I've always wanted to take a photo of this interchange from above but I wasn't able to get on the roof of any of the surrounding buildings. Instead of wasting my time, I settled for taking a picture underneath the interchange and this is what I captured.

American Museum of Natural History. New York. Jan/2017

 

The American Museum of Natural History (abbreviated as AMNH), located on the Upper West Side of Manhattan, New York City, is one of the largest museums in the world. Located in park-like grounds across the street from Central Park, the museum complex comprises 28 interconnected buildings housing 45 permanent exhibition halls, in addition to a planetarium and a library. The museum collections contain over 33 million specimens of plants, animals, fossils, minerals, rocks, meteorites, human remains, and human cultural artifacts, of which only a small fraction can be displayed at any given time, and occupies more than 2,000,000 square feet (190,000 m2). The museum has a full-time scientific staff of 225, sponsors over 120 special field expeditions each year, and averages about five million visits annually.

The one mission statement of the American Museum of Natural History is: "To discover, interpret, and disseminate—through scientific research and education—knowledge about human cultures, the natural world, and the universe.

 

Source: Wikipedia

 

O Museu Americano de História Natural (American Museum of Natural History, em inglês) é um museu dos Estados Unidos da América, localizado em Nova Iorque e fundado em 1869. É especialmente reconhecido pela sua vasta coleção de fósseis, incluindo de espécies de Dinossauros. Uma das grandes atrações do museu é uma coleção de esqueletos de dinossauro, com mais de 30 milhões de fósseis e artefatos espalhados por 42 salas de exibição.Um T-Rex de aproximadamente 15 metros e dá as boas vindas aos visitantes na entrada.

Theodore Roosevelt está ligado à sua fundação e é lembrado no actual museu por um memorial. O primeiro edifício do museu acabou de ser construído em 1877, a partir do projecto de Calvert Vaux e Jacob Wrey Mould, a partir de uma ideia de Albert Smith Bickmore, discípulo de Louis Agassiz no Museu de Zoologia Comparativa de Harvard, em 1860. O museu serviu como cenário para o filme "Uma Noite no Museu" (2006).

Fonte: Wikipedia

This pink umbrella fungus (Marasmius haematocephalus) is dainty and beautiful, all while 'getting its hands dirty' under a carpet of leaves. The vegetative mycelia, an interconnected network of hyphae, secrete acids to break down leaf litter, thereby restoring nutrients and energy which would otherwise be trapped. See more amazing #FungiofSani.

Overview of the 'relax', 'sleep' and 'work' zones of the relaxation room; all interconnected. There is a large frosted glass partition door that can enclose the bathroom.

“We don’t understand how interconnected we are until you can’t do it anymore.”

www.nytimes.com/2010/04/19/world/europe/19ash.html?partne...

 

www.nationalpost.com/news/world/story.html?id=2917955

Volcanic plume has far reaching effects on the weather, Earth - Blocks sunlight

The explosive eruption of a volcano in Iceland has had various local and distant effects. In Iceland, volcanic ash is settling on the land, threatening the health of grazing livestock, while mud flows, known as lahars, and glacial floods, known as jokulhlaup, threaten the tourists who have converged on the area since the eruption began last month. Across Europe, thousands of flights have been cancelled, with economic losses thought to be in the billions. . . But as the volcano continues to burble, and gases that were once dissolved in magma deep within the Earth are released as vapour and carried on the wind, scientists are watching for possible changes in the weather and, more controversially, the wider climate. Reports indicate that the Iceland eruption, while relatively small, has sent its plume high enough into the atmosphere to reach the fast-moving winds that can spread it around the globe.

 

www.csmonitor.com/USA/2010/0416/Researchers-puzzle-over-h...

As travelers contend with global airline cancellations and delays triggered by clouds of ash from an erupting volcano in Iceland, researchers are trying to judge just how long the mountain's explosive eruptions might last.While airlines have coped with eruptions along the Pacific Rim's Ring of Fire, this marks the first time modern Europe – with its high concentration of major airports – has had to cope with the disruptions caused by wind-steered clouds of volcanic ash, researchers say. On Friday, airlines canceled some 16,000 flights, twice the number of cancellations Thursday. Typically, air traffic hovers around 28,000 flights a day.

 

Iceland's Eyjafjallajokull volcano, the culprit behind the flight cancellations, has erupted only twice before over the past 1,100 years. The volcano's last active period lasted from 1821 to 1823.

 

www.npr.org/blogs/thetwo-way/2010/04/iceland_volcano_eyja...

Can You Say 'Eyjafjallajokull'?

One thing you won't hear too often, at least on U.S. broadcast outlets, is an attempt to pronounce the name of the glacier -- Eyjafjallajokull -- under which the volcano lies and from which it gets its name.

 

NPR librarian Kee Malesky checked with Iceland's embassy in Washington and came away with this: "AY-yah-fyah-lah-YOH-kuul."

 

#108 in a series for one photo a day for a year

The picture depicts the new Philadelphia Police headquarters building, it is two round buildings interconnected, for obvious reasons it has been nicknamed "The handcuff building". The building is bordered by North 8th Street, North 7th Street and Race Street. This was taken in North 7th Street.

In the foreground are a fine selection of period cars, in the centre is a fabulous Chevrolet Impala 2 door Sports Coupe

There is much to see of everyday life in 1960's America, to the left are some small industrial buildings. Traffic is light and pedestrians seem to be jay-walking. The older buildings have roof mounted water towers.

The image is one from a set of pictures taken by my friend Roy Stove, he spent time in the states whilst studying architecture. He recently rediscovered his negatives and we are scanning them, all the negatives are 6x6cm format and taken on a brand new Yashica-mat twin lens reflex.

Photography by Roy Stove 13/10/1962. Copyright: All rights reserved

Here's a fence by the Willamette River, in late afternoon light, along the Ruth Bascom Riverbank Trail System (a collection of interconnected trails lining the Willamette River in Eugene, OR).

 

Additional info: www.traillink.com/trail/ruth-bascom-riverbank-trail-syste...

 

[For more photos from Eugene, go to my Eugene gallery at JimArnoldPhotography.com.]

The Renaissance Center (also known as the GM Renaissance Center and nicknamed the RenCen) is a group of seven interconnected skyscrapers in Downtown Detroit, Michigan, United States. Located on the International Riverfront, the Renaissance Center complex is owned by General Motors as its world headquarters. The central tower, the Detroit Marriott at the Renaissance Center, is the tallest all-hotel skyscraper in the Western Hemisphere, and features the largest rooftop restaurant, Coach Insignia. It has been the tallest building in Michigan since it was erected in 1977.

 

John Portman was the principal architect for the original design. The first phase constructed a five tower rosette rising from a common base. Four 39-story office towers surround the 73-story hotel rising from a square-shaped podium which includes a shopping center, restaurants, brokerage firms, banks, a four-screen movie theater and private clubs. The first phase officially opened in March 1977. Portman's design renewed attention to city architecture, constructing the world's tallest hotel at the time. Two additional 21-story office towers (known as Tower 500 and Tower 600) opened in 1981. This type of complex has been termed a city within a city.

 

In 2004, General Motors completed a US$500 million renovation of the Class-A center as its world headquarters, which it had purchased in 1996. The renovation included the addition of the five-story Wintergarden atrium, which provides access to the International Riverfront. Architects for the renovation included Skidmore, Owings & Merrill, Gensler, SmithGroup, and Ghafari Associates. Work continued in and around the complex until 2005. Renaissance Center totals 5,552,000 square feet (515,800 m2) making it one of the world's largest commercial complexes.

 

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Renaissance_Center

 

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Text_of_Creative_Commons_...

 

Wintergarden and the "Rencen' towers on either side from the International riverfront.

 

Renaissance Center (also known as the GM Renaissance Center and nicknamed the RenCen) is a group of seven interconnected skyscrapers in Downtown Detroit, Michigan, United States. Located on the Detroit International riverfront, the Renaissance Center complex is owned by General Motors as its world headquarters.

 

John Portman was the principal architect for the original design. The first phase constructed a five tower rosette rising from a common base. Four 39-story office towers surround the 73-story hotel rising from a square-shaped podium which includes a shopping center, restaurants, brokerage firms, banks, a four-screen movie theatre, private clubs. Portman's design renewed attention to city architecture, constructing the world's tallest hotel at the time.

 

In 2004, General Motors completed a US$500 million renovation of the class-A center as its world headquarters, the renovation included the addition of the five-story Wintergarden atrium, which provides access to the Detroit International riverfront. Renaissance Center totals 5,552,000 square feet (515,800 m2) making it one of the world's largest office complexes.

 

source: www.wikipedia.org

 

October 9, 2010, International river walk, Detroit, Michigan, as seen from here.

Lucky enough today to get shots of the two sets of Tames Forts, Shivering Sands Jools and I visited by boat in 2009.

 

These stand like stranded aliens in Thames Estuary.

 

-----------------------------------------

 

Maunsell also designed forts for anti-aircraft defence. These were larger installations comprising seven interconnected steel platforms. Four towers carried QF 3.75 inch guns arranged in a semicircle ahead of the control centre and accommodation, a tower to the rear of the control centre mounted Bofors 40 mm guns, while the seventh tower, set to one side of the gun towers and further out, was the searchlight tower.

 

Three forts were placed in Liverpool Bay:[11][12]

 

Queens AA Towers

Formby AA Towers

Burbo AA Towers

and three in the Thames estuary:

 

Nore (U5),

Red Sands (U6)

Shivering Sands (U7)

Each of these AA forts carried four QF 3.75 inch guns and two Bofors 40 mm guns. The Mersey forts were constructed at Bromborough Dock,[13] the Thames forts at Gravesend.[14] Proposals to construct Forts off the Humber, Portsmouth & Rosyth, Belfast & Londonderry never materialized.[7]

 

During World War II, the Thames estuary forts shot down 22 aircraft and about 30 flying bombs.

 

They were decommissioned by the Ministry of Defence in the late 1950s.

 

There are 7 forts in the Red Sands group, at the mouth of the Thames Estuary. These forts were previously connected by metal grate walk-ways. In 1959 consideration was given to re floating the Red Sands Fort and bringing the towers ashore, but the costs were prohibitive.[16] In the early 21st century there were threats that the fort could be demolished so a group called Project Redsands was formed to try and preserve the fort. It is currently the only fort that can be accessed safely from a platform in between the legs of one of the towers.

 

This group was built near the Thames estuary for anti-aircraft defence, and made-up of several towers north of Herne Bay and 9.2 miles from the nearest land. One of the 7 towers collapsed in 1963 when fog caused the ship Ribersborg to stray off course and collided with one of towers.[18] In 1964 the Port of London Authority placed wind and tide monitoring equipment on the Shivering Sands searchlight tower, which was isolated from the rest of the fort by the demolished tower. This relayed data to the mainland via a radio link. In August and September 2005, artist Stephen Turner spent six weeks living alone in the searchlight tower of the Shivering Sands Fort in what he described as "an artistic exploration of isolation, investigating how one's experience of time changes in isolation, and what creative contemplation means in a 21st-century context.

 

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maunsell_Forts

Learning I suppose is factual.

 

When we learn things we can recite them at command...

 

to ourselves or others.

 

That can come in handy.

 

Understanding though...

 

That seems entirely different from learning.

 

'Understanding' seems to be the ability to relate the things we've 'learned' to each other...

 

to the greater interconnected reality around us.

 

'Now that I know this, what will I do with it?'

 

I wonder what comes on top of understanding.

 

I'm curious.

 

We're all on the same journey.

 

The Believer

    

Interconnected

(now I´m online)

‘Amerika’ is a name for a system of long-abandoned limestone pit quarries up to 60 meters of depth, some with deep, blue lakes, others interconnected by ingenious system of galleries and tunnels. In some quarries production used to take place on five levels; the main adit is 3 km long.

 

‘Amerika’ quarries are situated next to the village Mořina in the landscape protection area Český kras (Bohemian Karst), in vicinity of the castle Karlštejn. The best known of all and the most sought-after respectively are Velká Amerika, Malá Amerika and Mexiko quarries (Grand America, Little America, and Mexico) and several other quarries of various sizes hidden in the woods.

 

Recently used names of quarries were created by campers, who had fallen in love with this rough place, sometimes nicknamed the Czech Grand Canyon. They loved especially clear water in the lagoons and the white rocks surrounding them, wandering in the adits and tunnels, and danger lurking literally at every turn.

 

Stone mining in the ‘Amerika’ locality has a long established tradition. Limestone mining in this locality began already in the beginning of 19th century. After the World War I, with construction and manufacturing industries developing, also demand for building materials increased; this necessitated faster supply of stone. That is why the mine railway was constructed.

 

The railway connected a stone crusher and a shipping room with the then bottom of the Velká Amerika, and Mxiko, Azurové jezírko (Azure Lagoon), and the Zasypaný (Filled) Quarry; at the same time adits were being driven. Stone was transported in mine wagons drawn by an electric locomotive. Assuming that one wagon could take about 1 m3 of stone, some 1 million wagons must have made their way through the main adit towards a limekiln; the last one of them is exposed in the window above the Azure Lagoon.

 

With time progression of mining increased due to mechanization; no longer there was a need for numerous small quarries. Deep mining was applied and mining works moved to Malá Amerika, Mexiko, and, namely to Velká Amerika. With development of motor transport the era of railway in the quarries Amerika was over. All mining works moved to Velká Amerika; in the east end of the quarry an entrance tunnel was built. Mining in the Amerika quarries was terminated in 1960s.

 

The locality Amerika, which is easily accessible by car as well as by bus, is know and popular for several reasons. It is an important paleontological locality; the most significant wintering grounds for bats in Central Bohemia; a place frequently chosen as the scenes for films and fairytales (e.g. The Lemonade Joe or the Horse Opera; The Little Mermaid); a locality with natural caves; area suitable for diving, and one of the first naturist places in the Czech Republic.

 

-----

 

Did enjoy a short afternoon trip to the Amerika quarries area close to Prague - quite a lovely place, especially during warn sunny summer evenings...

United Nations General Assembly Hall

  

New York City, New York

  

10:13 A.M. EDT

  

PRESIDENT OBAMA: Mr. President, Mr. Secretary General, fellow delegates, ladies and gentlemen: We come together at a crossroads between war and peace; between disorder and integration; between fear and hope.

  

Around the globe, there are signposts of progress. The shadow of World War that existed at the founding of this institution has been lifted, and the prospect of war between major powers reduced. The ranks of member states has more than tripled, and more people live under governments they elected. Hundreds of millions of human beings have been freed from the prison of poverty, with the proportion of those living in extreme poverty cut in half. And the world economy continues to strengthen after the worst financial crisis of our lives.

  

Today, whether you live in downtown Manhattan or in my grandmother’s village more than 200 miles from Nairobi, you can hold in your hand more information than the world’s greatest libraries. Together, we’ve learned how to cure disease and harness the power of the wind and the sun. The very existence of this institution is a unique achievement -- the people of the world committing to resolve their differences peacefully, and to solve their problems together. I often tell young people in the United States that despite the headlines, this is the best time in human history to be born, for you are more likely than ever before to be literate, to be healthy, to be free to pursue your dreams.

  

And yet there is a pervasive unease in our world -- a sense that the very forces that have brought us together have created new dangers and made it difficult for any single nation to insulate itself from global forces. As we gather here, an outbreak of Ebola overwhelms public health systems in West Africa and threatens to move rapidly across borders. Russian aggression in Europe recalls the days when large nations trampled small ones in pursuit of territorial ambition. The brutality of terrorists in Syria and Iraq forces us to look into the heart of darkness.

