YES, IT IS REAL

Once again the awesome power of nature goes and produces something that looks like it couldn’t possibly be real. Last time it was the Jewel Caterpillar. Now we have the prettiest ear of corn we’ve ever seen.

This is the aptly named Glass Gem Corn. The photos are from Seeds Trust (“a 25 year-old family seed company dedicated to teaching you to save your own seeds, grow a delicious home garden and create stunning native landscapes”) who shared the following background story about this stunning vegetable:

“Seedsman Greg Schoen got the seed from Carl Barnes, a part-Cherokee man, now in his 80’s, in Oklahoma. He was Greg’s “corn-teacher”. Greg was in the process of moving last year and wanted someone else to store and protect some of his seeds. He left samples of several corn varieties, including glass gem. I grew out a small handful this past summer just to see.

The rest, as they say is history. I got so excited, I posted a picture on Facebook. We have never seen anything like this. Unfortunately, we did not grow out enough to sell. Look for a small amount for sale starting in August 2011.”

Of course now we can’t help but wonder if it tastes as good as it looks.

[via TYWKIWDBI and Farming and Agriculture]

GOOD TO KNOW

Food for thought:

wcfoodies:

Those annoying fruit stickers can, apparently, be quiet informative:

A 4-number code denotes conventionally-grown fruits and vegetables (pesticides used);

A 5-number code beginning with 8 means, organic or not, the fruit or vegetable was genetically modified (GE or GMO);

And a 5-number code beginning with 9 means the fruit was organically grown without genetic modification.

This image of the Pinwheel Galaxy, also known as M101, combines data in the infrared, visible, ultraviolet and X-rays from four of NASA's space-based telescopes. This multi-spectral view shows that both young and old stars are evenly distributed along M101's tightly-wound spiral arms. Such composite images allow astronomers to see how features in one part of the spectrum match up with those seen in other parts. It is like seeing with a regular camera, an ultraviolet camera, night-vision goggles and X-ray vision, all at the same time. The Pinwheel Galaxy is in the constellation of Ursa Major (also known as the Big Dipper). It is about 70 percent larger than our own Milky Way Galaxy, with a diameter of about 170,000 light years, and sits at a distance of 21 million light years from Earth. This means that the light we're seeing in this image left the Pinwheel Galaxy about 21 million years ago - many millions of years before humans ever walked the Earth. Image Credits: X-ray: NASA/CXC/SAO; IR & UV: NASA/JPL-Caltech; Optical: NASA/STScI

A REAL HONEST TO GOODNESS POET/MUSICIAN

Click to Enlarge

Legendary musician Bob Dylan visited the White House on Tuesday to receive the Medal of Freedom, the nation's highest civilian honor. Dylan released his first album in 1962, and his music had a considerable influence on the civil rights movement. Below, President Barack Obama awards Dylan the prestigious medal.

The president said he found Dylan's music transcendant, claiming it led to his "world opening up, because [Dylan] captured something about this country that was so vital."

A REAL HONEST TO GOODNESS HERO

Click to Enlarge

President Barack Obama presents former United States Marine Corps pilot, astronaut and United States Senator John Glenn with a Medal of Freedom, Tuesday, May 29, 2012, during a ceremony at the White House in Washington. Image Credit: NASA/Bill Ingalls

