astropixie

Monday, January 10, 2011

Sunday, January 9, 2011

sunday at shelly beach

the forecast called for rain, and how wonderfully wrong they were.

the morning looked a bit cloudy in my neighborhood, but i decided to grab a ferry for the coast anyway.

there was a volleyball tournament on the beach!

after a tasty brazilian feijoada for lunch, we decided to walk to that little beach off in the distance.

we spotted a big lizard along the way...

almost at shelly beach!

ahhh...

one thing i like about australia is that matters are not complicated by subtlety or suggestion. no, they are presented in an upfront and honest manner. for instance, when i first heard of shelly beach, my passing thought was that maybe it was named after a historic person named shelly who lived in the area and achieved something special.

and then i visited the beach today. as i walked into the water, i realized my feet were becoming quite sensitive because the sand went from very small granules to increasingly larger chunks of broken shells. i thought to myself "wow, there are a lot of shells here! oh right, shelly beach is... shelly!"

(shells photo credit: amanda gilligan)

when i lived in england, i felt like there was always some deeper, hidden, clever meaning to everything and i was constantly on the look out so as not to miss the subtle joke. the british take great pride in their humour, even moreso when people "dont get it." actually, i just found this quote about the english and their use of understatement from the "Humour Rules" chapter of Watching The English, by Kate Fox, which explains it all very well.

anyway, in australia, understatement is not commonplace. they call it like it is. shelly beach has a lot of shells. es ist wie es ist.

i like not feeling as though i'm always missing something!

Saturday, January 8, 2011

we're searching for ET, but it's really hard to see

some clever folks recently made a parody of Ke$ha's hit song, "We R Who We R." i've never heard that song or seen the video, but i don't really feel that i need to after this. its almost a little embarrassing to watch, because of the ridiculousness of modern pop style, but the lyrics are actually really good and the background images are gorgeous!

those of you following the continuing debate about the potential for life to survive on arsenic, might take offense to the song's notion that the discovery expands the possible types of lifeforms that can exist.

i will leave you with some of the reasonable response from the makers of the movie:

We’d like to defend our honor just a little bit in regards to the arsenic debate. Certainly, we know it is a very contentious subject, but we felt we couldn’t really do the whole controversy justice in the context of this parody, so we went with the brief mention. Are we trying to say this is a comprehensive look at everything about astrobiology? Of course not, and we understand you weren’t implying that it was supposed to be. But if we can pique the scientific curiosity of even a few young people, and get them interested in pursuing this field, that’s a win for us.

Friday, January 7, 2011

partially eclipsed sun rising

the partial solar eclipse that occurred on 4th january 2011 was not visible from my part of the world, unfortunately. but many people achieved some fantastic photos of the event, including this shot featured on APOD today taken in austria by robert pölzl.

lucky for us earthlings, there will be another 3 partial solar eclipses and 2 total lunar eclipses in 2011! most of them are visible from rather remote places on the globe, but i'm sure some folks will venture to take photos for the rest of us!

the next total solar eclipse takes place on 13th november 2012 and will be visible from the very north of australia! i'll absolutely, positively be there! anyone else?

Thursday, January 6, 2011

is it octopuses or octopi?

an associate editor at mirriam-webster explains the mystery...

video spotted by ze frank.

Wednesday, January 5, 2011

let's dance

i was hoping to find a live version of M. Ward performing his version of david bowie's let's dance, but alas, i could not. at least you can listen. this version has a much different feel than the original tune... it's an entirely different dance.