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Given that Box Hill and its vistas have been used as a shorthand for Englishness by everyone from G.K. Chesterton to John Lydon, it's ironic that the view is now rolling vineyards. Especially so now that Denbies have moved beyond eccentrically English grapes like bacchus and planted more of the trecharously foreign varieties like sauvignon blanc.
MFA LRVS Lecture: Wendy Given
Jul 22, 2015 6:30 PM – 8:00 PM
The Low-Residency MFA in Visual Studies welcomes Wendy Given for a discussion of her work as part of the 2015 Summer Graduate Visiting Artist Lecture Series.
Wendy Given was born in 1971 and is an American artist living and working in Portland, Oregon. Given studied fine art and was trained in painting, printmaking, photography and sculpture during her BFA undergraduate work at Atlanta College of Art in Atlanta, Georgia. She received her MFA from Otis College of Art and Design in Los Angeles, California. Given has exhibited both nationally and internationally at venues including the Vincent Price Art Museum in Monterey Park, California; Tacoma Art Museum, Tacoma, Washington; Chelsea Art Museum, New York, New York; Fototropía in Guatemala City, Guatemala; Fifth Floor, Los Angeles, California; The Art Gym at Marylhurst University, Marylhurst, Oregon; Indiana University IUPUI, Indianapolis, Indiana; Humble Arts Foundation, New York, New York; Kasher | Potamkin, New York, New York; Hap Gallery, Portland, Oregon; University of Tennessee Downtown Gallery, Knoxville, Tennessee; whitespace, Atlanta, Georgia and Wieden+Kennedy Gallery, Portland, Oregon. Given has also been awarded residencies with Signal Fire, Portland, Oregon; Joshua Tree Highlands Artist Residency, California; and at Caldera Arts, Sisters, Oregon. She is represented by whitespace in Atlanta, Georgia and Kasher | Potamkin in NYC. www.wendygiven.com
Photos by Matthew Gaston
Francisco Aguabella Cubacan 2002
VEAN/SEE VIDEO youtu.be/qWJkTwmbQDA
Release Date May 21, 2002
Duration01:02:47
Genre, Jazz
,Latin, Styles
,Cuban Jazz
,World Fusion
,Latin Jazz
,Cuban Traditions
Review by Stewart Mason
A 2002 session by percussionist Francisco Aguabella, a fixture on New York's expatriate Cuban music scene since the late '50s, Cubacan is refreshingly free of the Buena Vista Social Club cash-ins that marred so many Afro-Cuban jazz records of the late '90s and early 2000s. Instead, Aguabella concentrates on his own conga-led Latin jazz, with emphasis on the latter. The set list includes no fewer than three of Dizzy Gillespie's Latin compositions -- "Fiesta Mojo," "Dreaming," and "Tin Tin Deo" (actually a co-composition with the legendary Cuban congero Chano Pozo) -- as well as two standards given the Aguabella touch, "My Favorite Things" (a restrained version which owes little to Coltrane's famous reworking) and "Autumn Leaves" (given a more successful, almost bossa nova tinge). The heart and soul of the album, however, is in the two tracks dedicated to Aguabella's friend and mentor, Tito Puente. The reflective "El Agua Limpia Todo" is a lovely ballad that Aguabella had written in the '50s at Puente's behest, but the rollicking "Mambo for Puente" is a joyous celebration, remembering the bandleader with the passion with which that he lived and played. Nearing his seventies, Aguabella plays with the vitality of a man less than half his age, and the all-star band supports him perfectly. This is a remarkable album.
Track Listing
Sample Title/Composer Performer Time Stream
1
My Favorite Things
Oscar Hammerstein II / Richard Rodgers
Francisco Aguabella
6:05 Amazon
2
Felukin
Francisco Aguabella
3:34 Amazon
3
Guajira Para los Pollos
Papo Lucca
Francisco Aguabella
4:55 Amazon
4
Fiesta Mojo
Dizzy Gillespie
Francisco Aguabella
4:50 Amazon
5
La Costa
Natalie Cole
Francisco Aguabella
7:37 Amazon
6
Aqua Linpia Todo
Francisco Aguabella
5:45 Amazon
7
Tin Tin Deo
Gil Fuller / Dizzy Gillespie / Chano Pozo
Francisco Aguabella
6:15 Amazon
8
Noche Azúl
Francisco Aguabella
5:13 Amazon
9
Mambo for Puente
Francisco Aguabella
4:59 Amazon
10
Yesterday's Dreams
Don Sebesky
Francisco Aguabella
7:02 Amazon
11
Autumn Leaves
Joseph Kosma / Johnny Mercer / Jacques Prévert
Francisco Aguabella
6:32 Amazon
Righteous Brothers and Jack Benny Unpublished? Photo from Bobby Hatfield's Personal 1966 Custom Photo Album Given to Him by Harrah’s of Lake Tahoe, Nevada
Righteous Brothers Bobby Hatfield’s Personal 1966 Custom Photo Album Given to Him by Harrah’s of Lake Tahoe, Nevada.
This custom leather bound photo album is about 7.5 inches by 7.5 inches by 2.0 inches in size. The photo album contains twenty private photographs approximately 7 by 5 inches in size. The photographs appear to chronicle the Righteous Brothers’ singing engagement headlining with comedian Jack Benny in The Southshore Room at Harrah’s Casino in Lake Tahoe, Nevada from April 7 through April 27th of 1966.
The front of the custom made leather photo album is embossed in gold with the Harrah’s logo in the center of the photo album. The name “Righteous Brothers” and the dates of their entertainment engagement at Harrah’s Casino are both embossed in gold at the bottom right of the front of the photo album.
Most of the photos are shots of the Righteous Brothers on stage at Harrah's in 1966.
Given that I was in Louisville for the NBDCC 2025 (National Barbie Doll Collectors Convention), I decided (after hemming and hawing) to drive the hour and forty-five minutes to Bowling Green to try to find the white squirrels on campus. I was told they are all over, but you have decent odds trying at the WKU campus. So off I went. After arriving early (benefiting from the time change to Central), I walked around and noticed a number of Eastern Grey Squirrels on campus, but for the first hour, any white ones were elusive. Then by the Housing and Residence Life building (and the Centennial Mall), I noticed a bright white object moving. I found one! This little guy (little chance to mistake that) was probably the only one I saw. I moved around and did not find any others - but got some great pictures of this little charmer.
FWIW, the white squirrels in Bowling Green, Kentucky are leucistic. A leucistic squirrel has a condition that leads to a partial loss of pigmentation. The distinction between leucistic squirrels and albino squirrels is typically in the eyes. If they have dark eyes and are white or mostly white or off-white, they have leucism. A great squirrel tourism campus indeed! Taken on Friday June 27th, 2025 in Bowling Green, Kentucky.
The Maryland Army National Guard staff members stand with Maj. Gen. George Meade who was given command of the Army of the Potomac just three days before the Battle of Gettysburg.
Given in memory of Dr Charles Vachell. Five-light window with standing figures of St Luke, Virgin & Child, Christ as an adult (beardless), John the Baptist and St David. Angels holding heraldic shields in the tracery.
Cardiff, St John The Baptist Church.
Netanyahu says political “boycotts” by other parties have thus far prevented him from forming the broad-based coalition needed to deal with critical issues, such as Iran and the peace process with the Palestinians. Those boycotts include the refusal of the Yesh Atid and Bayit Yehudi parties to join the government without each other. In addition, the Likud Beytenu coalition claims the parties have refused to sit in a government with orthodox or Haredi parties.
Over the weekend, Netanyahu called on leaders of all political parties to “display responsibility” and make efforts to “unite, rather than divide.” He said goals such as renewing negotiations for a peace process with the Palestinians require an inclusive government.
Much is at stake for Prime Minister Netanyahu and his attempt to form a governing coalition in Israel. Issues such as Iran’s quest for nuclear weapons and the Palestinian peace process loom larger with each passing day, and now Netanyahu has just two weeks to form a new government, before President Shimon Peres must decide on another course of action which could include new elections. With U.S. President Obama threatening to cancel his trip to Israel if a new government is not in place, now is the time to pray for Prime Minister Netanyahu and the other players trying to form a governing coalition. Proverbs 15:22 reminds us that “without consultation, plans are frustrated, but with many counselors they succeed.” Pray that those counselors will have wisdom in forming a new governing coalition in Israel.
For more on this story, visit: Jerusalem Prayer Team Articles Page.
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Pictured: Medics are given a brief on correct use of Personal Protective Equipment.
Seventeen Army Reservists will deploy to Sierra Leone shortly and are receiving training at the Army Medical Services Training Centre (AMSTC) in Strensall, near York to prepare them to deal with the Ebola virus.
The majority of the Reservists from all over the UK will work in the Ebola Virus Disease Treatment Unit in Kerrytown which provides treatment for healthcare workers who contract Ebola. The remainder of the Reservists will work in a military Role 2 field hospital in Freetown which provides (non Ebola) healthcare for UK military forces and entitled personnel.
The AMSTC has a bespoke training unit to provide all personnel deploying to Sierra Leone with an understanding of the protection and decontamination needed regardless of their role.
The Reservists will practice donning and removing (known as doffing) the protective clothing as well as working in it in increased temperatures simulating the in-country climate. They will also be taught the rigorous decontamination procedures as well as how to recognise the symptoms of the disease.
They will be joined in their training by groups of Canadian medical personnel who will deploy alongside the UK troops in Sierra Leone, as well as other UK military medical and generalist staff, and a small group of Danish clinicians being trained on behalf of the NGO GOAL.
NOTE TO DESKS:
MoD release authorised handout images.
All images remain Crown Copyright 2014.
Photo credit to read -Sgt Si Longworth RLC (Phot)
Email: simonlongworth@mediaops.army.mod.uk
richardwatt@mediaops.army.mod.uk
shanewilkinson@mediaops.army.mod.uk
Si Longworth - 07414 191994
Richard Watt - 07836 515306
Shane Wilkinson - 07901 590723
Wolf Pack Invite 09/27/08
River Walk Park - Bakersfield, CA, Wednesday, September 27, 2008
www.andynoise.com/wolfpack08.html
Chris Schwartz (Foothill) won the varsity boys race in 16:18. McFarland took the team title. McFarland also won the boys frosh/soph and jv team races. medals were given out to the top 15 runners.
Varsity Boys Team Results
1 MCFA McFarland 25
2 PADA Palmdale 95
3 RIDG Ridgeview 118
4 SHAF Shafter 130
5 BAEA East Bakersfield 142
6 BAKE Bakersfield 174
7 WASC Wasco 176
8 STOC Stockdale 210
9 FTHL Foothill 233
10 GARC Garces Memorial 254
11 ARVI Arvin 321
12 NORT North 324
13 Fron Frontier 345
14 SOUT South 404
15 BACH Bakersfield Christian 423
16 WSTB West Bakersfield 461
TFCC Taft INC
1. 16:18 179 179 Chris Schwartz Sr M FTHL 1
2. 16:29 292 292 Cisneros Alfonso Sr M MCFA 2
3. 16:38 450 450 Robby Baker Jr M RIDG 3
4. 16:44 297 297 Marco Perez So M MCFA 4
5. 16:48 293 293 Eduardo Bautista Jr M MCFA 5
6. 16:51 294 294 Marco Camargo Jr M MCFA 6
7. 16:54 451 451 Alex Garcia Jr M RIDG 7
8. 16:56 291 291 Gerardo Alcala Sr M MCFA 8
9. 16:58 295 295 Eddie Garcia Sr M MCFA 9
10. 17:04 296 296 Francisco Nava So M MCFA 10
11. 17:05 483 483 Joshua Wittenberg Sr M SHAF 11
12. 17:10 402 402 Adrian Ramos Jr M PADA 12
13. 17:16 400 400 Victor Hernandez Sr M PADA 13
14. 17:19 72 72 Andrew Ariey Sr M BAKE 14
15. 17:20 403 403 Daniel Ramos Jr M PADA 15
Elizabeth Wittenberg (Shafter) won the girls varsity race in 20:10. The Ridgeview varsity girls won the team title. Palmdale won the jv race and McFarland won the frosh/soph team title.
