Little red dot

From a simulated alien perspective in space, Earth looks red, not blue.

Elephants

In Thailand, a zoo painted their elephants to look like pandas, because no one cares about elephants anymore.

Chapel on the moon

Meghan's last post makes me think of the Believer article about the chapel on the moon.

To the makers of music

I can't believe we've never made a post about the Voyager Golden Record. There is more to come, but for now here's Ann Druyan describing the experience of making an hour-long recording of her own brainwaves for inclusion in what Jimmy Carter called 'a present from a small, distant world, a token of our sounds, our science, our images, our music, our thoughts and our feelings.'


"Earlier I had asked Carl if those putative extraterrestrials of a billion years from now could conceivably interpret the brain waves of a meditator. Who knows? A billion years is a long, long time, was his reply. On the chance that it might be possible why don't we give it a try?
Two days after our life-changing phone call, I entered a laboratory at Bellevue Hospital in New York City and was hooked up to a computer that turned all the data from my brain and heart into sound. I had a one-hour mental itinerary of the information I wished to convey. I began by thinking about the history of Earth and the life it sustains. To the best of my abilities I tried to think something of the history of ideas and human social organization. I thought about the predicament that our civilization finds itself in and about the violence and poverty that make this planet a hell for so many of its inhabitants. Toward the end I permitted myself a personal statement of what it was like to fall in love."

Pretty

How sunspots evolve.

Plants can communicate

Sagebrush can warn other sagebrush plants of danger. They don't secrete the same chemicals warning of danger if the air passage is closed and other plants cant receive ths signals.

Also, plants can discriminate between themselves and other plants.

The Good Fight

Click the photo for info on the documentary on the Abraham Lincoln Brigade, a group of Americans who fought against Franco in the Spanish Civil War. I cannot stress how moving this film was. It's available on Netflix. Most, if not all, of the veterans interviewed are now deceased.

Stillborn suburb

Newsweek's slideshow of recent scenes of economic desolation. This is a nearly vacant subdivision in Rio Vista, California.

Holy shit

NASA space shuttle passing the sun. Via Alyssa.

Alan Thicke explains Twin Peaks