Sunday Selections #3 (21 July 2013)

This week’s selections are a little long because of an amazing photo series that I found but we’ll get on to that later. For now, let’s start with a little happy-happy, joy-joy 🙂

Because I’m a real sucker for all things feel-good, this video made me smile. I don’t really think this style of mashing everything together in a happy, surf-loving, Jason-Mraz kind of way particularly suits the song but Adam Levine helped a bit. Fine. A lot. So did the awesome didgeridoo-playing Aborigine.

Then I saw these cute photos of Justin the Most Badass Kitten Ever and couldn’t help but go, “AWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWW”:

Justin the most badass kitten

Later on in the week, I stumbled upon this article about the moon landing in 1969. This is National Geographic’s original article about the moon landing, first published in December 1969. How momentous was that occasion? Cold War politics aside (because it was a HUGE deal in the Space Race), let’s put things into context for you – the computing technology in our smartphones today is way more than it took to send Apollo 11 into space and onto the moon…and we use our iPhones to play Angry Birds? o_O

NASA’s computing power

On the same topic of technology, how good has CGI technology become? Forget constructing entire movie sets and renting mansions that’ll only be used once, only people in the 2000s still do that. The movie of the year, The Great Gatsby, shows us how it’s done with some amazing CGI treatment:

Then a friend posted this article about the dark side of Dubai. The article described an apathy for human life that made for tough reading. Yes, I shouldn’t be nearly as horrified because foreign workers can be poorly treated in Malaysia, but the flippancy of the perpetrators and their audacity to laugh it off as being part of the process, or dismiss them as “the servant class”…sorry but my left-leaning tendencies finds that quite disgusting and arrogant. Where do you come off laughing at people who are less fortunate than you, because YOU chose to exploit them?

Ommmm…keep my Buddhist cool…

Also getting on my nerves this week was the outcome of the George Zimmerman case. I didn’t follow it closely so I won’t add my own commentary but the Daily Show does a good job of summarising everything I read about the case (including the privileged middle class outrage I feel). Fast-forward to 1min 23secs in…and watch for John Oliver’s face when the jury announces a not-guilty verdict:

Since the outcome of the George Zimmerman trial threatened to destabilise my week, I had to do something fast. So I read this, this and this to restore my faith in humanity.

Still a ridiculous outcome to the trial though.

And thus we return to feel-good. This week, I came across this amazing list of photographs: 40 of the Most Powerful Photographs Ever Taken (http://www.themysteryworld.com/2012/06/40-of-most-powerful-photographs-ever.html). They caught my attention because they do such a good job of capturing the human experience. Regardless of our race, culture, gender, background, religion or even species, we all feel pain, sadness, joy, happiness, jealousy, compassion, sympathy. Just look at the photos and you will see why tolerance, understanding and harmony will make this world a better place for all of us…and why everyone appreciates kindness, and how ego and attachment are the cause of our suffering. I reproduce 20 photographs here, for your viewing pleasure:

Sisters pose for the same photo three separate times, years apart.

A Russian war veteran kneels beside the tank he spent the war in, now a monument.

A Romanian child hands a heart-shaped balloon to riot police during protests against austerity measures in Bucharest.

Retired Philadelphia Police Captain Ray Lewis is arrested for participating in the Occupy Wall Street protests in 2011.

A monk prays for an elderly man who had died suddenly while waiting for a train in Shanxi Taiyuan, China.

A dog named “Leao” sits for a second consecutive day at the grave of her owner, who died in the disastrous landslides near Rio de Janiero on January 15, 2011.

The 1968 Olympics Black Power Salute: African American athletes Tommie Smith and John Carlos raise their fists in a gesture of solidarity at the 1968 Olympic games. Australian Silver medalist Peter Norman wore an Olympic Project for Human Rights badge in support of their protest. Both Americans were expelled from the games as a result.

Jewish prisoners at the moment of their liberation from an internment camp “death train” near the Elbe in 1945.

John F. Kennedy Jr. salutes his father’s coffin along with the honor guard.

Christians protect Muslims during prayer in the midst of the uprisings in Cairo, Egypt, in 2011.

A North Korean man waves his hand as a South Korean relative weeps, following a luncheon meeting during inter-Korean temporary family reunions at Mount Kumgang resort October 31, 2010. Four hundred and thirty-six South Koreans were allowed to spend three days in North Korea to meet their 97 North Korean relatives, whom they had been separated from since the 1950-53 war.

A dog is reunited with his owner following the tsunami in Japan in 2011.

“Wait For Me Daddy,” by Claude P. Dettloff, October 1, 1940: A line of soldiers march in British Columbia on their way to a waiting train as five-year-old Whitey Bernard tugs away from his mother’s hand to reach out for his father.

Navy chaplain Luis Padillo gives last rites to a soldier wounded by sniper fire during a revolt in Venezuela.

Australian Scott Jones kisses his Canadian girlfriend Alex Thomas after she was knocked to the ground by a police officer’s riot shield in Vancouver, British Columbia. Canadians rioted after the Vancouver Canucks lost the Stanley Cup to the Boston Bruins.

A mother comforts her son in Concord, Alabama, near his house which was completely destroyed by a tornado in April of 2011.

Pearl Harbor survivor Houston James of Dallas is overcome with emotion as he embraces Marine Staff Sgt. Mark Graunke Jr. during the Dallas Veterans Day Commemoration at Dallas City Hall in 2005. Sgt Graunke, who was a member of a Marine ordnance-disposal team, lost a hand, leg, and eye while defusing a bomb in Iraq in July of 2004.

Phyllis Siegel, 76, left, and Connie Kopelov, 84, both of New York, embrace after becoming the first same-sex couple to get married at the Manhattan City Clerk’s office in 2011.

A 4-month-old baby girl in a pink bear suit is miraculously rescued from the rubble by soldiers after four days missing following the Japanese tsunami.

A French civilian cries in despair as Nazis occupy Paris during World War II.

Source: >40 of the Most Powerful Photographs Ever Taken (http://www.themysteryworld.com/2012/06/40-of-most-powerful-photographs-ever.html)

Sunday Selections