View allAll Photos Tagged difficulty
If we wait until our lives are free from sorrow or difficulty, then we wait forever. And miss the entire point.
~ Dirk Benedict
Anything Goes 2021: Forest
*Working Towards a Better World
If he who does not know kept silent, discord would cease. -
Socrates
Three Rules of work:
1. Out of clutter find simplicity.
2. From discord find harmony.
3. In the middle of difficulty lies
opportunity. -
Albert Einstein
Change is never easy, and it often creates discord, but when people come together for the good of humanity and the Earth, we can accomplish great things.
- David Suzuki
By union the smallest states thrive. By discord the greatest are destroyed. - Sallust
Please bear with me, I will not get to all of your works right away but I am making my way slowly am having some computer problems that are slowing me down even more, sorry.
Thank you for your kind visit. Have a wonderful and beautiful day! xo❤️
While walking along the strolling deck above the stormwater management area, we saw a lot of branches in the water, which I have never seen before. Best seen large by clicking on the photo.
Stay safe and don't let your guard down in the holiday season. Do your part, stay apart and wear a mask. #BeKind
Having difficulty in identifying these. My current thought is that they are mergansers, a male in eclipse and a female, but would welcome comments. Seen on the Tyne today.
Great difficulty standing against the strength of the wind.
The Helm Wind is the only named wind in the UK. Blows along the length of the Cumbrian Pennines, East of the Eden Valley and is marked by a long rolling bank of cloud parallel to the Pennines.. The wind needs to blow from the East, as it was today.
This otherworldly scene was shot at sunrise on Serra da Estrela, Portugal’s mainland highest mountain.
It was a very cold winter morning, crisp air, wonderful light.
Looking at the image you would most certainly say that the golden rocks are a different kind from the dark grey ones. Well, in fact they are exactly the same, all of them being granite. The only difference here is, …. well, quite right, THE LIGHT! The ones under the direct sunrise light seem to be gold whereas the ones standing in the shadow show their true grey tone.
*****
Serra da Estrela (Star Mountain) is Portugal’s mainland highest mountain. At 1,993 metres at its highest point in Torre, Serra da Estrela is an area of rare landscape beauty. You can take advantage of the moments of communion with nature to discover the diversity of plants and birds and the flocks of sheep herded by Estrela dogs from the breed named after the mountain.
In cold weather, Serra da Estrela is the only place in Portugal where you can try ski, or go sledging, snowboarding or ride a snowmobile. Albeit small, there are several runs with support infrastructure, as well as artificial snow runs for skiing at any time of the year.
This natural park is excellent for trekking, horse-riding or mountain biking. It boasts some 375km of marked trails of varying degrees of difficulty.
*******
Covão do Boi, Serra da Estrela, Portugal
© All rights reserved Rui Baptista. Please do not use this image on websites, blogs or any other media without my explicit written permission.
In the early 1800's, many thoughtful Americans believed that isolation and the difficulties of communication would force the Mississippi Valley settlements to form a separate nation. Hoping to hold the frontier, Congress, in 1800, established a post route from Nashville (TN) to Natchez (MS). The Trace, then a series of Indian Trails, had drawn from the Secretary of State the bitter comment, "The passage of mail from Natchez is as tedious as from Europe when westerly winds prevail." To speed the mail, President Jefferson ordered the army to clear out the trail and make it a road. Postriders, carrying letters, dispatches, and newspaper helped bind the vast turbulent frontier to the republic. However, their day passed by the mid-1830's when steamboats, running from New Orleans to Pittsburg, robbed the Trace of its usefulness as a main post route.
The pathway shown above is a section of the original Old Natchez Trace near Eupora, Mississippi (before the road) that you can walk on as it winds back and forth across the newer Natchez Trace Road. Some sections are fairly flat adjacent to the nearby roadway and others are deeper, worn out paths that are usually referred to as the 'Sunken Trace'.
Three bracketed photos were taken with a handheld Nikon D7200 and combined with Photomatix Pro to create this HDR image. Additional adjustments were made in Photoshop CS6.
"For I know the plans I have for you", declares the LORD, "plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future." ~Jeremiah 29:11
The best way to view my photostream is through Flickriver with the following link: www.flickriver.com/photos/photojourney57/
© Leanne Boulton, All Rights Reserved
Street photography from Glasgow, Scotland.
Colour re-edit of a shot from July 2017.
The slogan on the bag reads "Every Little Helps" but a well placed crease is hiding the 'E' for a slogan that best matches the position I am in right now.
I'm struggling. Having to pack and downsize means losing things that are precious but not essential. It hurts. I know that I hold on to the memories but the objects related to those memories have been such an important part of my life. Having to do this on an ever decreasing time scale while getting breathless just walking up a flight of stairs still and suffering fatigue from lack of sleep. It's all a bit too much and there is not a lot that helps.
I just needed to share. It helps just a little to let it out. My head is spinning with so much to do.
I wish you all a very wonderful weekend of photography my dear Flickr friends.
Take care and take photos.
