Tag Archives: sky

27-Shor

Adrian du Buisson for Quanta Magazine – March 12, 2019

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

07-Lock

Seven older gentlemen of various political persuasions gather in the courtyard under the squawking birds to politely discuss and examine, in regulated heartbeat, the current issues and events of the week.

They also like to talk about their high-school classmates, both living & dead, unknown to others outside of Los Gatos. It’s an exclusive club.

17-View

Liftoff

View of rocket launched from Vandenberg, 200 miles away – Thanks M

From our front porch this morning, we could even see the 1st stage booster separating from the 2nd stage and its return for landing on earth. The only things missed were the roaring sound of the nine thruster engines, and a 4-hour drive from Central California back home to Northern California.

25-Wing

Flight of Fancy

Flying machines epitomize the realization of a 3-D experience of the world.

Edel Space 27 over Pacifica – Photo by Leon

Piloting a paraglider around the turn of the millennium. That’s M with outstretched arms.

Now my wing is in the garage, ready for the museum. It’s still flight worthy, and it could still break my neck.

06-Veri

Dreams at Twilight – Artist’s Reverie

That word, “reverie“, for some reason went around & around through my mind all night.

Coincidentally, in this morning’s San Jose Mercury News, I found one of Jules Travernier’s paintings. It was inspired during the year he spent crossing America, sketching the scenes he encountered while lost in his thoughts.

wikipedia.org/wiki/Jules_Tavernier_(painter)