For continuity and transition purposes, I have re-post my final post on WordPress.
Previously I had notified you of the change: that effective Monday, December 1, 2014 my Blogs/Websites, and ongoing work are moved from WordPress to Blogger. New research is revealing some worrisome facts on:
http://youtu.be/6XUJAlJD5s0
Uploaded on Jan 6, 2008
Gratitude and appreciation bring more into our lives to be grateful for! How cool is that?
Music: Michael Zanabili http://michaelzanabili.com/
CD: Lava
Song: Part Soul Part Cause
>> SOUND ON >> MINIMIZED SCREEN (IE: NOT FULL SCREEN – so that you can read the balance of the post.)
ATTITUDE OF Gratitude and appreciation
Uploaded on Jan 6, 2008
Gratitude and appreciation bring more into our lives to be grateful for! How cool is that?
Music: Michael Zanabili http://michaelzanabili.com/
CD: Lava
Song: Part Soul Part Cause
>>>>
20 Mind-Blowing Facts About Gratitude
Originally posted by By Amanda Chan | Yahoo Health – Thu, 27 Nov, 2014 8:44 AM EST
Being grateful may not always be easy — but it sure is good for you.
‘Tis the season for those warm fuzzy feelings: Love, friendship, peace and, of course, gratitude. And turns out, there are a lot of good reasons to feel, and express, thanks — many of which benefit you.
Below are some things you may not have realized about gratitude, from its health benefits to need-to-know tips to maintaining a positive attitude. We hope they’ll inspire you to say “thank you” to a loved one today!
1. Writing down what you’re grateful for — yes, with a pen and paper — has been linked in research to a multitude of health benefits.
2. Materialistic people may have all the tangible “stuff,” but research shows they’re low in well-being. The reason: They lack gratitude.
3. Writing and delivering a thank you note can actually make you happier.
4. If you’re a manager, saying “thank you” to your employees could actually increase their motivation.
5. For teens, gratitude could mean better behavior in school and higher levels of happiness and hopefulness, according to one study.
6. Gratitude could also have a positive effect on teens’ GPAs.
7. Keeping track of what you’re grateful for could make you feel more optimistic about the week ahead.
8. Having a grateful outlook on life could also help you be a better support to those in need.
9. Being appreciative of the little things your partner does can help your relationship thrive.
10. A good way to increase your feelings of gratitude is to embrace the setbacks you experience in life, according to leading gratitude researcher Robert Emmons, of the University of California, Davis.
11. In addition to keeping a gratitude journal, use visual reminders to help you remember to count your blessings.
12. Gratitude makes you a better team player and could even have effects against athlete burnout.
13. It will help you better manage stress (and even protect you against negative effects of stress).
14. You can turn your mindfulness meditation into an opportunity for gratitude by focusing on what you’re thankful for.
15. Gratitude has positive effects on the brain, including mood neurotransmitters and hormones that are key to social bonding.
16. It helps us go against our natural tendency to let the “bad” outweigh the “good” in our lives.
17. Gratitude can also help us sleep better.
18. Even though a grateful temperament is, to some extent, genetic, we can cultivate gratitude through experience and behavior.
19. If you want to boost your gratitude, think about your life without something — chances are, you’ll then feel more grateful for that thing.
20. Vow to be grateful, as it will increase the likelihood you’ll actually do it.
This is craftsmanship at it’s best. I wonder how many years it took him to make the doll, incredible! – Thank you for this, Allan. http://youtu.be/f-WFvKAKjA0
From a BBC Documentary
A 240 year old doll that can write, a clockwork creation by Pierre Jaquet-Droz.
Engineers, artists, clock makers, doll makers, computer programmers, want to be inventors or basically anyone out there that likes to tinker.
Enjoy. It is truly amazing. Remember this was built in the 1770’s.
This amazing visualization shows Transatlantic traffic over a 24-hour period taken from a day in North Atlantic Skies – The gateway to Europe
26 June 2014
Every day between two and three thousand aircraft fly across the North Atlantic, with the UK – and NATS – acting as the gateway to Europe.
Up to 80% of all Oceanic traffic passes through the Shanwick Oceanic Control Area (OCA), which is airspace controlled by the United Kingdom. With this in mind, we created a data visualisation showing a day of traffic from August last year and the oceanic airspace structures that help to make it all work.
Rocky Mountain Images and time-lapse movies from summer 2014 from Alberta Rockies
>> Sound On >> Full Screen
Published on Nov 12, 2014
Night sky photographer Alan Dyer recorded this time lapse montage at the Banff, Jasper and Waterton LakesNational Parksin the Canadian Rocky Mountains over the summer of 2014.
