Oct 6 2023 - What colour lies?

 

I've changed my mind on street names - there's streets to be found that are named after food.  Not things like Souffle Crescent or Creme Caramel Drive.  But here they are:  Chicken Dinner Road, Frying Pan Road, Puddin' Ridge Road, Burnt Corn Road, Butter & Egg Road, event Egg / Butter Road, Tater Peeler Road, Smiley Cookie Lane, Chicken Gristle Road, Pop Corn Drive, Ice Cream Street, Candy Castle Lane. These were at this site HERE if you want to know the locations.  Another site has Long Island Street Names that follow the course of food - but really these are named after fruits like Cherry Lane, Plum Street, and so on. They are at this site HERE.  A few are intriguing - Bread and Cheese Hollow Road, Lobster Way, Tuna Walk, Crab Avenue, and so on until Muffin Meadows Road pops up.  And that great expanse - London England - has lots of food and drink streets: Bread Street, Milk Street, Honey Lane, Stew Lane, and so on. That site is HERE.   I was wondering how lies could be white or black - or are there more colours for lies?  There seems to be at least four colours. History has us start at black vs white. "The origin of white lies probably drifts back to the ancient Western idea of polar opposites, white meaning good (and pure) and black as its evil antithesis. Thus a white lie is one that lacks evil intent and a black lie is malevolent." Are there other colours that lies can come in?  Yes - "Gray lies are described as "somewhere in the middle of harming others versus minimizing harm to ourselves. Black lies, the opposite of white lies, aim to harm others while protecting ourselves." And how about the Yellow Lie?  "“A yellow lie is a lie about a big thing. But it's a lie that is important. It's a lie that is necessary to potentially save somebody's life. Yellow lies can only be done if you really know the person who you're lying to." Don't leave out Blue Lies - A lie told by a police officer in order to get someone to comply with his or her wishes, thereby avoiding the use of force.  A lie told to protect the reputation of one's group or organization. More colours:  A bright red lie: a total lie, when something is completely different from the truth. Red lies are about spite and revenge. "Unlike white lies, little green lies are not harmless. Revealing the truth about little green lies will make society as a whole better off. Little green lies may also be good for their tellers." I have even found the Purple Lie! It refers to the assertion that purple as a colour does not exist and it is dark blue. There's a chart in one article to help us navigate some of the colours of lies. Except it has pink rather than red.   Here's a montage image - Floyd Elzinga's mountains and the rust image of the Cloud Garden fountain - one of my favourite texture images.

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Jan 6 2021 - Finding More Corners

 

Are mountains distinguished by how many sides they have?  How are they shaped?  Are there mountains with four sides so have four corners?  Yes, there are.   The one that seems to be famous is Makalu.  It is an isolated peak whose shape is a four-sided pyramid.  It is south-east of Mount Everest. The isolated peak straddles the border of Nepal and Tibet, a region currently governed by China. The summit itself lies directly on the international boundary.  "At 6675m, four-sided Mount Kailash rises isolated above one of the barren places on this planet, the Tibetan Plateau. Seeing this majestic, pyramid-shaped mountain one can imagine that it is perceived as one of the most sacred mountains in the world. To Hindus the mountain is named Kailāśa and it serves as the home of the mountain god Shiva and his wife Parvati. In addition the mountain is seem as the ‘World pillar’ rising to the center of heaven. The Hindus claim that its four sides are made-up of lapis lazuli, crystal, ruby and gold. Buddhists call the mountain Kang Rimpoche, the precious one of glacial snow; for them it is the navel of the world. The Bön see it as the dwelling of sky goddess Sipaimen and call it Tise, and for the Jains, who call it Astapada, it is the mountain where their leader Rishaba was enlightened." There are not a lot of four sided mountains, but there is another distinction - mountains with peaks that are four-sided, or pyramidal.  There turns out to be a lot of these and they are located in the Alps.  The Matterhorn is a classic example of a pyramidal peak.  Mountain shapes turn out to be distinctive when their elevations are mapped. There are four different shapes - diamond, pyramid, hourglass and inverse pyramid  I would never have guessed.  Here's the chart that shows the shapes and where they are located.   The article is here at the dailymail.uk.

