Soldier

The following is an imaginary diary entry of a Canadian soldier after the Second Battle of Ypres. I wrote it for part of my Canadian history assignment for this week.

May 5, 1915

                I don’t know how I made it through the last few weeks. Maybe someday I’ll get through the horror of that first battle, but now it keeps playing through my mind; over and over again. Every time I close my eyes, I hear the constant fire, the whistling of bullets, the screams and groans of my friends. Yes, my comrades that keep falling because that’s what we’re here for. The only consolation I have is that we held the Huns back. Oh, but the gas was terrible. It glowed an eerie greenish-yellow, slowly gliding towards our trenches.  It seemed to stretch out its hands to choke the air from us. It smothered so many. The silence that the mist made was terrifying as well; as though the guns were just a dream. Now even the grunge and smoke and dismal skies grate on my nerves and my mind. There is only rest for the dead. And one-fifth of our men are just that. Dead. Physically, I’m far away from the fighting field, but my mind I can’t control. But yet we stopped them!

The Second Battle of Ypres

A Question of Nerves

What would happen if you had surgery on the nerves in your lower spinal cord, and the doctors crossed the nerves for you legs? If you would stub your left big toe, would you feel it in your right?

Four Thoughts

From Murphy's Law:

     The best way to inspire fresh thoughts is to seal the envelope.

     The one who snores will fall asleep first.

     The probability of meeting someone you know increases when you 

     are with someone you don't want to be seen with.

     Sow you wild oats on Saturday night - then on Sunday pray for

     crop failure.

And that's all I have to post today, 'cause it's going to be busy!

Ink & Watercolour

This an ink and watercolour picture that I painted recently for my art course. I got the idea for the lighting effects from the lighting effects master, Pascal Campion. Lighting plays an important part in creating atmosphere, both in paintings and in real life. The people in this picture were lots of fun draw; you could imagine that they were ticked off, or happy, or just plain tired from an evening of shopping...

A Glimpse

"O! pathless world of seeming!
O! pathless life of mine whose deep ideal
Is more my own than ever was the real.
For others Fame
And Love's red flame,
And yellow gold; I only claim
The shadows and the dreaming."
from "Shadow River" by E. Pauline Johnson

I had to read this verse a couple of times before I understood it. This verse has such... such a wistful contentedness about it. While other people want fame, love, and money, Johnson only wants "the shadows and the dreaming." A little glimpse into her soul.

Original Door

Original Door 

I posted the link to this animation a while ago on Google Buzz, but it's so good I'll post it again.

DNA

I was fascinated by the following facts about DNA:

"Each cell carries the entire instruction book of one hundred thousand genes. DNA is estimated to contain instructions that, if written out, would fill a thousand six-hundred-page books. A nerve cell may operate according to instructions from volume four and a kidney cell from volume twenty-five, but both carry the whole compendium. The DNA is so narrow and compacted that all the genes in all my body's cells would fit into an ice cube; yet if the DNA were unwound and joined together end to end, the strand could stretch from the earth to sun and back more the four hundred times."

                  from Fearfully and Wonderfully Made, by Dr. Paul Brand

                  and Philip Yancy

The whole book is filled with interesting facts and uses them to draw parallels between the human body and God's church.

Metacognition

"Knowing about knowing." What an interesting definition!

Picture your brain sitting in your head. All folds and layers and made up of billions of stringy nerve cells that are extremely interconnected. These cells zap each other with electricity and chemical reactions, which is the basic process we call "thought." So right now those nerve cells are thinking about themselves...

If You Want to Feel Really Small...

Click for larger image

This diagram is beyond description. I can get completely lost in the comparison. Imagine what it would look like if it started with a single atom...

A Glorious Sound

I love this sound. It floods me with the joys of plane spotting... the toasty warmth from a glaring sun, gleaming landing lights in the hazy distance, the rush of wind from passing "heavies", the smell of burnt rubber and kerosene fumes. I find it amazing that something so metallic and artificial can create the magical freedom of flight.

By the way, I'm pretty sure the plane in this sound track is an Airbus A320. No other plane has the particular "buzz saw" sound to the engines.

Speed of Light

Step outside and look at the sun. Do you realize that the light you see actually began its journey from the sun eight minutes ago? 

Meet Betelgeuse, a super redgiant in the constellation, Orion. This star is 640 light years away. That means the light from this star began it's journey 640 years ago, or sometime in the 1300's. Who knows, the light particles might have started their journey when the Black Death was raging through Europe and Asia, claiming millions of lives. Since its creation, this light has traveled on and on while the people in Europe emerged from the barbaric Middle Ages into the arts of the Renaissance. It kept travelling while North America was discovered, while Shakespeare wrote his plays, and as the British Empire grew around the world. This light kept travelling as Canada became its own nation, sprouted provinces, and prepared a place for you and I to grow up. Today, if you step outside on a clear winter night and gaze into the southern sky, you will find Betelgeuse in the shoulder of Orion. And when you find it, you will end a journey that began 640 years ago.

Speed of light? More aptly, the slow of light.