Thorsday Tonic - Happy Little Clouds!

                                                                                                                                                 painting by Bob Ross via kalenart

For many NiftyReaders (not to mention, yours truly), it's been an almost endless winter. Some of us are contending with raw, wet, cold days and some are even still dealing with snow. The garden looks so sad, like it's mid-January not nearing the end of April.

I toyed with the idea of reposting the wonderful remix The Garden of Your Mind featuring wonderful classic video of Mr. (Fred) Rogers, but then I found another wonderful offering that I think makes the perfect Thorsday Tonic for the weary reader.

This is a remix that features another TV personality, Bob Ross, the beloved PBS artist who gently invited a generation of viewers to explore their inner artist.  The soft-spoken painter honed his craft of quick painting while in the Air Force. During that period in his life, Ross promised himself that if he ever got out of the military, he would never yell or scream again - and by all accounts he kept that promise.

This autotune captures the essence of a gentle man and an artist, and I think it inspires any kind of creativity. Whether you dream of painting, writing or making music - or any other creative endeavor from dreaming up new mathematical theorems to designing cool toys - I think Bob's words are meant for you:  "Believe that you can do it...'cause you can do it."



via pbsdigitalstudios                                    remix by melodysheep

Happy Little Clouds

I believe...I believe...
every day's a good day when you paint.
I believe...I believe...
it'll bring a lot of good thoughts to your heart.

Let's build a happy little cloud.
Let's build some happy little trees.
There are no limits here.
You start out by believing here.

You can almost paint with anything;
all you have to do is practice.
There are no limits here.
You start by believing here.

This is your world...you're the creator.
Find freedom on this canvas.
Believe that you can do it...'cause you can do it.

Give it a little touch; give it a little push,
make love to the canvas
give it a little touch; give it a little push,
caress it very gently,
grab it, lift it, fluff it,
you can go on and on and on,
back and forth, back and forth,
layer after layer after layer.

Relax. Let it flow.
Think like water.
Relax. Let it flow.
You can go on and on and on.

We don't make mistakes,
we just have happy accidents.
You can do anything that you want to do.
Total power.
Sing along. Have a good time.

This is your world. You're the creator.

Find freedom on this canvas.

Believe that you can do it...'cause you can do it.

I believe...I believe...

every day's a good day when you paint.

I believe...I believe...

it'll bring a lot of good thoughts to your heart.

Thorsday Tonic - Escaping Our Island Earth

Starry Night Over the Rhone, Vincent Van Gogh

There is way too much winter out there still!

For your Thorsday Tonic, let's escape this winter-weary planet and journey to the stars!

First, from the poetry corner:

Stars 

How countlessly they congregate
O'er our tumultuous snow,
Which flows in shapes as tall as trees
When wintry winds do blow!--

As if with keeness for our fate,
Our faltering few steps on
To white rest, and a place of rest
Invisible at dawn,--

And yet with neither love nor hate,
Those starts like somw snow-white
Minerva's snow-white marble eyes
Without the gift of sight.

-Robert Frost


And now for some Morgan Freeman/science/autotune awesomeness!

Quote for the Thorsday win:

"Because what man can imagine, man can do."




(from the talented MelodySheep, Morgan Freeman, Escaping Earth.)

*I hope Morgan Freeman meant "humankind" here but went with "man" for the staccato rhetorical impact  - but just to be clear, it's "humankind" in the NiftyUniverse!

Face of Creation - Higgs Remix

To celebrate the news this week that scientists have confirmed the discovery of the Higgs Boson.

Science Sunday - Reality of Climate Change

via melodysheep

For your Science Sunday, Al Gore and colleagues on the reality of global climate change.

Tuesday Tonic - The Big Electron

For your Tuesday Tonic, some classic remarks about human existence from Bill Hicks (who died on this date in 1994 from pancreatic cancer) and George Carlin, delivered inside one of melodysheep's excellent autotunes.

Lyrics:
                                                                                         
Is this real?
Or is this just a ride?

The world is like a ride
You think it's real - it's just a ride
And we can change it any time we want
It's only a choice - between fear and love

The ride goes up and down and round and round
It has thrills and chills and it's very brightly colored
Up and down and round and round
And it's very loud
                                                                                                   
Don't worry, don't be afraid
It's just a ride
And we can change it any time we want
It's only a choice between fear and love

Why are we here?
I think we're part of a greater wisdom
That we won't ever understand
A higher order - call it what you want -
Know what I call it?

