"Yesterday, December 7, 1941 a date which will live in infamy the United States of America was suddenly and deliberately attacked by naval and air forces of the Empire of Japan.
...
With confidence in our armed forces with the unbounded determination of our people we will gain the inevitable triumph so help us God.
I ask that the Congress declare that since the unprovoked and dastardly attack by Japan on Sunday, December 7, a state of war has existed between the United States and the Japanese Empire."
... It is said that if birds knew what they were doing ...they would fall from the sky like rocks. That they do not is a tribute to the efficiency of intelligent design or evolution ...take your pick.
Continuing in the vein of 'capturing nature' comes Andrew Zuckerman with his signature white backgrounds, and his skill in capturing the beauty and essence of his subjects. While Audubon seemed to want to educate his viewers about lands and animals previously unseen, Zuckerman seems to want to wow today's jaded viewer with the power and beauty of the animals alone.
Bird is a coffee-table book featuring his artistic photographs of dozens of bird species. While Zuckerman has tackled other subjects in other books, his topic here is the beauty and diversity of birds.
Read the rest of my review at Epinions dot com. (...and trust me, you will find no 'rubber duckies' in this excellent coffee-table book..!!)
... Sometimes someone on the Intertubes gets it exactly right.
Gate Rape
November 19, 2010 Urban Word of the Day
The TSA airport screening procedure.
My sister got gate raped at LAX.
Kon Tiki got it right and s/he made it 'short-n-sweet' to match the attention span of the average net-surfer.
Ya gotta strike while the iron is hot and match the mood of your readers. The topic may be dead in a week ( I doubt it... ) but for now it is the perfect Intertubes posting.
I mean, when you or I or any group can (with enough planning and preparation) send a video camera into space and return it safely (hopefully..!!) to Earth ...well, what is not possible..?!?
... One of the features I really like about the Mozilla Firefox browser is the auto-spellcheck function. It is nice to see misspelled words politely underlined in red to let you know something is amiss.
But I do find some of its idiosyncrasies (Firefox spellcheck used right there..!!) to be amusing.
... I had heard a while ago that a solar eclipse was soon to be visible somewhere in the southern hemisphere. I had no idea where and really paid little attention to its arrival as I knew I would not be able to see it.
Wrong..!!
Thanks to the power of the Intertubes I was alerted at an online forum about a live-streaming site where the solar eclipse could be viewed in the south Pacific.
Apparently sponsored by Wakayama University of Japan, the feed was available on the techdreams.org website.
Truly amazing. Here is a screen shot that I captured near what appears to be total eclipse:
Amazing, especially to watch it live, to see the shakiness of the camera, the clouds in the atmosphere sliding past the ongoing eclipse ...to see it live from halfway around the world. Simply amazing.
You can visit shadowandsubstance dot com to see an animation of the sunlight and the shadow of the moon interacting on the surface of the Earth. Very cool.
Techdreams dot org has another animated video up as well. Plus, it is a NASA video, your tax dollars at work.
You know me, I am always up for a geeky astronomy post and links.
A recent post by a blogger I consider an online-friend made me think to share my thoughts about the novel Earth Abides by George R. Stewart.
Earth Abides is an old novel. Written in 1949 it is one of the first post-apocalyptic novels. Fresh on the heels of WW II and at the beginning of the Cold War, Earth Abides addresses the idea of a pandemic wiping mankind from the earth as easily as sweeping ants off a picnic table.
The copy of Earth Abides (penned in 1949 by George R. Stewart) that I am reading must be thirty years old, if a day. The pages are definitely not acid-free. Yellowing, browning at the edges, corners flaking, many are loosely held in the book. Large sections are broken away from the spine. Great care must be taken to keep it all together, all in order. To maintain it as a 'readable' book.
A quick estimate suggests a total word count of perhaps a hundred thousand words for Earth Abides. Losing one page from my worn copy would make it worthless for resell. Losing ten pages would make it useless even for someone very familiar with the story.
Now imagine every word gone, but one. What value would this book have now? Imagine the book on your nightstand. Every word gone. Save one. What value would that lone word still retain?
...
Earth Abides is a story that rings very plausible. It is the story of a small group of survivors pushing back the darkness that threatens their small community. It teases us with the hope for a rebirth of 'civilization' and all the monumental achievements of man that represent that civilization. But it leaves us with the thought that civilization might simply be the caring and bonding of individuals together in common effort to preserve the human family.
... Disagreement, conflict, strife, war: by any name it seems to be a fatal flaw of the human condition.
Man is a creature who relishes the control of his surroundings, his lands, all the bounty of nature that lies before him. When others seek (or even seem to desire) to deprive him of any of his power and control . . .well, all hell breaks loose.
It is depressing that conflict and war seem to drive the expansion of human progress and civilization (if it can really be called that when applied to war) more than any other factor.
