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One hot, humid afternoon, he messaged me asking me to come out because he was bored and needed someone to help him commit to scootering. A 60% chance of thunderstorms didn't deter me—after all, it didn't deter him.
Nikon D700
AF Zoom-Nikkor 80-200mm f/2.8 ED
11-Jan-2021: 1. Frivillig barnlöshet by Kristina Engwall & Helen Peterson (editors)
Fave! Swedish book about childfree people. :)
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26-Jan-2021: 2. A promised land by Barack Obama
Fave!
"My staff's biggest fear was that I'd make a 'gaffe,' the expression used by the press to describe any maladroit phrase by the candidate that reveals ignorance, carelessness, fuzzy thinking, insensitivity, malice, boorishness, falsehood, or hypocrisy – or is simply deemed to veer sufficiently far from conventional wisdom to make said candidate vulnerable to attack. By this definition, most humans will commit five to ten gaffes a day, each of us counting on the forbearance and goodwill of our family, coworkers, and friends to fill in the blanks, catch our drift, and generally assume the best rather than the worst in us."
"Hearing about what had happened to [Professor Henry Louis Gates, Jr.], I had found myself almost involuntarily conducting a quick inventory of my own experiences. The multiple occasions when I'd been asked for my student ID while walking to the library on Columbia's campus, something that never seemed to happen to my white classmates. The unmerited traffic stops while visiting certain 'nice' Chicago neighborhoods. Being followed around by department store security guards while doing my Christmas shopping. The sound of car locks clicking as I walked across a street, dressed in a suit and tie, in the middle of the day.
Moments like these were routine among Black friends, acquaintances, guys in the barbershop. If you were poor, or working-class, or lived in a rough neighborhood, or didn't properly signify being a respectable Negro, the stories were usually worse. For just about ever Black man in the country, and every woman who loved a Black man, and every parent of a Black boy, it was not a matter of paranoia or 'playing the race card' or disrespecting law enforcement to conclude that whatever else had happened that day in Cambridge, this much was almost certainly true: A wealthy, famous, five-foot-six, 140-pound, fifty-eight-year-old white Harvard professor who walked with a cane because of a childhood leg injury would not have been handcuffed and taken down to the station merely for being rude to a cop who'd forced him to produce some form of identification while standing on his own damn property."
"Around six in the morning on October 9, 2009, the White House operator jolted me from sleep to say that Robert Gibbs was on the line. Calls that early from my staff were rare, and my heart froze. Was it a terrorist attack? A natural disaster?
'You were awarded the Nobel Peace Prize,' Gibbs said.
'What do you mean?'
'They just announced it a few minutes ago.'
'For what?'
Gibbs tactfully ignored the question. Favs would be waiting outside the Oval to work with me on whatever statement I wanted to make, he said. After I hung up, Michelle asked what the call was about.
'I'm getting the Nobel Peace Prize.'
'That's wonderful, honey,' she said, then rolled over to get a little more shut-eye.
An hour and a half later, Malia and Sasha stopped by the dining room as I was having breakfast. 'Great news, Daddy,' Malia said, hitching her backpack over her shoulders. 'You won the Nobel Prize . . . and it's Bo's birthday!'"
"Reading the transcript [from a Deepwater Horizon press conference] now, a decade later, I'm struck by how calm and cogent I sound. Maybe I'm surprised because the transcript doesn't register what I remember feeling at the time or come close to capturing what I really wanted to say before the assembled White House press corps:
That MMS wasn't fully equipped to do its job, in large part because for the past thirty years a big chunk of American voters had bought into the Republican idea that government was the problem and that business always knew better, and had elected leaders who made it their mission to gut environmental regulations, starve agency budgets, denigrate civil servants, and allow industrial polluters to do whatever the hell they wanted to do.
That the government didn't have better technology than BP did to quickly plug the hole because it would be expensive to have such technology on hand, and we Americans didn't like paying higher taxes – especially when it was to prepare for problems that hadn't happened yet.
That it was hard to take seriously any criticism from a character like Bobby Jindal, who'd done Big Oil's bidding throughout his career and would go on to support an oil industry lawsuit trying to get a federal court to lift our temporary drilling moratorium; and that if he and other Gulf-elected officials were truly concerned about the well-being of their constituents, they'd be urging their party to stop denying the effects of climate change, since it was precisely the people of the Gulf who were the most likely to lose their homes or jobs as a result of rising global temperatures.
And that the only way to truly guarantee that we didn't have another catastrophic oil spill in the future was to stop drilling entirely; but that wasn't going to happen because at the end of the day we Americans loved our cheap gas and big cars more than we cared about the environment, except when a complete disaster was staring us in the face; and in the absence of such a disaster, the media rarely covered efforts to shift America off fossil fuels or pass climate legislation, since actually educating the public on long-term energy policy would be boring and bad for ratings; and the one thing I could be certain of was that for all the outrage being expressed at the moment about wetlands and sea turtles and pelicans, what the majority of us were really interested in was having the problem go away, for me to clean up yet one more mess decades in the making with some quick and easy fix, so that we could all go back to our carbon-spewing, energy-wasting ways without having to feel guilty about it."
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8-May-2021: 3. Unweaving the rainbow by Richard Dawkins
Fave! And a re-read. Only my favourite book of all time, and Dawkins is my fave writer. :O
"Imagine a spaceship full of sleeping explorers, deep-frozen would-be colonists of some distant world. Perhaps the ship is on a forlorn mission to save the species before an unstoppable comet, like the one that killed the dinosaurs, hits the home planet. The voyagers go into the deep-freeze soberly reckoning the odds against their spaceship's ever chancing upon a planet friendly to life. If one in a million planets is suitable at best, and it takes centuries to travel from each star to the next, the spaceship is pathetically unlikely to find a tolerable, let alone safe, haven for its sleeping cargo.
But imagine that the ship's robot pilot turns out to be unthinkably lucky. After millions of years the ship does find a planet capable of sustaining life: a planet of equable temperature, bathed in warm starshine, refreshed by oxygen and water. The passengers, Rip van Winkles, wake stumbling into the light. After a million years of sleep, here is a whole new fertile globe, a lush planet of warm pastures, sparkling streams and waterfalls, a world bountiful with creatures, darting through alien green felicity. Our travellers walk entranced, stupefied, unable to believe their unaccustomed senses or their luck.
As I said, the story asks for too much luck; it would never happen. And yet, isn't that what has happened to each one of us? We have woken after hundreds of millions of years asleep, defying astronomical odds. Admittedly we didn't arrive by spaceship, we arrived by being born, and we didn't burst conscious into the world but accumulated awareness gradually through babyhood. The fact that we slowly apprehend our world, rather than suddenly discover it, should not subtract from its wonder.