Varsity Girls Team Results
1 RIDG Ridgeview 45
2 SHAF Shafter 73
3 PADA Palmdale 94
4 NORT North 95
5 STOC Stockdale 124
6 FTHL Foothill 142
7 BAKE Bakersfield 142
8 GARC Garces Memorial 189
9 Fron Frontier 243
10 SOUT South 278
BAEA East Bakersfield INC
ARVI Arvin INC
WASC Wasco INC
TFCC Taft INC
WSTB West Bakersfield INC
BACH Bakersfield Christian INC
1. 20:10 464 464 Elizabeth Wittenberg Sr F SHAF
2. 21:04 430 430 Tijerra Lynch So F RIDG
3. 21:07 369 369 Merino Jennifer Sr F PADA
4. 21:10 428 428 Jessica Huizar Jr F RIDG
5. 21:12 89 89 Lucia Garcia Jr F BAEA
6. 21:17 208 208 Monica Guzman Jr F GARC
7. 21:23 330 330 Cecilia Lopez Sr F NORT
8. 21:33 90 90 Sophia Garcia So F BAEA
9. 21:35 136 136 Natalie Fernandez So F FTHL
10. 21:46 2 2 Tonya Hernandez Jr F ARVI
11. 21:53 624 624 Alejandra Gutierrez Sr F WASC
12. 21:55 372 372 Anaiz Ortiz Sr F PADA
13. 21:56 426 426 Ashley Duran Sr F RIDG
14. 22:05 459 459 Lindsee Handel So F SHAF
15. 22:12 45 45 Gabrielle Lerma So F BAKE
JV Boys Results
1 MCFA McFarland 29
2 RIDG Ridgeview 72
3 BAEA East Bakersfield 105
4 PADA Palmdale 118
5 SOUT South 150
6 Fron Frontier 160
7 WASC Wasco 161
8 STOC Stockdale 169
9 FTHL Foothill 237
10 GARC Garces Memorial 246
11 MiMo Mira Monte 278
12 BAKE Bakersfield 341
SHAF Shafter INC
TFCC Taft INC
ARVI Arvin INC
NORT North INC
1. 11:06 284 284 Bryan Calvo Sr M MCFA
2. 11:23 290 290 Pedro Sanchez Jr M MCFA
3. 11:34 661 661 Eric Sanchez Jr M WASC
4. 11:34 100 100 felix Trevino So M BAEA
5. 11:36 277 277 Bernardo Garcia Fr M MCFA
6. 11:39 440 440 Ernesto Castillo Jr M RIDG
7. 11:45 476 476 Matt Yanez Jr M SHAF
8. 11:46 439 439 Michael Anseno Sr M RIDG
9. 11:47 98 98 Marc Sotello Jr M BAEA
10. 11:47 474 474 Elias Picazo Sr M SHAF
11. 11:49 288 288 Adam Marquez Fr M MCFA
12. 11:50 394 394 Ramirez Miguel Jr M PADA
13. 11:50 393 393 Nicholas Mayo Jr M PADA
14. 11:53 276 276 Ismael Bautista Fr M MCFA
15. 12:00 101 101 Esteban Vargas Sr M BAEA
JV Girls Results
1 PADA Palmdale 27
2 STOC Stockdale 51
3 RIDG Ridgeview 66
4 MiMo Mira Monte 100
SOUT South INC
BAKE Bakersfield INC
FTHL Foothill INC
NORT North INC
GARC Garces Memorial INC
1. 14:45 494 494 Claudia Cuevas Sr F SOUT
2. 15:05 420 420 Natalia Motta Sr F RIDG
3. 15:12 528 528 Amber Crabtree Sr F STOC
4. 15:28 351 351 Amy Diaz Sr F PADA
5. 15:33 360 360 Lizet Onofre Jr F PADA
6. 15:41 364 364 Crystal Schachter Jr F PADA
7. 15:48 531 531 Shelby Pinkham Jr F STOC
8. 15:51 41 41 Felisa Torres Sr F BAKE
9. 15:52 118 118 Lucia Garcia Jr F FTHL
10. 15:54 362 362 Karina Ortega Jr F PADA
11. 15:54 328 328 Aubree Mossburg Jr F NORT
12. 16:04 365 365 Michelle Silva Jr F PADA
13. 16:06 367 367 Zaria Zambrano Jr F PADA
14. 16:07 525 525 Justine Benavidez Sr F STOC
15. 16:19 128 128 Nancy Tenorio Sr F FTHL
Frosh/Soph Boys
1 MCFA McFarland 25
2 WASC Wasco 66
3 FTHL Foothill 95
4 STOC Stockdale 114
5 RIDG Ridgeview 121
6 PADA Palmdale 139
7 SHAF Shafter 174
8 Inde Independence 183
9 TFCC Taft 254
10 BAKE Bakersfield 287
11 RFKH RFKH 312
12 GARC Garces Memorial 313
13 ARVI Arvin 337
14 MiMo Mira Monte 383
SOUT South INC
Error 2042 #N/A INC
1. 10:53 666 666 Jorge Zuniga Fr M WASC
2. 10:55 282 282 Chavez Ryan Fr M MCFA
3. 11:12 275 275 Sergio Avelar Fr M MCFA
4. 11:25 638 638 Eddie Aguilar So M WASC
5. 11:26 280 280 Leo Perez Fr M MCFA
6. 11:26 278 278 Jose Monrreal Fr M MCFA
7. 11:36 177 177 Genaro Quintanar Fr M FTHL
8. 11:38 541 541 Alex Eckley Fr M STOC
9. 11:39 279 279 Gonzalo Mulato Fr M MCFA
10. 11:40 252 252 Dwayne Facho So M Inde
11. 11:41 434 434 Brandon Magno Fr M RIDG
12. 11:42 383 383 Corey Nieto Fr M PADA
13. 11:48 543 543 Abraham Mayorga So M STOC
14. 11:49 467 467 Pablo Mendez Fr M SHAF
15. 11:50 650 650 Asencion Mendoza Sr M WASC
Frosh/Soph Girls
1 MCFA McFarland 43
2 Inde Independence 51
3 STOC Stockdale 73
4 FTHL Foothill 101
5 TFCC Taft 121
6 RIDG Ridgeview 139
7 RFKH RFKH 173
8 WASC Wasco 180
SOUT South INC
BAEA East Bakersfield INC
NORT North INC
BAKE Bakersfield INC
GARC Garces Memorial INC
1. 14:02 267 267 Corina Garcia So F MCFA
2. 14:02.6 270 270 Kathy Torres Fr F MCFA
3. 14:09 266 266 Olivia Ayon Fr F MCFA
4. 14:09 586 586 Daisy Guitron Fr F TFCC
5. 14:16 522 522 Madison Schutzner Fr F STOC
6. 14:23 484 484 Natalie Espinoza So F SOUT
7. 14:37 248 248 Sara Sullivan Fr F Inde
8. 14:37 110 110 Erica Castro So F FTHL
9. 14:44 237 237 Natalie Ambriz So F Inde
10. 14:46 93 93 Mayra Ponce So F BAEA
11. 14:50 244 244 Acacia Ingram So F Inde
12. 14:58 523 523 Victoria Valos So F STOC
13. 15:00 268 268 Liset Perezchica Fr F MCFA
14. 15:03 249 249 Katelynn Webb Fr F Inde
15. 15:20 135 135 Mari Escuedero So F FTHL
"For unto us a child is born, unto us a son is given: and the government shall be upon his shoulder: and his name shall be called Wonderful, Counsellor, The mighty God, The everlasting Father, The Prince of Peace."
King James Version (KJV)
Public Domain
L677 card
Full chapter:
Isaiah 9
Nevertheless the dimness shall not be such as was in her vexation, when at the first he lightly afflicted the land of Zebulun and the land of Naphtali, and afterward did more grievously afflict her by the way of the sea, beyond Jordan, in Galilee of the nations.
2 The people that walked in darkness have seen a great light: they that dwell in the land of the shadow of death, upon them hath the light shined.
3 Thou hast multiplied the nation, and not increased the joy: they joy before thee according to the joy in harvest, and as men rejoice when they divide the spoil.
4 For thou hast broken the yoke of his burden, and the staff of his shoulder, the rod of his oppressor, as in the day of Midian.
5 For every battle of the warrior is with confused noise, and garments rolled in blood; but this shall be with burning and fuel of fire.
6 For unto us a child is born, unto us a son is given: and the government shall be upon his shoulder: and his name shall be called Wonderful, Counsellor, The mighty God, The everlasting Father, The Prince of Peace.
7 Of the increase of his government and peace there shall be no end, upon the throne of David, and upon his kingdom, to order it, and to establish it with judgment and with justice from henceforth even for ever. The zeal of the Lord of hosts will perform this.
8 The Lord sent a word into Jacob, and it hath lighted upon Israel.
9 And all the people shall know, even Ephraim and the inhabitant of Samaria, that say in the pride and stoutness of heart,
10 The bricks are fallen down, but we will build with hewn stones: the sycomores are cut down, but we will change them into cedars.
11 Therefore the Lord shall set up the adversaries of Rezin against him, and join his enemies together;
12 The Syrians before, and the Philistines behind; and they shall devour Israel with open mouth. For all this his anger is not turned away, but his hand is stretched out still.
13 For the people turneth not unto him that smiteth them, neither do they seek the Lord of hosts.
14 Therefore the Lord will cut off from Israel head and tail, branch and rush, in one day.
15 The ancient and honourable, he is the head; and the prophet that teacheth lies, he is the tail.
16 For the leaders of this people cause them to err; and they that are led of them are destroyed.
17 Therefore the Lord shall have no joy in their young men, neither shall have mercy on their fatherless and widows: for every one is an hypocrite and an evildoer, and every mouth speaketh folly. For all this his anger is not turned away, but his hand is stretched out still.
18 For wickedness burneth as the fire: it shall devour the briers and thorns, and shall kindle in the thickets of the forest, and they shall mount up like the lifting up of smoke.
19 Through the wrath of the Lord of hosts is the land darkened, and the people shall be as the fuel of the fire: no man shall spare his brother.
20 And he shall snatch on the right hand, and be hungry; and he shall eat on the left hand, and they shall not be satisfied: they shall eat every man the flesh of his own arm:
21 Manasseh, Ephraim; and Ephraim, Manasseh: and they together shall be against Judah. For all this his anger is not turned away, but his hand is stretched out still.
Guisborough Town striker Mike Roberts tricks his way past visiting Marske United centre-back Adam Wheatley during an Easter Monday Northern League First Division derby at the King George V Ground. A second-half goal from Roberts gave the Priorymen a 1-0 victory over their struggling neighbours.
23/07/2023. Ladies European Tour 2023. La Sella Open . La Sella Golf, Denia. Spain, 20 -23 July Ellie Givens of England during the final round. Credit: Tristan Jones / LET
It is the weekend.
And weekends here are mostly given over to football. Saturday its college football, and on Sunday its the NFL. And it would be easy to fond a bar and sit there, drinking cheap and crap beer, watching half a dozen screens at the same time. But we're in The Big Easy, we'd better be do something better.
Jetlag is a thing of last week, so we were awake at seven, bright eyed and bushy tailed, and needing breakfast.
It was going to be hot. Damn hot. 86 degrees in the afternoon. Shame then that we had arranged a walking tour, meaning we would be out in the midday and afternoon sun. What could go wrong?