The Big Electron. Whoa whoa.

It doesn't punish.
It doesn't reward.
It doesn't judge at all.
It just is.
And so are we...
for a little while.

Tuesday Tonic - Humanity's Epoch

Exciting news! There is a new video from melodysheep!

For your Tuesday Tonic, may I present the freshly created Humanity's Epoch.

Stay Tuned...

Stay tuned, NiftyReaders!  I'm working on this week's Barmy Bible Study (delayed by Superstorm Sandy coverage) and it will be an important one. We will sweep away the lies and confusion once and for all and finally answer the burning question:

Does God intend for rape to happen?

Meanwhile, to tide you over until Barmy Bible Study class is called into session, I am reprising one of my favorite videos for your listening/viewing pleasure.  Here is your Thorsday Tonic:



via Symphony of Science

Dinosaurs!

Lyrics:

[Dr. Alice Roberts]
How can we start to come close to animals that lived hundreds of millions of years ago?

Dinosaurs
[Jack Horner]
Dinosaurs
[Bill Nye]
Dinosaurs
Di-Di-Dinosaurs

[Dallas Campbell]
Dinosaurs weren't just giant lizards
But a truly unique kind of reptile

[Narrator 1]
Dinosaurs roamed
For more than 150 million years
Dinosaurs roamed
In amazing shapes and sizes

Very few left evidence of their existence
And those bones never cease to fascinate us

[Roberts]
The more we find
The more complete our understanding
Utterly awe-inspiring
The world of the dinosaurs

[Campbell]
There are always new discoveries out there
Waiting to be found

[Narrator 2]
Tyrannosaurus, the largest flesh eater
The world has ever seen
Dinosaurs - all the dinosaurs-
Followed a well trod trail to oblivion

[Narrator 1]
Rock layers span the age of dinosaurs
The deeper the layer, the older the rock

At the top - rock from the Cretaceous
Below that, the Jurassic
And near the bottom, red Triassic badlands
When dinosaurs first appeared

(refrain)

(dino breakdown)

[Nye]
65 million years ago
[Nigel Marvin]
A meteorite smashed into the Earth
[Nye]
Hurtling toward our planet
At a hundred thousand kilometers a second
**correction: per hour, not second!

[Roberts]
If we'd never found their bones,
We wouldn't ever have known
These ancient animals ever existed

(refrain)

Space Exploration - Onward To The Edge!

Another great video from Symphony of Science.

To mark the occasion of the Mars landing of the Curiosity rover..

Lyrics:

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]
The act of moving onward means we pass these sign posts
One of them was first leaving earth
The next one is hanging out on the moon
What's next? The planets

Onward to the edge
We're moving onward to the edge
Here we are together
This fragile little world

[Brian Cox]
This is our sun
Just another star in a sea of stars
The heart of the solar system
Just another star in a sea of stars

Mercury is the closest planet
This tortured piece of rock has been stripped naked

[Tyson]
The moon has a sky
It has a horizon
It's another world

It's got earth in the sky
Just the way we have the moon in the sky

(refrain)

We're not the only world to think about
Worlds unnumbered
We're not the only world to think about
Think about worlds unnumbered

[Carolyn Porco]
There is a powerful recognition
That stirs within us
When we see our own little blue ocean planet
In the skies of other worlds

The Saturn system
Offers splendor beyond compare
Because of its rings
And very diverse moons

[Tyson]
These are no longer abstractions
These are worlds
Maybe there's life there
They've changed how we think about Earth

[Cox]
"A mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam
The pale blue dot" (Carl Sagan)

(refrain)

The laws of nature create
Vastly different worlds
With the tiniest of changes

[Tyson]
When I reach to the edge of the universe
I do so knowing that along some paths of cosmic discovery
There are times when, at least for now,
One must be content to love the questions themselves

Saturday Inspiration - The Unbroken Thread

Thanks to Symphony of Science for these wonderful videos.

Lyrics:

(Carl Sagan's lyrics written by Carl Sagan, Ann Druyan and Steven Soter)


[David Attenborough]
All life is related
And it enables us to construct with confidence
The complex tree that represents the history of life

Our planet, the Earth, is as far as we know
Unique in the universe; it contains life
Here plants and animals proliferate in such numbers
That we still have not even named all the different species

Darwin's great insight revolutionized the way in which we see the world
We now understand why there are so many different species

[Carl Sagan]
Every cell is a triumph of natural selection
And we're made of trillions of cells (Within us is a little universe)
Those are some of the things that molecules do
Given four billions years of evolution (We are, each of us, a multitude)

Now how did the molecules of life arise?

