Ever since I saw The Time Machine - the 1960 George Pal version with Rod Taylor and Yvette Mimieux - and became hopelessly fascinated with time travel, I have loved the magic of time-lapse movies.
In a time-lapse film, hours and days flash by in seconds. Traffic becomes a pulsating river of light, and clouds puff into and out of existence. Time travel may be a physical impossibility, but thanks to the magic of the camera we can pretend that it is real.
Follow this link to Tim Tyson’s site and check out this stunning high definition time-lapse of the view overlooking the Chao Phraya river. That river, the lifeline of Bangkok, looks like nothing so much as a busy street in this speeded-up view, the boats doing their complicated, syncopated dance as the hours zoom by.
Volcanoes have always held a certain fascination for me. When I was a young snot-nose of five or six, I would gaze in rapt attention at the photographs of Parícutin, a volcano that reared its cindery head above the fields of Michoacán, Mexico in 1943 - a mere nine years before I was born. The incandescent fire of those lava fountains captured my childish imagination, tickling the back alleys of my brain-pan with a peculiar combination of fear and curiosity. And National Geographic, with its photos of the 1960 Kilauea eruption, planted in me a lifelong desire to - one day - see a volcano in action.
I have stood at the edge of the Kilauea caldera and looked deep into the Halemaumau fire-pit. I have walked the length of the Thurston lava tube. But, as yet, I have never seen Earth’s molten fire with my own eyes. That one’s still on the Bucket List.
Meanwhile, Ol’ Vulcan has been in the news lately, what with Iceland’s Eyjafjallajökull volcano blowing a monster plume of ash into the stratosphere and grounding tens of thousands of European flights. Perhaps the European aviation authorities are being overcautious, but anyone who remembers British Airways flight 9 won’t question their decision.
In June, 1982, BA9, a Boeing 747 enroute from Kuala Lumpur to Perth, lost all four engines when it encountered a cloud of ash from Indonesia’s Mount Galunggung. I’m sure there were any number of folks who filled their trousers after hearing the Captain’s masterfully understated announcement: “Ladies and gentlemen, this is your captain speaking. We have a small problem. All four engines have stopped. We are doing our damnedest to get them under control. I trust you are not in too much distress.” Fortunately, the crew was able to restart the engines after exiting the ash cloud... but not before a scary gliding descent to bring the plane down to an altitude with breathable air. The 747 limped into Jakarta on three engines, but with no casualties. (Except maybe those trousers.)
But back to Eyjafjallajökull.
The photograph above was taken by Arnþór Ævarsson (the letter þ - thorn - is pronounced “th”) in April, before the second phase of the eruption shut down European airspace mid-month. By a happy coincidence, the Northern Lights were in full play at the time, leading to a striking juxtaposition of lights from both earth and sky. As Arnþór himself says in another masterful understatement, it was “my biggest Kodak moment.”
Ya gotta love Iceland. Populated by the descendants of Vikings, packed with stunningly gorgeous blondes, and with active volcanoes to boot. I’ve gotta get me a ticket... when atmospheric conditions permit, of course.
The Harris Shutter effect sprays color throughout this image of a cataract at the St. George fishway in New Brunswick, Canada. [Click on the photo to embiggen.]
Every so often, my eye is drawn to an interesting texture or pattern. It could be something as mundane as paving stones. Or pasta.
I spotted these a few weeks ago while visiting Elder Daughter. Can you figure out what they are without mousing over the images to look at their file names?
We’re still freezing our collective asses off here in the beating heart of the Old South... but at least the roads are no longer the skating rinks they were on Friday.
There’s even a rumor to the effect that the temperature may get above freezing later this week. Zounds!
Meanwhile, just to help us stay in that wintry frame of mind, Jerry Foster - frequent commenter and long-time buddy of the Other Elisson - sends us these fine images from Big Bear, California, just a couple of hours from the temperate Simi Valley where he makes his home. Yes, Esteemed Readers: icicles in California!
