If you are a carbon-based life form, odds are there's only one known place in the Solar System where you really feel at home - Earth. Yes, it's Earth Day again, that one day a year we're supposed to pay extra special attention to the one place where we know of in the galaxy where human life can survive.
It's been a rough year, for reasons too numerous to mention. Let's let all that slide for the moment ("When are you kids going to clean up your room!" - Mother Nature) and step back for a little perspective, three different ways.
More below the Orange Omnilepticon.
Via the BBC, there's an intriguing interactive web page that will give you a Time perspective on Earth. Put in your date of birth, gender, and your height, and it will give you a picture of how the Earth has changed since your birth. [Best viewed on Chrome, Firefox and Internet Explorer 10 and above]. I admit I hadn't realized I'd racked up nearly 37 billion miles circling the sun - where does the time go? It's a little disturbing to see nearly 5 billion people have been added to the crowd since I joined the party (Don't tell the Fire Marshall!), or that the world has lost about 90% of the forest cover in my lifetime to date. There's more information as well.
For the BIG PICTURE, our friends at NASA have (for the moment) ignored the idiots currently running the U.S. Congress to share some of their best images of the Earth from Space. To say they are stunning is an understatement. (Anyone who claims the Earth is too big for anything humans do to affect it needs to consider the implications of this.)
A Close Up and Personal perspective shows us there are marvels to be found 'neath our very noses - if we take time to look. Jürgen Otto in Australia has been looking at some very small critters who were largely being ignored up until just a few years ago. New Scientist shares his work in Wizards of Oz: World's cutest and most awesome spiders. These guys are tiny - but incredibly beautiful. That's why they're collectively called Peacock Spiders. You can follow them on Facebook for more pictures and videos.
Hope your Earth Day is going well - and things will be better by the time the next one rolls around.