View allAll Photos Tagged Cataclysm
The ranger said that this geyser was experiencing a surge in activity. It turned out that they closed that area the next day for fear of a cataclysmic event.
A very impressive erosion hole just on the side of the main Rhône Valley in Central Wallis. Fortunatly the region has a typical, very dry, mediterranean climate. But, it there is big storm, it's better to fly, since all comes down to the Rhône valley, cutting it.
Astronomers reject the idea of Nibiru, and have made efforts to inform the public that there is no threat to Earth.[56] They point out that such an object so close to Earth would be easily visible to the naked eye, and would create noticeable effects in the orbits of the outer planets. Most photographs purporting to show "Nibiru" beside the Sun are lens flares, false images of the Sun created by reflections within the lens. Claims that the object has been concealed behind the Sun are untenable.[
An orbit like that of Nibiru within our Solar System is inconsistent with celestial mechanics. David Morrison, NASA space scientist explains that after just one previous flyby of Earth, such as they claim happened in Sumerian times, Earth itself would no longer be in its current near circular orbit and would be likely to have lost its Moon. If Nibiru were a brown dwarf it would have even worse effects, as brown dwarfs are far more massive..Since Pluto is now frequently observed by backyard telescopes, any giant planet beyond Pluto would be easily observed by an amateur astronomer. And if such an object existed in our Solar System, it would have passed through the inner Solar System a million times by now.
Astronomer Mike Brown notes that if this object's orbit were as described, it would only have remained in the Solar System for about a million years before Jupiter expelled it, and, even if such a planet existed, its magnetic field would have no effect on Earth's.Lieder's assertions that the approach of Nibiru would cause the Earth's rotation to stop or its axis to shift violate the laws of physics. In his rebuttal of Immanuel Velikovsky's Worlds in Collision, which made the same claim that the Earth's rotation could be stopped and then restarted, Carl Sagan noted that, "the energy required to brake the Earth is not enough to melt it, although it would result in a noticeable increase in temperature: The oceans would [be] raised to the boiling point of water ... [Also,] how does the Earth get started up again, rotating at approximately the same rate of spin? The Earth cannot do it by itself, because of the law of the conservation of angular momentum."
In a 2009 interview with the Discovery Channel, Mike Brown noted that, while it is not impossible that the Sun has a distant planetary companion, such an object would have to be lying very far from the observed regions of the Solar System to have no detectable gravitational effect on the other planets. A Mars-sized object could lie undetected at 300 AU (10 times the distance of Neptune); a Jupiter-sized object at 30,000 AU. To travel 1000 AU in two years, an object would need to be moving at 2400 km/s – faster than the galactic escape velocity. At that speed, any object would be shot out of the Solar System, and then out of the Milky Way galaxy into intergalactic space.
The Nibiru cataclysm is a supposed disastrous encounter between the Earth and a large planetary object (either a collision or a near-miss) which certain groups believe will take place in the early 21st century. Believers in this doomsday event usually refer to this object as Nibiru or Planet X. The idea was first put forward in 1995 by Nancy Lieder,founder of the website ZetaTalk. Lieder describes herself as a contactee with the ability to receive messages from extraterrestrials from the Zeta Reticuli star system through an implant in her brain. She states that she was chosen to warn mankind that the object would sweep through the inner Solar System in May 2003 (though that date was later postponed) causing Earth to undergo a physical pole shift that would destroy most of humanity.
The prediction has subsequently spread beyond Lieder's website and has been embraced by numerous Internet doomsday groups. In the late 2000s, it became closely associated with the 2012 phenomenon. Since 2012, the Nibiru cataclysm has frequently reappeared in the popular media, usually linked to newsmaking astronomical objects such as Comet ISON or Planet Nine. Although the name "Nibiru" is derived from the works of the ancient astronaut writer Zecharia Sitchin and his interpretations of Babylonian and Sumerian mythology, he denied any connection between his work and various claims of a coming apocalypse. A prediction by self-described "Christian numerologist" David Meade that the Nibiru cataclysm would occur on 23 September 2017 received extensive media coverage.
The idea that a planet-sized object will collide with or closely pass by Earth in the near future is not supported by any scientific evidence and has been rejected by astronomers and planetary scientists as pseudoscience and an Internet hoax.[5][6] Such an object would have destabilised the orbits of the planets to the extent that their effects would be easily observable today.Astronomers have hypothesized many planets beyond Neptune, and though many have been disproved, there are some that remain viable candidates such as Planet Nine. All the current candidates are in orbits that keep them well beyond Neptune throughout their orbit, even when they are closest to the sun.
Every week NASA receives thousands of requests from people wanting to know more about Nibiru, also known as the Planet of Crossing, or Planet X. It is due to pass through our solar system in the year 2020, and when it does, the asteroid belt will once again be disrupted. This will cause unimaginable damage throughout the system,
including here on earth, as our recurring cycle of mass extinctions tells us. But the experts still haven’t answered a very important question: Is Nibiru really a planet?
Finally, one must know how to renounce lies. We must dare to face the truth when the hiding veil is opening. To look at the truth is not innocent, for it drives you to believe it. Believe it, why not? As long as it’s without believing.
The Lone Planet Theory is certainly the most popular among Nibiru scholars. It was first opined in the 1970s by the speculative writer Zecharia Sitchin. The theory goes something like this: the vast asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter along with the bizarre positions of Neptune and Uranus didn’t just happen. Some mysterious massive object changed forever the structure of the Solar System. Proponents of this theory believe that Nibiru was never able to reach a resonant frequency with the rest of the planets. So it was flung out of the system and into its wildly elliptical orbit. This process destroyed its moons - leaving only the rubble that we call the asteroid belt. This violent event also tossed Neptune and Uranus into their current positions. Luckily though, once Nibiru was gone, the remaining planets were able to find stable and harmonious orbits around the sun.
Those who believe this theory are divided into two camps as to how the Anunnaki’s could have survived this catastrophe. On the one hand, there are those who believe the planet was colonized AFTER the ejection. The Anunnaki’s were already advanced, self-sufficient space travelers. They chose Nibiru, perhaps for the very extreme qualities that would be lethal to humans. On the other hand, there are those who believe the planet had an existing population at the time of its ejection. They were immediately forced to move deep underground for survival. Over the eons life there evolved to suit the bizarre environment and the 3,500 year orbit. All the life forms on Nibiru had to begin processing geothermal energy, or perish. Examples of this very type of adaptation can be seen here on earth near thermal vents at the bottom of our deepest oceans.
Nibiru is the name that Anunna give their wandering planet. Zecharia Sitchin and Sumer
The word Nibiru comes from the writings of the Azerbaijani American author and ancient astronaut theorist Zecharia Sitchin. Zecharia Sitchin has speculated that Nibiru would be an additional planet in our solar system, a planet that have escaped astronomers because it describes a disconcerting orbit. In fact, according to Sitchin, Nibiru planet leaves the solar system for thousands of years. What is indisputable, since all the myths say the same thing.
The argument in favor of the Lone Planet Theory is the evidence that the Anunnaki themselves left here on earth after their visits. Examples include the ancient Sumerian civilization, the elongated skulls that can be seen in natural history museums worldwide, and the strange codes they placed in our DNA. They used early hominid, animal, and their own genetic material to create the modern human race, which they used as slave labor to extract the minerals they needed for their long journey.
I’m sorry to say Sitchin is mistaken about Nibiru itself, about its true nature. Peeling the Sumerian writings, I have become convinced that Nibiru is not a planet, even though it has the dimensions. The texts call it the roaming planet of Anunna. That’s why. Nibiru is a sapceship, a mother ship. To know where it came from, to know the secret it hides, we just have to reverse the letters of its name: NIBIRU becomes URIBIN. Language of the Goslings. A small detour by the Tudesque gives the grid of reading: UR I(ch) BIN, I AM UR, I am the origin.
We all remember the Death Star / Black Star in Star Wars saga. Nibiru is far wider, more terrible even. Bottom view, it is black and gloomy because it hides the sunlight. View from above, or side view, it is welcoming and clear. Nibiru is a tropical bubble of light and sweetness that moves at will throughout the galaxy. There is an ocean in the transparent bubble, an ocean that moves in space, with a circular central island surrounded by lagoons and concentric lidos.
The form and appearance of this wandering planet is found in a line-by-line fashion in the compasses of the navy, as I have already explained.
The Nemesis Theory is similar in many ways to the Lone Planet theory. The difference is that proponents assert that Nibiru is a planet orbiting a Dwarf Star called Nemesis. This dwarf brown or red star is the “dark twin” of our own sun. It states, in fact, that we live in a binary system. This idea hasn’t gained much traction with the general populous, but is widely endorsed by many scientists. And it’s easy to see why. NASA has in fact discovered a dimly radiating star called Nemesis on the outskirts of our system. It’s about twice the mass of Jupiter, and could very well have a planet - or several planets - orbiting it. They calculate that Nemesis wreaks havoc in our neighborhood about once every 3,500 years.
If some of you recognized the description of Atlantis that Plato gives, chance has nothing to do with it. Nor random, since it does not exist. Plato ignored a few things. Among them, Atlantis was not an ordinary island, but a mother ship floating in the middle of the Atlantic. You can not blame Plato who lived 25 centuries ago, because if the thing is difficult to admit today, it was totally inconceivable in those days.
In this gigantic spaceship shaped transparent bubble, there is this island that remains horizontal as it floats in the ocean. When the mother ship lands on the ocean, it floats there, and the sky of the bubble is retracted as a cockpit, so that no one can tell the difference between this island vessel and an ordinary island. Except, perhaps, its perfect circularity described by Plato, which didn’t catch attention of any researcher, although it seems quite unnatural.
The heat and light from the dwarf star would be enough keep Nibiru habitable, and somewhat earth-like. In this scenario, the Anunnaki were never hurled into space. Rather they have enjoyed a stable orbit around their star Nemesis, which in turn orbits our sun in a somewhat lopsided binary system. When the two stars are at their closest, it causes complete mayhem in both systems. Our asteroid belt is just one piece of evidence supporting this.
Nancy Lieder and ZetaTalk
Nancy Lieder
The idea of the Nibiru encounter originated with Nancy Lieder, a Wisconsin woman who claims that as a girl she was contacted by gray extraterrestrials called Zetas, who implanted a communications device in her brain. In 1995, she founded the website ZetaTalk to disseminate her ideas.[8] Lieder first came to public attention on Internet newsgroups during the build-up to Comet Hale–Bopp's 1997 perihelion. She stated, claiming to speak as the Zetas, that "The Hale–Bopp comet does not exist. It is a fraud, perpetrated by those who would have the teeming masses quiescent until it is too late. Hale–Bopp is nothing more than a distant star, and will draw no closer."[10] She claimed that the Hale–Bopp story was manufactured to distract people from the imminent arrival of a large planetary object, "Planet X", which would soon pass by Earth and destroy civilization. After Hale–Bopp's perihelion revealed it as one of the brightest and longest-observed comets of the last century, Lieder removed the first two sentences of her initial statement from her site, though they can still be found in Google's archives.[10] Her claims eventually made the New York Times.
Lieder described Planet X as roughly four times the size of the Earth, and said that its closest approach would occur on May 27, 2003, resulting in the Earth's rotation ceasing for exactly 5.9 terrestrial days. This would be followed by the Earth's pole destabilising in a pole shift (a physical pole shift, with the Earth's pole physically moving, rather than a geomagnetic reversal) caused by magnetic attraction between the Earth's core and the magnetism of the passing planet. This in turn would disrupt the Earth's magnetic core and lead to subsequent displacement of the Earth's crust.
Roughly a week before the supposed arrival of Planet X in May 2003, Lieder appeared on KROQ-FM radio in Los Angeles, and advised listeners to euthanize their pets in anticipation of the event as she had done.This led the Fortean Times to conclude that she had put down her dog(s) to save them from further suffering during the Pole Shift.[15] Later, in a 2004 interview she said that she had euthanized her dog because it was acting aggressively.[16] After the 2003 date passed without incident, Lieder said that it was merely a "white lie ... to fool the establishment."She refused to disclose the true date, saying that to do so would give those in power enough time to declare martial law and trap people in cities during the shift, leading to their deaths.
Although Lieder originally referred to the object as "Planet X", it has become deeply associated with Nibiru, a planet from the works of ancient astronaut proponent Zecharia Sitchin, particularly his book The 12th Planet. According to Sitchin's interpretation of ancient Mesopotamian religious texts, which contradicts conclusions reached by credited scholars on the subject, a giant planet (called Nibiru or Marduk) passes by Earth every 3,600 years, allowing its sentient inhabitants to interact with humanity. Sitchin identified these beings with the Anunnaki in Sumerian mythology and claimed that they were humanity's first gods.[22][19] Lieder first made the connection between Nibiru and her Planet X on her site in 1996 ("Planet X does exist, and it is the 12th Planet, one and the same.").
However, Sitchin, who died in 2010, denied any connection between his work and Lieder's claims. In 2007, partly in response to Lieder's proclamations, Sitchin published a book, The End of Days, which set the time for the last passing of Nibiru by Earth at 556 BC, which would mean, given the object's supposed 3,600-year orbit, that it would return sometime around AD 2900. He did however say that he believed that the Annunaki might return earlier by spaceship, and that the timing of their return would coincide with the shift from the astrological Age of Pisces to the Age of Aquarius, sometime between 2090 and 2370
Believers in the Nemesis Theory say the Anunnaki need nothing from us. They were our teachers, not slave drivers. They helped us survive the great flood, rather than being the cause of it. Since our only record of their visits is in ancient Sumerian tablets - which are still in the process of being translated - it’s easy to see how these ideas could be confused.
As if all that weren’t enough, there is one other idea worth discussing: the Space Vessel Theory. It is certainly the least researched, but possibly the most intriguing of all the speculations regarding Nibiru. The theory goes like this: like Star Trek, there really is a kind of United Nations of planets and alien civilizations in our galaxy. They built this giant vessel, and many others like it, for purposes we are only just beginning to understand. What many refer to as “planet” Nibiru is actually a planet-sized space ship that is on a 3,500-year continual mission in our part of the Galaxy. It is equipped to research, patrol, protect, police, and even punish growing populations that were long ago seeded by the Anunnaki.
When Nibiru must regain altitude, the bubble is closed, and the gigantic machine take off the ocean. The mass of water it displaces, tearing digs a more terrible tsunami and even more devastating than that one day will cause the collapse of Cumbre Vieja. Both sides of the Atlantic are buried under a huge wave, the human and material damage is considerable, many believe that the end of the world is coming. This trauma is the origin of the myth of the flood. The disappearance of Atlantis is the cause and not the consequence of the flood.
Atlantis is one of the names that the ancients gave this mother ship which received a lot across countries and over time. If the Greeks called Atlantis, Nibiru is Sumerian name. The Romans called Hercolobus. Christians have made Eden or Paradise, which for them is a past paradise on earth and also a future heavenly paradise. It corresponds to the status of a modern and technological mother ship, resembling a wandering planet that comes and goes. The Hebrews called the Heavenly Jerusalem, which they want the return of all their wishes, the unfortunate.
The Bible speaks with regret of “time where the gods lived among men.” This time is lost at times when Nibiru arose.
Because Anunnaki came more than once, we bet they will come back again. After all, they are at home here. And they put on all the world’s oceans in order to develop, teach and use of all global populations. When they landed in the Indian Ocean, their floating island was named the Land of Punt, which some rebaptiseront later Lemuria. When they landed on the Pacific Ocean, their bubble ship was called Mu, the fabulous empire Naacals.
Those who favor this theory point to the recent uptick in UFO sightings and crop circle messages as a sign that the Anunnaki are preparing to meet with us again, as they have on their previous passes. The ancient Sumerians greeted the Anunnaki as gods. However, our current level of civilization and scientific understanding will enable us to greet them as equals. But it still remains to be seen whether our meeting will be a friendly one. No doubt, despite all our advancements, the Anunnaki are, literally, light years ahead of us.
As Nibiru comes ever closer, our scientists will gather more information, and all will eventually become clear. But for now the questions outnumber the answers by a maddening margin. There are some who say they are already in contact with the Anunnaki. There are some who say this is all nonsense. I tend to think the truth is somewhere in between those two extremes.
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From left:
Temblor - Robert Coleman was a supervillain for hire who used a pair of gauntlets to generate shockwaves. From small blasts that knocked pursuers off their feet to block-levelling tremors, Temblor seemed to be a formidable mercenary until a building he had been hired to destroy collapsed on top of him. Rescued by Batgirl, Coleman hung up the gloves for good and became little more than a footnote in supercriminal history, although he was briefly blamed for the Cataclysm that rendered Gotham a no-man's land.
Anarky - Lonnie Machin was originally a teenage hacker under the alias Money_Spider, stealing millions of dollars from multinational corporations. Once caught, Lonnie refused to lend his talents to the NSA unlike his co-conspirator Hadrian "The General" Armstrong, and wound up incarcerated in a brutal home for young offenders. These horrific conditions radicalized Lonnie against the capitalist system, and he used money squirreled away from his past cyber heists to start giving to the poor and to begin his new career as the vigilante Anarky. Pursued by Armstrong (now a government agent), Lonnie's benevolent intentions won him enough favor with Batman to briefly be considered a candidate for the next Robin. His staunch rejection of Batman's methods, however, put the two at deeply personal odds.
Gearhead - Nathan Finch was gravely injured in a street race. Left for dead by his peers, Finch was rescued by a back alley doctor who grafted his body to a mobile life support machine with modular cybernetic attachments. Unwilling to die, yet appalled that the doctor had simply experimented on him for his own gratification, Finch escaped and began a campaign of revenge against those he blamed for his loss of humanity. Years later, when the Justice League's own Cyborg went rogue due to the Grid virus, Gearhead himself succumbed to Grid and joined many other infected technological villains as part of the Crime Syndicate's invasion army.
Copperhead - The anonymous assassin Copperhead used a mechanical tail to suffocate her victims. She took contracts all over the globe, pitting her against many of the world's heroes and often finding herself hired as muscle in a variety of other supervillains' schemes.
