View allAll Photos Tagged answer
I got tagged to answer these five questions:
1. My favorite song right now is the cover Toro Y Moi did of Master Of None, I've seriously been listening to it none stop for months.
2. I don't really have a good memory of all the text messages I've gotten, so I can't really remember the nicest one I've ever gotten.
3. My favorite place in the world... that's hard to say because I haven't been to many places yet, and I actually want to visit it first before I call it my favorite place in the world. It would be somewhere beautiful though, but I'm sure anyone would guess that.
4. My favorite food would be chocolate? Maybe? It always takes me a long time to come up with an answer to this particular question.
5. I had a favorite word but I can't remember what it was right now.
Haha wow I feel like I did a crappy job at answering these questions.
Not the best portraits as I was late for a meeting but had to stop and talk to these two. My first question was "what are your ears gonna look like when you're sixty?"
Her answer: "I will wrap them behind my head in a bun"
His answer: "I don't care."
Not sure what I'd do if these were my kids.
Visit my new photo blog at www.alanwshapiro.blogspot.com/
Well, the poor keep getting hungry,
and the rich keep getting fat
Politicians change, but they're never gonna change that.
Girl, we got the answer, it's so easy you won't believe
All we gotta do is...
Well, the winds of war are blowin', and the tide is comin' in
Don't you be hopin' for the good times, because the good times have already been.
But, girl, we got the answer, it's so easy you won't believe
All we gotta do is...
It's so easy, to see
If only they'd listen, to you and me.
We got to... as fast as we can
We got to... every woman, every man
We got to... time after time
We got to... vodka and lime.
Well, the world is gettin' weary, and it wants to go to bed
Everybody's dyin', except the ones who are already dead.
Girl, we got the answer, starin' us right in the face
All we gotta do is
All we gotta do is
All we gotta do is..
taken in Wong Tai Sin Temple - Hong Kong
Incense sticks being burnt at a Chinese Taoist place of worship.The Taoist temple is famed for the many prayers answered: "What you request is what you get"
Most of the visitors come to the temple in search for a spiritual answer via a practice called Kau Cim. They light incense sticks, kneel before the main altar, make a wish, and shake a bamboo cylinder containing fortune sticks until a stick falls out. This stick is exchanged for a piece of paper bearing the same number, and then the soothsayer will interpret the fortune on the paper for the worshiper. Often the same piece of fortune is taken to multiple booths for verification purposes.
“How many people have ever lived?” That's the question this graphic tries to answer. I've recently updated it for 2011.
The numbers in this piece are speculative but are as accurate as modern research allows. It’s widely accepted that prior to 2002 there had been somewhere between 106 and 140 billion homo sapiens born to the world. The graphic below uses the conservative number (106 bn) as the basis for a circle graph. The center dot represents how many people are currently living (red) versus the dead (white). The dashed vertical line shows how much time passed between milestones. The spectral graph immediately below this text illustrates the population ‘benchmarks’ that were used to estimate the population over time. Adding the population numbers gets you to 106 billion. The red sphere is then used to compare against other data.
What's different in the 2011 version of Population of the Dead? To start I've included both all time population estimates. White represents the 106 billion conservative estimate while the more liberal estimation of 140 billion is represented by the gray outer zone.
A number of corrections have been included this time around. First, the red circle is actually to scale throughout the image, so all the circles can be easily compared to one another.
When I originally published this, I was eviscerated by a few select mathematicians who pointed out that using the radius or diameter as the basis for scaling the circles was incorrect. One blogger gave me a much appreciated math lesson which motivated me to update the graphic. I'm still not a math guy, so if the numbers are still wrong forgive me. I did use the area this time, not the diameter.
However, I'd also like to restate that proper math isn't exactly the point of this image. One viewer, Andrew Liebchen, says this far more elegantly than I can in a comment he left for me, "In some ways, the circle within the circle is poetic. It implies that in time, all the living will die; the that is red will become white. Meanwhile, new births will forever increase the overall area." In short, the point is to reflect on the scale of life and death. ;-)
Finally, I'd like to thank everyone who's viewed or promoted this image! 111,920 have viewed it on Flickr alone, but it's been posted and reposted all over the web on sites like Visual.ly, Digg, Reddit, Dzone, and DesignFloat. I've also spotted prints in the wild. Thanks everyone, truly flattering!
Research Notes: The research used to create largely came from this article from The Scientific American, published by Ciara Curtin on March 1, 2007. Her article cites Carl Haub, a demographer at the Population Reference Bureau, and Joel Cohen, a professor of populations at the Rockefeller and Columbia Universities in New York City, as sources. A number of other sources were used including research from the Forum of the Future, the Population Reference Bureau, Jeffery Sachs Blog and publications by the United Nations.
View the High Res copy
Update Jan 29, 2010: Fixed Spelling Mistake
Update Feb 11, 2010: Proceeds from this graphic now being donated to One Million Bones
Update Aug 27, 2011: 2011 version released
Originally published at appfrica.net/blog/2009/11/16/population-of-the-dead/
(further information and pictures are available by clicking on the link at the end of page!)
Cathedral of St. Pölten
The Cathedral of St. Pölten
Apse
The Cathedral of St. Pölten (also cathedral of the Assumption) is a cathedral and since 1785 the cathedral of the Diocese of St. Pölten. Until the dissolution of the Augustinian Canons monastery of St. Pölten in 1784 it was the abbey church. The building appears despite well-preserved late Roman core a baroque building.
