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  Have a Happy Thought: In the olden days, people told stories of going out into the desert to meditate, find (often divine) inspiration, or to refresh their spirits. And this is often portrayed as a huge sacrifice, going out into a desolate landscape. These photos might give you a different mental picture of what it would mean to "go out into the desert." Starting with Namibia, under the light of the Milky Way: Image: Daniel Kordan   Or Cappadocia, in central Turkey: Image: Daniel Kordan   Western Kazakhstan surely meets the definition of desert … Image: Daniel Kordan   Actually, have some more of Kazakhstan: Image: Daniel Kordan   Image: Daniel Kordan :   Or the Atacama desert: Image: Daniel Kordan   Of course, you could effectively travel the world through the camera lens of Daniel Kordan – His website is absolutely worth a visit, and I can almost guarantee you've seen his work somewhere! (Yes,...

Have a Happy Thought: (Before I go too far, do you ever have those times in your life when you just keep seeing the same thing over and over? Like you learn a new word, and then that word appears in a book you're reading, a tv show you're watching, and in a random-facts quiz later that week? Yeah, that's been my life lately. Which is why there is some cross-over between this week's topic and that from just a few weeks ago .) The world around us, especially the living world, is constantly surprising us. We humans continue to learn new things all the time (thanks, science!), and then of course there is the fact that " Life, uh, finds a way " to deal with an ever-changing environment. The latest example of this? Two species of jay birds, whose ancestors have not crossed paths in about 7 million years, have recently been finding themselves in the same place. Green jays are a tropical bird, living in the central Americas.  Image: Green Jay (Cyanocorax yncas) Photo ...

Have a Happy Thought:  Humans have almost always named places that we visit and live. Those names are sometimes just boringly descriptive, sometimes they are nods to history, or something interesting that happened in a place. One of the things that I have enjoyed learning about my latest adopted city (New Plymouth, New Zealand – a lot of “new”s!) is that the local museum has an explanation for many of the street names in the region. Some of these are sensible ( Airport Drive, which does indeed go to the Airport), others are whimsical ( Albatross Place , named after the airplane, not the bird), while others are... memorials to times or people that possibly don’t deserve such positive recognition (looking at you, Gustavus von Tempsky ) Sometimes, people new to an area give a new name to the place, even though it already has a name. Colonisation aside, this can lead to some fun “stacking” of names. You may have heard of Torpenhow Hill in England. The name comes from successive l...

  Have a Happy Thought:  We use a lot of data in today’s world. IN fact, the total amount of data created and stored digitally is expected to reach 181 zettabytes this year . (A zettabyte is 2 to the 70 th power, or 1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 bytes). Moving all of this data around accounts for a lot of power usage today – every email (yes, including this one), shared document, or any other file digitally transferred takes energy to send, share, and store online . Now, we’ve all at some point struggled to figure out the best way to transfer a file – maybe it’s something too large to send over email, or an odd file type that wouldn’t attach. So, here are some alternatives that might a)take less energy; and b) actually be more efficient?? Option 1: Use a snowmobile. Yep, Amazon Web Services actually offers this as a way to transfer very large ( 100 petabytes = 10 to the 15 th power, or 1,000,000,000,000,000 bytes, still much smaller than a zettabyte) amo...

Have a Happy Thought:  Two of the most important fun voting opportunities are taking place, at the same time this year! No, I don’t mean local elections in New Zealand – while very important, they are less fun. (despite some of the ads being very funny). I do mean: 1. Fat Bear Week ! Yes, it’s that time to look at pictures of adorably pudgy bears living in Katmai National Park in Alaska, and decide which one gets your vote. You can choose the reason for yourself. Are you more interested in who has put on the most weight this summer? Or maybe it’s a good coat colour change you’re after. Or maybe its a bear you’ve voted for in previous years. In any case, the bears will be announced this coming Monday (Alaska time). In the meantime, you can check out – and vote for – fat bear junior, a compendium of adorable bear cubs, making their way through their first year of life. Here’s a couple of examples:​ ​ ​​ 2. Bird of the Year . Voting closes next weekend, so you ...

