22 over 7 = [aspects and concepts of matter and energy / form, flame, light, space, image and imagination]

What might one think upon seeing
a twin caught up in combat?

At the moment, I'm reminded of my thoughts on Saturday about learning Arabic. It will be vital for being able to teach and learn, and perhaps to help people heal, when I return to Africa and the Middle East.

"An [Ethiopian?] Israeli soldier and tank prepare to give covering fire as an injured comrade is brought back to Israel from Lebanon on July 30, 2006, near the town of Kiryat Shemona, Northern Israel. More than 50 people, half of them children, were killed today when Israeli planes bombed Qana in Southern Lebanon."

Market dharma
and other matters

Walked over to the street market to find some apples this morning. As I neared the opening to the no-car street, I heard the cadence and tok-tok sound of a Buddhist liturgy coming from nearby. Turned out that there was a tape playing into an amp on the curb, with a little donation box to the side. I was enchanted by the recitation and the rhythm, so I went home to fetch the tape recorder after I bought some slightly shaky apples.

I returned shortly thereafter, but the tape had stopped. I took a few photos to try to set the scene: the people going about their business while the audio equipment and iconography sat to the side. And then two monks walked up, restarted the tape, and began to converse with a passerby. A little circle of people gathered for a minute or two, (heard at the beginning of the recording), and then the older of the two monks began to recite in time with the liturgy.

Monks at the market - 12:00

And then there's the rest:

Hot stuff that I've had on hold.

Mt. Arenal in Costa Rica

Mayon volcano in the Philippines

Mt. Etna in Sicily

Mt. Merapi in Indonesia

A quick Giza duet

nmazca.com/cairo, yo.

The Fountain

I saw a teaser for this flick (via RW) a few of months ago. Now I'm that much more captivated by what Aronofsky has done (besides make what looks like a cosmically gorgeous film)...

...that's had its release pushed back to November 22...

...and that was a graphic novel first?!

"Working with acclaimed painter Kent Williams, 'The Fountain' crisscrosses through three distinct time periods: 1535, during an ancient Mayan war; the present day, following one doctor's desperate search for the cure for cancer; and the far future through the vast exotic reaches of space. Interweaving these three periods, 'The Fountain' follows Tomas -- warrior, doctor, explorer -- as he feverishly tries to beat death and prolong the life of the woman he loves."

Azul

The day after The Day Out of Time

"The Day Out of Time, celebrated annually since 1992, always falls on July 25th. On the 13 Moon calendar, this day is no day of the month, and no day of the week. It is in-between the closing of the previous year (July 24th) and the dawning of the new year (July 26th). The offical flag for the Day Out of Time is the Banner of Peace.

"This day is an opportunity to experience the freedom of being alive, true timelessness and loving kindness. Whether public gatherings or private circles, this day is a catalytic launch-pad for the year to come, a great, global harnessing of telepathic presence, and a perfect way to invite new participants into the harmony of the 13 Moon Calendar."

[July 26th closely coincides with the heliacal rising of the star Sirius. In antiquity, Sirius was visible before sunrise on that date. This was a central event in the cosmology and calendars of many ancient cultures, including the Mayans, from whose time system the 13 Moon calendar was derived. Currently, Sirius' heliacal rising takes place around August 7th. --Ed.]

The Day Out of Time is also celebrated
as the World Day of Love and Thanks to Water:

"We have a vision that on this day, our Earth will be filled with beautiful golden/silver light of Love and Thanks that is flowing from the hearts of each and every one of us. Golden/silver light is the highest vibration in the range of visible light, and it will heal and cleanse all the water on earth, be it water of the ocean or that of our own body."

[And there was I yesterday, commenting on how white-bright the Sun's light was. Since it was the New Moon day, also, I decided to craft some flower essences, which one only needs sunlight and clean water to produce.]

Speaking of which...

While I checked out the Thank Water site, I saw that a children's version of The Message of Water by Masaru Emoto is now available as a PDF.

Hmm... many Masaru Emoto links from which to choose.

The Dog Days of Summer,
as they relate to
the Dogon and Sirius

"These canicular days (from, say, July to August) get their name from the Dog Star, Sirius, the brightest star in the constellation Canis Major.

"During this time of the year, Sirius disappears into [and then reappears from] the Sun's glow. Both heavenly bodies are in conjunction, rising and setting at around the same time. Ancient stargazers thought that the heat from Sirius, the brightest star in the heavens, combined with the heat of the Sun to produce the hottest weather of the year...

