News and links for early October 2012

There was a native orchid display down the road for one September weekend. Here are two photos from the display section:

And here’s a photo from the sales section, followed by one of the orchid I bought (shown here on my kitchen windowsill).

I bought the orchid (dendrobium delicatum) as a gift for my mother, who excitedly requested it when I mentioned the orchid display was on. Her birthday is today as I write this, the 7th of October. I haven’t had a chance to hand it over yet, but Dad will be in town Monday night (arriving home from a work trip to Papua New Guinea) so I’ll get him to deliver it. Meanwhile the orchid’s flowering season has ended, but with any luck the flowers will be back next year.

Incidentally, in a frivolous mood I was inspired to compose lyrics for a song to sing to your plants. Lyrics below, plus a recording, added later.

We’ll grind all the humans to powder
And sprinkle them onto the ground
But first we’ll let their screams grow louder
And savour that heavenly sound.

Links

• The Hubble Extreme Deep Field is a high-resolution replacement for the 2009 edition of the Ultra Deep Field, which in turn adds infrared data to the 2004 original. I made an animation comparing the 2012 and 2009 images, and I hope you like it (I had to manually trim and resize the images to get them to match).
• The Curiosity rover finds a Martian streambed — with rounded pebbles and so forth.
• I intend to browse the Australian Skeptics Youtube channel when I have the time.
• Evidence vs dogmatism as explained by rabbits.
• Most and least popular PIN numbers.
• Beautiful video of a glass horse being made.
• American states that never were. (Just as well: it would have lead to hordes of ignorant people believing that Dracula was set in America.)
• Loved these Google Earth fractals. Would make a good calendar.
• Alternative versions of Earth (via Zompist).
• Giving away books in Manila: an antidote to cynicism.
• On Twitter, Jessica Palmer linked to a poem by John M Ford that I, on a whim, was subsequently inspired to record. I hope that my rendition would please the poet.
• For Doctor Who fans: I recently found that I am the #1 result in Google Images for this search. Nice!

Postscript

Here is a recording of some kookaburras from a September walk in Shepherds Hill Recreation Park.

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