At Google this weekend. Seeing a CMU telepresence robot now.

Some details from the scifoo Wiki:

I'd like to discuss an idea I'm formulating to improve climate modeling called "Global Swarming." The core idea is to deploy tens of thousands of ocean probes by leveraging the creative smarts and logistics coordination of the web.

As someone who served as an expert witness in the Dover "Intelligent Design" trial, and who has worked in the "creation-evolution" arena for a long time, if there is any interest I would be happy to run a session on "What happens post-Dover?" What will be the next wave of anti-evolutionism and anti-science? What needs to be done to combat it and raise the American public's awareness of the evidence for evolution? Why is this issue critical to the success of basic research in this country? How do scientists, educators, and tech folks fit in?

I'd like to brainstorm about programmable matter ProgrammableMatter. Programmable matter is any substance which can be programmed to change its shape or physical properties. We are currently working on constructing programmable matter and investigating how to program it. I would be most interested in talking about how one might program ensembles.

I’d like to present on OpenWetWare, a wiki promoting open research among biologists and biological engineers. With 65 labs and 1200 users on OpenWetWare, I can provide practical examples of how scientists are currently making use of the web(2.0) to support research and education in new ways. I’ll also talk about where the site is headed in the future, and how foocampers could help make it easier for scientists to share more of their secrets online.

I'll bring a memory stick with the recent radar images of what appear to be hydrocarbon-filled lakes on Saturn's moon, Titan, and some movies from Titan. I'm also happy to discuss the interesting phenomenon of "instant public science" done by enthusiasts everywhere who have instant access to the latest space science data from the web. BTW, Nature magazine's piece on exciting questions in chemistry (this week) included a mention of Titan, which should be on every organic chemists' hit list for places to visit.

I am interested in discussing the dichotomy of design and evolutionary search as divergent paths in complex systems development. - jurvetson.blogspot.com

I could begin a session about Systems Biology, with a general theme of building towards whole cell or whole organisms models in biology. I have some (whacky) ideas about this in addition to having done some real science on this subject.

I could present about novel circuit-focused neurotechnologies I'm developing, for advancing the study of brain function and consciousness, and for treating neurological and psychiatric disorders. Although I've been exploring this question in academic research settings – and I'm gearing up to set up my own university laboratory – I'd like to brainstorm about how to build the significant community of clinicians, engineers, scientists, and psychologists that we'd need to make strong scientific progress on the timeless, unyielding problem of understanding the nature of consciousness.

I could talk about/demonstrate: digital fabrication in the lab and its impact in field fab labs around the world, mathematical programs as a programming model for enormous/unreliable/extended systems and their application in analog logic circuits and Internet 0 networks, and microfluidic logic to integrate chemistry with computation

I could contribute to a session on powerlaws in nature, markets and human affairs. They're found nearly everywhere, from earthquakes to species distributions to cities to wars. We used to think the world was mostly defined by gaussian distributions (bell curves) with neat medians and standard deviations. But now we see that powerlaws, where low-frequency events have the highest amplitude, are far more common, and they're infinite functions where concepts like "average" are meaningless. What are the factors that create powerlaws and what does nature have in common with economics and social networking in this instance?

I'd like to talk to the assembled folks about a project we are running to help scientists move large datasets without using the internet (which can be very slow or expensive.

I hope to demo a viral database and talk about efforts to build real time surveillance via the WHO.

I'd like to discuss the range of applications being discussed in HE (HigherEd) that permit faculty and research groups to store and share a wide range of scholarly assets, including research data, texts (articles such as pre-prints and post-prints), images, and other media. These next generation academic apps provide support for tagging, community-of-use definitions, discovery, rights assertions via CC, and new models of peer review and commentary. Early designs typically implicate heavy use of atom or gdata for posting and retrieval, lucene, and ajax.

I can offer a brief introduction to the Human Genome, and the field of Comparative Genomics which focuses on comparing our own genome to that of other species. I'll try to give a taste of some of the startling revelations, seeming paradoxes, and many open questions that make working with this three billion letter string a ball.

I could offer the opposite point of view, looking at the very simplest organisms, what they do, how they work, and what life looks like when the genome fits on a floppy.

I would like to talk about the future of the scientific method. How the scientific method was one invention the Chinese did not make before the west, and how the process of science has changed in the last 400 years and will change even more in the next 50 years. I'd love to hear others' ideas of where the science method is headed.

I could offer some (possibly naive) ideas on how we could design evolvability into the scientific process by learning from the evolution of cellular complexity. I can also include some examples from language evolution and software evolution.

I can describe our general approach for open collaborative biomedical research at The Synaptic Leap.

I have in mind a presentation related to my project on Milestones in the History of Data Visualization – an attempt to provide a comprehensive catalog documenting and illustrating the historical developments leading to modern data visualization and visual thinking. The talk might encompass some of (a) some great moments in the history of data visualization, (b) 'statistical historiography': the study of history as 'data', (c) a self-referential Q: how to visualize this history. The goal would be more to suggest questions and aproaches than to provide answers – in fact a main reason to present would be to hear other people's reactions.

As we're on the topic of visualizations, I could give a talk about the rise of the geobrowser/virtual globe and how it is revolutionizing the geospatial visualization of information. I can showcase some of the best examples of scientific visualizations, show how geobrowsers are helping humanitarian causes and discuss the social-software aspect of Google Earth and other expected 'mirror worlds', where geospatial information is shared, wiki-like. Above all, I would love to brainstorm the possible use of geobrowsers in the projects of other campers.

I'm willing to give a talk about imaging projects in the Stanford Computer Graphics Laboratory, such as our large array of cameras, our handheld camera whose photographs you can refocus after you take the picture, and our work on multi-perspective panoramas (the Google-funded Stanford CityBlock Project). These projects are part of a trend towards "computational photography", in which computers play a significant role in image formation.

