Beach Sunset
A sunset near Half Moon Bay, in California. I was coming down from a hike and caught the sun just as it dropped below the clouds.
Tag » nature
Trees
Photographer Myoung Ho Lee takes pictures of trees separated from their background by a white backdrop. Neat idea.
On a separate note, I know I haven’t been posting lately. Things have been busy at work, but I’m going to try posting more often.
A new photoblog
My friend Diede van Lamoen has finally started posting pictures at lamoen.com. Check out some great shots from his adventure travels around the world.
PS: Diede, please fix the RSS feed so it includes the pictures. C’mon, you were a CS major!
Miracle Berries
PSFK points us to this WSJ article about Miracle Berries, which make everything sour taste sweet:
Within minutes of consuming the berries, guests were devouring lime wedges as if they were candy. Straight lemon juice went down like lemonade, and goat cheese tasted as if it was “covered in powdered sugar,” said one astonished partygoer.
Jacob Grier and David Barzelay post their personal accounts of the experience, and The Guardian highlights its use for diets in Japan. For a lot more information, check out this history of the miracle berry.
This is without doubt the most amazing thing I’ve heard in the last few months. I clearly have to organize a miracle berry party at some point. It also makes me wonder how many other fantastic plants we don’t know about yet…
PS: here’s a link to the WSJ version of the article, but it will expire in the coming days. Doh!
Following up on yesterday’s post on Michael Poliza, Jason Kottke reminds me of Yann-Arthus Bertrand, who takes similarly beautiful aerial photographs. I can highly recommend his book Earth from Above (but you need a sturdy coffee table).
Michael Poliza has some stunning photography. Check out these aerial shots.
Update: You may find it easier to check out Michael’s pictures on Flickr. I love this one. Thanks Jason!
Superlions of Botswana, an amazing story of evolutionary adaption. In the same vein, an article on the evolution of a lactose-tolerance gene in East Africa.
Lot’s of aurora pictures: timelapse, from space, with a volcano.
The BBC has some amazing pictures of volcanic smoke-rings blown by Mount Etna in Sicily.
Biomimicry
In the past months, I have come across no less than two articles on Biomimicry entitled Nature’s Design Workshop: MSNBC and more recently BusinessWeek (make sure you watch the slideshow).
Researcher Promode Bandyopadhyay has a very interesting quote:
I am against mimicry. I am against making a mechanical zoo. There is no science in that. It is imperative to understand the science first.
Nature is great at finding a solution to a very particular problem within a precise set of environmental constraints. The researcher’s role is to understand how nature’s solution works and to generalize it to other applications. Combine nature’s adeptness at finding efficient, sustainable solutions with our ability for abstract thinking and we get some of the very best engineering around.
For those not familiar with the term, the Biomimicry Institute gives the following definition:
Biomimicry (from bios, meaning life, and mimesis, meaning to imitate) is a new science that studies nature’s best ideas and then imitates these designs and processes to solve human problems.
Their website has a good introduction to the concept, and a bunch of interesting case studies.
