There is speculation that this statue in the style of the Capitoline Jupiter was given the head of Claudius when it was restored in the 19th century. It may originally have been a figure of Vespasian.

Many statues of Emperors and members of their family were uncovered from the site of a large central square at Herculaneum, which has become known as the Augusteum, an Imperial cult building.

Heculaneum was covered by flows of pyroclastic rock from the eruption of Vesuvius in AD 79. It solidified to a height of many metres. Only part of the site has been excavated and stabilised.

Remains of the Augusteum are still buried, next to where the present site ends at a main street known as the Decumanus Maximus. The area was accessed in the 18th century by tunneling, and statues and paintings were recovered.

From the site of Herculaneum, now in the Naples Archaeological Museum, Italy.

The history of the Jemison Center, often strangely called "Old Bryce," seems to be mired in half-truths and speculation on the internet. The earliest information found dates back to when the land was a plantation, called Crab Orchard back in the 1820s, due to the many crab apple trees located on the property. It was owned by William Jemison, who then passed it down to his son, Robert Jemison Jr., a successful politician and businessman. The 4,000 acre tract in Northport was later known as Cherokee Place, where Robert would live until his new home was completed in Tuscaloosa in 1862. Jemison was a major advocate for the establishment of a hospital for the insane in Alabama, and is considered a major influence to select the area as the site for the first asylum in the state - the Alabama State Hospital for the Insane (Bryce Hospital).

By the 1920s the asylum had become severely overcrowded, and satellite institutions were created nearby to relieve the pressure, such as the Alabama Home for Mental Defectives (later known as Partlow State School). In 1939, the site of the Cherokee Plantation was purchased and transformed into the State Farm Colony for Negroes (the old Bryce Hospital grounds only housed white patients during the Jim Crow era). The former plantation house on the hill was razed and in its place the state of Alabama constructed the Jemison Institute, a three-story brick institution with detached heating plant for $161,000.

History seems to fade from there; it's assumed the Jemison Center operated as a state work farm, where able-bodied African American patients would work the fields to produce food for the hospital, as well as performing other kinds of labor (weaving, mending, etc). Desegregation orders from the government and changes in labor laws seemed to put an end to the Jemison Center; all farming operations at Bryce ceased in 1977. A mid-19th century structure was also erected on the property, called the S.D. Allen Intermediate Care Facility; it was used as a nursing home until it closed in 2003.

Info taken from - opacity.us/site245_jemison_center.htm

Mount Morris Park, Harlem

Harlem, Manhattan

Physically the proposed Mount Morris Park Historic District is a relatively level area extending generally from Mount Morris Park on the east to Lenox Avenue on the west, from 119th Street on the south to 123rd Street on the north. It faces but does not include Mount Morris Park itself in which a notable outcropping of rock rises to considerable elevation. Mount Morris Park interrupts Fifth Avenue which extends south from the south side and north from the north side of the Park.

The proposed Mount Morris Park Historic District is a fine residential area which has maintained its attractive late 19th century architectural character remarkably well. This part of the City was largely built up during the latter part of the 19th century, with rows of unusually handsome townhouses and several notable churches. Some of the most stately residences are to be found along Mount Morris Park West.

The buildings in this District represent cany architectural styles including the Romanesque Revival, the French neo-Grec, the Queen Anne and a number of structures designed in the classical and Renaissance traditions popularized by the World's Columbian Exposition of 1893 in Chicago.

In the Romanesque Revival style are the Bethel Gospel Pentecostal Church, built originally for the Harlem Club, and St. Martin's Episcopal Church, both on Lenox Avenue. St. Martin's (formerly Holy Trinity) Church, with its noted carillon, is undoubtedly the handsomest example of this style of architecture remaining in Manhattan today. On the southwest corner of Mount Morris Park West and 122nd Street is the fine Mount Morris Presbyterian Church, designed in modified classical style. The Ephesus Seventh Day Adventist Church at the northwest corner of Lenox Avenue and West 123rd Street is also notable architecturally, and its lofty spire is in itself a landmark.

A large townhouse at the northwest corner of 123rd Street and Mount Morris Park Vest is a particularly fine example of the neo-Renaissance style introduced by the architects McKim, Mead & White. Among townhouses in the District, the brownstone rectory of the Mount Morris Presbyterian Church on 122nd Street is one of the handsomest and best preserved residences in the City. Here one finds the original interiors unchanged since the day they were built, furnished in complete harmony in Victorian style.

The bold decorative detail of the residences in the District runs the gamut from the neo-medievalists of Viollet-le-Duc to the classical traditions of the turn of the century. The love and care lavished on these fine houses bears witness to the pride of both their original owners and their present occupants.

Recent Developments

This area was first built up with a fine assemblage of architecturally notable structures with a remarkable quality of homogeneity that gives the area a special character, readily recognized when one enters or leaves it. It is this character which distinguishes it as an Historic District.

Valiant efforts have been made to maintain the character of the neighborhood both as a residential community and as an area containing much notable architecture Economic forces and several depressions have taken their detrimental toll but the fine architecture remains a source of pride to today's residents.

The conversion of once privately owned homes to rooming houses and the introduction of stores at the ground floor of residences along the Avenue are some of the inevitable consequences of economic change.

Redevelopment plans have been made for this area and it is considered that designation as an Historic District will be an added factor contributing to its preservation and upgrading. Present dangers to the area are renovations to existing buildings which destroy their original exterior character and the possible introduction of new buildings cr additions of inappropriate exterior architectural character.

Importance of the District

The Mount Morris Park Historic District includes a remarkably interesting . cross-section of turn of the century townhouses and churches. These buildings represent many styles of architecture spanning a period of over four decades.

The churches and individual residences are among the finest in the City. The quality of design and workmanship of these buildings establishes the exceptional character of the District. Outstanding among them is the row of townhouses on Mount Morris Park West. The survival of a substantially unbroken row of handsome residences and churches facing a park is, in itself, rare in Manhattan.

HISTORY

Early Years (1658-1851)

The history of the Mount Morris Park Historic District goes back to I658, the year Dutch settlers founded the town of Nieuw Haerlem. Mount Morris, a wooded promontory among the Round Hills, was called Slang Burg, or Snake Hill, by the Dutch. Between 1664 and 1674 New York passed back and forth between the Dutch and the English, with British rule finally established in 1674. In 1776, at the beginning of the Revolutionary War, Washington attempted to withstand the British army behind fortifications on Harlem Heights.

The colonials tried valiantly, without success, to fend off the British from the fort they had erected earlier that year on Snake Hill, which commanded the mouth of the Harlem River. Washington was forced to retreat to Port Washington and then to White Plains.

Until the mid-19th century, Harlem was a sparsely settled farming area. The largest landowners were members of the Benson family, descendants of Captain Johannes Benson who had settled there in 1696.

The Mount Morris Park Historic District occupies a portion of the Benson "Pace Course Farm," as it was called in the 19th century because it encompassed the Harlem Park Trotting Course. In 1851, Samson Adolphus Benson of Fishkill, N. Y., a sixth generation descendant of Johannes Benson, sold the farm, which had been divided into City lots a few years earlier, to John Bruce, a well-to-do Brooklyn resident and hardware dealer in New York.

When Bruce sold the lots for development, the deeds included restrictive covenants which assured the future residential character of this District, bordering on picturesque Mount Morris Park. In the 1850s and, indeed, until considerably later, the streets in the District were unpaved and builders dumped surplus earth in the roads to improve their grading.

Lenox Avenue was still known as "Sixth Avenue" and Mount Morris Park West was called "The New Avenue" on the 1848 map of Samson Adolphus Benson's property. This map also explains the sharp diagonal of the boundary of the Historic District, at the rear of Nos. 12-28 West 120th Street, which was established by the direction of the old Manhattan Road which passed through the Benson farm.

Mount Morris Park was acquired by New York City in 1839, and was first known as Mount Morris Square. Until late in the 1870s Mount Morris Park was a popular spot for weekend excursions. New Yorkers came here for country walks and picnics; the nearby race track was an added attraction. The opening of the "El" in 1872, however, was a pivotal point: Harlem became a suburb of the City, which was rapidly expanding northward.

Development of the District

Speculative building began in 1878 and continued into the early 20th century, encouraged by plans for an East Side subway line, resulting in successive booms in Harlem real estate. William B. Astor, Oscar Hammerstein, Henry Morgenthau and Oswald Ottendorfer were among those associated with speculation in the area.

