Exhaust or Contrail? I’m not sure. Get your contrail science on over at the appropriately named contrailscience.com

Contrail: streaks of condensed water vapor created in the air by an airplane or rocket at high altitudes.

This is just after the sun went down. The color of sunsets and sunrises have to do with the travel time of sunlight at its farthest point from the earth. Brush up on your science over at this article.

My wife pointed out the first firefly siting of the summer last night while eating in the garden at Franny’s. It is such a pleasure to see that light. It evokes strong childhood memories of Virginia summers and backyards full of them. Sadly I don’t see as many as I used to but I was reminded of Gregory Crewdson’s Fireflies work. To my eye his most satisfying, elegant and simple body of work. (Like most photobooks, I should have bought it before the price went up.)

Three side notes:
–Crewdson’s work as a student at SUNY Purchase involved photographing objects in thrift stores that he re-arranged. I wonder if there are prints of this around. Let me know if you’ve seen this work.

–The snap peas at dinner were unbelievably good.

–”Fireflies appear to light up for a variety of reasons. The larvae produce short glows and are primarily active at night, even though many species are subterranean or semi-aquatic. Fireflies produce defensive steroids in their bodies that make them unpalatable to predators. Larvae use their glows as warning displays to communicate their distastefulness. As adults, many fireflies have flash patterns unique to their species and use them to identify other members of their species as well as to discriminate between members of the opposite sex. Several studies have shown that female fireflies choose mates depending upon specific male flash pattern characteristics. Higher male flash rates, as well as increased flash intensity, have been shown to be more attractive to females in two different firefly species.” –from Scientific American’s “How and why do fireflies light up?”

Here’s something I should be thinking about as I try and put some pictures I took into story format: “…correlated enough to create a pattern but chaotic enough to be interesting.”

That is what the Gilden Lab at UTexas Austin has to say about Fractal Structure and Attention. Their site was brought to my attention by an article, “Bringing New Understanding to the Director’s Cut,” in the Science Section of today’s (3.2.10) New York Times, written by Natalie Angier.

Apparently story telling in movies is getting so good it is approaching a ratio “1/f” (one over frequency) called pink noise which is an internal rhythm close to the human heartbeat. A sexy star, well paid gaffers, and an awesome DP (e.g. Harris Savides) can’t hurt when making a movie though, right?

The first time I encountered the idea of the heartbeat as a narrative was in Grateful Dead drummer Mickey Hart’s book “Drumming at the Edge of Magic: A Journey into the Spirit of Percussion.” When your in a band in your 20s there is a lot of spare time. I spent some of it reading the book, listening to his  Diga Rhythm Band and, um, relaxing.

This is the killer sentence:
“If you’re sitting at a task, Dr. Cutting said, ‘sometimes you’re good at it, sometimes your mind wanders, sometimes you’re fast, sometimes you’re slow, and the oscillating patterns that occur are generally one over f.’”

Related mind wandering thoughts (is it possible I spend more time in that cycle than in the “good at,” or “fast” cycle):
–The next post should be “Pink Noise plus the Golden Section Equals.” With the answer my photos will slay.
–Gaia Theory, Interval Training, and the see saw… all related?
–Personal experience with pink noise: The ARP 2600.
–I thought “Back to the Future” was good because of the skateboarding and the Delorean.