For reasons best known to myself, I need to have a bit of perspective. Therefore, a post with two images,
one of which is taken by the Hubble Space Telescope and depicts Hubble Deep Field, a glimpse at some of the furthest away (and consequently, the oldest) stuff in the universe; the other, depicting a reflected Sun and flakes of tree pollen on the surface of a lake, my lake, taken by yours truly. 
I quite like both of them, although one is, of course, rather grander than the other.
Wednesday, September 19, 2007
In the grand scheme of things, it really isn't a big deal, but
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34 comments:
my vote's on the latter, for originality.
Ooooh, pretty pictures. And many orders of magnitude of perspective... Did it work?
xx
hubble, bubble, toil and trouble, both lovely, but i like yours better, i can relate to it more! x
I've just been reading about Mika Waltari and can't understand why I've never heard of him before.
matti and Ms Cyberfriend - thank you. It is a tough call, I understand, what with the spectacular amount of skill and technology that have gone into both shots and so on and so forth. I am highly pleased to have trumped the Deep Field, though. It used to be my favourite picture of them all, some while back - I think not only because I wanted to be an astronaut when I was little, but also probably because it looks uncannily like amoebae floating in a dark liquid. Nnnnice. Right up my street. (We are nothing if not original, yes.)
Tri Mutta, our scientist-in-residence - thank you too, not least for bringing in the lingo ("...many orders of magnitude of perspective..."). Did it work, hard to say. Within a scientific margin of error, yes.
RH, Grandmaster General of Apropos Nothing, Waltari used to rank very very high amongst my favourite authors when I was younger - in particular his historical novels. Sinuhe, of course, is the most famous of them, (although hang on a minute - I think it was translated as The Egyptian), but some of the others are very good too. Most of them should be available in English translation. As to why you haven't heard of him before, I can't say, but I expect it is because the peak of his international fame came before your time (mine too, but obviously we haven't forgotten about him here).
x x x x one each, dear visitors
My vote is for the latter, because you took it!
:-)
Kahless, I am touched by your support. But wait - are you insinuating my poor picture would be without merit if it didn't have my lovable personality to back it up? I may in fact now be, by proxy, all wounded, fy ffrind.
Hope you are well, incidentally, Kahless. I saw, in your comment the other day at the House of Signs, an apology about not visiting me lately - please, I don't keep tabs on people, you can come and go as you please and when it feels like a good thing, okay? No worries, you're always a welcome visitor.
x
Well Ibsen is common here, Hamsun too, and Abba, but Waltari? I doubt even the literati would have heard of him. What a scandal.
(I'd go up into space with you Miss Anna. Anytime)
I counted four kisses and thought I'd missed out.
Panic for a moment, but okay now.
Thank-you Anna,
the picture IS with merit fy ffrind AND with your loveable personality it is dynamite!
:-)
I am OK at the mo, just a bit on the slow side getting to the places I want to go.
x.
Hey queen of the road of excess - I want to tell you how much I loved that Blake Crystal Ship thing - and that track which I haven't heard for years. I sometimes catch up with these lovely things later and then forget to say how much I've liked them. And one day I would like a seminar please on how to do all that stuff.
The pictures - yes of course your one is better: a) because, as Kahless said, you took it
b) it just is, and
c) I have spoken.
If you find any of that perspective you're after, can I borrow some? :)
Great picture.
RH - it's the fate of the Finns, always being upstaged by the "real Scandinavians" (Ibsen, Abba, etc).
As for the other issues you bring up, the manned space flight programme shouldn't really be rekindled, in my opinion. It is overly expensive (for a mankind riddled with global poverty and acute environmental issues to be confronted with serious scientific research and, consequently, funding), and, it could be argued, doesn't necessarily provide better science than the unmanned missions (e.g. Hubble).
No more kisses anymore - this is a cloister-like corner of scientific thinking.
Kahless - I haven't felt less like dynamite for quite a while (at most, like a damp candle-wick), but thank you all the same. Once all my pieces fall into place, I'll be all ka-boom again, I'm sure.