  

Each of these problems demands urgent attention. But they are also symptoms of a broader problem -- the failure of our international system to keep pace with an interconnected world. We, collectively, have not invested adequately in the public health capacity of developing countries. Too often, we have failed to enforce international norms when it’s inconvenient to do so. And we have not confronted forcefully enough the intolerance, sectarianism, and hopelessness that feeds violent extremism in too many parts of the globe.

  

Fellow delegates, we come together as united nations with a choice to make. We can renew the international system that has enabled so much progress, or we can allow ourselves to be pulled back by an undertow of instability. We can reaffirm our collective responsibility to confront global problems, or be swamped by more and more outbreaks of instability. And for America, the choice is clear: We choose hope over fear. We see the future not as something out of our control, but as something we can shape for the better through concerted and collective effort. We reject fatalism or cynicism when it comes to human affairs. We choose to work for the world as it should be, as our children deserve it to be.

  

There is much that must be done to meet the test of this moment. But today I’d like to focus on two defining questions at the root of so many of our challenges -- whether the nations here today will be able to renew the purpose of the UN’s founding; and whether we will come together to reject the cancer of violent extremism.

  

First, all of us -- big nations and small -- must meet our responsibility to observe and enforce international norms. We are here because others realized that we gain more from cooperation than conquest. One hundred years ago, a World War claimed the lives of many millions, proving that with the terrible power of modern weaponry, the cause of empire ultimately leads to the graveyard. It would take another World War to roll back the forces of fascism, the notions of racial supremacy, and form this United Nations to ensure that no nation can subjugate its neighbors and claim their territory.

  

Recently, Russia’s actions in Ukraine challenge this post-war order. Here are the facts. After the people of Ukraine mobilized popular protests and calls for reform, their corrupt president fled. Against the will of the government in Kyiv, Crimea was annexed. Russia poured arms into eastern Ukraine, fueling violent separatists and a conflict that has killed thousands. When a civilian airliner was shot down from areas that these proxies controlled, they refused to allow access to the crash for days. When Ukraine started to reassert control over its territory, Russia gave up the pretense of merely supporting the separatists, and moved troops across the border.

  

This is a vision of the world in which might makes right -- a world in which one nation’s borders can be redrawn by another, and civilized people are not allowed to recover the remains of their loved ones because of the truth that might be revealed. America stands for something different. We believe that right makes might -- that bigger nations should not be able to bully smaller ones, and that people should be able to choose their own future.

  

And these are simple truths, but they must be defended. America and our allies will support the people of Ukraine as they develop their democracy and economy. We will reinforce our NATO Allies and uphold our commitment to collective self-defense. We will impose a cost on Russia for aggression, and we will counter falsehoods with the truth. And we call upon others to join us on the right side of history -- for while small gains can be won at the barrel of a gun, they will ultimately be turned back if enough voices support the freedom of nations and peoples to make their own decisions.

  

Moreover, a different path is available -- the path of diplomacy and peace, and the ideals this institution is designed to uphold. The recent cease-fire agreement in Ukraine offers an opening to achieve those objectives. If Russia takes that path -- a path that for stretches of the post-Cold War period resulted in prosperity for the Russian people -- then we will lift our sanctions and welcome Russia’s role in addressing common challenges. After all, that’s what the United States and Russia have been able to do in past years -- from reducing our nuclear stockpiles to meeting our obligations under the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, to cooperating to remove and destroy Syria’s declared chemical weapons. And that’s the kind of cooperation we are prepared to pursue again -- if Russia changes course.

  

This speaks to a central question of our global age -- whether we will solve our problems together, in a spirit of mutual interest and mutual respect, or whether we descend into the destructive rivalries of the past. When nations find common ground, not simply based on power, but on principle, then we can make enormous progress. And I stand before you today committed to investing American strength to working with all nations to address the problems we face in the 21st century.

  

As we speak, America is deploying our doctors and scientists -- supported by our military -- to help contain the outbreak of Ebola and pursue new treatments. But we need a broader effort to stop a disease that could kill hundreds of thousands, inflict horrific suffering, destabilize economies, and move rapidly across borders. It’s easy to see this as a distant problem -- until it is not. And that is why we will continue to mobilize other countries to join us in making concrete commitments, significant commitments to fight this outbreak, and enhance our system of global health security for the long term.

  

America is pursuing a diplomatic resolution to the Iranian nuclear issue, as part of our commitment to stop the spread of nuclear weapons and pursue the peace and security of a world without them. And this can only take place if Iran seizes this historic opportunity. My message to Iran’s leaders and people has been simple and consistent: Do not let this opportunity pass. We can reach a solution that meets your energy needs while assuring the world that your program is peaceful.

  

America is and will continue to be a Pacific power, promoting peace, stability, and the free flow of commerce among nations. But we will insist that all nations abide by the rules of the road, and resolve their territorial disputes peacefully, consistent with international law. That’s how the Asia-Pacific has grown. And that’s the only way to protect this progress going forward.

  

America is committed to a development agenda that eradicates extreme poverty by 2030. We will do our part to help people feed themselves, power their economies, and care for their sick. If the world acts together, we can make sure that all of our children enjoy lives of opportunity and dignity.

  

America is pursuing ambitious reductions in our carbon emissions, and we’ve increased our investments in clean energy. We will do our part, and help developing nations do theirs. But the science tells us we can only succeed in combating climate change if we are joined in this effort by every other nation, by every major power. That’s how we can protect this planet for our children and our grandchildren.

  

In other words, on issue after issue, we cannot rely on a rule book written for a different century. If we lift our eyes beyond our borders -- if we think globally and if we act cooperatively -- we can shape the course of this century, as our predecessors shaped the post-World War II age. But as we look to the future, one issue risks a cycle of conflict that could derail so much progress, and that is the cancer of violent extremism that has ravaged so many parts of the Muslim world.

  

Of course, terrorism is not new. Speaking before this Assembly, President Kennedy put it well: “Terror is not a new weapon,” he said. “Throughout history it has been used by those who could not prevail, either by persuasion or example.” In the 20th century, terror was used by all manner of groups who failed to come to power through public support. But in this century, we have faced a more lethal and ideological brand of terrorists who have perverted one of the world’s great religions. With access to technology that allows small groups to do great harm, they have embraced a nightmarish vision that would divide the world into adherents and infidels -- killing as many innocent civilians as possible, employing the most brutal methods to intimidate people within their communities.

  

I have made it clear that America will not base our entire foreign policy on reacting to terrorism. Instead, we’ve waged a focused campaign against al Qaeda and its associated forces -- taking out their leaders, denying them the safe havens they rely on. At the same time, we have reaffirmed again and again that the United States is not and never will be at war with Islam. Islam teaches peace. Muslims the world over aspire to live with dignity and a sense of justice. And when it comes to America and Islam, there is no us and them, there is only us -- because millions of Muslim Americans are part of the fabric of our country.

  

So we reject any suggestion of a clash of civilizations. Belief in permanent religious war is the misguided refuge of extremists who cannot build or create anything, and therefore peddle only fanaticism and hate. And it is no exaggeration to say that humanity’s future depends on us uniting against those who would divide us along the fault lines of tribe or sect, race or religion.

  

But this is not simply a matter of words. Collectively, we must take concrete steps to address the danger posed by religiously motivated fanatics, and the trends that fuel their recruitment. Moreover, this campaign against extremism goes beyond a narrow security challenge. For while we’ve degraded methodically core al Qaeda and supported a transition to a sovereign Afghan government, extremist ideology has shifted to other places -- particularly in the Middle East and North Africa, where a quarter of young people have no job, where food and water could grow scarce, where corruption is rampant and sectarian conflicts have become increasingly hard to contain.

  

As an international community, we must meet this challenge with a focus on four areas. First, the terrorist group known as ISIL must be degraded and ultimately destroyed.

  

This group has terrorized all who they come across in Iraq and Syria. Mothers, sisters, daughters have been subjected to rape as a weapon of war. Innocent children have been gunned down. Bodies have been dumped in mass graves. Religious minorities have been starved to death. In the most horrific crimes imaginable, innocent human beings have been beheaded, with videos of the atrocity distributed to shock the conscience of the world.

  

No God condones this terror. No grievance justifies these actions. There can be no reasoning -- no negotiation -- with this brand of evil. The only language understood by killers like this is the language of force. So the United States of America will work with a broad coalition to dismantle this network of death.

  

In this effort, we do not act alone -- nor do we intend to send U.S. troops to occupy foreign lands. Instead, we will support Iraqis and Syrians fighting to reclaim their communities. We will use our military might in a campaign of airstrikes to roll back ISIL. We will train and equip forces fighting against these terrorists on the ground. We will work to cut off their financing, and to stop the flow of fighters into and out of the region. And already, over 40 nations have offered to join this coalition.

  

Today, I ask the world to join in this effort. Those who have joined ISIL should leave the battlefield while they can. Those who continue to fight for a hateful cause will find they are increasingly alone. For we will not succumb to threats, and we will demonstrate that the future belongs to those who build -- not those who destroy. So that's an immediate challenge, the first challenge that we must meet.

  

The second: It is time for the world -- especially Muslim communities -- to explicitly, forcefully, and consistently reject the ideology of organizations like al Qaeda and ISIL.

  

It is one of the tasks of all great religions to accommodate devout faith with a modern, multicultural world. No children are born hating, and no children -- anywhere -- should be educated to hate other people. There should be no more tolerance of so-called clerics who call upon people to harm innocents because they’re Jewish, or because they're Christian, or because they're Muslim. It is time for a new compact among the civilized peoples of this world to eradicate war at its most fundamental source, and that is the corruption of young minds by violent ideology.

  

That means cutting off the funding that fuels this hate. It’s time to end the hypocrisy of those who accumulate wealth through the global economy and then siphon funds to those who teach children to tear it down.

  

That means contesting the space that terrorists occupy, including the Internet and social media. Their propaganda has coerced young people to travel abroad to fight their wars, and turned students -- young people full of potential -- into suicide bombers. We must offer an alternative vision.

  

That means bringing people of different faiths together. All religions have been attacked by extremists from within at some point, and all people of faith have a responsibility to lift up the value at the heart of all great religions: Do unto thy neighbor as you would do -- you would have done unto yourself.

  

The ideology of ISIL or al Qaeda or Boko Haram will wilt and die if it is consistently exposed and confronted and refuted in the light of day. Look at the new Forum for Promoting Peace in Muslim Societies -- Sheikh bin Bayyah described its purpose: “We must declare war on war, so the outcome will be peace upon peace.” Look at the young British Muslims who responded to terrorist propaganda by starting the “NotInMyName” campaign, declaring, “ISIS is hiding behind a false Islam.” Look at the Christian and Muslim leaders who came together in the Central African Republic to reject violence; listen to the Imam who said, “Politics try to divide the religious in our country, but religion shouldn’t be a cause of hate, war, or strife.”

  

Later today, the Security Council will adopt a resolution that underscores the responsibility of states to counter violent extremism. But resolutions must be followed by tangible commitments, so we’re accountable when we fall short. Next year, we should all be prepared to announce the concrete steps that we have taken to counter extremist ideologies in our own countries -- by getting intolerance out of schools, stopping radicalization before it spreads, and promoting institutions and programs that build new bridges of understanding.

  

Third, we must address the cycle of conflict -- especially sectarian conflict -- that creates the conditions that terrorists prey upon.

  

There is nothing new about wars within religions. Christianity endured centuries of vicious sectarian conflict. Today, it is violence within Muslim communities that has become the source of so much human misery. It is time to acknowledge the destruction wrought by proxy wars and terror campaigns between Sunni and Shia across the Middle East. And it is time that political, civic and religious leaders reject sectarian strife. So let’s be clear: This is a fight that no one is winning. A brutal civil war in Syria has already killed nearly 200,000 people, displaced millions. Iraq has come perilously close to plunging back into the abyss. The conflict has created a fertile recruiting ground for terrorists who inevitably export this violence.

  

The good news is we also see signs that this tide could be reversed. We have a new, inclusive government in Baghdad; a new Iraqi Prime Minister welcomed by his neighbors; Lebanese factions rejecting those who try to provoke war. And these steps must be followed by a broader truce. Nowhere is this more necessary than Syria.

  

Together with our partners, America is training and equipping the Syrian opposition to be a counterweight to the terrorists of ISIL and the brutality of the Assad regime. But the only lasting solution to Syria’s civil war is political -- an inclusive political transition that responds to the legitimate aspirations of all Syrian citizens, regardless of ethnicity, regardless of creed.

  

Cynics may argue that such an outcome can never come to pass. But there is no other way for this madness to end -- whether one year from now or ten. And it points to the fact that it’s time for a broader negotiation in the region in which major powers address their differences directly, honestly, and peacefully across the table from one another, rather than through gun-wielding proxies. I can promise you America will remain engaged in the region, and we are prepared to engage in that effort.

  

My fourth and final point is a simple one: The countries of the Arab and Muslim world must focus on the extraordinary potential of their people -- especially the youth.

  

And here I’d like to speak directly to young people across the Muslim world. You come from a great tradition that stands for education, not ignorance; innovation, not destruction; the dignity of life, not murder. Those who call you away from this path are betraying this tradition, not defending it.

  

You have demonstrated that when young people have the tools to succeed -- good schools, education in math and science, an economy that nurtures creativity and entrepreneurship -- then societies will flourish. So America will partner with those that promote that vision.

  

Where women are full participants in a country’s politics or economy, societies are more likely to succeed. And that’s why we support the participation of women in parliaments and peace processes, schools and the economy.

  

If young people live in places where the only option is between the dictates of a state, or the lure of an extremist underground, then no counterterrorism strategy can succeed. But where a genuine civil society is allowed to flourish -- where people can express their views, and organize peacefully for a better life -- then you dramatically expand the alternatives to terror.

  

And such positive change need not come at the expense of tradition and faith. We see this in Iraq, where a young man started a library for his peers. “We link Iraq’s heritage to their hearts,” he said, and “give them a reason to stay.” We see it in Tunisia, where secular and Islamist parties worked together through a political process to produce a new constitution. We see it in Senegal, where civil society thrives alongside a strong democratic government. We see it in Malaysia, where vibrant entrepreneurship is propelling a former colony into the ranks of advanced economies. And we see it in Indonesia, where what began as a violent transition has evolved into a genuine democracy.

  

Now, ultimately, the task of rejecting sectarianism and rejecting extremism is a generational task -- and a task for the people of the Middle East themselves. No external power can bring about a transformation of hearts and minds. But America will be a respectful and constructive partner. We will neither tolerate terrorist safe havens, nor act as an occupying power. We will take action against threats to our security and our allies, while building an architecture of counterterrorism cooperation. We will increase efforts to lift up those who counter extremist ideologies and who seek to resolve sectarian conflict. And we will expand our programs to support entrepreneurship and civil society, education and youth -- because, ultimately, these investments are the best antidote to violence.

  

We recognize as well that leadership will be necessary to address the conflict between Palestinians and Israelis. As bleak as the landscape appears, America will not give up on the pursuit of peace. Understand, the situation in Iraq and Syria and Libya should cure anybody of the illusion that the Arab-Israeli conflict is the main source of problems in the region. For far too long, that's been used as an excuse to distract people from problems at home. The violence engulfing the region today has made too many Israelis ready to abandon the hard work of peace. And that's something worthy of reflection within Israel.

  

Because let’s be clear: The status quo in the West Bank and Gaza is not sustainable. We cannot afford to turn away from this effort -- not when rockets are fired at innocent Israelis, or the lives of so many Palestinian children are taken from us in Gaza. So long as I am President, we will stand up for the principle that Israelis, Palestinians, the region and the world will be more just and more safe with two states living side by side, in peace and security.