I'm a Hugo Award-winning science-fiction writer, and I'm working on a trilogy (my 18th through 20th novels) about the World Wide Web spontaneously gaining consciousness once the number of interconnections it has exceeds the number in a human brain. I'd love to talk a bit about my ideas of how such a consciousness, at first an epiphenomenon supervening on top of the web infrastructure, might actually come to access the documents and input sources available online and how it might perceive external reality, and I'd love to brainstorm with people about what sort of interactions and relationships humanity might have with such an entity.

I could talk about the current and future generation of astronomical surveys that will map the sky every three nights or so (e.g. the Large Synoptic Survey Telescope). They are designed to be able to address multiple science goals from the same data set (e.g. understanding cosmology and dark energy through to indentifying moving sources such as asteroids in our Solar System). With hundreds of thousands of variable sources detected each year (on top of the ten billion non-variables) the flow of data presents a number of challenges for how we follow up these sources.

I could talk about insights gained as part of the NSF-funded Pathways research project (Cornell U, LANL) that looks at scholarly communication as a global workflow across heterogeneous repositories and tries to identify a lightweight interoperability framework to facilitate the emergence of a natively digital scholarly communication system. Think introspecting on the evolution of science by traversing a scholarly communication graph that jumps across repositories. I could also talk about work we have been doing with scholarly usage information: aggregating it across repositories, and using the aggregated data to generate recommendations and metrics.

I'd love to show the prototype of an NSF-sponsored web-based simulation designed to help students learn about the nature of science. I'll bring the server on my laptop; we can all connect and play cosmologist. Advice welcome. More at NatureOfScienceGame

Making Open Access Affordable (free): There is a move afoot to put all science literature in the public domain (it is mostly funded with tax-free or tax money). There is a move afoot to put all science data in the public domain (ditto). These are unfunded mandates. We can not do much about the funding, but we computer scientists can do a LOT to drive the needed funds to zero by making it EASY to publish, organize, search, and display literature and data online. This also dovetails with Jill Mesirov's approach to reproducable science – future science literature will be a multi-layer summary of the source data – words, graphs, pictures on top and derivations + data underneath. Many working on these issues will be at this event. We should have a group-grope.

Laboratory Information Management Systems (LIMS) for small labs with BIG data. It is embarrassing how many scientists use Excel as their database system – but even more embarrassing is how many use paper notebooks as their database. New science instruments (aka sensors) produce more data and more diverse data than will fit in a paper notebook, a table in a paper, or in Excel. How does "small science" work in this new world where it takes 3 super-programmers per ecologist to deploy some temperature and moisture sensors in a small ecosystem? We think we have an answer to this in the form of pre-canned LIMS applications.

Related to this I could talk a bit about how our work on myGrid has been aiming at taking the escience capabilities offered to large well funded groups down to a more 'grass roots' level - grid based science is traditionally the realm of people and groups with serious money but we don't think this has to be the case.

I could present a software demo of a new web-based collaborative environment for sharing drug discovery data – initially focused on developing world infectious disease research (such as Malaria, Chagas Disease, African Sleeping Sickness) with technology that should be equally applicable for scientists collaborating around any private or public therapeutic area. This demo is a collaboration initiated between Collaborative Drug Discovery, Inc and Prof. McKerrow at UCSF which could shift drug discovery efforts away from today's fragmented, secretive, individual lab model to an integrated, distributed model while maintaining data and IP protection.

Our present vaccine production infrastructure leaves us woefully unprepared to deal with either natural or artificial surprises – think SARS and avian influenza (H5N1), which can both easily outpace our technological response. There are superior technological alternatives that will not be widely available for years to come due to regulatory issues, and I would like engage the other campers on ways to address this problem. In particular, I would like to explore the potential contribution of distributed, low cost science – garage science – to improving our safety and preparedness.

The "Encyclopedia of Life" is a buzz phrase being bandied around by biologists – the idea is having an online resource that tells you what we know about each species of organism on the planet. It's an idea that seems obvious, but how would we achieve this given the scale of the task (number of known species about 2 million, those waiting to be found maybe 2-100, we really don't know), the rapidly dwindling number of experts who can tells us something about those organisms, the size of the literature (unlike most sciences, taxonomists care about stuff published back as far as the 18th century), and the widely distributed, often poorly digitized sources of information? I'd willing to chat about some of the issues involved, and some possible solutions

I would like to share briefly with you the results of a five year project to create and publish the world’s first totally integrated Encyclopedic vision of food – its origins, variations, complexity,nutrients, dimensions, meanings, enjoyment, history and a thousand and one stories about food. The result is a new kind of truly multidimensional Encyclopedia of Food and Culture that I edited with a whole team of scientists and scholars, and Scribner’s (Gale /Thompson) published in 2003. The Encyclopedia has been well reviewed and we won, among many awards, the Dartmouth Medal (the top prize in the reference world) in July 2004. I am bringing a three volume HARD copy with me and will put it on display at the “Table” for everyone to peruse at your leisure -(it is designed to ‘catch you’ – so if you are a browser and you love food you may have trouble giving it up for others to read!)I would also be delighted to talk about a new kind of World Food Museum that is designed to make the Encyclopedia come alive (please seem my bio statement for more).

I would like to present Cornell Lab of Ornithology’s Citizen Science work as an example of several of the broader citizen science interests described in the Wiki. These include: Challenges of involving the public in data collection for professional research, scientific tradeoffs and possibilities, internet data collection tools, dynamic graphing and mapping tools, data mining, sustainability, webcommunity building plans for the future, and recruitment models within the contexts of conservation science and ornithology.

