We are pleased to announce that on January 21, 2010 ‘Kind of blurry’ became official member 20331 of The Cloud Appreciation Society.
The Cloud Appreciation Society is an organization based in the UK promoting an interest in clouds, and has over 20,000 members all over the world. Read more about it in this previous article.
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Fig. to daydream; to be unaware of what is going on from fantasies Read the rest of this article
If you feel curious to know how high (or low) a cloud is, you can learn now how to calculate it.
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Height = 125 x (outside temperature ºC – dew point ºC)
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The Cloud Appreciation Society is an organization promoting an interest in clouds, with news, forums, photograph gallery and members area. It has published as well an amount of books in different languages, such as ‘The Cloudspotter’s Guide’ and ‘The Cloud Collector’s Handbook’. Read the rest of this article
When you know about them, you will notice them: cloud streets. They occur in coastal regions if the wind blows from sea. They consist of individual cumulus clouds, which are organized in parallel lines or streets. The distance between two streets is typical 1.5 km. On the Frisian island Terschelling, where I spend a few weeks any year, I usually spot such streets a few times during each stay. They occur there during south-western wind, that is when the wind direction is parallel with the island. Over Terschelling, about 4 km wide, there are usually three of these streets; between them the sky is clear. If you are unlucky enough, such a street keeps you many hours out of the sun. Over the sea there are no clouds at all.
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The mascletá as we know it today seems to have its origin in an act of movement: the mascletá correguda or ‘runned mascletá’. In the mascletá correguda, long strings with fireworks (the so-called traca) are disposed along the streets of a village or neighbourhood. The fireworks are lit at one extreme and explode all along the way, allowing people to run under the exploding fireworks or along with it, ‘accompanying the fire’.
Dutch landscape painting of the 17 century has gained a unique place in art history; for the first time landscape played a role of its own due to its realist naturalistic reproduction. But the ‘realism’ in the paintings of the Dutch ‘Golden Age’ must not be wrongly interpreted that they represent a linear copy of nature (de Vries 1991), as an early form of landscape photography. The paintings have to be understood as compositions, composed of realistically reproduced elements where the whole is much more than a summary of the single parts. Hedinger (2001) has called this an ‘invented reality’ of landscape.
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Laura d'Ors, My own beliefs (2009)
The mascletá is a (mostly) daytime firework show consisting on rythmic sound explosions. It is based in the use of the so-called ‘masclet’ (a kind of powerful firecracker), whose explosion receives the name of ‘thunder’. The word’s etimology lies in the Valencian word for ‘male’. It is probably related to the loudness of the sound, what was considered masculine, and to the fact that these fireworks explosions were dedicated exclusively to holy men; whereas celebrations for holy women had a lighter, more feminine character. The origin of the mascletá lies probably in the purifying character of black powder, to scare evil spirits. Today, mascletás are common in weddings and other celebrations.
The mascletá is a very austere show, it has no colours or shapes to decorate, it is based on the beauty of the pure explosion. It normally lasts for 5 to 10 minutes and follows a strict order. In this sense, we can consider them authentic symphonies of noise.
Laura d'Ors, Reference (2009)
The Blur building was built by New York-based architects Diller and Scofidio on Lake Neuchâtel at Yverdon-les-Bains, Switzerland on occasion of the Swiss Expo 2002. The Blur building uses various forms of water –mist, dew, fog and drinking water– as the substance of its architecture. Water is pumped from the lake, filtered and shot as mist.
Laura d'Ors, Die Verschwindung von Haus 8 (2007)