History
General view of the monastery of St. Pölten from 1653, still with the now demolished Parish Church on Cathedral Square
Predecessors
The origins of today's monastery of St. Pölten (St. Hippolytus) and thus of the cathedral date back to the period around the year 790. During this time it is said that the brothers Adalbert and Otakar from the Tegernsee monastery founded a daughter house in St. Pölten. The Benedictines also brought the Hippolyt relics to St. Pölten, from which the modern name of the city is derived. Since 828 the monastery was in possession of the diocese of Passau. The from there outgoing missionary activity can be supposed in the Great Moravian Empire, the church on Pöltenberg in Znojmo is suspected to have been founded from there.
With the invasion of the Magyars around the year 907, the monastery was almost completely destroyed. Only after the Battle of Lechfeld in 955 it was rebuilt. The first written mention of the monastery is found in 976 in a charter of Emperor Otto II for Bishop Pilgrim of Passau. Under Bishop Altmann of Passau it was in 1081 converted into an Augustinian Canons monastery and from then on it bore the patronage of St. Peter, in the 12th Century the high altar was the SS. Stephen and Hippolytus consecrated.
Today's church
Around 1150, a three-aisled church without transept church with twin towers was built as West plant (Westwerk), which was, however, already generously rebuilt 1267-1280 after a fire. This church was consecrated in 1228 by Bishop Gebhard in honor of the Virgin Mary ascension into heaven (the Assumption) that Patotrozinium that the Cathedral till today carries. In 1512 there was a devastating fire in the city, thereafter the North Tower was demolished and never rebuilt.
Today's figure of the cathedral emerged in the 17th Century. After a fire in 1621 the present diocese building was designed in the early Baroque. The last high point in the history of construction experienced the former convent under provost Johann Michel Führer. He was thrilled by the high baroque splendor of neighboring residences as Melk Abbey and found in the in the city living Jacob Prandtauer a like-minded partner. The planned reconstruction should expand the diocese building to a second floor and the exterior view of the church should become a three-tower ensemble (similar to the Seitenstetten monastery) with the existing tower at its center. This plan was not fully implemented, mainly because Führer burned the candle at both ends and the monastery was nearly bankrupt when he resigned in 1739. In addition to the spacious redesigning of the entire interior, especially by Daniel Gran and Bartolomeo Altomonte, only the tower was raised and fitted with a new dome.
1784, the monastery was abandoned by Joseph II . On 28 January in the following year the building became diocesan seat (cathedral) of the newly established Diocese of Sankt Pölten on the basis of the by Pius VI. adopted papal bull Inter plurimas.
In 1873 the reverend Josef Kinzl founded the Catholic patriotic folk and Preßverein (press association) for Lower Austria, publishing the St. Pölten messenger. Hence the NÖN (Niederösterreichische Nachrichten - news of Lower Austria) and the Lower Austrian Pressehaus have developed.
Architecture
The Choir of the Cathedral of St. Pölten
"As little as the viewer is expecting when he is looking at the outside of this cathedral, so surprising is the entry in the same, because objects appear to meet him from all sides, which deserve special attention, but probably at the same time arouse the wish that more light might brighten these masterpieces, God's temple somewhat economically illuminating".
- Representation of Erzherzogthums (Archduchy) Austria under the Ens (River Enns), 1835
The exterior
The floor plan of the exterior facade still consists largely from the around 1150 constructed building. Originally built as a three-aisled church without transept with twin towers as Westwerk, it was between 1267-1280 generously rebuilt in late Romanesque style after a fire.
The cathedral is directly connected to the diocese building, on the north side the church closes at the cloister. Despite the high degree of conservation of the late Romanesque building structure, is the construction baroque dominated by the mighty south tower with its double onion dome and the dome lanterns on the south aisle. From the late Romanesque building, the apse and the south façade have been preserved.
With exception of the two lower floors of the south tower, both towers have a Eckquaderung (corner block). At the west facade is main portal of the cathedral located with skylights and a broken pediment attachment. On both sides of the portal at the level of the second floor each is a statue of a saint: Hippolytus left, right, Augustine.
The interior
The interior of the church by Jakob Prandtauer, Joseph Munggenast, Daniel Gran and Bartolomeo Altomonte was baroquised. The ceiling frescoes designed partly Thomas Friedrich Gedon.
Organ
The organ is a work of Swiss company Metzler organ building from 1973 with 36 stops on three manuals and pedal. The prospectus stems from the original organ from the year 1722, built by Johann Ignaz Egedacher.
Bell
The cathedral has an almost complete peal from the Baroque period, cast in 1696 by Mathias Prininger from Krems. Only the bell 3 went lost through the bell deliveries in World War I and had to be re-acquired after two world wars.
No. Name nominal weight
(kg) diameter
(cm) casting year caster
1 Immaculataglocke a0 +2 4318 189 1696 Mathias Prininger
2 Zwölferin (ringing at twelve o'clock) cis1 +0 2223 151 1696 Mathias Prininger
3 Bishop anniversary bell e1 +2 1066 120 1955 Josef Pfundner
4/4 or Poor soul bell a1 +0516 93 1696 Mathias Prininger
5 Food bell cis2 +0264 73 1696 Mathias Prininger
There are also two other small bells that do not belong to the actual bells.
History of the City St. Pölten
In order to present concise history of the Lower Austrian capital is in the shop of the city museum a richly illustrated full version on CD-ROM.
Tip
On the occasion of the commemoration of the pogroms of November 1938, the Institute for Jewish History of Austria its virtual Memorbuch (Memory book) for the destroyed St. Pölten Jewish community since 10th November 2012 is putting online.
