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Having just finished the book, I find myself “just thinking about the weather” (like 10,000 Maniacs).
Every decade, we have added one day to our forward weather forecast. So, today’s weekly forecast is as accurate as the 2-day forecast in the 70’s. In the first book on weather prediction — 100 years ago — Lewis Fry Richardson prophesied “perhaps someday in the dim future it will be possible to advance the computation faster than the weather advances, and at a cost less than the savings to mankind due to the information gained. But that is a dream.”
What a setup for Moore’s Law! More on that later.
Weather predictions started with telegraph networks in the 1860’s. News of a storm front could arrive by electrical signals faster than the wind itself. Those physical networks were interrupted by the civil war and the great wars. The observational stations drove short term forecasts driven by simple pattern matching; meteorologists flipped through maps of prior patterns to find one that looked similar, missing the nuances in the complex networks of interactions.
What was needed was a theory, a mathematics derived from first principles of the physics of atmospheric flows. Those equations, a collection of interlocking partial differential equations, across a matrix of pressure, temperature, air density, wind vectors and such, were first published in 1904 (and are the subject of the thick textbook below). They are practically unsolvable, but can be approximated with a variety of numerical / graphical methods and approximations (hydrostatic, anelastic, autobarotropic shallow fluid, etc.). New weather prediction models were then back tested on historical data, an iterative feedback cycle of learning from past to present.
The weather became important to ship traffic and battle planning, and forecasts were weaponized in wartime. The terminology of weather “fronts” traces to the martial vernacular of WW I. The Germans were at a distinct meteorological disadvantage, with storms coming from areas controlled by the Allied powers. Siemens developed automatic weather stations with NiCad batteries and radios that could be dropped off by plane in remote locations. With 200 submarines trying to maintain a blockade of England, the Germans desperately needed weather predictions for the North Atlantic. In 1943, they sent U-537 to an uninhabited part of North America, and set up a weather station on a local peak, with a long range 30-ft. diameter antenna to beam weather data back to Germany. To evade detection, they hand-painted “Canada Meteor Service” on the side and scattered American cigarette packs about. It remained there until discovered in 1981. Yes, the only known incursion by the Nazis onto North American soil was for the weather.
Then came the rockets. The first U.S. launch of a V-2 rocket brought back from Germany snapped a picture of the cloud cover as had never been seen before, with a quarter of the U.S. in a single frame. In 1954, an Aerobee rocket cam captured the first clear image of a tropical storm swirling in the Gulf of Mexico, and it became a full-page spread in Life magazine. (I have an Aerobee nose cone, fin can, and engine on display at work).
The first weather satellite, TIROS 1, launched in 1960, and in Kennedy’s famous speech that launched the Apollo program, he also beckoned “at the earliest possible time, a satellite system for worldwide weather observation.” It was overshadowed a bit by the whole man on the moon thing.
Today, the polar-orbiting LEO satellites raster scan the Earth (like Planet Labs) and “contribute the most quantitative data to the weather models. When it comes to meaningful impacts on forecasting, they are the champs.” (p.81). We have hundreds of LEO and GEO birds with a variety of weather instruments (optical, IR, radar) providing global coverage.
It’s a torrent of data, feeding supercomputers that are upgraded every two years. About half of the supercomputers on Earth are working on the weather. The European Center for Medium-Range Weather forecasts has two supercomputers the size of volleyball courts with 260,000 processor cores (in 2019). They maintain the current champion model for forecasting. They devote 50% of their compute cycles to iterating on model improvements (and the other 50% running the latest model for the world). They have improved their forecasts continuously for 40 years straight.
To build a global model, there are global sensors from many nations, all contributing to a public good. “WMO estimates put the economic value of weather services in excess of $100 billion annually, while the cost of providing them is a tenth of that.” (p.175) Still, a big number for a public good. “The weather machine is a last bastion of international cooperation.” (p.181)
P.S. The book is not nearly as gripping as the history of ammonia, and it ends abruptly without painting a picture of what’s next for Sim-Earth... with a proliferation of networked sensors and machine learning in the mix.
The snake year begins today and it is a water snake. Oriental fortune tellers all over the world are debating and forecasting what the Year of the Snake will bring. Let this fortune teller throw his hat in the mix. Before I begin, let me tell you that my prediction last year on the Year of the Dragon was dead wrong. It was one of the most miserable years of my Life while most people were expecting great things just because the picture of the dragon looks majestic. So the hospitals did not have enough beds and there were reports of mothers giving birth on the floor. And 7 years later, the schools will not have enough classrooms. And more planners will die from stress…
Read more in -
a1000reasons.blogspot.com/2013/02/2013-taming-water-snake...
Happy Year of the Snake!
It's that time of the year again where The Oscars is tomorrow! I did this back in 2015 and I forgot to do this again last year, but I didn't forget this time! And like I did last time, I'm not going to make my predictions on all the awards, only the big ones. So here are my predictions for best director, best score, best animated film, best visual effects, best adapted screenplay, and best original screenplay.
Best Director: Denis Villeneuve (Arrival)
Best Score: La La Land
Best Animated Film: Moana (though I wouldn't be surprised if it's Zootopia, this one was kinda tough to call)
Best Visual Effects: The Jungle Book (But I'm holding out for Doctor Strange!)
Best Screenplay:
Adapted: Arrival
Original: Manchester by the Sea
Make sure to check out part 1 for some other predictions: www.flickr.com/photos/antdude3001/33076494876/in/datepost...
What are your predictions? Leave them down in the comments below!
It's that time of the year again where The Oscars is tomorrow! I did this back in 2015 and I forgot to do this again last year, but I didn't forget this time! And like I did last time, I'm not going to make my predictions on all the awards, only the big ones. So here's the biggy out of the two, best film, best lead actor, best lead actress, best supporting actor, and best supporting actress!
Best Film: La La Land
Best Lead Actor: Casey Affleck (Manchester By the Sea)
Best Lead Actress: Emma Stone (La La Land)
Best Supporting Actor: Mahershala Ali (Moonlight)
Best Supporting Actress: Viola Davis (Fences)
Make sure to check out part 2 for some other predictions: www.flickr.com/photos/antdude3001/32961603142/in/datepost...
What are your predictions? Leave them down in the comments below!
His scientific works include a collaboration with Roger Penrose on gravitational singularity theorems in the framework of general relativity and the theoretical prediction that black holes emit radiation, often called Hawking radiation. Hawking was the first to set out a theory of cosmology explained by a union of the general theory of relativity and quantum mechanics. He is a vigorous supporter of the many-worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics.
Hawking is an Honorary Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts, a lifetime member of the Pontifical Academy of Sciences, and a recipient of the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the highest civilian award in the US. In 2002, Hawking was ranked number 25 in the BBC's poll of the 100 Greatest Britons. He was the Lucasian Professor of Mathematics at the University of Cambridge between 1979 and 2009 and has achieved commercial success with works of popular science in which he discusses his own theories and cosmology in general; his book A Brief History of Time appeared on the British Sunday Times best-seller list for a record-breaking 237 weeks.
Hawking has a rare early-onset, slow-progressing form of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) that has gradually paralysed him over the decades. He now communicates using a single cheek muscle attached to a speech-generating device.
