Cool color illusion.

Instructions: Look at the black dot in the picture below. Stare at the dot until the countdown ends, and the black and white picture should look like it’s in color . . . until you move your eyes!



I've loved these little optical illusions ever since I was a kid.

Pompeii Exhibit in Charlotte

Last week I realized that the Pompeii Exhibit "A Day in Pompeii" would be leaving Charlotte on January 4th. The exhibit was only in 4 U.S. cities and Charlotte was the last stop. I quickly arranged for an overnight trip to see the exhibit and to have a little Christmas gift of staying in one my favorite hotels, The Dunhill, which is just across the street from the exhibit.

After a Saturday afternoon drive through the misty, gray rainy weather, we arrived at The Dunhill, which incidentally had already picked up tickets for us, and off to the exhibit we went. The docent said no flash photography, so I disabled the flash and took a few pictures. The first part of the exhibit showed a typical day in Pompeii in 79 A.D. The cooking, the jars and jugs, the food, the houses, the worship, the utensils, jewelry, art and gardens. The last part of the exhibit explained the eruption of Vesuvius and how the people of Pompeii tried to escape, and what dying in the ash, gases, pumice, and other volcanic material would've been like. Dark, hot, increasingly hard to breathe. Terrible.

For hundreds and hundreds of years it was all left undisturbed under many feet of ash, rubble and rock, but in the 1700's archeologists began the work to uncover the city again. The most haunting images were the body casts of the people and animals that died. Here's how they were discovered (from the wiki site about Pompeii and Herculaneum):

"Giuseppe Fiorelli took charge of the excavations in 1860. During early excavations of the site, occasional voids in the ash layer had been found that contained human remains. It was Fiorelli who realised these were spaces left by the decomposed bodies and so devised the technique of injecting plaster into them to perfectly recreate the forms of Vesuvius's victims. What resulted were highly accurate and eerie forms of the doomed Pompeiani who failed to escape, in their last moment of life, with the expression of terror often quite clearly visible."

The room in the exhibit where the body casts were shown was dark, with black walls and a red floor. Spotlights showed the plaster body casts, and beautiful somber music played softly in the background. Something I won't soon forget.

Here are few pictures I took of the exhibit:

What's flying around up there anyway?

Neat site I just discovered at spaceweather to track what satellites you can see from your location (what time and where to look):

"US and Canadian readers, enter your zip code ... hit Go!, and you will find out what is going to fly over your area in the nights ahead. There are hundreds of satellites in Earth orbit; we cut through the confusion by narrowing the list to a half-dozen or so of the most interesting. At the moment we are monitoring spy satellite Lacrosse 3, the International Space Station, the Early Ammonia Servicer, and the Hubble Space Telescope."

Heck if you are looking up there in the night sky, you might even spot the lost NASA tool bag, estimated value $100K. It was lost in the current Shuttle mission and it's now streaking across the sky.

As uploaded to youtube (just a few seconds long) of the streaking tool bag:



Happy sky-watching!

Things that make us go BOOM! Or not.

Looks like this Wednesday is going to be a big day in the science world. Nerdlingers like me are awaiting the re-enactment of The Big Bang. So hold on to your um, gravity and stuff. It's being done with a 17 mile long atom smasher that's being fired up on Wednesday:

GENEVA - It has been called an Alice in Wonderland investigation into the makeup of the universe - or dangerous tampering with nature that could spell doomsday.

Whatever the case, the most powerful atom-smasher ever built comes online Wednesday, eagerly anticipated by scientists worldwide who have awaited this moment for two decades.

The multibillion-dollar Large Hadron Collider will explore the tiniest particles and come ever closer to re-enacting the big bang, the theory that a colossal explosion created the universe.

The machine at CERN, the European Organization for Nuclear Research, promises scientists a closer look at the makeup of matter, filling in gaps in knowledge or possibly reshaping theories.

Now if you really want a better understanding of what's going on, please do go take a look at the cheesy but catchy music video that the folks at CERN put together:



The article goes on to say:

It will still be about a month before beams traveling in opposite directions are brought together in collisions that some skeptics fear could create micro "black holes" and endanger the planet.

So have a great month!

Loggerhead Turtle Nests on Topsail Island

We spent a long weekend on Topsail Island with my family and the weather was beautiful. A lot of the time we were on the beach swimming and playing in the sand and beach-combing and I am happy to report seeing several loggerhead turtle nests roped off just in one small section of coastline. They came complete with with warning signs--penalty up to $100,000 and also criminal prosecution with jail time. Everyone was very respectful of the nests.

