Motley Moose – Archive

The Camera Obscura technique has been with us for much longer than photography. The principle is that of a pinhole camera.

The device consists of a box or room with a hole in one side. Light from an external scene passes through the hole and strikes a surface inside where it is reproduced, upside-down, but with color and perspective preserved.

The image can be projected onto paper, and can then be traced to produce a highly accurate representation. The first camera obscura was later built by an Iraqi scientist named Abu Ali Al-Hasan Ibn al-Haytham, born in Basra (965-1039 AD), known in the West as Alhacen or Alhazen, who carried out practical experiments on optics in his Book of Optics.

More follows…

I was up before dawn one morning in the fall and gazed out the front window across the lawn. It was still dark. The streetlight added a little illumination to the scene. Out the corner of my eye on the left a small figure dashed across the drive between bushes. It was followed by another and another until five raccoons were in view. As soon as they reached the lawn, they walked a few steps and stopped to probe and feel the grass for a moment. Then, a few more steps, they stopped to check again and again. I have seen patches on golf courses where raccoons have torn up large areas of turf in search of grubs. They can be very destructive as you can see in this photo. Fortunately, they found no grubs in our yard this time.

What does one call a crowd, or herd, or fleet, or flock, or gaggle, or bunch of raccoons. The San Diego Zoo calls them a “gaze.” The gaze made its way across to the right and out of sight between my house and the neighbor’s. I went to the back window to see if they would come around to that side of the house. None showed up. But, in the dark of the trees in back, a deer gazed up at me and quietly munched her way across the back enjoying the last of the greenery.

We headed out for a walk that morning. As we cut through a tall weedy path we came across some milkweeds we had been watching for a couple of weeks. Their pods were beginning to open up to release the multitude of seeds. Nature’s packing expertise with these things is amazing. I have never tried counting them. According to this Ohio State Univ. site, there can be as many as 450 seeds in a pod.

In a past summer, it was about time to trim back some of the bridal wreath bushes near the house. The many black ants were troublesome. They were about 1/2″ long on many of the tips of the small branches. They seemed very intent doing something slowly and deliberately. A closer look revealed tiny, light green aphids had been herded by the ants toward the ends of the small branches.

Ants and aphids have a relationship called Mutualism. The relationship serves to benefit both the ant and the aphids. The ant obtains a sweet source of food from the abdomen called honeydew. The aphids are protected on the branch by the ant. Each can exist independently of the other. But, both parties benefit when together. Here is a link to a better close-up view of ants herding their aphids together. The link also talks about the mortal enemy of the aphid, the Ladybug or Ladybird beetle.

Finally, this video shows some ants tending their aphids. Watch for the stroking action of the antennae on the abdomen of the aphids.

Have you seen other examples of mutualism in your backyard? Is there any noteworthy sign of spring?

This image of the Moon is probably not familiar to you. It is the Moon’s far side. Only 24 people have seen it with their own eyes and not in an image. They are the Apollo astronauts. Click on it for a detailed and closeup view.

Because the moon is tidally locked (meaning the same side always faces Earth), it was not until 1959 that the farside was first imaged by the Soviet Luna 3 spacecraft. Russian names are common for prominent farside features, such as Mare Moscoviense. The widespread smooth maria on the nearside that we see do not appear much on the farside. It is a very different world from what we see from Earth.

Two years ago, I was directed by a friend to watch a Ted Talk video about a online choir project. It really impressed me for two reasons. First, it was beautiful to the ear and touching to the heart. Second, it took advantage of the world wide reach of technology connecting people in a very creative way. This was such a cool idea. The linking of people all over the world by a common direct thread was a stroke of genius. People want to be part of something bigger than they are. They want to belong, to connect, to converse, and to feel like they are contributing something worthwhile.

I offer you this video by Eric Whitacre who explains his project and how it grew. It is about 14 min but well worth watching.

After the success of Virtual Choirs 1 and 2, Eric went ahead with Virtual Choir 3 “Water Night”. The project received 3746 videos from 73 countries around the world and launched on April 2, 2012 at a live event at Lincoln Center.

He is now working to organize Virtual Choir 4. Fund raising was completed January 31, 2013. In all, 1938 backers pledged $122,555 toward the project. The debut of VC4 will be at the Coronation Concerts in July at Buckingham Palace.

