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When North Western bought 15 Dennis Lolines in 1960, it seemed perfectly logical. Dennis had negotiated a deal with Bristol to produce a vehicle based on the nationalised concern's Lodekka design, the Loline being the outcome. The lineage was clearly evident in the bonnet shape, steering wheel angle. fuel filler position, axle finishers, and other details. Lolines could be sold to any interested operator, overcoming the restrictions on Bristol vehicle sales. Operators envious of the Lodekka's low overall height, whilst retaining a central upper deck gangway with minimal mechanical complications, now had a way to overcome their frustrations of being unable to buy Bristols. For North Western, it also appeared to overcome its apparent frustration at being unable to continue its earlier preference for Bristol products.
RDB822, photographed in Manchester's Piccadilly Gardens Bus Station in May 1970, represents these Bristol Lodekka clones. It was a Loline II YF3 with Leyland O.600 engine and East Lancs. H39/32F body.
Ich habe heute den Logical Song von Supertramp gehört und sah, dass er zu der Filmmusik von "Magnolia" gehört!
Das hat mich dazu inspiriert eine Magnolie zu posten!
Sozusagen eine Montagsblüte:)!
+++ DISCLAIMER +++
Nothing you see here is real, even though the conversion or the presented background story might be based historical facts. BEWARE!
Some background:
The Supermarine Type 250 was a fighter design that responded to the British Air Ministry specification F.5/34 for a new single-seat fighter that was primarily intended to intercept incoming bombers. Five companies responded with proposals, Bristol with the Type 146, Martin-Baker with the M.B.2, Vickers with the Type 279 Venom, Gloster F.5/34 and Supermarine with the Type 250.
The first design of the Type 250 still retained fabric covering on the fuselage and the outer wings. The engine was to be the liquid-cooled Rolls-Royce Kestrel with 520 hp, which drove a wooden fixed-pitch two-blade propeller and featured a ventral radiator and a separate oil cooler under the inner starboard side gull wing, a characteristic feature that helped reduce the length of the fixed, spatted landing gear. The wings already had an elliptic shape that became the trademark of the later Type 300, the legendary Spitfire. The cockpit was semi-enclosed, with open sides and a short spine behind it. Despite the conservative layout, much detail work was invested into structural lightness, a compact and streamlined airframe. Armament consisted of four 0.303" machine guns, a synchronized pair in the fuselage flanks, firing through the propeller disc, and another, unsynchronized pair in the wings just outboard of the gull wing's kink.
By 1935, however, the design had evolved and changed in many details. For instance, the Type 250 had acquired a number of improved features such as a metal stressed-skin fuselage (only the rudders were still covered with fabric), a more powerful (630 hp) version of the Kestrel and an upgraded armament, which had the wing-mounted machine guns replaced with new 20mm Hispano cannon.
The rationale behind the latter decision was the tactical insight, that modern fighters would only have few opportunities to open fire on incoming bombers due to the ever-raising speed of modern aircraft. In consequence, the potential weight of fire had to be increased to ensure an effective hit upon the first opportunity. Since the Type 250's thin and complex wings did not offer enough room for more machine guns, the weapon's caliber was simply raised and the 20 mm cannons and their drum magazines hidden under streamlined fairings, their barrels protruding from the wing’s leading edge. The improvement was considerable: with its original weapons, the Type 250 had a weight of fire of ~1.8 kg/sec. with an effective firing range of 1,500 yd (1,400 m), while the heavier guns raised this to ~4 kg/sec. with a maximum firing range of up to 7,000 yd (6,500 m). The only drawback was the relatively small supply of rounds: only 60 could be carried per weapon.
The first prototype made its maiden flight in April 1936. Compared to its contemporaries, test pilots found the Type 250 prototypes had a shorter take off run, offered better initial climb and were more responsive and manoeuvrable due to ailerons that did not become excessively heavy at high speed. Handling was considered very good and the all-round cockpit visibility was far better than other designs (which had fully closed cockpits, though). In a shallow dive, the Type 250 was capable of exceeding 310 mph (500 km/h), while top speed at level flight was 280 mph (450 km/h).
Supermarine's Type 250 debuted officially at the 1936 Hendon Air Show under its official name "Skylark", and serial production for the Royal Air Force, which had ordered 100 aircraft, started. However, this order was already cancelled in 1937 when it had become obvious that types like the Hawker Hurricane, as well as Supermarine's own new Spitfire, both monoplanes with retractable landing gear and a fully closed cockpit, easily outperformed the "Skylark" in almost any tactical aspect, and had much more development potential. In consequence, production stopped prematurely after only 65 airframes, which were delivered only to RAF 25 and 43 Squadron, where they replaced Hawker Fury biplanes. However, they were soon retired from these front line units, and plans to upgrade the aircraft with fully closed canopies and three-blade metal propellers with variable pitch to a Mk. II standard were never carried out. The RAF “Skylarks” were relegated to the advanced trainer role or used as instructional airframes until 1943. Additionally, a number of the retired RAF “Skylark” Mk. Is were also sold to Ireland (six in 1937) and Iraq (ten in 1938), where they served until the late Forties.
General characteristics:
Crew: one pilot
Length: 29 ft 11 in (9.12 m)
Wingspan: 36 ft 10 in (11.23 m)
Height: 11 ft 5 in (3.86 m)
Wing area: 242.1 ft2 (22.48 m²)
Airfoil: NACA 2213 (root)
NACA 2209.4 (tip)
Empty weight: 4,190 lb (1,900 kg)
Loaded weight: 5,400 lb (2,449 kg)
Max. takeoff weight: 5,600 lb (2,542 kg)
Powerplant:
1× Rolls-Royce Kestrel XV supercharged V12 engine, 685 hp (511 kW) at 2,240 rpm for
take-off and 631 hp (471 kW) at 2,900 rpm at 14,400 ft (4,400 m)
Performance:
Maximum speed: 244 knots (280 mph, 451 km/h) at 16,000 ft (4,875 m)
Rate of climb: 2,300 ft/min[121] (11.7 m/s)
Climb to 10,000 ft (3,050 m): 4.75 min
Service ceiling: 32,500 ft (9,910 m)
Wing loading: 17.3 lb/ft² (84 kg/m²)
Power/mass: 0.163 hp/lb (0.269 kW/kg)
Armament:
2× synchronized 0.303-in Vickers machine guns in fuselage sides with 300 RPG
2× 0.787-in (20mm) Hispano Mk. I cannons with 60 RPG in the wings
Provision for 20 lb (9.1 kg) bomb carriers under the outer wings
The kit and its assembly:
This model was inspired by a drawing, created by Paul Mason in 2013 but re-posted by a modeler at FlickR who was about to build something along its lines, and the ensuing discussion about this fictional aircraft, which appeared like a lean predecessor or the fictional missing link between the Supermarine 224 monoplane with spats and the highly successful, modern Spitfire.