Thank you, Night sky photographer Alan Dyer for posting these beautiful Images and time-lapse movies of the Canadian Rocky Mountains
Philae probe (The Lander) on Spaceship Rosetta arrived at Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko on Wednesday, November 12, 2014 http://youtu.be/MBGICP1P32w
Philae probe (The Lander) on Spaceship Rosetta arrived at Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko on Wednesday, Nov. 12, just after 8 a.m. PST/11 a.m. EST in North America (on November 13, 2014 at ESA – European Space Agencies control centers). The lander is expected to send images from its landing site, Agilkia, the first ever taken from a comet’s surface.
Rosetta #CometLanding webcast Separation Confirmation Received on Ground http://new.livestream.com/accounts/362/events/3544091/videos/67854347/player?autoPlay=false&height=436&mute=false&width=775 http://new.livestream.com/ESA/cometlanding/videos/67854347 This earlier video stream contained much more information than the actual landing video. That mostly showed all of the participants in
ESA – European Space Agencies control centers congratulating one another.
Here’s why the Rosetta Mission has so many Egyptian names
Agilkia Island is an island in the River Nile and the present site of an Ancient Egyptian temple complex of Philae in southern Egypt. Wikipedia
What’s the betting that Agilkia makes it into the baby name charts in 2015? This romantic, lyrical word is the name of an island in the Egyptian Nile, but it’s also just been given to the patch of Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko where the Rosetta mission’s Philae lander is due to touch down.
More than 8,000 people from 135 different countries entered the ESA’s competition to name the landing site. More than 150 of these entrants independently suggested Agilkia. Surprised? You shouldn’t be, because this geographical reference fits beautifully with the overarching Egyptian imagery of the Rosetta mission.
It’s well known that the Rosetta spacecraft was named after the famous Rosetta stone, whose discovery in 1799 enabled historians to unlock the secrets of hieroglyphics. The choice of that name reflected the spacecraft’s role in deciphering the mysteries of the universe, while poetically linking space with time, language with science, archaeology with cosmology.
The connections continue. The Philae lander was christened in 2004 by an Italian high-school student, who made the connection between the lander and an ancient obelisk found on the island of Philae near Aswan. The obelisk was inscribed in both Greek and Egyptian characters and its discovery represented another landmark in the translation of hieroglyphics and the understanding of distant kingdoms.
Other ancient Egyptian references in the space mission include Ptolemy (after Ptolemy V, whose name appears on both the Rosetta stone and the Philae obelisk), and the on-board camera OSIRIS—an acronym for Optical, Spectroscopic, and Infra-red Remote Imaging System but also one of the most intriguing ancient Egyptian deities.
And now we have Agilkia—that enigmatic landscape which silently awaits the arrival of Philae.
Back on earth, Philae and Agilkia aren’t just neighboring islands. In the 1970s, when Philae was at risk of floods after the building of the Aswan Dam, the ancient temple complex on the island was dismantled and then re-built on Agilkia.
The journey of the Philae lander to the Agilkia comet site re-enacts this piece of rescue archaeology on a cosmic scale and sets up an almost perfect analogy between ancient Egypt and modern space travel.
Almost perfect, because the inscribed Philae obelisk wasn’t actually among the monuments dispatched to Agilkia. A British aristocrat named William John Bankes had discovered the obelisk in 1815 and taken it back to his stately home in England. Like many other Egyptian obelisks—including those plundered by “Egyptomaniac” Roman emperors—this one has ended up far from its original place of display, and now stands in impressive isolation in the gardens of a National Trust property in Dorset.
Universal heritage
But although the Rosetta’s web of symbolism becomes complicated on close inspection, the overall Egyptian theme is still an incredibly powerful one.
Using hieroglyphs to frame the mission presents space as an entity that can—and eventually will—be deciphered. And while most of us have trouble grasping the colossal distances involved in space travel (Rosetta has travelled a cumulative distance of over 6.4 billion km), the names of ancient places, pharaohs and gods can help us to mentally reach the physical remoteness of celestial bodies.
Other symbolic resonances include the Ptolemaic system of astronomy and the infamous conspiracy theories about the alien origins of the pyramids.
Sending ancient Egypt into space makes our cosmos alive with history and myth. It makes space seem more tangible, yet simultaneously more distant. The analogy can also enhance our perceptions of the past, influencing how we regard our monumental heritage. Philae and Agilkia are currently trending on Google and Twitter—and it’s clear that the world’s attention has been refocused on these sites thanks to their appropriation by space scientists.
And at a time of increasingly strained debates about cultural patrimony it makes a refreshing change to see ancient monuments used as symbols—not of an individual or nation—but of the whole planet. Rosetta, Philae, Ptolemy and Agilkia now rise far above national or political boundaries. They have become distant representatives of our shared, earthly heritage. And in that cosmic light, they look even more noble.