"The first day of the 13 Moon Calendar begins on July 26. This date originally correlated to the heliacal rising of Sirius at 19.5 latitude north.

"The 13 Moon Calendar (a 28-day calendar based on the lunar cycle) has been in use for over 5500 years. From the Incan, to the Druidic count, to the Egyptian, to the Essene, to the Mayan, to the Polynesian, the 13 Moon calendar was used throughout pre-history as the harmonic standard, and is now being followed the world over by advocates of Galactic Culture.

"The calendars that start on July 26 may carry messages from the star Sirius, through the Sun, to the Earth... Calendars that begin January 1 may be circulating energy from both Sirius and Vega, since the Sun aligns with those two stars at that time: Sirius, the (13 Moon) New Year Star, is at its highest overhead at midnight on December 31, while Vega is located directly opposite, below the horizon, under our feet."

Of course, I can't present all of this info
about Sirius and not mention the Dogon:

"The earliest Egyptians believed Sirius - 'Sothis' - was the home of souls that have crossed over. It is the brightest star in our night sky. This belief is also shared by the Dogon.

"The Dogon (a tribe in eastern Mali) are famous for their astronomical knowledge, taught through oral tradition that dates back thousands of years, referencing the star system, Sirius. The astronomical information known by the Dogon was not verified by physicists and astronomers until the 19th and 20th centuries.

"The Dogon have described perfectly the DNA pattern made by an elliptical orbit created by the two stars of Sirius as they rotate make around each other. They believe Sirius to be the axis of the universe, and from it all matter and all souls are produced in a great spiral motion.

"The Dogon also claimed that a third star Emme Ya - 'sorghum female' - exists in the Sirius system. Larger and lighter than Sirius B, this star revolves around Sirius A as well. It has not been proven to exist, though some people have called it Sirius C.

"The Dogon calendar is quite nontraditional in that it is based neither on the Earth's rotation around the Sun (as is our Julian calendar) nor the cycles of the Moon (a lunar calendar). Instead, the Dogon calendar centers around the rotation cycle of Sirius B, which encircles the primary star Sirius A every 49.9, or simply 50, years."

A luminous Milky Way
w/ an X-ray center

"You're looking at the heart of your own galaxy with X-ray specs. This photograph was captured by NASA's Chandra X-Ray observatory, and shows the three massive star clusters that surround the super-massive black hole at the centre of the Milky Way."

Blue Jupiter, and other Gemini sights

"A Gemini North adaptive-optics image of Jupiter and its two red spots (which apppear white because this is a near-infrared image; in visible light they appear reddish).

"In this color composite image, white indicates cloud features at relatively high altitudes; blue indicates lower cloud structures; and red represents still deeper cloud features. The two red spots appear more white than red, because their tops hover high above the surrounding clouds."

"This classic star trail image was obtained with a digital camera using the technique described in the March 2004 Sky and Telescope magazine. More than 150 one-minute images were stacked in Photoshop to create this image. A First Quarter moon illuminated the surrounding landscape for the duration of the exposures.

"NOTE: These images were used to create a high-definition time-lapse video that is also available here.

NGC 6946 - The Fireworks Galaxy

All images accessible via Gemini Observatory's image gallery... which will be added to the sidebar links right quick.

Indigenous mystery

"In 1872, so the story goes, workers digging a hole for a fence post near Lake Winnipesaukee in the central part of this New England state found a lump of clay that seemed out of place.

"There was something inside -- a dark, odd-looking, egg-shaped stone with a variety of carvings, including a face, teepee, ear of corn and starlike circles.

"And there were many questions: Who made the stone and why? How old was it? How was it carved?

"To date, no one has been able to say for sure, and the item has come to be known as the 'Mystery Stone.' Seneca Ladd, a local businessman who hired the workers, was credited with the discovery."

Myth, chaos and space
from solitary confinement

"The morning after the opening of a show of his recent work, Donny Johnson was in his studio, a concrete cell in the Pelican Bay State Prison, where he is serving three life terms in solitary confinement for murder and for slashing a prison guard's throat. He was checking his supplies, taking inventory.

"His paintbrush, made of plastic wrap, foil and strands of his own hair, lay on the lower bunk. So did his paints, leached from M&M’s and sitting in little white plastic containers that once held packets of grape jelly. Next to them was a stack of the blank postcards that are his canvases...

"Donny Johnson lives in an 8-by-12-foot, or 9-square-meter, concrete cell. His meals are pushed through a slot in the door. Except for the odd visitor, whom he talks to through thick plexiglass, he interacts with no one. He has not touched another person in 17 years.

"His art, he said recently, is a solace, an obsession and a burden...

"Most prison art, the kind created in crafts classes and sold in gift shops, tends toward kitsch and caricature. But there are no classes or art supplies where Mr. Johnson is held, and his powerful, largely abstract paintings are something different. They reflect the sensory deprivation and diminished depth perception of someone held in a windowless cell for almost two decades.

"They pulse, some artists on the outside say, with memory and longing and madness. Others are less impressed, saying the works are interesting examples of human ingenuity but fall short of real artistic achievement..."

And those people are likely the entrenched academics and "professionals" who've forgotten (after drinking the art school Kool-Aid?) that such expression is the point and purpose of living and being human.

7/22 sunset

Yes, they're meant to look that way.

Snafus ensued, but nmazca has moved.

So sorry about the interruption and absence... it is Mercury Retrograde season, and I had to initiate this transfer from 16 timezones away (and handle some network protocol bidness that I'd never handled before).

Asphalt aurorae

I spy a spider.

Something similar to the time I said
"Say hello to my little friend."

Heavy rains in Daehanminguk...

...but we were fortunate to be away from the worst of it. My Lady Friend and I took advantage of an extra day off and traveled to the shores of the Yellow Sea. A few days earlier, she had proposed that we venture to some caves near the East Sea coast, but the combined bus and train journey would've taken several hours.

As it happened, the mountainous clouds I saw on Friday were holding rain that inundated the eastern provinces. Flash floods and landslides killed several people and left many more homeless. The Han River in Gyeonggi-do (the province around Seoul) rose over its banks in many places, putting some roads under water and flooding low apartments. We got a phone call from friends in Yeoju saying that the Namhan River might flood, but it seems not to have happened (yet?).

In any case, here are the photos (and a few videos, too).

Mallipo fireworks 1
Mallipo fireworks 2
Mallipo fireworks 3

Different strokes for different folks

Sidewalk scene near Dongdaemun
Namdaemun market
Foot traffic at Yongsan Station
Just one aisle of an electronics market

The sky was alive at 5:55.

Oh, if only I could upload live skyscapes
as I walk (or, in this case, run)
down the street...

I submitted this image to the Cloud Appreciation Society and it was accepted.

Visible-light satellite imagery
at 17:20 KST, 14 July

It's the rainy season in Korea (a strong typhoon rumbled through on Sunday and Monday), so today I was witness to 50,000-foot towers of cloud power that I haven't seen since I lived in New Mexico during its summer storms.

For the record, I believe that these were cumulonimbus clouds, which were featured on SpaceWeather.com on July 12.

Open-source exploration
of interstellar space

Ah, don't get too excited. I'm not talking about DIY human spaceflight (yet). I just installed Celestia, and so I wanted to share some of the views and functions with you.

Celestia allows the user to observe and navigate the planets of the solar system and beyond. Orbital paths, satellite and interstellar probe orbits, detail maps of planetary surfaces, comet and asteroid orbits and extrasolar planets are among the objects and information one can access.

Users can also develop and share their own datasets and models for real or imaginary planets, spacecraft, and newly discovered objects, all of which can be distributed via The Celestia MotherLode.

I'll still continue to use the Hallo Northern Sky Planetarium program to track transits and timings for "local" planetary objects. Don't yet know if this can be done with Celestia, or if that program is all about touring 3D space. Which is just fine.

A real fire in the sky

"This is a photograph of an atmospheric phenomenon known as a circumhorizontal arc. The examples shown above and below were captured on camera as it hung for about an hour across a several-hundred-square-mile area of sky above northern Idaho (near the Washington border) on 3 June 2006."

Art of the Spirit

Mara Friedman...

Krisztina Lazar

David Heskin...

Richard Stodart...

and Mariela de la Paz

via Sitka's photo album

Rewind to 9.9.99

An hour after sunset on Sept. 9, 1999, standing along Hwy. 14 between Albuquerque and Santa Fe, I exposed several frames to capture the "magic time" twilight to the south-southwest. I've made many more images since, but this one is particularly enchanting.

