Mood music

Just close your eyes, listen to this music, and think of all that is beautiful in the world...

Murmurations

This stunning video of starlings in flight will give you goosebumps.

Two girls out canoeing in Ireland captured this unbelievable, beautiful, moving act of nature on camera. How brave of them to keep calm! Enjoy.



Murmuration from Sophie Windsor Clive on Vimeo.

Built for star-gazing

Even though I find thinking about outer space a bit scary and stressful, I absolutely love observatories from a design and function perspective. There is something lovely about a building constructed entirely for looking at stars.

Griffith Observatory in California [Credit: unkown]

Teide Observatory in Tenerife [Credit: Tenerife Tourism]

Royal Greenwich Observatory [Credit: philsphotoweb]

When I was a child, my parents were professors at the University of Oxford, and my father's office was in the converted dome of the Radcliffe Observatory at Green College. The roof was permanently closed, but the crank to turn the roof still functioned, so on special occasions my dad would let me brother and I go up and turn it. It was so magical!

The green dome where my father had his office, Green College, Oxford [Credit: P. Vojtechovsky]

Do observatories capture your imagination the way they do mine?

Knowing when to be silent

The good-to-honest truth, as told in graph form by Jessica at Indexed.

Credit: Jessica Hagy/Indexed

Beaver vs. Polar Bear

Two weeks ago, a Canadian senator proposed changing Canada's national animal from the beaver to the polar bear. The concept has gone viral, providing Canadian online commentators and twitterers with a practically unlimited supply of that's-what-she-said jokes.

The National Post, one of Canada's national newspapers, put together this funny graphic outlining the arguments for each side of the debate that is sweeping the nation(!):

Credit: Steve Murray/National Post

Are you on Team Beaver or Team Polar Bear? I am on Team Beaver! Have you ever seen one in real life? I have a few times, and they are incredibly adorable.

Friday night guilty pleasures

My guilty pleasures this week:

Indulging in Piroulines... 

...and singing along to old-school Mariah Carey.

Tribal tattoos

Do you watch rugby? I recently found out about a young rugby star from New Zealand, who has one of the most beautiful tattoos I've seen.

Isn't his tattoo striking? At a music festival last year, my friends and I tested each other to see if anyone could spot a tattoo that wasn't ugly...and none of us succeeded. They are hard to get right, and I think for them to work aesthetically, they have to go beyond personal significance and be works of art. I think Williams' tattoo hits the mark perfectly and is just gorgeous. Here are some closeups of his shoulder art:

Williams is part-Samoan, so it's a nice bonus that his tattoo hearkens some of his heritage. I doubt I'll ever take the plunge and get permanently inked, but if I did, I'd consider modeling it on this type of style. Although perhaps...something a little more subtle?