[Attenborough]
It began in the sea
Some 3 thousand million years ago
Complex chemical molecules began to clump together

These were the "seeds"
From which the tree of life developed
They were able to split, replicating themselves
As bacteria do

[Sagan]
The secrets of evolution
Are time and death
There's an unbroken thread that stretches
From those first cells to us

(refrain)

[Jane Goodall]
There isn't a sharp line dividing humans
from the rest of the animal kingdom
It's a very wuzzie line

It's a very wuzzie line,
and it's getting wuzzier
All the time

We find animals doing things that we,
In our arrogance,
Used to think was "just human"

(refrain)

[Attenborough]
Its continued survival now rests in our hands

Quantum Theory Explained!

Lyrics:

[Morgan Freeman]
So, what are we really made of?
Dig deep inside the atom
and you'll find tiny particles
Held together by invisible forces

Everything is made up
Of tiny packets of energy
Born in cosmic furnaces

[Frank Close]
The atoms that we're made of have
Negatively charged electrons
Whirling around a big bulky nucleus

[Michio Kaku]
The Quantum Theory
Offers a very different explanation
Of our world

[Brian Cox]
The universe is made of
Twelve particles of matter
Four forces of nature

That's a wonderful and significant story

[Richard Feynman]
Suppose that little things
Behaved very differently
Than anything big

Nothing's really as it seems
It's so wonderfully different
Than anything big

The world is a dynamic mess
Of jiggling things
It's hard to believe

[Kaku]
The quantum theory
Is so strange and bizarre
Even Einstein couldn't get his head around it

[Cox]
In the quantum world
The world of particles
Nothing is certain
It's a world of probabilities

(refrain)

[Feynman]
It's very hard to imagine
All the crazy things
That things really are like

Electrons act like waves
No they don't exactly
They act like particles
No they don't exactly

[Stephen Hawking]
We need a theory of everything
Which is still just beyond our grasp
We need a theory of everything, perhaps
The ultimate triumph of science

(refrain)

[Feynman]
I gotta stop somewhere
I'll leave you something to imagine

(We Are) Children Of Africa!

via Symphony of Science

Lyrics:

[Jacob Bronowski]
Man is a singular creature;
He has a set of gifts which make him unique among the animals
So that unlike them, he is not a figure in the landscape
He is the shaper of the landscape

[Alice Roberts]
We are all children of Africa
They say this is where it all began

[Bronowski]
In a parched African landscape
Man first put his foot to the ground

[Roberts]
Africa was our only home
for tens of thousands of years
until a small handful of people made their way
out of Africa

[Carolyn Porco]
These beings with soaring imagination
Eventually flung themselves and their machines
Into interplanetary space

[Roberts]
We are all children of africa
This landscape has been home to humans
Two hundred thousand years

[Porco]
We have come so far
All of this is cause for great celebration
We have come so far
This is a story about us

[Roberts]
Those early Europeans
Were people like you and me
But it is humbling
When you see the challenges they faced

People like you and me
Overcame the Neanderthals
People like you and me
Made it through the ice age

[Refrain]

[Jane Goodall]
We are not the only beings
With personalities, minds, and feelings
Chimpanzees have very clear personalities

[Robert Sapolsky]
Take a chimp brain foetally
And let it go two or three more rounds of division
And out comes symphonies and ideology

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]
Everything that we are
That distinguishes us from chimps
Emerges from that one percent
Difference in DNA

[Roberts]
People like you and me
Overcame the Neaderthals
People like you and me
Made it through the ice age

[Refrain]

[David Attenborough]
Using his burgeoning intelligence,
This most successful of all mammals
Has exploited the environment to produce food
For an ever increasing population.

Instead of controlling the environment
For the benefit of the population
Perhaps it's time we controlled the population
To allow the survival of the environment

The Greatest Show On Earth

I'm still struggling with several complex topics, but in the meantime:

Lyrics:


[David Attenborough]
How could one species turn into another?


[Richard Dawkins]
How is it that we find ourselves surrounded by such complexity, such elegance?


