View allAll Photos Tagged Driverless
The Australia and New Zealand Driverless Vehicle Initiative (ADVI) displayed a driverless vehicle at CeBIT Australia held at the International Convention Centre at Sydney's Darling Harbour recently . The photographs show an autonomous vehicle developed by Easy Mile one of the companies that specialises in vehicles of this type.
The Post Office Railway, also known as Mail Rail, is a 2 ft (610 mm) narrow gauge, driverless underground railway in London that was built by the Post Office with assistance from the Underground Electric Railways Company of London, to move mail between sorting offices. Inspired by the Chicago Tunnel Company, it operated from 1927 until 2003.
Clerkenwell, London, UK
Ultimi giorni di pre-esercizio (in attesa della data ufficiale di apertura al pubblico che dovrebbe essere il 3 Marzo) per la MetroBrescia qui in arrivo alla fermata di Poliambulanza; i treni sono di produzione AnsaldoBreda tipo LRVs ovvero metropolitana leggera senza conducente
(Last days of testing before official openign to the public for MetroBrescia here arriving in Poliambualnza stop; trains are produced by AnsalboBreda and are driverless type)
Alan Murray, Chief Content Officer, Time, USA.Violeta Bulc, Commissioner, Transport, European Commission, Brussels.Carlos Ghosn, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, Renault-Nissan Alliance, France.Paul E. Jacobs, Executive Chairman, Qualcomm, USA.Wendell Wallach, Scholar, Interdisciplinary Center for Bioethics, Yale University, USA.speaking during the Session "Shifting Gears to Driverless" at the Annual Meeting 2017 of the World Economic Forum in Davos, January 20, 2017
Copyright by World Economic Forum / Mattias Nutt
Line 5 of the Kuala Lumpar Light Rail network features driverless Bombardier trains - seen here between Danai and Ampang Park stations.
British Railways 47324 pictured after crashing at Oxley Junction, Wolverhampton in March 1985. The coal train had run driverless from Oxley Carriage Sidings to Oxley Junction where it derailed at speed and ended up embedding itself into the long disused track bed of the former Wolverhampton-Wombourne-Stourbridge line, making it the first train to go further than the buffer stops since 1967. The picture shows the recovery operation a day or so later.
Location of accident on Google Satallite map: maps.google.co.uk/maps?f=q&hl=en&geocode=&tim...
The Dubai Metro (in Arabic: مترو دبي) is a driverless, fully automated metro rail network in the United Arab Emirates city of Dubai. The Red Line and Green Line are operational, with three further lines planned. These first two lines run underground in the city centre and on elevated viaducts elsewhere (elevated railway).[2] All trains and stations are air conditioned with platform edge doors to make this possible.
The first section of the Red Line, covering 10 stations, was ceremonially inaugurated at 9:09:09 PM on 9 September 2009, by Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, Ruler of Dubai,[3] with the line opening to the public at 6 AM on 10 September.[4] The Dubai Metro is the first urban train network in the Arabian Peninsula.[5] More than 110,000 people, which is nearly 10 per cent of Dubai’s population, used the Metro in its first two days of operation.[6] The Dubai Metro carried 10 million passengers from launch on 9 September 2009 to 9 February 2010 with 11 stations operational on the Red Line.[7] Engineering consultancy Atkins provided full multidisciplinary design and management of the civil works on Dubai Metro.Architecture firm Aedas were the architect who designed for Dubai system's 45 stations, two depots and operational control centres.[8]
Guinness World Records has declared Dubai Metro as the world's longest fully automated metro network spanning at 75 kilometres (47 mi).[9]
According to statement by Adnan Al Hammadi, Chief Executive of the Rail Agency and Transport Authority, Dubai Metro transported 33.3 million people in Q1 of 2013, a significant increase, compared to the same period of the previous year.
__Wikipedia
A boat without captain is like a life without mission ....
Subscribe to my photo blog for my photography,tips,tricks and articles
dozens of self driving cars with passengers will hit the streets of mountian view and the rest of the bay area this summer (assuming they pass their surface street test the expressways will follow). pictured is the highway 101 / 280 interchange - bernal heights, san francisco, california. 3 stitched images.
(4) Bagneux Lucie Aubrac 25/02/2022 08h25
The station hall of the new terminus of métro line 1 is fully located on street level.
Before the fully automated driverless metros arrive on métro line 4 the line has being extened in the South to Bagneux - Lucie Aubrac.
In 2013, Line 4 was extended for the first time since its initial construction, into the southern suburbs of Montrouge. The line was further extended to Bagneux–Lucie Aubrac in on 13/01/2022 (the day after I took this picture), connecting to the future Grand Paris Express. The line is now being retrofitted for full automation, with the first automated trains expected to run by mid-2022.
It is the second-busiest Métro line after Line 1, carrying over 154 million passengers in 2004.
MÉTRO LINE 4
Porte de Clignancourt - Bagneux-Lucie Aubrac
Total length : 13.9 km
Number of stations: 29
Date of opening: April 21st, 1908
Number of trains during rush hours: 44 (interval of 1m35)
Number of departures a day: 424
Traveltime: 36 minutes
Ridership: 158,5 million (2019)
Stock:MP 89 CC (*mid 2022: MP 89 CA - MP 05 - MP 14)
[ Wikipedia - Métro Paris Ligne 4 (français) 02/2022 ]
The new driverless Metro extension opened in August, 2024. Thought I'd check out the new station under Central. SWISH!
London Post Office Railway..The Post Office Railway, known as Mail Rail since 1987, is a 2 ft (610 mm) narrow gauge, driverless underground railway in London that was built by the Post Office with assistance from the Underground Electric Railways Company of London, to move mail between sorting offices. Inspired by the Chicago Tunnel Company..
Not sure where these two units (one of which is no. 67) are heading, but the bloke on the opposite platform at Poplar seems to be "tired of being tired"!
Over 2,800 pairs of bullet trains numbered by G, D or C run daily connecting over 550 cities in China and covering 33 of the country's 34 provinces.
China's Fuxing trains can carry 1,200 passengers at speeds of 350 kph. As well as boasting the longest network of high-speed lines in the world, China now has the fastest scheduled trains on the planet.
Only 16 nations have high-speed railways -China boasts the world's longest network with 27,000km of such tracks. Japan, Spain, France and Germany are the others where tracks dedicated for high-speed trains stretch over 1,000 km
China not only has the safest passenger trains, but also by far the busiest tracks. Freight density beats that of the US and Russia and passenger density beats that of any European country.
This photo is taken at Bluff which is an important railway crew point on the busy former Queensland Railways Central Line with the loaded train heading east to Rockhampton and then south to the massive port of Gladstone. Located in the Bowen Basin, what was once principally a rural main line to central western Queensland is now, from Emerald east a very busy, double tracked electrified line, with a number of branches, some linking northward to join the similarly busy Goonyella network.
Once the freight arm of Queensland Railways was privatised (that is, it is now a stock exchange traded company), it took over responsibility for the infrastructure of the coal network in Central Queensland as well as running the trains, although now with open access, in competition with Pacific National, BMA and latest entrant, One Rail Australia. Most trains run in distributed power mode of one form or another, this means the locomotives are not all at the front but spread throughout the long trains, and except for the front loco, unmanned (or is that driverless) using advanced electronic telecommunications to talk to each other. Trains are hauled by multiple locomotives, both electric exceeding 5000hp and powerful diesels. This train is a good example, as well as German built 3825 on the head end, it also had 3757 and 3728 spaced back in the train running in distributed power mode (almost like three trains coupled together except in this instance 3728 was pushing at the end) with something like 120 wagons (this varies) and a gross mass of perhaps anything up to 14000 tonnes. They get along at a good clip, the distributed power arrangement making operation far safer with less strain on couplers and better train control on grades, along with electric actuation of brakes that enables a faster and more consistent brake application. All this enables greater track occupancy also, that is, more trains.
Here are details of the 3800 class locos for those technically minded
en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siemens_E40_AG-V1
And a note on the Queensland railway coal network and project
'Auto Shuttle 1' under conventional control on Madingley Road prior to autonomous operations around the roads of the West Cambridge technology area.
PA_249 [10 points]
A re-activation wave in métro station République where all two re-activated space invaders were removed within a few days together with this métro space invader in métro station Bastille. Never seen the original of this one before. It was the 13,130,955th space invader flashed since the start of the game in 2014 and at the moment I flashed this one there were 210,007 players of this game.
Onscreen FlashInvaders message: CHAMPION!
All my photos of PA_249:
PA_249 (Close-up, March 2022)
PA_249 (Wide shot, Marchg 2022)
Date of invasion: 20/12/1999
DELETED ages ago (unknown)
RE-ACTIVATED March 2022
"The Nassauer Haus or Schlüsselfeldersche Stiftungshaus in Nuremberg is a medieval residential tower made of so-called red castle sandstone. Although originally built in the Romanesque style, the house still features Gothic style elements after a few renovations. It is the last remaining residential tower in Nuremberg.
The tower is located in Lorenz's old town, opposite the Lorenz Church, at Karolinenstrasse 2.
The term “Nassauer Haus” is the name for the corner house, which has only been in use since the 19th century and is based on an erroneous reference to the German King Adolf of Nassau († 1298). Until then, the building was known as the Schluesselfelder Foundation House (since the early 18th century). However, descendants of the king from the Count's House of Nassau owned property further north of the Lorenzkirche in the 15th century.
The construction method for fortified tower houses or residential towers came in the 13th century from northern Italian cities to the German imperial cities that traded with them. “Family towers” were widespread in the (rather weakly fortified) trading centers to protect trading goods from raids, and also as status symbols for noble families who had moved to the cities. Several Italian-style family towers have been preserved in Regensburg. Around 1430 there were around 65 in Nuremberg, of which the Nassau House is the only one preserved.
The cellar (with an irregular ribbed vault) and the two lower floors date back to the 13th century. Around the 16th century, the vault of the cellar and the ground floor were raised. The hall-like cellar is now used as a tavern. The two upper floors, which are clearly distinguished from the small-scale structured masonry of the lower floors by their regular ashlar masonry in a reddish tint, belong to the 15th century. The original tower probably rose free-standing above the low wooden houses in the area and could also have had a wooden or half-timbered tower in the style of the Amorbach Templar house. At least the penultimate floor can be attributed to a renovation around 1422 by the then owner Jobst Haug. The top floor with its coat of arms frieze and the three pointed-helmet corner towers was given the existing shape around 1433 by Ulrich Ortlieb, who is also responsible for the choir. A pyramid-shaped hipped roof is placed on the tower.
The residential tower probably only became a “defensive tower” for romantic observers of the 19th century, who may have seen it as a unified structure, although the decorative crenellated wreath, the coat of arms frieze and the royal attribution may have contributed to this assessment. The most important external change is the installation of the arched openings on the ground floor in 1836; one of them was enlarged into a door around 1900. In the early days, the stone floors of the tower probably only had slit windows or embrasures and a high entrance.
Nuremberg (/ˈnjʊərəmbɜːrɡ/ NURE-əm-burg; German: Nürnberg [ˈnʏʁnbɛʁk]; in the local East Franconian dialect: Nämberch [ˈnɛmbɛrç]) is the largest city in Franconia, the second-largest city in the German state of Bavaria, and its 545,000 inhabitants make it the 14th-largest city in Germany.
Nuremberg sits on the Pegnitz, which carries the name Regnitz from its confluence with the Rednitz in Fürth onwards (Pegnitz→ Regnitz→ Main→ Rhine→ North Sea), and on the Rhine–Main–Danube Canal, that connects the North Sea to the Black Sea. Lying in the Bavarian administrative region of Middle Franconia, it is the largest city and unofficial capital of the entire cultural region of Franconia. The city is surrounded on three sides by the Reichswald, a large forest, and in the north lies Knoblauchsland (garlic land), an extensive vegetable growing area and cultural landscape.
The city forms a continuous conurbation with the neighbouring cities of Fürth, Erlangen and Schwabach, which is the heart of an urban area region with around 1.4 million inhabitants, while the larger Nuremberg Metropolitan Region has a population of approximately 3.6 million. It is the largest city in the East Franconian dialect area (colloquially: "Franconian"; German: Fränkisch).
Nuremberg and Fürth were once connected by the Bavarian Ludwig Railway, the first steam-hauled and overall second railway opened in Germany (1835). Today, the U1 of the Nuremberg Subway, which is the first German subway with driverless, automatically moving railcars, runs along this route. Nuremberg Airport (Flughafen Nürnberg "Albrecht Dürer") is the second-busiest airport in Bavaria after Munich Airport, and the tenth-busiest airport of the country.
Institutions of higher education in Nuremberg include the University of Erlangen-Nuremberg (Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg), Germany's 11th-largest university, with campuses in Erlangen and Nuremberg and a university hospital in Erlangen (Universitätsklinikum Erlangen), Technische Hochschule Nürnberg Georg Simon Ohm and Hochschule für Musik Nürnberg. The Nuremberg exhibition centre (Messe Nürnberg) is one of the biggest convention center companies in Germany and operates worldwide.
Nuremberg Castle and the city's walls, with their many towers, are among the most impressive in Europe. Staatstheater Nürnberg is one of the five Bavarian state theatres, showing operas, operettas, musicals, and ballets (main venue: Nuremberg Opera House), plays (main venue: Schauspielhaus Nürnberg), as well as concerts (main venue: Meistersingerhalle). Its orchestra, the Staatsphilharmonie Nürnberg, is Bavaria's second-largest opera orchestra after the Bavarian State Opera's Bavarian State Orchestra in Munich. Nuremberg is the birthplace of Albrecht Dürer and Johann Pachelbel. 1. FC Nürnberg is the most famous football club of the city and one of the most successful football clubs in Germany. Nuremberg was one of the host cities of the 2006 FIFA World Cup.
Franconia (German: Franken, pronounced [ˈfʁaŋkŋ̍]; Franconian: Franggn [ˈfrɑŋɡŋ̍]; Bavarian: Frankn) is a region of Germany, characterised by its culture and Franconian dialect (German: Fränkisch).
Franconia is made up of the three Regierungsbezirke of Lower, Middle and Upper Franconia in Bavaria, the adjacent, Franconian-speaking, South Thuringia, south of the Thuringian Forest—which constitutes the language boundary between Franconian and Thuringian— and the eastern parts of Heilbronn-Franconia in Baden-Württemberg.
Those parts of the Vogtland lying in Saxony (largest city: Plauen) are sometimes regarded as Franconian as well, because the Vogtlandian dialects are mostly East Franconian. The inhabitants of Saxon Vogtland, however, mostly do not consider themselves as Franconian. On the other hand, the inhabitants of the Hessian-speaking parts of Lower Franconia west of the Spessart (largest city: Aschaffenburg) do consider themselves as Franconian, although not speaking the dialect. Heilbronn-Franconia's largest city of Heilbronn and its surrounding areas are South Franconian-speaking, and therefore only sometimes regarded as Franconian. In Hesse, the east of the Fulda District is Franconian-speaking, and parts of the Oden Forest District are sometimes regarded as Franconian for historical reasons, but a Franconian identity did not develop there.
Franconia's largest city and unofficial capital is Nuremberg, which is contiguous with Erlangen and Fürth, with which it forms the Franconian conurbation with around 1.3 million inhabitants. Other important Franconian cities are Würzburg, Bamberg, Bayreuth, Ansbach and Coburg in Bavaria, Suhl and Meiningen in Thuringia, and Schwäbisch Hall in Baden-Württemberg.
The German word Franken—Franconians—also refers to the ethnic group, which is mainly to be found in this region. They are to be distinguished from the Germanic people of the Franks, and historically formed their easternmost settlement area. The origins of Franconia lie in the settlement of the Franks from the 6th century in the area probably populated until then mainly by the Elbe Germanic people in the Main river area, known from the 9th century as East Francia (Francia Orientalis). In the Middle Ages the region formed much of the eastern part of the Duchy of Franconia and, from 1500, the Franconian Circle. The restructuring of the south German states by Napoleon, after the demise of the Holy Roman Empire, saw most of Franconia awarded to Bavaria." - info from Wikipedia.
Summer 2019 I did a solo cycling tour across Europe through 12 countries over the course of 3 months. I began my adventure in Edinburgh, Scotland and finished in Florence, Italy cycling 8,816 km. During my trip I took 47,000 photos.
Now on Instagram.
A driverless Leyland Olympian,of Arriva the Shires sits at High Wycombe,waiting to work its next service.
(4) Bagneux Lucie Aubrac 25/02/2022 08h25
When going up the stairs to exit the station Bagneux Lucie Aubrac you see the beautiful work of stencil artist C215 (group).
Before the fully automated driverless metros arrive on métro line 4 the line has being extened in the South to Bagneux - Lucie Aubrac.
In 2013, Line 4 was extended for the first time since its initial construction, into the southern suburbs of Montrouge. The line was further extended to Bagneux–Lucie Aubrac in on 13/01/2022 (the day after I took this picture), connecting to the future Grand Paris Express. The line is now being retrofitted for full automation, with the first automated trains expected to run by mid-2022.
It is the second-busiest Métro line after Line 1, carrying over 154 million passengers in 2004.
MÉTRO LINE 4
Porte de Clignancourt - Bagneux-Lucie Aubrac
Total length : 13.9 km
Number of stations: 29
Date of opening: April 21st, 1908
Number of trains during rush hours: 44 (interval of 1m35)
Number of departures a day: 424
Traveltime: 36 minutes
Ridership: 158,5 million (2019)
Stock:MP 89 CC (*mid 2022: MP 89 CA - MP 05 - MP 14)
[ Wikipedia - Métro Paris Ligne 4 (français) 02/2022 ]
Driverless bus/vehicle locked up behind some fence in the car park of the Inverness University campus on the afternoon of 5/7/2022. Now registered SV67EPY the vehicle mat or may not be in service but is almost certainly a 'hazardous area'!!!
It rattles and clanks through in the dead of night, every 2nd of February. Driverless of course, he's long gone.
(033/365) for www.flickr.com/groups/2017_one_photo_each_day/
The Detroit People Mover, which began operations in 1987, is the major transportation railways system throughout downtown Detroit. With a 2.9 mile circular loop, 13 stations, speeds of up to 56 miles per hour, and low fares of 75 cents per ride, it not only provides transportation for the residents of Detroit, but also serves as a mode of transport for tourists, downtown business workers, and sports fans.
The People Mover uses UTDC ICTS Mark I technology, and the cars are driverless.
Source: Historic Detroit (web)
The line through the Mount Royal tunnel linking Montreal's Gare Centrale with Deux-Montagnes to the north was opened in 1918 as part of the Canadian Northern Railway, transferrinng to Canadian National Railways ownership in 1923. The line was completely re-built between 1992 and 1995, with new trains, track and electrification. The line was closed in 2020 as part of the Réseau express métropolitain plan to convert the line to a driverless metro and extend service beyond Gare Centrale to Brossard across the St. Lawrence River, with subsequent branches to Montreal-Pierre Eliott Trudeau International Airport and to Sainte-Anne-de-Bellevue.
Paddock atmosphere during the 2013 Silverstone Classic: Chris Lunn's Cooper-Climax T45 and Jason Minshaw's Brabham-Climax BT4 sitting driverless in the pitlane after Saturday pre-'66 HGPCA race was flagged off prematurely after the track was hit by a massive thunderstorm.
Read our full Silverstone Classic report and discover more pictures on 8W.
On 13 October 1990, a week before the Gateshead Garden Festival closed, one of the "caterpillar" monorail trains is seen in the Esslington area. These trains were driverless and automatically operated.
Unbeknownst to many, the driverless car is here; dozens of them travel between northern Virginia and central Florida every day... (Amtrak's southbound Auto Train at Featherstone, Virginia on December 31, 2012.)
Algorithmic Drive. Daïmôn. October 2018.
francois-quevillon.com/w/?p=1466
Conduite algorithmique. Daïmôn. Octobre 2018.
The Galactic Police try to make the galaxy a safer place for you and me and all the other sentient critter and creatures that inhabit our galaxy...
one of their daily choirs is to confiscate illegal space-vehicles, spy-satellites, stolen vehicles, ships involved in crime and ships that make out a risk to others safety or just the ships that have parked to long...
A tradition is to pose for a picture infront of them every week, there is a certain pride in the size and amount of vehicles confiscated and too as well competition between the different districts, the record holder is section B12 close to the white dwarf cluster by the brown hole, but many think that they don´t follow the proper galactic protocol so many other departments have sent spies to expose them!
Driverless elevated train arriving at the Financial center metro station in the futuristic-looking Dubai. Ultra-modern architecture, cleanliness of the metro station, women-only passenger cars, along with the melting pot of different races at the station, elevates the feeling of the almost science-fiction society.
Cruise has a fleet of autonomous car sharing cars in San Francisco. These are specially adapted Chevrolet Bot EV's. At this moment a driver is still needed, but Cruise aims to get a permit for driverless use in the near future.
‘Scene’ at ‘Coach & Bus UK19’ Part 3
on Dennis Basford’s railsroadsrunways.blogspot.co.uk’
It took me a while out work out that ‘Autonomous Technology’ means that the bus can navigate its way around without the need for a driver.
Working within a fenced area with a van parked fairly awkwardly it quite happily navigated its way round the circuit without fuss or hesitation.
It looks like an ordinary bus but there are number of sensors and
‘black boxes’ (painted dark blue) particularly at the front.
According to one of the team with the bus. The technology is particularly useful in the depot where at night, the bus can park itself up without the occasional scratch or scrape it might acquire with a human driver.
I think that we are a still long way from regularly catching a driverless bus to the shops but I think that it is coming.
More tomorrow!
(4) Gare du Nord 27/10/2020 17h34
The station Gare du Nord is being prepared for full automatic operation. Platform doors have been installed in October 2019 and are working as we speak (*October 2020). The line is being converted to an automated system (like Line 14 and 1). The initial plans were to begin conversion some time after the completion of the Line 1 conversion, but due to high costs those plans were put on hold . On April 2, 2013, the RATP confirmed that Line 4 would be fully automated, but stopped short of giving a timeline of the conversion.[16] In January 2016, Siemens was awarded a €70 million contract to fully automate Line 4. A mix of passenger and driverless trains will commence in 2020 and the line will be fully driverless by 2022.
Although rolling stock for the automated line has not yet been confirmed, it is highly speculated that Line 4 will initially see a mix of MP 89CA and MP 05 stock from Line 14 running alongside new MP 14 railcars.
MÉTRO LINE 4
Porte de Clignancourt - Mairie de Montrouge
Total length : 12.1 km
Number of stations: 27
Date of opening: April 21st, 1908
Number of trains during rush hours: 44 (interval of 1m35)
Number of departures a day: 424
Traveltime: 30 minutes
[2013]
Thursday 19th December 2019
First day of Christmas/New Year holiday.
And, what with the cold, sore shoulder, allergies and the rest, I would rather just curl up in bed, at least for the first day off, seeing as I was away the first three days of the week. But no.
All the stuff we do, the places we visit, the plants and butterflies, churches and trains are pretty much always my idea.
Yeah, I know, hard to believe, huh?
Jools sometimes likes to do things, sometimes I don't want to tag along for, sometimes I do. But back in November, the original plan when we visited the Blake exhibition was to go to Greenwich for the Moon exhibition. Circumstances meant that we didn't leave the pub until it was nearly time to go home.
I know, how could that happen?
Well, with both of us off on Thursday, we booked tickets for Moon, and planned our trip up to that London.
I didn't much feel like it, but I knew there was always a photographic opportunity and double so as near to the exhibition there is The Queen's house and the very photogenic Tulip Stairs.
OK, I'm in.
Our initial plan was to catch an early train, but study of the ticket prices showed that if we waited until arriving in London after ten, halved the ticket price. It would have cost £144 for the two of us, a hundred of that on the outward trip alone.
So we have to wait, and fritter away the morning and daylight at home, having breakfast, coffee, more coffee and taking a shower.
So, at quarter past nine we load the car with ourselves, and for me a single camera(!), well, the compact doesn't really count as I always carry that, but one DSLR with the nifty fifty attached, drive down Station Road to the, er, station.
We get our tickets, and wait on the platform, while other passengers arrived, meaning there was a good 20 of us by the time the train arrived.
It was always going to be busy, but it seems that Thursday was also the first day of the school holidays, so the train would be packed. And it was, packed, by the time we left Folkestone, standing room only. We had seats, mind.
We get off at Stratford, then walk through the gaudy glitz that is Westfield, marvelling at the glittery crap that was in the windows: who buys this tat? Well, most of the people around us, already laden down with armfuls of shopping bags.
We travel light.
At Statford Regional, we stop for a mid-morning snack of lamb samaosas from the small kiosk, then take the warm delicacies to the DLR train waiting to take us to the ultra-modern dystopia that is Canary Wharf.
Running out of Stratford, we see the Crossrail tracks dive into the ground marking where the central section begins in the east of London. Pudding Mill Lane station has been moved to allow the tunnel to be built, so we can no longer use it to snap railtours heading to East Anglia.
More's the pity.
We have front seats of the driverless train, meaning we see the tracks stretching along to the old Bryant and May match factory, before the line turns south to Poplar and Canary Wharf.
Day trip to Greenwich We change trains for one going to Lewisham, again taking front seats so we could enjoy the view as the tracks weave their way through massive skyscrapers, before dropping to street level for the run to the river, along which, normal people live, rather than where the super-rich work.
Journey to another world Through my favourite named station, Mudchute, and itno the tunnel under the river to Greenwich.
Greenwich is another world. dominated by the old hospital, observatory and other magnificent buildings, it is a tourist trap, but spacious too, and not many people sunbathing in Greenwich Park on a mild but damp Thursday morning in December.
Journey to another world We walk along the main road, then along to the Maritime Museum, then down steps to the exhibition area. Jools has the tickets on her phone scanned, and we're in.
The exhibition was rather good, as it examined our relationship through art and science with the moon, not just about the moon landings. It was rather fascinating, as we knew it would be.
Journey to another world Lots to see and enjoy, works of art, scientific documents and tools. And videos to watch and learn yet more stuff.
And it was pretty quiet, with just a few other visitors who were quiet too, and took time in looking at each piece.
Journey to another world After an hour, we were done, and from the museum it is a short walk to the Queen's House.
The Queen's House, Greenwich It was built by Charles 1st, before he lost his head, and designed by Indigo Jones. I mean, the King didn't build it, he paid for it. Or the country paid for it. You know what I mean.
And part of the original building was the fabulous "Tulip Stairs", which might not actually tulips, but are stairs. When I say not tulips, I mean representation of tulips.
You know.
We walk past the ice skating rink, which is blaring out Christmas songs, nearly downed out by the screaming of children and teens as they fall over and over.
We walk by to the basement entrance to the house. We are greeted, told where to go, and there is no charge, just a voluntary contribution.
I rush on hoping to see the stairs, but the modern stairs we climb up open onto a large entrance hall with a stunning black and white tiled floor.
But through the arch to the right, I saw the risers of te Tulip Stairs. I walk towards the stairwell and find I am the only one there, so I can snap away to my hearts content.
Mwah ha ha.
I snap it from the bottom, middle, with both the DSLR and compact.
Then out onto the balcony to snap the floor of the reception room from above.
We explored the adjoining rooms, all lavishly decorated and filled with paintings, including the "Armada" portrait of Elizabeth I.
I snap that too.
By now it was raining outside, so we beat retrat to a pie and mash shop we had spotted near to the station. We go in an I have beef pie and mash, Jools has chicken and mushroom pie and mash, bit covered in liquor, a sauce flavoured with parsley.
I have wanted to try proper pie and mash for ages, now I have, and well. Pie and mash was once a staple of tradition London food, with shops all over the East End, most have closed, but this one remains, and worth a visit.
Outside, it was raining harder than ever.
So we rush to the station and get a train to Bank Station in the City.
From there we catch another train to Embankment, as we were to check on whether my Granddad's medals have been mounted. We had dropped them off back in November, and heard nothing.
In among the theatres is the London Medal Centre, and after some searching, they bring out the frame, and it looks fabulous. I mean, really good.
The medals have been remounted with new ribbons, the medals polished and the photograph trimmed so it is now straight.
We were going to head to Regent Street to see the Christmas lights, but it would be even more corwded than here. So, I make an executive decision that we would head home.
Now.
Jools didn't argue.
Back to the underground, north one stop to Leicester Square and change onto the Piccadilly Line to Kings Cross.
There was time to get a snack from M&S before we go up to the platform to wait for the Dver train to pull i so we could nab a seat.
The train fills up, and is standing room only by the time it leaves. My eyes grew heavy and closed as we rattled over the points to the tunnel.
And the train did empty a little as it went through Ebbsfleet and Ashford, but when we got off back at Martin Mill, it was still pretty full.
This being Christmas and all, I suppose.
A quick blast up the hill and over the Deal road, up Station Road to home.
Phew.
I put the kettle on and Jools feeds the cats.
Phew indeed.
We feat of white chocolate cookies from M&S, dunking them in our coffee. Later we have cheese and a mince pie after I make a batch.
Tangara T24 pulls into platform 3 at Chatswood with a Hornsby via the ECRL service.
Notably, platform 2 and 3 will be lost to the Sydney Metro Project, making this scene in the future to be completely different.
On the 30th September 2018, the Epping - Chatswood Rail Link (ECRL) was closed to be converted to a "Metro" as part of the Sydney Metro project, a driverless train system running from Tallawong, near Riverstone, to Sydenham, with plans to extend to Bankstown.
Sunday 23rd September 2018
Image taken by fellow driver Mick.
This was the loco that stopped the runaway driverless 31102 from Pelton as it was stabled in Tyne Yard.
No injuries were sustained by anyone.
Taken with a drone, this view looks straight down upon precise lines of Alstom Metropolis EMU sets where driverless passenger trains wait their turn for service on the Northwest Metro line between Tallawong, where this scene was captured, and Chatswood in New South Wales, Australia, on February 5, 2022.
Judges’ Comments: The factory-like precision of this drone photograph beautifully captures the standardization that has taken hold within the rail industry over the last fifty years. A stark and exceptional portrait of stored EMU commuter equipment speaks to the scale and character of modern railroading; and also the sterility and industrial nature of an industry where the relentless march of technological advancement has eliminated many aspects of individuality and personality.
Read more about the 2023 John E. Gruber Creative Photography Awards: railphoto-art.org/awards-2023/
Day 252 of the 365 Journey
Agent 47 figured this was a prime opportunity to send a clear and concise message to not only the remaining two family members but also anyone else out there with any ideas about trying to locate “the ghost”; a man that doesn’t exist. This public “assignment” would ring loud that “You are not safe….ANYWHERE”.
As he approaches the black sedan; having already done his due diligence he knows that the glass isn’t bullet proof. Knowing that the mark will continue down the straight for at least another 3.6 miles he speeds ahead of the sedan to watch the mark in the rear view mirror. The stocky unshaven man in the mirror laughs unknowingly as he holds his cell phone to his ear. While engulfed in his preoccupied conversation, the portly gentleman slowly accelerates his town car which is now running at the same pace as Agent 47. “This couldn’t be any easier” 47 thinks to himself. With both vehicles now window to window, the red tie assassin honks his horn as he aims his 45 at the man laughing into his cell.
The laughing stops and the look of horror overtakes the driver. A single shot is fired.
The classical music on the stereo is raised as the mirror is adjusted slightly to the side. The driverless car screeches off the road into a tree on the side of the road. Five “Family” members down; two to go.
“When will they learn; ALWAYS install bullet proof glass”, he thinks to himself.
(We all know, Agent 47 would of course find other options…hahaha.)
He continues on his way; loosening his tie…….just a bit.
Strobist INFO:
Shutter Speed 1/60
Aperture 2.8
ISO 100
Lens – Tamron 17-35MM
Focal Length – 17mm
White Bal – AUTO
Setup time: 15 Mins – One Putting on a suit and driving around…haha
580exII at 1/32 (-.07) power with Gary Fong Light Sphere just below dash (2 ft from subject
Lights and camera shutter release triggered via Pocket Wizard’s
All photos and textures are my own.
Nikon Coolpix L6, 3/12
Done for Artistic Manipulation Group Mixmaster Challenge 20
Another view of the autonomous 8-seater that is being trialled in downtown St. Pete. An operator is on board to work a computer screen, but there’s no steering wheel as lasers and cameras provide the guidance.
"The Nuremberg Palace of Justice (German: Justizpalast) is a building complex in Nuremberg, Bavaria, Germany. It was constructed from 1909 to 1916 and houses the appellate court (Oberlandesgericht), the regional court (Landgericht), the local court (Amtsgericht) and the public prosecutor's office (Staatsanwaltschaft). The Nuremberg Trials Memorial (Memorium Nürnberger Prozesse) is located on the top floor of the courthouse. The International Nuremberg Principles Academy is housed on the ground floor of the east wing since 2020.
The building was chosen as the location of the Nuremberg trials (1945–1949) for the main surviving German war criminals of World War II because it was almost undamaged, was large enough, and included a large prison complex. The choice of the city of Nuremberg was symbolic as the Nazi Party had held its large Nuremberg rallies in the city.
The trials took place in courtroom number 600, situated in the east wing of the palace of Justice. The courtroom was used until 1 March 2020, especially for murder trials. At the end of the Nuremberg Trials the courtroom was refurbished, and is now smaller. A wall that had been removed during the trials in order to create more space was re-erected. In addition, the judges’ bench was turned 90 degrees and is no longer situated in front of the window, but stands where the witness box was placed during the trials.
From the year 2000 on, courtroom 600 could be visited by tourists, during weekends. In December 2008, the courtroom was closed to the public due to construction works creating a permanent exhibition. The Nuremberg Trials Memorial hosted by the Nuremberg Municipal Museums was opened in November 2010. Since 2022, a media installation creates a virtual illusion of the courtroom at the time of the Nuremberg Trials.
Nuremberg (/ˈnjʊərəmbɜːrɡ/ NURE-əm-burg; German: Nürnberg [ˈnʏʁnbɛʁk]; in the local East Franconian dialect: Nämberch [ˈnɛmbɛrç]) is the largest city in Franconia, the second-largest city in the German state of Bavaria, and its 545,000 inhabitants make it the 14th-largest city in Germany.
Nuremberg sits on the Pegnitz, which carries the name Regnitz from its confluence with the Rednitz in Fürth onwards (Pegnitz→ Regnitz→ Main→ Rhine→ North Sea), and on the Rhine–Main–Danube Canal, that connects the North Sea to the Black Sea. Lying in the Bavarian administrative region of Middle Franconia, it is the largest city and unofficial capital of the entire cultural region of Franconia. The city is surrounded on three sides by the Reichswald, a large forest, and in the north lies Knoblauchsland (garlic land), an extensive vegetable growing area and cultural landscape.
The city forms a continuous conurbation with the neighbouring cities of Fürth, Erlangen and Schwabach, which is the heart of an urban area region with around 1.4 million inhabitants, while the larger Nuremberg Metropolitan Region has a population of approximately 3.6 million. It is the largest city in the East Franconian dialect area (colloquially: "Franconian"; German: Fränkisch).
Nuremberg and Fürth were once connected by the Bavarian Ludwig Railway, the first steam-hauled and overall second railway opened in Germany (1835). Today, the U1 of the Nuremberg Subway, which is the first German subway with driverless, automatically moving railcars, runs along this route. Nuremberg Airport (Flughafen Nürnberg "Albrecht Dürer") is the second-busiest airport in Bavaria after Munich Airport, and the tenth-busiest airport of the country.
Institutions of higher education in Nuremberg include the University of Erlangen-Nuremberg (Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg), Germany's 11th-largest university, with campuses in Erlangen and Nuremberg and a university hospital in Erlangen (Universitätsklinikum Erlangen), Technische Hochschule Nürnberg Georg Simon Ohm and Hochschule für Musik Nürnberg. The Nuremberg exhibition centre (Messe Nürnberg) is one of the biggest convention center companies in Germany and operates worldwide.
Nuremberg Castle and the city's walls, with their many towers, are among the most impressive in Europe. Staatstheater Nürnberg is one of the five Bavarian state theatres, showing operas, operettas, musicals, and ballets (main venue: Nuremberg Opera House), plays (main venue: Schauspielhaus Nürnberg), as well as concerts (main venue: Meistersingerhalle). Its orchestra, the Staatsphilharmonie Nürnberg, is Bavaria's second-largest opera orchestra after the Bavarian State Opera's Bavarian State Orchestra in Munich. Nuremberg is the birthplace of Albrecht Dürer and Johann Pachelbel. 1. FC Nürnberg is the most famous football club of the city and one of the most successful football clubs in Germany. Nuremberg was one of the host cities of the 2006 FIFA World Cup.
Franconia (German: Franken, pronounced [ˈfʁaŋkŋ̍]; Franconian: Franggn [ˈfrɑŋɡŋ̍]; Bavarian: Frankn) is a region of Germany, characterised by its culture and Franconian dialect (German: Fränkisch).
Franconia is made up of the three Regierungsbezirke of Lower, Middle and Upper Franconia in Bavaria, the adjacent, Franconian-speaking, South Thuringia, south of the Thuringian Forest—which constitutes the language boundary between Franconian and Thuringian— and the eastern parts of Heilbronn-Franconia in Baden-Württemberg.
Those parts of the Vogtland lying in Saxony (largest city: Plauen) are sometimes regarded as Franconian as well, because the Vogtlandian dialects are mostly East Franconian. The inhabitants of Saxon Vogtland, however, mostly do not consider themselves as Franconian. On the other hand, the inhabitants of the Hessian-speaking parts of Lower Franconia west of the Spessart (largest city: Aschaffenburg) do consider themselves as Franconian, although not speaking the dialect. Heilbronn-Franconia's largest city of Heilbronn and its surrounding areas are South Franconian-speaking, and therefore only sometimes regarded as Franconian. In Hesse, the east of the Fulda District is Franconian-speaking, and parts of the Oden Forest District are sometimes regarded as Franconian for historical reasons, but a Franconian identity did not develop there.
Franconia's largest city and unofficial capital is Nuremberg, which is contiguous with Erlangen and Fürth, with which it forms the Franconian conurbation with around 1.3 million inhabitants. Other important Franconian cities are Würzburg, Bamberg, Bayreuth, Ansbach and Coburg in Bavaria, Suhl and Meiningen in Thuringia, and Schwäbisch Hall in Baden-Württemberg.
The German word Franken—Franconians—also refers to the ethnic group, which is mainly to be found in this region. They are to be distinguished from the Germanic people of the Franks, and historically formed their easternmost settlement area. The origins of Franconia lie in the settlement of the Franks from the 6th century in the area probably populated until then mainly by the Elbe Germanic people in the Main river area, known from the 9th century as East Francia (Francia Orientalis). In the Middle Ages the region formed much of the eastern part of the Duchy of Franconia and, from 1500, the Franconian Circle. The restructuring of the south German states by Napoleon, after the demise of the Holy Roman Empire, saw most of Franconia awarded to Bavaria." - info from Wikipedia.
Summer 2019 I did a solo cycling tour across Europe through 12 countries over the course of 3 months. I began my adventure in Edinburgh, Scotland and finished in Florence, Italy cycling 8,816 km. During my trip I took 47,000 photos.
Now on Instagram.
"The patient is young" is true to some degree – the lower the age of the patient (measured e.g. in years), the more the sentence is true. The word Advaita is a composite of two Sanskrit words: Advaita is often translated as "non-duality," but a more apt translation is "non-secondness." Advaita has several meanings: As Gaudapada states, when a distinction is made between subject and object, people grasp to objects, which is samsara. By realizing one's true identity as Brahman, there is no more grasping, and the mind comes to rest. Nonduality of Atman and Brahman, the famous diction of Advaita Vedanta that Atman is not distinct from Brahman; the knowledge of this identity is liberating. Monism: there is no other reality than Brahman, that "Reality is not constituted by parts," that is, ever-changing 'things' have no existence of their own, but are appearances of the one Existent, Brahman; and that there is in reality no duality between the "experiencing self" (jiva) and Brahman, the Ground of Being. The word Vedānta is a composition of two Sanskrit words: The word Veda refers to the whole corpus of vedic texts, and the word "anta" means 'end'. The meaning of Vedānta can be summed up as "the end of the vedas" or "the ultimate knowledge of the vedas". Vedānta is one of six orthodox schools of Hindu philosophy. Truth of a fuzzy proposition is a matter of degree. I recommend to everybody interested in fuzzy logic that they sharply distinguish fuzziness from uncertainty as a degree of belief (e.g. probability). Compare the last proposition with the proposition "The patient will survive next week". This may well be considered as a crisp proposition which is either (absolutely) true or (absolutely) false; but we do not know which is the case. We may have some probability (chance, degree of belief) that the sentence is true; but probability is not a degree of truth. In metrology (the science of measurement), it is acknowledged that for any measure we care to make, there exists an amount of uncertainty about its accuracy, but this degree of uncertainty is conventionally expressed with a magnitude of likelihood, and not as a degree of truth. In 1975, Lotfi A. Zadeh introduced a distinction between "Type 1 fuzzy sets" without uncertainty and "Type 2 fuzzy sets" with uncertainty, which has been widely accepted. Simply put, in the former case, each fuzzy number is linked to a non-fuzzy (natural) number, while in the latter case, each fuzzy number is linked to another fuzzy number.Problems of vagueness and fuzziness have probably always existed in human experience. From ancient history, philosophers and scientists have reflected about those kinds of problems. The ancient Sorites paradox first raised the logical problem of how we could exactly define the threshold at which a change in quantitative gradation turns into a qualitative or categorical difference. With some physical processes this threshold is relatively easy to identify. For example, water turns into steam at 100 °C or 212 °F (the boiling point depends partly on atmospheric pressure, which decreases at higher altitudes). With many other processes and gradations, however, the point of change is much more difficult to locate, and remains somewhat vague. Thus, the boundaries between qualitatively different things may be unsharp: we know that there are boundaries, but we cannot define them exactly. The Nordic myth of Loki's wager suggested that concepts that lack precise meanings or precise boundaries of application cannot be usefully discussed at all.[9] However, the 20th-century idea of "fuzzy concepts" proposes that "somewhat vague terms" can be operated with, since we can explicate and define the variability of their application by assigning numbers to gradations of applicability. This idea sounds simple enough, but it had large implications. The intellectual origins of the species of fuzzy concepts as a logical category have been traced back to a diversity of famous and less well-known thinkers,[10] including (among many others) Eubulides, Plato, Cicero, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel,[11] Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, Friedrich Nietzsche, Hugh MacColl,[13] Charles S. Peirce, Max Black,[15] Jan Łukasiewicz,[16] Emil Leon Post, Alfred Tarski,Georg Cantor, Nicolai A. Vasiliev,[19] Kurt Gödel, Stanisław Jaśkowski[20] and Donald Knuth. Across at least two and a half millennia, all of them had something to say about graded concepts with unsharp boundaries. This suggests at least that the awareness of the existence of concepts with "fuzzy" characteristics, in one form or another, has a very long history in human thought. Quite a few logicians and philosophers have also tried to analyze the characteristics of fuzzy concepts as a recognized species, sometimes with the aid of some kind of many-valued logic or substructural logic. An early attempt in the post-WW2 era to create a theory of sets where set membership is a matter of degree was made by Abraham Kaplan and Hermann Schott in 1951. They intended to apply the idea to empirical research. Kaplan and Schott measured the degree of membership of empirical classes using real numbers between 0 and 1, and they defined corresponding notions of intersection, union, complementation and subset.[22] However, at the time, their idea "fell on stony ground".[23] J. Barkley Rosser Sr. published a treatise on many-valued logics in 1952, anticipating "many-valued sets".[24] Another treatise was published in 1963 by Aleksandr A. Zinov'ev and others In 1964, the American philosopher William Alston introduced the term "degree vagueness" to describe vagueness in an idea that results from the absence of a definite cut-off point along an implied scale (in contrast to "combinatory vagueness" caused by a term that has a number of logically independent conditions of application). The German mathematician Dieter Klaua [de] published a German-language paper on fuzzy sets in 1965, but he used a different terminology (he referred to "many-valued sets", not "fuzzy sets"). Two popular introductions to many-valued logic in the late 1960s were by Robert J. Ackermann and Nicholas Rescher respectively.] Rescher's book includes a bibliography on fuzzy theory up to 1965, which was extended by Robert Wolf for 1966–1974.[30] Haack provides references to significant works after 1974.[31] Bergmann provides a more recent (2008) introduction to fuzzy reasoning.
According to the modern idea of the continuum fallacy, the fact that a statement is to an extent vague, does not automatically mean that it is invalid. The problem then becomes one of how we could ascertain the kind of validity that the statement does have.Nondualism is a fuzzy concept, for which many definitions can be found. According to David Loy, since there are similar ideas and terms in a wide variety of spiritualities and religions, ancient and modern, no single definition for the English word "nonduality" can suffice, and perhaps it is best to speak of various "nondualities" or theories of nonduality.[10] Loy sees non-dualism as a common thread in Taoism, Mahayana Buddhism, and Advaita Vedanta,distinguishes "Five Flavors Of Nonduality":
Advaita, nondual awareness, the nondifference of subject and object, or nonduality between subject and object. According to Loy, in the Upanishads " It is most often expressed as the identity between Atman (the self) and Brahman.". Monism, the nonplurality of the world. Although the phenomenal world appears as a plurality of "things", in reality they are "of a single cloth". Brahmanical and non-Brahmanical ascetic traditions of the first millennium BCE developed in close interaction, utilizing proto-Samkhya enumerations (lists) analyzing experience in the context of meditative practices providing liberating insight into the nature of experience. The first millennium CE saw a movement towards postulating an underlying "basis of unity," both in the Buddhist Madhyamaka and Yogacara schools, and in Advaita Vedanta, collapsing phenomenal reality into a "single substrate or underlying principle." From Dualism to Oneness in Psychoanalysis: A Zen Perspective on the Mind-Body Question focuses on the shift in psychoanalytic thought, from a view of mind-body dualism to a contemporary non-dualistic perspective. The Perennial philosophy has its roots in the Renaissance interest in neo-Platonism and its idea of The One, from which all existence emanates. Marsilio Ficino (1433–1499) sought to integrate Hermeticism with Greek and Jewish-Christian thought, discerning a Prisca theologia which could be found in all age Giovanni Pico della Mirandola (1463–94) suggested that truth could be found in many, rather than just two, traditions. He proposed a harmony between the thought of Plato and Aristotle, and saw aspects of the Prisca theologia in Averroes, the Koran, the Cabala and other sources. Agostino Steuco (1497–1548) coined the term philosophia perennis."Dual" comes from Latin "duo," two, prefixed with "non-" meaning "not"; "non-dual" means "not-two." When referring to nondualism, Hinduism generally uses the Sanskrit term Advaita, while Buddhism uses Advaya (Tibetan: gNis-med, Chinese: pu-erh, Japanese: fu-ni). "Advaita" (अद्वैत) is from Sanskrit roots a, not; dvaita, dual. As Advaita, it means "not-two." or "one without a second," and is usually translated as "nondualism", "nonduality" and "nondual". The term "nondualism" and the term "advaita" from which it originates are polyvalent terms. "Advaya" (अद्वय) is also a Sanskrit word that means "identity, unique, not two, without a second," and typically refers to the two truths doctrine of Mahayana Buddhism, especially Madhyamaka.
The English term "nondual" was informed by early translations of the Upanishads in Western languages other than English from 1775. These terms have entered the English language from literal English renderings of "advaita" subsequent to the first wave of English translations of the Upanishads. These translations commenced with the work of Müller (1823–1900), in the monumental Sacred Books of the East (1879). Max Müller rendered "advaita" as "Monism", as have many recent scholars. However, some scholars state that "advaita" is not really monism. Nondual awareness, also called pure consciousness or awareness, contentless consciousness, consciousness-as-such, and Minimal Phenomenal Experience, is a topic of phenomenological research. As described in Samkhya-Yoga and other systems of meditation, and referred to as, for example, Turya and Atman, pure awareness manifests in advanced states of meditation. Unitarian Universalism had a strong impact on Ram Mohan Roy and the Brahmo Samaj, and subsequently on Swami Vivekananda. Vivekananda was one of the main representatives of Neo-Vedanta, a modern interpretation of Hinduism in line with western esoteric traditions, especially Transcendentalism, New Thought and Theosophy. His reinterpretation was, and is, very successful, creating a new understanding and appreciation of Hinduism within and outside India, and was the principal reason for the enthusiastic reception of yoga, transcendental meditation and other forms of Indian spiritual self-improvement in the West. Narendranath Datta (Swami Vivekananda) became a member of a Freemasonry lodge "at some point before 1884" and of the Sadharan Brahmo Samaj in his twenties, a breakaway faction of the Brahmo Samaj led by Keshab Chandra Sen and Debendranath Tagore.Ram Mohan Roy (1772-1833), the founder of the Brahmo Samaj, had a strong sympathy for the Unitarians, who were closely connected to the Transcendentalists, who in turn were interested in and influenced by Indian religions early on. It was in this cultic milieu that Narendra became acquainted with Western esotericism. Debendranath Tagore brought this "neo-Hinduism" closer in line with western esotericism, a development which was furthered by Keshubchandra Sen, who was also influenced by transcendentalism, which emphasised personal religious experience over mere reasoning and theology. Sen's influence brought Vivekananda fully into contact with western esotericism, and it was also via Sen that he met Ramakrishna. Vivekananda's acquaintance with western esotericism made him very successful in western esoteric circles, beginning with his speech in 1893 at the Parliament of Religions. Vivekananda adapted traditional Hindu ideas and religiosity to suit the needs and understandings of his western audiences, who were especially attracted by and familiar with western esoteric traditions and movements like Transcendentalism and New thought. In 1897 he founded the Ramakrishna Mission, which was instrumental in the spread of Neo-Vedanta in the west, and attracted people like Alan Watts. Aldous Huxley, author of The Perennial Philosophy, was associated with another neo-Vedanta organisation, the Vedanta Society of Southern California, founded and headed by Swami Prabhavananda. Together with Gerald Heard, Christopher Isherwood, and other followers he was initiated by the Swami and was taught meditation and spiritual practices. Neo-Vedanta was well-received among Theosophists, Christian Science, and the New Thought movement; Christian Science in turn influenced the self-study teaching A Course in Miracles.Pure consciousness is distinguished from the workings of the mind, and "consists in nothing but the being seen of what is seen." Gamma & Metzinger (2021) present twelve factors in their phenomenological analysis of pure awareness experienced by meditators, including luminosity; emptiness and non-egoic self-awareness; and witness-consciousness.A main modern proponent of perennialism was Aldous Huxley, who was influenced by Vivekananda's Neo-Vedanta and Universalism. This popular approach finds supports in the "common-core thesis". According to the "common-core thesis", different descriptions can mask quite similar if not identical experiences:
According to Elias Amidon there is an "indescribable, but definitely recognizable, reality that is the ground of all being." According to Renard, these are based on an experience or intuition of "the Real". According to Amidon, this reality is signified by "many names" from "spiritual traditions throughout the world": [N]ondual awareness, pure awareness, open awareness, presence-awareness, unconditioned mind, rigpa, primordial experience, This, the basic state, the sublime, buddhanature, original nature, spontaneous presence, the oneness of being, the ground of being, the Real, clarity, God-consciousness, divine light, the clear light, illumination, realization and enlightenment. According to Renard, nondualism as common essence prefers the term "nondualism", instead of monism, because this understanding is "nonconceptual", "not graspapable in an idea" Even to call this "ground of reality", "One", or "Oneness" is attributing a characteristic to that ground of reality. The only thing that can be said is that it is "not two" or "non-dual": [N]o unmediated experience is possible, and that in the extreme, language is not simply used to interpret experience but in fact constitutes experience. The idea of a common essence has been questioned by Yandell, who discerns various "religious experiences" and their corresponding doctrinal settings, which differ in structure and phenomenological content, and in the "evidential value" they present. The specific teachings and practices of a specific tradition may determine what "experience" someone has, which means that this "experience" is not the proof of the teaching, but a result of the teaching. The notion of what exactly constitutes "liberating insight" varies between the various traditions, and even within the traditions. Bronkhorst for example notices that the conception of what exactly "liberating insight" is in Buddhism was developed over time. Whereas originally it may not have been specified, later on the Four Truths served as such, to be superseded by pratityasamutpada, and still later, in the Hinayana schools, by the doctrine of the non-existence of a substantial self or person. And Schmithausen notices that still other descriptions of this "liberating insight" exist in the Buddhist canon.nsight (prajna, kensho, satori, gnosis, theoria, illumination), especially enlightenment or the realization of the illusory nature of the autonomous "I" or self, is a key element in modern western nondual thought. It is the personal realization that ultimate reality is nondual, and is thought to be a validating means of knowledge of this nondual reality. This insight is interpreted as a psychological state, and labeled as religious or mystical experience. According to Hori, the notion of "religious experience" can be traced back to William James, who used the term "religious experience" in his book, The Varieties of Religious Experience. The origins of the use of this term can be dated further back. In the 18th, 19th, and 20th centuries, several historical figures put forth very influential views that religion and its beliefs can be grounded in experience itself. While Kant held that moral experience justified religious beliefs, John Wesley in addition to stressing individual moral exertion thought that the religious experiences in the Methodist movement (paralleling the Romantic Movement) were foundational to religious commitment as a way of life. Wayne Proudfoot traces the roots of the notion of "religious experience" to the German theologian Friedrich Schleiermacher (1768–1834), who argued that religion is based on a feeling of the infinite. The notion of "religious experience" was used by Schleiermacher and Albert Ritschl to defend religion against the growing scientific and secular critique, and defend the view that human (moral and religious) experience justifies religious beliefs. Such religious empiricism would be later seen as highly problematic and was – during the period in-between world wars – famously rejected by Karl Barth. In the 20th century, religious as well as moral experience as justification for religious beliefs still holds sway. Some influential modern scholars holding this liberal theological view are Charles Raven and the Oxford physicist/theologian Charles Coulson. The notion of "religious experience" was adopted by many scholars of religion, of which William James was the most influential. The notion of "experience" has been criticised. Robert Sharf points out that "experience" is a typical Western term, which has found its way into Asian religiosity via western influences.Insight is not the "experience" of some transcendental reality, but is a cognitive event, the (intuitive) understanding or "grasping" of some specific understanding of reality, as in kensho,or anubhava. "Pure experience" does not exist; all experience is mediated by intellectual and cognitive activity A pure consciousness without concepts, reached by "cleaning the doors of perception", would be an overwhelming chaos of sensory input without coherence.A major force in the mutual influence of eastern and western ideas and religiosity was the Theosophical Society.It searched for ancient wisdom in the east, spreading eastern religious ideas in the west One of its salient features was the belief in "Masters of Wisdom", "beings, human or once human, who have transcended the normal frontiers of knowledge, and who make their wisdom available to others". The Theosophical Society also spread western ideas in the east, aiding a modernisation of eastern traditions, and contributing to a growing nationalism in the Asian colonies.Transcendentalism was an early 19th-century liberal Protestant movement that developed in the 1830s and 1840s in the Eastern region of the United States. It was rooted in English and German Romanticism, the Biblical criticism of Herder and Schleiermacher, and the skepticism of Hume. The Transcendentalists emphasised an intuitive, experiential approach of religion. Following Schleiermacher, an individual's intuition of truth was taken as the criterion for truth. In the late 18th and early 19th century, the first translations of Hindu texts appeared, which were read by the Transcendentalists and influenced their thinking. The Transcendentalists also endorsed universalist and Unitarianist ideas, leading to Unitarian Universalism, the idea that there must be truth in other religions as well, since a loving God would redeem all living beings, not just Christians.Western esotericism (also called esotericism and esoterism) is a scholarly term for a wide range of loosely related ideas and movements which have developed within Western society. They are largely distinct both from orthodox Judeo-Christian religion and from Enlightenment rationalism. The earliest traditions which later analysis would label as forms of Western esotericism emerged in the Eastern Mediterranean during Late Antiquity, where Hermetism, Gnosticism, and Neoplatonism developed as schools of thought distinct from what became mainstream Christianity. In Renaissance Europe, interest in many of these older ideas increased, with various intellectuals seeking to combine "pagan" philosophies with the Kabbalah and with Christian philosophy, resulting in the emergence of esoteric movements like Christian theosophy."Dual" comes from Latin "duo," two, prefixed with "non-" meaning "not"; "non-dual" means "not-two." When referring to nondualism, Hinduism generally uses the Sanskrit term Advaita, while Buddhism uses Advaya (Tibetan: gNis-med, Chinese: pu-erh, Japanese: fu-ni). "Advaita" (अद्वैत) is from Sanskrit roots a, not; dvaita, dual. As Advaita, it means "not-two."[1][8] or "one without a second,"[8] and is usually translated as "nondualism", "nonduality" and "nondual". The term "nondualism" and the term "advaita" from which it originates are polyvalent terms. "Advaya" (अद्वय) is also a Sanskrit word that means "identity, unique, not two, without a second," and typically refers to the two truths doctrine of Mahayana Buddhism, especially Madhyamaka. The English term "nondual" was informed by early translations of the Upanishads in Western languages other than English from 1775. These terms have entered the English language from literal English renderings of "advaita" subsequent to the first wave of English translations of the Upanishads. These translations commenced with the work of Müller (1823–1900), in the monumental Sacred Books of the East (1879). Max Müller rendered "advaita" as "Monism", as have many recent scholars. However, some scholars state that "advaita" is not really monism
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nondualism
A fuzzy concept is a kind of concept of which the boundaries of application can vary considerably according to context or conditions, instead of being fixed once and for all. This means the concept is vague in some way, lacking a fixed, precise meaning, without however being unclear or meaningless altogether.It has a definite meaning, which can be made more precise only through further elaboration and specification - including a closer definition of the context in which the concept is used. The study of the characteristics of fuzzy concepts and fuzzy language is called fuzzy semantics. The inverse of a "fuzzy concept" is a "crisp concept" (i.e. a precise concept).
A fuzzy concept is understood by scientists as a concept which is "to an extent applicable" in a situation. That means the concept has gradations of significance or unsharp (variable) boundaries of application. A fuzzy statement is a statement which is true "to some extent", and that extent can often be represented by a scaled value. The term is also used these days in a more general, popular sense – in contrast to its technical meaning – to refer to a concept which is "rather vague" for any kind of reason. In the past, the very idea of reasoning with fuzzy concepts faced considerable resistance from academic elites. They did not want to endorse the use of imprecise concepts in research or argumentation. Yet although people might not be aware of it, the use of fuzzy concepts has risen gigantically in all walks of life from the 1970s onward. That is mainly due to advances in electronic engineering, fuzzy mathematics and digital computer programming. The new technology allows very complex inferences about "variations on a theme" to be anticipated and fixed in a program. New neuro-fuzzy computational methods make it possible to identify, measure and respond to fine gradations of significance with great precision. It means that practically useful concepts can be coded and applied to all kinds of tasks, even if ordinarily these concepts are never precisely defined. Nowadays engineers, statisticians and programmers often represent fuzzy concepts mathematically, using fuzzy logic, fuzzy values, fuzzy variables and fuzzy sets."There exists strong evidence, established in the 1970s in the psychology of concepts... that human concepts have a graded structure in that whether or not a concept applies to a given object is a matter of degree, rather than a yes-or-no question, and that people are capable of working with the degrees in a consistent way. This finding is intuitively quite appealing, because people say "this product is more or less good" or "to a certain degree, he is a good athlete", implying the graded structure of concepts. In his classic paper, Zadeh called the concepts with a graded structure fuzzy concepts and argued that these concepts are a rule rather than an exception when it comes to how people communicate knowledge. Moreover, he argued that to model such concepts mathematically is important for the tasks of control, decision making, pattern recognition, and the like. Zadeh proposed the notion of a fuzzy set that gave birth to the field of fuzzy logic..."Hence, a concept is generally regarded as "fuzzy" in a logical sense if:defining characteristics of the concept apply to it "to a certain degree or extent" (or, more unusually, "with a certain magnitude of likelihood").
or, the boundaries of applicability (the truth-value) of a concept can vary in degrees, according to different conditions.
or, the fuzzy concept itself straightforwardly consists of a fuzzy set, or a combination of such sets.
The fact that a concept is fuzzy does not prevent its use in logical reasoning; it merely affects the type of reasoning which can be applied (see fuzzy logic). If the concept has gradations of meaningful significance, it is necessary to specify and formalize what those gradations are, if they can make an important difference. Not all fuzzy concepts have the same logical structure, but they can often be formally described or reconstructed using fuzzy logic or other substructural logics.The advantage of this approach is, that numerical notation enables a potentially infinite number of truth-values between complete truth and complete falsehood, and thus it enables - in theory, at least - the greatest precision in stating the degree of applicability of a logical rule..In philosophical logic and linguistics, fuzzy concepts are often regarded as vague concepts which in their application, or formally speaking, are neither completely true nor completely false, or which are partly true and partly false; they are ideas which require further elaboration, specification or qualification to understand their applicability (the conditions under which they truly make sense). The "fuzzy area" can also refer simply to a residual number of cases which cannot be allocated to a known and identifiable group, class or set if strict criteria are used. The collaborative written works of French philosopher Gilles Deleuze and French psychoanalyst Félix Guattari refer occasionally to fuzzy sets in conjunction with their idea of multiplicities. In A Thousand Plateaus, they note that "a set is fuzzy if its elements belong to it only by virtue of specific operations of consistency and consolidation, which themselves follow a special logic", and in What Is Philosophy?, a work dealing with the functions of concepts, they write that concepts as a whole are "vague or fuzzy sets, simple aggregates of perceptions and affections, which form within the lived as immanent to a subject" In mathematics and statistics, a fuzzy variable (such as "the temperature", "hot" or "cold") is a value which could lie in a probable range defined by some quantitative limits or parameters, and which can be usefully described with imprecise categories (such as "high", "medium" or "low") using some kind of scale or conceptual hierarchy.n mathematics and computer science, the gradations of applicable meaning of a fuzzy concept are described in terms of quantitative relationships defined by logical operators. Such an approach is sometimes called "degree-theoretic semantics" by logicians and philosophers, but the more usual term is fuzzy logic or many-valued logic. The novelty of fuzzy logic is, that it "breaks with the traditional principle that formalisation should correct and avoid, but not compromise with, vagueness". The basic idea of fuzzy logic is that a real number is assigned to each statement written in a language, within a range from 0 to 1, where 1 means that the statement is completely true, and 0 means that the statement is completely false, while values less than 1 but greater than 0 represent that the statements are "partly true", to a given, quantifiable extent. Susan Haack comments: "Whereas in classical set theory an object either is or is not a member of a given set, in fuzzy set theory membership is a matter of degree; the degree of membership of an object in a fuzzy set is represented by some real number between 0 and 1, with 0 denoting no membership and full membership." ..."Truth" in this mathematical context usually means simply that "something is the case", or that "something is applicable". This makes it possible to analyze a distribution of statements for their truth-content, identify data patterns, make inferences and predictions, and model how processes operate. Petr Hájek claimed that "fuzzy logic is not just some "applied logic", but may bring "new light to classical logical problems", and therefore might be well classified as a distinct branch of "philosophical logic" similar to e.g. modal logics.Fuzzy logic offers computationally-oriented systems of concepts and methods, to formalize types of reasoning which are ordinarily approximate only, and not exact. In principle, this allows us to give a definite, precise answer to the question, "To what extent is something the case?", or, "To what extent is something applicable?". Via a series of switches, this kind of reasoning can be built into electronic devices. That was already happening before fuzzy logic was invented, but using fuzzy logic in modelling has become an important aid in design, which creates many new technical possibilities. Fuzzy reasoning (i.e., reasoning with graded concepts) turns out to have many practical uses. It is nowadays widely used in:
The programming of vehicle and transport electronics, household appliances, video games, language filters, robotics, and driverless vehicles. Fuzzy logic washing machines are gaining popularity. All kinds of control systems that regulate access, traffic, movement, balance, conditions, temperature, pressure, routers etc. Electronic equipment used for pattern recognition, surveying and monitoring (including radars, satellites, alarm systems and surveillance systems).
Cybernetics research, artificial intelligence,[54] virtual intelligence, machine learning, database design and soft computing research. "Fuzzy risk scores" are used by project managers and portfolio managers to express financial risk assessments. It looks like fuzzy logic will eventually be applied in almost every aspect of life, even if people are not aware of it, and in that sense fuzzy logic is an astonishingly successful invention.[58] The scientific and engineering literature on the subject is constantly increasing.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fuzzy_concept
Advaita Vedanta (/ʌdˈvaɪtə vɛˈdɑːntə/; Sanskrit: अद्वैत वेदान्त, IAST: Advaita Vedānta) is a Hindu sādhanā, a path of spiritual discipline and experience, and the oldest extant tradition of the orthodox Hindu school Vedānta. The term Advaita (literally "non-secondness", but usually rendered as "nondualism",and often equated with monism[note 3]) refers to the idea that Brahman alone is ultimately real, while the transient phenomenal world is an illusory appearance (maya) of Brahman. In this view, jivatman, the experiencing self, is ultimately non-different ("na aparah") from Ātman-Brahman, the highest Self or Reality.The jivatman or individual self is a mere reflection or limitation of singular Ātman in a multitude of apparent individual bodies. In the Advaita tradition, moksha (liberation from suffering and rebirth),is attained through recognizing this illusoriness of the phenomenal world and disidentification from the body-mind complex and the notion of 'doership',[note 5] and acquiring vidyā (knowledge) of one's true identity as Atman-Brahman, self-luminous (svayam prakāśa)[note 6] awareness or Witness-consciousness. Upanishadic statements such as tat tvam asi, "that['s how] you are," destroy the ignorance (avidyā) regarding one's true identity by revealing that (jiv)Ātman is non-different from immortal[note 8] Brahman. While the prominent 8th century Vedic scholar and teacher (acharya) Adi Shankara emphasized that, since Brahman is ever-present, Brahman-knowledge is immediate and requires no 'action', that is, striving and effort,[15][16][17] the Advaita tradition also prescribes elaborate preparatory practice, including contemplation of the mahavakyas and accepting yogic samadhi as a means to knowledge, posing a paradox which is also recognized in other spiritual disciplines and traditions. Advaita Vedānta adapted philosophical concepts from Buddhism, giving them a Vedantic basis and interpretation,and was influenced by, and influenced, various traditions and texts of Indian philosophy, While Adi Shankara is generally regarded as the most prominent exponent of the Advaita Vedānta tradition,[26] his early influence has been questioned, as his prominence started to take shape only centuries later in the 14th century, with the ascent of Sringeri matha and its jagadguru Vidyaranya (Madhava, 14th cent.) in the Vijayanagara Empire.[note 11] While Shankara did not embrace Yoga,[37] the Advaita Vedānta tradition in medieval times explicitly incorporated elements from the yogic tradition and texts like the Yoga Vasistha and the Bhagavata Purana, culminating in Swami Vivekananda's full embrace and propagation of Yogic samadhi as an Advaita means of knowledge and liberation. In the 19th century, due to the influence of Vidyaranya's Sarvadarśanasaṅgraha, the importance of Advaita Vedānta was overemphasized by Western scholarship,[42] and Advaita Vedānta came to be regarded as the paradigmatic example of Hindu spirituality, despite the numerical dominance of theistic Bhakti-oriented religiosity. In modern times, Advaita views appear in various Neo-Vedānta movements. While "a preferred terminology" for Upanisadic philosophy "in the early periods, before the time of Shankara" was Puruṣavāda,[50][note 13] the Advaita Vedānta school has historically been referred to by various names, such as Advaita-vada (speaker of Advaita), Abheda-darshana (view of non-difference), Dvaita-vada-pratisedha (denial of dual distinctions), and Kevala-dvaita (non-dualism of the isolated). It is also called māyāvāda by Vaishnava opponents, akin to Madhyamaka Buddhism, due to their insistence that phenomena ultimately lack an inherent essence or reality,[ According to Richard King, a professor of Buddhist and Asian studies, the term Advaita first occurs in a recognizably Vedantic context in the prose of Mandukya Upanishad.[51] In contrast, according to Frits Staal, a professor of philosophy specializing in Sanskrit and Vedic studies, the word Advaita is from the Vedic era, and the Vedic sage Yajnavalkya (8th or 7th-century BCE is credited to be the one who coined it] Stephen Phillips, a professor of philosophy and Asian studies, translates the Advaita containing verse excerpt in Brihadaranyaka Upanishad, as "An ocean, a single seer without duality becomes he whose world is Brahman.While the term "Advaita Vedanta" in a strict sense may refer to the scholastic tradition of textual exegesis established by Shankara, "advaita" in a broader sense may refer to a broad current of advaitic thought, which incorporates advaitic elements with yogic thought and practice and other strands of Indian religiosity, such as Kashmir Shaivism and the Nath tradition. The first connotation has also been called "Classical Advaita" and "doctrinal Advaita," and its presentation as such is due to mediaeval doxographies,the influence of Orientalist Indologists like Paul Deussen, and the Indian response to colonial influences, dubbed neo-Vedanta by Paul Hacker, who regarded it as a deviation from "traditional" Advaita Vedanta.Yet, post-Shankara Advaita Vedanta incorporated yogic elements, such as the Yoga Vasistha, and influenced other Indian traditions, and neo-Vedanta is based on this broader strand of Indian thought. This broader current of thought and practice has also been called "greater Advaita Vedanta," "vernacular advaita,"and "experiential Advaita." It is this broader advaitic tradition which is commonly presented as "Advaita Vedanta," though the term "advaitic" may be more apt.The nondualism of Advaita Vedānta is often regarded as an idealist monism. According to King, Advaita Vedānta developed "to its ultimate extreme" the monistic ideas already present in the Upanishads. In contrast, states Milne, it is misleading to call Advaita Vedānta "monistic," since this confuses the "negation of difference" with "conflation into one."Advaita is a negative term (a-dvaita), states Milne, which denotes the "negation of a difference," between subject and object, or between perceiver and perceived. According to Deutsch, Advaita Vedānta teaches monistic oneness, however without the multiplicity premise of alternate monism theories.According to Jacqueline Suthren Hirst, Adi Shankara positively emphasizes "oneness" premise in his Brahma-sutra Bhasya 2.1.20, attributing it to all the Upanishads. Nicholson states Advaita Vedānta contains realistic strands of thought, both in its oldest origins and in Shankara's writings.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Advaita_Vedanta#Svayam_prakāśa_(self-luminosity)