Elegant houses, generally built in rows, a few apartment houses, churches and public buildings began to appear in the last two decades of the 19th century. They were designed by such prominent Hew York architects as Arnold W. Brunner, Hugo Lamb of the firm of Lamb & Rich, George F. Pelham, William A. Potter, J. R. Thomas, Thorn & Wilson and James E. Ware.

In 1903, the New York Herald compared the houses along Mount Morris Park West favorably with the mansions along Fifth Abenue. Prominent political leaders, professionals, businessmen and tradesmen occupied these fine residences; many belonged to the Harlem Club and were members of the Harlem Board of Commerce.

Demographic Changes

The original residents of the Mount Morris Park Historic District were of Dutch, English and Irish descent. Soon after the turn of the 20th Century, a few German Jewish families moved to the Mount Morris Park area.

In 1903, Blacks first came to Harlem,and Lenox Avenue and 135th Street subsequently became the nucleus of a radiating Black population. Despite the influx of Blacks to Harlem before, during and after World War I, the Mount Morris Park area remained a middle-class white enclave until the Depression.

Between 1935 and 1940 a great increase in the number of vacancies led to Mount Morris Park's transition to a Black neighborhood .

These demographic changes are reflected in the history of its religious buildings. For example, the Ephesus Seventh Day Adventist Church now occupies the structure erected in 1885-87 for the Reformed Low Dutch Church of Harlem, originally organized in 1660.

Here, Johannes and Samson Benson served as deacons in colonial days; later, Samson Adolphus Benson served as an elder. In 1901, the church was enlarged to accommodate the expanding local population. Today, the congregants arc Black and the Sunday school has been converted to a Baptist Temple. Mount Olivet Baptist Church, organized by Blacks in 1878, moved in 1924 in a building on Lenox Avenue at 121st Street which had been occupied since 1907 by a synagogue, Temple Israel of Harlem.

This was the first Black church on Lenox Avenue. The pastor of St. Martin's Episcopal Church, the Reverend John H. Johnson, wis an active member nf the Citizens League for Fair Play, which picketed the 125th Street business area in 1933 in a successful effort to persuade white merchants to employ Blacks.

Churches in the District sponsored the appearance of many famous Americans, of which only a few are mentioned here. Booker T. Washington spoke at the Ephesus Seventh Day Adventist Church. Robert H. Perry appeared at the Mount Morris Baptist Church in 1916. In 1917, Marcus Garvey addressed a meeting at the Bethel African Methodist Episcopal Church in his efforts to organize a Liberty League.

The District Today

The District includes well-maintained, owner-occupied residences, rooming houses, a few apartment buildings and a number of churches. In addition to these, former residences on Lenox Avenue, a former parsonage and the buildings originally occupied by the Harlem Club and the Harlem Library have been converted to religious uses.

Mount Morris Park is currently regaining its stature as a focus of community activity, following a long period of neglect. It is serving once again "as the pleasure ground of a population many times greater than ... any of the small downtown squares," to quote the Harlem Local Reporter of 1890. Back in 1886, it had been the site of a spectacular Independence Day celeb-ration and, in 1890, the City supported bi-weekly concerts in the band pagoda.'

Nowadays, the City's popular annual Summer Festival attracts people from the entire metropolitan area to the park. The Mount Morris Park Recreation Center and Amphitheater, created largely through the generosity of Richard Rodgers, serves as a facility for concerts, educational and cultural programs for all ages and for community recreation. The swimming pool complex, which opened last year, was constructed by the first Black-owned architectural firm to be awarded a Parks Department design contract.

The Mount Morris Park Historic District is served by several charities. Jewish Family Service and Catholic Charities, for example, offer counseling, homemaking courses and related services. In the area are the Central Harlem Referral Unit of the New York City Youth Board, the Narcotics Addiction Control Center at 10 Mount Morris Park West, the Mount Morris Child Health Center and the Mount Morris Children's Center.

The latter, a church-related organization, serves .over a hundred three to ten-year-olds. The major portion of the Mount Morris Park Historic District is included in the Milbank-Frawley Circle Urban Renewal Area, a program which it will enhance. The community is conveniently served by the many shops along 125th Street, It is also served by the Hospital for Joint Diseases, located on Madison Avenue between 123rd and 124th Streets.

Educational facilities include, within a block of the District, an elementary school, a Catholic high school and the Harlem branch of the New York Public Library. Transportation facilities, buses, subways and railroads, are amply adequate for the community needs.

- From the 1971 NYCLPC Historic District Designation Report

Seal performs at Sydney Entertainment Centre, Australia

Tonight the legendary Seal played to an appreciative audience at the soon to be demolished Sydney Entertainment Centre.

Seal sounded and looked great, but at times was a little hard to see, as the background was quite dark in places.

The song that many came to hear live was 'Kiss from a Rose', which appeared in the soundtrack to the 1995 comic book movie 'Batman Forever'.

As you would expect, most of the fans went home very happy.

We wish Seal well with the rest of his tour and stay in Australia.

Other news

Speculation whether or not Seal and Australian singer - songwriter, and co judge on 'The Voice', Delta Goodrem are at item, however Seal tells news media that they are just good friends.

On March 10, 2012, Seal shared the stage with Kanye West, Soul Rebels Brass Band and Snoop Dogg at Brad Pitt’s Night to Make It Right Foundation New Orleans after-party, hosted by comedian Aziz Ansari. The charity event, hosted by Ellen DeGeneres, raised money to build homes for victims of Hurricane Katrina.

Seal has cancelled some of his Australian dates via promoter Dainty Group.

The Dainty website states: We are sad to announce that Seal’s scheduled shows in Perth and Canberra will unfortunately not proceed, due to ongoing scheduling conflicts with Seal’s international and Australian work schedule.

A spokesman for Seal said: "Due to further adjustments to Seal’s hectic touring and filming schedule while in Australia, we’ve had to make the difficult decision not to proceed with these two shows. However, the remaining shows in Melbourne, Adelaide, Gold Coast and Sydney will definitely proceed as scheduled.:

Thank you to those involved with making tonight a success.

Stay tuned to this station for updates.

About Seal

Seal (Henry Olusegun Olumide Adeola Samuel) was born 19 February 1963 in Paddington, London, England).

His stage name is Seal and he is a British soul and R&B singer-songwriter, of Nigerian and Brazilian background. Seal has won numerous music awards throughout his career, including three Brit Awards—winning Best British Male in 1992, four Grammy Awards, and an MTV Video Music Award. Seal is known for his numerous international hits; the best known being "Kiss from a Rose", which appeared in the soundtrack to the 1995 film Batman Forever. He has sold more than 20 million albums worldwide. He is a coach on The Voice Australia.

Websites

Seal official website

www.seal.com

Sydney Entertainment Centre

www.sydentcent.com.au

Dainty Group

www.dcegroup.com

Eva Rinaldi Photography

www.evarinaldi.com

Eva Rinaldi Photography Flickr

www.flickr.com/evarinaldiphotography

Music News Australia

www.musicnewsaustralia.com

Some Speculation

My Friend Bill

The history of the Jemison Center, often strangely called "Old Bryce," seems to be mired in half-truths and speculation on the internet. The earliest information found dates back to when the land was a plantation, called Crab Orchard back in the 1820s, due to the many crab apple trees located on the property. It was owned by William Jemison, who then passed it down to his son, Robert Jemison Jr., a successful politician and businessman. The 4,000 acre tract in Northport was later known as Cherokee Place, where Robert would live until his new home was completed in Tuscaloosa in 1862. Jemison was a major advocate for the establishment of a hospital for the insane in Alabama, and is considered a major influence to select the area as the site for the first asylum in the state - the Alabama State Hospital for the Insane (Bryce Hospital).

By the 1920s the asylum had become severely overcrowded, and satellite institutions were created nearby to relieve the pressure, such as the Alabama Home for Mental Defectives (later known as Partlow State School). In 1939, the site of the Cherokee Plantation was purchased and transformed into the State Farm Colony for Negroes (the old Bryce Hospital grounds only housed white patients during the Jim Crow era). The former plantation house on the hill was razed and in its place the state of Alabama constructed the Jemison Institute, a three-story brick institution with detached heating plant for $161,000.

