Well, are they ever?

The Ring Nebula's distinctive shape makes it a popular illustration for astronomy books. But new observations by NASA's Hubble Space Telescope of the glowing gas shroud around an old, dying, sun-like star reveal a new twist. "The nebula is not like a bagel, but rather, it's like a jelly doughnut, because it's filled with material in the middle," said C. Robert O'Dell of Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tenn. He leads a research team that used Hubble and several ground-based telescopes to obtain the best view yet of the iconic nebula. The images show a more complex structure than astronomers once thought and have allowed them to construct the most precise 3-D model of the nebula. -- NASA -

Bland Old RingNebula:

New Jelly Doughnut Nebula:

gerardvanderleun : May 24, 13  |  Your Say (0)  | PermaLink:

"Smooth! And some little blonde will never know the difference...."

Rubbing alcohol as scotch? N.J. officials release details of 'Operation Swill' In most instances, they said, bars swapped higher-priced brands for less-expensive liquor. But in a few instances, "they didn't even bother doing that," said Michael Halfacre, director of the New Jersey Division of Alcoholic Beverage Control.

"They literally just filled it with whatever they had available," Halfacre said.

That, Chiesa said, poses a health risk.

"I think it's pretty dangerous," he said. "I wouldn't drink rubbing alcohol in my house. It serves a very specific purpose: to rub."

gerardvanderleun : May 24, 13  |  Your Say (3)  | PermaLink:

It's Not About the Nail from Jason Headley on Vimeo.

File under "Things Rodger the Real King of France has brought to my attention because he is a depraved and merciless human being with no sense of decency, yes sir, at long last no sense of decency."

gerardvanderleun : May 23, 13  |  Your Say (11)  | PermaLink:

UPDATE This Just In: The FBI Investigated the Song ‘Louie Louie’ for Two Years --

The song “Louie Louie” by the Kingsmen might not strike you as Federal Bureau of Investigation material. But the song was under investigation by the FBI for two whole years. The bureau’s interest had to do with the lyrics of the song, which most listeners find either confusing or simply impossible to understand. Those muddle words turned out to be big trouble for “Louie Louie,” as at least one person heard a few things in there that weren’t exactly suiting for a teenage audience. -- | Smart News

When she's not quietly, politely, and respectfully driving a stake through the heart of the Obama campaign, neoneocon dallies with a certain number of odd obsessions. Recently she was on a Jello Mold binge, but seems to have turned her attention of late to ancient pop culture. In that capacity, you might want to take a trip through some of the worst songs of decades gone by that are embedded in her essay, Whatever happened to really silly pop songs?

Most of the greats are there: “Itsy Bitsy Teenie Weenie Yellow Polka Dot Bikini,” "Purple People Eater," "Monster Mash" and others just as odious. But she misses the Godzilla of silly pop songs, "Louie Louie."

"Louie Louie" is the ultimate "silly pop song" for two main reasons: 1) It is a highly infectious ear-worm that heard once seems to gnaw its way to your brain stem. 2) Nobody in the history of the world really knows what the hell the lyrics are. Until now.

Click and see, at last, the lyrics synched to the song as put together by a great human being; one who had to have subjected himself to untold excruciating repetitions of "Louie Louie" to create this video. He probably died from the effort murmuring "Hey gotta go now," but he did not live in vain.

Vanderleun : May 23, 13  |  Your Say (14)  | PermaLink:

Doors keyboardist Ray Manzarek (February 12, 1939 – May 20, 2013) has passed away. His music endures.

"Forty days after finishing film school, thinking they had gone their separate ways, Manzarek and Morrison met by chance on Venice Beach in California. Morrison said he had written some songs, and Manzarek expressed an interest in hearing them, whereupon Morrison sang a rough version of "Moonlight Drive". Manzarek liked the songs and co-founded the Doors with Morrison at that moment."