Prehistory
The time from which there is no written record is named after the main materials used for tools and weapons: Stone Age, Bronze Age, Iron Age. Using the latest technologies, archaeologists from archaeological finds and aerial photographs can trace a fairly detailed picture of life at that time. Especially for the time from the settling down of the People (New Stone Age), now practicing agriculture and animal husbandry, in the territory of St. Pölten lively settlement activity can be proved. In particular, cemeteries are important for the research, because the dead were laid in the grave everyday objects and jewelry, the forms of burial changing over time - which in turn gives the archeology valuable clues for the temporal determination. At the same time, prehistory of Sankt Pölten would not be half as good documented without the construction of the expressway S33 and other large buildings, where millions of cubic meters of earth were moved - under the watchful eyes of the Federal Monuments Office!
A final primeval chapter characterized the Celts, who settled about 450 BC our area and in addition to a new culture and religion also brought with them the potter's wheel. The kingdom of Noricum influenced till the penetration of the Romans the development in our area.
Roman period, migrations
The Romans conquered in 15 BC the Celtic Empire and established hereinafter the Roman province of Noricum. Borders were protected by military camp (forts), in the hinterland emerged civilian cities, almost all systematically laid out according to the same plan. The civil and commercial city Aelium Cetium, as St. Pölten was called (city law 121/122), consisted in the 4th Century already of heated stone houses, trade and craft originated thriving urban life, before the Romans in the first third of the 5th Century retreated to Italy.
The subsequent period went down as the Migration Period in official historiography, for which the settlement of the Sankt Pöltner downtown can not be proved. Cemeteries witness the residence of the Lombards in our area, later it was the Avars, extending their empire to the Enns.
The recent archaeological excavations on the Cathedral Square 2010/2011, in fact, the previous knowledge of St.Pölten colonization not have turned upside down but enriched by many details, whose full analysis and publication are expected in the near future.
Middle Ages
With the submission of the Avars by Charlemagne around 800 AD Christianity was gaining a foothold, the Bavarian Benedictine monastery of Tegernsee establishing a daughter house here - as founder are mentioned the brothers Adalbert and Ottokar - equipped with the relics of St. Hippolytus. The name St. Ypolit over the centuries should turn into Sankt Pölten. After the Hungarian wars and the resettlement of the monastery as Canons Regular of St. Augustine under the influence of Passau St. Pölten received mid-11th Century market rights.
In the second half of the 20th century historians stated that records in which the rights of citizens were held were to be qualified as Town Charters. Vienna is indeed already in 1137 as a city ("civitas") mentioned in a document, but the oldest Viennese city charter dates only from the year 1221, while the Bishop of Passau, Konrad, already in 1159 the St. Pöltnern secured:
A St. Pöltner citizen who has to answer to the court, has the right to make use of an "advocate".
He must not be forced to rid himself of the accusation by a judgment of God.
A St. Pöltner citizen may be convicted only by statements of fellow citizens, not by strangers.
From the 13th Century exercised a city judge appointed by the lord of the city the high and low jurisdiction as chairman of the council meetings and the Municipal Court, Inner and Outer Council supported him during the finding of justice. Venue for the public verdict was the in the 13th Century created new marketplace, the "Broad Market", now the town hall square. Originally square-shaped, it was only later to a rectangle reduced. Around it arose the market district, which together with the monastery district, the wood district and the Ledererviertel (quarter of the leather goods manufacturer) was protected by a double city wall.
The dependence of St. Pölten of the bishop of Passau is shown in the municipal coat of arms and the city seal. Based on the emblem of the heraldic animal of the Lord of the city, so the Bishop of Passau, it shows an upright standing wolf holding a crosier in its paw.
Modern Times
In the course of the armed conflict between the Emperor Frederick III . and King Matthias of Hungary pledged the Bishop of Passau the town on the Hungarian king. From 1485 stood Lower Austria as a whole under Hungarian rule. The most important document of this period is the awarding of the city coat of arms by King Matthias Corvinus in the year 1487. After the death of the opponents 1490 and 1493 could Frederick's son Maximilian reconquer Lower Austria. He considered St. Pölten as spoils of war and had no intention of returning it to the diocese of Passau. The city government has often been leased subsequently, for instance, to the family Wellenstein, and later to the families Trautson and Auersperg.
That St. Pölten now was a princely city, found its expression in the coat of arms letter of the King Ferdinand I. from 1538: From now on, the wolf had no crosier anymore, and the from the viewer's point of view left half showed the reverse Austrian shield, so silver-red-silver.
To the 16th Century also goes back the construction of St. Pöltner City Hall. The 1503 by judge and council acquired house was subsequently expanded, rebuilt, extended and provided with a tower.
A for the urban history research important picture, painted in 1623, has captured scenes of the peasant uprising of 1597, but also allows a view to the city and lets the viewer read some of the details of the then state of construction. The economic inconveniences of that time were only exacerbated by the Thirty Years War, at the end of which a fifth of the houses were uninhabited and the citizenry was impoverished.
Baroque
After the successful defense against the Turks in 1683, the economy started to recover and a significant building boom began. Lower Austria turned into the land of the baroque abbeys and monasteries, as it is familiar to us today.
In St. Pölten, the change of the cityscape is closely connected to the Baroque architect Jakob Prandtauer. In addition to the Baroquisation of the interior of the cathedral, a number of buildings in St. Pölten go to his account, so the reconstruction of the castle Ochsenburg, the erection of the Schwaighof and of the core building of the Institute of the Blessed Virgin Mary (Englische Fräuleins - English Maidens) - from 1706 the seat of the first school order of St.Pölten - as well as of several bourgeois houses.
