Memory Palace

Dune 45 is a dune in the Sossusvlei area of the Namib Desert in Namibia. Its name comes from the fact that it is at the 45th kilometre of the road that connects the Sesriem gate and Sossusvlei. Standing over 170m, it is composed of 5-million-year-old sand that is detritus accumulated by the Orange River from the Kalahari Desert and then blown here. It is red in colour due to its iron oxide content.

As the lighting changes with the time of day, so does the appearance of the dunes’ characteristic colour, allowing for interesting photographs at any time. The wind in the Sossusvlei area blows from all directions, which means that the type of the dunes hare are known as “star dunes”. The winds cause the sand to form a star shape with multiple arms. Its fascinating shape and accessibility makes it the most photographed dune in the world.

(Source: Sossusvlei Conservation Area)

Old City of Dubrovnik

The ‘Pearl of the Adriatic’, situated on the Dalmatian coast, became an important Mediterranean sea power from the 13th century onwards. Although severely damaged by an earthquake in 1667, Dubrovnik managed to preserve its beautiful Gothic, Renaissance and Baroque churches, monasteries, palaces and fountains. Damaged again in the 1990s by armed conflict, it is now the focus of a major restoration programme co-ordinated by UNESCO.

The government of the Republic was liberal in character and early showed its concern for justice and humanitarian principles. The Republic’s flag had the word Libertas (freedom) on it, and the entrance to the Saint Lawrence fortress (Lovrijenac) just outside the Ragusa city walls bears the inscription Non bene pro toto libertas venditur auro (Liberty can not be sold for all the gold of the world). Well ahead of its time, the Republic imposed restrictions on the slave trade in 1416.

(Source: Republic of Ragusa—Wiki, Forced Adventure—Dubrovnik Guided Tour in 30 min.)

In the English language, colours are separate from each other; the words white, yellow, red, green, blue and brown are distinct terms which do not merge into each other. In the Desana language, Reichel-Dolmatoff shows, colour terms melt into each other, in a spectrum where one word gently hints at both the previous term and the subsequent term, just as colours themselves softly shift from one to another, yellow turning into orange into red. In this, the Desana language faithfully and subtly follows the truth of nature.

Thus, bo’ré gohseró means yellow-bright, for example sun rays;
bo’ré yahsáro means yellow-greenish;
yahsári-da means greenish-blue, for example, an aspect of moonlight, and
bo’ré yahsá duabiríro means yellow-greenish—strengthened-with-red.

(Source—Wild by Jay Griffiths, Image—Marcel Christ)

(Source: Lotus Plaza—Overnight Motorcycle Music EP, 2014)

The ghost coast is a very unusual phenonemon that occurs when drinking large amounts of robitussin. It is when someone begins automaticly walking in a certain direction as if compelled by an unseen force. Its called ghost coast because you seem to be floating or coasting along with no effort. I believe it is caused by a heavy gravity of a future event pulling one toward it. Or it could be like if you read an email from yourself from the future, you would have no choice but to write that email at the time it came from and send it. The fact that you saw it leaves you no choice but to write it. You would coast to the computer at the appropriate time and write the email automaticly. People who are coasting often have their arms out in front of them like a zombie. They do this unconsciously which makes me wonder where the whole cliche came from of zombies holding their arms out like that. Maybe once there really was dead folks whose time was messed up and they were being pulled by the Magnet. Robitussin effects the time/space orientation portion of the brain which happens to be the religious portion of the brain.

Holy piss! I was tussin rockets last night, I even did the ghost coast!
by erik f. neumann May 03, 2006

(Source: Ghost Coast—Urban Dictionary)

GOAL

This website is designed to assist feather identification by providing high-resolution scans of flight feathers of major groups of North American birds. This is an ongoing project that will continually add new species.

HOW TO USE THE FEATHER ATLAS

To search the image database by the common or scientific name of a bird species or group, click on “Search Scans.” To browse by taxonomic group (for example, owls or woodpeckers), click on “Browse Images.” Feather identification can be made by comparing an unknown feather with the scans of similar feathers on the Feather Atlas. The range of possibilities can be narrowed down by examining the details of plumage illustrated in bird field guides.

