19/12/06

The Winter Solstice and Seasonal

The winter solstice is upon us, marking the beginning of winter. It's the day when the Sun's setting position along the horizon stops changing. Solstice means "sun stop." Ancient peoples observed the position of sunset with care to be able to determine both the winter and summer solstices as a way of keeping time, making calendars. Stonehenge in England is just such an observatory. Solstice celebrations marked the rebirth of the Sun in Roman and other ancient cultures. Today, we also hold celebrations in December, and some traditions from ancient solstice celebrations remain. Decorated trees, Yule logs, mistletoe, and communal celebrations date back thousands of years as people observed the Winter Solstice. As the holidays approach, the weather chills (here in the northern climes), and people remark upon the seasons. "Brrrrr ... sure is cold. Must be because we are farther from the Sun in the winter." Wrong, the notion that our distance from the Sun determines the seasons is a widespread, common misconception about the Earth and its relationship to our star. As reasoning creatures, many of us compare the temperature variation through the seasons from long, hot days of summer to cold short days of winter with the experience of standing next to a fire. It's hotter close up, and cooler at a distance. But this common sense notion is not the cause of the seasons.
It is true that the Earth's distance from the Sun actually does vary during a year--but it is not enough to drive the seasons. The Earth's orbit is an ellipse with the Sun sitting at one foci. The closest approach of the Earth to the Sun is called perihelion, and happens on January 4, 2003 about two weeks after the winter solstice. Aphelion occurs when Earth is farthest from the Sun, and will happen on July 4, 2003, a couple of weeks after the summer solstice. The difference in distance? About 3 million miles, or about 3% of Earth’s total distance from the Sun, not nearly enough to explain the temperature difference between a cold day in January vs. a hot day July.
So, if it's not the distance, then what? It's the amount (in hours) and concentration (in watts per area) of light/energy striking the surface. That is determined by tilt of Earth's axis and its location in its orbit around the Sun. The Earth is tilted 23 degrees 27 minutes off perpendicular to its orbit. So as it spins (causing day and night) and orbits, the North-South axis points gradually away from (winter) and toward (summer) the Sun. This determines how many hours of daylight and darkness each of us receive at different seasons. Here, in the Northern Hemisphere, as we approach the Winter Solstice, the daylight hours are short and the weather is cold. Earth's North-South axis is pointed away from the Sun (from our perspective), and the Sun rises late, travels a low path across the sky, and sets early. The average energy per square foot per day is low compared with our northern summers.
It's not winter over the entire planet. If you travel down under to, say Australia, on the same date, it's the hot season in December. In the Southern Hemisphere, the Winter Solstice marks the beginning of the hottest weather for the people of Australia, Africa and South America. The "Winter Solstice" is the "longest day of the year" in Australia at the same time it is the "shortest day of the year" in the USA, Europe and other northern sites. So, as you celebrate a cold, and perhaps snowy holiday season, remember that when the Aussie's sing "I'm dreaming of a white Christmas" they're headed to bright white sandy beaches to celebrate the beginning of a long hot season.

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Copyright © Demetrios the Traveler
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10/12/06

Zardoz (1974)
Director: John Boorman


It's the year 2293. Zed (Sean Connery) is an exterminator, whose role it is to cull the population of brutals, primitive humans. He and the other exterminators receive orders from their god, Zardoz. This is a flying stone head, which makes pronouncements like "The gun is good, the penis is evil" and provides the exterminators with all the ammunition they need. One day, Zed stows away inside Zardoz and finds himself inside the Vortex, in the land of the eternals. The eternals are immortal, so reproduction is no longer required. As a result, women dominate and men are impotent, and the eternals' culture has settled into a lazy, bored decadence. May (Sara Kestleman), a scientist, wants to keep Zed for testing, and soon finds herself attracted to him - much to the disgust of Consuella (Charlotte Rampling), who wants to have Zed killed...
Made on a very low budget on attractive locations (mostly around Boorman's home in County Wicklow), Zardoz doesn't always make a lot of sense. This isn't helped by a story construction that withholds vital information for about half the running time, and a frequently obscure second half. It's certainly not as profound as it thinks it is, portentous dialogue and allusions to Nietzche and T.S. Eliot notwithstanding, and The Wizard Of Oz... hence the title. But what it has in its favour is Boorman's visual flair (helped by Geoffrey Unsworth's scope camerawork) and willingness to take risks. When it doesn't work, which is often, it falls flat on its face. But you do have to admire Boorman's nerve, and you can't help liking the end result.
Zardoz flopped badly on its original release, but has since picked up a considerable cult following. Perhaps in recognition of this, Fox have put together an excellent DVD (encoded for both Regions 2 and 4). The disc has an anamorphic picture in the original 2.35:1 aspect ratio, with the soundtrack remixed from mono to Dolby digital 3.0 with extras: director's commentary, a very psychedelic trailer, a stills gallery, four radio spots.


