Perhapablog

Friday, July 03, 2009

sewer monster 2.0

okay...

i was hanging out with my niece, jordyn, the other day, when, out of nowhere, she produced this card--her first birthday card. apparently, she had been going through some old photos and baby stuff and found it, saying that she had never seen it before. and i, of course, hadn't seen it for, let's see...15 years. she said that, since i had posted all of my old christmas cards during the holidays last year, i might as well put this one up as well.
so here ya go.





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following up on the creepy sewer monster that howard porter served up the other day, our friend, gretchen hill, sent me this local news clip along with her own brief commentary...

Todd,

Have you seen this? Ew...

http://www.wral.com/news/local/video/5485506/

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our pal, nic carcieri--portal comics to those in the know--knows how much i dig stuff like this and sent it over the other day. i do love nature and weather and weird stuff, so when you put it all together like this, how can you go wrong...?
thanks, nic~!


Fantastic Natural Phenomena.

The classical natural wonders are huge and hard to miss - vast canyons, giant mountains and the like. Many of the most fantastic natural phenomena, however, are also least easy to spot. Some are incredibly rare while others are located in hard-to-reach parts of the planet. From moving rocks to mammatus clouds and red tides to fire rainbows, here are seven of the most spectacular phenomenal wonders of the natural world.
1. Sailing Stones

The mysterious moving stones of the packed-mud desert of Death Valley have been a center of scientific controversy for decades. Rocks weighing up to hundreds of pounds have been known to move up to hundreds of yards at a time.
Some scientists have proposed that a combination of strong winds and surface ice account for these movements. However, this theory does not explain evidence of different rocks starting side by side and moving at different rates and in disparate directions.
Moreover, the physics calculations do not fully support this theory as wind speeds of hundreds of miles per hour would be needed to move some of the stones.
2. Columnar Basalt

When a thick lava flow cools it contracts vertically but cracks perpendicular to its directional flow with remarkable geometric regularity - in most cases forming a regular grid of remarkable hexagonal extrusions that almost appear to be made by man.
One of the most famous such examples is the Giant's Causeway on the coast of Ireland (shown above) though the largest and most widely recognized would be Devil's Tower in Wyoming .
Basalt also forms different but equally fascinating ways when eruptions are exposed to air or water.
3. Blue Holes

Blue holes are giant and sudden drops in underwater elevation that get their name from the dark and foreboding blue tone they exhibit when viewed from above in relationship to surrounding waters.
They can be hundreds of feet deep and while divers are able to explore some of them they are largely devoid of oxygen that would support sea life due to poor water circulation - leaving them eerily empty.
Some blue holes, however, contain ancient fossil remains that have been discovered, preserved in their depths.
4. Red Tides

Red tides are also known as algal blooms - sudden influxes of massive amounts of colored single-cell algae that can convert entire areas of an ocean or beach into a blood red color.
While some of these can be relatively harmless, others can be harbingers of deadly toxins that cause the deaths of fish, birds and marine mammals.
In some cases, even humans have been harmed by red tides though no human exposure are known to have been fatal. While they can be fatal, the constituent phytoplankton in ride tides are not harmful in small numbers.
5.. Ice Circles

While many see these apparently perfect ice circles as worthy of conspiracy theorizing, scientists generally accept that they are formed by eddies in the water that spin a sizable piece of ice in a circular motion.
As a result of this rotation, other pieces of ice and flotsam wear relatively evenly at the edges of the ice until it slowly forms into an essentially ideal circle..
Ice circles have been seen with diameters of over 500 feet and can also at times be found in clusters and groups at different sizes as shown above.
6. Mammatus Clouds

True to their ominous appearance, mammatus clouds are often harbingers of a coming storm or other extreme weather system..
Typically composed primarily of ice, they can extend for hundreds of miles in each direction and individual formations can remain visibly static for ten to fifteen minutes at a time.
While they may appear foreboding they are merely the messengers - appearing around, before or even after severe weather.
7. Fire Rainbows

A circumhorizontal fire rainbow arc occurs at a rare confluence of right time and right place for the sun and certain clouds.
Crystals within the clouds refract light into the various visible waves of the spectrum but only if they are arrayed correctly relative to the ground below.
Due to the rarity with which all of these events happen in conjunction with one another, there are relatively few remarkable photos of this phenomena.

