Bouquet #12: Eclectic Mind Food (Lakes, Indentured, Universe Dance, Stowaway Birds, Ballet)

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.

The 36 Most Beautiful Lakes in the World, From Luxurious Vacation Spots in Italy to Hidden Wonders in Myanmar

We’d love to take a deep dive into some of these captivating bodies of water.

Condé Nast TravelerCondé Nast

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

Requiring nurses to repay for training programs has become increasingly common, with some hospitals sending $15,000 bills.

NBC NewsShannon Pettypiece

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

Hubble’s 30th anniversary: Hubble observations help calculate the expansion rate of the universe.

HubbleSite.org

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

Einstein’s equations gave the Universe a structure. But not even Einstein could have known how tricky the story of cosmology would become.

Big ThinkMarcelo Gleiser

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

Why fly all the way across the ocean when you can chill out by the pool?

Hakai MagazineHakai 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

Alice Robb’s Don’t Think, Dear and Ellen O’Connell Whittet’s What You Become in Flight explore both the liberating sense of art and the domineering logic of ballet.

The NationGlory Liu

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