After getting dressed, we walk down Canal to the Palace for breakfast, but it don't open until half ten at weekends. So, back to the hotel for breakfast there, not quite as good, and more expensive, but it is food.
We never will like biscuits and gravy, there is a huge pot of grey-coloured gloop bubbling away. We pass up on that, but links, bacon, homestyle potatoes and eggs over medium were good. And coffee.
We eat in the luxurious surroundings of the Bourbon House, where in twelve hours we would have dinner. But that was later. Much later.
We laze in the room until 11, when we walk through the French Quarter so Jools could find a bead shop. Before then, we ended up watching football on TV. Proper football. Tottenham scored a lucky late equaliser against Watford, and Norwich drew 1-1 against Bournemouth for our first away point of the year.
Yay.
We had arranged a walking tour around the Garden District, with a walk round the local cemetery, but to meet the tour, we had to meet at a place well out of the centre of town. Google suggested it was 1.4 miles. Our feet suggested it was longer.
Starting from the middle of French Quarter, we walk to Canal Street, then over to the start of St Charles Avenue, which if my calculations were correct, we would stay on all the way.
St Charles started off going through the commercial area, past hotels and former banks. It was hot, and there was little shade.
We walk past a blues and bbq festival, which we say we'll visit on the way back, cos if we go now, we'd never leave. One we go, beside a trolley route that was not in use, until we came to a huge roundabout, rotary, with our way straight ahead, under a flyover.
Lighting Essentials Workshop given by Don Giannatti in Detroit, October 4-5.
Model is Briana.
VAL supported speedlight set to match ambient behind aimed at her hair. There is also a gold reflector in line with the back of her head, adding some warmth and flagging the speedlight.
I purposely did not crop the area to the right of the green post; any thoughts on this?
PP in Lightroom/CS3 almost exclusively on the face, although there was a vignette added.
HOTEL JAKARTA, AMSTERDAM NL
SeARCH Architects in collaboration with WestCord Hotels won the tender of the city of Amsterdam for the development of a unique hotel at the very tip of Java Island. Given the prominent location on the IJ river, the city council wanted a unique hotel concept, not only in its architecture, but also in its public programming and sustainability.
HOTEL JAKARTA is an energy neutral building and BREEAM Excellent certified with 200 luxurious hotel rooms and a sky-bar, all offering stunning views over the river IJ. Unique for the Netherlands is its 30-m high load-bearing timber structure. All the beams, columns, ceilings and window frames are made of natural, FSC or PEFC certified timber. For 176 of the 200 hotel rooms SeARCH developed 4-star luxury wooden prefabricated units of 30 m2. All were placed on site within 3 weeks, reaching a height of 30 metres above the quays of Java Island. SeARCH translated structural and architectural requirements into a clever design where thin high-quality prefabricated concrete floors are combined with cross-laminated structural wooden walls and ceilings. Each room fitted on a standard truck, and was delivered to site fully equipped with a passive façade, balcony and complete bathroom for plug-and play, including all necessary technical installations and interior finishes.
HOTEL JAKARTA’S south and east façades are covered with Building integrated Photovoltaics (BIPV panels). The 350 PV panels - over 700m2 in total – are fully integrated into the loggias design. The glass rooftop covering the atrium also contains BIPV cells that, simultaneously collect energy and function as sun shading for the subtropical inner garden.
An atrium with the subtropical garden is the center of the hotel. It acts as a temperature regulator in both summer and winter. On every side of the building rooms have their own private covered exterior space which functions as structural shading. The single layered glass curtain of these balconies buffers noise and protects from the harsh winds of the sites exposed position at open waters.
Above the IJ at the highest point in the triangular building, the sky-bar is fully enclosed in glass. Its tip is a curved double-layered glass with an outer radius of just 600mm. Its roof is made of triple-layered glass. Both façade and roof are brought together via a very subtle glass-on-glass connection, allowing the internal timber curtain wall construction to be visible throughout.
HOTEL JAKARTA’s east and north façades are covered with anodized aluminium panels, each with their own unique perforation pattern that combines ancient trade ship illustrations from Amsterdam’s 17th century.
HOTEL JAKARTA symbolizes Amsterdam’s historic maritime connection with Asia. It is built on the quay where until the mid-20th century, immigrants would arrive after a long trip from Indonesia. For many families, the tip of Java Island was their first or last view of Amsterdam.
The 4-star hotel houses a dynamic public space with various bars, restaurants, coffee corners, a wellness centre and cultural activities, all built around the central subtropical garden. The design and maintenance of the subtropical garden is a result of a collaboration with the Hortus Botanicus and completes the series of gardens on the island. The Royal Tropical Institute is assisting us with the cultural planning. By terracing the ground floor plinth the hotel is publicly accessible on all side through the transparent façade. SeARCH designed Hotel Jakarta as a truly public building. It is a lively cornerstone of the city and a second living room to both the curious globe-trotter, the neighbours of Java Island and the wider inhabitants of Amsterdam.
facts
Client: WestCord Hotels
Location: Amsterdam, The Netherlands
Year: 2013 - 2018
Program: Hotel, restaurant, sky bar, conference, wellness, fitness, swimming pool, subtropical garden, parking
Size: 16,500 m2
The Postcard
A postcard that was published on behalf of the Royal Academy. The photography was by Anderson of Rome. On the back of the card is printed:
'Exhibition of Italian Art
Royal Academy London
1930.
Titian - Salome - Rome,
Collection of Prince
Doria Pamphili.'
The card was posted in South Kensington using stamps to the value of 2d. The postmark states 'Postage on Letters to Europe 4d.'
The card was sent on Monday the 7th. June 1954 to:
Mrs. Chanter,
Fort Hill,
Barnstaple,
North Devon.
The message on the divided back of the card was as follows:
"10, Courtfield Road,
SW7.
Whit Monday.
Dear Aunt Ann,
Thank you for your card.
I have been delayed in
London.
Nigel is leaving for the
Continent & it has been
necessary for me to stay
behind to help him with
his things.
I intend if I can to come
down tomorrow.
Please keep the parcel -
I wonder what it can be.
Love to you and Uncle
Edward.
Rob."
Salome With the Head of John the Baptist
90 x 73 cm; oil on canvas.
This early masterpiece shows that Titian’s personal style had already evolved , with a “sense of physical proximity and involvement of the viewer” (David Jaffé).
Salome was a Jewish princess, the daughter of Herod II and princess Herodias. In the New Testament, Salome demands and receives the head of John the Baptist.
The scene is scattered with refined lyricism, and represents Salome, given the presence of the maidservant and the silver platter on which John the Baptist’s head is laid.
Some scholars suggest that the head of the Baptist might be a self-portrait of the artist. It is usually dated about 1515. The picture’s early fame is demonstrated by the various copies that were made of it.
Iowa Class Battleships
So what else happened on the day that Rob posted the card to his aunt?
Well, on the 7th. June 1954, all four Iowa class battleships were together in one place for the only time in their history.
Alan Turing
The day also marked the death by suicide of Alan Turing.
Alan Mathison Turing, who was born on the 23rd. June 1912, was an English mathematician, computer scientist, logician, cryptanalyst, philosopher and theoretical biologist.
He was highly influential in the development of computer science, providing a formalisation of the concepts of algorithm and computation with the Turing machine, which can be considered a model of a general-purpose computer.
Turing is widely considered to be the father of theoretical computer science.
Born in London, Turing was raised in southern England. He graduated from King's College, Cambridge, and in 1938, earned a doctorate from Princeton University. During World War II, Turing worked for the Government Code and Cypher School at Bletchley Park, Great Britain's codebreaking centre that produced Ultra intelligence.
Alan led Hut 8, the section responsible for German naval cryptanalysis. Turing devised techniques for speeding the breaking of German ciphers, including improvements to the pre-war Polish bomba method, an electromechanical machine that could find settings for the Enigma machine.
He played a crucial role in cracking intercepted messages that enabled the Allies to defeat the Axis powers in many engagements, including the Battle of the Atlantic.
After the war, Turing worked at the National Physical Laboratory, where he designed the Automatic Computing Engine, one of the first designs for a stored-program computer.
In 1948, Turing joined Max Newman's Computing Machine Laboratory at the Victoria University of Manchester, where he helped develop the Manchester computers and became interested in mathematical biology.
Turing wrote on the chemical basis of morphogenesis, and predicted oscillating chemical reactions such as the Belousov–Zhabotinsky reaction, first observed in the 1960's.
However despite these accomplishments, Alan was never fully recognised during his lifetime, because much of his work was covered by the Official Secrets Act.
In 1952, Turing was prosecuted for homosexual acts. He accepted hormone treatment, a procedure commonly referred to as chemical castration, as an alternative to prison.
Turing died on the 7th. June 1954, aged 41, from cyanide poisoning. An inquest determined his death to be suicide, but the evidence is also consistent with accidental poisoning.
Following a campaign in 2009, British prime minister Gordon Brown made an official public apology for "the appalling way Turing was treated".
Queen Elizabeth II granted a pardon in 2013. The term "Alan Turing law" is used informally to refer to a 2017 law in the UK that retroactively pardoned men cautioned or convicted under historical legislation that outlawed homosexual acts.
Turing left an extensive legacy in mathematics and computing which today is recognised more widely, with statues and many things named after him, including an annual award for computing innovation.
Alan's portrait appears on the Bank of England £50 note, first released on the 23rd. June 2021 in order to coincide with his birthday. The audience vote in a 2019 BBC series named Turing the greatest person of the 20th century.
-- Alan Turing - The Early Years
Turing was born in Maida Vale, London, while his father, Julius Mathison Turing, was on leave from his position with the Indian Civil Service (ICS) of the British Raj government at Chatrapur.
Turing's father was the son of a clergyman, the Rev. John Robert Turing, from a Scottish family of merchants that had been based in the Netherlands and included a baronet.
Turing's mother was Ethel Sara Turing (née Stoney), daughter of Edward Waller Stoney, chief engineer of the Madras Railways. Julius and Ethel married on the 1st. October 1907 at St. Bartholomew's Church in Dublin.
Julius's work with the ICS brought the family to British India, where his grandfather had been a general in the Bengal Army. However, both Julius and Ethel wanted their children to be brought up in Britain, so they moved to Maida Vale, London, where Alan Turing was born.
His birth is recorded by a blue plaque on the outside of the house, later the Colonnade Hotel.
Turing had an elder brother, John Ferrier Turing, father of Sir John Dermot Turing, 12th. Baronet of the Turing baronets.
Turing's father's civil service commission was still active during Turing's childhood years, and his parents travelled between Hastings and India, leaving their two sons to stay with a retired Army couple.
At Hastings, Turing stayed at Baston Lodge, Upper Maze Hill, St. Leonards-on-Sea, now marked with a blue plaque.
Turing's parents purchased a house in Guildford in 1927, and Turing lived there during school holidays. The location is also marked with a blue plaque.
-- Alan Turing's Schooldays
Turing attended St. Michael's, a primary school at 20 Charles Road, St. Leonards-on-Sea, from the age of six to nine. The headmistress recognised his talent, noting that:
"We have had clever boys and
hardworking boys, but Alan is
a genius".
Between January 1922 and 1926, Turing was educated at Hazelhurst Preparatory School, an independent school in the village of Frant in Sussex.
In 1926, at the age of 13, Alan went on to Sherborne School, an independent boarding school in Sherborne in Dorset.
The first day of term coincided with the 1926 General Strike, but Turing was so determined to attend that he rode his bicycle unaccompanied 60 miles (97 km) from Southampton to Sherborne, stopping overnight at an inn.
Turing's natural inclination towards mathematics and science did not earn him respect from some of the teachers at Sherborne, whose definition of education placed more emphasis on the classics. His headmaster wrote to his parents:
"I hope he will not fall between two stools.
If he is to stay at public school, he must
aim at becoming educated.