[Bill Nye]
The genes of you and me
They're all made of DNA
We're all made of the same chemicals
DNA - we're all made of DNA


[Attenborough]
Only the fittest survive
And that is the key
Natural Selection
That is the key


[Dawkins]
We are surrounded by endless forms
Most beautiful, most wonderful
Evolution - the greatest show on Earth


There is grandeur in this view of life
Evolution - the greatest show on Earth


[Attenborough]
The history of life can be thought of
As a many branched tree
The five kingdoms of life
were established early on


Bacteria
Protists- amoeba like creatures
Fungi
Plants 
And animals


[Dawkins]
We find ourselves perched on one tiny twig
In the midst of a blossoming tree of life


[refrain]


We are surrounded by millions of other species
Walking, flying, burrowing, stalking, chasing, fleeing,
Outpacing


[Attenborough]
Animals strive to reach this one ultimate goal
To ensure the survival of the next generation
This one ultimate goal
To pass on their genes
That is what life is all about


[refrain]


[Dawkins]
As we look back on the history of life
We see a picture of never ending,
ever rejuvinating novelty


[Attenborough]
Those animals may seem to us to be very remote,
strange, even fantastic


But all of us alive today
Owe our very existence to them

The Garden Of Your Mind

via pbsdigitalstudios

Did you ever think about growing things in the garden of your mind?

It's good to be curious about many things.

You can grow ideas in the garden of your mind!

(via def shepherd)

Thorsday Tonic - A Wave of Reason

Lyrics:
Russell:
When you are studying any matter
Or considering any philosophy
Ask yourself only: what are the facts,
And what is the truth that the facts bear out

Sagan:
Science is more than a body of knowledge
It's a way of thinking
A way of skeptically interrogating the universe

If we are not able to ask skeptical questions
To be skeptical of those in authority
Then we're up for grabs

Shermer:
In all of science we're looking for a balance
between data and theory

Harris:
You don't have to delude yourself
With Iron age fairy tales

Porco:
The same spiritual fulfillment
That people find in religion
Can be found in science
By coming to know, if you will, the mind of God

Krauss:
The real world, as it actually is,
Is not evil, it's remarkable
And the way to understand the physical world
is to use science

Dawkins:
There is a new wave of reason
Sweeping across America, Britain, Europe, Australia
South America, the Middle East and Africa
There is a new wave of reason
Where superstition had a firm hold

Plait:
Teach a man to reason
And he'll think for a lifetime

Sagan:
Cosmology brings us face to face with the deepest mysteries
With questions that were once treated only
in religion and myth

The desire to be connected with the cosmos
Reflects a profound reality
But we are connected; not in the trivial ways
That Astrology promises, but in the deepest ways

Feynman:
I can't believe the special stories that have been made up
About our relationship to the universe at large
Look at what's out there; it isn't in proportion

Russell:
Never let yourself be diverted
By what you wish to believe
But look only and surely
At what are the facts

Randi:
Enjoy the fantasy, the fun, the stories
But make sure that there's a clear sharp line
Drawn on the floor
To do otherwise is to embrace madness

We Are Stardust

3 minutes of musical inspiration for a beautiful Saturday morning. We are stardust, in the highest exalted way. Stand in the middle and enjoy everything both ways; the tininess of us; the enormity of the universe.


Lyrics:

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]
We are part of this universe
We are in this universe
The universe is in us
Yes, the universe is in us

[Lawrence Krauss]
Every atom in your body
Came from a star that exploded
You are all star dust
From a star that exploded

[Tyson]
Look up at the night sky
We are part of that
The universe itself
Exists within us

We are star dust
In the highest exalted way
Called by the universe
Reaching out to the universe

We are star dust
In the highest exalted way
Reaching out to the universe
With these methods and tools of science

[Richard Feynman]
Stand in the middle and enjoy everything both ways
The tininess of us;
The enormity of the universe

[Tyson]
The atoms that make up the human body
Are traceable to the crucibles
That cooked light elements
Into heavy elements

These stars went unstable in their later years
And then exploded
Scattering their enriched guts
Across the galaxy

[Refrain]

[Tyson]
We are part of this universe
We are in this universe
The universe is in us
Yes, the universe is in us

The Poetry of Reality

Tuesday tonic!