PRIMARY and SECONDARY SCHOOL YEARS
Hawking began his schooling at the Byron House School in Highgate, London. He later blamed its "progressive methods" for his failure to learn to read while at the school.In St Albans, the eight-year-old Hawking attended St Albans High School for Girls for a few months. At that time, younger boys could attend one of the houses.
Hawking attended Radlett School, an independent school in the village of Radlett in Hertfordshire, for a year, and from September 1952, St Albans School, an independent school in the city of St Albans in Hertfordshire. The family placed a high value on education. Hawking's father wanted his son to attend the well-regarded Westminster School, but the 13-year-old Hawking was ill on the day of the scholarship examination. His family could not afford the school fees without the financial aid of a scholarship, so Hawking remained at St Albans. A positive consequence was that Hawking remained with a close group of friends with whom he enjoyed board games, the manufacture of fireworks, model aeroplanes and boats, and long discussions about Christianity and extrasensory perception. From 1958 on, with the help of the mathematics teacher Dikran Tahta, they built a computer from clock parts, an old telephone switchboard and other recycled components.
Although known at school as "Einstein", Hawking was not initially successful academically. With time, he began to show considerable aptitude for scientific subjects and, inspired by Tahta, decided to read mathematics at university. Hawking's father advised him to study medicine, concerned that there were few jobs for mathematics graduates. He also wanted his son to attend University College, Oxford, his own alma mater. As it was not possible to read mathematics there at the time, Hawking decided to study physics and chemistry. Despite his headmaster's advice to wait until the next year, Hawking was awarded a scholarship after taking the examinations in March 1959.
UNDERGRADUATE YEARS
Hawking began his university education at University College, Oxford in October 1959 at the age of 17. For the first 18 months, he was bored and lonely – he was younger than many of the other students, and found the academic work "ridiculously easy". His physics tutor, Robert Berman, later said, "It was only necessary for him to know that something could be done, and he could do it without looking to see how other people did it." A change occurred during his second and third year when, according to Berman, Hawking made more of an effort "to be one of the boys". He developed into a popular, lively and witty college member, interested in classical music and science fiction. Part of the transformation resulted from his decision to join the college boat club, the University College Boat Club, where he coxed a rowing team. The rowing trainer at the time noted that Hawking cultivated a daredevil image, steering his crew on risky courses that led to damaged boats.
Hawking has estimated that he studied about a thousand hours during his three years at Oxford. These unimpressive study habits made sitting his finals a challenge, and he decided to answer only theoretical physics questions rather than those requiring factual knowledge. A first-class honours degree was a condition of acceptance for his planned graduate study in cosmology at the University of Cambridge. Anxious, he slept poorly the night before the examinations, and the final result was on the borderline between first- and second-class honours, making a viva (oral examination) necessary. Hawking was concerned that he was viewed as a lazy and difficult student. So, when asked at the oral to describe his future plans, he said, "If you award me a First, I will go to Cambridge. If I receive a Second, I shall stay in Oxford, so I expect you will give me a First." He was held in higher regard than he believed; as Berman commented, the examiners "were intelligent enough to realise they were talking to someone far cleverer than most of themselves". After receiving a first-class BA (Hons.) degree in natural science and completing a trip to Iran with a friend, he began his graduate work at Trinity Hall, Cambridge, in October 1962.
GRADUATE YEARS
Hawking's first year as a doctoral student was difficult. He was initially disappointed to find that he had been assigned Dennis William Sciama, one of the founders of modern cosmology, as a supervisor rather than noted astronomer Fred Hoyle, and he found his training in mathematics inadequate for work in general relativity and cosmology. After being diagnosed with motor neurone disease, Hawking fell into a depression – though his doctors advised that he continue with his studies, he felt there was little point. However, his disease progressed more slowly than doctors had predicted. Although Hawking had difficulty walking unsupported, and his speech was almost unintelligible, an initial diagnosis that he had only two years to live proved unfounded. With Sciama's encouragement, he returned to his work. Hawking started developing a reputation for brilliance and brashness when he publicly challenged the work of Fred Hoyle and his student Jayant Narlikar at a lecture in June 1964.
When Hawking began his graduate studies, there was much debate in the physics community about the prevailing theories of the creation of the universe: the Big Bang and Steady State theories. Inspired by Roger Penrose's theorem of a spacetime singularity in the centre of black holes, Hawking applied the same thinking to the entire universe; and, during 1965, he wrote his thesis on this topic. There were other positive developments: Hawking received a research fellowship at Gonville and Caius College; he obtained his PhD degree in applied mathematics and theoretical physics, specialising in general relativity and cosmology, in March 1966; and his essay entitled "Singularities and the Geometry of Space-Time" shared top honours with one by Penrose to win that year's prestigious Adams Prize.
CAREER
1966–1975
In his work, and in collaboration with Penrose, Hawking extended the singularity theorem concepts first explored in his doctoral thesis. This included not only the existence of singularities but also the theory that the universe might have started as a singularity. Their joint essay was the runner-up in the 1968 Gravity Research Foundation competition. In 1970 they published a proof that if the universe obeys the general theory of relativity and fits any of the models of physical cosmology developed by Alexander Friedmann, then it must have begun as a singularity. In 1969, Hawking accepted a specially created Fellowship for Distinction in Science to remain at Caius.
In 1970, Hawking postulated what became known as the second law of black hole dynamics, that the event horizon of a black hole can never get smaller.[83] With James M. Bardeen and Brandon Carter, he proposed the four laws of black hole mechanics, drawing an analogy with thermodynamics. To Hawking's irritation, Jacob Bekenstein, a graduate student of John Wheeler, went further—and ultimately correctly—to apply thermodynamic concepts literally.[85][86] In the early 1970s, Hawking's work with Carter, Werner Israel and David C. Robinson strongly supported Wheeler's no-hair theorem that no matter what the original material from which a black hole is created, it can be completely described by the properties of mass, electrical charge and rotation.[87][88] His essay titled "Black Holes" won the Gravity Research Foundation Award in January 1971.[89] Hawking's first book, The Large Scale Structure of Space-Time, written with George Ellis, was published in 1973.
Beginning in 1973, Hawking moved into the study of quantum gravity and quantum mechanics. His work in this area was spurred by a visit to Moscow and discussions with Yakov Borisovich Zel'dovich and Alexei Starobinsky, whose work showed that according to the uncertainty principle, rotating black holes emit particles. To Hawking's annoyance, his much-checked calculations produced findings that contradicted his second law, which claimed black holes could never get smaller,and supported Bekenstein's reasoning about their entropy.His results, which Hawking presented from 1974, showed that black holes emit radiation, known today as Hawking radiation, which may continue until they exhaust their energy and evaporate. Initially, Hawking radiation was controversial. However, by the late 1970s and following the publication of further research, the discovery was widely accepted as a significant breakthrough in theoretical physics. Hawking was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society (FRS) in 1974, a few weeks after the announcement of Hawking radiation. At the time, he was one of the youngest scientists to become a Fellow.
Hawking was appointed to the Sherman Fairchild Distinguished visiting professorship at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) in 1970. He worked with a friend on the faculty, Kip Thorne, and engaged him in a scientific wager about whether the dark star Cygnus X-1 was a black hole. The wager was an "insurance policy" against the proposition that black holes did not exist. Hawking acknowledged that he had lost the bet in 1990, which was the first of several that he was to make with Thorne and others.Hawking has maintained ties to Caltech, spending a month there almost every year since this first visit.
