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Happy birthday to my wonderful friend Lindsey Reynolds! Took this photo in honor of her first French birthday (my French is a bit rusty/nonexistent)! The lucky girl is in France studying abroad for law school! Wish I could be there with you! (in France, not law school)
大正湯
The Taishou era (大正) was 1912-1926.
There are more bathhouses with the same name in Hakodate and Sapporo, but they don't seem to be related. The one in Hakodate was founded in the Taisho era.
The large "ゆ" means 湯, hot water.
The vending machine is convenient, as well as the recycling bin (streetside trashcans are just about nonexistent).
When I Lived There - 1/00 - 4/00
Who I Lived With - Just myself.
When It Felt Like Home - It didn't. It was a really cool space that I wanted to like, but living here I realized I really need defined rooms and coziness, not just a big open space with a concrete floor. I never felt safe or comfortable, always exposed and annoyed.
Current Status - Still standing.
For three months before moving here, after leaving California, I lived first with my friend and her family, and then in a Residence Inn. Technically those two places should have their own pages in this series but it's just too depressing to remember and contemplate.
This "loft" apartment taught me that industrial buildings are not meant to be lived in. Soundproofing was nonexistent; I was able to hear, very clearly, the guy upstairs sneeze, pee, talk on the phone, have sex... The industrial-size heating system was so loud when it was on that I couldn't carry on a conversation. One of my friends said that this place was like some fictional bad-guy's hangout, but the romance of this notion was totally negated by the realities of living there. The fictional bad-guy does not have to listen to his neighbor pissing in the toilet.
Update 6/6/10 - pix of the interior
Suspended Animation Classic #331
Originally published April 30, 1995 (#18)
(Dates are approximate)
Big Bang Comics; Hermes Versus The Eyeball Kid
By Michael Vance
“Now, for the first time ever, the greatest heroes of all times must unite to defeat the evil mastermind who threatens the very existence of two worlds” in Big Bang Comics’ “The Criss-Cross Crisis”.
Well, maybe not for the first time, since The Knights of Justice, The Round Table of America, and the Whiz Kids (all super teams) are a wonderful homage to DC Comics heroes from the 1950s and earlier.
Inside this pastiche are two parallel Earths. A portal between both has been opened, and collision threatens. Heroes who believe in truth, justice and the American Way must seal the portal.
In the 1950s, characterization meant a name, costume, and powers. Plot was king. Art was straightforward and uncluttered, lacking the visual dynamics of today. Adventure was everywhere, and comic books were fun.
Then came “Big Bang Comics: Untitled”. In the real world, the change of artistic styles from the 1950s to the 1990s was slow. This stylistic change between issue three and four of “Big Bang” is startling.
Here, The Round Table of America is decommissioned, their headquarters converted into a museum. A super-villain held in stasis there escapes, vowing revenge. The rest of this issue is clenched fists, power bursts, and broken teeth.
Characterization is still two dimensional, plot is almost nonexistent, and the art is cluttered, confusing, and full of visual pyrotechnics. The fist is king, and comic books are ‘realistic’, grim, and gritty.
If different is better, then these adventures of The Round Table must be fantastic, right?!
They are just different.
These old and new stylistic issues are recommended for their respective old and new audiences.
“Big Band Comics” #s 3 & 4/32 pages and 24 pages, $1.95 each from Caliber Press/writers: Chris Ecker and Gary S. Carlson; artists: (#3) Steve Adams, (#4) Bart Schmitz/available in comics shops and by mail.
MINIVIEW: “Hermes Versus The Eyeball Kid”. Outrageous, wildly creative adventures as Hermes and assorted old gods reenter today’s world. Recommended.
I made these from felt. You can go to youtube on Diane Morello channel, and see, how they are made. Diane is so nice, you can email her for a free pattern too. I adjusted patter a bit, because my dolls foot is a bit wider and rise is nonexistent, but overall it is similar.
Ponderosa Canyon is so named because of the huge Ponderosa Pines on the canyon floor.
In the slick rock sandstone of the White Cliffs the soil is thin or nonexistent and plants cannot easily take hold. The lack of plants causes this region to endure intense erosion with each rainstorm forming deep canyons, rounded domes and pointed nipples.
Where the roots of trees and plants can get established they help stabilize the soil and rock underneath. This is evident in the Grey Cliffs, the sequence of rock that lies above the White Cliffs. The Grey Cliffs are made of rock that consists of a combination of sand, shale, and clay. This combination produces better soils allowing dense vegetation, which better protects the rock underneath by absorbing some of the rainfall and preventing flash floods.
1/100 Elyn Kshatriya
1/100 Elyn Gatling Guns x 4
Custom decals laid out by Dade W. Bell and printed by Samuel.
Custom mixed paint scheme with 12 layers of paint for both candy purple colors.
Paints are Gaia, Gunze, Vallejo, and Citadel.
This project took FOREVER and I frankly stopped keeping track of the hours once I hit 150. This is mainly due to all of the paint layers required to give the proper shading and depth I was after. Plus the fact that I'm a slow builder. lol Note that I also went with my concept of painting the frame in a lighter color than the armor. We often see MS frames painted in dark and/ or metallic colors, but I thought it would look much more interesting if the frame was a light color contrasted with the darker "candy purple" armor (kinda like my Ple Qubeley). Also note how I went farther with the idea of making the finish matte. I think this adds an interesting appearance to the candy surface and is actually more realistic and less toy-like than the usual gloss finish seen on candy colors (contrast with my Ple Qubeley...).