Nicodemus - Thomas Hart was a corrupt councillor in an equally corrupt City Hall. Taking the biblical name Nicodemus, he sought to divert attention from his own crimes coming to light by instead amplifying those of his coworkers. Nicodemus held live broadcasts of the "trials" he put on for his kidnapped colleagues, which invariably ended with Hart burning them to death. Faking his own murder at the hands of Nicodemus was not enough to fool Batman, however, and Hart perished for good in a fire he intended for the Dark Knight.
Cornelius Stirk - A metahuman with the ability to alter his appearance through psychic means, Cornelius Stirk is unfortunately more well known for a series of canniballistic murders. A long-time resident of the Arkham Institute, Stirk seems to have reformed and is occasionally allowed to indulge his more benign culinary pursuits in the facility's mess hall. Yet he still remains on a very short leash - "kiss the cook" is not a risk any of the staff or other inmates want to take.
Did Tyrannosaurus Rex use red toothpaste?
The head of existing T. Rex skeletons are almost my height. Lucky for us it went extinct in one of the mass extinction cataclysms suffered by our planet Earth.
The teeth of Tyrannosaurus rex displayed marked heterodonty (differences in shape).[13][23] The premaxillary teeth at the front of the upper jaw were closely packed, D-shaped in cross-section, had reinforcing ridges on the rear surface, were incisiform (their tips were chisel-like blades), and curved backward. The D-shaped cross-section, reinforcing ridges, and backward curve reduced the risk that the teeth would snap when Tyrannosaurus bit and pulled. The remaining teeth were robust, like "lethal bananas" rather than daggers; more widely spaced and also had reinforcing ridges.[24] Those in the upper jaw were larger than those in all but the rear of the lower jaw. The largest found so far is estimated to have been 30 centimeters (12 in) long including the root when the animal was alive, making it the largest tooth of any carnivorous dinosaur yet found.[3]
Tyrannosaurus rex was one of the largest land carnivores of all time; the largest complete specimen, FMNH PR2081 ("Sue"), measured 12.8 metres (42 ft) long and was 4.0 metres (13.1 ft) tall at the hips.[3] Mass estimates have varied widely over the years, from more than 7.2 metric tons (7.9 short tons),[2] to less than 4.5 metric tons (5.0 short tons),[5][6] with most modern estimates ranging between 5.4 and 6.8 metric tons (6.0 and 7.5 short tons).[4][7][8][9] Packard et al. (2009) tested dinosaur mass estimation procedures on elephants and concluded that dinosaur estimations are flawed and produce over-estimations; thus, the weight of Tyrannosaurus could be much less than usually estimated.[10]
Although Tyrannosaurus rex was larger than the well known Jurassic theropod Allosaurus, it was slightly smaller than some other Cretaceous carnivores, such as Spinosaurus and Giganotosaurus.[11][12]
The neck of Tyrannosaurus rex formed a natural S-shaped curve like that of other theropods, but was short and muscular to support the massive head. The forelimbs had only two clawed fingers,[13] along with an additional small metacarpal representing the remnant of a third digit.[14] In contrast, the hind limbs were among the longest in proportion to body size of any theropod. The tail was heavy and long, sometimes containing over forty vertebrae, in order to balance the massive head and torso. To compensate for the immense bulk of the animal, many bones throughout the skeleton were hollow, reducing its weight without significant loss of strength.[13]
The largest known Tyrannosaurus rex skulls measure up to 5 feet (1.5 m) in length.[15] Large fenestrae (openings) in the skull reduced weight and provided areas for muscle attachment, as in all carnivorous theropods. But in other respects, Tyrannosaurus’ skull was significantly different from those of large non-tyrannosauroid theropods. It was extremely wide at the rear but had a narrow snout, allowing unusually good binocular vision.[16][17] The skull bones were massive and the nasals and some other bones were fused, preventing movement between them; but many were pneumatized (contained a "honeycomb" of tiny air spaces) which may have made the bones more flexible as well as lighter. These and other skull-strengthening features are part of the tyrannosaurid trend towards an increasingly powerful bite, which easily surpassed that of all non-tyrannosaurids.[18][19][20] The tip of the upper jaw was U-shaped (most non-tyrannosauroid carnivores had V-shaped upper jaws), which increased the amount of tissue and bone a tyrannosaur could rip out with one bite, although it also increased the stresses on the front teeth.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tyrannosaurus
T.Rex was not the largest Therapod:
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Largesttheropods.png
IMG_0368
Reality exhausts the day, and so weakened, succumbs to night.
And time, burdened by care, sleeps so we may dream.
Heroic dreams of travail, betrayal and forgiveness.
Mythic dreams of creation, cataclysm and redemption.
And dreams unkempt by reason, full of original promise;
Of reality nurturing day, and so strengthened, transfiguring night.
And time, relieved of care, sleeps so we may dream.
- Prose poem composed by two glasses of sangria over the course of a winter evening.
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Image Basis: A tree encircled in vines, located in a wooded area of a local nature preserve.
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Locale: Schlitz Audubon Nature Center ("SANC") - Bayside, Wisconsin, (USA).
Sub-Locale: Northwestern portion of Lake Terrace Trail.
Year & Season: 2014 ; Mid summer
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Camera: Sony Alpha a7 Mirrorless
Sensor: Full-frame
IBIS: n/a ; OIS: n/a
Support: Tripod
Lens: Sony-Zeiss Vario-Tessar FE 24-70mm f/4 OSS T* ZA
Filters: (none)
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Exposure Program: Manual
Metering Mode: Average
Drive/Focus Mode: Single-shot/Manual focus
Focus Area: Focus magnifier (center of tree trunk)
Exposure Quality: Raw (Lightroom DNG)
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Processing: Lightroom 6.12 (CR 9.12)
LR Presets: (none) ; Processing Plug-Ins: (none)
JPG Size: 11.8MP (4872 x 2415)
File ID: Polyptych02 Milw.SANC.20140813-01 ltRmPrntMdlJ100.jpg
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Tech Note 1: Each frame of this polyptych was created from the same base exposure, using Adobe Lightroom. The base exposure is of a vine encircled tree in a wooded area. Each frame was created entirely within Lightroom, without the aid of any third-party add-ins or other tools.
The third frame appears to show a male figure kneeling before a slender female figure. Less distinctly, there also appears to be another, rather ominous male figure (giant in aspect), lurking behind them, with the hilt of a sword (or a cross) held in his upraised right hand. In fact, the third frame is a rather extreme example of the phenomenon of pareidolia (perceiving patterns where none actually exist), bought about through inverse-linear processing ("ILP") in Lightroom.
Lightroom ILP begins with inverting the Tone Curve (by setting it to fall from the upper left-hand corner to the the lower right-hand corner). In ILP the sense of most, but not all, Lightroom controls invert. Proficiency in ILP requires patience and experimentation, but the results can reveal extraordinary imagery hidden in otherwise straight-forward exposures.
Tech Note 2: The base exposure is actually a vertical panorama of two exposures, merged together in Lightroom using the Photomerge function.
Tech Note 3: The first processing step was to convert the base exposure to a B&W image. Subsequent processing steps included global tinting using split toning, and spot tinting using graduated and radial filters. Overall, processing was such as to produce results reminiscent of certain alternate print methods, such as gum bichromate, cyanotype, and gumoil.
Tech note 4: Lightroom Print module settings: Print to: JPEG file ; Print Sharpening: Standard ; JPEG Quality: 100 ; Custom File Dimensions: 41.25cm x 20.45 (each frame is 20cm x 10cm) ; Profile: RGB ; Intent: Relative ; Page Background Color (border color): "Old Gold" RGB H50,S19,L52 (HEX 9C946D).
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Rvw'd 190724
On Sunday, Guatemala’s Volcán de Fuego erupted, sending a river of lava and plumes of ash, gas, and soot into nearby villages. It is a cataclysmic event that has killed hundreds of people and injured many more.
They need our help. Rescue operations have been hampered by dangerous conditions, and the death toll is expected to rise, according to BBC.
People are using social media to spread awareness about the need for assistance, usually accompanied by the hashtag #VolcanDeFuego and #PrayforGuatemala. If you want to help, here are ways to get involved:
GoFundMe has also compiled a list of verified campaigns to help those affected by the Fuego volcano eruption
Arca de Noé, the largest pet store chain in Guatemala, is collecting donations for animals and humans alike at their shops.
The U.S.-based God’s Child Project, which operates facilities in Guatemala, expects to “feed, clothe, shelter, and provide medical assistance to thousands of people in the upcoming weeks.”
The Guatemalan consulate in L.A. is accepting donations.
Cruz Roja Guatemalteca—the Guatemalan division of the Red Cross—is on the ground running blood drives, collecting supplies, and providing medical care. You can donate to them directly through the bank information they released on Twitter.
Alternatively, you can also donate to the U.S. Red Cross who is also responding to the crisis.
for Flickriver - Sophie Shapiro
.
Having slowly cooled over a billion years from the molten core of a planet that blasted apart in a cataclysmic collision in our solar system's formation.
Peter Thoeny shot it during his last visit to our Space Museum, and upscaled from 24 to 90MP with the Topaz Gigapixel AI, , a model trained with millions of photos. The detail is amazing... but it comes filtered from the mind of an alien AI. 👽 Here is the full 90 megapixel upload.
Most of the Seymchan Meterorite is at the Russian Academy of Sciences (which I recently visited and found captivating). I also voyaged through Eastern Russia near Magadan years ago.
This huge slice of a Seymchan meteorite shows the internal structure which appears as an intricate latticework — actually the crystalline pattern of the alloys that comprise the meteorite — known as the Widmanstätten pattern. This unique "fingerprint" serves as a diagnostic in the identification of iron meteorites as different meteorites feature distinct patterns.
This Pallasite-PMG comes from the Magadan District, Russia and was found in 1967. This meteorite now classified as a rare ungrouped Pallasite. The new pieces are a mixture of some pieces being iron only, some with a few silicates.
37.47 x 26.04 x .79 cm (14.75 x 10.25 x .3125 inches) and 3964.9 grams (8.74 pounds).
Terre de deserts et de beauté où la vie parait insensée.Sensation de sentir naître notre planète ou de découvrir la renaissance de la vie après un cataclysme...Etranges impressions
The Dow lost 395 points yesterday as tech stocks dragged down the major indexes. A star system in our galaxy is primed for an intense explosion that could wipe out the ozone layer in our atmosphere (though the system is eight thousand light years away from us).
Here’s the good news: we’re not living in AD 536, which one Harvard historian considers the worst year in human history. The reason: a cataclysmic volcanic eruption in Iceland spewed ash across the Northern Hemisphere, blanketing the land in a mysterious fog for eighteen months.
Temperatures fell; crops failed; people starved. Bubonic plague followed, wiping out one-third to one-half of the population of the eastern Roman Empire and hastening its collapse.
How does this dismal story relate to Thanksgiving?
“Give thanks in all circumstances”
I’ve been contemplating a challenging sentence in Scripture: “Give thanks in all circumstances; for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus for you” (1 Thessalonians 5:18).
“Give thanks” translates eucharisteite, from which we get “eucharist.” The Greek verb is a present tense imperative second person plural and thus can be literally translated, “Each and every one of you is commanded continually to express gratitude without ceasing.”
“In all circumstances” translates panti, meaning “in each and every place and time.” The Greek adjective admits no exceptions or qualifications. Such gratitude is God’s will “for you,” referring to each and every believer.
Why does our Lord command every Christian to express thanks in every circumstance of life? Does this imperative mean that God’s self-esteem is so low that he needs our constant affirmations of gratitude? Or could it be that this command is for our sake rather than his?
An attitude of gratitude in hard times
The latter is obviously the case. Why, then, does our Father want his children to live in a continuing state of thanksgiving?
The answer is not that every circumstance is inherently deserving of thanks. Jesus sweated drops of blood in Gethsemane and cried out in agony on the cross. Paul pled with the Lord to remove his “thorn in the flesh” (2 Corinthians 12:8) and had “great sorrow and unceasing anguish” for his fellow Israelites who rejected their Messiah (Romans 9:2).
Remember the sufferings of Job, the persecution faced by God’s prophets, and the martyrdoms of early Christians.
God’s word calls us to give thanks in all circumstances, not for all circumstances. But why is such an attitude of gratitude best for us even in hard times?
One reason is that giving thanks in all circumstances reinforces our status as creatures rather than the Creator, a life-giving lesson our souls constantly need to remember.
Our debt and our gratitude
Think about the last time you were genuinely grateful to someone. Did you deserve what he or she did for you? Or was your gratitude motivated by your need and their grace?
If my car breaks down on my way to the office this morning, I will have to call a mechanic to tow the vehicle or repair it. If the mechanic fixes it, I will pay him (or her) and express my thanks. But my thanksgiving will be somewhat cursory since the mechanic will do what mechanics do for a living.
But if a fellow driver stops on the side of the road and repairs my car, my depth of gratitude will be far greater. We express genuine thanksgiving when we receive grace (getting what we don’t deserve) and mercy (not getting what we do deserve). The greater our debt, the greater our gratitude.
Will you be deceived or grateful?
Here’s why our Father wants us to live in recognition of our need for his grace: he wants to give us his best and use us for his glory, but he can give only what we will receive and lead only if we will follow.
In today’s First15, Craig Denison comments on Matthew 5:3, “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.” He notes: “To be poor in spirit is to accomplish far more than you ever could in your own strength. . . . It positions you to receive the grace of God whereby your works are of an eternal nature and filled with the anointing and power of your loving, near, heavenly Father.”
As a result, we can expect Satan to tempt us to be our own god (Genesis 3:5). He is especially opposed to thanksgiving because he knows that gratitude is the antidote for pride.
So, our Father wants us to recognize our need for his grace and to respond with an attitude of gratitude that enables him to empower and use us. Our enemy wants us to reject our status as creatures and thus forfeit the blessings God gives to the humble.
The choice is ours.
James warned us: “Do not be deceived, my beloved brothers. Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of lights” (James 1:16-17).
Will you be deceived today, or will you be grateful?
Jim Denison
[FR version above / EN version below]
Mesdames et messieurs, les Dentelles du Cygne ! (V3)
Cette nébuleuse est le rémanent d'une supernova, une explosion cataclysmique signant la fin de vie d'une étoile et parfois le début d'une autre (les supernovæ finissent soir par l'explosion complète de l'étoile, soit par l'éjection des couches supérieures de l'étoile, le reste s'effondrant sous sa propre masse et finissant en naine blanche, étoile à neutron ou trou noir). Cette supernova a du se produire il y a environ une dizaine de milliers d'années et se trouve à 1440 années lumières. Autrement dit, si elle a explosé il y a 10000 ans exactement, votre ancêtre d'il y a 8560 ans (10000-1440) en est encore à tailler des pointes de flèche en silex un peu moches (mésolithique) tandis qu'en Chine ils sont au néolithique. A la même époque, la mer monte, passant d'un niveau de -15m à -3m (par rapport au niveau actuel) et la Manche se forme. Bref, à ce moment là, dégustant un des derniers mammouths au coin du feu, il assiste à un formidable spectacle céleste, éblouissant, même en pleine nuit : la supernova dont on observe les traces maintenant.
Les astronomes qui aiment bien découper les objets célestes en petits bouts, principalement pour distinguer les parties bien visibles des extensions faiblement lumineuses, distinguent la grande dentelle, la plus lumineuse à gauche, et la petite dentelle, à droite. Oui, je sais, c'est paradoxal car la grande dentelle est la plus petite sur l'image et la petite est la plus grande ; une histoire de luminosité probablement ... La grande dentelle est composée de NGC 6992 (la partie la plus brillante) et de NGC 6995 (la partie qui rebique), ainsi qu'IC 1340, les extensions faiblement lumineuses de la petite dentelle. La petite dentelle est composée de NGC 6990 (quasiment toute la petite dentelle) et de 2 petites parties en haut, NGC 6979 et NGC 6974. Les Dentelles du Cygne ne sont pas visible à l'œil nu et à peine aux jumelles avec un très bon ciel si vous savez où les chercher (je l'ai fait le soir même et c'est parce que je savais quoi chercher que je les ai identifiées aux jumelles, sinon c'est vraiment difficile), mais la petite dentelle est collée à une étoile visible (magnitude 4.2) par un très bon ciel, 52 cygni (la 52ème étoile de la constellation du cygne), ce qui permet en se servant également de l'étoile Aljanah (epsilon cygni), une étoile très brillante, de localiser la nébuleuse, de pointer dessus (ce que j'ai fait avec un viseur point rouge sur mon appareil photo) et de cadrer la photo.
Sur cette photo, il y a également d'autres étoiles de la constellation du cygne qui sont identifiées comme 41, 48, 49 cygni, ainsi que 2 étoiles de la constellation du petit renard (vulpecula en latin ; renard = vulpes), 26 et 27 vulpeculi.
De plus, on observe sans peine à droite de l'image un amas ouvert, NGC 6940, âgé de 720 millions d'années et situé à 2500 années lumière de nous. Ses dimensions apparentes étant de 25' d'arc (1 seconde d'arc = 1/60 degré), je vous laisse faire le calcul de sa dimension réelle, un peu de trigonométrie ne peut pas vous faire de mal !
Enfin, toujours sur cette image, j'ai attrapé une galaxie qui, certes, apparaît toute petite vu la faible focale employée ici, NGC 7013. Ne cherchez pas sur l'image non annotée, sauf si vous vous ennuyez à mort. C'est un point vaguement nébuleux et allongé verticalement tout en bas de l'image, au premier quart gauche de celle-ci. C'est une galaxie dont la classification la situe entre les galaxies spirales et lenticulaires. Elle est distante d'environ 40 millions d'années lumières et fait 43680 années lumières de diamètre. En comparaison, la notre (la voie lactée) en fait environ 120000. Là où je suis assez content, c'est d'arriver à la faire sortir sur cette photo car sa magnitude est de 12.4 (donc assez faible).
