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The Shield of Achilles

The Shield of Achilles

W. H. Auden – 1907-1973     She looked over his shoulder       For vines and olive trees,    Marble well-governed cities       And ships upon untamed seas,    But there on the shining metal       His hands had put instead    An artificial wilderness       And a sky like lead. A plain without a feature, bare and brown,   No blade of grass, 

The Still Face Experiment

The Still Face Experiment

Using the “Still Face” Experiment, in which a mother denies her baby attention for a short period of time, Tronick describes how prolonged lack of attention can move an infant from good socialization, to periods of bad but repairable socialization. In “ugly” situations the child 

Light Pillars In Northern Ontario

Light Pillars In Northern Ontario

A lot of spectacular things happen at night, and luckily there is someone to capture them while we’re sleeping tight in our beds. Photographer Timothy Joseph Elzinga was recently woken up by his 2-year-old boy Gibson at 1:30 a.m. when his son spotted beautiful color lights dancing in the sky. Timothy quickly picked up his camera and shot some amazing photos of what he later realized is a phenomenon, called “light pillars.”

“I thought it was The Northern Lights because we live in Canada,” Elzinga said. “It was a super clear night, you could see everything. These lights were [shooting] into the sky, blasting hundreds of feet in the air, and they were shimmering and moving.”

A light pillar is an atmospheric optical phenomenon, which is an interaction of light with ice crystals. When the temperature drops and these crystals position themselves horizontally as they fall through the air, they act as “vessels” for light, shooting it upwards. Bored Panda has collected more images of these gorgeous light pillars, so scroll down to enjoy Elzinga’s shots, plus other pictures!

More info: YouTube (h/t: petapixeltwistedsifter)

View all photos: http://www.beautyofplanet.com/photographer-captures-amazing-light-pillars-in-northern-ontario-10-pics-woow/

‘We the People’ – the three most misunderstood words in US history

‘We the People’ – the three most misunderstood words in US history

Blessed Images: The Religious Photography of Cristina García Rodero

Blessed Images: The Religious Photography of Cristina García Rodero

IF CRISTINA GARCÍA RODERO has a motto for her 47-year-long career in photography, it may be something akin to what she told B&W Magazine in a 2017 interview about returning to her native Spain: “We roam the world and very often we don’t know our 

The English vegetable picked by candle light

The English vegetable picked by candle light

A notoriously fickle vegetable to harvest, Yorkshire forced rhubarb is anything but easy to grow. It thrives in the county’s cold winters, but if the soil is too wet, it can’t be planted. If the temperature is too hot, it won’t grow; and 10 or more frosts are needed before a farmer can even think about forcing it. Only then can horticulturalists remove the heavy roots from the field, then clean and replant them inside the forcing sheds where photosynthesis is limited, encouraging glucose stored in the roots to stimulate growth. It demands patience, expertise and good fortune, and, ultimately, it is engineered for maximum taste: once deprived of light, the vegetable is forced to use the energy stored in its roots, making it far sweeter than the normal variety.

For a simple vegetable, rhubarb has come a long way since it was discovered growing wild on the banks of the River Volga. Cultivated from Siberia to China as far back as 2700 BC, where it was used for its healing properties, it was transported along the Silk Road to Italy in the 13th Century by Marco Polo. It once commanded three times the price of opium and saffron, and was weighed against gold.

It took another three centuries – up to around the 1620s – before it was brought to England by Sir Matthew Lister, royal physician to James I and Charles I, and used as a cathartic food to purge the body of illness. That would have been the end of the story if it wasn’t for scientists at London’s Chelsea Physic Garden, who discovered the forcing process by chance. Covering up leftover rhubarb crowns – the underground part of the plant – with soil in 1817, the gardeners were stunned weeks later when the robust plant produced a shock of sweet pink stems and frilly leaves.

Read The Rest At BBC Travel