Taken with some difficulty through our neighbour's tree at almost the same spot as the Possum/Galah confrontation the other day - we heard a Kookaburra laughing and I noticed one sitting on the far right end of the power pole cross arm (out of sight on the right) followed by a Magpie landing on the other end. Oh no, problems for sure. As I grabbed the camera and moved a bit to position myself, at the left hand end and middle were a further two Kookas with the Magpie keeping a watchful eye....surprisingly close. Magpies take exception to Kookaburras and usually take chase. In time, as I typed this the Noisy Miners joined in. The Kookas decided to retreat as usual. Game over.
Today 19 June.
Having difficulty with the berries. She dropped this one, but was soon back for more at Martin Mere WWT.
My vibe, my calm and also my storm, my greatest certainty is that being with you is all I need and all I want always. You know that without you nothing is fun and the sun doesn't shine well, but if you are with me everything is good, the day is clear with beautiful sunshine. Falling in love with you wasn't magical, you are the love of my life, nothing more, difficulties exist to be overcome and we always manage, because love always comes first <3 You are my strength every day and my inspiration on how to love and be loved and we do it very well. I want to say that you are and always will be my universe of good things, you have a vibe that my God I love when you lift me up when I'm down, thank you for existing my love and always being with me. You always take me back to the night we met, I love you life ❤️️
I have difficulty identifying hawks in flight at a far distance, but there is little doubt about a powerful hawk flying low across a field, with a white patch on the rump...Northern Harrier.
This hawk was seen at a VERY far distance, so it was necessary to crop the picture. Not the sharpest of shots but still with some feather detail and motion blur. Happy to have gotten it for Life Bird Photograph #236.
This my friends will be the absolute last in this Osprey series, and I so want to thank all who commented and looked at these beautiful birds, and will now move on to other images taken in my recent outings.
Have a wonderful Sunday, a wonderful week ahead, and thank you all for everything through my difficulty with Flick, which continues still.
With the next age of our poetry divergency and difficulty begin.
From The Study of Poetry (1880) by Matthew Arnold
• Available high res and unframed at tomraven.com
• Prints, Cards and Posters available at RavenRedBubble
After a hike with Swiss friends at the Mills Canyon Park in Burlingame, I scouted for a good place with a clear view of airplanes landing at SFO, the San Francisco International airport. I found some dandelion blowballs in a local park. A dandelion blowball apparently has a spiritual meaning of surviving through all challenges and difficulties.
I processed a balanced, a photographic and a paintery HDR photo from two RAW exposures, blended them, and carefully adjusted the color balance and curves. I welcome and appreciate constructive comments.
Thank you for visiting - ♡ with gratitude! Fave if you like it, add comments below, like the Facebook page, order beautiful HDR prints at qualityHDR.com.
-- ƒ/6.3, 50 mm, 1/80, 1/320 sec, ISO 400, Sony A6000, SEL-P1650, HDR, 2 RAW exposures, _DSC0784_5_hdr2bal1pho1pai5m.jpg
-- CC BY-NC-SA 4.0, © Peter Thoeny, Quality HDR Photography
[Explore] on 08/05/2016. Highest position: 4, but very very late publication at 2:15 am the day after.
An extraordinary light which the camera has a great deal of difficulty in capturing, a rainy curtain arrived in this ultimate evening luminosity.
-
Une lumière extraordinaire que l'appareil photo a bien du mal à capturer, un rideau de pluie arrivait dans cette ultime luminosité du soir.
-
Charente, France
Thank you to all for your kind words! I really appreciate each one of them !!!
See my shots with 1,000+ faves, in Explore or my 3 best.
60074 "Luke" & 60065 "Jaguar" on 13:40 6H09 Dowlow Briggs Sidings - Peak Forest Up Sidings at Buxton URS Sidings.
60065 came in to difficulties at Dowlow / will only drive one way so 60074 had to top her to Buxton then both ran round and Claggy 60065 lead to Peak Forest 27/11/2022
Still shot over Lake Okanagan. This is actually the opposite back view of the mountain I was taking photographs of my pet mountain goats. I see why they like it here with that mountain view they have. And all the time I thought they were looking at me.
BTW that motor boat in the middle of the lake destroying my perfect symmetry is someone I hope ran into motor difficulties before he got home.
This IS a Contraption!! At one stage, I made a number of really FUN Steampunk cloth dolls ( from commercial patterns- by 'Frowning Francis', for the Crafters among you) I collected tons of rusty bottle caps, pieces of rusted metal, springs, a derelict watch that a Dear Friend donated to the cause ( I dismantled it with difficulty) etc! I created this 'thingamy' but never got round to fastening it together. Anyway, for what it is worth, it is my contribution to MM's 'Contraptions' prompt. It is an Alternate Sponser- as, if it WERE all connected, I feel certain that it would Sponse, alternately!! And so it should!! ( please note- any similarity between an Alternate Sponser and Alternate Facts is purely coincidental!!!)
Castle Stalker (Scottish Gaelic: Caisteal an Stalcaire) is a four story tower house or keep picturesquely set on a tidal islet on Loch Laich, an inlet off Loch Linnhe.
The islet is accessible (with difficulty) from the shore at low tide. The name 'Stalker' comes from the Gaelic Stalcaire, meaning 'hunter' or 'falconer', and should therefore be pronounced 'stal-ker', with the 'l' sounded, not as in the pronunciation of the English word 'stalker'. In recent times the castle was brought to fame by the Monty Python team, appearing in their film Monty Python and the Holy Grail. It also appeared in the film Highlander: Endgame.
