xenogere

One word meme

Posted on Dec 7, 2006 by jason

From The Kitchen Drawer via Amba comes this time-wasting yet fun little meme.

The rules are simple.  Rather, the rule is simple: Respond to each prompt with one word only.  ‘Nuff said.

1. Yourself: worried
2. Your spouse: nonexistent
3. Your hair: hatted
4. Your mother: beloved
5. Your father: changed
6. Your favorite item: words
7. Your dream last night: peculiar
8. Your favorite drink: water
9. Your dream car: non-polluting
10. The room you are in: sunny
11. Your ex: sundry
12. Your fear: failure
13. What you want to be in 10 years: novelist
14. Who you hung out with last night: cats
15. What you’re not: perfect
16. Muffins: bran
17: One of your wish list items: wealth
18: Time: lunch
19. The last thing you did: photographed
20. What you are wearing: fabrics
21. Your favorite weather: cold
22. Your favorite book: many
23. The last thing you ate: yogurt
24. Your life: ongoing
25. Your mood: concerned
26. Your best friend: which?
27. What you’re thinking about right now: employment
28. Your car: Lexus
29. What you are doing at the moment: typing
30. Your summer: relaxed
31. Your relationship status: single
32. What is on your TV: dust
33. What is the weather like: cooling
34. When was the last time you laughed: today

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Open thread

Posted on Dec 7, 2006 by jason

Pack your bags and take a trip with Tangled Bank #68: The Voyage of Discovery.  You’ll find plenty of fascinating sites to see from the science blogosphere.

Circus of the Spineless #15 is now available with plenty of invertebrate news.  While you’re there, check out those two macro photos of insect eyes.  Wow!

Doubting Thomas would be proud of the 49th Skeptics’ Circle.  Watch the video first, and then go to the links for a plethora of great critical thinking.

Some very troubling news regarding global warming, although understanding Earth’s food chain makes this confirmation of what has already been suspected.  “Almost ten years of unprecedented color satellite imagery of Earth’s oceans has now made one thing crystal clear: When the water gets warmer, ocean life declines. The orbiting Sea-viewing Wide Field-of-view Sensor (SeaWiFS) has been collecting data on the colors of the oceans since 1997. That global data, combined with detailed ocean temperature data, shows an undeniable connection between the vibrancy of phytoplankton — the microscopic plants that anchor the ocean food web — and the temperature of the water, scientists announced on Wednesday.”  Because phytoplankton represent the foundation of the entire food chain on our planet, all you need to do is think about what would happen if their numbers dwindled catastrophically due to warmer oceans.

Well shiver me timbers!  “Leaders of the Conservative Jewish movement opened the door on Wednesday to the ordination of gay rabbis and the recognition of gay marriage, but made it clear the more orthodox in the faith may go on opposing such liberalization.”

You mean they’ll actually have to work like the rest of us?  “Forget the minimum wage. Or outsourcing jobs overseas. The labor issue most on the minds of members of Congress yesterday was their own: They will have to work five days a week starting in January. The horror.”  And guess who’s complaining about it?  Republicans.  Get this: “‘Keeping us up here eats away at families,’ said Rep. Jack Kingston (R-Ga.), who typically flies home on Thursdays and returns to Washington on Tuesdays. ‘Marriages suffer. The Democrats could care less about families — that’s what this says.’”  Oh, boohoo . . .  Cry me a big ol’ alligator tear while you’re at it, you pathetic, whining, spineless, lazy piece of shit.  If you don’t like the hours, find another job, but we the people prefer to see our elected officials actually doing work and putting in hours that represent a serious take on the job and the people’s business.  What a bunch of losers.  By the way, read the article to get really mad about how little they’ve worked this past year (less than any other Congress in history, and they’ve passed only a tiny fraction of the budget bills necessary to keep the government running).  It pisses me off.  I’m glad to see the Democrats turning that around and laying down a schedule that puts Congress back to work—instead of on perpetual vacation.

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Buddha’s Fingers

Posted on Dec 7, 2006 by jason

[this is a photo of crepuscular rays emanating through gathering storm clouds; also called Buddha's Fingers, sun rays, Ropes of Maui, sun drawing water, Jacob's Ladder, and a great many other appellations, such visuals are created by sunlight passing around an obstacle (e.g. clouds, trees, or the horizon); they are created by the physical processes of scattering, reflection, and diffraction, and the optical process called linear perspective; they are called crepuscular rays when they diverge from a central point and anticrepuscular rays when they converge toward a central point]

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Three years later and I still haven’t a clue

Posted on Dec 7, 2006 by jason

I purchased my digital camera in October 2003, yet I must admit I have only scratched the surface of its various functions and settings.  For the first two years alone, I think all the pictures I snapped were taken in only two or three modes.  How pitiful is that?

Over the last year, I have finally delved into the manual (RTFM!) and discovered a plethora of neat goodies I could have been using for quite some time—but haven’t been out of sheer ignorance.  Um, duh.

Just today, I found the macro mode setting.  That could have been quite useful in many cases.  Whether insects or lizards or any subject taken in a close-up shot, the photographs I’ve captured thus far might have been better had I used that mode.

And what of the landscape mode?  I wonder how improved many of my “that’s unusable” photos might have been had they been taken that way.  And nighttime photos, and multi-focus photos, and . . .

I’m such an idiot.

But I’m learning.  It’s been in the last six months or so that I found the right mixture of toggles and switches (digitally speaking, of course) to take sharp photos in natural light (sans the flash).  Yet there are many pictures in my collection I now look at and realize how much better they might have been had I paid more attention to what the camera could do rather than leaping in uninformed and snapping away as I have done.  Oh well.  Live and learn.

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Random Thought

Posted on Dec 7, 2006 by jason

[P]rescientific people . . . could never guess the nature of physical reality beyond the tiny sphere attainable by unaided common sense. Nothing else ever worked, no exercise from myth, revelation, art, trance, or any other conceivable means; and notwithstanding the emotional satisfaction it gives, mysticism, the strongest prescientific probe in the unknown, has yielded zero.

— Edward O. Wilson

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