Of course I am playing tricks with the idea of luck, putting the cart before the horse. It is no accident that our kind of life finds itself on a planet whose temperature, rainfall and everything else are exactly right. If the planet were suitable for another kind of life, it is that other kind of life that would have evolved here. But we as individuals are still hugely blessed. Privileged, and not just privileged to enjoy our planet. More, we are granted the opportunity to understand why our eyes are open, and why they see what they do, in the short time before they close for ever. /.../
After sleeping through a hundred million centuries we have finally opened our eyes on a sumptuous planet, sparkling with colour, bountiful with life. Within decades we must close our eyes again. Isn't it a noble, an enlightened way of spending our brief time in the sun, to work at understanding the universe and how we have come to wake up in it? This is how I answer when I am asked -- as I am surprisingly often -- why I bother to get up in the mornings. To put it the other way round, isn't it sad to go to your grave without ever wondering why you were born? Who, with such a thought, would not spring from bed, eager to resume discovering the world and rejoicing to be a part of it?"
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30-May-2021: 4. Do no harm: Stories of life, death, and brain surgery by Henry Marsh
Fave!
"Sometimes I discuss with my neurosurgical colleagues what we would do if we – as neurosurgeons and without any illusions about how little treatment achieves – were diagnosed with a malignant brain tumour. I usually say that I hope that I would commit suicide but you never know for certain what you will decide until it happens."
"'He might recover.'
'Oh come off it! With both his frontal lobes smashed up like that? He hasn't got a hope in hell. If we operate to deal with the bleeding he might just survive but he'll be left hopelessly disabled, without language and probably with horrible personality change as well. If we don't operate he'll die quickly and peacefully.'
'Well, the family will want something done. It's their choice,' she replied.
I told her that what the family wanted would be entirely determined by what she said to them. If she said 'we can operate and remove the damaged brain and he may just survive' they were bound to say that we should operate. If, instead, she said 'If we operate there is no realistic chance of his getting back to an independent life. He will be left profoundly disabled. Would he want to survive like that?' the family would probably give an entirely different answer. What she was really asking them with the first question was 'Do you love him enough to look after him when he is disabled?' and by saying this she was not giving them any choice. In cases like this we often end up operating because it's easier than being honest and it means that we can avoid a painful conversation. You might think the operation has been a success because the patient leaves the hospital alive but if you saw them years later – as I often do – you would realize that the result of the operation was a human disaster."
"With slowly progressing cancers it can be very difficult to know when to stop. The patients and their families become unrealistic and start to think that they can go on being treated forever, that the end will never come, that death can be forever postponed. They cling to life. I told the meeting about a similar problem some years ago of a three-year-old child, an only child from IVF treatment. I had operated for a malignant ependymoma and he was fine, and had radiotherapy afterwards. When it recurred – which ependymomas always do – two years later, I operated again and it recurred again, deep in the brain, soon afterwards. I refused to operate another time – it seemed pointless. The conversation with his parents was terrible: they wouldn't accept what I said and they found a neurosurgeon elsewhere who operated three times over the next year and the boy still died. His parents then tried to sue me for negligence. It was one of the reasons I stopped doing paediatrics. Love, I reminded my trainees, can be very selfish."
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5-Jun-2021: 5. We are the weather: Saving the planet begins at breakfast by Jonathan Safran Foer
Fave!
"We cannot keep the kinds of meals we have known and also keep the planet we have known. We must either let some eating habits go or let the planet go. It is that straightforward, that fraught."
"It is true that a healthy traditional diet is more expensive than an unhealthy one – about $550 more expensive over the course of a year. And everyone should, as a right, have access to affordable, healthy food. But a healthy vegetarian diet is, on average, about $750 less expensive per year than a healthy meat-based diet. (For perspective, the median income of a full-time American worker is $31,099.) In other words, it is about $200 cheaper per year to eat a healthy vegetarian diet than an unhealthy traditional diet. Not to mention the money saved by preventing diabetes, hypertension, heart disease, and cancer – all associated with the consumption of animal products. So, no, it is not elitist to suggest that a cheaper, healthier, more environmentally sustainable diet is better. But what does strike me as elitist? When someone uses the existence of people without access to healthy food as an excuse not to change, rather than as a motivation to help those people."
"And we have to acknowledge that change is inevitable. We can choose to make changes, or we can be subject to other changes – mass migration, disease, armed conflict, a greatly diminished quality of life – but there is no future without change. The luxury of choosing which changes we prefer has an expiration date."
"We view the actions of civilians during World War II from the vantage of having won the war. Winning required the ravaging of lives, landscapes, and cultures. Perhaps we look back at those blacked-out houses with admiration, but more likely, we look back and think, It was the least they could do.
What if those who came before us had refused to make home-front efforts, and we had lost the war? What if the costs were not extreme, but total? Not eighty million, but two hundred million or more? Not the occupation of Europe, but the domination of the world? Not a Holocaust, but an extinction? If we existed at all, we would look back at a collective unwillingness to sacrifice as an atrocity commensurate with the war itself."
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20-Jun-2021: 6. Outgrowing God: A beginner's guide by Richard Dawkins
Fave!
"We tend to think the United States is an advanced, well-educated country. And so it is, in part. Yet it is an astonishing fact that nearly half the people in that great country believe literally in the story of Adam and Eve. Luckily the other half is there too, and they have made the United States the greatest scientific power in the history of the world. You have to wonder how much further ahead they would be if they weren't held back by the scientifically ignorant half who believe every word of the Bible is literally true."
"What do you think of people who threaten children with eternal fire after they are dead? In this book I don't normally give my own answers to such questions. But I can't help making an exception here. I'd say those people are lucky there is no such place as hell, because I can't think of anybody who more richly deserves to go there."
"If God made the cheetah, he evidently put a lot of effort into designing a superb killer: fast, fierce, keen-eyed, with sharp claws and teeth, and with a brain dedicated to ruthlessly killing gazelles. But the same God put an equal amount of effort into making the gazelle. At the same time as he designed the cheetah to kill gazelles, he was busy designing the gazelle to be expert at escaping from cheetahs. He made both fast, so each could thwart the speed of the other. You can't help wondering, whose side is God on? He seems to be piling on the agony for both. Does he enjoy the spectator sport? Wouldn't it be horrible to think that God enjoys watching a terrified gazelle running for its life, then being knocked over and throttled by a cheetah gripping its throat so tightly that it can't breathe? Or that he likes watching a cheetah that fails to kill starve slowly to death, along with its pathetically whimpering cubs?"
"In 2014, a teenager was caught on camera urinating into a reservoir in America. The local water authority therefore took the decision to drain the reservoir and clean it at an estimated cost of $36,000. The volume of water drained was about 140 million litres. The volume of urine was perhaps about a tenth of a litre. So the ratio of urine to water in the reservoir was less than one part in a billion. There were dead birds and debris in the reservoir, and presumably plenty of animals had urinated into it without anyone noticing. But such was the 'yuck' reaction many people felt, the fact that a single human was known to have peed in the reservoir was enough to get it drained and cleaned. Is that sensible? What would you have done if you were in charge of the reservoir?