  

So this is what America is prepared to do: Taking action against immediate threats, while pursuing a world in which the need for such action is diminished. The United States will never shy away from defending our interests, but we will also not shy away from the promise of this institution and its Universal Declaration of Human Rights -- the notion that peace is not merely the absence of war, but the presence of a better life.

  

I realize that America’s critics will be quick to point out that at times we too have failed to live up to our ideals; that America has plenty of problems within its own borders. This is true. In a summer marked by instability in the Middle East and Eastern Europe, I know the world also took notice of the small American city of Ferguson, Missouri -- where a young man was killed, and a community was divided. So, yes, we have our own racial and ethnic tensions. And like every country, we continually wrestle with how to reconcile the vast changes wrought by globalization and greater diversity with the traditions that we hold dear.

  

But we welcome the scrutiny of the world -- because what you see in America is a country that has steadily worked to address our problems, to make our union more perfect, to bridge the divides that existed at the founding of this nation. America is not the same as it was 100 years ago, or 50 years ago, or even a decade ago. Because we fight for our ideals, and we are willing to criticize ourselves when we fall short. Because we hold our leaders accountable, and insist on a free press and independent judiciary. Because we address our differences in the open space of democracy -- with respect for the rule of law; with a place for people of every race and every religion; and with an unyielding belief in the ability of individual men and women to change their communities and their circumstances and their countries for the better.

  

After nearly six years as President, I believe that this promise can help light the world. Because I have seen a longing for positive change -- for peace and for freedom and for opportunity and for the end to bigotry -- in the eyes of young people who I’ve met around the globe.

  

They remind me that no matter who you are, or where you come from, or what you look like, or what God you pray to, or who you love, there is something fundamental that we all share. Eleanor Roosevelt, a champion of the UN and America’s role in it, once asked, “Where, after all, do universal human rights begin? In small places,” she said, “close to home -- so close and so small that they cannot be seen on any maps of the world. Yet they are the world of the individual person; the neighborhood he lives in; the school or college he attends; the factory, farm or office where he works.”

  

Around the world, young people are moving forward hungry for a better world. Around the world, in small places, they're overcoming hatred and bigotry and sectarianism. And they're learning to respect each other, despite differences.

  

The people of the world now look to us, here, to be as decent, and as dignified, and as courageous as they are trying to be in their daily lives. And at this crossroads, I can promise you that the United States of America will not be distracted or deterred from what must be done. We are heirs to a proud legacy of freedom, and we’re prepared to do what is necessary to secure that legacy for generations to come. I ask that you join us in this common mission, for today’s children and tomorrow’s.

  

Thank you very much. (Applause.)

END

10:52 A.M. EDT

this great blue heron was seen in the 'mystic river watershed', he flew in from the 'ale wife reservation' the waters of medford, arlington, cambridge etc. are all interconnected! george mclean photo

Undisclosed location. Microway built cluster of infiniband interconnected nodes and Tesla GPU units.

This shopping center is divided in five interconnected parts wrapped up by a translucent façade. The circulation is based on twisting corridors opening towards the surrounding landscape.

  

Read more:

aqso.net/projects/1115ccl

  

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Este centro comercial se divide en cinco cuerpos interconectados entre sí y exteriormente envueltos por una fachada translúcida. Su estructura logra una circulación serpenteante en constante relación con el entorno que lo rodea.

  

Leer más:

aqso.es/proyectos/1115ccl

Mr. President, Mr. Secretary General, fellow delegates, ladies and gentlemen: we come together at a crossroads between war and peace; between disorder and integration; between fear and hope.

   

Around the globe, there are signposts of progress. The shadow of World War that existed at the founding of this institution has been lifted; the prospect of war between major powers reduced. The ranks of member states has more than tripled, and more people live under governments they elected. Hundreds of millions of human beings have been freed from the prison of poverty, with the proportion of those living in extreme poverty cut in half. And the world economy continues to strengthen after the worst financial crisis of our lives.

   

Today, whether you live in downtown New York or in my grandmother’s village more than two hundred miles from Nairobi, you can hold in your hand more information than the world’s greatest libraries. Together, we have learned how to cure disease, and harness the power of the wind and sun. The very existence of this institution is a unique achievement – the people of the world committing to resolve their differences peacefully, and solve their problems together. I often tell young people in the United States that this is the best time in human history to be born, for you are more likely than ever before to be literate, to be healthy, and to be free to pursue your dreams.

   

And yet there is a pervasive unease in our world – a sense that the very forces that have brought us together have created new dangers, and made it difficult for any single nation to insulate itself from global forces. As we gather here, an outbreak of Ebola overwhelms public health systems in West Africa, and threatens to move rapidly across borders. Russian aggression in Europe recalls the days when large nations trampled small ones in pursuit of territorial ambition. The brutality of terrorists in Syria and Iraq forces us to look into the heart of darkness.

   

Each of these problems demands urgent attention. But they are also symptoms of a broader problem – the failure of our international system to keep pace with an interconnected world. We have not invested adequately in the public health capacity of developing countries. Too often, we have failed to enforce international norms when it’s inconvenient to do so. And we have not confronted forcefully enough the intolerance, sectarianism, and hopelessness that feeds violent extremism in too many parts of the globe.

   

Fellow delegates, we come together as United Nations with a choice to make. We can renew the international system that has enabled so much progress, or allow ourselves to be pulled back by an undertow of instability. We can reaffirm our collective responsibility to confront global problems, or be swamped by more and more outbreaks of instability. For America, the choice is clear. We choose hope over fear. We see the future not as something out of our control, but as something we can shape for the better through concerted and collective effort. We reject fatalism or cynicism when it comes to human affairs; we choose to work for the world as it should be, as our children deserve it to be.

   

There is much that must be done to meet the tests of this moment. But today I’d like to focus on two defining questions at the root of many of our challenges– whether the nations here today will be able to renew the purpose of the UN’s founding; and whether we will come together to reject the cancer of violent extremism.

   

First, all of us – big nations and small – must meet our responsibility to observe and enforce international norms.

   

We are here because others realized that we gain more from cooperation than conquest. One hundred years ago, a World War claimed the lives of many millions, proving that with the terrible power of modern weaponry, the cause of empire leads to the graveyard. It would take another World War to roll back the forces of fascism and racial supremacy, and form this United Nations to ensure that no nation can subjugate its neighbors and claim their territory.

   

Russia’s actions in Ukraine challenge this post-war order. Here are the facts. After the people of Ukraine mobilized popular protests and calls for reform, their corrupt President fled. Against the will of the government in Kiev, Crimea was annexed. Russia poured arms into Eastern Ukraine, fueling violent separatists and a conflict that has killed thousands. When a civilian airliner was shot down from areas that these proxies controlled, they refused to allow access to the crash for days. When Ukraine started to reassert control over its territory, Russia gave up the pretense of merely supporting the separatists, and moved troops across the border.

   

This is a vision of the world in which might makes right – a world in which one nation’s borders can be redrawn by another, and civilized people are not allowed to recover the remains of their loved ones because of the truth that might be revealed. America stands for something different. We believe that right makes might – that bigger nations should not be able to bully smaller ones; that people should be able to choose their own future.

   

These are simple truths, but they must be defended. America and our allies will support the people of Ukraine as they develop their democracy and economy. We will reinforce our NATO allies, and uphold our commitment to collective defense. We will impose a cost on Russia for aggression, and counter falsehoods with the truth. We call upon others to join us on the right side of history – for while small gains can be won at the barrel of a gun, they will ultimately be turned back if enough voices support the freedom of nations and peoples to make their own decisions.

   

Moreover, a different path is available – the path of diplomacy and peace and the ideals this institution is designed to uphold. The recent cease-fire agreement in Ukraine offers an opening to achieve that objective. If Russia takes that path – a path that for stretches of the post-Cold War period resulted in prosperity for the Russian people – then we will lift our sanctions and welcome Russia’s role in addressing common challenges. That’s what the United States and Russia have been able to do in past years – from reducing our nuclear stockpiles to meet our obligations under the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, to cooperating to remove and destroy Syria’s declared chemical weapons. And that’s the kind of cooperation we are prepared to pursue again—if Russia changes course.

   

This speaks to a central question of our global age: whether we will solve our problems together, in a spirit of mutual interests and mutual respect, or whether we descend into destructive rivalries of the past. When nations find common ground, not simply based on power, but on principle, then we can make enormous progress. And I stand before you today committed to investing American strength in working with nations to address the problems we face in the 21st century.

   

As we speak, America is deploying our doctors and scientists – supported by our military – to help contain the outbreak of Ebola and pursue new treatments. But we need a broader effort to stop a disease that could kill hundreds of thousands, inflict horrific suffering, destabilize economies, and move rapidly across borders. It’s easy to see this as a distant problem – until it isn’t. That is why we will continue mobilizing other countries to join us in making concrete commitments to fight this outbreak, and enhance global health security for the long-term.

   

America is pursuing a diplomatic resolution to the Iranian nuclear issue, as part of our commitment to stop the spread of nuclear weapons and pursue the peace and security of a world without them. This can only happen if Iran takes this historic opportunity. My message to Iran’s leaders and people is simple: do not let this opportunity pass. We can reach a solution that meets your energy needs while assuring the world that your program is peaceful.

   

America is and will continue to be a Pacific power, promoting peace, stability, and the free flow of commerce among nations. But we will insist that all nations abide by the rules of the road, and resolve their territorial disputes peacefully, consistent with international law. That’s how the Asia-Pacific has grown. And that’s the only way to protect this progress going forward.

   

America is committed to a development agenda that eradicates extreme poverty by 2030. We will do our part – to help people feed themselves; power their economies; and care for their sick. If the world acts together, we can make sure that all of our children can enjoy lives of opportunity and dignity

   

America is pursuing ambitious reductions in our carbon emissions, and we have increased our investments in clean energy. We will do our part, and help developing nations to do theirs. But we can only succeed in combating climate change if we are joined in this effort by every major power. That’s how we can protect this planet for our children and grandchildren.

   

On issue after issue, we cannot rely on a rule-book written for a different century. If we lift our eyes beyond our borders – if we think globally and act cooperatively – we can shape the course of this century as our predecessors shaped the post-World War II age. But as we look to the future, one issue risks a cycle of conflict that could derail such progress: and that is the cancer of violent extremism that has ravaged so many parts of the Muslim world.

   

Of course, terrorism is not new. Speaking before this Assembly, President Kennedy put it well: “Terror is not a new weapon,” he said. “Throughout history it has been used by those who could not prevail, either by persuasion or example.” In the 20th century, terror was used by all manner of groups who failed to come to power through public support. But in this century, we have faced a more lethal and ideological brand of terrorists who have perverted one of the world’s great religions. With access to technology that allows small groups to do great harm, they have embraced a nightmarish vision that would divide the world into adherents and infidels – killing as many innocent civilians as possible; and employing the most brutal methods to intimidate people within their communities.

   

I have made it clear that America will not base our entire foreign policy on reacting to terrorism. Rather, we have waged a focused campaign against al Qaeda and its associated forces – taking out their leaders, and denying them the safe-havens they rely upon. At the same time, we have reaffirmed that the United States is not and never will be at war with Islam. Islam teaches peace. Muslims the world over aspire to live with dignity and a sense of justice. And when it comes to America and Islam, there is no us and them – there is only us, because millions of Muslim Americans are part of the fabric of our country.

   

So we reject any suggestion of a clash of civilizations. Belief in permanent religious war is the misguided refuge of extremists who cannot build or create anything, and therefore peddle only fanaticism and hate. And it is no exaggeration to say that humanity’s future depends on us uniting against those who would divide us along fault lines of tribe or sect; race or religion.

   

This is not simply a matter of words. Collectively, we must take concrete steps to address the danger posed by religiously motivated fanatics, and the trends that fuel their recruitment. Moreover, this campaign against extremism goes beyond a narrow security challenge. For while we have methodically degraded core al Qaeda and supported a transition to a sovereign Afghan government, extremist ideology has shifted to other places – particularly in the Middle East and North Africa, where a quarter of young people have no job; food and water could grow scarce; corruption is rampant; and sectarian conflicts have become increasingly hard to contain.

   

As an international community, we must meet this challenge with a focus on four areas. First, the terrorist group known as ISIL must be degraded, and ultimately destroyed.

   

This group has terrorized all who they come across in Iraq and Syria. Mothers, sisters and daughters have been subjected to rape as a weapon of war. Innocent children have been gunned down. Bodies have been dumped in mass graves. Religious minorities have been starved to death. In the most horrific crimes imaginable, innocent human beings have been beheaded, with videos of the atrocity distributed to shock the conscience of the world.

   

No God condones this terror. No grievance justifies these actions. There can be no reasoning – no negotiation – with this brand of evil. The only language understood by killers like this is the language of force. So the United States of America will work with a broad coalition to dismantle this network of death.

   

In this effort, we do not act alone. Nor do we intend to send U.S. troops to occupy foreign lands. Instead, we will support Iraqis and Syrians fighting to reclaim their communities. We will use our military might in a campaign of air strikes to roll back ISIL. We will train and equip forces fighting against these terrorists on the ground. We will work to cut off their financing, and to stop the flow of fighters into and out of the region. Already, over 40 nations have offered to join this coalition. Today, I ask the world to join in this effort. Those who have joined ISIL should leave the battlefield while they can. Those who continue to fight for a hateful cause will find they are increasingly alone. For we will not succumb to threats; and we will demonstrate that the future belongs to those who build – not those who destroy.

   

Second, it is time for the world – especially Muslim communities – to explicitly, forcefully, and consistently reject the ideology of al Qaeda and ISIL.

   

It is the task of all great religions to accommodate devout faith with a modern, multicultural world. No children – anywhere – should be educated to hate other people. There should be no more tolerance of so-called clerics who call upon people to harm innocents because they are Jewish, Christian or Muslim. It is time for a new compact among the civilized peoples of this world to eradicate war at its most fundamental source: the corruption of young minds by violent ideology.

   

That means cutting off the funding that fuels this hate. It’s time to end the hypocrisy of those who accumulate wealth through the global economy, and then siphon funds to those who teach children to tear it down.

   

That means contesting the space that terrorists occupy – including the Internet and social media. Their propaganda has coerced young people to travel abroad to fight their wars, and turned students into suicide bombers. We must offer an alternative vision.

   

That means bringing people of different faiths together. All religions have been attacked by extremists from within at some point, and all people of faith have a responsibility to lift up the value at the heart of all religion: do unto thy neighbor as you would have done unto you.

   

The ideology of ISIL or al Qaeda or Boko Haram will wilt and die if it is consistently exposed, confronted, and refuted in the light of day. Look at the new Forum for Promoting Peace in Muslim Societies – Sheikh bin Bayyah described its purpose: “We must declare war on war, so the outcome will be peace upon peace.” Look at the young British Muslims, who responded to terrorist propaganda by starting the “notinmyname” campaign, declaring – “ISIS is hiding behind a false Islam.” Look at the Christian and Muslim leaders who came together in the Central African Republic to reject violence – listen to the Imam who said, “Politics try to divide the religious in our country, but religion shouldn’t be a cause of hate, war, or strife.”

   

Later today, the Security Council will adopt a resolution that underscores the responsibility of states to counter violent extremism. But resolutions must be followed by tangible commitments, so we’re accountable when we fall short. Next year, we should all be prepared to announce the concrete steps that we have taken to counter extremist ideologies – by getting intolerance out of schools, stopping radicalization before it spreads, and promoting institutions and programs that build new bridges of understanding.

   

Third, we must address the cycle of conflict – especially sectarian conflict – that creates the conditions that terrorists prey upon.

