The Four Ages Of Sand

Moon Venus and Robin together at Dusk

Did you see Venus last night? It's the very bright "star" visible quite high in the sky in the direction of the setting sun. And to the left is Jupiter.

It's always wonderful to see the crescent Moon next to Venus at dusk but it's even better if you can add in a singing Robin.

The idea was to get the Robin with the Moon behind it in the same shot. Next time maybe. The video has come out quite nicely considering how little light there was:

 

The curse of the Kingfisher

Alan T regularly emails me to tell me he's seen yet another Kingfisher. I have a strong suspicion he likes to do this because he knows how much it annoys me that I almost never see my favourite bird.

Alan R has gone one better; he's now taking great photos of them...

Jealous? Not me.

I'd love to take my own shots of course, but nicking them off Alan's excellent blog, Seymour Birdies, is almost as satisfying:

 

Got to laugh!

This from Alan R:

 

Islington Council admits tree sign 'error'

  

The sign led to "laughter, grumpiness and indignation," said Nadi Jahangiri

A council has warned residents not to attach objects to trees - in a notice attached to a tree. Islington Council said the poster in Highbury Fields, north London, had been put up "in error" by a junior worker. It read: "Please do not attach or affix any structures or objects to the park furniture and trees at Highbury Fields including the benches and lamp posts." A council spokesman said it had now moved the notice to a nearby noticeboard.

The notice, which asked residents to respect the park and be responsible, was spotted by Nadi Jahangiri, an architect who lives nearby. He said: "A lot of people have been putting signs up on the trees about lost cats and so on with drawing pins - it really annoys me. "I walked up to it to rip it down, only to find it was telling people not to attach anything to trees!" He continued: "Lots of people soon gathered around laughing.

"There was lots of grumpy huffiness and indignation about our taxes being used for this. "If you want to stop someone doing something, doing it yourself is an odd way to go about it - but that's Islington Council for you."

A spokesman for the council said: "This was a mistake by a junior member of staff who thought they were doing the right thing to protect the trees. "Yesterday we removed the sign to a nearby noticeboard as intended."

 

 

brain-mind graphic

And ANOTHER thing about the Brain and the Mind is... ok I'm not really going down that route at the moment. Well not on the blog anyway.  The subject of consciousness, the Mind Body problem, and all that, is still very much on my mind though (or Brain; take your pick) and I've just started my Masters on the subject (post coming soon). But I must share this from Nick's blog, biotechnorati.

Remember my diagrams laying out the main positions with regard to the connection between Brain and Mind? (previous post)

Are Mind and Brain 2 different things?

Or 2 words for the same thing?

Or perhaps Mind is an illusion:

It feels like our mind has control over the body:



but Neuroscience suggests the opposite is true; Mind, whatever it is or is not, arises from the brain:



The 5 diagrams seemed to me to be the exhaustive list on the subject, but the more I read the more I began to wonder if the 2 concepts could be intertwined in some other way, a way that suggested a deeper interconnectedness between the 2 concepts.  The letters 'I' and 'N' are common to both words so I thought there must be a way to express this diagramatically, but I couldn't think of any way to do it. I mentioned it to Nick and then thought no more about it.  But Nick, unlike me, has a habit of following things through to their ultimate conclusion, and he has come up with this. I think it's fantastic.

I've searched online and can't find anything like it. Nice job mate!

See biotechnorati here for the full story.

 

Answer to "What is it? 243"

Well done to Ted!

Sun reflecting off an aeroplane.

Posted by: Ted Boatman | January 23, 2012 at 02:56 PM

I don't know who he is but he appears to have a Welsh email address...

It's an aeroplane flying past Venus at Sunset, which is not something you see every day.

The Zoom in the second half of the clip is 250X. The quality is rubbish at that kind of zoom of course, but the image stabilisation still does an amazing job. To get a usable image at 250X really is impressive.

 

 

And for those without Vimeo, here's a single frame:

What is it? 243

Treecreeper Magic

Treecreepers are common birds in woods and forests in the UK but they are extremely difficult to photograph because they are small, (5 inches from head to tail) and constantly flit about in the darkest parts of the tree. In fact a quick search of 4AoS suggests I've never managed to photogrpah one all.

But then came the Panasonic SD900! You just switch to Manual focus, open up the aperture and you're away. Here's a still from the vid:

And here's the vid:

 

Disproportionate or What?

Good one from Alan R. I have mixed feeling about SOPA but I do think some perspective is needed:

Answer to "What is it? 242"

 

Some great guesses this week, from Trifle to Scallops, but none close to the answer I'm afraid

It's...

Well, watch the video to find out (it's at the end)

I've been playing around with creative filters in Corel VideoStudio Pro X4.

Is the result great Art? That's not for me to say, but a metaphor for my work might be the vision of a young child taking its first tentative steps in a freshly mown meadow...

For busy 4AoSers or those without access to Vimeo, the answer is here too:

Question of the week: How can you think like Leonardo Da Vinci?

Any way you cut it, Leonardo was a clever guy.

