Contributor Posts

Short were his wanders,
small was the town.
He covered mile after mile,
until the final sundown.

He walked and walked,
never slowing down,
then he discovered he was
on the other side of town.

NASA Astronomy Picture of the Day:

Meteors can be colorful. While the human eye usually cannot discern many colors, cameras often can. Pictured here is a fireball, a disintegrating meteor that was not only one of the brightest the photographer has ever seen, but colorful. The meteor was captured by chance in mid-July with a camera set up on Hochkar Mountain in Austria to photograph the central band of our Milky Way galaxy. The radiant grit, likely cast off by a comet or asteroid long ago, had the misfortune to enter Earth's atmosphere. Colors in meteors usually originate from ionized chemical elements released as the meteor disintegrates, with blue-green typically originating from magnesium, calcium radiating violet, and nickel glowing green. Red, however, typically originates from energized nitrogen and oxygen in the Earth's atmosphere. This bright meteoric fireball was gone in a flash -- less than a second -- but it left a wind-blown ionization trail that remained visible for almost a minute.

Photo by Michael Kleinburger

Ten ducklings,
showed up today,
two fell through a grid,
now only eight to play,

I see you,
my heart sings,
all these years together,
is what love brings.

The music I hear,
goes straight to my heart.
It's too painful now,
when we are apart.

Grousing today, was apparent,
complaining about something,
to another person, without
benefit of informing the
person who was in charge.

Forever and a day,
one step beyond,
the realities of now,
with severing eroding
of our very soul.

Will it matter, in the
scheme of things?
No matter the grief,
you may bear, in this
short life, nor the time
spent praying to an
unknown being, no
matter what religion,
life will still move along.

NASA Astronomy Picture of the Day:

It does what? No one knew that 2,000 years ago, the technology existed to build such a device. The Antikythera mechanism, pictured, is now widely regarded as the first computer. Found at the bottom of the sea aboard a decaying Greek ship, its complexity prompted decades of study, and even today some of its functions likely remain unknown. X-ray images of the device, however, have confirmed that a main function of its numerous clock-like wheels and gears is to create a portable, hand-cranked, Earth-centered, orrery of the sky, predicting future star and planet locations as well as lunar and solar eclipses. The corroded core of the Antikythera mechanism's largest gear is featured, spanning about 13 centimeters, while the entire mechanism was 33 centimeters high, making it similar in size to a large book. Recently, modern computer modeling of missing components is allowing for the creation of a more complete replica of this surprising ancient machine.

"Past public ire over high drug prices has recently taken a back seat to a more insidious problem – no drugs at any price. Patients and their providers increasingly face limited or nonexistent supplies of drugs" More at The Conversation ➜

NASA Astronomy Picture of the Day:

A photograph of Buzz Aldrin standing on the Moon taken by Neil Armstrong, was digitally reversed to create this lunar selfie. Captured in July 1969 following the Apollo 11 moon landing, Armstrong's original photograph recorded not only the magnificent desolation of an unfamiliar world, but Armstrong himself reflected in Aldrin's curved visor. In the unwrapped image, the spherical distortion of the reflection in Aldrin's helmet has been reversed. The transformed view features Armstrong himself from Aldrin's perspective. Since Armstrong took the original picture, today the image represents a fifty-four year old lunar selfie. Aldrin's visor reflection in the original image appears here on the left. Bright (but distorted) planet Earth hangs in the lunar sky above Armstrong's figure, toward the upper right. A foil-wrapped leg of the Eagle lander and Aldrin's long shadow stretching across the lunar surface are prominently visible. In 2024 NASA's Artemis II mission will return humans to the Moon.

Life is a game.
Run rabbit, run.
Don't lose your courage,
life has just begun.