Pour vous aider à vous y retrouver dans tout ça, je vous encourage à aller jeter un oeil à l'image annotée sur astrometry.net : nova.astrometry.net/annotated_full/6780553
Bon, parlons techno maintenant. Pour cette reprise de mes sessions astro, j'y suis allé tranquille ; j'ai fonctionné à l'objectif seulement ; pas de telescope. Donc, ce sont 416 photos de 45 secondes de pose unitaire (espacées de 5 secondes), iso 800, prises au Canon 1200D DP-Photomax + objectif Samyang 135 mm f/2 ouvert à f/2.8 (très ouvert donc, ce qui me vaut un léger halo sur les étoiles non centrées, les brillantes principalement), prises entre 22h34 (samedi 30/07/22) et 4h09 (dimanche 31 donc), que j'ai triées pour ne conserver que les 315 meilleures, cumulant ainsi 3h56 de signal. Le suivi était assuré par une monture Star Adventurer 2i.
Tout le pré-traitement jusqu'à l'empilement des images a été fait sous Siril 1.3 en utilisant 35/35/35 DOF.
Pour le post-traitement, la photo a subit une réduction d'étoiles. J'ai commencé par faire une starless (virer les étoiles) en utilisant StarNet V2. J'ai ensuite fait tout le reste sous Gimp : masque d'étoiles, recombinaison des images nébuleuse seule + étoiles seules, travail sur le niveau de noir / balance des blancs, ... Cette version est un retraitement complet effectué à partir des photos d'origine.
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Ladies and gentlemen, the Cygnus Loop (V3)
This nebula is the remnant of a supernova, a cataclysmic explosion that ends a star's life and sometimes sounds the birth of another one. Supernovae indeed end either with the complete explosion of the star, or with the ejection of the layers of the star, the remains collapsing under their own mass and ending up as a white dwarf, neutron star or black hole.
This supernova must have occurred about ten thousand years ago and is located 1440 light years away. In other words, if it exploded exactly 10,000 years ago, your ancestor from 8,560 years ago (10,000-1440) was carving ugly flint arrowheads (Mesolithic) while in China Neolithic yet started. At the same time, the seas were rising, going from a level of -15m to -3m (compared to the current level) and the Channel formed. At that moment, tasting one of the last mammoths by the fireside, your ancestor witnessed a formidable celestial spectacle, dazzling, even in the middle of the night: the supernova whose traces we now observe.
Astronomers who often cut celestial objects into small pieces, distinguish the bright visible parts from the weakly luminous extensions. The brightest part on the left is called the Western veil, and the weaker part, on the right, is called the Eastern veil. The Eastern veil is composed of NGC 6992 (the brightest part of the Eastern veil) and NGC 6995 (the part that bends), as well as IC 1340, the weakly luminous extensions of the Eastern veil. The Western veil is composed of NGC 6990 (almost all the western part of the nebula) and 2 small parts at the top, NGC 6979 and NGC 6974. The Cygnus loop is not visible to the naked eye and barely to binoculars with a very good skies ... if you know where the nebula stays of course. The Western veil is stuck to a star that can be observed under good skies (magnitude 4.2), 52 cygni (the 52nd star of Cygnus constellation). If you also locate the star Aljanah (epsilon cygni), a very bright star, you will be able to locate the nebula that stands between the two.
In this photo there are also other stars in the Cygnus constellation which are identified as 41, 48, 49 cygni, as well as 2 stars in the constellation of the Little Fox (vulpecula in Latin; fox = vulpes), 26 and 27 vulpeculi.
Moreover, we easily observe on the right of the image an open cluster, NGC 6940, 720 million years old and located 2500 light years from us. Its apparent dimensions being 25' of arc (1 second of arc = 1/60 degree), I let you do the calculation of its real dimensions, a bit of trigonometry can't hurt you!
Finally, I caught a galaxy which, admittedly, appears very small given the low focal length used here, NGC 7013. Don't try to look for it on the non-annotated image, unless you are bored to death. It is a vaguely nebulous and vertically elongated point at the very bottom of the image, in the first left quarter. It is a galaxy classified between spiral and lenticular galaxies. It is about 40 million light years away and 43680 light years diameter. In comparison, ours (the Milky Way) is about 120,000 LY. I'm quite happy is to get it because its magnitude is 12.4 (therefore quite low : 86000 times less brighter than Vega).
To help you figure it all, may I encourage you to take a look at the annotated image on astrometry.net: nova.astrometry.net/annotated_full/6780553
Let's talk tech now. I took 416 photos of 45 seconds of exposure (5 seconds between each), iso 800, taken with a Canon 1200D filter partially removed + Samyang 135 mm f/2 lens opened to f/2.8 (very open, therefore, which produced a slight halo on the non-centered stars, mainly the bright ones). Photos were taken between 10:34 p.m. (Saturday 07/30/22) and 4:09 a.m. (Sunday 31 therefore). I kept only the best 315 ones, thus accumulating 3:56 signal. Tracking was provided by a Star Adventurer 2i mount.
All pre-processing up to image stacking was done in Siril 1.3 using 35/35/35 DOF.
For post-processing, the photo underwent star reduction. I started by doing a starless (turning the stars) using StarNet V2. Post-treatment was done with Gimp: star mask, recombination of nebula images only + stars alone, ...
This version is a new treatment from scratch from original data.
- www.kevin-palmer.com - On this day the Elk Fire made a huge run to the southeast, jumping Highway 14 along the face of the Bighorn Mountains. Smoke blocked out the sun, ash fell from the sky, and the scene was apocalyptic. Prior to this the largest fire on record in these mountains was 18,000 acres, but this one burned up 96,000 acres of forest.
With all of the buzz about asteroid strikes causing mass extinctions, I have decided to travel into our interplanetary solar system to map and track the orbits of these dangerous miniature worlds. After tagging countless lifeless rocks, I stumbled upon this gem. Naturally, I was curious to take the pathway to see if the other side was greener . . .
This photo was taken with an Asahi Pentax 6 X 7 medium format film camera with a Super Takumar/6X7 1:2.4/105 lens and HOYA 67mm INFRARED (R72) filter using Rollei IR 400 film, the negative scanned by an Epson Perfection V600 and digitally rendered using Photoshop.
Chaotic in appearance, these filaments of shocked, glowing gas break across planet Earth's sky toward the constellation of Cygnus, as part of the Veil Nebula. The Veil Nebula itself is a large supernova remnant, an expanding cloud born of the death explosion of a massive star. Light from the original supernova explosion likely reached Earth over 5,000 years ago. Blasted out in the cataclysmic event, the interstellar shock waves plow through space sweeping up and exciting interstellar material. The glowing filaments are really more like long ripples in a sheet seen almost edge on, remarkably well separated into the glow of ionized hydrogen and sulfur atoms shown in red and green, and oxygen in blue hues. Also known as the Cygnus Loop, the Veil Nebula now spans nearly 3 degrees or about 6 times the diameter of the full Moon. While that translates to over 70 light-years at its estimated distance of 1,500 light-years, this field of view spans less than one third that distance. Identified as Pickering's Triangle for a director of Harvard College Observatory and cataloged as NGC 6979, the complex of filaments might be more appropriately known as Williamina Fleming's Triangular Wisp. via NASA 1.usa.gov/1Ll71V5
Chaotic in appearance, these filaments of shocked, glowing gas break across planet Earth's sky toward the constellation of Cygnus, as part of the Veil Nebula. The Veil Nebula itself is a large supernova remnant, an expanding cloud born of the death explosion of a massive star. Light from the original supernova explosion likely reached Earth over 5,000 years ago. Blasted out in the cataclysmic event, the interstellar shock waves plow through space sweeping up and exciting interstellar material. The glowing filaments are really more like long ripples in a sheet seen almost edge on, remarkably well separated into the glow of ionized hydrogen and sulfur atoms shown in red and green, and oxygen in blue hues. Also known as the Cygnus Loop, the Veil Nebula now spans nearly 3 degrees or about 6 times the diameter of the full Moon. While that translates to over 70 light-years at its estimated distance of 1,500 light-years, this field of view spans less than one third that distance. Identified as Pickering's Triangle for a director of Harvard College Observatory and cataloged as NGC 6979, the complex of filaments might be more appropriately known as Williamina Fleming's Triangular Wisp. via NASA ift.tt/1FOtV0X
it was late in the afternoon
and the Portland Aerial Tram
lay mostly in the cold blue shadows
of the west hills.
as we approached the lower tower,
you could see the south waterfront district
and the sun reflecting off
the new facility
built by the Oregon Health & Science University.
beyond it is the river,
the city and,
to the right,
a huge crane.
it is said that the lower tower
is 197 feet tall
and i found myself thinking
about the Missoula Floods.
less than 15,000 years ago,
huge ice dams were formed
on the Clark Fork River,
creating Glacial Lake Missoula.
every 55 years or so,
the ice dams would rupture
and the waters of the lake
would sweep across
what is now eastern Washington
at speeds approaching 65 mph.
as the icy waters
came blasting down
the Columbia River,
they would back up
at the narrows near
what is now the
city of Kalama, Washington,
in turn pushing water
in excess of 400 feet deep
up the Willamette Valley.
this led to rampant alcoholism
among the locals
inasmuch as
there was not much fishing
to be had for quite awhile
after each of these cataclysmic events.
a geologist named J. Harlen Bretz
figured all of this stuff out
in the mid-1920s.
i don’t know what the “J”
stands for in his name,
but I bet his buddies
just called him “Harl.”
word has it that he
was a helluva good trout fisherman.
in any event,
by my calculation,
during one of these floods,
the top of the tower would still be
under a couple hundred feet of water.
i don’t what this has to do with anything,
but what with global warming and all,
i found myself thinking about it
as we all hung suspended
from a steel cable
high above the I-5 freeway.
it’s all relative, I guess.
fuji 100f
color slide film
zero image 69
pinhole camera,
held for 5 seconds or so
against the glass
at the front of the tram.
These 2,000 year old tree fragments were recently unearthed by shifting sands:
"It's theorized that around 2,000 years ago a massive, cataclysmic earthquake abruptly dropped this forest possibly more than 25 feet. Then, somehow, they were preserved by sand and mud, rather then being destroyed and scattered, as natural erosion might've done."
(via www.beachconnection.net/news/nesko0606_29013.htm)
Many thanks to fellow flickr'r Unsettler for the heads up on the site.
Terre de deserts et de beauté où la vie parait insensée.Sensation de sentir naître notre planète ou de découvrir la renaissance de la vie après un cataclysme...Etranges impressions
Commentary.
A myriad of lochans and pools
interspersed with drumlins, roche moutonée, erratic boulders,
islets and peaty bog.
This vast, wet, boggy expanse indicates cataclysmic change.
Not by humans.
Not by animals.
Not even by glaciers.
(though several will have merged here, many times).
No, it was by that thing that we are conditioned to think
started in the 19th. century and still exists today…..
Climate change.
Preserving peat bog is now seen as vital in combatting radical climate change. They act as a vast carbon lock and should become protected areas.
A very wet period drowned the native Scots Pine and this steaming bog is all that remains of a once vast forest.
Here at sunrise, the mist rises, as the sun’s rays catch the peaks.
A mystical, ancient, primeval, ethereal feeling catches one’s imagination.
Rannoch Moor rarely fails to amaze and entrance!
Chaotic in appearance, these filaments of shocked, glowing gas break across planet Earth's sky toward the constellation of Cygnus, as part of the Veil Nebula. The Veil Nebula itself is a large supernova remnant, an expanding cloud born of the death explosion of a massive star. Light from the original supernova explosion likely reached Earth over 5,000 years ago. Blasted out in the cataclysmic event, the interstellar shock waves plow through space sweeping up and exciting interstellar material. The glowing filaments are really more like long ripples in a sheet seen almost edge on, remarkably well separated into the glow of ionized hydrogen and sulfur atoms shown in red and green, and oxygen in blue hues. Also known as the Cygnus Loop, the Veil Nebula now spans nearly 3 degrees or about 6 times the diameter of the full Moon. While that translates to over 70 light-years at its estimated distance of 1,500 light-years, this field of view spans less than one third that distance. Identified as Pickering's Triangle for a director of Harvard College Observatory and cataloged as NGC 6979, the complex of filaments might be more appropriately known as Williamina Fleming's Triangular Wisp. via NASA ift.tt/1FOtV0X
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Feel the heat, feel the burn, feel your world breaking into millions of tiny pieces.
Set: Greyhound: Cataclysm
Cosmic Cataclysm
An explosion of radiant energy, where light and shadow collide in a dance of creation. A vision of the universe in flux—chaotic, fierce, and infinitely alive.
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A horrible cataclysm breaks the tearful ground and the river rushes through the new bed; Through the walls of luminous granite itarare, fearful and violent.
Suddenly he stops to take a breath, here in the dark cave, in the shady silence; But soon he jumps on, rude and noisy, to disappear beyond, elusive and silent.
In the afternoon, the swallows, in wild revolts, threw themselves at the grottoes, the arrows of which were fired, seeking the solitude of spontaneous exile.
And the mystery of the river remains inviolable ...
Nothing escapes from within the unfathomable abyss.
Only the swallows know ... but keep it a secret.
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Typhon was flying through the spirit of consciousness, when I designed thus engine in 1987 for Alice v W.......
There is also a shining white comet with silver "hair,"
shining in such a way that it can scarcely be looked at,
and of human appearance,
showing in itself the form of a god.
―Joannes Lydus, in De Ostentis
I suppose that the comets may be the agents
which have already effected great changes in all the planets,
and that they may be destined to effect many others―
till, in defined periods, the planets, by means of these agents,
may be all reduced to a state of fusion or gas ....
―Godfrey Higgins, Anacalypsis, Volume II
Typhon (/ˈtaɪfɒn, -fən/; Greek: Τυφῶν, Tuphōn [typʰɔ̂ːn]), also Typhoeus (/taɪˈfiːəs/; Τυφωεύς, Tuphōeus), Typhaon (Τυφάων, Tuphaōn) or Typhos (Τυφώς, Tuphōs), was a monstrous snaky giant and the most deadly creature in Greek mythology. According to Hesiod, Typhon was the son of Gaia and Tartarus. However one source has Typhon as the son of Hera alone, while another makes Typhon the offspring of Cronus. Typhon and his mate Echidna were the progenitors of many famous monsters. Typhon attempted to overthrow Zeus for the supremacy of the cosmos. The two fought a cataclysmic battle, which Zeus finally won with the aid of his thunderbolts. Defeated, Typhon was cast into Tartarus, or buried underneath Mount Etna, or the island of Ischia. In later accounts Typhon was often confused with the Giants.According to Hesiod's Theogony (c. 8th – 7th century BC), Typhon was the son of Gaia (Earth) and Tartarus: "when Zeus had driven the Titans from heaven, huge Earth bore her youngest child Typhoeus of the love of Tartarus, by the aid of golden Aphrodite".The mythographer Apollodorus (1st or 2nd century AD) adds that Gaia bore Typhon in anger at the gods for their destruction of her offspring the Giants.Numerous other sources mention Typhon as being the offspring of Gaia, or simply "earth-born", with no mention of Tartarus.However, according to the Homeric Hymn to Apollo (6th century BC), Typhon was the child of Hera alone. Hera, angry at Zeus for having given birth to Athena by himself, prayed to Gaia, Uranus, and the Titans, to give her a son stronger than Zeus, then slapped the ground and became pregnant. Hera gave the infant Typhon to the serpent Python to raise, and Typhon grew up to become a great bane to mortals.
Depiction by Wenceslas Hollar
Several sources locate Typhon's birth and dwelling place in Cilicia, and in particular the region in the vicinity of the ancient Cilician coastal city of Corycus (modern Kızkalesi, Turkey). The poet Pindar (c. 470 BC) calls Typhon "Cilician,"and says that Typhon was born in Cilicia and nurtured in "the famous Cilician cave",[8] an apparent allusion to the Corycian cave in Turkey.[9] In Aeschylus' Prometheus Bound, Typhon is called the "dweller of the Cilician caves",and both Apollodorus and the poet Nonnus (4th or 5th century AD) have Typhon born in Cilicia.
The b scholia to Iliad 2.783, preserving a possibly Orphic tradition, has Typhon born in Cilicia, as the offspring of Cronus. Gaia, angry at the destruction of the Giants, slanders Zeus to Hera. So Hera goes to Zeus' father Cronus (whom Zeus had overthrown) and Cronus gives Hera two eggs smeared with his own semen, telling her to bury them, and that from them would be born one who would overthrow Zeus. Hera, angry at Zeus, buries the eggs in Cilicia "under Arimon", but when Typhon is born, Hera, now reconciled with Zeus, informs him.
According to Hesiod, Typhon was "terrible, outrageous and lawless",immensely powerful, and on his shoulders were one hundred snake heads, that emitted fire and every kind of noise:
Strength was with his hands in all that he did and the feet of the strong god were untiring. From his shoulders grew a hundred heads of a snake, a fearful dragon, with dark, flickering tongues, and from under the brows of his eyes in his marvellous heads flashed fire, and fire burned from his heads as he glared. And there were voices in all his dreadful heads which uttered every kind of sound unspeakable; for at one time they made sounds such that the gods understood, but at another, the noise of a bull bellowing aloud in proud ungovernable fury; and at another, the sound of a lion, relentless of heart; and at another, sounds like whelps, wonderful to hear; and again, at another, he would hiss, so that the high mountains re-echoed.
The Homeric Hymn to Apollo describes Typhon as "fell" and "cruel", and neither like gods nor men.Three of Pindar's poems have Typhon as hundred-headed (as in Hesiod), while apparently a fourth gives him only fifty heads, but a hundred heads for Typhon became standard. A Chalcidian hydria (c. 540–530 BC), depicts Typhon as a winged humanoid from the waist up, with two snake tails below.Aeschylus calls Typhon "fire-breathing".For Nicander (2nd century BC), Typhon was a monster of enormous strength, and strange appearance, with many heads, hands, and wings, and with huge snake coils coming from his thighs.
