Windy!

This video clip was recorded at Crown Point, Oregon, last month.  The wind was gusting to well over 100 mph (more than 160 km/h).  If you look at this picture of Crown Point, you can see that the building portrayed below is exposed to the winds from all directions, so it's not surprising the gusts affected it so greatly.

Peter

The beauty of frozen bubbles

Bored Panda has a fascinating photo essay on a Washington photographer, Angela Kelly.

When the weather forecast announced about the unexpected cold from -9°C to -12°C last week, Washington-based photographer Angela Kelly decided to take an advantage of it in one truly creative way. Together with her 7-year-old son, Kelly combined the home-based remedies – dish soap, karo syrup, and water – and went out to blow bubbles and take pictures as they freeze and melt.

Soon the two adventurers found themselves in awe while watching the frost create magical patterns in the freezing bubbles.

The smaller ones would freeze momentarily, simply mid-air, and then they would fall down and scatter like thin glass chips.

The bigger ones would manage to freeze more slowly on the surface, giving the photographer a chance to catch the artworks of the frost on camera.

There's much more at the link.  Highly recommended viewing.

Peter

Weird canine science?

A rather . . . interesting scientific experiment caught my eye today.

A new study published in the journal Frontiers in Zoology finds that a wide range of canines preferred to “excrete with the body being aligned along the north-south axis” under “calm magnetic field conditions.” The nearly 37 breeds of dogs studied were found to completely avoid urination or defecation along an east-west direction.

The study is the first time that magnetic sensitivity was proven in dogs, although previous research has shown that many mammals “spontaneously align their body axis” with Earth’s magnetic field in a diverse range of behavioral contexts.

Examination of 70 dogs over two years – including 1,893 defecations and 5,582 urinations – revealed that dogs who were not leashed or influenced in movement were naturally inclined to relieve themselves in “axial orientation” with the earth’s magnetic field.

The study did not detail exactly why this phenomenon occurs.

There's more at the link.

What I want to know is, who counted the number of defecations and urinations so meticulously?  And who cleaned up after them?  That must have been a very dedicated lab assistant . . . 'lab' as in both laboratory and breed!





Peter

Perhaps a quick visit to Africa might be in order . . .

With a trembling in my bones, I've just realized that this weekend and early next week are going to be the coldest temperatures I've ever experienced in my life.  I'm an African boy.  I grew up used to summers with heat up to or exceeding 100° Fahrenheit (38° Celsius:  sometimes rising as high as 120°/49°).  Winters very seldom dropped to below freezing, and when they did, it was only by a few degrees, and not for long.  Snow was a once-in-a-decade thing, and then only in a few cities.  It would literally stop traffic, as everyone got out of their cars to catch the few falling flakes and marvel at it!

When I first came to North America, on a seven-month work-related visit in 1996, I landed in Toronto, Canada, in a snowstorm and sub-freezing temperatures.  My sinuses instantly quit in protest, and for the next three weeks I was barely able to whimper at the chill.  I spent several weeks in what was allegedly spring in Canada and the northern USA, with snow on the ground, ice not uncommon, and a frozen African body screaming with every fiber of its being, "Take me back to the Namib Desert!"

Since then I've experienced sub-freezing temperatures on quite a few occasions, along with snow and the occasional ice storm.  The coldest I've ever known (and that only late some nights, for short periods while outside) is about 15°F/-9°C.  However, Monday is forecast to get down to a maximum of 9°F/-13°C, and Monday night the mercury's supposed to fall as low as 3°F/-16°C.  Up in Minneapolis, friends of ours will be facing a low of -19°F/-28°C.  (One of them is scheduled to fly here on Monday.  All I can say is, I hope they manage to break his plane loose from the ice floe so it can try to take off!)

In one of my favorite pubs in Swakopmund, on Namibia's coast at the lower edge of the Skeleton Coast, it'll be in the balmy 70's to 80's Fahrenheit over the weekend and into next week.  It'll be twenty to thirty degrees hotter further north and inland.  I think this is the perfect weekend for a visit there, and a nice cold Windhoek lager . . .





Peter

A spectacularly beautiful approach

Courtesy of an e-mail from reader Trailbee, here's an airline pilot's view of the approach to Queenstown, New Zealand.  The music is 'Paradise' by Coldplay.  You really need to watch this one in full-screen mode.  It's worth it.