1975–1990
Hawking returned to Cambridge in 1975 to a more academically senior post, as reader in gravitational physics. The mid to late 1970s were a period of growing public interest in black holes and of the physicists who were studying them. Hawking was regularly interviewed for print and television. He also received increasing academic recognition of his work. In 1975, he was awarded both the Eddington Medal and the Pius XI Gold Medal, and in 1976 the Dannie Heineman Prize, the Maxwell Prize and the Hughes Medal. He was appointed a professor with a chair in gravitational physics in 1977. The following year he received the Albert Einstein Medal and an honorary doctorate from the University of Oxford.
In the late 1970s, Hawking was elected Lucasian Professor of Mathematics at the University of Cambridge.His inaugural lecture as Lucasian Professor of Mathematics was titled: "Is the End in Sight for Theoretical Physics" and proposed N=8 Supergravity as the leading theory to solve many of the outstanding problems physicists were studying. His promotion coincided with a health crisis which led to his accepting, albeit reluctantly, some nursing services at home. At the same time, he was also making a transition in his approach to physics, becoming more intuitive and speculative rather than insisting on mathematical proofs. "I would rather be right than rigorous", he told Kip Thorne. In 1981, he proposed that information in a black hole is irretrievably lost when a black hole evaporates. This information paradox violates the fundamental tenet of quantum mechanics, and led to years of debate, including "the Black Hole War" with Leonard Susskind and Gerard 't Hooft.
Cosmological inflation – a theory proposing that following the Big Bang, the universe initially expanded incredibly rapidly before settling down to a slower expansion – was proposed by Alan Guth and also developed by Andrei Linde. Following a conference in Moscow in October 1981, Hawking and Gary Gibbons organized a three-week Nuffield Workshop in the summer of 1982 on "The Very Early Universe" at Cambridge University, which focused mainly on inflation theory. Hawking also began a new line of quantum theory research into the origin of the universe. In 1981 at a Vatican conference, he presented work suggesting that there might be no boundary – or beginning or ending – to the universe. He subsequently developed the research in collaboration with Jim Hartle, and in 1983 they published a model, known as the Hartle–Hawking state. It proposed that prior to the Planck epoch, the universe had no boundary in space-time; before the Big Bang, time did not exist and the concept of the beginning of the universe is meaningless. The initial singularity of the classical Big Bang models was replaced with a region akin to the North Pole. One cannot travel north of the North Pole, but there is no boundary there – it is simply the point where all north-running lines meet and end. Initially, the no-boundary proposal predicted a closed universe, which had implications about the existence of God. As Hawking explained, "If the universe has no boundaries but is self-contained... then God would not have had any freedom to choose how the universe began."
Hawking did not rule out the existence of a Creator, asking in A Brief History of Time "Is the unified theory so compelling that it brings about its own existence?" In his early work, Hawking spoke of God in a metaphorical sense. In A Brief History of Time he wrote: "If we discover a complete theory, it would be the ultimate triumph of human reason – for then we should know the mind of God." In the same book he suggested that the existence of God was not necessary to explain the origin of the universe. Later discussions with Neil Turok led to the realisation that the existence of God was also compatible with an open universe.
Further work by Hawking in the area of arrows of time led to the 1985 publication of a paper theorising that if the no-boundary proposition were correct, then when the universe stopped expanding and eventually collapsed, time would run backwards. A paper by Don Page and independent calculations by Raymond Laflamme led Hawking to withdraw this concept. Honours continued to be awarded: in 1981 he was awarded the American Franklin Medal, and in 1982 made a Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE). Awards do not pay the bills, however, and motivated by the need to finance the children's education and home expenses, in 1982 Hawking determined to write a popular book about the universe that would be accessible to the general public. Instead of publishing with an academic press, he signed a contract with Bantam Books, a mass market publisher, and received a large advance for his book. A first draft of the book, called A Brief History of Time, was completed in 1984.
One of the first messages Hawking produced with his speech-generating device was a request for his assistant to help him finish writing A Brief History of Time. Peter Guzzardi, his editor at Bantam, pushed him to explain his ideas clearly in non-technical language, a process that required many revisions from an increasingly irritated Hawking. The book was published in April 1988 in the US and in June in the UK, and it proved to be an extraordinary success, rising quickly to the top of bestseller lists in both countries and remaining there for months. The book was translated into many languages, and ultimately sold an estimated 9 million copies. Media attention was intense, and a Newsweek magazine cover and a television special both described him as "Master of the Universe". Success led to significant financial rewards, but also the challenges of celebrity status. Hawking travelled extensively to promote his work, and enjoyed partying and dancing into the small hours. He had difficulty refusing the invitations and visitors, which left limited time for work and his students. Some colleagues were resentful of the attention Hawking received, feeling it was due to his disability. He received further academic recognition, including five more honorary degrees,[149] the Gold Medal of the Royal Astronomical Society (1985), the Paul Dirac Medal (1987) and, jointly with Penrose, the prestigious Wolf Prize (1988). In 1989, he was appointed Member of the Order of the Companions of Honour (CH). He reportedly declined a knighthood.
1990–2000
Hawking pursued his work in physics: in 1993 he co-edited a book on Euclidean quantum gravity with Gary Gibbons and published a collected edition of his own articles on black holes and the Big Bang. In 1994, at Cambridge's Newton Institute, Hawking and Penrose delivered a series of six lectures that were published in 1996 as "The Nature of Space and Time". In 1997, he conceded a 1991 public scientific wager made with Kip Thorne and John Preskill of Caltech. Hawking had bet that Penrose's proposal of a "cosmic censorship conjecture" – that there could be no "naked singularities" unclothed within a horizon – was correct. After discovering his concession might have been premature, a new, more refined, wager was made. This one specified that such singularities would occur without extra conditions. The same year, Thorne, Hawking and Preskill made another bet, this time concerning the black hole information paradox. Thorne and Hawking argued that since general relativity made it impossible for black holes to radiate and lose information, the mass-energy and information carried by Hawking radiation must be "new", and not from inside the black hole event horizon. Since this contradicted the quantum mechanics of microcausality, quantum mechanics theory would need to be rewritten. Preskill argued the opposite, that since quantum mechanics suggests that the information emitted by a black hole relates to information that fell in at an earlier time, the concept of black holes given by general relativity must be modified in some way.
Hawking also maintained his public profile, including bringing science to a wider audience. A film version of A Brief History of Time, directed by Errol Morris and produced by Steven Spielberg, premiered in 1992. Hawking had wanted the film to be scientific rather than biographical, but he was persuaded otherwise. The film, while a critical success, was, however, not widely released. A popular-level collection of essays, interviews, and talks titled Black Holes and Baby Universes and Other Essays was published in 1993, and a six-part television series Stephen Hawking's Universe and a companion book appeared in 1997. As Hawking insisted, this time the focus was entirely on science.
2000–present
Hawking continued his writings for a popular audience, publishing The Universe in a Nutshell in 2001, and A Briefer History of Time, which he wrote in 2005 with Leonard Mlodinow to update his earlier works with the aim of making them accessible to a wider audience, and God Created the Integers, which appeared in 2006. Along with Thomas Hertog at CERN and Jim Hartle, from 2006 on Hawking developed a theory of "top-down cosmology", which says that the universe had not one unique initial state but many different ones, and therefore that it is inappropriate to formulate a theory that predicts the universe's current configuration from one particular initial state. Top-down cosmology posits that the present "selects" the past from a superposition of many possible histories. In doing so, the theory suggests a possible resolution of the fine-tuning question.