I had already built a similar aircraft a while ago, a retrograded Messerschmitt Bf 109 with spats and an open cockpit (as a fictional Bf 94), but found the idea of a British counterpart very attractive. Even more so because of the particularly elegant lines of this so-called “Type 250”.
At its core, this heavily modified model is a Hasegawa Spitfire Mk. I, chosen because of the kit’s simplicity, good fit and very delicate surface details. Many changes were made, though, partly inspired by the drawing, but also following my own instincts. The biggest changes concern the engine and the wings.
I found the Merlin from the drawing to be too modern for this aircraft, so I transplanted an earlier Kestrel engine from a Matchbox Hawker Fury biplane, together with its ventral radiator that replaced the Spitfire’s cooling system under the wings, together with the older two blade wooden propeller.
The wings were also heavily modified: landing gear wells and radiator openings were filled/closed with 2C putty. Then the wings were cut/bent and re-arranged so that they ended up in an F4U-esque, but very attractive inverted gull wing shape. Not an easy task, though, more PSR involved, but it worked well and looks very natural. Under the wings’ kinks, shortened spats from an Avia B.35 (old KP kit) were added and holes for the new/bigger guns (hollow steel needles) were drilled. As a bonus, the bulges from the original landing gear could now be used as fairings for the early Hispano 60 rounds drum magazines.
The cockpit area was modified, too, into an open configuration. The original Spitfire windscreen was retained (cut away from the OOB single-piece canopy), as well as the entry door, which was cut open for later display. The door itself was replaced with a thinner a piece of 0.5mm styrene sheet. The Spitfire’s spine was completely cut down and re-sculpted with 2C putty. I wanted a low back (similar to the late versions with a bubble canopy), only a short headrest fairing was added behind the pilot’s seat, which received recesses on its flanks for a better field of view for the pilot backwards.
A final change/addition are the machine guns in the flanks that appeared on the Paul Mason drawing. A placement on top of the engine might have been a more logical position and easier to realize with the Hawker Fury’s nose section, but I stuck to the drawing. The fairings were carved from styrene profiles and blended under the kestrel’s exhaust stubs, where the Spitfire fuselage and the Fury engine meet.
Painting and markings:
The original benchmark drawing for this build showed an RAF machine with standard Dark Green/Dark Earth camouflage and somewhat inconclusive markings, but I wanted a different livery, anyway, since there are already some RAF model in the standard guise in my collection. Searching for pre-WWII alternatives and also potential operators outside of Great Britain I stumbled across the Irish Gloster Gladiators that were delivered in 1938: these machine eventually received an RAF-style paint scheme when the war broke out, but before that, they carried for a short period of time (a year maybe) a very attractive scheme in green and silver, with bright national insignia. I am not certain whether this scheme was intended to be just decorative or a serious camouflage, but that’s what I eventually used on the Irish Skylark. Turned out to be a very good decision!
The Irish Gladiators’ original green carried on fuselage and fin is called “Titanine TE348”. BS5064 “Bredon Green” is supposed to be a modern tone that comes close, but there’s no direct model paint equivalent for both. According to Max Decals, who offer some sheets for Irish military vehicles, a potential option is Revell’s 360 (Fern Green, RAL 6025), and this is what I went for. The fuselage was mostly painted in this bright tone, and the green was also used on the landing gear’s spats.
The wings were painted in Matt Aluminum Metallizer from Humbrol, while Revell 99 and Polished Aluminum Metallizer was used around the engine for a brighter look (the Irish Gladiators had highly polished cowlings). The interior was painted in RAF Cockpit Green (Humbrol 78). The propeller blades received a wooden look with the help of Humbrol 63 (Sand) worked into a semi-dry base of Humbrol 62 (Leather) with a relatively hard, flat brush. The metal fairings on the blades’ leading edges are decal strips in silver.
The kit received a light black ink wash as well as some post shading treatment and fake panel lines with a soft pencil – more to emphasize details than for weathering, since the aircraft would be quite new and well kept. Some soot stains were added around the exhaust stubs and the gun nozzles, too.
During the pre-WWII era, Irish aircraft did not carry any roundels yet. Instead, they were marked with stripes with colors from the Irish flag on their wings and on the vertical rudder. These were created with generic decal sheet material (green, white and orange), IMHO a more convenient solution than trying to paint everything. The only other marking is the tactical code, which comes from an Xtradecal sheet for Bristol Blenheim – finding numbers in a suitable font, size and in black and white was not easy!
Finally, the kit was sealed with a sheen coat of acrylic varnish, a mix of matt and semi-gloss Italeri varnish.
I am very pleased with the outcome of this build. Not only is the resulting aircraft very elegant, I am also happy that I opted for the early, bright green Irish livery that almost makes it look like an air racer? My hardware interpretation of the Type 250 drawing also reminds a lot of the contemporary Dewoitine 501/510 monoplane, doesn’t it?
Congratulations to Intel on their acquisition of Nervana. This photo is from the last board meeting at our offices; the Nervana founders — from right to left: Naveen Rao, Amir Khosrowshahi and Arjun Bansal — pondered where on the wall they may fall during M&A negotiations.
We are now free to share some of our perspectives on the company and its mission to accelerate the future with custom chips for deep learning.
I’ll share a recap of the Nervana story, from an investor’s perspective, and try to explain why machine learning is of fundamental importance to every business over time. In short, I think the application of iterative algorithms (e.g., machine learning, directed evolution, generative design) to build complex systems is the most powerful advance in engineering since the Scientific Method. Machine learning allows us to build software solutions that exceed human understanding, and shows us how AI can innervate every industry.