The pictures truly don't do the real thing justice and I'll try to take better photos (and a video) with my D5100 outside when it cools down in the fall... Until then, I think these pics will suffice.
With this project done, I'm done building Kshatriyas. Too much of my life has been taken up with these things and it's time to move on. Still, I'm the "Ple Guy" so I had to at least make this one. ;-) (Wink) As for how Ple could end up piloting the Kshatriya, below is the story file I created to go on the base when I have a custom label printed later...
An Alternate Timeline...
In the original events of ZZ Gundam, Elpeo Ple sacrificed herself to protect Judau Ashta from the Psycho Gundam Mk-II piloted by her clone, Ple Two. However, in this alternate timeline, Glemy Toto’s attempts to clone Ple failed... and as a result, Ple didn’t die at the hands of her now-nonexistent clone. Thus, the “butterfly effect” of the changed timeline allowed Ple to survive the First Neo-Zeon War.
With the First Neo Zeon War over, Ple headed to Jupiter with Judau and Roux, but eventually grew bored with her relatively peaceful life (not to mention her “third-wheel” status with her friends), and decided to return to the Earth Sphere. During the long voyage home, she was disappointed to find that she missed the events of the Second Neo-Zeon War (Char’s Counterattack), and vowed to never miss out on any further action.
So when Ple heard about Full Frontal’s group of Neo-Zeon remnants, The Sleeves, she joined them without hesitation (and received the customized purple Kshatriya for her personal MS). This was because of a longing for excitement more than any kind of belief in Neo-Zeon ideology, and the battlefield was once again filled with the giddy shout of, “Purupurupurupuru!”. However, she quickly switched sides when she discovered that Frontal was merely using her as a “test” against the Unicorn Gundam’s NT-D system (her ability to defeat her own NT-D-controlled funnels and fight the Unicorn to a standstill is a significant departure from the original timeline).
Being a natural Newtype and not subject to the side-effects of the Cyber-Newtype process (complicated by the horrible events of childhood), Ple was able to avoid most of the unfortunate, and ultimately fatal, events that befell her clone, Marida Cruz (Ple Twelve), in the original timeline. As a result, she and the Kshatriya were able to survive the Third Neo-Zeon war relatively unharmed... a feat for which she rewarded herself with a nice, long bubble bath.
1/100 Elyn Kshatriya
1/100 Elyn Gatling Guns x 4
Custom decals laid out by Dade W. Bell and printed by Samuel.
Custom mixed paint scheme with 12 layers of paint for both candy purple colors.
Paints are Gaia, Gunze, Vallejo, and Citadel.
This project took FOREVER and I frankly stopped keeping track of the hours once I hit 150. This is mainly due to all of the paint layers required to give the proper shading and depth I was after. Plus the fact that I'm a slow builder. lol Note that I also went with my concept of painting the frame in a lighter color than the armor. We often see MS frames painted in dark and/ or metallic colors, but I thought it would look much more interesting if the frame was a light color contrasted with the darker "candy purple" armor (kinda like my Ple Qubeley). Also note how I went farther with the idea of making the finish matte. I think this adds an interesting appearance to the candy surface and is actually more realistic and less toy-like than the usual gloss finish seen on candy colors (contrast with my Ple Qubeley...).
The pictures truly don't do the real thing justice and I'll try to take better photos (and a video) with my D5100 outside when it cools down in the fall... Until then, I think these pics will suffice.
With this project done, I'm done building Kshatriyas. Too much of my life has been taken up with these things and it's time to move on. Still, I'm the "Ple Guy" so I had to at least make this one. ;-) (Wink) As for how Ple could end up piloting the Kshatriya, below is the story file I created to go on the base when I have a custom label printed later...
An Alternate Timeline...
In the original events of ZZ Gundam, Elpeo Ple sacrificed herself to protect Judau Ashta from the Psycho Gundam Mk-II piloted by her clone, Ple Two. However, in this alternate timeline, Glemy Toto’s attempts to clone Ple failed... and as a result, Ple didn’t die at the hands of her now-nonexistent clone. Thus, the “butterfly effect” of the changed timeline allowed Ple to survive the First Neo-Zeon War.
With the First Neo Zeon War over, Ple headed to Jupiter with Judau and Roux, but eventually grew bored with her relatively peaceful life (not to mention her “third-wheel” status with her friends), and decided to return to the Earth Sphere. During the long voyage home, she was disappointed to find that she missed the events of the Second Neo-Zeon War (Char’s Counterattack), and vowed to never miss out on any further action.
So when Ple heard about Full Frontal’s group of Neo-Zeon remnants, The Sleeves, she joined them without hesitation (and received the customized purple Kshatriya for her personal MS). This was because of a longing for excitement more than any kind of belief in Neo-Zeon ideology, and the battlefield was once again filled with the giddy shout of, “Purupurupurupuru!”. However, she quickly switched sides when she discovered that Frontal was merely using her as a “test” against the Unicorn Gundam’s NT-D system (her ability to defeat her own NT-D-controlled funnels and fight the Unicorn to a standstill is a significant departure from the original timeline).
Being a natural Newtype and not subject to the side-effects of the Cyber-Newtype process (complicated by the horrible events of childhood), Ple was able to avoid most of the unfortunate, and ultimately fatal, events that befell her clone, Marida Cruz (Ple Twelve), in the original timeline. As a result, she and the Kshatriya were able to survive the Third Neo-Zeon war relatively unharmed... a feat for which she rewarded herself with a nice, long bubble bath.