As usual, the real difficulty with Macro Mondays was thinking of something a little different and different from the last time that I tried to photograph a similar subject.
This is a wineglass full of marbles photographed in a dark room with just an LED penlight for illumination from above. I used the usual setup: tripod, trigger and black foamboard background.
The raw file was developed in Capture One for colour and lowering the Clarity to give a softer feel. In Affinity, there was a bit of sharpening and the usual tone and colour work. Cropping proved a bit of a challenge, and then I applied a bit of standard Orton effect using a couple of adjustment layers [a brightness/contrast layer with Screen blend and a Gaussian blur layer with Multiply blend mode and restricted to a tonal range using advanced blend options ], but lightly as MM is not meant to be heavily processed. Then to add a little more interest I flipped the image vertically to give a more surreal abstract feel. I’m not sure I got where I wanted but at least it’s something…
The glass is less than three inches at its widest and that is not visible here anyway, so we are within the guidelines.
I wonder how many people get to the stage of losing their marbles while still having their marbles from their teenage years… {sighs}
Thanks for taking the time to look. I hope you enjoy the image. Happy Macro Mondays! :)
You are able to grow and turn difficulties into opportunities ... everything is born, matures and transforms itself
"You keep having hard days and I will keep sitting next to you. You do not have to feel alone." ~~ Rabbit
“There is an island of opportunity in the middle of every difficulty.” Unknown.
Monemvasia, apart from being one of the most beautiful medieval towns in the Peloponnese, is a unique place in Greece. Its location on an island in the Mediterranean is truly spectacular. Today, the town can be reached by a causeway built over the sea in 1971, which connected the island with the mainland, but before that date, Monemvasia could only be reached by boat.
Due to its peculiar geography, Monemvasia became an ideal place to protect itself from invaders in the High Middle Ages, and that is how its first inhabitants built the first fortress in 583. Several centuries later, around the 10th AD, the town passed to be an important maritime and trade center. However, this fact led to continuous attacks to take over the island, and the city passed through Byzantine, Venetian and finally Ottoman hands, until its decline in the 18th century, and subsequent liberation in 1821 during the Greek War of Independence. Without a doubt, a fascinating story for such a peculiar and small territory.
Our YouTube Travel Video with Behind the Scenes of this picture:
-------------------------------------------------------
“Hay una isla de oportunidades en medio de cada dificultad”. Anónimo.
Monemvasia, además de ser uno de los pueblos medievales más hermosos del Peloponeso, es un lugar único en Grecia. Su emplazamiento en una isla sobre el Mediterráneo es realmente espectacular. Hoy en día, se puede llegar hasta el pueblo por una calzada construida sobre el mar en 1971, que conectó la isla con tierra firme, pero antes de esa fecha, a Monemvasia solo se podía llegar navegando.
Debido a su peculiar geografía, Monemvasia se convirtió en un lugar ideal para protegerse de invasores en la Alta Edad Media, y así fue cómo sus primeros habitantes construyeron la primera fortaleza en 583. Varios siglos más tarde, en torno al X d.C, la ciudad pasó a ser un importante centro marítimo y de comercio. Sin embargo, este hecho trajo consigo continuos ataques para apoderarse de la isla, y la ciudad pasó por manos Bizantinas, Venecianas y finalmente Otomanas, hasta su declive en el siglo XVIII, y posterior liberación en 1821 durante la Guerra de Independencia griega. Sin duda, una historia fascinante para un territorio tan pequeño y peculiar.
April 23, 2015 on our trip to the blipmeet at Wanaka, Central Otago in New Zealand. www.polaroidblipfoto.com/browse/me
Our first morning in Cromwell. We woke to heavy fog which took a while to lift. We have arrived at Mt Difficulty Estate Winery so John can do some tasting.
The unique microclimate of the Bannockburn area is partially created by the presence of Mount Difficulty which overlooks the southern Cromwell basin, and is the namesake of Mt Difficulty Wines. Mount Difficulty is integral in providing low rainfall and humidity for the region. Bannockburn enjoys hot summers, a large diurnal temperature variation and long cool autumns; conditions which bring the best out of the Pinot Noir grapes. These conditions, along with soils which are ideal for viticulture, provide an excellent basis not only for Pinot Noir, but also for Pinot Gris, Riesling, and Chardonnay. The soils are a mix of clay and gravels, but all feature a high pH level; grapes produce their best wines on sweet soils.
For More Info and photos: www.mtdifficulty.co.nz/aboutus/ourstory.htmlTalbe
She'll be coming 'round the mountains when she comes..
This is a very famous Tourists attraction in Ella.
We visited this place for the First time with our good friend Shiran and family with great difficulty due to bad roads. Then we set our Cameras on tripods waited nearly 45mins until the train appears from the bend. There was a young school boy who helped us with the location and the timing of the train.
FACTS
This viaduct was built at Gotuwala between the two railway stations – Ella and Demodara during the British Colonial period is the largest in Sri Lanka. Located almost 3100 feet above the sea level, this 99.6ft high bridge is called “Ahas namaye palama” (Nine skies bridge) in Sinhala. When one stands underneath it and looks up there is a beautiful sight of ‘nine skies’ through the nine arches, hence the Sinhala name. This bridge is also called ‘The Bridge in the sky’ due to the sheer height.
