Image Upload Test

Earlier images, not yet re-categorized. All subject types. Not for new images.

Moderators: rjlittlefield, ChrisR, Chris S., Pau

augusthouse
Posts: 1195
Joined: Sat Sep 16, 2006 1:39 am
Location: New South Wales Australia

Image Upload Test

Post by augusthouse »

Just testing image upload

Craig

Image
To use a classic quote from 'Antz' - "I almost know exactly what I'm doing!"

augusthouse
Posts: 1195
Joined: Sat Sep 16, 2006 1:39 am
Location: New South Wales Australia

Post by augusthouse »

That was really quick!
To use a classic quote from 'Antz' - "I almost know exactly what I'm doing!"

rjlittlefield
Site Admin
Posts: 23562
Joined: Tue Aug 01, 2006 8:34 am
Location: Richland, Washington State, USA
Contact:

Post by rjlittlefield »

Nice image -- what's the flower? (It looks a lot like our rhododendrons, but half a world away, who knows?)

--Rik

augusthouse
Posts: 1195
Joined: Sat Sep 16, 2006 1:39 am
Location: New South Wales Australia

Post by augusthouse »

It's a Magnolia Rik.

I planted it about 3 years ago. I'd have to jog my memory for botanical specifics.

Craig
To use a classic quote from 'Antz' - "I almost know exactly what I'm doing!"

augusthouse
Posts: 1195
Joined: Sat Sep 16, 2006 1:39 am
Location: New South Wales Australia

Post by augusthouse »

I remember reading that a Magnolia seed was found, estimated to be 10,000 years old and they managed to germinate it.

Can't remember where I came across that info; but if anyone knows please point me in the right direction.

Craig
To use a classic quote from 'Antz' - "I almost know exactly what I'm doing!"

MacroLuv
Posts: 1964
Joined: Mon Aug 28, 2006 2:36 pm
Location: Croatia

Post by MacroLuv »

Nice. :D
Yep, Magnolia is a very old genus of flowering plants having evolved even before bees appeared. 8)
The meaning of beauty is in sharing with others.

P.S.
Noticing of my "a" and "the" and other grammar
errors are welcome. :D

beetleman
Posts: 3578
Joined: Fri Aug 04, 2006 4:19 am
Location: Southern New Hampshire USA

Post by beetleman »

Very nice Craig. A nice clear background shows off the flower very well.
Take Nothing but Pictures--Leave Nothing but Footprints.
Doug Breda

Ken Ramos
Posts: 7208
Joined: Thu Jul 27, 2006 2:12 pm
Location: lat=35.4005&lon=-81.9841

Post by Ken Ramos »

Those are some beautiful flowers there Craig. The only ones I have seen though are the white ones. Good shot! :D

augusthouse
Posts: 1195
Joined: Sat Sep 16, 2006 1:39 am
Location: New South Wales Australia

Post by augusthouse »

I took this shot hand-held from my verandah for the purposes of a lens test. There was a light breeze at the time. There are a number of factors that could have been handled better; but I needed a subject and there it was.

The magnolia is growing beside my verandah and is gradually making its way upward (as they tend to do).

I have a rainforest surrounding the east and south eastern side of my house. A eucalypt corridor runs through the rainforest and it is an official koala corridor - yep there are koalas in there.

In the background of the image you can see the lawn which runs down into a natural pond that I suspect would have been an old tar-pit as our area was once volcanic and the geological evidence is obvious. The rainforest/eucalypt corridor extends around and beyond the pond. The ocean is about five minutes from my house to the east (with some suburbia in between). To the west is a huge, lush green plateau that is believed to have once been home to a volcano the size of Mt Fuji.

I don't know if anyone is familiar with Mary E White - "The Greening of Gondwana"; but her place The Falls Retreat is not that far from mine - as the crow flies.

I'll find the details in regard to this particular magnolia. It's in some compartment of my memory under a pile of other stuff.

I'd still like to find the article that outlined the 10,000 year old magnolia seed adventure. I read it in my pre-computer days when I was involved in horticulture. I vaguely remember that it all took place in China.

Craig
To use a classic quote from 'Antz' - "I almost know exactly what I'm doing!"

Ken Ramos
Posts: 7208
Joined: Thu Jul 27, 2006 2:12 pm
Location: lat=35.4005&lon=-81.9841

Post by Ken Ramos »

Interesting info there Craig. I remember Gondwana being referenced as I was reading up on the formation of the Appalachian Mountain Range, some interesting stuff there. Sounds like a very interesting place you live in, pre/post :?: -volcanic areas seem to fascinate me for some reason. Must be all those prehistoric movies I watched as a kid many years ago. :D

augusthouse
Posts: 1195
Joined: Sat Sep 16, 2006 1:39 am
Location: New South Wales Australia

Post by augusthouse »

Yeah Ken,
No dinos left but still plenty of reptiles that think they own the place. We all get along.

If we are in a state of pre/post volcanic activity it could become rather interesting. I'd better watch Dante's Peak again, just to be prepared.

Craig
Last edited by augusthouse on Mon Feb 18, 2008 1:42 am, edited 2 times in total.
To use a classic quote from 'Antz' - "I almost know exactly what I'm doing!"

augusthouse
Posts: 1195
Joined: Sat Sep 16, 2006 1:39 am
Location: New South Wales Australia

Post by augusthouse »

Just one other point that I need to clarify as a matter of conscience. I do not hold to the 'popular theory of evolution'. There is some biological truth that explains about .00000000000000000000001% of the equation (if that); but all that nonsense that is thrown into so many popular docos and other books and what not, is nothing but myth based on speculation and inaccurate assumptions yet presented as solid truth to the general population. If you start with a flawed or inadequate formula you will never arrive at the correct answer. So if all that info that is so often dished-up to us doesn't sit right with you - it's okay - you are not alone - with good reason.

