Res ipsa loquitur ("The thing itself speaks")
I give you the space butterfly.
This was taken by the Hubble telescope. It is believed to dwarf Rex Harrison’s Giant Lunar Moth.
For collectors, the problem is not the size of the net, but the speed of the insect. This particular specimen of lepidoptera racing at over 600,000 mph from a dying star.
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This is beautiful. Might I also suggest looking at Eta Carniae.
Just Google the image. Similar stellar event.
Regulars,
This will be my last post from work for the next 48 hours. We have a hacker issue that requires immediate attention and surprise surprise they got in using one of the two Windows machines we keep for customer convenience (rat bastards). So I’ll be busy and I may get online tonight, but it may be the weekend. I know you will all keep on fighting the good fight in my absence.
I’ll be back ASAP.
BIL,
Sorry to not see you here, hacker need something to do too.
This image is great.
You give me the space butterfly?
Not to look a gift-[butterfly] in the mouth, but how does one run a title search on a space butterfly?
The Universe is a life factory, that is it’s design and purpose the more you learn of it the more this become clear, we are stardust the universe is in us and we are in it…
Whenever these petty issues mankind creates due to his lack of integrity and wisdom and clarity get the better of you, take some time to realize the incredible wonder you are a part of, and you’ll realize how small and insignificant and temporary we are and how we’ve turned Eden into a place of misery, degradation suffering, fear, anxiety, needless death and dread for no real reason..but our own will and self loathing..
The Universe will end due to it’s expansion and the power of dark energy over powering that of gravity, but we will be long gone and forgotten for billions and billions of years before that eventually happens..
See what I mean..?
How’s a whale eye grab you (Yo, ho, ho):
http://athensboy.files.wordpress.com/2009/05/hubble_image_whales_eye.jpg
BOB,Esq:
Here you go:
Hubble’s latest, greatest views revealed
NASA declares ‘mission accomplished’ with dazzling new images
Slideshow.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/32757086/ns/technology_and_science-space/?GT1=43001
I give you Omega Centauri.
http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/hubble/multimedia/ero/ero_omega_centauri.html
TJ Colatrella:
“and you’ll realize how small and insignificant and temporary we are and how we’ve turned Eden into a place of misery, degradation suffering, fear, anxiety, needless death and dread for no real reason..but our own will and self loathing..”
Well what do you expect from small and insignificant beings? With that type of description why wouldnt we be self loathing?
And what is wrong with the will? God dosent like it when we dont do what He wants us to do?
I have a zillion butterflies going through my back yard. My lady plants flowers to attract them, as well as hummingbirds.
The butterflies are an absolutely incredible migratory species that travel distances would would not expect them to ever be able to travel.
You know, we of the human species must become space butterflies, as a species.
At first I thought it was incredible that a law professor would appreciate the space butterfly.
But then, lawyers are one of the professions that should advocate for taking care of this planet for as long as it takes.
As long as it takes us to get out of our larva stage and into at least the chrysalis stage, eager and waiting to fly, after having learned to be cosmic adults HERE!
We have so very far to go!
http://blogdredd.blogspot.com/2009/09/compromise-and-settle-on-moon.html
how do you post video on this site?
Byron,
I like myself. I just happen to realize that if I didn’t exist, the universe would still go on. As a matter of fact it makes me all the more grateful for my existence because I realize that there’s no good reason for me to be.
I’m small and insignificant. If that’s what it takes for me to exist, then I’m happy to be small and insignificant.
Religion isn’t always a necessity for a happy life.
I see your space butterfly and give you Madam Butterfly:
TJ:
is this woman small and insignificant?
Byron,
If it’s from Youtube, just copy and paste the link into your comment. If embedding is enabled on the Youtube end of things it will appear in your comment, if not it will just show up as a link.
I could not think of a more appropriate song to play. By you guess Iron Butterfly.
Gyges:
no it is not, there are many unhappy Christians. We all have our place in the scheme of things.
Leontyne Price singing is every bit as wondrous, in my mind anyway, as the space butterfly and that is my point to TJ.
In fact the space butterfly cannot do other than what it does, Ms. Price had a choice to become a great voice. Which is the more beautiful, the one that is because it has to be or the one that is because of shear will?
Byron,
In the end, beauty is a personal thing.
I quick quibble about choosing to be a great singer: You choose to be a musician, you don’t choose to be a great one. Playing music (and singing) is hard work, I’ve spend countless hours practicing. Right now I’m about 2-3 hours a day, plus gigs or rehearsals, but I was up to 8 hours a day in college. It didn’t do a thing to increase my innate talent, just helped me utilize it. I’ll never be a great classical musician (although I am proficient), and I’ll probably never become one of the “greats” in jazz, but it wasn’t because I didn’t choose to be.
I think a much more important (and answerable) question than “which is more beautiful?” is “why are they like that?”
A mildly interesting (the subject matter is good, but the writing itself is a little lacking) book on the role of music in humanities development is “Beethoven’s Anvil.” It explores music and dance as a tool for social interaction, and actually deals with some of the physiological aspects of listening to music and dancing. I’ve been told “Effortless Mastery” is an great book dealing with performing from the performers’ standpoint, but haven’t read it myself.
Iron Butterfly opened for Jefferson Airplane at McFarlin Auditorium on the SMU campus. It was the first rock concert I attended. I was 14, wore a polyester pantsuit, and smelled reefer for the first time. Almost forty years later, someone gave us tickets to Hippiefest at Nokia Theater where we saw I.B. and even approached the stage afterward. My kid got the keyboard player’s autograph.
