An older but enlightening and reassuring post from the archives of Today I Found Out was really something to assuage the fears of silent-worriers, explaining the nature of those strange and sometimes persistent odd shapes that glide over ones field of vision. I always thought that these transparent zeppelins were microbes darting around ones eyeball (always there but easier to discern when focused on infinity—blue or grey skies—or in any visual landscape of low-contrast), which usually receding just to the periphery if one tried to focus on them, only to return to the centre of ones eye when not looking.
TIFO informs readers, as a public service it seems since there were quite a lot of people relieved to find out it was not some dread sign of the onset of blindness, poisoning or the effects of staring at the sun too long as a kid during long car trips, that the phenomenon is common to everyone, even if they are loath to discuss such optical figments as they are hard to articulate—and besides, it sounds a bit crazy and may be a sign that something is seriously wrong with them—and goes by the name mydesopsia (eye-floaters—or en france, mouches volantes und auf Deutsch, fliegende Mรผcke, flying flies) and are gelatinous bits of the vitreous humour coming loose from the rear of ones eyeball and then floating around inside of it. The squiggly flashes that avert themselves from ones gaze and cannot be studied (or fretted over directly) are usually the electric impulses released as bits of the vitreous humour detach and bump against the receptors and nerves of the eye, the discharge interpreted by the sense of vision as flashes. The article has some bonus facts and some warnings and disclaimers, as no one should take this or any accounting as a substitute for a professional diagnosis, nor be afraid to share ones own weird mirages.
Sunday 18 May 2014
adrifters
wild-vines or foilage
Researches in the jungles of Chile have discovered a species of ivy that has advanced chameleon-like abilities to blend into its surroundings—hitherto a trait almost exclusively reserved to select members of the animal kingdom.
nomenclature or child-like princess
Not very long ago, we had a newborn come into the community and the mother named her Voilร , which I think is pretty cute—ta-da! Presto—here I am! There is a young adult here called uniquely Atreu, after the alter-ego hero of The Never-Ending Story.
There are no shortage, as well, of unfortunately chosen names, but many countries place few restrictions on what parents can call their children or what individuals can call themselves—unlike our host country Germany, which prudently denied new parents the right right to call their children “Google” or “Osama bin Laden.” Of those parents who are called out on this listing of outrageous baby names of the past year, I think the most tragic (but who am I to judge, since those all may have been intentionally picked) are those six baby girls named Charlemagne, not a feminine name at all but rather the French version of Karolus Magnus (Karl der Groรe), emperor and unifying force of medieval Europe after the fall of Rome.
Saturday 17 May 2014
refrain or power glove
sting, where is thy death?
Kottke shares an intriguing review of a new book out by marine biologist Lisa-ann Gershwin on the curious lifestyle of jellyfish and increasing success in the world's oceans.
These creatures have been around for a half a billion years, at least, and such longevity certainly affords some evolutionary luxuries. Further, jellyfish could not only be considered to have attained a certain biological immortality, one type even re-emerging like a phoenix as a polyp from its own decomposing body, but also when faced with hard-times, hunger and starvation, jellyfish merely respond by shrinking (and in proportion) to a small-scale version of their former size, until food becomes available again.
catagories: ๐, environment
ticker-tape or news you can use
Several companies world-wide, including the Frauenhofer Institute in Germany, are developing applications that can process unfiltered data through algorithms which the program can fetch autonomously from the รฆther (with apparently little mentorship, apprenticeship or copy-editing) to formulate news articles, written in natural language.
catagories: ๐, language, lifestyle, networking and blogging, technology and innovation
Thursday 15 May 2014
reasonable person or scare quotes
Move along—nothing to see here. There is an odd instance of disclosure yielding a sort of hybrid-transparency—that’s middling somewhere between rank-hypocrisy and demanding a blessing—with the news of the son of the vice-president of the United States of America being appointed to the board of directors of a Ukrainian natural gas concern.
This whole regime seems pretty keen on this line, gimmick of sophistry which divorces perception from reality and everything is same- otherwise—but of course that’s politics everywhere and immemorial, and there are too many incidents of unfortunate associations to list. There’s no chance of corruption or conflict-of-interests or skewed negotiations. End of story—and the line of questioning was summarily rebuffed. Of course, selling back fracking Freedom Gas to Europe and the US (as opposed to evil, commie Russian gas, and exporting the dirty business of doing business to someone else’s backyard) is a sure way to ingratiate democracy and singing eagles to the region, and has absolutely no parallels to former VP’s connections to war-profiteering and firms contracted to rebuild Iraq after the US invasion. None whatsoever.
catagories: ๐ท๐บ, ๐บ๐ธ, ๐ฑ, environment, foreign policy, revolution