K Tempest Tumbles

jtotheizzoe:

Tesla - From Faust to Master of Lightning

Pictured above is one of Nikola Tesla’s original induction motors, a marvel of invention that harnesses alternating current to create mechanical power. The term “world-changing invention” gets thrown around a lot, but this certainly qualifies.

But its inspiration has an unexpected genesis. One day, while walking through a park in Budapest, the young Tesla was reciting a poetic passage by heart (one of his many talents). From Goethe’s Faust:

The glow retreats, done is the day of toil;
It yonder hastes, new fields of life exploring;
Ah, that no wing can lift me from the soil
Upon its track to follow, follow soaring!

And as the sun set that day, with its glow retreating, Tesla is said to have drawn the design for the induction motor in the sand.

Creativity, scientific or otherwise, is nourished by diverse influences. Keep your ears and eyes open.

(via PBS)

(via cypheroftyr)

life:

On the afternoon of April 30, 2012, steelworkers placed the first column on the 100th floor at One World Trade Center (still called, by some, the “Freedom Tower”) and New York City will again have a new tallest building on its skyline. But no matter how much higher One World Trade climbs, however, and whatever skyscrapers follow in the years and decades to come, there will always be one building in New York City that looms larger, and is looked on more fondly, than any other.

The Empire State Building opened for business on May 1, 1931, in the midst of the Great Depression, with New York governor Al Smith’s grandchildren cutting the ceremonial ribbon that introduced the 102-story masterpiece to the world. For four decades, it was the tallest building on the planet, before it was finally surpassed in 1972 by the World Trade Center towers anchoring lower Manhattan three miles south. Today, long after it lost the title as the tallest building in the world, and at a time when taller structures (everywhere, but especially in Asia) are rising at a dizzying clip, the ESB nevertheless still stands alone — literally and figuratively — on the Manhattan skyline.

Read more about the history of the Empire State Building here.

deconversionmovement:

The Origin of Marriage (And the Evolution of Divorce)

A couple of weeks ago a Dollars and Sex commenter wrote that the “origin of marriage was to create a legal contract by which a man could acquire a female slave.” Interesting point. Is there an economic story that explains the origin of this most-debated-of-all-institutions?

The first humans, those who lived between 5 and 1.8 million years ago, had very little use for marriage. Using the behavior of bonobos as the basis for how early humans would have behaved, it is presumed that early males and females had sex with many partners. Food sharing was principally in exchange for sexual favors, including sexual favors between same-gender pairs. Because females could collect food (fruits, nuts and insects) while still carrying and protecting their babies, males were not needed as protectors or providers. That meant that in this period neither partner gained from being in a committed pair.

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The only problem i have with this article is that it’s from a very herteronormative POV and doesn’t address group marriages or even marriage arrangements wherein two people agreed to separate after a certain time.

(via deducecanoe)

fyeahblackhistory:

kemetically-ankhtified:

Black History Month fact #10

The Shabaka Stone is one of the most important relics to be discovered from Kemet, next to the Rosetta Stone.

It is named after the “black” Pharaoh Shabaka (ca.712- 698 BCE), who ruled in the XXVth Dynasty (ca. 716 - 702 BCE) and who’s Old Kingdom styled prenomen name (“Neferkare”) is mentioned twice (in LINE 1). The black African Nubian Shabaka was the first king of the “Ethiopian” Dynasty to reunite Kemet by defeating the monarchy of Sais while settling in Memphis. Memphis was the ancient capital of Kemet, founded by Pharoah Menes.

The Shabaka Stone lays the foundation for the Memphite Theology, which was the foundational spiritual teaching of Kemet presented by Pharaoh Menes. It centers Ptah as the creator of the universe:

This it is said of Ptah: “He who made all and created the gods”. And he is Ta-tenen, who gave birth to the gods, and from whom every thing came forth, foods, provisions, divine offerings, all good things.

This it is recognized and understood that he is the mightiest of the gods. Thus Ptah was satisfied after he had made all things and all divine words.

Click here for more.

(via alexandraerin)

darkjez:

Did We Sell Each Other Into Slavery?

The single most effective White propaganda assertion that continues to make it very difficult for us to reconstruct the African social systems of mutual trust broken down by U.S. Slavery is the statement, unqualified, that, “We sold each other into slavery.” Most of us have accepted this statement as true at its face value. It implies that parents sold their children into slavery to Whites, husbands sold their wives, even brothers and sisters selling each other to the Whites. It continues to perpetuate a particularly sinister effluvium of Black character. But deep down in the Black gut, somewhere beneath all the barbecue ribs, gin and whitewashed religions, we know that we are not like this.