History seems to fade from there; it's assumed the Jemison Center operated as a state work farm, where able-bodied African American patients would work the fields to produce food for the hospital, as well as performing other kinds of labor (weaving, mending, etc). Desegregation orders from the government and changes in labor laws seemed to put an end to the Jemison Center; all farming operations at Bryce ceased in 1977. A mid-19th century structure was also erected on the property, called the S.D. Allen Intermediate Care Facility; it was used as a nursing home until it closed in 2003.

Info taken from - opacity.us/site245_jemison_center.htm

Ischia under fire the first photo that I take during the beginning of the blaze

There seems to be some speculation as to which railroad this depot belonged to and an actual build date. Some guesses are Pennsylvania Railroad (PRR), Cleveland, Cincinnati, Chicago & St. Louis (CCC&St.L) and the Cleveland, Columbus, Cincinnati & Indianapolis (CCC&I) Railroads. Build dates vary from 1875 to 1960.

According to the county auditors information, it was built in 1890 and ownership can only be tracked back to the 1920's.

Google Map coordinates... 40.127197, -83.005193

www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2202769119

A call for an independent inquiry into the origin of the SARS-CoV-2 virus

Neil L. Harrison and Jeffrey D. Sachs

Since the identification of theSARS-CoV-2 in Wuhan, China, in January 2020 (1), the origin of the virus has been a topic of intense scientific debate and public speculation. The two main hypotheses are that the virus emerged from human exposure to an infected animal [“zoonosis” (2)] or that it emerged in a research-related incident (3). The investigation into the origin of the virus has been made difficult by the lack of key evidence from the earliest days of the outbreak—there’s no doubt that greater transparency on the part of Chinese authorities would be enormously helpful. Nevertheless, we argue here that there is much important information that can be gleaned from US-based research institutions, information not yet made available for independent, transparent, and scientific scrutiny.

The data available within the United States would explicitly include, but are not limited to, viral sequences gathered and held as part of the PREDICT project and other funded programs, as well as sequencing data and laboratory notebooks from US laboratories. We call on US government scientific agencies, most notably the NIH, to support a full, independent, and transparent investigation of the origins of SARS-CoV-2. This should take place, for example, within a tightly focused science-based bipartisan Congressional inquiry with full investigative powers, which would be able to ask important questions—but avoid misguided witch-hunts governed more by politics than by science.

Essential US Investigations

The US intelligence community (IC) was tasked, in 2021 by President Joe Biden (4), with investigating the origin of the virus. In their summary public statement, the IC writes that “all agencies assess that two hypotheses are plausible: natural exposure to an infected animal and a laboratory-associated incident” (4). The IC further writes that “China’s cooperation most likely would be needed to reach a conclusive assessment of the origins of COVID-19 [coronavirus disease 2019].” Of course, such cooperation is highly warranted and should be pursued by the US Government and the US scientific community. Yet, as outlined below, much could be learned by investigating US-supported and US-based work that was underway in collaboration with Wuhan-based institutions, including the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV), China. It is still not clear whether the IC investigated these US-supported and US-based activities. If it did, it has yet to make any of its findings available to the US scientific community for independent and transparent analysis and assessment. If, on the other hand, the IC did not investigate these US-supported and US-based activities, then it has fallen far short of conducting a comprehensive investigation.

This lack of an independent and transparent US-based scientific investigation has had four highly adverse consequences. First, public trust in the ability of US scientific institutions to govern the activities of US science in a responsible manner has been shaken. Second, the investigation of the origin of SARS-CoV-2 has become politicized within the US Congress (5); as a result, the inception of an independent and transparent investigation has been obstructed and delayed. Third, US researchers with deep knowledge of the possibilities of a laboratory-associated incident have not been enabled to share their expertise effectively. Fourth, the failure of NIH, one of the main funders of the US–China collaborative work, to facilitate the investigation into the origins of SARS-CoV-2 (4) has fostered distrust regarding US biodefense research activities.

Much of the work on SARS-like CoVs performed in Wuhan was part of an active and highly collaborative US–China scientific research program funded by the US Government (NIH, Defense Threat Reduction Agency [DTRA], and US Agency for International Development [USAID]), coordinated by researchers at EcoHealth Alliance (EHA), but involving researchers at several other US institutions. For this reason, it is important that US institutions be transparent about any knowledge of the detailed activities that were underway in Wuhan and in the United States. The evidence may also suggest that research institutions in other countries were involved, and those too should be asked to submit relevant information (e.g., with respect to unpublished sequences).

Participating US institutions include the EHA, the University of North Carolina (UNC), the University of California at Davis (UCD), the NIH, and the USAID. Under a series of NIH grants and USAID contracts, EHA coordinated the collection of SARS-like bat CoVs from the field in southwest China and southeast Asia, the sequencing of these viruses, the archiving of these sequences (involving UCD), and the analysis and manipulation of these viruses (notably at UNC). A broad spectrum of coronavirus research work was done not only in Wuhan (including groups at Wuhan University and the Wuhan CDC, as well as WIV) but also in the United States. The exact details of the fieldwork and laboratory work of the EHA-WIV-UNC partnership, and the engagement of other institutions in the United States and China, has not been disclosed for independent analysis. The precise nature of the experiments that were conducted, including the full array of viruses collected from the field and the subsequent sequencing and manipulation of those viruses, remains unknown.

EHA, UNC, NIH, USAID, and other research partners have failed to disclose their activities to the US scientific community and the US public, instead declaring that they were not involved in any experiments that could have resulted in the emergence of SARS-CoV-2. The NIH has specifically stated (6) that there is a significant evolutionary distance between the published viral sequences and that of SARS-CoV-2 and that the pandemic virus could not have resulted from the work sponsored by NIH. Of course, this statement is only as good as the limited data on which it is based, and verification of this claim is dependent on gaining access to any other unpublished viral sequences that are deposited in relevant US and Chinese databases (7,8). On May 11, 2022, Acting NIH Director Lawrence Tabak testified before Congress that several such sequences in a US database were removed from public view, and that this was done at the request of both Chinese and US investigators.

Blanket denials from the NIH are no longer good enough. Although the NIH and USAID have strenuously resisted full disclosure of the details of the EHA-WIV-UNC work program, several documents leaked to the public or released through the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) have raised concerns. These research proposals make clear that the EHA-WIV-UNC collaboration was involved in the collection of a large number of so-far undocumented SARS-like viruses and was engaged in their manipulation within biological safety level (BSL)-2 and BSL-3 laboratory facilities, raising concerns that an airborne virus might have infected a laboratory worker (9). A variety of scenarios have been discussed by others, including an infection that involved a natural virus collected from the field or perhaps an engineered virus manipulated in one of the laboratories (3).

Overlooked Details

Special concerns surround the presence of an unusual furin cleavage site (FCS) in SARS-CoV-2 (10) that augments the pathogenicity and transmissibility of the virus relative to related viruses like SARS-CoV-1 (11, 12). SARS-CoV-2 is, to date, the only identified member of the subgenus sarbecovirus that contains an FCS, although these are present in other coronaviruses (13, 14). A portion of the sequence of the spike protein of some of these viruses is illustrated in the alignment shown in Fig. 1, illustrating the unusual nature of the FCS and its apparent insertion in SARS-CoV-2 (15). From the first weeks after the genome sequence of SARS-CoV-2 became available, researchers have commented on the unexpected presence of the FCS within SARS-CoV-2—the implication being that SARS-CoV-2 might be a product of laboratory manipulation. In a review piece arguing against this possibility, it was asserted that the amino acid sequence of the FCS in SARS-CoV-2 is an unusual, nonstandard sequence for an FCS and that nobody in a laboratory would design such a novel FCS (13).

In fact, the assertion that the FCS in SARS-CoV-2 has an unusual, nonstandard amino acid sequence is false. The amino acid sequence of the FCS in SARS-CoV-2 also exists in the human ENaC α subunit (16), where it is known to be functional and has been extensively studied (17, 18). The FCS of human ENaC α has the amino acid sequence RRAR'SVAS (Fig. 2), an eight–amino-acid sequence that is perfectly identical with the FCS of SARS-CoV-2 (16). ENaC is an epithelial sodium channel, expressed on the apical surface of epithelial cells in the kidney, colon, and airways (19, 20), that plays a critical role in controlling fluid exchange. The ENaC α subunit has a functional FCS (17, 18) that is essential for ion channel function (19) and has been characterized in a variety of species. The FCS sequence of human ENaC α (20) is identical in chimpanzee, bonobo, orangutan, and gorilla (SI Appendix, Fig. 1), but diverges in all other species, even primates, except one. (The one non-human non-great ape species with the same sequence is Pipistrellus kuhlii, a bat species found in Europe and Western Asia; other bat species, including Rhinolophus ferrumequinem, have a different FCS sequence in ENaC α [RKAR'SAAS]).