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Nov 23 2021 - Something Sublime

 

We don't have much to say about "sublime" these days.  It seems to me that's because we are far from the experience: 1a : lofty, grand, or exalted in thought, expression, or manner. b : of outstanding spiritual, intellectual, or moral worth. c : tending to inspire awe usually because of elevated quality (as of beauty, nobility, or grandeur) or transcendent excellence.   Do a search on lofty - and there is very little - new word toplofty entered the English language in 2021.   Grand has been overtaken by versions of the best -  the best things, favourite things, must-see things, etc and if one looks for Grandeur, these are Hyundai's most luxurious cars. Look for exalted and one finds the exalted weapons of Warframe. What happens with noble?  One retrieves the Nobel Prize winners.  So where have I found sublime? in the field of philosophy, where the term sublime refers to something that is great.  Wikipedia tells me: "This greatness can be physical, moral, intellectual, metaphysical, aesthetic, spiritual or artistic. Very often, the term refers to something that is so great that it cannot be calculated, measured or imitated. Special skills are often needed to fully perceive or understand the sublime." Mountains seem to be examples of the sublime.  Grosser Mythen in the Swiss Alps was referred to by British writers in the 17th and 18 centuries as sublime.  This was the first time that objects of nature got this descriptor. Has sublime gone out of favour now?  I have to think so - it isn't in the current social culture as expressed by google searches.  No TikTok dances, tweets or memes..  That goes for philosophy too.  OK,  maybe John Gray, with his 2020 book Feline Philosophy: Cats and the Meaning of Life.   Our picture today is Garden of the Gods in Colorado.  I guess its name carries the sense of  exalted, grandeur, and beauty.  Were there any philosophers in the expedition to name it?  Rusus Cable exclaimed this was  “a fit place for the gods to assemble!” And so its name was given.

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July 30 2021 - Mallfun or Mallfunction

 

I went to the Mall yesterday.  The one I went to was Mapleview in Burlington.  Whenever we drive by that Mall, I still see the original farm with old-style greenhouses on the vast grounds that are now parking lots.   That would be more than a year and a half since I'd been in a mall or most retail stores.  There are many kinds of places that we haven't been in since March 2019.   Malls and corporate office towers are very similar - shining granite and marble floors and walls in neutral colours.  Everything so clean and entirely impersonal.  The 'death of the shopping mall' has been in progress for years with the drop in revenue continuous.  Before February 2020, the drop in revenue per square foot was 42 per cent.  But then the pandemic came along.  Malls may not be going down yet.   I was there just as it opened at 11:00am and left just before 12:30pm.  It started to fill up as the 12:00 hour approached. The people that were there seemed impatient to get started with normal again.  Both young and old were there. There were quite a few 'super seniors' out for a look-see walk in the stores.  Yes, everyone was out for a stroll in the Mall.  Will this be part of a new normal?  What will the social environment be post-2019 pandemic?  Will Malls remain part of it?  I ask this as it is my generation that experienced the rise of the Malls.  Let's enjoy some of the shopping/mall jokes of the past.     What is cheaper and more effective than a psychiatrist? Going shopping at a mall. I saw a man with one arm shopping at a second hand store. I told him “you’re not going to find what you’re looking for.” An atheist comes into a mall And there is no parking spot, so he says "God, if you give me parking spot, I will convert myself and become Christian". Two minutes later he says "Nevermind I found one" I fell asleep at the mall today... I was counting customers leaving the Apple store There's a lot of fun in playing spin-the-dial on images with Flexifly - our Floyd Elzinga montage image has a few variations today.

April 22 2020 - Earth Day Shadows

It is the 50th anniversary of Earth Day.  There's a picture of the first Earth Day, 1970 in New York City, and lots of young people are wearing masks.  We would have a similar picture today, but would be six feet apart and likely a few years older.  For Earth Day this year, our reduced impact due to COVID-19 is being shown with pictures showing the reduction of pollution, showing wild animals walking down main streets, and the song of spring birds being noticeably louder.  There are many things about this Earth Day that will become historical. Earth Day made me think about the scale of things and as I looked at a large bank of clouds was on the eastern horizon this morning, they seemed to look like a mountain range.   Did you know that mountains cast shadows into the sky? Mt. Rainier in Washington State casts a triangular shadow into the sky in a picture from the top of the mountain  HERE. Triangular shadows are not seen from objects much smaller than mountains because their shadows are not long enough. Perhaps as part of Earth Day, we should look at the Earth's shadow. The Earth casts a shadow which is viewable after sunset.  Here's the explanation:  "After sunset look eastwards. A low horizon is needed but not a volcano. As twilight deepens a dark band rises upwards from the horizon, The band is the shadow of the Earth on the atmosphere. Immediately above, where the evening air is still lit, glows a pink band called the anti-twilight arch or "Belt of Venus". The pink arises from scattered and deeply reddened sunlight mingling with the deep blues of the eastern sky. Look westwards before sunrise to watch the shadow sinking towards the horizon. The shadow is a three dimensional void of unlit atmosphere. The sky high above the shadowed air is bright because it is still sunlit and the air scatters light down to the eye. " And what about the picture of Apollo 17 astronaut Eugene Cernan's photograph of his own shadow cast on the coal black lunar surface December 1972? "His shadow, or more accurately his camera's, appears to be surrounded by a bright glow.  Cernan's shadow, like many images on the Moon's surface, is surrounded by a bright aureole.  It is an example of the "Opposition Effect". "Lunar soil has an open structure with many areas of deep shadow.  But, when looking in a direction directly away from the sun, shadows are hidden by the object casting them.   The antisolar point and the adjacent areas therefore appear brighter than elsewhere because they have more sunlit surfaces and less shadow. There are other factors that contribute to the glow, retroreflection by crystalline minerals and a phenomenon called coherent backscattering. The heiligenschein, also at the antisolar point, is a separate effect." There are no representations of the earth in my database, but there is a picture of Mount Rainier posted last September when we visited Sacramento.  The second is a piece of plastic with drew drops at a gas station.