Sometimes it is like that with blogdom - it's not like you don't want to visit people or whatever, you just can't bring yourself to doing it, or posting, or whatever. I think it hits us all, from time to time. Enjoy your weekend, though, hwyl fawr iawn...
Signs of Aixga - I'm glad you enjoyed the Crystal Shippy thing. Here's an alternative look at the stuff - for myself, tonight, the music is just too soothing. More, more...
As for the pictures - your praise is valued v.highly in these parts, so thank you kindly. I particularly like point c) ...
Mwah, lady. Take care now, and do enjoy the Norfolkian mission you've embarked upon. I look forward to reading about it once you're back.
housut - you can be sure if I find some perspective, I shall post it here as a freeware public domain thingy, fear not. All property is theft, and holding onto perspective would seem like a particularly cruel and selfish thing to do, when so many could use it to further their pursuit of happiness (I am a saint and a Communist all rolled into one).
(Glad you liked the picture - but which one, which one? I never meant it to be a competition as such, I hasten to add, besides which Signs has already said the final and definitive word on the matter. But just out of interest, you know.)
Russian troops had dreadful trouble invading Finland, which fooled Hitler into invading Russia.
Sorry you've gone all practical. Outer space gives a good view of the moon, Miss Iceberg.
(X)
Eternity? In an hour?
You don't know Australian public transport, it takes that long to get to Footscray.
Robert.
(Newport)
Sail boat exploration was overly expensive, and the space travel of its time; landing in Australia was like walking on the moon.
I wish they hadn't done it, I'd be an Englishman now.
What you need, pal, are fractals - finite surface enclosed by an infinite line.
Liked the photos so much I searched for a free fractal generator for you.
.
http://tinyurl.com/3d57s6
.
Have fun. Or not, as the mood takes you.
Your picture is the one I like anna. The other one is just derivative :)
Hatschee.
Sorry, I'm allergic to tree pollen :( Agree with everyone else, though. You've got some ace pix on flickr.
Yes, perspective is good. You're good at this consolationing (is that a word?). I have been - coincidentally - peering a lot at these pix of late. Not that I am miserable or anything. Hope you're okay, though.
(I've tried inserting a link here, I hope it works, I'm not very clever like that).
RH - that is a novel way of looking at the shameful trauma of Finland's past (Red Army, Finland, Hitler). May I just emphasise Finland was never invaded - just lost a chunk of land in the form of Karelia and the other "arm" of Finland, in Lapland. Never invaded, although the ratio was one Finn to thirty odd Red Army dudes. Yes. We are a tough lot to beat. A free-hand quickly-self-translated quote from the definitive Finnish war novel, Tuntematon sotilas ("The Unknown Soldier"): "The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics came first, but little and feisty Finland came in a good second." But there aren't very many excuses for accepting military assistance from Hitler's lot, though, and the outcome of the war didn't improve by doing the shameful thing at all.
You are right, I know nothing of Australian public transport. Ours is pretty good.
And, finally, don't you be wishing they hadn't gone to Australia, because if they hadn't, you wouldn't be born at all, and that's just the way it is. A bit like losing Karelia for Finland - my dad would never have become an evacuee child, would have lived a different life, would never have met my mum, and I would never have been born. Well worth the exchange, all things considered.
Merkin - thank you for the compliment and for going through the fractal trouble. I looked up the link and have bookmarked it - it looked a bit involved and scary for a Saturday night, but I am fond of fractals and will see if I can get a handle on using a fractal generator. As of yet, I don't know what to feed it, but maybe all will become clear...
housut - hei and thank you. Fishing for compliments for my picture was a bit low of me and I feel I ought to apologise, really...but you're right, the Hubble images, impressive as they are, have no, ahem, artistic idea or planning or vision behind them, they just depict what's there. Yes. I'm glad you got me thinking in this vein, legwear my friend. Have a lovely Saturday.