Sorry for the ugly watermark...I seem to mostly find my car photos on forums and stuff. :-/
**Strange - it shows up very bright on my laptop screen but almost nonexistent on my work monitor...so the apology comment is for those of you that see it brightly. ;)
I cut the right gauge off because it has a big glowing square where the digital mileage meter is and it distracted from these. I'll take one of all three when it isn't pitch black out so I can do a shorter exposure.
Decent selection of books, but it's not nearly as large as the Chapters in downtown Montreal, and the French manga selection here is nonexistent (as is the case with the other suburban Ottawa Chapters I frequent to some degree, at Pinecrest and South Keys. Only the downtown Ottawa location seems to have a decent-sized French section).
Wearing a beautiful luxurious fleece. Alpaca not a Llama.
Alpaca (Vicugna pacos) is a domesticated species of South American camelid. It resembles a small llama in superficial appearance.
Alpacas are kept in herds that graze on the level heights of the Andes of Ecuador, southern Peru, northern Bolivia, and northern Chile at an altitude of 3,500 m (11,000 ft) to 5,000 m (16,000 ft) above sea-level, throughout the year. Alpacas are considerably smaller than llamas, and unlike llamas, alpacas were not bred to be beasts of burden but were bred specifically for their fiber. Alpaca fiber is used for making knitted and woven items, much as wool is. The fiber comes in more than 52 natural colors as classified in Peru. In the textile industry, "alpaca" primarily refers to the hair of Peruvian alpacas.
About Alpaca Fleece
Alpaca fleece is the natural fiber harvested from an alpaca. It is light weight or heavy weight, depending on how it is spun. It is soft, durable, luxurious and silky natural fiber. While similar to sheep’s wool, it is warmer, not prickly, and has no lanolin which makes it hypoallergenic. Alpaca is naturally water-repellent. Huacaya, an alpaca that grows soft spongy fiber has natural crimp, thus making a naturally elastic yarn, perfect for knits. Suri has far less crimp and thus is best suited for woven goods, but is wonderfully luxurious as well.
In physical structure, alpaca fiber is somewhat akin to hair, being very glossy. Alpaca fiber is similar to that of merino wool fiber, and alpaca yarns tend to be stronger than wool yarns. The heel hole that appears in wool socks or in elbows of wool sweaters is nonexistent in similar alpaca garments. In processing, slivers lack fiber cohesion and single alpaca rovings lack strength. Blend these together and the durability is increased several times over. More twisting is necessary, especially in Suri, and this can reduce a yarn's softness.
The alpaca has a very fine and light fleece. It does not retain water, is thermal even when wet and can resist the solar radiation effectively. These characteristics guarantee the animals a permanent and appropriate coat to fight against the extreme changes of temperature. This fiber offers the same protection to humans. Alpaca is sustainable as a fiber, and is naturally organic. Alpacas as animals are soft on the environment, making alpaca a truly green textile.
Info re Wiki and Encyclo Brit
È il Gral che è in noi a muovere le nostre spade.
L'amore dell'universo può prendere forma di tremendo furore e spingerci a infilzare amorosamente i nemici.
Il nostro Ordine è invincibile in guerra proprio perché combattiamo senza fare alcuno sforzo né alcuna scelta ma lasciando che il sacro furore si scateni attraverso i nostri corpi.
da Il cavaliere inesistente di Italo Calvino
from The Nonexistent Knight by Italo Calvino
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This photos been taken during the last Christmas (25th december 2011) in Capracotta (Molise), Italy. At that time it was a very cold snow storm in the little village at 1421 m (A.M.S.L). My cousin (that you see in this photos) was wearing a traditional cloak from Capracotta called "Cuappot a Rota", so I could not resist to ask him to go out in the snow storm with this scenic and traditional cloak! :) It was very cold and windy so I was compleatily freezing, but I'm pretty satisfied with the result! :)
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Posters and Art Prints are now available @ ArtFlakes
Copyright © Francesca Alviani All rights reserved
Thanks for visiting!
Bosnia was the biggest culture shock that I have experienced. Upon exiting the plane in Sarajevo, the public transit was the least convenient of any city we've been too. Nonexistent from the airport. This led us to stubbornly walking for a good distance, then happening upon this nice little restaurant.
Acting like the bratty kids from the U.S. that we are, we didn't bother learning any languages beyond our own for this trip. Most Bosnians do not know English. This was the first time we experienced that. There is also an incredible amount of evidence from the civil war that tore it apart. Over 20 years ago.
This led us to try a beer on the menu we haven't seen yet. Happened to be non-alcoholic.
So here we are acting bratty and sad because our beer isn't what we liked, while there is a guy missing an arm in the frame.
This was my first time actually plane watching at Miami International Airport (MIA). I checked some spotter websites to find some good locations. They recommended The Holes as being an "official" site so we checked it out. I was pretty disappointed; there was a lot of construction going on and parking was nonexistent. My wife dropped me off. The area is totally exposed. Even though it was December it was pretty hot - no shade, no place to sit, no other people around. The holes are actually pretty small so it's hard to get a lens through the hole. Arrivals were almost impossible to shoot but you could see planes taxiing by for takeoff. After an hour I was cooking so we bagged it. We then went to the area close to the El Dorado furniture store. Much better. There were a bunch of spotters from around the world there. It was a great atmosphere. Nicely shaded, safe, close to some stores and a lot of good traffic to watch. I saw a bunch of planes from airlines I had not seen before, including some airlines I had not heard of. Some of the planes didn't show up on Flight Radar 24 so they were very pleasant surprises. All in all a very good day and I'd love to go back there!
I took these photos in December 2019.