Hawking continued to travel widely, including trips to Chile, Easter Island, South Africa, Spain (to receive the Fonseca Prize in 2008),] Canada, and numerous trips to the United States. For practical reasons related to his disability, Hawking increasingly travelled by private jet, and by 2011 that had become his only mode of international travel. By 2003, consensus among physicists was growing that Hawking was wrong about the loss of information in a black hole. In a 2004 lecture in Dublin, he conceded his 1997 bet with Preskill, but described his own, somewhat controversial solution to the information paradox problem, involving the possibility that black holes have more than one topology. In the 2005 paper he published on the subject, he argued that the information paradox was explained by examining all the alternative histories of universes, with the information loss in those with black holes being cancelled out by those without such loss. In January 2014 he called the alleged loss of information in black holes his "biggest blunder".
As part of another longstanding scientific dispute, Hawking had emphatically argued, and bet, that the Higgs boson would never be found.[182] The particle was proposed to exist as part of the Higgs field theory by Peter Higgs in 1964. Hawking and Higgs engaged in a heated and public debate over the matter in 2002 and again in 2008, with Higgs criticising Hawking's work and complaining that Hawking's "celebrity status gives him instant credibility that others do not have." The particle was discovered in July 2012 at CERN following construction of the Large Hadron Collider. Hawking quickly conceded that he had lost his bet and said that Higgs should win the Nobel Prize for Physics, which he did in 2013.
In 2007, Hawking and his daughter Lucy published George's Secret Key to the Universe, a children's book designed to explain theoretical physics in an accessible fashion and featuring characters similar to those in the Hawking family.[188] The book was followed by sequels in 2009, 2011 and 2014.
In 2002, following a UK-wide vote, the BBC included Hawking in their list of the 100 Greatest Britons.[190] He was awarded the Copley Medal from the Royal Society (2006), the Presidential Medal of Freedom, which is America's highest civilian honour (2009), and the Russian Special Fundamental Physics Prize (2013).
Several buildings have been named after him, including the Stephen W. Hawking Science Museum in San Salvador, El Salvador, the Stephen Hawking Building in Cambridge, and the Stephen Hawking Centre at the Perimeter Institute in Canada.Appropriately, given Hawking's association with time, he unveiled the mechanical "Chronophage" (or time-eating) Corpus Clock at Corpus Christi College Cambridge in September 2008.
During his career, Hawking has supervised 39 successful PhD students. As required by Cambridge University regulations, Hawking retired as Lucasian Professor of Mathematics in 2009. Despite suggestions that he might leave the United Kingdom as a protest against public funding cuts to basic scientific research, Hawking has continued to work as director of research at the Cambridge University Department of Applied Mathematics and Theoretical Physics, and indicated in 2012 that he had no plans to retire.
On 28 June 2009, as a tongue-in-cheek test of his 1992 conjecture that travel into the past is effectively impossible, Hawking held a party open to all, complete with hors d'oeuvres and iced champagne, but only publicized the party after it was over so that only time-travellers would know to attend; as expected, nobody showed up to the party.
On 20 July 2015, Hawking helped launch Breakthrough Initiatives, an effort to search for extraterrestrial life. In 2015, Richard Branson offered Stephen Hawking a seat on the Virgin Galactic spaceship for free. While no hard date has been set for launch, Virgin Galactic's SpaceShipTwo is slated to launch at the end of 2017. At 75, Hawking will not be the oldest person ever to go to space (John Glenn returned to space at age 77), but he will be the first person to go to space with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS). While this will be Hawking's first time in space, it will not be the first time he will have experienced weightlessness: in 2007, he had flown into zero gravity aboard a specially-modified Boeing 727-200 aircraft. Hawking created Stephen Hawking: Expedition New Earth, a documentary on space colonization, as a summer 2017 episode of Tomorrow's World.
In August 2015, Hawking said that not all information is lost when something enters a black hole and there might be a possibility to retrieve information from a black hole according to his theory.
It was the first real snowfall of winter, so I decided to head out to get a bit of practice, try out a different gear configuration, and try to get some good shots of the snow on the trees.
The weather prediction was for mostly cloudy so I didn't set the alarm to catch sunrise. In hindsight that was a mistake, as it was clear when I woke up (at dawn) and I hadn't planned a speedy departure the night before. The clouds moved in after my first battery and I missed some lovely light. As well, the bright sunlight was beginning to melt the snow off the trees.
On the bright side, my gear load-out mostly worked, so I’m good for more trips next time conditions are suitable.
This High Dynamic Range 360° aerial panorama was stitched from 104 bracketed photographs with PTGUI Pro, tone-mapped with Photomatix, processed with Colour Efex, and touched up in Affinity Photo and Aperture.
Original size: 25000 × 12500 (312.5 MP; 1.00 GB).
Location; East Duffins Headwaters, Ontario, Canada
Josie outside Shannon's in Augusta, Georgia on April 30, 2015. I am wearing a black dress and a pair of size 9 - 3.25 inch heel open toe, strappy slingback pumps by Predictions. My dear friend, Kay, gave me the brown bag I have, as well as my necklace and ring I have on.
For "Our Daily Challenge ... superstition"
According to follklore / superstition you can predict the nmber of children you will have. Pick a dandelion that has gone to seed. Take a deep breath and blow the seeds into the wind. Count the seeds that remain on the stem. That is the number of children you will have.
weather predictions said it's a clear night, so just could not miss the night to go out and shoot the sky. Had to go out and capture some data for the coming weeks as soon the moon will be out and you never know if the weather will be kind enough in future.
Went out to warkworth satellite station last night, which is a pretty decent dark spot, though you do have some light pollution from auckland in south and warkworth in north.
In this image the light pollution can be seen on both sides of the image, left being auckland and warkworth at right. You can see the Large and Small Magellan clouds to the left of the image and near the center if you look at the horizon you can see some green air glow.
So, the best area to shoot was west and overhead. Had a go at some long run data capture of the scorpio, but the conditions were not that great, there was moisture in the air and every now and then the lens fogged up, so we were getting on an average 3 shots before we had to defog the lens.
After all the data capture and as the MW was heading down, the clouds rolled in and we decided to packup, but before leaving had to go for a panorama, i thought the clouds would ruin it and cause banding issues but they turned out great.
LONDON, ENGLAND - MARCH 23: Emma Tucker on stage for the Predictions For The Future Of Media, during Advertising Week Europe, Piccadilly, on March 23, 2015 in London, England. (Photo by Stuart Wilson/Getty Images for Advertising Week)
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see on black - www.darckr.com/username.php?username=10334788@N02
1.1.2010 - 1.383 / 114 / 510 / 4 galleries
2010 Predictions from ... Beyond.
www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q3zJm98UXzQ
"first, we would suggest pausing a moment and recognizing that the great unknown is your paradise"
"we are only giving you the potential of what you are most inclined to do;
we are not giving you some magic future, created by energies that are not yours."
"The concept of free choice creates a constant and continuously changing track in front of you."
"In 2010, anything that you desire strongly will manifest in your life"
"There will be a number of people who will increasingly be aware of a longing within themselves for more"
"Souls will be stirring that have not been awake for many, many lifetimes"
"In the year 2010, it will become harder to hide truth. Transparency will become the watchword of the times"
"The coming year is a time to shed the perception of trouble and strife, and exchange that vision for one of transformation, growth, sharing and envisioning the new reality you are striving for."
