This is the “street view” (no-street view) of one of the many undeveloped areas of . . . Mars. The only development on that planet might be the recent addition of rover tracks.  Was that unmanned rover sent by Google?

Where human eyes now go — it’s amazing. Thanks to technology. If anything ought to be praised . . .

[image thanks to NASA]

NASA’s unmanned Dawn spacecraft took this picture of the asteroid Vesta. Upon analysis by experts, it seems the asteroid has had landslides on it. A landslide on an asteroid! Holy craters! What a wild and fantastic universe we live in. And thanks to NASA we are discovering more and more about it.

Landslides on Earth, sure I can easily comprehend that. But a landslide on an asteroid?! I don’t know about you, but that causes something of an intellectual mind-slide within me.

To wax a bit philosophical here: What is the Earth but a massive asteroid running circles around the sun, completely caught by its gravitational field? Cut the the gravitational tether to the star at the center of our solar system and . . .

Yikes. I’ve got to sit down. That thought just about blew my mind.

Doing the first can facilitate the second.

Consider these stunning peeks of “out there.” Do you feel the walls of your mind coming down, just a little?

[all below photos of planet Earth thanks to NASA]

Me, I’m a pervert of the astronomical variety (for one). Thanks to the Internet and sites such as NASA’s Picture of the Day, I get to feast my eyes on heavenly bodies like the handful of pin-up worthy pics below. Have you the moral fortitude to look away in fidelity to your own planet? Or does no such black/white choice exist?

My recommendation: Peep away.

Hyperion. She’s gravitationally attached to Saturn. So don’t get any ideas.

The Sun. Talk about hot.

The asteroid Vesta. Unattached. Kinda dangerous. Might some day wreck your home.

The south pole of Mars. You like? You dirty, dirty man. Or woman. What, you say you are just curious? Admit it — you are a voyeur. Welcome to club. Support group begins at 7:00.

What does the clock say?

Before knowing the origin of clocks, I found those two expressions curious. A clock on the wall doesn’t “say” anything. Nor does it strictly “tell” us something. Rather, we read a clock.

As in the photograph below, the first “clock” (the first . . . event synchonizer and duration measurer?) was the position of the sun in the sky. Which is fully mute, at least from this distance. Later, much later, came the mechanical clock. And suddenly, clock’s could “speak.” The etymology of the term reveals:

late 14c., clokke, originally “clock with bells,” probably from M.Du. clocke (Du. klok), from O.N.Fr. cloque, from M.L. (7c.) clocca “bell,” probably from Celtic (cf. O.Ir. clocc, Welsh cloch “bell”) [source]

Clock bells are struck. They resound. We don’t need to read them, we listen . . . one, two, three.

[photo thanks to NASA]