Joseph Munggenast, nephew and co-worker of Prandtauer, completed the Baroquisation of the cathedral, he baroquised the facade of the town hall (1727) and numerous bourgeois houses and designed a bridge over the Traisen which existed until 1907. In the decoration of the church buildings were throughout Tyroleans collaborating, which Jakob Prandtauer had brought along from his homeland (Tyrol) to St. Pölten, for example, Paul Troger and Peter Widerin.
Maria Theresa and her son Joseph II: Their reforms in the city of the 18th Century also left a significant mark. School foundings as a result of compulsory education, the dissolution of the monasteries and hereinafter - from 1785 - the new role of St. Pölten as a bishop's seat are consequences of their policies.
1785 was also the year of a fundamental alteration of the old Council Constitution: The city judge was replaced by one magistrate consisting of five persons, at the head was a mayor. For the first mayor the painter Josef Hackl was chosen.
The 19th century
Despite the Napoleonic Wars - St. Pölten in 1805 and 1809 was occupied by the French - and despite the state bankruptcy of 1811, increased the number of businesses constantly, although the economic importance of the city for the time being did not go beyond the near vicinity.
Against the background of monitoring by the state secret police, which prevented any political commitment between the Congress of Vienna and the 1848 revolution, the citizens withdrew into private life. Sense of family, fostering of domestic music, prominent salon societies in which even a Franz Schubert socialized, or the construction of the city theater were visible signs of this attitude.
The economic upswing of the city did not begin until after the revolution of the year 1848. A prerequisite for this was the construction of the Empress Elisabeth Western Railway, moving Vienna, Linz, soon Salzburg, too, in a reachable distance. The city walls were pulled down, St. Pölten could unfold. The convenient traffic situation favored factory start-ups, and so arose a lace factory, a revolver factory, a soap factory or, for example, as a precursor of a future large-scale enterprise, the braid, ribbon and Strickgarnerzeugung (knitting yarn production) of Matthias Salcher in Harland.
In other areas, too, the Gründerzeit (years of rapid industrial expansion in Germany - and Austria) in Sankt Pölten was honouring its name: The city got schools, a hospital, gas lanterns, canalization, hot springs and summer bath.
The 20th century
At the beginning of the 20th Century the city experienced another burst of development, initiated by the construction of the power station in 1903, because electricity was the prerequisite for the settlement of large companies. In particular, the companies Voith and Glanzstoff and the main workshop of the Federal Railways attracted many workers. New Traisen bridge, tram, Mariazell Railway and other infrastructure buildings were erected; St. Pölten obtained a synagogue. The Art Nouveau made it repeatedly into the urban architecture - just think of the Olbrich House - and inspired also the painting, as exponents worth to be mentioned are Ernst Stöhr or Ferdinand Andri.
What the outbreak of the First World War in broad outlines meant for the monarchy, on a smaller scale also St. Pölten has felt. The city was heavily impacted by the deployment of army units, a POW camp, a military hospital and a sick bay. Industrial enterprises were partly converted into war production, partly closed. Unemployment, housing emergency and food shortages long after the war still were felt painfully.
The 1919 to mayor elected Social Democrat Hubert Schnofl after the war tried to raise the standard of living of the people by improving the social welfare and health care. The founding of a housing cooperative (Wohnungsgenossenschaft), the construction of the water line and the establishment of new factories were further attempts to stimulate the stiffening economy whose descent could not be stopped until 1932.
After the National Socialist regime had stirred false hopes and plunged the world into war, St. Pölten was no longer the city as it has been before. Not only the ten devastating bombings of the last year of the war had left its marks, also the restrictive persecution of Jews and political dissidents had torn holes in the structure of the population. Ten years of Russian occupation subsequently did the rest to traumatize the population, but at this time arose from the ruins a more modern St. Pölten, with the new Traisen bridge, district heating, schools.
This trend continued, an era of recovery and modernization made the economic miracle palpable. Already in 1972 was - even if largely as a result of incorporations - exceeded the 50.000-inhabitant-limit.
Elevation to capital status (capital of Lower Austria), 10 July 1986: No other event in this dimension could have become the booster detonation of an up to now ongoing development thrust. Since then in a big way new residential and commercial areas were opened up, built infrastructure constructions, schools and universities brought into being to enrich the educational landscape. East of the Old Town arose the governmental and cultural district, and the list of architects wears sonorous names such as Ernst Hoffmann (NÖ (Lower Austria) Landhaus; Klangturm), Klaus Kada (Festspielhaus), Hans Hollein (Shedhalle and Lower Austrian Provincial Museum), Karin Bily, Paul Katzberger and Michael Loudon ( NÖ State Library and NÖ State Archive).
European Diploma, European flag, badge of honor, Europe Price: Between 1996 and 2001, received St. Pölten numerous appreciations of its EU commitment - as a sort of recognition of the Council of Europe for the dissemination of the EU-idea through international town twinnings, a major Europe exhibition or, for example, the establishment and chair of the "Network of European medium-sized cities".
On the way into the 21st century
Just now happened and already history: What the St. Pöltnern as just experienced sticks in their minds, travelers and newcomers within a short time should be told. The theater and the hospital handing over to the province of Lower Austria, a new mayor always on the go, who was able to earn since 2004 already numerous laurels (Tags: polytechnic, downtown enhancement, building lease scheme, bus concept) - all the recent changes are just now condensed into spoken and written language in order to make, from now on, the history of the young provincial capital in the 3rd millennium nachlesbar (checkable).
de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dom_zu_St._P%C3%B6lten
www.st-poelten.gv.at/Content.Node/freizeit-kultur/kultur/...