Pammyreminded me that this New Year’s Eve just past was unusual: the kind of New Year’s we see once in a blue moon. Literally.
According to current popular usage, the expression “blue moon” refers to the second full moon in a calendar month, a phenomenon that takes place about once every two-and-a-half years. That it happens at all is owing to the fact that the Gregorian calendar year is about eleven days longer than the lunar year of 354 days.
There were full moons on both December 2 and December 31, 2009: the second of these is the blue moon. The last time a blue moon showed up on a New Year’s Eve, it was 1990 - nineteen years ago.
[It’s no coincidence that the Jewish calendar, which is based on the solar year while at the same time using the moon’s phases to determine the months, has a repeating cycle of nineteen years. Of course, given that every Jewish month begins with the new moon, there can be no blue moons in the Jewish calendar.]
The next New Year’s Eve blue moon will be in another nineteen years: December 31, 2028. As far as a blue moon closing out a decade, that’s an even more unusual event, taking place once every 190 years. The last time it happened was in 1819; the next time will be in 2199. Barring some major advances in Medical Science, I suspect we won’t, alas, be around to see it.
A few weeks ago, Velociman (who writes like a chimerical combination of William Faulkner and Hunter S. Thompson) e-mailed me a link to some amazing conceptual art: images from a video game that is being designed for the Wii system by Warren Spector and his Junction Point Studios. “Epic Mickey,” they call this Work-in-Progress.
Imagine Walt Disney World after the Steampunk Apocalypse, and you’ll get the flavor of it. Twisted Bizarro-World versions of the EPCOT dome, Cinderella’s castle, et alia. The Magic Kingdom as seen through a glass, extremely darkly...
Remember in Back to the Future Part II, after the Biff Tannen of 1955 gets hold of Marty McFly’s 2015-vintage sports almanac? With his knowledge of the results of future sporting events, Biff makes a fortune gambling and remolds the formerly idyllic Hill Valley into a mini-Vegas of casinos, luxury hotels, and cheap hookers... an evil Alternate History. Warren Spector has wreaked a similar transformation on Mickey and his friends.
Velociman and I discussed the matter at length. Was this dystopian, dark vision of Disneyish innocence laid waste not simply art to be assessed on its own merits, but a visual analogy of the current State of the Union?
“You’ve got to post about this,” I told him. “It’s right up your alley.”
I sat back and waited... and waited... and waited. Knowing Velociman’s strange Bloggy Work-Ethic, I knew that the much-anticipated (by me, anyway) post had a probability somewhere south of 30 per centum of ever appearing.
But, at last, it has appeared... and it is eloquent.
Look: Nobody writes quite like Velociman. Whether he’s engaging in a political rant, ruminating on the twists and turns of daily life, reminiscing about childhood days with the legendary Senator, or posting photos of some horrific injury, there’s never any denying the man’s incredible verbal gifts.
In this post, however, he eschews using his own words, relying instead upon one of the great American bards to set lyrics to the visual music. And he swats it right out of the park.
Go thou and read it. It is food for thought... with some nice Eye-Candy for dessert.
Travelers never came through space to visit the Earth. They had no need.
They had found universes in grains of sand.
- Greg Bear, Blood Music
I am so glad this did not exist back in my University Days. I can only imagine the hordes of weed-baked longhairs gazing into their computer monitors while thin streams of spittle leak out of the corners of their mouths...
...and zoom happily away. You can control your speed - forward or backward - by using the control bar on the left. Centering the bar stops the motion. You can hide the control panel by placing your cursor in the right-hand side of your monitor screen.
The best way I can describe it? It’s like Hieronymus Bosch piloting the Millennium Falcon.
[Tip o’ th’ Elisson fedora to Jerry Foster for the link.]
Ever since my Snot-Nose Days, I’ve preferred the window seat.
