What is a blog for?

Posted on December 29, 2019 Posted in UncategorizedTagged Art, Blogging, Creative writing, History, Poetry, Science, themes, WritingLeave a comment

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Blogging seems to be all sorts of things. I follow poetry, science, history, art and all sorts of other subjects. I post pretty much anything I’m interested in. I try and write things that are interesting, sometimes short stories or poems, other times about my art.

I started out thinking it would purely be about painting and drawing. But I suddenly realised that I wanted to include more than that. My writing and grammar skills are not honed. I used to write essays in English or History classes, but that was on the subjects on the syllabus. When I got to Art school I had to write essays and a thesis, so blogging came slowly. I hope what I write is enjoyable or interesting.

I like noticing things…

Posted on December 14, 2019December 14, 2019 Posted in UncategorizedTagged Earth, Moon, Night sky, Observation, Science, Space, Sun, Thinking, Thought experiment, Working things outLeave a comment

For instance, this is the just after full moon. Its in the same place in the sky as it was over the last few days, but not at the same time! I know the Earth and Moon orbit each other, and the moon is tidally locked with us. Which means it has one side always facing towards us. But as I say its in about the same place, but each day its a bit later, so after 5 days it’s moved from being there at 2am to 6am…..

Think about it. The Earth rotates in 24 hours, if the Moon is coming up later each day it must be going round the Earth at a certain speed. I don’t have the mathematic skill to work that out but if it takes 6 days to move 4 hours then if you multiply 4×6 you get 24 (hours) for it to end up in the same place so if you multiply 5(days)x6 you get 30, which is approximately a month to get to the same place in the sky and appear again at 2am. The Moon waxes and wanes while doing this. From that you can tell approximately where the sun is in relationship to us. If the half moon, and all the other phases are facing one way before full moon, the Sun is on the lighter side of the Moon. If its curved the other way as the moon starts to go away from full, then it’s on the other side. You can guess when the sun will rise from this, the smaller the area of brightness the more to the side of the Earth the sun must be. I can’t work out whether the sun would be rising sooner or later depending on its phase. I can see in my mind that if you were looking at both Earth and Moon from space they would be lit from the same direction, but sometimes you see the Moon in daylight, so I don’t know how that works. I think I would need to start drawing very long thin triangles, based on say a quarter of a centimeter on one side and 93 centimeters on the other two to work something out (based on the ratio of distances from the Earth to the Moon and the Earth to the Sun – .5:93…this is just scaling down the siz. I’m thinking in miles because I don’t know the distances in kilometers…. Its all got a bit complicated….

I remember once watching the moon every day for a week from the top of the hill, each day it got closer to the setting sun, till finally there was almost an eclipse. Somewhere on Earth there must have been an eclipse in the following day or so, but we missed it because the sun had already set.

Giraffe

Posted on December 9, 2019 Posted in UncategorizedTagged Animals, Blogging, Earth, Endangered, Environment, Extinction, Giraffes, Life, Science, Time, WorldLeave a comment

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Giraffes are close to extinction. People are shooting them! How selfish can you be? Elephants, Lions, Snow Leopards, Cheetahs, Rhino’s, White Rhino’s, Tigers and Gorilla’s and Orangutans, and monkeys and marsupials. So many animals that might not exist in a few years. Then there’s all the small mammals, fish, insects, cold blooded snakes and lizards, birds, amphibians. Not to mention Trees, plants and everything else you can think of!

You know who is driving this mass extinction, US! Humans, people, man, woman everyone.

We need to grab back our world and save it, now, before it’s too late and it’s gone….

Plant trees, cut CO2

Posted on November 28, 2019November 28, 2019 Posted in UncategorizedTagged Chlorophyll, Climate shange, Plant trees, Plants, Science, Small garden, Trees, Woodland Trust, WorldLeave a comment

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Just watching a programme about tree planting from the Woodland Trust. I wanted to donate but the website seems to have crashed.

I think it’s a brilliant idea and the thought of planting Rowan trees or Wild Cherries really sounds good. We might not stop global warming but it’s got to help.

The previous programme, on another channel, was with leaders of our political parties stating how they would reduce global warming and pollution. The leader of the current government and another party did not take part and are now calling for the Channel the discussion was on to be censured! We are not a dictatorship but I do worry that things are not as democratic as they should be!

How do I know what I know?

Posted on November 14, 2019 Posted in UncategorizedTagged Art, Brain, General knowledge, Knowledge, Literature, Mind, Science, Thinking, Thought, Trying to learnLeave a comment

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Stuff is in my head. Stuff that I learned at school, or from my parents and family. From books I have read, from things on the TV and radio. From things I have experienced, felt, seen, heard.

The mind is a wonderful thing if it is allowed to learn. An empty vessel waiting for millions of little facts and ideas to inhabit it. General knowledge, science, literature, music, ideas, so much! I know things I didn’t think I know. Except about pop music! That’s what I really don’t know. I don’t claim to be knowledgeable about everything and anything. But I know a bit about quite a lot. But then am I a jack of all trades and master of none. You can see my grammar is not brilliant, I can’t do complex maths or calculus, but I know they exist…

The mind should be kind, I think. To be flexible and fluid. To try and understand other peoples minds and ideas. To care about things around you.