Spaceship Earth, the iconic and symbolic structure of Epcot, opened with the park in Future World in 1982. The 18-storym 180-foot tall geosphere, whose design was conceived by Wallace Floyd Design Group and completed by Simpson Gumpertz & Heger Inc., is derived from the Class 2 geodesic polyhedron. Each face of the polyhedron is divided into three isosceles triangles to form each point—with, in theory, 11,520 triangles forming 3,840 points (some are nonexistent due to supports and doors). The 15,520,000 pound sphere, with a circumference of 518.1 feet and a diameter of 165 feet, is raised 18-feet off the ground by three pylons sunk more than 120-feet into the ground.
Inside the sphere, guests take a 15-minute dark Omnimover ride in a "time machine" to learn how advancements in communication have helped create the future. Narrators have included Lawrence Dobkin, Walter Cronkite, Jeremy Irons and now Dame Judi Dench.
This was my first time actually plane watching at Miami International Airport (MIA). I checked some spotter websites to find some good locations. They recommended The Holes as being an "official" site so we checked it out. I was pretty disappointed; there was a lot of construction going on and parking was nonexistent. My wife dropped me off. The area is totally exposed. Even though it was December it was pretty hot - no shade, no place to sit, no other people around. The holes are actually pretty small so it's hard to get a lens through the hole. Arrivals were almost impossible to shoot but you could see planes taxiing by for takeoff. After an hour I was cooking so we bagged it. We then went to the area close to the El Dorado furniture store. Much better. There were a bunch of spotters from around the world there. It was a great atmosphere. Nicely shaded, safe, close to some stores and a lot of good traffic to watch. I saw a bunch of planes from airlines I had not seen before, including some airlines I had not heard of. Some of the planes didn't show up on Flight Radar 24 so they were very pleasant surprises. All in all a very good day and I'd love to go back there!
I took these photos in December 2019.
This was my first time actually plane watching at Miami International Airport (MIA). I checked some spotter websites to find some good locations. They recommended The Holes as being an "official" site so we checked it out. I was pretty disappointed; there was a lot of construction going on and parking was nonexistent. My wife dropped me off. The area is totally exposed. Even though it was December it was pretty hot - no shade, no place to sit, no other people around. The holes are actually pretty small so it's hard to get a lens through the hole. Arrivals were almost impossible to shoot but you could see planes taxiing by for takeoff. After an hour I was cooking so we bagged it. We then went to the area close to the El Dorado furniture store. Much better. There were a bunch of spotters from around the world there. It was a great atmosphere. Nicely shaded, safe, close to some stores and a lot of good traffic to watch. I saw a bunch of planes from airlines I had not seen before, including some airlines I had not heard of. Some of the planes didn't show up on Flight Radar 24 so they were very pleasant surprises. All in all a very good day and I'd love to go back there!
I took these photos in December 2019.
On December 4, 1826 the Genesee County Board of Supervisors met in Bethany for the purpose of establishing a County Poorhouse. A brick building, originally a stagecoach tavern, located near the corner of the Bethany Center Road and Raymond Road was the site selected, as it represented the geographical center of the county. (Wyoming County wasn’t established until 1841.) In 1828 Genesee County constructed a stone building attached to the Poorhouse for the confinement of lunatics and a repository for paupers committed for misconduct. The insane were also housed at the County Home until 1887 when the Board of Supervisors agreed to send “persons suffering with acute insanity" elsewhere in the state.
The Genesee County Poor Farm aka The County Home, was a self sufficient working farm and woods, spanning over 200 acres, providing food and fuel, thus the actual cost to care for each person was low, about $1.08 per week per resident, back in 1871.
Residents were referred to as inmates (no matter why they were housed there) and those physically able-bodied would work the farm and many actually built and made wares to sell to help offset some of the living expenses. The raising of Holsteins, pigs, draft horses, chickens and ducks, raising vegetable and fruit crops, canning jams, jellies, meats, were all part of the chores, there was a bakery and even a wood shop where coffins were made (for use as needed and for sale to local mortuaries).
The County would bury those who had no family, and records indicate there was once a cemetery located on the property, but the particulars are almost nonexistent. An 1886 Proceeding states “The burying ground we have improved by building a fence in front and grading and leveling the ground as much as could be done without injury to the graves.”
The cemetery for the County Poorhouse has faded away as the stones crumpled, the grass grew and the forest replanted. No one was around to care for those who had so long ago been forgotten. These people, though they were poor, ill and sometime abandoned, do deserve to be remembered. An actual cemetery register or plot map has yet to be discovered.
A memorial site was created in the Genesee County Park and on June 6, 2004 when five headstones, dated from 1887 to 1888, were returned to the County. The Genesee County Historians dedicated a historical marker honoring those who died while living in the County Home from 1827 until the facility was closed in 1974 (residents were relocated to new facilities in Batavia).
Thailand:
Thai immigration to America was nearly nonexistent before 1960, when U.S. armed forces began arriving in Thailand during the Vietnam war. After interacting with Americans, Thais became more aware of the possibility for immigration to the United States. By the 1970s, some 5,000 Thais had emigrated to this country, at a ratio of three women to every man. The largest concentration of Thai immigrants can be found in Los Angeles, Houston and New York City. These new immigrants consisted of professionals, especially medical doctors and nurses, business entrepreneurs, and wives of men in the U.S. Air Force who had either been stationed in Thailand or had spent their vacations there while on active duty in Southeast Asia.
According U.S. Census 2000, the greatest numbers of Thais are in California (most in Los Angeles area), some 36,525. Texas with 7,384 (primarily Houston and Dallas) and New York, with a Thai population of 6,658 (most in New York City) have the second and third largest Thai populations, respectively.