One consequence of this “molecular mimicry” between the FCS of SARS CoV-2 spike and the FCS of human ENaC is competition for host furin in the lumen of the Golgi apparatus, where the SARS-CoV-2 spike is processed. This results in a decrease in human ENaC expression (21). A decrease in human ENaC expression compromises airway function and has been implicated as a contributing factor in the pathogenesis of COVID-19 (22). Another consequence of this astonishing molecular mimicry is evidenced by apparent cross-reactivity with human ENaC of antibodies from COVID-19 patients, with the highest levels of cross-reacting antibodies directed against this epitope being associated with most severe disease (23).

We do not know whether the insertion of the FCS was the result of natural evolution (2, 13)—perhaps via a recombination event in an intermediate mammal or a human (13, 24)—or was the result of a deliberate introduction of the FCS into a SARS-like virus as part of a laboratory experiment. We do know that the insertion of such FCS sequences into SARS-like viruses was a specific goal of work proposed by the EHA-WIV-UNC partnership within a 2018 grant proposal (“DEFUSE”) that was submitted to the US Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) (25). The 2018 proposal to DARPA was not funded, but we do not know whether some of the proposed work was subsequently carried out in 2018 or 2019, perhaps using another source of funding.

We also know that that this research team would be familiar with several previous experiments involving the successful insertion of an FCS sequence into SARS-CoV-1 (26) and other coronaviruses, and they had a lot of experience in construction of chimeric SARS-like viruses (27–29). In addition, the research team would also have some familiarity with the FCS sequence and the FCS-dependent activation mechanism of human ENaC α (19), which was extensively characterized at UNC (17, 18). For a research team assessing the pandemic potential of SARS-related coronaviruses, the FCS of human ENaC—an FCS known to be efficiently cleaved by host furin present in the target location (epithelial cells) of an important target organ (lung), of the target organism (human)—might be a rational, if not obvious, choice of FCS to introduce into a virus to alter its infectivity, in line with other work performed previously.

Of course, the molecular mimicry of ENaC within the SARS-CoV-2 spike protein might be a mere coincidence, although one with a very low probability. The exact FCS sequence present in SARS-CoV-2 has recently been introduced into the spike protein of SARS-CoV-1 in the laboratory, in an elegant series of experiments (12, 30), with predictable consequences in terms of enhanced viral transmissibility and pathogenicity. Obviously, the creation of such SARS-1/2 “chimeras” is an area of some concern for those responsible for present and future regulation of this area of biology. [Note that these experiments in ref. 30 were done in the context of a safe “pseudotyped” virus and thus posed no danger of producing or releasing a novel pathogen.] These simple experiments show that the introduction of the 12 nucleotides that constitute the FCS insertion in SARS-CoV-2 would not be difficult to achieve in a lab. It would therefore seem reasonable to ask that electronic communications and other relevant data from US groups should be made available for scrutiny.

Seeking Transparency

To date, the federal government, including the NIH, has not done enough to promote public trust and transparency in the science surrounding SARS-CoV-2. A steady trickle of disquieting information has cast a darkening cloud over the agency. The NIH could say more about the possible role of its grantees in the emergence of SARS-CoV-2, yet the agency has failed to reveal to the public the possibility that SARS-CoV-2 emerged from a research-associated event, even though several researchers raised that concern on February 1, 2020, in a phone conversation that was documented by email (5). Those emails were released to the public only through FOIA, and they suggest that the NIH leadership took an early and active role in promoting the “zoonotic hypothesis” and the rejection of the laboratory-associated hypothesis (5). The NIH has resisted the release of important evidence, such as the grant proposals and project reports of EHA, and has continued to redact materials released under FOIA, including a remarkable 290-page redaction in a recent FOIA release.

Information now held by the research team headed by EHA (7), as well as the communications of that research team with US research funding agencies, including NIH, USAID, DARPA, DTRA, and the Department of Homeland Security, could shed considerable light on the experiments undertaken by the US-funded research team and on the possible relationship, if any, between those experiments and the emergence of SARS-CoV-2. We do not assert that laboratory manipulation was involved in the emergence of SARS-CoV-2, although it is apparent that it could have been. However, we do assert that there has been no independent and transparent scientific scrutiny to date of the full scope of the US-based evidence.

The relevant US-based evidence would include the following information: laboratory notebooks, virus databases, electronic media (emails, other communications), biological samples, viral sequences gathered and held as part of the PREDICT project (7) and other funded programs, and interviews of the EHA-led research team by independent researchers, together with a full record of US agency involvement in funding the research on SARS-like viruses, especially with regard to projects in collaboration with Wuhan-based institutions. We suggest that a bipartisan inquiry should also follow up on the tentative conclusion of the IC (4) that the initial outbreak in Wuhan may have occurred no later than November 2019 and that therefore the virus was circulating before the cluster of known clinical cases in December. The IC did not reveal the evidence for this statement, nor when parts of the US Government or US-based researchers first became aware of a potential new outbreak. Any available information and knowledge of the earliest days of the outbreak, including viral sequences (8), could shed considerable light on the origins question.

We continue to recognize the tremendous value of US–China cooperation in ongoing efforts to uncover the proximal origins of the pandemic. Much vital information still resides in China, in the laboratories, hospital samples, and early epidemiological information not yet available to the scientific community. Yet a US-based investigation need not wait—there is much to learn from the US institutions that were extensively involved in research that may have contributed to, or documented the emergence of, the SARS-CoV-2 virus. Only an independent and transparent investigation, perhaps as a bipartisan Congressional inquiry, will reveal the information that is needed to enable a thorough scientific process of scrutiny and evaluation.

Supporting Information

Appendix 01 (PDF)

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The speculation for the longest time by many people (in certain circles) was that this was a WWII Nazi secret weapon. The shape is definitely like the Millenium Falcon from Star Wars but this is ancient, very ancient indeed. Yet it has an intelligent look. Check out this post for full details guys, it's decent.in circles) was that this was a WWII Nazi secret weapon. The shape is definitely like the Millenium Falcon from Star Wars but this is ancient, very ancient indeed. Yet it has an intelligent look. Check out this post for full details guys, it's decent. #ufo #balticseaanomaly #balticseaufo #thebalticseaspaceship #balticseaufos #anomalyinthebalticsea #balticsea #ufosightingsfootage #ufosfootage #realufo #ufosightings #ufosighting #nasalies #spaceshipufo #resupplyshipufo #ufos #arealiensreal #russianufo #russiaufos #ovni #ovnis

How Architecture Learned to Speculate

Mona Mahall and Asli Serbest

December 2009

For the first time, the speculative in architecture becomes a topic of critical research. It is investigated, not as idealistic but as strategic acting within endless modernity. This modernity implies that speculation, as strategic acting, is not only applied to economic, but also to political, and aesthetic values. The consequences? Values become mobile, valuations become a play with high and low, authors (architects) become winners or losers, and culture becomes fashion.

Including projects by Michael Najjar, Matthieu Laurette, NL Architects, PARA-Project, visiondivision, MVRDV, Aristide Antonas, David Schalliol, Kevin Bauman, FAT, David Trautrimas, JODI, Bernard Gigounon, Ralf Schreiber, Gitta Gschwendtner, Pascual Sisto, Darlene Charneco, Seyed Alavi, Helmut Smits, Ant Farm, 100101110101101.ORG, Caspar Stracke, and OMA.

ISBN: 978-3-00-029876-9

Number of pages: 246

Measurements: 19 x 12 x 1,1 cm

www.igmade.net/order.html

Angkor Wat or "Capital Temple" is a temple complex in Cambodia and the largest religious monument in the world. It was first a Hindu and later a Buddhist temple. It was built by the Khmer King Suryavarman II in the early 12th century in Yaśodharapura, present-day Angkor, the capital of the Khmer Empire, as his state temple and eventual mausoleum.