I think this is an incredible project. It connects people world wide in something of beauty and peace. It gives them the opportunity to share some of their talent. Please consider sharing this story with your friends.

Astronomy has always been an important part of my life. Growing up on a farm gave me many nights of fantastically good views of the stars, planets, and the Milky Way. I remember paying attention to the IGY (International Geophysical Year) in 1957-1958 when I was 10. It was especially exciting to see Sputnik go over and pass through the constellations.

Walt Disney teamed up with Werner Von Braun to produce a 3 part series about space flight in the mid-50s. They were Man in Space, Man and the Moon, and Mars and Beyond. I loved those shows. They fueled my imagination. Multi-staged rockets, lunar landscapes, and Martian myths and legends planted the seeds of the possibility that alien life existed on some worlds out there in space.

Imaginations have been fueled for thousands of years. I offer you this famous space pootie, Leo. But, the life I am imagining is real.

There is more to this story.

Could it be that spring is in the air? The sun is bright. It rises earlier and sets later. The birds are active. Their colors are brighter and showy for the breeding season. The squirrels are very frisky with each other. Love is in the air.

Spring also brings many other smells to the air. Today, Google announced a great new tool.

The new scent-sation in search.

It is called Google Nose. It is in the Beta testing phase. But, you can try it out on a limited basis with their links. Amazing stuff! What will technology come up with next?

I can’t wait for Smellivision.

It flies! Da Vinci’s dream comes true. 

This brief flight of fancy diary is fun. Two mechanical flying machines deserve some attention. They were built by a team of engineers at a company called Festo in Germany, which specializes in factory automation. One is designed after a seagull. The other looks like a giant jelly fish.

The gull is made of carbon fiber and plastic foam. It weighs a little over 17 ounces, with a wingspan more than 6 feet across. The engineers who built it, after a lot of ka-thunk, ker-plunk trial and error, can now put it on the ground and it will start flapping and take off on its own.

And in maybe their most glorious flight of fancy, they created an enormous mechanical floating jellyfish, called the AirJelly, part of which was a helium balloon.

Leonardo devoted much of his time to the idea of flight as indicated from this quote attributed to him. An incident in Leonardo’s youth is very telling of his efforts to achieve flight.

“It comes to me almost like a dream, the first recollection of my infancy. I was in my cradle and a great hawk flew down to me. It opened my mouth with its tail and its feathers struck me several times inside my lips. That bird seems to me now to have pointed me to my destiny.”

Leonardo took this incident as an Omen that he was meant to fly someday. It strengthened his resolve to achieve flight.

It is a wonder Leonardo didn’t come out of that experience with a phobia for birds.

Cross posted at The JAR Blog on Wordpress. You are invited to go there. Follow me if you wish.

This diary is NOT meant to argue for or against the highly controversial technology of hydraulic fracturing, or ‘fracking’. There are many diaries and published pieces which argue both sides of the issue effectively. Instead, it is meant to inform more people about the technology of hydraulic fracturing. The goal is to avoid getting so deep into the details that readers give up.

According to this research study by the EPA published June 2010, ‘fracturing is a well stimulation process used to maximize the extraction of oil, natural gas or geothermal energy.’ The Saturday Essay of April 2, 2011, in the Wall Street Journal entitled Stepping on the Gas by Daniel Yergin, peaked my interest in the topic. I realized I had seen or heard the word ‘Fracking’ used for the technology countless times. But, I really had no clear idea what the concepts were behind it. As with most things, understanding is an essential part of being able to make informed decisions. And, this issue certainly begs for that.

With any of the following publications, consider the context and the source. The intent of this diary is to illustrate the basic processes.  I do not necessarily agree with the claims of the articles.

Please come below for more.

Today, we awoke to a fresh inch of snow here in east central Iowa. This needs to stop so we can proceed to spring.

We have one more week of March remaining. So far, it has been colder than normal for . The image below is for a NWS station 10 miles north of us. It shows the daily temperature ranges for each date as dark vertical bars. The green band across shows the normal range of highs and lows. Red and light blue are the extremes. Only once did we meet or exceed the normal high on March 14. Click on the image to see the actual daily measurements. Our normal high for March is 47˚. This year’s high has averaged 34˚. Last year averaged 62˚ for the high.

Please offer your observations about the weather this March in your area. Warmer? Colder? Drier? Wetter? About the same?