I would also like to demonstrate the new Pulluin software chip that fits in a TREO palm cell phone. It has a bird ID tool, lets you hear vocalizations, see pictures, and enter data into one of our citizen science projects, eBird. The ideal way to show you this toy would be to take interested campers on an early morning bird walk. If I can get enough signups, I will try to get eBird project leader, Brian Sullivan, to come up from Monterey, providing he is available. We would probably carpool to the shore to bird. If you are interested, email me and tell me which days, Sat., Sun., or both, you would be available.

Who are we? I'd like to give a short talk to argue for the importance of addressing an old question with a new meaning: What is it like to be human? Why do we dare, care and share? Why are we curious, generous and open? We have to deal with these questions before artifical intelligence, genetic engineering and the globalisation of cultures have changed us irreversibly. Many areas of activity in science, technology and the arts offer new perspectives: Sexual selection, algorithmic information theory, perception, nutrition, experimental economics, game theory and network theory, etc. They point to a coherent view of humans as flows and processes, rather than things and objects. Openness is essential. Attention is essential. Time is ripe for a new collective effort at producing a view of human being relevant to our age.

Robotics for the Masses – I would like to present two new technologies that we are public-domaining imminently. One is Gigapan, a technology for taking ultra-high-resolution panoramic images with low-cost equipment. We can generate time lapses of an entire field with enough detail to see individual petals in detail as they bloom and wither. The second is the TeRK site, which is designed to enable non-roboticists to make robots for tools without becoming robotics experts. I will bring Gigapans and TeRK robots with me and would love to show them doing their techie things. Both of these strands have the potential to be useful scientific tools.

Science, not near as much fun as math! :~) But without it the world remains untouchable. Do you want your child with maximum understanding? We better equip the rest to understand her, so that she is heard when speaking about this exquisite world. But how to reach as many as can be reached? Free is not near enough, full access comes close. The challenge is to deliver science, as the compelling, engaging, tantalizing world that it is, the very first frontier to cross into who we are. The quality of that experience needs freedom of expression. NASA World Wind is a bold step towards that. We are delighted to share the not-so-secret secrets thereof.

I could discuss how our fundamental discoveries on bipedal bugs and octopuses, gripping geckos and galloping ghost crabs have provided biological inspiration for the design of robots, artificial muscles and adhesives. I can include a demo of artificial muscles from Artificial Muscle Incorporated. I will bring two robots in development – a gecko-like climbing robot from our collaboration with Stanford and an insect-like hexapedal robot built by our UPenn colleagues. I will carry with me live death-head cockroaches that serve as our inspiration. I could facilitate a discussion of neuromechanical control architectures. I will introduce briefly our new center at Berkeley (CIBER – Center for Interdisciplinary Bio-inspiration in Education and Research) and a new journal - Bioinspiration and Biomimetics. I welcome this group’s creative suggestions not only for the next generation of robots, but also for novel designs using tunable skeletal structures, artificial muscles and dry adhesives

I would be interested in discussing and debating technical and nontechnical issue involving Social Semantic Search and Analytics. There is a significant interest in Social Search, and some interest in Semantic Search. Here is a scenario that probably involves more futuristic capabilities but a modest verion of this can lead to lower hanging fruits involving "little semantics" and "weak semantics" which would involve less infrastructure in creating and maintaining ontologies (albeit my experience shows building and maintaining large ontologies is doable, see Semantic Web: A different perspective on what works and what doesn't: (a) a research paper is published ;Eg: Semantics Analytics on Social Networks www2006.org/programme/item.php?id=4068], (b) there is a popular press article with numerous factual errors and unsupported conjuctures e.g., this one, (c) there are several versions on popular web sites along with numerous blog postings containing emotional reactions See for example, (d) Tim O'Reilly digs into the facts and sets the record staight in Datamining Social Networking Sites. How can we track the string of these stories along various dimensions [thematic, spatial, temporal] while provding overview, ranking based on various criteria, contextual linking, insights on individual postings, and more? I am interested in more than clustering and linking through statistical analysis which are good to put some stories in font of a reader,but would not sufficiently help someone who needs to creat a cogent understanding of an event or a situation.

I'd like to discuss the planning of a Mountain View Consensus, in response to Bjørn Lomborg's Copenhagen Consensus, a ranking of where to spend money on the world's biggest problems. The frustrating thing about the Copenhagen Consensus is that it is published as a report – so if you think the compund interest rate should be 2% higher, you can only speculate on what the effect would be of changing it. For the Mountain View Consensus we would publish findings as a collaborative spreadsheet, with annotations for the values that different participants place on each variable, and the opportunity for anyone to add annotations. Also, while Lomborg invited only economists, we would include scientists and engineers who understand the technologies, and venture capitalists who understand risk factors and chances of technology bets.

I have two projects I'd like to share at Science Foo–and i'm eager to hear your thoughts on how best to build and deploy them both:

1) An open source project–the Family Medical History Tool –that could graphically capture essential medical data and which could be shared by family members (with this goes a myriad of challenging issues around privacy, HIPPA laws, etc.

2) We're initiating a "citizen science" approach to a retrospective clinical trial providing open and transparent results real-time. We believe that additional data could be rapidly collected to demonstrate a correlation between drug metabolism and genotype for the 2D6 gene and the drug tamoxifen. Preliminary data shows that 5-10 % of women who are 2D6 poor metabolizers taking tamoxifen (to avoid a reoccurrence of cancer) may be getting nothing more than a placebo effect, and worse, run a 3 times greater risk of a cancer reoccurrence.

I could give a talk and lead a discussion on the status and prospects for advanced nanotechnologies based on digital control of molecular assembly. I'd start by describing machines that already do this (in biology) and how they are being exploited to make nanostructures. I'd then outline a path forward to some very powerful technologies that today can be studied only by means of physical modeling and computational simulation. There are potential applications on a scale relevant to the climate change problem.