Breaking from the Shiva tradition of previous kings, Angkor Wat was instead dedicated to Vishnu. As the best-preserved temple at the site, it is the only one to have remained a significant religious center since its foundation. The temple is at the top of the high classical style of Khmer architecture. It has become a symbol of Cambodia, appearing on its national flag, and it is the country's prime attraction for visitors. Angkor Wat combines two basic plans of Khmer temple architecture: the temple-mountain and the later galleried temple, based on early Dravidian architecture, with key features such as the Jagati. It is designed to represent Mount Meru, home of the devas in Hindu mythology: within a moat and an outer wall 3.6 kilometres long are three rectangular galleries, each raised above the next. At the centre of the temple stands a quincunx of towers. Unlike most Angkorian temples, Angkor Wat is oriented to the west; scholars are divided as to the significance of this. The temple is admired for the grandeur and harmony of the architecture, its extensive bas-reliefs, and for the numerous devatas adorning its walls.

The modern name, Angkor Wat, means "Temple City" or "City of Temples" in Khmer; Angkor, meaning "city" or "capital city", is a vernacular form of the word nokor (នគរ), which comes from the Sanskrit word nagara (नगर). Wat is the Khmer word for "temple grounds" (Sanskrit: वाट vāṭa ""enclosure").

HISTORY

Angkor Wat lies 5.5 kilometres north of the modern town of Siem Reap, and a short distance south and slightly east of the previous capital, which was centred at Baphuon. It is in an area of Cambodia where there is an important group of ancient structures. It is the southernmost of Angkor's main sites.

According to one legend, the construction of Angkor Wat was ordered by Indra to act as a palace for his son Precha Ket Mealea.

According to the 13th century Chinese traveler Daguan Zhou, it was believed by some that the temple was constructed in a single night by a divine architect. The initial design and construction of the temple took place in the first half of the 12th century, during the reign of Suryavarman II (ruled 1113-C. 1150). Dedicated to Vishnu, it was built as the king's state temple and capital city. As neither the foundation stela nor any contemporary inscriptions referring to the temple have been found, its original name is unknown, but it may have been known as "Varah Vishnu-lok" after the presiding deity. Work seems to have ended shortly after the king's death, leaving some of the bas-relief decoration unfinished.

In 1177, approximately 27 years after the death of Suryavarman II, Angkor was sacked by the Chams, the traditional enemies of the Khmer. Thereafter the empire was restored by a new king, Jayavarman VII, who established a new capital and state temple (Angkor Thom and the Bayon respectively) a few kilometers to the north.

In the late 13th century, Angkor Wat gradually moved from Hindu to Theravada Buddhist use, which continues to the present day. Angkor Wat is unusual among the Angkor temples in that although it was somewhat neglected after the 16th century it was never completely abandoned, its preservation being due in part to the fact that its moat also provided some protection from encroachment by the jungle.

One of the first Western visitors to the temple was António da Madalena, a Portuguese monk who visited in 1586 and said that it "is of such extraordinary construction that it is not possible to describe it with a pen, particularly since it is like no other building in the world. It has towers and decoration and all the refinements which the human genius can conceive of."

In the mid-19th century, the temple was visited by the French naturalist and explorer, Henri Mouhot, who popularised the site in the West through the publication of travel notes, in which he wrote:

"One of these temples - a rival to that of Solomon, and erected by some ancient Michelangelo - might take an honorable place beside our most beautiful buildings. It is grander than anything left to us by Greece or Rome, and presents a sad contrast to the state of barbarism in which the nation is now plunged."

Mouhot, like other early Western visitors, found it difficult to believe that the Khmers could have built the temple, and mistakenly dated it to around the same era as Rome. The true history of Angkor Wat was pieced together only from stylistic and epigraphic evidence accumulated during the subsequent clearing and restoration work carried out across the whole Angkor site. There were no ordinary dwellings or houses or other signs of settlement including cooking utensils, weapons, or items of clothing usually found at ancient sites. Instead there is the evidence of the monuments themselves.

Angkor Wat required considerable restoration in the 20th century, mainly the removal of accumulated earth and vegetation. Work was interrupted by the civil war and Khmer Rouge control of the country during the 1970s and 1980s, but relatively little damage was done during this period other than the theft and destruction of mostly post-Angkorian statues.The temple is a powerful symbol of Cambodia, and is a source of great national pride that has factored into Cambodia's diplomatic relations with France, the United States and its neighbor Thailand. A depiction of Angkor Wat has been a part of Cambodian national flags since the introduction of the first version circa 1863. From a larger historical and even transcultural perspective, however, the temple of Angkor Wat did not become a symbol of national pride sui generis but had been inscribed into a larger politico-cultural process of French-colonial heritage production in which the original temple site was presented in French colonial and universal exhibitions in Paris and Marseille between 1889 and 1937. Angkor Wat's aesthetics were also on display in the plaster cast museum of Louis Delaporte called musée Indo-chinois which existed in the Parisian Trocadero Palace from C. 1880 to the mid-1920s. The splendid artistic legacy of Angkor Wat and other Khmer monuments in the Angkor region led directly to France adopting Cambodia as a protectorate on 11 August 1863 and invading Siam to take control of the ruins. This quickly led to Cambodia reclaiming lands in the northwestern corner of the country that had been under Siamese (Thai) control since 1351 AD (Manich Jumsai 2001), or by some accounts, 1431 AD. Cambodia gained independence from France on 9 November 1953 and has controlled Angkor Wat since that time.

ARCHITECTURE

SITE AND PLAN

Angkor Wat, located at 13°24′45″N 103°52′0″E, is a unique combination of the temple mountain, the standard design for the empire's state temples and the later plan of concentric galleries. The temple is a representation of Mount Meru, the home of the gods: the central quincunx of towers symbolises the five peaks of the mountain, and the walls and moat the surrounding mountain ranges and ocean. Access to the upper areas of the temple was progressively more exclusive, with the laity being admitted only to the lowest level. Unlike most Khmer temples, Angkor Wat is oriented to the west rather than the east. This has led many (including Maurice Glaize and George Coedès) to conclude that Suryavarman intended it to serve as his funerary temple.Further evidence for this view is provided by the bas-reliefs, which proceed in a counter-clockwise direction - prasavya in Hindu terminology - as this is the reverse of the normal order. Rituals take place in reverse order during Brahminic funeral services. The archaeologist Charles Higham also describes a container which may have been a funerary jar which was recovered from the central tower. It has been nominated by some as the greatest expenditure of energy on the disposal of a corpse. Freeman and Jacques, however, note that several other temples of Angkor depart from the typical eastern orientation, and suggest that Angkor Wat's alignment was due to its dedication to Vishnu, who was associated with the west.

A further interpretation of Angkor Wat has been proposed by Eleanor Mannikka. Drawing on the temple's alignment and dimensions, and on the content and arrangement of the bas-reliefs, she argues that the structure represents a claimed new era of peace under King Suryavarman II: "as the measurements of solar and lunar time cycles were built into the sacred space of Angkor Wat, this divine mandate to rule was anchored to consecrated chambers and corridors meant to perpetuate the king's power and to honor and placate the deities manifest in the heavens above." Mannikka's suggestions have been received with a mixture of interest and scepticism in academic circles. She distances herself from the speculations of others, such as Graham Hancock, that Angkor Wat is part of a representation of the constellation Draco.

STYLE

Angkor Wat is the prime example of the classical style of Khmer architecture - the Angkor Wat style - to which it has given its name. By the 12th century Khmer architects had become skilled and confident in the use of sandstone (rather than brick or laterite) as the main building material. Most of the visible areas are of sandstone blocks, while laterite was used for the outer wall and for hidden structural parts. The binding agent used to join the blocks is yet to be identified, although natural resins or slaked lime has been suggested. The temple has drawn praise above all for the harmony of its design. According to Maurice Glaize, a mid-20th-century conservator of Angkor, the temple "attains a classic perfection by the restrained monumentality of its finely balanced elements and the precise arrangement of its proportions. It is a work of power, unity and style." Architecturally, the elements characteristic of the style include: the ogival, redented towers shaped like lotus buds; half-galleries to broaden passageways; axial galleries connecting enclosures; and the cruciform terraces which appear along the main axis of the temple. Typical decorative elements are devatas (or apsaras), bas-reliefs, and on pediments extensive garlands and narrative scenes. The statuary of Angkor Wat is considered conservative, being more static and less graceful than earlier work. Other elements of the design have been destroyed by looting and the passage of time, including gilded stucco on the towers, gilding on some figures on the bas-reliefs, and wooden ceiling panels and doors.