Tiger Swallowtails are the main lepidoptera attraction around here these days.
Here’s my butterfly selection:
Gyges:
I agree that there is something that differentiates a good competent musician/singer from the greats. It could be as simple as a longer tendon in your fingers to a differently shaped vocal cord.
But someone with great talent must work hard, there are brilliant bus drivers.
Because 3:30 in the afternoon isn’t too early for a dry Martini… Paul Desmond plays Poor Butterfly.
Pardon me I saw Iron Butterfly open for the Jefferson Airplane at the Aragon Ballroom in Chicago. It must have been the same tour.
Gyges:
that is great!
Beauty is a personal thing but there are also standards. Some color combinations are more pleasing than other and there is a rational reason. The human face properly proportioned, there is some equation for that.
There must be a similar tonal element for music that makes it more pleasing to the ear?
Hey now, that is not fare Pardon me or Swartzmore Mom. I lived in a small town and only hippies and freaks went to that kinda shit. As soon as I graduated from High School I went to Mexico and learned a whole nother culture adventure. Drove from Sherman to Acapulco. That was a trip quite an adventure, the beginning of many road trips. Then for some reason I moved to Houston then Austin for College.
Now if you wanna start concert time. That was prime and ripe. Only city I know that has a THC index level for pollen. Guess its for the true stoners or an alert that prices were going to drop.
Now Jimi Hendrixs opened for the Monkeys in 67′.
Byron,
Most of those norms are set by the culture, and are pretty far from universal.
Exhibit A: Sir Mix-a-lot
(Or if you prefer, Ruben)
Well, I’m home and the damage is both minor and contained. But tomorrow is going to be restoration and removing the offending Windows machines from the open network and re-imaging them.
And I come home to find an nice discussion about the nature of beauty.
Gyges/Byron,
Beauty is indeed often a cultural norm and there are far more drastic examples than Rubens and Sir Mix-A-Lot (think “lip plates”), but what Byron is referring to about the symmetry of the human face is an expression of the Golden Ratio.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golden_ratio
This is the “perfect shape”, the “perfect proportion”. It was also used to define the shapes of the monoliths in 2001 and 2010.
Music is a slightly different issue.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Circle_of_fifths
Yes, there are mathematical relations in music and the easiest to deal with is the Circle of Fifths. However, not all music is tonal. Some is purposefully atonal. Dvorak and Shostakovitch come to mind for classical, but an more interesting example is the album “You Had It Coming” by Jeff Beck. As a guitarist primarily, maybe it makes me pay closer attention to guitarists, but Beck has tinnitus – a disorder that affects his hearing and consequently his playing. It’s a great album. One of his best. But if you listen closely, there are lots of little odd atonal bits. They fit, the songs are beautiful (see “Suspension”), but they were not part of Jeff’s playing style twenty years ago.
Buddha,
I’ll preface this by saying, we’re talking about Western music here, there’s lots and lots and lots of Non-western music out there that use different tunings and scales and theory.
There’s music theory and there’s tuning. Tuning is the relationship of notes to each other in a strictly acoustical setting. There a wide variety of approaches to tuning, and without opening a HUGE can of worms let’s just say that the system modern western music uses has an equal interval between every adjacent note, and that this wasn’t always the case. Music theory on the other hand deals with the relationships of notes on paper. A fifth is a fifth is a fifth no matter which tuning system is used. To use an example that has an interesting youtube video: Bach’s Well Tempered Clavier is theoretically the same now as it was when he wrote it. Tonally, it sounds different. For those who don’t care about the mechanics of the tuning, the second piece starts playing at 8:30 in. You might not be able to hear the difference between this recording and one played on an equal temperament instrument, but it’s there.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=__tbvLNH6FI
Like everything else musical beauty is a function of it’s culture. Even those things we think of as “great masterpieces” are played differently (Sometimes vastly so) then what they were intended because our tastes have changed.
gyges,
No issue with any of that and I was referring to Western music soley – even the Russians mostly wrote with a equal interval tunings with the noted exceptions. And I chose a theory example vis a vis mathematical relations over tuning for the very reason you mention: it can be a huge can of worms. But Beck’s atonal playing just seemed to be on my mind and it is not in the ordinary course of Western music.
Neat video BTW. I love Bach, but the details about his annotations was almost as interesting as the music. Almost.
Have you ever listened to any of the Christoper Hogwood/Academy of Ancient Music records where they play classical on period instruments?
Buddha,
I took a class on Performance Practice, we listened to those AAM recordings at least once a week.
There’s a great video out there of Symphonie Fantastique played on period instruments in the Hall that it was originally preformed in. Unfortunately I can’t remember the name of the conductor or organization that did it.
eniobob,
Thanks, but I’m still not clear on the title search issue.
The butterfly is beautiful. The most impressive collection of photographs I have seen from the Hubble was posted on the Big Picture blog:
http://www.boston.com/bigpicture/2008/12/hubble_space_telescope_advent.html
I agree with the authors that #25 is perhaps the most… humbling.
And for those interested in pondering the future of man in this universe I found this talk by Juan Enriquez on radical advancements in biology, robotics, and the future of the economy to be quite thought provoking. I post it here because his sense of humor reminded me a bit of our gracious host:
Apologies, the embed was stripped out by WordPress. Here is the link:
http://www.ted.com/talks/juan_enriquez_shares_mindboggling_new_science.html
and what of this butterfly’s effect?
I was at that Jefferson Airplane/Iron Butterfly show at SMU on August 16, 1968. I have photos.