Product: Fanta Grape, Product of Thailand
Store: Battambanc Market II: 229 E Kingsbridge Road, Bronx, NY
Neighborhood: Fordham Road ( D Train, Kingsbridge Road)
This was my first time actually plane watching at Miami International Airport (MIA). I checked some spotter websites to find some good locations. They recommended The Holes as being an "official" site so we checked it out. I was pretty disappointed; there was a lot of construction going on and parking was nonexistent. My wife dropped me off. The area is totally exposed. Even though it was December it was pretty hot - no shade, no place to sit, no other people around. The holes are actually pretty small so it's hard to get a lens through the hole. Arrivals were almost impossible to shoot but you could see planes taxiing by for takeoff. After an hour I was cooking so we bagged it. We then went to the area close to the El Dorado furniture store. Much better. There were a bunch of spotters from around the world there. It was a great atmosphere. Nicely shaded, safe, close to some stores and a lot of good traffic to watch. I saw a bunch of planes from airlines I had not seen before, including some airlines I had not heard of. Some of the planes didn't show up on Flight Radar 24 so they were very pleasant surprises. All in all a very good day and I'd love to go back there!
I took these photos in December 2019.
Perak occupies one of the more hillier regions of Peninsula Malaysia - so it is not too difficult to enjoy mountain views in this region.
Apart from the famous mountains of the Titiwangsa Range, the northern parts of the state is dotted with isolated mountain ranges.
I noticed that visibility was quite good today, and was amazed at the well-defined peaks of Mt. Bubu that is 50km away from Kampar. On your average day such a clear view is nonexistent due to haze. I paused for a moment as I made my way down the cycling track from Prima@Kampar to Kampar Putra.
This Mt. Bubu is the one in Ulu Kenas, and not the one part of the G7 mountains.
Credit: Paul Morse / Clinton Global Initiative
A Better Future for Girls and Women: Empowering the Next Generation - CGI U 2013
From women’s suffrage movements in the early 20th century to the Arab Spring, countless exceptional women have redefined their role in the world on their own terms. Yet the reality for many girls and women is still stark: over 60 million girls still do not have access to primary education, approximately 10 million women die each year due to nonexistent or low-quality healthcare, and three out of every four war fatalities are women or children. The education and empowerment of girls and women is not only a moral issue—it is also a critical economic issue. Ensuring access to education, financial capital, and political participation for women is among the most impactful strategies for advancing long-term sustainable development. From the creation of all-girls schools to women-run microcredit cooperatives, how can students and universities support the projects that are working to empower girls and women? This panel will bring together practitioners and pioneers who will explore the tangible ways in which young people can continue to build a better future for girls and women around the world.
“If a lover is wretched who invokes kisses of which he knows not the flavour, a thousand times more wretched is he who has had a taste of the flavour and then had it denied him.”
Italo Calvino, The Nonexistent Knight
Over the last hundred years, some decades have seen huge schools of sardines flourish off the Central California coast; during other decades, the small fish have been virtually nonexistent. These changes may be symptomatic of long-term (50-year) cycles that affect the entire Pacific Ocean.
It's finally raining in California! The first potent storm of the season finally gives the state a good soaking, including SoCal where rain was virtually nonexistent so far this season. I miss driving in the rain! Right after I was done with work, I went straight to observe the rainy weather. Due to all this rain, localized flooding was possible in flood-prone areas. Surely, we are having a weather pattern that was completely opposite of last month's epic dryness. Is it now safe to say that California's rainy season is finally here?
(Video footage taken from around San Jose, CA on Monday evening, January 8, 2018)
Weather update/forecast:
A powerful storm had battered California with heavy rain, mountain snow & gusty winds. A connection of subtropical moisture was present and had helped aid in bringing heavy rain to parts of the state. Heavy rain fell around NorCal Monday and into early Tuesday morning with approximately 3.50 inches of rain around San Francisco & Sacramento. While rainfall was forecast to be more sporadic over NorCal for the duration of the storm, heavy rain was more intense in Central/SoCal into Tuesday night. T-storms with small hail & lightning weren't out of the question as the low pressure system itself drifted inland with the added atmospheric instability. Gusty winds have continued to kick up along the coast and over the mountains as the storm drifted inland. Sporadic power outages were possible... This widespread rainfall had put a dent in the state's precipitation deficits, as well as put an end to the wildfire season at last. Looking ahead, more rain was on the horizon. Is the state's rainy season finally starting to kick in despite a slow start? Fingers crossed...
This view of a "farmyard" street in the Bo-Kaap dates from 1943.Motorized traffic were obviously nonexistent. That tree is trying its best to be a tree!
In the rural village of Navala, technology is nonexistent and cameras are extremely rare. These little girls asked me to take their picture and then show it to them on the screen of my digital camera. They were so interested in the pictures that we repeated this process over and over. We giggled with delight every time and enjoyed the game immensely. These girls and their families hosted me during my stay in the village, and taught me how to appreciate every little moment. Although I may have shown them how a camera lens views their home, they truly taught me a new way in which to view the world.
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Fortune Global Forum 2018
October 16th, 2018
Toronto, Canada
3:30 PM
THE NEW GLOBAL CONSUMER: DOING BUSINESS IN A DIGITAL ECONOMY
The digital economy is no longer part of the economy. It is the economy. How can traditional brick-and-mortar firms reinvent themselves, their supply chains, and their marketplaces to avoid the fate of brands once thought of as everlasting but which are now nonexistent? And how are new platforms – from e-commerce to shared services – rewriting the rules of the game? A conversation on how businesses can manage expectations for digitally empowered customers, and how technology is being used to enhance the customer experience.