One nest even had a little 'runway' dragged into the sand from the nest to the surf by the volunteers who help protect the sea turtles. Evidently the 'runway' means it's close to having the eggs hatch. It takes about 60 days from the time the mother loggerhead turtle lays the eggs until they hatch and the babies make their way out to the ocean. The nests will have volunteer babysitters (nestsitters?) to sit with the nests overnight so no idiot will vandalize the nests at night. An interesting article here from last Saturday about the nests this year: Sea turtles take over Topsail.

Topsail Island has one of the few "sea turtle hospitals" to help injured loggerheads recuperate and get back to the ocean. You can even vist Topsail's Sea Turtle Rescue and Rehabilitation Center. It seems to be a big hit with kids . . . and big kids like me too.

Here are some pictures I took:

A roped off nest near the dunes


The "runway" down to the surf:


The warning sign (click it twice to make it readable):


Here's a youtube video (not mine) of some Topsail Island loggerhead babies making their way to the ocean. And also a very quick video of a mother loggerhead on Topsail crawling back to the water.

Night-blooming Datura

Several years ago, my great-aunt gave me a flower pot with little green plants sprouting. She said when mature, the plants would produce big trumpet flowers that are "sweet-smelling and night-blooming." She didn't know the exact name, but called them "moonflowers." After a little research on the internet, I found out they are actually "datura" and are desert plants, and thus, very drought tolerant. Here's one of mine:



They easily re-seed themselves each year, and require little care. They aren't fazed when I move the "baby plants" where I want them once they sprout up in the spring. Here's where I planted them along my driveway. At night, they open up and they do smell very good:



They have a funny-looking prickly seed head after the flower drops off, and then at the end of the season, the seed head splits open and spits out the seeds (these next 2 photos are from wiki):





According to the American Botanical Council, datura has a long history of being used in religious ceremonies because it is hallucinogenic, but then too, I think it could be very poisonous so don't eat them!

Live web stream of a nest of baby robins at Duke

They are so cute! I got the stream to open best using the IE browser, which normally I don't use.

Here's the link:

http://www.ustream.tv/channel/duke-university-baby-robins


About the birds from the link:

Two weeks ago, three baby robins hatched in a nest on a ledge outside our office window outside the Office of News and Communications at 615 Chapel Drive on the Duke University campus. Watch as the robins grow and prepare to leave the nest.

In the Dog Days of Summer

We are in the midst of the "Dog Days of Summer" which is the period of time in the summer generally from the first part of July until mid-August. In ancient times, this period of time was when the brightest star in the sky, Sirius (also called the "Dog Star"), rose and set with our Sun.

The ancient Romans recognized the "Dog Days" and called them caniculares dies ("days of the dogs") for the Dog Star.

They thought that the rising and setting of the big bright star Sirius with the Sun added to the heat we normally received from the Sun, making it extra hot during this period of time.

The ancient Greeks actually gave the Dog Star the name "Sirius" and for them, the rising of Sirius with the Sun was the sign that annual flooding of the Nile would begin.

Happy Dog Days and at least, unlike the ancients, we have a Locopops around the corner to help get us through the Dog Days.

Fairy Rings

IF YOU SEE A FAERY RING

If you see a faery ring
In a field of grass,
Very lightly step around,
Tip-toe as you pass,
Last night faeries frolicked there-
And they're sleeping somewhere near.
If you see a tiny faery,
Lying fast asleep
Shut your eyes
And run away,
Do not stay to peek!
Do not tell
Or you'll break a faery spell.

~ William Shakespeare

A block or so away from my house I saw a burgeoning Fairy Ring, but alas no "tiny faery" as Shakespeare suggested I might see. I've always been fascinated by Fairy Rings, so I had to go back and get a better look and maybe a picture or two. Not sure what kind of mushroom this is specificially, however, because many different kinds of mushrooms can populate a Fairy Ring.




It's quite possibly a Scotch Bonnet 'shroom from the looks of it though. Edited to add: Don't ever eat mushrooms unless you are 100% positive what they are--and then double-check that.

Happy Earth Day

Enjoy a tiny part of our freakish but amazing world:



Disclaimer: not my photography, found on the internerds . . .