RC Controller, Futaba, TX 1024z radio transmitter; Pulse Code Modulation System--Image from the SDASM Curatorial Collection--Please tag these photos so information can be recorded.---Note: This material may be protected by Copyright Law (Title 17 U.S.C.)--Repository: San Diego Air and Space Museum

Rolex Learning Center - EPFL Lausanne

Designed by Roger Pfund

 

(MODULATION ENTRE HARMONIE ET MATHÉMATIQUE - 2010 Roger Pfund)

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Immaculate condition Leica IIIf (Red Dial) with optically very good USSR Industar 5cm f/3.5

 

This is a SOOC JPG with exception of adding metadata and cropping to 7:6 ratio.

 

Shot using my film recipe for Ilford HP5 Plus:

ISO: 640 (sometimes I'll do Auto 400-6400)

Dynamic Range: DR200

Film Sim: Monochrome + Y

White Balance: 3300K

White Balance Adjustment: R +5, B -3

Sharpness: -1

Highlight: +2

Shadow: +1

Noise Reduction: -2

Long Exposure Noise Reduction: ON

Color Space: Adobe RGB

Lens Modulation Optimizer: ON

The 2018 Ampera Faraday is an all-electric hot-hatch, and the Sport version is its turbocharged sibling, featuring a slightly larger battery pack and upgraded electric wheel motors for faster pickup. Sporting Ampera's patented GearShift performance modulation package, the Faraday can perform in an extremely economical fashion, or in a more sporty fashion; it also has several vehicle emulation modes including performance, muscle, and comfort.

 

©2014 Christopher Elliott, All Rights Reserved

I saw this MOC of a Lego Moog first on the Music Radar website and was so impressed by it, that I planned to build my own. But after studying all the photos I found in the internet I soon recognised that I wouldn’t manage to build it with the full functionality (working keyboard, pitch- and modulation wheels and controller knobs) like the one built by the Arvo brothers. So, my mod is simply a display piece.

 

You can find the original of the Arvo brothers here:

arvobrothers.com/2017/09/04/minimoog/

Visiting Alford Museum I was delighted to find this genuine Dalek from the BBC Television Show "Dr Who", it was displayed among other materials from the 70s etc, hence a quick video to archive the scene.

 

I've followed the Dr Who series from my school days ( a long time ago) hence absolute joy to view this item.

 

The Daleks - (DAH-leks) are a fictional extraterrestrial race of mutants principally portrayed in the British science fiction television programme Doctor Who. The Daleks were conceived by science-fiction writer Terry Nation and first appeared in the 1963 Doctor Who serial The Daleks, in the shells designed by Raymond Cusick.

 

Drawing inspirations from the real-life example of the Nazis, the Daleks are merciless and pitiless cyborg aliens, demanding total conformity, bent on conquest of the universe and the extermination of what they see as inferior races.

 

Their catchphrase, "Exterminate!", is a well-recognised reference in British popular culture.

 

Within the programme's narrative, the Daleks were engineered by the scientist Davros during the final years of a thousand-year war between his people, the Kaleds, and their enemies the Thals.

 

With some Kaleds already badly mutated and damaged by nuclear war, Davros genetically modified the Kaleds and integrated them with a tank-like, robotic shell, removing their every emotion apart from hate. His creations soon came to view themselves as the supreme race in the universe, intent on purging the universe of all non-Dalek life. Collectively they are the greatest enemies of Doctor Who's protagonist, the Time Lord known as The Doctor.

 

Later in the programme's run, the Daleks acquired time travel technology and engaged the Time Lords in a brutal Time War affecting most of the universe, with battles taking place across all of history.

 

They are among the show's most popular villains and their various returns to the series over the years have typically been widely reported in the television press.

 

Creation

 

The Daleks were created by writer Terry Nation and designed by BBC designer Raymond Cusick.

 

They were introduced in December 1963 in the second Doctor Who serial, colloquially known as The Daleks.

 

They became an immediate and huge hit with viewers, featuring in many subsequent serials and two 1960s motion pictures.

 

They have become as synonymous with Doctor Who as the Doctor himself, and their behaviour and catchphrases are now part of British popular culture. "Hiding behind the sofa whenever the Daleks appear" has been cited as an element of British cultural identity;and a 2008 survey indicated that nine out of ten British children were able to identify a Dalek correctly.

 

In 1999 a Dalek photographed by Lord Snowdon appeared on a postage stamp celebrating British popular culture.

 

In 2010, readers of science-fiction magazine SFX voted the Dalek as the all-time greatest monster, beating competition including Japanese movie monster Godzilla and J. R. R. Tolkien's Gollum, of The Lord of the Rings.

 

Entry into popular culture

 

As early as one year after first appearing on Doctor Who, the Daleks had become popular enough to be recognized even by non-viewers. In December 1964 editorial cartoonist Leslie Gilbert Illingworth published a cartoon in the Daily Mail captioned "THE DEGAULLEK", caricaturing French President Charles de Gaulle arriving at a NATO meeting as a Dalek with de Gaulle's prominent nose.

 

The word "Dalek" has entered major dictionaries, including the Oxford English Dictionary, which defines "Dalek" as "a type of robot appearing in 'Dr. Who' [sic], a B.B.C. Television science-fiction programme; hence used allusively."

 

But English-speakers sometimes use the term metaphorically to describe people, usually authority figures, who act like robots unable to break from their programming. For example, John Birt, the Director-General of the BBC from 1992 to 2000, was publicly called a "croak-voiced Dalek" by playwright Dennis Potter in the MacTaggart Lecture at the 1993 Edinburgh Television Festival.

 

Physical characteristics

 

Externally, Daleks resemble human-sized pepper pots with a single mechanical eyestalk mounted on a rotating dome, a gun mount containing an energy weapon ("gunstick" or "death ray") resembling an egg whisk, and a telescopic manipulator arm usually tipped by an appendage resembling a sink plunger. Daleks have been known to use their plungers to interface with technology, crush a man's skull by suction,[measure the intelligence of a subject, and extract information from a man's mind.[

 

Dalek casings are made of a bonded polycarbide material dubbed "dalekanium" by a member of the human resistance in The Dalek Invasion of Earth and by the Cult of Skaro in "Daleks in Manhattan".

 

The lower half of a Dalek's shell is covered with hemispherical protrusions, or "Dalek bumps", which are shown in the episode "Dalek" to be spheres embedded in the casing.[11] Both the BBC-licensed Dalek Book (1964) and The Doctor Who Technical Manual (1983) describe these items as being part of a sensory array,[ whilst in the 2005 series episode "Dalek", they are integral to a Dalek's self-destruct mechanism.

 

Their armour has a forcefield that evaporates most bullets and resists most types of energy weapons. The forcefield seems to be concentrated around the Dalek's midsection (where the mutant is located), as normally ineffective firepower can be concentrated on the eyestalk to blind a Dalek. Daleks have a very limited visual field, with no peripheral sight at all, and are relatively easy to hide from in fairly exposed places. Their own energy weapons are capable of destroying them.

 

Their weapons fire a beam that has electrical tendencies, is capable of propagating through water, and may be a form of plasma or electrolaser.

 

The eyepiece is a Dalek's most vulnerable spot; impairing its vision often leads to a blind, panicked firing of its weapon while exclaiming "My vision is impaired; I cannot see!" Russell T Davies subverted the catchphrase in his 2008 episode "The Stolen Earth", in which a Dalek vaporises a paintball that has blocked its vision while proclaiming "My vision is not impaired!"

 

Kaled mutants are octopus-like; many are coloured green, such as this one from "Resurrection of the Daleks".

 

The creature inside the mechanical casing is soft and repulsive in appearance and vicious in temperament. The first-ever glimpse of a Dalek mutant, in The Daleks, was a claw peeking out from under a Thal cloak after it had been removed from its casing.

 

The mutants' actual appearance has varied, but often adheres to the Doctor's description of the species in Remembrance of the Daleks as "little green blobs in bonded polycarbide armour".

 

In Resurrection of the Daleks a Dalek creature, separated from its casing, attacks and severely injures a human soldier; in Remembrance of the Daleks, there are two Dalek factions (Imperial and Renegade) and the creatures inside have a different appearance in each case, one resembling the amorphous creature from Resurrection, the other the crab-like creature from the original Dalek serial.

 

As the creature inside is rarely seen on screen, a common misconception exists that Daleks are wholly mechanical robots.

 

In the new series Daleks are retconned to be mollusc-like in appearance, with small tentacles, one or two eyes, and an exposed brain.

 

Daleks' voices are electronic; when out of its casing the mutant is only able to squeak. Once the mutant is removed, the casing itself can be entered and operated by humanoids; for example, in The Daleks, Ian Chesterton (William Russell) enters a Dalek shell to masquerade as a guard as part of an escape plan.

 

In a dark basement, a white Dalek (see previous description) appears to levitate up a small staircase of approximately seven stairs. The body of the Dalek is white, with shiny gold vertical slats and gold balls on its lower half. There is an orange-yellow glow at the Dalek's base.

 

For many years it was assumed that, due to their design and gliding motion, Daleks were unable to climb stairs, and that this was a simple way of escaping them. A well-known cartoon from Punch pictured a group of Daleks at the foot of a flight of stairs with the caption, "Well, this certainly buggers our plan to conquer the Universe".

 

In a scene from the serial Destiny of the Daleks, the Doctor and companions escape from Dalek pursuers by climbing into a ceiling duct. The Fourth Doctor calls down, "If you're supposed to be the superior race of the universe, why don't you try climbing after us?"

 

The Daleks generally make up for their lack of mobility with overwhelming firepower; a joke among Doctor Who fans goes, "Real Daleks don't climb stairs; they level the building."

 

Dalek mobility has improved over the history of the series: in their first appearance, The Daleks, they were capable of movement only on the conductive metal floors of their city; in The Dalek Invasion of Earth a Dalek emerges from the waters of the River Thames, indicating that they not only had become freely mobile, but are amphibious;Planet of the Daleks showed that they could ascend a vertical shaft by means of an external anti-gravity mat placed on the floor; Revelation of the Daleks showed Davros in his life-support chair and one of his Daleks hovering and Remembrance of the Daleks depicted them as capable of hovering up a flight of stairs.

 

Despite this, journalists covering the series frequently refer to the Daleks' supposed inability to climb stairs; characters escaping up a flight of stairs in the 2005 episode "Dalek" made the same joke, and were shocked when the Dalek began to hover up the stairs after uttering the phrase "ELEVATE", in a similar manner to their normal phrase "EXTERMINATE".

 

The new series depicts the Daleks as fully capable of flight, even space flight.

 

Prop details

 

The non-humanoid shape of the Dalek did much to enhance the creatures' sense of menace[citation needed]. A lack of familiar reference points differentiated them from the traditional "bug-eyed monster" of science fiction, which Doctor Who creator Sydney Newman had wanted the show to avoid.

 

The unsettling Dalek form, coupled with their alien voices, made many believe that the props were wholly mechanical and operated by remote control.

 

The Daleks were actually controlled from inside by short operators who had to manipulate their eyestalks, domes, and arms, as well as flashing the lights on their heads in sync with the actors supplying their voices. The Dalek cases were built in two pieces; an operator would step into the lower section, and then the top would be secured. The operators looked out between the cylindrical louvres just beneath the dome, which were lined with mesh to conceal their faces.

 

In addition to being hot and cramped the Dalek casings also muffled external sounds, making it difficult for operators to hear the director's commands or studio dialogue. John Scott Martin, a Dalek operator from the original series, said that Dalek operation was a challenge: "You had to have about six hands: one to do the eyestalk, one to do the lights, one for the gun, another for the smoke canister underneath, yet another for the sink plunger. If you were related to an octopus then it helped."

 

For Doctor Who's 21st-century revival the Dalek casings retain the same overall shape and dimensional proportions of previous Daleks, although many details have been re-designed to give the Dalek a heavier and more solid look.

 

Changes include a larger, more pointed base; a glowing eyepiece; an all-over metallic-brass finish (specified by Davies); thicker, nailed strips on the "neck" section; a housing for the eyestalk pivot; and significantly larger dome lights.

 

The new prop made its on-screen debut in the 2005 episode "Dalek". These Dalek casings use a short operator inside the housing while the 'head' and eyestalk are operated via remote control. A third person, Nicholas Briggs, supplies the voice in their various appearances.

 

In the 2010 season a new, larger model appeared in several colours representing different parts of the Dalek command hierarchy.

 

Movement

 

Terry Nation's original plan was for the Daleks to glide across the floor. Early versions of the Daleks rolled on nylon castors, propelled by the operator's feet. Although castors were adequate for the Daleks' debut serial, which was shot entirely at the BBC's Lime Grove Studios, for The Dalek Invasion of Earth Terry Nation wanted the Daleks to be filmed on the streets of London. To enable the Daleks to travel smoothly on location, designer Spencer Chapman built the new Dalek shells around miniature tricycles with sturdier wheels, which were hidden by enlarged fenders fitted below the original base.

 

The uneven flagstones of Central London caused the Daleks to rattle as they moved and it was not possible to remove this noise from the final soundtrack. A small parabolic dish was added to the rear of the prop's casing to explain why these Daleks, unlike the ones in their first serial, were not dependent on static electricity drawn up from the floors of the Dalek city for their motive power.

 

Later versions of the prop had more efficient wheels and were once again simply propelled by the seated operators' feet, but they remained so heavy that when going up ramps they often had to be pushed by stagehands out of camera shot. The difficulty of operating all the prop's parts at once contributed to the occasionally jerky Dalek movements.

 

This problem has largely been eradicated with the advent of the "new series" version, as its remotely controlled dome and eyestalk allow the operator to concentrate on the smooth movement of the Dalek and its arms.

 

Voices

 

The staccato delivery, harsh tone, and rising inflection of the Dalek voice were initially developed by voice actors Peter Hawkins and David Graham, who would vary the pitch and speed of the lines according to the emotion needed. Their voices were further processed electronically by Brian Hodgson at the BBC Radiophonic Workshop.

 

Although the exact sound-processing devices used have varied, the original 1963 effect used equalisation to boost the mid-range of the actor's voice, then subjected it to ring modulation with a 30 Hz sine wave. The distinctive harsh grating vocal timbre this produced has remained the pattern for all Dalek voices since (with the exception of those in the 1985 serial Revelation of the Daleks, for which director Graeme Harper deliberately used less distortion).

 

Besides Hawkins and Graham, notable voice actors for the Daleks have included Roy Skelton, who first voiced the Daleks in the 1967 story The Evil of the Daleks and went on to provide voices for five additional Dalek serials including Planet of the Daleks, and for the one-off anniversary special The Five Doctors. Michael Wisher, the actor who originated the role of Dalek creator Davros in Genesis of the Daleks, provided Dalek voices for that same story, as well as for Frontier in Space, Planet of the Daleks, and Death to the Daleks. Other Dalek voice actors include Royce Mills (three stories),Brian Miller (two stories), and Oliver Gilbert and Peter Messaline (one story).

 

John Leeson, who performed the voice of K9 in several Doctor Who stories, and Davros actors Terry Molloy and David Gooderson also contributed supporting voices for various Dalek serials.

 

Since 2005, the Dalek voice in the television series has been provided by Nicholas Briggs, speaking into a microphone connected to a voice modulator.

 

Briggs had previously provided Dalek and other alien voices for Big Finish Productions audio plays, and continues to do so. In a 2006 BBC Radio interview, Briggs said that when the BBC asked him to do the voice for the new television series, they instructed him to bring his own analogue ring modulator that he had used in the audio plays. The BBC's sound department had changed to a digital platform and could not adequately create the distinctive Dalek sound with their modern equipment. Briggs went as far as to bring the voice modulator to the actors' readings of the scripts.

 

Construction

 

Manufacturing the props was expensive. In scenes where many Daleks had to appear, some of them would be represented by wooden replicas (Destiny of the Daleks) or life-size photographic enlargements in the early black-and-white episodes (The Daleks, The Dalek Invasion of Earth, and The Power of the Daleks).

 

In stories involving armies of Daleks, the BBC effects team even turned to using commercially available toy Daleks, manufactured by Louis Marx & Co and Herts Plastic Moulders Ltd. Examples of this can be observed in the serials The Power of the Daleks, The Evil of the Daleks, and Planet of the Daleks.[48] Judicious editing techniques also gave the impression that there were more Daleks than were actually available, such as using a split screen in "The Parting of the Ways".

 

Four fully functioning props were commissioned for the first serial "The Daleks" in 1963, and were constructed from BBC plans by Shawcraft Engineering.

 

These became known in fan circles as "Mk I Daleks". Shawcraft were also commissioned to construct approximately 20 Daleks for the two Dalek movies in 1965 and 1966 (see below). Some of these movie props filtered back to the BBC and were seen in the televised serials, notably The Chase, which was aired before the first movie's debut. The remaining props not bought by the BBC were either donated to charity or given away as prizes in competitions.

 

The BBC's own Dalek props were reused many times, with components of the original Shawcraft "Mk I Daleks" surviving right through to their final classic series appearance in 1988.

But years of storage and repainting took their toll. By the time of the Sixth Doctor's Revelation of the Daleks new props were being manufactured out of fibreglass.

 

These models were lighter and more affordable to construct than their predecessors. These newer models were slightly bulkier in appearance around the mid-shoulder section, and also had a redesigned skirt section which was more vertical at the back. Other minor changes were made to the design due to these new construction methods, including altering the fender and incorporating the arm boxes, collars, and slats into a single fibreglass moulding.

 

These props were repainted in grey for the Seventh Doctor serial Remembrance of the Daleks and designated as "Renegade Daleks"; another redesign, painted in cream and gold, became the "Imperial Dalek" faction.

 

New Dalek props were built for the 21st century version of Doctor Who. The first, which appeared alone in the 2005 episode "Dalek", was built by modelmaker Mike Tucker.

Additional Dalek props based on Tucker's master were subsequently built out of fibreglass by Cardiff-based Specialist Models.

 

Development

 

Wishing to create an alien creature that did not look like a "man in a suit", Terry Nation stated in his script for the first Dalek serial that they should have no legs. He was also inspired by a performance by the Georgian National Ballet, in which dancers in long skirts appeared to glide across the stage.[56] For many of the shows, the Daleks were operated by retired ballet dancers wearing black socks while sitting inside the Dalek. Raymond Cusick (who died on 21 February 2013) was given the task of designing the Daleks when Ridley Scott, then a designer for the BBC, proved unavailable after having been initially assigned to their debut serial.

 

An account in Jeremy Bentham's Doctor Who—The Early Years (1986) says that after Nation wrote the script, Cusick was given only an hour to come up with the design for the Daleks, and was inspired in his initial sketches by a pepper shaker on a table. Cusick himself, however, states that he based it on a man seated in a chair, and only used the pepper shaker to demonstrate how it might move.

 

In 1964 Nation told a Daily Mirror reporter that the Dalek name came from a dictionary or encyclopaedia volume, the spine of which read "Dal – Lek" (or, according to another version, "Dal – Eks"). He later admitted that this book and the origin of the Dalek name was completely fictitious, and that anyone bothering to check out his story would have found him out.[61] The name had in reality simply rolled off his typewriter.

 

Later, Nation was pleasantly surprised to discover that in Serbo-Croatian the word "dalek" means "far", or "distant".

 

Nation grew up during World War II, and remembered the fear caused by German bombings. He consciously based the Daleks on the Nazis, conceiving the species as faceless, authoritarian figures dedicated to conquest and complete conformity. The allusion is most obvious in the Dalek stories penned by Nation, in particular The Dalek Invasion of Earth (1964) and Genesis of the Daleks (1975).

 

Prior to writing the first Dalek serial, Nation was chief scriptwriter for comedian Tony Hancock. The two had a falling out, and Nation either resigned or was fired.

 

When Hancock left the BBC, he worked on several series proposals, one of which was called From Plip to Plop, a comedic history of the world which would have ended with a nuclear apocalypse, the survivors being reduced to living in dustbin-like robot casings and eating radiation to stay alive. According to biographer Cliff Goodwin, when Hancock saw the Daleks, he allegedly shouted at the screen, "That bloody Nation—he's stolen my robots!"[69]

 

The naming of early Doctor Who stories is complex and sometimes controversial. The first Dalek serial is called, variously, The Survivors (the pre-production title), The Mutants (its official title at the time of production and broadcast, later taken by another unrelated story), Beyond the Sun (used on some production documentation), The Dead Planet (the on-screen title of the serial's first episode), or simply The Daleks.

 

The instant appeal of the Daleks caught the BBC off guard,and transformed Doctor Who from a Saturday tea-time children's educational programme to a must-watch national phenomenon. Children were alternately frightened and fascinated by the alien look of the monsters, and the Doctor Who production office was inundated by letters and calls asking about the creatures. Newspaper articles focused attention on the series and the Daleks, further enhancing their popularity.

 

Nation jointly owned the intellectual property rights to the Daleks with the BBC, and the money-making concept proved nearly impossible to sell to anyone else; he was dependent on the BBC wanting to produce stories featuring the creatures.

Several attempts to market the Daleks outside of the series were unsuccessful.Since Nation's death in 1997, his share of the rights is now administered by his former agent, Tim Hancock.