Light My Fire (Live In Europe 1968)

You know that it would be untrue
You know that I would be a liar
If I was to say to you
Girl, we couldn't get much higher

Come on baby, light my fire
Come on baby, light my fire
Try to set the night on fire

When The Music's Over (The Doors Live In Copenhagen 1968)

For the music is your special friend
Dance on fire as it intends
Music is your only friend
Until the end
Until the end
Until the end

Cancel my subscription to the resurrection
Send my credentials to the house of detention
I got some friends inside....

gerardvanderleun : May 22, 13  |  Your Say (2)  | PermaLink:

'Soldier beheaded' in 'Islamist terror attack' oustide barracks in Woolwich - Telegraph Two suspected terrorists were shot by armed police after attacking a pedestrian, believed to be a soldier, with a machete-style knife close to military barracks in an 'Islamist attack'..

One man is reported dead and two others injured amid reports of a shooting incident close to the Royal Artillery Barracks in Woolwich this afternoon.One witness reported seeing a man beheaded in the street in an attack by two men.

The report also said that police officers opened fire after the attack in John Wilson Street in Woolwich.

LiveLeak.com - Beheading in Woolwich, UK - British Soldier Dead

Twitter user Boya Dee writes an account of the incident online. These details have not yet been verified.

He wrote: 'Ohhhhh myyyy God!!!! I just see a man with his head chopped off right in front of my eyes!

'Oh my God!!!! The way Feds took them out!!! It was a female police officer she come out the whip and just started bussssin shots!!

'Mate ive seen alot of s*** im my time but that has to rank sumwhere in the top 3. I couldnt believe my eyes. That was some movie s***.'

The two black bredas run this white guy over over then hop out the car and start chopping mans head off with machete!!

'People were asking whyyy whyyy they were just saying we've had enough! They looked like they were on sutn! Then they start waving a recolver

'Then boydem turn up!! Woolwich feds didnt want it... They had to wait for armed response.. Helicopters everyting...

'Then thats how u know they were on sutn cos they actually went for armed feds with just two machete and an old rusty lookin revolver

'The first guy goes for the female fed with the machete and she not even ramping she took man out like robocop never seen nutn like it

'Then the next breda try buss off the rusty 45 and it just backfires and blows mans finger clean off... Feds didnt pet to just take him out!!

'These times i was just going to the shop for some fruit and veg and i see all that!' - https://twitter.com/BOYADEE

One eyewitness described how the men got out of their car and started to cut him "like a piece of meat".... The BBC's Nick Robinson said the attack had been filmed and that the men had cried "Allah Akhbar [God is great]". - - IBTimes UK

Woolwich Attackers 'Filmed' Each Other and asked members of the public to take pictures during the assault, Sky sources say.

gerardvanderleun : May 22, 13  |  Your Say (28)  | PermaLink:

"Please see for me if her hair hangs long,
If it rolls and flows all down her breast.
Please see for me if her hair hangs long,
That’s the way I remember her best."

[Live / The Johnny Cash TV Show 1969]

gerardvanderleun : May 22, 13  |  Your Say (5)  | PermaLink:

Sir Arthur Ignatius Conan Doyle (22 May 1859 – 7 July 1930)

“My name is Sherlock Holmes. It is my business to know what other people do not know.” -The Adventure of the Blue Carbuncle

What everyone who cares about “the best and the wisest man whom I have ever known” knows is that today is the 154th birthday of Arthur Conan Doyle. Here's my homage to one of the world's greatest literary creations free to download.

Every so often, I either write or make a book. And every so often, as is the way of the world, those books go out of print. But not, I dare say, on the Internet. While it is not as compact or as slick as the original, it still has all the text and should give no little pleasure to those that love the "World's Greatest Consulting Detective."

THE QUOTABLE SHERLOCK HOLMES
Originally Published by The Mysterious Press (Time-Warner) in 2000.
Now sadly out-of-print -- except here.**
Click Right Here to Download Free PDF [ 530K ]

Please feel free to link here, to download, to email and otherwise and pass it along.

Vanderleun : May 22, 13  |  Your Say (32)  | PermaLink:

Wait for it.