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atelier ying, nyc.

this mini-series design offers a brief respite from the stormy weather of life in the House of Commons, although this particular kind of vulnerability was probably nothing much to the brave W. Churchill.

the extra large trunk and topiary-like foliage provide a sound structure.

Churchill's House of Commons room in the clouds is a single room library of British Annual Registers of the years of his entire career (which Churchill had sent to him in India by his mother for careful study). A series of many short stairs with protracted landings contain work papers (in order of importance) allowing the PM to slowly descend the tree during his work day, ending at the bottom in a circular foyer that has a prominent ticker machine which Churchill used to check on the latest world events. A simple pulley French elevator becomes a painting studio for the PM.

Design, concepts, text and drawing are copyright 2014 by David Lo.

Enjoy LARGE view and tags on right.

____________

Magdi Allam Recounts His Path to Conversion

Benedict XVI Baptized the Journalist at Easter Vigil

VATICAN CITY, MARCH 23, 2008 (Zenit.org).- Here is a translation of Magdi Allam’s account of his conversion to Catholicism. The Muslim journalist was baptized by Benedict XVI at Saturday's Easter Vigil Mass in St. Peter's Basilica.

An abbreviated form of this account appeared as a letter to Paolo Mieli, the director of the Italian newspaper Corriere della Sera. Allam is the paper’s deputy director. The Italian version of the complete text is available at magdiallam.it.

* * *

Dear Friends,

I am particularly happy to share with you my immense joy for this Easter of Resurrection that has brought me the gift of the Christian faith. I gladly propose the letter that I sent to the director of the Corriere della Sera, Paolo Mieli, in which I tell the story of the interior journey that brought me to the choice of conversion to Catholicism. This is the complete version of the letter, which was published by the Corriere della Sera only in part.

* * *

Dear Director,

That which I am about to relate to you concerns my choice of religious faith and personal life in which I do not wish to involve in any way the Corriere della Sera, which it has been an honor to be a part of as deputy director “ad personam” since 2003. I write you thus as protagonist of the event, as private citizen.

Yesterday evening I converted to the Christian Catholic religion, renouncing my previous Islamic faith. Thus, I finally saw the light, by divine grace -- the healthy fruit of a long, matured gestation, lived in suffering and joy, together with intimate reflection and conscious and manifest expression. I am especially grateful to his holiness Pope Benedict XVI, who imparted the sacraments of Christian initiation to me, baptism, confirmation and Eucharist, in the Basilica of St. Peter’s during the course of the solemn celebration of the Easter Vigil. And I took the simplest and most explicit Christian name: “Cristiano.” Since yesterday evening therefore my name is Magdi Crisitano Allam.

For me it is the most beautiful day of [my] life. To acquire the gift of the Christian faith during the commemoration of Christ’s resurrection by the hand of the Holy Father is, for a believer, an incomparable and inestimable privilege. At almost 56 […], it is a historical, exceptional and unforgettable event, which marks a radical and definitive turn with respect to the past. The miracle of Christ’s resurrection reverberated through my soul, liberating it from the darkness in which the preaching of hatred and intolerance in the face of the “different,” uncritically condemned as “enemy,” were privileged over love and respect of “neighbor,” who is always, an in every case, “person”; thus, as my mind was freed from the obscurantism of an ideology that legitimates lies and deception, violent death that leads to murder and suicide, the blind submission to tyranny, I was able to adhere to the authentic religion of truth, of life and of freedom.

On my first Easter as a Christian I not only discovered Jesus, I discovered for the first time the face of the true and only God, who is the God of faith and reason. My conversion to Catholicism is the touching down of a gradual and profound interior meditation from which I could not pull myself away, given that for five years I have been confined to a life under guard, with permanent surveillance at home and a police escort for my every movement, because of death threats and death sentences from Islamic extremists and terrorists, both those in and outside of Italy.

I had to ask myself about the attitude of those who publicly declared fatwas, Islamic juridical verdicts, against me -- I who was a Muslim -- as an “enemy of Islam,” “hypocrite because he is a Coptic Christian who pretends to be a Muslim to do damage to Islam,” “liar and vilifier of Islam,” legitimating my death sentence in this way. I asked myself how it was possible that those who, like me, sincerely and boldly called for a “moderate Islam,” assuming the responsibility of exposing themselves in the first person in denouncing Islamic extremism and terrorism, ended up being sentenced to death in the name of Islam on the basis of the Quran. I was forced to see that, beyond the contingency of the phenomenon of Islamic extremism and terrorism that has appeared on a global level, the root of evil is inherent in an Islam that is physiologically violent and historically conflictive.

At the same time providence brought me to meet practicing Catholics of good will who, in virtue of their witness and friendship, gradually became a point of reference in regard to the certainty of truth and the solidity of values. To begin with, among so many friends from Communion and Liberation, I will mention Father Juliàn Carròn; and then there were simple religious such as Father Gabriele Mangiarotti, Sister Maria Gloria Riva, Father Carlo Maurizi and Father Yohannis Lahzi Gaid; there was rediscovery of the Salesians thanks to Father Angelo Tengattini and Father Maurizio Verlezza, which culminated in a renewed friendship with major rector Father Pascual Chavez Villanueva; there was the embrace of top prelates of great humanity like Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, Monsignor Luigi Negri, Giancarlo Vecerrica, Gino Romanazzi and, above all, Monsignor Rino Fisichella, who personally accompanied me in the journey of spiritual acceptance of the Christian faith.

But undoubtedly the most extraordinary and important encounter in my decision to convert was that with Pope Benedict XVI, whom I admired and defended as a Muslim for his mastery in setting down the indissoluble link between faith and reason as a basis for authentic religion and human civilization, and to whom I fully adhere as a Christian to inspire me with new light in the fulfillment of the mission God has reserved for me.