Every time you drink a glass of water, there's a high chance you'll drink at least one molecule that passed through the bladder of Julius Caesar."
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17-Jul-2021: 7. White Fang by Jack London
"To man has been given the grief, often, of seeing his gods overthrown and his altars crumbling; but to the wolf and the wild dog that have come in to crouch at man's feet, this grief has never come. Unlike man, whose gods are of the unseen and the overguessed, vapors and mists of fancy eluding the garmenture of reality, wandering wraiths of desired goodness and power, intangible outcroppings of self into the realm of spirit – unlike man, the wolf and the wild dog that have come into their fire find the gods in the living flesh, solid to the touch, occupying earth-space and requiring time for the accomplishment of their ends and their existence. No effort of faith is necessary to believe in such a god; no effort of will can possibly induce disbelief in such a god. There is no getting away from it. There it stands, on its two hindlegs, club in hand, immensely potential, passionate and wrathful and loving, god and mystery and power all wrapped up and around by flesh that bleeds when it is torn and that is good to eat like any flesh."
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23-Jul-2021: 8. What happened by Hillary Rodham Clinton
Fave!
"In short, I thought I'd be a damn good President.
Still, I never stopped getting asked, 'Why do you want to be President? Why? But, really – why?' The implication was that there must be something else going on, some dark ambition and craving for power. Nobody psychoanalyzed Marco Rubio, Ted Cruz, or Bernie Sanders about why they ran. It was just accepted as normal. But for me, it was regarded as inevitable – people assumed I'd run no matter what – yet somehow abnormal, demanding a profound explanation."
"For years, GOP leaders had stoked the public's fears and disappointments. They were willing to sabotage the government in order to block President Obama's agenda. For them, dysfunction wasn't a bug, it was a feature. They knew that the worse Washington looked, the more voters would reject the idea that government could ever be an effective force for progress. They could stop most good things from happening and then be rewarded because nothing good was happening. When something good did happen, such as expanding health care, they would focus on tearing it down, rather than making it better. With many of their voters getting their news from partisan sources, they had found a way to be consistently rewarded for creating the gridlock voters say they hate."
"In my experience, the balancing act women in politics have to master is challenging at every level, but it gets worse the higher you rise. If we're too tough, we're unlikable. If we're too soft, we're not cut out for the big leagues. If we work too hard, we're neglecting our families. If we put family first, we're not serious about the work. If we have a career but no children, there's something wrong with us, and vice versa. If we want to compete for a higher office, we're too ambitious. Can't we just be happy with what we have? Can't we leave the higher rungs on the ladder for men?
Think how often you've heard these words used about women who lead: angry, strident, feisty, difficult, irritable, bossy, brassy, emotional, abrasive, high-maintenance, ambitious (a word that I think of as neutral, even admirable, but clearly isn't for a lot of people)."
"Of the sixty-eight women who signed the Declaration of Sentiments in 1848, only one lived to see the Nineteenth Amendment ratified. Her name was Charlotte Woodward, and she thanked God for the progress she had witnessed in her lifetime.
In 1848, Charlotte was a nineteen-year-old glove maker living in the small town of Waterloo, New York. She would sit and sew for hours every day, working for meager wages with no hope of ever getting an education or owning property. Charlotte knew that if she married, she, any children she might have, and all her wordly possessions would belong to her husband. She would never be a full and equal citizen, never vote, certainly never run for office. One hot summer day, Charlotte heard about a women's rights conference in a nearby town. She ran from house to house, sharing the news. Some of her friends were as excited as she was. Others were amused or dismissive. A few agreed to go with her to see it for themselves. They left early on the morning of July 19 in a wagon drawn by farm horses. At first, the road was empty, and they wondered if no one else was coming. At the next crossroads, there were wagons and carriages, and then more appeared, all headed to Wesleyan Chapel in Seneca Falls. Charlotte and her friends joined the procession, heading toward a future they could only dream of.
Charlotte Woodward was more than ninety years old when she finally gained the right to vote, but she got there. My mother had just been born and lived long enough to vote for her daughter to be President.
I plan to live long enough to see a woman win."
"As Stephen Colbert once joked, 'reality has a well-known liberal bias.'"
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11-Sep-2021: 9. The hipster handbook by Robert Lanham
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19-Sep-2021: 10. Mannen som ordnade naturen: En biografi över Carl von Linné by Gunnar Broberg
Swedish bio of Carl Linnaeus.
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31-Oct-2021: 11. Until the end of time: Mind, matter, and our search for meaning in an evolving universe by Brian Greene
Fave! Brian is my 4th fave writer, the most pedagogical person in the world, and THE GREATEST MINDFUCKER I have ever read. :'D
"… A star that's twenty times the mass of the sun will spend its first eight million years fusing hydrogen into helium, then devote its next million years to fusing helium into carbon and oxygen. From there, with its core temperature getting ever higher, the conveyor belt continually revs up: it takes about a thousand years for the star to burn its storehouse of carbon, fusing it into sodium and neon; over the next six months, further fusion produces magnesium; within a month more sulfur and silicon; and then in a mere ten days fusion burns the remaining atoms, producing iron."
"The functions that keep a typical cell alive for just a single second require the energy stored in about ten million ATP molecules. Your body contains tens of trillions of cells, which means that every second you consume on the order of one hundred million trillion (10^20) ATP molecules."
"I have encountered many people /.../ who feel that any attempt to subsume consciousness within the physical description of the world belittles our most precious quality. People who suggest that the physicalist program is the hamfisted approach of scientists blinded by materialism and unaware of the true wonders of conscious experience. Of course, no one knows how all this will play out. Perhaps a hundred or a thousand years from now the physicalist program will look naïve. I doubt it. But in acknowledging this possibility, it is also important to counter the presumption that by delineating a physical basis for consciousness we devalue it. That the mind can do all it does is extraordinary. That the mind may accomplish all it does with nothing more than the kinds of ingredients and types of forces holding together my coffee cup makes it more extraordinary still. Consciousness would be demystified without being diminished."
"Let's focus on earth and imagine that another star wanders by. Depending on the interloper's mass and trajectory, its gravitational pull may only mildly perturb earth's motion. A lightweight intruder that keeps a good distance won't wreak havoc. But the gravitational pull of a more massive star that passes closer could easily rip earth from its orbit, sending it hurtling across the solar system and heading into deep space. And what's true for earth is true for most other planets orbiting most other stars in most other galaxies. As we climb up the timeline, more and more planets will be flung into space by the disruptive gravitational pull of wayward stars. Indeed, although extremely unlikely, the earth could suffer this fate before the sun burns out.