UPDATE: Barbara Garcia, Her Dog, and Life Under the Oklahoma Sky : The New Yorker

Barbara Garcia had been living in her neighborhood in Moore, Oklahoma, for forty-five years before yesterday’s tornado flattened her house. She was interviewed by a TV news crew while standing on top of the rubble of her home. She is covered in dust and has some scratches, but she describes the experience calmly—she took shelter in a bathroom, sitting on the toilet with her dog on her lap. She felt the stool lift up out of the floor. “I rolled around a little bit,” she says, and then found herself lying in the debris. She never lost consciousness, but she lost her little dog. She looks over the pile of wood and metal scrap behind her. “I know he’s in here somewhere.”

gerardvanderleun : May 21, 13  |  Your Say (11)  | PermaLink:

On May 20, 1927, Lindbergh took off in the Spirit of St. Louis from Roosevelt Field, near New York City, at 7:52 A.M. He landed at Le Bourget Field, near Paris, on May 21 at 10:21 P.M. Paris time (5:21 P.M. New York time).

"If I take the wings of the morning, and dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea,
Even there shall thy hand lead me, and thy right hand shall hold me."
-- Psalm 139

That long green swell that sears my eyes
As I drowse on this bed of black stones,
Is it the Irish coast rising in the dawn
Beyond the brushed silver of my cowling
Where, throughout the night, I trusted
Not in some desert God's directions,
But like all fools who dreamed my flight
In the calibrated compasses of man?

That rushing sound, is it the crowd at Le Bourget,
Swarming past the barriers and lights
To scavenge my Spirit; to lift me up
Into the air that only heroes breathe?
Or is it the age-old sigh of sea on stones,
Known to those who pace the shingle
And the swirled black sands that wrap
These impossible islands in a shawl of waves?

That painting daubed on the chapel's window --
Not the roselined mandala at Chartres
Where flame in glass misprisoned sings --
But a cruder Savior, bearded, browned, and popular;
An icon obtainable to plain sight, a trim God
Limned flat upon the glass in dull gesso,
And, when light moves behind it, looking down....
Is this the sign in which, at last, we conquer?

Conquer? I'd laugh the laugh of stones
Had I but eyes to see and lips to breathe.
No, I am content with my reduced cathedral
Here above the ocean where man and apes
Together waltzing lie, having done at last
With all horizons, having done at last with sky.

If you would see me now pass by
The small green church where ancient banyans
Bloom with shade and guard
The tower and the bell which you
May toll for you or me, or other souls
Not yet delivered to the stars and sea.

And then, retreating, mark the tree
Whose tendriled branches hold but air,
And shadow both the church and stones
Beneath which wait both apes and men
Who, foolish with their hunger for the air,
Swung branch to branch up all the eons
And, letting go at last, they learned --
Through my night's leap -- to rise.

Sea, stone, tree, ape and Savior:
These now my long companions are.
Better here, I think, in this dank green
Cartoon of Paradise, this slight-of-hand Eden;
Better here beneath the pumice stones
Where strangers drop a wreath a year.

Better in here deep than out there wide --
Hovering over the pillaring waves alone,
Suspended between the old world and the new,
Trusting in man's compass to guide me home;
Descending down the sharp cold blade of dawn.
Better, much better, in here at last to wait
In here where the shawl of the waves below
Enfolds that fire they could never snare.

         -- At the Palapala Ho'omau Church, Hana, Maui

Composed and photographs taken on site. Hana, 2003 Lindburgh flew the Atlantic and opened up the skies 86 years ago this week. May 20–21, 1927. An inch of time but all is "changed, changed utterly."

Vanderleun : May 21, 13  |  Your Say (17)  | PermaLink:

"Picture this: quite possibly the most important street photographer of the 20th century was a 1950s children'€™s nanny who kept herself to herself and never showed a single one of her photographs to anyone.

Decades later in 2007, a Chicago real estate agent and historical hobbyist, John Maloof purchased a box of never-seen, never-developed film negatives of an unknown "amateur"€™ photographer for $380 at his local auction house.

John began developing his new collection of photographs, some 100,000 negatives in total, that had been abandoned in a storage locker in Chicago before they ended up at the auction house. It became clear these were no ordinary street snaps of 1950s & 60s Chicago and New York and so John embarked on a journey to find out who was behind the photographs and soon discovered her name: Vivien Maier. -- Found at Auction: The Unseen Photographs of a Legend that Never Was

gerardvanderleun : May 20, 13  |  Your Say (1)  | PermaLink:

"Why is it that you can mobilize the IRS to go after political enemies but you can't mobilize troops to save American lives in Benghazi?"