Spectacular, isn't it?  Thanks, Trailbee!

Peter

Snowflakes as you've never seen them before

Russian photographer Alexey Kljatov has a collection of fascinating photographs of snowflakes, in more detail than I've ever seen before.  He describes how he takes them in this article, which also contains many images.  Here's a brief selection of his work, reduced in size to fit this blog.  Click on each picture to be taken to a larger version.

There are many more photographs at the link, and in other articles and galleries linked from there.  Highly recommended for photography buffs, and for those who find snowflakes fascinating in their infinite variety.

Peter

Eagle steals camera

I was amused by this video footage from a camera set up by game rangers on a meat trap near the Margaret River, in the Kimberley region of Western Australia, to photograph crocodiles.  It seems they didn't secure it to anything;  and a passing young sea eagle decided it might be edible.  Here's the result.

It was found almost 70 miles away at the Mary River.  Looks like the eagle took the scenic route . . .

Peter

I've never seen one like that before . . .

From NASA's Astronomy Picture Of The Day, here's an image of a cap cloud over the Sierra Nevada mountains of Spain.  I've reduced the image size to fit this blog.

Mother Nature never ceases to impress!  Click the link for a full-size version.

Peter

The raw power of the sea

I came across this Russian video while searching for something else.  It conveys, as few other videos have in my experience, the raw power of the sea when Mother Nature gets her dander up.  I recommend watching it in full-screen mode.

It brought back lots of memories of my time in ships and small craft off the Cape of Good Hope and around the southern coast of Africa, where the Agulhas Current makes the area the so-called 'Home of the Rogue Wave'.  (The first explorer to round the Cape, Bartolomeu Dias, named it the 'Cape Of Storms', with good reason.  The King of Portugal decided that was bad public relations, so he renamed it the 'Cape Of Good Hope'.  On a calm day it's absolutely beautiful - in 1580 Sir Francis Drake called it 'the fairest Cape in all the world', and in good weather I won't disagree with him.  On a rough day, though . . . )





Peter

Ever heard of a 'TomTato'?

I hadn't, until I came across this report in the Telegraph.

It sounds like something from a science fiction film, but a plant which produces both potatoes and tomatoes has been launched in the UK.

The ‘TomTato’ can grow more than 500 sweet cherry tomatoes above ground, while beneath the soil it produces white potatoes that are suitable for boiling, roasting or turning into chips.

Horticultural mail order company Thompson & Morgan, which is selling the plants for £14.99 each, described their new product as a “veg plot in a pot”.

The hybrid plants are not a product of genetic engineering, but are each individually hand-grafted. Like potatoes, tomatoes are members of the nightshade family (Solanaceae), which makes them compatible for grafting.

. . .

The plants can be grown either outside or inside, as long as they are in a large pot or bag. Thompson & Morgan refused to disclose which varieties of tomato and potato they had used, for fear of being imitated, but said that the cherry tomatoes were far sweeter than those available in supermarkets.

There's more at the link.  Here's an advertising video from the producer describing the plant.

Sounds interesting.  I can't help wondering what's coming next.  If they can do this with two plants, why not with three or four?  Why not with different varieties of fruits and vegetables?  Will we end up with salad on a tree?

Peter

Niagara Falls as you've never seen them before

This video was taken from a small UAV flying (with permission) in restricted airspace over Niagara Falls, on both the US and Canadian sides of the border.  It's pretty spectacular. I recommend watching it in full-screen mode.

That's certainly a unique perspective on the Falls.

Peter

Would you drink out of a bottle made from sewage?

A news report on the BBC informed me that containers and utensils could now be made out of plastic produced from raw human and animal sewage.  The thought alone was nauseating, but it led me to do an Internet search.  That produced several articles about this new technology.  Even though the concept is off-putting (to put it mildly!), I can see how it would help to greatly reduce plastic waste fill.

Here's a video clip from one of the founders of the company concerned, demonstrating how the process works.  I actually found it quite interesting, despite the subject matter.

I daresay we'll see a lot more of this sort of technology in future - and if we go into space, where landfills are few and far between and raw materials aren't easily gathered, it'll have to be an integral part of waste management.

Peter