Easily strong

What are you looking at?

Eyes everywhere

Soon enough every where will be under the all seeing eye and what happens then? When men in suits have video of everyone at all times?


We enter the new age soon enough, fellow humans.

The All Seeing Eye

You might tag and smash a few, but the effort is ultimately futile. The cameras are only going to proliferate, in dramatic fashion. Soon enough there will be public cameras so small and cheap they'll be everywhere. The computer programs able to read the happenings on all the cameras will come along, and there will no escape.

So, until then, enjoy some British graffiti:

The cameras will not only be the Government's but also too the stores and not just the businesses but homes - right now, as you read, you can pay to have a security company install cameras in your house that they are, indeed, able to monitor 24/7. If you call them in an emergency, ostensibly, for now. Later? Or when needed? Always on.

For the children, of course - don't you want to keep your kids safe from murdering Eurasians? Then years go by, technology gets cheaper and better, and whammo! Total surveillance state.

Read 1984. Don't vote RANDPAUL.

Or any Republican, if you value your freedom - literally.

Everything is Information

Think about it, really. Stop whatever it is you're doing (when you read the end of this paragraph), and think of this: Everything you see, touch, hear, know, think, remember, feel, is but some form of information. But more! Everything that is or could ever be - every atom, every molecular gas cloud, every star, every planet and person and even dog that has ever or will ever live is but a collection of information - ones and zeroes. Dots and dashes. Numbers on scales. Literally. Consider vision - an important human sense. Witness above how the human eye gathers light. Once focused, it strikes a collection of differentiated cells of the optic nerve, and that nerve transmits data to the brain. The data? Lightwave frequencies. The brain takes this data and transforms it into red, or green, or blue, or some combination thereof, and that in turn is what we see. And remember. It's a wicked cool trick!

Colors exist because the material through which light passes and strikes differs. Water is different than stone, a tree different than a car. Low different than high, hot different than cold, and so on. These differences give birth to all color, as the light is reflected, refracted, blocked, twisted, or otherwise changed in different ways based on the conditions. Above you see the spectrum in part, based on the density, temperature, and speed of the water, coupled with the differing angles of light. Below,

an amalgamation of movie poster colors by year - oldest at the top. Notice the color shift! And consider it - you see this shift through a screen over the internet, clearly nothing but data which comes alive with meaning in your mind. Hence!

False color astronomy. Defined as the addition of color where there was no color in the original image. This is an X-Ray shot, after all, and alas! We humans cannot see in X-Ray. The original image is greyscale, but in that scale is revealed the different frequencies of X-Rays, and if you follow the following logic: Low end of frequency equals red and high end equals blue than here you are - false color, but real in its way. It represents something very real and meaningful - especially meaningful to us, viewers of color, as we can tease meaning out of an image in color that we cannot in grey. For the best example:

The CMB: Cosmic Microwave Background. These globes represent the temperature of the UNIVERSE at approximately 300 million years old, which is a trifling number when you consider the estimated age of the Universe (14Billlion give or take). It is near this point that light first escaped the cosmic creation soup and traveled freely across space. And thus the map - different areas of hot and cold. Where the differences are like miniscule but enough over time to shape the infinity of galaxies that make up our ever expanding reality - red areas represent places of higher density and thus matter was attracted and here was built, everything. Blue less dense areas, now representing interstellar space, and it is vast and only getting ever vaster.

Once again, but numbers, which we translate into colors, shapes, texture, form. We are the creators of everything, since everything is but a bunch of numbers and long ass formulas n' shit. Consider in closing this image - our star, "The Sun"! In neutrinos, captured by a "telescope" buried deep under a mountain. You see, neutrinos don't care about our matter so much, and pass right through. Right now there are trillions upon trillions - seriously! - streaming right through you. Yet we found a way to measure them, and so here's the sun in False Color, neutrino style. Pretty dang sweet, science. Also too, eyes!

Finally, yay art! Previous post photo setup - not my picture, but alas I don't know who to credit. Whoever you are, rock on!

It's awesome what people can make out of all this information.

