Tuesday, November 1, 2016

In The Spotlight - The new BMW R nineT Racer

Alan Watts ~ The Greatest Skill of All

Society Trap - Joe Rogan

National Geographic Photo of the Day: November 1st of 2016

Picture of three women in Day of the Dead costumes in Oaxaca, Mexico
November 1, 2016Celebration of LifeWoman in Oaxaca, Mexico, celebrate Día de los Muertos (Day of the Dead). Death is the theme of the two-day festival, which starts on November 1, but it’s not focused on the macabre. Rather, as Your Shot photographer Daniel Kudish rightly notes, it’s “an incredible celebration of life and a beautiful way to remember those who have passed.”

Astronomy Picture of the Day: November 1st of 2016

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Arp 299: Black Holes in Colliding Galaxies
Image Credit: NASA, JPL-Caltech, GSFC, Hubble, NuSTAR
Explanation: Is only one black hole spewing high energy radiation -- or two? To help find out, astronomers trained NASA's Earth-orbiting NuSTAR and Chandra telescopes on Arp 299, the enigmatic colliding galaxies expelling the radiation. The two galaxies of Arp 299 have been locked in a gravitational combat for millions of years, while their central black holes will soon do battle themselves. Featured, the high-resolution visible-light image was taken by Hubble, while the superposed diffuse glow of X-ray light was imaged by NuSTAR and shown in false-color red, green, and blue. NuSTAR observations show that only one of the central black holes is seen fighting its way through a region of gas and dust -- and so absorbing matter and emitting X-rays. The energetic radiation, coming only from the galaxy center on the right, is surely created nearby -- but outside -- the central black hole's event horizon. In a billion years or so, only one composite galaxy will remain, and only one central supermassive black hole. Soon thereafter, though, another galaxy may enter the fray.

Sunday, October 30, 2016

DB11 launch and Aston Martin drifting performance in Osaka, Japan | Aston Martin

Dave Grohl's Top 10 rules For Success

National Geographic Photo of the Day: October 30th of 2016

Picture of krill and penguin in the Antarctic
October 30, 2016Antarctic Drama“This is the most unexpected split photo I’ve seen,” writes Enric Sala, a National Geographic explorer-in-residence and the editor of the Pristine Seas assignment, of this image by Your Shot photographer Justin Hofman. “The lonely krill seems to be checking for the presence of the penguin predator. At the same time, we can see the ice and landscape on the surface. It's mostly monochromatic, but the reddish krill attracts one's eye.”

Astronomy Picture of the Day: October 30th of 2016

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Halloween and the Ghost Head Nebula
Image Credit: Mohammad Heydari-Malayeri (Observatoire de Paris) et al., ESA, NASA
Explanation: Halloween's origin is ancient and astronomical. Since the fifth century BC, Halloween has been celebrated as a cross-quarter day, a day halfway between an equinox (equal day / equal night) and a solstice (minimum day / maximum night in the northern hemisphere). With a modern calendar however, even though Halloween occurs tomorrow, the real cross-quarter day will occur next week. Another cross-quarter day is Groundhog Day. Halloween's modern celebration retains historic roots in dressing to scare away the spirits of the dead. Perhaps a fitting tribute to this ancient holiday is this view of the Ghost Head Nebula taken with the Hubble Space Telescope. Similar to the icon of a fictional ghost, NGC 2080 is actually a star forming region in the Large Magellanic Cloud, a satellite galaxy of our own Milky Way Galaxy. The Ghost Head Nebula spans about 50 light-years and is shown in representative colors.

Saturday, October 29, 2016

Mercedes-Benz X-Class Pickup Truck Concept | Autoblog Minute

Alan Watts - How to Spend (a life) Time

National Geographic Photo of the Day: October 29th of 2016

Picture of fog over Sofia, Bulgaria, at night
October 29, 2016Cloak of ColorA thick fog rolls over Sofia and appears to glow as it takes on the city’s light. Beneath the cloak of color, visitors to Bulgaria’s capital will find a lively collection of museums, galleries, restaurants, and recently excavated Roman ruins from about 2,000 years ago.

