View allAll Photos Tagged Predictions..
Sadly this store will close in December 2016 for good and my prediction is it will get torn down for a new Hy-Vee or something will move into it
The Hunt for Microbes
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.
Aspen, Colorado
September 5, 1980
2020 - Visions of the Future - Roaring Fork Valley (Page 1 of 7)
Nick's 1980 predictions for the year 2020
Document courtesy of:
Aspen Historical Society, IDCA Time Capsule Collection
Text:
1
2020 - VISIONS OF THE FUTURE - ROARING FORK VALLEY
By Nick DeWolf, Friday, September 5 1980
I hope we’ll take seriously the concept of burying the results of this conference in a time capsule because forty years from now most of [us] will still be alive so we will enjoy seeing what fools we were. I originally intended to give you a jazzy slide show of pictures from OMNI Magazine of wonderful machines and inventions from the future, but such fun excursions into fantasy will prevent all of us from truly thinking about tomorrow. We picked 2020 because that’s perfect vision, knowing full well that we don’t even have a chance to be close. The only forecast we can make safely is that we will be wrong, but more importantly, looking at other seasoned forecasts, we will almost certainly completely miss the most important issues forty years from now. I’ve been in the fast changing semiconductor business and thirty years ago we made all kinds of forecasts, the most optimistic of us making our most bizarre and kookiest guesses were fifteen times too low. The explosive growth just plain blew up in our faces.
In 2020 most of us will be a mere 85. By then, however, many of us will still be in our prime, with 20 years to go. But 2020 is relatively a twink away.
The earth is 4,600 million years old.
Cellular life has been here most of that time.
Photosynthesis for 2,000 million years.
Quasi-man 2 million years.
Erectus a tenth of a million years.
The last glacier coincided roughly with the birth of
consciousness (some believe), agriculture, the Church, cities, factories
- all five to ten thousand years old.
Books, schools, divorces, Hell and democracy were invented between two and five thousand years ago.
We’ve been capable of self destruction for only about thirty years.
Half of our published literature is only six years old.
Futurists of the past have held to cyclical views, a convolution
thing, such as sunspot cycles (my Father’s favorite way of predicting the stock market), but the kind of rollercoaster we’re on now makes the cyclical view seem kind of silly.
Others are evolutionists, who think about trends, and extrapolate Pitkin County growth forty years from now via percentage growth rates.
But I believe in catastrophe theory - that the future will come by lurches and leaps and creaks up and down, and changes will be more revolutionary.
Above all, more than at any other time in the history of man, we control our own destiny. The incredible number of options we have are really within our control instead of nature’s.
Many of those who want to plot charts are stuck in measuring the quality of life with measurements like:
Air pollution; Gross National Product; Nuclear Radiation levels;
Bacteria counts.
I find that those measures of the quality of life don’t interest me much - what counts to me are things like:
Rewards; Happiness; Freedom; Spark; Elan; Spirit; Privacy; Self
Expression; Fulfillment - those kinds of things.
Therefore most are incapable of attacking the subject scientifically - three cheers!
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
Predictions of 200-1000 per hour did not pan out. Oh well beautiful night anyway. Bonus points! Reddish glow Northern lights!
Newsweek Cover, July 3, 1978: TV of Tomorrow
www.facebook.com/photo/?fbid=1470218527709398&set=a.9...
Credit:
Computer Love Records
The Michigan Data Science Team, led by faculty advisor Jacob Abernethy, assistant professor of electrical engineering and computer science at U-M Ann Arbor, toured the city of Flint, MI as part of the group's new partnership with U-M Flint and Google to develop predictive software that will identify locations in Flint that are most at risk for lead contamination.
Photo: Evan Dougherty, Michigan Engineering, Communications & Marketing
engin.umich.edu
High-profile virologist Didier Raoult, a leading proponent of the controversial drug chloroquine as a treatment for Covid-19, says the virus is disappearing in Marseille. But the city's regional health boss says it’s far too early for such conclusions.
In a video on twitter on Tuesday night, the specialist in infectious diseases at Marseille university hospital declared that the virus is “gradually disappearing” in the city.
“There is a very significant drop in the number of positive tests and an even bigger drop among those who are tested who have no symptoms,” he says.