Apollodorus describes Typhon as a huge winged monster, whose head "brushed the stars", human in form above the waist, with snake coils below, and fire flashing from his eyes:
In size and strength he surpassed all the offspring of Earth. As far as the thighs he was of human shape and of such prodigious bulk that he out-topped all the mountains, and his head often brushed the stars. One of his hands reached out to the west and the other to the east, and from them projected a hundred dragons' heads. From the thighs downward he had huge coils of vipers, which when drawn out, reached to his very head and emitted a loud hissing. His body was all winged: unkempt hair streamed on the wind from his head and cheeks; and fire flashed from his eyes.
The most elaborate description of Typhon is found in Nonnus's Dionysiaca. Nonnus makes numerous references to Typhon's serpentine nature,giving him a "tangled army of snakes",snaky feet,and hair.According to Nonnus, Typhon was a "poison-spitting viper",whose "every hair belched viper-poison", and Typhon "spat out showers of poison from his throat; the mountain torrents were swollen, as the monster showered fountains from the viperish bristles of his high head",and "the water-snakes of the monster's viperish feet crawl into the caverns underground, spitting poison!".
Following Hesiod and others, Nonnus gives Typhon many heads (though untotaled), but in addition to snake heads,Nonnus also gives Typhon many other animal heads, including leopards, lions, bulls, boars, bears, cattle, wolves, and dogs, which combine to make 'the cries of all wild beasts together',and a "babel of screaming sounds". Nonnus also gives Typhon "legions of arms innumerable", and where Nicander had only said that Typhon had "many" hands, and Ovid had given Typhon a hundred hands, Nonnus gives Typhon two hundred.
According to Hesiod's Theogony, Typhon "was joined in love" to Echidna, a monstrous half-woman and half-snake, who bore Typhon "fierce offspring".First, according to Hesiod, there was Orthrus,the two-headed dog who guarded the Cattle of Geryon, second Cerberus,the multiheaded dog who guarded the gates of Hades, and third the Lernaean Hydra,the many-headed serpent who, when one of its heads was cut off, grew two more. The Theogony next mentions an ambiguous "she", which might refer to Echidna, as the mother of the Chimera (a fire-breathing beast that was part lion, part goat, and had a snake-headed tail) with Typhon then being the father.
While mentioning Cerberus and "other monsters" as being the offspring of Echidna and Typhon, the mythographer Acusilaus (6th century BC) adds the Caucasian Eagle that ate the liver of Prometheus, the mythographer Pherecydes of Leros (5th century BC), also names Prometheus' eagle,and adds Ladon (though Pherecydes does not use this name), and the dragon that guarded the golden apples in the Garden of the Hesperides (according to Hesiod, the offspring of Ceto and Phorcys).The lyric poet Lasus of Hermione (6th century BC) adds the Sphinx.
Later authors mostly retain these offspring of Typhon by Echidna, while adding others. Apollodorus, in addition to naming as their offspring Orthrus, the Chimera (citing Hesiod as his source) the Caucasian Eagle, Ladon, and the Sphinx, also adds the Nemean lion (no mother is given), and the Crommyonian Sow, killed by the hero Theseus (unmentioned by Hesiod).
Hyginus (1st century BC),in his list of offspring of Typhon (all by Echidna), retains from the above: Cerberus, the Chimera, the Sphinx, the Hydra and Ladon, and adds "Gorgon" (by which Hyginus means the mother of Medusa, whereas Hesiod's three Gorgons, of which Medusa was one, were the daughters of Ceto and Phorcys), the Colchian Dragon that guarded the Golden Fleece and Scylla.The Harpies, in Hesiod the daughters of Thaumas and the Oceanid Electra,[48] in one source, are said to be the daughters of Typhon.
The sea serpents which attacked the Trojan priest Laocoön, during the Trojan War, were perhaps supposed to be the progeny of Typhon and Echidna.
According to Hesiod, the defeated Typhon is the source of destructive storm winds.
Typhon challenged Zeus for rule of the cosmos.The earliest mention of Typhon, and his only occurrence in Homer, is a passing reference in the Iliad to Zeus striking the ground around where Typhon lies defeated.Hesiod's Theogony gives us the first account of their battle. According to Hesiod, without the quick action of Zeus, Typhon would have "come to reign over mortals and immortals".In the Theogony Zeus and Typhon meet in cataclysmic conflict:
[Zeus] thundered hard and mightily: and the earth around resounded terribly and the wide heaven above, and the sea and Ocean's streams and the nether parts of the earth. Great Olympus reeled beneath the divine feet of the king as he arose and earth groaned thereat. And through the two of them heat took hold on the dark-blue sea, through the thunder and lightning, and through the fire from the monster, and the scorching winds and blazing thunderbolt. The whole earth seethed, and sky and sea: and the long waves raged along the beaches round and about at the rush of the deathless gods: and there arose an endless shaking. Hades trembled where he rules over the dead below, and the Titans under Tartarus who live with Cronos, because of the unending clamor and the fearful strife.
Zeus with his thunderbolt easily overcomes Typhon,who is thrown down to earth in a fiery crash:
So when Zeus had raised up his might and seized his arms, thunder and lightning and lurid thunderbolt, he leaped from Olympus and struck him, and burned all the marvellous heads of the monster about him. But when Zeus had conquered him and lashed him with strokes, Typhoeus was hurled down, a maimed wreck, so that the huge earth groaned. And flame shot forth from the thunderstricken lord in the dim rugged glens of the mount, when he was smitten. A great part of huge earth was scorched by the terrible vapor and melted as tin melts when heated by men's art in channelled crucibles; or as iron, which is hardest of all things, is shortened by glowing fire in mountain glens and melts in the divine earth through the strength of Hephaestus. Even so, then, the earth melted in the glow of the blazing fire.
Defeated, Typhon is cast into Tartarus by an angry Zeus.
Epimenides (7th or 6th century BC) seemingly knew a different version of the story, in which Typhon enters Zeus' palace while Zeus is asleep, but Zeus awakes and kills Typhon with a thunderbolt.Pindar apparently knew of a tradition which had the gods, in order to escape from Typhon, transform themselves into animals, and flee to Egypt.Pindar calls Typhon the "enemy of the gods",and says that he was defeated by Zeus' thunderbolt.In one poem Pindar has Typhon being held prisoner by Zeus under Etna,and in another says that Typhon "lies in dread Tartarus", stretched out underground between Mount Etna and Cumae.In Aeschylus' Prometheus Bound, a "hissing" Typhon, his eyes flashing, "withstood all the gods", but "the unsleeping bolt of Zeus" struck him, and "he was burnt to ashes and his strength blasted from him by the lightning bolt."
According to Pherecydes of Leros, during his battle with Zeus, Typhon first flees to the Caucasus, which begins to burn, then to the volcanic island of Pithecussae (modern Ischia), off the coast of Cumae, where he is buried under the island.Apollonius of Rhodes (3rd century BC), like Pherecydes, presents a multi-stage battle, with Typhon being struck by Zeus' thunderbolt on mount Caucasus, before fleeing to the mountains and plain of Nysa, and ending up (as already mentioned by the fifth-century BC Greek historian Herodotus) buried under Lake Serbonis in Egypt.
Like Pindar, Nicander has all the gods but Zeus and Athena, transform into animal forms and flee to Egypt: Apollo became a hawk, Hermes an ibis, Ares a fish, Artemis a cat, Dionysus a goat, Heracles a fawn, Hephaestus an ox, and Leto a mouse.
The geographer Strabo (c. 20 AD) gives several locations which were associated with the battle. According to Strabo, Typhon was said to have cut the serpentine channel of the Orontes River, which flowed beneath the Syrian Mount Kasios (modern Jebel Aqra), while fleeing from Zeus,and some placed the battle at Catacecaumene ("Burnt Land"),a volcanic plain, on the upper Gediz River, between the ancient kingdoms of Lydia, Mysia and Phrygia, near Mount Tmolus (modern Bozdağ) and Sardis the ancient capital of Lydia.
In the versions of the battle given by Hesiod, Aeschylus and Pindar, Zeus' defeat of Typhon is straightforward, however a more involved version of the battle is given by Apollodorus.No early source gives any reason for the conflict, but Apollodorus' account seemingly implies that Typhon had been produced by Gaia to avenge the destruction, by Zeus and the other gods, of the Giants, a previous generation of offspring of Gaia. According to Apollodorus, Typhon, "hurling kindled rocks", attacked the gods, "with hissings and shouts, spouting a great jet of fire from his mouth." Seeing this, the gods transformed into animals and fled to Egypt (as in Pindar and Nicander). However "Zeus pelted Typhon at a distance with thunderbolts, and at close quarters struck him down with an adamantine sickle"Wounded, Typhon fled to the Syrian Mount Kasios, where Zeus "grappled" with him. But Typhon, twining his snaky coils around Zeus, was able to wrest away the sickle and cut the sinews from Zeus' hands and feet. Typhon carried the disabled Zeus across the sea to the Corycian cave in Cilicia where he set the she-serpent Delphyne to guard over Zeus and his severed sinews, which Typhon had hidden in a bearskin. But Hermes and Aegipan (possibly another name for Pan)stole the sinews and gave them back to Zeus. His strength restored, Zeus chased Typhon to mount Nysa, where the Moirai tricked Typhon into eating "ephemeral fruits" which weakened him. Typhon then fled to Thrace, where he threw mountains at Zeus, which were turned back on him by Zeus' thunderbolts, and the mountain where Typhon stood, being drenched with Typhon's blood, became known as Mount Haemus (Bloody Mountain). Typhon then fled to Sicily, where Zeus threw Mount Etna on top of Typhon burying him, and so finally defeated him.
Oppian (2nd century AD) says that Pan helped Zeus in the battle by tricking Typhon to come out from his lair, and into the open, by the "promise of a banquet of fish", thus enabling Zeus to defeat Typhon with his thunderbolts.
The longest and most involved version of the battle appears in Nonnus's Dionysiaca (late 4th or early 5th century AD).Zeus hides his thunderbolts in a cave, so that he might seduce the maiden Plouto, and so produce Tantalus. But smoke rising from the thunderbolts, enables Typhon, under the guidance of Gaia, to locate Zeus's weapons, steal them, and hide them in another cave.Immediately Typhon extends "his clambering hands into the upper air" and begins a long and concerted attack upon the heavens.Then "leaving the air" he turns his attack upon the seas.Finally Typhon attempts to wield Zeus' thunderbolts, but they "felt the hands of a novice, and all their manly blaze was unmanned."
Now Zeus' sinews had somehow – Nonnus does not say how or when — fallen to the ground during their battle, and Typhon had taken them also.But Zeus devises a plan with Cadmus and Pan to beguile Typhon.Cadmus, desguised as a shepherd, enchants Typhon by playing the panpipes, and Typhon entrusting the thuderbolts to Gaia, sets out to find the source of the music he hears.Finding Cadmus, he challenges him to a contest, offering Cadmus any goddess as wife, excepting Hera whom Typhon has reserved for himself.Cadmus then tells Typhon that, if he liked the "little tune" of his pipes, then he would love the music of his lyre – if only it could be strung with Zeus' sinews.So Typhon retrieves the sinews and gives them to Cadmus, who hides them in another cave, and again begins to play his bewitching pipes, so that "Typhoeus yielded his whole soul to Cadmos for the melody to charm".
With Typhon distracted, Zeus takes back his thunderbolts. Cadmus stops playing, and Typhon, released from his spell, rushes back to his cave to discover the thunderbolts gone. Incensed Typhon unleashes devastation upon the world: animals are devoured, (Typhon's many animal heads each eat animals of its own kind), rivers turned to dust, seas made dry land, and the land "laid waste".
The day ends with Typhon yet unchallenged, and while the other gods "moved about the cloudless Nile", Zeus waits through the night for the coming dawn.Victory "reproaches" Zeus, urging him to "stand up as champion of your own children!"Dawn comes and Typhon roars out a challenge to Zeus. And a cataclysmic battle for "the sceptre and throne of Zeus" is joined. Typhon piles up mountains as battlements and with his "legions of arms innumerable", showers volley after volley of trees and rocks at Zeus, but all are destroyed, or blown aside, or dodged, or thrown back at Typhon. Typhon throws torrents of water at Zeus' thunderbolts to quench them, but Zeus is able to cut off some of Typhon's hands with "frozen volleys of air as by a knife", and hurling thunderbolts is able to burn more of typhon's "endless hands", and cut off some of his "countless heads". Typhon is attacked by the four winds, and "frozen volleys of jagged hailstones."Gaia tries to aid her burnt and frozen son.Finally Typhon falls, and Zeus shouts out a long stream of mocking taunts, telling Typhon that he is to be buried under Sicily's hills, with a cenotaph over him which will read "This is the barrow of Typhoeus, son of Earth, who once lashed the sky with stones, and the fire of heaven burnt him up".
Most accounts have the defeated Typhon buried under either Mount Etna in Sicily, or the volcanic island of Ischia, the largest of the Phlegraean Islands off the coast of Naples, with Typhon being the cause of volcanic eruptions and earthquakes.
Though Hesiod has Typhon simply cast into Tartarus by Zeus, some have read a reference to Mount Etna in Hesiod's description of Typhon's fall: And flame shot forth from the thunderstricken lord in the dim rugged glens of the mount when he was smitten. A great part of huge earth was scorched by the terrible vapor and melted as tin melts when heated by men's art in channelled crucibles; or as iron, which is hardest of all things, is shortened by glowing fire in mountain glens and melts in the divine earth through the strength of Hephaestus. Even so, then, the earth melted in the glow of the blazing fire.
The first certain references to Typhon buried under Etna, as well as being the cause of its eruptions, occur in Pindar:Son of Cronus, you who hold Aetna, the wind-swept weight on terrible hundred-headed Typhon, and:among them is he who lies in dread Tartarus, that enemy of the gods, Typhon with his hundred heads. Once the famous Cilician cave nurtured him, but now the sea-girt cliffs above Cumae, and Sicily too, lie heavy on his shaggy chest. And the pillar of the sky holds him down, snow-covered Aetna, year-round nurse of bitter frost, from whose inmost caves belch forth the purest streams of unapproachable fire. In the daytime her rivers roll out a fiery flood of smoke, while in the darkness of night the crimson flame hurls rocks down to the deep plain of the sea with a crashing roar. That monster shoots up the most terrible jets of fire; it is a marvellous wonder to see, and a marvel even to hear about when men are present. Such a creature is bound beneath the dark and leafy heights of Aetna and beneath the plain, and his bed scratches and goads the whole length of his back stretched out against it. Thus Pindar has Typhon in Tartarus, and buried under not just Etna, but under a vast volcanic region stretching from Sicily to Cumae (in the vicinity of modern Naples), a region which presumably also included Mount Vesuvius, as well as Ischia.
Many subsequent accounts mention either Etna[98] or Ischia. In Prometheus Bound, Typhon is imprisoned underneath Etna, while above him Hephaestus "hammers the molten ore", and in his rage, the "charred" Typhon causes "rivers of fire" to pour forth. Ovid has Typhon buried under all of Sicily, with his left and right hands under Pelorus and Pachynus, his feet under Lilybaeus, and his head under Etna; where he "vomits flames from his ferocious mouth". And Valerius Flaccus has Typhon's head under Etna, and all of Sicily shaken when Typhon "struggles". Lycophron has both Typhon and Giants buried under the island of Ischia. Virgil, Silius Italicus and Claudian, all calling the island "Inarime", have Typhon buried there. Strabo, calling Ischia "Pithecussae", reports the "myth" that Typhon lay buried there, and that when he "turns his body the flames and the waters, and sometimes even small islands containing boiling water, spout forth." In addition to Typhon, other mythological beings were also said to be buried under Mount Etna and the cause of its vocanic activity. Most notably the Giant Enceladus was said to be entombed under Etna, the volcano's eruptions being the breath of Enceladus, and its tremors caused by the Giant rolling over from side to side beneath the mountain. Also said to be buried under Etna were the Hundred-hander Briareus,and Asteropus who was perhaps one of the Cyclopes.
Typhon's final resting place was apparently also said to be in Boeotia.The Hesiodic Shield of Heracles names a mountain near Thebes Typhaonium, perhaps reflecting an early tradition which also had Typhon buried under a Boeotian mountain.And some apparently claimed that Typhon was buried beneath a mountain in Boeotia, from which came exhaltations of fire.
Homer describes a place he calls the "couch [or bed] of Typhoeus", which he locates in the land of the Arimoi (εἰν Ἀρίμοις), where Zeus lashes the land about Typhoeus with his thunderbolts.[107] Presumably this is the same land where, according to Hesiod, Typhon's mate Echidna keeps guard "in Arima" (εἰν Ἀρίμοισιν). But neither Homer nor Hesiod say anything more about where these Arimoi or this Arima might be. The question of whether an historical place was meant, and its possible location, has been, since ancient times, the subject of speculation and debate. Strabo discusses the question in some detail. Several locales, Cilicia, Syria, Lydia, and the island of Ischia, all places associated with Typhon, are given by Strabo as possible locations for Homer's "Arimoi".
Pindar has his Cilician Typhon slain by Zeus "among the Arimoi",[111] and the historian Callisthenes (4th century BC), located the Arimoi and the Arima mountains in Cilicia, near the Calycadnus river, the Corycian cave and the Sarpedon promomtory.[112] The b scholia to Iliad 2.783, mentioned above, says Typhon was born in Cilicia "under Arimon",and Nonnus mentions Typhon's "bloodstained cave of Arima" in Cilicia. Just across the Gulf of Issus from Corycus, in ancient Syria, was Mount Kasios (modern Jebel Aqra) and the Orontes River, sites associated with Typhon's battle with Zeus,and according to Strabo, the historian Posidonius (c. 2nd century BC) identified the Arimoi with the Aramaeans of Syria.
Alternatively, according to Strabo, some placed the Arimoi at Catacecaumene, while Xanthus of Lydia (5th century BC) added that "a certain Arimus" ruled there. Strabo also tells us that for "some" Homer's "couch of Typhon" was located "in a wooded place, in the fertile land of Hyde", with Hyde being another name for Sardis (or its acropolis), and that Demetrius of Scepsis (2nd century BC) thought that the Arimoi were most plausibly located "in the Catacecaumene country in Mysia".[119] The 3rd-century BC poet Lycophron placed the lair of Typhons' mate Echidna in this region.