Have a Happy Thought:  A wonderful thing about being part of diverse humanity is being able to experience the work of people who think very differently than you do. Me? I’m pretty literal, I like numbers and words. I don’t “think” much in imagery ( you may already know why ). That’s possibly why so many of these Friday posts focus on visual artistry – it is a communication that I can appreciate, but can’t even imagine doing. That goes doubly for the artist this week – the medium she uses – metal – feels so solid to me that I am blown away by these designs: Some of these works exude the strength of the metal: While others almost appear delicate: And still others capture the delicate-yet-strong-at-the-same-time vibe: Anyway, go check out more of her art here: https://www.raeripple.com/gallery And I hope you find something “different” to appreciate, this weekend :)

Have a Happy Thought:  At some point in your life, you probably made up a code with some friends. Maybe it was just a few words that you attached a special meaning to, or maybe it was an entire language (and no, pig-Latin doesn’t count, because all the adults already knew it). Sometimes, though, people come up with codes to communicate more clearly (think the NATO phonetic alphabet to help make sure words are spelled correctly)… but end up just making everything more difficult. This is a case in point: a cypher code created in the late 19 th century to – apparently – make it easier to send telegrams about new discoveries in Astronomy. My guess is that either very few people used this… or the people that did use this spent as much of their time decoding messages from colleagues as actually doing astronomy. Here's the first couple of sentences in this explainer about this “cipher-code”… This concept was pretty complex, but I’m guessing if you really took the time, it wou...

Have a Happy Thought:  One of the early dreams for the internet was that all of human knowledge would be available for everyone. While we haven’t quite reached that, there are still some corners of the internet, and dedicated people, that are doing their part to make this happen. You all know about Wikipedia, which has become one of the more reliable parts of the internet to start research on something (read the article, then follow the sources). I’ve also recently learned about the Survivor Library , which, while it is a little bit “prepper” in origins, is an amazing “compendium of the Technological and Industrial Knowledge of the 1800 through early 1900s with a few books from even earlier periods.” Want to learn about beekeeping; or how to make (or repair) a good shoe by hand; or re-read the Encyclopedia Britannica Great Books Of The Western World; or even refresh yourself on the rules of Whist – this is a great place to go. Some of you may remember me talking ...

Have a Happy Thought:  Things that fly are (usually) really good at avoiding crashing into other things in the air. Sometimes, though, they are not. A few examples, to brighten your day. 1. In the middle of the Great Smog of London (1952, after which we actually get the word smog), the visibility was so low that a pigeon actually flew into a man in the street . Neither saw it coming. 2. David Attenborough is very impressed with the ability of bats to use sonar to avoid things in their path – be it other bats, obstacles, cave walls, or people. Except for the bat that smacked right into Sir David’s face! 3. If you’ve ever driven from Auckland to the Coromandel, or Tauranga, or really anywhere on the East coast, you’ve probably driven past the Bugger Cafe. And if you’ve stopped in, you’ve probably seen this photo, of a couple of humans taking a “Titanic” photo of their love story, being rudely interrupted by a gull. Alternatively, it is the story of a gull just ...

Have a Happy Thought:  People, given the opportunity, LOVE science. More specifically, exploration. In this case, specifically, exploring the deep ocean. Researchers from the Museo Argentino de Ciencias Naturales have set up a livestream from their Remotely Operated Vehicle (ROV) that is currently exploring a deep (3000 m)-sea canyon off the Argentinian coast. This went absolutely viral, both within and without Argentina – there have been at times literally tens of thousands of people watching this livestream. (To see the livestream, which as at writing is still going, go to the Schmit Ocean youtube page and look for the “Live now” section.) One of the real highlights of this was when the person operating the ROV found this very peculiarly shaped seastar (aka starfish). The operator did an honest-to-goodness double-take-then-zoom-in with the camera (or see it in full context ).   Image: a seastar with a symmetrical, rounded shape between two of its “legs”. ...