 

Early plans for what eventually became the 1996 Doctor Who television movie included radically redesigned Daleks whose cases unfolded like spiders' legs. The concept for these "Spider Daleks" was abandoned, but picked up again in several Doctor Who spin-offs.

 

When the new series was announced, many fans hoped the Daleks would return once more to the programme.

 

The Nation estate however demanded levels of creative control over the Daleks' appearances and scripts that were unacceptable to the BBC.[80] Eventually the Daleks were cleared to appear in the first series.

 

Fictional history

 

Main article: History of the Daleks

Dalek in-universe history has seen many retroactive changes, which have caused continuity problems. When the Daleks first appeared, they were presented as the descendants of the Dals, mutated after a brief nuclear war between the Dal and Thal races 500 years ago. This race of Daleks is destroyed when their power supply is wrecked.

 

However, when they reappear in The Dalek Invasion of Earth, they have conquered Earth in the 22nd century. Later stories saw them develop time travel and a space empire. In 1975, Terry Nation revised the Daleks' origins in Genesis of the Daleks, where the Dals were now called Kaleds (of which "Daleks" is an anagram), and the Dalek design was attributed to one man, the crippled Kaled chief scientist and evil genius, Davros.[84] Instead of a short nuclear exchange, the Kaled-Thal war was portrayed as a thousand-year-long war of attrition, fought with nuclear, biological and chemical weapons which caused widespread mutations among the Kaled race.

 

Davros experimented on living Kaled cells to find the ultimate mutated form of the Kaled species and placed the subjects in tank-like "travel machines" whose design was based on his own life-support chair.

 

Genesis of the Daleks marked a new era for the depiction of the species, with most of their previous history either forgotten or barely referred to again.Future stories in the original Doctor Who series, which followed a rough story arc,would also focus more on Davros, much to the dissatisfaction of some fans who felt that the Daleks should take centre stage rather than merely becoming minions of their creator.

 

Davros made his last televised appearance for 20 years in Remembrance of the Daleks, which depicted a civil war between two factions of Daleks. One faction, the "Imperial Daleks", were loyal to Davros, who had become their Emperor, whilst the other, the "Renegade Daleks", followed a black Supreme Dalek. By the end of the story, both factions have been wiped out and the Doctor has tricked them into destroying Skaro, though Davros escapes.

 

A single Dalek appeared in "Dalek", written by Robert Shearman, which was broadcast on BBC One on 30 April 2005. This Dalek appeared to be the sole Dalek survivor of the Time War which had destroyed both the Daleks and the Time Lords.

 

A Dalek Emperor returned at the end of the 2005 series, having rebuilt the Dalek race with genetic material harvested from human subjects. It saw itself as a god, and the new Daleks were shown worshipping it. These Daleks and their fleet were destroyed in "The Parting of the Ways".

 

The 2006 season finale "Army of Ghosts"/"Doomsday" featured a squad of four Dalek survivors from the old Empire, known as the Cult of Skaro, led by a black Dalek known as "Sec", that had survived the Time War by escaping into the Void between dimensions. They emerged, along with the Genesis Ark, a Time Lord prison vessel containing millions of Daleks, at Canary Wharf due to the actions of the Torchwood Institute and Cybermen from a parallel world.

 

This resulted in a Cyberman-Dalek clash in London, which was resolved when the Tenth Doctor caused both groups to be sucked back into the Void. The Cult survived by utilising an "emergency temporal shift" to escape.

 

These four Daleks - Sec, Jast, Thay and Caan - returned in the two-part story "Daleks in Manhattan"/"Evolution of the Daleks", in which whilst stranded in 1930s New York, they set up a base in the partially built Empire State Building and attempt to rebuild the Dalek race. To this end, Dalek Sec merges with a human being to become a Human/Dalek hybrid. The Cult then set about creating "Human Daleks" by "formatting" the brains of a few thousand captured humans, with the intention of producing hybrids which remain fully human in appearance but with Dalek minds.[

 

Dalek Sec, however, starts to become so human that he changes the DNA to make the hybrids more human. This angers the rest of the Cult, resulting in mutiny and the death of Sec, Thay and Jast as well as the wiping out of all the hybrids. This leaves Dalek Caan as the last Dalek in existence. When the Doctor makes Caan realise that he is the last of his kind, Caan uses emergency temporal shift and escapes once more.

 

The Daleks returned in the 2008 season's two-part finale, "The Stolen Earth"/"Journey's End", accompanied once again by their creator Davros. The story reveals that Caan's temporal shift sent him into the Time War whence he rescued Davros, in the process gaining the ability to see the future at the cost of his own sanity. Davros has created a new race using his own body's cells.

 

The episode depicts a Dalek invasion of Earth, which with other planets is taken to the Medusa Cascade, led by a red Supreme Dalek, who has kept Caan and Davros imprisoned in "The Vault", a section of the Dalek flagship, the Crucible. Davros and the Daleks plan to destroy reality itself with a "reality bomb" for which they need the stolen planets. The plan fails due to the interference of Donna Noble, a companion of the Doctor, and Caan himself, who has been manipulating events to destroy the Daleks after realising the severity of the atrocities they have committed.

 

The Daleks returned in the 2010 episode "Victory of the Daleks", the third episode of the series; Daleks who escaped the destruction of Davros' empire fell back in time and, by chance, managed to retrieve the "Progenitor".

 

This is a tiny apparatus which contains 'original' Dalek DNA. The activation of the Progenitor results in the creation of a "new paradigm" of Daleks. The New Paradigm Daleks deem their creators inferior and exterminate them; their creators make no resistance to this, deeming themselves inferior as well. They are organised into different roles (drone, scientist, strategists, supreme and eternal), which are identifiable with colour-coded armour instead of the identification plates under the eyestalk used by their predecessors. They escape the Doctor at the end of the episode via time travel with the intent to rebuild their Empire.

 

The Daleks only appeared briefly in subsequent finales "The Pandorica Opens"/"The Big Bang" (2010) and The Wedding of River Song (2011) as Steven Moffat decided to "give them a rest" and stated "There's a problem with the Daleks. They are the most famous of the Doctor's adversaries and the most frequent, which means they are the most reliably defeatable enemies in the universe."

 

They next appear in "Asylum of the Daleks" (2012), where the Daleks are shown to have greatly increased numbers and have a Parliament; in addition to the traditional "modern" Daleks, several designs from both the original and new series appear. All record of the Doctor is removed from their collective consciousness at the end of the episode. The Daleks then appear in the 50th Anniversary special "The Day of the Doctor", where they are seen being defeated in the Time War. In "The Time of the Doctor", the Daleks are one of the races that travel to Trenzalore and besiege it for centuries to stop the Doctor from releasing the Time Lords.

 

Due to converting Tasha Lem into a Dalek puppet, they regain knowledge of the Doctor. In the end, they are the only enemy left, the others having retreated or been destroyed and nearly kill the near-death Doctor before the Time Lords intervene and grant him a new regeneration cycle. The Doctor then uses his regeneration energy to obliterate the Daleks on the planet.

 

The Twelfth Doctor's first encounter with the Daleks is in his second full episode, "Into the Dalek" (2014), where he encounters a damaged Dalek, which he names 'Rusty', aboard a human resistance ship. Left with the Doctor's love of the universe and his hatred of the Daleks, he spares its life; it assumes a mission to destroy other Daleks. In "The Magician's Apprentice"/"The Witch's Familiar" (2015), the Doctor is summoned to Skaro where he learns Davros is alive, but dying, and has rebuilt the Dalek Empire. He escapes Davros' clutches by enlivening the decrepit Daleks of Skaro's sewers, who tear the empire apart, leaving behind the Master (Michelle Gomez), who accompanied him to Skaro. In "The Pilot" (2017), the Doctor briefly visits a battle in the Dalek-Movellan war while trying to escape a time travelling enemy.

 

Dalek culture

 

Daleks have little, if any, individual personality, ostensibly no emotions other than hatred and anger,[11] and a strict command structure in which they are conditioned to obey superiors' orders without question.

 

Dalek speech is characterised by repeated phrases, and by orders given to themselves and to others.

 

Unlike the stereotypical emotionless robots often found in science fiction, Daleks are often angry; author Kim Newman has described the Daleks as behaving "like toddlers in perpetual hissy fits", gloating when in power and flying into rage when thwarted.

 

They tend to be excitable and will repeat the same word or phrase over and over again in heightened emotional states, most famously "Exterminate! Exterminate!"

 

Daleks are extremely aggressive, and seem driven by an instinct to attack. This instinct is so strong that Daleks have been depicted fighting the urge to kill or even attacking when unarmed.

 

The Fifth Doctor characterises this impulse by saying, "However you respond [to Daleks] is seen as an act of provocation."

 

The fundamental feature of Dalek culture and psychology is an unquestioned belief in the superiority of the Dalek race,and their default directive is to destroy all non-Dalek life-forms.[

 

Other species are either to be exterminated immediately or enslaved and then exterminated once they are no longer useful.

 

The Dalek obsession with their own superiority is illustrated by the schism between the Renegade and Imperial Daleks seen in Revelation of the Daleks and Remembrance of the Daleks: the two factions each consider the other to be a perversion despite the relatively minor differences between them.

 

This intolerance of any "contamination" within themselves is also shown in "Dalek", The Evil of the Daleks and in the Big Finish Productions audio play The Mutant Phase.

 

This superiority complex is the basis of the Daleks' ruthlessness and lack of compassion.[11][93] This is shown in extreme in "Victory of the Daleks", where the new, pure Daleks destroy their creators, impure Daleks, with the latters' consent. It is nearly impossible to negotiate or reason with a Dalek, a single-mindedness that makes them dangerous and not to be underestimated.

 

The Eleventh Doctor (Matt Smith) is later puzzled in the "Asylum of the Daleks" as to why the Daleks don't just kill the sequestered ones that have "gone wrong". Although the Asylum is subsequently obliterated, the Prime Minister of the Daleks explains that "it is offensive to us to destroy such divine hatred", and the Doctor is sickened at the revelation that hatred is actually considered beautiful by the Daleks.

 

Dalek society is depicted as one of extreme scientific and technological advancement; the Third Doctor states that "it was their inventive genius that made them one of the greatest powers in the universe."

 

However, their reliance on logic and machinery is also a strategic weakness which they recognise, and thus use more emotion-driven species as agents to compensate for these shortcomings.

 

Although the Daleks are not known for their regard for due process, they have taken at least two enemies back to Skaro for a "trial", rather than killing them immediately. The first was their creator, Davros, in Revelation of the Daleks,[39] and the second was the renegade Time Lord known as the Master in the 1996 television movie.[98] The reasons for the Master's trial, and why the Doctor would be asked to retrieve the Master's remains, have never been explained on screen.

 

The Doctor Who Annual 2006 implies that the trial may have been due to a treaty signed between the Time Lords and the Daleks. The framing device for the I, Davros audio plays is a Dalek trial to determine if Davros should be the Daleks' leader once more.

 

Spin-off novels contain several tongue-in-cheek mentions of Dalek poetry, and an anecdote about an opera based upon it, which was lost to posterity when the entire cast was exterminated on the opening night. Two stanzas are given in the novel The Also People by Ben Aaronovitch.

 

In an alternative timeline portrayed in the Big Finish Productions audio adventure The Time of the Daleks, the Daleks show a fondness for the works of Shakespeare.

 

A similar idea was satirised by comedian Frankie Boyle in the BBC comedy quiz programme Mock the Week; he gave the fictional Dalek poem "Daffodils; EXTERMINATE DAFFODILS!" as an "unlikely line to hear in Doctor Who".

 

Because the Doctor has defeated the Daleks so often, he has become their collective arch-enemy and they have standing orders to capture or exterminate him on sight. In later fiction, the Daleks know the Doctor as "Ka Faraq Gatri" ("Bringer of Darkness" or "Destroyer of Worlds"), and "The Oncoming Storm".

 

Both the Ninth Doctor (Christopher Eccleston) and Rose Tyler (Billie Piper) suggest that the Doctor is one of the few beings the Daleks fear. In "Doomsday", Rose notes that while the Daleks see the extermination of five million Cybermen as "pest control", "one Doctor" visibly un-nerves them (to the point they physically recoil).[13] To his indignant surprise, in "Asylum of the Daleks", the Eleventh Doctor (Matt Smith) learns that the Daleks have designated him as "The Predator".

 

As the Doctor escapes the Asylum (with companions Amy and Rory), a Dalek-converted-human (Oswin Oswald) prisoner provides critical assistance, which culminates in completely deleting the Doctor from the Dalek hive-consciousness (the PathWeb), thus wiping the slate entirely blank. However, this was reversed in "The Time of the Doctor", when the Daleks regained knowledge of the Doctor through the memory of an old acquaintance of the Doctor, Tasha Lem.

 

Measurements

 

A rel is a Dalek and Kaled unit of measurement. It was usually a measurement of time, with a duration of slightly more than one second, as mentioned in "Doomsday", "Evolution of the Daleks" and "Journey's End", counting down to the ignition of the reality bomb. (One earth minute most likely equals about 50 rels.) However, in some comic books it was also used as a unit of velocity. Finally, in some cases it was used as a unit of hydroelectric energy (not to be confused with a vep, the unit used to measure artificial sunlight).

 

The rel was first used in the non-canonical feature film Daleks – Invasion Earth: 2150 A.D., soon after appearing in early Doctor Who comic books.

   

Produced by Asahi Optical Co. (later Pentax Corp.) from 2001 to 2006, body MSRP $1433 in 2001 ($1988 in 2017). The final professional-grade, flagship 35mm film SLR from Pentax, lighter and more compact than competing cameras, known for excellent handling. Considered to be one of the best Pentax film cameras ever made (along with the PZ-1P autofocus and LX manual focus models). First Pentax body of magnesium alloy, unique interface with analog dials, LCD display, slanted top panel. Automatic imprint of exposure information on the edge of the film. Databack with time/date imprinting. Purchased 3/9/17 from a camera dealer in Japan on Ebay.

 

Specs: 6 point autofocus; Power zoom; accepts all K-mount lenses (auto and manual focus) with full function; provides aperture-priority autoexposure with older M42 screw mount lenses (with adapter).

Electronically controlled metal vertical focal plane shutter, speeds 30 - 1/6000s; self timer; mirror lock-up; auto bracketing; multi-exposure; auto-winder 2.5 fps

Multi-segment (6) autoexposure, range 0 - 21 EV; also center-weighted and spot; ISO 6 - 6400; exposure modes P, Av, Tv, M, B; compensation +/-3 EV; exposure lock.

Program modes: Normal, Action, Depth of field and MTF (Modulation Transfer Function - camera sets the aperture to the value where the lens performs the best under the given light).

Built-in flash GN 12, 24mm coverage, Pentax through the lens (P-TTL) autoexposure with sync to 1/180s, high speed sync to 1/6000 sec, red-eye reduction. Both P-TTL and TTL sync with external Pentax flashes. Hot shoe and PC port.

Viewfinder 0.75x, 92%, exposure information indicators, pentaprism, diopter correction, exchangeable focusing screen, depth of field preview

Battery 2 x CR2; 19 customizable control functions. Size 136.5 x 95 x 64 mm, Weight 520 g

Accessories: Battery grip BG-10 (4AA batteries); AF360FGZ flash (P-TTL, wireless P-TTL, High-Speed sync, Contrast control); soft case CF-10

Kit lenses: SMC Pentax-FA 24-90mm F3.5-4.5 AL [IF] which I recently bought. Shown is a SMC Pentax-F 35-70mm F3.5-4.5 with Macro (1987), a small and light near-normal zoom.

All sounds and visuals are generated and spatialised (3d for sound, 2d for visuals) according to the position and other modulation parameters of people inside the installation. Sorry, sound and video a bit crappy as it was taken with my picture camera.

The suspension bridge Bristol

with modulation mike

At 6 seconds a ferris wheel at night turns into madness ;-)

 

I seem to be unable to get the Fujifilm X-T2 to produce the tack sharp images it is supposed to be known for... I want to love this camera, but this lack of sharpness is very disappointing.

 

UPDATE:

I have found the cause of this problem! I *think* Fuji has the options "Long Exposure NR" and "Lens Modulation Optimizer" turned on by default (I surely can not remember setting them to on myself!). I have changed them to off and now my images are sooooooo much sharper!! You'll find these options on page 2 of the IQ menu of the Fujifilm X-T2.

 

UPDATE OF THE UPDATE:

Yes, Fuji turns on "Long Exposure NR" by default... Be sure to turn it off!

Paul Cezanne (January 19, 1839 - October 22, 1906) was a French artist and Post-Impressionist painter whose work laid the foundations of the transition from the 19th century conception of artistic endeavour to a new and radically different world of art in the 20th century. Cezanne can be said to form the bridge between late 19th century Impressionism and the early 20th century's new line of artistic enquiry, Cubism. The line attributed to both Matisse and Picasso that Cezanne "is the father of us all" cannot be easily dismissed.

 

Cezanne's work demonstrates a mastery of design, colour, composition and draftsmanship. His often repetitive, sensitive and exploratory brushstrokes are highly characteristic and clearly recognisable. He used planes of colour and small brushstrokes that build up to form complex fields, at once both a direct expression of the sensations of the observing eye and an abstraction from observed nature. The paintings convey Cezanne's intense study of his subjects, a searching gaze and a dogged struggle to deal with the complexity of human visual perception.

 

Paul Cezanne was a French painter, often called the father of modern art, who strove to develop an ideal synthesis of naturalistic representation, personal expression, and abstract pictorial order.

 

Cezanne was born in the southern French town of Aix-en-Provence, January 19, 1839, the son of a wealthy banker. His boyhood companion was Emile Zola, who later gained fame as a novelist and man of letters. As did Zola, Cezanne developed artistic interests at an early age, much to the dismay of his father. In 1862, after a number of bitter family disputes, the aspiring artist was given a small allowance and sent to study art in Paris, where Zola had already gone. From the start he was drawn to the more radical elements of the Parisian art world. He especially admired the romantic painter Eugene Delacroix and, among the younger masters, Gustave Courbet and the notorious Edouard Manet, who exhibited realist paintings that were shocking in both style and subject matter to most of their contemporaries.

 

Many of Cezanne's early works were painted in dark tones applied with heavy, fluid pigment, suggesting the moody, romantic expressionism of previous generations. Just as Zola pursued his interest in the realist novel, however, Cezanne also gradually developed a commitment to the representation of contemporary life, painting the world he observed without concern for thematic idealization or stylistic affectation.

 

The most significant influence on the work of his early maturity proved to be Camille Pissarro, an older but as yet unrecognized painter who lived with his large family in a rural area outside Paris. Pissarro not only provided the moral encouragement that the insecure Cezanne required, but he also introduced him to the new impressionist technique for rendering outdoor light.

 

Along with the painters Claude Monet, Auguste Renoir, and a few others, Pissarro had developed a painting style that involved working outdoors (en plein air) rapidly and on a reduced scale, employing small touches of pure color, generally without the use of preparatory sketches or linear outlines. In such a manner Pissarro and the others hoped to capture the most transient natural effects as well as their own passing emotional states as the artists stood before nature. Under Pissarro's tutelage, and within a very short time during 1872-73, Cezanne shifted from dark tones to bright hues and began to concentrate on scenes of farmland and rural villages.

 

Although he seemed less technically accomplished than the other impressionists, Cezanne was accepted by the group and exhibited with them in 1874 and 1877. In general the impressionists did not have much commercial success, and Cezanne's works received the harshest critical commentary. He drifted away from many of his Parisian contacts during the late 1870s and '80s and spent much of his time in his native Aix. After 1882, he did not work closely again with Pissarro. In 1886, Cezanne became embittered over what he took to be thinly disguised references to his own failures in one of Zola's novels. As a result he broke off relations with his oldest supporter. In the same year, he inherited his father's wealth and finally, at the age of 47, became financially independent, but socially he remained quite isolated.

 

Cezanne's goal was, in his own mind, never fully attained. He left most of his works unfinished and destroyed many others. He complained of his failure at rendering the human figure, and indeed the great figural works of his last years-such as the Large Bathers(circa 1899-1906, Museum of Art, Philadelphia) - reveal curious distortions that seem to have been dictated by the rigor of the system of color modulation he imposed on his own representations. The succeeding generation of painters, however, eventually came to be receptive to nearly all of Cezanne's idiosyncrasies. Cezanne's heirs felt that the naturalistic painting of impressionism had become formularized, and a new and original style, however difficult it might be, was needed to return a sense of sincerity and commitment to modern art.

 

For many years Cezanne was known only to his old impressionist colleagues and to a few younger radical postimpressionist artists, including the Dutch painter Vincent van Gogh and the French painter Paul Gauguin. In 1895, however, Ambroise Vollard, an ambitious Paris art dealer, arranged a show of Cezanne's works and over the next few years promoted them successfully. By 1904, Cezanne was featured in a major official exhibition, and by the time of his death (in Aix on October 22, 1906) he had attained the status of a legendary figure. During his last years many younger artists traveled to Aix to observe him at work and to receive any words of wisdom he might offer. Both his style and his theory remained mysterious and cryptic; he seemed to some a naive primitive, while to others he was a sophisticated master of technical procedure. The intensity of his color, coupled with the apparent rigor of his compositional organization, signaled to most that, despite the artist's own frequent despair, he had synthesized the basic expressive and representational elements of painting in a highly original manner.

