Tuesday, September 29, 2009
Monday, September 28, 2009
a lonely tree on a fall afternoon
The term "green infrastructure" is being applied at a wide range of landscape scales, from statewide conservation networks to streetside rain gardens. Fundamentally, green infrastructure is just a framework for recognizing the valuable services that nature provides for the human environment. At a bioregional scale, green infrastructure supports essential ecosystem functions. At a metropolitan scale, green infrastructure forms a tapestry of open space that serves and guides smarth growth. At a site scale, green infrastructure integrates functions and makes life-giving processes visible and meaningful. Large protected and connected natural habitats are the foundation for any regional green infrastructure network. Parks, trails, greenways, and other open spaces should link communities to each other and a regional landscape matrix. Holistically conceived, a green infrastructure network is also a regenerative solution to urban challenges associated with stormwater and waste management, mobility and public health, local food and energy security, and even protection from natural and man-made hazards.
Sunday, September 27, 2009
evolution....
Evolution from Alex Glawion on Vimeo.
This short animation reflects shortcomings of mankind in different stages. It was entirely created in Blender within a university motion design class.
enjoy
http://www.alexglawion.com
music by sia
http://www.blender.org
"We both step and do not step in the same rivers. We are and are not."
Heraclitus the Riddler
Saturday, September 26, 2009
Start the day with a GOOD Laugh!
Start the day with a good laugh!! as demonstrated by "Aussie.. the quarter horse"..he has been on flickr before with his big toothy grin!
He always gives me a nice smile especially after having his carrot!! :))
Monday, September 21, 2009
Thursday, September 17, 2009
microworlds
A Microworld is a term coined at the MIT Media Lab Learning and Common Sense Group . It means, literally, a tiny world inside which a student can explore alternatives, test hypotheses, and discover facts that are true about that world. It differs from a simulation in that the student is encouraged to think about it as a "real" world, and not simply as a simulation of another world (for example, the one in which we physically move about in).
an extarterrestrial ?
Extraterrestrial life is defined as life which does not originate from planet Earth. The existence of life outside the planet is theoretical and all assertions of such life remain disputed.
Hypotheses regarding the origin(s) of extraterrestrial life, if it exists, are as follows: one proposes that it may have emerged, independently, from different places in the universe.
An alternative hypothesis is panspermia, which holds that life emerges from one location, then spreads between habitable planets.
These two hypotheses are not mutually exclusive. The study and theorization of extraterrestrial life is known as astrobiology, exobiology or xenobiology. Speculated forms of extraterrestrial life range from life at the scale of bacteria to sapient or sentient beings.
Suggested locations which might have once developed, or presently continue to host life similar to our own, include the planets Venus and Mars, moons of Jupiter and Saturn (e.g. Europa, Enceladus and Titan) and Gliese 581 c and d, recently discovered to be near Earth-mass extrasolar planets apparently located in their star's habitable zone, and with the potential to have liquid water.
To date, no credible evidence of extraterrestrial life has been discovered which has been generally accepted by the mainstream scientific community.
All other proposals, including beliefs that some UFOs are of extraterrestrial origin (see extraterrestrial hypothesis) and claims of alien abduction, are considered hypothetical by most scientists. In 2006, New Scientist published a list of ten controversial pieces of evidence that extraterrestrial life exists, but scientists do not consider them credible since no direct observational evidence has been encountered.
Flag on the rock
When the Germans occupied Athens in WWII, the Evzone who guarded the Greek flag which flew from the Acropolis, was ordered by the Nazis to remove it. He calmly took it down, wrapped himself in it and jumped to his death.
A plaque by the flag commemorates Manolis Glezos and Apostolis Santas, the two eighteen year-old heroes who tore down the Nazi flag flying from the Acropolis on the night of May 30th, 1941.
Saturday, September 12, 2009
Light-Emitting Bubbles
Light-Emitting Bubbles
Scientists Investigate Light-Emitting Bubbles
Michael D. Wheeler
LOS ANGELES --
What do sound waves, water bubbles and photons have in common? They are the primary players in sonoluminescence, a phenomenon in which the tiny bubbles created by intense acoustic fields in water emit light as they collapse.
It also spurred Gary A. Williams from the University of California and his colleagues to conduct experiments in sonoluminescence. They focused on creating single-bubble luminescence in alcohol and nitrogen at cryogenic temperatures, but they found it difficult to trap the bubbles. They tried another approach: using focused laser pulses to induce cavitation.
In experiments that they described in the May 21 issue of Physical Review Letters, the researchers created bubbles in water with 6-ns, 600-mJ pulses from an Nd:YAG laser. The water absorbed the energy from the focused pulse, creating a bubble that expanded to 2 mm in diameter before it collapsed.
The key to analyzing the luminescence was a Roper Scientific spectrometer with intensified CCD readout capabilities. "The CCD allows us to record a range of 200 nm of the spectrum on each shot," Williams explained. "Because the luminescence is only about 108 photons from each bubble, the intensifier stage of the CCD proved crucial in boosting the signal."
The bubbles displayed a molecular OH* band at 310 nm, which approximates a 7800-K blackbody spectrum. This suggests a strong connection between the emission from single and multiple bubbles, because the same molecular band is observed in the latter.
Saturday, September 5, 2009
The toad
Elizabeth Bishop - Giant Toad
I am too big. Too big by far. Pity me.
My eyes bulge and hurt. They are my one great beauty, even
so. They see too much, above, below. And yet, there is not much
to see. The rain has stopped. The mist is gathering on my skin
in drops. The drops run down my back, run from the corners of
my downturned mouth, run down my sides and drip beneath
my belly. Perhaps the droplets on my mottled hide are pretty,
like dewdrops, silver on a moldering leaf? They chill me
through and through. I feel my colors changing now, my pig-
ments gradually shudder and shift over.
Now I shall get beneath that overhanging ledge. Slowly. Hop.
Two or three times more, silently. That was too far. I'm
standing up. The lichen's gray, and rough to my front feet. Get
down. Turn facing out, it's safer. Don't breathe until the snail
gets by. But we go travelling the same weathers.
Swallow the air and mouthfuls of cold mist. Give voice, just
once. O how it echoed from the rock! What a profound, angelic
bell I rang!
I live, I breathe, by swallowing. Once, some naughty children
picked me up, me and two brothers. They set us down again
somewhere and in our mouths they put lit cigarettes. We could
not help but smoke them, to the end. I thought it was the death
of me, but when I was entirely filled with smoke, when my slack
mouth was burning, and all my tripes were hot and dry, they
let us go. But I was sick for days.
I have big shoulders, like a boxer. They are not muscle,
however, and their color is dark. They are my sacs of poison,
the almost unused poison that I bear, my burden and my great
responsibility. Big wings of poison, folded on my back. Beware,
I am an angel in disguise; my wings are evil, but not deadly. If
I will it, the poison could break through, blue-black, and
dangerous to all. Blue-black fumes would rise upon the air.
Beware, you frivolous crab.
Friday, September 4, 2009
secret light... bright illumination
A Navigation light is a colored source of illumination on an aircraft, spacecraft, or waterborne vessel, used to signal a craft's position, heading, and status.
Commonly, their placement is mandated by international conventions or civil authorities.
Water.....
Everything on the earth bristled, the bramble
pricked and the green thread
nibbled away, the petal fell, falling
until the only flower was the falling itself.
Water is another matter,
has no direction but its own bright grace,
runs through all imaginable colors,
takes limpid lessons
from stone,
and in those functionings plays out
the unrealized ambitions of the foam.
Pablo Neruda