a collection of satellite images of earth, processed during the month of August 09.
the image pictured here…
“Rainforests are not always wet and rainy. The world’s largest rainforest, the Amazon, actually has a dry season when the clouds clear and sunlight drenches the trees. It is during this period that the forest growth is the greatest. In June, July, and August , the thick blanket of clouds brought in by large-scale patterns in the atmosphere disappear, and smaller-scale processes that influence the weather become apparent. This image, captured on 19 August, shows how the forest and the atmosphere interacted to create a uniform layer of ‘popcorn’ clouds one afternoon”
a remote volcanic crater on the Pacific island of Papua, New Guinea has revealed many new discoveries and wildlife never seen before.
A team of scientists from Britain, the United States and Papua New Guinea found more than 40 previously unidentified species when they climbed into the kilometre-deep crater of Mount Bosavi and explored a pristine jungle habitat teeming with life that has evolved in isolation since the volcano last erupted 200,000 years ago. In a remarkably rich haul from just five weeks of exploration, the biologists discovered 16 frogs which have never before been recorded by science, at least three new fish, a new bat and a giant rat, which may turn out to be the biggest in the world.
New York Times Magazine article details some of the meticulous work that’s gone into the ‘Beatles’ version of the latest Rock Band video game series. Screen shot – “Here Comes the Sun’ complete with accurate instrument and Abbey Road studio details…
The Beatles: Rock Band follows the group’s career from Liverpool to the concert on the roof of Apple Corps in London in 1969, which marks the band’s end in the public imagination. The first half of the game recreates famous live performances; the second half weaves psychedelic “dreamscapes” around animations of the Beatles recording in Studio Two. By now it has become an almost mythical arc: when the Beatles rose to fame, rock ’n’ roll was a live medium. A rock album was essentially a take-home version of a concert. But the frenzy of Beatlemania overwhelmed the Beatles and their music. In response, the band refocused its talent and energy on studio recordings and created a new paradigm: lush, elaborately produced rock music that not only didn’t try to create an illusion of live performance but also couldn’t be played live at all, and that very pointedly sprung from the artists’ private space without the interference or involvement of fans. In a sense, the two phases of the band’s career are now being reconciled with an interactive game. The fan again becomes an active part of the process, but in the service of teasing out the intricacies of the studio productions.
Noctilucent clouds, or ‘night shining’ are becoming more common, attracting the attention of photographers, environmentalists, scientists and other sky-watchers…
The clouds might be beautiful, but they could portend global changes caused by global warming. Noctilucent clouds are a fundamentally new phenomenon in the temperate mid-latitude sky, and it’s not clear why they’ve migrated down from the poles. Or why, over the last 25 years, more of them are appearing in the polar regions, too, and shining more brightly.
link to Wired article link to gallery @ spaceweather.com
update…
a recent study claims that some of these cloud effects are a result of space shuttle launches, which exhaust huge quantities of water vapour into the atmoshphere. The same study also examines the similar cloud effects after the Tunguska (comet) event of June 1908. link to article
Controversial 15th century Vinland Map, which surfaced in the 1950′s, has been authenticated by a team of Danish experts…
Controversy has swirled around the map since it came to light in the 1950s, many scholars suspecting it was a hoax meant to prove that Vikings were the first Europeans to land in North America — a claim confirmed by a 1960 archaeological find.
Doubts about the map lingered even after the use of carbon dating as a way of establishing the age of an object.
The map shows both Greenland and a western Atlantic island “Vinilanda Insula,” the Vinland of the Icelandic sagas, now linked by scholars to Newfoundland where Norsemen under Leif Eriksson settled around AD 1000.
a selection of images, scanned and collected by the ASIFA Animation Archive, from the book ‘As I See‘ by Ukrainian-born illustrator Boris Artzybasheff (1899-1965).
A set called ‘Diablerie’, inspired by the politics and actions of World War 2 and after-events, had this intro…
“Let’s sing hosannas to men this day, for theirs is the triumph of wit! In their long search for better tools and weapons, men at last have found the way of locking a pinch of cosmic force in a sheath of silver-white metal… as well as the means for making it go boom. Any time they wish, or think they must, men can touch off an orgasmic flash, making the oceans boil and seethe with fire, making the soil rise up in crimson dust… Perhaps after the cloud drifts thrice around it, the earth will emerge once more free of living things… In the hush of night this comely planet will go on waltzing in its ordained orbit until God awakens from His sleep and resolves it back to the primordial elements.
I try to shake this thought off; it may be that a healthy planet should have no more life upon it than a well-kept dog has fleas; but what posesses the flea to concoct its own flea powder?”
Also of interest, a couple more collections… Machinalia – a surreal tribute to 20th century industrialization Neurotica – neuroses, in his visual style…