   

There is nothing new about wars within religions. Christianity endured centuries of vicious sectarian conflict. Today, it is violence within Muslim communities that has become the source of so much human misery. It is time to acknowledge the destruction wrought by proxy wars and terror campaigns between Sunni and Shia across the Middle East. And it is time that political, civic and religious leaders reject sectarian strife. Let’s be clear: this is a fight that no one is winning. A brutal civil war in Syria has already killed nearly 200,000 people and displaced millions. Iraq has come perilously close to plunging back into the abyss. The conflict has created a fertile recruiting ground for terrorists who inevitably export this violence.

   

Yet, we also see signs that this tide could be reversed – a new, inclusive government in Baghdad; a new Iraqi Prime Minister welcomed by his neighbors; Lebanese factions rejecting those who try to provoke war. These steps must be followed by a broader truce. Nowhere is this more necessary than Syria. Together with our partners, America is training and equipping the Syrian opposition to be a counterweight to the terrorists of ISIL and the brutality of the Assad regime. But the only lasting solution to Syria’s civil war is political – an inclusive political transition that responds to the legitimate aspirations of all Syrian citizens, regardless of ethnicity or creed.

   

Cynics may argue that such an outcome can never come to pass. But there is no other way for this madness to end – whether one year from now or ten. Indeed, it’s time for a broader negotiation in which major powers address their differences directly, honestly, and peacefully across the table from one another, rather than through gun-wielding proxies. I can promise you America will remain engaged in the region, and we are prepared to engage in that effort.

   

My fourth and final point is a simple one: the countries of the Arab and Muslim world must focus on the extraordinary potential of their people – especially the youth.

   

Here I’d like to speak directly to young people across the Muslim world. You come from a great tradition that stands for education, not ignorance; innovation, not destruction; the dignity of life, not murder. Those who call you away from this path are betraying this tradition, not defending it.

   

You have demonstrated that when young people have the tools to succeed –good schools; education in math and science; an economy that nurtures creativity and entrepreneurship – then societies will flourish. So America will partner with those who promote that vision.

   

Where women are full participants in a country’s politics or economy, societies are more likely to succeed. That’s why we support the participation of women in parliaments and in peace processes; in schools and the economy.

   

If young people live in places where the only option is between the dictates of a state, or the lure of an extremist underground – no counter-terrorism strategy can succeed. But where a genuine civil society is allowed to flourish – where people can express their views, and organize peacefully for a better life – then you dramatically expand the alternatives to terror.

   

Such positive change need not come at the expense of tradition and faith. We see this in Iraq, where a young man started a library for his peers. “We link Iraq’s heritage to their hearts,” he said, and “give them a reason to stay.” We see it in Tunisia, where secular and Islamist parties worked together through a political process to produce a new constitution. We see it in Senegal, where civil society thrives alongside a strong, democratic government. We see it in Malaysia, where vibrant entrepreneurship is propelling a former colony into the ranks of advanced economies. And we see it in Indonesia, where what began as a violent transition has evolved into a genuine democracy.

   

Ultimately, the task of rejecting sectarianism and extremism is a generational task – a task for the people of the Middle East themselves. No external power can bring about a transformation of hearts and minds. But America will be a respectful and constructive partner. We will neither tolerate terrorist safe-havens, nor act as an occupying power. Instead, we will take action against threats to our security – and our allies – while building an architecture of counter-terrorism cooperation. We will increase efforts to lift up those who counter extremist ideology, and seek to resolve sectarian conflict. And we will expand our programs to support entrepreneurship, civil society, education and youth – because, ultimately, these investments are the best antidote to violence.

   

Leadership will also be necessary to address the conflict between Palestinians and Israelis. As bleak as the landscape appears, America will never give up the pursuit of peace. The situation in Iraq, Syria and Libya should cure anyone of the illusion that this conflict is the main source of problems in the region; for far too long, it has been used in part as a way to distract people from problems at home. And the violence engulfing the region today has made too many Israelis ready to abandon the hard work of peace. But let’s be clear: the status quo in the West Bank and Gaza is not sustainable. We cannot afford to turn away from this effort – not when rockets are fired at innocent Israelis, or the lives of so many Palestinian children are taken from us in Gaza. So long as I am President, we will stand up for the principle that Israelis, Palestinians, the region, and the world will be more just with two states living side by side, in peace and security.

   

This is what America is prepared to do – taking action against immediate threats, while pursuing a world in which the need for such action is diminished. The United States will never shy away from defending our interests, but nor will we shrink from the promise of this institution and its Universal Declaration of Human Rights – the notion that peace is not merely the absence of war, but the presence of a better life.

   

I realize that America’s critics will be quick to point out that at times we too have failed to live up to our ideals; that America has plenty of problems within our own borders. This is true. In a summer marked by instability in the Middle East and Eastern Europe, I know the world also took notice of the small American city of Ferguson, Missouri – where a young man was killed, and a community was divided. So yes, we have our own racial and ethnic tensions. And like every country, we continually wrestle with how to reconcile the vast changes wrought by globalization and greater diversity with the traditions that we hold dear.

   

But we welcome the scrutiny of the world – because what you see in America is a country that has steadily worked to address our problems and make our union more perfect. America is not the same as it was 100 years ago, 50 years ago, or even a decade ago. Because we fight for our ideals, and are willing to criticize ourselves when we fall short. Because we hold our leaders accountable, and insist on a free press and independent judiciary. Because we address our differences in the open space of democracy – with respect for the rule of law; with a place for people of every race and religion; and with an unyielding belief in the ability of individual men and women to change their communities and countries for the better.

   

After nearly six years as President, I believe that this promise can help light the world. Because I’ve seen a longing for positive change – for peace and freedom and opportunity – in the eyes of young people I’ve met around the globe. They remind me that no matter who you are, or where you come from, or what you look like, or what God you pray to, or who you love, there is something fundamental that we all share. Eleanor Roosevelt, a champion of the UN and America’s role in it, once asked, “Where, after all, do universal human rights begin? In small places,” she said, “close to home – so close and so small that they cannot be seen on any maps of the world. Yet they are the world of the individual person; the neighborhood he lives in; the school or college he attends; the factory, farm or office where he works.”

   

The people of the world look to us, here, to be as decent, as dignified, and as courageous as they are in their daily lives. And at this crossroads, I can promise you that the United States of America will not be distracted or deterred from what must be done. We are heirs to a proud legacy of freedom, and we are prepared to do what is necessary to secure that legacy for generations to come. Join us in this common mission, for today’s children and tomorrow’s.

   

###

 

A close-up of the interconnected beams that make up the support structure of the Tappan Zee Bridge. More depth in this shot.

An entry into the military group's competition. Made for the interconnected vignette category.

 

Urban combat is bloody, personal and extremely slow. An invading spec ops team meets resistance at every street corner and is forced to dig into the city itself. This is just a little skirmsh over an area labeled tennis court #8. The title "battle" is meant to show just how slow urban combat is.

 

One spec ops member has had his leg blown off and is bleeding profusely all over the street. A defending soldier is just about to shoot him, but he fails to notice the other spec ops member hiding behind the rusted chain link fence.

 

What will happen to the soldier? Who will win the battle? Who will pay for all the damage done to the shop window?

 

"Toon in next week to find out"

The Tummel hydro-electric power scheme is an interconnected network of dams, power stations, aqueducts and electric power transmission in the Grampian Mountains of Scotland. Roughly bounded by Dalwhinnie in the north, Rannoch Moor in the west and Pitlochry in the east it comprises a water catchment area of around 1,800 square kilometres (690 square miles) and primary water storage at Loch Ericht, Loch Errochty, Loch Rannoch and Loch Tummel, in Perth and Kinross. Water, depending on where it originates and the path it takes, may pass through as many as five of the schemes nine power stations as it progresses from north-west to south-east. The scheme was constructed in the 1940s and 50s incorporating some earlier sites. It is managed by SSE plc.

 

The idea of Loch Ericht as a source for hydro-electric power was first anticipated in 1899, when the Highland Water Power Bill was put before Parliament. The plan was to generate electricity for industrial purposes, but the bill did not receive Parliamentary approval. The next attempt was the Loch Ericht Water and Electricity Power Act, which received approval in 1912, but it included a clause that prohibited alteration of the water level of the loch, making the scheme uneconomic. Dundee Corporation sought to use Loch Ericht, Loch Rannoch and Loch Tummel in a scheme proposed in 1919, but there was strong opposition to it, and the plans did not come to fruition.

 

The potential for hydro-electric power in the Highlands of Scotland was recognised by the Snell Committee, who published reports in 1919 and 1920. Against this background, the Grampian Electricity Supply Bill was laid before Parliament. The promotors were aware of the "fundamental principles" set out by the Snell Committee, and ensured that these formed part of the bill. Consequently, the scheme would treat a single catchment area comprehensively, and would ensure that some of the power generated would be made available to residents who lived within the catchment of the scheme. The promotors included the Duke of Atholl and the chairman of Lloyds Bank, John William Beaumont Pease, both men who were known to be honest and trustworthy, and who were held in high regard locally. The bill became an Act of Parliament in 1922, and allowed the promotors to use the waters of Loch Ericht, Loch Rannoch and Loch Tummel. Loch Ericht would be augmented by water diverted from Loch Seilich and Loch Garry, increasing the catchment area to 418 square miles (1,080 square kilometres). The power generated would supply an area of over 5,000 square miles (13,000 square kilometres), covering the counties of Perth, Kinross and Forfar, together with parts of Inverness-shire, Argyllshire and Stirlingshire. Some of the power would be sold in bulk to the Scottish Central Electric Power Company and the Fife Electric Power Co.

 

The Highlands is a historical region of Scotland. Culturally, the Highlands and the Lowlands diverged from the Late Middle Ages into the modern period, when Lowland Scots language replaced Scottish Gaelic throughout most of the Lowlands. The term is also used for the area north and west of the Highland Boundary Fault, although the exact boundaries are not clearly defined, particularly to the east. The Great Glen divides the Grampian Mountains to the southeast from the Northwest Highlands. The Scottish Gaelic name of A' Ghàidhealtachd literally means "the place of the Gaels" and traditionally, from a Gaelic-speaking point of view, includes both the Western Isles and the Highlands.

 

The area is very sparsely populated, with many mountain ranges dominating the region, and includes the highest mountain in the British Isles, Ben Nevis. During the 18th and early 19th centuries the population of the Highlands rose to around 300,000, but from c. 1841 and for the next 160 years, the natural increase in population was exceeded by emigration (mostly to Canada, the United States, Australia and New Zealand, and migration to the industrial cities of Scotland and England.) and passim  The area is now one of the most sparsely populated in Europe. At 9.1/km2 (24/sq mi) in 2012, the population density in the Highlands and Islands is less than one seventh of Scotland's as a whole.

 

The Highland Council is the administrative body for much of the Highlands, with its administrative centre at Inverness. However, the Highlands also includes parts of the council areas of Aberdeenshire, Angus, Argyll and Bute, Moray, North Ayrshire, Perth and Kinross, Stirling and West Dunbartonshire.

 

The Scottish Highlands is the only area in the British Isles to have the taiga biome as it features concentrated populations of Scots pine forest: see Caledonian Forest. It is the most mountainous part of the United Kingdom.

 

Between the 15th century and the mid-20th century, the area differed from most of the Lowlands in terms of language. In Scottish Gaelic, the region is known as the Gàidhealtachd, because it was traditionally the Gaelic-speaking part of Scotland, although the language is now largely confined to The Hebrides. The terms are sometimes used interchangeably but have different meanings in their respective languages. Scottish English (in its Highland form) is the predominant language of the area today, though Highland English has been influenced by Gaelic speech to a significant extent. Historically, the "Highland line" distinguished the two Scottish cultures. While the Highland line broadly followed the geography of the Grampians in the south, it continued in the north, cutting off the north-eastern areas, that is Eastern Caithness, Orkney and Shetland, from the more Gaelic Highlands and Hebrides.

 

Historically, the major social unit of the Highlands was the clan. Scottish kings, particularly James VI, saw clans as a challenge to their authority; the Highlands was seen by many as a lawless region. The Scots of the Lowlands viewed the Highlanders as backward and more "Irish". The Highlands were seen as the overspill of Gaelic Ireland. They made this distinction by separating Germanic "Scots" English and the Gaelic by renaming it "Erse" a play on Eire. Following the Union of the Crowns, James VI had the military strength to back up any attempts to impose some control. The result was, in 1609, the Statutes of Iona which started the process of integrating clan leaders into Scottish society. The gradual changes continued into the 19th century, as clan chiefs thought of themselves less as patriarchal leaders of their people and more as commercial landlords. The first effect on the clansmen who were their tenants was the change to rents being payable in money rather than in kind. Later, rents were increased as Highland landowners sought to increase their income. This was followed, mostly in the period 1760–1850, by agricultural improvement that often (particularly in the Western Highlands) involved clearance of the population to make way for large scale sheep farms. Displaced tenants were set up in crofting communities in the process. The crofts were intended not to provide all the needs of their occupiers; they were expected to work in other industries such as kelping and fishing. Crofters came to rely substantially on seasonal migrant work, particularly in the Lowlands. This gave impetus to the learning of English, which was seen by many rural Gaelic speakers to be the essential "language of work".

 

Older historiography attributes the collapse of the clan system to the aftermath of the Jacobite risings. This is now thought less influential by historians. Following the Jacobite rising of 1745 the British government enacted a series of laws to try to suppress the clan system, including bans on the bearing of arms and the wearing of tartan, and limitations on the activities of the Scottish Episcopal Church. Most of this legislation was repealed by the end of the 18th century as the Jacobite threat subsided. There was soon a rehabilitation of Highland culture. Tartan was adopted for Highland regiments in the British Army, which poor Highlanders joined in large numbers in the era of the Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars (1790–1815). Tartan had largely been abandoned by the ordinary people of the region, but in the 1820s, tartan and the kilt were adopted by members of the social elite, not just in Scotland, but across Europe. The international craze for tartan, and for idealising a romanticised Highlands, was set off by the Ossian cycle, and further popularised by the works of Walter Scott. His "staging" of the visit of King George IV to Scotland in 1822 and the king's wearing of tartan resulted in a massive upsurge in demand for kilts and tartans that could not be met by the Scottish woollen industry. Individual clan tartans were largely designated in this period and they became a major symbol of Scottish identity. This "Highlandism", by which all of Scotland was identified with the culture of the Highlands, was cemented by Queen Victoria's interest in the country, her adoption of Balmoral as a major royal retreat, and her interest in "tartenry".

 

Recurrent famine affected the Highlands for much of its history, with significant instances as late as 1817 in the Eastern Highlands and the early 1850s in the West.  Over the 18th century, the region had developed a trade of black cattle into Lowland markets, and this was balanced by imports of meal into the area. There was a critical reliance on this trade to provide sufficient food, and it is seen as an essential prerequisite for the population growth that started in the 18th century. Most of the Highlands, particularly in the North and West was short of the arable land that was essential for the mixed, run rig based, communal farming that existed before agricultural improvement was introduced into the region.[a] Between the 1760s and the 1830s there was a substantial trade in unlicensed whisky that had been distilled in the Highlands. Lowland distillers (who were not able to avoid the heavy taxation of this product) complained that Highland whisky made up more than half the market. The development of the cattle trade is taken as evidence that the pre-improvement Highlands was not an immutable system, but did exploit the economic opportunities that came its way.  The illicit whisky trade demonstrates the entrepreneurial ability of the peasant classes. 

