Gift Ideas for One Who Has Everything

Beachfront property! The closer to the beach the better! Here's a nice one in the sand dunes of Cape Henlopen, Delaware.

Why get a yacht or a motorboat when you can get--a transoceanic vessel! The black ship here evidently gets around. Called the Pacific Clipper, it was photographed in Maine.

An antique car! Bonus brownie points if it's still drivable.

A French workhorse! Not as fast as a thoroughbred, but twice the size.

A trip to an exotic place like Egypt for a zany event like the World Arm Wrestling Tournament.

Like a modern-day de' Medici, hire a graffiti artist to paint a couple of walls in the recipient's honor.

A rocket! For the kid in everyone--for having a blast.

A bunch of kitchen sinks--or bathroom sinks (they're interchangeable for the well-heeled)--in honor of that old cliche about having "everything but the kitchen sink."

A large ornate antique hunk of junk to put out in their yard. Like this gorgeous old light fixture on the Columbia University campus.

A full-fledged sculpture park! Buy one like Storm King here in upstate New York. Dig a few dozen holes in the ground, throw some sand around and call it a golf course.

The Gateway Arch! For enough dough the government might be willing to part with the landmark. You'd probably need to disassemble it before shipping.

The Grand Canyon. The one who has everything can spread out his/her toys there.

For the environmentally inclined: a solution to a big problem, such as the runaway greenhouse effect.

A Stairway to Heaven. A fine gift for the religiously and/or musically inclined. Doubters can just try walking all the way up it and they'll find out soon enough.

Give 'em their own crater portrait on the Moon! It could help put them on the map for the space-faring sort of crowd.

Of course, if the One Who Has All behaved particularly badly, Santa's helpers can be recruited to deliver a big Charlie Brown Rock.

SUPERNOVA FORESHADOWED BY A SONG

The spectacular supernova discovered recently in the constellation Ursa Major appears to have been foreshadowed by a Steven Starjet song of mine titled "Big Dipper." The song goes "Big Dipper's burning down tonight", repeating this key line several times. As you may know, "Big Dipper" is more or less synonymous with Ursa Major.

The song is obviously referring to some spectacular, fiery, destructive natural phenomenon happening there and visible from Earth. That's precisely what this explosive supernova is--the brightest supernova seen in a quarter century. If this supernova happened to ber as close to us as the Sun,it would appear several billions of times of times brighter than our home star.

The song "Big Dipper" is on the cd Love Wheel by Steven Starjet, available at cdbaby website and elsewhere.. "Starjet" is a way of describing the explosive path of matter spurting out from supernovae, gamma-ray bursts and black holes (their accretion disks)--these are the most powerful natural events in the universe.

Here are the song lyrics for the first verse:
After dinner take a walk outside
and look up into the sky
there'll be tears in those pretty green eyes
Big Dipper's burning down tonight
Little Dipper's gonna lose a friend
someone better call the fireman
Big Dipper's burning down tonight.

Celebrity Moon Faces & Multi-Galactic Leaves

Above video as discussed in the preceding and following blog entries.

Celebrity Moon Faces
Enormous strange portrait-like features have been spotted on the surface of the Moon using obscure NASA photographs from the 1960's (Figs. 7-4a-l).

A bearded Jesus, Marilyn Monroe ("Moonroe") wearing a top hat (like in her movie with that name), a stringy inside-out baseball face, a couple pairs of fish, and a caped devil with horns were among the first discovered.

The roster of famous figures seen depicted now includes such notables as Albert Einstein, John Lennon, Willie Nelson, Tom Selleck, Bill Clinton, Saddam Hussein, Adolph Hitler, Charles Chaplin and Babe Ruth. Also on display are the likenesses of Bozo the Clown, the cartoon character Shaggy, a goat boy and Pinocchio.

Furthermore, there are representations of a royal procession (including the British royal guard), a Star of David, an American Indian chief and an Egyptian sphinx. Animal sculptures such the fish, a dalmation, and a deer with antlers are also evident.

Though any of these could have been produced by natural means, it's also possible that they were designed by powerful extraterrestrial intelligent beings, such as the Wormhole Web Weavers, say, as a sort of art class project involving expression, of "native Earth culture” in a geological fashion. Their control over material things and the forces of Nature allows them to create immense and expressive works without
any difficulty or need for crude mechanical devices such as bulldozers and fork-lifts. Their work is virtually indistinguishable from natural forces.