Astronomy Picture of the Day: October 29th of 2016

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Moonset at Whitby Abbey
Image Credit & Copyright: Chris Kotsiopoulos (GreekSky)
Explanation: October's Hunters Moon shines near the horizon, setting beyond the arches of Whitby Abbey in this eerie night scene. The moonlight partly illuminates the ruined Benedictine abbey's grounds and walls on a cliff overlooking the North Sea from England's Yorkshire coast. Fans of Bram Stoker's 1897 novel Dracula will recognize the abbey and town of Whitby as the location of the Transylvanian count's shipwrecked landing on English shores. There fiction's most famous vampire transformed into an immense dog, jumped ashore and ran up the cliff to the ruined abbey. A 360 degree panorama, the dramatic fisheye view was created from 23 digitally stitched photos.

Wednesday, August 3, 2016

Tommy Chong & Joe Rogan on Legalizing Marijuana and The War on Drugs (features Rick Shapiro)

National Geographic Photo of the Day: August 3rd of 2016

Picture of a man wearing a feathered headdress smoking and holding a chicken in Sarawak, Borneo
August 3, 2016

Lifting the Veil

Photograph by Jonathan Nyik Fui Tai, National Geographic Your Shot
A lacy veil of cigarette smoke encircles a man in Sarawak, one of two Malaysian states on the island of Borneo. “I embarked on photography trips to inland Sarawak to seek out the native people [who] preserve their way of life,” Your Shot member Jonathan Nyik Fui Tai says. ”Many of the tribes have slowly [been] assimilated into modern society.”

Astronopmy Picture of the Day: August 3rd of 2016

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Behold the Universe
Image Credit & Copyright: A. Garrett Evans; Rollover Annotation: Judy Schmidt
Explanation: What if you climbed up on a rock and discovered the Universe? You can. Although others have noted much of it before, you can locate for yourself stars, planets, and even the plane of our Milky Way Galaxy. All you need is a dark clear sky -- the rock is optional. If you have a camera, you can further image faint nebulas, galaxies, and long filaments of interstellar dust. If you can process digital images, you can bring out faint features, highlight specific colors, and merge foreground and background images. In fact, an industrious astrophotographer has done all of these to create the presented picture. All of the component images were taken early last month on the same night within a few meters of each other. The picturesque setting was Sand Beach in Stonington, Maine, USA with the camera pointed south over Penobscot Bay.

Friday, July 29, 2016

National Geographic Photo of the Day: July 29th of 2016

Picture of cypress trees in Lake Camécuaro, Mexico
July 29, 2016

Old Guard

Photograph by Javier Eduardo Alvarez, National Geographic Your Shot
“Hundreds of old cypresses guard the perimeter of Lake Camécuaro and its turquoise-colored, crystal clear water,” Javier Eduardo Alvarez writes of this photo he made of the small Mexican lake, popular for its picturesque beauty. “This place is magical.”

Astronomy Picture of the Day: July 29th of 2016

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Blue Danube Analemma
Image Credit & Copyright: György Soponyai
Explanation: The Sun's annual waltz through planet Earth's sky forms a graceful curve known as an analemma. The analemma's figure 8 shape is tipped vertically at far right in this well-composed fisheye view from Budapest, Hungary. Captured at a chosen spot on the western bank of the Danube river, the Sun's position was recorded at 11:44 Central European Time on individual exposures over days spanning 2015 July 23 to 2016 July 4. Of course, on the northern summer solstice the Sun is at the top of the curve, but at the midpoints for the autumn and spring equinoxes. With snow on the ground, the photographer's shadow and equipment bag also appear in the base picture used for the composite panorama, taken on 2016 January 7. On that date, just after the winter solstice, the Sun was leaving the bottom of the beautiful curve over the blue Danube.

