.time for the sea
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mashsf:

Fog City
Anthony Bourdain: BURMA FAREWELL

anthonybourdain:

It’s a very special moment when you arrive someplace, look around at a vista that is clearly, awe-inspiringly fantastic and realize: “Holy ****! Almost no one else has SEEN this!”

After many years of looking at some pretty impressive vistas, I have to be honest: It makes it better. Let’s face…

sciencesoup:

Everybody Claps
From French opera to Amazonian tribe dances, performances will be rewarded with the noise of humans smacking their hands together in sync. Applause is a behaviour as widespread as humanity, but how has it become so ubiquitous? We know that clapping mimics the behaviour of apes in excited states – stamping, whooping and slapping are orang-utan reactions to food or friends. But primates don’t truly applaud unless they’re taught to. Lift your hands and clap them together. Think about what a complex action it is: cupping your hands so you burst the air pocket between your palms, having the energy to repeat the action, knowing what speed matches the people around you. So why this, over howling or kicking or stamping? Some theorists link applause solely to the group effect, citing the tendency of applause to synchronise — listen to the next slow clap you hear, and marvel at our ability to keep steady time. Clapping also tends to be prompted by a group experience, like a punchline or a spectacle. Research at York University shows that just as people laugh louder in company to prove they’ve gotten a joke, applause is more synchronous in response to a snappy turn of phrase. It makes us feel included, a part of the group, and so has an evolutionary basis. Others suggest that clapping is instinctive. Babies clap in happiness from the age of four months, and patients in catatonic states will often adopt clapping as a fixation, suggesting that it produces pleasure independent of company. This could be because of the soothing regularity and rhythm it produces. But further, there is evidence that the act can induce seizure-like brain activity, pleasurable in short bursts. In which case, clapping is not just learned, but hard-wired in our brains.
Guest article written by biocurious