"The world is full, fat and overly ripe with juicy secrets now. These will seed, pop and explode onto the world stage this year."
2010 will be the year conspiracy theorists will say, "i told you so"
"Much will come to the forefront that was hidden in the past, including areas such as UFOs, psychic phenomenon, healing miracles and government cover-ups."
"Universal truths about energy and interconnectedness of all life will emerge into the mainstream with increasing speed."
"There will be growing sense of awareness across the planet that many things aren't really as they have appeared to be for a long time"
For many of you this will be the year in which you "get it"
"The demystifying of life on the grand scale it is occurring now is unprecedented ."
"The new world view is being created from inside out, instead of the outside in."
"Human beings will move from instinctual survival to conscious creation."
"what happens between now and 2012 will be the foundation for the next ten years. And what transpires within the next ten years will be the foundation for the next hundred years and more."
"Be prepared for announcements of cures for devastating diseases."
"Be prepared for some amazing technologies that will support the restoration of the dirtied waterways."
"Evolutionary medical processes found trough stem cell technology will bring to masses to absolute gaping awe."
"People will be able to live uncompromisingly with strong bones well into their nineties after this year's discoveries."
"Researchers will begin to study human emotions more thoroughly and will see how humans play a vital role in creation of sickness. And scientific communities will start slowly accepting this."
"In 2010 you are going to have a young people's crusade because of the Internet."
"Technology developed by hackers will permit people of all races and ethnicity to communicate without the interference of governments or countries seeking to silence them."
"Another blessing of the Internet will be the lifting of the curtains hiding child labor."
"Communities will once again spring up in a way that has not been seen in some time."
"You will begin to see a marked increase in the demand for wholesome, healthy, non-contaminated foods."
"The past that held gods who took sides is dying."
"A power circling perpetually throughout this year to help you achieve your dreams, successes and enlightenment, is the power of envisioning."
"So if we were to give you advice that will hold true for the entire year, it would be to become a powerful visionary."
"Energy follows thought."
"We see even the last of you emerging from the fog soon."
"Do not give your precious energy to a dying past."
"Face the brilliance of your most wonderful creations."
"Dwell on your dreams."
.
Aspen, Colorado
September 5, 1980
2020 - Visions of the Future - Roaring Fork Valley (Page 2 of 7)
Nick's 1980 predictions for the year 2020
Document courtesy of:
Aspen Historical Society, IDCA Time Capsule Collection
Text:
2
In 1945 we climbed out of World War II and looked upward wih Utopian optimism. In 1980 we look around at a frontierless landscape and we feel from here on up it’s downhill all the way-or worse, the reverse!
So futurists tend to try to cheer us up with space talk and colonies on the moon are a favorite. Colonies in space are more practical. In looking for an issue forty years from now, I asked lots of counter-culture types, not a single one had a suggestion! Perhaps we won’t have problems in 2020 - I hope not, but I might suggest human cloning. Oil shale - Ouch! That one’s so scary I left it out, but I’m certain we’ll discuss the daylights out of that later. If the oil shale growth boom occurs, which I frankly doubt, we sure will have a lot of smoke coming down wind this way.
Now, let’s tackle the future, sticking to possible or feasible scenarios or happenings.
First, there are “wish” and “fear” futures. These are not probable, but are the ones we mostly talk about - we’re scared of them or dream of them.
Then there are “get” futures. These are what we’ll get if we coast. Some good, some bad. “They” will do this for “me.”
There are “want” futures that “I” prefer and would like to get, and in some cases “we” will do this for “them.”
Now to scratch the crystal ball, let’s start with a few “fear” items.
Laser beam weapons reach Poor Paul’s war surplus market.
Computers outwit us, snoop on us, and do our planning.
Major nuclear war = if so, we are upwind of Colorado Springs, but downwind of the MX missiles in Nevada and Utah, so it’ll be a lot safer in Los Angeles than here.
In the “wish” department, these are largely the province of technology. Whether we like it or not, it is only technology that can make a drastic change in our options. There is hi-tech, lo-tech, appropriate-tech (soon to be a fighting word), and “silly-tech” or “fantasy-tech.” Things like:
Cryogenic power lines
Matter scanner transporters
Anti-gravity units
Anti-matter disposals
Microwave power from the pie-in-the-sky
Earthbound laser missile stoppers
Space colonies. Prof.O’Neill (Princeton) sez “By 2150 there could be more people living in space than on earth; earth might serve mainly as a tourist attraction, a carefully planned preserved monument to man’s origin.” If so, Aspen will have a ball, but we’ll have to fix the airport.
Plastic bubble over the city (controlled micro-climate)
Air cars and personal hovercraft (the whoosh dream is a clatter-roar reality)
Extra-terrestial aliens teach us a thing or two
Holographic movies save Hollywood
Procreative solar devices manufacture themselves (currently called wheat)
Biological engineering creates mental superperson
Local tracked private electric mini-cars with computer pilots
Separate airport busway (I put in the “wish” category)
Alcohol fuel dominates transport (the fumes in Brazil are already a problem)
Computers eliminate paper money (the underground economy won’t permit it)
A car link-up system to deliver our cars to Denver as we get off the train
Video phones - long rejected because you have to put on your clothes to answer the phone.
part of an archival project, featuring the work of nick dewolf
© the Nick DeWolf Foundation
Requests for use are welcome via flickrmail or nickdewolfphotoarchive [at] gmail [dot] com
If wildlife and nature can’t survive than neither can we
Tanya Steele, UK CE of WWF
Global wildlife populations have plummeted by nearly 70 per cent in less than 50 years. It’s a sobering fact.
An awesome and fun-filled evening went underway yesterday!
I was monitoring radar all day long and keeping up with the Storm Prediction Center (SPC) as well as the National Weather Service in Lincoln, IL (NWS ILX)'s weather discussions to pinpoint where and when the gist of severe storms would arrive and be their healthiest. The afternoon rolled along, and it was around 715pm CDT I drove up to the gas station and filled up my car's gas tank. Once I left the gas station I headed home to go pick up my smartphone (my handy mobile weather gadget) and took a glimpse at radar. There appeared to be a pretty decent looking squall line approaching from NE of the St. Louis area and was quickly progressing to the NNE. It was 730pm that I finally left and hit Route 16 due west, for my short little ride to my target of Gays, which is right at the border of Shelby and Moultrie Counties here in Central Illinois.
Once I arrived to my destination (Gays) I was feeling a little tense and losing hope although as the storm approached from the SW, it began to look very cold and outflow dominant of course - the shelf cloud structure was a little ragged and didn't appear to be holding together all that well. But as the next several minutes passed to around 815-830pm or so, this bow echo began to impress me. The lightning intensity picked up and the thunder rumbled and growled - the shelf cloud began to smoothen out and the twilight post-sunset sky vividly struck my eyes with the amazing steel blue and menacing appearance!
This storm was straight up photogenic...I will have more images to upload in a while - for now, please enjoy this squall line shot with a couple cloud-to-ground lightning bolts (CGs.)
If you'd like, come by and check this out on my Facebook photography page! (It's open to the public!)
www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=559150160794550&set=p...