Lyrics:

[Michael Shermer]
Science is the best tool ever devised
For understanding how the world works

[Jacob Bronowski]
Science is a very human form of knowledge
We are always at the brink of the known

[Carl Sagan]
Science is a collaborative enterprise
Spanning the generations
We remember those who prepared the way
Seeing for them also

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]
If you're scientifically literate,
The world looks very different to you
And that understanding empowers you

Refrain:
[Richard Dawkins]
There's real poetry in the real world
Science is the poetry of reality

[Sagan]
We can do science
And with it, we can improve our lives

[Jill Tarter]
The story of humans is the story of ideas
That shine light into dark corners

[Lawrence Krauss]
Scientists love mysteries
They love not knowing

[Richard Feynman]
I don't feel frightened by not knowing things
I think it's much more interesting

[Brian Greene]
There's a larger universal reality
of which we are all a part

[Stephen Hawking]
The further we probe into the universe
The more remarkable are the discoveries we make

[Carolyn Porco]
The quest for the truth, in and of itself,
Is a story that's filled with insights

(Refrain)

[Greene]
From our lonely point in the cosmos
We have through the power of thought
Been able to peer back to a brief moment
After the beginning of the universe

[PZ Myers]
I think that science changes the way your mind works
To think a little more deeply about things

[Dawkins]
Science replaces private prejudice
With publicly verifiable evidence

(Refrain)

Our Place in the Cosmos

Like Dawkins, I find the reality of our existence thrilling.

A little inspiration for a Saturday morning.

Lyrics:

[Narrator]
With every century
Our eyes on the universe have been opened anew
We are witness
To the very brink of time and space

[Robert Jastrow]
We must ask ourselves
We who are so proud of our accomplishments
What is our place in the cosmic perspective of life?

[Carl Sagan]
The exploration of the cosmos
Is a voyage of self discovery
As long as there have been humans
We have searched for our place in the cosmos

[Richard Dawkins]
Are there things about the universe
That will be forever beyond our grasp?
Are there things about the universe that are
Ungraspable?

[Sagan]
One of the great revelations of space exploration
Is the image of the earth, finite and lonely
Bearing the entire human species
Through the oceans of space and time

[Dawkins]
Matter flows from place to place
And momentarily comes together to be you
Some people find that thought disturbing
I find the reality thrilling

[Sagan]
As the ancient mythmakers knew
We're children equally of the earth and the sky
In our tenure on this planet, we've accumulated
Dangerous evolutionary baggage

We've also acquired compassion for others,
Love for our children,
And a great soaring passionate intelligence
The clear tools for our continued survival

[Michio Kaku]
We could be in the middle
Of an inter-galactic conversation
And we wouldn't even know

[Sagan]
We've begun at last
To wonder about our origins
Star stuff contemplating the stars
Tracing that long path

Our obligation to survive and flourish
Is owed not just to ourselves
But also to that cosmos
Ancient and vast, from which we spring

We Are All Connected

Everyone deserves a little bit of awesome on a Friday morning. Enjoy!


Lyrics:

[deGrasse Tyson]
We are all connected;
To each other, biologically
To the earth, chemically
To the rest of the universe atomically

[Feynman]
I think nature's imagination
Is so much greater than man's
She's never going to let us relax

[Sagan]
We live in an in-between universe
Where things change all right
But according to patterns, rules,
Or as we call them, laws of nature

[Nye]
I'm this guy standing on a planet
Really I'm just a speck
Compared with a star, the planet is just another speck
To think about all of this
To think about the vast emptiness of space
There's billions and billions of stars
Billions and billions of specks

[Sagan]
The beauty of a living thing is not the atoms that go into it
But the way those atoms are put together
The cosmos is also within us
We're made of star stuff
We are a way for the cosmos to know itself

Across the sea of space
The stars are other suns
We have traveled this way before
And there is much to be learned

I find it elevating and exhilarating
To discover that we live in a universe
Which permits the evolution of molecular machines
As intricate and subtle as we

[deGrasse Tyson]
I know that the molecules in my body are traceable
To phenomena in the cosmos
That makes me want to grab people in the street
And say, have you heard this??

(Richard Feynman on hand drums and chanting)

[Feynman]
There's this tremendous mess
Of waves all over in space
Which is the light bouncing around the room
And going from one thing to the other

And it's all really there
But you gotta stop and think about it
About the complexity to really get the pleasure
And it's all really there
The inconceivable nature of nature