Last week eloquently summed up, rolled into a ball, and tossed into the next week which should, I hope, be even more devastating to the current crop of craven cowards in the White House.

Harry Reid said, "€œThey're hyperventilating about Benghazi. President Obama was absolutely right to call this a sideshow. This is about smear politics and nothing else."€

Hyperventilating?  I'll tell you what Mr. Reid, and no due respect intended here:

There were only two people hyperventilating in Benghazi.  They're the ones painted by Al Qaeda-linked lasers - two men on a roof who disobeyed your order to stand down, waited hours for help that never came because you wouldn't give the cross border authority order, and instead, fired up Air Force One for your Las Vegas fundraiser, and went to bed.

So don't give me your holier than thou rhetoric, and your arrogant condescending hogwash that you're going to get rid of all the wrongdoers or throw us a few crumbs like the grainy pictures of terrorists 8 months after an attack.  Or give me your "I'm going to fix it" riff. And do us all a favor - explain a few things. Judge Jeanine Blasts Obama Admin @ Fox News Insider

gerardvanderleun : May 19, 13  |  Your Say (6)  | PermaLink:

From the genius that is ICON.The speaker has a flat affect but stick with him and the overwhelming nature of what was done with this Powerwagon will engulf you.

gerardvanderleun : May 17, 13  |  Your Say (5)  | PermaLink:

In the afterglow of the last week I have come to realize that what is deeply wrong with this country is that so far we have neither heard enough nor seen enough of President Obama.

I now think we need to see more. Much more. We need to bask in his warm visage and be lulled with the hum of his valved voice. We need to have a morning message from the President every day on all cable news channel. Indeed, we need to have it broadcast on all TV channels, especially ESPN and other places where citizens dodge their need to know the truth and their duty to look up from their coffee and upon the wonderful latte-tanned visage that is Obama.

We need to see his face with his honeyed message oozing out of his mouth in the lead-in to Good Morning America and Fox and Friends both without fear or favoritism.

Weather Channel too.

We need to have Barack Obama’s message, whatever it might be on whatever day, delivered dripping from his lips to all of us on the front page of whatever newspaper we are still reading online with a video-embed set on autoplay.

We need to have Obama's dulcet tones crooning his soothing message as the lead-in to NPR’s Morning Edition and that thing most considered among All Things Considered.

We need to have Obama's lilting phrases replace the bumper music at the top of Rush Limbaugh’s show.

In short, we cannot have enough of listening to the President tell us what he’s thinking and what the right way to think about what he’s thinking is.

We need to hear his inspiring words and see his craggy and indomitable face every day. We need to look and look again upon that clear eye, square jaw, and firm forehead leaning ever "Forward" and asking for our spare five bucks. We need this every single day.

I am in ernest about this. I will even pay higher taxes to make this so. We need, in the most urgent and important way, to see the wonder that is Barack Obama.... All. The. Time.

I hope that his coming testimony to the Congress, and to the special prosecutor, and to a grateful nation of church ladies in wild hats is only the beginning of this program of all Obama all the time!

This then is my solemn prayer. in the words of that most holy and revered of Presidents, George W. Bush, "LORD, MAKE OBAMA APPEAR IN THE FACE OF ALL. BRING. IT. ON. 'Give me excess of it, that, surfeiting, The appetite may sicken, and so die'."

gerardvanderleun : May 16, 13  |  Your Say (12)  | PermaLink:

