via Nerdist
Archives for the month of: December, 2011
Via the Atlantic:
A cloud of ash billowing from Puyehue volcano near Osorno in southern Chile, 870 km south of Santiago, on June 5, 2011. Puyehue volcano erupted for the first time in half a century on June 4, 2011, prompting evacuations as it sent up a cloud of ash that circled the globe. Claudio Santana/AFP/Getty Images
Lightning bolts strike around the Puyehue-Cordon Caulle volcanic chain near southern Osorno city, on June 5, 2011. Reuters/Ivan Alvarado
Volcanic activity in the sea off the Canary island of El Hierro, seen in this aerial photo taken on November 5, 2011. The regional government of the Canary Islands ordered the evacuation of homes and road closures near the southern tip of El Hierro after two earth tremors and increased offshore volcanic activity caused a buildup of malodorous debris floating on the sea. Seismic activity began in the area on July 17 and residents have since been rocked by more than 10,000 tremors, while underwater fissures have released an almost continuous flow of sulfurous gases, smoke and hot debris. AP Photo/Canary Islands Government
Tungurahua Volcano is seen from the town of Guadalupe, Ecuador, on November 28, 2011. Pablo Cozzaglio/AFP/Getty Images
With Ryan Gosling, Eva Mendes and Jim Carrey
The spiral Antennae galaxies are one of the nearest and youngest examples of a pair of colliding galaxies.
NASA, ESA, and the Hubble Heritage Team, STScI/AURA-ESA/Hubble Collaboration – click to embiggen
During the course of the collision, billions of stars will be formed. […] Nearly half of the faint objects in the Antennae image are young clusters containing tens of thousands of stars. The orange blobs to the left and right of image center are the two cores of the original galaxies and consist mainly of old stars criss-crossed by filaments of dust, which appears brown in the image. The two galaxies are dotted with brilliant blue star-forming regions surrounded by glowing hydrogen gas, appearing in the image in pink. The Antennae galaxies take their name from the long antenna-like “arms” extending far out from the nuclei of the two galaxies, best seen by ground-based telescopes.
via the Atlantic’s Hubble Telescope Advent Calendar. More info about the Antennae Galaxies
Via Boing Boing:
David Gray, Reuters – click to embiggen
[…]Wonderland, an unfinished Disneyland clone outside of Beijing. Here, a farmer tends crops in a field now encompassing the abandoned Cinderella Castle-style building that was to be a centerpiece. Construction work at the park, promoted by developers as “the largest amusement park in Asia”, stopped around 1998; disagreements over property prices with the local government and farmers are cited as factors.
on the inner flap of my Trader Joe’s Candy Cane green tea
Oh my god. I don’t even know what to say. All I keep thinking is, “Jeeeeeesus. …JEEEESUUUUUSSSS.” The horror. Read it here. Excerpt below, but it really doesn’t do it justice.
Backstory: the recipient of this email thought the first date was ‘horrendous’ and wanted nothing more to do with this guy. I’m sure you will not be surprised by her decision after reading the email.
I suggest that we continue to go out and see what happens. Needless to say, I find you less appealing now (given that you haven’t returned my messages) than I did at our first date. However, I would be willing to go out with you again. I’m open minded and flexible and am willing to give you the benefit of the doubt. I wish you would give me the benefit of the doubt too. If you don’t want to go out again, in my opinion, you would be making a big mistake, perhaps one of the biggest mistakes in your life.
Oh the little rover that could! The Mars Exploration Rovers, Spirit and Opportunity, were only meant to last for 90 Martian-days (~92 Earth-days). Opportunity is still out there, exploring the surface of Mars (and soon to be joined by her cousin, the Mars Science Laboratory), but Spirit, five years and almost four months after landing on Mars, became stuck in a patch of soft ground. This video is composed of stills, and shows the rover traveling across Mars, conducting experiments, and finally, sadly, becoming stuck. I like to imagine that someday we’ll find Spirit, buried in the Martian soil, and once we clean off the solar panels and give her some power she’ll spring back to life.
Picture of Spirit taken from the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter
via Wikipedia – click to embiggen
Traverse maps
click to embiggen
If you enjoy Perez Hilton, or have heard of him, and also enjoy early American history, boy do I have a site for you. Making the rounds on Facebook and the rest of the blogosphere this week (crap I can’t believe I used the word ‘blogosphere’; I am such a cliché): Perez Hamilton. A (clean) example:
So FUNgasmic!! We’re already really smart, but can we go too?!?!
Now men in the New World have a place to go in Massachusetts if they want to formally learn. John Harvard donated his whole entire book collection and half of his fortune to the new college so the founders named it after him.
We could donate our favorite feather quill if they want to name it after us instead. Hamilton College sounds sooooo much better!
Just a thought!