This massive bridge is built entirely of solid rocks, bricks and cement without using a single piece of steel. The bridge was finally commissioned in 1921.
There is a popular story to say that when construction work was commenced on the bridge, the World War 1 broke-out and the steel consignment assigned for this site was seized and was used for war related projects. When the work came to a standstill the locals came forward and build the bridge with solid stone bricks and cement without steel.
Thank you for your visits, faves and comments. Constructive criticism and suggestions are most welcome!
DFA_9082
Nemo Nanyi མེ་མོ་ ན་ ཉི་ (Gurla Mandhata) 7728m (25354ft)
Nemo Nanyi མེ་མོ་ ན་ ཉི་ (Gurla Mandhata) 7728m (25354ft). It is the 34th highest peak in the world (using a 500 metre prominence cutoff). It is also notable for being well within the Tibetan Plateau (most peaks of similar height - except notably Shishapangma, the world's 14th highest peak - lie nearer to or outside the edge of the Plateau) and relatively far away from other peaks of height greater than 7500 metres. It sits roughly across Lake Manasarowar from the sacred peak of Mount Kailash. The Tibetan name, Naimona'nyi, is said to come from naimo = "herbal medicine", na = "black", nyi = "heaped-up slabs", giving "the mountain of heaped-up slabs of black herbal medicine." In 1905 T. G. Longstaff, accompanied by two alpine guides and six porters, made an attempt on Gurla Mandhata. They turned back at around 7,000 m (23,000 ft) after being caught in an avalanche and encountering other difficulties.[1] This was a strong achievement for the time, especially for such a small group; at that time no summit of over 7,000 m had yet been climbed and Longstaff's height represented a world altitude record. The first ascent of the peak was by a joint Japanese/Chinese team led by Katsutoshi Hirabayashi, via the north side of the peak, in May 1985. Since that time, there have been six additional successful ascents and two failed attempts on the peak. In 1997, an attempt was made to ascend the peak via the then-unclimbed North Face route by Quinn Simons, Soren Peters, and their guide, Charlie Fowler. The team made a valiant effort, climbing high on the mountain, but after severe storms and other difficulties had to retreat. Their descent ended in a fall of some 450 m (1,500 ft) down the North Face of the peak. Fowler was slightly injured, while Simons and Peters both suffered extreme frostbite on their extremities. The standard ascent route climbs the western flanks of the mountain ascending the Chaglung'mlungha Glacier to the summit plateau. Most teams choose to approach the mountain over land by jeep from either Lhasa, Tibet, or Kathmandu, Nepal. However, an alternate approach begins in the mountain hamlet of Simikot, Nepal, in the remote Humla district of west Nepal and follows the Karnali River northward, crossing into Tibet in the village of Sher. Jeeps then take climbers north through Taklakot (Burang) to basecamp on the mountain. The first official American ascent of the mountain was made on September 28, 2006 en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gurla_Mandhata
སྤོས་ རི་ ངད་ལྡན་ > spos ri ngad ldan > Pori Ngeden > Bon holy mountain - Pori Ngeden...Fragrant Incense Mountain...in Khyungpo Shangshung...
EXPLORE # 471 JULY 4TH 2009....thank you everyone
Wild Turmeric (Curcuma aromatica) is a rhizomatous herbaceous perennial plant of the ginger family, Zingiberaceae.
Wild tumeric is an aromatic and pretty ginger with stout underground rhizomes. Foliage dies down in late in autumn and the rhizomes remain dormant in winter. The inflorescence appears in early spring from the base of the rhizome. Flowers are pinkish white in color, with an orange lip. The stalk grows to about 8 to 10 inches tall, and is crowned with enlarged colored bracts tipped with pink. Leaves appear after the flowers. When in full growth the plants can reach a height of about 3ft tall. Leaves are broad and very decorative, elliptic, 3-4 ft long, and 20 cm wide, leaf-stalk being as long as the blade. Turmeric has a long tradition of use in the Chinese and Ayurvedic systems of medicine, particularly as an anti-inflammatory agent, and for the treatment of flatulence, jaundice, menstrual difficulties, hematuria, hemorrhage, and colic. Turmeric can also be applied topically in poultices to relieve pain and inflammation.
No difficulty picking out the real artist here! I worked the first three pieces many, many years ago. Note that I am an awful painter. The first and third plaques are gilded and all are made of wood. The Halpern plaque is made of metal and painted with enamels.