Mine was a journey that began when at four years old, my mother Safeya -- a believing and practicing Muslim -- in the first in the series of “fortuitous events” that would prove to be not at all the product of chance but rather an integral part of a divine destiny to which all of us have been assigned -- entrusted me to the loving care of Sister Lavinia of the Comboni Missionary Sisters, convinced of the goodness of the education that would be imparted by the Catholic and Italian religious, who had come to Cairo, the city of my birth, to witness to their Christian faith through a work aimed at the common good. I thus began an experience of life in boarding school, followed by the Salesians of the Institute of Don Bosco in junior high and high school, which transmitted to me not only the science of knowledge but above all the awareness of values.

It is thanks to members of Catholic religious orders that I acquired a profoundly and essentially an ethical conception of life, in which the person created in the image and likeness of God is called to undertake a mission that inserts itself in the framework of a universal and eternal design directed toward the interior resurrection of individuals on this earth and the whole of humanity on the day of judgment, which is founded on faith in God and the primacy of values, which is based on the sense of individual responsibility and on the sense of duty toward the collective. It is in virtue of a Christian education and of the sharing of the experience of life with Catholic religious that I cultivated a profound faith in the transcendent dimension and also sought the certainty of truth in absolute and universal values.

There was a time when my mother’s loving presence and religious zeal brought me closer to Islam, which I occasionally practiced at a cultural level and in which I believed at a spiritual level according to an interpretation that at the time -- it was the 1970s -- summarily corresponded to a faith respectful of persons and tolerant toward the neighbor, in a context -- that of the Nasser regime -- in which the secular principle of the separation of the religious sphere and the secular sphere prevailed.

My father Muhammad was completely secular and agreed with the opinion of the majority of Egyptians who took the West as a model in regard to individual freedom, social customs and cultural and artistic fashions, even if the political totalitarianism of Nasser and the bellicose ideology of Pan-Arabism that aimed at the physical elimination of Israel unfortunately led to disaster for Egypt and opened the way to the resumption of Pan-Islamism, to the ascent of Islamic extremists to power and the explosion of globalized Islamic terrorism.

The long years at school allowed me to know Catholicism well and up close and the women and men who dedicated their life to serve God in the womb of the Church. Already then I read the Bible and the Gospels and I was especially fascinated by the human and divine figure of Jesus. I had a way to attend Holy Mass and it also happened, only once, that I went to the altar to receive communion. It was a gesture that evidently signaled my attraction to Christianity and my desire to feel a part of the Catholic religious community.

Then, on my arrival in Italy at the beginning of the 1970s between the rivers of student revolts and the difficulties of integration, I went through a period of atheism understood as a faith, which nevertheless was also founded on absolute and universal values. I was never indifferent to the presence of God even if only now I feel that the God of love, of faith and reason reconciles himself completely with the patrimony of values that are rooted in me.

Dear Director, you asked me whether I fear for my life, in the awareness that conversion to Christianity will certainly procure for me yet another, and much more grave, death sentence for apostasy. You are perfectly right. I know what I am headed for but I face my destiny with my head held high, standing upright and with the interior solidity of one who has the certainty of his faith. And I will be more so after the courageous and historical gesture of the Pope, who, as soon has he knew of my desire, immediately agreed to personally impart the Christian sacraments of initiation to me. His Holiness has sent an explicit and revolutionary message to a Church that until now has been too prudent in the conversion of Muslims, abstaining from proselytizing in majority Muslim countries and keeping quiet about the reality of converts in Christian countries. Out of fear. The fear of not being able to protect converts in the face of their being condemned to death for apostasy and fear of reprisals against Christians living in Islamic countries. Well, today Benedict XVI, with his witness, tells us that we must overcome fear and not be afraid to affirm the truth of Jesus even with Muslims.

For my part, I say that it is time to put an end to the abuse and the violence of Muslims who do not respect the freedom of religious choice. In Italy there are thousands of converts to Islam who live their new faith in peace. But there are also thousands of Muslim converts to Christianity who are forced to hide their faith out of fear of being assassinated by Islamic extremists who lurk among us. By one of those “fortuitous events” that evoke the discreet hand of the Lord, the first article that I wrote for the Corriere on Sept. 3, 2003 was entitled “The new Catacombs of Islamic Converts.” It was an investigation of recent Muslim converts to Christianity in Italy who decry their profound spiritual and human solitude in the face of absconding state institutions that do not protect them and the silence of the Church itself. Well, I hope that the Pope’s historical gesture and my testimony will lead to the conviction that the moment has come to leave the darkness of the catacombs and to publicly declare their desire to be fully themselves. If in Italy, in our home, the cradle of Catholicism, we are not prepared to guarantee complete religious freedom to everyone, how can we ever be credible when we denounce the violation of this freedom elsewhere in the world? I pray to God that on this special Easter he give the gift of the resurrection of the spirit to all the faithful in Christ who have until now been subjugated by fear. Happy Easter to everyone.

Dear friends, let us go forward on the way of truth, of life and of freedom with my best wishes for every success and good thing.

Magdi Allam

Yesterday night I sat down to train my linework. It ended up as this new shirtdesign. I wanted to go on some kind of early-punk/hardcore record sleeve vibe.

If you're a band or a brand and interested in the design just hit me up: hello@deedeekid.com

Text is pretty random and of course replaceable.

More details here: deedeekid.com/blog/illustration/wreckage/

Leica SL (Typ 601)

Leica 24-90mm f2.8-4 ASPH Vario-Elmarit-SL Lens

Street Photography in London, UK

The text for a calligraphy is given by the customer. The calligraphy will be used in frameworks of a design project.