Meet Me on the Moon, Marilyn
Nicknames for the sculptures include: the aforementioned Marilyn Moonroe, Magmoon P.I.(Selleck), and Albert Moonstein (Einstein).

It's possible that some of the moon faces are part of a publicity stunt by time traveling moviemakers who used actors from different periods together--for example Tom Selleck and Marilyn Monroe in a James Bond-style thriller with a title like Double-Platinum Blonde. Some DPB scenes may have been set on the Moon--and even shot there. The rock faces might perform a function somewhat similar to those building-sized billboard advertisements that are common today in places like NYC and LA.

What is truly astonishing is the life-likeness, complexity and richness of the sculptural works. They are in another league from the so-called “face on Mars” (planet #4), which is, by comparison, rather generic and poker-faced--more like a nickel-and-dime-store mask. The faces and figures on the Moon are demonstrable evidence of beings capable of controlling the trajectory and impact of asteroids, meteors and comets, as well as having a profound understanding of human facial dynamics.

These marvelous artworks are site-specific, and so are intended to be seen in their natural setting. Naturally, the appearance of any stationary, sunlit sculpture from a distance will vary depending on the time of (lunar) day--angles and shadows. Nonetheless, as there has been precious little geological or orbital change with the Moon in the few decades since these photos were taken, nor any weathering phenomena such as high winds or rain, they should be repeatable by 21st century lunar orbiters' cameras in the right place at the right time(s).

The above is excerpted from the Steve Kearney book Cosmic Web.  It's available on Amazon Kindlle (including Kindle for PC).

Multi-Galactic Foliage: a Field Notebook

Multi-Galactic Foliage: a Field Notebook

Linking the terrestrial to the cosmic: the speckled leaves of the cultivated evergreen shrub Aucuba japonica Variegata (aka Gold Dust Plant) bear an astonishing resemblance to deep-field telescopic images (See Pictures). This includes, notably, the Hubble Space Telescope's Ultra Deep Field (HUDF) photograph. That image used a ten-hour exposure over several weeks to peer far into space and found an abundance of galaxies.

The markings on the Gold Dust Plant's leaves are evocative of stars, star clusters, assorted nebulae, galaxies (spiral, elliptical and irregular), comets, even asteroids. Also, the leaf spines can look like meteor streaks or spiral galaxies viewed edge-on. Some of the leaf images even appear to mimic the phenomenon of gravitational lensing. All these effects can be particularly impressive when the leaves are viewed in black & white, as on a photocopier--where it's also possible to enhance the view with motion (which can boost nebulosity).

Native to a large swath of Asia, the characteristic Aucuba japonica "variegated with yellow spots" was described by Swedish naturalist Carl Peter Thunberg in his 1783 botany catalog following extensive journeys in the Orient. Consequently, the horticulturalists who bred this attractive ornamental plant to look that way had to predate deep-field astronomy by centuries.

See my (Steve Kearney) book--Cosmic Web--available on Kindle (including Kindle pc).

See the slide show in the next posting of this blog--Celebrity Moon Faces & Multi-Galactic Leaves for examples of the Aucuba leaves phenomenon.

Desert Island Art

Steve Kearney's list of top 10 artists whose works he'd take to a desert island:

10) Paul Cezanne ( because I'm "not in Paris anymore")

9) Dan Flavin (so I'll at least have some artificial lighting)

8) George Bellows (since there's no TV to watch the fights on)

7) Mark Rothko or Ad Reinhardt (in case there are no blank canvases I can use theirs)

6) John Chamberlain (gives me a source of scrap metal to build something)

5) Georgia O'Keefe (to feel at-home on a desert island)

4) Frank Stella (when something goes wrong I can sarcastically cry out "oh well that's just stellar!"--in my best NY accent)

3) Eric Fischl (so when something goes right I can exult "It's a Fishl!" (i.e. "official"))

2) Paul Gauguin (if I find a genie there I could point to these and wish for an island upgrade)

1) Michelangelo (so I can have a roof over my head)