I’m excited about Europa Report, which looks like it might actually be a (mostly) scientifically accurate space film. Though I have to say I was not the least bit surprised by the appearance of something under the ice on Europa. Didn’t these people get the message?
ALL THESE WORLDS
ARE YOURS EXCEPT
EUROPA
ATTEMPT NO
LANDING THERE
Right, so what did they expect, attempting a landing there?
(Full screen and HD for maximum scariness.)
1. Type “atari breakout” into Google Images.
2. Grab your mouse and play.
Does this ever bring back memories! Part of my misspent youth went toward achieving grand master status on this game…along with Space Invaders and the original Mario Brothers.
(Note: It works on a laptop trackpad, too, but that’s a bit more challenging. It also works quite well on an iPad…not that I’ve been wasting time on different devices or anything.)
(Photo by Alexander Wild. That is not a twig, by the way.)
Did you know that some paper wasps make vertical nests? Neither did I, until I stumbled across a post at Scientific American titled “My longest blog post ever.” Curious, I clicked to see what that was about, and found a life size photo of a Mischocyttarus sp. paper wasp nest. Take my word for it, you really want to click that link and go see for yourself. You’ll have to scroll for a bit to see it all.
It does give one pause when fantasizing about hiking in the Brazilian rainforest. Blundering through spider webs is one thing, but smacking into one of these…yikes.
From a safe distance, though, this is seriously cool.
You wouldn’t think so, would you? But look at what Disney has done to tomboy Princess Merida of “Brave,” who just wanted to ride her horse and shoot arrows off into the sunset:
On the left, we have the actual Merida of the movie. On the right, the sexed-up version that Disney decided was necessary before inducting her into the Disney Princess collection (and its clothes, toys, sheets, towels, and collectibles which will now be sold to the huddled 12-year-old masses). That image of an older, sexier woman in a tight dress is what countless little girls are going to get when they ask their parents for a Merida t-shirt.
Seriously, Disney. Merida’s mane of bouncing red curls wasn’t good enough? No, you had to make it twice as thick, several inches longer, and blow it back with a fan. Then you added at least five years to her face and body, a cup size or two to her breasts, and a bunch of makeup to her face, while subtracting several inches from her waist. Worst of all, you stuffed her into a ridiculous tight dress like the one she hated in the movie. She complained endlessly about having to wear a dress like that! And when she was forced to anyway, she intentionally tore it straight down the back and in the arm and shoulder seams so that she could shoot her bow. This glammed-up creature in your collection couldn’t even lift a bow, much less pull it.
“Brave” was a movie about a tomboy who didn’t conform to girly expectations, who butted heads with her mother about those expectations, and who had a marvelous, scary adventure because she was too independent to give in. This is the princess little girls the world over loved — and little boys, too. We took our 11-year-old son to see the film and he thought it was great. So great, in fact, that when it became available for renting on our cable provider, he wanted to watch it again. I sincerely doubt he’d be interested in watching a sexpot version.
So thanks, Disney, for yanking away the sorely-needed role model for millions of little girls, and replacing her with yet another image they cannot measure up to. “Brave” was about being true to yourself, liking who you are, and not conforming. Disney is about feeling bad about yourself and hating your inadequate body so that a megacorporation can make even more money.
The worst thing is that it was so unnecessary.
To get the bad taste out of our mouths, let’s watch Princess Merida tear that damn dress apart so she can show the world that she, a freckled redheaded girl, is the best freakin’ archer in Scotland.
(Watch it fullscreen for maximum seam-tearing enjoyment.)
Looks like a sci fi painting, doesn’t it? But it’s real, taken with a fisheye lens. This is Warsaw at sunset, with the Vistula River and the Świętokrzyski Bridge in the foreground. Cool fact about this bridge: it has a bike path going each direction. I would love to ride across it.
(Click the image to ex-span-d.)
The economy, politics and news got you down? Feel too hurried and stressed to even think about spending almost eight minutes watching a video?
Then you owe it to yourself to watch this one. It’s a clip from the Spanish TV show “Tú Sí Que Vales,” showing 52-year-old dancer Miyoko Shida Rigolo performing with a feather and…you know, I can’t even describe it. Suffice to say it is riveting and beautiful, and the ending is fantastic.
Ms. Rigolo won the Silver Prize of The Fifth International festival of Circus Art in Izhevsk, Udmurtia, Russia with this performance, called Sanddornbalance, and she certainly wowed the judges and audience of “Tú Sí Que Vales.” Not to mention the rest of the world — this video was posted just 11 days ago and already has over 1 million views. Which kind of gives me hope for humanity.
Hat tip to Power Wench.
Because it doesn’t have hummingbirds:
One of our planet’s best eyes into the universe has closed. The Herschel Space Observatory — just Herschel to its friends — was the largest infrared telescope we had in orbit, with an ability to see into the coldest regions of space. (By “we” I mean “we humans,” because Herschel was built and operated by the European Space Agency.) Those are the areas where giant dust clouds obscured the light that other telescopes could see, but Herschel peered right through them to photograph the star-forming nurseries they concealed.
It was launched in 2009 with enough liquid helium to cool its instruments for three years. Unlike every electronic appliance I’ve bought in the last decade, Herschel outlived its predicted lifespan, by an impressive 25 percent. But its helium has boiled away and its instruments have gone dark. The last act it will perform is to shift its orbit from the Earth to the sun, where it will probably remain until space travel is boringly normal and somebody grabs it for salvage.
Both the Atlantic and Wired put up photo galleries sampling the wonders that Herschel revealed, and both are worth a look. I particularly enjoyed the Atlantic’s collage of the Andromeda Galaxy as seen by two different telescopes (Herschel in infrared and XMM-Newton in x-ray) plus an astrophotographer’s “normal” camera. The combination of different views is a great illustration of just how limited our biological eyes are in seeing what’s really out there.
Wired writes:
According to the ESA, Herschel has made more than 35,000 individual observations across 600 programmes. That dataset is so vast that scientists are still combing through it
…and will be for a long time to come.
Stanford University Ph.D. student Cassandra Brooks spent two months aboard the icebreaker ship Nathaniel B. Palmer as it traveled — and sometimes crunched — through the Ross Sea. She’s been blogging her experiences at National Geographic in a series of posts that are well worth your time. Her post on “Fighting for the last tomato” reminded me of my own experience on a Gulf of Mexico research cruise, which — while in far more hospitable temperatures — still ran into the problem of keeping fresh vegetables on board a long cruise with no resupply stops. We ran out of lettuce quickly, and I remember fantasizing about salads. (The fried foods were available forever, though — ugh.)
Brooks’ most recent post is a video featuring nothing but the forward view from the bridge, which you might think would be boring. You would be wrong. She writes: “To share the incredible experience of an almost infinite variety of scenes, I’ve compiled a time-lapse montage shot over the last two months, condensed into less than five minutes, with a surprise at the end.”
Infinite variety is right. This is a mesmerizing video.
Okay, technically it’s Tuesday, but that’s only because I got involved in a movie (Looper; it was much better than I expected and actually fried my brain a bit, which I always appreciate in a movie) and then dinner dishes and then this and that and…well, it’s almost 01:00 but I’m still calling this Monday.
With its close focus and empty horizon, this wallpaper could be almost anywhere. In fact it’s at Seven Sisters Country Park in England, where the high tide has partially submerged an abandoned dock. The post-sunset color palette is lovely, but my favorite part is that coil of rope in the foreground. It draws the eye, then leads the viewer deeper into the shot to discover more bits of rope and netting…and to realize that a seemingly empty scene is in fact full of the signs of past activity.
(Click the image to wallpaperize.)
