If you do one thing on May 3rd, Vote Green Party on the Orange ballot paper – London needs a strong Green voice on the Assembly more than ever. The Green Party Election Broadcast for the Local Elections and London Elections on May 3rd 2012. Help us Make The Difference. Produced and promoted by Martin Bleach on behalf of Jenny Jones and London Green Party candidates, all at Development House, 56-64 Leonard Street, London EC2A 4LT.

Color Cave in the Sea of Synesthesia


Image by garlandcannon
This is the proximate (and previous) version of my "Just Close Your Eyes" at www.flickr.com/photos/garlandcannon/5393101853/
There are advantages/disadvantages to both sepia and the in-your-face colors I have used here. Which do you prefer, in this case at least?

Walk down Memory Lane with Kermit the Frog at www.youtube.com/watch?v=jSFLZ-MzIhM

Created for k-play’s Jump-n-Tag challenge at www.flickr.com/groups/kaleidoscope_players/discuss/

Proximate source: "Rond" by innac at www.flickr.com/photos/30383287@N03/5389885560/

Original source: Partial Collection By skagitrenee at www.flickr.com/photos/14678598@N07/5377638225/

Intermediate source "Coral Reef" by bethrosengard at www.flickr.com/photos/bethpix/5383317305/

See wikipedia on synesthesia. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Synesthesia

"How do we know that your ‘red’ looks the same as my ‘red’? For all we know, your ‘red’ looks like my ‘blue’. In fact, for all we know your ‘red’ looks nothing like any of my colors at all! If colors are just internal labels, then as long as everything gets labeled, why should your brain and my brain use the same labels?

Richard Dawkins recently wrote a nice little piece on color, and along the way he asked these questions.

He also noted that not only can color labels differ in your and my brain, but perhaps the same color labels could be used in non-visual modalities of other animals. Bats, he notes, use audition for their spatial sense, and perhaps furry moths are heard as red, and leathery locusts as blue. Similarly, rhinoceroses may use olfaction for their spatial sense, and could perceive water as orange and rival male markings as gray.

However, I would suggest that most discussions of rearrangements of color qualia severely underestimate how much structure comes along with our color perceptions. Once one more fully appreciates the degree to which color qualia are linked to one another and to non-color qualia, it becomes much less plausible to single color qualia out as especially permutable.

Few of us, for example, would find it plausible to imagine that others might perceive music differently, e.g,. with pitch and loudness swapped, so that melody to them sounds like loudness modulations to me, and vice versa. Few of us would find it plausible to imagine that some other brain might perceive ‘up’ (in one’s visual field) and ‘down’ as reversed. And it is not quite so compelling to imagine that one might perceive the depth of something as the timbre of an instrument, and vice versa. And so on.

Unlike color qualia, most alternative possible qualia rearrangements do not seem plausible. Why is that? Why is color the butt of nearly all the "inverted-spectra" arguments?

The difference is that these other qualia seem to be more than just mere labels that can be permuted willy nilly. Instead, these other qualia are deeply interconnected with hosts of other aspects of our perceptions. They are part of a complex structured network of qualia, and permuting just one small part of the network destroys the original shape and structure of the network – and when the network’s shape and structure is radically changed, the original meanings of the perceptions (and the qualia) within it are obliterated.

The reason other qualia seem to be more than mere labels is that most of them have clear meanings and functions. We know what they’re for, and how they plug in to the rest of our network of qualia. For color, on the other hand, we have historically been largely blind to what colors are for, and how they functionally integrate with the rest of our perception. In the absence of knowing how to plug colors in to the rest of our qualia, they do seem much more rearrangeable.

But we’re beginning to know more about what colors are for, and as we learn more, color qualia are becoming more and more like other qualia in their non-permutability. Let’s see why. . . " Mark Changizi www.psychologytoday.com/blog/nature-brain-and-culture/201…

Question by *Proud Brewnette*: What color clothes should I wear for a green background?
My bf and I are getting out pix professionally done with a green background. What colors would make us pop out?

Best answer:

Answer by WTF.IZ.RONG.WIT.U
bright colors.
or maybe colorful ones.

Know better? Leave your own answer in the comments!

Pitman crimelog – burglaries to homes and businesses
By Joe Green/Gloucester County Times — Police responded just after midnight May 13 to the report of a burglary in which a Dell laptop computer and an unknown number of XBox games, valued at $ 618, were stolen. There were no signs of forced entry to the …
Read more on NJ.com

Home builder: Regulations getting in way of recovery
So you take all of that property out of the mix, and you are left with some smaller amount that can be developed as lots and homes. So it's going to drive the cost of the lots and ultimately the homes up. Twenty percent mandatory green space just adds …
Read more on Greenville News

Eco-homes and green scenery in sustainable community; includes HGTV 'Green Home'
Spending the day at the sustainable community of Serenbe has morphed from a mere country idyll into an occasion for intensive green research. As idea houses go, the HGTV Green Home 2012 is a great place to start if you are building or renovating with …
Read more on MiamiHerald.com