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6/12/06



το ανοιξαμε και παλι το μαγαζι





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2/12/06

χωρις λογια






















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29/11/06

FEW DAYS OFF

ΜΕΡΙΚΕΣ ΜΕΡΕΣ ΞΕΚΟΥΡΑΣΗ
PLECAT PENTRU CATEVA ZILE


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28/11/06

ΓΙΑ ΤΟΥΣ ΚΥΝΗΓΟΥΣ......




ΣΤΑΜΑΤΗΣΤΕ ΤΙΣ ΚΟΥΒΕΝΤΕΣ ΓΙΑ ΤΟ ΦΟΝΙΚΟ ΣΤΟ ΑΓΡΙΝΙΟ
ΚΑΙ ΚΑΝΤΕ ΚΑΤΙ ΓΙΑ ΝΑ ΜΗΝ ΞΑΝΑΓΙΝΕΙ!
ΣΤΟΝ ΨΥΧΙΑΤΡΟ ΟΛΟΙ ΟΣΟΙ ΘΕΛΟΥΝ ΝΑ ΣΚΟΤΩΝΟΥΝ ΠΟΥΛΑΚΙΑ...
ΚΑΙ ΕΑΝ Ο ΕΠΙΣΤΗΜΩΝ ΔΩΣΕΙ ΤΟ ΟΚ ΤΟΤΕ ΝΑ ΕΧΕΙ ΚΑΙ ΤΗΝ ΕΥΘΗΝΗ ΤΗΣ
ΚΥΝΗΓΕΤΙΚΗΣ ΑΔΕΙΑΣ.....
ΕΠΑΝΑΠΡΟΣΔΙΟΡΙΣΜΟΣ ΜΕ ΑΥΣΤΗΡΑ ΚΡΗΤΙΡΙΑ ΟΛΩΝ ΤΩΝ ΚΥΝΗΓΕΤΙΚΩΝ ΑΔΕΙΩΝ
ΓΙΑΤΙ Η ΖΩΗ ΕΧΕΙ ΜΕΓΑΛΥΤΕΡΗ ΑΞΙΑ ΑΠΟ ΜΕΡΙΚΕΣ ΕΚΑΤΟΝΤΑΔΕΣ ΕΥΡΩ!
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23/11/06

We're only human? It's more complex than that





Wed Nov 22, 1:07 PM ET


PARIS (AFP)


New investigations into the code for life suggest the assumption that humans are genetically almost identical is wide of the mark, and the implications could be resounding.

Current thinking, inspired by the results five years ago from the Human Genome Project, is that the six billion humans alive today are 99.9 percent similar when it comes to genetic content and identity.

But major research work, published on Thursday, suggests we are genetically more diverse -- and the repercussions could be far-reaching for medical diagnosis, new drugs and the tale of human evolution itself.

Until now, analysis of the genome has focussed overwhelmingly on comparing flaws, or polymorphisms, in single "letters" in the chemical code for making and sustaining human life.

An international consortium of scientists has taken a different tack and believe they have uncovered a complex, higher-order variation in the code.

This better explains why some individuals are vulnerable to certain diseases and respond well to specific drugs, while counterparts swiftly fall sick or never respond to treatment, the authors believe.

Their focus has been to dig out deletions or duplications of code among relatively long sequences of individual DNA and then compare these so-called copy number variations (CNVs) across a range of volunteers of different ancestry.

The researchers were astonished to locate 1,447 CNVs in nearly 2,900 genes, or around one eighth of the human genetic code.

"Each one of us has a unique pattern of gains and losses of complete sections of DNA," said Matthew Hurles of Britain's Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute, one of the project's partners.

"One of the real surprises of these results was just how much of our DNA varies in copy number. We estimate this to be at least 12 percent of the genome."

"The copy number variation that researchers had seen before was simply the tip of the iceberg, while the bulk lay submerged, undetected. We now appreciate the immense contribution of this phenomenon to genetic differences between individuals."