By crude analogy, Nervana is recapitulating the evolutionary history of the human brain within computing — moving from the logical constructs of the reptilian brain to the cortical constructs of the human brain, with massive arrays of distributed memory and iterative learning algorithms.
Not surprisingly, the founders integrated experiences in neuroscience, distributed computing, and networking — a delightful mélange for tackling cognitive computing. Ali Partovi, an advisor to Nervana, introduced us to the company.
We were impressed with the founding team and we had a prepared mind to share their enthusiasm for the future of deep learning. Part of that prepared mind dates back to 1989, when I started a PhD in EE focusing on how to accelerate neural networks by mapping them to parallel processing computers. Fast forward 25 years, and the nomenclature has shifted to machine learning and the deep learning subset, and I chose it as the top tech trend of 2013 at the Churchill Club VC debate (video). We were also seeing the powerful application of deep learning and directed evolution across our portfolio, from molecular design to image recognition to cancer research to autonomous driving.
All of these companies were deploying these simulated neural networks on traditional compute clusters. Some were realizing huge advantages by porting their code to GPUs; these specialized processors originally designed for rapid rendering of computer graphics have many more computational cores than a traditional CPU, a baby step toward a cortical architecture. I first saw them being used for cortical simulations in 2007. But by the time of Nervana’s founding in 2014, some (e.g., Microsoft’s and Google’s search teams) were exploring FPGA chips for their even finer-grained arrays of customizable logic blocks. Custom silicon that could scale beyond any of these approaches seemed like the natural next step. Here is a page from Nervana’s original business plan (Fig. 1 in comments below).
The march to specialized silicon, from CPU to GPU to FPGA to ASIC, had played out similarly for Bitcoin miners, with each step toward specialized silicon obsoleting the predecessors. When we spoke to Amazon, Google, Baidu, and Microsoft in our due diligence, we found a much broader application of deep learning within these companies than we could have imagined prior, from product positioning to supply chain management.
Machine learning is central to almost everything that Google does. And through that lens, their acquisition, and new product strategies make sense; they are not traditional product line extensions, but a process expansion of machine leaning (more on that later). They are not just playing games of Go for the fun of it. Recently, Google switched their core search algorithms to deep learning, and they used Deep Mind to cut data center cooling costs by a whopping 40%.
The advances in deep learning are domain independent. Google can hire and acquire talent and delight in their passionate pursuit of game playing or robotics. These efforts help Google build a better brain. The brain can learn many things. It is like a newborn human; it has the capacity to learn any of the languages of the world, but based on training exposure, it will only learn a few. Similarly, a synthetic neural network can learn many things.
Google can let the Brain team find cats on the Internet and play a great game of Go. The process advances they make in building a better brain (or in this case, a better learning machine) can then be turned to ad matching, a task that does not inspire the best and the brightest to come work for Google.
The domain independence of deep learning has profound implications on labor markets and business strategy. The locus of learning shifts from end products to the process of their creation. Artifact engineering becomes more like parenting than programming. But more on that later; back to the Nervana story.
Our investment thesis for the Series A revolved around some universal tenets: a great group of people pursuing a product vision unlike anything we had seen before. The semiconductor sector was not crowded with investor interest. AI was not yet on many venture firms’ sectors of interest. We also shared with the team that we could envision secondary benefits from discovering the customers. Learning about the cutting edge of deep learning applications and the startups exploring the frontiers of the unknown held a certain appeal for me. And sure enough, there were patterns in customer interest, from an early flurry in medical imaging of all kinds to a recent explosion of interest in the automotive sector after Tesla’s Autopilot feature went live. The auto industry collectively rushed to catch up.
Soon after we led the Series A on August 8, 2014, I found myself moderating a deep learning panel at Stanford with Nervana CEO Naveen Rao.
I opened with an introduction to deep learning and why it has exploded in the past four years (video primer). I ended with some common patterns in the power and inscrutability of artifacts built with iterative algorithms. We see this in biology, cellular automata, genetic programming, machine learning and neural networks.
There is no mathematical shortcut for the decomposition of a neural network or genetic program, no way to “reverse evolve” with the ease that we can reverse engineer the artifacts of purposeful design.
The beauty of compounding iterative algorithms — evolution, fractals, organic growth, art — derives from their irreducibility. (More from my Google Tech Talk and MIT Tech Review)
Year 1. 2015
Nervana adds remarkable engineering talent, a key strategy of the first mover. One of the engineers figures out how to rework the undocumented firmware of NVIDIA GPUs so that they run deep learning algorithms faster than off-the-shelf GPUs or anything else Facebook could find. Matt Ocko preempted the second venture round of the company, and he brought the collective learning of the Data Collective to the board.
Year 2. 2016 Happy 2nd Birthday Nervana!
The company is heads down on chip development. They share some technical details (flexpoint arithmetic optimized for matrix multiplies and 32GB of stacked 3D memory on chip) that gives them 55 trillion operations per second on their forthcoming chip, and multiple high-speed interconnects (as typically seen in the networking industry) for ganging a matrix of chips together into unprecedented compute fabrics. 10x made manifest. See Fig. 2 below.
And then Intel came knocking.
With the most advanced production fab in the world and a healthy desire to regain the mantle of leading the future of Moore’s Law, the combination was hard to resist. Intel vice president Jason Waxman told Recode that the shift to artificial intelligence could dwarf the move to cloud computing. “I firmly believe this is not only the next wave but something that will dwarf the last wave.” But we had to put on our wizard hats to negotiate with giants.
The deep learning and AI sector have heated up in labor markets to relatively unprecedented levels. Large companies are recently paying $6–10 million per engineer for talent acquisitions, and $4–5M per head for pre-product startups still in academia. For the Masters students in a certain Stanford lab, they averaged $500K/yr for their first job offer at graduation. We witnessed an academic turn down a million dollar signing bonus because they got a better offer.
Why so hot?
The deep learning techniques, while relatively easy to learn, are quite foreign to traditional engineering modalities. It takes a different mindset and a relaxation of the presumption of control. The practitioners are like magi, sequestered from the rest of a typical engineering process. The artifacts of their creation are isolated blocks of functionality defined by their interfaces. They are like blocks of magic handed to other parts of a traditional organization. (This carries over to the customers too; just about any product that you experience in the next five years that seems like magic will almost certainly be built by these algorithms).
