This is what our game camera caught last Friday during a hail storm:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gkqidTkg ... e=youtu.be

So much stuff falling from the sky it set off the motion detector.

This is how quickly the tide comes back into to Bar Harbor. This is a sandbar that is exposed at low tide. People can walk across the sandbar to the island. People (and cars) can also get stranded because the tide turns incredibly fast!

https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?v=10 ... 9211430247


And here's our whale! He was a small humpback, and they didn't have him in their database. So he must be new! I like to think that we were his first people, just like he was my first whale. And this made being seasick totally worth it!

https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?v=10 ... 9803781426

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Spectacular four-minute video of a brilliant aurora over northern Canada last December:

http://vimeo.com/85070976

The motion is in real time, not time-lapse. Staggering.

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“There, peeping among the cloud-wrack above a dark tor high up in the mountains, Sam saw a white star twinkle for a while. The beauty of it smote his heart, as he looked up out of the forsaken land, and hope returned to him. For like a shaft, clear and cold, the thought pierced him that in the end the Shadow was only a small and passing thing: there was light and high beauty for ever beyond its reach.”
― J.R.R. Tolkien, The Return of the King

wooooooooooooooooooow

It makes me wonder what early humans thought when seeing something like that. wow

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everything happens so much

Absolutely incredible!

So beautiful and awe-inspiring; a huge ribbon or river or serpent of shimmering light!

Watching the clip of the aurora made my thoughts leap to the rainbow serpent, which features in the indigenous stories of Australia. The rainbow serpent created the landscape and gave birth to many of the indigenous animals of the continent, and I wondered whether sometime in the dim past (these stories are ancient), there may be have been similar light shows the skies over Australia to inspire such a beautiful mythology.

I don't know. I am merely allowing free rein to my leaping thoughts.

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Mornings wouldn't suck so badly if they came later in the day.

Just lovely (and warmed me a just a little towards the concept of drones)

http://vimeo.com/89059231

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Mornings wouldn't suck so badly if they came later in the day.

I have a friend with a "drone" (although his is more of an actual miniature airplane). He uses it to help out environmental groups, such as flying over local Nature Conservancy land that's hard to access safely in order to assess invasion by nonnative plant species. Drones have a lot of legitimate applications. They let us see things we just can't see safely (or at all, if we go in with big noisy machines that can carry us, instead of a little flitting machine that can carry only a camera).

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“There, peeping among the cloud-wrack above a dark tor high up in the mountains, Sam saw a white star twinkle for a while. The beauty of it smote his heart, as he looked up out of the forsaken land, and hope returned to him. For like a shaft, clear and cold, the thought pierced him that in the end the Shadow was only a small and passing thing: there was light and high beauty for ever beyond its reach.”
― J.R.R. Tolkien, The Return of the King

What a lovely idea.....I'd say undoubtedly, Impy, after all, you have the Aurora Australis, don't you?

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There is magic in long-distance friendships. They let you relate to other human beings in a way that goes beyond being physically together and is often more profound.
~Diana Cortes

Drones have also been used to save lives in disaster response scenarios, helping to locate stranded people in difficult-to-access areas. They are also excellent tools for assessing the effects of extreme weather events.

On the military side, I must also say that weaponized drones are far preferable to other forms of targeted killing. They are much more precise than other kinds of aircraft, include weapons systems that are more precise than other weapons systems, and on average, are more precise even than the human soldier on the ground.

Though civilians have been killed by drones, it can be argued that lots of civilians have been spared because of their discriminate nature...

Nature on a small scale, but quite mesmerising and beautiful to watch:

https://vimeo.com/122575482

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Mornings wouldn't suck so badly if they came later in the day.

Neat! Who knew they had such pretty flowers?

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I didn't, until Mr. Prim took me camping in the Anza-Borrego Wilderness near L.A. during the blooming season, the first year we were married. The desert was brilliant with color. I'll never forget it. Ocotillo plants that look like tall gangling bundles of sticks for most of the year were covered with tiny green leaves and brilliant magenta blooms. In the distance the bare dirt was hidden by clouds of yellow and orange flowers.

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“There, peeping among the cloud-wrack above a dark tor high up in the mountains, Sam saw a white star twinkle for a while. The beauty of it smote his heart, as he looked up out of the forsaken land, and hope returned to him. For like a shaft, clear and cold, the thought pierced him that in the end the Shadow was only a small and passing thing: there was light and high beauty for ever beyond its reach.”
― J.R.R. Tolkien, The Return of the King

https://www.facebook.com/142468583842/p ... 646253843/

Sent from a tiny phone keyboard via Tapatalk - typos inevitable.

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Mornings wouldn't suck so badly if they came later in the day.