I don’t care that getting to the aisle (say, in order to use the restroom) requires that I get past two people. I can hold my water.
I like the view. It has fascinated me since my earliest trips on the Silver Aerial Bus... and I’ve been riding that bus for a loooong time. Over 55 years, ever since I was a snivelling two-year-old being dragged off to Miami to visit the grandparents.
Speaking of Miami, here's one I took of Miami Beach in 1969. The bizarre color scheme is the result of using Ektachrome Infrared Aero, a film that renders anything with chlorophyll (like living plants) in an unearthly red, as though H. G. Wells’s Martians had won the War of the Worlds.
Miami Beach. The small dick-shaped island is Allison Island; on the left is La Gorce Island, complete with Country Club. [Click to embiggen.]
More below the fold.
Washington, D.C. is always impressive when seen from the airplane window...
Lincoln Memorial.
Jefferson Memorial.
The U. S. Capitol.
Here’s New York, the city that never sleeps.
Manhattan and the East River.
Coney Island. You can see the legendary Parachute Jump tower easily, but you’ll need sharp eyes to spot the Cyclone and the Wonder Wheel. And a microscope to find the Jooette.
For a change of pace, here is the polar icecap, shot as I flew the Great Circle Route from Chicago to Tokyo with Elder Daughter last year.
Somewhere over the Bering Sea.
And the mountains of Alaska, America’s great wilderness.
The rugged landscape of Alaska, shot in March 1980 from a Chicago-Manila flight.
I ask you: From what other vantage point can you see stuff like this?
Eos, rosy-fingered Dawn, opens the gates of Heaven.
More prosaically, this time of year, sunrise coincides with the time I leave the house for morning Minyan. If the light of the rising sun catches the clouds just right, beauty happens. But it’s a momentary beauty: Wait a minute and you’ll miss it.
Thanks to recent repairs to the Hubble Space Telescope conducted as part of the STS-125 Atlantis shuttle mission, we should expect its useful life to be extended at least through 2014.
It’s an amazing tool, the Hubble Telescope... and the latest fixes have made it even more so:
With the newly installed Wide Field Camera, Hubble will be able to observe in ultraviolet and infrared spectrums as well as visible light, peer deep onto the cosmic frontier in search of the earliest star systems and study planets in the solar system. The telescope’s new Cosmic Origins Spectrograph will allow it to study the grand-scale structure of the universe, including the star-driven chemical evolution that produce carbon and the other elements necessary for life. [NASA]
Since its initial launch in 1990 (and an early repair mission in 1993 to correct issues with the ’scope’s main mirror), the Hubble has provided a stream of astounding images of distant cosmic events. Here are a few:
Jupiter’s Red Spots. [Image: M. Wong and I. de Pater (University of California, Berkeley)]
Star-Birth Clouds in M16. [Image: NASA, ESA, STScI, J. Hester and P. Scowen (Arizona State University)]
Cone Nebula. [Image: NASA, H. Ford (Johns Hopkins University), G. Illingworth (UCSC/LO), M.Clampin and G. Hartig (STScI), the ACS Science Team, and ESA]
Turbulent Gases in the Omega/Swan Nebula (M17). [Image: NASA, ESA, J. Hester (Arizona State University)]
Some of these dramatic images depict phenomena that are reasonably well-understood, at least by current astronomical and astrophysical standards. Atmospheric turbulence on a gas-giant planet. Star formation. Other Hubble images have captured the accretion discs of collapsed stars, the titanic energies of colliding galaxies.
This recent image, however, has proven to be completely mysterious:
A cosmic mystery. [Image: William Magnus]
What the hell is it, anyway? A quasar at the edge of the known universe? A chunk of ice and dust from the Oort Cloud that surrounds our solar system? The double-domes at JPL and NASA have been completely flummoxed.
Until now...
Cosmic mystery, revealed. It’s Ringo’s ass! [Image: William Magnus]
Why, it’s the Cat’s-Ass Nebula!