And remember that these “brain builders” could join any industry. They can ply their trade in any domain. When we were building the deep learning team at Human Longevity Inc. (HLI), we hired the engineering lead from the Google’s Translate team. Franz Och pioneered Google’s better-than-human translation service not by studying linguistics, grammar, or even speaking the languages being translated. He focused on building the brain that could learn the job from countless documents already translated by humans (UN transcripts in particular). When he came to HLI, he cared about the mission, but knew nothing about cancer and the genome. The learning machines can find the complex patterns across the genome. In short, the deep learning expertise is fungible, and there are a burgeoning number of companies hiring and competing across industry lines.
And it is an ever-widening set of industries undergoing transformation, from automotive to agriculture, healthcare to financial services. We saw this explosion in the Nervana customer pipeline. And we see it across the DFJ portfolio, especially in our newer investments. Here are some examples:
• Learning chemistry and drug discovery: Here is a visualization of the search space of candidates for a treatment for Ebola; it generated the lead molecule for animal trials. Atomwise summarizes: “When we examine different neurons on the network we see something new: AtomNet has learned to recognize essential chemical groups like hydrogen bonding, aromaticity, and single-bonded carbons. Critically, no human ever taught AtomNet the building blocks of organic chemistry. AtomNet discovered them itself by studying vast quantities of target and ligand data. The patterns it independently observed are so foundational that medicinal chemists often think about them, and they are studied in academic courses. Put simply, AtomNet is teaching itself college chemistry.”
• Designing new microbial life for better materials: Zymergen uses machine learning to predict the combination of genetic modifications that will optimize product yield for their customers. They are amassing one of the largest data sets about microbial design and performance, which enables them to train machine learning algorithms that make search predictions with increasing precision. Genomatica had great success in pathway optimization using directed evolution, a physical variant of an iterative optimization algorithm.
• Discovery and change detection in satellite imagery: Planet and Mapbox. Planet is now producing so much imagery that humans can’t actually look at each picture it takes. Soon, they will image every meter of the Earth every day. From a few training examples, a convolutional neural net can find similar examples globally — like all new housing starts, all depleted reservoirs, all current deforestation, or car counts for all retail parking lots.
• Automated driving & robotics: Tesla, Zoox, SpaceX, Rethink Robotics, etc.
• Visual classification: From e-commerce to drones to security cameras and more. Imagen is using deep learning to radically improve medical image analysis, starting with radiology.
• Cybersecurity: When protecting endpoint computing & IOT devices from the most advanced cyberthreats, AI-powered Cylance is proving to be a far superior and adaptive approach versus older signature-based antivirus solutions.
• Financial risk assessment: Avant and Prosper use machine learning to improve credit verification and merge traditional and non-traditional data sources during the underwriting process.
• And now for something completely different: quantum computing. For a wormhole peek into the near future, our quantum computing company, D-Wave Systems, powered a 100,000,000x speedup in a demonstration benchmark for Google, a company that has used D-Wave quantum computers for over a decade now on machine learning applications.
So where will this take us?
Neural networks had their early success in speech recognition in the 90’s. In 2012, the deep learning variant dominated the ImageNet competitions, and visual processing can now be better done by machine than human in many domains (like pathology, radiology and other medical image classification tasks). DARPA has research programs to do better than a dog’s nose in olfaction.
We are starting the development of our artificial brains in the sensory cortex, much like an infant coming into the world. Even within these systems, like vision, the deep learning network starts with similar low level constructs (like edge-detection) as foundations for higher level constructs like facial forms, and ultimately, finding cats on the internet with self-taught learning.
But the artificial brains need not limit themselves to the human senses. With the internet of things, we are creating a sensory nervous system on the planet, with countless sensors and data collecting proliferating across the planet. All of this “big data” would be a big headache but for machine learning to find patterns in it all and make it actionable. So, not only are we transcending human intelligence with multitudes of dedicated intelligences, we are transcending our sensory perception.
And it need not stop there. It is precisely by these iterative algorithms that human intelligence arose from primitive antecedents. While biological evolution was slow, it provides an existence proof of the process, now vastly accelerated in the artificial domain. It shifts the debate from the realm of the possible to the likely timeline ahead.
Let me end with the closing chapter in Danny Hillis’ CS book The Pattern on the Stone: “We will not engineer an artificial intelligence; rather we will set up the right conditions under which an intelligence can emerge. The greatest achievement of our technology may well be creation of tools that allow us to go beyond engineering — that allow us to create more than we can understand.”
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Here is some early press:
Xconomy(most in-depth), MIT Tech Review, Re/Code, Forbes, WSJ, Fortune.
The LT-12-15 was a logical progression made by Tarsin engineers. To maximize production output the decision was made to use universal chassis for the construction of Coalition armoured vehicles. This developement fueled the never ending number of variants that spawned off of a limited few base vehicles. This has led some to speculate that Coalition engineers are lazy and are unwilling to make strides in the field of tank design. Quite to the contrary, Coalition specialists simply take the best aspects from battle proven machines and build upon them. As such there are few radical differences from one tank to the next, but a relative increase in performance is seen with each new modification.
Modeled heavily on the SV-15 chassis the LT-12-15 features the important traits that Coalition vehicles posses, heavy armour, covered suspension and a sloped front glacis. The LT-12-15 is one of the more numerous tanks encountered when the imperial army mobilises. This is due to the easy conversion required to change any number of the already numerous SV-15 vehicles in the LT-12-15. It has been recounted that this simple procedure has turned the tide of many battles, most where enemies, expecting a sizable mechanised infantry force, were in fact faced with the virtual transformation of their foe into a mechanised tank army.
The LT-12-15 also sees a modest armament, though these are usually limited to what is domestically available to Imperial producers. This has lead to a general trend where outlying sectors will outfit their tanks with more economical, high velocity guns due to their low cost and ease of opperation. On the other hand wealthier sectors tend to lavish their vehicles with Plasma Cannons often purchased via trade with the Tarsin core worlds. This trend is compounded by the Tarsin army's exclusive use of plasma based main weapons. This has lead to a devastating effectiveness on the battlefield albeit at substantial cost increase and high maintenace rate.