At the height of the epidemic, Raoult’s Méditerranée Infection Foundation counted 368 new cases per day. But now he says numbers are around 60 to 80.
“It’s possible that the epidemic will disappear in the spring", he says, "A few weeks from now, it’s possible that there will be no more cases. We don’t know why, but we see it quite often, with the majority of viral respiratory illnesses.”
However, the Director General of the Regional Health Agency for the Marseille area worries about such suggestions.
"It is far too early to make predictions about the end of the epidemic", Philippe de Mester told the French newspaper France Bleu Provence. "We know nothing about its duration, unfortunately. It is true that we have recorded a slowdown in the spread of the epidemic, but not an actual decline. The epidemic will continue and it will take a few more weeks”
He stressed the importance of continuing to follow the lockdown rules.
Raoult regularly posts videos on Twitter, communicating directly with the public and not simply to the scientific community.
His long hair and unconventional manner are part of the anti-establishment style he appears to cultivate and he has a growing number of followers.
Supporters of his treatment see him as provincial hero challenging a Parisian scientific establishment and a working doctor standing up to researchers in ivory towers.
He maintains that an anti-malaria drug, hydroxychloroquine, combined with the antibiotic azithromicyne, is an effective treatment for Covid-19 patients, if used before they need intensive care.
He has published results from his use of this approach which show considerable success but with no neutral control group for comparison, there is no conclusive proof that patients recover because of his treatment. As a result, it has not been authorised for use except in certain conditions in hospitals. The drug is known to have negative side effects but it is already used against malaria and in the treatment of Lupus and rheumatoid arthritis.
In an interview in Le Figaro on 3 April, Raoult was critical of today’s medical research processes.
He said that trial methodology established during the fight against Aids was not suitable for all situations and that the “group of people” who worked together at that time adhered to such methods too rigidly. He said that research had become too divorced from medicine.
Although Raoult himself is both a researcher and a clinical practitioner, he distinguished between the two, saying that as a doctor he wanted to use what seemed to work. In a health crisis, he said, lengthy trials could be shortened for a drug which is already in use.
Numerous other trials on hydroxychloroquine are underway but so far none which tests his exact approach.
It is unclear why his critics in the scientific community have not conducted such trials, to prove or disprove its effectiveness.
Instead the impression is given of a scientific community which is unwilling for some reason to explore certain options versus a maverick burnishing a reputation.
Several mostly right wing politicians have voiced support for Raoult and former health minister Philippe Douste-Blazy, a cardiologist, launched a petition to allow wider use of hydroxychloroquine.
In an interview with RFI on Wednesday, President Macron said he was “convinced he is a great scientist”, describing him as one of our most eminent experts. Macron has now called for rigorous trials of Raoult’s treatment approach to be conducted very soon so that its efficacy can be proved or disproved.
Born in Senegal, where he spent his childhood, the French doctor and researcher has maintained strong professional and emotional ties with the continent. And many African countries are already using chloroquine to treat people infected with Covid-19.
On 24 March, Professor Didier Raoult slammed the door on the circle of researchers who were supposed to advise the French president on the pandemic.
Disagreeing with the containment policy adopted by France, which favours mass screening, the iconoclastic infectiologist has just been disavowed by his peers, who are reluctant to endorse the use of hydroxychloroquine against coronavirus.
On Thursday 9 April, Raoult could measure the progress made when President Emmanuel Macron travelled especially to Marseilles to talk to him in order to “take stock of the question of treatment.”
This was a strong political gesture in favour of Raoult’s theses, whose promotion of the use of hydroxychloroquine to treat coronavirus patients has been the subject of much controversy for several weeks.
READ MORE: Coronavirus: 9 things to know about chloroquine
Pre-COVID-19 era
A specialist in emerging tropical infectious diseases at Marseille’s Faculty of Medical and Paramedical Sciences and at the Institut Hospitalo-Universitaire (IHU) Méditerranée Infection, the long-haired professor with the pepper and salt beard was still largely unknown to the general public at the end of February when his views on a chloroquine-based coronavirus treatment began to be heard.
Since then, the Frenchman has seen his media and digital fame take off. And in the ranks of its most fervent supporters, the African continent is not to be outdone.