This is a look into a brochure that introduces a collection of 130 CDs, called "Musik in Deutschland 1950-2000", published by the "Deutscher Musikrat" two decades ago.
But who, may you well ask, is the "Deutscher Musikrat"? The name sounds uncannily Orwellian, as if it were a secretive government agency that dictates what kind of music should be made and heard in Germany. The reality is not quite that sinister. "Rat" doesn’t mean "rat". It is an NGO, they have a website and they have even answered my e-mail. But they do have the mysterious smell of a secret society. After 20 years I still don’t really know who they are and what they are up to.
I know only one thing: The CDs promoted here constitute a monument to German post-war music and I am proud to own the whole set. No other country has done that. It would take almost a week to listen to the 1750 pieces of music - 6 days and 17 hours non-stop. If these were vinyl records the set would comprise of more than 200 LPs. Every CD comes with a booklet of up to 32 pages with informative text, scores of scores, photos and almost all the lyrics. The booklets alone would be a valuable document for everybody interested in modernist culture. Reading them I learnt a lot not only about music, but also about poetry, literature, dance, theatre, film and other forms of art.
The curators of the collection were careful to present composers from both German states without bias and prejudice. Thanks to this you can hear many gems that would otherwise be forgotten and impossible to find, even in the age of the mouse click. Where else can you hear "Socialist Realism"? I knew examples of Socialist Realism in painting, sculpture and architecture but never heard Socialist Realism music before – but, hey, now I can listen to recitals of Stalinist propaganda as well as speeches of Lenin and Honnecker put into grandiose song arrangements.
Where else can you hear music from an electronic opera, written by the Chinese-born composer Boris Blacher in 1966? And where else can you enjoy a live recording of a hilarious Wolf Vostell performance of 1969?
This is all good news. Now for the snags.
It is always easy to complain about the selection on a music compilation. It goes without saying that not all 1750 pieces are good and there a hundreds that I don’t care much about, but let’s not dwell on this, because there are less forgivable problems:
Every booklet starts with an introduction that says that the curators had to do a "strict selection", but it does not disclose what their selection criteria were (secret society again!). May there be a clue in the title of the collection "Musik in Deutschland 1950-2000" perhaps? No! All criteria in that name are violated. Many of the featured musicians and composers are not German, some recordings were made in other countries and some works were created long before 1950. The most recent work is "Fälschung" by Orm Finnendahl - written in 2003 (but a great piece, so it’s fine with me)! Some tracks are not even music. At one point Oskar Pastior is reading his poems, one of the aesthetic nadirs of the set, if you ask me.
Could it be that the selection focuses on what was widely heard by the people of Germany after the 2nd World War? Wrong again! I am sure that 99% of Germans have never listened to any of the music in this collection. This is because it has a strong focus on what most people would call "classical music" (I personally would prefer to call it "music by modernist composers" or "art music" because much of it is not "classical" at all) which is enjoyed by only a small minority of music lovers. True, there is one box with jazz and one with pop music, but the jazz is mostly of the "artsy" kind (often not very different from the “classical” music of the same period) and the pop box is only an afterthought and not really part of the set (it is, for example, not mentioned in the brochure shown above). I have no problem with this, but I still don’t know what the selection criteria were.
The worst mistake in any music compilation would be to include a song more than once, particularly when strict selection criteria are claimed. But even this mistake has been made - twice: The "Fünf Neapolitanische Lieder" by Hans Werner Henze are presented twice, and so are 2 "Hölderin Fragments" by Wolfgang Rihm, although on different CDs and performed by different singers.
Even worse are the editing problems. The booklets are informative and well written, but look cheap. A terrible sans-serif typeface is used throughout and typos are not unheard of. Formatting is awful. The captions are printed onto the photos with disregard of the background and often impossible to decipher. It is obvious that the authors are experts, but no professional editor was involved. The beautiful line "it was evening all afternoon" by Wallace Stevens is clumsily translated as "Es war den Nachmittag über Abend" instead of the more accurate and elegant "Am ganzen Nachmittag war Abend", to give just one example of the many mistranslations.
The whole set is organised in a complex multi-layered system, which is explained at the back of each CD. It says that there are 19 boxes of CDs, structured in 6 categories and 26 sub-categories. That sounds simple. But the actual CDs are difficult to align with this system. At the same time there is another underlying structure: Every category (or sub-category?) is sub-divided into „Serie“ and „Portraits“. Don’t waste your precious time trying to understand the difference, because whatever the rationale behind this is, it brakes down with the box "Angewandte Musik", if not earlier. It is obvious that the concept of this project has changed several times during its short lifetime and there were multiple attempts to categorise the music - all failed. The names of the categories and the discs must have changed several times as well, and some CDs were announced but have never materialised (e.g. "Musizieren im Alltag") whereas others do exist but seem to never have been part of the plan (e.g. "Free Jazz" - appropriately, because free jazz abhors planning). The names of some CDs even change between the cover and the disc inside. A CD called "Solo & Klavier" contains a few songs with guitar (instead of piano).
It seems that the publishers were overwhelmed by their own complex system and the multiple layers of categories they tried to establish.