Were this to happen, earth's ever-larger distance from the sun would cause its temperature to fall continually. Upper layers of the world's oceans would freeze, as would whatever else is left on the surface. Atmospheric gases, predominantly nitrogen and oxygen, would liquefy and drip from the skies. Could life survive? On earth's surface, that would be a tall order. But as we have seen, life thrives and indeed may have originated in dark thermal vents dotting the ocean floor. Sunlight can't penetrate anywhere near such depths, and so the vents will hardly be affected by the sun's absence. Instead, a substantial part of the energy powering the vents comes from diffuse but continual nuclear reactions. Earth's interior contains a storehouse of radioactive elements (mostly thorium, uranium, and potassium), and as these unstable atoms decay they emit a stream of energetic particles that heat the surroundings. So whether or not earth enjoys the warmth generated by nuclear fusion in the sun, it will continue to enjoy the warmth generated by nuclear fission in its interior. Were earth to be ejected from the solar system, it is possible that life on the ocean floor would carry on for billions of years as if nothing had happened."
Me in margin: :)
Me in margin: "DISASTER MOVIE!!!"
"… In forming a black hole, the larger the mass, the less that mass needs to be crushed. To build a black hole like the one in the center of the Milky Way, whose mass is about four million times that of the sun, you need matter whose density is about one hundred times that of lead, so you've still got some serious crushing ahead of you. To build one with mass one hundred million times that of the sun, the necessary density drops all the way to that of water. And to build one that's four billion times the mass of the sun, the density you need is on par with that of the air you're now breathing. Gather together four billion times the mass of the sun in air, and unlike the case with a grapefruit, or the earth, or the sun, to create a black hole you would not need to squeeze the air at all. Gravity acting on the air would form a black hole on its own."
And I was introduced to the concept of Boltzmann brains. o_O The biggest mindfuck in this book of mindfuckery.
"… We can estimate that there's a reasonable chance that a Boltzmann brain will form within [1 followed by 10^68 zeroes] years."
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21-Dec-2021: 12. Me by Elton John
Fave! The shit hit the fan when I watched "Rocketman" on June 14, and several songs in it made me go "Hmm, this sounds pretty nice. I should probably check out more of his music." I'd had a handful of Elton songs in my collection for decades (I first heard him on "The lion king" soundtrack), but now I really started to spend time with ALL THE ALBUMS. (Er, I'm almost done.) Normally, the high point of my week is… the Flickr upload… :B But the Flickr habit had kind of been broken over the summer, for reasons. So the new high point of each week was to sit the fuck down with a new (to me…) Elton album and a can o' energy drink and no distractions. Ahhh. And I've got THREE ELTON SHOWS booked for 2022 and 2023! But I half expect them to get postponed or cancelled. :'( I COULD have started listening to him properly in 1995 or some shit. -_-
"But there was something more to cocaine than the way it made me feel. Cocaine had a certain cachet about it. It was fashionable and exclusive. Doing it was like becoming a member of an elite little clique, that secretly indulged in something edgy, dangerous and illicit. Pathetically enough, that really appealed to me. I'd become successful and popular, but I never felt cool. Even back in Bluesology, I was the nerdy one, the one who didn't look like a pop star, who never quite carried off the hip clothes, who spent all his time in record shops while the rest of the band were out getting laid and taking drugs. And cocaine felt cool: the subtly coded conversations to work out who had some, or who wanted some - who was part of the clique and who wasn't - the secretive visits to the bathrooms of clubs and bars. Of course, that was all bullshit, too. I already was part of a club. Ever since my solo career had begun, I'd been shown nothing but kindness and love by other artists. From the minute I turned up in LA, musicians I adored and worshipped - people who'd once just been mythic names on album sleeves and record labels - had fallen over themselves to offer friendship and support. But when it finally arrived, my success had happened so fast that, despite the warm welcome, I couldn't help but still feel slightly out of place, as if I didn't quite belong."
"There was choreography, in which I was expected to take part, at least initially. Visibly stunned by my demonstration of the moves I'd honed on the dance floors of Crisco Disco and Studio 54, the choreographer Arlene Phillips went pale and suddenly scaled down my involvement in that side of things, until all I really had to do was click my fingers and walk along the seafront in time to the music. Perhaps she was afraid I was going to upstage the professionals, and the thing she later said about me being the worst dancer she'd ever worked with was a brilliant double-bluff, designed to spare their blushes."
PS. Fave Elton song: "Live like horses". :'D Never heard it before 2021. D:
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Vegan FAQ! :)
The Web Site the Meat Industry Doesn't Want You to See.
Please watch Earthlings.
Storm in making
Mother nature committed to perform as expected in local forecast, quick thunderstorm. quick click with iphone.
Sommet Joe Biden -Vladimir Putin
Joe Biden - Vladimir Putin Summit
Des voitures banalisées des polices des autres cantons venues en aide. Au premier plan même l'armée s'investit.
95% des effectifs totaux de la police cantonale seront mobilisés, soit environ 2000 personnes. Les forces de l'ordre seront épaulées par 900 renforts des polices de tous les cantons.
La police genevoise reçoit aussi l'appui de l'armée qui mobilise 1000 hommes pour ce sommet. Les forces aériennes apportent un appui subsidiaire et protègent l'espace aérien qui sera temporairement réduit du 15 au 17 juin dans un rayon de 50 kilomètres et jusqu'à 6000 mètres.
L'armée assure également un soutien logistique au sol et sur le lac et engage un bataillon sur le site de l'aéroport. Les soldats sont en charge de la protection des ambassades et des missions diplomatiques. Un dispositif de défense sol-air a été déployé sur le territoire du canton.
La totalité du Parc Lagrange est entouré de près de dix kilomètres de barrières et barbelés infranchissables !
Unmarked cars from the police forces of other cantons came to help. In the foreground even the army is involved.
95% of the total staff of the cantonal police will be mobilised, i.e. around 2000 people. The police will be supported by 900 reinforcements from the police forces of all the cantons.
The Geneva police will also receive support from the army, which will mobilise 1,000 men for this summit. The air force will provide subsidiary support and protect the airspace, which will be temporarily reduced from 15 to 17 June within a radius of 50 kilometres and up to 6000 metres.
The army also provides logistical support on the ground and on the lake and commits a battalion to the airport site. The soldiers are in charge of the protection of embassies and diplomatic missions. A ground-air defence system has been deployed in the canton.
The entire Parc Lagrange is surrounded by nearly ten kilometres of impassable fences and barbed wire!
this little foster baby is all snuggled in and warming up after a bath and blowdry. he's transitioning from bottle to soft food and was covered from head to toe in cat food!
Obituary of another 60s Housing Scheme.
Kidbrooke Housing Scheme (later known as Ferrier Estate).
Architects: GLC Architects Department, 1967-72.