All are limitory, but each has her own
nuance of damage. The elite can dress and decent themselves,
        are ambulant with a single stick, adroit
to read a book all through, or play the slow movements of
        easy sonatas. (Yet, perhaps, their very
carnal freedom is their spirit's bane: intelligent
        of what has happened and why, they are obnoxious
to a glum beyond tears.) Then come those on wheels, the average
        majority, who endure T.V. and, led by
lenient therapists, do community singing, then
        the loners, muttering in limbo, and last
the terminally incompetent, as impeccable,
        improvident, unspeakable as the plants
they parody. (Plants may sweat profusely but never
        sully themselves.) One tie, though, unites them: all
appeared when the world, though much was awry there, was more
        spacious, more comely to look at, its Old Ones
with an audience and secular station. (Then a child,
        in dismay with Mamma, could refuge with Gran
to be revalued and told a story.) As of now,
        we all know what to expect, but their generation
is the first to fade like this, not at home but assigned
        to a numbered frequent ward, stowed out of conscience
as unpopular luggage.
                  As I ride the subway
        to spend half-an-hour with one, I revisage
who she was in the pomp and sumpture of her hey-day,
        when week-end visits were a presumptive joy,
not a good work. Am I cold to wish for a speedy
        painless dormition, pray, as I know she prays,
that God or Nature will abrupt her earthly function?

gerardvanderleun : May 15, 13  |  Your Say (4)  | PermaLink:

The Drudge Report now:

Extra visual, verbal, and historical punning points for "Son of Watergate?"

Why has Matt Drudge never received a Pulitzer? Because a Pulitzer, at this point, would demean this most modern Michelangelo.

gerardvanderleun : May 14, 13  |  Your Say (13)  | PermaLink:

[Click to enlarge]

[Click to enlarge] and, yes, that's a housefly in the foreground.

Just two shots from a massive photo essay on this miracle on a small branch of a small tree next to the parking lot of a golf course in Colorado. Full show RIGHT HERE. Take your time. It's a big (BIG) page and the photos are high-res, but it's worth it. [Thanks to Rodger the Real King of France]

[Reposted from 2011 to go with the Nest Video below]

Vanderleun : May 14, 13  |  Your Say (7)  | PermaLink:

Robins: 4 Eggs, 4 Weeks from Fred Margulies on Vimeo.

gerardvanderleun : May 13, 13  |  Your Say (5)  | PermaLink:

Blur Brain sez This Music Video Got Nearly 89 Million Views, Find Out Why "My recent post of a member of the Japanese vocal group AKB48 eating Tororo gave some of you a bad case of yellow fever so here’s one of the group’s most popular music videos. Not sure why it’s so popular, maybe it’s the catchy tune or the odd lyrics. Perhaps you can figure it out."

gerardvanderleun : May 13, 13  |  Your Say (14)  | PermaLink:

Wow! Just wow! Every so often you come across something that reminds you that, with all the old evils of this Earth, we still live in the age of miracles and wonders. This is one of those.

gerardvanderleun : May 12, 13  |  Your Say (4)  | PermaLink:

 
Lois Lucille McNair Van der Leun -- then and now

Her earliest memory is being held on the shoulders of her father, watching the men who lived through the First World War parade down the main street of Fargo, North Dakota in 1918. She would have been just four years old then. Now she's 90 years old and she comes to her birthday party wearing a chic black and white silk dress, shiny black shoes with three inch heels, and a six foot long purple boa. She's threatening to sing Kurt Weill's 'The Saga of Jenny" and dance on the table one more time .

She'll sing the Kurt Weill song, but we draw the line at her dancing on the table this year. Other than that, it is pretty much her night, and she gets to call the shots. Which is what you get when you reach 90 97 and are still managing to make it out to the tennis courts three to four times a week. "If it wasn't for my knees I'd still have a good backcourt game, but now I pretty much like to play up at the net." [Note 2012: Alas she had to give up tennis two years back when her knees finally gave up. She didn't. Water walking twice a week.]

She plays Bridge once or twice a week, winning often, and has been known to have a cocktail or two on occasion. She still drives even though it causes my brother to fret. This is a good thing since he's the kind of man who sees the incipient disaster in everything and it's good for him to fret about something that has a smidgen of reality to it.

She keeps a small two-bedroom apartment in a complex favored by young families and college students from Chico State and, invariably, has a host of fans during any given semester. She's thought about moving to the "senior apartments" out by the mall, but "I'm just not sure I could downsize that much and everyone there is so old."

She was born deep in the heartland at the beginning of the Great War, the youngest of five children. She grew up and into the Roaring 20s, through the Great Depression, taught school at a one room school house at Lake of the Woods Minnesota, roamed west out to California in the Second World War and met the man she married.

