Flying Fish and All Things Beautiful

My name is Margaret, Maggie or Mags, your choice. I spent 2 years (2008-2010) living in South Korea working as an EFL teacher. Then 6 months traveling from India to Germany to Thailand to Malaysia and back to Thailand before returning to my hometown in the USA.

I fall in love easily with people and places. I love photography and traveling and talking :P

~Love without hope of reward
Love unselfishly for love's own sake~
futurejournalismproject: Earth, 121 Megapixel Russian Edition Via The Verge: There’s been a long history of NASA-provided “Blue Marble” images of Earth, but now we’re getting a different perspective thanks to photos taken by the Elektro-L No.1 Russian weather satellite. Unlike NASA’s pictures, this satellite produces 121-megapixel images that capture the Earth in one shot instead of a collection of pictures from multiple flybys stitched together. The result is the highest-resolution single picture of Earth yet. The image certainly looks different than what we’re used to seeing, and that’s because the sensor aboard the weather satellite combines data from three visible and one infrared wavelengths of light, a method that turns vegetation into the rust color that dominates the shot. A zoomable version of this image is here. A collection of related images is available on the Planet Earth Web site. cool!

futurejournalismproject:

Earth, 121 Megapixel Russian Edition

Via The Verge:

There’s been a long history of NASA-provided “Blue Marble” images of Earth, but now we’re getting a different perspective thanks to photos taken by the Elektro-L No.1 Russian weather satellite. Unlike NASA’s pictures, this satellite produces 121-megapixel images that capture the Earth in one shot instead of a collection of pictures from multiple flybys stitched together. The result is the highest-resolution single picture of Earth yet. The image certainly looks different than what we’re used to seeing, and that’s because the sensor aboard the weather satellite combines data from three visible and one infrared wavelengths of light, a method that turns vegetation into the rust color that dominates the shot.

A zoomable version of this image is here. A collection of related images is available on the Planet Earth Web site.

cool!

From Seoul to New York

Worked with Amnesty International on this when I was in Korea. These are some very strong women who have been fighting for a very long time.  

When Obama endorsed marriage equality…

whenobamaendorsed:

… he danced around the White House all like:

and:

and:

Probably not, check out the rest of the tumblr. it’s pretty much awesome. I think I’ll just link it in my legislation final, something about the President’s role in the lawmaking process….

I have nothing now but praise for my life. I’m not unhappy. I cry a lot because I miss people. They die and I can’t stop them. They leave me and I love them more. … What I dread is the isolation. … There are so many beautiful things in the world which I will have to leave when I die, but I’m ready, I’m ready, I’m ready.

—Maurice Sendak on Fresh Air in 2011. [all interviews with Sendak here] (via nprfreshair)

(via npr)

futurejournalismproject: Daughters Are Precious My morning reading in the Hindustan Times today. A new column by actor-activist Amir Khan. He writes: Every conceivable reason that I have come across during our research of people explaining why they want a boy and not a girl as a daughter does not seem to make any sense to me. For instance, “if we have a girl then at the time of her marraige we have to pay dowry”, or “a girl cannot perform the last rites after the death of her parents, or near and dear ones”, or “the girl can’t take the vansh, or family forward”…All these are man-made reasons. We have created dowry and are now killing the girl child as if she is responsible for it. We have decided for ourselves that girls can’t perform last rites and then we say the girl is to blame.” FJP: Agreed, approved, and happy to see this in a newspaper. I had a really nice conversation with the man who ran the hotel I stayed at in Delhi when I first got to India about his children. His said his daughter was his favorite, because his sons were spoiled and selfish, but she was smarter, kinder and a harder worker than his sons. As the conversation went on he got prouder and prouder of his daughter. You could see him kind of puff up when he talked about her.  It’s not my country, nor culture so I am not about to sit and judge, but it is always nice to see people talking about such things. And it reminded of the kind man and our nice chat during my first 24 hours in India.

futurejournalismproject:

Daughters Are Precious

My morning reading in the Hindustan Times today. A new column by actor-activist Amir Khan. He writes:

Every conceivable reason that I have come across during our research of people explaining why they want a boy and not a girl as a daughter does not seem to make any sense to me. For instance, “if we have a girl then at the time of her marraige we have to pay dowry”, or “a girl cannot perform the last rites after the death of her parents, or near and dear ones”, or “the girl can’t take the vansh, or family forward”…All these are man-made reasons. We have created dowry and are now killing the girl child as if she is responsible for it. We have decided for ourselves that girls can’t perform last rites and then we say the girl is to blame.”

FJP: Agreed, approved, and happy to see this in a newspaper.

I had a really nice conversation with the man who ran the hotel I stayed at in Delhi when I first got to India about his children. His said his daughter was his favorite, because his sons were spoiled and selfish, but she was smarter, kinder and a harder worker than his sons. As the conversation went on he got prouder and prouder of his daughter. You could see him kind of puff up when he talked about her. 

It’s not my country, nor culture so I am not about to sit and judge, but it is always nice to see people talking about such things. And it reminded of the kind man and our nice chat during my first 24 hours in India.