Venetian glass was an additivein Renaissance paintings...thus the 'special glow'

"Using an electron microscope, Barbara Berrie, senior conservation scientist at the National Gallery of Art, discovered one of [the secrets of Venetian Renaissance painters]: tiny bits of glass the artists mixed with their pigments."

An old autumn moon riseswith a new astronomical timestamp

"'Autumn Moon, the High Sierra from Glacier Point,' taken by Ansel Adams in Yosemite National Park, is a thrilling view of the American West, featuring a waxing Moon rising over dark, ice-tinged peaks.

"Ansel Adams was always precise about exposure times and lens settings, but sometimes vague about when and where he took his pictures. Autumn Moon has been dated as both 1944 and 1948. [This 'graph lifted from the Guardian, see link.]

"A team led by Donald Olson, a professor of physics and astronomy at Texas State University, claim that the mystery can be resolved.*

"Using lunar tables, topographic maps, weather records and astronomical software, backed by a scouting trip to Glacier Point itself, the researchers believe that Adams pressed the shutter on September 15, 1948 at 7:03 p.m. Pacific Daylight Time.

"Olson has previously determined when Van Gogh painted 'Evening Landscape with Rising Moon' in Provence and 'The White House at Night,' painted at Auvers-sur-Oise, northwest of Paris... and the exact spot where Edvard Munch conceived of his painting 'The Scream.' [Sort of takes the mystery out of it, ne? --Ed.]

"Those who wish to get a real-life glimpse of 'Autumn Moon' are in luck this year. On September 15, the Moon will be in almost exactly the same position as when it was seen by Adams."

Autumn Moon over Glacier Point, Sept. 15, 2005

* What, does this guy have a contract with the wire services? Here's another story about Olson's lunar forensics from Aug. 21, 2004.

Mars' marbled surface

"This image shows martian sediment in two basic forms: (1) light-toned, layered, sedimentary rock outcrops and (2) dark, windblown sand dunes. The dark sand of the dunes is most likely composed of grains rich in iron-, magnesium-, aluminum-, and silicon-bearing minerals. The hills and mounds of layered sedimentary rock were once more extensive, covering the entire scene shown here, which occurs on the floor of a crater in western Arabia Terra."

Will the real Mr. Damon please stand up?

"This site is for my students and their parents,
but it may be of interest to anyone else who enjoys science."

The most interesting Google-gleaning since I found about film hero Damon Taylor, a time traveler who's on the run from The Man.

Rollin' on poems, part two

This is part one,
though there have been other occasions
when I have shared other people's
vision and verse.


Out of Bounds

Soft assurance, pavement lullabies
round our days—we blink through streaked
panes, dark forms rise like lifeboats,
red boots stammer on the pavement.

Which detail arrests you?

Each dawn casts
that part of us we don’t know well
to warm the seat beside us.
What matters shifts, and shifts again.

Kim Hamilton


Water Aerobics at the YMCA

We struggle against gravity,
mostly graying, mostly overweight.
We hop backwards as instructed,
in sudden kinship with crustaceans,
hot crawdad mamas jetting out of danger,
ghost shrimp scooting back to shelter --
we are the known ridiculous,
time lost and less remaining.

Margaret McLeod


Blurred Reflection

How can you describe yourself,
When every day
You are a different river.
Culture, ideas, impressions,
Float through,
Rippling your water.

Sarah Neal, 8th Grade


[All from Seattle Metro's Poetry on Buses series]

Othala/Heritage

The rune stone featured toward the left of this image is Othala.

"Othala is the rune of the sacred enclosure, the homeland, the village, the homestead. It is the family group, its customs, lands and language, as well as the duties and responsiblities that go along with maintaining family ties.

"Othala is the 'inherited' wealth that comes from ones' ancestors and their customs and way of life, as well as any property or physical attributes that are passed down from one generation to the next. Othala represents the wise management of family assets or the loyalty to ones' family or kin.

"This rune also represents leadership in clan or family matters and may refer to an elder or patriarch/matriarch such as a grandparent, or in business matters, a founding father of the company.

"Magically, Othala can be used to invoke a solid and peaceful family or group life, or to generate continued growth and prosperity. It can also provide a link to ancestral wisdom through inherited natural skills and abilities."

Another rune-inspired image by Svetlana Bakushina is featured here.

Fanta Sea

The Return of The Cosmic Serpent

"Jeremy Narby's critical view of anthropology has been marked by his stays in the Amazonian forest. He spent several years in Peru working with the native people, notably on the issue of territorial rights. That's where he met with shamans who gave him an intimate knowledge of the hallucinatory sphere.

