My Inner Monologue

Underwater Surfer

Photograph by Tony Heff

Surfer Coco Ho is momentarily suspended weightless between the ocean’s surface and the shallow reef.

Godafoss, Iceland

Photograph by Orsolya and Erlend Haarberg

A glacial torrent pours over a 40-foot-high ledge at Gođafoss, “waterfall of the gods.” After the Icelandic assembly adopted Christianity in 1000, its leader threw his pagan idols into the falls. The mossy island, notes geographer Guđrún Gísladóttir, “is protected from sheep.”

Stop CISPA! »

burnished:

Here’s a handy link that will help you get in touch with your local congressional representative and let them know that you will NOT stand for the government passing CISPA.

What is CISPA?

CISPA would allow websites such as Google, Facebook, Twitter, and yes, even Tumblr, to hand over your private information to the government, all in the name of “cyber-security.” I’m all for protecting our nation against online attacks, but the laws surrounding this bill are very vague. Worst of all, there is very little oversight. CISPA is NOT the way to protect this country.

Does the government really need to be reading my e-mail? Reading what I post on Facebook or Tumblr? Think about it.

Please reblog if you can. The citizens of the Internetz helped stopped SOPA and PIPA. We can all do our part to stop this, too.

More ways you can help:

Sign the petition here: http://www.avaaz.org/en/stop_cispa/?wIcxadb

EFF message your local representative: https://wfc2.wiredforchange.com/o/9042/p/dia/action/public/?action_KEY=8444

Call your local representative: http://grassroutes.us/cispa

A small town in England a few days before D-Day, 1944

Earth Fire Water Wind

A 5 minute video of Kevin Gallagher’s 2200 mile trek along the Appalachian Trail, beginning in Georgia and ending at Mount Katahdin, Maine. It’s a stop-motion video of 4000 still pictures.

supersonicelectronic:

Ho Ryon Lee.

$Hubble Sees Glittering Jewels of Messier 9 The Hubble Space Telescope has produced the most detailed image so far of Messier 9, a globular star cluster located close to the center of the galaxy. This ball of stars is too faint to see with the naked eye, yet Hubble can see over 250,000 individual stars shining in it. Messier 9, pictured here, is a globular cluster, a roughly spherical swarm of stars that lies around 25,000 light-years from Earth, near the center of the Milky Way, so close that the gravitational forces from the galactic center pull it slightly out of shape. Globular clusters are thought to harbor some of the oldest stars in our galaxy, born when the universe was just a small fraction of its current age. As well as being far older than the sun — around twice its age — the stars of Messier 9 also have a markedly different composition, and are enriched with far fewer heavier elements than the sun. In particular, the elements crucial to life on Earth, like oxygen and carbon, and the iron that makes up our planet’s core, are very scarce in Messier 9 and clusters like it. This is because the universe’s heavier elements were gradually formed in the cores of stars, and in supernova explosions. When the stars of Messier 9 formed, there were far smaller quantities of these elements in existence. As well as showing the individual stars, Hubble’s image clearly shows the different colors of the stars. A star’s color is directly related to its temperature — counter-intuitively, perhaps, the redder it is, the cooler it is; and the bluer it is, the hotter. The wide range of stellar temperatures here is clearly displayed by the broad palette of colors visible in this image. Image Credit: NASA and ESA$

Hubble Sees Glittering Jewels of Messier 9

The Hubble Space Telescope has produced the most detailed image so far of Messier 9, a globular star cluster located close to the center of the galaxy. This ball of stars is too faint to see with the naked eye, yet Hubble can see over 250,000 individual stars shining in it.

Messier 9, pictured here, is a globular cluster, a roughly spherical swarm of stars that lies around 25,000 light-years from Earth, near the center of the Milky Way, so close that the gravitational forces from the galactic center pull it slightly out of shape.

Globular clusters are thought to harbor some of the oldest stars in our galaxy, born when the universe was just a small fraction of its current age. As well as being far older than the sun — around twice its age — the stars of Messier 9 also have a markedly different composition, and are enriched with far fewer heavier elements than the sun.

In particular, the elements crucial to life on Earth, like oxygen and carbon, and the iron that makes up our planet’s core, are very scarce in Messier 9 and clusters like it. This is because the universe’s heavier elements were gradually formed in the cores of stars, and in supernova explosions. When the stars of Messier 9 formed, there were far smaller quantities of these elements in existence.

As well as showing the individual stars, Hubble’s image clearly shows the different colors of the stars. A star’s color is directly related to its temperature — counter-intuitively, perhaps, the redder it is, the cooler it is; and the bluer it is, the hotter. The wide range of stellar temperatures here is clearly displayed by the broad palette of colors visible in this image.

Image Credit: NASA and ESA

Quiver Trees, Namibia

Photograph by Frans Lanting, National Geographic

Quiver trees stand like eerie sentinels under the stars in the Namib Desert. The flowers of these desert–tough varieties of the aloe plant provide nectar for birds and insects.

Stream, Seoul

Photograph by Greg Girard, National Geographic

Urban Renewal

Seoul, South Korea
Buried under an elevated highway for decades, the Cheonggyecheon stream once again flows in the open air through downtown Seoul. A 3.6–mile–long stretch of the stream was restored in 2005.