long stories shortened... (discarded and abandoned and intertwined short stories) well..actually they are chunks and fragmets and notes of stories that never made it
____________________________________________
a young PhD math candidate writing his dissertation on an obscure arab mathematician from the middle ages who specialized in cycles and periods in infinite series and develops a process to determine prime number density in a large number space. (which is all and good) except this makes it an excellent tool to decrypting military grade encryption, which is based on the computational difficulty of factoring large numbers into their prime components
the arab mathematician was ultimately censured by the religious mullahs for developing tools to rationalize the infinite, which is of course the nature of Allah and for man to attempt to place Allah into a human scale is blasphemy
so the arab mathematician disappears and the young phd candidate finds that his dissertation has been suspended pending review but cant get any information on who is reviewing it
finally another young mathematician approaches him and starts a long discussion on math and the nature of numbers and the mathematicians love of the underlying structure of reality that math represents. the phd candidate is leary of this mathematician cause he wont answer what he does or where he went to school or how he knows so many cutting edge fields in math
eventually, the young mathematician offers the phd candidate a position with the NSA, National Security Agency, (where all the big crypto and high math goes on) but explains that if he accepts that he will essentially disappear from his current world. his work will be classified, he will not be able to publish in academic journals or speak in public, or talk about his work to his friends on the outside, but the compensation is that he
would be able to work unfettered with the greatest math minds in the country, totally funded, free to explore any field or fancy he thought. after a few moments of thought, the phd accepts.
then the story will go back to the arab mathematician who is also approached my a young beared mullah, who offers him a position within his group of thinkers who do ponder and explore the nature of nature reality and Allah through mathematics, but that by joining them he would need to disappear from the world, after a few minutes of thought, he too accepts...
--
Daniel sipped his 6th coffee (colloidal suspension for caffeine transport) while his batch jobs on ramanet, the Indian supergrid, finished their checksum verification. His chin, a bit stubbly, itched. His eyes, a bit red, were sore. The goa trance shoutcast feed had mushed into a fast cadence drone. The flat screen monitor warped and bulged with the oscillating fan blowing on Daniel's face
'O' glamorous larval life of a PhD student...' he jotted and doodle-circled on his notepad.
Daniel cracked his neck and jutted his jaw, stretching out the accumulation of kinks, as RamaNet finished the final integrity check on his dataset. this two hour round of processing on the Indian supergrid would cost about $130 out of his precious grant fund, but you couldnt beat the bargain. 120 minutes times 150,000 PCs in the RamaNet processing collective = 1,080,000,000 seconds or 18,000,000 minutes or 300,000 hours or 12500 days or 34.25 years of processing time for the price of a video game. Calculation was commoditized now. You uploaded your pre-fromatted dataset to RamaNet. the data was packeted and sent to out to 150,000 Indians who lent a few percents of never-to-be missed CPU cycles off their systems for background processing. when their alotted package was completed it was sent back to RamaNet for re-assembly into something coherent for the buyer. in return the Indians got a rebate on their net access charges or access to premier bollywood galleries or credit towards their own processing charges. a good deal all the way around. Daniel's dataset, an anthology of complex proofs from a long-dead arab mathematician, was queued with amateur weather forecast modeling, home-brewed digital CGI for indie movies, chaos theory-based currency trading algorithms, etc. the really high end, confidential jobs, like protein folding analysis or big pharm drug trials were more likely handled by the huge western collectives of several million collaborative systems, usually high-performance machines in dedicated corporate server farms. the cost there was out of Daniel's range, but you got a faster return and better promises of encryption for your buck.
Daniel scratched his scalp and flexed his fingers. 'two months from today i will be a doctor of mathematics...and no job. damnit. i need to find something fast.' Daniel calculated in his mind how quickly the student loans repayments would kick in and completely wipe him out. RamaNet would have done it in nanoseconds, ha! he laughed to himself. Daniel had avoided the rounds of job interviews and recommendations that passed his way. he was too absorbed in his research to look ahead, and perhaps a bit intimidated by the idea of the job hunt flea market. flexing his CV, getting a monkey suit, trying to explain his research to recruiters, who were often the same finger-counting business majors in college that made his skin crawl. Daniel always felt a bit embarrassed when he announced he was math PhD candidate. folks would immediately glaze over,
tsk tsk out a 'that's interesting', and swiftly change the subject. something will come up, he mantra'd to himself over and over, something will come up. stick with ali, there is something real in there, just a bit deeper. the real problem was his thesis advisor. dr. fuentes was not returning his calls, his secretary was not taking appointments from Daniel. he had submitted his finished draft of his thesis two weeks ago, but hadnt heard back since, except for a cryptic email saying that the review committee was having some issues with his paper and that Daniel would be hearing from him shortly. Daniel was rerunning his calculations on RamaNet to assuage the gnawing doubt that he completely botched some component of his argument and that the review committee was debating some manner of telling him to redo the entire effort. no PhD and no job. that would ice the cake. Daniel started calculating his body mass and general aerodynamic resistance relative to the height of the school cathedral to figure out if he had time to reach a terminal velocity before impact...only a failed math PhD would attempt to determine at what speed his body would smack concrete, he morbidly thought to himself.
ali ja'far muhammed ibn abdullah al-farisi slipped meditatively on his cup of water, thinking about his proof. he dipped a finger in the cup and held up a droplet of water under his fingertip, watching the sunlight prisimatically splay out on the mouth of the cup. 'praise be Allah and his wonderous bounty' he mumured to himself.
the elders had been in conference all day over his proof. though the heavy doors to their chamber were closed, he would occasionally hear muffled but distinctly angry shouts. ali sat on a divan in the anteroom, served numerous cups of tea by an obviously nervous secretary. ali knew there was deep resistance to his research, but for the life of him he couldnt figure out why. he was a simple mathematician. he came up with some unique observations. he wanted to share them with his peers...
