Posted on May 30, 2010 - by Andrew

The Blue Stane of St. Andrews and the Devil’s fingerprint

In the Scottish town of Saint Andrews, by the railings of the Hope Park Church, is a large stone with a strange blue patch. The stone wasn’t always beside Hope Park Church, it once rested at Magnus Muir where Knights of Scotland used to swear their oaths.

The legend behind the Blue Stane of St Andrews suggests that the devil (or an angry giant, according to others) threw it there from Blebo Craigs. Why? The devil was angry at the presence of Saint Rule and threw the stone to try and hit him.

Some suggest that the blue mark on the stone is the devil’s fingerprint. The word “stane”, of course, is the Scottish inflection of “stone”.

St Rule (also known as Saint Regulus) was a monk who was told in a dream by an angel that the bones of Saint Andrew needed to be moved from their resting place Constantinople to the ends of the earth. St Rule obeyed, taking a tooth, some fingers, a kneecap and an arm bone of St Andrews all the way to the edge of the known world. The edge of the known world, at the time, was Scotland.

It is said that St Rule landed in Scotland at an East Coast settlement – a place which was to become known as St Andrews.

Getting to St Andrews

St Andrews has no airport. The nearest airports are Edinburgh Airport and the small Dundee Airport. Most visitors either catch the bus from Glasgow or Edinburgh (a trip which takes a few hours) or take the train from Edinburgh Waverley station (a trip which takes just over an hour).

In Pure Spirit

Have you passed Hope Park Church and wondered what the significance of the large stone was? Why not post links to any photographs you took of your trip?

Posted on May 26, 2010 - by Andrew

Video and photographs of UFO spirals in Sky over Canada

The International weather and science website The WeatherSpace has some rather remarkable video footage.

The site says a number of different photographs had been sent to it showing a most unusual spiral in the sky – and a glowing, moving orb.

Rather sensibly The WeatherSpace reminds readers of the spiral seen in the sky of Norway. That spiral was said to be the effect of a missile. Could that explain these spirals in the sky of Western Canada?

The WeatherSpace has also researched nearby areas that could launch sites for aircraft. there’s the Vandernberg Air Force Base but they suggest there have been no launches in the time window. The nearby base of Kodiak Island is on the wrong side for the direction of travel the glowing object seemed to be moving in.

The photographs were taken by Steven Murry – who had cameras pointed to the sky to take photographs of meteors. He told The WeatherSpace that he heard a loud boom as well.

In Pure Spirit

What do you think? Is this a faked video? If not… what could it be?

What’s your opinion on UFOs? Are you a believer? Do we take them too seriously?

Posted on May 25, 2010 - by Andrew

Selling your old o2 mobile phone

Prompted by Al Write Now I’ve had a quick look into which of the mobile operators let you sell your phone back to them.

Turns out o2 have the lead in this area and operate o2 Recycle. Now, o2 were the first network in the UK to be allowed to sell Apple’s famous iPhone. A glance at the site suggests you can sell your iPhone back to them for over £200. That’s pretty impressive. You don’t even have to be trying to sell your old o2 mobile phone as the site says they’ll accept phones from any networks and even gadgets like GPS systems.

I predict the other operators will get into this market pretty swiftly. In fact, they may already be here but haven’t grown their offering into anything I noticed. I also predict there will be more people looking to sell their o2 mobile phone as time goes on, as people become much more aware of this option – good for the environment and good for mobile adoption in the third world too.

In Pure Spirit

Have you used any of these mobile phone recycling options? Which would you recommend?

Posted on May 23, 2010 - by Andrew

DoGood – swap out annoying web ads with green messages

It’s increasingly common for people to try and block adverts on websites. To do this they’ll install some software that simply makes known ads appear as blank spaces when they visit websites.

I guess people do this for a number of reasons. Some might just hate seeing ads when they browse. Others don’t like the distraction. There’s even a security argument as ads are often little holes in a trusted website pointing to the highest bidder.

There’s a problem though. Large websites use ads to make money. They take money when people see an ad – not when they click or buy something (as In Pure Spirit does). If you run an ad blocker and you visit their site, read their content, etc, then are you a thief?

Some sites would say so!

Here’s a possible solution – or a possible can of worms – which is called DoGood. What DoGood does is swap out adverts with green messages/adverts for green companies. They give 50% of the money those adverts earn them to charity. Let’s hope they use the other 50% to promote the service, make it better and otherwise adopt a don’t-be-evil strategy.

DoGood also says their solution doesn’t block the original adverts. People can switch back and forth. This means big sites don’t get robbed of their ‘impression’ based payment (but small sites like this one which hopes for the very occassional affiliate payment may still suffer). However; it’s better than so many other ad-blockers.

DoGood also, as you’d hope, run a blog and have recently increased the browsers they support to include Google’s Chrome. This is a sign that they’re serious.

In Pure Spirit

What do you think? Is this a good idea or is it a terrible one? Should DoGood be keeping 50% – perhaps this figure will come down as/when/if the company grows?

Posted on May 22, 2010 - by Andrew

21 cute pictures for International Biological Diversity Day

The 22 of May is the International Day for Biological Diversity (aka IDB). It’s supported and promoted by The United Nations.

The theme for the 2010 International Biological Diversity Day is “Biodiversity, Development and Poverty Alleviation” and we would like to support that by sharing 21 animal pictures.

In Pure Spirit’s IDB suggested mascot

International Biological Diversity Day Animal Gallery

In Pure Spirit

These pictures where taken from a LiveJournal community are are believed to be free for public use. If you disagree/have a royality claim and don’t wish your image to be used in supporting the International Day for Biological Diversity then get in touch.

If you are a supporter – why not comment below and share your own ideas on what we can do to help biological diversty.

Support: If you’re moved by this and want to do good then why not donate to the World Land Trust.

Posted on May 20, 2010 - by Andrew

After 300 years, the gray whale is back from the dead

Here’s some good news from earlier on this week. A gray whale has been sighted off the coast of Israel by Herzliya Marina.

This is good news because the gray whale was previously thought to be extinct across the Atlantic Ocean. It’s shocking but good to find one in the Mediterranean Sea!

The Grey Whale (aka Gray Whale) was believed to have died out in the North Atlantic as far back as the 17th of 18th Century – though no one’s really sure why.

The sighting by Israel Marine Mannal Research and Assistance Centre back at the start of May is good news but confusing.

Nicola Hodgins of the Whale and Dolphin Conservation Society (WDCS), which has its headquarters in Wiltshire, UK, was quoted in the BBC;

“Gray whales are well known for performing one of the world’s longest migrations, making a yearly round trip of 15,000-20,000 km,”

“Over a lifetime, a gray whale migrates the equivalent distance of a return trip to the moon.

“However, these new images show that this particular whale would have had to beat all previous distance records to end up where it has.”

In Pure Spirit

Do you have any theories to explain why we might have once again, after hundreds of years, at least one Grey Whale in the Med?

Posted on May 20, 2010 - by Andrew

The Gulf oil slick from space

NASA has published photos from its MODIS (ahem; that’s Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometre) from its Terra satellite of the Gulf of Mexico.

The strange arm like curl is nothing other than the BP disaster. The oil silk from the well.

These photos come to IPS via Tree Hugger and the excellent Michael Graham Richard. That’s why we see “Holy Crap!” added. That wasn’t NASA. Got to agree with Michael on this one.

(more…)

Space Monkey: It’s not a planet, it’s our home

by Andrew on April 26, 2010

Children forced to use death slide

by Andrew on April 8, 2010

Pope in Edinburgh: Pope Benedict XVI’s itenary

by Andrew on March 21, 2010