IN MEMORIUM

Navy recruitment poster by JC Leyendecker, 1917
Happy Memorial Day

A REAL CELEBRATION

LGBT activists all over the country will celebrate the third annual Harvey Milk Day on May 22, a holiday honoring the pioneering San Francisco supervisor who served as the first openly gay elected official in the United States. A bill authored by California State Asseblyman Mark Leno and signed into law by former Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger created Harvey Milk Day in 2009. While California is the only state to officially honor the legislator, whose tragic assassination at the hands of fellow Supervisor Dan White was depicted in the Academy Award-winning 2008 film "Milk," people all over the country also participate. In 2010, groups in 28 other cities followed the Golden State's lead and held events honoring the legislator. "He knew you had to make change," Mobile, Ala. gay rights activist Robin Galbraith told USA Today. "Our community has to understand you have a voice, and if you don't use it, nothing will change." In the New York native's adopted hometown of San Francisco, there are a bevvy of Harvey Milk Day events planned for Tuesday, including a fashion show, a march through Milk's Castro neighborhood and a benefit for Harvey Milk Elementary School featuring "Milk" screenwriter Dustin Lawrence Black. But some are none too pleased by the festivities. A group of conservative California parents are threatening to withdraw their children from school in protest of local districts' plans to spend a portion of the day teaching students about the gay rights movement. The anti-gay group Save California has been running a series of ads in the Sacramento radio market urging parents to follow their lead. "Parents who hear about 'Harvey Milk Day' are outraged that this teen predator and sexual anarchist would be given the time of day, let alone be indoctrinating children behind the backs of parents," said Save California President Randy Thomasson in a statement. Thomasson argues that schools should be required to gain written parental consent before students learn anything about gay rights.

GREAT SERBIAN-CROATIAN

Click to Enlarge

Nikola Tesla (1856-1943) was a Great Serbian-Croatian inventor who was later nationalized as an American. He pioneered the concept of Alternating Current, the system of electricity used throughout the world.
This is a publicity photo of Nikola Tesla sitting in his laboratory, built in 1899 in Colorado Springs in December 1899. The photo was taken by Dickenson V. Alley, a photographer at the Century Magazines. Tesla sent a copy of this photograph to Sir William Crookes in England in 1901.
The image is a multiple exposure but is cited as a double exposure by Carl Willis and Marc Seifer. Tesla's Colorado Springs notes identify the photo as a double exposure. To give an idea of the magnitude of the discharge the experimenter is sitting slightly behind the "extra coil". "I did not like this idea but some people find such photographs interesting." Of course, the discharge was not playing when the experimenter was photographed, as might be imagined!
Conversely a copy of the original photograph was collected by Leland I. Anderson who sold the collection to Tesla Wardenclyffe Project. They now claim copyright. Note that the version in that archive includes a hand written note added in 1901 printing which doesn't appear on the more widely available image.

ONE AND ONE EQUALS THREE

DOES IT MAKE YOU FEEL OLD?

Click to Enlarge

30 years later, you can carry all of this in your pocket.

HEY OBAMA, MISS NANCY WANTS TITLE BACK

Time Magazine reminds us that the First Gay President isn’t a title that can be applied to President Obama for more than one reason.

Miss Nancy

Loewen is one of several historians who believe that James Buchanan, who served from 1857 to 1861, was in fact our first gay president. He is the only president to have remained a bachelor throughout his life. (His niece, Harriet Lane, handled the duties of First Lady during his term in office.) He shared a home with William Rufus King, an Alabama Senator and Vice President under Buchanan’s predecessor, Franklin Pierce. Their relationship was reportedly so close that Andrew Jackson and other contemporaries referred to them as ”Miss Nancy” and “Aunt Fancy”.

It is difficult to say with absolute certainty that Buchanan was homosexual. The term – as well as the modern understanding of the concept – had not yet been developed. But however best described, Miss Nancy was decidedly atypical in his sexual comportment and would never be accepted as a presidential contender today.

Considering his life – and the perceptions of his life by those around him – I believe that it is fair to say that James Buchanon was our First Gay President (providing that we recall the limitations of language). But should some revelation prove that to be false, there’s always his successor, that young Illinois Republican who had a penchant for sharing beds with other men.

THE BIRTH OF THE BLUES

It coincided with the rise of the Sears Roebuck catalog:

While it is certainly true that the music was forged in part by the legacy of slavery and the insults of Jim Crow, the iconic image of the lone bluesman traveling the road with a guitar strapped to his back is also a story about innovators seizing on expanded opportunities brought about by the commercial and technological advances of the early 1900s. There was no Delta blues before there were cheap, readily available steel-string guitars. And those guitars, which transformed American culture, were brought to the boondocks by Sears, Roebuck & Co. ... Guitars first appeared in the catalog in 1894 for $4.50 (around $112 in today’s money). By 1908 Sears was offering a guitar, outfitted for steel strings, for $1.89 ($45 today), making it the cheapest harmony-generating instrument available.