Incredible song by Pearl Jam from their album ‘Lost Dogs’ (It also appeared on ‘Jeremy’ B-side)
Video Rating: 4 / 5

Black Hole Outburst in Spiral Galaxy M83 (NASA, Chandra, Hubble, 04/30/12)


Image by NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center
Editor’s note: I just saw this great image — it’s the false-color X-ray only view from the Chandra photo released on 4/30/12: www.flickr.com/photos/nasamarshall/7129105247/in/photostream. Very pretty in pink! This is also rotated from the original orientation. I’ve added a note to show where the black hole lurks…

NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory has discovered an extraordinary outburst by a black hole in the spiral galaxy M83, located about 15 million light years from Earth. Using Chandra, astronomers found a new ultraluminous X-ray source (ULX), objects that give off more X-rays than most "normal" binary systems in which a companion star is in orbit around a neutron star or black hole.

On the left is an optical image of M83 from the Very Large Telescope in Chile, operated by the European Southern Observatory. On the right is a composite image showing X-ray data from Chandra in pink and optical data from the Hubble Space Telescope in blue and yellow. The ULX is located near the bottom of the composite image.

In Chandra observations that spanned several years, the ULX in M83 increased in X-ray brightness by at least 3,000 times. This sudden brightening is one of the largest changes in X-rays ever seen for this type of object, which do not usually show dormant periods.

Optical images reveal a bright blue source at the position of the ULX during the X-ray outburst. Before the outburst the blue source is not seen. These results imply that the companion to the black hole in M83 is a red giant star, more than about 500 million years old, with a mass less than about four times the Sun’s. According to theoretical models for the evolution of stars, the black hole should be almost as old as its companion.

Astronomers think that the bright, blue optical emission seen during the X-ray outburst must have been caused by a disk surrounding the black hole that brightened dramatically as it gained more material from the companion star.

Another highly variable ULX with an old, red star as a companion to a black hole was found recently in M31. The new ULXs in M83 and M31 provide direct evidence for a population of black holes that are much older and more volatile than those usually considered to be found in these objects.

The researchers estimate a mass range for the M83 ULX from 40 to 100 times that of the Sun. Lower masses of about 15 times the mass of the Sun are possible, but only if the ULX is producing more X-rays than predicted by standard models of how material falls onto black holes.

Evidence was also found that the black hole in this system may have formed from a star surprisingly rich in "metals", as astronomers call elements heavier than helium. The ULX is located in a region that is known, from previous observations, to be rich with metals.

Large numbers of metals increase the mass-loss rate for massive stars, decreasing their mass before they collapse. This, in turn, decreases the mass of the resulting black hole. Theoretical models suggest that with a high metal content only black holes with masses less than about 15 times that of the Sun should form. Therefore, these results may challenge these models.

This surprisingly rich "recipe" for a black hole is not the only possible explanation. It may also be that the black hole is so old that it formed at a time when heavy elements were much less abundant in M83, before seeding by later generations of supernovas. Another explanation is that the mass of the black hole is only about 15 times that of the sun.

Read entire caption/view more images: chandra.harvard.edu/photo/2012/m83/

Credit: Left image – Optical: ESO/VLT; Close-up – X-ray: NASA/CXC/Curtin University/R.Soria et al., Optical: NASA/STScI/Middlebury College/F.Winkler et al.

Read entire caption/view more images: chandra.harvard.edu/photo/2012/m83/

Caption credit: Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics

Read more about Chandra:
www.nasa.gov/chandra

p.s. You can see all of our Chandra photos in the Chandra Group in Flickr at: www.flickr.com/groups/chandranasa/ We’d love to have you as a member!

_____________________________________________
These official NASA photographs are being made available for publication by news organizations and/or for personal use printing by the subject(s) of the photographs. The photographs may not be used in materials, advertisements, products, or promotions that in any way suggest approval or endorsement by NASA. All Images used must be credited. For information on usage rights please visit: www.nasa.gov/audience/formedia/features/MP_Photo_Guidelin…

Green Party Community Picnic


Image by ItzaFineDay
Green Party of Alberta and Canada Community Picnic More details to follow.

red beach


Image by fluffisch
jaja "red beach" as a b&w capture, that makes sense! a lovely light this evening. there will follow another one that explains "red" beach.

see more details here

moodymann

Question by : Jerry Brown says the only way to fix California is to have massive tax increases?
Brown is going to put massive tax increases on the ballot in June, and let voters vote to tax themselves some $ 45B extra…

California has the highest income tax, sales tax, and property tax in the nation as it is…

Is this proof that Brown is senile?

Best answer:

Answer by goodluckwithhat
There’s a shocker, huh? You would think that Californians would have figured Jerry out by now.

What do you think? Answer below!

Silly Green Products


Image by FunnyBiz
IS this really necessary