 

Agricultural improvement reached the Highlands mostly over the period 1760 to 1850. Agricultural advisors, factors, land surveyors and others educated in the thinking of Adam Smith were keen to put into practice the new ideas taught in Scottish universities.  Highland landowners, many of whom were burdened with chronic debts, were generally receptive to the advice they offered and keen to increase the income from their land.  In the East and South the resulting change was similar to that in the Lowlands, with the creation of larger farms with single tenants, enclosure of the old run rig fields, introduction of new crops (such as turnips), land drainage and, as a consequence of all this, eviction, as part of the Highland clearances, of many tenants and cottars. Some of those cleared found employment on the new, larger farms, others moved to the accessible towns of the Lowlands.

 

In the West and North, evicted tenants were usually given tenancies in newly created crofting communities, while their former holdings were converted into large sheep farms. Sheep farmers could pay substantially higher rents than the run rig farmers and were much less prone to falling into arrears. Each croft was limited in size so that the tenants would have to find work elsewhere. The major alternatives were fishing and the kelp industry. Landlords took control of the kelp shores, deducting the wages earned by their tenants from the rent due and retaining the large profits that could be earned at the high prices paid for the processed product during the Napoleonic wars.

 

When the Napoleonic wars finished in 1815, the Highland industries were affected by the return to a peacetime economy. The price of black cattle fell, nearly halving between 1810 and the 1830s. Kelp prices had peaked in 1810, but reduced from £9 a ton in 1823 to £3 13s 4d a ton in 1828. Wool prices were also badly affected.  This worsened the financial problems of debt-encumbered landlords. Then, in 1846, potato blight arrived in the Highlands, wiping out the essential subsistence crop for the overcrowded crofting communities. As the famine struck, the government made clear to landlords that it was their responsibility to provide famine relief for their tenants. The result of the economic downturn had been that a large proportion of Highland estates were sold in the first half of the 19th century. T M Devine points out that in the region most affected by the potato famine, by 1846, 70 per cent of the landowners were new purchasers who had not owned Highland property before 1800. More landlords were obliged to sell due to the cost of famine relief. Those who were protected from the worst of the crisis were those with extensive rental income from sheep farms.  Government loans were made available for drainage works, road building and other improvements and many crofters became temporary migrants – taking work in the Lowlands. When the potato famine ceased in 1856, this established a pattern of more extensive working away from the Highlands.

 

The unequal concentration of land ownership remained an emotional and controversial subject, of enormous importance to the Highland economy, and eventually became a cornerstone of liberal radicalism. The poor crofters were politically powerless, and many of them turned to religion. They embraced the popularly oriented, fervently evangelical Presbyterian revival after 1800. Most joined the breakaway "Free Church" after 1843. This evangelical movement was led by lay preachers who themselves came from the lower strata, and whose preaching was implicitly critical of the established order. The religious change energised the crofters and separated them from the landlords; it helped prepare them for their successful and violent challenge to the landlords in the 1880s through the Highland Land League. Violence erupted, starting on the Isle of Skye, when Highland landlords cleared their lands for sheep and deer parks. It was quietened when the government stepped in, passing the Crofters' Holdings (Scotland) Act, 1886 to reduce rents, guarantee fixity of tenure, and break up large estates to provide crofts for the homeless. This contrasted with the Irish Land War underway at the same time, where the Irish were intensely politicised through roots in Irish nationalism, while political dimensions were limited. In 1885 three Independent Crofter candidates were elected to Parliament, which listened to their pleas. The results included explicit security for the Scottish smallholders in the "crofting counties"; the legal right to bequeath tenancies to descendants; and the creation of a Crofting Commission. The Crofters as a political movement faded away by 1892, and the Liberal Party gained their votes.

 

Today, the Highlands are the largest of Scotland's whisky producing regions; the relevant area runs from Orkney to the Isle of Arran in the south and includes the northern isles and much of Inner and Outer Hebrides, Argyll, Stirlingshire, Arran, as well as sections of Perthshire and Aberdeenshire. (Other sources treat The Islands, except Islay, as a separate whisky producing region.) This massive area has over 30 distilleries, or 47 when the Islands sub-region is included in the count. According to one source, the top five are The Macallan, Glenfiddich, Aberlour, Glenfarclas and Balvenie. While Speyside is geographically within the Highlands, that region is specified as distinct in terms of whisky productions. Speyside single malt whiskies are produced by about 50 distilleries.

 

According to Visit Scotland, Highlands whisky is "fruity, sweet, spicy, malty". Another review states that Northern Highlands single malt is "sweet and full-bodied", the Eastern Highlands and Southern Highlands whiskies tend to be "lighter in texture" while the distilleries in the Western Highlands produce single malts with a "much peatier influence".

 

The Scottish Reformation achieved partial success in the Highlands. Roman Catholicism remained strong in some areas, owing to remote locations and the efforts of Franciscan missionaries from Ireland, who regularly came to celebrate Mass. There remain significant Catholic strongholds within the Highlands and Islands such as Moidart and Morar on the mainland and South Uist and Barra in the southern Outer Hebrides. The remoteness of the region and the lack of a Gaelic-speaking clergy undermined the missionary efforts of the established church. The later 18th century saw somewhat greater success, owing to the efforts of the SSPCK missionaries and to the disruption of traditional society after the Battle of Culloden in 1746. In the 19th century, the evangelical Free Churches, which were more accepting of Gaelic language and culture, grew rapidly, appealing much more strongly than did the established church.

 

For the most part, however, the Highlands are considered predominantly Protestant, belonging to the Church of Scotland. In contrast to the Catholic southern islands, the northern Outer Hebrides islands (Lewis, Harris and North Uist) have an exceptionally high proportion of their population belonging to the Protestant Free Church of Scotland or the Free Presbyterian Church of Scotland. The Outer Hebrides have been described as the last bastion of Calvinism in Britain and the Sabbath remains widely observed. Inverness and the surrounding area has a majority Protestant population, with most locals belonging to either The Kirk or the Free Church of Scotland. The church maintains a noticeable presence within the area, with church attendance notably higher than in other parts of Scotland. Religion continues to play an important role in Highland culture, with Sabbath observance still widely practised, particularly in the Hebrides.

 

In traditional Scottish geography, the Highlands refers to that part of Scotland north-west of the Highland Boundary Fault, which crosses mainland Scotland in a near-straight line from Helensburgh to Stonehaven. However the flat coastal lands that occupy parts of the counties of Nairnshire, Morayshire, Banffshire and Aberdeenshire are often excluded as they do not share the distinctive geographical and cultural features of the rest of the Highlands. The north-east of Caithness, as well as Orkney and Shetland, are also often excluded from the Highlands, although the Hebrides are usually included. The Highland area, as so defined, differed from the Lowlands in language and tradition, having preserved Gaelic speech and customs centuries after the anglicisation of the latter; this led to a growing perception of a divide, with the cultural distinction between Highlander and Lowlander first noted towards the end of the 14th century. In Aberdeenshire, the boundary between the Highlands and the Lowlands is not well defined. There is a stone beside the A93 road near the village of Dinnet on Royal Deeside which states 'You are now in the Highlands', although there are areas of Highland character to the east of this point.

 

A much wider definition of the Highlands is that used by the Scotch whisky industry. Highland single malts are produced at distilleries north of an imaginary line between Dundee and Greenock, thus including all of Aberdeenshire and Angus.

 

Inverness is regarded as the Capital of the Highlands, although less so in the Highland parts of Aberdeenshire, Angus, Perthshire and Stirlingshire which look more to Aberdeen, Dundee, Perth, and Stirling as their commercial centres.

 

The Highland Council area, created as one of the local government regions of Scotland, has been a unitary council area since 1996. The council area excludes a large area of the southern and eastern Highlands, and the Western Isles, but includes Caithness. Highlands is sometimes used, however, as a name for the council area, as in the former Highlands and Islands Fire and Rescue Service. Northern is also used to refer to the area, as in the former Northern Constabulary. These former bodies both covered the Highland council area and the island council areas of Orkney, Shetland and the Western Isles.

 

Much of the Highlands area overlaps the Highlands and Islands area. An electoral region called Highlands and Islands is used in elections to the Scottish Parliament: this area includes Orkney and Shetland, as well as the Highland Council local government area, the Western Isles and most of the Argyll and Bute and Moray local government areas. Highlands and Islands has, however, different meanings in different contexts. It means Highland (the local government area), Orkney, Shetland, and the Western Isles in Highlands and Islands Fire and Rescue Service. Northern, as in Northern Constabulary, refers to the same area as that covered by the fire and rescue service.

 

There have been trackways from the Lowlands to the Highlands since prehistoric times. Many traverse the Mounth, a spur of mountainous land that extends from the higher inland range to the North Sea slightly north of Stonehaven. The most well-known and historically important trackways are the Causey Mounth, Elsick Mounth, Cryne Corse Mounth and Cairnamounth.

 

Although most of the Highlands is geographically on the British mainland, it is somewhat less accessible than the rest of Britain; thus most UK couriers categorise it separately, alongside Northern Ireland, the Isle of Man, and other offshore islands. They thus charge additional fees for delivery to the Highlands, or exclude the area entirely. While the physical remoteness from the largest population centres inevitably leads to higher transit cost, there is confusion and consternation over the scale of the fees charged and the effectiveness of their communication, and the use of the word Mainland in their justification. Since the charges are often based on postcode areas, many far less remote areas, including some which are traditionally considered part of the lowlands, are also subject to these charges. Royal Mail is the only delivery network bound by a Universal Service Obligation to charge a uniform tariff across the UK. This, however, applies only to mail items and not larger packages which are dealt with by its Parcelforce division.

 

The Highlands lie to the north and west of the Highland Boundary Fault, which runs from Arran to Stonehaven. This part of Scotland is largely composed of ancient rocks from the Cambrian and Precambrian periods which were uplifted during the later Caledonian Orogeny. Smaller formations of Lewisian gneiss in the northwest are up to 3 billion years old. The overlying rocks of the Torridon Sandstone form mountains in the Torridon Hills such as Liathach and Beinn Eighe in Wester Ross.

 

These foundations are interspersed with many igneous intrusions of a more recent age, the remnants of which have formed mountain massifs such as the Cairngorms and the Cuillin of Skye. A significant exception to the above are the fossil-bearing beds of Old Red Sandstone found principally along the Moray Firth coast and partially down the Highland Boundary Fault. The Jurassic beds found in isolated locations on Skye and Applecross reflect the complex underlying geology. They are the original source of much North Sea oil. The Great Glen is formed along a transform fault which divides the Grampian Mountains to the southeast from the Northwest Highlands.

 

The entire region was covered by ice sheets during the Pleistocene ice ages, save perhaps for a few nunataks. The complex geomorphology includes incised valleys and lochs carved by the action of mountain streams and ice, and a topography of irregularly distributed mountains whose summits have similar heights above sea-level, but whose bases depend upon the amount of denudation to which the plateau has been subjected in various places.

Climate

 

The region is much warmer than other areas at similar latitudes (such as Kamchatka in Russia, or Labrador in Canada) because of the Gulf Stream making it cool, damp and temperate. The Köppen climate classification is "Cfb" at low altitudes, then becoming "Cfc", "Dfc" and "ET" at higher altitudes.

 

Places of interest

An Teallach

Aonach Mòr (Nevis Range ski centre)

Arrochar Alps

Balmoral Castle

Balquhidder

Battlefield of Culloden

Beinn Alligin

Beinn Eighe

Ben Cruachan hydro-electric power station

Ben Lomond

Ben Macdui (second highest mountain in Scotland and UK)

Ben Nevis (highest mountain in Scotland and UK)

Cairngorms National Park

Cairngorm Ski centre near Aviemore

Cairngorm Mountains

Caledonian Canal

Cape Wrath

Carrick Castle

Castle Stalker

Castle Tioram

Chanonry Point

Conic Hill

Culloden Moor

Dunadd

Duart Castle

Durness

Eilean Donan

Fingal's Cave (Staffa)

Fort George

Glen Coe

Glen Etive

Glen Kinglas

Glen Lyon

Glen Orchy

Glenshee Ski Centre

Glen Shiel

Glen Spean

Glenfinnan (and its railway station and viaduct)

Grampian Mountains

Hebrides

Highland Folk Museum – The first open-air museum in the UK.

Highland Wildlife Park

Inveraray Castle

Inveraray Jail

Inverness Castle

Inverewe Garden

Iona Abbey

Isle of Staffa

Kilchurn Castle

Kilmartin Glen

Liathach

Lecht Ski Centre

Loch Alsh

Loch Ard

Loch Awe

Loch Assynt

Loch Earn

Loch Etive

Loch Fyne

Loch Goil

Loch Katrine

Loch Leven

Loch Linnhe

Loch Lochy

Loch Lomond

Loch Lomond and the Trossachs National Park

Loch Lubnaig

Loch Maree

Loch Morar

Loch Morlich

Loch Ness

Loch Nevis

Loch Rannoch

Loch Tay

Lochranza

Luss

Meall a' Bhuiridh (Glencoe Ski Centre)

Scottish Sea Life Sanctuary at Loch Creran

Rannoch Moor

Red Cuillin

Rest and Be Thankful stretch of A83

River Carron, Wester Ross

River Spey

River Tay

Ross and Cromarty

Smoo Cave

Stob Coire a' Chàirn

Stac Polly

Strathspey Railway

Sutherland

Tor Castle

Torridon Hills

Urquhart Castle

West Highland Line (scenic railway)

West Highland Way (Long-distance footpath)

Wester Ross

 

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Ilit Azoulay, Israeli Pavilion, 2022 Venice Biennale

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How sovereign can art be? Ilit Azoulay casts off the restrictions of national and male representations and opens pathways into an interconnected Middle East. The Queendom, reigned by art, seems to have risen out of a total system crash. It is a rhizomatic realm, where stories coalesce. Panoramic Photomontages – based on the archive of art historian David Storm Rice (1913–1962) – presents a symphony of fracture and healing, while an audio work fills the venue with sounds of a universal language. Azoulay uses digital craftwork to visualise the afterlife of images and their transformations, accentuating histories of appropriation and missing links in their geographies of knowledge.

 

American Museum of Natural History. New York. Jan/2017

 

The American Museum of Natural History (abbreviated as AMNH), located on the Upper West Side of Manhattan, New York City, is one of the largest museums in the world. Located in park-like grounds across the street from Central Park, the museum complex comprises 28 interconnected buildings housing 45 permanent exhibition halls, in addition to a planetarium and a library. The museum collections contain over 33 million specimens of plants, animals, fossils, minerals, rocks, meteorites, human remains, and human cultural artifacts, of which only a small fraction can be displayed at any given time, and occupies more than 2,000,000 square feet (190,000 m2). The museum has a full-time scientific staff of 225, sponsors over 120 special field expeditions each year, and averages about five million visits annually.

The one mission statement of the American Museum of Natural History is: "To discover, interpret, and disseminate—through scientific research and education—knowledge about human cultures, the natural world, and the universe.

 

Source: Wikipedia

 

O Museu Americano de História Natural (American Museum of Natural History, em inglês) é um museu dos Estados Unidos da América, localizado em Nova Iorque e fundado em 1869. É especialmente reconhecido pela sua vasta coleção de fósseis, incluindo de espécies de Dinossauros. Uma das grandes atrações do museu é uma coleção de esqueletos de dinossauro, com mais de 30 milhões de fósseis e artefatos espalhados por 42 salas de exibição.Um T-Rex de aproximadamente 15 metros e dá as boas vindas aos visitantes na entrada.

Theodore Roosevelt está ligado à sua fundação e é lembrado no actual museu por um memorial. O primeiro edifício do museu acabou de ser construído em 1877, a partir do projecto de Calvert Vaux e Jacob Wrey Mould, a partir de uma ideia de Albert Smith Bickmore, discípulo de Louis Agassiz no Museu de Zoologia Comparativa de Harvard, em 1860. O museu serviu como cenário para o filme "Uma Noite no Museu" (2006).