Alain Bejjani, Chief Executive Officer, Majid al Futtaim
Andrea Stairs, General Manager, Canada and Latin America, eBay
Ning Tang, Founder and CEO, CreditEase
Moderator: Phil Wahba, Senior Writer, Fortune
Photograph by Stuart Isett/Fortune
Part two of a request I received to compare scans of old negatives with scans of prints produced from said negatives. See part one here: www.flickr.com/photos/itendswithtens/4255417525/
Plustek Opticfilm 7300 at 3600dpi, no sharpening or grain reduction, color untouched beyond basic histogram tweaking. Scanned to uncompressed TIFF through Silverfast, then compressed to JPEG with RIOT optimization plugin for Irfanview, quality set to 88% with 4:2:0 chroma subsampling. Full compression quality and chroma sampling produce a file too large to upload to Flickr (lots of grain means lots of random data, which makes the image that much harder to compress), so I did what I had to. The difference is effectively nonexistent.
As intense as the grain is in this, I was surprised to find that there's noticeably more detail represented here than at 1800dpi; one even begins to see the delicate vertical lines on the outer skin of the towers here, which don't show up at lower scan resolutions. Scanning a poorly stored negative after over twenty-six years will naturally come with the danger of scratches, yes, but the detail level does go up appreciably.
Same subject matter as the Scanjet sample, the twin towers of the World Trade Center in New York City as they appeared sometime in 1982.
They Live, We Sleep
Artist Statement
“We are living in an artificially induced state of consciousness that resembles sleep. The poor and the underclass are growing. Racial justice and human rights are nonexistent.
They influence our decisions without us knowing it. They numb our senses without us feeling it. They control our lives without us realizing it.
They have created a repressive society and we are their unwitting accomplices ...their intention to rule rests with the annihilation of consciousness.
We have been lulled into a trance.
They have made us indifferent, to ourselves, to others; we are focused only on our own gain. They are safe as long as they are not discovered ...that is their primary method of survival.
Keep us asleep, keep us selfish, keep us sedated...they are dismantling the sleeping middle class.
More and more people are becoming poor. We are their cattle. We are being bred for slavery.”
– They Live
This photographic body of work is inspired by John Carpenter’s 1988 film, “They Live.” The movie was also credited by Shepard Fairey “as a major source of inspiration for his own subversive brand of street art.” They Live was the basis for his use of the word ‘OBEY’ that became his main campaign and a popular clothing brand consequently.
The protagonist of the movie, an unemployed drifter named "Nada," accidentally comes across a box of sunglasses. After putting a pair on, he realizes that they are quite special. He sees the world in black and white and discovers that it's not what it seems. The series of images I have created are like those unique sunglasses that Nada stumbled upon, aim to show the world to the viewer for what it truly is. I hope they will help people to take into consideration what they sacrifice by blindly following self-serving governments and corporations’ agendas.
Through this photographic project my intent is to encourage people to be more aware of the habitual ways of living that we have been thoughtlessly following for most of human history. It seems as though the human race would have learned by now to not put their trust in the hands of the misguiding ruling class. Unfortunately most of the humanity is still in the state of mindless consumerism and simply does not realize that their decisions, their entire lives are being manipulated.
I am drinking Imperial Beer in Washington Bar, in Limon, Costa Rica. The beer was cold, and good after walking through the city on a hot day. Imperial is the largest selling beer in the country. Draft beer seems to be almost nonexistent in Central America or the Caribbean, at last at places I have seen. Just about every day in Costa Rica is a hot day.
A slightly early Independence Day (Fourth of July) fireworks show over Lake Monona in the heart of the Wisconsin capital.
* Fireworks pictures in a sense are double exposures, at least multiple exposures.
* My ISO was set at 100. Nothing higher is needed or even desirable.
* White balance set to auto because in raw capture it does not matter.
* The technique used (and it's an old one) was to hold the shutter open for 10, 20, or 30 seconds at a time.
* The aperture is adjusted in the opposite direction to keep the exposure uniform. In this case I found that 10 seconds at f/8 worked well. 30 seconds at f/16 captured more bursts, but if the action was very heavy then too many bursts made for a busy, messy picture. I had to keep changing the settings.
* The camera was in full manual mode (otherwise it would change the exposure and focus).
* Because the display was 2 miles away the camera only needed to be focused at infinity.
* Solidly mounted on a sturdy tripod and tripped with an electronic cable release to insure there is no camera movement.
* Vibration reduction turned off (otherwise the VR would "hunt" for nonexistent movement and smear the shot). I nearly forgot this but I made a couple of test exposures early on and realized immediately that they were smeared due to the VR.
* I also turned off the Long Exposure Noise Reduction when I realized that it was doubling the time for the picture to load, and I knew I could minimize any noise in Lightroom. As it turned out little noise reduction was necessary beyond the standard.
* I worked in live view and kept the auto review on for two seconds for each shot to insure that I was getting what I thought I was getting. It’s enormously reassuring!
* With the shutter open for longer periods, more individual bursts are recorded on each frame. You have to shoot a lot of frames and hope to luck out. There is no way to plan it. You open the shutter, the stuff goes up, at the end of the time the shutter closes and you've got what you've got. I think I made about 75 exposures to get 19 that were good. The rest were trashed.
* Despite some 75 extended exposures, live view, and constant instant reviews, the battery at the end of 45 minutes of fireworks still had 60% charge. Turning off the noise reduction undoubtedly helped, plus made the shoot more efficient; no waiting.
