DDD SUGGESTED READING ~ JAN 13, 2015

1. You know the Pillars of Creation? That massive celestial structure that makes you go "oooh" and "aaaah" every time they show up on PBS or in the pages of Scientific Astronomy or whatever? Turns out they're not there anymore. Like, they're gone, man. But we can still see them. But they're gone. But they're still there. But not. Look, I know it sounds daft, but read this Sploid article to find out exactly what's up about what, exactly, is or isn't "up there" anymore. And how.

2. I know I've been using this space to harp incessantly on about the Charlie HEBDO attack, as though this new think piece by Slavoj Zizek says so much that I wished I'd said - and then some - that I just can't help but post it. It also doesn't hurt things that Zizek quotes some very germain Nietzsche, as well as from my favorite piece of poetry, Yeats' The Second Coming. He begins:

Now, when we are all in a state of shock after the killing spree in the Charlie Hebdo offices, it is the right moment to gather the courage to think. We should, of course, unambiguously condemn the killings as an attack on the very substance our freedoms, and condemn them without any hidden caveats (in the style of "Charlie Hebdo was nonetheless provoking and humiliating the Muslims too much"). But such pathos of universal solidarity is not enough – we should think further.
Such thinking has nothing whatsoever to do with the cheap relativisation of the crime (the mantra of "who are we in the West, perpetrators of terrible massacres in the Third World, to condemn such acts"). It has even less to do with the pathological fear of many Western liberal Leftists to be guilty of Islamophobia. ... What is much more needed than the demonisation of the terrorists into heroic suicidal fanatics is a debunking of this demonic myth.

You really need to read this.

3. And, finally, a much needed dose of hilarity courtesy of [adult swim]! Newbridge Tourism invites you to visit the Little Town that Wishes it Could, but Can't!