I can’t decide if ibises are tall ducks or short flamingos.
Launch site
While out on the kayak, we went near the current NASA launch site. It was quite far away, but seeing it made 12 year old me rather happy.
Landscape
Island and moonrise in the infrared spectrum.
Heron
When you’re not sure if your friends got the “meet me here” text, but don’t want to leave until they’re *really* late.
Ant
I also played a bit with my new super-macro lens. Like most lenses that focus to more than a 1:1 level, it works a lot better with flash. But it was a sunny day so I got something.
Bird
This is the photo that got me interested in infrared again. I happened to have the modified camera, a set of new lenses for my primary camera, and an adapter. I was early for a kayak appointment, and was just sort of futzing around. That’s when I saw this bird fly really close to me. Kicking myself for not holding my primary camera at the time, I took a shot anyway … and got this.
Infrared seems to be more susceptible to lens flare, but even with that, I think this shot is rather striking, so I started exploring other ways to see the world through infrared.
Texas Blind Salamander
When they’re young, apparently the blind salamanders still have eyespots. Makes you wonder if they “see” random flashes of visual noise like we do when in total darkness, and whether that stops when they grow bigger and lose their eyespots.
Brain Loopies – Is your brain lying to you?
Continuing the something a little different.
As noted earlier today, I’ve been making charts to sort of document the way I deal with stress. Others seem to think they’ll be useful so I am sharing them here. This one presumes that you’ve already checked on general health, and focuses more on general issues.
If you want the full size, click through to Flickr. Then look at the bottom right for the download icon. Click that, then click “original”. It’ll download an image that you should be able to print onto an 11″ x 17″ piece of paper relatively easily. If I wind up making more of these in the future, I may collect them all up into a PDF, but that seems stupid for just two diagrams.
Brain Loopies – Biological
Something a little different today.
For the last few weeks, I’ve been talking to lots of people who, like me, are feeling the stress of living in world/country that seems to make less sense every day, where hope is harder to find and fighting grows exhausting. It is not uncommon to hear people say that they couldn’t get to sleep because they were thinking about this or that. As I had these discussions, it slowly dawned on me that, while I had developed a rather algorithmic approach to parts of my life, many people hadn’t.
So, I created this little flow chart, based on some of the readings I’ve done and observations I’ve made over the last couple of decades. Some friends say it looks useful, so I am sharing it here so it automatically filters out to all of my various social media sites.
Another one will post later this afternoon.
If you want the full size, click through to Flickr. Then look at the bottom right for the download icon. Click that, then click “original”. It’ll download an image that you should be able to print onto an 11″ x 17″ piece of paper relatively easily. If I wind up making more of these in the future, I may collect them all up into a PDF, but that seems stupid for just two diagrams.
Sailfin Dragon
It’s a little known fact that Yondu tested his early models on animals.
Circle road.
California road design apparently involves someone noticing that several highways were going to collide with each other and circled the area on the map to call attention to it, then someone just turned the circle into a road and called it done.
Red Fox
“Health nuts are going to feel stupid someday, lying in hospitals dying of nothing.”
California
No idea which city this is. It’s east of L.A., but then again, many cities are.
Still, I think it’s a neat view.
Otter
This otter couldn’t sleep until he finished fact-checking “Dreams” by Fleetwood Mac
Now here you go again, you say
You want your freedom
You want your freedom
[True. Freedom is something all otters want]
Well who am I to keep you down
It’s only right that you should
Play the way you feel it
Play the way you feel it
[True. Play is very important and should not be stopped by anyone]
But listen carefully to the sound
Of your loneliness
Of your loneliness
[False. Loneliness has no sound]
Like a heartbeat drives you mad
In the stillness of remembering what you had
And what you lost, and what you had, and what you lost
[False. Despite the accuracy of one’s memory, one’s heartbeat cannot cause insanity.]
Thunder only happens when it’s raining
[False. Thunder happens when there is lighting. Lightning does not require rain.]
