Bouquet #12: Eclectic Mind Food (Lakes, Indentured, Universe Dance, Stowaway Birds, Ballet)
Mind food for this week comprises beautiful lakes, story of Indentured nurses, Universe Dance, Stowaway Birds, and contradictions of Ballet
“In rivers, the water that you touch is the last of what has passed and the first of that which comes; so with present time.” ― Leonardo da Vinci
1. Lakes beautiful
When nothing else works on days you are feeling dull, down and out, a water body around you, specifically in the confines of the mountains. That is the impact that Mansarovar had on me. Here are some of the beautiful ones.
2. Indentured Nurses
Twenty years back, Indian IT companies would have a bond on the employees they sent abroad. The Indian IT employees were treated as indentured labor. They were paid pittance and the IT companies earned in millions. All in the name of training and sending them abroad. Now the American hospitals are doing that to the nurses.
When it comes to money, the western employers are no better than their other opportunist brethren.
‘Indentured servitude’: Nurses hit with hefty debt when trying to leave hospitals
3. The Dance of the Universe
Is the Universe expanding or oscillating between expansion and contraction? This was the question with the scientists back in the 1900s. Including Einstein.
Hubble, however, first conjectured that universe is expanding. After a century of telescope observations and scientific calculations for the Hubble Constant, finally in 2019, the error was brought down to 2%.
Hubble’s Exciting Universe: Measuring the Universe’s Expansion Rate
While the Dutch scientist Willem de Sitter argued that the universe was expanding, the Russian scientist Alexander Friedmann's argument was it was oscillating.
How imaginary universes advanced the field of cosmology
4. Traveling Birds
Birds have been known to travel thousands of miles via ships - cargo and passengers. They make their journey as unexpected stowaways. The whole story is fascinating!
With Ships, Birds Find an Easier Way to Travel | Hakai Magazine
5. Ballet Contradictions
Ballet is about showing the ease with how the ballerina prances around gracefully. But the greatest contradiction is that ballet routine is anything but of ease.
“Blood builds character,” one of my teachers said when he noticed a dancer’s toes beginning to bleed through her shoe. Yet ballet isn’t training to endure sustained agony in the body alone; it is also training to endure it in the mind.
It is useful to know what really happens under the façade of grace and beauty. Blood.
The Costs and Contradictions of Ballet
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