_____________________________________________________
Overview: biotech researcher discovers a new life-extension technology and is murdered. He is cryogenically frozen for 150 years. When he is
revived he must stop a dark corporate conspiracy – and find his murderer.
Summer 2015 - Hot genius free-lance biotech researcher unravels the key component of a radical life-extension gene therapy that will ensure 300 years of robust life to its recipients. The researcher is murdered shortly after he hides the critical component. His distraught friend has him cryogenically frozen. 150 years later, the researcher is revived by the same major bio-med corporation for which he had originally been working.
Quickly he realizes that their motives are less than altruistic: his modification of the gene therapy is needed to resolve an unforeseen debilitation now creeping up in the recipients of the life-extension process. The recipients, now nearing 125 years off added life, are decompensating into psychotics. The researcher at first tries to remember and reconstruct what he did with the hidden critical component, but stops in disgust when he learns that in the past 150 years the life-extension therapy has been reserved solely for the ultra-affluent and has created an extreme and cruel global gerontocratic elite. He voices his disgust to his corporate minders, who cease being beneficent and show their true colors as trying to gain control of this critical technology in order to control the elites.
In the process of dealing with the corporation, he learns about his murder and begins investigating.As he comes closer to the identity of his murderer, he uncovers a wider conspiracy and is the target of more murder attempts.
He was killed by a friend in 2015. The friend was the CEO of a small bio-gen firm that the researcher was doing the LET work for. The CEO, a biz-head with a genetics academic background, took the researcher’s work and exploited it as his own, in the process growing his small firm into a bio-med powerhouse and him into one of the world’s wealthiest individuals.
The CEO also was the first recipient of the LET and is now 190 years old, but doesn’t look a day over 45. Smart, urbane, ruthless, the CEO used his wealth and position to start the cabal of Ultras. It is a faction of the top 50 smartest and wealthiest people in the world who have ‘ascended from the world’ (faked their demise) and control the global economy with their vast coordinated wealth. Perhaps they will call themselves ‘The Ascended’. We need to decide how the cabal lives. Are they sequestered on a luxurious island compound, or do they live in the open, surgically re-sculpted after each faked death, or do they live in the open.
Also we need to figure out what the world will look and feel like in 150 years.
As the ultras decompensate into psychosis, the CEO orders the researcher to be revived in order to find a cure. The CEO had the researcher’s lab notes decrypted and figured that the he was close if not successful in finding the missing component to stabilize the LET.
Tiberius Syndrome: the decline into cruel psychosis experienced by the ultras, named after the roman emperor Tiberius’ degenerate behavior after he sequestered himself on Capri.
The ironic twist might be that there is no cure, no stabilization. The psychosis is not the result of the LET alone, but also due in part to the unfettered ego/wills of the ultras. Absolute power corrupts…
________________________________________________________
a brazilian hacking syndicate was subcontracted by a st petersberg crew to run interference on a hit on SWIFT, the global currency clearinghouse notification network. The UniFavela clan was going to run a multi-flank raid. They specialized in fast propagating virii and had created a custom mail-in virus that exploited a few microsoft vulnerabilities that they had discovered and kept mum. Their target was a Latin American PR spokesman listed on the corporate web site for press queries. The PR flak would be just the sleepy guard on the wall for their virus to slip past. 30 minutes after opening an inocuous spoofed email from a French e-trade publication requesting clarification on the SWIFT-Indentrus partnership. the virus would port scan and map its entire site LAN, salmoning its way up the router paths till it found the deep waters of the main corporate campus network in Brussels. Shortly, the internal LAN at Brussels would be suffering switch and router buffer overflows and traffic would gasp, ack, and sputter. UniFavela would then towel whip out a vanilla DDOS on the main company web site, any INTERNIC-registered addresses, and any other system in the IP block reserved for SWIFT that had previously port scanned as interesting, or ,even, as nothing. Mongols charging the village gates and tossing flaming torches on thatched roofs. IT Operations would be running to and fro, trying to figure out the internal bandwidth crunch and if there was a bleedout causing the external net problems.
____________________________________________________________
The Post-Human Story of Minos:
the CEO of a powerful commercial combine is bore an illegitimate son by his indiscreet wife in retaliation for his own dalliances. the son has a hideous deformity but is fantastically brilliant - brilliant enough for the father overcome his own repulsion of the child - as a bastard and a freak. the father sequesters the child in an elaborate virtual domain. the child, a hacker savant, is used to breach competitor nets. but as his power in the digital realm expands, the child transforms into the tyrant-monster. using the nets, he lashes out at people who have caused him pain, then evolves into enjoying the taste of terror and fear. He becomes the Minotaur.
____________________________________________________________
'there was a mad scramble amongst all the big spook governments, dark side corporations, and the privacy maccabees once it was determined that quantum computation had left the tidal pool of academia, grown legs and air-breathing lungs, and was headed for the nat sec intel highlands. all previous encryption models were rendered obsolete, and worse, exposed. QC became an undefiable xray spotlight, laying bare any encrypted secret with a ease of opening a mathematical candy wrapper. And for a while it swung the advantage back to the state in the digital Boer War against the freecon partisans.'