British postcard in the Picturegoer Series, London, no. 1048b. Photo: Metro Goldwyn Mayer.

 

German-American-British film actress Luise Rainer (1910-2014) was the first to win multiple Academy Awards and the first to win back-to-back for The Great Ziegfeld (1936) and The Good Earth (1937). At the time of her death, thirteen days shy of her 105th birthday, she was the longest-lived Oscar recipient, a superlative that had not been exceeded as of 2020.

 

Luise Rainer was born in 1910 in Düsseldorf, in then the German Empire (now Germany). Her parents were Heinrich and Emilie (née Königsberger) Rainer. Her father was a businessman who settled in Europe after spending most of his childhood in Texas. Rainer's rebellious nature made her appear to be a "tomboy" and happy to be alone. She started her acting career in Berlin at age 16, under the pretext of visiting her mother, she traveled to Düsseldorf for a prearranged audition at the Dumont Theater. In the 1920s the theatre director Louise Dumont separated from her husband. Dumont was attached to a number of young actresses including Fita Benkhoff, Hanni Hoessrich, and Rainer. It has been presumed that Dumont was bisexual. Rainer later began studying acting with the leading stage director at the time, Max Reinhardt. By the time she was 18, several critics felt that she had an unusual talent for a young actress. She became a distinguished Berlin stage actress with Reinhardt's theatre ensemble. She also appeared in several German-language films. After years of acting on stage and in films in Austria and Germany, she was discovered by MGM talent scout Phil Berg, who signed her to a three-year contract in Hollywood in 1935. He thought she would appeal to the same audience as Swedish MGM star Greta Garbo. Mayer assigned actress Constance Collier to train her in speech and dramatic modulation, and Rainer's English improved rapidly.

 

Luise Rainer's first American film role was in the romantic comedy Escapade (Robert Z. Leonard, 1935) with William Powell. It is a remake of the popular Austrian Operetta film Maskerade/Masquerade (Willy Forst, 1934). The film generated immense publicity for Rainer, who was hailed as "Hollywood's next sensation." The following year she was given a supporting part as the real-life character Anna Held in the musical biography The Great Ziegfeld (Robert Z. Leonard, 1936), featuring William Powell. Despite her limited role, her emotion-filled performance so impressed audiences that she was awarded the Oscar for Best Actress. She was later dubbed the "Viennese Teardrop" for her dramatic telephone scene, attempting to congratulate Ziegfeld on his new marriage, in the film. On the evening of the Academy Award ceremonies, Rainer remained at home, not expecting to win. When Mayer learned she had won, he sent MGM publicity head Howard Strickling racing to her home to get her. She was also awarded the New York Film Critics' Award for the performance. For her next role, producer Irving Thalberg was convinced, despite the studio's disagreement, that she would also be able to play the part of a poor, plain Chinese farm wife opposite Paul Muni in The Good Earth (Sidney Franklin, 1937), based on Nobel Prize-winning author Pearl Buck's novel about hardship in China. The humble, subservient, and mostly silent character role was such a dramatic contrast to her previous vivacious character that she again won the Oscar for Best Actress. Rainer and Jodie Foster are the only actresses ever to win two Oscars by the age of thirty.

 

However, Luise Rainer later stated nothing worse could have happened to her than winning two consecutive Oscars, as audience expectations from then on would be too high to fulfill. A few months before the film was completed, Irving Thalberg died suddenly at the age of 37. Rainer commented years later: "His death was a terrible shock to us. He was young and ever so able. Had it not been that he died, I think I may have stayed much longer in films." After four more, insignificant roles, MGM and Rainer became disappointed, and she was dubbed "Box Office Poison" by the Independent Theatre Owners of America. Adding to her rapid decline, some feel, was the poor career advice she received from her then-husband, playwright Clifford Odets. She ended her brief three-year Hollywood career and returned to Europe where she helped get aid to children who were victims of the Spanish Civil War. Nevertheless, she was not released from her MGM contract and, by 1940, she was still bound to make one more film for the studio. Some film historians consider her the "most extreme case of an Oscar victim in Hollywood mythology". Rainer studied medicine and returned to the stage. In 1939, she made her first appearance at the Palace Theatre, Manchester in Jacques Deval's play 'Behold the Bride', and later played the same part in her London debut at the Shaftesbury Theatre. Returning to America, she played the leading part in George Bernard Shaw's 'Saint Joan' in 1940 at the Belasco Theatre in Washington, D.C. under the direction of German emigrant director Erwin Piscator. In 1943, she made an appearance in the film Hostages (Frank Tuttle, 1943). Rainer abandoned film making in 1944 after marrying publisher Robert Knittel. She made sporadic television and stage appearances, appearing in an episode of the World War II television series Combat! in 1965. She took a dual role in a 1984 episode of The Love Boat. She appeared in the film The Gambler (Károly Makk, 1997), starring Michael Gambon. It marked her film comeback at the age of 86. Luise Rainer passed away in 2014, in Belgravia, London, England. She was 104. Rainer married Clifford Odets in 1937 and they divorced in 1940. Her second husband was publisher Robert Knittel. They were married from 1945 till his death in 1989 and lived in the UK and Switzerland for most of their marriage. The couple had one daughter, Francesca Knittel.

 

Sources: Wikipedia and IMDb.

 

And, please check out our blog European Film Star Postcards.

Free download under CC Attribution (CC BY 2.0). Please credit the artist and rawpixel.com

 

Hu Zhengyan (c. 1584-1674) was a Chinese traditional painter, calligrapher, seal carver and publisher during the transition of the Ming and Qing dynasties. He produced China’s first printed publication in color, and was famous for his incredible techniques achieving gradation and modulation of shades in woodblock prints.

 

Higher resolutions with no attribution required can be downloaded: rawpixel

 

Sample image taken with a Fujinon XF 56mm f1.2 R mounted on a Fujifilm XT1 body; each of these images is an out-of-camera JPEG with Lens Modulation Optimisation enabled. These samples and comparisons are part of my Fujinon XF 56mm f1.2 R review at:

 

cameralabs.com/reviews/Fujifilm_Fujinon_XF_56mm_f1-2_R/

 

Feel free to download the original image for evaluation on your own computer or printer, but please don't use it on another website or publication without permission from www.cameralabs.com/

The 2018 Ampera Faraday is an all-electric hot-hatch, and the Sport version is its turbocharged sibling, featuring a slightly larger battery pack and upgraded electric wheel motors for faster pickup. Sporting Ampera's patented GearShift performance modulation package, the Faraday can perform in an extremely economical fashion, or in a more sporty fashion; it also has several vehicle emulation modes including performance, muscle, and comfort.

 

©2014 Christopher Elliott, All Rights Reserved

Free download under CC Attribution (CC BY 2.0). Please credit the artist and rawpixel.com

 

Hu Zhengyan (c. 1584-1674) was a Chinese traditional painter, calligrapher, seal carver and publisher during the transition of the Ming and Qing dynasties. He produced China’s first printed publication in color, and was famous for his incredible techniques achieving gradation and modulation of shades in woodblock prints.

 

Higher resolutions with no attribution required can be downloaded: rawpixel

 

Stuck a £1 plastic tumbler on the end of the lens. then waved lights at it. Notice the barcode still on the sticker on the bottom of the tumbler.

The 2018 Ampera Faraday is an all-electric hot-hatch, and the Sport version is its turbocharged sibling, featuring a slightly larger battery pack and upgraded electric wheel motors for faster pickup. Sporting Ampera's patented GearShift performance modulation package, the Faraday can perform in an extremely economical fashion, or in a more sporty fashion; it also has several vehicle emulation modes including performance, muscle, and comfort.

 

©2014 Christopher Elliott, All Rights Reserved

Sample image taken with a Fujinon XF 56mm f1.2 R mounted on a Fujifilm XT1 body; each of these images is an out-of-camera JPEG with Lens Modulation Optimisation enabled. These samples and comparisons are part of my Fujinon XF 56mm f1.2 R review at:

 

cameralabs.com/reviews/Fujifilm_Fujinon_XF_56mm_f1-2_R/

 

Feel free to download the original image for evaluation on your own computer or printer, but please don't use it on another website or publication without permission from www.cameralabs.com/

The facade is relieved by horizontal and vertical bands of terra-cotta. The random false balcony and subtile modulation of the plane of the facade breaks up this block long assemblage.

Tuscaloosa 1966

untitled #2 (modulations)

2016_08_13

charcoal pastel and graphite on manila tagboard

12" x 12" (30.48 x 30.48)cm

Matt Niebuhr

West Branch Studio

www.mattniebuhr.com

shop.mattniebuhr.com

Pablo Picasso (/pɪˈkɑːsoʊ, -ˈkæsoʊ/; Spanish: [ˈpaβlo piˈkaso]; 25 October 1881 – 8 April 1973) was a Spanish painter, sculptor, printmaker, ceramicist, stage designer, poet and playwright who spent most of his adult life in France. Regarded as one of the most influential artists of the 20th century, he is known for co-founding the Cubist movement, the invention of constructed sculpture, the co-invention of collage, and for the wide variety of styles that he helped develop and explore. Among his most famous works are the proto-Cubist Les Demoiselles d'Avignon (1907), and Guernica (1937), a dramatic portrayal of the bombing of Guernica by the German and Italian airforces.Picasso demonstrated extraordinary artistic talent in his early years, painting in a naturalistic manner through his childhood and adolescence. During the first decade of the 20th century, his style changed as he experimented with different theories, techniques, and ideas. After 1906, the Fauvist work of the slightly older artist Henri Matisse motivated Picasso to explore more radical styles, beginning a fruitful rivalry between the two artists, who subsequently were often paired by critics as the leaders of modern art.Picasso's work is often categorized into periods. While the names of many of his later periods are debated, the most commonly accepted periods in his work are the Blue Period (1901–1904), the Rose Period (1904–1906), the African-influenced Period (1907–1909), Analytic Cubism (1909–1912), and Synthetic Cubism (1912–1919), also referred to as the Crystal period. Much of Picasso's work of the late 1910s and early 1920s is in a neoclassical style, and his work in the mid-1920s often has characteristics of Surrealism. His later work often combines elements of his earlier styles.Exceptionally prolific throughout the course of his long life, Picasso achieved universal renown and immense fortune for his revolutionary artistic accomplishments, and became one of the best-known figures in 20th-century art.Picasso was baptized Pablo Diego José Francisco de Paula Juan Nepomuceno María de los Remedios Cipriano de la Santísima Trinidad Ruiz y Picasso,[1] a series of names honouring various saints and relatives.[9] Ruiz y Picasso were included for his father and mother, respectively, as per Spanish law. Born in the city of Málaga in the Andalusian region of Spain, he was the first child of Don José Ruiz y Blasco (1838–1913) and María Picasso y López.[10] His mother was of one quarter Italian descent, from the territory of Genoa.[11] Though baptized a Catholic, Picasso would later on become an atheist.[12] Picasso's family was of middle-class background. His father was a painter who specialized in naturalistic depictions of birds and other game. For most of his life Ruiz was a professor of art at the School of Crafts and a curator of a local museum. Ruiz's ancestors were minor aristocrats.Picasso showed a passion and a skill for drawing from an early age. According to his mother, his first words were "piz, piz", a shortening of lápiz, the Spanish word for "pencil".[13] From the age of seven, Picasso received formal artistic training from his father in figure drawing and oil painting. Ruiz was a traditional academic artist and instructor, who believed that proper training required disciplined copying of the masters, and drawing the human body from plaster casts and live models. His son became preoccupied with art to the detriment of his classwork.

The family moved to A Coruña in 1891, where his father became a professor at the School of Fine Arts. They stayed almost four years. On one occasion, the father found his son painting over his unfinished sketch of a pigeon. Observing the precision of his son's technique, an apocryphal story relates, Ruiz felt that the thirteen-year-old Picasso had surpassed him, and vowed to give up painting, though paintings by him exist from later years.In 1895, Picasso was traumatized when his seven-year-old sister, Conchita, died of diphtheria.[15] After her death, the family moved to Barcelona, where Ruiz took a position at its School of Fine Arts. Picasso thrived in the city, regarding it in times of sadness or nostalgia as his true home.[16] Ruiz persuaded the officials at the academy to allow his son to take an entrance exam for the advanced class. This process often took students a month, but Picasso completed it in a week, and the jury admitted him, at just 13. The student lacked discipline but made friendships that would affect him in later life. His father rented a small room for him close to home so he could work alone, yet he checked up on him numerous times a day, judging his drawings. The two argued frequently.Picasso's father and uncle decided to send the young artist to Madrid's Real Academia de Bellas Artes de San Fernando, the country's foremost art school.At age 16, Picasso set off for the first time on his own, but he disliked formal instruction and stopped attending classes soon after enrolment. Madrid held many other attractions. The Prado housed paintings by Diego Velázquez, Francisco Goya, and Francisco Zurbarán. Picasso especially admired the works of El Greco; elements such as his elongated limbs, arresting colours, and mystical visages are echoed in Picasso's later work.Picasso's training under his father began before 1890. His progress can be traced in the collection of early works now held by the Museu Picasso in Barcelona, which provides one of the most comprehensive records extant of any major artist's beginnings.[17] During 1893 the juvenile quality of his earliest work falls away, and by 1894 his career as a painter can be said to have begun.The academic realism apparent in the works of the mid-1890s is well displayed in The First Communion (1896), a large composition that depicts his sister, Lola. In the same year, at the age of 14, he painted Portrait of Aunt Pepa, a vigorous and dramatic portrait that Juan-Eduardo Cirlot has called "without a doubt one of the greatest in the whole history of Spanish painting."In 1897, his realism began to show a Symbolist influence, for example, in a series of landscape paintings rendered in non-naturalistic violet and green tones. What some call his Modernist period (1899–1900) followed. His exposure to the work of Rossetti, Steinlen, Toulouse-Lautrec and Edvard Munch, combined with his admiration for favourite old masters such as El Greco, led Picasso to a personal version of modernism in his works of this period.Picasso made his first trip to Paris, then the art capital of Europe, in 1900. There, he met his first Parisian friend, journalist and poet Max Jacob, who helped Picasso learn the language and its literature. Soon they shared an apartment; Max slept at night while Picasso slept during the day and worked at night. These were times of severe poverty, cold, and desperation. Much of his work was burned to keep the small room warm. During the first five months of 1901, Picasso lived in Madrid, where he and his anarchist friend Francisco de Asís Soler founded the magazine Arte Joven (Young Art), which published five issues. Soler solicited articles and Picasso illustrated the journal, mostly contributing grim cartoons depicting and sympathizing with the state of the poor. The first issue was published on 31 March 1901, by which time the artist had started to sign his work Picasso; before he had signed Pablo Ruiz y Picasso.Picasso's Blue Period (1901–1904), characterized by sombre paintings rendered in shades of blue and blue-green, only occasionally warmed by other colours, began either in Spain in early 1901, or in Paris in the second half of the year.[22] Many paintings of gaunt mothers with children date from the Blue Period, during which Picasso divided his time between Barcelona and Paris. In his austere use of colour and sometimes doleful subject matter – prostitutes and beggars are frequent subjects – Picasso was influenced by a trip through Spain and by the suicide of his friend Carlos Casagemas. Starting in autumn of 1901 he painted several posthumous portraits of Casagemas, culminating in the gloomy allegorical painting La Vie (1903), now in the Cleveland Museum of Art..Pablo Picasso, 1905, Au Lapin Agile (At the Lapin Agile) (Arlequin tenant un verre), oil on canvas, 99.1 × 100.3 cm, Metropolitan Museum of Art

The same mood pervades the well-known etching The Frugal Repast (1904),] which depicts a blind man and a sighted woman, both emaciated, seated at a nearly bare table. Blindness is a recurrent theme in Picasso's works of this period, also represented in The Blindman's Meal (1903, the Metropolitan Museum of Art) and in the portrait of Celestina (1903). Other works include Portrait of Soler and Portrait of Suzanne Bloch.The Rose Period (1904–1906)[25] is characterized by a lighter tone and style utilizing orange and pink colours, and featuring many circus people, acrobats and harlequins known in France as saltimbanques. The harlequin, a comedic character usually depicted in checkered patterned clothing, became a personal symbol for Picasso. Picasso met Fernande Olivier, a bohemian artist who became his mistress, in Paris in 1904.[15] Olivier appears in many of his Rose Period paintings, many of which are influenced by his warm relationship with her, in addition to his increased exposure to French painting. The generally upbeat and optimistic mood of paintings in this period is reminiscent of the 1899–1901 period (i.e. just prior to the Blue Period) and 1904 can be considered a transition year between the two periods.Portrait of Gertrude Stein, 1906, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York City. When someone commented that Stein did not look like her portrait, Picasso replied, "She will".By 1905, Picasso became a favourite of American art collectors Leo and Gertrude Stein. Their older brother Michael Stein and his wife Sarah also became collectors of his work. Picasso painted portraits of both Gertrude Stein and her nephew Allan Stein. Gertrude Stein became Picasso's principal patron, acquiring his drawings and paintings and exhibiting them in her informal Salon at her home in Paris. At one of her gatherings in 1905, he met Henri Matisse, who was to become a lifelong friend and rival. The Steins introduced him to Claribel Cone and her sister Etta who were American art collectors; they also began to acquire Picasso and Matisse's paintings. Eventually Leo Stein moved to Italy. Michael and Sarah Stein became patrons of Matisse, while Gertrude Stein continued to collect Picasso.In 1907 Picasso joined an art gallery that had recently been opened in Paris by Daniel-Henry Kahnweiler. Kahnweiler was a German art historian and art collector who became one of the premier French art dealers of the 20th century. He was among the first champions of Pablo Picasso, Georges Braque and the Cubism that they jointly developed. Kahnweiler promoted burgeoning artists such as André Derain, Kees van Dongen, Fernand Léger, Juan Gris, Maurice de Vlaminck and several others who had come from all over the globe to live and work in Montparnasse at the time.Picasso's African-influenced Period (1907–1909) begins with his painting Les Demoiselles d'Avignon. Picasso painted this composition in a style inspired by Iberian sculpture, but repainted the faces of the two figures on the right after being powerfully impressed by African artefacts he saw in June 1907 in the ethnographic museum at Palais du Trocadéro.[30] When he displayed the painting to acquaintances in his studio later that year, the nearly universal reaction was shock and revulsion; Matisse angrily dismissed the work as a hoax.[31] Picasso did not exhibit Le Demoiselles publicly until 1916.Other works from this period include Nude with Raised Arms (1907) and Three Women (1908). Formal ideas developed during this period lead directly into the Cubist period that follows.Analytic cubism (1909–1912) is a style of painting Picasso developed with Georges Braque using monochrome brownish and neutral colours. Both artists took apart objects and "analyzed" them in terms of their shapes. Picasso and Braque's paintings at this time share many similarities.Synthetic cubism (1912–1919) was a further development of the genre of cubism, in which cut paper fragments – often wallpaper or portions of newspaper pages – were pasted into compositions, marking the first use of collage in fine art. In Paris, Picasso entertained a distinguished coterie of friends in the Montmartre and Montparnasse quarters, including André Breton, poet Guillaume Apollinaire, writer Alfred Jarry, and Gertrude Stein. Apollinaire was arrested on suspicion of stealing the Mona Lisa from the Louvre in 1911. Apollinaire pointed to his friend Picasso, who was also brought in for questioning, but both were later exonerated.Between 1915 and 1917, Picasso began a series of paintings depicting highly geometric and minimalist Cubist objects, consisting of either a pipe, a guitar or a glass, with an occasional element of collage. "Hard-edged square-cut diamonds", notes art historian John Richardson, "these gems do not always have upside or downside".[33][34] "We need a new name to designate them," wrote Picasso to Gertrude Stein: Maurice Raynal suggested "Crystal Cubism".[33][35] These "little gems" may have been produced by Picasso in response to critics who had claimed his defection from the movement, through his experimentation with classicism within the so-called return to order following the war.At the outbreak of World War I in August 1914, Picasso was living in Avignon. Braque and Derain were mobilized and Apollinaire joined the French artillery, while the Spaniard Juan Gris remained from the Cubist circle. During the war, Picasso was able to continue painting uninterrupted, unlike his French comrades. His paintings became more sombre and his life changed with dramatic consequences. Kahnweiler’s contract had terminated on his exile from France. At this point Picasso’s work would be taken on by the art dealer Léonce Rosenberg. After the loss of Eva Gouel, Picasso had an affair with Gaby Lespinasse. During the spring of 1916, Apollinaire returned from the front wounded. They renewed their friendship, but Picasso began to frequent new social circles.Towards the end of World War I, Picasso made a number of important relationships with figures associated with Serge Diaghilev's Ballets Russes. Among his friends during this period were Jean Cocteau, Jean Hugo, Juan Gris, and others. In the summer of 1918, Picasso married Olga Khokhlova, a ballerina with Sergei Diaghilev's troupe, for whom Picasso was designing a ballet, Erik Satie's Parade, in Rome; they spent their honeymoon near Biarritz in the villa of glamorous Chilean art patron Eugenia Errázuriz.After returning from his honeymoon, and in desperate need of money, Picasso started his exclusive relationship with the French-Jewish art dealer Paul Rosenberg. As part of his first duties, Rosenberg agreed to rent the couple an apartment in Paris at his own expense, which was located next to his own house. This was the start of a deep brother-like friendship between two very different men, that would last until the outbreak of World War II.Khokhlova introduced Picasso to high society, formal dinner parties, and all the social niceties attendant to the life of the rich in 1920s Paris. The two had a son, Paulo Picasso,.who would grow up to be a dissolute motorcycle racer and chauffeur to his father. Khokhlova's insistence on social propriety clashed with Picasso's bohemian tendencies and the two lived in a state of constant conflict. During the same period that Picasso collaborated with Diaghilev's troupe, he and Igor Stravinsky collaborated on Pulcinella in 1920. Picasso took the opportunity to make several drawings of the composer.In 1927 Picasso met 17-year-old Marie-Thérèse Walter and began a secret affair with her. Picasso's marriage to Khokhlova soon ended in separation rather than divorce, as French law required an even division of property in the case of divorce, and Picasso did not want Khokhlova to have half his wealth. The two remained legally married until Khokhlova's death in 1955. Picasso carried on a long-standing affair with Marie-Thérèse Walter and fathered a daughter with her, named Maya. Marie-Thérèse lived in the vain hope that Picasso would one day marry her, and hanged herself four years after Picasso's death.