Local flora times three

Chihuahua's crystal caverns

The photos and text below came from a site about the world's great canyons. As I looked for more info about the Naica mine, I discovered the official site for the ongoing exploration and research of the crystal caves.

"Found deep in a mine in southern Chihuahua, Mexico, these crystals were formed in a natural cave totally enclosed in bedrock. When I first stepped into the cavern, it was like walking into the Land of the Giants. I have often admired crystal geodes held in my hand, but when photographing these unique natural structures it was almost impossible to get any sense of scale. This is a geode full of spectacular crystals as tall as pine trees, and in some cases greater in circumference.

"They have formed beautiful crystals that are a translucent gold and silver in color, and come in many incredible forms and shapes. Some of the largest are essentially columnar in shape and stand thirty to fifty feet high and three to four feet in diameter. Many of the smaller examples are four to six feet in circumference, have many incredible geometrical shapes, and probably weigh in excess of ten tons...

"The Naica mine was first discovered by early prospectors in 1794 south of Chihuahua City. They struck a vein of silver at the base of a range of hills called Naica by the Tarahumara Indians. The origin in the Tarahumara language seems to mean "a shady place." Perhaps here in the small canyon there was a grove of trees tucked away by a small canyon spring. From the discovery of the mine until about 1900, the primary interest was silver and gold. Around 1900, large-scale mining began as zinc and lead became more valuable...

"I have been told that the mining company was afraid to tunnel through the Naica fault for fear of flooding the entire mine. In April 2000, the company became confident that the water table on the other side of the fault had been lowered sufficiently to drill. When they did this, it is almost as if a magical veil of reality was breached and an entirely new world was discovered. Two caverns filled with the Earth's largest crystals were immediately revealed. More discoveries are expected to be made in this magical kingdom of intense natural beauty.

Two views outside
of the hagwon window

Speaking of Saturn...

"Cassini looked toward the night side of Saturn to spy the darkened orb of Mimas barely visible here near the center of the image hugging the planet's shadow. To the left of Mimas are several bright features in the faint D ring.

"Mimas, the innermost of Saturn's medium-sized icy moons, is 397 kilometers (247 miles) across.

"The image was taken in visible light with the Cassini spacecraft narrow-angle camera on June 7, 2006, at a distance of approximately 3.9 million kilometers (2.4 million miles) from Mimas and 4 million kilometers (2.5 million miles) from Saturn."

Bright light via satellite
[Another odd shot from Saturn]

The first post on 22/7 was an intriguing, symmetrical overexposure taken from orbit near the sixth planet. Every now and again, as I peruse the raw-image archive, similar shots catch my eye.

The captions for these curious images often simply say that the camera was pointed toward the sky. It was the same with this image, which might be an intensely overexposed shot of one of Saturn's moons.

Unlike the curious image thst I posted in May, I don't think that this one shows the Sun.

South Korea
via satellite

These images are from the European Space Agency's ENVISAT image archive, which features high-quality observations of select locations from around the globe.

Yeoju, the city in which I currently live, is the white "T" region that's alongside the river on the righthand side of the second image. The vast, developed area to the left is Seoul, which (depending on the counting method) is the third- or fifth-largest city in the world.

How cosmic time
was kept in Korea

A stone sundial without contextual information
that's situated near the Jongmyo Royal Shrine.

A bronze sundial (angbu ilgu) from the Joseon (Chosun) Dynasty

A celestial globe (honsang) reconstructed
from an original design made during the reign
of King Sejong. It's located near the entrance
of Sejong's burial grounds here in Yeoju.

An Joseon period astrolabe (honcheonui)
at King Sejong's burial grounds

Two more sundials at Sejong's tomb

A two-sided black granite stele with star maps
(cheonsangyeolchabunyajido) from 1395 and 1433

Daehanminguk digicam:
Another Sunday
in South Korea

The latest installment of photos from the Land of Morning Calm.
There's some silent video, too:

Biking past food vendors 1
Biking past food vendors 2
Biking past food vendors 3

A bumpy shortcut above the rice fields
Spraying and swerving

[1111px version]

The total picture
of totality

"The total solar eclipse of 2006 crossed northern Africa and central Asia. Among the many countries in the path, Libya, Egypt and Turkey attracted most eclipse chasers because of their favorable weather prospects and long duration of totality. NASA's 2006 total eclipse website has detailed predictions and maps of this remarkable event."