Jai Prakash Yantra – Jantar Mantar

Jantar Mantar is a collection of architectural astronomical instruments. The Jai Prakash, two bowl shaped hemispherical dials, is considered to be Jai Singhs most complex and elaborate instrument. A taut crosswire suspended above the hemispheres holds a plate which serves as a sighting device for night observations, and casts a shadow for daytime observations. It has upon its surface engravings of equatorial coordinate systems used to describe the position of celestial objects

E Street Band’s Clarence Clemons Dies at 69

 

E Street Band’s Clarence Clemons Dies at 69:

Clemons – known affectionately to fan and friends as the Big Man – was the heart and soul of the E Street Band. His playing on tracks like “Born To Run,” “Thunder Road,” “Jungleland,” “Dancing In The Dark” and countless more represent some of the most famous sax work in the history of rock & roll. “The story I have told throughout my work life I could not have told as well without Clarence,” Springsteen wrote in the introduction to Clemons’ 2009 memoir Big Man: Real Life and Tall Tales.

Born to Run was such a seminal part of my childhood, listening to the record brings vivid memories of listening to Thunder Road on a tape deck in a busted old Volkswagon Rabbit puttering throughout the two lane roads of rural Ohio. Eventhough we would speed past She’s the One and Meeting Across the River, the sound of the Big Man’s sax would flow through the two working speakers, making the drive monumental.

He will be missed.

In Tennessee, Fireflies Are Beacon for Tourists

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In Tennessee, Fireflies Are Beacon for Tourists:

The secret is out about this marvelously rare and very brief annual spectacle. About a thousand tourists a night come to Elkmont, a small trailhead in Great Smoky Mountains National Park, during the two weeks each June when the country’s largest population of synchronous fireflies puts on what locals call “the light show.”

That is not exactly true, but the finer details of Photinus carolinus remain mysterious. The synchrony is more a race than a drum beat. One dominant male blinks and then all of the others flash almost instantly too. They follow a pattern, Morse-code-like, of roughly six seconds of flashing and then six seconds of darkness that lasts for about two hours after dusk.