There are many who take onboard the extent of our knowledge - past and present, (for just as much has been lost as found) and are still left with the word 'mystery'... Don't assume that the sciences will be able to define that for us - they are not and never will be able to; though of all the sciences Art at least provides us with the clarity of a reliable, strangely familiar echo.

Darwin called it an 'abominable mystery' - there was a time when there were no flowering plants and then there were flowering plants, a vast array of them. More of an occasion of "Let there be..."

Our highest level of science and mathematics are still just finger-painting. In Nature I believe we can discern a Signature; the 'prima' has been provided for us. I'm obviously not referring to 'Intelligent Design' as such. I haven't looked into that idea; it seems to be merely a manufactured counter-argument to Evolution (though that is an unfounded assumption, as indicated, I have not looked into the matter). Truth doesn't need a manufactured counter-argument to act in its defence in the same way an elephant doesn't need to be concerned about a flea biting its butt, there is no discernable impact.

I need to quote Thomas Carlyle here, though C.S Lewis or Blaise Pascal and others would also be relevant. A.W Tozer leads us into it:

"Thomas Carlyle, following Plato, pictures a man, a deep pagan thinker, who had grown to maturity in some hidden cave and is brought out suddenly to see the sun rise. 'What would his wonder be,' exclaims Carlyle, 'his rapt astonishment at the sight we daily witness with indifference! With the free, open sense of a child, yet with the ripe faculty of a man, his whole heart would be kindled by that sight... The green flowery rock-built earth, the trees, the mountains, rivers, many-sounding seas; that great deep sea of azure that swims overhead; the winds sweeping through it; the black cloud fashioning itself together, now pouring out fire, now hail and rain; what is it? Ay, what? At the bottom we do not yet know; we can never know at all.'

How different are we who have grown used to it; who have become jaded with a satiety of wonder. 'It is not by our superior insight that we escape the difficulty,' says Carlyle, 'it is by our superior levity, out inattention, our want of insight. It is by not thinking that we cease to wonder at it....We call the fire of the black thundercloud 'electricity', and lecture learnedly about it, and grind the like of it out of glass and silk: but what is it? Whence comes it? Whither goes it? Science has done much for us; but it is a poor science that would hide from us the great deep sacred infinitude of Nescience, wither we can never penetrate, on which all science swims as a mere superficial film. This world, after all our science and sciences, is still a miracle; wonderful, inscrutable, magical and more, to whosoever will think of it.'

These penetrating, almost prophetic, words were written more than 150 years ago, but not all the breathtaking advances of science and technology since that time have invalidated one word or rendered obsolete as much as one period or comma. Still we do not know. We save face by repeating frivolously the popular jargon of science. We harness the mighty energy that rushes through our world; we subject it to fingertip control in our cars and our kitchens; we make it work for us like Aladdin's lamp; but we still do not know what it is. Secularlism, materialism and the intrusive presence of things have put out the light in our souls and turned us into a generation of zombies. We cover our deep ignorance with words, but we are ashamed to wonder, we are afraid to whisper 'mystery'. "

Craig
To use a classic quote from 'Antz' - "I almost know exactly what I'm doing!"

Ken Ramos
Posts: 7208
Joined: Thu Jul 27, 2006 2:12 pm
Location: lat=35.4005&lon=-81.9841

Post by Ken Ramos »

Well here is a table spread with "food for thought." An interesting piece here Craig. I had never considered as much, though maybe we all should. :D
Our highest level of science and mathematics are still just finger-painting.
Truth doesn't need a manufactured counter-argument to act in its defence in the same way an elephant doesn't need to be concerned about a flea biting its butt, there is no discernable impact.
I like these and something to remember I think. :wink:

Michigan Michael
Posts: 193
Joined: Sat Aug 04, 2007 6:12 pm
Location: SE Mi.

Post by Michigan Michael »

augusthouse wrote: In Nature I believe we can discern a Signature; the 'prima' has been provided for us.

I, for one, am "mystified" by these two terms.

rjlittlefield
Site Admin
Posts: 23562
Joined: Tue Aug 01, 2006 8:34 am
Location: Richland, Washington State, USA
Contact:

Post by rjlittlefield »

augusthouse wrote:We cover our deep ignorance with words, but we are ashamed to wonder, we are afraid to whisper 'mystery'.
Just to put this on a quantitative basis...

The average human brain weighs about 3 pounds.

The total biomass of the Earth is estimated to be around 1.5x10^14 pounds (75 billion tons).

Consider building a model of anything on a scale of 1:50,000,000,000,000, and ask yourself how much detail you'd have to leave out.

That's how much you lose, at a minimum, in going from how the world actually works to how a human can possibly think about it.*

Humbling, isn't it?

I for one am delighted. Long live the mysteries! :D

--Rik

*The actual loss is rather more severe. Best available estimates place human memory at around 1 billion bits per brain. So what we're really talking about is a model that allocates 1 bit of memory for each 150,000 pounds of biomass. And that's just the current biomass. Add in the historical biomass, and the physical systems, and the ratio gets rather pointless to compute. "Complete understanding" or "absolute certainty"? Give me a break! :roll:

Post Reply Previous topicNext topic