Players only love you when they’re playing
[False. While common, there have documented evidence of love regardless of the game being played]
Say women they will come and they will go
[True. In the grand fullness of time, we will all go]
When the rain washes you clean, you’ll know, you’ll know
[False. You will know that you are wet. Knowing whether one is clean requires more than mere rain]
Now here I go again, I see the crystal visions
I keep my visions to myself, it’s only me
I keep my visions to myself, it’s only me
[False. Visions have been shared in many of Fleetwood Mac’s songs ]
Who wants to wrap around your dreams and,
Have you any dreams you’d like to sell?
Have you any dreams you’d like to sell?
[Possibly true. Selling dreams is possible, though they are usually converted into other forms first, such as novels, plays, or movies.]
Dreams of loneliness,
[Possibly true, but unlikely to sell at a reasonably high price]
(Chorus repeats)
Orangutan
“When we think of the past it’s the beautiful things we pick out. We want to believe it was all like that.”
IR Mountains
The interesting thing here is not that snow reflects infrared light so well, but that clouds reflect exactly the same amount.
In visible light, when shooting from the air, clouds make shadows on the ground, but there’s enough light that makes it through the clouds and, presumably, bounces between the earth, off the clouds, and back down, that you can still see the ground in the shadow. This does not occur in infrared. I do not know if that is due to the narrow band I was shooting in or if there’s something else going on.
Still, quite interesting.
Nutria
This is the first actual nutria I’ve seen, which means I get to tell the story about confusing South American mammals.
It is not uncommon for native peoples to use different classification systems than is used by the Western-educated post-colonial developed countries. This shouldn’t come as a surprise because the way they interact with these animals is very different. Let’s start with the naming.
In English, German, Chinese (various variants), and Russian, this animal is called the “nutria”. However, in Spanish, the word “nutria” refers to what we call the beaver. Since this is confusing, in Spanish, this animal is called the “coypu”, based on the Mapuche language used in Chile and Argentina. In French, it’s a “ragondin”. But, just to make things confusing, in Dutch, it’s a beverrat. Secondary names in German, Italy, and Swedish include “biberratte” (beaver rat), sumpfbiber (swamp beaver), castorino (little beaver), or sumpbäver (marsh/swamp beaver).
OK, so far we know that it’s beaver-like but that it’s not actually a beaver. Now we get to talk about religion.
As some of you know, there is a rather major religion that is now popular in Central and South America … but the path to its popularity wasn’t exactly straightforward. One aspect of that religion when it was being spread throughout the new world was that people were expected to fast on Friday and/or Lent (various reasons for this exist, but I couldn’t find a definitive answer as to why). In practice, “fasting” didn’t mean then what it means today. The point was to avoid eating warm-blooded mammals. In practice, this meant eating fish.
Now, fish just isn’t equally available to everyone world-wide, but rituals matter. At this point, there are numerous stories about what happened. There are stories about native villages refusing conversion because the fish in their rivers weren’t safe to eat. There are stories about missionaries unable to meet the Lenten requirement, and one involving the Bishop of Quebec. All of these stories involve petitions being sent to the Vatican asking for permission to eat things other than fish.
The obvious solution, of course, was for the church to declare that these animals were, in fact, fish. The two decently documented stories I could find specifically allow beavers and capybara to be fish. However, because of the linguistic drift, according to the people I talked to Costa Rica, Nicaragua, and Peru (not a huge sample, admittedly), the pope has declared “nutria” to be fish … with whatever definition of nutria you prefer, be they beaver, capybara, coypu, otter, or any other rodent found in the water. This is why they’re okay to eat on Fridays and during Lent, but only if you’re native to Central or South America.
I was told that white people don’t eat them whatever day it happens to be.
Gorilla
Really?
IR Diodes
Did you know that the entertainment systems on newly retrofitted planes have two infrard LEDs in each seat?
The operating theory is that they are proximity detectors. Still, they seem to emit an awful lot of light if that’s their purpose.
Giant Leaf Frog
This giant leaf frog isn’t angry, just disappointed.