- Melinda
Worlds End pub sign , Knaresborough Yorkshire showing Mother Shipton it sited across the road from Mother Shiptons Cave near to the River Nidd where there is a petrifying well which has been a tourist attraction since 1630
Ursula Southeil (c. 1488 - 1561) , the legendary soothsayer and prophetess who exhibited prophetic and psychic abilities from an early age, writing prophecies in the form of poems, not much different than the cryptic Quatrains of Nostradamus
The first publication of her prophecies, which did not appear until 1641, eighty years after her death, contained a number of mainly regional predictions. this was followed by another edition in 1684. This stated that she was born in Knaresborough in a cave and was reputed to be hideously ugly. The woman who delivered Ursula', spoke of a smell of sulphur and a great crack of thunder as the child came into the world.
In 1512 aged 24 she married Toby Shipton, a local carpenter, near York Some say she had bewitched him, as she was too hideous for him to be attracted to her. They lived in Knaresborough, he died 2 years later.
Ursula had told fortunes and made predictions throughout her life. They lived in Knaresborough, but had no children, Her power to see into the future made her well known not only in her home town but throughout England.
Her legend was passed on through oral traditions, perhaps sometimes embellished. Many of her visions came true within her own lifetime
In subsequent centuries her predictions alluded to the tthe defeat of the Spanish Armada in 1588 , he Great Fire of London in 1666 - Samuel Pepys whilst surveying the damage to London caused by the Great Fire, in the company of the Royal Family, discussed her prophecy of the event.
She also prrdicted the Dissolution of the Monasteries. This led to the redistribution of the wealth and land held by the monasteries to the emerging middle class and the existing noble families.
Also modern technology - planes, submarines, telephone / internet etc
"Then upside down the world shall be and gold found at the root of tree
All England's sons that plough the land shall oft be seen with Book in hand
The poor shall now great wisdom know great houses stand in farflung vale all covered o'er with snow and hail
A carriage without horse will go, disaster fill the world with woe.
in London, Primrose Hill shall be In centre hold a Bishop's See
Around the world men's thoughts will fly quick as the twinkling of an eye.
And water shall great wonders do how strange. And yet it shall come true.
Through towering hills proud men shall ride no horse or ass move by his side.
Beneath the water, men shall walk shall ride, shall sleep, shall even talk.
And in the air men shall be seen in white and black and even green
A great man then, shall come and go for prophecy declares it so.
In water, iron, then shall float as easy as a wooden boat
Gold shall be seen in stream and stone
In land that is yet unknown. and England shall admit a Jew
You think this strange, but it is true
The Jew that once was held in scorn shall of a Christian then be born.
A house of glass shall come to pass in England. But alas, alas
A war will follow with the work where dwells the Pagan and the Turk
These states will lock in fiercest strife and seek to take each others life.
When North shall thus divide the south and Eagle build in Lions mouth
Then tax and blood and cruel war shall come to every humble door.
Three times shall lovely sunny France be led to play a bloody dance
Before the people shall be free three tyrant rulers shall she see.
Three rulers in succession be each springs from different dynasty.
Then when the fiercest strife is done England and France shall be as one.
The British olive shall next then twine In marriage with a german vine.
Men walk beneath and over streams fulfilled shall be their wondrous dreams.
For in those wondrous far off days the women shall adopt a craze to dress like men, and trousers wear and to cut off their locks of hair
They'll ride astride with brazen brow as witches do on broomstick now.
And roaring monsters with man atop does seem to eat the verdant crop
And men shall fly as birds do now and give away the horse and plough.
There'll be a sign for all to see be sure that it will certain be.
Then love shall die and marriage cease and nations wane as babes decrease
And wives shall fondle cats and dogs and men live much the same as hogs.
In nineteen hundred and twenty six build houses light of straw and sticks.
For then shall mighty wars be planned and fire and sword shall sweep the land.
When pictures seem alive with movements free when boats like fishes swim beneath the sea,
When men like birds shall scour the sky then half the world, deep drenched in blood shall die.
For those who live the century through in fear and trembling this shall do.
Flee to the mountains and the dens to bog and forest and wild fens.
For storms will rage and oceans roar when Gabriel stands on sea and shore and as he blows his wondrous horn old worlds die and new be born.
A fiery dragon will cross the sky six times before this earth shall die
Mankind will tremble and frightened be for the sixth heralds in this prophecy.
For seven days and seven nights Man will watch this awesome sight. The tides will rise beyond their ken to bite away the shores and then the mountains will begin to roar
And earthquakes split the plain to shore. and flooding waters, rushing in will flood the lands with such a din
That mankind cowers in muddy fen and snarls about his fellow men. He bares his teeth and fights and kills and secrets food in secret hills and ugly in his fear, he lies to kill marauders, thieves and spies.
Man flees in terror from the floods and kills, and rapes and lies in blood And spilling blood by mankinds' hands will stain and bitter many lands
And when the dragon's tail is gone, Man forgets, and smiles, and carries on to apply himself - too late, too late for mankind has earned deserved fate.
His masked smile - his false grandeur, will serve the Gods their anger stir. and they will send the Dragon back to light the sky - his tail will crack upon the earth and rend the earth
And man shall flee, King, Lord, and serf.
But slowly they are routed out to seek diminishing water spout And men will die of thirst before the oceans rise to mount the shore. And lands will crack and rend anew You think it strange. It will come true.
And in some far off distant land some men - oh such a tiny band , will have to leave their solid mount and span the earth, those few to count,
Who survives this (unreadable) and then begin the human race again. But not on land already there but on ocean beds, stark, dry and bare
Not every soul on Earth will die as the Dragons tail goes sweeping by. Not every land on earth will sink but these will wallow in stench and stink of rotting bodies of beast and man
Of vegetation crisped on land.
But the land that rises from the sea will be dry and clean and soft and free of mankinds' dirt and therefore be the source of man's new dynasty.
And those that live will ever fear the dragons tail for many year
But time erases memory You think it strange. But it will be.
And before the race is built anew a silver serpent comes to view and spew out men of like unknown to mingle with the earth now grown Cold from its heat and these men can enlighten the minds of future man to intermingle and show them how to live and love and thus endow
The children with the second sight. a natural thing so that they might grow graceful, humble and when they do the Golden Age will start anew.
She also said ” The world shall end when the High Bridge is thrice fallen”. flic.kr/p/bb8R48
The High Bridge at Knaresborough has fallen twice so far….
Aspen, Colorado
September 5, 1980
2020 - Visions of the Future - Roaring Fork Valley (Page 6 of 7)
Nick's 1980 predictions for the year 2020
Document courtesy of:
Aspen Historical Society, IDCA Time Capsule Collection
Text:
6
DOOM:
All forecasts have some of this, but there is only one that I believe is inevitable and serious. That's the Carbon Dioxide crisis. The idea was clearly stated in 1861 - quite accurately.
The problem is the increase in CO2 caused by our rapacious burning of hydrocarbons, wood and coal. CO2 has only been measured since 1958, but it appears it will double by 2020. This will cause a 3 degree Farenheit average increase in the temperature of the earth from the greenhouse effect (similar to a closed automobile). By 2020 the desert areas will have expanded and killed many Africans. The key, by 2020, will be the grim forecast at that time of another doubling of CO2. That will melt the polar ice caps, flooding the East Coast by 25 feet (hoorah?). We may, therefore, have a ban on unnecessary carbon burning, and that will violently change most of today's hoped-for energy solutions.