Under a Midnight Sky

All the photos in this post were taken by me, redshirt, on a full Moon night in mid August, 2012, around Midnight. I used a tripod and a remote shutter release, which allows you to take steady shots for as long as you want. Most of these pics were either 15 or 30 seconds. I've got tons, but here's the best. Not Instagrammed, btw. Enjoy, I hope. That's Mt. Washington far off in the center of this picture.

The Big Dipper! The best Northern Constellation, yes? Two fun facts - to find the North star, trace a line straight up from the two stars forming the right side of the dipper. You can't see Polaris in this picture though. Also, get some binoculars sometime and take a look at the second star from the left, in the handle of the Big Dipper. This is actually two stars - Mizar and Alcor. You'll see them both through binoculars, and also in this picture.  Click for big, as always.

Headin' down the mountain. Midnight, remember. And here's a good point to remind you why the Moon shines - because of sunlight bouncing off it and then hitting our eyes. Literally. A photon is created in the center of the Sun millions of years ago, spends a long time trying to escape, and when it finally does it joins many gazillions of its fellows racing towards Earth in 8 minutes. Anything that reflects (pretty much everything) then bounces these photons elsewhere, where in turn they bounce of something else, so on until there's just no energy to bounce anymore. This is light, this is sight, and color - the materials of the reflector change the photon's "color", and thus we see blue, or red, or green, and all the colors in between.

A bit back up. And in this little valley I created a stream over the past year, and now it is truly a thing of beauty, though no picture seems able to do it justice. Created is the wrong word, however. Channeled is a better idea, though does not do justice to the tons of rocks I moved to make it so. But still, it is thus, and aptly describes all our human endeavors - channeling existing materials, in some manner or other. We cannot possibly create or destroy; it is only our place to rearrange.

Gondolin, occluded. Solar lights provide the ethereal glow. I work by obsesion, I've come to realize. Not sure if this is normal or healthy or good at all, but when I obsess on something, by gum it shall be done. My latest obsession has been in manicuring a natural wall of pine trees, as a fence of sorts. I've cleared all the forest around Gondolin of dead wood and leaves (tons of work), cut down many leaf trees, and carefully nurtured every little baby pine tree that pokes its head above ground. Soon (10-20 years), I will be surrounded by lovely, sweet smelling Balsams, and these damn leaf trees can go fly a kite. Raking! It sucks! And in the Winter, where are you then, oh Oak? That's right, bare assed and creepy.

Artist's Representation

Did you hear the big nerd news? Disney bought LucasFilms, and so now the Mouse owns The Force. I don't like it in principle cuz "Monopoly" but creatively, hell yeah! Lucas was space drunk on his own fame/wealth and turned to crap. But he only got 4 billion for it, which, combined with the many other billions he's made off Star Wars, heh. You win, George, you win. Here's a cosmic Ring:

A spiral of death, a sun-like star expelling outer shells in its old age, prelude to star's end. Fitting for the finger of such a creative titan. But here's an industry secret: False Color

Mighty Orion, most beautiful of all nebula. But this picture, and pretty much every awesome astronomy picture you've seen, is a 'shop of sorts. In some form or another, astronomers take the raw data of their images and "translate" these images into colors. Since data is just numbers, in this case, the redshifts of various elements. These redshifts are numbers, these numbers are translated to colors, the colors you see above. What you might see with your eye could be quite different. Who knows - you'll never get a chance.

But isn't "False Color" what our brain is doing with all color anyway? Without eyes to see, there's no blue, or red, or green. Just frequencies of radiation. It is the seer that defines color, and thus, all of life is "False Color".

Or at least creatively enhanced.

Duck Hemisphere

Your eyes don't lie, right? It's a duck, or some sort of water fowl. I never knew - never even dreamed, really - we could all be but lice on a duck's feathers. But hey, if it's turtles all the way down, why not duck continents too, and we but bugs crawling on its surface? Or some such.

Up Here (look into my eyes)

Of course there is a Spider Woman, though this is not her costume. Just as there is a Bat Girl, Super Boy, and She-Hulk. The comics are free to create untold versions of the same characters, repeatedly. Clones? Long lost twins? Doppelgangers from a different dimension? Robots? Long lost child? Time traveling version of you? If you can think it, you can write it in a comic. Name me another medium with such freedom!