Is it because the chemical compound he uses to treat his patients, hydroxychloroquine, is well known on the continent, where it has long been used to treat malaria? In two publications exposing tests carried out on some 20 patients, then on 80, the researcher and his teams conclude that “hydroxychloroquine combined with azithromycin is effective in the treatment of COVID-19”.
This quinine derivative is currently the subject of several studies. Those carried out by Professor Raoult have indeed aroused reservations among many experts, who reproach him for not having respected standard scientific protocols. At the end of March in France, the High Council of Public Health considered that chloroquine could be administered to patients suffering from “serious forms” of the coronavirus.”
READ MORE: To fight coronavirus, Burkina Faso is tempted by chloroquine
Those African countries that opt for chloroquine
At Fann Hospital in Dakar, Professor Moussa Seydi, head of the department of infectious and tropical diseases, has already administered chloroquine alone to the first 100 patients who tested positive for COVID-19. “In Marseille, Dr Didier Raoult published encouraging preliminary results. The combination of hydroxychloroquine and azithromycin should make it possible to shorten the carrying time [of the virus], in order to accelerate the healing of the sick,” Seydi told Jeune Afrique on 19 March. To use this drug, he says he relied on the study co-signed by his French counterpart.
Like Senegal, Burkina Faso, Algeria and Morocco have also opted for chloroquine.
On 23 March, the Ministry of Health of the Cherifian Kingdom thus requisitioned the national stocks and distributed to the directors of CHU the protocol for the prescription of chloroquine and hydroxychloroquine for confirmed cases of COVID-19. A decision inspired by Chinese research on the subject, and studies conducted by the French researcher, according to a member of the Moroccan committee in charge of the fight against the pandemic.
Born and raised in Senegal
If Professor Raoult is well known on the continent, it is also because this specialist in tropical and infectious diseases, in addition to having grown up there, has worked a lot there. It was in Dakar that the Frenchman is said to have caught the research virus.
Born in 1952 in the Senegalese capital, he lives there, in the building of the Research Office for Food and African Nutrition (Orana), created by his father.
This building sits opposite the Pasteur Institute in Dakar which houses the frontline laboratory in the fight against the epidemic in Senegal, and is where this son of a nurse and a military doctor stationed at the capital’s main hospital, took his first steps.
A childhood marked by happy memories of playing on the beach at Anse Bernard, made the move “complicated” when the young Didier Raoult arrived in Marseille at the age of 9. “Being partly Senegalese, I can’t help but feel concerned by what’s happening in Africa,” he says in a video addressed to the Senegalese group eMédia on 7 April.
QUEST FOR CHLOROQUINE
Coronavirus: Didier Raoult the African and chloroquine, from Dakar to Brazzaville
By Marième Soumaré, Rémy Darras
Posted on Wednesday, 15 April 2020 19:39
didier raoult
Professor Didier Raoult with Doctor Cheikh Sokhna (in the yellow shirt) in Niokolo-Koba park in Senegal, August 2019 © DR
Born in Senegal, where he spent his childhood, the French doctor and researcher has maintained strong professional and emotional ties with the continent. And many African countries are already using chloroquine to treat people infected with Covid-19.
On 24 March, Professor Didier Raoult slammed the door on the circle of researchers who were supposed to advise the French president on the pandemic.
Disagreeing with the containment policy adopted by France, which favours mass screening, the iconoclastic infectiologist has just been disavowed by his peers, who are reluctant to endorse the use of hydroxychloroquine against coronavirus.
On Thursday 9 April, Raoult could measure the progress made when President Emmanuel Macron travelled especially to Marseilles to talk to him in order to “take stock of the question of treatment.”
This was a strong political gesture in favour of Raoult’s theses, whose promotion of the use of hydroxychloroquine to treat coronavirus patients has been the subject of much controversy for several weeks.
READ MORE: Coronavirus: 9 things to know about chloroquine
Pre-COVID-19 era
A specialist in emerging tropical infectious diseases at Marseille’s Faculty of Medical and Paramedical Sciences and at the Institut Hospitalo-Universitaire (IHU) Méditerranée Infection, the long-haired professor with the pepper and salt beard was still largely unknown to the general public at the end of February when his views on a chloroquine-based coronavirus treatment began to be heard.
Since then, the Frenchman has seen his media and digital fame take off. And in the ranks of its most fervent supporters, the African continent is not to be outdone.