It saddens me to write the first chapter of this mostly visual obituary of a failed scheme now facing demolition. I feel honour bound to say some words to defend some very hardworking architects, with whom I had the honour to work with as a young student. These people, most of them no longer with us, were hard working, sincere and conscientious and gave their best to a scheme they seriously believed would house generations of happy and satisfied residents.
The subject of disastrous housing schemes of this period has been endlessly discussed and dissected by some very able writers and critics and I don’t feel this is right place to repeat various views which are already well known.
However, I would like to address a few words to Flickr viewers who often write vitriolic comments about this and similar estates, when they see some sad and depressing photographs of these decaying estates facing demolition and immediately start attacking ‘Planners and Architects’ for committing these atrocities against the human race.
Again, this is an understandable first reaction and with the benefit of the hindsight it is easy to say and admit that some very serious mistakes were made in the housing development of this period.
If you were living in the middle of ‘Jerusalem’ when it was being built and the new, spacious houses were being occupied by happy people delighted by these new estates, you would have found it difficult to believe that in not so distant a future such a sad outcome could have been remotely possible.
All I would like to say here is that there are a huge number of factors which influenced the outcome of these large housing schemes, a very dubious concept in its own right. The factors like political and social environment at the time of inception and occupation, financial controls with ‘sticks’ and ‘carrots’, the importance of choosing the appropriate residents, day to day management and maintenance, sufficient finances for maintaining and if necessary, eliminating the ‘failure’ as they become apparent and encouraging residents to actively take over the management of their own environments, were hardly understood by most of the bureaucracies involved in the whole process.
The examples exist of identical or near identical schemes where one has turned out to be a winner in most respects and the ‘identical twin’ had to be demolished because it was considered to be a complete failure and intensely hated by the occupants.
It would be nice to think that some understanding of these issues is available and grasped before ‘off the cuff’ insults are scattered at only one or two parties concerned.
The photographs I have shown above were taken during construction and early occupation period. The current state of this scheme is well illustrated by Flickr member ‘Waterford Man’. Please see his set on the following link for the current situation;
www.flickr.com/photos/waterford_man/sets/72157604073276791/
There is another very informative site covering the background of this scheme at this link:
www.jacobcarter.co.uk/Ferrier Estate Project 2.htm
Demolition started;
www.flickr.com/photos/waterford_man/3390406178/in/photost...
A rather catch all warning. Akin to saying, 'whatever it is you are doing, stop it'. Or perhaps a more old fashioned approach to "Don't be evil". The particular optimistic stab at ensuring the public good is on Great Guildford Street in Southwark.
He's Olaf and he likes warm hugs. He is by far the craziest snowman to walk the mountains above Arendelle and he's finally been committed!
Taken on the site of the old Maximum security wards (Wards 21 & 22) of Morisset Hospital, which were built in 1930 in a separate walled compound about 1.5 kilometres from centre of main hospital. Named 'Wyee Bay Gaol' this part of the hospital went on to have a long and distinguished role in the care of the criminally insane in NSW. It was also referred to as 'The Crim' and was closed in 1991.
Thanks for taking the time to check out my image!
If you really enjoyed this image, be sure to click on over to my Urbex & Street Art Collection and check out more of my Urbex & Street Art photos.
Even better, if you have some Urbex & Street Art to share, come on over to the Urbex & Street Art (NSW & ACT) Group, join up & share away!
If you’re feeling ’a little more adventuress’ then click on over to all my Albums and browse through my collection.
Cheers. ‘Squiz’
And in her was found the blood of prophets, and of saints, and of all that were slain upon the earth.
Revelation 18:24 King James Version
One could commit an entire trip to Costa Rica just for macro and amazing insects. My primary goal and hope was for owls, other birds, bugs/insects, landscapes were secondary yet many opportunities presented without us seeking them....such as this burly spider found on top of a lamp cover at Arenal Observatory Lodge.
GMP is deploying Project Servator in the City Centre during the weeks leading up to Christmas.
Project Servator will see officers working with partners to target offenders of all levels, from petty criminals to terrorists. Project Servator tactics include highly visible patrols that can turn up anywhere and at any time across the city.
They will involve both uniformed and plain clothes officers, who are specially trained to spot the tell-tale signs that a person is planning or preparing to commit a criminal act, as well as a range of other tactics including search dogs and horses, police vehicles and utilising CCTV across the city centre.
Officers will also be encouraging security staff, retailers and the public to be extra eyes and ears and report anything that doesn’t feel right.
You should call 101, the national non-emergency number, to report crime and other concerns that do not require an emergency response.
Always call 999 in an emergency, such as when a crime is in progress, violence is being used or threatened or where there is danger to life.
You can also call anonymously with information about crime to Crimestoppers on 0800 555 111. Crimestoppers is an independent charity who will not want your name, just your information. Your call will not be traced or recorded and you do not have to go to court or give a statement.
You can access many of our services online at www.gmp.police.uk
Before we commit to unpacking and perhaps lighting a fire!
Camping in the area near the Algebuckina Bridge is restricted to the area near the waterhole to the east of the Oodnadatta Track. The waterhole offers a great fishing and camping spot, although during summer, you may want to camp a bit back from the waters edge because of the mossies. The Algebuckina waterhole has never dried up in living memory and is the largest refuge waterhole in the Neales-Peak river system. Please remove all rubbish and bury human waste well away from the water hole. Notes from the ExPlorOz Traveller Navigation App…… buy it to find your way here..
www.exploroz.com/places/98843/sa+algebuckina-campsite#.Y2...
Date and Time (Modified) - 2011:07:01 17:40:17 we wandered around checking the water nearby and looking for a level spot.
see some videos around the Flinders to the outback and the Centre of Australia! here!
Watch in 720 or 1080p
01 First 5 days to Kinchega youtu.be/uSn83Zbr_3Q
02 to BH Yunta Arkaroola youtu.be/ckQNC5y5ooc
03 Arkaroola Umberatane road, Leigh Creek Marree pub youtu.be/uSn83Zbr_3Q
03a Rough exit track west from Arkaroola SA youtu.be/AcIybjnt__A
04 4WDs Coward Springs to Oodnadatta youtu.be/hzSmMQSY7o4
05 Oodnadatta Eringa Lambert Centre youtu.be/QGFLmBc8QJ0
05a Eringa camp scenes youtu.be/SPRT1jmlSes
05b Macca at Eringa waterhole youtu.be/CyBdfGX2190
05c 4WD Finke to Lambert Centre youtu.be/KGHUjrPc3dc
06 Lambert Centre to Old Andado youtu.be/2cr4A_4vlxg
07 31st Old Andado to Mt Dare youtu.be/6TYGbvR5lKU
08 New Crown Eringa Alberga Ck Oodnadatta Marree youtu.be/48SRYDkyDcw
08a Alberga Creek muddy crossing.wmv
09 Marree Cooper Creek Tippipilia Birdsville Track
10 Tippiplia Creek to Birdsville Big Red youtu.be/1I4yjf8mPrs
10a Sunset on Big Red youtu.be/ghEiVfoBB2s
10b Wrecking Big Red youtu.be/e6Zeurts94g
11 Birdsville to Windorah youtu.be/e3wEOiz719g
12 Windorah to Jundah youtu.be/EWpoaiFfl1k
13 Sheep Shenanigans Pt 1 youtu.be/yiLvPwO2QC0
14 Sheep Shenanigans Pt 2 youtu.be/OhxVx0fFzSs
15 Welford NP-Cunnamulla youtu.be/vYl2-AZNA8w
16 Cunnamulla Bourke Nyngan Home.m2ts youtu.be/vYl2-AZNA8w
The first quarter Moon taken on the evening of 16th July 2013 using my Lumix LX3 through a Celestron Travelscope 70 telescope.
