Constellation Orion, partly encircled by Barnard’s Loop, appears upside down (on the left) when seen from the southern hemisphere.
Sirius is the brightest star in the night sky.
On the far right, near the top, are the two Magellanic Clouds, satellite galaxies of the Milky Way.
There’s a sacred place at Almaden Quicksilver Park that few people know about. A hike there is refreshing to the soul, yet could be exhausting to the body.
It’s a fair trade.
Cells in embryos make their way across a steep “developmental landscape” to their eventual fate.
Embryonic cells continuously monitor their changing surroundings and make small corrective adjustments, optimizing as development proceeds, locking in on their planned identity relatively late.
Processing positional information makes genes variously switch on and off throughout the embryo, giving cells distinct identities based on their location. (Some cells unfortunately take the wrong paths and are unable to get back on track.)
All the information is there in the landscape and processing that information effectively may be the phenomenon that makes a bunch of loosely stuck-together atoms behave like the thing we call life.
Had I been like a man living in a wood from which he knows there is no exit, I could have lived; but I was like one lost in a wood who, horrified at having lost his way, rushes about wishing to find the road.”
-Leo Tolstoy
A man walks upright. For him it is strenuous to climb a steep hill, because he has to keep pushing his own vertical mass upward and cannot gain any momentum.
The rabbit is better off. His forelegs support his horizontal body and the great back legs do the work. They are more than equal to thrusting uphill the light mass in front of them.
Rabbits can go fast uphill. In fact, they have so much power behind that they find going downhill awkward, and sometimes, in flight down a steep place, they may actually go head over heels.
WATERSHIP DOWN (1972) by Richard George Adams
Scientific man does not aim at an immediate result. He does not expect that his advanced ideas will be readily taken up. His work is like that of the planter for the future, to lay the foundation for those who are to come, and point the way.
-Nikola Tesla
Never had an idea in my life. I’ve got no imagination. My so-called inventions already existed in the environment. I took them out. I’ve created nothing. Nobody does. Genius hangs around the laboratory day & night; if anything happens, he’s there to catch it.
-Thomas Edison
Out here by myself in 2016 at a place almost totally inaccessible to normal people; motorcycle stuck on that hill for several hours. There’s no water! Nowadays I stay home, look at the picture.
He turned to Stephen and said:
—Seriously, Dedalus. I’m stony. Hurry out to your school kip and bring us back some money.
—That reminds me, Haines said, rising, that I have to visit your national library today.
—Our swim first, Buck Mulligan said.”
Ulysses by James Joyce
Flag Hill 2
Several visits to a beautiful wilderness area.
46 photos · 12 views
Flag Hill 3
Approaching the cliffs from below.
20 photos · 11 views
What you can do or think you can do, begin it.
For boldness has magic, power, and genius in it.
GOETHE (Mehr Licht!)