Another place, mentioned by Strabo, as being associated with Arima, is the island of Ischia, where according to Pherecydes of Leros, Typhon had fled, and in the area where Pindar and others had said Typhon was buried. The connection to Arima, comes from the island's Greek name Pithecussae, which derives from the Greek word for monkey, and according to Strabo, residents of the island said that "arimoi" was also the Etruscan word for monkeys.
Typhon's name has a number of variants. The earliest forms of Typhoeus and Typhaon, occur prior to the 5th century BC. Homer uses Typhoeus,Hesiod and the Homeric Hymn to Apollo use both Typhoeus and Typhaon. The later forms Typhos and Typhon occur from the 5th century BC onwards, with Typhon becoming the standard form by the end of that century.
Though several possible derivations of the name Typhon have been suggested, the derivation remains uncertain.Consistent with Hesiod's making storm winds Typhon's offspring, some have supposed that Typhon was originally a wind-god, and ancient sources associated him with the Greek words tuphon, tuphos meaning "whirlwind".Other theories include derivation from a Greek root meaning "smoke" (consistent with Typhon's identification with volcanoes), from an Indo-European root meaning "abyss" (making Typhon a "Serpent of the Deep"), and from Sapõn the Phoenician name for the Ugaritic god Baal's holy mountain Jebel Aqra (the classical Mount Kasios) associated with the epithet Baʿal Zaphon.
Mythologist Joseph Campbell makes parallels to the slaying of Leviathan by YHWH, about which YHWH boasts to Job. Ogden calls the Typhon myth "the only Graeco-Roman drakōn-slaying myth that can seriously be argued to exhibit the influence of Near Eastern antecedents", connecting it in particular with Baʿal Zaphon's slaying of Yammu and Lotan, as well as with the Hittite myth of Illuyankas. From its first reappearance, this latter myth has been seen as a prototype of the battle of Zeus and Typhon. Walter Burkert and Calvert Watkins each note the close agreements.
Comparisons can also be drawn with the Mesopotamian monster Tiamat and her slaying by Babylonian chief god Marduk.The similarities between the Greek myth and its earlier Mesopotamian counterpart do not seem to be merely accidental. A number of west Semitic (Ras Shamra) and Hittite sources appear to corroborate the theory of a genetic relationship between the two myths.
Typhon's story seems related to that of another monstrous offspring of Gaia: Python, the serpent killed by Apollo at Delphi, suggesting a possible common origin. Besides the similarity of names, their shared parentage, and the fact that both were snaky monsters killed in single combat with an Olympian god, there are other connections between the stories surrounding Typhon, and those surrounding Python. Although the Delphic monster killed by Apollo is usually said to be the male serpent Python, in the Homeric Hymn to Apollo, the earliest account of this story, the god kills a nameless she-serpent (drakaina), subsequently called Delphyne, who had been Typhon's foster-mother. Delphyne and Echidna, besides both being intimately connected to Typhon—one as mother, the other as mate—share other similarities.Both were half-maid and half-snake,a plague to men,and associated with the Corycian cave in Cilicia.
Python was also perhaps connected with a different Corycian Cave than the one in Cilicia, this one on the slopes of Parnassus above Delphi, and just as the Corcian cave in Cilicia was thought to be Typhon and Echidna's lair, and associated with Typhon's battle with Zeus, there is evidence to suggest that the Corycian cave above Delphi was supposed to be Python's (or Delphyne's) lair, and associated with his (or her) battle with Apollo.
Typhon bears a close resemblance to an older generation of descendants of Gaia, the Giants.They, like their younger brother Typhon after them, challenged Zeus for supremacy of the cosmos,were (in later representations) shown as snake-footed,and end up buried under volcanos.
While distinct in early accounts, in later accounts Typhon was often confused or conflated with the Giants.The Roman mythographer Hyginus (64 BC – 17 AD) includes Typhon in his list of Giants,while the Roman poet Horace (65 – 8 BC), mentions Typhon, along with the Giants Mimas, Porphyrion, and Enceladus, as together battling Athena, during the Gigantomachy.The Astronomica, attributed to the 1st-century AD Roman poet and astrologer Marcus Manilius,and the late 4th-century early 5th-century Greek poet Nonnus, also consider Typhon to be one of the Giants.
From apparently as early as Hecataeus of Miletus (c. 550 BC – c. 476 BC), Typhon was identified with Set, the Egyptian god of destruction.This syncretization with Egyptian mythology can also be seen in the story, apparently known as early as Pindar, of Typhon chasing the gods to Egypt, and the gods transforming themselves into animals.Such a story arose perhaps as a way for the Greeks to explain Egypt's animal-shaped gods.Herodotus also identified Typhon with Set, making him the second to last divine king of Egypt. Herodotus says that Typhon was deposed by Osiris' son Horus, whom Herodutus equates with Apollo (with Osiris being equated with Dionysus),and after his defeat by Horus, Typhon was "supposed to have been hidden" in the "Serbonian marsh" (identified with modern Lake Bardawil) in Egypt.
Feel the heat, feel the burn, feel your world breaking into millions of tiny pieces.
Set: Greyhound: Cataclysm
Chaotic in appearance, these filaments of shocked, glowing gas break across planet Earth's sky toward the constellation of Cygnus, as part of the Veil Nebula. The Veil Nebula itself is a large supernova remnant, an expanding cloud born of the death explosion of a massive star. Light from the original supernova explosion likely reached Earth over 5,000 years ago. Blasted out in the cataclysmic event, the interstellar shock waves plow through space sweeping up and exciting interstellar material. The glowing filaments are really more like long ripples in a sheet seen almost edge on, remarkably well separated into the glow of ionized hydrogen and sulfur atoms shown in red and green, and oxygen in blue hues. Also known as the Cygnus Loop, the Veil Nebula now spans nearly 3 degrees or about 6 times the diameter of the full Moon. While that translates to over 70 light-years at its estimated distance of 1,500 light-years, this field of view spans less than one third that distance. Identified as Pickering's Triangle for a director of Harvard College Observatory and cataloged as NGC 6979, the complex of filaments might be more appropriately known as Williamina Fleming's Triangular Wisp. via NASA ift.tt/1FOtV0X
This dark, tangled web is an object named SNR 0454-67.2. It formed in a very violent fashion — it is a supernova remnant, created after a massive star ended its life in a cataclysmic explosion and threw its constituent material out into surrounding space. This created the messy formation we see in this NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope image, with threads of red snaking amidst dark, turbulent clouds.
SNR 0454-67.2 is situated in the Large Magellanic Cloud, a dwarf spiral galaxy that lies close to the Milky Way. The remnant is likely the result of a Type Ia supernova explosion; this category of supernovae is formed from the death of a white dwarf star, which grows and grows by siphoning material from a stellar companion until it reaches a critical mass and then explodes.
As they always form via a specific mechanism — when the white dwarf hits a particular mass — these explosions always have a well-known luminosity, and are thus used as markers (standard candles) for scientists to obtain and measure distances throughout the universe.
For more information, please visit:
www.nasa.gov/image-feature/goddard/2018/hubble-captures-t...
Image credit: European Space Agency (ESA)
Text credit: ESA/Hubble, NASA
This is what my previously uploaded shot, Caesious Cataclysm, was taken from, after a bit more swirling and what not.
View the final result here: Caesious Cataclysm
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Chaotic in appearance, these filaments of shocked, glowing gas break across planet Earth's sky toward the constellation of Cygnus, as part of the Veil Nebula. The Veil Nebula itself is a large supernova remnant, an expanding cloud born of the death explosion of a massive star. Light from the original supernova explosion likely reached Earth over 5,000 years ago. Blasted out in the cataclysmic event, the interstellar shock waves plow through space sweeping up and exciting interstellar material. The glowing filaments are really more like long ripples in a sheet seen almost edge on, remarkably well separated into the glow of ionized hydrogen and sulfur atoms shown in red and green, and oxygen in blue hues. Also known as the Cygnus Loop, the Veil Nebula now spans nearly 3 degrees or about 6 times the diameter of the full Moon. While that translates to over 70 light-years at its estimated distance of 1,500 light-years, this field of view spans less than one third that distance. Identified as Pickering's Triangle for a director of Harvard College Observatory and cataloged as NGC 6979, the complex of filaments might be more appropriately known as Williamina Fleming's Triangular Wisp. via NASA ift.tt/1FOtV0X
This map shows the most current territories of the players immediately after the event has transpired. A 7.6 earthquake has just hit Gotham following the detonation of dozens of Joker Bombs across the frozen city.
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All players bases have be destroyed—they’ve reverted back to standard lots. You may not select a new base. Names on the map no longer indicate a location as a base, rather they are now just used to name and distinguish colors.
All Special and Utility Zones have reverted to neutral Zones.
All Train Stations have been destroyed
(#40, 72, 109, and 152)
All bridges have been destroyed, and are no longer operational.
The following Docks have been destroyed:
(#14, 54, 58, 62, 92, 103, 127 154)
Smuggler Docks have appeared at:
(6, 33, 45, 74, 82, 101, 125, 141)
Airports Grounded:
--Archie Goodwin Airport (#132)
Emergency Airports have opened at:
--Amusement Mile (#21)
--Blackgate (#145)
Sewers have collapsed at:
(#50, 78, 134)
Sewer Passages have opened at numbers:
(#3, 48, 55, 60, 94, 131, 148, and 155)
More information on the consequences of this event will be provided as needed, and as fast as possible. Tomorrow, I will update the Master Territory list, which will reflect these changes.
MAJOR
ALL FOLLOWING ACTIONS AFTER THIS POST MUST FOLLOW NEW MAP LIMITATIONS—You are not allowed to use destroyed transports, bridges, or bases after this has been posted—meaning now.
Edge-on spiral Cigar Galaxy has had at least one cataclysmic run-in with its very close neighbor Bode’s Galaxy. This interaction is responsible for corralling hydrogen gas toward the center of the object where gravity will eventually absorb then compress the material into individual protostars.
The picture is the result of three nights worth of the ZWO 2600MC, one nights worth of the 2600MM for Ha and one night where nothing seemed to work at all. The Celestron HD8 @ f7 sat atop the iOptron CEM40. The exposures were taken from my Bottle 6 driveway in a very damp Savannah, GA.
...ten minutes later AR2434 had exploded in C-class flare.
Animated GIF, click here to view the action.
16.10.2015 09:14-09:32 MSK, 20 frames, ~40 sec/frame between 2 and 19th frames. There is 4 mins between first and second frames and about 2 minutes between 19th and 20th.
I have missed the beginning of the event collecting the pano tiles, so it begins somewhere between 09:10:58 and 09:14:09 MSK
Postwar Dialogues:
Europe and the United States
The cataclysm of World War II brought in its wake the obligation of profound reflection as well as an intense desire for a new beginning. The nations of Europe were starting to recover from physical and economic devastation and to recognize that the horrors of war had irrevocably damaged former ways of life, social bonds, and cultural assumptions. Having avoided home-front hostilities, the United States emerged from the war a geopolitical superpower, optimistic about the future but also bearing the scars of wartime sacrifice. The artistic cultures on both sides of the Atlantic remained deeply interconnected, but the perceived balance of authority began to shift toward the Americans.
The Brutally reactionary Nazi regime decimated the progressive cultural communities of Europe, and many of its leading talents—among them Hans Hofmann, Willem de Kooning, Piet Modrian, and Arshile Gorky—fled to the United States, infusing new ambition into the country’s artistic life. Abstract Expressionism (in New York), Art Informel (in Paris), and CoBrA (in Copenhagen, Brussels, and Amsterdam) developed as parallel efforts to delve beneath the compromised façade of Western civilization to seek sources of cultural rebirth in archaic eras and the art of children and the insane. Meanwhile, individualists such as Pablo Picasso, Alberto Giacometti, and Balthus explored universal aspects of the human condition: desire, alienation, and dream.
From the Placard: The Philadelphia Museum of Art, PA
L'éruption du Krakatoa survenue en 1883 est une éruption volcanique cataclysmique qui remodela la physionomie du Krakatoa, le volcan gris d'Indonésie. Survenue le 27 août 1883 à 10 h 02, elle provoqua un bruit effroyable et engendra des nuages dans le ciel que l'on put observer jusqu'en Europe du Nord, où Edward Munch les reproduit dix ans plus tard dans son célèbre tableau Le Cri.
À 10 heures 02 minutes, le 27 août, une explosion effroyable : il s'agit du bruit le plus fort jamais enregistré, la force de l'explosion est environ 10 000 fois supérieure à celle de la bombe atomique lancée sur Hiroshima et les ondes de choc parcourent le monde sept fois2. L'explosion est audible dans toutes les Indes néerlandaises bien sûr, mais aussi à Alice Springs dans le centre de l'Australie et à l'île de Rodrigues dans le sud-ouest de l'océan Indien, situées respectivement à 3 500 et à 4 800 kilomètres du Krakatoa. À 160 kilomètres de distance, il atteint encore 180 décibels. Toutes les personnes étant dans un rayon de 20 kilomètres deviennent totalement ou partiellement sourdes et les personnes se trouvant à moins de 160 km subissent toutes des altérations persistantes de l'audition. L'éruption plinienne atteint le niveau 6 sur l'échelle d'explosivité volcanique, développe une énergie correspondant à 13 000 Little Boy et expulse entre 10 et 20 km3 de matière dans l'air.
Des vagues colossales — peut-être aussi hautes qu'un cocotier — déferlent à plusieurs reprises les 26 et 27 août sur les côtes de Java et de Sumatra. Dans les régions basses bordant le détroit de la Sonde, tout est balayé, détruit, tordu, emporté. À Merak, une vague de quarante-six mètres déferle sur la ville ; quand elle se retire, rien n'indique que l'endroit ait été habité. À Teluk Betung, grand port de la région de Sumatra, l'eau monte de vingt-deux mètres, nivelant tout. Une oscillation anormale des eaux est enregistrée par les marégraphes jusque dans le golfe de Gascogne et dans la Manche à 18 000 kilomètres du lieu de la catastrophe1. Elle a probablement été causée par une onde de choc aérienne résultant de l'explosion, car elle s'est produite trop tôt pour être un reliquat du tsunami. Ces ondes de choc ont circulé plusieurs fois autour du globe et sont encore détectables à l'aide de barographes cinq jours plus tard.
Après l'explosion, le volcan donne naissance à une nouvelle île, l'Anak Krakatau ou « enfant du Krakatoa », offrant un terrain d'études à de nombreux scientifiques. Le site du volcan est toujours actif mais le risque d'un nouvel événement de grande ampleur semble relativement limité.
The thunderous footsteps overhead rock the hollowed out tunnels of Echo Base causing snow to trickle down on R2's dome. The Astro steadily speeds up knowing full well that the cataclysmic shaking will eventually bring the winding passageways to the ground.
Queensland State Archives Item ID 436368
The Birth of South Bank (or, why one should always read the legislation)
Anthony S Marinac
This article speaks only of the modern history of the area now known as South Bank. The author respectfully acknowledges the Yuggera and Turrbal people, who first occupied the lands now constituting South Bank.
As we press towards 2020, it has become difficult to imagine a Brisbane without the South Bank parklands. The parklands have become the city’s playground; a garden and exercise space; a space for public performance; an important restaurant quarter; and an urban beach for a city which has ideal beach weather, but which lacks a Bondi or a St Kilda. With the release of the 1988 Queensland cabinet papers, it has become possible to take a deeper look at the genesis of this key feature of modern Brisbane. In reality, South Bank began with three key events which live in Brisbane’s historical memory: the 1974 floods, the 1982 Commonwealth Games, and the 1988 World Expo.
Early history
For much of its early European history, the southern side of the Brisbane River’s city reach was a commercial hub. The interstate railway terminal was located adjacent to where the South Brisbane railway station still stands, and the southern side of the city had wharves, and warehouses, and the infrastructure which went along to support them, including some of the less legitimate types of business: “Between the wharves and the interstate railway station built in the 1880s, were streets of sly grog and loose women, dance halls and theatres, a place where local mixed with foreign. In the years after the second world war, however, the area fell into something of a decline. 3 By the later 1960s, there were plans to redevelop part of the area into a cultural precinct. The Exhibition Building on Gregory Terrace, which housed the Queensland Art Gallery and the Queensland Museum, had been well and truly outgrown, and was damaged by winds in Brisbane’s 1974 flood crisis. The South Brisbane site was purchased in 1969, and the Art Gallery opened there in 1982.
The Queensland Performing Arts Centre followed in 1985, the Queensland Museum in 1986, and the State Library of Queensland in 1988. The latest addition, the Gallery of Modern Art, opened in 2006. During the era of the cultural centre’s development, the South Brisbane area lost its centrality as a transport hub, when the interstate rail terminus shifted to the Roma St Transit Centre in 1986. To make matters worse, South Brisbane was inundated by the cataclysmic Brisbane River flood in 1974. Following the flood, it was clear that some form of redevelopment was going to be necessary in the South Brisbane area, well beyond the cultural centre. In 1982, Brisbane hosted the Commonwealth Games, a major international event which began the city’s transition into a modern, world city. One of the defining moments of the Commonwealth Games was the victory, in the Marathon, of Australia’s Robert de Castella. The marathon began and ended on what is now South Bank, in the shadow of the cultural centre. 5 Almost immediately after the Commonwealth Games, bolstered by the confidence engendered by the games itself, planning began in earnest for the World Exposition – Expo.