Some of the missing or duplicated stretches are very long, suggesting that, like backroom switches in a protein factory, CNVs must have a big impact on gene expression.

Nearly 16 percent of genes that are known to be related to disease have CNVs, the group found.

These include genes involved in rare genetic disorders such as DiGeorge, Williams-Beuren and Prader-Willi syndromes and those linked with schizophrenia, cataracts, spinal muscular atrophy and atherosclerosis.

But kidney disease, Parkinson's, Alzheimer's and vulnerability to malaria and the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV), which recent research has blamed on single-letter variations in the gene code, may also well be rooted in CNVs, the doctors believe.

"The stage is set for global studies to explore anew... the clinical significance of human variation," said Huntington Willard and Kevin Shianna of the Institute for Genome and Science Policy at Duke University in North Carolina, in a review of the research.

Evolution is another area that will come under new scrutiny.

The "Out of Africa" scenario, by which Homo sapiens emerged from east Africa and spread around the globe, will not be challenged, though.

Our origins are so recent that the vast majority of CNVs, around 89 percent, was found to be shared among the 269 people who volunteered blood as samples for the study.

These individuals included Japanese from Tokyo, Han Chinese from Beijing, Yoruba from Nigeria and Americans of Northern and Western European ancestry.

All the same, there are widespread differences in CNVs according to the three geographical origins of the samples.

This implies that, over the last 200,000 years or so, subtle variants have arisen in the genome to allow different populations of humans adapt to their different environments, Wellcome Trust Sanger said in a press release.

The research, which appears in the British journal Nature, is based on two technical breakthroughs, one in faster, accurate sequencing of DNA and the other in a powerful software programme to spot the CNVs.


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ειμαστε ιδιοι......

ενα πολυ ομορφο ιστογραφημα απο τη Tribbles.






toomanytribbles: animals in the womb#links

21/11/06

GIOVANA CASOTTO .....ΟΙ ΓΥΝΑΙΚΕΣ












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μαναρια απο τον MILO MANARA












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ΕΤΣΙ ΣΕ ΘΕΛΩ... Η ΣΥΝΕΧΕΙΑ











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ΕΤΣΙ ΣΕ ΘΕΛΩ



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18/11/06

CE BRUIT DE LA MER


ΝΤΕΝΙΖ ΛΕΒΕΡΤΟΒ
1923

À la manière de Jules Supervielle



Αυτό τον ήχο, πάντοτε γύρω μας, της θάλασσας,

το δέντρο ανάμεσα στους πλοκάμους του πάντα τον άκουγε,

και το άλογο βουτά το μαύρο σώμα του στον ήχο

τεντώνοντας το λαιμό σαν να ‘θελε να πιει νερό,

σα να λαχταρούσε ν’ αφήσει τους αμμόλοφους και να γίνει

ένα μυθικό άλογο στην πιο μακρινή απόσταση,

αδελφωμένο με το κοπάδι των αφροπροβάτων

-το δέρας είναι μόνο γα την όραση-

να γίνει στ’ αλήθεια ο γιος αυτών των αλμυρών νερών

και να βοσκάει φύκια στα βαθιά λιβάδια.

Αλλά πρέπει να μάθει να περιμένει, να περιμένει στην ακτή,

τάζοντας τον εαυτό του στα κύματα του πελάγου

-ναι κάποια μέρα-

ελπίζοντας στον βέβαιο θάνατο, χαμηλώνοντας

πάλι το κεφάλι προς το χορτάρι.



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ΡΟΜΠΕΡΤ ΛΟΟΥΕΛ
1917-1977





ΕΠΙΓΡΑΜΜΑ


Σκέψου τον Λεωνίδα και τους οπλίτες ίσως

να λάμπουν λευτεριά

χτενίζοντας ο ένας του άλλου τα χρυσά Μποτιτσέλεια

μαλλιά στις Θερμοπύλες – φίλοι η εραστές,

νύφη και γαμπρός –

κινήθκαν προς τη θέση θάνατος.



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ΟΙ ΛΕΞΕΙΣ ΤΟΥ ΤΕΛΟΥΣ



ΛΟΥΙ ΑΡΑΓΚΟΝ
1897-1982

[....]