"He was thus able to construct new hypotheses for research and to write a controversial book, The Cosmic Serpent, which was published in 1995. He's currently carrying on with his investigations [by writing] a book on the intelligence of nature and [by contributing to the] Amazonia Ambient Project...

"'We asked molecular biologists to submit themselves to the shamanic state of consciousness in order to see if they could find information in their visions which was pertinent to their research. We did this in 1999 in Peru with three leading researchers and the results were conclusive. That scientists can find information in visions orchestrated by shamans is an idea that will now need to be tested as many times as possible.'"

via Magpie

Never mind Mars;there are meteorsto be seen

If you've read something about Mars making some ultraspectacular approach to Earth in two weeks: Don't believe the hype.

Don't be too disappointed. There is supposed to be a special display of Perseid meteors tomorrow morning.

"A nice outburst is projected for Aug. 12, 2005, at 08:18h UT (= 04:18 EDT or 01:18 PDT), when Earth will encounter the dust ejected in the comet return of 1479. Rates might go up fourfold to about 240 meteors per hour, on top of the normal 80-per-hour annual activity, for approximately 1.2 hours.

In addition, rates may increase again around 13h UT (9 am EDT, 6 am PDT), when Earth is slated to encounter another comet-stream component, with activity rising to less than 86 meteors per hour.

Ingwaz/Creation

The rune stone featured at the bottom of this image is Ingwaz.

"The symbolism of this rune can be found in the juxtaposition of two individual representations of Gyfu which, together, result in the act of creation rendered through a mutual exchange of gifts. In a word, sex. It has been said that this pictogram is intended to represent the birth canal or a vagina...

"Ingwaz is a rune of warmth and inner fire. It reflects the sacred sexual fires and can be used to stimulate the growth of slumbering abilities into full arousal, awakening, and greater potency.

"Magically, Ingwaz can be used to summon the creative and sexual drives. The most potent magic of the sexual union is the creation of new life, and so with Ingwaz the essence of the magic is in the creative impulse that results in conception...

"Not only is Ingwaz a rune of invocation and action, it is a rune of family as well as the accompanying responsiblity. What is created must be cared for. In this way Ingwaz is a representation of family, and the duties and responsibilities one must shoulder for the benefit of both present members and future generations."

Another rune-inspired image by Svetlana Bakushina is featured here.

Nagasaki marks 60th anniversaryof WWII atomic bombing

Nagasaki on Tuesday observed the 60th anniversary of the atomic bombing of the city at the end of World War II by the United States, with Nagasaki Mayor Itcho Ito criticizing nations possessing nuclear weapons for relying on nuclear deterrence for security.

"The nuclear weapons states, and the United States of America in particular, have ignored their international commitments, and have made no change in their unyielding stance on nuclear deterrence. We strongly resent the trampling of the hopes of people worldwide," Ito said in a ceremony at the Peace Memorial Park.

Ito's remarks were a criticism of the breakdown in talks of the Review Conference of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty in May in New York.

The NPT meeting, held every five years, ended without any substantive progress toward abolishing nuclear weapons.

While criticizing the U.S. government, Ito appealed to members of the American public.

"We understand your anger and anxiety over the memories of the horror of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. Yet, is your security actually enhanced by your government's policies of maintaining 10,000 nuclear weapons, of carrying out repeated subcritical nuclear tests, and of pursuing the development of new 'mini' nuclear weapons?" Ito asked.

He also urged the Japanese government to lead efforts to abolish nuclear weapons, break away from the "nuclear umbrella" of the United States and give greater aid to atomic-bomb survivors,
including those who live abroad.

Hiroshima mourns victims of atomic bomb

Capping a day of solemn remembrance, thousands of paper lanterns representing the souls of the dead were floated on a Hiroshima river Saturday near ground zero for the world's first atomic bomb attack 60 years ago.

The annual lantern observance brought to a close a full day of memorials, ranging from official gatherings to a "die-in" and dozens of small-scale peace rallies.

At 8:15 a.m., the moment of the 1945 blast, the city's trolleys stopped. More than 55,000 people, including Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi, observed a moment of silence at Peace Memorial Park that was broken only by the ringing of a bronze bell.

A flock of doves was released into the sky. Then wreaths and ladles of water — symbolizing the suffering of those who died in the atomic inferno — were offered at a simple, arch-shaped stone monument at the center of the park.