If he is to be solely a Scientific Specialist,
he is wasting his time at a public school".
Despite this, Turing continued to show remarkable ability in the studies he loved, solving advanced problems in 1927 without having studied even elementary calculus.
In 1928, aged 16, Turing encountered Albert Einstein's work; not only did he grasp it, but it is possible that he managed to deduce Einstein's questioning of Newton's laws of motion from a text in which this was never made explicit.
-- Christopher Morcom
At Sherborne, Turing formed a significant friendship with fellow pupil Christopher Collan Morcom (1911 – 1930), who has been described as Turing's first love.
Their relationship provided inspiration in Turing's future endeavours, but it was cut short by Morcom's death, in February 1930, from complications of bovine tuberculosis, contracted after drinking infected cow's milk some years previously.
The event caused Turing great sorrow. He coped with his grief by working that much harder on the topics of science and mathematics that he had shared with Morcom. In a letter to Morcom's mother Turing wrote:
"I am sure I could not have found anywhere
another companion so brilliant and yet so
charming and unconceited. I regarded my
interest in my work, and in such things as
astronomy (to which he introduced me) as
something to be shared with him, and I think
he felt a little the same about me ...
I know I must put as much energy if not as
much interest into my work as if he were
alive, because that is what he would like
me to do."
Turing's relationship with Morcom's mother continued long after Morcom's death, with her sending gifts to Turing, and him sending letters, typically on Morcom's birthday. A day before the third anniversary of Morcom's death (13th. February 1933), he wrote to Mrs. Morcom:
"I expect you will be thinking of Chris when
this reaches you. I shall too, and this letter
is just to tell you that I shall be thinking of
Chris and of you tomorrow.
I am sure that he is as happy now as he
was when he was here.
Your affectionate Alan."
Some writers have speculated that Morcom's death was the cause of Turing's atheism and materialism. Apparently, at this point in his life he still believed in such concepts as a spirit, independent of the body and surviving death. In a later letter, also written to Morcom's mother, Turing wrote:
"Personally, I believe that spirit is really eternally
connected with matter, but certainly not by the
same kind of body ... as regards the actual
connection between spirit and body, I consider
that the body can hold on to a 'spirit', whilst the
body is alive and awake the two are firmly
connected.
When the body is asleep I cannot guess what
happens but when the body dies, the 'mechanism'
of the body, holding the spirit is gone and the
spirit finds a new body sooner or later, perhaps
immediately."
-- Alan Turing at University and his Work on Computability
After graduating from Sherborne, Turing applied for several Cambridge scholarships, including Trinity and King's, eventually earning an £80 per annum scholarship (equivalent to about £4,300 as of 2023) in order to study at the latter.
There, Turing studied the undergraduate course in a three-year Parts I and II of the Mathematical Tripos, with extra courses at the end of the third year from February 1931 to November 1934, at King's College, Cambridge, where he was awarded a first-class honours degree in mathematics.
His dissertation, On the Gaussian error function, written during his senior year and delivered in November 1934 (with a deadline date of the 6th. December) proved a version of the central limit theorem. It was finally accepted on the 16th. March 1935.
By the spring of 1935, Turing had started his master's course (Part III)—which he completed in 1937—and, at the same time, he published his first paper, a one-page article called Equivalence of Left and Right Almost Periodicity, featured in the tenth volume of the Journal of the London Mathematical Society.
Later that year, Turing was elected a Fellow of King's College on the strength of his dissertation where he served as a lecturer. However, and, unknown to Turing, this version of the theorem that he proved in his paper, had already been proven, in 1922, by Jarl Waldemar Lindeberg.
Despite this, the college committee found Turing's methods original and so regarded the work worthy of consideration for the fellowship. Abram Besicovitch's report for the committee went so far as to say that:
"If Turing's work had been published
before Lindeberg's, it would have
been an important event in the
mathematical literature of that year".
Between the springs of 1935 and 1936, at the same time as Alonzo Church, Turing worked on the decidability of problems, starting from Gödel's incompleteness theorems.
In mid-April 1936, Turing sent Max Newman the first draft typescript of his investigations. That same month, Church published his An Unsolvable Problem of Elementary Number Theory, with similar conclusions to Turing's then-yet unpublished work.
Finally, on the 28th. May of 1936, Alan finished and delivered his 36-page paper for publication called "On Computable Numbers, with an Application to the Entscheidungsproblem".
The paper was published in the Proceedings of the London Mathematical Society journal in two parts, the first on the 30th. November, and the second on the 23rd. December 1936.
In this paper, Turing reformulated Kurt Gödel's 1931 results on the limits of proof and computation, replacing Gödel's universal arithmetic-based formal language with the formal and simple hypothetical devices that became known as Turing machines.
The Entscheidungsproblem (Decision Problem) was originally posed by German mathematician David Hilbert in 1928. Turing proved that his "universal computing machine" would be capable of performing any conceivable mathematical computation if it were representable as an algorithm.
Alan went on to prove that there was no solution to the decision problem by first showing that the halting problem for Turing machines is undecidable: it is not possible to decide algorithmically whether a Turing machine will ever halt.
This paper has been called:
"Easily the most influential
math paper in history".
Although Turing's proof was published shortly after Church's equivalent proof using his lambda calculus, Turing's approach is considerably more accessible and intuitive than Church's.
It also included a notion of a 'Universal Machine' (now known as a Universal Turing Machine), with the idea that such a machine could perform the tasks of any other computation machine (as indeed could Church's lambda calculus).
According to the Church–Turing thesis, Turing machines and the lambda calculus are capable of computing anything that is computable. John von Neumann acknowledged that the central concept of the modern computer was due to Turing's paper.
To this day, Turing machines are a central object of study in the theory of computation.
From September 1936 to July 1938, Turing spent most of his time studying under Church at Princeton University. In addition to his purely mathematical work, Alan studied cryptology, and also built three of four stages of an electro-mechanical binary multiplier.
In June 1938, Alan obtained his PhD from the Department of Mathematics at Princeton; his dissertation, Systems of Logic Based on Ordinals, introduced the concept of ordinal logic and the notion of relative computing, in which Turing machines are augmented with so-called oracles, allowing the study of problems that cannot be solved solely by Turing machines.
John von Neumann wanted to hire Alan as his postdoctoral assistant, but he went back to the United Kingdom.
-- Turing's Return to Cambridge
When Turing returned to Cambridge, he attended lectures given in 1939 by Ludwig Wittgenstein about the foundations of mathematics. The lectures have been reconstructed verbatim, including interjections from Turing and other students, from students' notes.
Turing and Wittgenstein argued and disagreed, with Turing defending formalism and Wittgenstein propounding his view that mathematics does not discover any absolute truths, but rather invents them.
-- Alan Turing and Cryptanalysis
During the Second World War, Turing was a leading participant in the breaking of German ciphers at Bletchley Park. The historian and wartime codebreaker Asa Briggs has said:
"You needed exceptional talent,
you needed genius at Bletchley,
and Turing's was that genius."
From September 1938, Turing worked part-time with the Government Code and Cypher School (GC&CS), the British codebreaking organisation. He concentrated on cryptanalysis of the Enigma cipher machine used by Nazi Germany, together with Dilly Knox, a senior GC&CS codebreaker.
Soon after the July 1939 meeting near Warsaw at which the Polish Cipher Bureau gave the British and French details of the wiring of Enigma machine's rotors and their method of decrypting Enigma machine's messages, Turing and Knox developed a broader solution.
The Polish method relied on an insecure indicator procedure that the Germans were likely to change, which they in fact did in May 1940. Turing's approach was more general, using crib-based decryption for which he produced the functional specification of the bombe (an improvement on the Polish Bomba).
On the 4th. September 1939, the day after the UK declared war on Germany, Turing reported to Bletchley Park, the wartime station of GC&CS. Like all others who came to Bletchley, he was required to sign the Official Secrets Act, in which he agreed not to disclose anything about his work at Bletchley, with severe legal penalties for violating the Act.
Specifying the bombe was the first of five major cryptanalytical advances that Turing made during the war. The others were:
-- Deducing the indicator procedure used by the German navy.
-- Developing a statistical procedure dubbed Banburismus for making much more efficient use of the bombes.
-- Developing a procedure dubbed Turingery for working out the cam settings of the wheels of the Lorenz SZ 40/42 (Tunny) cipher machine.
-- Towards the end of the war, the development of a portable secure voice scrambler at Hanslope Park that was codenamed Delilah.
By using statistical techniques to optimise the trial of different possibilities in the code breaking process, Turing made an innovative contribution to the subject.
He wrote two papers discussing mathematical approaches, titled The Applications of Probability to Cryptography and Paper on Statistics of Repetitions, which were of such value to GC&CS and its successor GCHQ that they were not released to the UK National Archives until April 2012, shortly before the centenary of Alan's birth.
A GCHQ mathematician, who identified himself only as "Richard," said at the time that the fact that the contents had been restricted under the Official Secrets Act for some 70 years demonstrated their importance, and their relevance to post-war cryptanalysis.
Richard said:
"The fact that the contents has been restricted
shows what a tremendous importance it has in
the foundations of our subject.
The papers detailed using mathematical analysis
to try and determine which are the more likely
settings, so that they can be tried as quickly as
possible.
GCHQ has now "squeezed the juice" out of the
two papers, and is now happy for them to be
released into the public domain".
Turing had a reputation for eccentricity at Bletchley Park. He was known to his colleagues as "Prof," and his treatise on Enigma was known as the "Prof's Book". Jack Good, a cryptanalyst who worked with Turing, said of his colleague:
"In the first week of June each year he would
get a bad attack of hay fever, and he would
cycle to the office wearing a service gas mask
to keep the pollen off.
His bicycle had a fault: the chain would come
off at regular intervals. Instead of having it
mended, he would count the number of times
the pedals went round and would get off the
bicycle in time to adjust the chain by hand.
Another of his eccentricities is that he chained
his mug to the radiator pipes to prevent it
being stolen."
Peter Hilton recounted his experience working with Turing in Hut 8 in his "Reminiscences of Bletchley Park" from A Century of Mathematics in America:
"It is a rare experience to meet an authentic genius.
Those of us privileged to inhabit the world of
scholarship are familiar with the intellectual
stimulation furnished by talented colleagues.
We can admire the ideas they share with us, and are
usually able to understand their source; we may even
often believe that we ourselves could have created
such concepts and originated such thoughts.
However, the experience of sharing the intellectual
life of a genius is entirely different; one realizes that
one is in the presence of an intelligence, a sensibility
of such profundity and originality that one is filled with
wonder and excitement.
Alan Turing was such a genius, and those, like myself,
who had the astonishing and unexpected opportunity,
created by the strange exigencies of the Second World
War, to be able to count Turing as colleague and friend
will never forget that experience, nor can we ever lose
its immense benefit to us."
Hilton reported on the athletic side of Alan's life in the Nova PBS documentary Decoding Nazi Secrets:
"While working at Bletchley, Turing, who was a talented
long-distance runner, occasionally ran the 40 miles
(64 km) to London when he was needed for meetings,
and he was capable of world-class marathon standards.
Turing tried out for the 1948 British Olympic team, but
he was hampered by an injury. His tryout time for the
marathon was only 11 minutes slower than British silver
medallist Thomas Richards' Olympic race time of 2 hours
35 minutes.
He was Walton Athletic Club's best runner, a fact
discovered when he passed the group while running
alone. When asked why he ran so hard in training,
he replied:
'I have such a stressful job that the
only way I can get it out of my mind
is by running hard; it's the only way
I can get some release.'"
Due to the problems of counterfactual history, it is hard to estimate the precise effect that Ultra intelligence had on the war. However, official war historian Harry Hinsley estimated that this work shortened the war in Europe by more than two years, and saved over 14 million lives.