A tip o’ th’ Elisson fedora goes to Morris William, who forwarded the two Mysterious Images above - taken by our nephew William on his Daddy’s iPhone!
Is it a close-up of Paula Deen’s cottage cheese-like asscheek? Donovan’s Brain?
No!
This photo will help:
Yes, indeedy: Those are clouds. Mammatus clouds, to be precise, captured by Morris William (SWMBO’s kid brother) on his iPhone.
Mammatus clouds bear a vague resemblance to the Pendulous Bosomage from which they take their name. Me, I call ’em Sky-Tits... because it amuses me to do so.
That’s the comic - and completely inadequate - description one hears of the Grand Canyon, one of the scenic wonders of our planet.
Last week, She Who Must Be Obeyed and Elder daughter spent a long weekend knocking about in Arizona. A night in luxe digs in Scottsdale, followed by three nights in Sedona, their Base of Operations from which they made a pilgrimage to the Canyon a week ago today.
They were, to put it mildly, Suitably Impressed.
I was not present with them on this trip, a Mother-Daughter Outing that served both as a celebration of Mother’s Day and of Elder Daughter’s thirtieth birthday. But I have seen the Grand Canyon, both from the vantage point of a speeding jetliner seven miles up and from ground level. Yes: I was a freshly-minted graduate when I saw the Great Big Hole as part of a month-long, 10,000 mile cross-country Post-Collegiate Trek.
I have never forgotten the awe I felt when I saw that horizon-to-horizon panorama of eroded rock. Now, SWMBO and Elder Daughter know that feeling as well.
Not everybody is religious, but it’s hard to look at such spellbinding natural beauty without feeling the presence of... something divine. And any time we see an especially dramatic part of God’s handiwork, it’s traditional to recite a blessing - and the girls did exactly that: Barukh Atah Ha-Shem, Elokeinu melekh ha-olam, oseh ma-asei v’reishit - Blessed are You, Lord our God, Source of Creation.
Elder Daughter observed that when we look at the Earth (or parts thereof), it is the the rugose - the eroded - that catches our eye. But these are attributes that are not considered desirable in people, where youth and smooth skin are valued over age and wrinkles.
Between Scottsdale, Sedona, and the canyon, the Missus came back with a boatload of beautiful photographs. I’ve tucked a few below the fold for those who care to take a look.
Prickly beauty.
View from the girls’ room at the Fairmont Scottsdale Princess. Yowza.
Every once in a while, I’ll find something visually arresting on my journeys through Blogland.
Yesterday, for instance, I stopped by The Dax Files to see what Mr. Montana was up to....and what should I find but a post about anaglyphs.
An anaglyph image is a two-dimensional image in which three-dimensional (stereoscopic) image data is encoded through the use of offset color layers. It’s one type of technology that can be used to create 3-D movies.
I saw an anaglyph for the first time about 40 years ago in a copy of Psychology Today magazine. It wasn’t too complicated... a spattery-looking assemblage of multicolored dots... but when you put on the special glasses (red lens on the left, cyan on the right), a sphere practically jumped out of the page. It was fascinating.
[Anaglyphs are not to be confused with autostereograms (“Magic Eye” images), which use repeating patterns, coupled with special viewing techniques, to create the visual illusion of having three dimensions.]
You can create your own anaglyphs if you have photo editing software like PhotoShop that allows you to manipulate individual image channels. Here’s how. It’s so simple, even I could do it:
The surface of Mars. Image courtesy NASA.
Put on your 3-D glasses and it feels like you’re right there. (Except for the fact that you have a breathable atmosphere and are not as cold as a brass monkey’s nutsack.)
On a completely different tack, I stopped by El Capitan’s place earlier today, where I came across this fascinating video, a time-lapse film made by a tanker captain that shows his night run down the Houston Ship Channel, all the way from the Turning Basin to Morgan’s Point.
