Under The Volcano, Julian Charrière

Mikael Hallstrøm Eriksen

Strata-34B

Watercolour on paper

13x20 cm.

Strata-37c

Watercolour on paper

30x40 cm

Life of Pi (Ang Lee, 2012).

MAIN HOON NA (2004)

René Magritte (Belgian, 1898-1967), Le retour [The Return], c.1950. Gouache on paper, 29.6 x 41.7 cm.

प्रिय लिखकर

priya likhkar

after writing "beloved"

मैं नीचे लिख दूँ नाम तुम्हारा

main niche likh doon naam tumhara

I'll write down your name

कुछ जगह बीच में छोड़ दूँ

kuchh jagah beech mein chhod doon

I'll leave some space in between

नीचे लिख दूँ

neeche likh doon

ill write down

‘सदा तुम्हारा’

'sada tumhara'

always yours

लिखा बीच में क्या यह तुमको पढ़ना है

likha beech mein kya yeh tumko padhna hai

what I've written in the middle that you'll have to read

कागज़ पर मन की परिभाषा का अर्थ समझना है

kaagaz par man ki paribhasha ka arth samjhna hai

you'll have to understand the definition of my heart written on the paper

जो भी अर्थ निकालोगी तुम वह मुझको स्वीकार है

jo bhi arth nikaalogi tum woh mujhko swikaar hai

whatever meaning you'll decipher is welcomed by me

झुके नयन, मौन अधर या कोरा कागज़

jhuke nayan,maun adhar ya kora kagaz

bowed eyes,silent lips or blank paper

अर्थ सभी का प्यार है

arth sabhi ka pyar hai

everything's meaning is love

– Ashutosh Rana

what is even more heartwarming is that he(poet) courted his now wife using this poem

the hopeless romantic in me couldn't resist making a post about it when i saw it

"The feeling that she was not alone took possession of her." The whisper on the stair. 1924. Frontispiece.

Internet Archive

Stories of Your Life and Others - Ted Chiang

A book review by Danny Yee

© 2011 https://dannyreviews.com/

The stories in Stories of Your Life and Others tackle big ideas intelligently, in the grand tradition of science fiction. They postulate some fundamental change in how the world works and explore its implications through the experiences or challenges faced by their protagonists.

"Tower of Babylon" is set in a Mesopotamia where there really is a vault of heaven for a tower to reach. In "Understand" an experimental drug makes the protagonist really, really intelligent, capable of understanding not only the world but his own mind. And "Division by Zero" is about a mathematician who discovers that arithmetic is inconsistent.

In "Story of Your Life" a linguist is drafted to help decipher the language of heptapod aliens. Interspersed with the narrative of her linguistic discoveries are vignettes of her lifetime relationship with her daughter. At first these two strands appear to have no connection at all — and their link turns out to be indirect, involving variational approaches to physics and a different kind of consciousness, challenging our notions of memory and free will.

"Seventy-Two Letters" is set in a 19th century England where industrialisation is kabbalah-inspired, with automata (golems) manufactured by applying names to sculptures. And reproduction works in accordance with preformationist theory, with tiny homunculi recursively nested inside sperm. This is mixed up with some politics, involving eugenics and class tensions, and some action. "The Evolution of Human Science", originally published in Nature, is less a story than an abstract speculation about how human science might react to a "metahuman" population with a superior but incommunicable knowledge system.

In "Hell is the Absence of God" angels regularly visit the earth, dealing out miracles (and incidental damage); statistics are kept on the results, and on the fraction of people who are taken to Heaven or condemned to life in Hell, without God. The lead character is desperate to learn how to love God so he can rejoin his dead wife in Heaven; two other characters face rather different challenges.

Presented in a documentary format, with short perspectives from different people, "Liking What You See" is set in a near future where it's possible to reversibly modify people's brains so that they don't perceive beauty or ugliness in faces. A progressive university is debating whether this, known as calliagnosia, should be a requirement for students.The significant novelties involved in Chiang's stories require some serious suspension of disbelief, but he manages this well. He doesn't dwell on the presuppositions or back-story, attempting to justify the impossible, but rapidly introduces the setting and elaborates on it only as much as is necessary for the plot and the exploration of ideas. (The occasional exceptions are jarring, for example in "Story of Your Life" when some nonsensical argument is presented to explain why the aliens haven't learned anything from human television broadcasts.)

None of the characters have much depth. They are driven by intellect rather than emotion and their personalities presented from the outside, fairly clinically. A focus on their understanding of the world is arguably necessary for the elaboration of the story ideas, however, and there's only so much that can be fitted into a short story. (I am not convinced that Chiang could produce a decent novel using the same approach.)The plots work effectively, both in unfolding the implications of the central ideas and in holding the reader's attention. This is true both in the stories with straightforward chronological narratives and in the more unusually structured ones, with resolutions provided by a mix of goal seeking, problem solution, and structural cadence.Stories of Your Life and Others is the most entertaining and thought-provoking collection of science fiction stories I've read for a long time.

My favorite part about modern world-class scientists and mathematicians is how none of them sound real

We've got this guy

won the Fields Medal for his work in plasma physics

reports to the French government about advancements in science and technology

doesn't look out of place as a Hogwarts professor

and this guy

uncovered a KGB hacker conspiracy ring

sells personalized glassblown Klein bottles

from a miniature robotic forklift warehouse under his house

used a slide rule in 2006

thought the internet was a fad

and especially this guy (RIP)

cracked the mystery of the NASA Challenger space shuttle explosion

cracked open safes in the Manhattan Project for funsies

won the Nobel Prize for his work in quantum electrodynamics

played the bongos on the side

couldn't tell left from right

Guys our community for Hinduism just got approved!!!

Reblog or slide into the replies for an invite!!

So excited for this!!!

Let’s reach all Hindus on tumblr!

Meera Bai;

“One night as I walked in the desert the mountains rode on my shoulders

and the sky became my heart,

and the earth - my own body, I explored.

Every object began to wink at me, and Mira wisely calculated thinking,

My charms must be at their height

now would be a good time to rush into his arms,

maybe He won't drop me so quick.”