Credit: Barbara Kinney / Clinton Global Initiative
A Better Future for Girls and Women: Empowering the Next Generation - CGI U 2013
From women’s suffrage movements in the early 20th century to the Arab Spring, countless exceptional women have redefined their role in the world on their own terms. Yet the reality for many girls and women is still stark: over 60 million girls still do not have access to primary education, approximately 10 million women die each year due to nonexistent or low-quality healthcare, and three out of every four war fatalities are women or children. The education and empowerment of girls and women is not only a moral issue—it is also a critical economic issue. Ensuring access to education, financial capital, and political participation for women is among the most impactful strategies for advancing long-term sustainable development. From the creation of all-girls schools to women-run microcredit cooperatives, how can students and universities support the projects that are working to empower girls and women? This panel will bring together practitioners and pioneers who will explore the tangible ways in which young people can continue to build a better future for girls and women around the world.
It seems to happen that once in a great while a figure of profound depth and purity blossoms within a major religion, summarizing, expanding, and living through example its most cherished aspects. Ibn al-‘Arabī, known as al-Shaykh al-akbar, “The Greatest Master”, born in Mucia, Spain in 1165, is arguably such a figure for Sufism. An extremely prolific figure, Ibn al-‘Arabī wrote hundreds of works (estimates range from 250 to over 800!), some of which are still today widely considered to be classics. His thinking ranged from the practical to the scientific, to the metaphysical and to the sublimely spiritual, and his ability to weave together and expound upon all of these aspects is unparalleled, prompting a prominent scholar of Sufism and Ibn al-Arabī’s work, William Chittick, to declare him “the most influential thinker in the second half of Islamic history” (Chittick, 1994). Running through most of his works, in some explicitly and others only implicitly, is his “most famous idea” (Chittick, 2007): wahdat al-wujūd, or “The Oneness of Being”. Trying to come to terms with this concept is essential for an understanding of Ibn al-‘Arabī’s contribution to Sufism; this essay is an attempt to briefly explore this concept and its implications for Sufism.
Ibn al-‘Arabī never explicitly used the term wahdat al-wujūd in his writings, although he did use a variety of similar terms (Chittick, 1994), such as ‘ain al-wujūd, the essence of existence (Neusser, 2005). The word wujūd is translated both as ‘being’ or ‘existence’ and as ‘finding’ or ‘to be found’. Ibn al-‘Arabī’s use is complex enough to encompass both of these meanings, and more besides. Yet the primary aspect of wujūd, for Ibn al-‘Arabī is always its absolute unity. In this sense, Ibn al-‘Arabī seems to be in agreement with the Vedic sentiments of the Upanishads, wherein the oneness of existence takes primacy over any multiplicity.
However, whereas the working out of this concept in Hinduism finds its ultimate expression in Advaita Vedanta (non-dualism), where the world and all its seeming multiplicities are taken to be the equivalent of empty illusions, Ibn al-‘Arabī takes a different tack, affirming also the many-ness of reality along with its oneness (Chittick, 1994). So in speaking of wujūd (existence), it is possible for Ibn al-‘Arabī to see it from multiple viewpoints.
The primary aspect of wujūd, as already indicated, is its absolute oneness. This can be called wujūd mutlaq, absolute existence, in contrast to the wujūd of the manifest, contingent world, which can be called wujūd mustafad, or borrowed existence. For Ibn al-‘Arabī, in the most ultimate sense, there is only the oneness of Allah, but this does not mean that the manifest multiplicity of the created things of the universe, including human beings, is an existence-less illusion. Rather, the beingness of the manifest world is, as it were, borrowed from the only true existence – that of Allah. Thus we have, from our human perspective, the tanzih nature of God, in which Allah is absolutely unlike any particular part of manifest creation. On the other hand, we have the tashbih nature of God, in which Allah is like the manifest creation.
Self-existence and reality can only be attributed to the transcendent nature of God, which is necessary and cannot not exist. Allah is without parts, and is a singularity of nondelimited perfection – there is only a single wujūd. This transcendent nature is unknowable, for to know it would be to have a knower and a known, but no such separation can exist within wujūd, understood in this higher sense.
Ibn al-‘Arabī is not simply a transcendent mystic, content to leave the manifest world behind. Rather, he appeals strongly to reason, and takes pains to clarify as best he can the way in which the manifest world relates to the unmanifest, transcendent reality of wujūd. This is a complicated but central aspect to Ibn al-‘Arabī’s thinking; in fact the bulk of his works deal less with God’s transcendence than with his manifestation.
How then, if the only thing that has any real existence to it is the unity of God, can we explain the apparent multiplicity of the created world? What must be the nature of creation such that it can actually appear to us while not either making God dissectible into separate parts or taking the ground of being out from underneath the cosmos? Ibn al-‘Arabī answers that the things of perception have no separate existence apart from the ultimate wujūd of God. They cannot exist without ‘borrowing’ their wujūd from the only possible source: God. In this way, the wujūd of the manifest world is actually more of a metaphor than a reality; separate existent entities seem to have their own wujūd but do not – they exist by the continual creating will of Allah, and have no self-existence without Allah.