Ario - hello. Truly lovely to see you back, you Pink Fluffy Bunny generator. I must quickly tell you here that someone landed on my site not many days ago, with the search words "watership down fuck me". Now tell me, what's that all about, then? What sort of people are they who use search engines and sit online and stuff? And please, Ario, do realise their landing here is all your fault, because the likelihood of my ever blogging a single word about Watership Down without your influence - not to say, interference - would really be infinitesimal (much as I liked the book as a youngster, I am honest enough to admit to this - I read it numerous times. I am not, however, going to tell you I tried to get my kids to read it a few years ago (and failed), and in the process, reread it myself, one more time, not entirely without enjoyment either. No. I will keep that dirty secret to myself).
Thank you for what you say with regard to consolationing (yes, a fine word, which should be taken into more common use) and my humble self. That's a very nice thing to say indeed, and I appreciate you saying it. Perspective is a good thing, but whilst you are out there enjoying the Hubble imagery (your link worked a treat, Ario, no problems with that - for some highly annoying reason, there is a ghost in the system that stops me from linking in my own comment box, whereas other people are okay, and I'm okay too, as long as I leave the links in other people's comments boxes - another weird thing to wonder about) yes, while you are out there in etherspace appreciating the Hubble images, please don't fall for the "space is so big and I am so little and unimportant" lark. You are made of the same stuff, literally, as the stars and supernovae and all the other shite out there, and as such, are either equally important as them, or they are equally unimportant as you.
Ahem. This, Ario, is also meant to be a consolationing thought. I hope you see what I mean with it...have a right rock'n'roll Saturday, you wild child, okay? As I said, lovely to see you.
Anna Mr - tonight ,OK yesterday, was the Autumn Equinox...oh, such strange things..........seen above the Tor at Glastonbury three winged thingies - thwingies, if you like.....circling the Tor,black, greater than the width of the Tower....seen by my best friend, so this is true,she was not scared, a little uneasy.......Black versus White.................
Love to you, amazing Lady xx
The ***intelligentsia*** here and especially expatriate snobs like Greer and Humphries would say it's better not being born than to live in such a cultural desert. And so they travel: to admire the Brussells pee boy and bidets in France.
Australia!- what a horror!- only foreign is any good.
They'll get out at any price, and just happen to have the dough.
Hi Anna
Wow! I love your picture.
xxx
Pants
LavenderB - thwingies above Glastonbury on autumn equinox are a benign sign. Yes. No, wait. This is supposed to be a scientific thread. The size of the thwingies sighted causes me some concern, as the British Isles do not support flying creatures the width of the Tor. Therefore, we must conclude either that a) the Tor has been reduced until it is considerably narrower, by an irregular flow of sideways gravity b) the thwingies seen were not only the size of gnats, but actually were gnats, buzzing very close to the observer's eye - the difference in distance and perspective thus creating the optical illusion. Yes.
Love to you too, Lavendergirl.
Signed,
Deconstructing magical experiences 'r' us x
RH - I know very little about Australia, really, so cannot say anything on the topic of Australian cultural life with any authority. It does sound like you yourself simultaneously slag it off and would like to move away, though, whilst taking issue against others who have already done so. I think all of us have mixed feelings about our native countries. Sometimes living abroad for a while intensifies the dual nature of these feelings, I have found.
Why Pants of Pöksyt, thank you - your praise happens to be highly valued around these parts. Very lovely to see you tonight, awfully glad you liked my peculiar snap. Hoping all is well in the House of Pants, and that your weekend has been spiffing...
x
Our middle class is 18th century Russia's equivalent: venerating all things French, but with American glitz thrown in as well: New York and Disneyland. Which shows what kids they are.
Materialists want culture; financiers buy art for status, not just for profit.
But RH, that sounds like (some) people everywhere, to me. And I don't think you can paint everyone in a certain income bracket, coming or living in a particular neighbourhood, or belonging to a specific socio-economical group, with the same brush.
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