Regardless of her deployment, the LT-12-15 maintains a high level of respect with Imperial strategists and generals, who respect the tank's versatile command of the battlefield.
It has long been assumed, ever since the 17th century, that layers/strata observed in sedimentary rocks were built up gradually, layer upon layer, over many years. It certainly seemed logical at the time, from just looking at rocks, that lower layers would always be older than the layers above them, i.e. that lower layers were always laid down first followed, in time, by successive layers on top. Indeed, micro-strata were regarded as being somewhat similar to tree rings, indicative of a relative timescale (annual/seasonal).
This was assumed to be true and became known as the superposition principle.
It was also assumed that a layer/stratum comprising a different material from a previous layer, represented a change in environmental conditions/factors.
Changes in composition of layers or strata were considered to represent different, geological eras on a global scale, spanning millions of years. This formed the basis for the Geologic Column, which is used to date rocks and also fossils found within the rocks.
The evolutionary, 'fossil record' was based on the vast ages and assumed geological eras of the Geologic Column.
A sort of circular reasoning was applied with the assumed age of 'index' fossils (based on the preconceived idea of evolutionary progression) used to date strata in the Geologic Column.
Although these assumptions may have seemed logical at the time, we now know they are not supported by the evidence.
The mechanics of stratification had not been properly studied.
An additional and unfortunate factor was that the assumed superposition and uniformitarian model became essential, with the general acceptance of Darwinism, for the vast (multi-million-year) ages required for progressive, microbes-to-human evolution.
Thus, because the presumed, fossil record had become dependant on it, there was no incentive to question or challenge the superposition, uniformitarian model, especially as any change in the status quo would present devastating implications for Darwinism.
Unfortunately, the effect of linking the study of geology so closely to Darwinist ideology effectively stymied any study which didn’t treat the presumed, evolutionary, fossil record as though it was an irrefutable factor. The linking of geology/stratification with Darwinism is known as biostratigraphy.
There is now a wealth of evidence which refutes the old assumptions regarding strata formation. Some recent, field evidence can be observed here: www.flickr.com/photos/101536517@N06/sets/72157635944904973/
and also in the links to stunning, experimental evidence, carried out by sedimentologists, given later.
_______________________________________________
GEOLOGIC PRINCIPLES (established by Nicholas Steno in the 17th Century):
What Nicolas Steno believed about strata formation is the basis of the principle of Superposition and the principle of Original Horizontality.
dictionary.sensagent.com/Law_of_superposition/en-en/
“Assuming that all rocks and minerals had once been fluid, Nicolas Steno reasoned that rock strata were formed when particles in a fluid such as water fell to the bottom. This process would leave horizontal layers. Thus Steno's principle of original horizontality states that rock layers form in the horizontal position, and any deviations from this horizontal position are due to the rocks being disturbed later.”)
BEDDING PLANES.
'Bedding plane' describes the surface in between each stratum which are formed during sediment deposition.
science.jrank.org/pages/6533/Strata.html
“Strata form during sediment deposition, that is, the laying down of sediment. Meanwhile, if a change in current speed or sediment grain size occurs or perhaps the sediment supply is cut off, a bedding plane forms. Bedding planes are surfaces that separate one stratum from another. Bedding planes can also form when the upper part of a sediment layer is eroded away before the next episode of deposition. Strata separated by a bedding plane may have different grain sizes, grain compositions, or colours. Sometimes these other traits are better indicators of stratification as bedding planes may be very subtle.”
______________________________________________
Several catastrophic events, flash floods, volcanic eruptions etc. have forced Darwinian influenced geologists to admit to rapid stratification in some instances. However, they claim it is an occasional, or very rare phenomenon, which they have known about for many years, and which does not invalidate the Geologic Column, the fossil record, evotuionary timescale, or any of the old assumptions regarding strata formation, sedimentation and the superposition principle. They fail to face up to the fact that rapid stratification is not an extraordinary phenonemon, but rather the prevailing mechanism of sedimentary deposition occurring whenever and wherever there is moving, sediment-laden water.
Experimental evidence demonstrates the mechanism and a wealth of field evidence in normal (non-catastrophic) conditions shows it is a normal, everyday occurrence.
It is clear from experimental evidence that strata are not usually formed by horizontal layers being laid on top of each other in succession, as was assumed, but by sediment being sorted in moving/flowing water and laid down diagonally in the direction of flow. See diagram.
Rapid strata formation at Mount St Helens.
slideplayer.com/slide/5703217/18/images/28/Rapid+Strata+F...
In the diagram (Y) which is the normal, everyday mechanism for strata formation (discovered by experiments), we can see that a fossil (A) in the top strata is actually older than a fossil (B) in the middle strata. And both fossils (A) & (B) are older than the fossil (C) in the bottom strata.
Put simply, when a stratified, sedimentary deposit is laid down in flowing water, all the strata upstream is deposited before all the strata downstream. This means all strata upstream is always older than all strata downstream.
So strata at the top can actually be older than strata at the bottom of a rock formation. Which strata is older in sedimentary rock can only be determined if we know the direction of the water current at the time the sedimentary deposit was laid down.
This completely overturns the idea that fossils found in lower strata must always be older than those in upper strata. it completely debunks the idea of index fossils (biostratigraphy) and of a fossil record based on depth of burial or geological/ecological eras.
Examples:
www.flickr.com/photos/truth-in-science/45113754412
www.flickr.com/photos/truth-in-science/29224301937
www.flickr.com/photos/truth-in-science/40393875072
www.flickr.com/photos/truth-in-science/44552032162
Field evidence of rapid, simultaneous stratification refutes the Superposition Principle and the Principle of Lateral Continuity.
We now know, the Superposition Principle only applies on a rare occasion of sedimentary deposition in perfectly, still water. Superposition is required for the long evolutionary timescale, but the evidence shows it is not the general rule, as was once believed. Most sediment is laid down in moving water, where particle segregation is the general rule, resulting in the simultaneous deposition of strata/layers as shown in these photos ...