This post originally appeared at The Conversation. Follow @ConversationUK on Twitter. We welcome your comments at ideas@qz.com
Hear Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko sing
Rosetta’s Plasma Consortium (RPC) has uncovered a mysterious ‘song’ that Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko is singing into space. The comet seems to be emitting a ‘song’ in the form of oscillations in the magnetic field in the comet’s environment. It is being sung at 40-50 millihertz, far below human hearing. To make the music audible to the human ear, the frequencies have been increased in this recording: https://soundcloud.com/esaops/a-singing-comet
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Many of you are familiar with NASA. Few of you may be familiar with (a few) other space programs (those that have an English Language version):
Canadian Space Agency (CSA) (French: Agence spatiale canadienne (ASC)) From Wikipedia
China National Space Agency
ESA – European Space Agencies
ISRO – Indian Space Research Organisation – Mars Orbiter Mission is India’s first interplanetary mission to planet Mars, with an orbiter craft designed to orbit Mars in an elliptical orbit . It successfully entered into an orbit around planet Mars today morning (September 24, 2014). One of the most extraordinary things that I noticed about India’s Space Research Organization was that the total costs to date is only $85 millions US dollar equivalents. Video Mars Orbiter Insertion Simulation; Launch Video PSLV-C25/Mars Orbiter Mission. – Indian Space Research Organisation – Wikipedia
Russian Federal Space Agency (From English Russia News Website) also, From Wikipedia
Russian Space Research Institute From Wikipedia
Space.com
This year’s Leonids meteor shower peaks on the morning of Nov. 18.. If forecasters are correct, the shower should produce a mild but pretty sprinkling of meteors. The waning crescent moon will not substantially interfere with viewing the Leonid shower.
Category: Space
It’s been around a while, but I’ve have watched it repeatedly, as it is so very very beautiful!
It’s a Jewish wedding, and the male soloist, Yossi Azulay and his backup, the MusicKids, sings Hebrew spiritual words to the famous song “Con te Partiro” (Time to Say Good-bye).
The singer must be a cantor, as he has such a beguiling voice with a terrifically wide range. He is flanked by several young Orthodox boys as a back-up. What fabulous entrance music for the lovely bride and groom as they come down the aisle!! ENJOY!!!
Endless pockets of wonder await your discovery in a country big enough to hide mountain ranges. Considering Canada is 8000 kilometres (5000 miles) wide, it’s amazing how many people set out to cross the country from sea-to-sea. With so much ground to pass beneath you this is one pilgrimage where the journey truly is the destination. Whether by car or bicycle, train or canoe, travellers form their own river running across the landscape. Like a river, these travellers are forever shaped by the country they pass through.
It’s hard to make sense of living in a big country. Maybe that’s where the sea-to-sea travel urge comes from. I remember eating lunch in an Acadian village on New Brunswick’s coast. The restaurant’s other patrons were lobsterman eating rappie pie and discussing the weather in french. The village and its harbour formed a self-contained world, yet these people actually share something in common with, say, a software engineer four time zones away in the mini-Hong Kong that is Richmond, BC. How does one flag wrap around all of this?
My own cross-country exploration is done by taking the train, but not in the usual sense…I carry the train rather than it carrying me. It fits into a shopping bag from Mountain Equipment Co-Op.
The train is a miniature version of the vintage 1955 streamliner that was first called The Canadian, a ghost from the not-too-distant past. It rolls on tiny rails just one-inch apart. While it is tempting to document such a huge country from a plane or helicopter (in fact it has been done several times) the miniature train gets close to the heart of the land. Regal, silent, and fragile, The Canadian is a fine emissary for exploring the landscape. Those tiny rails are tenuous binds for a project this large, and that feels exactly right.
You won’t find scheduled service for this Canadian’s scenic dome route, though you may see evidence of its passing. For all of you who have encountered me working on this project and offered many kind words I hope you enjoy the finished photographs.
Thanks to David Shron for making a train that is in itself a work of art.
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A good object lesson, where co-operation comes out ahead of fierce independence.
Published on Oct 23, 2013
This is the ultimate showdown of the sea – the killer whale and the great white shark.
Killer whales are the world’s biggest dolphin: 32 feet long and up to six tons heavy.
They spend several years at their mother’s side, learning how to hunt some of the smallest, and biggest, animals in the sea.
They’ll develop into a predator so fierce with the speed, strength and sophisticated hunting skills to attack the legendary great white shark, the largest predatory fish on Earth.
This is a clash of the titans — but who will win?
Category: Nature
Tags: Killer Whales, Great White Shark, Killer whales are the world’s biggest dolphin, great white shark is the largest predatory fish.
Great white shark (Photo credit: 126 Club)
Resident (fish-eating) killer whales. The curved dorsal fins are typical of resident females. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
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