Expo
The Queensland Parliament passed the Expo ’88 Act 1984, which created the Expo Authority, properly titled the “Brisbane Exposition and South Bank Redevelopment Authority” although virtually everyone, it seems, immediately forgot the second half of the title. The authority, under the leadership of former Liberal leader Sir Llewellyn Edwards, had extensive powers to enable the Expo to be undertaken, including the power to resume land. Many of those who were moved on for the purpose of Expo were essentially voiceless, however close to the opening of Expo, the Courier Mail newspaper gave attention to renters in the surrounding areas of South Brisbane and West End, who were being squeezed out of rental markets by demand from, for instance, delegation staff from overseas. Section 30 of the Expo ’88 Act 1984 gave the Expo Authority the power to dispose of the lands resumed for the purpose of Expo. During initial planning for the Expo, these land sales were expected to form a substantial proportion of the income which would make Expo financially viable, hence the requirement that the Expo authority “secure for itself the maximum return that is reasonable to expect at the material time.”
Even in the immediate leadup to Expo, there was widespread concern about its potential success or failure. It was, however, a triumph, and a halcyon moment for the city. Its success appeared to occur at two levels: as a purely commercial venture it was successful, both in its own terms and in terms of generating longer term investment; but at a social level, Expo became a place to meet and socialise, particularly for the many thousands of Brisbane residents who had purchased season passes. Somewhere along the line, Queenslanders became proprietorial about Expo itself, and there was a substantial public desire to retain something of the spirit of what had become, in essence, an open and beloved public space.
Cabinet’s approach to redevelopment
At this point, we turn to the Cabinet documents, and things become somewhat odd. In 1986, expressions of interest were invited for the redevelopment of the site by private development consortia.8 Based on the Expo ’88 Act 1984, one would have expected those expressions of interest to have been assessed by the Expo Authority, most likely with input from the Brisbane City Council.9 However Cabinet called for these expressions of interest – it is not clear by what authority – and Cabinet established a committee to evaluate those proposals and to report back to Cabinet. The Committee was chaired by the Director General of the Premier’s Department, and included the Under Treasurer, the Chairman of the Expo Authority, and the Town Clerk of the Brisbane City Council. It is worth noting, as an aside, that the Council’s concerns were quite different from those of the Expo authority. Had South Bank become a rival commercial precinct across the river from the Brisbane CBD, there was the possibility of massive reductions in the commercial viability of office space in the CBD. The Council’s later push for open public space may therefore not have been entirely altruistic. The fact that Cabinet had absolutely no authority to call for, or assess these tenders, and that the Expo Authority had the right, if it wished, to simply proceed with the disposition of the land, does not seem to have occurred to anybody. Indeed the legislation itself is not mentioned anywhere in the Cabinet submission. Four submissions were shortlisted by the committee and considered by Cabinet: they were offered by the Kern Corporation, the CM Group, the World City 2000 Consortium, and the River City consortium. Cabinet considered the pros and cons of each submission, but it was always clear that budget considerations would take priority. At this stage (February 1988) it was not yet known whether Expo would be a success, and budgeting for the event required site sales of $150 Million in order for Expo to break even. Ultimately Cabinet settled on the proposal by River City 2000 consortium. The consortium included the Roma Street Development Group, Kern Corporation (which had also put in a separate bid), and the Conrad Hilton/Conrad Jupiters Group. The net present value of the offer was $136.83 Million, to be made as $200 Million in staged payments between 1989 and 1995. The general proposal was for two harbours and a substantial canal to be cut into the foreshore at South Bank, and the spill to be used to create a large island, to be called Endeavour Island, on the southern side of the river. Endeavour Island was to be dominated by an exhibition and convention centre, a hotel, a casino, and a proposed World Trade Centre. The shore-side of the canal was to include further office buildings, and the southern end was to include residential complexes. There were three immediate complications with this proposal. First, there were reservations expressed by the Brisbane City Council about the total amount of commercial and office floor space which was proposed by the River City consortium. Second, Cabinet had no capacity to influence the location of a World Trade Centre in the city. The World Trade Centres Association had granted to a company called the Fricker company the exclusive right to develop a world trade centre in Brisbane. Fricker was examining a number of sites in the Brisbane CBD and on Kangaroo Point. Cabinet could (and did) encourage the Fricker company “to examine the possibility of developing [a] World Trade Centre or associated facilities on the Expo site”10 but that was as far as Cabinet could go. Third, there was little appetite in the conservative Cabinet for a new casino. The Jupiters Casino had opened on the Gold Coast in 1985, and held a guarantee that no other casino would be developed in south-east Queensland until at least 1992 (although this may not have been insisted on since Conrad Jupiters were part of the River City consortium). Instead, Cabinet decided:
That no action be taken at this time to enter into any arrangement with the “preferred developer” for granting a casino licence for the site, but that the “preferred developer” be required to [include] provision for a casino facility within the site, at a location and under conditions acceptable to the Government. That the Under Treasurer be asked to investigate all aspects of the granting of a casino licence for the site and report back to Cabinet through the Cabinet Budget Committee.
Public reaction to the proposal was swift and negative. Neither the committee proposal nor the cabinet process had included any public consultation at all; the Endeavour Island concept failed to capture the public imagination; and the Courier Mail newspaper led a campaign sharply critical of the proposal. The title of its editorial said it all: South Bank – selling the city’s birthright. Sir Llew Edwards tried to distance the Expo Authority from the decision, but the Courier Mail was having none of it – and clearly journalist Don Petersen had read the legislation: The seven-member board of the Expo Authority meets today to vote on the State Government’s preferred developer for the post-Expo site … Authority Chairman Sir Llew Edwards said last week the vote was not necessary because responsibility for the decision rested with the Governor in Council. This is strange since the Expo 88 Act of 1984 specifically charges the authority with “disposing” of the land in an endeavour to gain the best possible price that might reasonably be expected. Public reaction became even more important after Expo commenced at the end of April 1988. As noted above, Expo exceeded all possible expectations, and despite its entry fees, the expo park became in essence a public space, with the many season pass holders making repeated visits. The lack of public input into the plan was a decisive aspect of its eventual downfall. The other key feature was the conduct of the River City consortium itself. Despite section 30, Cabinet continued to be the lead agency on behalf of government, and the River City consortium began immediately to push for government commitments in relation to both the World Trade Centre and the casino. Just a week after the initial decision, Cabinet made a curious decision, on the basis of an oral submission by the Premier, that the initial cabinet decision “be confirmed” and that “the River City 2000 Consortium be advised accordingly.” Once can only surmise that Cabinet had been asked to review its earlier decision, Cabinet not being in the habit of routinely reaffirming earlier decisions. Initially, Cabinet had set a deadline of 18 February 1988 to finalise agreement with the River City Consortium on outstanding issues. On that date, a two week extension was granted. A further extension was granted on 29 February 1988, setting the deadline at 8 April, and when it became clear that this deadline, too, would be missed, the Premier returned to Cabinet with a substantive report. Unsurprisingly, two of the three outstanding matters were:
negotiations with Fricker Developments regarding a World Trade Centre or a component thereof on the site; (iii) the interpretation of Cabinet’s decision regarding a Casino facility on the Expo site. The Premier asked for the timing of negotiations to be left to his discretion “in view of my continuing personal involvement in the negotiations, which I consider is necessary now.”
The fall of River City and the birth of the South Bank Development Corporation
The Premier’s involvement turned out to be decisive. Somewhere along the line, after the Premier became personally involved, someone finally seems to have fully grasped the importance of section 30 of the Expo ’88 Act. The Premier met with Sir Llew Edwards, and then returned to Cabinet to sound the death knell for River City 2000: Arising from my detailed involvement in the negotiations, I have become very much aware of the legislative requirements regarding the disposal of the Expo site. These requirements, in effect, are that the Expo authority shall dispose of the site in a way which will achieve a net financial result that will not impose a burden of cost on the Government of Queensland … in dealing with these details, I questioned why the Government is, in fact, embroiled in much of this public debate and criticism, when in fact most of the matters should be negotiated between the Expo Authority, Brisbane City Council, and the preferred developer, for submission in due course to the Government.19 Cabinet decided to withdraw preferred developer status from River City 2000, and to instruct the Expo Authority to commence the tender process all over again. This second process was to be based on the clear understanding that the Government had no capacity to influence the location of a World Trade Centre, and that any question of a casino licence would be completely divorced from South Bank redevelopment. This approach relieved pressure on the government in terms of the casino and World Trade Centre, but there remained the issue of public expectations. By this stage, Expo was well underway, and the enthusiasm of the people of Brisbane was a key element in its success. Expo forecasts required approximately 8 million visitors through the gate in order to meet its budget; it quickly became apparent that this number would be comprehensively surpassed. In the end, more than 18 million visitors passed through the gates. This, in turn, relieved financial pressure on the sale of the site. Thus the people themselves, in the process of falling in love with Expo, had helped to create the economic circumstances which allowed the government to seek a path other than a real estate fire sale. After the Expo Authority took responsibility for the tender process, it “subsequently became apparent that under this [tender] approach, it would be very difficult to meet public expectations for significant open space on the site with minimal commercial development together with the need for a financial return sufficient to enable the Expo Authority to break even.”
Instead, at the end of June 1988, the Premier joined with the Expo Authority Chairman and the Lord Mayor of Brisbane to announce the formation of the South Bank Development Corporation, which would take possession of both the assets and the liabilities of the Expo authority, including the land space, and which could then develop the site. Having learned from the first process, the Expo Authority produced a:
Statement of Development Principles for the South Bank together with some graphics showing the conceptual proposal for development of the main Expo site plus a land use proposal for the broader area. This material together with further graphics will be presented to the public as a set of eighteen display panels of which it is proposed that ten such displays be manned at various centres throughout Brisbane for a month within which the public will have the opportunity of commenting on the proposals. A press and media campaign will complement the static displays.
The public reception on this second occasion was far more positive, and the following year, Ahern introduced the South Bank Corporation Bill. In his second reading speech, he stated that the Act: provides the necessary statutory foundation from which the Expo South Bank area in particular, as well as the surrounding area, can be developed to produce a result of outstanding merit. Such a result will bring benefits not only to the City but to the State as a whole through tourism and its ability to identify Queensland to the World.
It need hardly be stated that this was far from the end of the South Bank story. The legislation has been repeatedly amended, and South Bank itself has continued to evolve in the three decades since its foundation. It is, however, well to remember the fact that the site was very nearly sold to private developers, and that the South Bank of today exists in its current form only because some anonymous angel on Ahern’s staff remembered to read the relevant legislation, and discovered section 30 of the Expo Act.
www.publications.qld.gov.au/dataset/76d9d6d4-9749-4fcc-a1...
Terre de deserts et de beauté où la vie parait insensée.Sensation de sentir naître notre planète ou de découvrir la renaissance de la vie après un cataclysme...Etranges impressions
Talamh's return to the kingdom was marked by disastrous cataclysm. Fueled by unbridled rage, she hurled Crux as a weapon, decimating the land and the people she had once held so dear. Countless villages drowned in blood, the skies echoing with a cacophony of horrified screams. The border lands became a vast tomb, none were spared from the murderous wrath that washed over it. There was no stopping Talamh, and she paved her way to the kingdom's capital with blood and anguish.
Art by atomhawk (slightly edited from original),
Ben Nevis is the highest mountain in Scotland, the United Kingdom and the British Isles. The summit is 1,345 metres (4,413 ft) above sea level and is the highest land in any direction for 739 kilometres (459 miles). Ben Nevis stands at the western end of the Grampian Mountains in the Highland region of Lochaber, close to the town of Fort William.
The mountain is a popular destination, attracting an estimated 130,000 ascents a year, around three-quarters of which use the Mountain Track from Glen Nevis. The 700-metre (2,300 ft) cliffs of the north face are among the highest in Scotland, providing classic scrambles and rock climbs of all difficulties for climbers and mountaineers. They are also the principal locations in Scotland for ice climbing.
The summit, which is the collapsed dome of an ancient volcano, features the ruins of an observatory which was continuously staffed between 1883 and 1904. The meteorological data collected during this period is still important for understanding Scottish mountain weather. C. T. R. Wilson was inspired to invent the cloud chamber after a period spent working at the observatory.
Ben Nevis is the Anglicisation of the Scottish Gaelic name Beinn Nibheis. Whilst Beinn is the common Scottish Gaelic word for 'mountain' the origin of Nibheis is unclear.
Nibheis may preserve an earlier Pictish form, *Nebestis or *Nebesta, involving the Celtic root *neb, meaning 'clouds' (compare: Welsh nef )., thus 'Cloudy Mountain'.
Nibheis may also have an origin with the words nèamh meaning 'heaven' (which is related to the modern Scottish Gaelic word neamh meaning 'bright, shining') and bathais meaning 'the top of a man's head'. Thus, Beinn Nibheis could derive from beinn nèamh-bhathais, "the mountain with its head in the clouds", or 'mountain of heaven'.
The Scottish Gaelic word neimh can be translated as 'malice', 'poison' or 'venom' giving 'venomous mountain', possibly describing the storms that envelop the summit.
As is common for many Scottish mountains, it is known both to locals and visitors as simply the Ben.
Ben Nevis forms a massif with its neighbours to the northeast, Càrn Mòr Dearg, to which it is linked by the Càrn Mòr Dearg Arête, Aonach Beag and Aonach Mòr. All four are Munros and among the eleven mountains in Scotland over 4,000 feet (1,200 m) (of which nine are currently listed as Munros).
Western flank of the Nevis massif; from Sgùrr Dhòmhnuill
The western and southern flanks of Ben Nevis rise 1,200 metres (3,900 ft) in about 2 kilometres (1.2 mi) above the River Nevis flowing down Glen Nevis – the longest and steepest hill slope in Britain – with the result that the mountain presents an aspect of massive bulk on this side. To the north, by contrast, cliffs drop some 600 metres (2,000 ft) to Coire Leis
A descent of 200 metres (600') from this corrie leads to the Charles Inglis Clark Memorial Hut (known as the CIC Hut), a private mountain hut 680 metres (2,230 ft) above sea level, owned by the Scottish Mountaineering Club and used as a base for the many climbing routes on the mountain's north face. The hut is just above the confluence of Allt a' Mhuilinn and Allt Coire na Ciste.
In addition to the main 1,345-metre (4,413 ft) summit, Ben Nevis has two subsidiary "tops" listed in Munro's Tables, both of which are called Càrn Dearg ("red hill"). The higher of these, at 1,221 metres (4,006 ft), is to the northwest, and is often mistaken for Ben Nevis itself in views from the Fort William area. The other Càrn Dearg (1,020 m (3,350 ft)) juts out into Glen Nevis on the mountain's southwestern side. A lower hill, Meall an t-Suidhe (711 metres (2,333 ft)), is further west, forming a saddle with Ben Nevis which contains a small loch, Lochan Meall an t-Suidhe. The popular tourist path from Glen Nevis skirts the side of this hill before ascending Ben Nevis's broad western flank.
Ben Nevis is all that remains of a Devonian volcano that met a cataclysmic end in the Carboniferous period around 350 million years ago. Evidence near the summit shows light-coloured granite (which had cooled in subterranean chambers several kilometres; miles beneath the surface) lies among dark basaltic lavas (that form only on the surface). The two lying side by side is evidence the huge volcano collapsed in on itself creating an explosion comparable to Thera (2nd millennium BC) or Krakatoa (1883). The mountain is now all that remains of the imploded inner dome of the volcano. Its form has been extensively shaped by glaciation.
Research has shown igneous rock from the Devonian period (around 400 million years ago) intrudes into the surrounding metamorphic schists; the intrusions take the form of a series of concentric ring dikes. The innermost of these, known as the Inner Granite, constitutes the southern bulk of the mountain above Lochan Meall an t-Suidhe, and also the neighbouring ridge of Càrn Mòr Dearg; Meall an t-Suidhe forms part of the Outer Granite, which is redder in colour. The summit dome itself, together with the steep northern cliffs, is composed of andesite and basaltic lavas.
Ben Nevis has a highland tundra climate (ET in the Köppen classification). Ben Nevis's elevation, maritime location and topography frequently lead to cool and cloudy weather conditions, which can pose a danger to ill-equipped walkers. According to the observations carried out at the summit observatory from 1883 to 1904, fog was present on the summit for almost 80% of the time between November and January, and 55% of the time in May and June. The average winter temperature was around −5 °C (23 °F), and the mean monthly temperature for the year was −0.5 °C (31.1 °F). In an average year the summit sees 261 gales, and receives 4,350 millimetres (171 in) of rainfall, compared to only 2,050 millimetres (81 in) in nearby Fort William, 840 millimetres (33 in) in Inverness and 580 millimetres (23 in) in London. Rainfall on Ben Nevis is about twice as high in the winter as it is in the spring and summer. Snow can be found on the mountain almost all year round, particularly in the gullies of the north face – with the higher reaches of Observatory Gully holding snow until September most years and sometimes until the new snows of the following season.
The first recorded ascent of Ben Nevis was made on 17 August 1771 by James Robertson, an Edinburgh botanist, who was in the region to collect botanical specimens. Another early ascent was in 1774 by John Williams, who provided the first account of the mountain's geological structure. John Keats climbed the mountain in 1818, comparing the ascent to "mounting ten St. Pauls without the convenience of a staircase". The following year William MacGillivray, who was later to become a distinguished naturalist, reached the summit only to find "fragments of earthen and glass ware, chicken bones, corks, and bits of paper". It was not until 1847 that Ben Nevis was confirmed by the Ordnance Survey as the highest mountain in Britain and Ireland, ahead of its rival Ben Macdui.
The summit observatory was built in the summer of 1883, and would remain in operation for 21 years. The first path to the summit was built at the same time as the observatory and was designed to allow ponies to carry up supplies, with a maximum gradient of one in five. The opening of the path and the observatory made the ascent of the mountain increasingly popular, all the more so after the arrival of the West Highland Railway in Fort William in 1894. Around this time the first of several proposals was made for a rack railway to the summit, none of which came to fruition.
In 1911, an enterprising Ford dealer named Henry Alexander ascended the mountain in a Model T as a publicity stunt. The ascent was captured on film and can be seen in the archives of the British Film Institute. A statue of Alexander and the car was unveiled in Fort William in 2018.
In 2000, the Ben Nevis Estate, comprising all of the south side of the mountain including the summit, was bought by the Scottish conservation charity the John Muir Trust.