 

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pablo_Picasso

 

Crystal Cubism (French: Cubisme cristal or Cubisme de cristal) is a distilled form of Cubism consistent with a shift, between 1915 and 1916, towards a strong emphasis on flat surface activity and large overlapping geometric planes. The primacy of the underlying geometric structure, rooted in the abstract, controls practically all of the elements of the artwork.This range of styles of painting and sculpture, especially significant between 1917 and 1920 (also referred to as the Crystal Period, classical Cubism, pure Cubism, advanced Cubism, late Cubism, synthetic Cubism, or the second phase of Cubism), was practiced in varying degrees by a multitude of artists; particularly those under contract with the art dealer and collector Léonce Rosenberg—Henri Laurens, Jean Metzinger, Juan Gris and Jacques Lipchitz most noticeably of all. The tightening of the compositions, the clarity and sense of order reflected in these works, led to its being referred to by the French poet and art critic Maurice Raynal as 'crystal' Cubism.Considerations manifested by Cubists prior to the outset of World War I—such as the fourth dimension, dynamism of modern life, the occult, and Henri Bergson's concept of duration—had now been vacated, replaced by a purely formal frame of reference that proceeded from a cohesive stance toward art and life.As post-war reconstruction began, so too did a series of exhibitions at Léonce Rosenberg's Galerie de L'Effort Moderne: order and the allegiance to the aesthetically pure remained the prevailing tendency. The collective phenomenon of Cubism once again—now in its advanced revisionist form—became part of a widely discussed development in French culture. Crystal Cubism was the culmination of a continuous narrowing of scope in the name of a return to order; based upon the observation of the artists relation to nature, rather than on the nature of reality itself.Crystal Cubism, and its associative rappel à l’ordre, has been linked with an inclination—by those who served the armed forces and by those who remained in the civilian sector—to escape the realities of the Great War, both during and directly following the conflict. The purifying of Cubism from 1914 through the mid-1920s, with its cohesive unity and voluntary constraints, has been linked to a much broader ideological transformation towards conservatism in both French society and French culture. In terms of the separation of culture and life, the Crystal Cubist period emerges as the most important in the history of Modernism.Cubism, from its inception, stems from the dissatisfaction with the idea of form that had been in practiced since the Renaissance. This dissatisfaction had already been seen in the works of the Romanticist Eugene Delacroix, in the Realism of Gustave Courbet, in passing through the Symbolists, Les Nabis, the Impressionists and the Neo-Impressionists. Paul Cézanne was instrumental, as his work marked a shift from a more representational art form to one that was increasingly abstract, with a strong emphasis on the simplification of geometric structure. In a letter addressed to Émile Bernard dated 15 April 1904, Cézanne writes: "Interpret nature in terms of the cylinder, the sphere, the cone; put everything in perspective, so that each side of an object, of a plane, recedes toward a central point."Cézanne was preoccupied by the means of rendering volume and space, surface variations (or modulations) with overlapped shifting planes. Increasingly in his later works, Cézanne achieves a greater freedom. His work became bolder, more arbitrary, more dynamic and increasingly nonrepresentational. As his color planes acquired greater formal independence, defined objects and structures began to lose their identity.'Walpurgis Night, and The Angel that other master Alfred Kubin the Western Window (whose hero is the esoteric scholar John Dee). Picasso was also a member of this Order And it seems the same is true about Picasso, if we can trust the word of Marijo Ariens-Volker, who in her article "Alchemical, Kabbalistic, and Occult Symbolism in the Work of His Contemporaries (discussed in chapter 4), brings up several disturbing arguments. According to this researcher, Picasso, at the beginning of his stay in Paris, lived with his friend Ricardo Vines, who frequented the Librairie du Merveilleux, the general headquarters of the "independent group of esoteric studies" created by Papus. Among those closest to the painter at this time, we find André Salmon, who makes reference to Papus, the Martinists, and the Masons in several of his texts There were also Juan Gris an extremely assiduous Mason 38 Max Jacob, who considered kabbalah as his "life philosophy" and will be, before being expelled by Breton for impenitent Catholicism, frequently published in Littérature, and Guillaume Apollinaire who often spoke of Hermes Tres megistus and whose library held many books by Papus and other Martinists, as well as the official journals of the Order and even a document from the 1908 Spiritualist Congress. According to his grandson, Olivier Widmaier, Picasso was extremely well versed in the kabbalah, read the Zohar, and was a spiritualist his conversations with Brassai, Picasso admitted he had been a "member of an Order during his cubist period," probably the Martinist Order: some of the collages he made at this ime even bear signs that Ariens-Volker analyzes as allusions to the Martinist grade of unknown superior 40 210 Papus (whose "confused mysticism" would be denounced by Gérard Legrand in Médium in November 1953) claimed he had received Martinist initiation from the son of a close friend of Saint-Martin, but he also spent time with the "famous" theoretician of modern occultism, the "priest" (and Mason) Alphonse Louis Constant, alias Eliphas Levi 211 (Osiris is a black god," Breton writes in Arcanum 1 and was part of Helena Blavatsky and Colonel Henry Steel Olcott's Theosophical Society. He wanted to make the Martinist order which was connected with Christian illuminism-a mystical society, "a school of moral chivalry that would strive to develop the spirituality of its members by the study of the invisible world and its laws through the exercise of devotion and intellectual assistance, and by the creation in each spirit of a faith that would be more solid by being based on by Papus's son Phillipe d'Encausse.

 

"Deriving directly from Christian Illuminism, Martinism had to adopt the principles [...]

The Order as a whole is above all a school of moral chivalry, striving to develop the spirituality of its members by studying the invisible world and its laws, by exercising devotion and intellectual assistance and by the creation in each spirit of a faith all the more solid as it is based on observation and on science.

Martinists do not do magic, either white or black. They study, they pray, and they forgive the insults as best they can.

Accused of being devils by some, clerics by others, and black magicians or insane by the gallery, we will simply remain fervent knights of Christ, enemies of violence and revenge, resolute synarchists, opposed to any anarchy from above or from below, in a word from the Martinists. ”

Papus, The Initiation, November 1906

 

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crystal_Cubism

 

Administration

The newspaper The archives

Other components of Picasso’s references: esotericism, the Rosicrucian movement and opium.

< Summary

> Credits

The magico-religious aspect of the Gosolan ceremonies, as well as their pagan and esoteric roots, must have attracted Picasso, who was superstitious and had been initiated into the occult by two masters, his close friends Max Jacob and Guillaume Apollinaire68. In Gósol, the painter had the opportunity to enrich his training with in situ practices.

 

The Gosolan rites highlighted the continuity between the pagan world and the Christian one. This continuity was maintained by the Neoplatonists and, once the Inquisition was abolished, secret circles that had preserved the “living” tradition resurfaced, such as the Rosicrucians led by Sâr Péladan. The Grand Master sought, among other things, to merge the Rosicrucian movement with Christianity. Their ideas influenced Picasso’s entourage69 and Picasso’s Gosolan work reflects this union between pagan and Christian symbols.

 

Furthermore, opium, which Picasso and his circle appreciated, was linked to ancient mystery religions, in particular the cult of wheat presided over by Demeter and Persephone (fig.16). Opium facilitated access to knowledge, immortality of the soul and states of revelation. The flower from which opium is extracted, the poppy, is one of the emblems of the goddess Persephone. It is the flower that Picasso drew in his Gosolan notebook, his Carnet Catalan. Opium pipes are also represented in this notebook where the word “opium” is written, as well as a prescription for laudanum.

Opium, as Jean Cocteau, Sir Harold Acton, or Fernande71 explain, provides the opium smoker with the ability to constantly metamorphose, the sensation of being able to get anywhere he wants without the slightest effort, and an out-of-body experience that allows one to contemplate everything, oneself and the world, with impartiality72. Cocteau called opium “the flying carpet” and Picasso considered the scent of opium to be “the most intelligent of odors.”73

 

Opium placed these artists on the level of the ancient initiates, and the capacity for metamorphosis that it gave them allowed them to feel and see like them. The theatrical stagings of the ancient initiatory Mysteries in Parisian esoteric circles74 found some of their last real vestiges in Gósol.

 

Notes

 

68. RICHARDSON, JOHN, op. cit., Vol. I (1881-1906), pp. 207, 216, 331 and 334.

 

69. See the number of publications by Papus and Sâr Péladan, among other occultists, in the Apollinaire library: BOUDAR, GILBERT and DÉ-CAUDIN, MICHEL The library of Guillaume Apollinaire. Paris, Éditions du Center National de la Recherche Scientifique, 1983. See also M. FREIXA, op. cit., pp. 435-439; Gabriela di Milia, “Picasso and Canudo, a Couple of Transplants” in AA.VV. Picasso: the Italian journey 1917-1924, under the direction of Jean Clair, London, Thames and Hudson, 1998, pp. 75-77 and RICHARDSON, JOHN, op cit., Vol. I (1881-1906), p. 340.

 

70. According to Fernande Olivier, Picasso stopped smoking opium in 1908 following the suicide of a friend due to multiple intoxication. In Gósol, they were still smoking opium. The couple took refuge in the small village of Rue-des-Bois, in the suburbs of Paris, in 1908 to put an end to their opium addiction. OLIVIER, FERNANDE, op. cit., p. 183.

 

71. OLIVIER, FERNANDE Recuerdos íntimos. Escritos para Picasso. Barcelona. Ed. Parsifal. 1990 (1st ed. Souvenirs intimes: écrits pour Picasso, Calmann-Lévy, 1988), pp. 149 and 150 and OLIVIER, FERNANDE Picasso y sus amigos. Madrid. Taurus Ediciones. 1964 (Picasso and his friends, Stock, Paris, 1933), pp. 45 and p. 46.

 

72. COCTEAU, JEAN Opio. Buenos Aires, Editorial Sudamericana, 2002 and ACTON, HAROLD Memorias de un esteta (originally Memoirs of an Aesthete), Valencia, Ed. Pre Textos, 2010, pp. 522 and 523.

 

73. RICHARDSON, JOHN El aprendiz de brujo. Madrid, Alianza Editorial, 2001. (1st edition The sorcerer’s Apprentice, 1991), pp. 313 and 314.

 

74. Sâr Péladan had organized theatrical performances of the ancient Mysteries. Reference consulted on May 9, 2011 on fratreslucis.netfirms.com/Peladan01.html

 

www.picasso.fr/details/ojo-les-archives-mars-2013-ojo-21-...

 

ANDRÉ BRETON AND HERMETICISM. FROM << MAGNETIC FIELDS >>> TO << THE KEY TO THE FIELDS >>>

 

Communication by Mrs. A. BALAKIAN (New York)

 

at the XIVth Congress of the Association, July 26, 1962.

 

In one of his most recent essays, "Before the Curtain," André Breton accused academic criticism of having made no formal effort to establish the esoteric schemes of art and poetry: "By abstaining until now from taking them into account, academic criticism has devoted itself purely and simply to inanity... thus the great emotional movements that still agitate us, the sensitive charter that governs us, would they proceed, whether we like it or not, from a tradition completely different from that which is taught: on this tradition the most unworthy, the most vindictive silence is kept (1)." Would not our investigation, "Hermeticism and Poetry," be a denial of this reproach?

 

It is true that hermeticism in all its forms has served as a cult for surrealism since Les Champs Magnétiques, the first surrealist document, until André Breton's last collection of essays, published under the cryptographic title of La Clé des Champs, which sums up the definitive position he reached after having searched for more than a quarter of a century for the occult foundations of the human pyramid. Already in he First Manifesto of the Magician Shepherd of the Magnetic Fields had proclaimed that Rimbaud's Alchemy of the Word should be taken literally. In the article, "Why I am Taking the Direction of the Surrealist Revolution", which dates from 1925, he had considered the surrealists as an army of adventurers who act under the orders of the marvelous. On many occasions he has traced the underground framework that, according to him, unites poetic minds since what he calls "the admirable fourteenth century" when Flamel mysteriously received the manuscript of the book of Abraham Juif, through the work of the alchemists of the fifteenth and seventeenth centuries, passing through the work of Martinès, Saint-Martin, Fabre d'Olivet, Abbé Contant, through that of the enlightened ones of the nineteenth century: Hugo, Lautréamont, Rimbaud, to a certain degree Mallarmé, and more recently up to the work of Jarry, Apollinaire, and Raymond Roussel; Breton thus marks the parallel between the occultists and the poets. The philosopher's stone does not simply transform metals but takes on a symbolic meaning; according to Breton it unleashes the human imagination, a word to which he attributes a very special meaning. It is not a deceptive faculty but a liberating one. Without it we are forced to live under the empire of rationalism, that is to say on the surface of things and according to the evident current of phenomena. According to Breton, imagination alone would be capable of delivering us from this condition. Indeed, he attributes to imagination this special characteristic of the human being that Hermes Trismegistus would have defined as "the intimate union of sensation and thought" . This faculty, not inert but latent, "domesticated" (the word is Breton's) for centuries, could find its repressed impulses to make us envisage an unexpected and dynamic rather than organized order of the world. The hermetic tradition that is perpetuated in an underground way at all times and under any form of culture, does not constitute a conscious influence; it is rather a kind of transfusion that at each new mystical crisis of humanity strengthens those

 

(1) La Clé des Champs, Sagittaire, 1953, p. 93.

 

www.persee.fr/doc/caief_0571-5865_1963_num_15_1_2248

Persistent vegetative state

SpecialtyNeurology

A persistent vegetative state (PVS) is a disorder of consciousness in which patients with severe brain damage are in a state of partial arousal rather than true awareness. After four weeks in a vegetative state (VS), the patient is classified as in a persistent vegetative state. This diagnosis is classified as a permanent vegetative state some months (three in the US and six in the UK) after a non-traumatic brain injury or one year after a traumatic injury. Today, doctors and neuroscientists prefer to call the state of consciousness a syndrome,[1] primarily because of ethical questions about whether a patient can be called "vegetative" or not.[2]

  

Contents

1Definition

1.1Medical definition

1.2Lack of legal clarity

1.3Vegetative state

1.4Persistent vegetative state

2Signs and symptoms

2.1Recovery

3Causes

4Diagnosis

4.1Diagnostic experiments

4.2Misdiagnoses

5Treatment

5.1Zolpidem

6Epidemiology

7History

8Society and culture

8.1Ethics and policy

8.2Notable cases

9See also

10References

11External links

Definition[edit]

There are several definitions that vary by technical versus layman's usage. There are different legal implications in different countries.

 

Medical definition[edit]

A wakeful unconscious state that lasts longer than a few weeks is referred to as a persistent (or 'continuing') vegetative state.[3]

 

Lack of legal clarity[edit]

Unlike brain death, permanent vegetative state (PVS) is recognized by statute law as death in very few legal systems. In the US, courts have required petitions before termination of life support that demonstrate that any recovery of cognitive functions above a vegetative state is assessed as impossible by authoritative medical opinion.[4] In England and Wales the legal precedent for withdrawal of clinically assisted nutrition and hydration in cases of patients in a PVS was set in 1993 in the case of Tony Bland, who sustained catastrophic anoxic brain injury in the 1989 Hillsborough disaster.[3] An application to the Court of Protection is no longer required before nutrition and hydration can be withdrawn or withheld from PVS (or 'minimally conscious' – MCS) patients.[5]

 

This legal grey area has led to vocal advocates that those in PVS should be allowed to die. Others are equally determined that, if recovery is at all possible, care should continue. The existence of a small number of diagnosed PVS cases that have eventually resulted in improvement makes defining recovery as "impossible" particularly difficult in a legal sense.[6] This legal and ethical issue raises questions about autonomy, quality of life, appropriate use of resources, the wishes of family members, and professional responsibilities.

 

Vegetative state[edit]

The vegetative state is a chronic or long-term condition. This condition differs from a coma: a coma is a state that lacks both awareness and wakefulness. Patients in a vegetative state may have awoken from a coma, but still have not regained awareness. In the vegetative state patients can open their eyelids occasionally and demonstrate sleep-wake cycles, but completely lack cognitive function. The vegetative state is also called a "coma vigil". The chances of regaining awareness diminish considerably as the time spent in the vegetative state increases.[7]

 

Persistent vegetative state[edit]

Persistent vegetative state is the standard usage (except in the UK) for a medical diagnosis, made after numerous neurological and other tests, that due to extensive and irreversible brain damage a patient is highly unlikely ever to achieve higher functions above a vegetative state. This diagnosis does not mean that a doctor has diagnosed improvement as impossible, but does open the possibility, in the US, for a judicial request to end life support.[6] Informal guidelines hold that this diagnosis can be made after four weeks in a vegetative state. US caselaw has shown that successful petitions for termination have been made after a diagnosis of a persistent vegetative state, although in some cases, such as that of Terri Schiavo, such rulings have generated widespread controversy.

 

In the UK, the term is discouraged in favor of two more precisely defined terms that have been strongly recommended by the Royal College of Physicians (RCP). These guidelines recommend using a continuous vegetative state for patients in a vegetative state for more than four weeks. A medical determination of a permanent vegetative state can be made if, after exhaustive testing and a customary 12 months of observation,[8] a medical diagnosis is made that it is impossible by any informed medical expectations that the mental condition will ever improve.[9] Hence, a "continuous vegetative state" in the UK may remain the diagnosis in cases that would be called "persistent" in the US or elsewhere.

 

While the actual testing criteria for a diagnosis of "permanent" in the UK are quite similar to the criteria for a diagnosis of "persistent" in the US, the semantic difference imparts in the UK a legal presumption that is commonly used in court applications for ending life support.[8] The UK diagnosis is generally only made after 12 months of observing a static vegetative state. A diagnosis of a persistent vegetative state in the US usually still requires a petitioner to prove in court that recovery is impossible by informed medical opinion, while in the UK the "permanent" diagnosis already gives the petitioner this presumption and may make the legal process less time-consuming.[6]

 

In common usage, the "permanent" and "persistent" definitions are sometimes conflated and used interchangeably. However, the acronym "PVS" is intended[by whom?] to define a "persistent vegetative state", without necessarily the connotations of permanence,[citation needed] and is used as such throughout this article. Bryan Jennett, who originally coined the term "persistent vegetative state", has now recommended using the UK division between continuous and permanent in his book The Vegetative State, arguing that "the 'persistent' component of this term ... may seem to suggest irreversibility".[10]

 

The Australian National Health and Medical Research Council has suggested "post coma unresponsiveness" as an alternative term for "vegetative state" in general.[11]

 

Signs and symptoms[edit]

Most PVS patients are unresponsive to external stimuli and their conditions are associated with different levels of consciousness. Some level of consciousness means a person can still respond, in varying degrees, to stimulation. A person in a coma, however, cannot. In addition, PVS patients often open their eyes in response to feeding, which has to be done by others; they are capable of swallowing, whereas patients in a coma subsist with their eyes closed (Emmett, 1989).

 

Cerebral cortical function (e.g. communication, thinking, purposeful movement, etc) is lost while brainstem functions (e.g. breathing, maintaining circulation and hemodynamic stability, etc) are preserved. Non-cognitive upper brainstem functions such as eye-opening, occasional vocalizations (e.g. crying, laughing), maintaining normal sleep patterns, and spontaneous non-purposeful movements often remain intact.

 

PVS patients' eyes might be in a relatively fixed position, or track moving objects, or move in a disconjugate (i.e., completely unsynchronized) manner. They may experience sleep-wake cycles, or be in a state of chronic wakefulness. They may exhibit some behaviors that can be construed as arising from partial consciousness, such as grinding their teeth, swallowing, smiling, shedding tears, grunting, moaning, or screaming without any apparent external stimulus.

 

Individuals in PVS are seldom on any life-sustaining equipment other than a feeding tube because the brainstem, the center of vegetative functions (such as heart rate and rhythm, respiration, and gastrointestinal activity) is relatively intact (Emmett, 1989).

