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My wife and I made our first short film. Check it out, repost and leave a comment if you’d like to.
oceanblog: Portuguese Mano-o-war (Physalia physalis)
The man-of-war comprises four separate polyps. It gets its name from the uppermost polyp, a gas-filled bladder, or pneumatophore, which sits above the water and somewhat resembles an old warship at full sail. Man-of-wars are also known as bluebottles for the purple-blue color of their pneumatophores.
The tentacles are the man-of-war’s second organism. These long, thin tendrils can extend 165 feet (50 meters) in length below the surface, although 30 feet (10 meters) is more the average. They are covered in venom-filled nematocysts used to paralyze and kill fish and other small creatures. For humans, a man-of-war sting is excruciatingly painful, but rarely deadly. But beware—even dead man-of-wars washed up on shore can deliver a sting.
Ancient galaxy collision created enormous stellar swirls
New simulations suggest that enormous swirls of stars surrounding a distant galaxy formed when two equal-sized galaxies collided. The galaxy, named NGC 5907, is located 50 million light-years away in the constellation Draco.
Its loops and currents, containing stars, gas and dust, are 150,000 light-years across. Researchers studying these swirls previously thought they were formed when a relatively small galaxy hit a larger one, getting torn apart in the process.
But in the new study, a massive computer simulation shows that it would have been impossible for a very small galaxy to produce the observed streams. More likely, two roughly equal-sized galaxies crashed into each other 8 or 9 billion years ago. The simulation also showed that the galaxies must have been very gas-rich in order to produce the swirls surrounding NGC 5907.
Most large spiral galaxies are thought to have formed from similar processes. Over the history of the universe, smaller galaxies have collided with one another and merged, producing ever-larger galaxies. Our own Milky Way galaxy is headed on a crash course with the neighboring Andromeda galaxy in 4.5 billion years.
Above: (1) Visible light image of NGC 5907. (2) Simulation of the collisions that produced NGC 5907 (1 Gyr = 1 billion years).
theanimalblog:Morning Butterfly (by Joel Olives)
* Gulf Fritillary (Agraulis vanillae), larval host plant - Passionvine
fairy-wren: red-shouldered hawk (photo by luna)
adorablespiders: Heteropoda davidbowie (!!!)
Wow. The Tree of Life was breathtaking.
I agree
Never been so moved and touched by something in my life. It was more like a piece of music than a film. I dont understand how it could make me feel so utterly insignificant yet so vastly important.
Thank you Terrence Malick.
(Source: ramblingsofanintoxicatedteen)
entomolog:More Happy Wasps - Maybe, Eumenes smithii
(photo by NaturalLight on Flickr)
Wow. The Tree of Life was breathtaking.
Never been so moved and touched by something in my life. It was more like a piece of music than a film. I dont understand how it could make me feel so utterly insignificant yet so vastly important.
Thank you Terrence Malick.
(Source: ramblingsofanintoxicatedteen)
Critics Top 10 of 2011: A compilation of critics' lists
9. Moneyball (162 lists; 9 top spots) Pitt and Hill make Beane and Brand seem like the year’s most intriguing couple, bringing deep shades of humour and pathos to their characters that help make Moneyball more than just another sports or baseball movie. — Peter Howell, Toronto Star 8. A Separation (162 lists; 10 top spots) 7. Midnight in Paris (169 lists; 7 top spots) 6. Melancholia (203 lists; 34 top spots) Depression finally seems to have brought out the best in Lars von Trier: “Melancholia” is his strongest work in a while, a devastatingly beautiful, operatic mixture of all his signature themes and visual schemes. — Christy Lemire, Associated Press 5. The Descendants (227 lists; 32 top spots) To call “The Descendants” perfect would be a kind of insult, a betrayal of its commitment to, and celebration of, human imperfection. Its flaws are impossible to distinguish from its pleasures. — A.O. Scott, New York Times If ever the movie gods were to smile on an adaptation, it would be Scorsese’s take on Selznick’s bestselling book, a valentine to the cinematic artists whose work the filmmaker has toiled so tirelessly to champion and preserve. — Ann Hornaday, Washington Post 3. The Artist (256 lists; 44 top spots) Dujardin turns his impeccable imitation skills on a host of early film stars, combining Rudolph Valentino’s smoldering appeal and slicked-back hair with Errol Flynn’s panache and pencil moustache, while preserving an essential sincerity in the process. — Peter Debruge, Variety 2. Drive (298 lists; 63 top spots) Tense car chases, action scenes handled with crisp panache and Canadian actor Ryan Gosling channelling Steve McQueen as an existential wheel man add up to make Drive one of the best arty-action films since Steven Soderbergh’s The Limey. — Liam Lacey, Globe and Mail 1. The Tree of Life (322 lists; 63 top spots) Wonder, dread, hope. They’re among the emotions prompted by the cascade of images in something that’s closer to epic poetry than to anything resembling narrative cinema. — Peter Howell, Toronto Star (via danieldaystreep)
10. Martha Marcy May Marlene (131 lists; 7 top spots)
The story hinges on a believable lead performance, and Olsen is mesmerizing in her first film role. She starts out wide-eyed and vulnerable and eventually assumes the look of a captive, communicating raw paranoia with subtle gestures. — Claudia Puig, USA Today
One of the year’s best foreign films, A Separation goes beyond its particular Iranian tale of a marital dissolution, contesting along the way gender, cultural, and religious values and taboos. — Emanual Levy, EmanuelLevy.com
This supernatural comedy isn’t just Allen’s best film in more than a decade; it’s the only one that manages to rise above its tidy parable structure and be easy, graceful, and glancingly funny, as if buoyed by its befuddled hero’s enchantment. — David Edelstein, New York Magazine
4. Hugo (239 lists; 28 top spots)
(Source: , via rearrange-me-till-im-sane-deact)
(Source: thenewenlightenmentage)