πέταξαν όλα τα πουλιά μέσα από τα κλαριά μου

οι άδειες φωλιές ξεραίνονται καθώς το δάκρυ

άκρη άκρη εκεί στο μάγουλο

έφυγε κι ο ζωγράφος τούτου εδώ του πίνακα που κατοικώ

έτσι καθώς η αράχνη

έτσι καθώς μια μεταμέλεια

Τι ζωγραφίζει τι να ζωγραφίζει Ίσως τη νεότητα

Και τις ευτυχισμένες χώρες τους ανθρώπους που

Φοβάμαι τόσο οι μέρες τους στις μέρες μου μη μοιάσουνε μια μέρα

Τι ζωγραφίζει εκείνος που στα πράγματα τα χρώματά τους τα καινούργια δίνει

Ίσως εσάς παιδιά ωραία παιδιά καθώς κι εμείς ση δυστυχία ταγμένα

Που αφήνετε μέσα από τα δάχτυλά σας να κυλά ο καιρός ης ηδονής

Πεισματικά πιστά στο ρόλο των προσώπων σας τον άψογο



Πώς χάνονται όλα μέσα μου όλα σβήνουν

Εκτός απ’ τη σκληρή ηδονή μετά πολύ

Που έχει φύγει



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Η ΑΓΑΠΗΜΕΝΗ




ΠΩΛ ΕΛΥΑΡ
1895-1952

Στέκεται ορθή στα βλέφαρά μου

Και τα μαλλιά της μπλέκονται μες στα δικά μου

Έχει το σχήμα των χεριών μου

Έχει το χρώμα των ματιών μου

Βυθίζεται μες στη σκιά μου

Σα μια πέτρα στον ουρανό



Έχει τα μάτια της πάντ’ ανοιχτά

Και δε μ’ αφήνει σ’ ύπνο να γείρω

Τα όνειρά της μέσα στο φως

Σβήνουν τον ήλιο

Με κάνουν να γελώ, να κλαίω και να γελώ

Και να μιλώ χωρίς να έχω τίποτα να πω.



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SUNDAY BLOODY SUNDAY-U2




I can't believe the news today
I can't close my eyes and make it go away.
How long, how long must we sing this song?
How long, how long?
'Cos tonight
We can be as one, tonight.

Broken bottles under children's feet
Bodies strewn across the dead-end street.
But I won't heed the battle call
It puts my back up, puts my back up against the wall.

Sunday, bloody Sunday.
Sunday, bloody Sunday.
Sunday, bloody Sunday.
Sunday, bloody Sunday.
Oh, let's go.

And the battle's just begun
There's many lost, but tell me who has won?
The trenches dug within our hearts
And mothers, children, brothers, sisters
Torn apart.

Sunday, bloody Sunday.
Sunday, bloody Sunday.

How long, how long must we sing this song?
How long, how long?
'Cos tonight
We can be as one, tonight.
Sunday, bloody Sunday.
Sunday, bloody Sunday.

Wipe the tears from your eyes
Wipe your tears away.
I'll wipe your tears away.
I'll wipe your tears away.
I'll wipe your bloodshot eyes.
Sunday, bloody Sunday.
Sunday, bloody Sunday.

And it's true we are immune
When fact is fiction and TV reality.
And today the millions cry
We eat and drink while tomorrow they die.

The real battle just begun
To claim the victory Jesus won
On...

Sunday, bloody Sunday
Sunday, bloody Sunday..


MAY THE FORCE BE WITH YOUCopyright © Demetrios the Traveler
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17/11/06

River Jordan



I'm goin' down to the river Jordan
I'm goin' down to the river Jordan
I'm goin' down to the river Jordan
I'm goin' down to the river Jordan
One of these days.
I'm gonna sit at the welcome table
I'm gonna sit at the welcome table
I'm gonna sit at the welcome table
Gonna sit at the welcome table
One of these days.
I'm gonna find that blessed salvation
I'm gonna find that blessed salvation
I'm gonna find that blessed salvation
Gonna find that blessed salvation
One of these days.
I'm gonna walk and talk with Jesus
I'm gonna walk and talk with Jesus
I'm gonna walk and talk with Jesus
Gonna walk and talk with Jesus
One of these days.
I'm gonna hold hands with my Master
I'm gonna hold hands with my Master
I'm gonna hold hands with my Master
I'm gonna hold hands with my Master
One of these days.
Now I'm goin' down to the river Jordan
I'm goin' down to the river Jordan
I'm goin' down to the river Jordan
Goin' down to the river Jordan
One of these days.



Janis Joplin




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ΓΙΑ ΤΟΥΣ ΑΝΤΙΚΟΜΦΟΡΜΙΣΤΕΣ







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BUD ΤΙΠΟΤΕ ΑΛΛΟ







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