With great power comes great responsibility.

Once Seen, Never Unseen

Well, the time has come, and I finally have a chance to use these pictures. As I said earlier, take it from me: Look no further than here. I trust you can get the gist of "goat...se" from these homages, yes? Because it surely is true: Once seen, never unseen. Anyways, above! A single mug in pre-production, and below, a batch ready for sale (not my creations, of course):

Pretty awesome in a 21st century post-modern ultra-ironic hipster way. Pretty awesome in lots of ways, but I'm not sure I'd drink out of one.

Speaking of irony:

And finally, a photoshop that has entered the realm of your Aunt's FW:FW:FW:FW email chains, Godse:

Mysterious ways indeed, ma'am.

Some say in ice

Our brains are hard wired to see patterns, shapes, faces. What did you see here, the first time you looked at it?

How about here?

But then sometimes our brains, via our eyes, are presented with something that makes no sense, too abstract, too absurd, and it bypasses that identification channel:

And the absurd is a liberation.  Or a fortress, of solitude (yes, the google's source for Superman puns!).

Or a theory turned into visual metaphor:

This is Freudian, literally, to the Extreme. Not sure if it's correct, or even close to correct. Yet, there's something here that makes sense to me - do you have another voice in your head? One which often says things like "I'm not sure that's a good idea", or "Maybe we should sleep for a couple of hours before driving" or "Maybe you shouldn't eat that piece of cheese on the floor". Etc. I believe - hope! - we all do, and if so, I ask you: What is that voice? Or who?

Are we all schizophrenics? Or, is the idea of different personalities, different perspectives within the same "individual", the truth? Or a closer approximation thereof.

What you see

I must confess to ordering a pair of these back in the day, thinking I too could be an undercover lecher. Alas! They were a complete fraud, and I learned something that day about the world.... it lies!

But it is possible to "see" in X-Rays. Or in Radio Waves. Or infrared, etc. Here are some examples of the same object, yet the picture was taken in a different frequency. First series of pix is Galaxy M31, or Andromeda:

Radio, microwave, infrared, visible, ultraviolet, and X-ray. And how about our good friend, Mother Earth:

 Infrared, visible, ultraviolet, EXTREME ultraviolet, X-Ray, and Gamma Ray. In the X-Ray photo, the earth is dark except for the Aurora at the north pole. The gamma ray view is showing particles from space bouncing off our atmosphere.

As you can see - wait, what is seeing? You can "see" in x-ray, or radio waves, or even gamma rays,  just not with our eyes, since we did not evolve the ability to perceive that frequency. Some animals can though. So, "seeing" is defined as the ability of a life form to receive and interpret specific frequencies of the electromagnetic spectrum. Thus, if there is no "receiver", there is no "seeing", right?


Thus! And in conclusion: If a tree falls in the forest, does it make a sound? And the answer is: If there are no life forms to hear it, then no. Since sound - like color, like smell, like touch - only exists with the receiver, with life. Without a life form to translate a specific frequency of the electromagnetic spectrum into "blue", there's no such thing as blue. Just as, without a medium to travel through, AND a receiver to pick up the noise, there is no sound - just pressure waves. Sound is the brain translating that pressure wave by frequency into everything you hear.


So, again: Nothing is as it seems. In fact, it's far more wonderful than you could ever imagine.
 

Eye of Jack, Eye of Horus, Eye of Saturn

Eyes! Lost has used the image of the opening eye pretty consistently throughout the show -- the first image of the show is of Jack's eye, above.

So, a prediction (pure specualtion!): Season 6 will open with a close up of an eye, of a character we either don't know yet, or a mysterious character like Richard, or the MiB, or maybe even Jacob. That first scene will most likely be very incongruous from what you expect Lost to be -- recall the Season 2 opener, for example. So, as a guess, it will be the eye of the person who first "discovered" the island.

I'm hoping they go into some detail about the Egyptian influences. But who knows? I don't care, actually, because at this point I have faith in the writers to bring this story home.

Also, of course, Horus (or Horace) is a semi-major character - leader of the DI, and the ghost form that pointed Locke in the direction of the Cabin in Season 3.