Nonetheless, I believe that by 2020 the energy issue will have largely disappeared because we will have spent 40 years working hard on our many options. The now industrialized emerging nations will still have a problem, but by 2050 theirs will be solved. The key will be the use of all systems where sensible, and not cram nukes to Berkeley, wind machines to Aspen, coal plants and alcohol cars to L.A. (O.K. in Boston). Let me make a little trouble - Hans Beth said it for me - "Over the next 25 years, there is no major alternative to fossil fuels but uranium fission."
The rest of the world will force us to fast breeders because they consume 1/100 as much critical uranium and use up dangerous plutonium. Waste reprocessing will be long solved. Fusion will still be emerging from the experimental stage.
Terrorists will get theirs via the military, because extortion requires proof of potency.
On the less controversial side; those who can afford to disconnect from "the system" will have done so. Those who are disciplined to frugailty will use less energy. But most of us will not. In fact, most of our physical problems will be solved by the application of lots of energy.
The first move in the '80's, and still being worked on in 2020, will be to cut waste. Examples:
The brightest night lights on earth are not entire cities, but Arabian oil well gas burn-offs! We've wasted 1,000 cubic miles of gas in 30 years this way.
The losses in American electric motors would power many countries.
Air conditioners are our peak electric load, but they could theoretically deliver power! By 2020 they will have improved drastically, and we may have solar cooling.
But to me the key waste is caused by the centralization of power plants which requires them to DUMP their gigantic losses into the environment. This leads to the unfashionable conclusion that we will decentralize power plants and use their low-temperature heat losses locally.
We will use all of the many alternative energy sources, but there will still be no free lunch.
Burning oil forbidden.
Gasoline - government only.
Gas - greatly curtailed.
Coal - makes hydrogen.
Nukes - lots.
Fusion - not yet substantial.
Fuel cells - very important for storage.
Photosynthesis - chlorophyll still king, but CO2 crisis looms.
part of an archival project, featuring the work of nick dewolf
© the Nick DeWolf Foundation
Requests for use are welcome via flickrmail or nickdewolfphotoarchive [at] gmail [dot] com
What with the Olympics and all that about to start there are more and more outstanding bodies on telly. It gets me all het up and longing to take brass rubbings of thighs and washboard stomachs.
These days I can spend many a happy hour watching muscles flexing, see sweaty flesh shimmering and that is just in horse racing.
It really is breathtaking just how good the human body can look.
Each different sport hones a different shape of body. I often ponder which sport sculpts the most beautiful. It’s so drastically different for men and women. One which makes the men drool worthy makes the women look like lesbian plumbers.
This Olympics I shall spend much time assessing which sport creates the best body.
My prediction from memory….
Best Male Bods:
Gymnasts - ripped
Sprinters - ripped
Rowers – ripped, enormous thighs
Swimmers – ripped and hairless
Diving – tiny pants, skin like dolphins
Boxing – ripped and able to protect you on the walk home from the pub :
uk.youtube.com/watch?v=2rLM1tBWt9Y
Best Female Bods:
Tennis - great legs, great tans
Swimmers/synchronised swimmers – lovely fish like forms, apparently hairless,
Gymnasts – elegant, fearless, tiny rock hard bums and beautiful pointy toes
Pole vaulters – not sure how but they are all stunning
Topless volleyball – bouncy bouncy
So this month I shall be particularly into my sports, with a constant grandstand commentary going on in my head…..but even in my imagination insecurities will infiltrate…..
The most embarrassing thing for women undertaking sporting activity – or maybe it’s just me is getting dark sweat patches in slightly embarrassing places.
My body’s particular favourites are between the boobies and dare I say it, the crotch or where one’s legs join one’s lower torso. After 10 mins on the rowing machine I have to walk around the gym with a kind of towel apron.
I remember long hot awards ceremonies at school where when we arose from our seats to sing the school song, a tiny rivulet of sweat would taunt from the plastic base of the Robin Day chair (had I known how huge they were to become as design classics I would have stolen a lot more from school). Oh the humiliation, I remember looking around the hall and seeing every single girl rise from her seat and swivel to look at her seat, flinging a programme down onto any puddles to stave off the bullying.
There is one other factor in the world of female sport that always concerns me – the athletes who wear little bikini briefs to race – Are they permanently hairless?! Even the neatest lady garden can sometimes be rebellious and peek out at the world. A bad start from the blocks might dislodge the gusset, pushing it to one side and out may peep a rogue hair. As the victorious sprinter waves her flag in front of the cameras she might also wave a portion of runway strip or a five o’clock shadow. Imagine the slow motion reply over the hurdles - "Ah i see where she came a cropper now - that giant pube snagged on the third hurdle and dragged her down."
The same applies to gymnasts and swimmers – what is the secret? No razor burn is ever seen at an Olympic games, not a single in-growing, infected hair follicle.
Jealous is not the word.
So as I’m out on my run, imagining Brendan Foster discussing my race with Steve Cram, suddenly…
“Lucy Naughton is really running out of her skin today. Oh! It appears she is also running out of her bikini briefs – that bush could really be creating a lot of drag and slowing her down there. Indeed, look the American hairless is overtaking her with consummate ease after slipstreaming behind that pelvis of stubble. And, oh god look Steve she’s got sweat patches all over the place, even her boobies are perspiring! Ewwwwww. This is worse than watching the men’s shot put.”
So which bodies do you think are perfectly honed by their sport?….
Oh and if you need a bit of help, have a look at this:
uk.youtube.com/watch?v=Q_3fTVtfxls
uk.youtube.com/watch?v=3d-OHGoB0Ho
Hubba hubba
Actually, I think the girl in the middle was just a little bit sad, because she was the only one without a cellphone in her hand...
**********************************
For much of my life, I’ve had the bad habit of visiting a new city for a week of intense activity — and, on occasion, even living in a new city for as long as a year — without ever getting to know it. It’s easier than you might think, if you have a set routine: you get up in the morning, you take the same route to school or work, you come home at the end of the day, and that’s that. I think I may have also been slightly warped by the childhood experience of moving every year (17 schools before college), and concluding (perhaps subconsciously) that there was no point really getting to know anything about (or anyone in) the current town, since we’d be moving within a year …
Anyway, I resolved to try harder during a recent weeklong Thanksgiving trip to visit the west coast contingent of my family, which involved our driving from Portland to a rented house in Bend, Oregon — located roughly in the center of Oregon. I had never been in Bend before, and I probably never will be again … but even so, I wanted to get a sense of what the town was all about.
Bend turns out to be the largest town in central Oregon, but its estimated population in 2013 was only 81,236. If you include the surrounding area of “metropolitan Bend,” that number increases to 165,954 — but that still makes it only the fifth largest metropolitan area in Oregon, and probably about the same as an individual neighborhood in New York City.
Compared to NYC, Bend’s recorded history is also much shorter — though that ignores the fact that Native Americans lived in the area for some 12,000 years before fur trading parties arrived in 1824, and succeeding generations of pioneers, intent on pushing further west to the Pacific Coast, forded the Deschutes River at a shallow point known as the “Farewell Bend” — which ultimately gave the town its name (you can blame the U.S. Postal Service for shortening the original name to “Bend”).