____________________________________________________________
The Oort, to the Intras, looked as one people. Extra-stellar hillbillies, ekeing out a subsistance existence on extracted organics from the frozen crud comets and other planetesimals of the Oort Cloud that slung around the solar system in a 1K AU circuit. To the Oort there was no Oort. Each station, each kampong was distinct and seperate. Seperate dialects, traditions, norms, goals. Some were scientific collectives, some were tired mining operations, some were intense sectarian cults - they shared little between themselves beyond necessary trade links for scarce commodities.
---
A young prince is disgraced in an internal court scandal and sent into a quasi-exile on a worthless mission. On his travels he builds the wisdom and learns the skills necessary to be a just and effective leader.
His exile was a gambit by his patriarch to remove Genji from the arena of pointless court intrigues and develop him as a real leader. The patriarch dispatched a team of loyal praetorians to discreetly follow and protect Genji on his odyssey.
Genji was sent as an emissary to the Oort system. He must pass through the Martian-Saturnine corridor, populated with industrial trading guilds and their private militias.
----
Genealogy becomes paramount in a closed culture; hierarchy by heredity. Reference the roman patrician class’ death-grip obsession with lineage, or the medieval Japanese imperial court’s strict intra-elite caste system.
But in an era of extreme genetic engineering, how can bloodlines retain their importance? Perhaps this is the wrong question. Perhaps in an era of extreme genetic engineering, authentic bloodlines can only retain their importance. The longevity of an unchanged gene line demonstrates success in evolutionary competition. Over time however, the fitness of a rigidly enforced and ‘sequestered’ gene line will degrade. Consider the hemophilia of the European royal strata.
I would not want the imperial court of the inner system to be pure blue bloods, eschewing genetic manipulation. Rather I would have them take the opposite tack – and embrace genetic engineering in the pursuit of perfecting particular socially valued or distinctive attributes; a roman nose, elongated refined fingers, even the possession of certain ‘noble’ afflictions (for ex., the aforementioned hemophilia as a sign of noble lineage).
The elites should pursue genealogy with the same passion and gusto as horse breeders; studs and mares and percentages of bloodlines, enforced and suppressed gene expressions, surrogates, and gene modes des saisons.
__________________________________________________________
a bum finds a the wallet and keys of a man who jumped from a bridge
he goes to his townhouse to find something to eat or steal
is impressed and overwhelmed with the man's townhouse
showers, eats, gets cleaned up, finds some clothes
is ready to leave when he helps a woman wrestling with groceries at her door
she thanks him, but looks stunned.
‘are you the man in #560? umm..i have lived here for 3 years and have never actually seen you. you seem to leave so early in the morning and get
home so late and keep to yourself.’
they spend 30 minutes talking, having a generally warm friendly encounter.
‘well, I am so glad to have finally met you. Hope to see you soon.’ As she closes her door, the bum turns to leave but pauses and thinks for a moment, then goes back into the man's townhouse
he pours through the man's papers and keepsakes and learns that the man has no family that he speaks with, no friends, lives off a well-endowed trust fund
and
the bum moves in and takes over the mans identity
he brings warmth and sincerity to the man's identity
what makes a hermit tick? what lengths do they go to to remove themselves from society? does it become a game to avoid contact, trying to become a shadow, a phantom? does society dissolve away as a mental force in their thoughts, atrophy away or does it become an amputated impression?
what divsion line stands between a hermit and convict in solitary? the hermit, by and large, chooses their isolation, the convict has it enforced upon them. at what point does the human need for society or socialization collapse? is there anything left that we can inspect and evaluate? a hermit, however, is able to maintain walls against the Great Other, which would imply that they are seeking refuge from the world. a schizo or an autistic will be physically surrounded by others but unable or incapable of making contact.
when does the will to contact die? what is left over? do humans require contact to retain our humanity? can you love and sacrifice in a vacuum?
what defines humanity? oooh, a big question...
___________________________________________________________________
genetic engineering will continue to deconstruct the human species
there will be catastrophic disasters: gene sequence specific viruses engineered to attack 'types' of people. Der Genkampf
petroleum will be replaced- hydrogen-powered locomotion and green power (in the wealthy states). the poor states will continue to be held hostage to oil politics
(cultures and civilizations do not move forward uneringly. they spasticly jerk forward and fro, in clumps andgrains, never ever as a lemming death drive.)
developed economies will be netized. a new state structure will be needed to manage and dsitribute resources. the corporate structure, the commercial backbone of the capitalist democracy, will replace the republic. it is flexible to markets and political forces, insistent on accountability, it provides a sufficient compromise between individual representation and republican government. they will begin their political evolution as projects in community development. assurances of an educated workforce by charter education. assurances of uninterrupted utilities by running their own power/water etc. net-based marketplaces create corporate agoras. employees are in fact de facto citizens of the corporation. citizenship, or regular employment, will be a reward for merit, stock shares will count towards suffrage.
great corporate collectives will arise. housing, education, security...all the needs of the middle class will be absorbed in the corporate state. the tradtional state will cede roles and responsibilities to the corporate state as their resources dwindle. a few isolated violent reactions (military or legal)by the republics against the corporate states, but they will fail over time. against, or more so, in conjunction with the homogenized corporatsists wil be the diasporae, non-corporates will glom to other modes of networked alignment, ethnic allegiance will become stronger over time - as the chinese, indian, and jewish disporaestrengthen as a formula for a successful competition against/with the corporates.
the american state, succored by its overwhelming techo-military supremancy, loses its mission, its vision - substitutes will to dominate for will to excel - and falls into the deep narcotic, insulated slumber of the unassailable. GE, nano, and the banknote net weaken the mythic cohesion of the american spirit. we are no longer united by common experience (mass-mediated or otherwise) the promise of science to make us stronger, smarter, near immortal is held like a manifest destiny or a divine IOU for services rendered to humanity.
