Tag: space

Miracle. All of it.

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Notes:

  • An astronaut onboard the @ISS captured this last February, focusing the camera on the 100 mile (160 kilometer) wide Irrawaddy river delta — the largest river in Burma (Myanmar) and one of the country’s most important transportation arteries. (NASA on Instagram via this isn’t happiness)
  • Related Posts: Miracle. All of it.
  • Inspiration: Inspired by Albert Einstein’s quote: “There are only two ways to live your life. One is as though nothing is a miracle. The other is as though everything is a miracle.”

Tuesday Morning Wake-Up Call

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light

When you get into your car, shut the door and be there for just half a minute. Breathe, feel the energy inside your body, look around at the sky, the trees. The mind might tell you, ‘I don’t have time.’ But that’s the mind talking to you. Even the busiest person has time for 30 seconds of space.

– Eckhart Tolle, from Oprah Talks to Eckhart Tolle (Oprah.com)

Notes: Quote – Thank you Beth @ Alive on All Channels. Photo: maggie kirkpatrick

Saturday Morning

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Make some room for yourself, human animal.
Even a dog jostles about on his master’s lap to
improve his position. And when he needs space he
runs forward, without paying attention to commands
or calls.
If you didn’t manage to receive freedom as a gift,
demand it as courageously as bread and meat.
Make some room for yourself, human pride and
dignity.
The Czech writer Hrabal said:
I have as much freedom as I take.

~ Julia Hartwig, Demand It Courageously, from In Praise of the Unfinished

Notes:

Miracle. All of it. (100 sec)

Live & Learn21 Comments

Notes:

  • NASAEarthObservatory. Published on Dec 19, 2017. NASA’s Operation IceBridge flew for the ninth year over Antarctica to map the ice. This video features photographs of land ice and sea ice, shot with a handheld camera and with the Digital Mapping System (DMS), during IceBridge flights in November 2017.
  • Post Inspiration: Aruni Nan Futuronsky: “I realize in this moment that there is no deprivation here in my life. This moment of my growth is one of inclusivity. I am old enough now to give myself full permission to integrate it all. To savor, to pick and choose, to put it all together. Not without feelings, not without disappointment and grieving, not without hope and possibility yet it is all sacred. It is all inevitable. All these streams of influence, all these rivers of practices and feelings and perspectives. I get them all. I get to turn; I get to change. I get to continue to choose what touches me and what grows me, continually building on the platform of who I am.” (Thank you makebelieveboutique.com)

Miracle. All of it.

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duck-cold-winter

A small child next to us looked down at her snow-covered boots, then pointed to a duck that stood on the ice on the bank and asked her mother an extremely good question: “Why don’t his feet get cold?”…

It’s this: The bigger the temperature difference between two objects when they touch, the faster heat will flow from one to the other. Another way of putting that is to say that the more similar the temperatures of the two objects are, the more slowly heat will flow from one to the other. And that’s what really helps the ducks. As all that frantic paddling was going on, warm blood was flowing down the arteries of each duck’s legs. But those arteries were right next to the veins carrying blood back from the feet. The blood in the veins was cool. So the molecules in the warm blood jostled the blood vessel walls, which then jostled the cooler blood. The warm blood going to the feet got a bit cooler, and the blood going back into the body was warmed up a bit. Slightly farther down the duck’s leg, the arteries and the veins are both cooler overall, but the arteries are still warmer. So heat flows across from the arteries to the veins. All the way down the duck’s legs, heat that came from the duck’s body is being transferred to the blood that’s going back the other way, without going near the duck’s feet. But the blood itself goes all the way around. By the time the duck’s blood reaches its webbed feet, it’s pretty much the same temperature as the water. Because its feet aren’t much hotter than the water, they lose very little heat. And then as the blood travels back up toward the middle of the duck, it gets heated up by the blood coming down. This is called a countercurrent heat exchanger, and it’s a fantastically ingenious way of avoiding heat loss. If the duck can make sure that the heat doesn’t get to its feet, it has almost eliminated the possibility of losing energy that way.

So ducks can happily stand on the ice precisely because their feet are cold. And they don’t care.

~ Helen Czerski, from “Why Ducks Don’t Get Cold Feet” in  Storm in a Teacup: The Physics of Everyday Life

 

Notes:

  • Image Credit: wsj.com – Agence France Presse / Getty Images
  • Inspired by Albert Einstein’s quote: “There are only two ways to live your life. One is as though nothing is a miracle. The other is as though everything is a miracle.”
  • Related Posts: Miracle. All of it.