Apollo 11 launched 44 years ago, on July 16th, 1969.
Apollo 11 Launch footage on YouTube
"I believe that this nation should commit itself to achieving the goal, before this decade is out, of landing a man on the moon and returning him safely to the earth. No single space project in this period will be more impressive to mankind, or more important for the long-range exploration of space."
-President John F. Kennedy, Address to Congress on Urgent National Needs, May 25, 1961
President Kennedy's May 1961 Speech on YouTube
The moon landings were one of the biggest commitments ever made and successfully undertaken. But now, who knows when human beings will next visit the moon...?
For the 'Commit' weekly theme in the 365 2013 Edition group.
After committing atrocities in the name of freedom, Bortak retired, swearing to never fight again. He currently lives in the Great Library of Magna Nui, helping Mr. Z sort millions of volumes. He is also the city-wide Patty-cake champ.
I can't say I'm pleased, but I can say he's the first a skeleton picture was worth. I ran out of ball joints by the end.
commit #2 ► Motivational Video 2016 ᴴᴰ LINK : youtu.be/nO38VeTDYKs ------------------------------------------------------------------------- COMMIT YOURSELF - Motivational Video - YouTube COMMITTED - Motivational Video (ft. Jaret Grossman) Commit - Motivational Video - YouTube COMMIT YOURSELF Motivational Video - YouTube COMMIT YOURSELF - Motivational Video - YouTube COMMIT YOURSELF Motivational Video YouTube - YouTube COMMIT YOURSELF - Motivational Video - YouTube COMMITMENT - THE BEST MOTIVATIONAL VIDEO (GET UP) Be Committed - Motivational Video - YouTube Commit - Motivational Video - YouTube | Crescimento COMMIT YOURSELF – Motivational Video | THE GUY CODE Motivational video "When You Commit a Mistake Motivational video "When You Commit a Mistake Motivational video "When You Commit a Mistake Commit to watching this motivational video every morning Commit Yourself Motivational Video Mp3 Download fully commit to excellence! (motivational video) Motivational Video: Commitment & Consistency | Project Commit - Motivational Video with subtitles | Amara Download Commit - Motivational Video .mp4 3gp flv motivational speech, motivational video, motivation kelly rowland, motivational videos for success in life, motivational songs, motivational speech for success in life, motivational speaker, motivational speeches for athletes, motivation music, motivation video, motivation song, motivation workout, motivation to study, motivation for students, motivation ti, motivation 2015, motivation arnold schwarzenegger, motivation and emotion, motivation at work, motivation and inspiration, motivation animation, motivational amv, motivation audio, motivation after break up, motivation athletes, motivation about life, a motivational video, a motivational speech, a motivational song, a motivational video for students, a motivational story, a motivational video never give up, a motivational speech on ending poverty, a motivational movie, a dream motivational, motivation bodybuilding, motivation by kelly rowland, motivation boxing, motivation business, motivation bodybuilding 2015, motivation become a lion, motivation baseball, motivation beat, motivation believe in yourself, motivation best, lil b motivation, r&b motivational songs, lil b motivation instrumental, r&b motivational songs 2014, lil b motivational speech, doe b motivation, r&b motivational music, r&b motivation, lil b motivation remix, b.o.b motivation, motivation compilation, motivation choreography, motivation change, motivation commercial, motivation compilation 2015, motivation clams casino, motivation confidence, motivation ct fletcher, motivation clean, motivation crossfit, c t fletcher motivation, c.ronaldo motivation, c.ronaldo motivational video, warrior motivation c, motivation dream, motivation dubstep, motivation depression, motivation don't give up, motivation don't quit, motivation documentary, motivation darkness, motivation desire, motivation dc young fly, motivation dance, d rose motivational video, d rose motivation, d wade motivation, motivation d, motivation dj mike d, basketball motivation d rose, motivational mr d, motivation entretien d'embauche, motivation d'avant match, motivation d'un coach, motivation eric thomas, motivation excuses, motivation eric thomas how bad do you want it, motivation et, motivation entrepreneur, motivation exercise, motivation education, motivation elliot hulse, motivation epic, motivation eric thomas breathe, e motivational speaker, e t motivational speaker, e thomas motivation, e t motivation, e 60 motivation, e-sports motivation, motivation football, motivation for studying, motivation for school, motivation for working out, motivation fear, motivation for life, motivation fitness, motivation for kids, motivation for teachers, motivational videos f, motivational speech f, motivational music f, motivation f, motivational songs f, motivation gym, motivationgrid, motivation grind, motivation gym music, motivation greg plitt, motivation gym workout, motivation guru, motivation get up, motivation goals, motivation get over depression, vince g motivation, chill rob g motivation, bboy lil g motivation, motivation how bad do you want it, motivation hard work, motivation hard times, motivation hip hop, motivation hour, motivation how great i am, motivation hindi, motivation hunger, motivation heartbroken, motivation hero, triple h motivation, triple h motivational video, motivation instrumental, motivation inspiration, motivation in the workplace, motivation is nothing without action, motivation is bullshit, motivation in college, motivation in hindi, motivation interview, motivation instrumental kelly rowland, motivation in school, i need motivation, i believe motivational video, i'm beast motivation, i believe motivation, i'm back motivation, i run motivation, youtu.be/nO38VeTDYKs
commit #2 ► Motivational Video 2016 ᴴᴰ LINK : youtu.be/nO38VeTDYKs ------------------------------------------------------------------------- COMMIT YOURSELF - Motivational Video - YouTube COMMITTED - Motivational Video (ft. Jaret Grossman) Commit - Motivational Video - YouTube COMMIT YOURSELF Motivational Video - YouTube COMMIT YOURSELF - Motivational Video - YouTube COMMIT YOURSELF Motivational Video YouTube - YouTube COMMIT YOURSELF - Motivational Video - YouTube COMMITMENT - THE BEST MOTIVATIONAL VIDEO (GET UP) Be Committed - Motivational Video - YouTube Commit - Motivational Video - YouTube | Crescimento COMMIT YOURSELF – Motivational Video | THE GUY CODE Motivational video "When You Commit a Mistake Motivational video "When You Commit a Mistake Motivational video "When You Commit a Mistake Commit to watching this motivational video every morning Commit Yourself Motivational Video Mp3 Download fully commit to excellence! (motivational video) Motivational Video: Commitment & Consistency | Project Commit - Motivational Video with subtitles | Amara Download Commit - Motivational Video .mp4 3gp flv motivational speech, motivational video, motivation kelly rowland, motivational videos for success in life, motivational songs, motivational speech for success in life, motivational