Not much happened until 1901, when the Pilot Butte Development Company built a commercial sawmill in Bend; a city was incorporated there in 1904 by a general vote of the community’s 300 residents. From what I can tell, the town then continued to grow, thrive, and prosper for another 30 or 40 years … after which it seems to have stagnated. Walking along Bond Street and Wall Street — the two busiest downtown streets — I saw a number of plaques on the side of buildings indicating that they had all been built in the 1910s, 1920s, and 1930s …
As for today, tourism is probably the most significant economic activities — focused around skiing at Mount Bachelor, and recreational activities around the nearby Cascade Lakes. Bend is also home to the Deschutes Brewery, which is the 6th largest craft brewery in the nation. And the town has hosted on of the top indie film festivals in the nation (the BendFilm Festival) each year since 2004. For whatever it’s worth, much of the town’s growth in recent years is due to its attraction as a retirement destination (I guess there must be a rational explanation for the decision to retire here, perhaps including a low crime rate or a low cost-of-living — but I found the concept quite mind-boggling) …
But none of this explains the look and feel of the houses in the “historical district” a few blocks away from the center of town. This is where my family members and I spent Thanksgiving week, and I walked through several quiet, empty blocks during the few days that it wasn’t raining … and while the photos in this Flickr album will give you some idea of what the houses and people look like, I’m at a loss for words to characterize what’s going on around here.
For one thing, it seems that every house is different. They’re all on tiny lots — probably about 1/4 of an acre — but they’re all different sizes, painted different colors, with different designs and architectures. I’m used to towns where all of the houses in an entire neighborhood are identical, because they were all designed and constructed by the same real-estate developer. And my son pointed out that in Portland, just a few hours away by car, the houses in several neighborhoods may look different from the house next door — but they all fall into five or six basic styles. Not so in Bend: it seems that nobody talked to anyone else, and nobody looked at any other house in the neighborhood, before they came up with their own unique design.
And with one or two exceptions, none of the houses are “modern” in any sense of the word. Many of them remind me of the neighborhoods were I lived as a child in the early 1950s; and I have a strong suspicion that many of them are much older than that, perhaps having been built in the 1920s or 1930s. Like the rest of the town, it seems that everything thrived here until the beginning of the 1940s … and then stopped.
Which then raises another interesting question: who actually lives in these houses today, in late 2014? I really couldn’t tell, because the streets were generally empty. and the only thing I saw through a living room window was a football game on a large TV screen. But I noticed that the cars parked on the street were by no means as old as the houses; most of them appeared to be less than five years old, with many large, modern trucks and Jeeps. There were a few bicycles and other indications of childhood life, along with a significant number of brightly-painted lawn chairs, an occasional barbecue grills (including some big, gas-powered grills on the front porch!), and lots of American flags …
If I had had a little more time or energy, I could have gone into the Deschutes County Museum (housed in what had been a stand-alone school house built in 1914), or perhaps the Town Hall, to learn a little more … but I didn’t.
And so Bend will remain a mystery, as we pack up and drive back to Portland tomorrow morning. And while nobody here will care, or even notice, I will go on record with the following prediction: I won’t be retiring here.
concrete oracle made with concrete, scratch marks and paint
Vorhersage.
Betonorakel aus Beton, Kratzmarkierungen und Farbe.
Hey Everybody! Since the Oscars is tomorrow and I'm a huge fan of film, I thought I would want to put my thoughts on the matter and make my predictions! I'm not going to make my predictions on all the awards, only the big ones. So here are my predictions for best director, best score, best animated film, best visual effects, best adapted screenplay, and best original screenplay.
Best Director: Richard Linklater(Boyhood)
Best Animated Film (because there is no Lego Movie): Big Hero 6
Best Visual Effects: Dawn of the Planet of the Apes
Best Screenplay:
Adapted: Whiplash
Original: Birdman
Make sure to check out part 1 for some other predictions (www.flickr.com/photos/antdude3001/16605227251/in/photostr...) and what are your predictions? Leave them down in the comments below!
Prediction of snow and ice (Polar Vortex) arriving from mid January 2024. One from the archives showing my old club Kexbrough playing at home in early season game 2016
Earthquake Prediction by Seismic Electric Signals: The success of the VAN method over thirty years by Mary S. Lazaridou-Varotsos
A curiosity
This gallery depicts a series of futuristic pictures by the French painter Jean-Marc Côté and other artists issued in 1899, 1900, 1901 and 1910. Originally in the form of paper cards enclosed in cigarette/cigar boxes and, later, as postcards, the images described the world as it was imagined to be like in the then distant year of 2000.
At least 87 were produced, and I have managed to capture 73 of them 😊. While a few were on point (A version of Skype or Facetime), many were wildly off-tangent (underwater croquet, anyone?). And all are definitely worth a look!
Sources: All images are in the public domain; Most were obtained from gallica.bnf.fr/
, although I had to edit a few to render them in higher resolution.
Me thinks....bamboozled will be the word of the year. Because in 2025 everything is cattywampus. Facts are just so yesterday. So pass me that ninnyhammer and lets get to work...dumbing down.
363/365 -- View On Black
I'm leaving the best for last folks! As some of you know I am a Tarot Reader. I wanted to do a 365 portrait honoring this gift. As well as sharing a daily reading. Here's my prediction for us for the New Year of 2010.
[DISCLAIMER]This prediction you can take it or leave it... It comes from the divine. If you do take it then apply it to all facets of your life. It's works if you work it!
For 2010 we should awaken our sense for adventure and self love! Time to know what you are worth honey!!! Our biggest obstacle in 2010? You guessed right you; us; ME; ME; ME! Keep your tried and true friends, toss the others.
You've been beating yourself up so much this past year that you haven't had time to think what you've been attracting into you life! I always say my mind is a dangerous neighborhood to be in... 2010 will give us lots of choices, choices, choices!
Yes money will be in the up in the air... but guess what?! It'll be falling back down to earth, and into our hands!! Don't miss out on opportunities, and don't loose your focus dear friends! Clean house or "house" will clean you!!!
The change game! Move a muscle and change a thought for the good!!
But guess what?! There's a yellow brick road!! And yes there is or will be a good witch(s) and bad witch(s)!!! Watch out for the poppies!!! Get to know yourself better and allow yourself to be vulnerable in such a time of vulnerability.
Be the dreamer or be dreamed!!!
Awaken the Dreamer! Go after your dream!!! Live it! Acknowledge that you exist! Go ahead! What are you afraid of??? Fear is useful until it locks you up in headlock of misery and projects it out into the world!!!
You only have now. We only live once!! Go ahead invest in self love. See how others harvest and plant it in others!!! Before you know it you may just have more self love than you count on your fingers!!!!!!!
Just be-careful of "rose colored glasses"! :-)
With all best intentions for you,
and love,
Henry
P.S. All Good Things
What is 2018 going to bring us ? Hard to predict.
Personally, I wish good health to all.
Politically I wish for the removal of the gang of criminals at the helm of my country, although I am aware that would be just a first step towards rebuilding civic decency and far more than that needs to be done.
Socially I wish for more human interactivity among us and less social media(tion). Remember how good it was getting together and doing things together ? I still do.
Photographically, I wish for good light and at least six remarkable photos in the new year. (yes you heard right: six. And that's a lot already, believe me.)
There are several other things I wish for, in the New Year, but I'll keep them to myself for now. Perhaps we can discuss them, face to face, next time we get together.
Peace and love to all.