Tuesday, July 12, 2016

Bill Hicks Destroys the Illuminati

National Geographic Photo of the Day: July 12th of 2016

Picture of two people crossing a rope bridge in disrepair in northern Pakistan
July 12, 2016

By a Thread

Photograph by Kieron Nelson, National Geographic Your Shot
In northern Pakistan’s Hunza region, travelers cross what’s often called the most dangerous bridge in the world: the Hussaini Hanging Bridge, which looks almost as unforgiving as the landscape around it. “[The bridge] is extremely old and very narrow,” photographer Kieron Nelson writes. “Situated high above [Borit Lake], it is missing many of the original wooden planks.”

Astronomy Picture of the Day: July 12th of 2016


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Chasing Juno
Image Credit & Copyright: Melissa Christine Kendall
Explanation: Wait for me! In 2011, NASA's robotic mission Juno launched for Jupiter from Cape Canaveral, Florida, USA. Last week, Juno reached Jupiter and fired internal rockets to become only the second spacecraft to orbit our Solar System's largest planet. Juno, tasked with studying the jovian giant over the next two years, is in a highly elliptical orbit that will next bringing it near Jupiter's cloud tops in late August. Of course, the three-year-old pictured was not able to catch up to the launching rocket. Today, however, five years later, he is eight-years-old and still chasing rockets -- in that now he wants to be an astronaut.

Monday, July 11, 2016

National Geographic Photo of the Day: July 11th of 2016

Picture of a stained glass window's multicolored reflection in the Mosque-Cathedral of Córdoba, Spain
July 11, 2016

Different Light

Photograph by Bin Yu, National Geographic Your Shot
Sunlight beams through a stained glass window in the Mosque-Cathedral of Córdoba, spotlighting orbs of color onto an adjacent wall. This unique building in Spain is an important archaeological example of both Christian and Muslim influences: It was a mosque in the eighth century, during the period of Moorish conquest, but claimed as a Christian cathedral in the 13th century.

Astronomy Picture of the Day: July 11th of 2016

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Aurorae on Jupiter
Image Credit: NASA, ESA, Hubble
Explanation: Jupiter has aurorae. Like Earth, the magnetic field of the gas giant funnels charged particles released from the Sun onto the poles. As these particles strike the atmosphere, electrons are temporarily knocked away from existing gas molecules. Electric force attracts these electrons back. As the electrons recombine to remake neutral molecules, auroral light is emitted. In the featured recently released composite image by the Hubble Space Telescope taken in ultraviolet light, the aurorae appear as annular sheets around the pole. Unlike Earth's aurorae, Jupiter's aurorae include several bright streaks and dots. Jupiter's Great Red Spot is visible on the lower right. Recent aurorae on Jupiter have been particularly strong -- a fortunate coincide with the arrival of NASA's Juno spacecraft at Jupiter last week. Juno was able to monitor the Solar Wind as it approached Jupiter, enabling a better understanding of aurorae in general, including on Earth.

Saturday, July 2, 2016

National Geographic Photo of the Day: July 2nd of 2016

Picture of tourists visiting the Erechtheion in Athens
July 2, 2016

Timeless Temple

Photograph by Vincent J. Musi, Archaeological Site of the Acropolis, Athens
People mill around the Erechtheion, a temple to Athena erected in 421–406 B.C., which occupies the most sacred ground on Athens’s Acropolis. Ancient Greeks held festivals, sacrifices, games, and religious processions at the site; today it’s a magnet for tourists.

Astronomy Picture of the Day: July 2nd of 2016

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Firefly Trails and the Summer Milky Way
Image Credit & Copyright: Malcolm Park (North York Astronomical Association)
Explanation: A camera fixed low to a tripod on a northern summer's eve captured the series of images used in this serene, southern Ontario skyscape. The lakeside view frames our fair galaxy above calm water and the night's quintessential luminous apparitions. But the trails of light are neither satellite glint, nor meteor flash, nor auroral glow. In the wide-field composite constructed with four consecutive 15 second exposures, a pulsing firefly enters at the right, first wandering toward the camera, then left and back toward the lake, the central Milky Way rising in the background.