Fonte: Wikipedia

This shopping center is divided in five interconnected parts wrapped up by a translucent façade. The circulation is based on twisting corridors opening towards the surrounding landscape.

  

Read more:

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Este centro comercial se divide en cinco cuerpos interconectados entre sí y exteriormente envueltos por una fachada translúcida. Su estructura logra una circulación serpenteante en constante relación con el entorno que lo rodea.

  

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The World Grid and the Whirled Mind ~

...The great sphere of the planet is crisscrossed by lines of force that adhere to the geometry of three dimensions. These shapes simultaneously mirror the patterns of higher order ‘hyperspace’ geometries [see TimeSpace]. Lines of energy follow paths of least resistance – the leyline network recognised and used by antediluvian civilisations, the dragon lines of the Gael and the Orient; the Songlines of nomadic aboriginal people.

 

The planet flows through a vibrating sea of energy. This bathes us in frequencies and wavelengths that define the courses of energies flowing across and through the Earth. Lines of least resistance form an intricately interconnected series of grids that map hyperspatial geometries onto and into the globe of the planet. They’re the acupuncture meridians of Gaia, and nodal points are strung along them as acupuncture points on the human body. As above, so below.

 

These nodal points are sacred sites and places of power that can be used for great good or ill. The fortuitous locations and arrangements of most temples and shrines, churches and mosques from antiquity to the present time indicates at least one of two things – 1) that gifted dowsers have always been with us, working at the behest of secretive conspiratorial master architects, and/or 2) that the works of humankind are parts of a greater plan serving the planet and/or other agencies – again, for good or for ill, in terms of the best interests of human beings and the myriad lifeforms that dwell in the wonderfully wild garden of Gaia.

 

In either case, the sanctuaries of world religions are constructed on primordial bastions of concentrated energy. There are those who know how to use or misuse these sites (and all the trappings of blinded faith – magical implements like altars, chalices, incense, books, bells and candles) in ways and purposes for which they’re intended. Just as the vast majority of people will never read or comprehend these little words, or read this far, almost all those in charge of sacred sites have no idea how to use them. They’re custodians, holding the sites in trust for others – just like all the smiling politicians and stern public servants in the secular world.

 

Where three or more gather in focus together our wills can combine to accomplish great ends. The whologram is greater than the sum of its parts. The massed and focused energies of congregations of living, breathing, wilful beings can be harnessed to feed the leyline/songline grid with specific patterns of sound, thought, motion and emotion – songs and dances, prayers and hopes that can be used as fuel to heal the world, or to further other agendas. The most cleverly constructed places of worship channel energy into the Earth and unto the sky, and even filter and focus it toward specific ends.

 

Controlling humankind is the main game around town. Most religions are in charge of edifices designed to subtly influence and control the minds of people in the lands they directly influence. At certain times and in the right hands, the grid network can be induced to resonate with extraordinary power. Sometimes, when the entire system is poised for impending change at times of cosmic confluence, the grid can be used to reset the mind of humankind – and even to alter human nature en masse.

 

The Magnetic Moment

 

“No man may know the day of my coming; I come like a thief in the night.” So says a ‘lord’ in the babbling Old Testament. ‘The Day of the Lord’ is the day of destruction, when the Earth is repaved in conflagrations and stars shift to new posts in heaven. At moments like these and at other nodal points in the spiral of timespace, when the magnetic field of the planet shifts and realigns, the entire world can be remade in manifold ways.

 

Certain places and edifices are finely tuned instruments whose potential can only be fulfilled by master conductors of energy - musicians/magicians prepared to emerge from the wings on cue to wield their baton/wand and remake the illusion of the world, and to repattern the human worldview. Those neophytes and supplicants who randomly pray or silently meditate in ‘spiritual centres’ can only feed psychic batteries that these priests and mages tap and channel.

 

At times in prehistory a singular consciousness controlled the entire old network of planetary influence from several plexuses at once – an extraordinary being possessed of transdimensional perceptions, who controlled the mass of humankind and instituted the hive-like pyramidal structures that have patterned almost all ‘civilised’ and domesticated human societies unto today. Many of the monuments that channelled this network were ultimately destroyed or submerged beneath the seas in a series of catastrophes that only culminated less than 3,000 years ago, when the ‘terrestrial’ inner planets of the solar system took up their current stations.

 

Those who inhabit the summit of power at the capstone of the societal pyramid are the very last to countenance change, unless it directly benefits them. Most real or fundamental change brings with it unpredictable and unforseen complications that can only threaten their towers of power. Change is anathema to most control freaks - yet when the magnetic field shifts they have little choice but to go with the flow, and attempt to ensure the next age to come in the wake of that shift will faithfully follow the pattern of their plan.

 

Nowadays there are several competing centres of power, all poised to attempt to wrest control of the planetary web at the Magnetic Moment, when momentum stops and Mind becomes silent. When everything pauses the code of the world is freed from its tethers and can be rewritten by those in control of the instruments of power. At this point in history the vocalists ready to sing their song are more cacophony than choir, possessed of as many differing agendas as a hydra has heads.

 

What can emerge from this discord? Will the harp they all attempt to simultaneously strum accidentally strike the right chord – the one that frees us all from their thrall?

 

To prepare for the Moment, examine and (dis)still your mind. With practice you can learn what it’s like in the moment of change, when the world turns around your silent centre. If enough of us focus on one thing when that time comes, all the plans of puppet masters will be for naught. If enough of us are prepared to dare to dream of paradise for all we can remake the world into something blessed. We can remake the world with dreams we all truly cherish in our combined heart of hearts. We can fulfil human destiny and remake Paradise on Earth.

 

No doubt all of this is difficult to credit for many or most. Those couched in the comforting illusions of permanence fostered by antiquated and carefully channelled academic and education systems may well ignore these little words entirely. The mindfield of the current paradigm is always self-reinforcing and filters out dangerous ideas, dreams and memories that are automatically proscribed for reasons of social stability.

 

No confirmation or conformation is required. You are free – and you are god(dess)!

 

See you in the Magnetic Moment – Happy New Aeon!

 

by Ram Ayana @ nexusilluminati.blogspot.com.au/search/label/r.%20ayana

— with Ram Ayana.

Photo Credit: Sandeep Sharma and Trishna Dutta, Smithsonian Conservation Biology Institute

 

As economic expansion and development fragments the forest landscape of central India, the species that rely on that habitat—including endangered tigers and leopards—face dwindling populations and increased competition for food and resources. Smithsonian Conservation Biology Institute scientists analyzed the genes of these great cats in the Satpura-Maikal landscape—a 15,000 km2 area composed of four interconnected reserves: Kanha, Satpura, Melghat and Pench. From April-June 2009 and Nov. 2009-May 2010, they collected scat (fecal matter) and hair samples for DNA analysis. This data, combined with India’s forest ecology history, enabled SCBI scientists to construct a definitive picture of how habitat loss affects the genetic diversity and gene flow of cat populations. Published in Evolutionary Applications and Proceedings of the Royal Society B, their research demonstrates that an intact forest corridor is vital for maintaining gene flow in these great cats.

 

Human activity in and around the Satpura-Maikal forest has dramatically changed the landscape over the course of 300 years. From 1700 C.E. to 2000 C.E., the habitat underwent a 25-fold increase in urbanization. Human population increased ten-fold, and anthropogenic activities resulted in the clearing of 78 percent of the forest, leaving just 32 percent of viable habitat for leopards and tigers. The reduced and fragmented landscape makes it difficult for these solitary animals to safely move between protected reserved in search of mates and territory.

 

SCBI scientists collected 1,411 scat samples, 66 hair samples and four claw samples and identified 217 leopards and 273 tigers in the same region. By extracting and analyzing genetic material, scientists found that leopard gene flow between the four protected areas in central India is much lower today than it has been in the past. The greatest decline of genetic diversity occurred between Melghat and Pench, the two most fragmented reserves. Reserves connected by forest corridors, however, has a higher rate of gene flow, suggesting that habitat connectivity directly affects the ability of leopards to find an unrelated mate.

 

Scientists found similar results for tigers. Three of the reserve pairs with poor forest connectivity—Kanha-Satpura, Pench-Melghat and Kanha-Melghat—showed a 47 to 70 percent reduction in gene flow when compared to historic levels. The most dramatic decrease in gene flow occurred between Kanha and Satpura—the pair of reserves with the least functional forest corridors.

 

As part of these studies, scientists reconstructed the demographic history of tigers in the Satpura-Maikal landscape. Using Bayesian and coalescent-based analyses, scientists identified three points when tiger populations clearly diverged. They found that tigers first entered India around 10,000 years ago. Their habitat fragmented 700 years ago as agricultural expansion and other human activities took place. In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, the third divergence event occurred as the British Empire expanded its territory and cleared the central Indian forests at an accelerated rate. After this development, the tiger population was drastically reduced and was further isolated.

 

As urbanization continues to infringe upon the natural Satpura-Maikal landscape, forest corridors play an increasingly important role in ensuring the survival of leopard and tiger populations. This research will be highly relevant to policy makers in central India as deforestation, road widening and coal mining continue to threaten tiger and leopard habitat. Both studies call for the protection of central India’s forest corridors, which are vital to maintaining genetic diversity in the populations by maintaining gene flow between protected areas. For more information on the role these corridors play in the conservation of big cat species, visit the Zoo’s website.

 

# # #

 

The World Grid and the Whirled Mind ~

...The great sphere of the planet is crisscrossed by lines of force that adhere to the geometry of three dimensions. These shapes simultaneously mirror the patterns of higher order ‘hyperspace’ geometries [see TimeSpace]. Lines of energy follow paths of least resistance – the leyline network recognised and used by antediluvian civilisations, the dragon lines of the Gael and the Orient; the Songlines of nomadic aboriginal people.

 

The planet flows through a vibrating sea of energy. This bathes us in frequencies and wavelengths that define the courses of energies flowing across and through the Earth. Lines of least resistance form an intricately interconnected series of grids that map hyperspatial geometries onto and into the globe of the planet. They’re the acupuncture meridians of Gaia, and nodal points are strung along them as acupuncture points on the human body. As above, so below.

 

These nodal points are sacred sites and places of power that can be used for great good or ill. The fortuitous locations and arrangements of most temples and shrines, churches and mosques from antiquity to the present time indicates at least one of two things – 1) that gifted dowsers have always been with us, working at the behest of secretive conspiratorial master architects, and/or 2) that the works of humankind are parts of a greater plan serving the planet and/or other agencies – again, for good or for ill, in terms of the best interests of human beings and the myriad lifeforms that dwell in the wonderfully wild garden of Gaia.

 

In either case, the sanctuaries of world religions are constructed on primordial bastions of concentrated energy. There are those who know how to use or misuse these sites (and all the trappings of blinded faith – magical implements like altars, chalices, incense, books, bells and candles) in ways and purposes for which they’re intended. Just as the vast majority of people will never read or comprehend these little words, or read this far, almost all those in charge of sacred sites have no idea how to use them. They’re custodians, holding the sites in trust for others – just like all the smiling politicians and stern public servants in the secular world.

 

Where three or more gather in focus together our wills can combine to accomplish great ends. The whologram is greater than the sum of its parts. The massed and focused energies of congregations of living, breathing, wilful beings can be harnessed to feed the leyline/songline grid with specific patterns of sound, thought, motion and emotion – songs and dances, prayers and hopes that can be used as fuel to heal the world, or to further other agendas. The most cleverly constructed places of worship channel energy into the Earth and unto the sky, and even filter and focus it toward specific ends.

 

Controlling humankind is the main game around town. Most religions are in charge of edifices designed to subtly influence and control the minds of people in the lands they directly influence. At certain times and in the right hands, the grid network can be induced to resonate with extraordinary power. Sometimes, when the entire system is poised for impending change at times of cosmic confluence, the grid can be used to reset the mind of humankind – and even to alter human nature en masse.

 

The Magnetic Moment

 

“No man may know the day of my coming; I come like a thief in the night.” So says a ‘lord’ in the babbling Old Testament. ‘The Day of the Lord’ is the day of destruction, when the Earth is repaved in conflagrations and stars shift to new posts in heaven. At moments like these and at other nodal points in the spiral of timespace, when the magnetic field of the planet shifts and realigns, the entire world can be remade in manifold ways.

 

Certain places and edifices are finely tuned instruments whose potential can only be fulfilled by master conductors of energy - musicians/magicians prepared to emerge from the wings on cue to wield their baton/wand and remake the illusion of the world, and to repattern the human worldview. Those neophytes and supplicants who randomly pray or silently meditate in ‘spiritual centres’ can only feed psychic batteries that these priests and mages tap and channel.

 

At times in prehistory a singular consciousness controlled the entire old network of planetary influence from several plexuses at once – an extraordinary being possessed of transdimensional perceptions, who controlled the mass of humankind and instituted the hive-like pyramidal structures that have patterned almost all ‘civilised’ and domesticated human societies unto today. Many of the monuments that channelled this network were ultimately destroyed or submerged beneath the seas in a series of catastrophes that only culminated less than 3,000 years ago, when the ‘terrestrial’ inner planets of the solar system took up their current stations.

 

Those who inhabit the summit of power at the capstone of the societal pyramid are the very last to countenance change, unless it directly benefits them. Most real or fundamental change brings with it unpredictable and unforseen complications that can only threaten their towers of power. Change is anathema to most control freaks - yet when the magnetic field shifts they have little choice but to go with the flow, and attempt to ensure the next age to come in the wake of that shift will faithfully follow the pattern of their plan.

 

Nowadays there are several competing centres of power, all poised to attempt to wrest control of the planetary web at the Magnetic Moment, when momentum stops and Mind becomes silent. When everything pauses the code of the world is freed from its tethers and can be rewritten by those in control of the instruments of power. At this point in history the vocalists ready to sing their song are more cacophony than choir, possessed of as many differing agendas as a hydra has heads.

 

What can emerge from this discord? Will the harp they all attempt to simultaneously strum accidentally strike the right chord – the one that frees us all from their thrall?

 

To prepare for the Moment, examine and (dis)still your mind. With practice you can learn what it’s like in the moment of change, when the world turns around your silent centre. If enough of us focus on one thing when that time comes, all the plans of puppet masters will be for naught. If enough of us are prepared to dare to dream of paradise for all we can remake the world into something blessed. We can remake the world with dreams we all truly cherish in our combined heart of hearts. We can fulfil human destiny and remake Paradise on Earth.

 

No doubt all of this is difficult to credit for many or most. Those couched in the comforting illusions of permanence fostered by antiquated and carefully channelled academic and education systems may well ignore these little words entirely. The mindfield of the current paradigm is always self-reinforcing and filters out dangerous ideas, dreams and memories that are automatically proscribed for reasons of social stability.

 

No confirmation or conformation is required. You are free – and you are god(dess)!

 

See you in the Magnetic Moment – Happy New Aeon!

 

by Ram Ayana @ nexusilluminati.blogspot.com.au/search/label/r.%20ayana

— with Ram Ayana.

A 444-axle CN 401 is approaching Turcot West with a couple of strings of TankTrain cars behind the usual head end autoracks. The right of way it is traveling on (CN's Montreal Sub) is supposed to be taken out of service by the end of the month, replaced by a brand new line slightly further north. To the right of the train are the remains of what were once the westbound lanes of autoroute 20, now also shifted further north.

American Museum of Natural History. New York. Jan/2017

 

The American Museum of Natural History (abbreviated as AMNH), located on the Upper West Side of Manhattan, New York City, is one of the largest museums in the world. Located in park-like grounds across the street from Central Park, the museum complex comprises 28 interconnected buildings housing 45 permanent exhibition halls, in addition to a planetarium and a library. The museum collections contain over 33 million specimens of plants, animals, fossils, minerals, rocks, meteorites, human remains, and human cultural artifacts, of which only a small fraction can be displayed at any given time, and occupies more than 2,000,000 square feet (190,000 m2). The museum has a full-time scientific staff of 225, sponsors over 120 special field expeditions each year, and averages about five million visits annually.

