Have you ever looked up at the night sky to find a view like this? Aurora, also known as the Northern or Southern Lights, are most often seen in high-latitude regions around the Arctic and Antarctic. These spectacular displays are caused by collisions between charged particles from solar wind and oxygen and nitrogen in Earth’s atmosphere. As the oxygen and nitrogen molecules revert to their normal state, they release photons, or small bursts of energy in the form of light—which is what we see on the ground below. The color of these hypnotizing displays is determined by what’s colliding: oxygen produces yellows and greens, while nitrogen is responsible for reds, violets, and blues.
Photo 1: Beverly & Pack, CC BY 2.0, flickr (Northern Lights)
Photo 2: Ben, CC BY-ND 2.0, flickr (Southern Lights)
Photo 3: Jukka Hernetkoski, CC BY-NC 2.0, flickr (Northern Lights)
Photo 4: Trey Ratcliff, CC BY-NC-SA 2.0, flickr (Southern Lights)
POV: You’re in the middle of the ocean and, for some reason, you need to write something down. To your surprise and delight, you discover that there are about three hundred species of sea pen! Unfortunately for you, none of them can be used for writing. Named for their resemblance to old-fashioned quills, sea pens are actually not single animals: they are colonies of polyps. All of the polyps work together and each has a role to play. There are feeding polyps that catch plankton, as well as polyps that circulate water to keep the colony balanced and upright.
We need not suppose that when power resides in an exclusive class, that class will knowingly and deliberately sacrifice the other classes to themselves: it suffices that, in the absence of its natural defenders, the interest of the excluded is always in danger of being overlooked: and, when looked at, is seen with very different eyes from those of the persons whom it directly concerns.
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John Stuart Mill, On Representative Government (via philosophybits)
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