"I offer deep prayers from my heart to those who were killed," Koizumi said, vowing that Japan would be a leader in the international movement against nuclear proliferation.

Hiroshima Mayor Tadatoshi Akiba, an outspoken critic of Koizumi's hawkish foreign policy, was more emotional in his "Peace Declaration." He gave an empassioned plea for the abolition of all nuclear weapons* and said the United States, Russia and other members of the nuclear club were "jeopardizing human survival."

* Nuclear weapons turned 60 on July 16... and some of our brightest minds keep finding new ways to reinvent them.

See also:
Activists mark atomic bomb anniversary in US
Secret film of Hiroshima destruction to be broadcast

From Earth to Mercury,but not before visitingEarth once more

"NASA’s MESSENGER spacecraft, headed toward the first study of Mercury from orbit, swung by its home planet [on 2 August] for a gravity assist that propelled it deeper into the inner solar system.

"Launched Aug. 3, 2004 from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, Fla., the solar-powered spacecraft is about 930 million kilometers into a 7.9-billion kilometer voyage that includes 14 more loops around the Sun. It will fly past Venus twice and Mercury three times before moving into orbit around its target planet in March 2011, the start of a yearlong science orbit around Mercury."

The Pluto Problem, Part Two

This is part one.

"The claim Friday that a 10th planet has been discovered in our solar system has set off a fresh round of debate and international talks aimed at defining the most vexing term in astronomy: the word planet.

"A formal proposal could come within a week or two. But some astronomers see no easy resolution.

"Now, the guy who stirred the latest dust is trying to snuff the whole debate by repositioning planet as a cultural term that no longer has any scientific meaning.

"'Scientists have for the most part not yet realized that the term planet no longer belongs to them,' says Caltech's Mike Brown, who led the discovery of the new larger-than-Pluto object.

Brown's new view comes after contemplating six years of mostly fruitless scientific arguments that began when the public became outraged over a rumor that scientists planned to demote Pluto, a rumor rooted in the fact that some astronomers had already stopped calling Pluto a planet by the late 1990s.

"'I finally realized the mistake we astronomers had been making all along,' Brown told SPACE.com yesterday. 'The word planet is simply not a scientific word, it is a cultural word. Once you get over that trap the rest becomes easy.'

"At the heart of the problem is small world that should never have been called the ninth planet when it was found 75 years ago.

"Pluto is small, its orbit very noncircular, and it travels 17 degrees outside the main plane of the solar system where the other planets roam. In recent years, several other round worlds at least half as big as Pluto have been found on similar offbeat paths, including two announced last week in addition to 2003 UB313, whose orbit is inclined a whopping 45 degrees.

"Most astronomers view all of them, Pluto included, as members of the Kuiper Belt (other terms are used, too, to describe the increasingly complex outer solar system).

"The newfound object, temporarily named 2003 UB313, is perhaps 1.5 times the diameter of Pluto and appears to have a similar surface rich in frozen methane. So Brown called it the 10th planet in a hastily arranged teleconference with reporters Friday evening."

The Pluto Problem and 2003 UB313

Last-minute addition:
They're working the Planet X angle, alright.
They want to name the object Xena.


First, if Pluto is considered not to be a planet by many in the astronomical field, then can an object that is only 150% larger and so much farther distant* be considered a contender?

Visitors to the Rose Planetarium in NYC will see that Pluto isn't featured in sculptural installations and diagrams that represent the solar system. Saturn's moon Titan is larger than Pluto. Our Moon is bigger than Pluto and the diameter of the latter is only half the length of the United States.

Isn't the idea that there's something dark and quite massive floating out there along (or, like 2003 UB313, above) the ecliptic? The real Planet X...? A planet that, to my mind, people are looking for in the wrong place. Perhaps the planet that so many have sought for so long was the object that orbited between Mars and Jupiter, the debris of which we now call the Asteroid Belt. I'm just sayin'...

UB313 is a great find, but let's not call it a planet. Aside from the comparisons and observations above, a declaration about planethood made in the middle of Mercury Retrograde period really ought to be scrutinized. Remember that line from the news stories: "a hastliy arranged press conference." Brown et al. wanted more time to review their data, but they were concerned that the data would be let loose.

Just nine is fine (and eight might be great).

Now, how might all this influence astrology?
That's for another time.

* "[2003 UB313] is currently 9 billion miles away from the Sun, roughly 100 times more distant than the Earth, and is now about three times more remote than Pluto. At its present distance, the Sun will appear so small in the sky it will almost be indistinguishable from other stars."