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Remembering Halloween Candy

Those of us who grew up in the 1950s had a Halloween that was abundant with all kinds of candies - particularly homemade taffy apples and caramel corn. I expect that people will recall the other side of Halloween candy - those Halloween kisses - over-chewy  with a funky sort of flavour that didn't resemble what it was made with - molasses. We considered them the worst Halloween candy.  And that turns out to be the case still.  In 2017, a National Post newspaper article derided Kerr's Molasses Kisses as the worst candy ever.  The battle played out on Twitter. "This Halloween don't scare kids with that wretched Kerr's molasses candy that you hated as a kid," wrote one user who goes by Terry, linking to the article. Kerr's responded with its own dose of sass. "You're right, Terry, you should keep Molasses Kisses all to yourself. Don't let the kids have the good candy!" the candy company's account tweeted back." The recipe has remained the same for 75 years.  This means that if you are looking for a bit of Halloween nostalgia, you can still buy them.  Kerr's boasts that they made of 10% real molasses, no artificial colours, real sugar, no modified or hydrogenated fats or oils, peanut free, tree-nut free, gluten free, vegetarian and Halal. The ingredients of Kerr's Halloween kisses do not make them more desirable to me. This view from Villa Eyrie, in Malahat, on the east side of Vancouver island, is definitely a candy apple view.  One could wake up to this every day.

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Ain't No Mountain High Enough

Wake Up on the Bright Side  Can you imagine naming mountains under the ocean?  Mauna Kea is the tallest mountain the measured from base to summit.  Its base is deep in the Pacific Ocean.  So its summit is 13,796 feet above see level but 19,700 feet below the sea level.  In total it is 33,500 feet.  That compares to Mount Everest at 29,035 feet.  There are 14 mountains on Earth that are at least 8,000 metres. tall. Mauna Kea, though, is located near the equator and is one excellent astronomical observation site with low humidity and clear skies.  There are 13 telescopes on Mauna Kea. For a few weeks every year, K2, in Pakistan/China is taller than Mount Everest.  How does that happen?  Snow, and lots of it! Chimborazo in Ecuador is the point on the earth's surface that is furthest away from the earth's core so by that measurement technique it is taller than Mount Everest. And at the opposite realm, "you might be interested to know that if Everest was put inside the Mariana Trench (the deepest point of the world’s oceans) it wouldn’t even reach the surface. In fact there’d still be room for more than 2,000 metres of water above it." I wonder what science class this might be taught in.  Fourth grade.  I feel like I am catching up - download lesson plans, activities, colouring pages, resources, printable, clipart, and worksheets HERE.  Here's the criss cross puzzle.  Our origami sculptures in the Minneapolis Arboretum repeat our theme for the day.

Don't Pinch the Salt

The headline today says 'tube' and we know that means London, England.  In Toronto and N.Y. we use 'subway'. British usage uses subway for an underground pedestrian road crossing. And we hear about the Paris or Washington metro - which can refer to any train system, not just subterranean.   Here are some facts and fancies The station with the most escalators is Waterloo with 23.about the London system: The busiest Tube station is Waterloo, which was used by around 95 million passengers in 2015. In 2014 Oxford Circus took top spot, in 2009 it was Victoria, and in 2005 it was King's Cross,  Aldgate Station, on the Circle and Metropolitan Lines, is built on a massive plague pit, where more than 1,000 bodies are buried. The TARDIS, (Dr Who’s transport) can be found outside Earl’s Court station. Or at least an old police call box can. The station with the most escalators is Waterloo with 23. The American talk show host Jerry Springer was born at East Finchley during the Second World War: his mother had taken shelter in the station from an air raid. The inaugural journey of the first Central line train in 1900 had the Prince of Wales and Mark Twain on board. Every week, Underground escalators travel the equivalent distance of going twice around the world. These come from the telegraph where there are many more. Our pictures today were taken from the golf course patio in Durango.  Can you imagine this view every day?