At the end of the war, a memo was sent to all those who had worked at Bletchley Park, reminding them that the code of silence dictated by the Official Secrets Act did not end with the war, but would continue indefinitely.
Thus, even though Turing was appointed an Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) in 1946 by King George VI for his wartime services, his work remained secret for many years.
-- Bombe
Within weeks of arriving at Bletchley Park, Turing had specified an electromechanical machine called the bombe, which could break Enigma more effectively than the Polish bomba kryptologiczna, from which its name was derived.
The bombe, with an enhancement suggested by mathematician Gordon Welchman, became one of the primary tools, and the major automated one, used to attack Enigma-enciphered messages.
The first bombe was installed on the 18th. March 1940.
The bombe searched for possible correct settings used for an Enigma message (i.e., rotor order, rotor settings and plugboard settings) using a suitable crib: a fragment of probable plaintext.
For each possible setting of the rotors, which had on the order of 1019 states, the bombe performed a chain of logical deductions based on the crib, implemented electromechanically.
The bombe detected when a contradiction had occurred and ruled out that setting, moving on to the next. Most of the possible settings would cause contradictions and be discarded, leaving only a few to be investigated in detail.
A contradiction occured when an enciphered letter was turned back into the same plaintext letter, which was impossible with the Enigma.
-- The 'Action This Day' Memo
By late 1941, Turing and his fellow cryptanalysts Gordon Welchman, Hugh Alexander and Stuart Milner-Barry were frustrated.
Building on the work of the Poles, they had set up a good working system for decrypting Enigma signals, but their limited staff and bombes meant that they could not translate all the signals.
In the summer, they had considerable success, and shipping losses had fallen to under 100,000 tons a month; however, they badly needed more resources in order to keep abreast of German adjustments. They had tried to get more people and fund more bombes through the proper channels, but had failed.
On the 28th. October they wrote directly to Winston Churchill explaining their difficulties, with Turing as the first named. They emphasised how small their need was compared with the vast expenditure of men and money by the forces, and compared with the level of assistance they could offer to the forces.
As Andrew Hodges, biographer of Turing, later wrote:
"This letter had an electric effect."
Churchill wrote a memo to General Ismay, which read:
"ACTION THIS DAY. Make sure they
have all they want on extreme priority
and report to me that this has been
done."
On the 18th. November 1941, the chief of the secret service reported that every possible measure was being taken. The cryptographers at Bletchley Park did not know of the Prime Minister's response, but as Milner-Barry recalled:
"All that we did notice was that almost
from that day, the rough ways began
miraculously to be made smooth."
More than two hundred bombes were in operation by the end of the war.
-- Hut 8 and the Naval Enigma
Turing decided to tackle the particularly difficult problem of cracking the German naval use of Enigma:
"... because no one else was doing
anything about it, and I could have
it to myself".
In December 1939, Turing solved the essential part of the naval indicator system, which was more complex than the indicator systems used by the other services.
That same night, he also conceived of the idea of Banburismus, a sequential statistical technique to assist in breaking the naval Enigma. Alan noted:
"I was not sure that it would work
in practice, and was not, in fact,
sure until some days had actually
broken".
For this, he invented a measure of weight of evidence that he called the ban. Banburismus could rule out certain sequences of the Enigma rotors, substantially reducing the time needed to test settings on the bombes.
Later this sequential process of accumulating sufficient weight of evidence using decibans (one tenth of a ban) was used in cryptanalysis of the Lorenz cipher.
Turing travelled to the United States in November 1942 and worked with US Navy cryptanalysts on the naval Enigma and bombe construction in Washington. He also visited their Computing Machine Laboratory in Dayton, Ohio.
Turing's reaction to the American bombe design was far from enthusiastic:
"The American Bombe programme was to produce
336 Bombes, one for each wheel order. I used to
smile inwardly at the conception of Bombe hut
routine implied by this programme, but thought
that no particular purpose would be served by
pointing out that we would not really use them
in that way.
Their test (of commutators) can hardly be
considered conclusive as they were not testing
for the bounce with electronic stop finding devices.
Nobody seems to be told about rods or offiziers or
banburismus unless they are really going to do
something about it."
During this trip, Alan also assisted at Bell Labs with the development of secure speech devices. He returned to Bletchley Park in March 1943.
During his absence, Hugh Alexander had officially assumed the position of head of Hut 8, although Alexander had been de facto head for some time (Turing having little interest in the day-to-day running of the section). Turing became a general consultant for cryptanalysis at Bletchley Park.
Alexander wrote of Turing's contribution:
"There should be no question in anyone's mind that
Turing's work was the biggest factor in Hut 8's success.
In the early days, he was the only cryptographer who
thought the problem worth tackling, and not only was
he primarily responsible for the main theoretical work
within the Hut, but he also shared with Welchman and
Keen the chief credit for the invention of the bombe.
It is always difficult to say that anyone is 'absolutely
indispensable', but if anyone was indispensable to
Hut 8, it was Turing.
The pioneer's work always tends to be forgotten
when experience and routine later make everything
seem easy, and many of us in Hut 8 felt that the
magnitude of Turing's contribution was never fully
realised by the outside world."
-- Turingery
In July 1942, Turing devised a technique termed Turingery (or jokingly Turingismus) for use against the Lorenz cipher messages produced by the Germans' new Geheimschreiber (Secret Writer) machine.
This was a teleprinter rotor cipher attachment codenamed Tunny at Bletchley Park. Turingery was a method of wheel-breaking, i.e., a procedure for working out the cam settings of Tunny's wheels.
Alan also introduced the Tunny team to Tommy Flowers who, under the guidance of Max Newman, went on to build the Colossus computer, the world's first programmable digital electronic computer.
This replaced a simpler prior machine (the Heath Robinson), and its superior speed allowed the statistical decryption techniques to be applied usefully to the messages.
Some have mistakenly said that Turing was a key figure in the design of the Colossus computer. Turingery and the statistical approach of Banburismus undoubtedly fed into the thinking about cryptanalysis of the Lorenz cipher, but Alan was not directly involved in the Colossus development.
-- Delilah
Following his work at Bell Labs in the US, Turing pursued the idea of electronic enciphering of speech in the telephone system. In the latter part of the war, he moved to work for the Secret Service's Radio Security Service (later HMGCC) at Hanslope Park.
At the park, he further developed his knowledge of electronics with the assistance of REME officer Donald Bayley. Together they undertook the design and construction of a portable secure voice communications machine codenamed Delilah.
The machine was intended for different applications, but it lacked the capability for use with long-distance radio transmissions. In any case, Delilah was completed too late to be used during the war.
Though the system worked fully, with Turing demonstrating it to officials by encrypting and decrypting a recording of a Winston Churchill speech, Delilah was not adopted for use.
Turing also consulted with Bell Labs on the development of SIGSALY, a secure voice system that was used in the later years of the war.
-- Early Computers
Between 1945 and 1947, Turing lived in Hampton, London, while he worked on the design of the ACE (Automatic Computing Engine) at the National Physical Laboratory (NPL).
He presented a paper on the 19th. February 1946, which was the first detailed design of a stored-program computer.
Von Neumann's incomplete first draft of a report on the EDVAC had pre-dated Turing's paper, but it was much less detailed and, according to John R. Womersley, Superintendent of the NPL Mathematics Division:
"It contains a number of ideas
which are Dr. Turing's own".
Although ACE was a feasible design, the effect of the Official Secrets Act surrounding the wartime work at Bletchley Park made it impossible for Turing to explain the basis of his analysis of how a computer installation involving human operators would work.
This led to delays in starting the project, and he became disillusioned. In late 1947 he returned to Cambridge for a sabbatical year during which he produced a seminal work on Intelligent Machinery that was not published during his lifetime.
While he was at Cambridge, the Pilot ACE was being built in his absence. It executed its first program on the 10th. May 1950, and a number of later computers around the world owe much to it, including the English Electric DEUCE and the American Bendix G-15.
The full version of Turing's ACE was not built until after his death.
In 1948, Turing was appointed reader in Mathematics at the Victoria University of Manchester. A year later, he became deputy director of the Computing Machine Laboratory, where he worked on software for one of the earliest stored-program computers—the Manchester Mark 1.
Turing wrote the first version of the Programmer's Manual for this machine, and was recruited by Ferranti as a consultant in the development of their commercialised machine, the Ferranti Mark 1. He continued to be paid consultancy fees by Ferranti until his death.
-- The Turing Test
During this time, Alan continued to do more abstract work in mathematics, and in "Computing Machinery and Intelligence" (Mind, October 1950), Turing addressed the problem of artificial intelligence, and proposed an experiment that became known as the Turing Test.
The Turing Test was an attempt to define a standard for a machine to be called "intelligent". The idea was that a computer could be said to "think" if a human interrogator could not tell it apart, through conversation, from a human being.
In the paper, Turing suggested that rather than building a program to simulate the adult mind, it would be better to produce a simpler one to simulate a child's mind, and then to subject it to a course of education.
A reversed form of the Turing test is widely used on the Internet; the CAPTCHA test is intended to determine whether the user is a human or a computer.
In 1948, Turing, working with his former undergraduate colleague, D. G. Champernowne, began writing a chess program for a computer that did not yet exist. By 1950, the program was completed and dubbed the Turochamp.
In 1952, he tried to implement it on a Ferranti Mark 1, but lacking enough power, the computer was unable to execute the program. Instead, Turing "ran" the program by flipping through the pages of the algorithm and carrying out its instructions on a chessboard, taking about half an hour per move. The game was recorded.
According to Garry Kasparov, Turing's program "played a recognizable game of chess". The program lost to Turing's colleague Alick Glennie, although it is said that it won a game against Champernowne's wife, Isabel.
The Turing Test was a significant, characteristically provocative, and lasting contribution to the debate regarding artificial intelligence, which continues after more than half a century.
-- Pattern Formation and Mathematical Biology
When Turing was 39 years old in 1951, he turned to mathematical biology, finally publishing his masterpiece "The Chemical Basis of Morphogenesis" in January 1952.
Alan was interested in morphogenesis, the development of patterns and shapes in biological organisms. He suggested that a system of chemicals reacting with each other and diffusing across space, termed a reaction–diffusion system, could account for the main phenomena of morphogenesis.
He used systems of partial differential equations to model catalytic chemical reactions. For example, if a catalyst A is required for a certain chemical reaction to take place, and if the reaction produced more of the catalyst A, then we say that the reaction is autocatalytic, and there is positive feedback that can be modelled by nonlinear differential equations.
Turing discovered that patterns could be created if the chemical reaction not only produced catalyst A, but also produced an inhibitor B that slowed down the production of A.
If A and B then diffused through the container at different rates, then you could have some regions where A dominated, and some where B did.
In order to calculate the extent of this, Turing would have needed a powerful computer, but these were not freely available in 1951, so he had to use linear approximations to solve the equations by hand.
These calculations gave the right qualitative results, and produced, for example, a uniform mixture that oddly enough had regularly spaced fixed red spots.
The Russian biochemist Boris Belousov had performed experiments with similar results, but could not get his papers published because of the contemporary prejudice that any such thing violated the second law of thermodynamics.
Belousov was not aware of Turing's paper in the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society.
Although published before the structure and role of DNA was understood, Turing's work on morphogenesis remains relevant today, and is considered a seminal piece of work in mathematical biology.
-- Stripey Cats and Spotty Cats
One of the early applications of Turing's paper was the work by James Murray explaining spots and stripes on the fur of cats, large and small.
Further research in the area suggests that:
"Turing's work can partially explain the
growth of feathers, hair follicles, the
branching pattern of lungs, and even the
left-right asymmetry that puts the heart
on the left side of the chest".
In 2012, Sheth et al. found that in mice, removal of Hox genes causes an increase in the number of digits without an increase in the overall size of the limb, suggesting that Hox genes control digit formation by tuning the wavelength of a Turing-type mechanism.