Rapid stratification with geological features: www.flickr.com/photos/101536517@N06/sets/72157635944904973/
Rapid, simultaneous formation of layers/strata, through particle segregation in moving water, is so easily created it has even been described by sedimentologists (working on flume experiments) as a law ...
"Upon filling the tank with water and pouring in sediments, we immediately saw what was to become the rule: The sediments sorted themselves out in very clear layers. This became so common that by the end of two weeks, we jokingly referred to Andrew's law as "It's difficult not to make layers," and Clark's law as "It's easy to make layers." Later on, I proposed the "law" that liquefaction destroys layers, as much to my surprise as that was." Ian Juby, www.ianjuby.org/sedimentation/
Examples in the photos www.flickr.com/photos/101536517@N06/sets/72157635944904973/
are the result of normal, everyday tidal action each occurring in a single incident. Where the water current or movement is more turbulent, violent, or catastrophic, considerable depths (many metres) of stratified sediment can be laid down in a short time. It does not require the many millions of years assumed to be necessary by evolutionists.
It is also evident that the composition of individual stratum formed in any deposition event. is related to whatever materials are in the sediment mix, not to any particular timescale. Whatever is in the mix will be automatically sorted into strata/layers. It could be sand, or other material added from mud slides, erosion of chalk deposits, coastal erosion, volcanic ash etc. Any organic material (potential fossils), alive or dead, engulfed by, or swept into, a turbulent sediment mix will also be sorted and buried within the rapidly, forming layers.
Experiments demonstrate the rapid, stratification principle.
and field evidence supports the work of the eminent, sedimentologist Dr Guy Berthault MIAS - Member of the International Association of Sedimentologists.
(Dr Berthault's experiments (www.sedimentology.fr/)
And also the experimental work of Dr M.E. Clark (Professor Emeritus, U of Illinois @ Urbana), Andrew Rodenbeck and Dr. Henry Voss, (www.ianjuby.org/sedimentation/)
Rapid strata formation videos:
A wealth of field evidence demonstrates that multiple strata in sedimentary deposits do not need millions of years to form and can be formed rapidly. The natural examples observed in field studies confirm the principle demonstrated by sedimentation experiments carried out by Dr Guy Berthault and other sedimentologists. It calls into question the widely accepted, multi-million year dating of sedimentary rocks, and the dating of fossils by depth of burial or position in the strata.
Dr Berthault's experiments (www.sedimentology.fr/) and other experiments (www.ianjuby.org/sedimentation/) combined with field studies of floods and volcanic action show that, rather than being formed by gradual, slow deposition of sucessive layers superimposed upon previous layers, with the strata or layers representing a particular timescale, particle segregation in moving water or airborne particles can form strata or layers very quickly, and frequently in a single event.
Most importantly, in such cases, lower strata are not older than upper strata, they are the same age, having been created in the same sedimentary episode.
Field studies of natural, stratification processes confirm the experiments carried out by sedimentologists and show that there is no longer any reason to conclude that strata/layers in sedimentary rocks relate to different geological eras and/or a multi-million year timescale. www.youtube.com/watch?v=5PVnBaqqQw8&feature=share&.... they also show that the relative position of fossils in rocks is not indicative of an order of evolutionary succession.
Obviously, the uniformitarian principle, on which the geologic column is based, can no longer be considered valid. And the multi-million, year dating of sedimentary rocks and fossils certainly needs to be reassessed.
The observed, rapid deposition of stratified sediments also explains the enigma of polystrate fossils, i.e. large fossils that intersect several strata. In some cases, tree trunk fossils are found which intersect the strata of sedimentary rock up to forty feet in depth. upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/0/08/Lycopsi... They must have been buried in stratified sediment in a short time (certainly not millions, thousands, or even hundreds of years), or they would have rotted away. youtu.be/vnzHU9VsliQ
The vast majority of fossils are found in good, intact condition, which is testament to their rapid burial. You don't get good fossils from gradual burial, because they would be damaged or destroyed by decay, predation or erosion. The existence of so many fossils in sedimentary rock on a global scale is stunning evidence for the rapid depostion of sedimentary rock as the general rule. It is obvious that virtually all rock formations which contain good, intact fossils were formed from sediment laid down in a very short time, not millions, or even thousands of years.
See set of photos of other examples of rapid stratification: www.flickr.com/photos/101536517@N06/sets/72157635944904973/
Carbon dating of coal should not be possible if it is millions of years old, yet significant amounts of Carbon 14 have been detected in coal and other fossil material, which indicates that it is less than 50,000 years old. www.ldolphin.org/sewell/c14dating.html
www.grisda.org/origins/51006.htm
Evolutionists confidently cite multi-million year ages for rocks and fossils, but what most people don't realise is that no one actually knows the age of sedimentary rocks or the fossils found within them. So how are evolutionists so sure of the ages they so confidently quote? The astonishing thing is they aren't. Sedimentary rocks cannot be dated by radiometric methods*, and fossils can only be dated to less than 50,000 years with Carbon 14 dating. The method evolutionists use is based entirely on assumptions. Unbelievably, fossils are dated by the assumed age of rocks, and rocks are dated by the assumed age of fossils, that's right ... it is known as circular reasoning.
* Regarding the radiometric dating of igneous rocks, which is claimed to be relevant to the dating of sedimentary rocks, in an occasional instance there is an igneous intrusion associated with a sedimentary deposit -
Prof. Aubouin says in his Précis de Géologie: "Each radioactive element disintegrates in a characteristic and constant manner, which depends neither on the physical state (no variation with pressure or temperature or any other external constraint) nor on the chemical state (identical for an oxide or a phosphate)."
"Rocks form when magma crystallizes. Crystallisation depends on pressure and temperature, from which radioactivity is independent. So, there is no relationship between radioactivity and crystallisation.
Consequently, radioactivity doesn't date the formation of rocks. Moreover, daughter elements contained in rocks result mainly from radioactivity in magma where gravity separates the heavier parent element, from the lighter daughter element. Thus radiometric dating has no chronological signification." Dr. Guy Berthault www.sciencevsevolution.org/Berthault.htm
Radiometric dating based on unverifiable assumptions.
scienceagainstevolution.info/v8i8f.htm
Geology the dreadful science. Principle of Superposition falsified.
malagabay.wordpress.com/2013/07/08/geology-the-dreadful-s...