Here are some the attributes/strategies of the great man which we could all emulate in order to think more like him:

Curiosità. Curiosità is an "insatiably curious approach to life and unrelenting quest for continuous learning".

Dimostrazione. Dimostrazione is "a commitment to test knowledge through experience, persistence, and a willingness to learn from mistake".

Sensazione. Sensazione is "the continual refinement of the senses, especially sight, as the means to enliven experience".

Cryptic. Cryptic is "a willingness to embrace ambiguity, paradox, and uncertainty".

Arte/scienza. Arte/scienza is "the development of the balance between science and art, logic and imagination".

Corporalità. Corporalità is "the cultivation of grace, ambidexterity, fitness, and poise".

Connessione. Connessione is "a recognition of and appreciation for the interconnectedness of all things and phenomena".

 

The full article is here: http://www.wikihow.com/Think-Like-Leonardo-Da-Vinci

It's all in the marketing

The Car Wash attached to our local Tesco needed a real punchy advert to pull in the punters. Here's what the marketing boys came up with.

That's why they get the big bucks!

As long as the Head Teachers are getting it right...

Alan spotted this:

374.AMc
Comment number 374 is an Editors' Pick
17th January 2012 - 12:26

I have been a primary head teacher for the past 12 years. I see a lot of comments against Ofsted but know this. These reports and grading’s have highlighted failing schools and those where improvements can be made. In the main the Inspectors offer very clear objectives and advice.
It's quite simple; those who work hard to improve their schools have nothing to fear.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-16579644?postId=111451366#comment_111451366

Possible Disintegrating Short-Period Super-Mercury Orbiting KIC 12557548

It's important to have catchy titles with a blog don't you think? ;-)

This from David:

I'm melting...

Hi Iain,

This just in:
http://arxiv.org/abs/1201.2662

I f you get the chance, watch this month's Sky at Night on catch up too. There's a lot of very interesting sdtuff about the latest on planets around other stars, also some updates on wandring planets.

Boffins now believe that planets around stars may be the exception rather than the rule, and that most planets are wandering free in space. Thety estimate there could be 4 billion of them in our galaxy alone. If they are large enough they will produce heat, much as Jupiter does, and this means that life may exist on their moons. You can imagine aliens looking for other life in the universe and never thinking to look in the direction of the stars! Full story here:

http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/badastronomy/2011/05/18/the-galaxy-may-swarm-with-billions-of-wandering-planets/

and here:

http://news.sciencemag.org/sciencenow/2011/05/homeless-planets-may-be-common.html

Cornell Lab of Ornithology's Neotropical Birds site; more prestigious than the BBC?

Let Alan have his Multiple BBC publishing fame (http://www.fouragesofsand.com/2011/11/100-congratulations-to-alans-success-.html) I've been published on the Cornell Lab of Ornithology's Neotropical bird's site!

I got this email from the Managing Editor of Neotropical Birds:

I am the managing editor of the Cornell Lab of Ornithology's Neotropical Birds site (http://neotropical.birds.cornell.edu ). I am writing to you because I found your photos when looking for sources of Diglossa gloriosa images, and found wonderful species identification images of species images on your website that could be of enormous use for our resource.

I wanted to contact you about the possibility of contributing photographs from your personal website to our resource about neotropical birds: http://neotropical.birds.cornell.edu.
The Cornell Lab of Ornithology is a nonprofit, member-supported organization with limited media resources. By sharing your photographs in NB, you are helping us in our mission to interpret and conserve the earth's biological diversity. The Neotropical Birds site is a newly launched project that is a work-in-progress, and one heavily invested in the use of research, observations, and resources from citizen scientists. There are over 4500 species of birds in the Neotropics, and we are relying heavily on the graces of potential contributors such as yourself to help advance our mission of education, outreach and conservation of avian life in the Neotropics.

We are unable to give financial renumeration for images at this time, but I would be more than happy to provide you with a credit and a link back to either a website or your flickr photostream, whichever you prefer.


We appreciate your prompt reply, and a sincere thank you in advance for considering my request.

Kind regards,

The bird is the very special Venezuelan endemic, the Merida Flowerpiercer:

found only in one small area of the country:

 

And here's the result:

http://neotropical.birds.cornell.edu/portal/species/overview?p_p_spp=635596 

 

What is it? 242, Part 2

Some good guesses this week, which have inspired me to post a part 2. Good luck!

Scallops ... with All-Bran?

Posted by: Alan | January 16, 2012 at 08:59 PM

 Looks like a slice of lemon.

Posted by: Alan R | January 17, 2012 at 03:43 PM

It almost looks like something knitted. Don't know why I would say that.

Posted by: UniC | January 17, 2012 at 09:54 PM

Question of the Week: How old is laughter?

I'm not laughing much these days, due to the ongoing agonies of the flu, but this from Alan caught my eye. How old is laughter? The boffins say: " laughter is at least 30 million to 60 million years old."

How did they work this out? By tickling gorillas!

Full story here:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-15880045

 

What is it? 242