07 MAR 2015 by ideonexus
Protecting the Environment as Protecting the Future
If you don’t know how to fix it, please stop breaking it. You grown ups say you love us. Please, take action. And for me,it is absolutely my responsibility to do whatever it takes to protect my child. When the haze gets serious, there is at least one thing we can do. That is to protect yourself and your loved ones. When I drew this little bear on paper, I was reminded of, when my daughter got sick, all my fear of losing her and all my hope of protecting her. I wish that all other mothers in t...Folksonomies: futurism environmentalism
Folksonomies: futurism environmentalism
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notes30 JAN 2015 by ideonexus
Your Birth Star
Name any event in history and you will find a star out there whose light
gives you a glimpse of something happening during the year of that event.
Provided you are not a very young child, somewhere up in the night sky
you can find your personal birth star. Its light is a thermonuclear glow
that heralds the year of your birth. Indeed, you can find quite a few such
stars (about 40 if you are 40; about 70 if you are 50; about 175 if you are
80 years old). When you look at one of your birth year ... 1 notes
notes04 MAY 2013 by mxplx
Nonconceptual awareness
When we spend time in the wilderness, it can be tempting to focus our awareness on "doing" something: taking pictures; getting a certain amount of physical exercise; traveling from point A to point B; naming all the species of birds we encounter. While nature photography is a lovely craft, and we need to exercise for good health, and understanding what lives in our environment is a valid part of deepening our relationship with the land, these activities can separate us from a more intimate ex...Folksonomies: meaning perception
Folksonomies: meaning perception
"You can know the name of a bird in all the languages of the world, but when you're finished, you'll know absolutely nothing whatever about the bird... So let's look at the bird and see what it's doing -- that's what counts. I learned very early the difference between knowing the name of something and knowing something.”
richard feynmann
18 MAY 2012 by ideonexus
Jupiter's Pattern in the Night Sky
Every 12 years Jupiter returns to the same position in the sky; every 370 days it disappears in the fire of the Sun in the evening to the west, 30 days later it reappears in the morning to the east...Folksonomies: astronomy
Folksonomies: astronomy
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notes4th Century BC observation from Gan De.
16 MAY 2012 by ideonexus
The State of Mind of Man in Olden Days
We find it hard to picture to ourselves the state of mind of a man of older days who firmly believed that the Earth was the centre of the Universe, and that all the heavenly bodies revolved around it. He could feel beneath his feet the writhings of the damned amid the flames; very likely he had seen with his own eyes and smelt with his own nostrils the sulphurous fumes of Hell escaping from some fissure in the rocks. Looking upwards, he beheld ... the incorruptible firmament, wherein the star... 1 notes
notesWhere he could detect the fires of hell beneath his feet and see the splendor of heaven in the night sky above.
07 MAY 2012 by ideonexus
History of Science and Religion
Some people want to put warning stickers on biology textbooks, saying that the theory of evolution is just one of many theories, take it or leave it. Now, religion long predates science; it'll be here forever. That's not the issue. The problem comes when religion enters the science classroom. There's no tradition of scientists knocking down the Sunday school door, telling preachers what to teach. Scientists don't picket churches. By and arge—though it may not look this way today—science and r... 1 notes
notesHow the Middle East was the center of scientific progress until religious fever took over it, the same is seen in Jewish and Christian cultures.
06 JAN 2012 by ideonexus
Hubble Ultra Deep Field (UDF) photograph
Here we go again, one of the epic documents of our time, the Hubble Ultra Deep Field (UDF) photograph, the deepest look into space ever. A random part of the sky, so small it could be covered by a pinhead held at arm's length. A part of the sky -- as NASA says -- that you'd see looking through an eight-foot-long soda straw. A photo exposed over 400 orbits of the Hubble, a total exposure of 11.3 days. The telescope pointing precisely to the same point in space even as it whizzes around the Ear...
1 It would take 12.7 million such photos to cover our night sky, and there are 10,000 galaxies in this image.
05 JAN 2012 by ideonexus
If We Could See the Night Sky With Eyes Like the Hubble T...
Imagine that we could see the night with eyes the size and sensitivity of the Hubble Space Telescope. How paltry then would seem our terrestrial gods, our shabby deities with human faces. How ridiculous our intolerances, how hollow our claims to have privileged access to the mind of God. 1 notes
notesThe grandeur of the Universe would let us know our place.
02 JAN 2012 by ideonexus
Garden of the Night Sky
This method of viewing the galaxies (‘to continue the simile I have borrowed from the vegetable kingdom’) presented the entire universe in a new kind of light, with the most radical implications. ‘The heavens are now seen to resemble a luxuriant garden which contains the greatest variety of productions, in different flourishing beds … and we can extend the range of our experience [of them] to an immense duration.’ In a garden we may live ‘successively to witness the germination, blooming, fol... 1 notes
notesA description of the variety found in the night sky through the newly invented telescope.
01 JAN 2012 by ideonexus
The Parallax Method
It is possible to measure how far away from us each galaxy is. How? How, for that matter, do we know how far away anything in the universe is? For nearby stars the best method uses something called 'parallax'. Hold your finger up in front of your face and look at it with your left eye closed. Now open your left eye and close your right. Keep switching eyes, and you'll notice that the apparent position of your finger hops from side to side. That is because of the difference between the viewpoi...Folksonomies: measurement parallax
Folksonomies: measurement parallax
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notesUsing the change in position of an object when viewed from two different points can be used to determine its distance from you.