FEATURES

OUTER ENCLOSURE

The outer wall, 1024 by 802 m and 4.5 m high, is surrounded by a 30 m apron of open ground and a moat 190 m wide. Access to the temple is by an earth bank to the east and a sandstone causeway to the west; the latter, the main entrance, is a later addition, possibly replacing a wooden bridge. There are gopuras at each of the cardinal points; the western is by far the largest and has three ruined towers. Glaize notes that this gopura both hides and echoes the form of the temple proper. Under the southern tower is a statue of Vishnu, known as Ta Reach, which may originally have occupied the temple's central shrine.Galleries run between the towers and as far as two further entrances on either side of the gopura often referred to as "elephant gates", as they are large enough to admit those animals. These galleries have square pillars on the outer (west) side and a closed wall on the inner (east) side. The ceiling between the pillars is decorated with lotus rosettes; the west face of the wall with dancing figures; and the east face of the wall with balustered windows, dancing male figures on prancing animals, and devatas, including (south of the entrance) the only one in the temple to be showing her teeth. The outer wall encloses a space of 820,000 square metres, which besides the temple proper was originally occupied by the city and, to the north of the temple, the royal palace. Like all secular buildings of Angkor, these were built of perishable materials rather than of stone, so nothing remains of them except the outlines of some of the streets. Most of the area is now covered by forest. A 350 m causeway connects the western gopura to the temple proper, with naga balustrades and six sets of steps leading down to the city on either side. Each side also features a library with entrances at each cardinal point, in front of the third set of stairs from the entrance, and a pond between the library and the temple itself. The ponds are later additions to the design, as is the cruciform terrace guarded by lions connecting the causeway to the central structure.

CENTRAL STRUCTURE

The temple stands on a terrace raised higher than the city. It is made of three rectangular galleries rising to a central tower, each level higher than the last. Mannikka interprets these galleries as being dedicated to the king, Brahma, the moon, and Vishnu.

Each gallery has a gopura at each of the points, and the two inner galleries each have towers at their corners, forming a quincunx with the central tower. Because the temple faces west, the features are all set back towards the east, leaving more space to be filled in each enclosure and gallery on the west side; for the same reason the west-facing steps are shallower than those on the other sides.

The outer gallery measures 187 by 215 m, with pavilions rather than towers at the corners. The gallery is open to the outside of the temple, with columned half-galleries extending and buttressing the structure. Connecting the outer gallery to the second enclosure on the west side is a cruciform cloister called Preah Poan (the "Hall of a Thousand Gods"). Buddha images were left in the cloister by pilgrims over the centuries, although most have now been removed. This area has many inscriptions relating the good deeds of pilgrims, most written in Khmer but others in Burmese and Japanese. The four small courtyards marked out by the cloister may originally have been filled with water.

North and south of the cloister are libraries.

Beyond, the second and inner galleries are connected to each other and to two flanking libraries by another cruciform terrace, again a later addition. From the second level upwards, devatas abound on the walls, singly or in groups of up to four. The second-level enclosure is 100 by 115 m, and may originally have been flooded to represent the ocean around Mount Meru.

Three sets of steps on each side lead up to the corner towers and gopuras of the inner gallery. The very steep stairways represent the difficulty of ascending to the kingdom of the gods. This inner gallery, called the Bakan, is a 60 m square with axial galleries connecting each gopura with the central shrine, and subsidiary shrines located below the corner towers. The roofings of the galleries are decorated with the motif of the body of a snake ending in the heads of lions or garudas. Carved lintels and pediments decorate the entrances to the galleries and to the shrines. The tower above the central shrine rises 43 m to a height of 65 m above the ground; unlike those of previous temple mountains, the central tower is raised above the surrounding four. The shrine itself, originally occupied by a statue of Vishnu and open on each side, was walled in when the temple was converted to Theravada Buddhism, the new walls featuring standing Buddhas. In 1934, the conservator George Trouvé excavated the pit beneath the central shrine: filled with sand and water it had already been robbed of its treasure, but he did find a sacred foundation deposit of gold leaf two metres above ground level.

DECORATION

Integrated with the architecture of the building, and one of the causes for its fame is Angkor Wat's extensive decoration, which predominantly takes the form of bas-relief friezes. The inner walls of the outer gallery bear a series of large-scale scenes mainly depicting episodes from the Hindu epics the Ramayana and the Mahabharata. Higham has called these, "the greatest known linear arrangement of stone carving".

From the north-west corner anti-clockwise, the western gallery shows the Battle of Lanka (from the Ramayana, in which Rama defeats Ravana) and the Battle of Kurukshetra (from the Mahabharata, showing the mutual annihilation of the Kaurava and Pandava clans). On the southern gallery follow the only historical scene, a procession of Suryavarman II, then the 32 hells and 37 heavens of Hindu mythology.

On the eastern gallery is one of the most celebrated scenes, the Churning of the Sea of Milk, showing 92 asuras and 88 devas using the serpent Vasuki to churn the sea under Vishnu's direction (Mannikka counts only 91 asuras, and explains the asymmetrical numbers as representing the number of days from the winter solstice to the spring equinox, and from the equinox to the summer solstice). It is followed by Vishnu defeating asuras (a 16th-century addition). The northern gallery shows Krishna's victory over Bana (where according to Glaize, "The workmanship is at its worst"). and a battle between the Hindu gods and asuras. The north-west and south-west corner pavilions both feature much smaller-scale scenes, some unidentified but most from the Ramayana or the life of Krishna. Angkor Wat is decorated with depictions of apsaras and devata; there are more than 1,796 depictions of devata in the present research inventory. Angkor Wat architects employed small apsara images (30–40 cm) as decorative motifs on pillars and walls. They incorporated larger devata images (all full-body portraits measuring approximately 95–110 cm) more prominently at every level of the temple from the entry pavilion to the tops of the high towers. In 1927, Sappho Marchal published a study cataloging the remarkable diversity of their hair, headdresses, garments, stance, jewelry and decorative flowers, which Marchal concluded were based on actual practices of the Angkor period.

CONSTRUCTION TECHNIQUES

The stones, as smooth as polished marble, were laid without mortar with very tight joints that are sometimes hard to find. The blocks were held together by mortise and tenon joints in some cases, while in others they used dovetails and gravity. The blocks were presumably put in place by a combination of elephants, coir ropes, pulleys and bamboo scaffolding. Henri Mouhot noted that most of the blocks had holes 2.5 cm in diameter and 3 cm deep, with more holes on the larger blocks. Some scholars have suggested that these were used to join them together with iron rods, but others claim they were used to hold temporary pegs to help manoeuvre them into place. The monument was made out of millions of tonnes of sandstone and it has a greater volume as well as mass than the Great Pyramid of Giza in Egypt. The Angkor Wat Temple consumes about 6 million to 10 million blocks of sandstone with an average weight of 1.5 tons each. In fact, the entire city of Angkor used up far greater amounts of stone than all the Egyptian pyramids combined, and occupied an area significantly greater than modern-day Paris. Moreover, unlike the Egyptian pyramids which use limestone quarried barely half a km away all the time, the entire city of Angkor was built with sandstone quarried 40 km (or more) away. This sandstone had to be transported from Mount Kulen, a quarry approximately 40 km to the northeast. The route has been suggested to span 35 kilometres along a canal towards Tonlé Sap lake, another 35 kilometres crossing the lake, and finally 15 kilometres upstream and against the current along Siem Reap River, making a total journey of 90 kilometres. However, Etsuo Uchida and Ichita Shimoda of Waseda University in Tokyo, Japan have discovered in 2012 a shorter 35-kilometre canal connecting Mount Kulen and Angkor Wat using satellite imagery. The two believe that the Khmer used this route instead.

Virtually all of its surfaces, columns, lintels even roofs are carved. There are miles of reliefs illustrating scenes from Indian literature including unicorns, griffins, winged dragons pulling chariots as well as warriors following an elephant-mounted leader and celestial dancing girls with elaborate hair styles. The gallery wall alone is decorated with almost 1000 square metres of bas reliefs. Holes on some of the Angkor walls indicate that they may have been decorated with bronze sheets. These were highly prized in ancient times and were a prime target for robbers. While excavating Khajuraho, Alex Evans, a stonemason and sculptor, recreated a stone sculpture under 1.2 m, this took about 60 days to carve. Roger Hopkins and Mark Lehner also conducted experiments to quarry limestone which took 12 quarrymen 22 days to quarry about 400 tons of stone. The labor force to quarry, transport, carve and install so much sandstone must have run into the thousands including many highly skilled artisans. The skills required to carve these sculptures were developed hundreds of years earlier, as demonstrated by some artifacts that have been dated to the seventh century, before the Khmer came to power.