For all the difficulty that I was having trying to capture a bumblebee in action, this guy seemed happy enough to just hang out and get his picture taken.
The theme for “Smile on Saturday” for the 4th of September is “many identical objects”. With my love of antiques and collectables, you would think this theme would be easy. However, the difficulty with antiques and collectables is that they are seldom similar, never mind identical, like items manufactured en mass today. So, this week I have opted for some of my blue and white Willow Pattern breakfast china. I do hope that you like my choice for the theme, and that it makes you smile. As a child, I grew up with three different sets of everyday crockery in use in my household: a fine white bone china set with gilding for dinner, a bright floral pattern set for luncheon and a blue and white Willow Pattern set used at breakfast. Old habits die hard, and to this day, I still use Willow Pattern crockery to eat my breakfast from, and only my breakfast from. This includes these bread and butter plates. You can see seven here on the shelf, however my breakfast set consists of twelve place settings. Even as a child, I was fascinated by the elegant designs that were covered up by toast or porridge, and my maternal Grandparents used that to their advantage, encouraging the finicky and reluctant eater that I was as a child to finish my breakfast and reveal the design. My love for it was further enhanced when my Grandmother told me the love story of the Willow Pattern.
Once there was a wealthy Mandarin, who had a beautiful daughter, Koong-se. She had fallen in love with her father's humble clerk, Chang, angering her father. It was inappropriate for them to marry due to their difference in social class. He dismissed the young man after discovering Chang and Koong-se in a lovers’ tryst in a summer house in a far corner of his estate, and built a high fence around his palace to keep the lovers apart. However, the lovers wrote letters to one another, taken between them by Koong-se’s handmaid and her husband the Mandarin’s gardener. The Mandarin was planning for his daughter to marry a powerful Duke. The Duke arrived by boat to claim his bride, bearing a casket of jewels as a gift. The wedding was to take place on the day the blossom fell from the giant peach tree in the Mandarin’s garden. On the eve of Koong-se's wedding to the Duke, Chang, disguised as a servant, slipped into the palace unnoticed with the help of Koong-se’s handmaid. Chang gave the Mandarin, the Duke and all his men a sleeping draught. The handmaid helped the lovers escape with the casket of jewels, before the alarm was raised. They ran over a bridge to the gardener’s cottage, however they were followed by the Mandarin, whip in hand, who had not drunk his drugged wine. He returned to the palace and raised his own army who went to the gardener’s cottage. They caught the gardener and the handmaid, put them to death and razed the cottage. However, the lovers escaped on the Duke's ship to the safety of a secluded island, where they had two children and lived happily for years, growing flowers and plants which made Chang famous as a plant propagator far and wide. However, this fame was to be the lovers’ downfall, for one day, the Duke learned of their refuge. Hungry for revenge, he sent soldiers, who captured the lovers and put them and their children to death. The gods, moved by their plight, transformed the lovers, Koong-se and Chang, into a pair of doves.
The Willow Pattern is a distinctive and elaborate chinoiserie pattern used on ceramic kitchen and housewares. It became popular at the end of the Eighteenth Century in England when, in its standard form, it was developed by English ceramic artists combining and adapting motifs inspired by fashionable hand-painted blue-and-white wares imported from China. Its creation occurred at a time when mass-production of decorative tableware, at Stoke-on-Trent and elsewhere, was already making use of engraved and printed glaze transfers, rather than hand-painting, for the application of ornament to standardized vessels.
219 059 is passing Gernewitz on her ride to Gera. In 2003 only a handful of these locomotives were still in service, mostly because the new DMUs had some difficulties in the beginning. Digitized b&w film.
THIS ARTIST DRAW BY HIS FOOT AND SELL HIS PAINTING ON DONG- KHOI STREET PAVEMENT.
THIS PHOTO WAS TAKEN AT 1998 BY NIKON D70 FILM CAMERA.
I had difficulty with this theme. White on White isn't easy. I have so much more to learn about photography. This is what it's all about for me is to learn from participating and seeing all of the wonderful photos each week. It's inspirational.
This is a piece of Japanese pottery that I received as a gift from my Mother in 1976 after my parents were in Japan. It measures 5" long and 3" wide. Area shown is less than 3"
I have great difficulty resisting mirrors......!
Here I'm at the restroom of a restaurant.
Lighting was scarce. I used 1/8 sec with aperture f/4 on Ilford XP2.
Lens is a Xenar 2.8/45mm.
Film developed with Cinestill C41 Color Simplified powder kit.
As you can see, I use a Leica SBOOI 50mm finder because of the excellent view that little thing presents me.