"We have found the MESSIAH: Jesus CHRIST, who brings us Truth and Grace." John 1:41, 17b

In Joyful Anticipation of the MESSIAH...

"In the Book of Daniel we are told that this kingdom is given to the Son of Man and to the saints (Daniel 7:14,18,22,27). The Son of Man is a Messianic title for God's anointed King. The New Testament word for "MESSIAH" is "CHRIST" which literally means the "ANOINTED ONE" or the "Anointed King". God sent us HIS Son not to establish an earthly kingdom but to bring us into HIS heavenly kingdom – a kingdom ruled by TRUTH, JUSTICE, PEACE, and HOLINESS. The kingdom of God is the central theme of Jesus' mission. It's the core of HIS gospel message."

~ www.dailyscripture.net/daily-meditation/?ds_year=2023&amp...

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Christ (ancient Greek: Christós, meaning 'anointed') is a translation of the Hebrew, the MESSIAH, and is used as a title for Jesus in the New Testament.

The followers of Jesus became known as Christians (as in Acts 11:26) because they believed Jesus to be the MESSIAH prophesied in the Hebrew Bible. Christians designate HIM Jesus Christ, meaning Jesus the Christos. Christ was originally a title, but later became part of the name "Jesus Christ", though it is still also used as a title, in the reciprocal use Christ Jesus, meaning "The Messiah Jesus".

Jesus is not accepted by the majority of Jews as their MESSIAH. The Jewish people still await the MESSIAHS first coming, while Christians await HIS second coming, when they believe HE will fulfill those parts of Messianic prophecy left unfulfilled in the first century AD.

~ Wikipedia

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PRAYER

"Lord Jesus Christ, You are the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end of all history, and the Lord of all creation. Give me Joyful Hope and Confidence that I will see You face to face when You return in glory ."

~ www.DailyScripture.net

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I am Honored to have this Image in use at:

~ reneweddaily.com/place-hope-advent/

~ biblicalvision.org

~ mark-cannon.com/2015/05/05/how-can-christians-help-muslim...

~ soarlectionarybiblestudy.wordpress.com/2016/01/23/gospel-...

~ soarlectionarybiblestudy.wordpress.com/2019/01/20/gospel-...

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Filename - MESSIAH - P9174344 Layers of Hills - boost 2 framed - digital painting - oil painting effect 2012

Following the Son...

Blessings,

Sharon 🌻

God's Beauty In Nature is calling us into a deeper relationship with Him...

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Bloggers are welcome to use my artwork with, “Image from Art4TheGlryOfGod by Sharon under Creative Commons license”, and a link back to the images you use, and please let me know in the comment section below, thank you...

Art4TheGlryOfGod Photography and Watercolor Paintings by Sharon

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Faith, Hope & Love in daily Art meditations...

X ~ www.twitter.com/Art4ThGlryOfGod

Flickr (complete portfolio) ~ www.Flickr.com/4ThGlryOfGod

Purchase images on (Giclée canvas, metal prints, throw pillows, tote bags, cards, etc.) Let me know if an image has not been uploaded…

Fine Art America ~ fineartamerica.com/profiles/sharon-soberon

Redbubble ~ www.Redbubble.com/people/Art4ThGlryOfGod

Pixoto (awards) ~ www.pixoto.com/4thegloryofgod/awards

Music Videos (from my Art Photography) ~

www.youtube.com/user/4ThGlryOfGod

Prints available upon request.

we have been damaged and grown up with mistaken beliefs

This 134,618 square foot Target Greatland (#668) opened on October 13th, 1991 along with two other Columbus Area stores. This was Target's first entry into the Columbus market. This Target still operates as a Greatland but the store will be closing in January 2016.

This Target store was built on the former site of a drive-in theater that had been open since the 1950s. The long driveway on West Broad going back to the Target store is a relic of the old drive-in. The Consumer Square shopping center originally opened with Cub Foods as a co-anchor. Cub Foods later became a Kroger store.

Some people claim this was one of the most profitable Target stores in the 1990s. That may explain why the store had 24 checkouts at one time! Since then other Columbus area Target stores have opened and many retail stores (plus Westland Mall) in the area around this Target failed. A large Hollywood Casino opened a block from here but apparently that did little to draw people to Target.

In August 2015, Target announced that this store would be closing in November, possibly on the 1st. I visited this store on November 1st (what I thought was the last day) only to find the shelves still being stocked, the Food Avenue still serving up popcorn, and the seasonal section was brimming with Christmas decorations. Everything seemed to be business as usual except for one thing, the Pharmacy was shut down. There was a note on the front door saying the pharmacy shut down in October and that prescriptions were moved to another Target.

A couple days after my visit, Target announced again that this store would be closing; this time that it would be closing on January 30th, 2016. This Target Is still closing but I will try to visit both this store and the other Target in Springfield, Ohio that is closing in mid-January.

I do have more pictures of this store from a previous trip here- www.flickr.com/search/?user_id=71978807%40N03&sort=da...

Target Greatland - Soldano Boulevard - Columbus, Ohio

SOURCES

>jobisez.com/edi-igs/Target/Store%20Addresses%20by%20Store%20Number.pdf

>historicaerials.com/

>property.franklincountyauditor.com/

>dispatch.com/content/stories/local/2015/08/12/Target-to-close-W-Broad-store.html

>huffingtonpost.com/entry/list-of-target-store-closings_563a8529e4b0b24aee48d007

If you want to use this photo please contact me (Nicholas Eckhart) in one of the following ways:

>Send a FlickrMail message

>Comment on this photo

>Send an email to

eckhartnicholas@yahoo.com

This is what our holiday pictures look like this year. I shot about 50 polaroids and scribbled down photos we couldn't take but should have.

atelier ying, nyc.