 

Recovery[edit]

Many people emerge spontaneously from a vegetative state within a few weeks.[10] The chances of recovery depend on the extent of injury to the brain and the patient's age – younger patients having a better chance of recovery than older patients. A 1994 report found that of those who were in a vegetative state a month after a trauma, 54% had regained consciousness by a year after the trauma, whereas 28% had died and 18% were still in the vegetative state. But for non-traumatic injuries such as strokes, only 14% had recovered consciousness at one year, 47% had died, and 39% were still vegetative. Patients who were vegetative six months after the initial event were much less likely to have recovered consciousness a year after the event than in the case of those who were simply reported vegetative at one month.[12] A New Scientist article from 2000 gives a pair of graphs[13] showing changes of patient status during the first 12 months after head injury and after incidents depriving the brain of oxygen.[14] After a year, the chances that a PVS patient will regain consciousness are very low[15] and most patients who do recover consciousness experience significant disability. The longer a patient is in a PVS, the more severe the resulting disabilities are likely to be. Rehabilitation can contribute to recovery, but many patients never progress to the point of being able to take care of themselves.

 

There are two dimensions of recovery from a persistent vegetative state: recovery of consciousness and recovery of function. Recovery of consciousness can be verified by reliable evidence of awareness of self and the environment, consistent voluntary behavioral responses to visual and auditory stimuli, and interaction with others. Recovery of function is characterized by communication, the ability to learn and to perform adaptive tasks, mobility, self-care, and participation in recreational or vocational activities. Recovery of consciousness may occur without functional recovery, but functional recovery cannot occur without recovery of consciousness (Ashwal, 1994).

 

Causes[edit]

There are three main causes of PVS (persistent vegetative state):

 

Acute traumatic brain injury

Non-traumatic: neurodegenerative disorder or metabolic disorder of the brain

Severe congenital abnormality of the central nervous system

Medical books (such as Lippincott, Williams, and Wilkins. (2007). In A Page: Pediatric Signs and Symptoms) describe several potential causes of PVS, which are as follows:

 

Bacterial, viral, or fungal infection, including meningitis

Increased intracranial pressure, such as a tumor or abscess

Vascular pressure which causes intracranial hemorrhaging or stroke

Hypoxic ischemic injury (hypotension, cardiac arrest, arrhythmia, near-drowning)

Toxins such as uremia, ethanol, atropine, opiates, lead, colloidal silver[16]

Trauma: Concussion, contusion

Seizure, both nonconvulsive status epilepticus and postconvulsive state (postictal state)

Electrolyte imbalance, which involves hyponatremia, hypernatremia, hypomagnesemia, hypoglycemia, hyperglycemia, hypercalcemia, and hypocalcemia

Postinfectious: Acute disseminated encephalomyelitis (ADEM)

Endocrine disorders such as adrenal insufficiency and thyroid disorders

Degenerative and metabolic diseases including urea cycle disorders, Reye syndrome, and mitochondrial disease

Systemic infection and sepsis

Hepatic encephalopathy

In addition, these authors claim that doctors sometimes use the mnemonic device AEIOU-TIPS to recall portions of the differential diagnosis: Alcohol ingestion and acidosis, Epilepsy and encephalopathy, Infection, Opiates, Uremia, Trauma, Insulin overdose or inflammatory disorders, Poisoning and psychogenic causes, and Shock.

 

Diagnosis[edit]

Despite converging agreement about the definition of persistent vegetative state, recent reports have raised concerns about the accuracy of diagnosis in some patients, and the extent to which, in a selection of cases, residual cognitive functions may remain undetected and patients are diagnosed as being in a persistent vegetative state. Objective assessment of residual cognitive function can be extremely difficult as motor responses may be minimal, inconsistent, and difficult to document in many patients, or may be undetectable in others because no cognitive output is possible (Owen et al., 2002). In recent years, a number of studies have demonstrated an important role for functional neuroimaging in the identification of residual cognitive function in persistent vegetative state; this technology is providing new insights into cerebral activity in patients with severe brain damage. Such studies, when successful, may be particularly useful where there is concern about the accuracy of the diagnosis and the possibility that residual cognitive function has remained undetected.

 

Diagnostic experiments[edit]

Researchers have begun to use functional neuroimaging studies to study implicit cognitive processing in patients with a clinical diagnosis of persistent vegetative state. Activations in response to sensory stimuli with positron emission tomography (PET), functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), and electrophysiological methods can provide information on the presence, degree, and location of any residual brain function. However, use of these techniques in people with severe brain damage is methodologically, clinically, and theoretically complex and needs careful quantitative analysis and interpretation.

 

For example, PET studies have shown the identification of residual cognitive function in persistent vegetative state. That is, an external stimulation, such as a painful stimulus, still activates "primary" sensory cortices in these patients but these areas are functionally disconnected from "higher order" associative areas needed for awareness. These results show that parts of the cortex are indeed still functioning in "vegetative" patients (Matsuda et al., 2003).

 

In addition, other PET studies have revealed preserved and consistent responses in predicted regions of auditory cortex in response to intelligible speech stimuli. Moreover, a preliminary fMRI examination revealed partially intact responses to semantically ambiguous stimuli, which are known to tap higher aspects of speech comprehension (Boly, 2004).

 

Furthermore, several studies have used PET to assess the central processing of noxious somatosensory stimuli in patients in PVS. Noxious somatosensory stimulation activated midbrain, contralateral thalamus, and primary somatosensory cortex in each and every PVS patient, even in the absence of detectable cortical evoked potentials. In conclusion, somatosensory stimulation of PVS patients, at intensities that elicited pain in controls, resulted in increased neuronal activity in primary somatosensory cortex, even if resting brain metabolism was severely impaired. However, this activation of primary cortex seems to be isolated and dissociated from higher-order associative cortices (Laureys et al., 2002).

 

Also, there is evidence of partially functional cerebral regions in catastrophically injured brains. To study five patients in PVS with different behavioral features, researchers employed PET, MRI and magnetoencephalographic (MEG) responses to sensory stimulation. In three of the five patients, co-registered PET/MRI correlate areas of relatively preserved brain metabolism with isolated fragments of behavior. Two patients had suffered anoxic injuries and demonstrated marked decreases in overall cerebral metabolism to 30–40% of normal. Two other patients with non-anoxic, multifocal brain injuries demonstrated several isolated brain regions with higher metabolic rates, that ranged up to 50–80% of normal. Nevertheless, their global metabolic rates remained <50% of normal. MEG recordings from three PVS patients provide clear evidence for the absence, abnormality or reduction of evoked responses. Despite major abnormalities, however, these data also provide evidence for localized residual activity at the cortical level. Each patient partially preserved restricted sensory representations, as evidenced by slow evoked magnetic fields and gamma band activity. In two patients, these activations correlate with isolated behavioral patterns and metabolic activity. Remaining active regions identified in the three PVS patients with behavioral fragments appear to consist of segregated corticothalamic networks that retain connectivity and partial functional integrity. A single patient who suffered severe injury to the tegmental mesencephalon and paramedian thalamus showed widely preserved cortical metabolism, and a global average metabolic rate of 65% of normal. The relatively high preservation of cortical metabolism in this patient defines the first functional correlate of clinical–pathological reports associating permanent unconsciousness with structural damage to these regions. The specific patterns of preserved metabolic activity identified in these patients reflect novel evidence of the modular nature of individual functional networks that underlie conscious brain function. The variations in cerebral metabolism in chronic PVS patients indicate that some cerebral regions can retain partial function in catastrophically injured brains (Schiff et al., 2002).

 

Misdiagnoses[edit]

Statistical PVS misdiagnosis is common. An example study with 40 patients in the United Kingdom reported 43% of their patients classified as PVS were believed so and another 33% had recovered whilst the study was underway.[17] Some PVS cases may actually be a misdiagnosis of patients being in an undiagnosed minimally conscious state.[18] Since the exact diagnostic criteria of the minimally conscious state were only formulated in 2002, there may be chronic patients diagnosed as PVS before the secondary notion of the minimally conscious state became known.

 

Whether or not there is any conscious awareness with a patient's vegetative state is a prominent issue. Three completely different aspects of this should be distinguished. First, some patients can be conscious simply because they are misdiagnosed (see above). In fact, they are not in vegetative states. Second, sometimes a patient was correctly diagnosed but is then examined during the early stages of recovery. Third, perhaps some day the notion itself of vegetative states will change so to include elements of conscious awareness. Inability to disentangle these three example cases causes confusion. An example of such confusion is the response to a recent experiment using functional magnetic resonance imaging which revealed that a woman diagnosed with PVS was able to activate predictable portions of her brain in response to the tester's requests that she imagine herself playing tennis or moving from room to room in her house. The brain activity in response to these instructions was indistinguishable from those of healthy patients.[19][20][21]

 

In 2010, Martin Monti and fellow researchers, working at the MRC Cognition and Brain Sciences Unit at the University of Cambridge, reported in an article in the New England Journal of Medicine[22] that some patients in persistent vegetative states responded to verbal instructions by displaying different patterns of brain activity on fMRI scans. Five out of a total of 54 diagnosed patients were apparently able to respond when instructed to think about one of two different physical activities. One of these five was also able to "answer" yes or no questions, again by imagining one of these two activities.[23] It is unclear, however, whether the fact that portions of the patients' brains light up on fMRI could help these patients assume their own medical decision making.[23]

 

In November 2011, a publication in The Lancet presented bedside EEG apparatus and indicated that its signal could be used to detect awareness in three of 16 patients diagnosed in the vegetative state.[24]

 

Treatment[edit]

Currently no treatment for vegetative state exists that would satisfy the efficacy criteria of evidence-based medicine. Several methods have been proposed which can roughly be subdivided into four categories: pharmacological methods, surgery, physical therapy, and various stimulation techniques. Pharmacological therapy mainly uses activating substances such as tricyclic antidepressants or methylphenidate. Mixed results have been reported using dopaminergic drugs such as amantadine and bromocriptine and stimulants such as dextroamphetamine.[25] Surgical methods such as deep brain stimulation are used less frequently due to the invasiveness of the procedures. Stimulation techniques include sensory stimulation, sensory regulation, music and musicokinetic therapy, social-tactile interaction, and cortical stimulation.[26]

 

Zolpidem[edit]

There is limited evidence that the hypnotic drug zolpidem has an effect.[27] The results of the few scientific studies that have been published so far on the effectiveness of zolpidem have been contradictory.[28][29]

 

Epidemiology[edit]

In the United States, it is estimated that there may be between 15,000 and 40,000 patients who are in a persistent vegetative state, but due to poor nursing home records exact figures are hard to determine.[30]

 

History[edit]

The syndrome was first described in 1940 by Ernst Kretschmer who called it apallic syndrome.[31] The term persistent vegetative state was coined in 1972 by Scottish spinal surgeon Bryan Jennett and American neurologist Fred Plum to describe a syndrome that seemed to have been made possible by medicine's increased capacities to keep patients' bodies alive.[10][32]

 

Society and culture[edit]

Ethics and policy[edit]

An ongoing debate exists as to how much care, if any, patients in a persistent vegetative state should receive in health systems plagued by limited resources. In a case before the New Jersey Superior Court, Betancourt v. Trinitas Hospital, a community hospital sought a ruling that dialysis and CPR for such a patient constitutes futile care. An American bioethicist, Jacob M. Appel, argued that any money spent treating PVS patients would be better spent on other patients with a higher likelihood of recovery.[33] The patient died naturally prior to a decision in the case, resulting in the court finding the issue moot.

 

In 2010, British and Belgian researchers reported in an article in the New England Journal of Medicine that some patients in persistent vegetative states actually had enough consciousness to "answer" yes or no questions on fMRI scans.[34] However, it is unclear whether the fact that portions of the patients' brains light up on fMRI will help these patient assume their own medical decision making.[34] Professor Geraint Rees, Director of the Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience at University College London, responded to the study by observing that, "As a clinician, it would be important to satisfy oneself that the individual that you are communicating with is competent to make those decisions. At the moment it is premature to conclude that the individual able to answer 5 out of 6 yes/no questions is fully conscious like you or I."[34] In contrast, Jacob M. Appel of the Mount Sinai Hospital told the Telegraph that this development could be a welcome step toward clarifying the wishes of such patients. Appel stated: "I see no reason why, if we are truly convinced such patients are communicating, society should not honour their wishes. In fact, as a physician, I think a compelling case can be made that doctors have an ethical obligation to assist such patients by removing treatment. I suspect that, if such individuals are indeed trapped in their bodies, they may be living in great torment and will request to have their care terminated or even active euthanasia."[34]

 

Notable cases[edit]

Tony Bland – first patient in English legal history to be allowed to die

Paul Brophy – first American to die after court-authorization

Sunny von Bülow – lived almost 28 years in a persistent vegetative state until her death

Gustavo Cerati – Argentine singer-songwriter, composer and producer who died after four years in a coma

Prichard Colón – Puerto Rican former professional boxer and gold medal winner who spent years in a vegetative state after a bout

Nancy Cruzan – American woman involved in a landmark United States Supreme Court case

Gary Dockery – American police officer who entered, emerged and later reentered a persistent vegetative state

Eluana Englaro – Italian woman from Lecco whose life was ended after a legal case after spending 17 years in a vegetative state

Elaine Esposito – American child who was a previous record holder for having spent 37 years in a coma

Lia Lee – Hmong child who spent 26 years in a vegetative state and was the subject of a 1997 book by Anne Fadiman

Haleigh Poutre

Karen Ann Quinlan

Terri Schiavo

Aruna Shanbaug – Indian woman in persistent vegetative state for 42 years until her death. Due to her case, the Supreme Court of India allowed passive euthanasia in the country.

Ariel Sharon

Chayito Valdez

Vice Vukov

Helga Wanglie

Otto Warmbier

See also[edit]

Anencephaly

Brain death

Botulism

Catatonia

Karolina Olsson

Locked-in syndrome

Process Oriented Coma Work, for an approach to working with residual consciousness in patients in comatose and persistent vegetative states

References[edit]

^ Laureys, Steven; Celesia, Gastone G; Cohadon, Francois; Lavrijsen, Jan; León-Carrión, José; Sannita, Walter G; Sazbon, Leon; Schmutzhard, Erich; von Wild, Klaus R (2010-11-01). "Unresponsive wakefulness syndrome: a new name for the vegetative state or apallic syndrome". BMC Medicine. 8: 68. doi:10.1186/1741-7015-8-68. ISSN 1741-7015. PMC 2987895. PMID 21040571.

^ Laureys S, Celesia GG, Cohadon F, Lavrijsen J, León-Carrión J, Sannita WG, Sazbon L, Schmutzhard E, von Wild KR, Zeman A, Dolce G (2010). "Unresponsive wakefulness syndrome: a new name for the vegetative state or apallic syndrome". BMC Med. 8: 68. doi:10.1186/1741-7015-8-68. PMC 2987895. PMID 21040571.

^ Jump up to: a b Royal College of Physicians 2013 Prolonged Disorders of Consciousness: National Clinical Guidelines, www.rcplondon.ac.uk/resources/prolonged-disorders-conscio...

^ Jennett, B (1999). "Should cases of permanent vegetative state still go to court?. Britain should follow other countries and keep the courts for cases of dispute". BMJ (Clinical Research Ed.). 319 (7213): 796–97. doi:10.1136/bmj.319.7213.796. PMC 1116645. PMID 10496803.

^ Royal College of Physicians 2013 Prolonged Disorders of Consciousness: National Clinical Guidelines

^ Jump up to: a b c Diagnosing The Permanent Vegetative State by Ronald Cranford, MD

^ PVS, The Multi-Society Task Force on (1994-05-26). "Medical Aspects of the Persistent Vegetative State". New England Journal of Medicine. 330 (21): 1499–1508. doi:10.1056/NEJM199405263302107. ISSN 0028-4793. PMID 7818633.

^ Jump up to: a b Wade, DT; Johnston, C (1999). "The permanent vegetative state: Practical guidance on diagnosis and management". BMJ (Clinical Research Ed.). 319 (7213): 841–4. doi:10.1136/bmj.319.7213.841. PMC 1116668. PMID 10496834.

^ Guidance on diagnosis and management: Report of a working party of the Royal College of Physicians. Royal College of Physicians: London. 1996.

^ Jump up to: a b c Bryan Jennett. The Vegetative State: Medical facts, ethical and legal dilemmas (PDF). University of Glasgow: Scotland. Retrieved 2007-11-09.

^ Post-coma unresponsiveness (Vegetative State): a clinical framework for diagnosis. National Health and Medical Research Council (NHMRC): Canberra. 2003. Archived from the original on 2006-08-20.

^ Jennett, B (2002). "Editorial: The vegetative state. The definition, diagnosis, prognosis and pathology of this state are discussed, together with the legal implications". British Medical Journal. 73 (4): 355–357. doi:10.1136/jnnp.73.4.355. PMC 1738081. PMID 12235296. Retrieved 2012-06-11.

^ "New Scientist". 2014-02-02. Archived from the original on 2017-07-11. Retrieved 2019-01-07.

^ Nell Boyce (July 8, 2000). "Is anyone in there?". New Scientist: 36.

^ Schapira, Anthony (December 18, 2006). Neurology and Clinical Neuroscience. Mosby. p. 126. ISBN 978-0323033541.

^ Mirsattari SM, Hammond RR, Sharpe MD, Leung FY, Young GB (April 2004). "Myoclonic status epilepticus following repeated oral ingestion of colloidal silver". Neurology. 62 (8): 1408–10. doi:10.1212/01.WNL.0000120671.73335.EC. PMID 15111684.

^ K Andrews; L Murphy; R Munday; C Littlewood (1996-07-06). "Misdiagnosis of the vegetative state: retrospective study in a rehabilitation unit". British Medical Journal. 313 (7048): 13–16. doi:10.1136/bmj.313.7048.13. PMC 2351462. PMID 8664760.

^ Giacino JT, et al. (2002). "Unknown title". Neurology. 58 (3): 349–353. doi:10.1212/wnl.58.3.349. PMID 11839831.

^ Owen AM, Coleman MR, Boly M, Davis MH, Laureys S, Pickard JD (2006-09-08). "Detecting awareness in the vegetative state". Science. 313 (5792): 1402. CiteSeerX 10.1.1.1022.2193. doi:10.1126/science.1130197. PMID 16959998.

^ "Vegetative patient 'communicates': A patient in a vegetative state can communicate just through using her thoughts, according to research". BBC News. September 7, 2006. Retrieved 2008-08-14.

^ Stein R (September 8, 2006). "Vegetative patient's brain active in test: Unprecedented experiment shows response to instructions to imagine playing tennis". San Francisco Chronicle. Retrieved 2007-09-26.

^ Willful Modulation of Brain Activity in Disorders of Consciousness at nejm.org

^ Jump up to: a b Richard Alleyne and Martin Beckford, Patients in 'vegetative' state can think and communicate,Telegraph (United Kingdom), Feb 4, 2010

^ Cruse Damian; et al. (2011). "Bedside detection of awareness in the vegetative state: a cohort study". The Lancet. 378 (9809): 2088–2094. CiteSeerX 10.1.1.368.3928. doi:10.1016/S0140-6736(11)61224-5. PMID 22078855.

^ Dolce, Giuliano; Sazbon, Leon (2002). The post-traumatic vegetative state. ISBN 9781588901163.

^ Georgiopoulos M, et al. (2010). "Vegetative state and minimally conscious state: a review of the therapeutic interventions". Stereotact Funct Neurosurg. 88 (4): 199–207. doi:10.1159/000314354. PMID 20460949.

^ Georgiopoulos, M; Katsakiori, P; Kefalopoulou, Z; Ellul, J; Chroni, E; Constantoyannis, C (2010). "Vegetative state and minimally conscious state: a review of the therapeutic interventions". Stereotactic and Functional Neurosurgery. 88 (4): 199–207. doi:10.1159/000314354. PMID 20460949.

^ Snyman, N; Egan, JR; London, K; Howman-Giles, R; Gill, D; Gillis, J; Scheinberg, A (2010). "Zolpidem for persistent vegetative state—a placebo-controlled trial in pediatrics". Neuropediatrics. 41 (5): 223–227. doi:10.1055/s-0030-1269893. PMID 21210338.

^ Whyte, J; Myers, R (2009). "Incidence of clinically significant responses to zolpidem among patients with disorders of consciousness: a preliminary placebo controlled trial". Am J Phys Med Rehabil. 88 (5): 410–418. doi:10.1097/PHM.0b013e3181a0e3a0. PMID 19620954.

^ Hirsch, Joy (2005-05-02). "Raising consciousness". The Journal of Clinical Investigation. 115 (5): 1102. doi:10.1172/JCI25320. PMC 1087197. PMID 15864333.

^ Ernst Kretschmer (1940). "Das apallische Syndrom". Neurol. Psychiat. 169: 576–579. doi:10.1007/BF02871384.

^ B Jennett; F Plum (1972). "Persistent vegetative state after brain damage: A syndrome in search of a name". The Lancet. 1 (7753): 734–737. doi:10.1016/S0140-6736(72)90242-5. PMID 4111204.

^ Appel on Betancourt v. Trinitas

^ Jump up to: a b c d Richard Alleyne and Martin Beckford, Patients in 'vegetative' state can think and communicate, Telegraph (United Kingdom), Feb 4, 2010

This article contains text from the NINDS public domain pages on TBI. [1] and [2].

