Sometimes you have to move the foliage aside to find the beauty ~
Photograph taken in Portugal, May 2012
Quote & photograph ~ nannette rogers kennedy
Every year
I see the first buttery
dandelions of the season,
it reminds of when
I was very young~
my mother and I
made invaluable crowns
of what some call weeds~
nannette rogers kennedy
photo & poem, April 2012
When I see things like this, I always pause and think: How can anyone not believe in a higher power?
Starling flocks, it turns out, are best described with equations of “critical transitions” — systems that are poised to tip, to be almost instantly and completely transformed, like metals becoming magnetized or liquid turning to gas. Each starling in a flock is connected to every other. When a flock turns in unison, it’s a phase transition.
At the individual level, the rules guiding this are relatively simple. When a neighbor moves, so do you. Depending on the flock’s size and speed and its members’ flight physiologies, the large-scale pattern changes. What’s complicated, or at least unknown, is how criticality is created and maintained.
It’s easy for a starling to turn when its neighbor turns — but what physiological mechanisms allow it to happen almost simultaneously in two birds separated by hundreds of feet and hundreds of other birds? That remains to be discovered, and the implications extend beyond birds. Starlings may simply be the most visible and beautiful example of a biological criticality that also seems to operate in proteins and neurons, hinting at universal principles yet to be understood.
Our minds are our very own simulators…we can simply imagine a thing and be happy or sad ~ when you are feeling down or angry remember one of your most joyous memories or look at beautiful photograph and exercise your face into a smile. You will be pleasantly surprised at the result~
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