Tomorrow it’s the fifth of november and for those don’t know what it’s about here is a little piece from wiki:

Guy Fawkes Night, also known as Bonfire Night, is an annual celebration, primarily in Great Britain, traditionally and usually held on the evening of 5 November. Festivities are centred on the use of fireworks and the lighting of bonfires.

Historically, the celebrations mark the anniversary of the failed Gunpowder Plot of 5 November 1605. The date was originally made a public holiday in England by the anti-Catholic Thanksgiving Act of 1605, which was repealed in 1859. Some former British colonies a

lso mark the occasion. Guy Fawkes Night was celebrated in Australia until the late 1970s, when the sale and public use of fireworks was made illegal, effectively abolishing the celebration.

So what does this mean for us; well for me personally it means not much to what happened that night (the failed gunpwder plot). But it does hold something to think about: some things should never be forgot, it is not the man that failed but the idea that he had. We should not be oppressed by anyone and if one man fails that doesn’t mean we should forget what he tried to do.

Tomorrow is V for Vendetta night at my home atleast. It’s a great movie showing how oppression can change everyones life and how one man can change it once again.

Photo by Cayusa. Creative Commons. Some Rights Reserved.
Film by palebluefilms. Creative Commons. Share a like.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=2pfwY2TNehw

The spacecraft was a long way from home.

I thought it would be a good idea, just after Saturn, to have them take one last glance homeward. From Saturn, the Earth would appear too small for Voyager to make out any detail. Our planet would be just a point of light, a lonely pixel hardly distinguishable from the other points of light Voyager would see: nearby planets, far off suns. But precisely because of the obscurity of our world thus revealed, such a picture might be worth having.

It had been well understood by the scientists and philosophers of classical antiquity that the Earth was a mere point in a vast, encompassing cosmos—but no one had ever seen it as such. Here was our first chance, and perhaps also our last for decades to come.

So, here they are: a mosaic of squares laid down on top of the planets in a background smattering of more distant stars. Because of the reflection of sunlight off the spacecraft, the Earth seems to be sitting in a beam of light, as if there were some special significance to this small world; but it’s just an accident of geometry and optics. There is no sign of humans in this picture: not our reworking of the Earth’s surface; not our machines; not ourselves. From this vantage point, our obsession with nationalisms is nowhere in evidence. We are too small. On the scale of worlds, humans are inconsequential: a thin film of life on an obscure and solitary lump of rock and metal.

Consider again that dot. That’s here. That’s home. That’s us. On it, everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you’ve ever heard of, every human being who ever was lived out their lives. The aggregate of all our joys and sufferings; thousands of confident religions, ideologies and economic doctrines; every hunter and forager; every hero and coward; every creator and destroyer of civilizations; every king and peasant, every young couple in love; every mother and father; hopeful child; inventor and explorer; every teacher of morals; every corrupt politician; every supreme leader; every superstar; every saint and sinner in the history of our species, lived there—on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam.

The Earth is a very small stage in a vast cosmic arena.

Think of the endless cruelties visited by the inhabitants of one corner of this pixel on the scarcely distinguishable inhabitants of some other corner. How frequent their misunderstandings; how eager they are to kill one another; how fervent their hatreds. Think of the rivers of blood spilled by all those generals and emperors so that in glory and triumph they could become the momentary masters of a fraction of a dot. Our posturings, our imagined self-importance, the delusion that we have some privileged position in the universe, are challenged by this point of pale light.

Our planet is a lonely speck in the great enveloping cosmic dark. In our obscurity—in all this vastness—there is no hint that help will come from elsewhere to save us from ourselves. Like it or not, for the moment, the Earth is where we make our stand.

It has been said that astronomy is a humbling and character-building experience. There is perhaps no better demonstration of the folly of human conceits than this distant image of our tiny world. It underscores our responsibility to deal more kindly with one another, and to preserve and cherish the only home we’ve ever known.

The pale blue dot

www.youtube.com/watch?v=QHPv9-Uu6ug

The camera obscura (Latin; "camera" is a "vaulted chamber/room" + "obscura" means "dark"= "darkened chamber/room") is an optical device that projects an image of its surroundings on a screen. It is used in drawing and for entertainment, and was one of the inventions that led to photography. The device consists of a box or room with a hole in one side.  Light from an external scene passes through the hole and strikes a surface inside where it is reproduced, upside-down, but with colour and perspective preserved. The image can be projected onto paper, and can then be traced to produce a highly accurate representation.

Using mirrors, as in the 18th century overhead version (illustrated in the Discovery and Origins section below), it is possible to project a right-side-up image. Another more portable type is a box with an angled mirror projecting onto tracing paper placed on the glass top, the image being upright as viewed from the back.

As a pinhole is made smaller, the image gets sharper, but the projected image becomes dimmer. With too small a pinhole the sharpness again becomes worse due to diffraction. Some practical camera obscuras use a lens rather than a pinhole because it allows a larger aperture, giving a usable brightness while maintaining focus.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=G8LlIgHR6wQ

For those who don’t know Left 4 Dead is a game where you are 4 humans versus a horde of zombies. Reach the goal before the zombies kill you. The fun of the game starts in the 4 vs 4(+horde) versusmode, where players play both zombie and humans in their respective rounds.

Goal of the game make sure the other team don’t meet their goal. But as in any game there are stupid teammates and this haiku perfectly shows how that feels.

5 haikus inspired by Left 4 Dead. Written by Paul Lucci. Animated and voiced by Carter Fort.
by crookedgremlins.com

www.youtube.com/watch?v=lx2iPOemj2Y