dinner at eight

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the standard weekly friday night dinner date happens about once a month.

not-so-famous-quotes xii

'it's a very very sad commentary on the values in our culture when shooting a ball into a basket is more laudable, more praiseworthy, more admirable and more rewarded than teasing out some fundamental truth about the natural world or finding a cure for AIDS or cancer.'
- one of a long series of poignant observations by carolyn porco
(video embedded here)

a vision softly creeping

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lately, i'm always kneeling or lying down somewhere and people keep asking if i'm ok. i guess that's a good thing.

the crescent earth

click pic to source

'this image is a combination of three photos (using an orange, green and blue filter) taken by the OSIRIS camera onboard ESA's rosetta spacecraft. it is part of a sequence of images taken every hour through one full rotation (24 hours). the illuminated sliver is centered around the south pole, with south at the bottom of the image. credit: ESA ©2009 MPS for OSIRIS team MPS/UPD/LAM/IAA/RSSD/INTA/UPM/DASP/IDA.'

in search of trees

i felt overwhelmed yesterday, as you can see from my post. so much so, that i panicked while at work and suddenly felt i had to leave. i headed towards home, but didn't want to lock myself up indoors so, a little before arriving, i started driving around.

kifissia is one of the prettiest parts of northern athens. southern athens has the sea... northern athens has trees. lots of them. in the autumn, i'm drawn to this place, so this is where i ended up.

athens is plagued by parked cars everywhere, but kassaveti street (on flickr's map) has posts built on either sidewalk, so there are fewer than normal. this is still an urban setting, but still... i'd taken an HDR of it in the winter and remember thinking i should come back in the fall.



so here are a few shots from yesterday:


like any of these? click'em then!

the combination of trees and photography is therapeutic.

president obama quotes carl sagan

two points of view:

at 08:24 :



at 10:00 :



thank you, sagan appreciation society.

carolyn porco at AAI 2009

when i saw in saturn's shadow - the pale blue dot at about 39:00 again, and listened to carolyn describe its meaning, i cried. i have this picture in my living room, personally signed by carolyn porco, one of a series of 5 in existence. i'm so thankful to have it.



via RD.
want to learn more about carolyn porco? hit her label on my blog.

dreams for rent

i was born in athens but lived elsewhere. i had visited as a child, but my first glimpse of this city as an adult from the airplane window in 1980 was a shocking experience: a cement jungle with scant green. as we flew lower, the buildings got uglier and i felt more deflated.

almost 30 years later, this city has not won my heart. the few historic bits are lovely, of course, but that's this place's legacy from another age. it's fine for the tourist or the short-term visitor, but modern athens, most of its neighborhoods, and the city center is a chaotic, people-unfriendly place -- a jumble of elements thrown together with little (or no) planning or thought and even less funding.

here's a gallery that's honest and true. it's not mine, but i suggest you feast your eyes.


you like this? really??! well, then click it!
this is a scene in front of my office. the yellow, licence-plate sized advertisement for an apartment for rent is a familiar sight in greece, normally plastered on any old place, as are other advertisements for anything imaginable. the owner of this particular flat made sure to tape it onto a tree, so full of tape that it's almost waterproof, topped with almost unintelligible handwriting.

i have a difficult time in this city. i do tend to notice details, and, if i started shooting and presenting them somewhere, i'd have a pretty ugly gallery. if you're wondering why i shoot so many macros since i returned from china a little over a year ago, this is it.

i'm sorry -- i can't romanticize this chaos, nor find beauty in this indifference.

i've added this image to the flickr page map.

the big picture: saturn at equinox

thanks to cassini and ciclops.


click to source for 23 pictures

we are here: a pale blue dot

i don't remember if i've posted this before. i probably have. but if you haven't seen it, you must:

restless dreams

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can't be cheerful all the time.

can you tell me how to get...

this is one of the google logos this week for sesame street's 40th birthday:



my mother, a greek speaker, learned english from sesame street in the 1970s.
and you thought it was for children.

remember carl.

he would have been 75 years old.







a couple of days ago, james randi spoke about how, after we'd lost carl sagan, he'd pick up the phone to call him. and then realize he couldn't.

i'm feeling that now, as i lost my mother three weeks ago. i want to pick up the phone too.

i often reflect about how lucky we are to be alive and how wondrous our cosmos is. but lately i haven't been feeling it.

then i found this podcast... an interview with ann druyan and nick sagan via nick's blog.

and it hit me more intensely than usual.

'it is far better to grasp the universe as it really is than to persist in delusion, however satisfying and reassuring.'

the interview starts at around 00:22.

cameron sinclair: the refugees of boom-and-bust

pictures in athens and beijing

mapflickr lets you create embeddable maps from your geotagged images in flickr. here's a couple of mine from beijing and athens:

LOLblooms

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bloomin' lollies

i shot this with the canon ef 100mm f/2.8 macro usm at 2.8 but also below with my canon ef 50mm f/1.4 usm at 1.4. i like both, so here you are.

...............s....

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keep me company

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intelligence squared - christopher hitchens and stephen fry vs the catholics

in 5 parts:



via RD

EDIT: catholics completely pwned by fry and hitchens.

motion: the catholic church is a force for good in the world.

for
before: 678
after: 268
(-410)

against
before: 1102
after: 1876
(+774)

undecided
before: 346
after: 34
(-312)