ANGKOR WAT TODAY

The Archaeological Survey of India carried out restoration work on the temple between 1986 and 1992. Since the 1990s, Angkor Wat has seen continued conservation efforts and a massive increase in tourism. The temple is part of the Angkor World Heritage Site, established in 1992, which has provided some funding and has encouraged the Cambodian government to protect the site. The German Apsara Conservation Project (GACP) is working to protect the devatas and other bas-reliefs which decorate the temple from damage. The organisation's survey found that around 20% of the devatas were in very poor condition, mainly because of natural erosion and deterioration of the stone but in part also due to earlier restoration efforts. Other work involves the repair of collapsed sections of the structure, and prevention of further collapse: the west facade of the upper level, for example, has been buttressed by scaffolding since 2002, while a Japanese team completed restoration of the north library of the outer enclosure in 2005. World Monuments Fund began conservation work on the Churning of the Sea of Milk Gallery in 2008 after several years of conditions studies. The project restored the traditional Khmer roofing system and removed cement used in earlier restoration attempts that had resulted in salts entering the structure behind the bas-relief, discoloring and damaging the sculpted surfaces. The main phase of work ended in 2012, and the final component will be the installation of finials on the roof of the gallery in 2013. Microbial biofilms have been found degrading sandstone at Angkor Wat, Preah Khan, and the Bayon and West Prasat in Angkor. The dehydration and radiation resistant filamentous cyanobacteria can produce organic acids that degrade the stone. A dark filamentous fungus was found in internal and external Preah Khan samples, while the alga Trentepohlia was found only in samples taken from external, pink-stained stone at Preah Khan. Angkor Wat has become a major tourist destination. In 2004 and 2005, government figures suggest that, respectively, 561.000 and 677.000 foreign visitors arrived in Siem Reap province, approximately 50% of all foreign tourists in Cambodia for both years. The site has been managed by the private SOKIMEX group since 1990, which rented it from the Cambodian government. The influx of tourists has so far caused relatively little damage, other than some graffiti; ropes and wooden steps have been introduced to protect the bas-reliefs and floors, respectively. Tourism has also provided some additional funds for maintenance - as of 2000 approximately 28% of ticket revenues across the whole Angkor site was spent on the temples - although most work is carried out by foreign government-sponsored teams rather than by the Cambodian authorities. Since Angkor Wat has seen significant growth in tourism throughout the years UNESCO and its International Co-ordinating Committee for the Safeguarding and Development of the Historic Site of Angkor (ICC), in association with representatives from the Royal Government and APSARA, organized seminars to discuss the concept of "cultural tourism". Wanting to avoid commercial and mass tourism, the seminars emphasized the importance of providing high quality accommodation and services in order for the Cambodian government to benefit economically, while also incorporating the richness of Cambodian culture. In 2001, this incentive resulted in the concept of the "Angkor Tourist City" which would be developed with regard to traditional Khmer architecture, contain leisure and tourist facilities, and provide luxurious hotels capable of accommodating large amounts of tourists. The prospect of developing such large tourist accommodations has encountered concerns from both APSARA and the ICC, claiming that previous tourism developments in the area have neglected construction regulations and more of these projects have the potential to damage landscape features. Also, the large scale of these projects have begun to threaten the quality of the nearby town's water, sewage, and electricity systems. It has been noted that such high frequency of tourism and growing demand for quality accommodations in the area, such as the development of a large highway, has had a direct effect on the underground water table, subsequently straining the structural stability of the temples at Angkor Wat. Locals of Siem Reap have also voiced concern over the charming nature and atmosphere of their town being compromised in order to entertain tourism. Since this charming local atmosphere is the key component to projects like Angkor Tourist City, local officials continue to discuss how to successfully incorporate future tourism without sacrificing local values and culture. At the ASEAN Tourism Forum 2012, both parties have agreed Borobudur and Angkor Wat to become sister sites and the provinces will become sister provinces. Two Indonesian airlines are considering the opportunity to open a direct flight from Yogyakarta, Indonesia to Siem Reap.

WIKIPEDIA

After all the speculation about how much Joe Paterno's salary is costing the hard-working taxpayers of Pennsylvania, it turns out that his salary is just a hair over $500,000.

That's the second lowest salary in the Big Ten Conference.

Joe and Sue Paterno have donated over $4,000,000 to Penn State University over the years. Of greatest importance to them is creating the ultimate environment for young and academically inspired students. Perhaps that's why the university library is named in his honor.

source: AP

Upper West Side, Manhattan, New York City, New York, United States

The 104 Riverside Drive House, originally designed by well-known architect and developer Clarence F. True, was built on speculation in 1898- 99 as one house of a picturesque group of six houses on the southeast corner of Riverside Drive and West 83rd Street. Today the 104 Riverside Drive House is architecturally significant and as one of the five extant houses in this group represents the first period of development on Riverside Drive. True designed several hundred houses, primarily in groups, on the Upper West Side in the years between 1890 and 1901, and was largely responsible for promoting the development and establishing the character of lower Riverside Drive. The houses in the group at Riverside and West 83rd Street were designed in True's signature "Elizabethan Revival" style based on French and English Renaissance prototypes and built by True's development firm, the Riverside Building Company; they are the northernmost of True's designs built along the Drive. The design of the L-shaped 104 Riverside Drive House is characterized by such picturesque elements as contrasting light orange Roman ironspot brick and limestone facing, round-arched and rectangular windows, keyed surrounds, decorative stonework, quoins, a prominent chimney, and a side courtyard. This house was originally designed with a projecting bowfront and a low stoop, but these features (along with those of the adjacent houses) became the focus of an interesting legal controversy several years after construction. As the result of a lawsuit brought by an adjacent property owner, the court ruled in 1903 that no one had the authority to place permanent encroachments onto public thoroughfares, and the owners of the houses in the True group facing onto Riverside Drive were thus ordered to remove the proj ections. In 1911 the main facades were removed and rebuilt to follow the diagonal of the Riverside Drive property lines. No. 104 (owned by architect Frederick W. Winterbum) was rebuilt with the original materials by the firm of Clinton & Russell (for which Winterburn worked) so that today, although it reflects the work of two architectural firms, it basically remains a modified version of the original picturesque Elizabethan Revival design.

The Development of Riverside Drive--

The Upper West Side, known as Bloomingdale prior to its urbanization, remained largely undeveloped until the 1880s. In the early eighteenth century, Bloomingdale Road (later renamed the Boulevard and finally Broadway in 1898) was opened through rural Bloomingdale and provided the northern route out of the city which was then concentrated at the southern tip of Manhattan. The Upper West Side was included in the Randel Survey of 1811 (known as the Commissioners' Map) which established a uniform grid of avenues and cross streets in Manhattan as far north as 155th Street, although years elapsed before streets on the Upper West Side were actually laid out, some as late as the 1870s and 1880s, and the land was subdivided into building lots. Improved public transportation to the area contributed to the growth and sustained development of the Upper West Side, particularly the completion in 1879 of the Elevated Railway on Ninth Avenue (renamed Columbus Avenue in 1890).

The biggest boost to the development of the West End (the area west of Broadway), however, was the creation of Riverside Drive and Park (a designated New York City Scenic Landmark). The presence of the Park and Drive was an important factor in making this area desirable for high-quality residential development. In 1865 the first proposal for converting the land on the Upper West Side along the eastern shore of the Hudson River into an ornamental park had been presented by Park Commissioner William R. Martin. The purchase of the park site and initial plans were approved in 1866. The drive, as proposed at this time, was to be a straight 100-foot wide road; however, this plan was impractical due to the existing topography. Hired by the Commissioners in 1873, Frederick Law Olmsted (1822-1903), already distinguished by his collaboration with Calvert Vaux (1824-1895) in the successful design for Central Park, proposed an alternate scheme. Olmsted's design for Riverside Park and Drive took into consideration the pre-existing topography, landscape possibilities, and views, resulting in a park and drive that would be amenable for horses and pleasure driving, would provide shaded walks for pedestrians, and would also allow easy access to and scenic vistas from the real estate bordering it on the east. Olmsted's plan was adopted by the Commissioners but the park was not executed under his supervision, due to his departure from New York City; it was actually developed between 1875 and 1900 by other designers including Vaux, Samuel Parsons, and Julius Munckwitz, who did not adhere to Olmsted's original scheme in its entirety. By the fall of 1879, work was completed between 72nd and 85th Streets, and Riverside Avenue (as it was called until 1908) was opened to the public in 1880.