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three items of information--

1.) so apparently, when you're posting three blog entries a week, you lose track of exactly how many you've done. this one, blogger informs me, is blog # 591. three weeks and we'll hit the big 600. (we oughta do something for that, no?)

b.) this afternoon, i am going to see my tarot reading/psychic friend, joann defile--yes, THAT JOANN!!!--for a reading. haven't had one in a while and i'm really excited. both for the reading and to see her! (she has yet to read herself in any of the image series...that should be fun...) joann actually does help out local law enforcement with a variety of different types of cases and her readings are always enlightening (and uncannily accurate...) i'll letcha know how it goes.

3.) hey-!! tomorrow's the FOURTH OF JULY!!! we've got a lot going on around here and in the family and so it kinda crept up on me. my nephew, tyler, has been away at camp all this week (and it's been nothin' but raining. poor tyler.) and we have to pick him up in the morning. sharon and i are gonna have the family out for a barbeque and maybe some fireworks (which i got.) (in the closet.) (i'm a closet pyromaniac.) (but, who isn't...?)
have a happy and safe INDEPENDENCE DAY, everybody! HAPPY BIRTHDAY, AMERICA!


"five for friday"
summer fun!

1. what was the nickname of the mechanical shark used in jaws?

2. who played john cusak's love interest in one crazy summer?

3. who sang the 1969 hit "hot fun in the summertime?"

4. on the beach boys' 1974 greatest hits compilation album, "endless summer," how many songs actually have the word surf in the title?

5. frisbees were originally used as what...?

that's it!
HAPPY 4th!!
smell ya later!
todd

7 comments:

Brian said...

We're hanging at home this 4th and having the in-laws over for a little Bar-B-Q. The weather around here has been decidedly wet and overcast, so it has been very hard to get into the summer mood.

Happy 4th everyone and now for my five.

1. Bruce

2. Demi Moore

3. Me in the shower

4. ?

5. Pie Plates from the Frisbee Pie Co.

Matt Wieringo said...

Pfft. Everyone knows those circles on the ice were caused by the Peanuts gang.

1. Bruce. Which was named after (I believe) Spielberg's lawyer. Or the lawyer of someone on the crew. We then named our Suburban "Bruce" after the shark.

~ Wendy ~ said...

Yikes - I think those Mammatus Clouds would give me nightmares! And those ice circles?! definately left by the same entities that leave crop circles - but this time they just wanted to have some fun.
;-)

Happy 4th of July to everyone!

alison said...

Happy 4th everyone!

I'm with Wendy on the ice circles.

Devil's Tower is pretty cool, but for some reason Devil's Postpile in CA was cooler for me. Maybe because it wasn't as tall and the top was accessible - showing the hexagons in all their freaky glory.

Anonymous said...

1. Bruce
2. Demi Moore
3. Sly & The Family Stone.

That's all I've got.

Unknown said...

It is unfair that these images have been used in a MASS email without any consent from the photographers. I for one, am the holder of the Circumhorizontal Arc (the one with the airplane) ALSO this is Not aFire Rainbow, that is insulting to the atmospheric community! This photo is copyrighted BY ME and I am trying to get to the source of this email and who constructed the montage of CHA's without any written consent from the owners. Sure I want to share this with the world, as I have. It was published in National Geographic April 2008, but where is the credit(s) to all of us who photographed these images????
Any help in tracking down where this originated from would be greatly appreciated. The one who "copied" my photo did so without my permission and that is just wrong!

Lisa Gonnelli

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