In 2016, the height of Ben Nevis was officially remeasured to be 1344.527m by Ordnance Survey. The height of Ben Nevis will therefore be shown on new Ordnance Survey maps as 1,345 metres (4,411 ft) instead of the now obsolete value of 1,344 metres (4,409 ft).
The 1883 Pony Track to the summit (also known as the Ben Path, the Mountain Path or the Tourist Route) remains the simplest and most popular route of ascent. It begins at Achintee on the east side of Glen Nevis about 2 km (1.2 mi) from Fort William town centre, at around 20 metres (60') above sea level. Bridges from the Visitor Centre and the youth hostel now allow access from the west side of Glen Nevis. The path climbs steeply to the saddle by Lochan Meall an t-Suidhe (colloquially known as the 'Halfway Lochan') at 570 m, then ascends the remaining 700 metres (2000') up the stony west flank of Ben Nevis in a series of zig-zags. The path is regularly maintained but running water, uneven rocks and loose scree make it hazardous and slippery in places. Thanks to the zig-zags, the path is not unusually steep apart from in the initial stages, but inexperienced walkers should be aware that the descent is relatively arduous and wearing on the knees.
A route popular with experienced hillwalkers starts at Torlundy, a few miles north-east of Fort William on the A82 road, and follows the path alongside the Allt a' Mhuilinn. It can also be reached from Glen Nevis by following the Pony Track as far as Lochan Meall an t-Suidhe, then descending slightly to the CIC Hut. The route then ascends Càrn Mòr Dearg and continues along the Càrn Mòr Dearg Arête ("CMD Arête") before climbing steeply to the summit of Ben Nevis. This route involves a total of 1,500 metres (5000') of ascent and requires modest scrambling ability and a head for heights. In common with other approaches on this side of the mountain, it has the advantage of giving an extensive view of the cliffs of the north face, which are hidden from the Pony Track.
It is also possible to climb Ben Nevis from the Nevis Gorge car park at Steall at the head of the road up Glen Nevis, either by the south-east ridge or via the summit of Càrn Dearg (south-west). These routes require mild scrambling, are shorter and steeper than the Pony Track, and tend only to be used by experienced hill walkers.
The summit of Ben Nevis comprises a large stony plateau of about 40 hectares (100 acres). The highest point is marked with a large, solidly built cairn atop which sits an Ordnance Survey trig point. The summit is the highest ground in any direction for 459 miles (739 km) before the Scandinavian Mountains in western Norway are reached.
The ruined walls of the observatory are a prominent feature on the summit. An emergency shelter has been built on top of the observatory tower for the benefit of those caught out by bad weather. Although the base of the tower is slightly lower than the true summit of the mountain, the roof of the shelter overtops the trig point by several feet, making it the highest man-made structure in the UK. A war memorial to the dead of World War II is located next to the observatory.
On 17 May 2006, a piano that had been buried under one of the cairns on the peak was uncovered by the John Muir Trust, which owns much of the mountain. The piano is believed to have been carried up for charity by removal men from Dundee over 20 years earlier.
The view from the UK's highest point is extensive. Under ideal conditions, it can extend to over 190 kilometres (120 mi), including such mountains as the Torridon Hills, Morven in Caithness, Lochnagar, Ben Lomond, Barra Head and to Knocklayd in County Antrim, Northern Ireland.
A meteorological observatory on the summit was first proposed by the Scottish Meteorological Society (SMS) in the late-1870s, at a time when similar observatories were being built around the world to study the weather at high altitude. In the summer of 1881, Clement Lindley Wragge climbed the mountain daily to make observations (earning him the nickname "Inclement Rag"), leading to the opening on 17 October 1883 of a permanent observatory run by the SMS. The building was staffed full-time until 1904, when it was closed due to inadequate funding. The twenty years worth of readings still provide the most comprehensive set of data on mountain weather in Great Britain.
In September 1894, C. T. R. Wilson was employed at the observatory for a couple of weeks as temporary relief for one of the permanent staff. During this period, he witnessed a Brocken spectre and glory, caused by the sun casting a shadow on a cloud below the observer. He subsequently tried to reproduce these phenomena in the laboratory, resulting in his invention of the cloud chamber, used to detect ionising radiation.
Ben Nevis's popularity, climate and complex topography contribute to a high number of mountain rescue incidents. In 1999 there were 41 rescues and four fatalities on the mountain. It has also been estimated that there are several deaths annually on Ben Nevis.
In two avalanches that occurred on Ben Nevis in 2009 and 2016 two people died on both occasions. In two avalanches that occurred in 1970 and 2019 three people died on both occasions. A climber died in an avalanche on the north face in 2022.
Some accidents arise over difficulties in navigating to or from the summit, especially in poor visibility. The problem stems from the fact that the summit plateau is roughly kidney-shaped and surrounded by cliffs on three sides; the danger is particularly accentuated when the main path is obscured by snow. Two precise compass bearings taken in succession are necessary to navigate from the summit cairn to the west flank, from where a descent can be made on the Pony Track in relative safety.
In the late 1990s, Lochaber Mountain Rescue Team erected two posts on the summit plateau to assist walkers attempting the descent in foggy conditions. These posts were subsequently cut down by climbers, sparking controversy in mountaineering circles on the ethics of such additions. Critics argued that cairns and posts are an unnecessary man-made intrusion into the natural landscape, which create a false sense of security and could lessen mountaineers' sense of responsibility for their own safety.
Supporters of navigational aids pointed to the high number of accidents that occurred on the mountain. Between 1990 and 1995 alone there were 13 fatalities, although eight of these were due to falls while rock climbing rather than navigational error. Also there is a long tradition of placing such aids on the summit, and the potentially life-saving role they could play.
In 2016, the John Muir Trust cleared a number of smaller informal cairns which had recently been erected by visitors, many near the top of gullies, which were seen as dangerous as they could confuse walkers using them for navigation.
The north face of Ben Nevis is riven with buttresses, ridges, towers and pinnacles, and contains many classic scrambles and rock climbs. It is of major importance for British winter climbing, with many of its routes holding snow often until late April. It was one of the first places in Scotland to receive the attention of serious mountaineers; a partial ascent and, the following day, a complete descent of Tower Ridge in early September 1892 is the earliest documented climbing expedition on Ben Nevis. (It was not climbed from bottom to top in entirety for another two years). The Scottish Mountaineering Club's Charles Inglis Clark hut was built below the north face in Coire Leis in 1929. Because of its remote location, it is said to be the only genuine alpine hut in Britain. It remains popular with climbers, especially in winter.
Tower Ridge is the longest of the north face's four main ridges, with around 600 metres (2000') of ascent. It is not technically demanding (its grade is Difficult), and most pitches can be tackled unroped by competent climbers, but it is committing and very exposed. Castle Ridge (Moderate), the northernmost of the main ridges, is an easier scramble, while Observatory Ridge (Very Difficult), the closest ridge to the summit, is "technically the hardest of the Nevis ridges in summer and winter". Between the Tower and Observatory Ridges are the Tower and Gardyloo Gullies; the latter takes its name from the cry of "garde à l'eau" (French for "watch out for the water") formerly used in Scottish cities as a warning when householders threw their waste out of a tenement window into the street. The gully's top wall was the refuse pit for the now-disused summit observatory. The North-east Buttress (Very Difficult) is the southernmost and bulkiest of the four ridges; it is as serious as Observatory Ridge but not as technically demanding, mainly because an "infamous" rock problem, the 'Man-trap', can be avoided on either side.
The north face contains dozens of graded rock climbs along its entire length, with particular concentrations on the Càrn Dearg Buttress (below the Munro top of Càrn Dearg NW) and around the North-east Buttress and Observatory Ridge. Classic rock routes include Rubicon Wall on Observatory Buttress (Severe) – whose second ascent in 1937, when it was considered the hardest route on the mountain, is described by W. H. Murray in Mountaineering in Scotland – and, on Càrn Dearg, Centurion and The Bullroar (both HVS), Torro (E2), and Titan's Wall (E3), these four described in the SMC's guide as among "the best climbs of their class in Scotland".
Many seminal lines were recorded before the First World War by pioneering Scottish climbers like J. N. Collie, Willie Naismith, Harold Raeburn, and William and Jane Inglis Clark. Other classic routes were put up by G. Graham Macphee, Dr James H. B. Bell and others between the Wars; these include Bell's 'Long Climb', at 1,400 ft (430 m) reputedly the longest sustained climb on the British mainland. In summer 1943 conscientious objector Brian Kellett made a phenomenal seventy-four repeat climbs and seventeen first ascents including fourteen solos, returning in 1944 to add fifteen more new lines, eleven solo, including his eponymous HVS on Gardyloo buttress. Much more recently, an extreme and as yet ungraded climb on Echo Wall was completed by Dave MacLeod in 2008 after two years of preparation.
The north face is also one of Scotland's foremost venues for winter mountaineering and ice climbing and holds snow until quite late in the year; in a good year, routes may remain in winter condition until mid-spring. Most of the possible rock routes are also suitable as winter climbs, including the four main ridges; Tower Ridge, for example, is grade IV on the Scottish winter grade, having been upgraded in 2009 by the Scottish Mountaineering Club after requests by the local Mountain Rescue Team, there being numerous benightments and incidents every winter season. Probably the most popular ice climb on Ben Nevis is The Curtain (IV,5) on the left side of the Càrn Dearg Buttress. At the top end of the scale, Centurion in winter is a grade VIII,8 face climb.
In February 1960 James R. Marshall and Robin Clark Smith recorded six major new ice routes in only eight days including Orion Direct (V,5 400m); this winter version of Bell's Long Climb was "the climax of a magnificent week's climbing by Smith and Marshall, and the highpoint of the step-cutting era".
The history of hill running on Ben Nevis dates back to 1895. William Swan, a barber from Fort William, made the first recorded timed ascent up the mountain on or around 27 September of that year, when he ran from the old post office in Fort William to the summit and back in 2 hours 41 minutes. The following years saw several improvements on Swan's record, but the first competitive race was held on 3 June 1898 under Scottish Amateur Athletic Association rules. Ten competitors ran the course, which started at the Lochiel Arms Hotel in Banavie and was thus longer than the route from Fort William; the winner was 21-year-old Hugh Kennedy, a gamekeeper at Tor Castle, who finished (coincidentally with Swan's original run) in 2 hours 41 minutes.
Regular races were organised until 1903, when two events were held; these were the last for 24 years, perhaps due to the closure of the summit observatory the following year. The first was from Achintee, at the foot of the Pony Track, and finished at the summit; It was won in just over an hour by Ewen MacKenzie, the observatory roadman. The second race ran from new Fort William post office, and MacKenzie lowered the record to 2 hours 10 minutes, a record he held for 34 years.
The Ben Nevis Race has been run in its current form since 1937. It now takes place on the first Saturday in September every year, with a maximum of 500 competitors taking part. It starts and finishes at the Claggan Park football ground on the outskirts of Fort William, and is 14 kilometres (8.7 mi) long with 1,340 metres (4,400 ft) of ascent. Due to the seriousness of the mountain environment, entry is restricted to those who have completed three hill races, and runners must carry waterproofs, a hat, gloves and a whistle; anyone who has not reached the summit after two hours is turned back. As of 2018, the record for the men's race has stood unbroken since 1984, when Kenny Stuart of Keswick Athletic Club won with a time of 1:25:34. The record for the women's race of 1:43:01 was set in 2018 by Victoria Wilkinson.
Ben Nevis is becoming popular with ski mountaineers and boarders. The Red Burn (Allt Coire na h-Urcaire) just to the North of the tourist path gives the easiest descent, but most if not all of the easier gullies on the North Face have been skied, as has the slope once adorned by the abseil poles into Coire Leis. No 4 gully is probably the most skied. Although Tower scoop makes it a no-fall zone, Tower Gully is becoming popular, especially in May and June when there is spring snow.
In 2018 Jöttnar pro team member Tim Howell BASE jumped off Ben Nevis which was covered by BBC Scotland.
On 6 May 2019, a team of highliners completed a crossing above the Gardyloo Gully, a new altitude record for the UK.
Also in May 2019, a team of 12, led by Dundee artist Douglas Roulston carried a 1.5-metre (4.9-foot) tall statue of the DC Thomson character Oor Wullie to the top of the mountain. The statue, which had been painted by Roulston with a 360-degree scene of the view from the summit was later sold at the Oor Wullie Big Bucket Trail charity auction to raise money for a number of Scottish children's charities.
The Ben Nevis Distillery is a single malt whisky distillery at the foot of the mountain, near Victoria Bridge to the north of Fort William. Founded in 1825 by John McDonald (known as "Long John"), it is one of the oldest licensed distilleries in Scotland, and is a popular visitor attraction in Fort William. The water used to make the whisky comes from the Allt a' Mhuilinn, the stream that flows from Ben Nevis's northern corrie. "Ben Nevis" 80/‒ organic ale is, by contrast, brewed in Bridge of Allan near Stirling.
Ben Nevis was the name of a White Star Line packet ship which in 1854 carried the group of immigrants who were to become the Wends of Texas. At least another eight vessels have carried the name since then.
A mountain in Svalbard is also named Ben Nevis, after the Scottish peak. It is 922 metres (3025') high and is south of the head of Raudfjorden, Albert I Land, in the northwestern part of the island of Spitsbergen.
A comic strip character, Wee Ben Nevis, about a Scottish Highlands boarding school student with superhuman strength and his antics were featured in the British comic The Beano from 1974 to 1977, named after the mountain.
Hung Fa Chai, a 489-metre (1605') hill in Northeast New Territories of Hong Kong was marked as Ben Nevis on historical colonial maps.
The Highlands is a historical region of Scotland. Culturally, the Highlands and the Lowlands diverged from the Late Middle Ages into the modern period, when Lowland Scots language replaced Scottish Gaelic throughout most of the Lowlands. The term is also used for the area north and west of the Highland Boundary Fault, although the exact boundaries are not clearly defined, particularly to the east. The Great Glen divides the Grampian Mountains to the southeast from the Northwest Highlands. The Scottish Gaelic name of A' Ghàidhealtachd literally means "the place of the Gaels" and traditionally, from a Gaelic-speaking point of view, includes both the Western Isles and the Highlands.
The area is very sparsely populated, with many mountain ranges dominating the region, and includes the highest mountain in the British Isles, Ben Nevis. During the 18th and early 19th centuries the population of the Highlands rose to around 300,000, but from c. 1841 and for the next 160 years, the natural increase in population was exceeded by emigration (mostly to Canada, the United States, Australia and New Zealand, and migration to the industrial cities of Scotland and England.) and passim The area is now one of the most sparsely populated in Europe. At 9.1/km2 (24/sq mi) in 2012, the population density in the Highlands and Islands is less than one seventh of Scotland's as a whole.
The Highland Council is the administrative body for much of the Highlands, with its administrative centre at Inverness. However, the Highlands also includes parts of the council areas of Aberdeenshire, Angus, Argyll and Bute, Moray, North Ayrshire, Perth and Kinross, Stirling and West Dunbartonshire.
The Scottish Highlands is the only area in the British Isles to have the taiga biome as it features concentrated populations of Scots pine forest: see Caledonian Forest. It is the most mountainous part of the United Kingdom.
Between the 15th century and the mid-20th century, the area differed from most of the Lowlands in terms of language. In Scottish Gaelic, the region is known as the Gàidhealtachd, because it was traditionally the Gaelic-speaking part of Scotland, although the language is now largely confined to The Hebrides. The terms are sometimes used interchangeably but have different meanings in their respective languages. Scottish English (in its Highland form) is the predominant language of the area today, though Highland English has been influenced by Gaelic speech to a significant extent. Historically, the "Highland line" distinguished the two Scottish cultures. While the Highland line broadly followed the geography of the Grampians in the south, it continued in the north, cutting off the north-eastern areas, that is Eastern Caithness, Orkney and Shetland, from the more Gaelic Highlands and Hebrides.
Historically, the major social unit of the Highlands was the clan. Scottish kings, particularly James VI, saw clans as a challenge to their authority; the Highlands was seen by many as a lawless region. The Scots of the Lowlands viewed the Highlanders as backward and more "Irish". The Highlands were seen as the overspill of Gaelic Ireland. They made this distinction by separating Germanic "Scots" English and the Gaelic by renaming it "Erse" a play on Eire. Following the Union of the Crowns, James VI had the military strength to back up any attempts to impose some control. The result was, in 1609, the Statutes of Iona which started the process of integrating clan leaders into Scottish society. The gradual changes continued into the 19th century, as clan chiefs thought of themselves less as patriarchal leaders of their people and more as commercial landlords. The first effect on the clansmen who were their tenants was the change to rents being payable in money rather than in kind. Later, rents were increased as Highland landowners sought to increase their income. This was followed, mostly in the period 1760–1850, by agricultural improvement that often (particularly in the Western Highlands) involved clearance of the population to make way for large scale sheep farms. Displaced tenants were set up in crofting communities in the process. The crofts were intended not to provide all the needs of their occupiers; they were expected to work in other industries such as kelping and fishing. Crofters came to rely substantially on seasonal migrant work, particularly in the Lowlands. This gave impetus to the learning of English, which was seen by many rural Gaelic speakers to be the essential "language of work".
Older historiography attributes the collapse of the clan system to the aftermath of the Jacobite risings. This is now thought less influential by historians. Following the Jacobite rising of 1745 the British government enacted a series of laws to try to suppress the clan system, including bans on the bearing of arms and the wearing of tartan, and limitations on the activities of the Scottish Episcopal Church. Most of this legislation was repealed by the end of the 18th century as the Jacobite threat subsided. There was soon a rehabilitation of Highland culture. Tartan was adopted for Highland regiments in the British Army, which poor Highlanders joined in large numbers in the era of the Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars (1790–1815). Tartan had largely been abandoned by the ordinary people of the region, but in the 1820s, tartan and the kilt were adopted by members of the social elite, not just in Scotland, but across Europe. The international craze for tartan, and for idealising a romanticised Highlands, was set off by the Ossian cycle, and further popularised by the works of Walter Scott. His "staging" of the visit of King George IV to Scotland in 1822 and the king's wearing of tartan resulted in a massive upsurge in demand for kilts and tartans that could not be met by the Scottish woollen industry. Individual clan tartans were largely designated in this period and they became a major symbol of Scottish identity. This "Highlandism", by which all of Scotland was identified with the culture of the Highlands, was cemented by Queen Victoria's interest in the country, her adoption of Balmoral as a major royal retreat, and her interest in "tartenry".