More about strata formation.
creation.com/geological-strata
Rapid stratification
evidenceoverignorance.wordpress.com/rapid-stratification-2/
Visit the fossil museum:
www.flickr.com/photos/101536517@N06/sets/72157641367196613/
Just how good are peer reviews of scientific papers?
www.sciencemag.org/content/342/6154/60.full
www.examiner.com/article/want-to-publish-science-paper-ju...
The neo-Darwinian idea that the human genome consists entirely of an accumulation of billions of mutations is, quite obviously, completely bonkers. Nevertheless, it is compulsorily taught in schools and universities as 'science'.
My build list is lengthy and downright insane, but surprisingly logical when you look at it. I want to start representing the Nickel Plate Road with preserved examples of locomotives and rolling stock that serve as "touchtstones" for connecting with the past of a wider system. One car was the 1937 AAR steel boxcar, with its 10ft interior. Work on this car kicked off for Boxcar-O-Rama 2024, when I was tasked with making a car for Brandon Burt. I had come off the heels of building Cale's revised PS-1, and used that as a jumping off point to work backwards through the evolutionary chain of the 40ft steel boxcars of the Nickel Plate Road. NKP 15797 and 15979 are preserved as a pair at the Hoosier Valley Railroad Museum, and I thought it would be a bit of fun to build the pair and give one away, but keep them together for the Nickel Plate Road Historical & Technical Society's convention. As of writing, 15979 was mailed away and Pere Marquette 72332 built by Matthew O'Brien. Looking forward to the day the pair can be reunited.
In the Middle Ages, Linlithgow rose to prominence as a royal town and residence, centred on Linlithgow Palace, a residence of the Scottish kings on the raised hill beside the loch, as it was a logical stopover between Edinburgh to the east and Stirling to the west.
In later centuries, Linlithgow became a centre of leather and other material manufacturing before developing rapidly in the Victorian era with the opening of the Union Canal in the 1820s and the arrival of the railway in 1842.
Today Linlithgow is a bustling town with a population of around 13,000.
The fountain dates back to the mid-16th century, but the current structure was built in 1807 by Robert Gray, a one-armed stonemason from Edinburgh. Robert built a replica of an earlier structure from 1628. The fountain is carved in the shape of a crown and has recently been refurbished.
Like the comics, Superman dies a sacrificial death defeating Doomsday; he falls in a crucifix pose, and some of the surrounding wreckage is shaped like crosses. Lois Lane holds Superman’s body in a Pietà-like pose.
I figured out way back if God is all-powerful, He cannot be all-good. And if He is all-good, then He cannot be all- powerful.” Luthor tells Superman that people “need to see the fraud you are with their eyes” and Luthor gloats that “now God bends to my will.
These scenes do not have much depth, but again, the film compares Superman to God. Batman and Superman fight,
Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice is one of 2016's most anticipated movies. The Zack Snyder flick pitting the Dark Knight (played by Ben Affleck) against the Man of Steel (Henry Cavill) will likely be a box office blockbuster of epic proportions.
DC Comics and Marvel Studios are at the helm of this resurgence in superhero movies. DC's Batman came in the form of the Christopher Nolan/Christian Bale trilogy and its newest Superman reincarnation in the Zack Snyder/Henry Cavill partnership. Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice features both (with a different Batman); and though there is much to derive from the Caped Crusader's anthology, Superman's storyline is the superhero tale rich with faith connections and parallels.
To fully understand the impact and faith correlations, you've got to back in time...back to 1978.
Superman pauses in mid-flight. He gazes down at Earth, our home. A smile flashes across his face. We are safe. He's watching over us. That's the last image we see in Superman: The Movie, starring Christopher Reeve.
For Stephen Skelton, that image stuck with him when he first saw the movie as a kid. From that day on, Superman became a heroic inspiration. As an adult, he became a source of spiritual connections. Skelton even wrote a book, The Gospel According to the World’s Greatest Superhero, to share what he found in his research -- that the stories of Superman and Jesus are connected.
SUPERMAN AND JESUS
“Superman’s story goes something like this… From above, a heavenly father sends his only son to save the Earth. When he comes down to Earth, he’ll be raised by two parents who originally had the names Mary and Joseph – now this is the Superman story we are talking about,” Skelton says.
When Superman comes of age, he travels to the arctic wilderness to commune with his father’s spirit, which mirrors Christ’s journey into the desert.
“At age 30, Superman will embark on his public mission – this is the same age as Christ,” he explains. “And then Superman will, in his mission as ministry, fight for truth and justice, two fundamental, biblical principles to base a mission on.”
He comes back to life after being killed in the last comic book published in 1992 called The Death of Superman. Then, Superman comes back to Earth – this is where the storyline in 2006's Superman Returns picks up.
“Within the specifics of that story, I know of no other story that mirrors it so closely than the Christ story,” Skelton says.
SUPERMAN'S ORIGIN AND LINKS TO THE BIBLE
The original 1930s Superman comic strip, created by Jerry Siegel and Joel Shuster in the 1930s, wasn’t supposed to reflect the Gospel story. The two Jewish teenagers simply stumbled onto the symbolic plot when they were creating an adventurous tale about an out-of-this-world superhero.
Siegel and Shuster drew from biblical heroes, such as Samson, who was the strongest man in the Bible, and Moses, who helped free God's people from slavery. The familiar storyline just happened to be one they used because it sounded like the most logical way to layout the story of a great hero.
Superman's origin came out of the loss of Jerry’s father, who was fatally shot by a robber, at a time when America was battling with the Great Depression and the world was just about to begin its fight with Hitler.
“They were looking for a savior figure they could relate to, they could envision, something to give them hope, inspire them,” Skelton says.
SUPERMAN'S PARALLELS TO JESUS
X-Men director Bryan Singer brought Superman back to the big screen with his movie, Superman Returns. Although the correlation to Jesus’ story could have easily been left out, filmmakers have kept its strong ties to the Bible. Singer, who is not a Christian, also determined not to overlook it in Superman Returns.
www.cbn.com/entertainment/screen/superman-gospel-story.aspx
Skelton says, “When asked what [the movie] was about, [the director] said, ‘Superman Returns is about what happens when messiahs come back.”