Later papers were not available until the Collected Works of A. M. Turing was published in 1992.
A study conducted in 2023 confirmed Turing's mathematical model hypothesis. Presented by the American Physical Society, the experiment involved growing chia seeds in even layers within trays, later adjusting the available moisture.
Researchers experimentally tweaked the factors which appear in the Turing equations, and, as a result, patterns resembling those seen in natural environments emerged.
This is believed to be the first time that experiments with living vegetation have verified Turing's mathematical insight.
-- Alan Turing's Personal Life
-- Lost Treasure
In the 1940's, Turing became worried about losing his savings in the event of a German invasion. In order to protect them, he bought two silver bars weighing 3,200 oz (90 kg) and worth £250 (in 2022, £48,000) and buried them in a wood near Bletchley Park.
Upon returning to dig them up, Turing found that he was unable to break his own code describing where exactly he had hidden them. This, along with the fact that the area had been renovated, meant that he never regained the silver.
-- The Engagement of Alan Turing
In 1941, Turing proposed marriage to Hut 8 colleague Joan Clarke, a fellow mathematician and cryptanalyst, but their engagement was short-lived.
After admitting his homosexuality to his fiancée, who was reportedly "unfazed" by the revelation, Turing decided that he could not go through with the marriage.
-- Alan Turing's Homosexuality and Indecency Conviction
In December 1951, Turing met Arnold Murray, a 19-year-old unemployed man. Turing was walking along Manchester's Oxford Road when he met Murray just outside the Regal Cinema and invited him to lunch.
The two agreed to meet again, and in January 1952 began an intimate relationship. On the 23rd. January, Turing's house was burgled. Murray told Turing that he and the burglar were acquainted, and Turing reported the crime to the police.
During the investigation, he acknowledged a sexual relationship with Murray. Homosexual acts were criminal offences in the United Kingdom at that time, and both men were charged with "gross indecency" under the Criminal Law Amendment Act of 1885.
Initial committal proceedings for the trial were held on the 27th. February 1952 during which Turing's solicitor reserved his defence, i.e., did not argue or provide evidence against the allegations. The proceedings were held at the Sessions House in Knutsford.
Turing was later convinced by his brother and solicitor to enter a plea of guilty. The case, Regina v. Turing and Murray, was brought to trial on the 31st. March 1952.
Turing was convicted, and given a choice between imprisonment and probation. His probation would be conditional on his agreement to undergo hormonal physical changes designed to reduce libido, known as "chemical castration".
He accepted the option of injections of what was then called stilboestrol (now known as diethylstilbestrol or DES), a synthetic oestrogen; this feminization of his body was continued for the course of one year.
The treatment rendered Turing impotent and caused breast tissue to form. In a letter, Turing wrote that:
"No doubt I shall emerge from it all
a different man, but quite who I've
not found out".
Murray was given a conditional discharge.
-- Consequences of Alan Turing's Conviction
Turing's conviction led to the removal of his security clearance and barred him from continuing with his cryptographic consultancy for the Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ), though he kept his academic job.
Alan's trial took place only months after the defection to the Soviet Union of Guy Burgess and Donald Maclean in summer 1951, after which the Foreign Office started to consider anyone known to be homosexual as a potential security risk.
Turing was denied entry into the United States after his conviction in 1952, but was free to visit other European countries.
In the summer of 1952 he visited Norway which was more tolerant of homosexuals. Among the various men he met there was one named Kjell Carlson. Kjell intended to visit Turing in the UK, but the authorities intercepted Kjell's postcard detailing his travel arrangements, and were able to intercept and deport him before the two could meet.
It was also during this time that Turing started consulting a psychiatrist, Dr Franz Greenbaum, with whom he got on well and who subsequently became a family friend.
-- The Death of Alan Turing
On the 8th. June 1954, Turing's housekeeper found him dead at his house at 43 Adlington Road, Wilmslow. A post mortem was held that evening; this determined that he had died the previous day at the age of 41, with cyanide poisoning cited as the cause of death.
When his body was discovered, an apple lay half-eaten beside his bed, and although the apple was not tested for cyanide, it was speculated that this was the means by which Turing had consumed a fatal dose.
Turing's brother, John, identified the body the following day and took the advice given by Dr. Greenbaum to accept the verdict of the inquest, as there was little prospect of establishing that the death was accidental.
The inquest was held the following day, which determined the cause of death to be suicide. Turing's remains were cremated at Woking Crematorium just two days later on the 12th. June 1954, with just his mother, brother, and Lyn Newman attending, and his ashes were scattered in the gardens of the crematorium, just as his father's had been.
Turing's mother was on holiday in Italy at the time of his death and returned home after the inquest. She never accepted the verdict of suicide.
Philosopher Jack Copeland has questioned various aspects of the coroner's historical verdict. He suggested an alternative explanation for the cause of Turing's death: the accidental inhalation of cyanide fumes from an apparatus used to electroplate gold onto spoons.
The potassium cyanide was used to dissolve the gold. Turing had such an apparatus set up in his tiny spare room. Copeland noted that the autopsy findings were more consistent with inhalation than with ingestion of the poison.
Turing's mother believed that the ingestion was accidental, resulting from her son's careless storage of laboratory chemicals.
Turing also habitually ate an apple before going to bed, and it was not unusual for the apple to be discarded half-eaten.
Furthermore, Turing had reportedly borne his legal setbacks and hormone treatment (which had been discontinued a year previously) "with good humour," and had shown no sign of despondency before his death.
He had even set down a list of tasks that he intended to complete upon returning to his office after the holiday weekend.
Turing's biographer Andrew Hodges theorised that Turing deliberately left the nature of his death ambiguous in order to shield his mother from the knowledge that he had killed himself.
Doubts on the suicide thesis have been also cast by John W. Dawson Jr. who, in his review of Hodges' book, recalls "Turing's vulnerable position in the Cold War political climate," and points out that:
"Turing was found dead by a maid, who
discovered him 'lying neatly in his bed'—
hardly what one would expect of a man
fighting for life against the suffocation
induced by cyanide poisoning."
Turing had given no hint of suicidal inclinations to his friends, and had made no effort to put his affairs in order.
Hodges and a later biographer, David Leavitt, have both speculated that Turing was re-enacting a scene from the Walt Disney film Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937), his favourite fairy tale.
Both men noted that (in Leavitt's words):
"He took an especially keen pleasure
in the scene where the Wicked Queen
immerses her apple in the poisonous
brew".
It has also been suggested that Turing's belief in fortune-telling may have caused his depressed mood. As a youth, Turing had been told by a fortune-teller that he would be a genius.
In mid-May 1954, shortly before his death, Turing again decided to consult a fortune-teller during a day-trip to St. Annes-on-Sea with the Greenbaum family. According to the Greenbaums' daughter, Barbara:
"It was a lovely sunny day and Alan was in a
cheerful mood and off we went ... Then he
thought it would be a good idea to go to the
Pleasure Beach at Blackpool.
We found a fortune-teller's tent, and Alan
said he'd like to go in, so we waited around
for him to come back ...
And this sunny, cheerful visage had shrunk
into a pale, shaking, horror-stricken face.
Something had happened. We don't know
what the fortune-teller said, but he obviously
was deeply unhappy.
I think that was probably the last time we
saw him before we heard of his suicide."
-- Government Apology and Pardon
In August 2009, British programmer John Graham-Cumming started a petition urging the British government to apologise for Turing's prosecution as a homosexual. The petition received more than 30,000 signatures.
The prime minister, Gordon Brown, acknowledged the petition, releasing a statement on the 10th. September 2009 apologising, and describing the treatment of Turing as "appalling":
"Thousands of people have come together to
demand justice for Alan Turing and recognition
of the appalling way he was treated.
While Turing was dealt with under the law of the
time and we can't put the clock back, his treatment
was of course utterly unfair, and I am pleased to
have the chance to say how deeply sorry I and we
all are for what happened to him ...
So on behalf of the British government, and all
those who live freely thanks to Alan's work, I am
very proud to say: we're sorry, you deserved so
much better."
In December 2011, William Jones and his member of Parliament, John Leech, created an e-petition requesting that the British government pardon Turing for his conviction of gross indecency:
"We ask the HM Government to grant a pardon
to Alan Turing for the conviction of gross
indecency. In 1952, he was convicted of gross
indecency with another man, and was forced to
undergo so-called "organo-therapy"—chemical
castration.
Two years later, he killed himself with cyanide,
aged just 41.
Alan Turing was driven to a terrible despair and
early death by the nation he'd done so much to
save.
This remains a shame on the British government
and British history. A pardon can go some way to
healing this damage. It may act as an apology to
many of the other gay men, not as well-known as
Alan Turing, who were subjected to these laws."
The petition gathered over 37,000 signatures, and was submitted to Parliament by the Manchester MP John Leech, but the request was discouraged by Justice Minister Lord McNally, who said:
"A posthumous pardon was not considered
appropriate as Alan Turing was properly convicted
of what at the time was a criminal offence.
He would have known that his offence was against
the law, and that he would be prosecuted. It is tragic
that Alan Turing was convicted of an offence that
now seems both cruel and absurd—particularly
poignant given his outstanding contribution to the
war effort.
However, the law at the time required a prosecution
and, as such, long-standing policy has been to accept
that such convictions took place and, rather than trying to
alter the historical context and to put right what cannot
be put right, ensure instead that we never again return
to those times."
Nevertheless, John Leech, the MP for Manchester Withington (2005–15), submitted several bills to Parliament, and led a high-profile campaign to secure the pardon.
Leech made the case in the House of Commons that Turing's contribution to the war made him a national hero, and that it was "ultimately just embarrassing" that the conviction still stood. Leech continued to take the bill through Parliament and campaigned for several years, gaining the public support of numerous leading scientists, including Stephen Hawking.
At the British premiere of a film based on Turing's life, The Imitation Game, the producers thanked Leech for bringing the topic to public attention and securing Turing's pardon.
Leech is now regularly described as the "architect" of Turing's pardon, and subsequently the Alan Turing Law, which went on to secure pardons for 75,000 other men and women convicted of similar crimes.
On the 26th. July 2012, a bill was introduced in the House of Lords to grant a statutory pardon to Turing.
Late in the year in a letter to The Daily Telegraph, the physicist Stephen Hawking and 10 other signatories including the Astronomer Royal Lord Rees, President of the Royal Society Sir Paul Nurse, Lady Trumpington (who worked for Turing during the war) and Lord Sharkey (the bill's sponsor) called on Prime Minister David Cameron to act on the pardon request.
The government indicated that it would support the bill, and it passed its third reading in the House of Lords in October 2012.
However at the bill's second reading in the House of Commons on the 29th. November 2013, Conservative MP Christopher Chope objected to the bill, delaying its passage. The bill was due to return to the House of Commons on the 28th. February 2014, but before the bill could be debated in the House of Commons, the government elected to proceed under the royal prerogative of mercy.
On the 24th. December 2013, Queen Elizabeth II signed a pardon for Turing's conviction for gross indecency, with immediate effect. Announcing the pardon, Lord Chancellor Chris Grayling said:
"Turing deserves to be remembered and
recognised for his fantastic contribution
to the war effort, and not for his later
criminal conviction."
The Queen pronounced Turing to be pardoned in August 2014. It was only the fourth royal pardon granted since the conclusion of the Second World War. Pardons are normally granted only when the person is technically innocent, and a request has been made by the family or other interested party; neither condition was met in regard to Turing's conviction.
In September 2016, the government announced its intention to expand this retroactive exoneration to other men convicted of similar historical indecency offences, in what was described as an "Alan Turing law".
The Alan Turing law is now an informal term for the law in the United Kingdom, contained in the Policing and Crime Act 2017, which serves as an amnesty law to retroactively pardon men who were cautioned or convicted under historical legislation that outlawed homosexual acts.