Recurrent famine affected the Highlands for much of its history, with significant instances as late as 1817 in the Eastern Highlands and the early 1850s in the West. Over the 18th century, the region had developed a trade of black cattle into Lowland markets, and this was balanced by imports of meal into the area. There was a critical reliance on this trade to provide sufficient food, and it is seen as an essential prerequisite for the population growth that started in the 18th century. Most of the Highlands, particularly in the North and West was short of the arable land that was essential for the mixed, run rig based, communal farming that existed before agricultural improvement was introduced into the region.[a] Between the 1760s and the 1830s there was a substantial trade in unlicensed whisky that had been distilled in the Highlands. Lowland distillers (who were not able to avoid the heavy taxation of this product) complained that Highland whisky made up more than half the market. The development of the cattle trade is taken as evidence that the pre-improvement Highlands was not an immutable system, but did exploit the economic opportunities that came its way. The illicit whisky trade demonstrates the entrepreneurial ability of the peasant classes.
Agricultural improvement reached the Highlands mostly over the period 1760 to 1850. Agricultural advisors, factors, land surveyors and others educated in the thinking of Adam Smith were keen to put into practice the new ideas taught in Scottish universities. Highland landowners, many of whom were burdened with chronic debts, were generally receptive to the advice they offered and keen to increase the income from their land. In the East and South the resulting change was similar to that in the Lowlands, with the creation of larger farms with single tenants, enclosure of the old run rig fields, introduction of new crops (such as turnips), land drainage and, as a consequence of all this, eviction, as part of the Highland clearances, of many tenants and cottars. Some of those cleared found employment on the new, larger farms, others moved to the accessible towns of the Lowlands.
In the West and North, evicted tenants were usually given tenancies in newly created crofting communities, while their former holdings were converted into large sheep farms. Sheep farmers could pay substantially higher rents than the run rig farmers and were much less prone to falling into arrears. Each croft was limited in size so that the tenants would have to find work elsewhere. The major alternatives were fishing and the kelp industry. Landlords took control of the kelp shores, deducting the wages earned by their tenants from the rent due and retaining the large profits that could be earned at the high prices paid for the processed product during the Napoleonic wars.
When the Napoleonic wars finished in 1815, the Highland industries were affected by the return to a peacetime economy. The price of black cattle fell, nearly halving between 1810 and the 1830s. Kelp prices had peaked in 1810, but reduced from £9 a ton in 1823 to £3 13s 4d a ton in 1828. Wool prices were also badly affected. This worsened the financial problems of debt-encumbered landlords. Then, in 1846, potato blight arrived in the Highlands, wiping out the essential subsistence crop for the overcrowded crofting communities. As the famine struck, the government made clear to landlords that it was their responsibility to provide famine relief for their tenants. The result of the economic downturn had been that a large proportion of Highland estates were sold in the first half of the 19th century. T M Devine points out that in the region most affected by the potato famine, by 1846, 70 per cent of the landowners were new purchasers who had not owned Highland property before 1800. More landlords were obliged to sell due to the cost of famine relief. Those who were protected from the worst of the crisis were those with extensive rental income from sheep farms. Government loans were made available for drainage works, road building and other improvements and many crofters became temporary migrants – taking work in the Lowlands. When the potato famine ceased in 1856, this established a pattern of more extensive working away from the Highlands.
The unequal concentration of land ownership remained an emotional and controversial subject, of enormous importance to the Highland economy, and eventually became a cornerstone of liberal radicalism. The poor crofters were politically powerless, and many of them turned to religion. They embraced the popularly oriented, fervently evangelical Presbyterian revival after 1800. Most joined the breakaway "Free Church" after 1843. This evangelical movement was led by lay preachers who themselves came from the lower strata, and whose preaching was implicitly critical of the established order. The religious change energised the crofters and separated them from the landlords; it helped prepare them for their successful and violent challenge to the landlords in the 1880s through the Highland Land League. Violence erupted, starting on the Isle of Skye, when Highland landlords cleared their lands for sheep and deer parks. It was quietened when the government stepped in, passing the Crofters' Holdings (Scotland) Act, 1886 to reduce rents, guarantee fixity of tenure, and break up large estates to provide crofts for the homeless. This contrasted with the Irish Land War underway at the same time, where the Irish were intensely politicised through roots in Irish nationalism, while political dimensions were limited. In 1885 three Independent Crofter candidates were elected to Parliament, which listened to their pleas. The results included explicit security for the Scottish smallholders in the "crofting counties"; the legal right to bequeath tenancies to descendants; and the creation of a Crofting Commission. The Crofters as a political movement faded away by 1892, and the Liberal Party gained their votes.
Today, the Highlands are the largest of Scotland's whisky producing regions; the relevant area runs from Orkney to the Isle of Arran in the south and includes the northern isles and much of Inner and Outer Hebrides, Argyll, Stirlingshire, Arran, as well as sections of Perthshire and Aberdeenshire. (Other sources treat The Islands, except Islay, as a separate whisky producing region.) This massive area has over 30 distilleries, or 47 when the Islands sub-region is included in the count. According to one source, the top five are The Macallan, Glenfiddich, Aberlour, Glenfarclas and Balvenie. While Speyside is geographically within the Highlands, that region is specified as distinct in terms of whisky productions. Speyside single malt whiskies are produced by about 50 distilleries.
According to Visit Scotland, Highlands whisky is "fruity, sweet, spicy, malty". Another review states that Northern Highlands single malt is "sweet and full-bodied", the Eastern Highlands and Southern Highlands whiskies tend to be "lighter in texture" while the distilleries in the Western Highlands produce single malts with a "much peatier influence".
The Scottish Reformation achieved partial success in the Highlands. Roman Catholicism remained strong in some areas, owing to remote locations and the efforts of Franciscan missionaries from Ireland, who regularly came to celebrate Mass. There remain significant Catholic strongholds within the Highlands and Islands such as Moidart and Morar on the mainland and South Uist and Barra in the southern Outer Hebrides. The remoteness of the region and the lack of a Gaelic-speaking clergy undermined the missionary efforts of the established church. The later 18th century saw somewhat greater success, owing to the efforts of the SSPCK missionaries and to the disruption of traditional society after the Battle of Culloden in 1746. In the 19th century, the evangelical Free Churches, which were more accepting of Gaelic language and culture, grew rapidly, appealing much more strongly than did the established church.
For the most part, however, the Highlands are considered predominantly Protestant, belonging to the Church of Scotland. In contrast to the Catholic southern islands, the northern Outer Hebrides islands (Lewis, Harris and North Uist) have an exceptionally high proportion of their population belonging to the Protestant Free Church of Scotland or the Free Presbyterian Church of Scotland. The Outer Hebrides have been described as the last bastion of Calvinism in Britain and the Sabbath remains widely observed. Inverness and the surrounding area has a majority Protestant population, with most locals belonging to either The Kirk or the Free Church of Scotland. The church maintains a noticeable presence within the area, with church attendance notably higher than in other parts of Scotland. Religion continues to play an important role in Highland culture, with Sabbath observance still widely practised, particularly in the Hebrides.
In traditional Scottish geography, the Highlands refers to that part of Scotland north-west of the Highland Boundary Fault, which crosses mainland Scotland in a near-straight line from Helensburgh to Stonehaven. However the flat coastal lands that occupy parts of the counties of Nairnshire, Morayshire, Banffshire and Aberdeenshire are often excluded as they do not share the distinctive geographical and cultural features of the rest of the Highlands. The north-east of Caithness, as well as Orkney and Shetland, are also often excluded from the Highlands, although the Hebrides are usually included. The Highland area, as so defined, differed from the Lowlands in language and tradition, having preserved Gaelic speech and customs centuries after the anglicisation of the latter; this led to a growing perception of a divide, with the cultural distinction between Highlander and Lowlander first noted towards the end of the 14th century. In Aberdeenshire, the boundary between the Highlands and the Lowlands is not well defined. There is a stone beside the A93 road near the village of Dinnet on Royal Deeside which states 'You are now in the Highlands', although there are areas of Highland character to the east of this point.
A much wider definition of the Highlands is that used by the Scotch whisky industry. Highland single malts are produced at distilleries north of an imaginary line between Dundee and Greenock, thus including all of Aberdeenshire and Angus.
Inverness is regarded as the Capital of the Highlands, although less so in the Highland parts of Aberdeenshire, Angus, Perthshire and Stirlingshire which look more to Aberdeen, Dundee, Perth, and Stirling as their commercial centres.
The Highland Council area, created as one of the local government regions of Scotland, has been a unitary council area since 1996. The council area excludes a large area of the southern and eastern Highlands, and the Western Isles, but includes Caithness. Highlands is sometimes used, however, as a name for the council area, as in the former Highlands and Islands Fire and Rescue Service. Northern is also used to refer to the area, as in the former Northern Constabulary. These former bodies both covered the Highland council area and the island council areas of Orkney, Shetland and the Western Isles.
Much of the Highlands area overlaps the Highlands and Islands area. An electoral region called Highlands and Islands is used in elections to the Scottish Parliament: this area includes Orkney and Shetland, as well as the Highland Council local government area, the Western Isles and most of the Argyll and Bute and Moray local government areas. Highlands and Islands has, however, different meanings in different contexts. It means Highland (the local government area), Orkney, Shetland, and the Western Isles in Highlands and Islands Fire and Rescue Service. Northern, as in Northern Constabulary, refers to the same area as that covered by the fire and rescue service.
There have been trackways from the Lowlands to the Highlands since prehistoric times. Many traverse the Mounth, a spur of mountainous land that extends from the higher inland range to the North Sea slightly north of Stonehaven. The most well-known and historically important trackways are the Causey Mounth, Elsick Mounth, Cryne Corse Mounth and Cairnamounth.
Although most of the Highlands is geographically on the British mainland, it is somewhat less accessible than the rest of Britain; thus most UK couriers categorise it separately, alongside Northern Ireland, the Isle of Man, and other offshore islands. They thus charge additional fees for delivery to the Highlands, or exclude the area entirely. While the physical remoteness from the largest population centres inevitably leads to higher transit cost, there is confusion and consternation over the scale of the fees charged and the effectiveness of their communication, and the use of the word Mainland in their justification. Since the charges are often based on postcode areas, many far less remote areas, including some which are traditionally considered part of the lowlands, are also subject to these charges. Royal Mail is the only delivery network bound by a Universal Service Obligation to charge a uniform tariff across the UK. This, however, applies only to mail items and not larger packages which are dealt with by its Parcelforce division.
The Highlands lie to the north and west of the Highland Boundary Fault, which runs from Arran to Stonehaven. This part of Scotland is largely composed of ancient rocks from the Cambrian and Precambrian periods which were uplifted during the later Caledonian Orogeny. Smaller formations of Lewisian gneiss in the northwest are up to 3 billion years old. The overlying rocks of the Torridon Sandstone form mountains in the Torridon Hills such as Liathach and Beinn Eighe in Wester Ross.
These foundations are interspersed with many igneous intrusions of a more recent age, the remnants of which have formed mountain massifs such as the Cairngorms and the Cuillin of Skye. A significant exception to the above are the fossil-bearing beds of Old Red Sandstone found principally along the Moray Firth coast and partially down the Highland Boundary Fault. The Jurassic beds found in isolated locations on Skye and Applecross reflect the complex underlying geology. They are the original source of much North Sea oil. The Great Glen is formed along a transform fault which divides the Grampian Mountains to the southeast from the Northwest Highlands.
The entire region was covered by ice sheets during the Pleistocene ice ages, save perhaps for a few nunataks. The complex geomorphology includes incised valleys and lochs carved by the action of mountain streams and ice, and a topography of irregularly distributed mountains whose summits have similar heights above sea-level, but whose bases depend upon the amount of denudation to which the plateau has been subjected in various places.
Climate
The region is much warmer than other areas at similar latitudes (such as Kamchatka in Russia, or Labrador in Canada) because of the Gulf Stream making it cool, damp and temperate. The Köppen climate classification is "Cfb" at low altitudes, then becoming "Cfc", "Dfc" and "ET" at higher altitudes.
Places of interest
An Teallach
Aonach Mòr (Nevis Range ski centre)
Arrochar Alps
Balmoral Castle
Balquhidder
Battlefield of Culloden
Beinn Alligin
Beinn Eighe
Ben Cruachan hydro-electric power station
Ben Lomond
Ben Macdui (second highest mountain in Scotland and UK)
Ben Nevis (highest mountain in Scotland and UK)
Cairngorms National Park
Cairngorm Ski centre near Aviemore
Cairngorm Mountains
Caledonian Canal
Cape Wrath
Carrick Castle
Castle Stalker
Castle Tioram
Chanonry Point
Conic Hill
Culloden Moor
Dunadd
Duart Castle
Durness
Eilean Donan
Fingal's Cave (Staffa)
Fort George
Glen Coe
Glen Etive
Glen Kinglas
Glen Lyon
Glen Orchy
Glenshee Ski Centre
Glen Shiel
Glen Spean
Glenfinnan (and its railway station and viaduct)
Grampian Mountains
Hebrides
Highland Folk Museum – The first open-air museum in the UK.
Highland Wildlife Park
Inveraray Castle
Inveraray Jail
Inverness Castle
Inverewe Garden
Iona Abbey
Isle of Staffa
Kilchurn Castle
Kilmartin Glen
Liathach
Lecht Ski Centre
Loch Alsh
Loch Ard
Loch Awe
Loch Assynt
Loch Earn
Loch Etive
Loch Fyne
Loch Goil
Loch Katrine
Loch Leven
Loch Linnhe
Loch Lochy
Loch Lomond
Loch Lomond and the Trossachs National Park
Loch Lubnaig
Loch Maree
Loch Morar
Loch Morlich
Loch Ness
Loch Nevis
Loch Rannoch
Loch Tay
Lochranza
Luss
Meall a' Bhuiridh (Glencoe Ski Centre)
Scottish Sea Life Sanctuary at Loch Creran
Rannoch Moor
Red Cuillin
Rest and Be Thankful stretch of A83
River Carron, Wester Ross
River Spey
River Tay
Ross and Cromarty
Smoo Cave
Stob Coire a' Chàirn
Stac Polly
Strathspey Railway
Sutherland
Tor Castle
Torridon Hills
Urquhart Castle
West Highland Line (scenic railway)
West Highland Way (Long-distance footpath)
Wester Ross
Postwar Dialogues:
Europe and the United States
The cataclysm of World War II brought in its wake the obligation of profound reflection as well as an intense desire for a new beginning. The nations of Europe were starting to recover from physical and economic devastation and to recognize that the horrors of war had irrevocably damaged former ways of life, social bonds, and cultural assumptions. Having avoided home-front hostilities, the United States emerged from the war a geopolitical superpower, optimistic about the future but also bearing the scars of wartime sacrifice. The artistic cultures on both sides of the Atlantic remained deeply interconnected, but the perceived balance of authority began to shift toward the Americans.
The Brutally reactionary Nazi regime decimated the progressive cultural communities of Europe, and many of its leading talents—among them Hans Hofmann, Willem de Kooning, Piet Modrian, and Arshile Gorky—fled to the United States, infusing new ambition into the country’s artistic life. Abstract Expressionism (in New York), Art Informel (in Paris), and CoBrA (in Copenhagen, Brussels, and Amsterdam) developed as parallel efforts to delve beneath the compromised façade of Western civilization to seek sources of cultural rebirth in archaic eras and the art of children and the insane. Meanwhile, individualists such as Pablo Picasso, Alberto Giacometti, and Balthus explored universal aspects of the human condition: desire, alienation, and dream.
From the Placard: The Philadelphia Museum of Art, PA
From the blurb on the dust jacket:
In just 20 cataclysmic months, Adolf Hitler had completed his lightninglike subjugation of virtually all of Europe. Now, he intended to reach his destiny in the east by invading America in the west. . .
What if Hitler had invaded America? This startling novel, written before Pearl Harbor, is the provocative answer.
In 1940, the Nazi war machine was ravaging Europe. Most Americans wanted no part of the foreign conflict, but wondered what might happen if we maintained our neutrality. When would Hitler finally be satisfied? Could the Wehrmacht conceivably attack the United States? Veteran journalist Fred Allhoff interviewed military experts of the day, and his informed scenario, serialized in "Liberty," sold more copies of that magazine than ever before in its publishing history.
"Lightning in the Night" assumes that England has fallen; America stands alone as the last bastion of democracy. By diplomatic coups and sheer bravado, the "Greater German Reich" annexes British, Dutch and French colonies throughout the Americas. Hitler acquires heavily fortified bases within striking distance of our Atlantic Coast . And then. . .
The action-packed plot follows Lt. Douglas Norton of Naval Intelligence and his fiancee Peggy O'Liam as they witness the siege of Seattle, the bombing of New York, and the fall of Baltimore. Tank warfare ranges across Pennsylvania; the Nazi flag is raised over Washington, D.C. The story moves from the pre-dawn Pacific to a concentration camp in Maryland; from a naval battle in the Straits of Magellan to the paratroop invasion of the Panama Canal -- until Adolf Hitler and the President of the United States confront each other across the peace table in Cincinnati. And yet many of Alhoff's prophecies are remarkably accurate, beginning with his forecast that war would actually begin with a Japanese attack on Hawaii! And his surprise conclusion, melodramatic and far-fetched by 1940's standards, today seems almost uncomfortably realistic.
Now collected in book form for the first time, together with the original "Liberty" illustrations, "Lightning in the Night" is a unique glimpse of the world of 1940 -- and a chillingly authentic account of the world that could have existed in 1945!
Jacket Art by Hal Siegel.