Eclectic Perambulations in the Noosphere
Barley Fields by Wendy Jones
"I enjoy painting plants growing in large masses or in whole fields. In these small paintings I wanted to retain some detail in the barley and also give a feeling of space."
"Barley is a nutritionally dense food. The Latin name for barley is Hordeum vulgare. Low in calories and not as starchy as wheat or rice, barley presents a balance of complex carbohydrates, proteins and an assortment of vitamins and minerals. It provides you dietary fiber, B vitamins, iron, copper, manganese and selenium, promoting more efficient metabolism and providing stronger immunity against various diseases.
Barley is one of the first grains domesticated, even before wheat was cultivated, and it can grow in harsh conditions. Barley originated in Ethiopia and Southeast Asia, where it has been cultivated for more than 10,000 years. Sadly, it is not much used as a food, but more as an animal feed."
"Rennes-le-Château (Rènnas del Castèl in Occitan) is a commune in the Aude department in Languedoc in southern France.
It is known internationally, and receives tens of thousands of visitors per year, for being at the center of various conspiracy theories.
Starting in the 1950s, a local restaurant owner, in order to increase business, claimed that the 19th century priest Bérenger Saunière had discovered the treasure of Blanche of Castile. The story achieved national fame in France, and was then enhanced and expanded by various hoaxsters, who added that the priest, Father Bérenger Saunière had found proof of a secret society known as the Priory of Sion. The story became the origin for hypotheses in documentaries and bestselling books such as The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail and the fiction thriller The Da Vinci Code."
From Left to Right: Janus, Pandora, Enceladus, Mimas and Rhea
"Cassini proves once again that it’s the spacecraft that just keeps on giving. Its mission was supposed to end in 2008 but has twice been extended, most recently out to 2017. That’s fine with us, since it keeps sending back pics like these from its wide orbit around arguably the solar system’s second-coolest planet. Represented here: Saturn’s signature rings and five of its more than 60 natural satellites--Janus, Pandora, Enceladus, Mimas and Rhea (from left to right).
NASA released the image yesterday, but it was actually captured (in visible green light) by Cassini back on July 29. To give a little perspective, Cassini was just 684,000 miles from Rhea (looming large at the far right) but 1.8 million miles from Enceladus in the center, which is actually beyond the rings. That’s Pandora hiding between the rings, second from left. And for a bit more perspective, the image scale is about 4 miles per pixel, says NASA."
Breakthrough Could Enable Others to Watch Your Dreams and Memories
"Scientists at the University of California, Berkeley, have reconstructed the internal “movie” that plays in a person’s head. To re-create dynamic visual experiences, they used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to measure the brain activity of volunteers (the other members of the research team) as they watched short movie clips (left panel in the video below). A computational model crunched the fMRI data to reproduce the images, as shown in the right panel."