The one mission statement of the American Museum of Natural History is: "To discover, interpret, and disseminate—through scientific research and education—knowledge about human cultures, the natural world, and the universe.

 

Source: Wikipedia

 

O Museu Americano de História Natural (American Museum of Natural History, em inglês) é um museu dos Estados Unidos da América, localizado em Nova Iorque e fundado em 1869. É especialmente reconhecido pela sua vasta coleção de fósseis, incluindo de espécies de Dinossauros. Uma das grandes atrações do museu é uma coleção de esqueletos de dinossauro, com mais de 30 milhões de fósseis e artefatos espalhados por 42 salas de exibição.Um T-Rex de aproximadamente 15 metros e dá as boas vindas aos visitantes na entrada.

Theodore Roosevelt está ligado à sua fundação e é lembrado no actual museu por um memorial. O primeiro edifício do museu acabou de ser construído em 1877, a partir do projecto de Calvert Vaux e Jacob Wrey Mould, a partir de uma ideia de Albert Smith Bickmore, discípulo de Louis Agassiz no Museu de Zoologia Comparativa de Harvard, em 1860. O museu serviu como cenário para o filme "Uma Noite no Museu" (2006).

Fonte: Wikipedia

Original Caption: Modular solar-heated house built near Corrales, New Mexico, features interconnected units of aluminum with a urethane inner core as insulation. Panels on south facing walls are dropped to pass sun through the inner glass walls to heat blackened 55-gallon drums filled with water. Panels close at night, 04/1974

  

U.S. National Archives’ Local Identifier: 412-DA-12855

  

Photographer: Norton, Boyd

 

Subjects:

Environmental protection

Natural resources

Pollution

Albuquerque (New Mexico, United States) inhabited place

 

Persistent URL: research.archives.gov/description/555307

 

Repository: Still Picture Records Section, Special Media Archives Services Division (NWCS-S), National Archives at College Park, 8601 Adelphi Road, College Park, MD, 20740-6001.

 

For information about ordering reproductions of photographs held by the Still Picture Unit, visit: www.archives.gov/research/order/still-pictures.html

 

Reproductions may be ordered via an independent vendor. NARA maintains a list of vendors at www.archives.gov/research/order/vendors-photos-maps-dc.html

 

Access Restrictions: Unrestricted

Use Restrictions: Unrestricted

The Watts Towers or Towers of Simon Rodia in the Watts district of Los Angeles, California, is a collection of 17 interconnected structures, two of which reach heights of over 99 feet (30 m). The Towers were built by Italian immigrant construction worker Sabato ("Sam" or "Simon") Rodia in his spare time over a period of 33 years, from 1921 to 1954. The work is an example of non-traditional vernacular architecture and American Naïve art.

 

The Watts Towers, and their creator Simon Rodia's friendship with a 10-year-old boy, are a major focus of Daniel and The Towers, a 1987 made-for-television movie.

 

The plot of E.L. Konigsburg's The Outcasts of 19 Shuyler Place involves a young girl's efforts to save the three towers made from metal pipes and broken glass, china, etc. from demolition planned by the city's council which claims that the towers pose a safety hazard. The reason those towers were built was that the builders wanted to do something big, just like Rodia.

 

The Towers are mentioned in the Dragnet '69, Season 3, Episode DR-11 "Management Services." The episode discusses LA as being a center of art culture and the Towers are used as a prime example.

 

The Towers are featured in the opening scene of Wattstax, a 1973 documentary film by Mel Stuart that focused on the 1972 Wattstax music festival and the African American community of Watts in Los Angeles.

Ambient musical group Porn Sword Tobacco recorded a song called "Watts Towers".

 

The towers are celebrated in Episode 3 of Jacob Bronowski's TV documentary Ascent of Man.

 

The Watts Towers play a significant role in the 1991 crime-thriller film Ricochet.

 

In Solomania!: A Festival of one-man(woman) shows (2006), Roger Guenveur Smith's The Watts Towers Project relates to the audience his fascination of the Watts Towers as he attempts to discover his own personal mark as an artist.

 

Charles Mingus' autobiography, Beneath the Underdog makes reference to the towers as a part of Mingus' upbringing.[7]

 

An episode of the HBO original series Six Feet Under features the towers, (season 3, episode 4, "Nobody Sleeps", timecode 33.17).

 

Colors features a car chase scene that ends when the Crips' car being chased crashes into one of the towers. The ending of the movie also includes a scene with which the towers are directly in the background.

 

The Towers were once used to film (or videotape) a brief location segment that appeared on the Donny & Marie variety show. In the segment, the Osmonds sang, then briefly described the Towers.

 

The 1976 blaxploitation horror film Dr. Black, Mr. Hyde climaxes with the title villain confronted by police outside the towers. The police refuse to fire on him because he is standing in front of the mosaic walls surrounding the towers. He escapes inside the structure and climbs one of the towers until he is shot down by the police. The towers were even featured prominently in the poster art for the film.

 

Robert Duncan wrote a poem entitled "Nel Mezzo Del Cammin Di Nostra Vita," published in Roots and Branches in 1964. This poem uses the Watts Towers as the focal image, discussing them as "art dedicated to itself" and as a kind of celebration of the individual, comparing the towers to the church and suggesting that they are a kind of church of the creative self.

 

One scene in Andy Warhol & Taylor Meade's 1964 film entitled "Tarzan and Jane Regained... Sort of" was shot in the towers.

 

The towers appear on the original cover of the 1975 album Brown Rice, by jazz trumpeter Don Cherry and the 1958 album Harold in the Land of Jazz by saxophonist Harold Land.

On the Red Hot Chili Peppers song "Good Time Boys" found on the album Mother's Milk, frontman Anthony Kiedis sings "Building up our brains with the supernatural powers/We take it from the trees and the mighty Watts Towers."

 

The towers appear in the show on BET called Baldwin Hills.

 

The towers feature heavily in an episode of the short-lived science fiction series Dark Skies, with the strong suggestion being that Rodia was inspired to build them by a telepathic vision of the human DNA helix.

 

Los Angeles underground MC MURS references the towers in the song "LA" from his 2006 album Murray's Revenge : "From the Towers in Watts, to the hills of Altadena."

An episode of Sanford and Son called "Tower Power" involves Fred Sanford building a structure from his own junk that was obviously inspired by the Watts towers, although they are not mentioned by name.

 

The towers appear on the cover of 2001 album 2000 Watts, by R&B artist Tyrese.

 

The story "Beautiful Junk," is a fictional story about the artist of the towers and a boy. The book's author is Jon Madian and is copyrighted in 1968.

 

The towers are referenced in Don DeLillo's novel Underworld, where characters Nick Shay and Klara Sax both visit Watts Towers.

 

The towers were in The World Almanac for Kids 2004.

 

Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas featured a re-creation of the Watts Towers, in East Los Santos, Los Santos

 

The story of the building of the towers are told in a children's book titled "The Wonderful Towers of Watts" by Patricia Zelver with pictures by Frané Lessac.

 

The towers appear briefly in the background after a murder victim is found in the "Sally in the Alley," an episode of the 2009 NBC series Southland, later rebroadcast on the TNT network.

 

Michelle Shocked referenced the towers in her song Come A Long Way - Arkansas Traveler lp 1992

the towers appear on the cover of Henry Jacobs LP The Wide Weird World of Shorty Petterstein, World Pacific, 1957.

 

The towers appear briefly in the movie Menace II Society during a "fly over" shot of the Watts district.

 

Sam Rodia, a description of the towers and their history are mentioned in the novel Caesarion by Dutch writer Tommy Wieringa.

 

Macy Gray shot the video for her song "Beauty in the World" at the Watts Towers.

  

Source: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Watts_Towers

Berwyn, Illinois

Earlier in the year I was part of a gathering with Sr. Joan to make a collage of our vision for the year. I didn't really have a clear vision as I was making it, but as I gaze upon it now, I see it as the first 4 lines of the Lord's Prayer from Neil Douglas-Kotz's interpretation of it in Aramaic. Sacred Unity, clearing a space for that to live, attuning to harmony and that vision of the cosmos of that kingdom/queendom in the now.

Earlier in the year I was part of a gathering with Sr. Joan to make a collage of our vision for the year. I didn't really have a clear vision as I was making it, but as I gaze upon it now, I see it as the first 4 lines of the Lord's Prayer from Neil Douglas-Kotz's interpretation of it in Aramaic. Sacred Unity, clearing a space for that to live, attuning to harmony and that vision of the cosmos of that kingdom/queendom in the now.

"War on Venus" is one of four interconnected stories that make up “Escape on Venus,” the fourth book in Edgar Rice Burroughs' Venus series. The stories were published in “Fantastic Adventures” between 1941 and 1942 and collected in 1946.

 

Here’s some information about the plot of “Escape on Venus:” Earthman Carson Napier crash lands on Venus after a miscalculation while trying to reach Mars. He rescues Princess Duare from a variety of perils, including a tribe of humanoid amphibians and a military city-state. Duare is sentenced to death by her father’s palace and they flee in an airship he built. The two outlaws search for refuge in the skies of Aptor, but encounter many dangers.

 

Connected, tensed, interconnected, rusted, frayed... holding on.

St.Paul’s Catacombs are a typical complex of interconnected, underground Roman cemeteries that were in use up to the 4th century AD. They are located on the outskirts of the old Roman capital Melite (today’s Mdina), since Roman law prohibited burials within the city. St Paul’s Catacombs represent the earliest and largest archaeological evidence of Christianity in Malta. The site was cleared and investigated in 1894 by Dr A.A. Caruana, the pioneer of Christian era archaeology in Malta.

The Catacombs of St Paul are situated in the zone of Ħal Bajjada in Rabat, in an area which is at times also called as Tad-Dlam. The site consists of two large areas called St Paul’s and Saints Paul/Agatha, and are littered with more than 30 hypogea, of which the main complex, situated within the St Paul’s cluster, comprises a complex system of interconnected passages and tombs covering an area of well over 2000 sqr metres.

The cluster gets its name from the myth that it was once connected with St Paul’s Grotto, which was once also partly re-cut into a Palaeochristian hypogeum. The origin of the main catacomb most probably started from a cluster of small tombs of the Punico-Roman type and hypogea which were eventually enlarged and joined haphazardly to create the complex system of passages and tombs used in the late Roman period. Although much smaller when compared to the catacombs of Rome and other large Roman centres, the catacombs of St Paul are a good example of the Maltese underground architecture, which is the result of an indigenous development which was barely influenced by overseas traditions.

The entrance to the main complex of St Paul’s Catacombs leads to two considerably large halls, adorned with pillars made to resemble Doric columns and painted plasters most of which have now disappeared. On keeping with what seems to have been a norm in most Christian catacombs, these main halls are equipped with two circular tables set in a low platform with sloping sides which resemble the reclining couch (triclinium) present in Roman houses. In all cases found in the main complex and the numerous other Christian Hypogea of the site, both table and couch are hewn out in one piece form the living rock forming a single architectural unit within an apsed recess. Although various interpretations may be found, these triclinia, or Agape tables, were probably used to host commemorative meals during the annual festival of the dead, during which the rites of burials were renewed.

The complex was probably abandoned and to some extent despoiled during the Saracenic period, when burial customs changed dramatically to suit the practices of the new conquerors. Part of the catacombs were used again during the re-Christianisation of the Island around the 13th century, when an open space was re-cut and used as a Christian shrine decorated with murals.

The catacombs were eventually abandoned and the site fell in disrepair. The main entrance was blocked off but access was still possible through an independent hypogeum in Djar Ħanżira (now Catacombs alley). It was from here that G.F. Abela probably accessed the site, which he described in his Della Descritione di Malta. The complex was however only cleared of debris in 1894 by A.A. Caruana, who cleared all the passages of rubble and surveyed the complex, including the areas appropriated by private landowners.

 

St.Paul’s Catacombs are a typical complex of interconnected, underground Roman cemeteries that were in use up to the 4th century AD. They are located on the outskirts of the old Roman capital Melite (today’s Mdina), since Roman law prohibited burials within the city. St Paul’s Catacombs represent the earliest and largest archaeological evidence of Christianity in Malta. The site was cleared and investigated in 1894 by Dr A.A. Caruana, the pioneer of Christian era archaeology in Malta.

The Catacombs of St Paul are situated in the zone of Ħal Bajjada in Rabat, in an area which is at times also called as Tad-Dlam. The site consists of two large areas called St Paul’s and Saints Paul/Agatha, and are littered with more than 30 hypogea, of which the main complex, situated within the St Paul’s cluster, comprises a complex system of interconnected passages and tombs covering an area of well over 2000 sqr metres.

The cluster gets its name from the myth that it was once connected with St Paul’s Grotto, which was once also partly re-cut into a Palaeochristian hypogeum. The origin of the main catacomb most probably started from a cluster of small tombs of the Punico-Roman type and hypogea which were eventually enlarged and joined haphazardly to create the complex system of passages and tombs used in the late Roman period. Although much smaller when compared to the catacombs of Rome and other large Roman centres, the catacombs of St Paul are a good example of the Maltese underground architecture, which is the result of an indigenous development which was barely influenced by overseas traditions.

The entrance to the main complex of St Paul’s Catacombs leads to two considerably large halls, adorned with pillars made to resemble Doric columns and painted plasters most of which have now disappeared. On keeping with what seems to have been a norm in most Christian catacombs, these main halls are equipped with two circular tables set in a low platform with sloping sides which resemble the reclining couch (triclinium) present in Roman houses. In all cases found in the main complex and the numerous other Christian Hypogea of the site, both table and couch are hewn out in one piece form the living rock forming a single architectural unit within an apsed recess. Although various interpretations may be found, these triclinia, or Agape tables, were probably used to host commemorative meals during the annual festival of the dead, during which the rites of burials were renewed.

The complex was probably abandoned and to some extent despoiled during the Saracenic period, when burial customs changed dramatically to suit the practices of the new conquerors. Part of the catacombs were used again during the re-Christianisation of the Island around the 13th century, when an open space was re-cut and used as a Christian shrine decorated with murals.

The catacombs were eventually abandoned and the site fell in disrepair. The main entrance was blocked off but access was still possible through an independent hypogeum in Djar Ħanżira (now Catacombs alley). It was from here that G.F. Abela probably accessed the site, which he described in his Della Descritione di Malta. The complex was however only cleared of debris in 1894 by A.A. Caruana, who cleared all the passages of rubble and surveyed the complex, including the areas appropriated by private landowners.

 

An entry into the military group's competition. Made for the interconnected vignette category.

 

Urban combat is bloody, personal and extremely slow. An invading spec ops team meets resistance at every street corner and is forced to dig into the city itself. This is just a little skirmsh over an area labeled tennis court #8. The title "battle" is meant to show just how slow urban combat is.

 

One spec ops member has had his leg blown off and is bleeding profusely all over the street. A defending soldier is just about to shoot him, but he fails to notice the other spec ops member hiding behind the rusted chain link fence.

 

What will happen to the soldier? Who will win the battle? Who will pay for all the damage done to the shop window?

 

"Toon in next week to find out"

The internet has shown itself to be a model for growing, interconnected "scal-free" networks... and as new services and tools are added, we face a world where things are not all neatly categorized or stored centrally. Can we deal with it?

 

Looming Questions...

*How to we as individuals handle the distributed nature of content?

* And how do we approach disaggregation as educators?

