Another layered mesa in the Cydonia region of Mars

Another layered mesa in the Cydonia region of Mars
Click for original image.

Cool image time! The picture to the right, cropped, reduced, and sharpened to post here, was taken on March 22, 2023, and shows a 100-foot-high many-layered mesa in the Cydonia region of Mars.

The shadows in this picture are deceptive. The mesa’s high point is not the narrow ridge-line, but at the green dot just beyond that ridge’s northern terminus. In fact, if you were walking south from that dot and then along the crest of that ridge you would be walking downhill the entire length.

Cydonia is in the Martian northern lowland plains, in the mid-latitudes. Thus, there are many features in this picture suggesting near surface ice, such as the mounds with craters at their peak. All could be mud volcanoes as seen in many places in the northern lowland plains.
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Tiny Tim’s first appearance on the Tonight Show with Johnny Carson

An evening pause: Aired live April 4, 1968. This important moment in time not only illustrates the incredible tolerant and eccentric nature of 1960s culture, it shows us Johnny Carson at his best. He recognizes the eccentricity of his guest, uses it for humor, but then is also sincerely willing to interview Tim and let him express himself. As always, Carson is kind to his guest, which is one of the reasons his audience loved him so much.

Carson also recognized that Tiny Tim’s eccentricity was great entertainment (something Tim recognized himself quite clearly), which is why Carson allowed the appearance to go so long. It was good show business.

Hat tip Judd Clark.

John Williams – Imperial March

An evening pause: What is most important about this performance is that Williams was doing the conducting on his 90th birthday. The only sour note of this performance is the idiotic masks they made some members of the orchestra wear. Obviously, a horn player can’t give anyone an infection, but a violin player can. Note too how all the VIPs on the front of the stage (such as Steven Spielberg) were also immune from COVID and didn’t need masks either. What fools and hypocrites.

Hat tip Phil Berardelli.

Zac Brown Band – Knee Deep

An evening pause: Performed live in 2022.

I heard this song on the radio and was astonished because it actually didn’t overload the sound with a typical rock instrumentation so that it was no longer a country tune but a simply rock song with the singer having a western accent. Instead it is simple and clear and a pleasure to listen to, partly because it doesn’t sound like every other pop song played these days.

It also makes a great song to start the weekend.

Heart – Crazy on You

An evening pause: I posted this same song in 2022 from a different performance during the same 1977 tour. This version however was recorded as part of a documentary and includes some backstage footage that is definitely worth watching.

Has tip Rex Ridenoure, who notes that “Heart was the first rock band with female leads who also wrote all their own songs.”

Zbigniew Rybczyński – The Orchestra (final scene)

An evening pause: Music is of course Ravel’s Bolero. This provides us an elegant thumbnail history of the Soviet Union using dance, choreography, and clever filming. And it is honest, showing how the whole thing was run by gangstas, as all such top-down communist/socialist societies are, and as America is now adopting. More information about the entire work here.

Hat tip Dave McCooey.

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