History of Life on Earth - Awesome !!

For a full size version, click here & trust me, it's AWESOME !!

.....NOM.....

Summertime in the city - 'bout time

After a prolonged spring with weather that could best be described as....crap, cold and rainy, it looks as if we may have finally turned the corner.

For those of you unfamiliar with Toronto, we usually get hot and humid summers. Not stifling like say Miami (duh) but definitely sticky. It also doesn't help when there's little wind and the smog builds but I AM NOT COMPLAINING !!

Anything is better that the 7 months of cold, wet, grey and occasionally snowy/rainy crud we get the rest of the year.
So here's hoping we get lots more of this.......











SRW

Storm Season Kicks Off

Hurricane, Tropical Depression, Squall and basically CNN fodder type weather is starting up in the Gulf of Mexico and the Caribbean.

Lower left is a storm that's going to get lotsa Texans wet and as for the one in the lower right, those rum loving Jamaicans & Cubans are gonna get walloped !

Here's hoping that Anderson Cooper has had all his shots, that the UN tear making machine is geared up and that you're ready for 24/7 coverage.

The Scale of our Universe in 3D

New 3D maps of the Universe released today. This is the most detailed look at what scientists have been able to piece together over literally years of study, data and number crunching.

(photos blatantly plagerized from PC Mag here)

Click Me

Click Me

Now for those of you who aren't technical, or geeks or interested in the slightest, I invite you to look at the following link to completely blow your mind.

I am in absolute AWE of what this website illustrates. Our place in the Universe and just how completely AWESOME all of everything is.

I hope you enjoy it and get just a small taste of what I experienced.

http://primaxstudio.com/stuff/scale_of_universe/

The Great Feast - Awesome !!

In late summer the plankton bloom is at its height. Vast shoals of herring gather to feed on it, diving birds round the fish up into a bait ball to feed and then................. OMFG !!

Japan Earthquake - The Swarm

Quick video showing earthquakes in Japan between 9 March and 14 March. 1 hour ~ 1 second. Big one is around 1:17

Snowmageddon - From Space

Do you folks remember Snowpocalyspe / Snowmageddon on Feb 3, 2011 ? If not, click here for a recap on that peach of a week when we here in North America were buried in the white stuff.

Anyways, NOAA (National Oceanic and Atmospheric Association) released the following composite.

At first glance it looks like a graphic from a Discovery Channel programme about a distant ice age. But this astonishing picture shows the world as it is today - with half the Northern Hemisphere covered with snow and ice. The image was released by the National Oceanic And Atmospheric Association (NOAA) on the day half of North America was in the grip of a severe winter storm. 


Cool !!


SRW

Life looks for Life

The incomparable Carl Sagan narrates this video. Humbling, haunting and beautiful.




Cosmos was one of the first books I ever got growing up. I still have it and still leaf through it from time to time. It was an inspiration to me then and remains one of the most thought provoking, insightful, interesting and frankly, enjoyable books I've ever read.


Who's going to be the Sagan of & for the next generation ? RIP

Where have I been living all these years ?

A dumb question but bear with me. Do you know where you live ? I mean do you really know the planet earth and it's true geography ?

We are all familiar with the following map which is what was used during my schooldays. In fact, this particular map projection is the one most often featured in classrooms the world over, in boardrooms etc. This is how we've been taught to look at the world and for a reason.

Mercator Projection

This map is what's called a Mercator Projection. The Mercator projection is a cylindrical map projection presented by the Belgian, Flemish geographer and cartographer Gerardus Mercator, in 1569. Mercator's projection (created at a time when navigators were sailing on the oceans in wooden ships, powered by the wind, and navigating by the stars) was particularly useful because straight lines on his projection were lines of constant compass bearing. Today the Mercator projection still remains useful for navigational purposes and is referred to by seafarers and airline pilots.

The Mercator is also a "conformal" map projection. This means that it shows shapes pretty much the way they appear on the globe. The mapmaker's dilemma is that you cannot show both shape and size accurately. If you want a true shape for the land masses you will necessarily sacrifice proportionality, i.e., the relative sizes will be distorted.

Take a look at the approximate size of Africa, Madagascar, Europe etc. They're all right where you expected to see them and in roughly the sizes that you've been taught to expect. Ready to blow your mind ?

Peters Projection

Above is the Peters Projection Map which is an Area Accurate Map. That is to say that it shows the true size of the continents, countries and seas/oceans. Go ahead, click on it now to blow your mind. This is the real world as it exists, not what you and I have been taught over the years.


Which is bigger, Greenland or China? With the traditional Mercator map, Greenland and China look the same size. But in reality China is almost 4 times larger! In response to such discrepancies, Dr. Arno Peters created a new world map that dramatically improves the accuracy of how we see the Earth.


Take a look at the difference in the size of North America vs. Europe, or Africa. To put it another way, have a look at the following. It freaked me out when I saw it and it got me thinking.

Some would argue that the Mercator Projection was adopted so readily by the early European empires because it reinforced a Euro-Centric view of the earth. Europe was "larger than life" and placed at the center of the map. Whether this is true or not remains in question but one thing is for sure. Since it's introduction in the mid 1500's, the Mercator view, out of the thousands of other projections, has become the most widely used and is recognizable by schoolchildren the world over.

The Peter's Projection on the other hand has been slow to be adopted. It is used in many NGO's, Multi-National companies and governments but has met with general public resistance, particularly in the USA.

Go figure.

SRW

Snowpocalypse From Space !!

Maybe the City of Toronto's authorities overreacted a bit before the arrival of the big winter storm on Feb 2-3, 2011 but who can blame them when this is what they were looking at in satellite images.


Beautiful, scary, humbling and outright AWESOME. Enjoy !!

SRW

(click on the images for a better view)

Snowmageddon - Feb 2, 2011