The very first Bond gadget is a bridge between the nostalgic past of the Cold War and modern technology. Here I increase the depth of this bridge, to the 19th century, on a whim perhaps Fleming, a collector of antiquarian books, esoteric information, and old gold coins, may appreciate.

The legendary initials of 'JB' are also shared by another man, Johann Sebastian Bach. The genesis of his Goldberg Variations is amalgamated with the iconic attache case from this film. Bach's payment of 100 Louis d'Ors are now represented as 10 ancient Macedonian coins, something that Fleming, whose family was in banking, would have around. An english virginal, digitized, and a pair of english fruit knives from Boswell's time adds to the folly.

Design, concepts, text and drawing are copyright 2015 by David Lo.

the street was empty and gleaming. again you were careless with your words to say.

i was afraid to say that it hurts.

Manuscript title: Passover Haggadah

Manuscript summary: This Hebrew manuscript from the 15th century combines liturgical texts and commentaries on the rites that provide the temporal foundation for the observation of Passover. The Passah-Haggadah, adorned with miniatures and rich illustrations, contains the complete liturgical version of the Exodus story. The first part of the manuscript contains the text of the Italian rite, the second part that of the Ashkenazi. This manuscript was written and illuminated by Joël ben Siméon, who signed his work with a Kolophon (f. 34r): I am Joel ben Simeon, called Veibusch Ashkenazi – blessed be his memory – and I am from Cologne, which is on the banks of the Rhine.

Origin: Cologne (Germany)

Period: 15th century

Image source: Cologny, Fondation Martin Bodmer, Cod. Bodmer 81: Passover Haggadah

(www.e-codices.unifr.ch/en/list/one/cb/0081)

Fantastic Novels

Volume 2 No. 3, September 1948

Cover art by Lawrence Sterne Stevens

Interior art by Virgil Finlay

Contents:

The Conquest of the Moon Pool - A. Merritt

Zenit TTL

Helios-44 58/2

Kodak Elite Chrome 100 cross-processed

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recently processed film. mamiya 6MF 75mm f/3.5 + cross-processed kodak E100VS. lab: A&I color, hollywood, ca. scan: epson V750. exif tags: filmtagger.

after all the moments and people

Take that old Mossberg 500 Pump action receiver and turn it into a fancy schmancy semi automatic receiver!

If you should need more help leave me a comment and I will get back to you ASAP!

Please give credit if you can!

I used photoshop for the text and putting the thing together!

my contribution to the gorki planet comic issue. it contanis stories from sharmila banerjee, till hafenbrak, aisha franz, till thomas, martin ernstsen and a cover from ana albero.

every illustrator got a text from a writer which should be tarnsformed into a comic. my scenario was written by lisa danulat

11x12" made for the Little Quilt- Sew, Vote Swap Group - round 11. Inspiration gotten from someone's Pinterest board.

atelier ying, nyc.

I've been excited to have the opportunity to make drawings of Chapels in the last few months as I greatly

When Lyndon Johnson swore his oath on a hymn missal, he made Air Force One an airborne church. Notwithstanding the tragic setting historically, and not taking any political views whatsoever, this design focuses solely on the idea of a cathedral in the skies.

The church floats suspended between buildings and connects the streets by means of an open public walkway.

The lower level wall has a niche for a

choir stall which serves the five levels via an open Grand Processional aisle.

There are four sets of stairways on the sides. The procession helps the congregants remain limber, which good for long air travel, even though this church is not truly airborne.

Congregants have individual cabins, efficiently decorated to allow them to store mementoes of their life of faith. This also becomes a private form of their worship and a 'centrist' form of the heart and head spirituality.

Just as a church installs a pastor, so the choir and congregants also experience a solid, committed feeling in this type of cabin installation, reminiscent of little private gardens and chapel spaces pre-decorated with necessities, as in mass produced housing but with the goal of being available to all levels of faith.

Each cabin can provide hospitality only to a small number at a time, diffusing the boundaries of what defines a space for worship.

In a similar metaphorical way, the ground level cabins are like the catacombs.

The prominent front nose Presidential cabin is re-visioned by its similarity to the Temple of Hercules in the city of Cora, particularly as drawn by the architect Piranesi. With this revision, a relic Altarpiece is at the front, with sofas for seating and meditation and the Situation room used for prayer meetings. The rear plane press room is converted to become an offertory.

The only other eccentric touch are the small packs of Air Force One peanuts given as a souvenir and available throughout the plane. The traditional Presidential Office next to the front cabin is a snack bar which serves a world class cup of coffee to all visitors.

Design, concepts, text and drawing are copyright 2014 by David Lo.

Sculpture textile

www.catherinerosselle.com/p/sculptures-textiles.html

Text: Princess is still sleeping. Great lightness of existence... Time for big changes.

This was pretty fun creating end editing.. :)

Charles Gesner van der Voort (1916-1991) worked for Holland-China Trading Company (HCHC) in Shanghai. Willem Kien was made representative at the start of the firm in 1903, later he became director.

Little archival material is available today, as the Rotterdam office was bombed by German airplanes at the start of World War II in the Netherlands, in May 1940, so I am particularly pleased this deed survived, going back to the very start of the company.

The text in Dutch reads:

De ondergeteekende, de Naamlooze Vennootschap Holland China Handelscompagnie, gevestigd te Rotterdam, te Hongkong en in China, te Shanghai en Tientsin, verklaart by deze te volmachtigen den Heer Willem – Kien, koopman, wonende te Shanghai, om haar te Shanghai en overal elders, waar zulks noodig mocht zyn, te vertegenwoordigen en al hare zaken en aangelegenheden waar te nemen, te besturen en te behartigen.