The metaphor that Ibn al-‘Arabī uses to describe this situation identifies God with Light, as stated in the Koran (24:35). The only thing that exists is Light – but this light becomes reflected and refracted into an infinite number of seemingly independent rays. Just as an individual ray of light may seem obviously separate from another: “this ray is red; that one is blue”, objects appear to us to have separate existence. But in pointing out the separateness of the objects we are not seeing their reality. In fact, the objects qua objectivity have no reality, and in this sense are described as nonexistent (‘adam). The nonexistence of the objects is precisely their nature. This is like the separate ray of red or blue light, which in fact cannot have any existence apart from the original Light itself, which is in fact the only thing which has existence in the first (and last) place. Every reflected or refracted ray is another veil through which the manifestation of God appears – but none of these manifestations themselves partake of their own existence, which is the sole domain of Allah. Ibn al’Arabī does distinguish between absolute nonexistence, which is nothingness in the most direct sense of the term, and relative nonexistence, which describes all that is approached as not God – i.e. the universe and its constituents. In this way, the manifest universe can be understood as an intermediary realm between absolute existence (wujūd mutlaq) and absolute nonexistence. It is the gray area that Ibn al-‘Arabī describes as “He/not He”, as it partakes of both ultimate existence and nonexistence simultaneously.
Therefore, in one sense when we see the things of the world, we are in fact seeing only the wujūd of God. Additionally, God, who “encompasses all things in knowledge” (65:12), has ‘in mind’ as it were, even all the potential objects of the cosmos. God’s knowledge of these things is immutable, fixed, and absolute; this knowledge corresponds to the object’s entire reality. But neither the manifest nor the unmanifest plurality of objects requires God Himself to be of a plural nature – just as all of the colors of light are contained in the primal Light of God as a singular unity, upon which they depend for their entire existence.
Apart from the ultimacy of wujūd, the relative nonexistence of the manifest world occurs as a continuum, stretching away from God towards ultimate nonexistence. Each “thing” is, as described by Ibn al-‘Arabī, a “locus of manifestation” of God. Each locus of manifestation is nonexistent in itself, but contains rather the properties or effects of the object, which ultimately derive from God. Thus, when we encounter the things of the universe, we are in actuality finding only God’s wujūd. Just as a single breath may contain many words, the “Breath of the All-merciful” may give rise to many objects – but some of these objects partake of a greater part of wujūd than others.
Even though God’s breath doesn’t need to contain words, He speaks in His overflowing generosity, and all the world is created. Multiplicity is real because God speaks many words – an infinite number of them, in fact, corresponding to the infinity of manifested objects. What characteristics the objects have depends upon the words God speaks. Thus there are ninety-nine different names of God (The Merciful, The Abaser, The Guarantor, etc.) which act as intermediaries between existence and nonexistence. Things of the manifest world are formed out of the conflation of any number of these names with any amount of purity. These ninety-nine names are all aspects of the one name: Allah, which encompasses all possible names in every possible way, both manifest and non-manifest.
Within this situation, the human being also exists as a relatively non-existent entity, described by a concatenation (with relative purity) of the names. In some people and at some times, one or another of the names becomes more manifested and understood than the other names. According to Ibn al-‘Arabī, the goal of a spiritual seeker is to manifest all of the ninety-nine names with equal perfection and harmony, thus becoming “the Perfect Man”. Humans are unique among beings of the world because they have the potential to comprehend and manifest allof the names, because God taught Adam all the names (2:30); all other things (minerals, plants, animals, angels) are created within known and fixed stations. If this perfection is achieved, the human would be a manifestation of what Ibn al-‘Arabī calls the “Muhammadan Reality” (Chittick, 1994), where instead of being stationed within any one or combination of names, the human stands equally within all the names at once: the “Station of No Station”. In order to achieve this state, rather than try to manifest all the divine names, which can lead to an arrogance of assuming that “I am like God”, it is better to try to get rid of all the particularly human attributes, so that what is left is the wujūd of God alone. The path of this struggle is one of surrendering oneself to God, of submission (islam) to God.
As we can see, the concept of wahdat al-wujūd is a central aspect of Ibn al-‘Arabī’s thought. Although he did not initially conceive of the idea, Ibn al’Arabī’s portrayal and discussion of the oneness of being clarified and brought to new light one of the most foundational aspects of Islam. According to Chittick, wahdat al-wujūd “is the most famous single theoretical issue in Sufi works of the later period, especially in the area under Persian influence.” (Chittick 2007). The concept was not universally accepted however, and was attacked by scholars such as Ibn Taymiya (d. 1328 C.E.), who actually did much to associate the concept with Ibn al-‘Arabī (Chittick 2007).
Don't worry about following route signs, they're mostly nonexistent. The young lady is signaling the bus behind us to stop. ($5 if you can locate one sign.)
This is an interesting little guy that I haven't seen sold before. The leaves vary from grey-green/purple to bright red on the smaller plants. On top is a bright, tiny, pinkish-red pineapple. Probably in preparation for Valentine's day, it is sold in a pink pot, though that now sits in my the storage closet waiting for a better companion. I chose a larger plant with a small to nonexistent fruits, but several babies already well on their way. As with most bromeliads, this plant will die within a year or so of flowering...essentially feeding itself to the offshoots growing around it. Here in the photo, you can see it newly nestled in a hanging basket that positions it as close as possible to the winter grow light.
Warm and cozy knit stockings for your elfin feet! Great for those long, cold days and nights making toys in Santa's workshop! On sale for a limited time at Santa's Sale Shack!
*Legs not included.
For FGR: Ads for Nonexistent Products.
For GTWL theme Holidays!
A radioactive fossil Transformer, though hilariously based on the (as we now know) nonexistent Dracorex. It's a juvenile Pachycephalosaurus.
I created this video in one night using Windows Movie Maker (which I was forced to use by the professor and hated because it kept crashing).
Not the best footage or editing, but considering my formal training on editing is pretty close to nonexistent, it's not too shabby.
Roundup of my observations reporting on Dorchester, MA.