On the 19th. July 2023, following an apology to LGBT veterans from the UK Government, Defence Secretary Ben Wallace suggested that Turing should be honoured with a permanent statue on the fourth plinth of Trafalgar Square, describing Turing as:
"Probably the greatest war hero, in my book,
of the Second World War, whose achievements
shortened the war, saved thousands of lives,
helped defeat the Nazis.
And his story is a sad story of a society and
how it treated him."
Gordon Welchman
For more interesting information relating to Gordon Welchman, please search for the tag 68HST77
Tommy Flowers
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Given the recent streak of feminine subjects, I felt the immediate need for more masculine participants in my 100 Strangers project. So today while I was out taking care of some affairs on campus, I caught Cho at the bus stop, and found out he had enough time for a photo and a quick story.
Upon asking Cho the story behind his suit (which was looking pretty sharp), I found out that he was dressed up for his a graduation photo today. He graduates at the end of the spring with a degree in business so it's no wonder he was looking sharp. Around here, the business students definitely know style. Cho is looking to apply to law schools, including the one on campus, but hopes to find a program in New York because of the ample job opportunities. I didn't want to take up too much of his time given he was waiting for a bus, so good luck Cho on your program applications and congratulations on your soon-to-be business degree!
In hindsight, I wish I had picked a better angle to have avoided the conspicuously boring sign to the right, nor was I able to efficiently crop it out given the angle of the shot. Oh well, something to bear in mind for the next time!
This picture is #6 in my 100 strangers project, started on February 14th, 2009. Find out more about the project and see pictures taken by other photographers at www.100Strangers.com
This haul photo is long overdue. I didn't even take it the day I acquired these dollies. I ended up being given a TON of dolls the same week as these plastic people, so I had a lot to process. And I forgot all about this picture until I was mostly done writing about all the individual dollies themselves. Anyways, this was a great Sunday for flea marketing. We haven't since come home with anything this great (I'm typing this literally a month later).
We first spotted Kit's Scooter on a blanket on the ground. I had seen this seller before--he usually has a couple of Bitty Baby dolls (but they are always the ones I already have). Colleen inquired the price--turns out it was $10. Since that was a lot to spend right out of the gate, we decided to walk around and think about it. Before leaving we did return to the booth and snatch it up. This retails for $50 these days...ridiculous I know. I always have great luck finding Kittles things in the wild!
All the little fixings and the tots (minus the rain jacket) were from a small container. We dubbed this the "Tub of Tots." I spotted it at a booth with random junk. I noted the L.O.L. Surprise dollies straight away. I was super nervous about forking over the $10 for the bin. You see, there was a TON of body swapping. This photo has the dolls assembled properly. That made it easier for me when logging them into my inventory and when figuring out which clothes went to whom. However, they were not like this whatsoever when I bought the bin. The majority of them were body swapped and in the wrong clothes. You can see that Fresh is without a body altogether in this photo. I have no idea where it went (currently I am waiting for a small lot of tot bodies in the mail which will hopefully have a match for her). I was willing to take the gamble because of the sheer volume of L.O.L. Surprise fixings inside. There were clearly a lot of clothes and accessories. It turns out there were pieces to my Glamper!!! I bought mine in 2021 at the same flea market...it was totally gutted. So this was one of my favorite parts of the lot. There were also two stowaways--this Chelsea friend and the Sunshine Kids doll (the mini Cabbage Patch looking one). You can also see that quite a few of the accessories were not L.O.L. Surprise either.
On our way down the last section of the flea market, I spotted Farrah Fawcett!!! I've wanted a Mego celebrity doll for ages. I recall ogling Cher at a local consignment shop years ago. But she was $12 and missing her hands if I'm not mistaken. Farrah was donning her original jumpsuit and looked pretty decent. I knew she was either going to be really cheap or super expensive. When we inquired, the seller said they were $3 each (Beauty Secrets Barbie and Charlie's Angels Sabrina were also at the booth). I was counting out my $3 when he said I could have the other two for just $2. I had been ogling the Beauty Secrets Barbie...I didn't need her as I had two at home. But I'm a sucker for old dolls like this who are neglected and in need of a home. I figured why not get all three dollies for $5. I conveniently had an outfit for Miss Beauty Secrets anyways! Turns out she was wearing a Newport Barbie ensemble that could dress one of my other gals at home. Oh, and Farrah's hair turned out to be a disaster. It SHRANK in the boil wash...yes shrank...not just balled up. I've never seen anything like it, but upon further investigation this is a common issue with Mego dolls. I couldn't smooth it all out because what was inside her head shrank up too. So she needs a reroot...poor Farrah (but I think she'll like saran hair better anyways).
Dolls in photo :
-1979 Beauty Secrets Barbie
-1977 Farrah
-1977 Charlie's Angels Kate Jackson as Sabrina
-2019 Club Chelsea #GHV66 Friend
-1981 Sunshine Kids
-2018 Eye Spy Series "Wave 1" Lil Royal High-Ney
-2016 Series 1 Fresh
-2018 #OOTD Jet Set Q.T.
-2019 Series 2 #Hairgoals Slice
-2019 2-in-1 Glamper Strut Doll
-2020 Dance Dance Dance Phenom B.B.
-2019 All-Star B.B.s Series 1 Beatnik Babe
-2020 All-Star B.B.s Series 3 Fancy
-2020 All-Star B.B.s Series 3 Foxy
-2019 #Hairvibes Scuba Babe
-2020 Re-released Confetti Under Wraps As If Baby
-2018 Eye Spy Series Under Wraps "Wave 1" Thrilla
-2017 Series 2 "Wave 1" Spice
-2020 Series 3 Furniture Classroom Teacher's Pet
caption given by my Uncle Steve:
"This is a picture of Cass taken in 1966 0r 1967 by our pool in California. It sure looks like Cass is trying to leave a "calling card" for someone to find."
given odin's recent weight gains, he's forced to endure a greater volume of the monoclonal antibodies. this time the shot was a full CC which is quite a bit of fluid to be injecting under the skin and, although he gets over the surprise rather quickly, it's still rather sad to hear the lamentful cry that he cries during shots. it's quite different than any other cry - sort of a mixture of surprise, pain and anger.
Catechesis at the Palacio De Deportes with The Mass given by Cardinal George Pell Archbishop of Sydney for English speaking pilgrims.
© Mazur/catholicchurch.org.uk
The Jiankou section of the Great Wall of China is the sixth section that I’ve visited (seventh trip in total) and it is – by far – my favorite section. “Jiankou” means “arrow nock” and was given that name as locals see that shape in the mountain/valley. There are two approaches to the wall: Hou Jiankou (rear) and Qian Jiankou (front). Of the two, Hou Jiankou is a much easier approach. It only climbs about 100 meters in altitude and is a reasonably easy climb over a kilometer. Qian Jiankou is about a kilometer in approach, but with a 450 meter rise, almost vertical. The wall was built in 1368 A.D. of the Ming Dynasty with large white rocks that are easily visible from a distance.
Photographers and hikers alike are quite drawn to the wall here. It’s not maintained like the other sections, so has a very “wild” feel to it thanks to its disrepair. The current state of the wall gives a sense of romanticism in its reality/purity (as opposed to renovated sections) but it’s also what makes it so dangerous. As you can tell from these photos, a simple walk is impossible. Many of the rocks along the wall are loose and if – like me – you carry a tripod or other photographic equipment, that adds an extra challenge. Because it’s an unrestored (and, for the most part, unmonitored) section of the wall, it’s quite possible to camp overnight atop the wall here, though – with the exception of summer – nights can be quite cold.
The wall here has many popular views or features. Among them are watch towers with names like “The Eagle Flies Facing Upward” (due to its almost vertical rise), the “Beijing Knot” (where three sections of the wall come together), the “Nine-Eye Tower” (a three-layered watchtower with nine holes on each side), Zhengbei Tower (great place to see the sunrise), and the Cloud Stairs (with a 70-80 degree ascent into the clouds).
Reaching the wall from Beijing isn’t too hard. From the Dongzhimen bus terminal (Dongzhimen subway station, exit B), you can take the 916 or 980 (kuai/fast) buses about one hour out of town into the Huairou district of Miyun County. It’s about 70-80 kilometers northeast of Beijing. Once off the bus, you’ll have to take a private taxi (aka…private individuals happy to fleece you to drive you to the wall, which is still 30-40 minutes away). I paid 500 RMB for a drive to the wall and back to the bus stop. That’s about…$80-85. The closest “village” to the Hou Jiankou section is Xizhazi. You could also possibly spend the night here, which is a more legitimate place to stay, if you can find a local who is willing to put you up for the night.
To put the location in a little more perspective, it’s immediately adjacent to the Mutianyu section (which is probably one of the two most popular sections, along with Badaling) to the east and the Moshikou section to the west.
This is definitely the first of what I hope to be a few more trips to this section (maybe even a return this summer). Today’s trip was just my “preview” and I only spent 1-2 hours out on the wall and, given the difficulty of negotiating the wall, I didn’t cover more than 500 meters of the 4,000+ meter section. Next time, I intend to spend the night out here.
YORK, ENGLAND - APRIL 11: during an i2i Soccer Academy Training Session at Haxby Road on April 11th 2023 in North Yorkshire, United Kingdom. (Photo by Matthew Appleby)
Windows to my Life part 3
- The poem collected of words given by my co-learners - rough translation:
let the winter bring all the new
- strong roots toward the wind
to be; to wander persistently
to avoid the storms of the spring
...or to let them affect?!
will all be born by itself...
...or should the next be created
who skates with the wind
hears the new morning
what will a new experience be made of?
antaa talven tuoda uutta
- juuret vahvoina tuulessa
olla olemassa; vaeltaa lepäämättä
väistää kevään myrskyt
...vai ottaa vastaan?!
antaako kaiken syntyä...
...vai pitääkö tulevaisuus synnyttää
tuulen kanssa luistelija
kuulee uuden aamun
mistä tunnistaa uuden kokemuksen?
couldn't handle the pressures anymore and gave up, some days are like that........i give in to cozy comforter in winter.