They stayed married until he died some 30 years ago. Together they raised three boys, and none of them came to any more grief than most and a lot more happiness than many.

After her husband died at the end of a protracted illness, she was never really interested in another man and filled her life with family, close friends (some stretching back to childhood), and was, for 15 years, a housemother to college girls. She still works three mornings a week as a teacher and companion to young children at a local day-care and elementary school.

She has always been a small and lovely woman -- some would say beautiful. I know I would. An Episcopalian, she's been known to go to church, but isn't devoted to the
practice, missing more Sundays than she attends. She's given to finding the best in people and letting the rest pass, but has been known to let fools pass at high speed.

Born towards the beginning of the 20th century, she now lives fully in the 21st. It is her 90th birthday party. It is attended by over 200 people from 2 to 97, many of whom are telling tales about her, some taller than others.

We don't believe the man who tells about the time in her early seventies that she danced on his bar. He's brought the pictures of the bar with her high-heel marks in it to prove the point.

Other stories are told, some serious, some funny, all loving. But they all can only go back so far since she has only been living in Chico, California for 30 years. I can go back further, and so, without planning to, I took my turn and told my story about her. It went something like this.

"Because I'm the oldest son, I can go back further in time. I can go back before Clinton, before Reagan, before Nixon, before Kennedy, before Eisenhower. We'll go back to the time of Truman.

"It must be the summer of 1949 and she's taking my brother and I back home to her family in Fargo for the first time. I would be almost four and he'd be two and a half. The war's been over for some time and everyone is now back home and settled in. My father's family lost a son, but -- except for some wounds -- everyone else came out all right.

"We're living in Los Angeles and her home is Fargo, North Dakota, half a continent away. So we do what you did then. We took the train. Starting in Los Angeles we went north to San Francisco where we boarded the newest form of luxury land transportation available that year, the California Zephyr.

"Out from the bay and up over the Sierras and down across the wastes until we wove our way up the spine of the Rockies and down again to the vast land sea that stretched out east in a swath of corn and wheat that that I remember more than the pitched curves and plunging cliffs of the mountains. You sat in a plush chair at the top of the car and Earth from horizon to the zenith flowed past you.

"There was the smell of bread and cooking in the Pullman cars that I can still capture in my mind, and the lulling rhythm of the wheels over the rails that I can still hear singing me down into sleep.

"At some point we changed trains to go north into the Fargo Station and, as we pulled into Fargo in mid-morning, my mother's family met us with their usual humble dignity -- they brought a full brass band that worked its way down through the John Philip Sousa set list with severe dedication. They also brought me more family members than there were people living on our entire block in Los Angeles. There may also have been a couple of Barbershop Quartets to serenade us during the band breaks, but I'm not sure about that.

"My mother and brother and I were swept away in the maelstrom of aunts, uncles, cousins by the dozens, and assorted folks from the neighborhood on 8th Avenue South.

"The day rolled into a huge lunch at a vast dining room table where my grandmother ruled with an iron ladle. Then, after a suitable post-prandial stupor, my entire family rose as one and headed out to the nearby park for their favorite activity -- trying to crush each other in tennis. When this family hit the courts, it was like a tournament had come to town. Other would-be players just took one look and headed for another set of courts elsewhere.

"I was still too young to play, although my mother would have a racquet custom-made for me within the year, so instead I would have been exhausting myself at some playground or in one of the sandboxes under the eyes of my older cousins. Then, at dusk, I made my way back to the courts."

"In the Fargo summers the twilights linger long and fade slowly and as they fade the lights on the courts come up illuminating them in the gathering dark. And I sat, not quite four, as the night grew dark around me and my mother and her family played on below.

"Now it is all more than fifty-four years gone but still, in my earliest memories, they play on in that endless twilight. I see them sweeping back and forth in the fading light. Taunting and laughing together. Calling balls out that are clearly in. Arguing and laughing and playing on forever long after the last light of day has fled across the horizon and the stars spread out high above the lights.

"Service. Return. Lob. Forehand. Volley. Backhand. Volley. Love All."

November, 2004 -- Chico & Laguna Beach, California

Vanderleun : May 12, 13  |  Your Say (40)  | PermaLink: