View allAll Photos Tagged Existence
XM655 is an Avro Vulcan B Mk2, and the youngest Vulcan in existence (the third to last produced; XM656 and XM657 have both been scrapped). Delivered to 9 squadron at RAF Cottesmore in November 1964, she tranferred to the Waddington Wing in January 1968. She then served with 101 and 44 squadrons, and was with 50 squadron when she was put up for disposal in late 1983. She was bought by businessman Roy Jacobsen who had hopes to fly her on the airshow circuit.
She was the first Vulcan “civilianised” and was flown in to Wellesbourne Mountford about a week after a Cat 3 Check, on the 11th of February 1984. Hundreds of people were there to watch her arrive. She had flown only 5,744 hours, making her a very viable proposition for taking to the air once more. However, the Civil Aviation Authority made it clear that the aircraft would not be flying again without stringent conditions being satisfied. While efforts at funding the work necessary were begun and the aircraft was put on the civil register as G-VULC, little real progress was made. A plan to fly the aircraft in America got as far as registering the aircraft on the American civil register as N655AV but no further. After two years Roy Jacobsen lost interest in XM655 and bought another Vulcan (XL426) which was delivered to Southend. Parking fees were mounting at Wellesbourne and after a number of years the airfield owners took Jacobsen to court to recover them. The result was that the ownership of the aircraft passed to Wellesbourne Airfield.
XM655 had stood without attention for so long that she was in quite poor condition. Ten years of neglect had finally put paid to any lingering hopes of her ever flying again. At one stage she had been broken into, the cockpit instrumentation vandalised and the co-pilot’s control column removed with a hacksaw. The wingtip panels were also damaged at some point. With the transfer of ownership however, the future began looking brighter.
The Delta Engineering Association was formed to look after XM655 and they made it clear from the outset that their intention was to get her into ground running condition only. The aircraft was gradually brought back to life – all the hydraulics were overhauled, the damage to the cockpit was repaired and a number of engine runs undertaken.
Delta moved from Wellesbourne to Kemble in March 1996, and after the brief and unhappy existence and demise of the XM655 Association, the volunteers remaining at Wellesbourne decided that the best way forward would be a properly constituted membership organisation to look after XM655. As a result the 655 Maintenance and Preservation Society (655MaPS) was formed in late 1998.
Thanks to the generosity of Wellesbourne Airfield and with funds provided by the society’s members and other donors, 655MaPS have been able to assemble an impressive collection of workshops, storage units and ground equipment to support and service XM655.
The rear spar has been inspected and found to be in excellent condition. XM655 now has fuel in her tanks at all times to keep the system and the seals ‘wet’. All the aircraft systems are powered up and exercised regularly.
The aircraft has been repainted several times to keep the inevitable corrosion of the more than 50 year old structure under control, the flying control surfaces (elevons and rudder) have been reskinned, the jet pipe end caps have been replaced and the three engines with the longest running hours have been removed, opened, inspected and re-installed.
Engine ground runs (EGRs) are carried out approximately every three months, together with slow taxi runs to ensure the steering and braking systems are functional. Once each year, usually in June, XM655 takes part in Wellesbourne Wings and Wheels, which is our major public event of the year. Reports of past events can be found on the Taxi Runs page, and details of the next event are on the Events page.
XM655 is virtually complete in terms of installed equipment, with the H2S Radar, the Terrain Following Radar (TFR) and Identification Friend or Foe (IFF) systems all still in-place, as well as the complete suite of Electronic Counter Measures (ECM) equipment. The only notable item missing when XM655 left RAF service was the in-flight refuelling probe; not surprising considering the world-wide hunt for serviceable probes which had occurred during the Falklands conflict a couple of years earlier. Eventually, a replacement probe was obtained and installed, and XM655 regained her familiar profile.
Four elements to the existence of life on our planet
The cold and wet water
The hot and dry sun
The air that surrounds us all
The earth that absorbers it all
The fifth element is the one that unbalance this equation.
The fifth element is us, the righteous humans
In the center of everything, playing god with this planet
Changing nature to fit our way of living
The sun is hotter and the water is rising
The air is polluted and the earth is dying
But we are god and we are right
We rather be blind then give up a fight
And this is why we go to wars
Coexisting seems to be the hardest thing
When we all are the most important
And everything else must change
The same way we put ourselves above others
We put ourselves above this planet, above life
The elements of life are what brought us all here
But the fifth element may take it all away. Us
Genus Schlumbergera (cactaceae)
Weihnachtskaktus
… fristet sein Dasein unauffällig auf dem Fensterbrett im Wirtschaftsraum zwischen Heizung und Waschmaschine. Hm, vielleicht zu Unrecht, oder?
Stativ, Stack aus 14 Einzelbildern
Holiday cactus
… carves out an unobtrusive existence on the window board in the utility room between heating and washing machine. Hm, perhaps wrongly, right?
tripod, stack of 14 images
This railroad has been a dream of mine to see since the first time I learned about its existence decades ago. The Chicago, South Shore and South Bend Railroad is considered the last interurban railroad in America and it's right of way clearly belies that fact despite modernization over the years.
For me the big draw has always the nearly two miles of street running through downtown Michigan City. The railroad snakes down 11th street for 1.1 miles then jogs across Amtrak's Michigan Line (ex NYC new Michigan Central) Ybefore another 0.6 miles or so of street running down 10th street before regaining a private right of way for a fast race west thru the Indiana dune country.
Like much of the midwest Michigan City has a good variety of rail action though nowhere near what it once was. In addition to the CSSB and Amtrak (which sees a tiny bit of NS action) CSXT's main to Grand Rapids (ex Pere Marquette) that also hosts a pair of Amtrak trains, cuts through the city. In days of old the Monon and Nickel Plate also came to town though the Monon is long gone and the NKP has been cut and a good portion of it is now a branch operated by the CSSB.
Anyway, a bit of history of the famed South Shore:
The South Shore began in 1901 as the Chicago and Indiana Air Line Railway, a streetcar route between East Chicago and Indiana Harbor. Reorganized as the Chicago, Lake Shore and South Bend Railway in 1904, by 1908 its route had reached South Bend, Indiana via Michigan City, Indiana. The company leased the Kensington and Eastern Railroad, an Illinois Central Railroad subsidiary, to gain access to Chicago. Passenger service between South Bend and Chicago began in 1909. The Lake Shore added freight service in 1916.
Samuel Insull, the Chicago utility magnate, acquired the bankrupt Lake Shore in 1925 and reorganized it as the Chicago South Shore and South Bend Railroad, which it remains today. The railroad experienced two more bankruptcies, in 1933 and 1938. Despite having become unprofitsble again in the post WWII period, in 1967 the Chesapeake and Ohio Railway (C&O) purchased the road to gain direct access to then new Bethlehem Steel plant at Burns Harbor (which still today as an Arcelor Mittal plant is still the CSSB's largest customer). Under C&O ownership electric freight operations ended and the famed 800s (Little Joes in Milwaukee Road parlance) were retired. In 1981 10 GP38-2s were bought new and they have been stalwarts ever since.
In 1977 the Northern Indiana Commuter Transportation District (NICTD) began subsidizing the passenger operations on the South Shore Line and in 1984 the Venango River Corporation (VRC) purchased the South Shore from the Chessie Sysem. Venango declared bankruptcy in 1989 due largely to problems with its much larger Chicago Missouri and Western property. In 1990 the Anacostia and Pacific Company stepped in and purchased the South Shore, while at the same time NICTD purchased the passenger assets. The two operations are entirely separate businesses but closely integrated, and NICTD continues to use the familiar South Shore branding for its passenger operations.
To learn more check out these great articles from TRAINS:
cs.trains.com/ctr/b/mileposts/archive/2019/01/10/putting-...
www.anacostia.com/sites/www.anacostia.com/files/assets/Tr...
But these iconic scenes aren't going to be around for long. A massive nearly half billion dollar project to double track the line all the way to Michigan City in order to shave 30 or more minutes off transit times and allow greater train frequencies is supposed to start construction soon (though the Covid-19 situation may push back the dates). This will lamentably lead to the end of street running and the removal of nearly all the homes and structures on the south side of 11 th street. To learn more check out the project web site and the detailed PPT presentation on the project: www.doubletrack-nwi.com/images/DT_PRS_DTVirtualOpenHouse_...
But change is the only constant in life, and the CSSB has been modernizing and rebuilding since the Insull era. In fact in 1956 the long section of street running in East Chicago was bypassed and in 1970 the street running into downtown South Bend was abandoned...so I suppose this is just a continuation of what has come before.
Anyway, I do think this will not be my only visit before this trackage disappears because there just isn't quite anything like it.
As for this shot, here is eastbound NICTD train 503 with a consist of Nippon-Sharyo built electric multiple unit cars. Lead #48 is a double ended car built in 1992 though the oldest of the type date from 1982 and were the cars that replaced the old Pullman and Standard Steel cars dating from the 1920s.
The train is about to stop at Michigan City 11th Street station near MP 33.9. The historic station with its ornate facade was built in 1927 and closed to passengers in 1987. It has been vacant since with trains stopping at a bus stop style shelter adjacent to it. It was sold to the city in 2007 and has an uncertain future with the coming changes.
Michigan, City Indiana
Saturday August 15, 2020
Anhalter Bahnhof – once one of the grandest train stations in Europe. A fixture in Berlin’s urban landscape akin to King’s Cross station in London, or Gare du Nord in Paris, that would serve as the arrival and departure point for international trains. Opened in 1880, by both Kaiser Wilhelm I and Chancellor Otto von Bismarck, this lavish and spacious terminus would actually cater for four different classes of ticket holders – with a separate entrance for royal and diplomatic visitors. At the peak of its use in the 1930s, trains left the six platforms at Anhalter Bahnhof every three to five minutes, carrying an average of 44,000 people daily – around 16 million a year. The darkest chapter in the station’s existence came following the Nazi takeover in 1933, when from 1941 Hitler’s regime began shipping Berlin’s Jewish citizens to their deaths from here. The Anglo-American air raids on Berlin during the Second World War devastated the Nazi capital and Anhalter Bahnhof was not spared. What remained of the station was largely demolished in 1960 – with the recognisable portico left as a solitary trace of the former station’s glory.
The Vitesse earlier on was a warm up for this...
One of the earliest 1987 213 post-facelifts left in existence - and any car spotters delight, as it's the base model (not even an 'S') and it's finished in a beautiful shade of beige...
The 1987 facelift addressed a few criticisms of the original Mk1, namely, the high boot lip and the lack of a sunroof option. Once these features were made available, the 200 actually acheived more sales than the Austin Montego, a car that was aimed at the fleet market and family car buyers - which resulted in the deletion of the Austin marque, due to the fact buyers seemed to be more keen on owning a Rover. Various other upgrades were made to the interior, such as the wood veneer trim on the doors and 'Rover 800' style chrome door handle releases and an integrated centre console. (More information can be found here in this entertaining Austin Rover dealership tutorial: www.youtube.com/watch?v=RveTj9OTApA)
Personally, I was never too keen on the pre-facelift Mk1 200, due to its rather basic appearance, and lack of the usual 'aspiring luxury' Rover features. But I do realise simplicity can give an old car more character, especially in the years when a car isn't quite accepted as a classic, which the 200, unfortunately still is.
This 213 spotted at a used car dealer wasn't actually for sale, but was there as a display item. It had done 34,000 miles and unsurprisingly, 1 lady owner from new.
Unbelievably, this isn't the only beige Mk1 200 I've spotted locally, that one I haven't been able to capture, and is always on the move. I surely can't have better luck finding more next year.
Thanks for all your views, comments and favourites this year, and hope you all have a Happy New Year!
Registration number: E928 JAC
✗ Untaxed
Tax due: 01 September 2012
✗ No MOT
Expired: 22 March 2014
Date of first registration 11 September 1987
Year of manufacture 1987
Cylinder capacity (cc) 1342cc
CO₂Emissions Not available
Fuel type PETROL
Export marker No
Vehicle status Not taxed
Vehicle colour BEIGE
Outwood Windmill was built for Thomas Budgen (1640–1716) in 1665. The original deed for its erection is still in existence. Thomas Budgen borrowed the money to finance the building of the windmill from two of his brothers-in-law. He was able to repay them within two years. The builders of the mill are traditionally said to have watched the Great Fire of London glowing in the distance, some 25 miles (40 km) away. In 1678, Thomas Budgen was convicted under the Conventicle Act as a seditious preacher, and fined £20.[3]
John Budgen took the mill on his father's death, and in 1715 was paying Quit Rent on the mill, a malthouse and a brick kiln. John Budgen died in 1765 and the rent was paid by his widow until she died in 1768, when Ezekial Budgen took the mill. Ezekial Budgen was involved in a quarrel with his brother Isaac, which led to William Budgen (Ezekial's nephew) being granted a piece of land near the mill in 1796 with liberty to erect a windmill upon it. By 1806, the mill was in the possession of John Jupp. William Jupp took the mill sometime before 1880 and ran it until he died in 1934. In 1929, the Windmill Section of the Society for the Protection of Ancient Buildings recognised the mill as "of paramount importance". A new pair of Spring sails were needed in 1931. The Society paid for Thomas Hunt, the Soham millwright to make and fit these at a cost of £80. William Jupp agreed not to sell the mill for demolition as a condition of the work being done. Publicity generated at the time led to an increase in orders at the mill. On 30 October 1931, a meeting was held to appeal for funds to replace the older pair of sails. Hilaire Belloc, who at the time owned Shipley windmill in Sussex, was the main speaker. Sir Joseph Rank was one of the subscribers. In 1933, a pair of sails was purchased secondhand[3] These had previously been on the Black Mill, Forncett End, Norfolk, which had been demolished in September 1932.[4] These replaced a pair of sails that had been on the mill for in excess of sixty years. William Jupp died in 1934.[3]
Stanley Jupp then took the mill. In the 1930s, the mill was little used, and started to deteriorate. Plans were drawn up for further restoration, but were postponed due to World War II. Milling ceased at Outwood in 1949 when the breast beam cracked and the windshaft dropped causing the sails to touch the roundhouse roof. Temporary repairs were made by millwrights E Hole & Son of Burgess Hill, followed by extensive repairs, including a new breast beam and prick post, in 1952. One of the sail stocks was found to be defective in 1955 and a new pair of spring sails was fitted. A grant of £750 from the Ministry of Works being given to enable the work to be carried out, on condition that public access would be given on appointment. The older of the two stocks broke in January 1956. E Hole & Son fitted a new stock and sail on 25 October 1958. William Jupp ran the mill until 1962. In the autumn of 1962, the mill was bought by the Thomas brothers.[3]
On 12 June 1964, the mill was caught in a severe thunderstorm. The mill was tailwinded, and only saved when the new owners turned the mill so that the wind was side on to the mill.[3] In 2003, the mill was offered for sale, with a price tag of £600,000.[5] On 5 January 2012, a sail was damaged in a gale.[6]
“Other people may be there to help us, teach us, guide us along our path, but the lesson to be learned is always ours.”
Disintegrating Planetary Existence.
La disminución de las criaturas extrínsecos convertibles verdades divinas cambiantes esencia inmutable,
approchant la compréhension des connaissances éminence pénétrante enluminures effets lointains,
confortatus est momenti materia nota immensitate species praedicta connaturalitate,
Vorfahren berühmten Jahrhunderte böswillige bitteren Herzen ständigen Kriege glühender Chancen Macht umgibt,
不公正的邪惡寬大嚴酷的教訓唆使暴徒脾氣敵人憤怒鞭笞孵化地塊,
блуждающих несбалансированным ОПЕРАЦИЙ безграничные основы против раструбили будущих неблагоприятных подарков,
تبقى المتمردين أصوات تشتبك قادة سنوات يرثى لها معايير الهمجية المشينة القوانين المعطلة داخل,
εξαφανίστηκε συμβούλια έσβησε το πρωί προσευχές έκπληκτος ευκαιρία για αναδύεται σφαίρες λήθαργο λόγους,
厳粛な基準は、ペノンが高いボディをヒービング武装法律を行進恐ろしい文字を破壊上昇します.
Steve.D.Hammond.
This railroad has been a dream of mine to see since the first time I learned about its existence decades ago. The Chicago, South Shore and South Bend Railroad is considered the last interurban railroad in America and it's right of way clearly belies that fact despite modernization over the years.
For me the big draw has always the nearly two miles of street running through downtown Michigan City. The railroad snakes down 11th street for 1.1 miles then jogs across Amtrak's Michigan Line (ex NYC new Michigan Central) before another 0.6 miles or so of street running down 10th street before regaining a private right of way for a fast race west thru the Indiana dune country.
Like much of the midwest Michigan City has a good variety of rail action though nowhere near what it once was. In addition to the CSSB and Amtrak (which sees a tiny bit of NS action) CSXT's main to Grand Rapids (ex Pere Marquette) that also hosts a pair of Amtrak trains, cuts through the city. In days of old the Monon and Nickel Plate also came to town though the Monon is long gone and the NKP has been cut and a good portion of it is now a branch operated by the CSSB.
Anyway, a bit of history of the famed South Shore:
The South Shore began in 1901 as the Chicago and Indiana Air Line Railway, a streetcar route between East Chicago and Indiana Harbor. Reorganized as the Chicago, Lake Shore and South Bend Railway in 1904, by 1908 its route had reached South Bend, Indiana via Michigan City, Indiana. The company leased the Kensington and Eastern Railroad, an Illinois Central Railroad subsidiary, to gain access to Chicago. Passenger service between South Bend and Chicago began in 1909. The Lake Shore added freight service in 1916.
Samuel Insull, the Chicago utility magnate, acquired the bankrupt Lake Shore in 1925 and reorganized it as the Chicago South Shore and South Bend Railroad, which it remains today. The railroad experienced two more bankruptcies, in 1933 and 1938. Despite having become unprofitsble again in the post WWII period, in 1967 the Chesapeake and Ohio Railway (C&O) purchased the road to gain direct access to then new Bethlehem Steel plant at Burns Harbor (which still today as an Arcelor Mittal plant is still the CSSB's largest customer). Under C&O ownership electric freight operations ended and the famed 800s (Little Joes in Milwaukee Road parlance) were retired. In 1981 10 GP38-2s were bought new and they have been stalwarts ever since.
In 1977 the Northern Indiana Commuter Transportation District (NICTD) began subsidizing the passenger operations on the South Shore Line and in 1984 the Venango River Corporation (VRC) purchased the South Shore from the Chessie Sysem. Venango declared bankruptcy in 1989 due largely to problems with its much larger Chicago Missouri and Western property. In 1990 the Anacostia and Pacific Company stepped in and purchased the South Shore, while at the same time NICTD purchased the passenger assets. The two operations are entirely separate businesses but closely integrated, and NICTD continues to use the familiar South Shore branding for its passenger operations.
To learn more check out these great articles from TRAINS:
cs.trains.com/ctr/b/mileposts/archive/2019/01/10/putting-...
www.anacostia.com/sites/www.anacostia.com/files/assets/Tr...
But these iconic scenes aren't going to be around for long. A massive nearly half billion dollar project to double track the line all the way to Michigan City in order to shave 30 or more minutes off transit times and allow greater train frequencies is supposed to start construction soon (though the Covid-19 situation may push back the dates). This will lamentably lead to the end of street running and the removal of nearly all the homes and structures on the south side of 11 th street. To learn more check out the project web site and the detailed PPT presentation on the project: www.doubletrack-nwi.com/images/DT_PRS_DTVirtualOpenHouse_...
But change is the only constant in life, and the CSSB has been modernizing and rebuilding since the Insull era. In fact in 1956 the long section of street running in East Chicago was bypassed and in 1970 the street running into downtown South Bend was abandoned...so I suppose this is just a continuation of what has come before.
Anyway, I do think this will not be my only visit before this trackage disappears because there just isn't quite anything like it.
As for this shot, here are three South Shore Freight units (GP38-2s 2005, 2007, 2008 from that 10 unit 1981 order) headed light engine back to the Caroll Ave. shops. This view looks west as they curl on to 11th Street after having crossed Amtrak at CP34.5 the 10th Street Interlocking diamond.
Michigan, City Indiana
Saturday August 15, 2020
en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Quantum_theory_of_observation/Quant...
Quantum theory of observation - Thierry Dugnolle
Quantum physics for dummies
Fundamental principles and concepts
Examples of measurements
Entanglement
General theory of measurement
The forest of destinies
The appearance of relative classical worlds in the quantum Universe
Quantum entanglement is the fundamental concept to explain the reality of observation.
---
Wave-particle duality
Is light a flow of particles or a wave phenomenon ? Light rays could be particle paths and they were regarded thus by Newton in his Optics. Light reflection in a mirror is then naturally interpreted with the hypothesis that particles of light, or photons, are like bouncing balls. Nevertheless Huygens argued that this phenomenon and others were better interpreted with the hypothesis that light rays are perpendicular lines to wave fronts.
Photography gives an evidence of the existence of particles of light, for traces left by light are always like impacts of particles.
But if light is made of particles how can we explain interference patterns such as those found by Young and Fresnel ? Interference is always interference between waves. It seems there can not be any interference with particles. An interference pattern is an experimental evidence that light is a wave phenomenon. It is confirmed by Maxwell's theory of electomagnetism, which defines light as an electromagnetic wave.
That light be made of particles is not contradicted by the existence of interference patterns. Here is what we can see if we look at how an interference pattern appears on a photographic plate (see photo - animated in original publication)
The wave phenomenon, interference, results from impacts of particles.
The superposition principle gives a very direct explanation of wave-particle duality. Any physical system is a particle or a system of particles, but these behave sometimes like waves because they can be in many places at the same time. The wave of a particle or of a system of particles determines its diffuse presence.
---
Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
seop.illc.uva.nl/entries/qt-entangle/
1. Quantum Entanglement
In 1935 and 1936, Schrödinger published a two-part article in the Proceedings of the Cambridge Philosophical Society in which he discussed and extended an argument by Einstein, Podolsky, and Rosen. The Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen (EPR) argument was, in many ways, the culmination of Einstein’s critique of the orthodox Copenhagen interpretation of quantum mechanics and was designed to show that the theory is incomplete. (See the entries on the Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen argument in quantum theory and the Copenhagen interpretation of quantum mechanics.)
In classical mechanics the state of a system is essentially a list of the system’s properties — more precisely, it is the specification of a set of parameters from which the list of properties can be reconstructed: the positions and momenta of all the particles comprising the system (or similar parameters in the case of fields).
The dynamics of the theory specifies how properties change in terms of a law of evolution for the state. In a letter to Max Born, Wolfgang Pauli characterized this mode of description of physical systems as a ‘detached observer’ idealization (see The Born-Einstein Letters, Born, 1992; p. 218).
On the Copenhagen interpretation, such a description is not possible for quantum systems. Instead, the quantum state of a system should be understood as a catalogue of what an observer has done to the system and what has been observed, and the import of the state then lies in the probabilities that can be inferred (in terms of the theory) for the outcomes of possible future observations on the system.
Einstein rejected this view and proposed a series of arguments to show that the quantum state is simply an incomplete characterization of a quantum system. The missing parameters are sometimes referred to as ‘hidden parameters’ or ‘hidden variables.’
It should not be supposed that Einstein’s notion of a complete theory included the requirement that the theory should be deterministic. Rather, he required certain conditions of separability and locality for composite systems consisting of separated component systems: each component system separately should be characterized by its own properties (its own ‘being-thus,’ as Einstein put it — ‘So-sein’ in German), and it should be impossible to alter the properties of a distant system instantaneously (or the probabilities of these properties) by acting on a local system.
In later analyses, notably in Bell’s argument for the nonlocality of quantum correlations, it became apparent that these conditions, suitably formulated as probability constraints, are equivalent to the requirement that statistical correlations between separated systems should be reducible to probability distributions over common causes (deterministic or stochastic) in the sense of Reichenbach. (See the entries on Bell’s theorem and Reichenbach’s common cause principle.)
Garden flower in my front yard with Mantis munching on another insect. The title is from a college text book. Can you guess which decade? Better yet don't think about it and I won't either!
Even if it turns into bones, it has a presence that overwhelms those who see it. Here is proof that it once reigned at the top of the food chain. At the museum in Ueno.
view light box and full screen
as a garden designer I spent time in reverie, as gardens, like everything new, have to be imagined into existence. I still sit in my garden dreaming over the borders before I make changes. It is what people who create do - when I worked with young children in a nursery school, when I was writing, when I ran workshops in a probation hostel - everything had to be dreamed into existence - even one's evening meal doesn't just appear if cooked from scratch.
This lead me to thinking about photography and why it fulfills so well my need to be creative. Taking a photograph is often a bit like looking at the stream that is never the same, the water flows on and is always different, even if it looks the same. So each time I frame with my view finder something or someone familiar (Elsie!/a reflection) there she/it is, the same but always different. And then there is what I choose to reveal or leave out. And in the photograph everything shows - any little carelessness and whether I took the photo because I loved what I was seeing, or whether it was quick snap.
Photography, I find, is the perfect device for keeping a journal, which is what my photographs are . . . when I was writing a journal there was always the tricky question - who or what is this for? and I'd become self conscious (which was madness) as it really was for me. So now I put up a photo and if you're here reading this, you've probably looked at it - you may look at it and not read this . . . no matter. My journal problem is sorted, it is for me, it is for now, and if you want to join in now and then, or each day, it is for you too. And believe me, those of you whose photostreams I visit regularly - you too are making a photo journal - what we choose to photograph gives clues to who we are and our way of being and it is my way into imagining who you are . . .
The dandelion is so under appreciated. I've walked by it so many times, not even giving it a second glance. Now, I have a new found wonder over it's tiny details.
There is no need to go out looking for physical evidence of God’s existence; we can work out that he exists just by thinking about it.
There clearly are certain claims that we can tell are false without even having to look into them to find out. The claim to have made a four-sided triangle, and the claim to be over six feet tall but less than five, for example, are both claims that are obviously false. We know that triangles have three sides. We know that being over six feet tall means being over five feet tall too. There’s no need to spend time looking for four-sided triangles or tall short people in order to know that there aren’t any.
We must therefore think of God as cannot be imagined to be better than he is, put it, God is “that than which no greater can be conceived.”
So as we all know those laws of physics that universe tends to be balanced in anyway. If we say God does exist, we actually say yes to the existence of Evil.... Whatever you may name it, Devil, Satan, etc...
There was emptiness more profound than the void between the stars, for which there was no here and there and before and after, and yet out of that void the entire plenum of existence sprang forth.
“The mystery of existence is the connection between our faults and our misfortunes”. So why we battle over a same believe cause. Fighting over the differences. Why not cherish our similarities and make each other understand about the Existence.. of peace, love and humanity.
Taken: Central Church of Abbottabad, NWFP, Pakistan.
Photo Copyright 2012, dynamo.photography.
All rights reserved, no use without license
++++ FROM WIKIPEDIA ++++
Taiwan (/ˌtaɪˈwɑːn/ (About this sound listen)), officially the Republic of China (ROC), is a state in East Asia. Its neighbors include the People's Republic of China (PRC) to the west, Japan to the northeast, and the Philippines to the south. Taiwan is the most populous state and largest economy that is not a member of the United Nations.
The island of Taiwan, formerly known as Formosa, was inhabited by aborigines before the 17th century, when Dutch and Spanish colonies opened the island to mass Han immigration. After a brief rule by the Kingdom of Tungning, the island was annexed by the Qing dynasty, the last dynasty of China. The Qing ceded Taiwan to Japan in 1895 after the Sino-Japanese War. While Taiwan was under Japanese rule, the Republic of China (ROC) was established on the mainland in 1912 after the fall of the Qing dynasty. Following the Japanese surrender to the Allies in 1945, the ROC took control of Taiwan. However, the resumption of the Chinese Civil War led to the ROC's loss of the mainland to the Communists, and the flight of the ROC government to Taiwan in 1949. Although the ROC continued to claim to be the legitimate government of China, its effective jurisdiction has, since the loss of Hainan in 1950, been limited to Taiwan and its surrounding islands, with the main island making up 99% of its de facto territory. As a founding member of the United Nations, the ROC continued to represent China at the United Nations until 1971, when the PRC assumed China's seat, causing the ROC to lose its UN membership.
In the early 1960s, Taiwan entered a period of rapid economic growth and industrialization, creating a stable industrial economy. In the 1980s and early 1990s, it changed from a one-party military dictatorship dominated by the Kuomintang to a multi-party democracy with a semi-presidential system. Taiwan is the 22nd-largest economy in the world, and its high-tech industry plays a key role in the global economy. It is ranked highly in terms of freedom of the press, healthcare,[16] public education, economic freedom, and human development.[d][14][17] The country benefits from a highly skilled workforce and is among the most highly educated countries in the world with one of the highest percentages of its citizens holding a tertiary education degree.[18][19]
The PRC has consistently claimed sovereignty over Taiwan and asserted the ROC is no longer in legitimate existence. Under its One-China Policy the PRC refuses diplomatic relations with any country that recognizes the ROC. Today, 20 countries maintain official ties with the ROC but many other states maintain unofficial ties through representative offices and institutions that function as de facto embassies and consulates. Although Taiwan is fully self-governing, most international organizations in which the PRC participates either refuse to grant membership to Taiwan or allow it to participate only as a non-state actor. Internally, the major division in politics is between the aspirations of eventual Chinese unification or Taiwanese independence, though both sides have moderated their positions to broaden their appeal. The PRC has threatened the use of military force in response to any formal declaration of independence by Taiwan or if PRC leaders decide that peaceful unification is no longer possible.[20]
Etymology
See also: Chinese Taipei, Formosa, and Names of China
Taiwan
Taiwan (Chinese characters).svg
(top) "Taiwan" in Traditional Chinese characters and Kyūjitai Japanese Kanji. (bottom) "Taiwan" in Simplified Chinese characters and Japanese Kanji.
Chinese name
Traditional Chinese 臺灣 or 台灣
Simplified Chinese 台湾
[show]Transcriptions
Japanese name
Kanji 台湾
Kana たいわん
Kyūjitai 臺灣
[show]Transcriptions
Republic of China
ROC (Chinese characters).svg
"Republic of China" in Traditional (top) and Simplified (bottom) Chinese characters
Traditional Chinese 中華民國
Simplified Chinese 中华民国
Postal Chunghwa Minkuo
[show]Transcriptions
China
Traditional Chinese 中國
Simplified Chinese 中国
Literal meaning Middle or Central State[21]
[show]Transcriptions
There are various names for the island of Taiwan in use today, derived from explorers or rulers by each particular period. The former name Formosa (福爾摩沙) dates from 1542,[verification needed] when Portuguese sailors sighted the main island of Taiwan and named it Ilha Formosa, which means "beautiful island".[22] The name "Formosa" eventually "replaced all others in European literature"[23] and was in common use in English in the early 20th century.[24]
In the early 17th century, the Dutch East India Company established a commercial post at Fort Zeelandia (modern-day Anping, Tainan) on a coastal sandbar called "Tayouan",[25] after their ethnonym for a nearby Taiwanese aboriginal tribe, written by the Dutch and Portuguese variously as Taiouwang, Tayowan, Teijoan, etc.[26] This name was also adopted into the Chinese vernacular (in particular, Hokkien, as Pe̍h-ōe-jī: Tāi-oân/Tâi-oân) as the name of the sandbar and nearby area (Tainan). The modern word "Taiwan" is derived from this usage, which is seen in various forms (大員, 大圓, 大灣, 臺員, 臺圓 and 臺窩灣) in Chinese historical records. The area of modern-day Tainan was the first permanent settlement by Western colonists and Chinese immigrants, grew to be the most important trading centre, and served as the capital of the island until 1887. Use of the current Chinese name (臺灣) was formalized as early as 1684 with the establishment of Taiwan Prefecture. Through its rapid development, the entire Formosan mainland eventually became known as "Taiwan".[27][28][29][30]
In his Daoyi Zhilüe (1349), Wang Dayuan used "Liuqiu" as a name for the island of Taiwan, or the part of it near to Penghu.[31] Elsewhere, the name was used for the Ryukyu Islands in general or Okinawa, the largest of them; indeed the name Ryūkyū is the Japanese form of Liúqiú. The name also appears in the Book of Sui (636) and other early works, but scholars cannot agree on whether these references are to the Ryukyus, Taiwan or even Luzon.[32]
The official name of the state is the "Republic of China"; it has also been known under various names throughout its existence. Shortly after the ROC's establishment in 1912, while it was still located on the Chinese mainland, the government used the short form "China" Zhōngguó (中國), to refer to itself, which derives from zhōng ("central" or "middle") and guó ("state, nation-state"), [e] A term which also developed under the Zhou Dynasty in reference to its royal demesne[f] and the name was then applied to the area around Luoyi (present-day Luoyang) during the Eastern Zhou and then to China's Central Plain before being used as an occasional synonym for the state under the Qingera .[34] During the 1950s and 1960s, after the government had fled to Taiwan due to losing the Chinese Civil War, it was commonly referred to as "Nationalist China" (or "Free China") to differentiate it from "Communist China" (or "Red China").[36] It was a member of the United Nations representing "China" until 1971, when it lost its seat to the People's Republic of China. Over subsequent decades, the Republic of China has become commonly known as "Taiwan", after the island that comprises 99% of the territory under its control. In some contexts, especially official ones from the ROC government, the name is written as "Republic of China (Taiwan)", "Republic of China/Taiwan", or sometimes "Taiwan (ROC)."[37] The Republic of China participates in most international forums and organizations under the name "Chinese Taipei" due to diplomatic pressure from the People's Republic of China. For instance, it is the name under which it has competed at the Olympic Games since 1984, and its name as an observer at the World Health Organization.[38]
History
Main articles: History of Taiwan and History of the Republic of China
See the History of China article for historical information in the Chinese Mainland before 1949.
Prehistoric Taiwan
Main article: Prehistory of Taiwan
A young Tsou man
Taiwan was joined to the mainland in the Late Pleistocene, until sea levels rose about 10,000 years ago. Fragmentary human remains dated 20,000 to 30,000 years ago have been found on the island, as well as later artefacts of a Paleolithic culture.[39][40][41]
Around 6,000 years ago, Taiwan was settled by farmers, most likely from mainland China.[42] They are believed to be the ancestors of today's Taiwanese aborigines, whose languages belong to the Austronesian language family, but show much greater diversity than the rest of the family, which spans a huge area from Maritime Southeast Asia west to Madagascar and east as far as New Zealand, Hawaii and Easter Island. This has led linguists to propose Taiwan as the urheimat of the family, from which seafaring peoples dispersed across Southeast Asia and the Pacific and Indian Oceans.[43][44]
Han Chinese fishermen began settling in the Penghu islands in the 13th century.[45] Hostile tribes, and a lack of valuable trade products, meant that few outsiders visited the main island until the 16th century.[45] By the 1700's visits to the coast by fishermen from Fujian, as well as Chinese and Japanese pirates, became more frequent.[45]
Opening in the 17th century
The Dutch East India Company attempted to establish a trading outpost on the Penghu Islands (Pescadores) in 1622, but were militarily defeated and driven off by the Ming authorities.[46]
In 1624, the company established a stronghold called Fort Zeelandia on the coastal islet of Tayouan, which is now part of the main island at Anping, Tainan.[30] David Wright, a Scottish agent of the company who lived on the island in the 1650s, described the lowland areas of the island as being divided among 11 chiefdoms ranging in size from two settlements to 72. Some of these fell under Dutch control, while others remained independent.[30][47] The Company began to import labourers from Fujian and Penghu (Pescadores), many of whom settled.[46]
In 1626, the Spanish Empire landed on and occupied northern Taiwan, at the ports of Keelung and Tamsui, as a base to extend their trading. This colonial period lasted 16 years until 1642, when the last Spanish fortress fell to Dutch forces.
Following the fall of the Ming dynasty, Koxinga (Zheng Chenggong), a self-styled Ming loyalist, arrived on the island and captured Fort Zeelandia in 1662, expelling the Dutch Empire and military from the island. Koxinga established the Kingdom of Tungning (1662–1683), with his capital at Tainan. He and his heirs, Zheng Jing, who ruled from 1662 to 1682, and Zheng Keshuang, who ruled less than a year, continued to launch raids on the southeast coast of mainland China well into the Qing dynasty era.[46]
Qing rule
In 1683, following the defeat of Koxinga's grandson by an armada led by Admiral Shi Lang of southern Fujian, the Qing dynasty formally annexed Taiwan, placing it under the jurisdiction of Fujian province. The Qing imperial government tried to reduce piracy and vagrancy in the area, issuing a series of edicts to manage immigration and respect aboriginal land rights. Immigrants mostly from southern Fujian continued to enter Taiwan. The border between taxpaying lands and "savage" lands shifted eastward, with some aborigines becoming sinicized while others retreated into the mountains. During this time, there were a number of conflicts between groups of Han Chinese from different regions of southern Fujian, particularly between those from Quanzhou and Zhangzhou, and between southern Fujian Chinese and aborigines.
