Swiss Chard
If I were a real photographer like Deron or Phil or Barry–I would take many pictures of Swiss Chard growing tall and back-lit by afternoon sun. I saw this batch at a local nursery and went home to get my point-and-shoot camera. That red! That green! The glow coming through made me imagine other worlds, and the way the sun looks from behind closed eyelids.
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This is Fermi 2
Sounds like a Muppet name, doesn’t it?
Last week I drove to Michigan on business south of Detroit and saw these cooling towers in the near distance. I’ve seen them from I-75 before, but they always seemed so far off the highway. I was mesmerized, couldn’t get close enough. I asked the nice man at the gate if I could drive closer to take pictures and he said, “you can drive to those pylons up ahead and make a u-turn and get on outta here.” He didn’t say it, but “little Missy” was implied by his tone of voice.
The first Fermi reactor (Fermi 1) suffered a partial meltdown and a release of radiation in 1966 during a test run. Engineers were able to intervene and contain the radiation, but the accident caused quite a scare and even prompted some officials to initially consider evacuating portions of southeastern Michigan, including the city of Detroit. Fermi 1 finally began operating again in 1970, but shut down for good in 1972.
But everything’s okay now!
We are made of star stuff
earthquakes alter axis
The Chilean earthquake may have shifted the earth’s axis and shortened its days.
Strong earthquakes have altered Earth’s days and its axis in the past. The 9.1 Sumatran earthquake in 2004, which set off a deadly tsunami, should have shortened Earth’s days by 6.8 microseconds and shifted its axis by about 2.76 inches (7 cm, or 2.32 milliarcseconds).
Selleck Waterfall Sandwich
urban skiing
In Pittsburgh, we don’t get two-plus feet of snow in 24 hours – but that happened two weeks ago. And some people knew what they should do… (via @woycheck and @schulman)
steps
More snow expected overnight. It is February in Pittsburgh, after all.
this unique 18-minute genre has its own requirements
From a Wired article on how to ace a TED Talk:
“I’m surprised to see that half the people here know my career in some detail and the other half don’t know who I am,” he says.
Science is fine, but not when it messes with our illusions.
If she had included solar power and African child warriors, it would have been so perfect a TED talk that there would have been no need for others.
Wolfram wraps his talk by saying that when it comes to trying to boil down the universe to a simple algorithm, “it’s almost embarrassing not to at least try.”
“Just because someone has an ego,” he says, citing a writer whose name I can’t read from my scribbled notes, “doesn’t mean he’s wrong.”
Let a Professional Do It
When I posted this, the phrase “insert in post” caught my eye.
At the Front Door
reg’lar day
Lookin’ out my back door.
It’s kind of wimpy for this time of year, as we had a big thaw a few days back.
snow on branches
From Friday evening through Saturday afternoon, we had steady, heavy, snowfall in Pittsburgh. By the time it stopped, 21 inches had fallen. (Another storm is expected tomorrow, with 6 – 10 inches more.) Our street is still unplowed, buses are infrequent and delayed, and we are walking a lot. Plenty of time to look up, look around, enjoy the changed landscape.
Childhood
…is an experiment.
(via)
This Is A Metaphor For Something
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What Cindy Just Said
Well fuck my rubber anus under the fold.
noah | networked organisms and habitats
An open-source citizen science project by three of my classmates.
I don’t have an iPhone, or even a data plan for the smartphone I do have, so I can’t submit critter spottings to Project Noah. All you people with your fancy iPhones can contribute, though, using Noah’s beta iPhone app; sign up on the site to be a tester.
Wild animal!
A thing of arctic climes.
Neither feline nor canine. Nobody is really sure if it is any kind of ine at all.
And it’s not telling.
It keeps its own counsel. It has been seen nattering happily to itself.
And it does not answer to Kitty. No pussy, it.
And it knows things. Biblically.
It howls its knowledge into the night — and eats its friends.
2,000 frames per second
Michael Kenna’s Hokkaido
Michael Kenna. Fading Light, Furano, Hokkaido, Japan. 2004.
Ordinarily I’d not want to follow so swiftly on Deron’s post about the Andy Goldsworthy documentary, but if I don’t do it now, I might be some time.
A short while ago Phil Bebbington sent me a link to this documentary interview with photographer Michael Kenna. I found Michael Kenna’s Hokkaido calming and beautiful, and I want to share it.
“Even in the midst of a storm, it’s a wonderful place to come to ground, in a sense.”
The snowfall in my neck of the woods is impressive, all right –
but my house is not nearly so spacious.
Today could mark the beginning of a long winter.
cypress
We got a tiny cypress in a pot – to be planted outside later on. Meanwhile, we have a Christmas tree which is scarcely larger than an ornament.
baby coelacanth
“As far as we know, it was the first ever video image of a living juvenile coelacanth, which is still shrouded in mystery,” said Masamitsu Iwata, a researcher at Aquamarine Fukushima in Iwaki, northeast of Tokyo.
It is believed that their eggs hatch inside the female and the young fish are fully formed at the time of birth.
Texas Woman Fakes Cancer to get Implants
Authorities say a Texas woman lied about having breast cancer and spent $10,000 raised at a benefit to have her breasts enlarged. McLennan County sheriff’s investigator James Pack says in court records that 24-year-old Trista Joy Lathern shaved her head to look like a cancer patient undergoing chemotherapy.
Pack says Lathern wanted breast implants to try to save her seven-month marriage.
A New THEORY of AWESOMENESS and MIRACLES
Today I’m going to talk about the idea of the miraculous, or at least the appearance of the miraculous. Humans have a strange relationship to the miraculous, but the prime emotion it seems to stimulate is awe, and awesomeness is pretty much what we’re all striving for.
Essentially, it is a reflection on the human mind’s relationship to size and complexity:
thoughts on a holographic universe
Unlike normal photographs, every part of a hologram contains all the information possessed by the whole.