Baháʼí World Centre is the name given to the spiritual and administrative centre of the Baháʼí Faith, representing sites in or near the cities of Acre and Haifa, Israel. Much of the international governance and coordination of the Baháʼí Faith occurs at the Baháʼí World Centre, including global teaching plans and study and translation of the Baháʼí holy writings. The Universal House of Justice, representing the supreme governing body of the Baháʼí Faith, resides in Haifa. The Baháʼí World Centre is also a major destination for religious tourism, and the current destination for Baháʼí pilgrimage, attracting annually about one million visitors. The location of the Baháʼí World Centre originated in Baháʼu'lláh's banishment and imprisonment to the fortress of Acre in 1868 by Ottoman authorities. Many of the locations at the Baháʼí World Centre, including the terraces and the Shrine of the Báb which constitute the north slope of Mount Carmel, were inscribed on the UNESCO World Heritage List in July 2008. History - The location of the administrative centre was a result of a successive number of banishments and imprisonments of Baháʼu'lláh, founder of the Baháʼí Faith. Baháʼu'lláh was banished from Persia by Nasser al-Din Shah in 1853, at which time Baháʼu'lláh went to Baghdad in the Ottoman Empire. Later he was exiled by the Sultan of the Ottoman Empire, at the behest of the Persian Shah, to territories further away from Iran and finally to Acre in Ottoman Syria in 1868. Baháʼu'lláh lived out the rest of his life in the area and he communicated with his followers throughout the Middle East, Central Asia and India through special couriers, and Acre became the centre of the expanding network of Baháʼí groups. When Baháʼu'lláh's imprisonment was eased, the area also became a centre of Baháʼí pilgrimage as Baháʼís would travel the long distance to see Baháʼu'lláh. The location of the Shrine of the Báb on Mount Carmel was indicated by Baháʼu'lláh to his son ʻAbdu'l-Bahá during a visit to Haifa. Furthermore, the establishing of the administrative centre of the Baháʼí Faith on Mount Carmel was also indicated by Baháʼu'lláh in his Tablet of Carmel, which is considered one of the charter documents of the Baháʼí administration. Baháʼu'lláh died in 1892 near Acre, and his resting place is in Bahji. Following his death, Baháʼu'lláh's son ʻAbdu'l-Bahá was appointed to be the head of his father's faith and the condition of the area as the centre of Baháʼí activity continued. He continued to correspond with Baháʼís all over the world, including now Baháʼís in the West. While he was still officially a prisoner and confined to Acre, ʻAbdu'l-Bahá also organized the transfer of the remains of the Báb from Iran to Palestine. He organized the purchase of land on Mount Carmel that Baháʼu'lláh had instructed should be used to lay the remains of the Báb and organized for the construction of the Shrine of the Báb. This process took another 10 years and was completed in 1909. In 1908, the Young Turks revolution freed all political prisoners in the Ottoman Empire, and ʻAbdu'l-Bahá was freed from imprisonment. Soon after the revolution, he moved to live in Haifa near the Shrine of the Báb, and since then the administrative headquarters of the religion have been in Haifa. During the final years of ʻAbdu'l-Bahá's life the increasing levels of correspondence led to the employment of a number of secretaries including some in Western languages and the provision of a Pilgrim House in the area. ʻAbdu'l-Bahá died in 1921, and was buried in a room of the Shrine of the Báb in Haifa. After ʻAbdu'l-Bahá's death, Shoghi Effendi was the head of the religion, and he directed the development of a number of separate projects in the area. He renovated the house of Baháʼu'lláh in Bahji in 1929, and in the 1950s secured legal possession of the lands around the building, creating a number of gardens. He also obtained possession of other sites around Acre related to Baháʼu'lláh's life, including the House of ʻAbbud. Around Haifa, he expanded the Shrine of the Báb by developing its golden-domed superstructure and purchased lands surrounding the Shrine in order to create gardens. Shoghi Effendi had also decided that the buildings housing the institutions of the religion indicated in Baháʼu'lláh's Tablet of Carmel, including the Universal House of Justice, the as yet unestablished governing body of the worldwide Baháʼí community, would be arranged in the shape of an arc surrounded by gardens. The fulcrum of this arc would be the Monument Gardens, which hold the graves of members of the Baháʼí holy family. During his own lifetime he started the construction of one of the buildings comprising the arc, the International Archives building. He also negotiated tax-exempt status for all Baha'i properties. The religion's situation in Israel was clarified in an agreement signed in 1987 by then Vice-Premier and Foreign Minister, Shimon Peres, in which the government formally acknowledged the Baháʼí Faith as a “recognized religious community in Israel,” declared its "friendly relations" with the Baháʼí world community, noted that the "holiest places of the Baháʼí Faith, … are located in Israel", and confirmed "that the Universal House of Justice is the Trustee of the Baháʼí International Community over the Holy Places of the Baháʼí Faith in Israel and over the Baháʼí endowments in Israel". The other buildings of the Arc, the Seat of the Universal House of Justice, the Centre for the Study of the Sacred Texts, and the Seat of the International Teaching Centre, were completed in 1982, 1999 and 2000 respectively. The fifth and yet-to-be-built building, the International Baháʼí library, is planned to be eventually built at the eastern end of the Arc, and is anticipated as a center for "knowledge in all fields", including scientific investigation. The Baháʼí Terraces, or the Hanging Gardens of Haifa, are garden terraces on Mount Carmel in Haifa, and one of the most popular tourist destinations in Israel. Completed in 2001, there are 19 terraces and more than 1,500 steps ascending the mountain. The central terrace has the Shrine of the Báb, one of the main religious figures of the Baháʼí Faith. The architect was Fariborz Sahba from Iran, and the structural engineers were Karban and Co. from Haifa. The terraces are part of a complex of Baháʼí holy places in Haifa, Acre, and western Galilee that were inscribed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site in July 2008. The gardens rest in the neighborhoods of Wadi Nisnas and Hadar HaCarmel. The terraces represent the first eighteen disciples of the Báb, who were designated "Letters of the Living", although no terraces are connected with particular individuals. Nine concentric circles provide the main geometry of the eighteen terraces. Just as the identification of a circle presupposes a centre, so the terraces have been conceived as generated from the Shrine of the Báb. The eighteen terraces plus the one terrace of the Shrine of the Báb make nineteen terraces total. Nineteen is a significant number within both the Baháʼí and Bábí religions. The gardens have elements of the Persian gardens of Shiraz, Iran, the Nishat Bagh gardens of Jammu and Kashmir, India and English gardens, isolating the site from the noise of the surroundings and connecting the different Baháʼí buildings on Mount Carmel together. Fariborz Sahba began work in 1987 designing the gardens and oversaw construction. The terraces were opened to the public in June 2001. Beginning at its base, the gardens extend almost one kilometre (0.6 miles) up the side of Mount Carmel, covering some 200,000 square metres (2,152,782 square feet) of land. The gardens are linked by a set of stairs flanked by twin streams of running water cascading down the mountainside through the steps and terrace bridges. The irrigation system includes a computer which, based on meteorologic data it receives, controls hundreds of valves to distribute water throughout the gardens by sprinkling and dripping. This is done at night and in the early morning, to avoid wasting water by evaporation. The water that flows alongside the stairs is circulating in a closed system within each terrace, so that little water is wasted. Haifa’s Mayor Amram Mitzna described the gardens as the eighth wonder of the world. "We have been very lucky," he said, "not many cities get a park that is so incredibly beautiful – free of charge."
A gift box that contained a bottle of Coppola, given to me by a coworker.
Impossible Project No. 8/61 - "pass by low-hanging fruits"
We were given a tour of Joint Base Pearl Harbor-Hickam when two F-22 Raptor fighter jets took off to escort a possible hijacked airliner near Hawaii.
Vysehrad Cemetery is the graveyard attached to the Basilica of Saint Peter & Saint Paul in Vysehrad (notes at the end about the Vysehrad complex).
The complex is over a thousand years old, but the cemetery was only established in 1869, which explains the newness of the headstones. It's an active cemetery, though it seems pretty packed walking around. As noted below, this could basically be seen as the Czech pantheon, given the number of notable Czechs interred here from the arts, letters, and medicine.
Among those you'll find here (that non-Czechs may recognize, by name or contribution) are: Jan Neruda (a poet, and the man from whom Pablo Neruda took his pen name), Antonin Dvorak (composer of the New World Symphony), Josef & Karel Capek (brothers, Josef created the word "robot" and Karel used it in his play R.U.R., which introduced the word to the world), Karel Ancerl (conductor of the Czech Philharmonic Orchestra and Toronto Symphony Orchestra), Hana Maskova (1968 bronze medalist in Olympic figure skating), and Jan Evangelista Purkyne (who, in 1839, coined the term "protoplasm"). There are many others of note, and very ornate headstones -- hence this large set. I don't intend to slight anyone, so feel free to do some research on your own if you wish.
Vysehrad is a pretty neat place to visit in Prague, in my opinion -- especially if you want to relax away from tourists.
It has a combination of things that make it wonderful for me. Its history, its current use, its location (and views it affords), and what's left on site -- taken individually, warrant a visit in my world. Collectively? Winner.
We'll start with what Vysehrad was, which involves local beliefs and legends. The (unproven) thought is that this is the original site of Prague, founded by Duke Krok in...who knows what year? Duke Krok is a myth, though may have been real. And since he's a myth, his daughters, too, are mythical. One of them is Libuse, who has a "bath" here, and she can be found in some architecture around town. I recall seeing her on a building on Karlova.
Duke Kroc was the first duke of the Czech people. Princess Libuse, the youngest (and wisest) of his three daughters later became queen and married a ploughman named Premysl, founding the Premyslid dynasty (interesting...she's royalty, he's a commoner, yet the dynasty is named for him because he's a man...yea for sexism?). The three sisters had special powers (one a healer, one a magician, and Libuse could predict the future). She prophesied the founding of Prague in the 8th century. So believe the Czechs.
What does history tell us? Well, this fortress-castle has been here for a thousand years give or take. Precise origin dates are unknown (or I can't seem to find them). One of the buildings here -- St. Martin's Chapel -- is known to have been built sometime between 1060-1090, so we can say it's conservatively a thousand years old.
Part of the fun of the legend that could support its continuing existence is its location high on a bluff directly overlooking the Vltava River. It was a perfect place to build a defensive fortress, that eventually became a royal castle. As the city grew, and Prague Castle was built, Vysehrad's importance waned.
The two castles competed (kind of) for two centuries to be the most important in Prague. The heyday for Vysehrad was in the late 11th century (when St. Martin's Chapel was built). Vratislaus II, the first king of Bohemia (until him, all were dukes or duchesses) moved his seat of power here from Prague Castle, at which point the original Vysehrad fortress received a major upgrade: a new palatial home, a church, a chapter house.
Growth continued, but only for a short time. Vratislaus's son, Duke Sobeslav (I'm not sure why he was duke, if his dad was king) moved the royal seat right on back to Prague Castle.
The death knell for Vysehrad (as a royal residence) came when Holy Roman Emperor Charles IV (yeah, the same one for whom Charles Bridge is named) renovated Prague Castle to its current dimensions. Vysehrad was abandoned. However, Charles did renew the fortifications with new gates, a royal palace (though never official seat of government), and started repairing the basilica. This was early 14th century. About a hundred years later in 1420 at the start of the Hussite War, Vysehrad was rancasked. And again, a few decades later. Finally, Vysehrad was left to ruin...
...Until the Austrians came along. Austria-Hungary gained Czech lands as a prize of the Thirty Years' War, remodeling it as a baroque fortress, to use as a training center for their troops.
The main building that dominated Vysehrad (to this day) is the Basilica of St. Peter & St. Paul. It's pretty big. Hard to miss, for sure. Like St. Martin's Chapel, it was also (originally) built in the 11th century. Unlike little St. Martin's, though, the big fella was remodeled in the late 1300s and, again, by the Austrians in 1885 & 1887. It's now a neo-Gothic church. Also dating to this baroque renovation are the Tabor and Leopold gates.
So...what do you get when come to Vysehrad now? A city park, really. It's free to come and go (though I think going inside the church may cost a little money).
The bastion walls are fantastic to take a walk around and enjoy panoramic views of every part of the city, the river, the bridges, just to reflect on the here and now, and the past. The bastions are big enough, and long enough, that you can take some time to just do that alone. There are also benches if you want to relax and enjoy the view.
Inside the fortress walls, you'll find mostly wooded land (thanks to its having been abandoned) with the aforementioned church and chapel, plus some other historic recreations, a few trails, and...well, all around, pleasant places to be. There are a handful of statues around the grounds, including Good King Wenceslaus, and Princess Libuse.
Being as that it's a church -- and a large one -- there's also a church cemetery attached directly to the side and back of it. Creatively, it's called "Vysehrad Cemetery."
As far as cemeteries go, I've been to many, and this one has some of the most interesting headstones I've seen. Not only that, as far as Czechs go, this could almost be their Pantheon. While royalty are buried elsewhere (Prague Castle, for starters), the literati all seem to be buried here -- except Kafka. He's in the New Jewish Cemetery. And, not every famous Czech is buried here, of course, but quite a few prominent ones from arts and letters are taking their dirt naps here. At the end of the day, this is a big, beautiful public park, well worth a visit, and the locals love it. This seems to be one of the places they come to celebrate New Year's Eve. I love that it's not overrun by tourists, though hope that anyone who has read this can make it there and see for yourself.