However, by far the worst problem with this collection is the marketing - how it was sold. When it all started at the beginning of the millennium the discs were sold one by one. I first bought one, to see if it is any good and then more and more. When I had a few dozen CDs they stopped selling them individually and you could only buy whole boxes, containing 5 to 10 discs each. At that time I had decided to collect the whole set, which meant that I had to start buying boxes with CDs that I already owned. That was annoying - but it got worse. In 2010 they stopped selling the boxes and you could only buy the whole set. I had already bought 14 of the 19 boxes at that stage.
So, with a heavy heart and after long hesitation, I bought the whole set in 2011 although at that time only a third of the CDs were still missing in my shelf. Shortly after that, the whole series was taken off the market and became unavailable in any form. I don’t regret the purchase, it’s a great thing to have, even in a time when CDs have become an obsolete format. Today some of the CDs are sold on the second hand market for more money than I paid for the entire set of 130 items, even if you include the money I wasted on the single discs and boxes.
Any reference to this comprehensive compilation has been deleted from the Musikrat’s website although this must have been one of the most impressive and interesting projects they have ever done. I cannot imagine how many hours of hard work went into this, but in the end it must have been a huge financial disaster for everybody involved. I’m sure they had a grandiose vision when it all started, with ideas aplenty, but the implementation lacked continuity, leadership and there was no demand. Although they finally managed to publish all 130 CDs it is, in hindsight, an excellent case study of an over-ambitious and failed endeavour. We can learn from this, not only about business and project management, but about human nature.
Some statistical analysis: The most extensively featured composer is Hans Werner Henze with 57 works, adding up to more than 5 hours playing time. Paul Dessau comes second with 50 pieces in the set, but they are mostly short (3½ minutes on average) so he comes only 7th when considering playing time (a bit less than 3 hours). Friedrich Schenker is second in terms of time (3½ hours of his music can be heard in the collection) and the Argentinian Mauricio Kagel comes third with 3 hours and 17 minutes. He and Wolfgang Rihm both have 36 pieces of music in the compilation.
Mr. Karlheinz Stockhausen, the most famous German post-war composer, is an also-run with only 10 works in the set. They add up to 2 hours, which is not much, if you compare him to less-known composers like Georg Katzer (2½ hours) and Friedrich Goldmann (3 hours). I can think of 2 reasons. One is probably the restrictive copyright protection of the Stockhausen œuvre (the same reason why Kraftwerk is conspicuously absent in the pop box). But I believe another one to be the determination of the curators to represent both German states equally, which led to an over-representation of the East-German music scene, simply because there was less of it. Just as Wartburg would be more dominant than Borgward in a book about the German post-war car industry that tries to represent both German states in a balanced way.
Having listened to the whole set several times, I am now able to draw wide-reaching, sweeping and judgemental conclusions about German post-war culture. Here are examples:
(1)
At first the differences between the cultures of capitalist West Germany and the East German one-party-state seem obvious. A superficial listening suggests that the East was being restricted by political diktat and a closed society, while the West was open for experimentation and inspiration from everywhere and everything. But after a while you realise that the reality was more complicated and on this compilation you find surprisingly daring works from the East as well as a fair share of conservative dullness from the West. Overall, I found it more interesting to note what the two states had in common. For example:
(2)
The old prejudice that German culture is heavy and humourless is, all in all, confirmed. It is difficult to find any light-hearted melody in this set. Admittedly, there is some humour, some of it by composers of non-Germanic provenance (Ligeti and Kagel), but this is clownish stuff that hasn’t stood the test of time and wasn't really funny in the first place.
(3)
More than in any other epoch, in post-war Germany composers felt the need to put their works into a political and sociocritical context – on both sides of the fence. Even creators of completely abstract instrumental compositions tried to express sophisticated views with their music, which is, most of the time, not obvious to the listener until he reads the booklet.
(4)
In the West as well as in the East two types of artists dominate: Leftist intellectuals and confessing Christians. And surprisingly it’s the Christians who are often more daring in their musical experiments. Even more surprisingly, Marxist views are as dominant among western composers as they are in the East. An opera about free trade, entrepreneurship and representative democracy would have been as taboo in 1960s Western Germany as it would have been in the East. I know why, but I stop now. I talk too much...
Pencil & digital work
2011/8/8
I really try very hard to answer the questions, but it's still all in a mess.
I cannot but to suppose it's due to the bad questions.
I hope that rather than good-record students, the teacher would like the one who can express free.
2011/8/8 作答
我真的很拼命的在寫答案，結果錯得亂七八糟。
我也忍不住會想是題目出得不好，但我希望比起考高分，老師更喜歡自由發揮的學生。
沒有被當的話，我願意繼續寫考卷。
Why are fires are so mesmerizing even to adults? It turns out that the attraction to fire beyond our childhood might be a Western trait.
A 2002 study by Irene Pinsonneault of the Massachusetts Coalition for Juvenile Firesetter Intervention Program revealed children's most common questions about fire: What makes fire hot? How does a small fire grow? Why are some fires very smoky? Can everything burn? How can you keep a fire small? How can you put fires out?
In societies in which fire is an everyday tool, kids learn the answers by age 7. Ethnographic data reveals that children in most such societies study adults' control of fire from infancy, and at age 3, start experimenting with fire (including building small fires and using them to "cook" pretend food, such as mud pies). They are gradually given more responsibility over the adults' fire as they grow older, and at age 7, are generally able to control fire. Fire play starts to wind down at that stage.
According to one researcher, here in the West, many or most of us never get to that point. "The motives that drive fire learning are only incompletely satisfied, with the result that, throughout life, fire retains greater allure or fascination than would normally be the case."