Northern Taiwan and the Penghu Islands were the scene of subsidiary campaigns in the Sino-French War (August 1884 to April 1885). The French occupied Keelung on 1 October 1884, but were repulsed from Tamsui a few days later. The French won some tactical victories but were unable to exploit them, and the Keelung Campaign ended in stalemate. The Pescadores Campaign, beginning on 31 March 1885, was a French victory, but had no long-term consequences. The French evacuated both Keelung and the Penghu archipelago after the end of the war.
In 1887, the Qing upgraded the island's administration from Taiwan Prefecture of Fujian to Fujian-Taiwan-Province (福建臺灣省), the twentieth in the empire, with its capital at Taipei. This was accompanied by a modernization drive that included building China's first railroad.[48]
Japanese rule
Main articles: Taiwan under Japanese rule and Republic of Formosa
Japanese colonial soldiers march Taiwanese captured after the Tapani Incident from the Tainan jail to court, 1915.
As the Qing dynasty was defeated in the First Sino-Japanese War (1894–1895), Taiwan, along with Penghu and Liaodong Peninsula, were ceded in full sovereignty to the Empire of Japan by the Treaty of Shimonoseki. Inhabitants on Taiwan and Penghu wishing to remain Qing subjects were given a two-year grace period to sell their property and move to mainland China. Very few Taiwanese saw this as feasible.[49] On 25 May 1895, a group of pro-Qing high officials proclaimed the Republic of Formosa to resist impending Japanese rule. Japanese forces entered the capital at Tainan and quelled this resistance on 21 October 1895.[50] Guerrilla fighting continued periodically until about 1902 and ultimately took the lives of 14,000 Taiwanese, or 0.5% of the population.[51] Several subsequent rebellions against the Japanese (the Beipu uprising of 1907, the Tapani incident of 1915, and the Musha incident of 1930) were all unsuccessful but demonstrated opposition to Japanese colonial rule.
Japanese colonial rule was instrumental in the industrialization of the island, extending the railroads and other transportation networks, building an extensive sanitation system, and establishing a formal education system.[52] Japanese rule ended the practice of headhunting.[53] During this period the human and natural resources of Taiwan were used to aid the development of Japan and the production of cash crops such as rice and sugar greatly increased. By 1939, Taiwan was the seventh greatest sugar producer in the world.[54] Still, the Taiwanese and aborigines were classified as second- and third-class citizens. After suppressing Chinese guerrillas in the first decade of their rule, Japanese authorities engaged in a series of bloody campaigns against the mountain aboriginals, culminating in the Musha Incident of 1930.[55] Intellectuals and laborers who participated in left-wing movements within Taiwan were also arrested and massacred (e.g. Chiang Wei-shui (蔣渭水) and Masanosuke Watanabe (渡辺政之輔)).[56]
Around 1935, the Japanese began an island-wide assimilation project to bind the island more firmly to the Japanese Empire and people were taught to see themselves as Japanese under the Kominka Movement, during which time Taiwanese culture and religion were outlawed and the citizens were encouraged to adopt Japanese surnames.[57] The "South Strike Group" was based at the Taihoku Imperial University in Taipei. During World War II, tens of thousands of Taiwanese served in the Japanese military.[58] For example, former ROC President Lee Teng-hui's elder brother served in the Japanese navy and was killed in action in the Philippines in February 1945. The Imperial Japanese Navy operated heavily out of Taiwanese ports. In October 1944, the Formosa Air Battle was fought between American carriers and Japanese forces based in Taiwan. Important Japanese military bases and industrial centres throughout Taiwan, like Kaohsiung, were targets of heavy American bombings.[59] Also during this time, over 2,000 women were forced into sexual slavery for Imperial Japanese troops, now euphemistically called "comfort women."[60]
In 1938, there were 309,000 Japanese settlers in Taiwan.[61] After World War II, most of the Japanese were expelled and sent to Japan.[62]
Republic of China
On 25 October 1945, the US Navy ferried ROC troops to Taiwan in order to accept the formal surrender of Japanese military forces in Taipei on behalf of the Allied Powers, as part of General Order No. 1 for temporary military occupation. General Rikichi Andō, governor-general of Taiwan and commander-in-chief of all Japanese forces on the island, signed the receipt and handed it over to General Chen Yi of the ROC military to complete the official turnover. Chen Yi proclaimed that day to be "Taiwan Retrocession Day", but the Allies considered Taiwan and the Penghu Islands to be under military occupation and still under Japanese sovereignty until 1952, when the Treaty of San Francisco took effect.[63][64] Although the 1943 Cairo Declaration had envisaged returning these territories to China, in the Treaty of San Francisco and Treaty of Taipei Japan has renounced all claim to them without specifying to what country they were to be surrendered. This introduced the problem of the legal status of Taiwan.
The ROC administration of Taiwan under Chen Yi was strained by increasing tensions between Taiwanese-born people and newly arrived mainlanders, which were compounded by economic woes, such as hyperinflation. Furthermore, cultural and linguistic conflicts between the two groups quickly led to the loss of popular support for the new government, while the mass movement led by the working committee of the Communist Party also aimed to bring down the Kuomintang government.[65][66] The shooting of a civilian on 28 February 1947 triggered island-wide unrest, which was suppressed with military force in what is now called the February 28 Incident. Mainstream estimates of the number killed range from 18,000 to 30,000. Those killed were mainly members of the Taiwanese elite.[67][68]
The Nationalists' retreat to Taipei: after the Nationalists lost Nanjing (Nanking) they next moved to Guangzhou (Canton), then to Chongqing (Chungking), Chengdu (Chengtu) and Xichang (Sichang) before arriving in Taipei.
After the end of World War II, the Chinese Civil War resumed between the Chinese Nationalists (Kuomintang), led by Chiang Kai-shek, and the Communist Party of China, led by Mao Zedong. Throughout the months of 1949, a series of Chinese Communist offensives led to the capture of its capital Nanjing on 23 April and the subsequent defeat of the Nationalist army on the mainland, and the Communists founded the People's Republic of China on 1 October.[69]
On 7 December 1949, after the loss of four capitals, Chiang evacuated his Nationalist government to Taiwan and made Taipei the temporary capital of the ROC (also called the "wartime capital" by Chiang Kai-shek).[70] Some 2 million people, consisting mainly of soldiers, members of the ruling Kuomintang and intellectual and business elites, were evacuated from mainland China to Taiwan at that time, adding to the earlier population of approximately six million. In addition, the ROC government took to Taipei many national treasures and much of China's gold reserves and foreign currency reserves.[71][72][73]
After losing most of the mainland, the Kuomintang held remaining control of Tibet, the portions of Qinghai, Xinjiang, and Yunnan provinces along with the Hainan Island until 1951 before the Communists subsequently captured both territories. From this point onwards, the Kuomintang's territory was reduced to Taiwan, Penghu, the portions of the Fujian province (Kinmen and Matsu Islands), and two major islands of Dongsha Islands and Nansha Islands. The Kuomintang continued to claim sovereignty over all "China", which it defined to include mainland China, Taiwan, Outer Mongolia and other areas. On mainland China, the victorious Communists claimed they ruled the sole and only China (which they claimed included Taiwan) and that the Republic of China no longer existed.[74]
A Chinese man in military uniform, smiling and looking towards the left. He holds a sword in his left hand and has a medal in shape of a sun on his chest.