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Is it because the chemical compound he uses to treat his patients, hydroxychloroquine, is well known on the continent, where it has long been used to treat malaria? In two publications exposing tests carried out on some 20 patients, then on 80, the researcher and his teams conclude that “hydroxychloroquine combined with azithromycin is effective in the treatment of COVID-19”.
This quinine derivative is currently the subject of several studies. Those carried out by Professor Raoult have indeed aroused reservations among many experts, who reproach him for not having respected standard scientific protocols. At the end of March in France, the High Council of Public Health considered that chloroquine could be administered to patients suffering from “serious forms” of the coronavirus.”
READ MORE: To fight coronavirus, Burkina Faso is tempted by chloroquine
Those African countries that opt for chloroquine
At Fann Hospital in Dakar, Professor Moussa Seydi, head of the department of infectious and tropical diseases, has already administered chloroquine alone to the first 100 patients who tested positive for COVID-19. “In Marseille, Dr Didier Raoult published encouraging preliminary results. The combination of hydroxychloroquine and azithromycin should make it possible to shorten the carrying time [of the virus], in order to accelerate the healing of the sick,” Seydi told Jeune Afrique on 19 March. To use this drug, he says he relied on the study co-signed by his French counterpart.
Like Senegal, Burkina Faso, Algeria and Morocco have also opted for chloroquine.
On 23 March, the Ministry of Health of the Cherifian Kingdom thus requisitioned the national stocks and distributed to the directors of CHU the protocol for the prescription of chloroquine and hydroxychloroquine for confirmed cases of COVID-19. A decision inspired by Chinese research on the subject, and studies conducted by the French researcher, according to a member of the Moroccan committee in charge of the fight against the pandemic.
Born and raised in Senegal
If Professor Raoult is well known on the continent, it is also because this specialist in tropical and infectious diseases, in addition to having grown up there, has worked a lot there. It was in Dakar that the Frenchman is said to have caught the research virus.
Born in 1952 in the Senegalese capital, he lives there, in the building of the Research Office for Food and African Nutrition (Orana), created by his father.
This building sits opposite the Pasteur Institute in Dakar which houses the frontline laboratory in the fight against the epidemic in Senegal, and is where this son of a nurse and a military doctor stationed at the capital’s main hospital, took his first steps.
A childhood marked by happy memories of playing on the beach at Anse Bernard, made the move “complicated” when the young Didier Raoult arrived in Marseille at the age of 9. “Being partly Senegalese, I can’t help but feel concerned by what’s happening in Africa,” he says in a video addressed to the Senegalese group eMédia on 7 April.
The article continues below
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In 2008, Raoult established a joint research unit at his IHU in the Senegalese capital dedicated to communicable infectious diseases – one of Raoult’s two African teams with the Algiers team. The latter claims to produce 10% of scientific publications in the country of Teranga. “He wanted to have a lot of field staff: epidemiologists, virologists and bacteriologists,” explains one of his close friends, epidemiologist and biologist Cheikh Sokhna, team leader at the IHU Méditerranée Infection in Marseille.
READ MORE: To fight coronavirus, Burkina Faso is tempted by chloroquine
Research on all fronts
Sokhna, also a Senegalese, is director of research at the Institut de recherche pour le développement (IRD), and regularly exchanges with Professor Raoult. This week, IHU’s Senegalese team of about thirty people was due to submit a research project to the Senegalese Ministry of Health on the protocol of the chloroquine-azithromycin combination.
An encouraging sign, according to Sokhna, is that the prevalence of coronavirus seems to be lower in areas where the use of antimalarial drugs such as chloroquine or mefloquine is frequent.
“This can be seen very crudely. But other factors will have to be taken into account before any definitive conclusions can be drawn,” adds the enthusiastic and cautious researcher, who is usually based in Marseille but is currently on a long-term mission in Dakar.
This mixed research unit is far from being the only innovation driven by Didier Raoult in Africa. In 2012, the French researcher installed a MALDI-TOF at the main hospital in Dakar: a mass spectrometer that can detect bacteria in a few hours, compared to the usual two to three days with traditional methods.
Then, starting in 2015, he set up three small laboratories in Dakar and two villages in the Fatick region (Centre-West), three small laboratories – points of care (POC), in the jargon of the milieu – which allow blood or saliva to be taken and the origin of the disease or fever to be quickly given so that the nurses can propose an effective remedy in good time.