 

External links[edit]

Sarà, M.; Sacco, S.; Cipolla, F.; Onorati, P.; Scoppetta, C; Albertini, G; Carolei, A (2007). "An unexpected recovery from permanent vegetative state". Brain Injury. 21 (1): 101–103. doi:10.1080/02699050601151761. PMID 17364525.

Canavero S, et al. (2009). "Recovery of consciousness following bifocal extradural cortical stimulation in a permanently vegetative patient". Journal of Neurology. 256 (5): 834–6. doi:10.1007/s00415-009-5019-4. PMID 19252808.

Canavero S (editor) (2009). Textbook of therapeutic cortical stimulation. New York: Nova Science. ISBN 9781606925379.

Canavero S, Massa-Micon B, Cauda F, Montanaro E (May 2009). "Bifocal extradural cortical stimulation-induced recovery of consciousness in the permanent post-traumatic vegetative state". J Neurol. 256 (5): 834–6. doi:10.1007/s00415-009-5019-4. PMID 19252808.

Connolly, Kate. "Car crash victim trapped in a coma for 23 years was conscious", The Guardian, November 23, 2009.

Machado, Calixto, et al. "A Cuban Perspective on Management of Persistent Vegetative State". MEDICC Review 2012;14(1):44–48.

 

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Persistent_vegetative_state

Free download under CC Attribution (CC BY 2.0). Please credit the artist and rawpixel.com

 

Hu Zhengyan (c. 1584-1674) was a Chinese traditional painter, calligrapher, seal carver and publisher during the transition of the Ming and Qing dynasties. He produced China’s first printed publication in color, and was famous for his incredible techniques achieving gradation and modulation of shades in woodblock prints.

 

Higher resolutions with no attribution required can be downloaded: rawpixel

 

Ok, let's take a look at the Batis 2/40 CF again in detail. Everyone is of course interested about the optical performance so I thought I should 'address the need' and start to investigate it. The MTF-diagrams published by ZEISS is a good starting point as they provide lot's of data and are easily comparable (with other ZEISS lenses). So, here are the MTF-diagrams of the Batis 2/40 CF.

 

People always look first for the resolution so they are mostly interested about the 40 lp/mm line, but I think the 10 lp/mm important as well, because it describes the amount overall contrast and 'pop' the lens is able to achieve. Wide open at f/2 the Batis 2/40 CF achieves more than 90% throughout the frame with 10 lp/mm and decreases to 80% only at very end of the frame. Anything above 80 % is usually considered to be excellent, but with the over 90% the Batis 2/40 shows outstanding contrast performance. For a reference the Otus 1.4/55 achieves only about 2% or 3% more (but then again the Otus is also about outstanding optical correction).

 

Next, the 40 lp/mm line tells us something about the maximum resolution and definition the lens can achieve. Wide open at f/2 the resolution looks – again – outstanding at the center. There are lenses that achieve similar resolution only at stopped down to f/5.6 and achieving such as resolution already at f/2 is very good indeed. The maximum resolution drops a bit at midframe, but at 50-60% it is totally acceptable (let's remember the lens measured wide open here). In short, the wide open performance is very, very good.

 

When the lens is stopped down to f/4 the performance of course increases a bit. The large scale contrast (10 lp/mm) is very similar to wide open behavior which is actually a compliment to wide open performance: this lens pushes maximum contrast already at wide open. The maximum resolution (40 lp/mm) jumps up a bit as is spread out very evenly throughout the frame and the lens shows no field curvature. Tangential and sagittal lines differ a bit here, which means a slight astigmatism at the midframe, but this is really nitpicking as the lines are still very convergent as a whole (you should see some zoom lenses). In short, the MTF-diagrams shows outstanding optical performance for the Batis 2/40 CF. But to be honest, this was to be expected because it's designed by ZEISS and the competition in Sony Alpha ecosystem is very hard at the moment, so the crafty people at Oberkochen has to push the envelope even further.

 

One thing I should note here is that ZEISS always provides MTF-data measured with white light from real lenses. With the most other manufacturers this is not the common practice. With Sony, for example, you only see theoretical MTF-data and they don't even publish the 40 lp/mm precision (only 10 and 30 lp/mm), which of course makes the diagrams look good, but the truth is that you cannot trust them. Manufacturing tolerances as also properties of glass, proper alignment, etc. affects the lenses so that one never gets the theoretical performance. Therefore it's more fair and truthful to see the measurements from real lenses. Also, I should add that Sony isn't even that bad as some other manufacturers that regularly publish MTF-diagrams with lines peaking at 100% – only it's just that it is physically impossible due the diffraction limitations of optical systems. Kind of wrecks their credibility. ZEISS is a rare exception, because their MTF comes always from the real lenses.

 

What I always do when ZEISS announces a new lens is that I compare it to other lenses in their catalogue. This is a good way to position the new lens compared to others (and of course to speculate how good ZEISS has succeeded this time). So here's the Batis 2/40 CF compared to Batis 2/25 and Batis 1.8/85 which present the obvious peer group.

 

Wide open and at the center of the frame the Batis 2/40 CF is the best of these three lenses. The performance is very similar to Batis 1.8/85 which is a compliment to Batis 2/40 because being a moderately wide lens it is more difficult the design than the short tele lens. Being familiar with the Batis 1.8/85 performance I think this is great news as it is about the best lens I've ever tested regarding wide open performance. I'm also happy to see that wide open Batis 2/40 is clearly better than the Batis 2/25. Don't get me wrong, the Batis 2/25 is also one of best wide angles you can get for Sony Alpha cameras (the new Sony 1.4/24 might be better), but the center resolution is clearly better with the Batis 2/40. Stopping down to f/4 all three become very similar with each other. Those who are already familiar with the Batis performance should be very well home here with the new Batis 2/40 CF.

 

So, the Batis 2/40 CF seems to fit very nicely to Batis lens family, but what about the other ZEISS lenses, like some similar from the Milvus lens family. Okay, so here is Batis 2/40 CF compared to Milvus 1.4/35 and Milvus 1.4/50.

 

The Milvus lenses are one stop faster so it's a kind of unfair comparison because stopped down they would do better, but still one can only admire the wide open performance of the Batis 2/40: plenty of contrast and resolution. Stopped down to f/4 the Milvus 1.4/35 takes a winning position here as it should because it is a large and uncompromised lens weighting a whopping 1174 g (quite a difference compared to 361 g Batis). But then compared to Milvus 1.4/50 the Batis has a very similar performance.

 

Every now and then I hear people claiming that Otus & Milvus represent ZEISS's premium lenses while the autofocusing Batis and Touit are only 'almost-premium lenses' (to put it nicely). This comparison doesn't support it. Sure there are some different design limits with different lenses, but unlike other companies like Sony, Canon or Nikon, ZEISS doesn't categorize their lens families similar way. Everything they do represents the professional lenses because it's in their brand and they don't do separate product lines for consumer lenses. If in doubt, they a look at the Touit MTF-diagrams, very similar looking curves there.

 

Ok, that's about all I'm going to say about the Batis 2/40 CF MTF-diagrams, but how does the optical performance look like in practice, you might wonder? Come back tomorrow and I'll show you!

 

www.30daysofbatis.com

untitled (searching)

2016_08_13

charcoal pastel and graphite on manila tagboard

12" x 12" (30.48 x 30.48)cm

Matt Niebuhr

West Branch Studio

www.mattniebuhr.com

shop.mattniebuhr.com

Frequency range: 1.5 to 31 MHz; CW, AM, NFM and SSB modulation. And a built in speaker.

This is what happens when an engineer runs out of electricity to power his domicile and is left with his dogged, stale imagination, a few self-made LED Throwies and a LED torch wrapped in violet sheath. The light on my face is triggered by pulse modulated LED illumination and the light trails are hand propagated with the torch previously mentioned.

 

The possessed guy standing in the middle is ME , by the way :D I had my earphones in my..err..ears constantly playing "Are We In Trouble Now"-by Mark Knopfler.

 

I was going to call this "When Poltergeists attack" and then thought "Something latin would be so much cooler."

 

...and oh, I'M BACK BITCHES! GOT MY STITCHES CUT TODAY.

 

Crazy Fact: I don't know why or when, but apparently I wrote "Fiat Lux" inside the flaps of my money bag sometime ago...possibly while pondering upon something composed by Abba.

 

# Taken with the Nikon D90

# Unedited , cropped in Adobe PS

# Taken in "The Bulwark of Bariwala Haroon"

.

 

Oh, almost forgot...Larger and denigrated...although, nothing too special this time.

A variation of this yellow composition was used for the cover art of this musical electro trash proposition.

 

www.youtube.com/watch?v=lIY7ZCd19ds

 

The concept was an expressive minimal music with modulations created by to subtract frequencies from a loop wave of a fraction of second.

 

Like for colors, if you take off the other frequencies, only the yellow is visible.

 

MG

Finally it is summer break. I have time to catch up with my painting.

I had a lot fun working on this still life. I tried to keep it as simple as possible and still it took three hours.

Under cover of dusk, a dark knight enters the holding bays.

Only the blue glow of a semi-powered coupling hints at the new entry in the 2011 Podracer

 

Challenge.

 

In a separate bay a short 'skrit' sound alludes to the challenge for team rivals as they face the

 

days ahead.

 

Morning reveals that a new BatPodracer has joined the lineup and given it's updated design

 

characteristics, its pilots expectations run high.

 

The engines themselves are at the peak of earthly efficiency, front weighted with a core booster

 

surrounded by six gimble mounted subthrust assemblys (please note that the 2 and 11 o'clock

 

assemblies have been muffled to prevent support arm blast damage).

 

It is by mere coincidence that the mid-mount stabliser fins are adjustable to include all

 

Podracer heights and are basically ornamental in design though sloped backward to meet the

 

current sponser safety regulations.

 

In a Podracer first, the energy bindings modulation packs have been fitted with pivotal cover

 

fins for extra debris and elemental protection.

 

The Pod itself houses a single pilot and from the rear sprouts two sonar amplification receivers

 

to enable advanced recognition tactics.

 

Two pivoting side wing-shaped 'flaps' beat in time with the engine thrusts to create, along with

 

an aft spoiler, an almost weightless effect on the pod in times of extreme manouver to assist

 

navigation in the most challenging of circumstances.

 

The head of the module is enhanced with left and right 'ear brakes' in case of the need for a

 

speedy shutdown. When forced to full front they are able to slow the Pod to a halt in a fraction

 

of a khelter giving the pilot enough time to navigate whatever tragedy may have announced itself

 

in its path.

 

Well, two things about this build...

 

1. I didn't want to do Batman, I felt the competition on this theme would be rampart; so we shall

 

see...

 

2. I didn't want to use black...I don't like building in black; it's hard to see and even harder

 

to photograph.

 

But I'll be damned if this thing didn't keep building itself.

 

So please absorb and enjoy the BatPodRacer in all of its striking Black Beauty as she thrusts

 

herself into the official FBTB 2011 Podracer Challenge.

detail: untitled #2 (modulations)

2016_08_13

charcoal pastel and graphite on manila tagboard

12" x 12" (30.48 x 30.48)cm

Matt Niebuhr

West Branch Studio

www.mattniebuhr.com

shop.mattniebuhr.com

I always prefer photographing in available light – or Rembrandt-light I like to call it – so you get the natural modulations of the face. It makes a more alive, real, and flattering portrait. Alfred Eisenstaedt

 

lford HP5 plus @ ASA320

 

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The Recipe

5 mins pre soak

7.5 mins Ilford ID11 - Ilford Agitation Method

1 min Ilford Stop

5 mins Ilford Fixer

10 mins wash

wash aid

Slowly learns

Voigtlaender Vitessa L, Fuji Neopan Acros II, F5.6, 1/60sec, 千葉県, 船橋市

When the painter Marc Chagall (1887-1985) agreed for the first time to create the stained glass windows of a cathedral, that of Metz in 1959, he was at the same time revealing a secret part of his art. Chagall also knew how to play admirably with the opposition of colors to bring out and oppose different worlds and stories. Each time, he knew how to use these strong oppositions by using different pigments to make us discover another reality. Thus, on the one hand, we discover the quasi-monochromy of yellow in the stained glass window of the Creation, this one corresponding more to solar representations.On the other hand, the midnight blue with the fiery red of the two bays of the interior ambulatory seem to be more associated with nocturnal, crepuscular, telluric but also lunar images. On the one hand, that of the stained glass window of the Creation which narrates the paradisiacal scenes where Eve and Adam evolve with the dominant yellow. And on the other hand, the other world, that of the aftermath of the fall, of the exit from Eden, according to the two bays of the interior ambulatory. These relate the history of the chosen people, with dark and violent colors such as night blue and fire red. All this to signify that we are no longer in the Edenic times but in those where humanity will know sin and death. At the same time, one will also notice that each stained glass window is crossed by an astonishing dynamism. This dynamism increases and always evolves in the same direction, from left to right. Thus we can follow the story of each representation always in the same direction.

 

The first stained glass window, that of the Creation, begins in the first lancet with the scene of the creation of the man Adam and finally ends in the last lancet with the expulsion of the couple Adam and Eve from paradise. At the same time, in the other two bays of the interior ambulatory, we see a long historical continuum that goes from the Sacrifice of Isaac to the deportation of the Jews to Babylon. It is worth noting that each time, the story told by the stained glass windows ends with a dramatic exit!

 

Finally, the deep source of this dynamism must be sought in Hasidism, a Jewish religious movement that strongly influenced Chagall. Most of the Israelites in Vitebsk were all Hasidim. For the Hasid, spontaneous emotion counts as much as the law or the rite. Hence the painter's insistence on often showing us festive scenes where everyone gives free rein to the expression of their spontaneous joy. Thus, often the Chagallian characters seem to be invaded by this enthusiasm inherited from Hasidism. This Russian painter succeeds in associating us with the vitality of the spectacle of human history to a more intense force that animates us. This mysterious divine energy, is it not ultimately what this artist wants to reveal to us with this other reality? To lead us in fact to fly always higher in the image of his Luftmensch?

 

This is not surprising, since the artist has always been a special case in modern painting. While abstraction appeared to many as the ultimate achievement of pictorial creation, he, on the contrary, always clung as fiercely to figuration. Not because of a concern for conformism or academicism, but rather because he considered it to be the most appropriate way to show another reality. Revealing notably by the magic of the representation and the color, the inaccessible, the unsuspected because this artist had always had the concern to reveal the most intimate and the most mysterious thing of the being. Father Couturier (1897-1954), who first encouraged him to work as a stained glass artist in the church of Assy in 1956-1957, had well grasped the soul of this painter by affirming that: "Chagall is not an explorer of the depths of the soul: he is a tree with deep roots whose fruits have the color of the Sun. But it is also thanks to his work on the Bible that the brush of this painter will allow other discoveries. The effect of the saving storm of the God of the Old Testament will indeed act powerfully on him. Hence the same impression that the visible reality of this painter becomes something else thanks to his palette. However, if his representations surprise by their sometimes irrational side, he is not for all that a surrealist painter, even if he makes us reach another world. Later, when he discovered at the age of 70 the possibilities offered by the technique of stained glass, it is also undeniable that this art of luminescence will stimulate his inspiration even more. The first cathedral of his career, the Cathedral of Saint-Etienne in Metz, will give him the opportunity to highlight certain facets of this other reality. First of all, to bring it out, he knew how to take advantage of a perfect use of the place. Indeed, his first stained glass windows often located in a relatively dark and secluded space will lead him to develop more than elsewhere his proximity to the painter Rembrandt, painter of the soul and chiaroscuro. Then, another complicity that we discover in this painter is that with Jacob, the patriarch of the Bible, with whom he will be able to emphasize his Luftmensch. Finally, he will play more than elsewhere with the partitions and polarities that underlie all his work. On this occasion also, he will be able to highlight with great mastery all the force that animates his stained glass work, which is totally subordinated to movement and dynamism. When he was offered to work for the cathedral of Metz, he was initially quite disappointed with the spaces he was given. Indeed, he was initially offered to practice his art in relatively secluded and dark areas of the cathedral, since they were located in the north apse, more precisely in the inner ambulatory. With the windows located at the beginning of the choir's perimeter and where the sun practically never appeared, his work might not benefit from maximum visibility and this had not escaped the painter. So he began with the window furthest back, the one with three lancets, and then the one further forward with four lancets. He called this three lancet window the "wounded stained glass window". Chagall called it that because the left side of the window was cut off when the turret was created, giving it a lame look. The median axis of the rose window is indeed off-center to the left of the current median axis of the lancets. As we will see later, Chagall knew perfectly how to illustrate his world by playing on partitions and polarities. Here, in these dark spaces, it will be the world of the night and the penumbra representing the lunar star opposed to the world of the day and the Sun. The solar world will be the one he will inaugurate some time later in the North transept with the stained glass window of the Creation. This is why, as a painter and to illuminate and "counterbalance" this world of night, he will use two dominant colors which are the dark blue associated with the aggressive red. He thus uses his proven technique of the preponderant color. This technique goes back to his very first years in painting, during his years spent in Saint Petersburg in 1906-1907. His master at the time, Leon Bakst, always advised him to limit the world of colors to better dominate them. During this same period, he also produced a number of paintings with scenes that took place mostly at night (The Birth, The Peasant Woman Eating, The Kermesse, The Procession, The Holy Family). His taste for tenebrism brings him closer to Caravaggio, but especially to Rembrandt. One can also explain his attraction for the half-light because, for lack of means, he worked at the time most often in a cramped room in St. Petersburg which was particularly dark. Thus, the affinities with the great Flemish painter will become more and more obvious. Firstly, in the use of chiaroscuro, which Chagall had to use in view of the places where he had to execute his work, in particular in the interior ambulatory of the cathedral in Metz. Then in the treatment itself of certain scenes. Indeed, we discover obvious similarities with a Rembrandt painting of 1635 when he tackles the first lancet of the four lancet stained glass window, in the scene of the Sacrifice of Isaac. We see the same strong chromatic opposition of contrasts between the dark blue in Chagall's work or the dark brown in Rembrandt's that invades the figure of Abraham and the whitish clarity of Isaac's body. We also detect an identical treatment in the softness and transparency of the half-tones. In these two painters, the same effects of light modulation are used to reveal the deep truth of the beings. Chagall, in this stained glass window, plays on the variation of blues, going from the most intense and darkest to the most luminous. In the same way, in these two artists, Isaac is violently illuminated while we never really see his eyes. We cannot see the victim's gaze because it is the gaze of God that we risk encountering. The work is here an unveiling. The artist then reveals another reality: the victim will be recognized by God and saved by him alone!.

 

www.blelorraine.fr/2021/05/des-vitraux-de-chagall-a-la-ca...

"Only her breathing was altered by each touch of my fingers, as though she were an instrument on which I was playing and from which I extracted modulations by drawing different notes from one after another of its strings."

--Marcel Proust

90 mins of Trippy Techno set recorded live @ Music For The Soul

You can watch it on Youtube: youtu.be/Ycs6GN_m5h8

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▼ Tracklist:

[0:00]Unclear - Mind

[4:50]Autechre - Foil

[7:11]Kryss Hypnowave - Cielo Stellato

[11:08]Animum - Astral

[16:16]Animum - Next Walking

[20:39]Anders Hellberg - Thriving Tribe (Doctrina Natura Remix)

[22:49]Violent - Rage For Order

[26:35]Basis Change - Taygeta

[30:16]Basis Change - Cease

[32:59]Anders Hellberg - Concomitant Modulation

[38:37]The Alchemical Theory - Esoteric

[40:45]NFEREE - Koppen

[45:21]Atis - Cradled

[48:40]One Release - Hela's Mjolnir

[54:22]Robin Kampschoer - Rattling Sticks

[57:03]Anders Hellberg - Unpredictable Event

[01:01:52]Mown - Patience (Floating Machine Remix)

[01:06:08]Rasser - Shape Position

[01:08:22]Vinicius Honorio - The Brotherhood of Shadow

[01:11:43]Ricardo Garduno - Resistencia

[01:14:13]MSDMNR - Saturn Crisis

[01:18:18]Black Lotus - Alienated Souls

[01:21:15]Aphex Twin - Digeridoo

From the appearance of the original photo print, I can tell that it was taken using my mom's Olympus Pen-D half-frame camera. Photo taken circa late Summer of 1966 when our house was freshly landscaped and only a few months old. We moved in during August of 1966. That Japanese black pine tree in front of the large window still exists today albeit a bit larger now.

 

A bit of College Park East (CPE) life back then:

 

At this point in time, this side of Elder Avenue was the furthest south to which College Park East was yet built; it was all clear and unbuilt from here to the San Diego Freeway (I-405). The tall concrete sound wall that separates this neighborhood from the freeway was not yet erected. This meant that we could stand on the 2nd floor balcony of the house and see the traffic whizzing by on the freeway.

 

Mailboxes needed to be curbside at first, so they had to be on the parkway as apparent here. By the time the subsequent blocks or units of homes were constructed, parkways were no longer included. This meant that sidewalks on later homes would be right next to the curb. Only the first units of homes, those that are located in the northeast portion of College Park East, have the benefit of parkways between the sidewalk and the curb.