speaker, motivational speeches for athletes, motivation music, motivation video, motivation song, motivation workout, motivation to study, motivation for students, motivation ti, motivation 2015, motivation arnold schwarzenegger, motivation and emotion, motivation at work, motivation and inspiration, motivation animation, motivational amv, motivation audio, motivation after break up, motivation athletes, motivation about life, a motivational video, a motivational speech, a motivational song, a motivational video for students, a motivational story, a motivational video never give up, a motivational speech on ending poverty, a motivational movie, a dream motivational, motivation bodybuilding, motivation by kelly rowland, motivation boxing, motivation business, motivation bodybuilding 2015, motivation become a lion, motivation baseball, motivation beat, motivation believe in yourself, motivation best, lil b motivation, r&b motivational songs, lil b motivation instrumental, r&b motivational songs 2014, lil b motivational speech, doe b motivation, r&b motivational music, r&b motivation, lil b motivation remix, b.o.b motivation, motivation compilation, motivation choreography, motivation change, motivation commercial, motivation compilation 2015, motivation clams casino, motivation confidence, motivation ct fletcher, motivation clean, motivation crossfit, c t fletcher motivation, c.ronaldo motivation, c.ronaldo motivational video, warrior motivation c, motivation dream, motivation dubstep, motivation depression, motivation don't give up, motivation don't quit, motivation documentary, motivation darkness, motivation desire, motivation dc young fly, motivation dance, d rose motivational video, d rose motivation, d wade motivation, motivation d, motivation dj mike d, basketball motivation d rose, motivational mr d, motivation entretien d'embauche, motivation d'avant match, motivation d'un coach, motivation eric thomas, motivation excuses, motivation eric thomas how bad do you want it, motivation et, motivation entrepreneur, motivation exercise, motivation education, motivation elliot hulse, motivation epic, motivation eric thomas breathe, e motivational speaker, e t motivational speaker, e thomas motivation, e t motivation, e 60 motivation, e-sports motivation, motivation football, motivation for studying, motivation for school, motivation for working out, motivation fear, motivation for life, motivation fitness, motivation for kids, motivation for teachers, motivational videos f, motivational speech f, motivational music f, motivation f, motivational songs f, motivation gym, motivationgrid, motivation grind, motivation gym music, motivation greg plitt, motivation gym workout, motivation guru, motivation get up, motivation goals, motivation get over depression, vince g motivation, chill rob g motivation, bboy lil g motivation, motivation how bad do you want it, motivation hard work, motivation hard times, motivation hip hop, motivation hour, motivation how great i am, motivation hindi, motivation hunger, motivation heartbroken, motivation hero, triple h motivation, triple h motivational video, motivation instrumental, motivation inspiration, motivation in the workplace, motivation is nothing without action, motivation is bullshit, motivation in college, motivation in hindi, motivation interview, motivation instrumental kelly rowland, motivation in school, i need motivation, i believe motivational video, i'm beast motivation, i believe motivation, i'm back motivation, i run motivation,
Around the corners of Melbourne was another world unexplored, graffiti masterpieces, dull street lamps...and, British quotes.
Basically, it means, be an English gentleman and don't piss on these walls, or not?
★Sony DSC-RX1, Zeiss Sonnar T* 35mm f/2
My photos are available as stock photos through: iStock | Getty
Follow me on: Twitter | Facebook
Or visit me here: www.facesbyling.com
Thank you all! ありがとうございました! 谢谢大家! Grazie a tutti! Terima kasih semua!
COMMIT!Forum at the Westin Hotel in Times Square on October 18, 2016 in New York City. (Photos by Ben Hider)
-Partisans are to be ruthlessly eliminated in battle or during attempts to escape. Attacks by the civilian population are to be suppressed by the Army on the spot by using extreme measures.
-Every officer in German occupation in the 'East of the future' will be entitled to perform executions without trial on any person suspected of having hostile attitude towards the Germans.
-If you have not managed to identify and punish the perpetrators of Anti-German acts, You are allowed to apply the principle of collective measures against residents of the area where the attack occurred.
-German soldiers who commit crimes against humanity , The USSR , and Prisoners of War are to be exempted from criminal responsibility.... Even if they commit acts punishable according to German law.
-Babarossa Decree, Laid out by Hitler March 30 1941.
This photo was taken on Sixth Avenue, between Minetta Lane and West 4th Street. I have no idea what was going on here ... but who cares?
***************
This set of photos is based on a very simple concept: walk every block of Manhattan with a camera, and see what happens. To avoid missing vanything, walk both sides of the street.
That's all there is to it …
Of course, if you wanted to be more ambitious, you could also walk the streets of Brooklyn, Queens, Staten Island, and the Bronx. But that's more than I'm willing to commit to at this point, and I'll leave the remaining boroughs of New York City to other, more adventurous photographers.
Oh, actually, there's one more small detail: leave the photos alone for a month -- unedited, untouched, and unviewed. By the time I actually focus on the first of these "every-block" photos, I will have taken more than 8,000 images on the nearby streets of the Upper West Side -- plus another several thousand in Rome, Coney Island, and the various spots in NYC where I traditionally take photos. So I don't expect to be emotionally attached to any of the "every-block" photos, and hope that I'll be able to make an objective selection of the ones worth looking at.
As for the criteria that I've used to select the small subset of every-block photos that get uploaded to Flickr: there are three. First, I'll upload any photo that I think is "great," and where I hope the reaction of my Flickr-friends will be, "I have no idea when or where that photo was taken, but it's really a terrific picture!"
A second criterion has to do with place, and the third involves time. I'm hoping that I'll take some photos that clearly say, "This is New York!" to anyone who looks at it. Obviously, certain landscape icons like the Empire State Building or the Statue of Liberty would satisfy that criterion; but I'm hoping that I'll find other, more unexpected examples. I hope that I'll be able to take some shots that will make a "local" viewer say, "Well, even if that's not recognizable to someone from another part of the country, or another part of the world, I know that that's New York!" And there might be some photos where a "non-local" viewer might say, "I had no idea that there was anyplace in New York City that was so interesting/beautiful/ugly/spectacular."