The mind can be beautiful. You have to try and make it that way.

Photo glitch

Posted on November 14, 2019 Posted in UncategorizedTagged Art, Design, Double exposure, Ghostly images, Life, Paintings, Photo, Photographer, Picture, ScienceLeave a comment

IMG_20191114_165233_550 this interesting effect is on my phone. I was trying to take two seperate photos, but my camera on the phone was playing up. I guess this is like a digital double exposure. I haven’t seen anything like it before. It’s quite strange as the first image must have stayed on the image processor or whatever it is and the second image must have added to it. I think the coloured images were the ones I took first?

Would any of you photographers out there know what caused this?

Twins

Posted on November 12, 2019 Posted in UncategorizedTagged Brothers, Family, Fraternal, Ideas, Identical, Learning, Life, Science, Sisters, Thinking, Twins2 Comments

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People seem to think there are only identical twin. Born on usually the same day, unless the Labour is long and continues into the next day. They are from one fertilised egg which splits in two and goes on to form two babies (or in the case of other multiple births, more, for instance triplets). Identical twins might not fully seperate in the womb and can end up being conjoined, that is joined together. Sometimes at the head or the body. It is possible to operate and seperate them if they are not sharing organs. This is not always possible though.

There is another form of twin. Non identical. These are two seperate eggs that are fertilised at the same, or almost the same time. Non identical twins are called fraternal twins. They can be a boy and a girl, a boy and a boy or a girl and a girl. They are brothers and sisters born at the same time, but not exact copies. As they grow up their differences become more apparent. They may be bought up wearing the same clothes…. But they are not necessarily the same shape or size. As with identical twins they may have similar interests or completely different ones.

Life can be interesting, a lot of how we live is often influenced by how we are bought up, not just from our genes. It’s the old nurture verses nature argument.

Rising tide…

Posted on November 7, 2019 Posted in UncategorizedTagged Boggle hole, Clouds, Flood, Humor, Life, Memory, Ocean, Poem, Poetry, Rain, Robin hoods Bay, Science, Sea, Sea level rise, Sketch, Water, Yorkshire2 Comments

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The sea is rising

The rain comes in mountains now.

Falling so fast its like a bomb.

Wet feet

Now wet knees,

Up to my thighs…

We walked once from Robin Hoods Bay

To Boggle Hole.

On the North East Coast

Of Yorkshire.

The sea came in

Along the rocks.

It was faster than us.

He was up to his chest,

I was up to my neck

When we waded out

Of the North Sea.

That was twenty years ago.

Now you only have to look at a cloud

And you are covered, soaked, flooded.

Where will it end?

Up a creek without a paddle?

Barometer reading

Posted on November 2, 2019 Posted in UncategorizedTagged Barometer, Cold, Experiment, fair weather, Heat, High pressure, Life, Low pressure, Rain, Science, Technology, WeatherLeave a comment

My barometer pressures have dropped from about 1010 yesterday to 970 on my traditional barometer and 959 on my electric weather station. There is always a discrepancy of about 10 (millimeters of Mercury?) between the two.

What is ‘pressure’. Pressure is air pressure, the weight of the air pressing down on us from the top of the atmosphere downwards.

The guage on the traditional barometer has gone from fair (gold pointer) to rain with the black pointer.

How is pressure measured? One ‘bar’ of pressure is the average air pressure at sea level. It’s also measured in millimetres of Mercury. There was a historical experiment to find out about the air pressure. The experimenters put a tube of mercury upside down in a glass dish. This can leave a vacuum in the top of the tube. If you have the tube and dish at sea level the Mercury will be at a lowed level in the dish. This is because a larger weight of atmosphere is pressing down. Go up a mountain and the level in the dish will rise, because the air pressure up there is lower (less depth of atmosphere).

There is lots of information on sites like Wikipedia about air pressure. They probably describe how the air circulating in the atmosphere causes areas of low and high pressure. The weather is also influenced by the sea and its temperatures and the heating of the Earth’s surface by the sun.

Observe

Posted on October 31, 2019October 31, 2019 Posted in UncategorizedTagged Bad rhyming, Fun, Galaxies, Humour, Life stars, Observatory, Planets, Poem, Poetry, Science, Space, UniverseLeave a comment

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Photo of Jodrell Bank Observatory I took in 2011.

See that star up there?

That’s a planet Galileo saw.

See the dots across its face?

Moons that circle it apace.

Moving further into space,

Stars and gas, nebulae like lace.

Gazing further, higher, far

Supernovae, neutron star.

Galaxies fly apart so fast

Hubbles constant, Doppler’s haste.

Black holes tug at other worlds,

Gravity wells where stars are hurled.

Big bang was expanding

Dark matter we’re not understanding..

Cosmic microwave background energy.

Look out from our earth observatory.

Mallaband-Brown

Tag: Science