Of course there are several major differences between human and bee consensus, not the least of which is that we are not part of a hive mind, despite how much the internet often feels like one. Also, we don’t usually make decisions based on trees and flowers, though maybe we should.
Annalee Newitz, in This video of a honeybee swarm reveals why humans can’t form consensus [io9.com]
I spent a weekend in Sydney between work meetings. It rained much of the weekend but I got a few hours on Saturday afternoon to go and see the city. On the upside the rain left a bit of a rainbow and I was able to get a few shots of it from Harbor Bridge. The weather also made for some very dramatic clouds at sunset and a wonderful reflection of this buildings windows:
You can see the rest of the Sydney, New South Wales, Australia, June 2013 photoset on Flickr [flickr.com].
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An analog day
Ahem. <cough> A haiku:
I forgot my phone
In the living room at home
I feel so alone
Being separated from the instantaneous global communications and the soft LED glow of mindless entertainment is all well and good, even desirable, when I’m on vacation but annoying when I’m at work.
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Gold Coast, Australia, June 2013
In June the family took a short holiday to the Gold Coast in Australia. Took the kids to Sea World and Movie World and whale watching. Not much for photo taking but the whales and the beach sunset on the first day were great.
During the whale watching we got to follow a few whales for almost 45 minutes, and we saw dolphins along side the whales and even a sea turtle. Unfortunately we didn’t see the whales breach but lots of surfacing for air – blow holes, humps and tails.
The beach was amazing, even in the southern winter the water was fairly warm – warmer than the air in fact. We played in the surf a lot, I think that Tori may have enjoyed the time at the beach better than anything else. The beach as Surfers Paradise — and in fact the whole town — reminded me of Gulf Shores and my granddads beach house when I was a kid. Wonderful shallow surf you could wade out in for a long way, sugar sand and all. It just had that small beach town feel, not like the mega tourist beach towns. I will have to take Tori and Livi back again just to play on the beach.
You can see the whole Gold Coast, Australia, June 2013 photoset on Flickr [flickr.com].
Categories
The Bad Guys
This post [gizmodo.com] over at Gizmodo shows the official patch for the NROL-39 [wikipedia.org] satellite launch:
This comment from Mariani [kinja.com] sums it up best:
Any child who saw this logo in a TV show would immediately identify it as belonging to the Bad Guys. Who was the dipshit at NRO who thought this was a good idea? Or have they actually dropped the act and chosen this as their way of owning up to what they truly are, because buying revolving chairs and fluffy white Angora cats for every staff member to pet menacingly is just too expensive?
Yep, 80’s cartoons taught me that a giant octopus devouring the Earth is a bad guys wet dream.