When people come together in communities and begin to specialize and divide labors among themselves ... always has evolved a warrior class. Some have been comprised of permanent warriors. Others have depended on farmers and laborers laying down their plows and tools and picking up the weapons of the day when called to do so.
Where there is conflict, battle, war ... there is always service, honor, valor, injury, and death. Today, in The United States, we honor those who have served ...and especially those who "gave the last full measure of devotion" they possessed in service to their country.
Save the debates about 'right vs wrong' and 'just vs unjust'. Instead, today, pause to remember and honor those who answered when called and served without reservation.
The Ken Burns' epic production of The Civil War includes a brief segment that shares the thoughts of a Union soldier as he writes home to his beloved wife in the days before battle. His profound and emotional thoughts and words are always moving to me, particularly on Memorial Day:
I also offer today the saddest piece of music I have ever heard. A piece occasionally used for military and other funerals. Anyone who can remain unmoved as they listen must surely have a heart and soul of stone:
A brief thought, a brief tribute, a brief prayer for all who serve and have serve ... and for all those who gave their all so we might indeed remember to this day.
... On this date it was the end of the world as they knew it.
For on this date in 1453 the city of Constantinople fell after a siege by forces led by Sultan Mehmed II.
Some historians use this date as the endpoint for the Middle Ages and credit the fall of Constantinople and its reverberations throughout medieval Europe as an important stimulus for the beginning of the period known as the Renaissance.
Just goes to show you that every culture and every civilization has had its own dark days.
... Do you remember your best friends from elementary school ...middle school ...high school..?? Have you kept in touch with them..?? Or have you drifted apart over the years, finding your own way in the wide, wide world..??
As a 'features' writer for The Wall Street Journal (given the "freedom (to) tend to the hearts of our readers" ...yes, even despicable robber-baron-zombie readers of The WSJ have 'hearts') Jeffrey Zaslow first learned of 'the girls from Ames' in an email response to a column about women's friendships.
Several years later Zaslow began to consider writing "a non-fiction narrative—the biography of a friendship meticulously reported—(that) could be a meaningful document for female readers." Apart from that altruistic motive, he hoped working on the project "would help me understand my daughters, my wife and the other women in my life."
To be honest, I was reluctant to start reading The Girls from Ames. Despite it being a local story I was not sure I would find it interesting. I only began reading when I realized the book was due back to the library. By the time I had read a few pages of the Introduction I was hooked. When I tried to renew it ...its waiting list had grown to seventeen patrons..!!
Weeks later (after I had finally checked it out again) I began to read and appreciate the depth of the story he tells. I had no doubt Zaslow would expertly tell the story of eleven girls/women and their sustained, shared relationships over several decades. I had previously read a similar 'life story' written by him (The Last Lecture, coauthored with Randy Pausch, link below) and had been impressed with his ability to weave an entertaining, emotional, and definitely worth reading story.
The Girls from Ames shares the interconnected stories of eleven childhood friends who blended stronger and weaker friendships between individual girls into a 'circle of friends' and a collective friendship that has endured for decades.
It has been a while since I shared a desktop view. Not that I imagine my reader or three are continually checking for the next one. My hit counter would certainly not indicate they are.
This one continues my theme of 'space' pictures. Is there really anything more beautiful, challenging, or exciting than the idea of exploring and living in space..?? Not for me.
What's that approaching? Astronauts on board the International Space Station first saw it far in the distance. Soon it enlarged to become a dark silhouette. As it came even closer, the silhouette appeared to be a spaceship. Finally, at just past 11 pm (CST) last Tuesday, the object, revealed to be the Space Shuttle Endeavour, docked as expected with the Earth-orbiting space station. Pictured above, Endeavour was imaged near Earth's horizon as it approached, where several layers of the Earth's atmosphere were visible. (continued at the APOD page.)
I think the idea of having something beautiful on one's desktop is a good idea. If it can not be my beautiful family . . .the beauty of space will be a close second choice.
... Look at your pay stub. Not your 'take home' pay amount. But your total earnings before any taxes are taken out. Now add in another 7-plus percent taxes paid by your employer.
Imagine getting all that gross income. Imagine not having to worry about 'net' income ever again. Except for the deductions you choose to make.
Look at your tax return as you prepare it this spring. Not at the $200 or $2000 you might get back. Instead look at the thousands of dollars they take from you. Every day, every week, every month, every year.
It is time to tell them no more. It is time to remind them they work for you not you for them.
It is time for you to educate yourself about the true cost of our current tax system and the inequities and outrageous impact it has on every citizen of the country.
Hmmm. 1200 characters ehh..??
Middle-aged male with a wife, three twenty-something kids, three cats, an indeterminate number of fish, and two mortgages. Life is good...