As for the sense of time: I remember wandering around my neighborhood in 2005, photographing various shops, stores, restaurants, and business establishments -- and then casually looking at the photos about five years later, and being stunned by how much had changed. Little by little, store by store, day by day, things change … and when you've been around as long as I have, it's even more amazing to go back and look at the photos you took thirty or forty years ago, and ask yourself, "Was it really like that back then? Seriously, did people really wear bell-bottom jeans?"
So, with the expectation that I'll be looking at these every-block photos five or ten years from now (and maybe you will be, too), I'm going to be doing my best to capture scenes that convey the sense that they were taken in the year 2013 … or at least sometime in the decade of the 2010's (I have no idea what we're calling this decade yet). Or maybe they'll just say to us, "This is what it was like a dozen years after 9-11".
Movie posters are a trivial example of such a time-specific image; I've already taken a bunch, and I don't know if I'll ultimately decide that they're worth uploading. Women's fashion/styles are another obvious example of a time-specific phenomenon; and even though I'm definitely not a fashion expert, I suspected that I'll be able to look at some images ten years from now and mutter to myself, "Did we really wear shirts like that? Did women really wear those weird skirts that are short in the front, and long in the back? Did everyone in New York have a tattoo?"
Another example: I'm fascinated by the interactions that people have with their cellphones out on the street. It seems that everyone has one, which certainly wasn't true a decade ago; and it seems that everyone walks down the street with their eyes and their entire conscious attention riveted on this little box-like gadget, utterly oblivious about anything else that might be going on (among other things, that makes it very easy for me to photograph them without their even noticing, particularly if they've also got earphones so they can listen to music or carry on a phone conversation). But I can't help wondering whether this kind of social behavior will seem bizarre a decade from now … especially if our cellphones have become so miniaturized that they're incorporated into the glasses we wear, or implanted directly into our eyeballs.
Oh, one last thing: I've created a customized Google Map to show the precise details of each day's photo-walk. I'll be updating it each day, and the most recent part of my every-block journey will be marked in red, to differentiate it from all of the older segments of the journey, which will be shown in blue. You can see the map, and peek at it each day to see where I've been, by clicking on this link
URL link to Ed's every-block progress through Manhattan
If you have any suggestions about places that I should definitely visit to get some good photos, or if you'd like me to photograph you in your little corner of New York City, please let me know. You can send me a Flickr-mail message, or you can email me directly at ed-at-yourdon-dot-com
Stay tuned as the photo-walk continues, block by block ...
Commited to getting up up at 4am on boxing day for the drive down to the apostles. Much better viewing when the lookout is empty.
Canon 5DmkII
Canon 16-35mm f/2.8L
Lee 0.6ND Grad
doyouknowwhoyouare?doyouwanttoknow?willyoueverknow?
nobody's perfect.
Quote by unknown.
View large on black highly recommended.
© A-Lister Photography. All rights reserved.
I actively enforce my copyright. Do not use my photographs in ANY form or media without my written permission - this includes redistributing in any form, printing, all file-sharing web sites, blogs and your own web pages. If you would like to use one of my images please email me using FlickrMail.
Thanks for viewing and looking through my Photostream...
This was taken on corner of Thompson and West Houston Streets. in Greenwich Village.
***************
This set of photos is based on a very simple concept: walk every block of Manhattan with a camera, and see what happens. To avoid missing anything, walk both sides of the street.
That's all there is to it …
Of course, if you wanted to be more ambitious, you could also walk the streets of Brooklyn, Queens, Staten Island, and the Bronx. But that's more than I'm willing to commit to at this point, and I'll leave the remaining boroughs of New York City to other, more adventurous photographers.
Oh, actually, there's one more small detail: leave the photos alone for a month -- unedited, untouched, and unviewed. By the time I actually focus on the first of these "every-block" photos, I will have taken more than 8,000 images on the nearby streets of the Upper West Side -- plus another several thousand in Rome, Coney Island, and the various spots in NYC where I traditionally take photos. So I don't expect to be emotionally attached to any of the "every-block" photos, and hope that I'll be able to make an objective selection of the ones worth looking at.
As for the criteria that I've used to select the small subset of every-block photos that get uploaded to Flickr: there are three. First, I'll upload any photo that I think is "great," and where I hope the reaction of my Flickr-friends will be, "I have no idea when or where that photo was taken, but it's really a terrific picture!"
A second criterion has to do with place, and the third involves time. I'm hoping that I'll take some photos that clearly say, "This is New York!" to anyone who looks at it. Obviously, certain landscape icons like the Empire State Building or the Statue of Liberty would satisfy that criterion; but I'm hoping that I'll find other, more unexpected examples. I hope that I'll be able to take some shots that will make a "local" viewer say, "Well, even if that's not recognizable to someone from another part of the country, or another part of the world, I know that that's New York!" And there might be some photos where a "non-local" viewer might say, "I had no idea that there was anyplace in New York City that was so interesting/beautiful/ugly/spectacular."
As for the sense of time: I remember wandering around my neighborhood in 2005, photographing various shops, stores, restaurants, and business establishments -- and then casually looking at the photos about five years later, and being stunned by how much had changed. Little by little, store by store, day by day, things change … and when you've been around as long as I have, it's even more amazing to go back and look at the photos you took thirty or forty years ago, and ask yourself, "Was it really like that back then? Seriously, did people really wear bell-bottom jeans?"
So, with the expectation that I'll be looking at these every-block photos five or ten years from now (and maybe you will be, too), I'm going to be doing my best to capture scenes that convey the sense that they were taken in the year 2013 … or at least sometime in the decade of the 2010's (I have no idea what we're calling this decade yet). Or maybe they'll just say to us, "This is what it was like a dozen years after 9-11".
Movie posters are a trivial example of such a time-specific image; I've already taken a bunch, and I don't know if I'll ultimately decide that they're worth uploading. Women's fashion/styles are another obvious example of a time-specific phenomenon; and even though I'm definitely not a fashion expert, I suspected that I'll be able to look at some images ten years from now and mutter to myself, "Did we really wear shirts like that? Did women really wear those weird skirts that are short in the front, and long in the back? Did everyone in New York have a tattoo?"
Another example: I'm fascinated by the interactions that people have with their cellphones out on the street. It seems that everyone has one, which certainly wasn't true a decade ago; and it seems that everyone walks down the street with their eyes and their entire conscious attention riveted on this little box-like gadget, utterly oblivious about anything else that might be going on (among other things, that makes it very easy for me to photograph them without their even noticing, particularly if they've also got earphones so they can listen to music or carry on a phone conversation). But I can't help wondering whether this kind of social behavior will seem bizarre a decade from now … especially if our cellphones have become so miniaturized that they're incorporated into the glasses we wear, or implanted directly into our eyeballs.
If you have any suggestions about places that I should definitely visit to get some good photos, or if you'd like me to photograph you in your little corner of New York City, please let me know. You can send me a Flickr-mail message, or you can email me directly at ed-at-yourdon-dot-com
Stay tuned as the photo-walk continues, block by block ...