This singular short tart claim, that “We sold each other into slavery”, has maintained in a state of continual flux our historical basis for Black-on-Black self love and mutual cooperation at the level of Class. Even if it is true (without further clarification) that we sold each other into slavery, this should not absolve Whites of their responsibility in our subjugation. We will deal with Africa if need be…

The first act against Africa by Whites was an unilateral act of war, announced or unannounced. There were no African Kings or Queens in any of the European countries nor in the U.S. when ships set sail for Africa to capture slaves for profit. Whites had already decided to raid for slaves. They didn’t need our agreement on that. Hence, there was no mutuality in the original act. The African so-called slave “trade” was a demand-driven market out of Europe and America, not a supply-driven market out of Africa. We did not seek to sell captives to the Whites as an original act. Hollywood s favorite is showing Blacks capturing Blacks into slavery, as if this was the only way capture occurred. There are a number of ways in which capture occurred. Let s dig a little deeper into this issue.

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Whenever someone says this to me I always say: Cite your sources. Then I usually have to point out that “somebody, somewhere” is not a valid source.

(via karnythia)

ataxiwardance:

Five Things You Should Know About Fred Shuttlesworth

When legendary civil rights activist Reverend Fred L. Shuttlesworth died today, many Americans had no idea who he was or what he’d accomplished in his 89 years on earth. It’s an unfortunate reality that people often think Martin Luther King, Jr. and Malcolm X were the beginning and end of black activism in the Civil Rights era. In fact, nothing could be more wrong. From the 1950s onward, Shuttlesworth was a major factor in ending Jim Crow laws in the South, and many other oppressive forces throughout the United States. Here are the top five things you should know about him.

1. From the start of his career, Shuttlesworth, who was raised poor in Alabama, was fiery and obstinate. After Alabama officially banned the NAACP from operating within the state in 1956, Shuttlesworth, then a pastor, founded the Alabama Christian Movement for Human Rights. The ACMHR’s first major order of business was a Birmingham bus sit-in, during which Shuttlesworth and others boarded city buses and sat in the “whites only” sections. The ACMHR would eventually become charter member organization in the Southern Christian Leadership Conference.

2. He lived nearly nine decades, but many people tried to kill Shuttlesworth much earlier for his outspokenness. He was the target of two bomb attacks, one on his home and one on his church. And when Shuttlesworth tried to enroll his daughters in an all-white Birmingham school in 1957, an armed mob attacked him, beating him unconscious and stabbing his wife. The couple survived, and when a doctor remarked that Shuttlesworth was lucky to have avoided a concussion,Shuttlesworth said, “Doctor, the Lord knew I lived in a hard town, so he gave me a hard head.”

3. Though he worked closely with King, Shuttlesworth’s style was decidedly different. “Among the youthful ‘elders’ of the movement,” historian Diane McWhorter told The New York Times, “he was Martin Luther King’s most effective and insistent foil: blunt where King was soothing, driven where King was leisurely, and most important, confrontational where King was conciliatory—meaning, critically, that he was more upsetting than King in the eyes of the white public.” Despite their differences, King once called Shuttlesworth ”the most courageous civil rights fighter in the South.”

4. Shuttlesworth’s fiercest enemy in Birmingham was infamous public safety commissioner Bull Connor. Connor’s violent responses—attack dogs, fire hoses, billy clubs—to Shuttlesworth’s peaceful demonstrations were integral in changing America’s attitude about Jim Crow. “The televised images of Connor directing handlers of police dogs to attack unarmed demonstrators and firefighters’ using hoses to knock down children had a profound effect on American citizens’ view of the civil rights struggle,” says the Shuttlesworth Foundation’s website.

5. After his actions helped spawn the passage of the federal Civil Rights Act in 1964, Shuttlesworth continued fighting for justice in realms both racial and economic. In 1988 he founded the Shuttlesworth Housing Foundation to help low-income families own their own homes, and in 2004 he became president of the SCLC. A firebrand to the end, he resigned from the SCLC within months, saying “deceit, mistrust and a lack of spiritual discipline and truth have eaten at the core of this once-hallowed organization.” Three years ago, the city of Birmingham named its airport after Shuttlesworth. There are still no monuments named after Bull Connor.

I lived across the street from him for a while and it was very surreal. I couldn’t put the man I’d heard stories about together with the dude who came and got the paper off the lawn in my head.

(via alexandraerin)