The landscape along the Houston Ship Channel was all too familiar to me for many years, although I never had the privilege of seeing it from the wheelhouse of a Panamax oil tanker. And that’s one honking big-ass ship, folks - 106 feet wide and 600 feet long. There are bigger ones out there, sure, but this one, at least, can squeeze through the Panama Canal.
Shooting one frame every six seconds on a digital camera allows a trip that takes about three-and-a-half hours to zoom by in three minutes. It’s just a bit surreal, that silent journey through the dark waters, with the sparkling lights of the petrochemical plants and refineries on either side of the Channel lighting up the clouds from below. At first it put me in mind of nothing so much as a trip along the River Styx with trusty Charon at the tiller.
All it needs is a Musical Background. At first I thought of lifting something from Pee-Wee’s Big Adventure, but that’d be wrong on oh, so many levels. And then I thought: What about the soundtrack to 2001: A Space Odyssey - that final section when Dave Bowman gets sucked through the Star Gate? For as I continued to watch the video, I began to see it not so much as a trip down the Styx, but as a voyage through some bizarro Hyper-Spatial Dimension... one that somehow managed to include the Fred Hartman Bridge in Baytown, Texas.
Try it! What do you think?
Update: This is the 3,500th post published here at Blog d’Elisson, which works out to an average of about two per day over the past (almost) five years. In unrelated news, “misuse of electrons” is now a misdemeanor in the state of Georgia.
For a couple of my earlier posts that reference Sam’s excellent work, go here and here. Remarkable stuff.
When you get tired of photographs and just want teh funny, go visit The Bloggess. She’s based in Houston - alas, I’ve never managed to meet her - and she is Certifiably Insane. Pants-pissingly funny. Which is several orders of magnitude funnier than spit-coffee-all-over-your-monitor funny.
I’m almost afraid to introduce the Mistress of Sarcasm to The Bloggess. She’s liable to laugh hard enough to make blood squirt out of her eyeballs. Come to think of it, you might, too.
The Moon shines through a hazy curtain. Photo credit: “Excellent Mountain” Gary.
“He says the sun came out last night. He says it sang to him.”
At the risk of seeming overly moony, another Moon-Post.
Some of my Esteemed Readers may recognize the above movie quote. The first thing that popped into my head when the Missus and I came out of the gym and saw the rising moon, enveloped in a shroud of thin haze, was a paraphrase: “The Moon came out last night. It sang to me.”
Our friend Gary was with us. He took the photograph you see here... evidently, the Moon sang to him as well.
Yesterday, as I drove home at dusk, my attention was captured by an extraordinarily beautiful full moon.
The sky was darkening to a deep blue, the kind of deep cornflower blue that you get when a winter’s day is ending... and that moon rode above the eastern horizon, casting its lambent yellow-white light.
It appeared larger than normal, probably because it’s no too far from perigee - its closest approach to Earth. Last month’s full moon was even larger, but clouds had obscured it here.
This image does not do it justice. I would’ve needed a long telephoto and a sturdy tripod. While I have the second - not the first, alas - what I really needed, and did not have, was time: The moment was fleeting. But, for better or worse, here it is.
“...maniacal, obsessive rants about duck fat...” - Steve H. Graham
“In a world almost entirely without heroes, Elisson stands alone...” - skippystalin
“I really want to whup [Elisson] upside the haid...” - Meryl Yourish
“The world is a much stranger place since I began reading your blog, Elisson.” - Kimberly
“…the cat’s ass in his trademark white fedora…” - Jim
“...R’ Blog Shem Tov...” - Erica Sherman
“By gadfrey, sir...You’re the most amazing character... there’s never any telling what you’ll say or do next, except that it’s bound to be something astonishing.” - Ivan G. Shreve
“Elisson, you are such a Renaissance Man you make Newton, Descartes & Copernicus look like Larry, Moe & Curly!” - El Capitan
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