Chiang Kai-shek, leader of the Kuomintang from 1925 until his death in 1975
Chinese Nationalist one-party rule
Martial law, declared on Taiwan in May 1949,[75] continued to be in effect after the central government relocated to Taiwan. It was not repealed until 1987,[75] and was used as a way to suppress the political opposition in the intervening years.[76] During the White Terror, as the period is known, 140,000 people were imprisoned or executed for being perceived as anti-KMT or pro-Communist.[77] Many citizens were arrested, tortured, imprisoned and executed for their real or perceived link to the Communists. Since these people were mainly from the intellectual and social elite, an entire generation of political and social leaders was decimated. In 1998 law was passed to create the "Compensation Foundation for Improper Verdicts" which oversaw compensation to White Terror victims and families. President Ma Ying-jeou made an official apology in 2008, expressing hope that there will never be a tragedy similar to White Terror.[78]
Initially, the United States abandoned the KMT and expected that Taiwan would fall to the Communists. However, in 1950 the conflict between North Korea and South Korea, which had been ongoing since the Japanese withdrawal in 1945, escalated into full-blown war, and in the context of the Cold War, US President Harry S. Truman intervened again and dispatched the US Navy's 7th Fleet into the Taiwan Strait to prevent hostilities between Taiwan and mainland China.[79] In the Treaty of San Francisco and the Treaty of Taipei, which came into force respectively on 28 April 1952 and 5 August 1952, Japan formally renounced all right, claim and title to Taiwan and Penghu, and renounced all treaties signed with China before 1942. Neither treaty specified to whom sovereignty over the islands should be transferred, because the United States and the United Kingdom disagreed on whether the ROC or the PRC was the legitimate government of China.[80] Continuing conflict of the Chinese Civil War through the 1950s, and intervention by the United States notably resulted in legislation such as the Sino-American Mutual Defense Treaty and the Formosa Resolution of 1955.
With President Chiang Kai-shek, the US President Dwight D. Eisenhower waved to crowds during his visit to Taipei in June 1960.
As the Chinese Civil War continued without truce, the government built up military fortifications throughout Taiwan. Within this effort, KMT veterans built the now famous Central Cross-Island Highway through the Taroko Gorge in the 1950s. The two sides would continue to engage in sporadic military clashes with seldom publicized details well into the 1960s on the China coastal islands with an unknown number of night raids. During the Second Taiwan Strait Crisis in September 1958, Taiwan's landscape saw Nike-Hercules missile batteries added, with the formation of the 1st Missile Battalion Chinese Army that would not be deactivated until 1997. Newer generations of missile batteries have since replaced the Nike Hercules systems throughout the island.
During the 1960s and 1970s, the ROC maintained an authoritarian, single-party government while its economy became industrialized and technology oriented. This rapid economic growth, known as the Taiwan Miracle, was the result of a fiscal regime independent from mainland China and backed up, among others, by the support of US funds and demand for Taiwanese products.[81][82] In the 1970s, Taiwan was economically the second fastest growing state in Asia after Japan.[83] Taiwan, along with Hong Kong, South Korea and Singapore, became known as one of the Four Asian Tigers. Because of the Cold War, most Western nations and the United Nations regarded the ROC as the sole legitimate government of China until the 1970s. Later, especially after the termination of the Sino-American Mutual Defense Treaty, most nations switched diplomatic recognition to the PRC (see United Nations General Assembly Resolution 2758).
Up until the 1970s, the government was regarded by Western critics as undemocratic for upholding martial law, for severely repressing any political opposition and for controlling media. The KMT did not allow the creation of new parties and those that existed did not seriously compete with the KMT. Thus, competitive democratic elections did not exist.[84][85][86][87][88] From the late 1970s to the 1990s, however, Taiwan went through reforms and social changes that transformed it from an authoritarian state to a democracy. In 1979, a pro-democracy protest known as the Kaohsiung Incident took place in Kaohsiung to celebrate Human Rights Day. Although the protest was rapidly crushed by the authorities, it is today considered as the main event that united Taiwan's opposition.[89]
Democratization
Chiang Ching-kuo, Chiang Kai-shek's son and successor as the president, began to liberalize the political system in the mid-1980s. In 1984, the younger Chiang selected Lee Teng-hui, a Taiwanese-born, US-educated technocrat, to be his vice-president. In 1986, the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) was formed and inaugurated as the first opposition party in the ROC to counter the KMT. A year later, Chiang Ching-kuo lifted martial law on the main island of Taiwan (martial law was lifted on Penghu in 1979, Matsu island in 1992 and Kinmen island in 1993). With the advent of democratization, the issue of the political status of Taiwan gradually resurfaced as a controversial issue where, previously, the discussion of anything other than unification under the ROC was taboo.
After the death of Chiang Ching-kuo in January 1988, Lee Teng-hui succeeded him as president. Lee continued to democratize the government and decrease the concentration of government authority in the hands of mainland Chinese. Under Lee, Taiwan underwent a process of localization in which Taiwanese culture and history were promoted over a pan-China viewpoint in contrast to earlier KMT policies which had promoted a Chinese identity. Lee's reforms included printing banknotes from the Central Bank rather than the Provincial Bank of Taiwan, and streamlining the Taiwan Provincial Government with most of its functions transferred to the Executive Yuan. Under Lee, the original members of the Legislative Yuan and National Assembly(a former supreme legislative body defunct in 2005）,[90] elected in 1947 to represent mainland Chinese constituencies and having held the seats without re-election for more than four decades, were forced to resign in 1991. The previously nominal representation in the Legislative Yuan was brought to an end, reflecting the reality that the ROC had no jurisdiction over mainland China, and vice versa. Restrictions on the use of Taiwanese Hokkien in the broadcast media and in schools were also lifted.[citation needed]
US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Taiwan's special envoy to the APEC summit, Lien Chan, November 2011
Democratic reforms continued in the 1990s, with Lee Teng-hui re-elected in 1996, in the first direct presidential election in the history of the ROC.[91] During the later years of Lee's administration, he was involved in corruption controversies relating to government release of land and weapons purchase, although no legal proceedings commenced. In 1997,"To meet the requisites of the nation prior to national unification",[92] the Additional Articles of the Constitution of the Republic of China was passed and then the former "constitution of five powers" turns to be more tripartite. In 2000, Chen Shui-bian of the Democratic Progressive Party was elected as the first non-Kuomintang (KMT) President and was re-elected to serve his second and last term since 2004. Polarized politics has emerged in Taiwan with the formation of the Pan-Blue Coalition of parties led by the KMT, favouring eventual Chinese reunification, and the Pan-Green Coalition of parties led by the DPP, favouring an eventual and official declaration of Taiwanese independence.[93][clarification needed] In early 2006, President Chen Shui-bian remarked: “The National Unification Council will cease to function. No budget will be ear-marked for it and its personnel must return to their original posts...The National Unification Guidelines will cease to apply."[94]
The ruling DPP has traditionally leaned in favour of Taiwan independence and rejects the "One-China policy".
