This marvellous little space is going to be something a little different from my other sites.
On here, my aim is to highlight unusual little things that make you step back, stop for a moment and let your mind wander, as you have a chance to ponder aspects of Life, The Universe and Everything that you normally wouldn't even consider during your day.
...In short, a brief web-inspired 'timeout'. Enjoy.
… Or more rather, Jonathan Jarvis’ explanation of bad credit. For those who are still struggling with the finer points of the current credit crunch, this video will prove invaluable (and blackly entertaining all at once). A recommended watch.
(PS: watch this in HD if your computer and Internet connection is up to it, it’s well worth it!)
Everybody has their own problems, and some people, who you might not immediately expect to suffer, do indeed have their own issues to deal with on a daily basis.
A breakdown of the inner ear.
“It was like listening to the hiss of a TV that’s not tuned to a channel. I thought I’d go deaf or nuts. “I thought of killing myself.” Shatner eventually underwent tinnitus refraining therapy, which helped him retrain his brain to ignore the buzzing. “Now the condition doesn’t affect me.”
That quote is from an interview in the Globe magazine with Star Trek icon William Shatner, who apparently once contemplated suicide because his hearing problems were driving him mad. Shatner’s permanent hearing damage was apparently as a result of an explosion on the set of Star Trek, and it used to keep him awake at night - he started fearing he’d never shake the noise. ‘Shatner isn’t the only star to have suffered from tinnitus - The Who’s Pete Townshend, Barbra Streisand and fellow Star Trek veteran Leonard Nimoy have also fought the hearing condition.’ I’m sure that Francis Rossi from the Quo also suffers from this, as does Phil Collins (in a big way) and all the surviving members of bands such as Pink Floyd and the Moody Blues! But hopefully Shatner’s quote should serve as a reminder that you have a lifetime of permanent damage inflicted upon you in a split second, not just through years of listening to loud music. I have tinnitus caused by someone smacking the side of my head and forcing air into my inner ear; if it can happen to me it can happen to pretty much anybody. So, although you may forget about them while they’re working fine, be grateful for the small things like perfect hearing or sight - because they tend not to grow back once damaged. :)
If you’re curious as to what tinnitus can sound like (because it takes many forms), you can listen to a synthesis of tinnitus here: http://www.hearingconservation.org/docs/tinnitusSimulation.mp3. I can confirm that that audio clip does mimic my tinnitus fairly well, but the ringing is more high-pitched in my own ear.
If you don’t fancy that kind of noise accompanying you day and night, wear some good earplugs! They needn’t cost the earth.
Well well… More wonderful images from Space once again. This time, it’s NGC 7293, aka the Helix Nebula:
This colour-composite image of the Helix Nebula (NGC 7293) was created from images obtained using the the Wide Field Imager (WFI), an astronomical camera attached to the 2.2-metre Max-Planck Society/ESO telescope at the La Silla observatory in Chile. The blue-green glow in the centre of the Helix comes from oxygen atoms shining under effects of the intense ultraviolet radiation of the 120 000 degree Celsius central star and the hot gas. Further out from the star and beyond the ring of knots, the red colour from hydrogen and nitrogen is more prominent. A careful look at the central part of this object reveals not only the knots, but also many remote galaxies seen right through the thinly spread glowing gas.
This image was created from images through blue, green and red filters and the total exposure times were 12 minutes, 9 minutes and 7 minutes respectively.
A factoid for you, courtesy of El Reg: the Helix Nebula first popped up in “a list of new objects compiled by the German astronomer Karl Ludwig Harding in 1824”. And while you’re at it, I SERIOUSLY recommend you check out the other images of nebulae the ESO has to offer… Some are truly astonishing.
The bushfires raging across large areas of south-eastern Australia have destroyed entire towns and devastated local communities. Many people perished in their cars as they tried to drive to safety.
Here - accompanied by some graphic images and the sound of the strong winds that have been fanning the flames - eyewitnesses describe how they escaped, but how others were not so lucky.
View slideshow(requires Flash).
(The popup used to play the video makes use of the wonderfully versatile Shadowbox. If for some reason the JS libraries don’t load due to my rubbish web hosting, refresh the page and try again).
This is a remix of a well-known woodblock print by the Japanese artist Hokusai, the same artist who created the famous series of woodblock prints named Thirty-Six Views of Mount Fuji.
It was remixed by persons unknown quite a few years ago, taking the original, moving it through digital pixelation and into a starkly contrasting wireframe for the right half of the image. It’s a wonderful blend of the old and the new without forgetting the history of the image, and recently the guy(s) at Vorpal made a fairly good quality version available on their web site. Read Vorpal’s blog post about this image for more info, but if you have a good inkjet or laserjet at home, print it off and stick it on the wall opposite your bed - along with a picture of NGC 3324 taken by Hubble (see one of my previous posts)… Really inspiring stuff to look at when you’re feeling a little devoid of creativity or imagination.
Found via kiyo, and later, haha.nu.
I’d not come across this particular chapter of desegregation prior to tonight, but the bloody and prolonged Freedom Ride protests that eventually helped rise to the American Civil Rights Movement are a moving and fascinating chapter in Western history. I’m British, so we have our own little piece of history (and we rightly celebrate Black History Month every year as a small, ongoing ‘living history’ element of this) - but America was where it really kicked off. It still amazes me that the ruling factions of a country which considered itself to have ostensibly Western values throughout the Civil Rights conflicts of the Twentieth century would allow these horrendous contradictions of human rights to continue. Happily though, this is all in the past now - but lest we forget what others went through to attain equal rights for all.
Now all we have to work on is getting the US to drop the Death Penalty…
Staff at the Montgomery County Sheriff’s Office discovered arrest logs and photographs from the time of the Montgomery Bus Boycott (1955-56) and the Freedom Rides (1961). Selected pages from those volumes have been scanned by ADAH staff and are available [from the below linked page].
The Chandra Deep Field South, observed in the U-, B-, and R-bands with ESO’s VIMOS and WFI instruments. The U-band VIMOS observations were made over a period of 40 hours and constitute the deepest image ever taken from the ground in the U-band. The image covers a region of 14.1 x 21.6 arcmin on the sky and shows galaxies that are 1 billion times fainter than can be seen by the unaided eye. The VIMOS R-band image was assembled by the ESO/GOODS team from archival data, while the WFI B-band image was produced by the GABODS team.
Click the image to head over to the ESO site, and download the full size image in JPEG or TIFF format. Tasty.