Didier Raoult launches research all over Senegal. On malaria, borreliosis, rickettsiosis, malnutrition, hand washing – “which can reduce diarrhoeal diseases by 50% and respiratory diseases by 30%”. The French doctor was already working with his Senegalese teams on other less severe forms of the coronavirus family that existed in the country, causing colds and pneumopathies.
READ MORE: Top 10 coronavirus fake news items
“Big African brother”
Every year, since 2008, he comes to spend a week in Dakar, participating in the IRD’s scientific day organized by Cheikh Sokhna, which brings together health actors and NGOs. It was on this occasion that he met two renowned scientists: the parasitologist Oumar Gaye, from the Cheikh-Anta-Diop University of Dakar (Ucad), and the pharmacist-colonel Souleymane Mboup, virologist and bacteriologist. They will join the scientific board of the IHU Méditerranée Infection, where the second will succeed the first.
All these names join the large community of African researchers gathered around the Marseille-based professor, including the Congolese Jean Akiana, from the Marien Ngouabi University in Brazzaville, the Algerian Idir Bitam, from the National Veterinary College in Algiers, and the Malian Ogobara Doumbo (who died in 2018). They all consider their peer as a “big African brother”. Not to mention his former doctoral students, with whom he has plans to create cutting-edge laboratories in Guinea-Conakry.
Described as an anti-conformist in the fight against dogma, familiar with the terrain but resistant to the beaten track, Professor Raoult does not hesitate to travel to the African countryside. “It’s an elephant that likes to come into contact with gorillas,” says Dr. Jean Akiana, director of health technologies at the Ministry of Health and a researcher at the National Public Health Laboratory in Brazzaville.
Interested in the transmission of bacteria from animals to humans, and vice versa, Raoult also went to meet gorillas in the Lésio-Louna reserve, in the Pool region, in south-eastern Congo-Brazzaville, to analyse their microorganisms and compare their residues with human faeces. “Picornavirus of the same family as coronavirus was found in the gorillas’ faeces. If we see Ebola genes, it could be a warning,” says Jean Akiana.
Akiana recently received a credit from Professor Raoult’s laboratory to travel to the Tchimpounga reserve to check whether chimpanzees might be the cause of the wild polio virus that struck Pointe-Noire in 2015. The Marseille-based professor also travelled to several departments such as Likouala, Sangha and the Plateaux to prospect for new micro-organisms with no immediate link to an identified outbreak. Samples that, when examined in Marseille, could help to take the lead when new epidemics occur.
In Algiers, a team made up of 100% Algerian teaching and research staff, is working on the final establishment of a research laboratory. The joint unit based in the Algerian capital is also working on infectious disease surveillance, taking advantage of the facilities of the Marseille-based institute.
Without foreigners, “no science in France”
“Its main objective is to help French-speaking countries, to transfer cutting-edge technology and to train young researchers in these innovative diagnostic tools,” says Sokhna. But Raoult, on the other hand, also knows very well what his country’s science owes to the African continent.
Critical of the restrictions imposed by the French administration in terms of the time it takes to obtain a visa, he believes that today the French scientific community relies above all on the contribution of doctoral students from the Maghreb and sub-Saharan Africa. During Emmanuel Macron’s visit, the Head of State was welcomed by a team of young researchers from Algeria, Morocco, Mali and Burkina Faso.
“In France, 50% of PhD students are foreigners. Without foreigners, there is no French science,” Raoult pointed out at a conference in 2013. At the time, the French researcher praised the work of the émigrés who are part of his team, the “engine of war” in scientific research. “The best, the most intelligent, the most dynamic, those who work on Sundays are only Sub-Saharan Africans and North Africans. That’s it! That’s the way it is.”
READ MORE: Coronavirus: Ending Europe’s colonial approach to medicine in Africa
Free spirit
The theme of the conference? “Disobedience at the heart of the research innovation process”. Raoult is known for not embarrassing himself in manners and freeing himself from doctrine, insulted by some, adulated by others, Raoult is a lasting figure. And he doesn’t seem to care. “I couldn’t imagine [my studies] triggering passions of this nature, I don’t even know where they come from,” he says in a video posted online on 8 April, in which he announces the imminent results of his new study, this time involving 1,000 patients.