On 30 September 2007, the ruling DPP approved a resolution asserting a separate identity from China and called for the enactment of a new constitution for a "normal country". It also called for general use of "Taiwan" as the country's name, without abolishing its formal name, the Republic of China.[95] The Chen administration also pushed for referendums on national defence and UN entry in the 2004 and 2008 elections, which failed due to voter turnout below the required legal threshold of 50% of all registered voters.[96] The Chen administration was dogged by public concerns over reduced economic growth, legislative gridlock due to a pan-blue, opposition-controlled Legislative Yuan and corruption involving the First Family as well as government officials.[97][98]
The KMT increased its majority in the Legislative Yuan in the January 2008 legislative elections, while its nominee Ma Ying-jeou went on to win the presidency in March of the same year, campaigning on a platform of increased economic growth and better ties with the PRC under a policy of "mutual nondenial".[96] Ma took office on 20 May 2008, the same day that President Chen Shui-bian stepped down and was notified by prosecutors of possible corruption charges. Part of the rationale for campaigning for closer economic ties with the PRC stems from the strong economic growth China attained since joining the World Trade Organization. However, some analysts say that despite the election of Ma Ying-jeou, the diplomatic and military tensions with the PRC have not been reduced.[99]
On 24 May 2017, the Constitutional Court ruled that current marriage laws have been violating the Constitution by denying Taiwanese same-sex couples the right to marry. The Court ruled that if the Legislative Yuan does not pass adequate amendments to Taiwanese marriage laws within two years, same-sex marriages will automatically become legitimate in Taiwan.[100]
Geography
Taiwan is mostly mountainous in the east, with gently sloping plains in the west. The Penghu Islands are west of the main island.
The total area of the current jurisdiction of the Republic of China is 36,193 km2 (13,974 sq mi),[9] making it the world's 137th-largest country/dependency, smaller than Switzerland and larger than Belgium.
The island of Taiwan has an area of 35,883 km2 (13,855 sq mi), and lies some 180 kilometres (110 mi) from the southeastern coast of mainland China across the Taiwan Strait.[9] The East China Sea lies to the north, the Philippine Sea to the east, the Bashi Channel of the Luzon Strait directly to the south, and the South China Sea to the southwest. Its shape is similar to a sweet potato, giving rise to the name sweet potato used by Taiwanese Hokkien speakers for people of Taiwanese descent.[101]
The island is characterized by the contrast between the eastern two-thirds, consisting mostly of rugged mountains running in five ranges from the northern to the southern tip of the island, and the flat to gently rolling Chianan Plains in the west that are also home to most of Taiwan's population. Taiwan's highest point is Yu Shan (Jade Mountain) at 3,952 metres (12,966 ft),[102] making Taiwan the world's fourth-highest island.
The Penghu Islands, 50 km (31.1 mi) west of the main island, have an area of 126.9 km2 (49.0 sq mi). More distant islands controlled by the Republic of China are the Kinmen, Wuchiu and Matsu Islands off the coast of Fujian, with a total area of 180.5 km2 (69.7 sq mi), and the Pratas Islands and Taiping Island in the South China Sea, with a total area of 2.9 km2 (1.1 sq mi) and no permanent inhabitants.[9] The ROC government also claims the Senkaku Islands to the northeast, which are controlled by Japan.
Climate
Taiwan lies on the Tropic of Cancer, and its general climate is marine tropical.[8] The northern and central regions are subtropical, whereas the south is tropical and the mountainous regions are temperate.[103] The average rainfall is 2,600 millimetres (100 inches) per year for the island proper; the rainy season is concurrent with the onset of the summer East Asian Monsoon in May and June.[104] The entire island experiences hot, humid weather from June through September. Typhoons are most common in July, August and September.[104] During the winter (November to March), the northeast experiences steady rain, while the central and southern parts of the island are mostly sunny.
Geology
Main article: Geology of Taiwan
Dabajian Mountain
The island of Taiwan lies in a complex tectonic area between the Yangtze Plate to the west and north, the Okinawa Plate on the north-east, and the Philippine Mobile Belt on the east and south. The upper part of the crust on the island is primarily made up of a series of terranes, mostly old island arcs which have been forced together by the collision of the forerunners of the Eurasian Plate and the Philippine Sea Plate. These have been further uplifted as a result of the detachment of a portion of the Eurasian Plate as it was subducted beneath remnants of the Philippine Sea Plate, a process which left the crust under Taiwan more buoyant.[105]
The east and south of Taiwan are a complex system of belts formed by, and part of the zone of, active collision between the North Luzon Trough portion of the Luzon Volcanic Arc and South China, where accreted portions of the Luzon Arc and Luzon forearc form the eastern Coastal Range and parallel inland Longitudinal Valley of Taiwan respectively.[106]
The major seismic faults in Taiwan correspond to the various suture zones between the various terranes. These have produced major quakes throughout the history of the island. On 21 September 1999, a 7.3 quake known as the "921 earthquake" killed more than 2,400 people. The seismic hazard map for Taiwan by the USGS shows 9/10 of the island as the highest rating (most hazardous).[107]
Political and legal status
Main article: Political status of Taiwan
The political and legal statuses of Taiwan are contentious issues. The People's Republic of China (PRC) claims that the Republic of China government is illegitimate, referring to it as the "Taiwan Authority" even though current ROC territories have never been controlled by the PRC.[108][109] The ROC has its own constitution, independently elected president and armed forces. It has not formally renounced its claim to the mainland, but ROC government publications have increasingly downplayed it.[110]
Internationally, there is controversy on whether the ROC still exists as a state or a defunct state per international law due to the lack of wide diplomatic recognition. In a poll of Taiwanese aged 20 and older taken by TVBS in March 2009, a majority of 64% opted for the "status quo", while 19% favoured "independence" and 5% favoured "unification".[111]
Relations with the PRC
The political environment is complicated by the potential for military conflict should Taiwan declare de jure independence; it is the official PRC policy to use force to ensure unification if peaceful unification is no longer possible, as stated in its anti-secession law, and for this reason there are substantial military installations on the Fujian coast.[112][113][114][115][116]
On 29 April 2005, Kuomintang Chairman Lien Chan travelled to Beijing and met with Communist Party of China (CPC) Secretary-General Hu Jintao,[117] the first meeting between the leaders of the two parties since the end of the Chinese Civil War in 1949. On 11 February 2014, Mainland Affairs Council Head Wang Yu-chi travelled to Nanjing and met with Taiwan Affairs Office Head Zhang Zhijun, the first meeting between high-ranking officials from either side.[118] Zhang paid a reciprocal visit to Taiwan and met Wang on 25 June 2014, making Zhang the first minister-level PRC official to ever visit Taiwan.[119] On 7 November 2015, Ma Ying-jeou (in his capacity as Leader of Taiwan) and Xi Jinping (in his capacity as Leader of Mainland China) travelled to Singapore and met up,[120] marking the highest-level exchange between the two sides since 1949.
"I think that taking life seriously means something such as this: that whatever man does on this planet has to be done in the lived truth of the terror of creation, of the grotesque, of the rumble of panic underneath everything. Otherwise it is false. Whatever is achieved must be achieved with the full exercise of passion, of vision, of pain, of fear, and of sorrow. How do we know...that our part of the meaning of the universe might not be a rhythm in sorrow?"
- Ernest Becker
[ - ]
As a way of returning the extraordinary generosity and support you
have all shown me in this great community, whenever I upload a new
pic or series of shots this year, I'll provide a link to another flickr
photog whose work, personality, or spirit I feel you should discover.
Visit and introduce yourself. Make a friend. Share the love.
Open your eyes to astazou today.
Me, my daughter (Daini)
Light
Shadow
Lens
Camera
M4-P + MS-Optical Sonnetar 50 mm F1.1 on Portra 400
F2.0 1/125 Second
Lebuh Ampang
Kuala Lumpur MY
Oktober 2010
Hasselblad 501C
Carl Zeiss 80mm f2.8 CF T*
Kodak Ektacolor Pro 160
Sekonic L308s
Epson V700