The scans typically illustrate the dorsal surfaces of 12 wing flight feathers (remiges) or six tail feathers (rectrices) from an individual bird (definitions of feather terms, with illustrations can be found on the Glossary page). If the ventral surfaces of the feathers reveal distinct patterns not visible in the dorsal view, then a ventral scan is also provided.

For certain species (e.g., Bald and Golden Eagles, and many ducks), all the primaries are illustrated, and separate scans are provided for secondaries and occasionally other feather types, such as coverts.

(Source: U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service Forensics Lab—The Feather Atlas)

Normally new rivers, seas and mountains are born in slow motion. The Afar Triangle near the Horn of Africa is another story. A new ocean is forming there with staggering speed — at least by geological standards. Africa will eventually lose its horn.

Geologist Dereje Ayalew and his colleagues from Addis Ababa University were amazed — and frightened. They had only just stepped out of their helicopter onto the desert plains of central Ethiopia when the ground began to shake under their feet. The pilot shouted for the scientists to get back to the helicopter. And then it happened: the Earth split open. Crevices began racing toward the researchers like a zipper opening up. After a few seconds, the ground stopped moving, and after they had recovered from their shock, Ayalew and his colleagues realized they had just witnessed history. For the first time ever, human beings were able to witness the first stages in the birth of an ocean.

Normally changes to our geological environment take place almost imperceptibly. A life time is too short to see rivers changing course, mountains rising skywards or valleys opening up. In north-eastern Africa’s Afar Triangle, though, recent months have seen hundreds of crevices splitting the desert floor and the ground has slumped by as much as 100 meters (328 feet). At the same time, scientists have observed magma rising from deep below as it begins to form what will eventually become a basalt ocean floor. Geologically speaking, it won’t be long until the Red Sea floods the region. The ocean that will then be born will split Africa apart.

(Source: ‘Africa’s New Ocean: A Continent Splits Apart’ by Axel Bojanowski)

(Source: Clement Valla—Postcards from Google Earth)

L’Inconnue de la Seine (French for “the unknown woman of the Seine”) was an unidentified young woman whose death mask became a popular fixture on the walls of artists’ homes after 1900. Her visage was the inspiration for numerous literary works.

According to an often-repeated story, the body of the young woman was pulled out of the Seine River at the Quai du Louvre in Paris around the late 1880s. Since the body showed no signs of violence, suicide was suspected.

It was then sent to the Paris Morgue, so the story goes, to be put on display in the hopes that a passerby would identify it. No such luck.

In the following years, numerous copies were produced. The copies quickly became a fashionable morbid fixture in Parisian Bohemian society. Albert Camus and others compared her enigmatic smile to that of the Mona Lisa, inviting numerous speculations as to what clues the eerily happy expression in her face could offer about her life, her death, and her place in society.

Fast forward to 1960. An Austrian doctor named Peter Safar was developing the basics of CPR and needed a way for people to practice his new method. He tracked down a toy maker in Norway, Asmund Laerdal, who had constructed prosthetic wounds for use in military training. Ultimately, Laerdal decided the best way to learn artificial resuscitation would to practice on a dummy. All he needed was the perfect face.

(Source: iTriage Health—How It Came To Be: The True Story Behind “CPR Annie”, Radiolab—’Death Mask’ Episode)

What we’re seeing here is what’s called a light echo. The dust cloud around the star is old, probably thousands of years old. When the star suddenly brightened, it sent out a flash of light that moved outward, illuminating the pre-existing cloud from the inside out.

In the video it looks like the cloud itself is expanding (you can see motion of individual structures), but that’s an illusion. Over just a few years the structure wouldn’t be seen to expand at all; we’re just seeing different structures (or different parts of the same structure, like filaments or compressed regions) as the flash of light moved through the nebula.

(Source: Slate Magazine—Bad Astronomy Video: The Bizarre Eructation of V838 Monocerotis)