For the complete article go to: news.discovery.com/human/psychology/fire-fascination-huma...
Anyone else ever afraid of what the future will bring in your life? Lately I've been searching and trying to figure out what career path I am to take but I just don't know. Why is it that some people just know what they want to be in life at a young age and waste no time and go after it? Me, I didn't know, I just wanted to get out of highschool and be done with it. Now I look back and wish I would have tried harder and taken different classes.
There is always light at the end of the tunnel and I know it will all work out, just a matter of time I guess.
Much better View On Black
credit: backgound
from No Easy Answers fanzine, issue #1 (1980)
stillunusual.tumblr.com/post/47018000503/no-easy-answers-...
Just when we think we figured things out, the universe throws us a curveball. So, we have to improvise. We find happiness in unexpected places. We find ourselves back to the things that matter the most. The universe is funny that way. Sometimes it just has a way of making sure we wind up exactly where we belong.
This is my first freelensing , I've always wanted to try and finally I've done it! :D
Weekend is here, so I hope go shopping (I want clothes) and above all to rest. I really need to rest. I'm inspired and I want to do lots of thing but I have no time. Yesterday I've written a wonderful text about freedom, so soon it will be a description of a photo.
Have a perfect weekend <3
Sorry guys, I'm looking forward finish exams, to see all your awesome photos. So I won't be on Flickr for a while I won't be able to comment and to answer your lovely comments, so so sorryyyyyy :(
Mattel’s answer to Kenner’s mega hit Six Million Dollar Man series, the Ultimate Man of Adventure, Pulsar! He has fantastic working lungs and heart with blood circulation plus opening face to reveal a holographic mission disc. To maintain Pulsar, Mattel came up with this Life Systems Centre, the counterpart to Kenner's SMDM Bionic Transport and Repair Station, which was also released in 1977 and it is packed with gimmicks and play-ability. Sadly though the entire Pulsar series is Pulsar himself, his nemesis, the Ultimate Enemy, Hypnos and this Life Systems Centre, just three only. Sorry it did not go well for they are really wonderful toys... When it comes to word "Pulsar" people would most likely think Nissan Pulsar!
IPPIO PAYO & Genelabo performen Nobody Answers Questions.
An audiovisual journey.
Anniversary Tour 2018.
Foto by C. Hofer
David Mellor called us all perverts on breakfast TV, on the 14th March 1996, the day after the Dunblane shootings, because we owned handguns, so our club, the WESC just had to inaugurate the "David Mellor Pervert's Trophy" competition....................
A Piece of timber, brass plate and a donation of an un-wanted and un-used present from one of our Lady members (not the one above) and we had a trophy!
We invited him to it's first presentation, but he never answered....
I won't say who won it 1st, or why.
But it wisnae me!!!! (The first time anyway)
P.S. Mellor forgot to mention his lounge wall covered in replica guns, so he can't be that anti-gun??
I know I'm not alone on this... i worry if I'm making the right decision, or I'm frustrated with where my life isn't... and I can't seen to get any clear cut answers from my family or friends as to which direction to take.
And then I take the time to read it again... just like I have before, except this time the words just jump off the page and nail me straight in the heart... He knew all along that I would be right here, at this very moment in my life, and he had these words written over 2,000 years ago just for me... so I could see clearly the path that lies before me...
Thanks for not giving up on me...
On a less personal note... this young man is modeling for a friend of mine who runs an outreach program for incarcerated youth in the local jails. I was asked to help with some pics for their new brochure. I have this one and a couple more that I would love your critique on... thanks :)
Chevrolet pulled something amazing out of the hat for 1957: Fuel Injection. First run in 1956 at the Sebring race, the Rochester Ramjet injection was an answer to Mercedes-Benz which featured fuel injection in the 1954 300SL. The innovation solved a fuel starvation problem caused by sloshing while cornering with carbureted engines under race conditions. The fuel injection system, displayed in a cutaway drawing to the left, also enabled Chevrolet to boast of 1 hp per cubic inch of displacement with the 283 cu. in., 283 hp engine.
In the early 1940's, the Kodak Ektra was Eastman Kodak's awesome super-advanced answer to the Leica & Contax cameras coming out of Germany. It had features that would not be seen in other cameras for decades, including a zoom viewfinder & interchangeable backs, & Kodak offered a line of top-notch lenses from 35mm to 153mm. Sadly, it was also super-expensive, had a notoriously unreliable shutter, & was designed to be used left-handed. You can read more about it on Brian Wallen's excellent article in his Kodak Camera site. Mike Eckman also has a great in-depth review: www.mikeeckman.com/2019/07/kodak-ektra-1941/
Fortunately, mine, shown here w/the stellar 35/3.3 Ektar (including the nifty slip-on 35mm viewfinder), works just fine. So far (knock wood). Pretty as they are, none of my cameras are "shelf queens" & you can just click on the camera's or lens's tag to the right to see photos I've taken with them.
The retail price of the camera body & 35/3.3 Ektar in 1941 was $243. Taking CPI inflation into account, that's $3903.18 in 2015 dollars. Good gear has always been pricey.
An old, broken down telephone/telegraph pole along an abandoned train track in rural Ohio no longer carries a message.
We had to say fair-well to our our old (C&W) answer phone; it was slowly becoming more doddery, confusing callers by mumbling inanely about something to do with messages.
Our new BT answer phone can send and receive text messages too!
Fish heads fish heads roly poly fish heads
Fish heads fish heads eat them up yum
In the morning laughing happy fish heads
In the evening floating in the soup.