Te dien einde alle overeenkomsten en vervrachting en bevrachting aan te gaan, te koopen en te verkoopen, huren en verhuren, met een ieder te rekenen en likwideeren; alle gelden en pretentien, aan haar bereids verschuldigd of in het vervolg aan haar verschuldigd te worden, te innen, te vorderen en te ontvangen en daarvoor te kwiteeren en te dechargeeren; in geval van faillissement of andere deconfiture van eenigen debiteur, de schuldvordering te doen verifieeren en de deugdelykheid daarvan met eede te bevestigen, alle vergaderingen van schuldeischers by te wonen en in hunne beraadslagingen deel te nemen en alle voorgestelde accoorden aan te nemen of te verwerpen; voorts alle posten, ten hare laste loopende, tegen kwitantie te voldoen; alle wisselbrieven, en assignatien, promessen en ander handelspapier te mogen trekken, disconteeren en endosseeren, of wel naar bevinding van zaken te refuseeren en te doen of laten protesteeren, gelden by kassiers of andere personen op hare rekening te doen stellen en daarvan zoomede van alle reeds verplaatste gelden af te schryven en al het noodige dienaangaande te observeeren, alle brieven, paketten of gelden, aan haar adres, van postkantoren of van eenige andere bureaux te ontvangen en daarvoor desgevorderd wordende, in de registers te teekenen en kwiteeren; voormelde naamloze vennootschap overal in rechten te vertegenwoordigen, zoo eischende als verwerende, daartoe alle processen te voeren, alle advokaten en procureurs aan te stellen, te compareeren voor alle rechters, rechtbanken en hoven, voordeelige vonnissen ten uitvoer te leggen en van nadeelige te komen in appel of cassatie; alle akten en stukken tot al het voorenstaande noodig, te teekenenen te passeeren, domicilie te kiezen en in het algemeen alles te doen en te verrichten, wat eenigszins noodig zyn zal en vereischt mocht worden en de directie der voormelde Naamloze vennootschap zelf tegenwoordig zynde, zou kunnen, mogen of moeten doen, al ware het, dat daartoe eenige nadere uitdrukking van last werd noodig geoordeeld, welke de directie voornoemd houdt voor alhier te zyn geinsereerd; alles met macht van substitutie, onder belofte van goedkeuring en verband als naar rechten.

Gedaan te Rotterdam den eersten October Negentien honderd en drie.

Ondertekening:

Stempel: Holland-China Handelscompagnie [handtekening]

No 1376 Gezien voor legalisatie der bovenstaande handteekening van den heer S.J.R. de Monchy [Salomon Jean René], Rotterdam, 1 oktober 1903, de burgemeester [handtekening en stempel Rotterdam]

Voor echt erkend. Shanghai, den eersten October 1900 twintig

Handtekeningen A.J. van Boven, K.S. Hsu, Willem …, Lipfors (?)

Stempel Consulaat der Nederlanden, Shanghai

Courtesy Kien family archives

Wallpaper 1920x1200

Typefaces in use:

Béla Frank’s (Faberfonts) elegant, gorgeous, slim typeface »FR Pasta Mono«.

FR Pasta Mono family is a monospaced, tall typeface capable to set playful, elegant and catching titles and displays. It compress 4 style: Mono, Decor, Decor Black and Extrude.

FR Pasta Mono family comes with a few OpenType features like case fractions and extended ligature set as well as support for many languages (Nordic, Icelandic, West and Eastern European, Turkish etc.).

and

Silas Dilworth’ (TypeTrust) clean, geometric sans-serif face »Breuer Text«.

Breuer Text is a simple geometric sans with relaxed curves and slightly condensed proportions suitable for moderate lengths of body copy. The italics are optically adjusted obliques with a selection of augmented lowercase glyphs for a warmer read.

Breuer Text offers the distinct aura of technical precision in a personable tone, ideal for instructional copy or safety warnings. Its basic structure and conservative letterforms maintain a level voice without turning robotic or sterile.

Pair with the two-font Breuer Headline family for a simple and complete editorial type system. Breuer Text includes Small Caps, Old Style Figures and Tabular Figures.

Νέο συλλεκτικό τεύχος.

Μόλις κυκλοφόρησε το 9ο μονοθεματικό τεύχος του περιοδικού ΦΩΤΟγράφος! Δείτε εδώ αναλυτικά τα περιεχόμενα: www.photo.gr/?p=21994

Φωτογραφία εφωφύλλου: Λουκάς Βασιλικός www.flickr.com/photos/vasilikos

Front Cover, 1951

My fav, Donald Duck

For some reason I felt the girl is one of those "Hello Kitty" brand lovers lol. I thought it fits :P

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The last 20 or so pics that I have posted were from an overnight stay in a hotel in Nottingham. Probably the best 'dressing session' I have had! I booked the hotel online 'last minute' and managed to get a full suite for less than £100 saving nearly £200. Both bathrooms had illuminated close up make up mirrors, and everything else a girl could need. The hotel had private secluded gardens, nice bar and very friendly staff. I also managed to finish work early and check in early (before official check in time) and was able to check out at 12 the following day. You can see from the pics I was busy. You can not see that I also managed to walk into town a few times for shopping and coffee. I even managed a highstreet bar for a drink in the evening as well as the several visits to the hotel bar. Almost 24 hours as KT, still buzzing!

Like it? It's yours for the right price. If no one saves it, it'll be landfill when the building is purchased and bulldozed. I'd take it in a heartbeat, but it's far too large for my property. I didn't measure it, but I'd guess it's about 8 or 10 feet across, and somewhere between 15 and 20 feet high. A lot of the neon tubing is intact, but as far as I know, it's not working. I'm someone could restore it, if interested.

It'd be a shame to see it crushed and discarded.

UPDATE: As of Nov 25th, the sign has been removed, and is on it's way to it's new owner in North Dakota. (A sign collector) I'm proud that I could help save this sign.