According to the French press, the professor would have presented last Thursday to Emmanuel Macron his results, which establish a rate of virological cure of his patients of more than 91%. Accustomed to not being listened to by politicians, who take researchers “for strange birds”, Professor Raoult, says he is “guided by curiosity and exploratory research”.
Will he be able to rally Macron to his cause? In a recent Odoxa barometer, Raoult the iconoclast, appears in any case in second place among the favourite personalities of the French.
www.theafricareport.com/26264/coronavirus-didier-raoult-t...
Tucker's predictions for Super Bowl 57 between
the Philadelphia Eagles and Kansas City Chiefs!
Tucker, Welsh Corgi brings down the stuffed bulldog
before he picks it up to run for a touchdown.
Tucker's prediction is the underdogs, Kansas City Chiefs,
to win!
Tucker picked the 2023 Super Bowl 57 Champions!
Yes, The Kansas City Chiefs win in a close, exciting game
down to the final seconds with a field goal.
Chiefs win 38 to 35!
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.
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.
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."
.
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.
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.
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
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
Footdee is an area of Aberdeen, Scotland known locally as "Fittie". It is an old fishing village at the east end of the harbour. The name is actually folk etymology. Far from being "Foot of the Dee/Fit o the Dee", it is actually a corruption of a former dedication to a "St Fothan".
The area has had a settlement as far back as the Medieval times and the first recorded reference to the area of Fittie was in the year 1398. This village was slightly further North than where Footdee is now located. It would have been near to where the St Clement's Church is located.
Footdee is a particularly interesting example of a planned housing development purpose-built to re-house Aberdeen's local fishing community. Laid out in 1809 by John Smith, then Superintendent Of The Town's Public Works. Smith went on to establish himself as one of Aberdeen's key architects. Occupying an isolated spit of land to the SE of Aberdeen's city centre, its regimented squares have been described as a cross between the neo-classical aspirations of Aberdeen and the close-knit fishing communities of the north-east.
The two squares of 'Fish Town' (known as Footdee), originally contained 28 single-storey thatched houses although this increased when the later Middle Row (circa 1837) and Pilot Square (circa 1855) were added. The entrances on each of the North and South squares were filled in the 1870s by William Smith (son of John and architect of Balmoral Castle). He also added additional storeys to the East and West sides of South Square creating a tenement feel. This was an attempt to ease crowding resulting from an influx of fishing families from other less prosperous areas and to help try to enforce the 'one-house-one-family' rule.
The Town Council decided to start selling the dwellings to occupiers in 1880, beginning a period of incremental development and reconstruction. Additional storeys and dormers were added piecemeal by the new owners as funds allowed. The result is one of individuality expressed within the constraints of a strictly formal plan and is a contributing factor to the special architectural and historical interest of Footdee as a whole.
Throughout the 19th century, 'tarry sheds' were added to the communal land within the squares opposite each dwelling and now every dwelling has its own shed. Originally constructed from drift wood and other found materials, the sheds have been built and rebuilt in an idiosyncratic manner over the years in a variety of materials with rendered brick now predominating slightly (2006). Some timber built sheds remain, predominantly on the North side of North Square.
North Square Mission Hall occupies the central area of the North Square, reflecting its significance as an integral part of village life. The building is plain, with simple detailing throughout, and as such, responds sympathetically to its setting and context. Known locally as 'the schoolie' the hall was built for general as well as religious purposes and continues to operate as a multi-purpose meeting space.
The entire Footdee village was added to the statutory list in 1967 as a single entity. The village was subsequently given Conservation Area status in 1968. At resurvey in 2006, each building within the Conservation Area was re-assessed separately. Key examples, demonstrating both individual architectural interest and representing the history and development of the village as a whole, were selected for listing.
On an 1828 map, the new housing squares were specifically labelled 'Fish Town'. 'Footdee' referred to the larger area from St. Clement's Church to 'Fish Town'. Later, the name 'Footdee' was erroneously used to refer specifically to the housing squares, with 'Fish Town' becoming forgotten.
On Tuesday 25 September 2012, Footdee became covered in foam from the sea after experiencing strong wind and rain conditions. The effect was like a blanket of snow and this made the UK national news.
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.