Ask a fish head anything you want to
They won't answer they can't talk
I took a fish head out to see a movie
Didn't have to pay to get it in
They can't play baseball they don't wear sweaters
They're not good dancers they don't play drums
Roly poly fish heads are never seen drinking cappuccino
at Italian restaurants with oriental women yeah
Yeah!
Fish Heads - Barnes and Barnes (1979)
Segura estoy en mi corazón tu seguirás, viviendo en mi ser no te podré olvidar. Lose en verdad ya no hay mas vuelta hacia atrás, estamos ocultando el dolor al sonreír.
Some of you may have noticed that, unfortunately, owing to the fact that a certain person who sells truck photos on eBay commercially has been lifting my images from this album and selling them I have had to remove 2300 photos that didn't have a watermark. I have now run around 1700 through Lightroom and added a watermark with the intention of bulk uploading them again. Rather than watermark the existing (hidden) files in Flickr one at a time it will be easier to do it this way. I definitely won’t be adding individual tags with the make and model of each vehicle I will just add generic transport tags. Each photo is named after the vehicle and reg in any case. For anyone new to these images there is a chapter and verse explanation below. It is staggering how many times I get asked questions that a quick scan would answer or just as likely I can’t possibly answer – I didn’t take them, but, just to clarify-I do own the copyright- and I do pursue copyright theft.
This is a collection of scanned prints from a collection of photographs taken by the late Jim Taylor A number of years ago I was offered a large number of photographs taken by Jim Taylor, a transport photographer based in Huddersfield. The collection, 30,000 prints, 20,000 negatives – and copyright! – had been offered to me and one of the national transport magazines previously by a friend of Jim's, on behalf of Jim's wife. I initially turned them down, already having over 30,000 of my own prints filed away and taking space up. Several months later the prints were still for sale – at what was, apparently, the going rate. It was a lot of money and I deliberated for quite a while before deciding to buy them. I did however buy them directly from Jim’s wife and she delivered them personally – just to quash the occasional rumour from people who can’t mind their own business. Although some prints were sold elsewhere, particularly the popular big fleet stuff, I should have the negatives, unfortunately they came to me in a random mix, 1200 to a box, without any sort of indexing and as such it would be impossible to match negatives to prints, or, to even find a print of any particular vehicle. I have only ever looked at a handful myself unless I am scanning them. The prints are generally in excellent condition and I initially stored them in a bedroom without ever looking at any of them. In 2006 I built an extension and they had to be well protected from dust and moved a few times. Ultimately my former 6x7 box room office has become their (and my own work’s) permanent home.
I hope to avoid posting images that Jim had not taken his self, however should I inadvertently infringe another photographers copyright, please inform me by email and I will resolve the issue immediately. There are copyright issues with some of the photographs that were sold to me. A Flickr member from Scotland drew my attention to some of his own work amongst the first uploads of Jim’s work. I had a quick look through some of the 30 boxes of prints and decided that for the time being the safest thing for me to do was withdraw the majority of the earlier uploaded scans and deal with the problem – which I did. whilst the vast majority of the prints are Jims, there is a problem defining copyright of some of them, this is something that the seller did not make clear at the time. I am reasonably confident that I have since been successful in identifying Jims own work. His early work consists of many thousands of lustre 6x4 prints which are difficult to scan well, later work is almost entirely 7x5 glossy, much easier to scan. Not all of the prints are pin sharp but I can generally print successfully to A4 from a scan.
You may notice photographs being duplicated in this Album, unfortunately there are multiple copies of many prints (for swapping) and as I have to have a system of archiving and backing up I can only guess - using memory - if I have scanned a print before. The bigger fleets have so many similar vehicles and registration numbers that it is impossible to get it right all of the time. It is easier to scan and process a print than check my files - on three different PC’s - for duplicates. There has not been, nor will there ever be, any intention to knowingly breach anyone else's copyright. I have presented the Jim Taylor collection as exactly that-The Jim Taylor Collection- his work not mine, my own work is quite obviously mine.
Unfortunately, many truck spotters have swapped and traded their work without copyright marking it as theirs. These people never anticipated the ease with which images would be shared online in the future. I would guess that having swapped and traded photos for many years that it is almost impossible to control their future use. Anyone wanting to control the future use of their work would have been well advised to copyright mark their work (as many did) and would be well advised not to post them on photo sharing sites without a watermark as the whole point of these sites is to share the image, it is very easy for those that wish, to lift any image, despite security settings, indeed, Flickr itself, warns you that this is the case. It was this abuse and theft of my material that led me to watermark all of my later uploads. I may yet withdraw non-watermarked photos, I haven’t decided yet. (I did in the end)
To anyone reading the above it will be quite obvious that I can’t provide information regarding specific photos or potential future uploads – I didn’t take them! There are many vehicles that were well known to me as Jim only lived down the road from me (although I didn’t know him), however scanning, titling, tagging and uploading is laborious and time consuming enough, I do however provide a fair amount of information with my own transport (and other) photos. I am aware that there are requests from other Flickr users that are unanswered, I stumble across them months or years after they were posted, this isn’t deliberate. Some weekends one or two “enthusiasts” can add many hundreds of photos as favourites, this pushes requests that are in the comments section ten or twenty pages out of sight and I miss them. I also have notifications switched off, I receive around 50 emails a day through work and I don’t want even more from Flickr. Other requests, like many other things, I just plain forget – no excuses! Uploads of Jim’s photos will be infrequent as it is a boring pastime and I would much rather work on my own output.