Besides the parallels between the two plots, strong symbolism abounds in the adventures of Superman that point directly to God. Skelton’s book specifically discusses the meaning found within Superman’s costume. One particular symbol that is interesting to Skelton is the triangular shield, which holds Superman’s S-shaped family crest.
Historically, a triangle is the symbol for the Trinity, the Father, Son, and the Holy Spirit. The triangle used on Superman’s costume points down signifying God’s relationship with man and the gift of His only Son to mankind.
EXPLAINING SUPERMAN'S POPULARITY
Other superheroes have come onto the scene through the years; Batman, Spiderman, Thor, Iron Man, and Wonder Woman are just a few. So, why has Superman maintained worldwide prominence for more than 75 years while others have not?
According to Skelton, people are intrigued by Superman simply because of his close resemblance to Christ.
“Even apart from the special powers, the character of Superman is something that mirrors the character of Christ,” Skelton says. “Superman actually illustrates the beatitudes in the same way that Christ would….”
After watching Superman Returns back in 2006, Skelton talked with a non-Christian friend about the movie.
“He said, ‘I can’t stop thinking about it. Do you know that movie spoke more to me about Jesus than The Passion of the Christ?’” Skelton explains. “And the reason that was is because The Passion of the Christ was a very straightforward presentation. It was obviously about Jesus Christ, and so it was easily dismissed by a non-believer.”
What Skelton gleaned from that conversation was the incredible power of film.
“It spoke to his heart before he realized what it was saying,” Skelton says. “It spoke to him about the one true Savior before he could reject that he needs a one true savior.”
“What Superman can remind us is that Christ is the universal savior, the savior that came not just to save one person or to save a city full of people, but in fact came to save everyone who ever lived who comes to him.”
. . . . . . .
Stay tuned for CBN.com's review of Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice, starring Ben Affleck and Henry Cavill. The Warner Bros. picture is rated PG-13 and releases in theaters nationwide on Friday, March 25, 2016.
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Man of Steel: Movie Review
If I find in myself desires which nothing in this world can satisfy, the only logical explanation is that I was made for another world. | CS Lewis
It hadn’t taken long to finish packing my belongings. Sad really, all I had existed with over the last eight or so weeks could easily fit into two plastic carrier bags. Time to leave my home from home. I had mixed feelings about it all. I had become so ingratiated into ward life that it had become a routine to me now. Everything had been predictable, stable and this was something I had been looking for in all the chaos that had followed July last year.
It was time for me to go home however. It was a choice that I had made and stuck by it. I had started out on this journey with a fighting spirit. Overtime it had slowly ebbed away, now it felt like I was fighting a battle on two fronts; one against the cancer and one to willingly give in to it. I had sat in the darkness of the night over the last thirty six hours contemplating a direction, to come to an understanding that went beyond the immediate future.
Life has no meaning the moment you lose the illusion of being eternal | Sartre
I had said my goodbyes to all the staff on the ward, this had been quite an emotional time. All that was left was for me to do was flick off the room light and go and wait for the arriving taxi.
There was knock on the door and Thomas peered in.
“Ahh good, I was hoping to see you a final time before you disappeared Jack”. He walked over and sat down bringing his hands up to chin, as if his outstretched fingers were supporting his head.
“Ann mentioned yesterday evening that you have decided to go home. I was expecting to have missed you however here we are…” his voice trailed off.
I picked up my Tesco bags and weakly smiled at Thomas. I didn’t want to be unkind or rude to him, I was hoping he would pick up on the subtle hint that it was time for me to go. He duly stood up and walked over to the door, holding it ajar.
“It wasn’t a hastily made choice Thomas. I have been considering my options for some weeks now, each time I would never come to the same conclusion. It has only been these last few nights that there has been some consistency in my considerations” I said.
He held the door open for me as I made my way out for the last time.
“What will you do now?” Thomas asked.
I stopped in my tracks while I thought about his question. Turning slowly back to him standing in the doorway.
“First thing is buy myself a packet of Marlboro Red if they still make them. Then I guess a shitload of Westons cider”. I smiled at him, nodding.
I continued my way out and down to the taxi rank waving at Christine and Kerry at the nurses station.
…we are having a hard time living because we are so bent on outwitting death | Simone De Beauvoir
The automatic doors slid silently aside, I was outside finally. I pulled my face mask aside and took a deep breath of the evening air. As I was taking in the moment the car door on the Model S parked next to where I was standing opened. The drivers side door opened.
That was my cue, I gently climbed into the passenger seat and closed the door. The interior of the car felt like being in a spaceship. All the dashboard appeared to be virtual. If I had been asked to get this thing to move I would have no idea. I was straining to see over to the drivers side, to find something familiar.
“Where to?” the driver asked not looking at me.
“Off licence” I replied.
“Which one?”
“Any that sells cigarettes and cider”
“You live here so you should fucking well know or do you want me to put in the sat-nav ‘place that sells fags and booze’ and see what it comes up with?”
I smiled shaking my head slightly from side to side. Hospital transport it seems had gone up in the world, I suspected not many patients were collected in a Tesla. Most impressive really, but Christ, the driver did need to work on their charm.
“A mystery tour, how exciting” I said.
The car pulled away silently and we headed into the night, the headlights carving a path through the darkness of the hospital grounds. Driver nor I said a word until we arrived at Ashraf’s off licence. I hadn’t seen him for over eight months. I did wonder if he would remember me let alone recognise me.
“This place will do” I said as we pulled up.
I was half out of the car when she said “after all these years, you’re still running. Nothing has fucking changed has it?”. I was sensing the usual hostility.
I leaned into the car. I could see in the passing headlights a tear below her eye.
This is what I wanted to avoid, causing pain and anguish.
“I’ve made my choice Angel, it is for the best as far as I am concerned. Nice car by the way” I said closing the door.
I paused just outside Ashraf’s, staring at the deactivate button. I had to ask myself again. Probably for the hundredth time. To do this was to close the door on the last ten years of my life.
I slipped the phone back into my pocket and headed on into the off licence.
…excuse me, let me introduce the lady, her name is Beretta and she’s mother fucking crazy | RB
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