 

At the time we moved in during August, 1966, Lampson Avenue in Seal Beach consisted of only two lanes, one in each direction. Shortly thereafter, two additional lanes were paved, allowing two lanes in both directions, its current configuration.

 

Also at this time, the Los Angeles-based Helms Bakery was still in business, so their delivery trucks would make their routes through the neighborhood in those earlier years. Similarly, Adohr Farms delivered milk and other dairy products.

 

Because my parents both worked, my mom made arrangements with the Helms Bakery truck driver to leave a loaf of bread on top of the clothes dryer in the garage whenever she placed the Helms sign in the window. She would leave money on top of the dryer for this. This, of course, meant that we would leave the garage door unlocked on those days.

 

Unlike the rest of Seal Beach, College Park East and College Park West were served then by the Los Alamitos School District for grades K through 6 and by the Anaheim Union High School District for grades 7 through 12.

 

To register me for school, my mom and I drove to the old Laurel School building that faced Florista just east of Los Alamitos Blvd. I was rather disappointed in that I had the impression that this deteriorating site was going to be the school that I would attend that fall. The buildings and the land seemed to me to be in a state of disrepair - the large, painted word "Laurel" in script form on the side of the pink-painted building was beginning to peel off and the baseball diamond on the southwest corner of the lot (where Katella Avenue intersects with Los Alamitos Boulevard) appeared to be neglected. It was only after my mom suggested that we drive to see my new school within Rossmoor that I realized (with relief) that the Laurel School was simply used for administrative purposes.

 

That first year of 1966-67, elementary students from College Park East were distributed among several schools in the Los Alamitos School District, transported by bus. All who were 6th Graders attended Francis Hopkinson Elementary School in Rossmoor. All 5th Graders attended Rossmoor Elementary School, 4th Graders to Benjamin Rush Elementary, etc. The other schools in the rotation were Los Alamitos and Thomas Jefferson Elementary Schools, both located on Bloomfield between Katella Ave. and Ball Rd. For some reason, neither Jack L. Weaver nor Richard Henry Lee Schools, two other schools within Rossmoor, were in the mix for College Park East students, or at least the bus on which I rode never stopped there. In retrospect I wonder if perhaps there might have been another bus, say for Kindergarteners, who may have had shorter school hours. I do not know. The school bus that I rode served all of College Park East.

 

The buildings for Benjamin Rush Elementary School no longer exist; only its site, Rush Park remains. Rush School appeared to be nearly identical to Hopkinson School nearby. The appearance of Hopkinson as viewed from Kensington is how Rush appeared as viewed from Blume.

 

Our bus driver for elementary school that first year was Jerri Sawyer. I can still picture her now, her auburn hair neatly pinned up, dressed in a clean white buttoned shirt with sleeves rolled up and with dark slacks. She was so consistent and reliable, always coming to a complete stop at every stop sign and railroad track crossing*, looking in all directions before proceeding. By observing her drive the bus, I learned how a manual transmission was operated, coordinating gear selection using the floor-mounted stick shift with clutch pedal modulation in order to start moving from a dead stop. Then in the second half of that school year, that bus was replaced with a brand new GMC that was equipped with an automatic transmission.

 

We as students riding on the bus were pretty well-behaved but still rather talkative. However, she was serious about maintaining order on her bus. I remember just a couple of times when she parked the bus and then came down the aisle with a serious look on her face in order to give a rider or two a serious 'talking-to.' She was always there to pick us up at Fir Circle; I don't recall even one day on which she wasn't our bus driver. The bus route was always thus: Hopkinson-Rush-Rossmoor-Los Alamitos-Jefferson.

 

Junior high and high schools that served College Park East and College Park West were part of the Anaheim Union High School District then. That first year, my sister along with other junior high level students from CPE attended Oxford Jr. High in Cypress, years before that campus was converted to The Oxford Academy High School. I don't recall with certainty, but I suspect that the first high school students from College Park went to Western High School in Anaheim as Los Alamitos High School did not start until the 1967-68 school year. That first year of Los Al High was held at the site of McAuliffe Middle School now. Only the Class of 1970 attended at that location for that single school year. Then from the 1968-69 school year forward, Los Al High students attended the current campus on Cerritos Ave. at Los Alamitos Blvd. That same year, junior high students from College Park East began to attend Pine Jr. High instead of Oxford. Pine Jr. High is now known as McAuliffe Middle School. The junior high school was renamed as McAuliffe in memory of Christa McAuliffe, the New Hampshire school teacher who perished in the Challenger Space Shuttle accident.

 

Despite being in Orange County, the telephones in College Park had 213 as the Area Code as did the rest of Seal Beach. Ditto for Rossmoor and Los Alamitos. In Seal Beach, Los Alamitos and Rossmoor, the phone numbers began with 43 or 59. This was because these areas were serviced by the General Telephone Company out of Long Beach rather than by Pacific Telephone. When the 213 area contracted circa 1991, the Area Code for these areas changed to 310. Then after another area contraction circa 1997, the phone numbers in these areas changed to the current 562 Area Code.

 

*There was still a railroad track that crossed Bloomfield at that time. It was located along the north side of Los Alamitos Elementary School. That track crossed Los Alamitos Blvd., too, near Catalina St. at that time. The track is gone now but the subtle rise of Bloomfield at this location reminds me that it was once there.

In my "glory days" I was pretty good at math. This was/is one of my all-time favorite books: Harry Van Trees' first volume on Detection, Estimation, and Modulation Theory. This is an old book: I wonder what book or books are used in the Universities now on this subject.

 

My kids don't really know that part of me.

Acrylic silver paint lettering on black Fabriano paper

Mallard Duck (Disambiguation) (ˈmælɑːrd, ˈmælərd) or Wild Duck (Anas platyrhynchos)

 

The mallard (/ˈmælɑːrd, ˈmælərd/) or wild duck (Anas platyrhynchos) is a dabbling duck that breeds throughout the temperate and subtropical Americas, Eurasia, and North Africa, and has been introduced to New Zealand, Australia, Peru, Brazil, Uruguay, Argentina, Chile, Colombia, the Falkland Islands, and South Africa. This duck belongs to the subfamily Anatinae of the waterfowl family Anatidae. The male birds (drakes) have a glossy green head and are grey on their wings and belly, while the females (hens or ducks) have mainly brown-speckled plumage. Both sexes have an area of white-bordered black or iridescent blue feathers called a speculum on their wings; males especially tend to have blue speculum feathers. The mallard is 50–65 cm (20–26 in) long, of which the body makes up around two-thirds the length. The wingspan is 81–98 cm (32–39 in) and the bill is 4.4 to 6.1 cm (1.7 to 2.4 in) long. It is often slightly heavier than most other dabbling ducks, weighing 0.7–1.6 kg (1.5–3.5 lb). Mallards live in wetlands, eat water plants and small animals, and are social animals preferring to congregate in groups or flocks of varying sizes. This species is the main ancestor of most breeds of domestic ducks.

 

The female lays eight to 13 creamy white to greenish-buff spotless eggs, on alternate days. Incubation takes 27 to 28 days and fledging takes 50 to 60 days. The ducklings are precocial and fully capable of swimming as soon as they hatch.

 

The mallard is considered to be a species of least concern by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN). Unlike many waterfowl, mallards are considered an invasive species in some regions. It is a very adaptable species, being able to live and even thrive in urban areas which may have supported more localised, sensitive species of waterfowl before development. The non-migratory mallard interbreeds with indigenous wild ducks of closely related species through genetic pollution by producing fertile offspring. Complete hybridisation of various species of wild duck gene pools could result in the extinction of many indigenous waterfowl. The wild mallard is the ancestor of most domestic ducks, and its naturally evolved wild gene pool gets genetically polluted by the domestic and feral mallard populations.

  

Taxonomy and evolutionary history

 

The mallard was one of the many bird species originally described in the 1758 10th edition of Systema Naturae by Carl Linnaeus. He gave it two binomial names: Anas platyrhynchos and Anas boschas. The latter was generally preferred until 1906 when Einar Lönnberg established that A. platyrhynchos had priority, as it appeared on an earlier page in the text. The scientific name comes from Latin Anas, "duck" and Ancient Greek πλατυρυγχος, platyrhynchus, "broad-billed" (from πλατύς, platys, "broad" and ρυγχός, rhunkhos, "bill"). The genome of Anas platyrhynchos was sequenced in 2013.

 

The name mallard originally referred to any wild drake, and it is sometimes still used this way. It was derived from the Old French malart or mallart for "wild drake" although its true derivation is unclear. It may be related to, or at least influenced by, an Old High German masculine proper name Madelhart, clues lying in the alternative English forms "maudelard" and "mawdelard". Masle (male) has also been proposed as an influence.

 

Mallards frequently interbreed with their closest relatives in the genus Anas, such as the American black duck, and also with species more distantly related, such as the northern pintail, leading to various hybrids that may be fully fertile. This is quite unusual among such different species, and is apparently because the mallard evolved very rapidly and recently, during the Late Pleistocene. The distinct lineages of this radiation are usually kept separate due to non-overlapping ranges and behavioural cues, but have not yet reached the point where they are fully genetically incompatible. Mallards and their domestic conspecifics are also fully interfertile.

 

Genetic analysis has shown that certain mallards appear to be closer to their Indo-Pacific relatives, while others are related to their American relatives. Mitochondrial DNA data for the D-loop sequence suggest that mallards may have evolved in the general area of Siberia. Mallard bones rather abruptly appear in food remains of ancient humans and other deposits of fossil bones in Europe, without a good candidate for a local predecessor species. The large Ice Age palaeosubspecies that made up at least the European and West Asian populations during the Pleistocene has been named Anas platyrhynchos palaeoboschas.

 

Mallards are differentiated in their mitochondrial DNA between North American and Eurasian populations, but the nuclear genome displays a notable lack of genetic structure. Haplotypes typical of American mallard relatives and eastern spot-billed ducks can be found in mallards around the Bering Sea. The Aleutian Islands hold a population of mallards that appear to be evolving towards becoming a subspecies, as gene flow with other populations is very limited.

 

Also, the paucity of morphological differences between the Old World mallards and the New World mallard demonstrates the extent to which the genome is shared among them such that birds like the Chinese spot-billed duck are highly similar to the Old World mallard, and birds such as the Hawaiian duck are highly similar to the New World mallard.

 

The size of the mallard varies clinally; for example, birds from Greenland, though larger, have smaller bills, paler plumage, and stockier bodies than birds further south and are sometimes classified as a separate subspecies, the Greenland mallard (A. p. conboschas).

  

Description

 

The mallard is a medium-sized waterfowl species that is often slightly heavier than most other dabbling ducks. It is 50–65 cm (20–26 in) long – of which the body makes up around two-thirds – has a wingspan of 81–98 cm (32–39 in) and weighs 0.7–1.6 kg (1.5–3.5 lb). Among standard measurements, the wing chord is 25.7 to 30.6 cm (10.1 to 12.0 in), the bill is 4.4 to 6.1 cm (1.7 to 2.4 in), and the tarsus is 4.1 to 4.8 cm (1.6 to 1.9 in).

 

The breeding male mallard is unmistakable, with a glossy bottle-green head and a white collar that demarcates the head from the purple-tinged brown breast, grey-brown wings, and a pale grey belly. The rear of the male is black, with white-bordered dark tail feathers. The bill of the male is a yellowish-orange tipped with black, with that of the female generally darker and ranging from black to mottled orange and brown. The female mallard is predominantly mottled, with each individual feather showing sharp contrast from buff to very dark brown, a coloration shared by most female dabbling ducks, and has buff cheeks, eyebrow, throat, and neck, with a darker crown and eye-stripe.

 

Both male and female mallards have distinct iridescent purple-blue speculum feathers edged with white, which are prominent in flight or at rest but temporarily shed during the annual summer moult. Upon hatching, the plumage of the duckling is yellow on the underside and face (with streaks by the eyes) and black on the back (with some yellow spots) all the way to the top and back of the head. Its legs and bill are also black. As it nears a month in age, the duckling's plumage starts becoming drab, looking more like the female, though more streaked, and its legs lose their dark grey colouring. Two months after hatching, the fledgling period has ended, and the duckling is now a juvenile. Between three and four months of age, the juvenile can finally begin flying, as its wings are fully developed for flight (which can be confirmed by the sight of purple speculum feathers). Its bill soon loses its dark grey colouring, and its sex can finally be distinguished visually by three factors:

1) the bill is yellow in males, but black and orange in females;

2) the breast feathers are reddish-brown in males, but brown in females; and

3) in males, the centre tail feather (drake feather) is curled, but in females, the centre tail feather is straight.

 

During the final period of maturity leading up to adulthood (6–10 months of age), the plumage of female juveniles remains the same while the plumage of male juveniles gradually changes to its characteristic colours. This change in plumage also applies to adult mallard males when they transition in and out of their non-breeding eclipse plumage at the beginning and the end of the summer moulting period. The adulthood age for mallards is fourteen months, and the average life expectancy is three years, but they can live to twenty.

 

Several species of duck have brown-plumaged females that can be confused with the female mallard. The female gadwall (Mareca strepera) has an orange-lined bill, white belly, black and white speculum that is seen as a white square on the wings in flight, and is a smaller bird. More similar to the female mallard in North America are the American black duck (A. rubripes), which is notably darker-hued in both sexes than the mallard, and the mottled duck (A. fulvigula), which is somewhat darker than the female mallard, and with slightly different bare-part colouration and no white edge on the speculum.

 

In captivity, domestic ducks come in wild-type plumages, white, and other colours. Most of these colour variants are also known in domestic mallards not bred as livestock, but kept as pets, aviary birds, etc., where they are rare but increasing in availability.

 

A noisy species, the female has the deep quack stereotypically associated with ducks. Male mallards make a sound phonetically similar to that of the female, a typical quack, but it is deeper and quieter compared to that of the female. When incubating a nest, or when offspring are present, females vocalise differently, making a call that sounds like a truncated version of the usual quack. This maternal vocalisation is highly attractive to their young. The repetition and frequency modulation of these quacks form the auditory basis for species identification in offspring, a process known as acoustic conspecific identification. In addition, females hiss if the nest or offspring are threatened or interfered with. When taking off, the wings of a mallard produce a characteristic faint whistling noise.

 

The mallard is a rare example of both Allen's Rule and Bergmann's Rule in birds. Bergmann's Rule, which states that polar forms tend to be larger than related ones from warmer climates, has numerous examples in birds, as in case of the Greenland mallard which is larger than the mallards further south. Allen's Rule says that appendages like ears tend to be smaller in polar forms to minimise heat loss, and larger in tropical and desert equivalents to facilitate heat diffusion, and that the polar taxa are stockier overall. Examples of this rule in birds are rare as they lack external ears, but the bill of ducks is supplied with a few blood vessels to prevent heat loss, and, as in the Greenland mallard, the bill is smaller than that of birds farther south, illustrating the rule.

 

Due to the variability of the mallard's genetic code, which gives it its vast interbreeding capability, mutations in the genes that decide plumage colour are very common and have resulted in a wide variety of hybrids, such as Brewer's duck (mallard × gadwall, Mareca strepera).

  

Distribution and habitat

 

The mallard is widely distributed across the Northern and Southern Hemispheres; in North America its range extends from southern and central Alaska to Mexico, the Hawaiian Islands, across the Palearctic, from Iceland and southern Greenland and parts of Morocco (North Africa) in the west, Scandinavia and Britain to the north, and to Siberia Japan and South Korea. Also in the east, it ranges to south-eastern and south-western Australia and New Zealand in the Southern hemisphere. It is strongly migratory in the northern parts of its breeding range, and winters farther south. For example, in North America, it winters south to the southern United States and northern Mexico, but also regularly strays into Central America and the Caribbean between September and May. A drake later named "Trevor" attracted media attention in 2018 when it turned up on the island of Niue, an atypical location for mallards.

 

The mallard inhabits a wide range of habitats and climates, from the Arctic tundra to subtropical regions. It is found in both fresh- and salt-water wetlands, including parks, small ponds, rivers, lakes and estuaries, as well as shallow inlets and open sea within sight of the coastline. Water depths of less than 0.9 metres (3.0 ft) are preferred, with birds avoiding areas more than a few metres deep They are attracted to bodies of water with aquatic vegetation.

  

Behaviour

 

Feeding

The mallard is omnivorous and very flexible in its choice of food. Its diet may vary based on several factors, including the stage of the breeding cycle, short-term variations in available food, nutrient availability, and interspecific and intraspecific competition The majority of the mallard's diet seems to be made up of gastropods, insects (including beetles, flies, lepidopterans, dragonflies, and caddisflies), crustaceans, worms, many varieties of seeds and plant matter, and roots and tubers. During the breeding season, male birds were recorded to have eaten 37.6% animal matter and 62.4% plant matter, most notably the grass Echinochloa crus-galli, and nonlaying females ate 37.0% animal matter and 63.0% plant matter, while laying females ate 71.9% animal matter and only 28.1% plant matter. Plants generally make up the larger part of a bird's diet, especially during autumn migration and in the winter.

 

The mallard usually feeds by dabbling for plant food or grazing; there are reports of it eating frogs. However, in 2017 a flock of mallards in Romania were observed hunting small migratory birds, including grey wagtails and black redstarts, the first documented occasion they had been seen attacking and consuming large vertebrates. It usually nests on a river bank, but not always near water. It is highly gregarious outside of the breeding season and forms large flocks, which are known as "sordes."

 

Breeding

 

Mallards usually form pairs (in October and November in the Northern Hemisphere) until the female lays eggs at the start of the nesting season, which is around the beginning of spring. At this time she is left by the male who joins up with other males to await the moulting period, which begins in June (in the Northern Hemisphere). During the brief time before this, however, the males are still sexually potent and some of them either remain on standby to sire replacement clutches (for female mallards that have lost or abandoned their previous clutch) or forcibly mate with females that appear to be isolated or unattached regardless of their species and whether or not they have a brood of ducklings.

 

Nesting sites are typically on the ground, hidden in vegetation where the female's speckled plumage serves as effective camouflage, but female mallards have also been known to nest in hollows in trees, boathouses, roof gardens and on balconies, sometimes resulting in hatched offspring having difficulty following their parent to water.

 

Egg clutches number 8–13 creamy white to greenish-buff eggs free of speckles. They measure about 58 mm (2.3 in) in length and 32 mm (1.3 in) in width. The eggs are laid on alternate days, and incubation begins when the clutch is almost complete. Incubation takes 27–28 days and fledging takes 50–60 days. The ducklings are precocial and fully capable of swimming as soon as they hatch.[citation needed] However, filial imprinting compels them to instinctively stay near the mother, not only for warmth and protection but also to learn about and remember their habitat as well as how and where to forage for food. When ducklings mature into flight-capable juveniles, they learn about and remember their traditional migratory routes (unless they are born and raised in captivity).In New Zealand, where mallards are naturalised, the nesting season has been found to be longer, eggs and clutches are larger and nest survival is generally greater compared with mallards in their native range.

 

In cases where a nest or brood fails, some mallards may mate for a second time in an attempt to raise a second clutch, typically around early-to-mid summer. In addition, mallards may occasionally breed during the autumn in cases of unseasonably warm weather; one such instance of a ‘late’ clutch occurred in November 2011, in which a female successfully hatched and raised a clutch of eleven ducklings at the London Wetland Centre.

 

During the breeding season, both male and female mallards can become aggressive, driving off competitors to themselves or their mate by charging at them.[86] Males tend to fight more than females, and attack each other by repeatedly pecking at their rival's chest, ripping out feathers and even skin on rare occasions. Female mallards are also known to carry out 'inciting displays', which encourages other ducks in the flock to begin fighting. It is possible that this behaviour allows the female to evaluate the strength of potential partners.

 

The drakes that end up being left out after the others have paired off with mating partners sometimes target an isolated female duck, even one of a different species, and proceed to chase and peck at her until she weakens, at which point the males take turns copulating with the female. Lebret (1961) calls this behaviour "Attempted Rape Flight", and Stanley Cramp and K.E.L. Simmons (1977) speak of "rape-intent flights". Male mallards also occasionally chase other male ducks of a different species, and even each other, in the same way. In one documented case of "homosexual necrophilia", a male mallard copulated with another male he was chasing after the chased male died upon flying into a glass window.[89] This paper was awarded an Ig Nobel Prize in 2003.

 

Mallards are opportunistically targeted by brood parasites, occasionally having eggs laid in their nests by redheads, ruddy ducks, lesser scaup, gadwalls, northern shovellers, northern pintails, cinnamon teal, common goldeneyes, and other mallards. These eggs are generally accepted when they resemble the eggs of the host mallard, but the hen may attempt to eject them or even abandon the nest if parasitism occurs during egg laying.

  

Predators and threats

 

In addition to human hunting, Mallards of all ages (but especially young ones) and in all locations must contend with a wide diversity of predators including raptors, mustelids, corvids, snakes, raccoons, opossums, skunks, turtles, large fish, felids, and canids, the last two including domestic ones. The most prolific natural predators of adult mallards are red foxes (which most often pick off brooding females) and the faster or larger birds of prey, e.g. peregrine falcons, Aquila eagles, or Haliaeetus eagles. In North America, adult mallards face no fewer than 15 species of birds of prey, from northern harriers (Circus hudsonius) and short-eared owls (Asio flammeus) (both smaller than a mallard) to huge bald, (Haliaeetus leucocephalus) and golden eagles (Aquila chrysaetos), and about a dozen species of mammalian predator, not counting several more avian and mammalian predators who threaten eggs and nestlings.

