3 Free eBooks - October 2013

It’s time again for the monthly post about eBooks that are freely available on the Internet. The three below are my favorites for October 2013.

Mollhausen, Balduin. Reisen in die Felsengebirge Nord-Amerikas Bd. 1. Leipzig: H. Constenoble. 1861. Available from the Internet Archive here. The images of the desert southwest that were published in 1861 are full of plants that are (mostly) realistically portrayed. 

 Macbeth-Evans Glass Company. Shades and Globes. Pittsburgh: Bartlett-Orr Press. 1912. Available from the Internet Archive here. This catalog from the early 1900s has some appealing ‘shades and globes’ for light fixtures that would not look out of place in a home today. I like the iridescent glass and the pattern of the one I clipped for this post.

Wittmack, L. Gartenflora Bd. 42. Berlin: Verlag von Paul Parey. 1893. Available from Internet Archive here. I am still savoring the volumes of Gartenflora ---- going through a few more each month. The chrysanthemum was one of my favorite images from October.

Gleanings of the Week Ending June 15, 2013

The items below were ‘the cream’ of the articles and websites I found this past week. Click on the light green text to look at the article.

Exploding Glass (Prince Rupert’s Drop) - Video

Feds issue guidelines for self-driving cars like Google's - Speeding up the advent of self-driving cars?

The City and the Sea - A survey of the landscape and politics of New York, post-Sandy - Analysis of what was discovered about New York due to Hurricane Sandy

Essential Friends + Gateways: Take A Long, Slow, Ride Along The Natchez Trace - This is something I’ve been thinking about doing for the past few years. This post has some good references when I get serious about actually taking the drive!

Here's what Pangea looks like mapped with modern political borders - A visualization to understand the first continent…and where the pieces are today.

WWII Drug: The German Granddaddy of Crystal Meth - It was used to keep pilots and soldiers alert

Butterflies tell UT climatologist about climate - An interview with Camille Parmesan

Nutritional Weaklings in the Supermarket - More color often means higher nutritional content

The Physics of Ferocious Funnels - Several visualizations to explain how tornados form and the historical tracks of tornados in the US.

Best Diets Overall - From US News and World Report

World Life Expectancy - Data presented mostly on maps. There is a portion of the site for USA Health Rankings.

Fish Oil - Info page from NIH

Blue Zones - Lessons learned from people who’ve lived the longest

Norfork Botanical Garden

I toured the Norfolk Botanical Garden the day after the Lewis Ginter which I posted about yesterday. The weather was still cool and cloudy but I was surprised at the difference being on the shore and a little further south meant. Quite a range of plants highlighted the visit.

There were the normal spring beauties like May Apples (left) and purple flags (on the right surrounding a Great Blue Heron sculpture).

Roses like cooler weather too. They are better now (and then again in the fall) than in the heat of summer. The yellow ones against the rough block wall relieve the harshness of its new construction.

But the rhododendrons stole the show - similarly to the peonies at the Lewis Ginter. I captured the phases of the clumps of flowers unfurling from tight buds. Don’t rhododendrons have the classic shape of a bouquet fit to be carried in a formal procesession?

There was glass sculpture by Craig Mitchell Smith displayed in the garden. My favorite was the blue jelly fish in the conservatory.

And what about a vine with white flowers unfurling - tight spirals expanding to gentle curves.

To end this very full post - enjoy the graceful curves of an aging tulip and spunky columbines. 

Gleanings of the Week Ending March 02, 2013

The items below were ‘the cream’ of the articles I read this past week. Click on the light green text to look at the article.

Point me to a brain area - neuro-anatomy (head - neck- brain - spine) tutorials

Shimmering Mosaic of Earth Made of Stained Glass and Jewels

The World's 20 Most Amazing Tunnels - lots of photos

Windows On Nature: The Ten Best National Park Webcam Sites In America - A list from National Parks Traveler. The collage of pictures at the right shows the snow and fog from earlier this week….a virtual tour of the parks!

4 surprising lessons about education learned from data collected around the world - TED talk

Want To Be In The Dark? Death Valley Is Among 20 Recommended Places

More Antioxidants In Your Diet May Not Mean Better Health - not all antioxidants are equal

Choosing Wisely Lists - information on when medical tests and procedures are appropriate…good information to have before you see your doctor

Jagged Worldviews Colliding by Leroy Little Bear- an introduction to the differences between Indigenous and Eurocentric worldviews

Technology Upends another Industry: Homebuilding - doing the same amount of work with half the staff

What if…the color in our homes was structural?

I am intrigued by the structural color of birds-of-paradise and peacock feathers. The colors are made by patterns of material instead of pigment. Link the basic research into structural colors to self-assembling nano-particles (here is an article of some recent work in that area)…and the future could hold ‘programmable’ color for our homes. Wouldn’t it be wonderful to change the color of a room - or maybe just one wall - during different times of the day? What if the surface also collected or radiated heat (depending on whether the area needed to be heated or cooled)? 

Or what about technology that puts more display glass on our walls with color and/or images appearing just as they do today on computer displays. The technology is probably already developed to do that - although the price is still too high. What about the power it would take to have all the walls of a house being glass displays? Corning Glass has several videos with this vision of the future.

Either scenario points to a world where our the color and surface of the walls of homes will become much more dynamic than they are today!

Glass as Art

I’ve posed about glass as art before - Corning Museum of Glass, Chihuly at the Dallas Arboretum (here and here), Karen LaMonte’s Reclining Dress made of glass. Today’s post is a series of macro shots of glass paper weights and a vase. Enjoy!