* Do we have to maintain "control" (e.g. "What happens if that web site disappears?")?

How can we help both teachers and students handle what seems "chaos"?

* What are the pros and cons of using third-party applications such as Flickr or del.icio.us?

* What are the implications for managing content? Backing up? Security? Authentication? Copyright?

 

Network Literacy

What's more important to teach our students is network literacy: writing in a distributed, collaborative environment. Weblogs are the first native web genre. Serial, unstable (ethics: edit? annotate? delete? change your mind? - compare net journalism, post-editing), networked. Jill Walker, Talk At Brown

 

Network Behaviors

Blog Lessons: User Patterns on LiveJournal, Clay Shirky, May 2002. A study of LiveJournal, a diary-format weblog, shows that the average pair of users in a group of 250,000 can be connected in four hops or less, and that this degree of connectivity relies on a small but fantastically connected core of users who serve as 'human routers'. The way their behavior affects the system as a whole has interesting implications for weblog design and use patterns.

The Hive Mind: Folksonomies and User-Based Tagging

* Look at the definition of MySpace Meet people from your area in the country and keep in touch. Site includes blog, forums, email, groups, games and events. That is FAR beyond blogging.

* Read about MySpace: Design Anarchy That Works (Top Tech News). MySpace has developed a particular appeal for young people because the site makes it especially easy for bands to set up pages to communicate with their fans... Today, the statistics are staggering: 43 million users so far, 150,000 new ones every day. Ten percent of all advertising impressions across the entire Internet happen on MySpace -- twice as many page views as Google.

 

Distributed Conversations

Blogs are but one piece in what some call "distributed conversations"- a loose connectiion where pieces of the conversation occur in different web sites. They may be more difficult to navigate.

 

Is there a tension between people who have comfort in following a conversation between posts on different blogs, tracking topics via search tools or RSS an dothers who seem to want them all neatly organized. structured, and in one place (like a threaded discussion)?

 

* Deconstructed Distributed Conversations Will Richardson, Weblogg-ed

* Sharing Learning Contexts Within A Distributed Conversation Model Scott Wilson

* Four Reasons Why the Blogsphere Might Make a Better Professional Collaborative Environment than Discussion Forums David Warlick (2 cents worth)

* 10 Reasons Why Blogs Are an Awkward Conversation Tool Amy Gahran, at The Right Conversation, wants things nice and neatly organized.

* Technorati search on "distributed conversations"

 

Our Blogged Bits...

* Alan's Distributed Conversations: More Than Four Reasons and Conversations: Tree People and Cave Dwellers

* Brian's The Conversation

* Brian's The Network Delivers the Goods

* Brian's post on a bad Technorati experience (good discussion in the comments field).

 

See more examples and resources in the network tag stream.

 

Image Credits: Mock-up of SciFi book cover created by Alan Levine, derived from Creative Commons licensed flickr image Karl Eschenbach

  

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The rainbow appeared from several different angles at Palouse Falls in eastern Washington state, which was cool!

 

Created by the Lake Missoula floods, Palouse Falls is located in the Palouse Falls Natural Area. The basalt in the area was caused by lava flows. The area is characterized by interconnected and hanging flood-created coulees, cataracts, plunge pools, kolk created potholes, rock benches, buttes and pinacles typical of scablands. Palouse Falls State Park is located at the falls, protecting this part of the uniquely scenic area.

 

There are 10 primitive campsites here, and 50 sites, no hookups, are available at Lyon's Ferry Park, just 10 minutes south.

 

Here are a couple of informative sites about the park - www.parks.wa.gov/parkpage.asp?selectedpark=Palouse Falls

www.spokaneoutdoors.com/pfalls.htm

 

This was part of the Missoula Flood area.

 

The Missoula Floods (also known as the Spokane Floods or the Bretz Floods) refer to the cataclysmic floods that swept periodically across eastern Washington and down the Columbia River Gorge at the end of the last ice age.

 

These glacial lake outburst floods were the result of periodic sudden ruptures of the ice dam on the Clark Fork River that created Glacial Lake Missoula. After each ice dam rupture (over 25 of them), the waters of the lake would rush down the Clark Fork and the Columbia River, inundating much of eastern Washington and the Willamette Valley in western Oregon. After the rupture, the ice would reform, recreating Glacial Lake Missoula once again. Geologists estimate that the cycle of flooding and reformation of the lake lasted an average of 55 years and that the floods occurred several times over the 2,000-year period between 15,000 and 13,000 years ago.

The Renaissance Center (also known as the GM Renaissance Center and nicknamed the RenCen) is a group of seven interconnected skyscrapers in Downtown Detroit, Michigan, United States. Located on the International Riverfront, the Renaissance Center complex is owned by General Motors as its world headquarters. The central tower, the Detroit Marriott at the Renaissance Center, is the tallest all-hotel skyscraper in the Western Hemisphere, and features the largest rooftop restaurant, Coach Insignia. It has been the tallest building in Michigan since it was erected in 1977.

 

John Portman was the principal architect for the original design. The first phase constructed a five tower rosette rising from a common base. Four 39-story office towers surround the 73-story hotel rising from a square-shaped podium which includes a shopping center, restaurants, brokerage firms, banks, a four-screen movie theater and private clubs. The first phase officially opened in March 1977. Portman's design renewed attention to city architecture, constructing the world's tallest hotel at the time. Two additional 21-story office towers (known as Tower 500 and Tower 600) opened in 1981. This type of complex has been termed a city within a city.

 

In 2004, General Motors completed a US$500 million renovation of the Class-A center as its world headquarters, which it had purchased in 1996. The renovation included the addition of the five-story Wintergarden atrium, which provides access to the International Riverfront. Architects for the renovation included Skidmore, Owings & Merrill, Gensler, SmithGroup, and Ghafari Associates. Work continued in and around the complex until 2005. Renaissance Center totals 5,552,000 square feet (515,800 m2) making it one of the world's largest commercial complexes.

 

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Renaissance_Center

 

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Text_of_Creative_Commons_...

 

The World Grid and the Whirled Mind ~

...The great sphere of the planet is crisscrossed by lines of force that adhere to the geometry of three dimensions. These shapes simultaneously mirror the patterns of higher order ‘hyperspace’ geometries [see TimeSpace]. Lines of energy follow paths of least resistance – the leyline network recognised and used by antediluvian civilisations, the dragon lines of the Gael and the Orient; the Songlines of nomadic aboriginal people.

 

The planet flows through a vibrating sea of energy. This bathes us in frequencies and wavelengths that define the courses of energies flowing across and through the Earth. Lines of least resistance form an intricately interconnected series of grids that map hyperspatial geometries onto and into the globe of the planet. They’re the acupuncture meridians of Gaia, and nodal points are strung along them as acupuncture points on the human body. As above, so below.

 

These nodal points are sacred sites and places of power that can be used for great good or ill. The fortuitous locations and arrangements of most temples and shrines, churches and mosques from antiquity to the present time indicates at least one of two things – 1) that gifted dowsers have always been with us, working at the behest of secretive conspiratorial master architects, and/or 2) that the works of humankind are parts of a greater plan serving the planet and/or other agencies – again, for good or for ill, in terms of the best interests of human beings and the myriad lifeforms that dwell in the wonderfully wild garden of Gaia.

 

In either case, the sanctuaries of world religions are constructed on primordial bastions of concentrated energy. There are those who know how to use or misuse these sites (and all the trappings of blinded faith – magical implements like altars, chalices, incense, books, bells and candles) in ways and purposes for which they’re intended. Just as the vast majority of people will never read or comprehend these little words, or read this far, almost all those in charge of sacred sites have no idea how to use them. They’re custodians, holding the sites in trust for others – just like all the smiling politicians and stern public servants in the secular world.

 

Where three or more gather in focus together our wills can combine to accomplish great ends. The whologram is greater than the sum of its parts. The massed and focused energies of congregations of living, breathing, wilful beings can be harnessed to feed the leyline/songline grid with specific patterns of sound, thought, motion and emotion – songs and dances, prayers and hopes that can be used as fuel to heal the world, or to further other agendas. The most cleverly constructed places of worship channel energy into the Earth and unto the sky, and even filter and focus it toward specific ends.

 

Controlling humankind is the main game around town. Most religions are in charge of edifices designed to subtly influence and control the minds of people in the lands they directly influence. At certain times and in the right hands, the grid network can be induced to resonate with extraordinary power. Sometimes, when the entire system is poised for impending change at times of cosmic confluence, the grid can be used to reset the mind of humankind – and even to alter human nature en masse.

 

The Magnetic Moment

 

“No man may know the day of my coming; I come like a thief in the night.” So says a ‘lord’ in the babbling Old Testament. ‘The Day of the Lord’ is the day of destruction, when the Earth is repaved in conflagrations and stars shift to new posts in heaven. At moments like these and at other nodal points in the spiral of timespace, when the magnetic field of the planet shifts and realigns, the entire world can be remade in manifold ways.

 

Certain places and edifices are finely tuned instruments whose potential can only be fulfilled by master conductors of energy - musicians/magicians prepared to emerge from the wings on cue to wield their baton/wand and remake the illusion of the world, and to repattern the human worldview. Those neophytes and supplicants who randomly pray or silently meditate in ‘spiritual centres’ can only feed psychic batteries that these priests and mages tap and channel.

 

At times in prehistory a singular consciousness controlled the entire old network of planetary influence from several plexuses at once – an extraordinary being possessed of transdimensional perceptions, who controlled the mass of humankind and instituted the hive-like pyramidal structures that have patterned almost all ‘civilised’ and domesticated human societies unto today. Many of the monuments that channelled this network were ultimately destroyed or submerged beneath the seas in a series of catastrophes that only culminated less than 3,000 years ago, when the ‘terrestrial’ inner planets of the solar system took up their current stations.

 

Those who inhabit the summit of power at the capstone of the societal pyramid are the very last to countenance change, unless it directly benefits them. Most real or fundamental change brings with it unpredictable and unforseen complications that can only threaten their towers of power. Change is anathema to most control freaks - yet when the magnetic field shifts they have little choice but to go with the flow, and attempt to ensure the next age to come in the wake of that shift will faithfully follow the pattern of their plan.

 

Nowadays there are several competing centres of power, all poised to attempt to wrest control of the planetary web at the Magnetic Moment, when momentum stops and Mind becomes silent. When everything pauses the code of the world is freed from its tethers and can be rewritten by those in control of the instruments of power. At this point in history the vocalists ready to sing their song are more cacophony than choir, possessed of as many differing agendas as a hydra has heads.

 

What can emerge from this discord? Will the harp they all attempt to simultaneously strum accidentally strike the right chord – the one that frees us all from their thrall?

 

To prepare for the Moment, examine and (dis)still your mind. With practice you can learn what it’s like in the moment of change, when the world turns around your silent centre. If enough of us focus on one thing when that time comes, all the plans of puppet masters will be for naught. If enough of us are prepared to dare to dream of paradise for all we can remake the world into something blessed. We can remake the world with dreams we all truly cherish in our combined heart of hearts. We can fulfil human destiny and remake Paradise on Earth.

 

No doubt all of this is difficult to credit for many or most. Those couched in the comforting illusions of permanence fostered by antiquated and carefully channelled academic and education systems may well ignore these little words entirely. The mindfield of the current paradigm is always self-reinforcing and filters out dangerous ideas, dreams and memories that are automatically proscribed for reasons of social stability.

 

No confirmation or conformation is required. You are free – and you are god(dess)!

 

See you in the Magnetic Moment – Happy New Aeon!

 

by Ram Ayana @ nexusilluminati.blogspot.com.au/search/label/r.%20ayana

— with Ram Ayana.

1 APR 13

 

I went out to check on my corn as I do every morning. Didn't have to water the garden today because of the heavy rains yesterday, and almost walked smack dab into this. Just the other day, I remember walking into some webs and pulling the stuff off my face, and now, just a few days later, what I assume is the same spider, has rebuilt its web. I wish I could have gotten a clearer picture of just how amazing this is. This tiny thing has attached its web from the giant red bush to the right, to the fake owl I have guarding the garden some five feet away. It is so crazy to think of the distance between and how long this took to make. It already had a couple of flies in the web though I didn't see the actual spider. Disturbingly yesterday, I came across one of those fat bottomed spiders who's toxins I think are very poisonous to humans. Usually down in these parts we get the spindly leg type that don't bother anyone unless, you want to be bothered.

 

So I was thinking about what I wanted to get for the baby shower end of April, and I thought, get...who are you and what have you done with yourself...no, I will be making my baby shower gift because I am awesome. I am going to tackle the fine art of the baby cake...which is surprisingly simple to make. For all the guys reading this, a baby cake is usually a three layered "cake" composed of diapers. It's just a creative way to give a new mom diapers rather then handing her some big old cardboard box. The great thing about this is I have plenty of cake boards from my momentary obsession with learning to make real cakes...by the way...despite 'all of that' two years ago, I still have never done it. I have an entire drawer filled with various cake pan sizes, turn table, cake knifes and spatulas, and trowels, and pastry bags, and gum paste, but never have I actually made it. I know exactly what happened, in that I made a one layer, which I split in two, but I had no clue how to cut an even layer, so the cake ended up with a giant jaggety edge and then a giant hole in it which is JUDICIOUSLY covered in buttercream, but it was a disaster, so I just never went back to try for a two layer and above...but I digress...

 

I'm really getting into the process doing the little research. I want to stick all kinds of onesies and teething rings and stuff into it. I finally also found the cupcakes I want to make. Its a sea theme party, so the cupcakes will be frosted in blue icing, with tiny goldfish (crackers) with dots of icing for bubbles, with crumbled cookies as the ocean floor with green fruit leather as seaweed. The same friend who organized the shower last year for our mutual friend, is doing it for this friend. That year he asked me to make the monkey cupcakes which were a huge hit for her monkey themed party, so he was like, you're the first person I thought of. That's always nice :o) Love it. Me and Hobby Lobby are best friends. I love to create any way possible, so cupcakes and baby cakes, yes!

 

So this morning I was about to open my mail when I saw the news feed with the words "gruesome injury" so of course, I opened it. Turns out this guy named Kevin Ware was in I believe the NCAA tournament and went for the ball, and landed, no big deal, except for his leg buckled out from under him because his femur literally busted through his skin. HOLY mother of! There was a video attached and man, it was crazy. You could see when he landed the players on the bench literally get up and scream. Kevin's team mates were trying not to throw up and crying and hugging and falling to their needs and the audience whom I think was shielded from the actual bone jutting out by the fact that the med team covered it as quick as they could with towels, was on their feet just in shock. How does that even happen? Someone suggested he must have had a hairline fracture prior to the game because ones leg just doesn't f-in break like that. Seriously, youtube it if you have the stomach for it. After going through some training, stuff like that doesn't horrify me to the point where I can't look at it. Dont' get me wrong, its horrifying, but I can look at it and not lose it. It reminded me of this Tru TV video where these two women at a company picnic were arm wrestling and right there, the one girl snapped the other girls arm and you see the bone just sort of rotate awkwardly, and her wrist just went limp and twisted in a really not normal way. It was like ten seconds of nobody moved. I've seen plenty of skiers who have broken their legs and had them flipped up in a way ones leg should never go, and what I think is one of the worst, the compact mirror falls where the body falls and your head hits your knees. Never good, never. I dooooo however, have my limits. I have never been able to really look at eye surgery...totally freaks me out, and dental surgery. I had to watch it for my Dentistry class where in preparation for full dentures, they have to snap out and remove all the patients remaining teeth. There are no words for the blood and gore in that. No words....eesh. Did I mention, that I used to want to be an Orthopedic surgeon...yeah, well, there you have it. Speedy recovery to KW. UNlucky break man.