 

Mallards are also preyed upon by other waterside apex predators, such as the grey heron (Ardea cinerea), the European herring gull (Larus argentatus), the wels catfish (Silurus glanis), and the northern pike (Esox lucius). Crows (Corvus spp.) are also known to kill ducklings and adults on occasion. Also, mallards may be attacked by larger Anseriformes such as swans (Cygnus spp.) and geese during the breeding season, and are frequently driven off by these birds over territorial disputes. Mute swans (Cygnus olor) have been known to attack or even kill mallards if they feel that the ducks pose a threat to their offspring.

 

The predation-avoidance behaviour of sleeping with one eye open, allowing one brain hemisphere to remain aware while the other half sleeps, was first demonstrated in mallards, although it is believed to be widespread among birds in general.

  

Status and conservation

 

Since 1998, the mallard has been rated as a species of least concern on the IUCN Red List of Endangered Species. This is because it has a large range–more than 20,000,000 km2 (7,700,000 mi2)–and because its population is increasing, rather than declining by 30% over ten years or three generations and thus is not warranted a vulnerable rating. Also, the population size of the mallard is very large.

 

Unlike many waterfowl, mallards have benefited from human alterations to the world – so much so that they are now considered an invasive species in some regions. They are a common sight in urban parks, lakes, ponds, and other human-made water features in the regions they inhabit, and are often tolerated or encouraged in human habitat due to their placid nature towards humans and their beautiful and iridescent colours. While most are not domesticated, mallards are so successful at coexisting in human regions that the main conservation risk they pose comes from the loss of genetic diversity among a region's traditional ducks once humans and mallards colonise an area. Mallards are very adaptable, being able to live and even thrive in urban areas which may have supported more localised, sensitive species of waterfowl before development. The release of feral mallards in areas where they are not native sometimes creates problems through interbreeding with indigenous waterfowl. These non-migratory mallards interbreed with indigenous wild ducks from local populations of closely related species through genetic pollution by producing fertile offspring. Complete hybridisation of various species of wild duck gene pools could result in the extinction of many indigenous waterfowl. The mallard itself is the ancestor of most domestic ducks, and its naturally evolved wild gene pool gets genetically polluted in turn by the domestic and feral populations.

 

Over time, a continuum of hybrids ranging between almost typical examples of either species develop; the speciation process is beginning to reverse itself. This has created conservation concerns for relatives of the mallard, such as the Hawaiian duck, the New Zealand grey duck (A. s. superciliosa) subspecies of the Pacific black duck, the American black duck, the mottled duck, Meller's duck, the yellow-billed duck, and the Mexican duck, in the latter case even leading to a dispute as to whether these birds should be considered a species (and thus entitled to more conservation research and funding) or included in the mallard species. Ecological changes and hunting have also led to a decline of local species; for example, the New Zealand grey duck population declined drastically due to overhunting in the mid-20th century. Hybrid offspring of Hawaiian ducks seem to be less well adapted to native habitat, and using them in re-introduction projects apparently reduces success. In summary, the problems of mallards "hybridising away" relatives is more a consequence of local ducks declining than of mallards spreading; allopatric speciation and isolating behaviour have produced today's diversity of mallard-like ducks despite the fact that, in most, if not all, of these populations, hybridisation must have occurred to some extent.

  

Invasiveness

 

Mallards are causing severe "genetic pollution" to South Africa's biodiversity by breeding with endemic ducks even though the Agreement on the Conservation of African-Eurasian Migratory Waterbirds – an agreement to protect the local waterfowl populations – applies to the mallard as well as other ducks. The hybrids of mallards and the yellow-billed duck are fertile, capable of producing hybrid offspring. If this continues, only hybrids occur and in the long term result in the extinction of various indigenous waterfowl. The mallard can crossbreed with 63 other species, posing a severe threat to indigenous waterfowl's genetic integrity. Mallards and their hybrids compete with indigenous birds for resources, including nest sites, roosting sites, and food.

 

Availability of mallards, mallard ducklings, and fertilised mallard eggs for public sale and private ownership, either as poultry or as pets, is currently legal in the United States, except for the state of Florida, which has currently banned domestic ownership of mallards. This is to prevent hybridisation with the native mottled duck.

 

The mallard is considered an invasive species in New Zealand, where it competes with the local New Zealand grey duck, which was overhunted in the past. There, and elsewhere, mallards are spreading with increasing urbanisation and hybridising with local relatives.

 

The eastern or Chinese spot-billed duck is currently introgressing into the mallard populations of the Primorsky Krai, possibly due to habitat changes from global warming. The Mariana mallard was a resident allopatric population – in most respects a good species – apparently initially derived from mallard-Pacific black duck hybrids; unfortunately, it became extinct in the late 20th century.

 

The Laysan duck is an insular relative of the mallard, with a very small and fluctuating population. Mallards sometimes arrive on its island home during migration, and can be expected to occasionally have remained and hybridised with Laysan ducks as long as these species have existed. However, these hybrids are less well adapted to the peculiar ecological conditions of Laysan Island than the local ducks, and thus have lower fitness. Laysan ducks were found throughout the Hawaiian archipelago before 400 CE, after which they suffered a rapid decline during the Polynesian colonisation. Now, their range includes only Laysan Island. It is one of the successfully translocated birds, after having become nearly extinct in the early 20th century.

  

Relationship with humans

 

Domestication

 

Mallards have often been ubiquitous in their regions among the ponds, rivers, and streams of human parks, farms, and other human-made waterways – even to the point of visiting water features in human courtyards.

 

Mallards have had a long relationship with humans. Almost all domestic duck breeds derive from the mallard, with the exception of a few Muscovy breeds, and are listed under the trinomial name A. p. domesticus. Mallards are generally monogamous while domestic ducks are mostly polygamous. Domestic ducks have no territorial behaviour and are less aggressive than mallards. Domestic ducks are mostly kept for meat; their eggs are also eaten, and have a strong flavour. They were first domesticated in Southeast Asia at least 4,000 years ago, during the Neolithic Age, and were also farmed by the Romans in Europe, and the Malays in Asia. As the domestic duck and the mallard are the same species as each other, It is common for mallards to mate with domestic ducks and produce hybrid offspring that are fully fertile. Because of this, mallards have been found to be contaminated with the genes of the domestic duck.

 

While the keeping of domestic breeds is more popular, pure-bred mallards are sometimes kept for eggs and meat, although they may require wing clipping to restrict flying, or training to navigate and fly home.

 

Hunting

 

Mallards are one of the most common varieties of ducks hunted as a sport due to the large population size. The ideal location for hunting mallards is considered to be where the water level is somewhat shallow where the birds can be found foraging for food. Hunting mallards might cause the population to decline in some places, at some times, and with some populations. In certain countries, the mallard may be legally shot but is protected under national acts and policies. For example, in the United Kingdom, the mallard is protected under the Wildlife and Countryside Act 1981, which restricts certain hunting methods or taking or killing mallards.

 

As food

 

Since ancient times, the mallard has been eaten as food. The wild mallard was eaten in Neolithic Greece. Usually, only the breast and thigh meat is eaten. It does not need to be hung before preparation, and is often braised or roasted, sometimes flavoured with bitter orange or with port.

  

[Credit: en.wikipedia.org/]

Ok, I saw the new Transformers movie last week and thought I would share my thought on it with you guys.

 

For the most part it was a disappointment to me. It's a shame because I think there were some really good ideas in this movie, but they threw in all kinds of stupid things that detracted from it.

 

I'm breaking it down by what I considered to be "good" and "bad" about it.

 

The “Good”:

 

1)The Autobots have teamed with human soldiers who are part of a team called “NEST” (what the heck does that stand for? Does anyone know?). I thought this was a good idea which seems to have no precedent in other Transformers fiction. Hey, if they can’t give us a live action GI Joe/Transformers crossover, this is the next best thing. I like the idea of the Autobots having official human allies, although generally having too many human characters in the mix annoys me, this is an exception at least these guys serve a purpose and they did a nice job of portraying the bond between these soldiers and the Autobots.

  

2)Agent Simmons was used well in this film, I liked the idea that he saw himself as a patriot who was betrayed by his government when they shut down Sector 7, but was still willing to go to bat for his country when it needed him. I love the idea of this guy being a legend in his own mind. His dropping trou in every film seems to be a running gag. The Rail Gun he uses to destroy Devastator was a great homage to G2, where Megatron gets a rail gun to replace his fusion cannon.

 

3)There was a pretty cool shot through a hole in the wall of a building that Sam and Mikela are hiding in.

 

4)The battle where Prime was killed was excellent! Seeing Prime take on a bunch of ‘Cons al at once was awesome. Megatron only kills him by sneaking up on him from behind like a chump. Definitely one of the best ‘bot vs. ‘bot fights I’ve ever seen!

 

5)Ravage and Soundwave were both executed well. They might be the only toys from this movie I bother to buy. Sure, the fact that Soundwave lacked his characteristic voice modulation was a disappointment, but I still enjoyed him nonetheless. Having him be a communications satellite was an appropriate alt mode considering that Bay’s determination to avoid size-changing Transformers means we’ll never see him as a tape deck or Mp3 player on the big screen. Ravage was just awesome all around. If only they had worked Rumble into it somehow!

 

6)In general, I was happy with how the Decepticons were handled in this movie as compared to the last one. They had more lines (in English!) and had a lot more personality this time around. We got to see Megatron smacking Starscream around several times, as he should. Megatron looked better in this film; it’s nice to see him in his tank mode, although I wish he had a REALISTIC earth tank mode. At least he uses his arm cannon a lot in the film. I was also happy that the concept of switching sides was introduced in this film.

 

7)the plot of this movie was a bit more interesting than the last one.

 

8)The pretender who is disguised as a girl at Sam’s college was pretty cool. Although it scared the crap out of my 5 year old son! Oh well, maybe it’ll discourage him from tongue kissing girls anytime ion the near future!

 

9)Nice homage to the comics to have Sam get the knowledge of the Allspark in his head, very similar to when Buster Witwicki had Prime put the knowledge of the Matrix in his mind in the Marvel series.

 

10)Good continuity to have Melaka’s criminal dad in one scene.

 

11) The Matrix! Even though it serves a different purpose, it‘s still nice to see a version of it in the movie continuity. Sam’s near death experience nicely echoes when Rodimus Prime enters the Matrix to consult with the wisdom of the spirits of Primes past!

  

12)The movie ‘bots DO run off of Energon as all proper Transformers should!

 

13)The Fallen is cool. I like the idea of bringing this character into the movie continuity. One can only hope that his evil is a result of being tainted by a movieverse Unicron. His pseudo-Egyptian look rocks!

 

14)Supermodes! Prime gets a “power up” from Jetfire and kicks much butt.

  

The Bad:

 

1)Characters from the first movie such as Ironhide and Ratchet only have a few lines and zero character development! New (to the movie franchise) characters that seem very cool like Sideswipe and Arcee similarly get barely any screen time.

 

2)The Twins!! They’re just awful! In his infinite wisdom, Bay has given us not just one, but TWO “Jar-Jars”! And just like Jar-Jar, they have been accused of being racist stereotypes, and I have to admit that this does seem a pretty valid charge. Sure there have been Transformers in the past that seem to be “black” like Jazz and Blaster, but these characters were never portrayed as being complete idiots “We don’t do much read’in!” – gimme a break! Obviously I don’t think the filmmakers intended for these characters to be perceived as racist, it was a misguided attempt to market to the very audience they are insulting. Most real life gangstas have at least more street-smarts than these characters do and are more useful in a fight, although I must admit that I actually enjoyed the scene where the twin that was “eaten” by Devastator busts out and smashes up his face from the inside – that was the ONLY cool thing any of them did in the entire movie. I was even happier when Bumblebee walks in and smashes them into each other and tosses them out of the room. One strange thing about this movie is that they seem to put in lots of characters who are deliberately annoying and even visibly annoy characters in the film (Sam’s roommate is another example) so that the audience will be happy when they get knocked out. I’m especially mad that the Twins get so many lines and screen time that other, better characters could be using. The only “Twins” I wanted to see in this movie were Sideswipe AND Sunstreaker. Instead, Sideswipe gets barely any screen time and Sunstreaker is completely absent. Instead of making up crappy new characters, they should’ve given us more movie versions of fan favorite characters like Wheeljack, or Perceptor, or Hot Rod, or Ultra Magnus or Prowl, or…I could go on and on! I’m sure many fans would’ve much rather seen any of these characters in the film than these ridiculous new characters.

 

3)Megan Fox is just eye candy. Sure she’s pretty, but her performance is pretty flat. I’d love to see an actress who can act in this role for a change, instead of a walking pin-up. There is no fire in her belly, no spark in her eye. She should’ve never been cast to begin with, but I guess we’re stuck with her now.

  

4)While I admit that most of the comedy in this film got at least a chuckle out of me, I think they overdid it. It’s like they have to turn every scene with the human characters into a comedy routine so we will tolerate the boringness of having all these fleshlings polluting a film that should mainly be about giant robots beating the tar out of each other. In doing so they run the danger of turning the whole thing into a giant farce. It was far too obvious that this film was written to appeal to 12 year olds and older people who are hopelessly mired in that mindset. It has all of the raunchiness of South Park, but lacks the brilliant social satire that redeems that show.

 

5)The language was much fouler than in the first film. I’m certainly no prude, but as the parent of a young child, it sucks to bring your kid to something like this and worry about hearing that your kid had been repeating lines from the movie in daycare or school. C’mon guys! It’s based on toys that are sold to children! You can find ways to make it seem more sophisticated and adult without resorting to such language so often – like maybe giving us a better story? Or decent character development? In the first movie the “bad” language was more natural, like the real reactions someone would have to seeing a car suddenly stand up and turn into a robot – but it’s more forced and pointless in this movie.

 

6)Lots of cornball moments in the movie. Did anyone really think that Sam was really dead? But the director milks that moment for all it’s worth (and then some!)even though you’d have to be brain dead to buy it. Excessive use of slow motion is a crime!

  

7)Megatron is The Fallen’s bitch? WHAAAAT??? Megatron is NOBODY’S servant or disciple! That is the main thing I like about the character! Even when faced with the ultimate bad guy, Unicron, he only accepts his overlordship at the last moment to preserve himself just long enough to figure out a way to betray him. I didn’t enjoy seeing Megs play second fiddle to The Fallen. He seemed genuinely crestfallen when The Fallen is killed, like he’d just lost his hero. Megatron is his own hero! He follows no one! That said, I did like his attempts to sway Optimus to his side during their battle by trying to persuade him that the future of their race depended on them exploiting the new energon source found on earth. This rang true to my perception of the character – that as evil as he appears to be, he actually does believe that he is doing the right thing for the survival of his race.

 

8)I don’t like the fact that so many characters in this film had wheels in place of legs. Sure, it makes some degree of sense in that one can imagine that they would move faster in ‘bot mode with wheels for legs, but only over normal terrain. There are many DISADVANTAGES to having a wheel instead of legs, like it makes it impossible to climb things and makes jumping very hard – and what on earth do they do when they get a flat? Plus I think it just looks bad. It makes it seem like the designers got bored halfway though creating the ‘bot mode of the characters. It makes me feel cheated somehow. Sure there is a precedent in Transformers lore (Hello, Beast Machines!) but it still sucks!

 

9)Devastator looked like a pile of trash.

 

10) Much of the action is too fast and choppy to properly follow upon a single viewing. This is a general problem with many modern action films.

 

The Just Plain Confusing (AKA food for thought):

 

1)Why couldn’t a bunch of Primes kill The Fallen? If “it takes a Prime to destroy The Fallen” (the equivalent of “fighting fire with fire” since The Fallen was once a “Prime”), surely 5 of them were up to the job! It seems stupid for them to sacrifice themselves to create a tomb to hide the Matrix in and leave someone so powerful and dangerous at large and leave nobody else around who is strong enough to take him on. And how did they go on to “father” Optimus if they all transformed into a tomb? Jetfire seems amazed that there is a “living Prime” around so obviously there wasn’t one( that he was aware of) around before he left Cybertron. So where the heck DOES Optimus come from exactly? I guess it makes SOME degree of sense if they couldn’t find The Fallen and were so terrified of the concept of him getting the Matrix and using it to make our sun go nova or whatever unless they locked it up good ASAP. It still seems like bad strategizing to me.

 

2) TFs reproduce sexually? Jetfire mentions having both a mother and a father! It’s not quite as silly as it seems since TFs seem to mimic most biological functions mechanically presumably using nanobots the same way we organics use cells. I just wish they would come out and clarify it already. Hey, it’s not as ridiculous as it seems, in G2 it was revealed that TFs once reproduced asexually in a process similar to cellular division.

Maybe that would explain the presence of female ‘bots in the movie – or in general? Why couldn’t ‘bots combine parts of their Sparks to forma unique new one, or their robotic equivalent of DNA (made up of nanobots) ? The background info for the first movie states that Megs and Prime are brothers (which Primes actually says in dialogue from the first movie, although he could’ve been speaking metaphorically) and that Megs killed their Father. So this info although not explicitly stared in the films themselves and therefore of dubious canocity, seems to back up this concept. Of course if this is true, why isn’t Megs “a Prime”?

  

2) What is up with those protoforms or whatever they are that the Decepticons are keeping in their ship? The ones Starscream says are too weak to mature without enough energon? Where did they come from? How did the Decepticons get them? Did the Allspark spit them out before it was launched into space? Or if Transformers do reproduce sexually as the movie implies, do they lay eggs (these things seem to be in some sort of transparent eggs)? If so, SOMEBODY had been getting a lot of action!

 

3) The Primes created the Allspark? The movie seems to imply that if they didn’t create it, then at the very least they kept it charged up with Energon extracted from suns. If they DID create it, it implies that the Primes are older than Cybertron since Optimus Prime says in the first movie that the Allspark is older than Cybertron. It also implies that the Primes created the rest of their race. Of course if you look at the Allspark Cube as just a physical artifact used to interface with a movieverse equivalent of Primus this makes sense. Perhaps Primus is the TRUE Allspark which as this movie states cannot really be destroyed, with the cube just being a man(or more accurately TF) made object used to access and channel his power. So maybe movieverse Primus makes the Primes and gives them the knowledge to create the Allspark Cube and keep it charged up? This is similar to the Beast Machines concept of the Allspark being a dimension that Primus resides in.

 

4) I still don’t get why the Allspark and its fragments only seems to create Decepticons, or at the very least Transformers whose first instinct upon birth is to shoot up everything in sight.

 

5) Optimus seems to know absolutely nothing about The Fallen when his name is first mentioned in the film. He claims that the Allspark held all the history of their race and when it was lost, so was that history. C’MON! Like being the leader of one half of the Transformer race means you can get away with having absolutely no knowledge for your own history? Who put Prime in charge if he is so damned ignorant? Every Decepticon in the film seems to be aware of the Fallen! You mean to say that even a rumor or legend of him was never been extracted from a single Decepticon in interrogation in all their countless years of battling each other? Yet once Optimus is revived by the Matrix he seems to be suddenly aware that the Primes were the brothers of The Fallen. Huh? Did the Matrix give him a sudden infusion of historical data? Did he have an awesome near death vision like Sam did that we were not privy to? WTF?

  

So overall what did I think of this movie? Well, I do feel that the first film was better, although there are many things in this movie that I think were improvements, there were just as many problems with it. I was entertained throughout, which after all is the goal of a movie such as this. While I am no great fan of Michael Bay (the only other movie of his I enjoyed was Independence Day, corny as it was), I do think he gets unfairly bashed. There is a reason why major studios keep on giving him millions of dollars to crank out movies like this. They are entertaining to a vast number of people! I think critics know this and can’t stands this fact because they know that he entertains primarily by playing to the lowest common denominator in human nature and they can’t stand this, or the fact that it is so consistently successful. It shatters their intellectual hubris that we are somehow progressing as a species and have evolved beyond the point of being still be entertained by stupid caveman humor and lots of explosions. It makes them realize that they are surrounded by “idiots” and they hate to be reminded of this - of how truly isolated they are from the general mindset of the great unwashed masses and makes them want to slink back into their intellectual ivory towers and hide there forever.

 

Sure it sucks! I’d rather see almost anyone else in charge of bringing the Transformers to the big screen, almost anyone would do a better job - but you also can’t deny that despite its many, many flaws, the final product is still pretty entertaining and is therefore still successful on some level. I am not so divorced from the passions of the “common man” (whatever the hell that means) to deny this. Parts of it will annoy you, but unless you’re a complete tool, you will be entertained which is the main reason we went to see movies the last time I checked. There are worse ways to spend a few hours. This is hardly a great piece of movie making but neither is it the steaming turd some critics would have you believe it is. It’s worth checking out for a laugh if you’re feeling bored. The Transformers franchise deserves better – but you knew that already when you saw the first film. If Hasbro itself doesn’t believe that – how do you think we’ll ever convince anyone else?

 

What do I know? I'm just some guy. Go see it for yourself and make up your own mind. Or don't. I don't care.

 

I'm now done talking about this- forever!

19 x 14 cm collage