The Drive, from West 72nd Street to approximately 129th Street, where it is effectively terminated by the viaduct and the Manhattanville fault, has a particularly strong character derived from its curves that break with the regular street grid and its location overlooking the park and the Hudson River. Riverside Park and Drive fulfilled the Park Commissioners' plans for promoting the development of the area west of Broadway. The numerous and exceptional advantages of the location, namely, its situation on a plateau, its "advantages of pure air and beautiful surroundings, glimpses of New Jersey hills . . . [and] the nearness of parks," assisted in making the area along Riverside Drive prime real estate, deserving of the highest character of residential development.

Development of the West End began slowly due to speculation, the hesitation of developers, and to the relative inconvenience of transportation compared to the area east of Broadway. By 1885, however, the whole Upper West Side had emerged as the area, in the city experiencing the most intense real estate speculation. The expectation that the blocks along Riverside Drive and West End Avenue would be lined with mansions kept the value of these lots, as well as adj acent land, consistently higher and developers were willing to wait to realize profits from the potentially valuable sites.

The initial development along Riverside Drive mostly took the form of single-family town houses and rowhouses, although some freestanding mansions were built there. luxury apartment buildings, as they gained in popularity toward the turn of the century, also appeared. Most of the single-family residences on the Upper West Side were speculatively-built rowhouses; along West End Avenue and Riverside Drive the houses tended to be larger and more elegant than those on the side streets. Architect-developer Clarence True, who characterized the Drive and its vicinity as "the most ideal home-site in the western hemisphere — the Acropolis of the world's second city, was largely responsible for the promotion of lower Riverside Drive as an attractive residential thoroughfare and his work there, like the group at 83rd Street, did much to establish the character of the area in the 1890s.

Clarence F. True and the Elizabethan Revival Style^

Clarence Fagan True (1860-1928) was a prolific and well-known architect (and later architect-developer) who designed, almost solely, rowhouses and town houses and practiced mainly on the Upper West Side of Manhattan during the years from 1890 to 1901. Born in Massachusetts, he came to New York City in 1880 and was trained in the office of Richard M. Upjohn beginning around 1881; he was listed in directories in 1884 and established his own firm in 1889. True received his commissions primarily from speculative builders and developers who were rapidly constructing houses throughout the Upper West Side. True is documented as having designed at least 270 houses on the Upper West Side, the majority located west of Broadway between 71st and 107th Streets. Diverse and eclectic in architectural style and massing, these houses contribute greatly to the architectural character of the Upper West Side. He also designed some twenty houses in Harlem, including several now located in the Hamilton Heights and Mount Morris Park Historic Districts. In 1893 he published a prospectus of his work, Designs of 141 Duelling Houses, in which he stated his aim of creating distinctive well- designed houses, both in interior plan and exterior appearance, that would mark a shift away from the homogeneity of the standard New York City brownstone rowhouse. True's executed work demonstrated that he succeeded in his ambitions.

True was primarily an architect of rowhouse groups. In his houses of the early 1890s, True employed a variety of contemporary architectural styles, frequently mingling them in an eclectic fashion; these included the popular Romanesque and Renaissance Revival styles, as well as the Francois I and a style he called "Elizabethan Revival" which was based on French and English Renaissance prototypes. In 1894 True began to work in part as his own developer and later formed the Riverside Building Company. A second prospectus, fA True History of] Riverside Drive (1899), pictured many of the houses for the Riverside Building Company, including the group of six houses at 102 to 107-109 Riverside Drive and 332 West 83rd Street which were then under construction and completed later that same year. In this prospectus True promoted the development of lower Riverside Drive:

Mr. Clarence True, who had erected houses upon some of the lower lots, became so thoroughly impressed with the possibilities of the river front as a residence district that he secured all the available property south of 84th street, and by covering it with beautiful dwellings, insured a most promising future for the Drive.

The area along and adjacent to Riverside Drive, from 75th to 85th Streets, includes the densest concentration of extant houses designed by True; many of these are now included in the West End-Collegiate and Riverside Drive-West 80th-81st Streets Historic Districts. These houses along the Drive — including No. 104 and the other houses in the corner group at 83rd Street — are characteristic of most of True's mature work; all were designed in the architect's highly idiosyncratic and readily identifiable "Elizabethan Revival" style. True's rowhouses in this vein are typified by lively silhouettes, composed of such elements as steeply-pitched roofs that often have curved or stepped gables, chimneys, stepped end-walls, turrets, bowed fronts, projecting three-sided and square bays, and dormers. The facades, varied within the group, also display a variety of contrasting materials, including fine brick and stone, and such features as quoins, keyed surrounds, stylized cornices, crenellation, parapets, and decorative ironwork. True's interest in the use of varied colors of building materials is also evident in the group at Riverside and 83rd — the brick colors graduate in hue from house to house, from tan to light orange to orange to red.

True was one of the architects who greatly popularized the American basement plan for rowhouse design in New York City during these years. He received much favorable notice in the architectural press of the 1890s, which published a number of his designs. Real Estate Record & Guide (1893) stated that True "has earned quite a reputation for the novelty of the ideas he has carried out in a large number of houses built from his designs on the West Side in the last few years. The old method of high stoop construction has been abandoned ... the houses are entered almost on a level with the street." Architecture and Building (1893) noted: "The facades show great variety and taste, and the plans, many of them upon narrow lots, ingenuity and skill in arrangement. A History of Real Estate, Building, and

Architecture in New York (1899) considered True "probably the best known New York architect designing almost entirely residential structures .... His work as exemplified by his houses is a credit both to himself and the city.,

True also designed several apartment houses, hotels, and small commercial structures, as well as a church building in Harlem. Little is known about the end of his career, but it appears to coincide with the demise of rowhouse construction in New York City after the turn of the century. His last directory listing was in 1910, although Clarence True & Son received a listing in 1916-17. True died in Greensboro, North Carolina, in 1928, and was buried in Middletowr\, Connecticut.

Ackerman vs. True

An interesting controversy developed around the construction of the houses at 102 to 107-109 Riverside Drive which affected the design of their facades eleven years after coupletion. On July 28, 1898, Clarence True applied, by letter, to the Commissioner of Buildings, Thomas J. Brady, for a foundation permit for six, five-story houses. According to his accompanying plans, each of the six structures partly extended beyond the property line, due to the oblique angle of the Drive, by incorporating stoops, areaway walls, and projecting bays and bowfronts. On August 8, Brady returned a permit to True granting him permission "to construct the foundation work provided for new buildings on E. S. Riverside Drive bet. 82 & 83 St. as per plans...." On August 16, True filed an application for the erection of these six new buildings (NB 730-1898), five fronting Riverside Drive and one fronting West 83rd Street. The Department of Buildings issued an objection to the application on September 15, stating that "projections beyond building lines are unlawful." True then obtained a letter from George C. Clauson, Commissioner of Parks, dated November 21, which granted consent "to the erection of projections on six proposed buildings" and exacted a fee based on the square footage of each projection. On November 28, True filed an amendment to the application which mentioned "consent from Park [sic] Department for projection beyond building lines is filed this date with

plans & etc " The structures were completed a year later in November

of 1899.

Building encroachments onto public property, a fairly common practice in New York City during the nineteenth century, became an increasingly debated topic at the turn of the century, as evidenced by the numerous lawsuits filed and by discussions in such periodicals as Real Estate Record & Guide. A lawsuit was brought against Clarence True, after the completion of the houses at Riverside Drive and West 83rd Street, by the adjacent property owner, Charlotte Y. Ackerman, who had purchased from True the lot to the south of the group. Ackerman's case argued that the projecting bays, bowfronts and stoops on the houses next to her property were illegal encroachments upon the public street which also diminished the value of her property through the obstruction of her view, light, and air. Ackerman won the case in 1903 on appeal to the New York State Court of Appeals, which reversed the Appellate Division of the Supreme Court's finding in favor of True. The court ruled that New York City's ownership of streets from property line to property line was "inalienable," that an encroachment was an "appropriation of the public street for private purposes," and that no individual or agency had the authority to permit encroachments onto public property. Thus the owners of the five houses in the group facing Riverside Drive had to remove the projections on their buildings.

In 1911 the main facades of these houses were completely removed and rebuilt to follow the diagonal of the Riverside Drive property lines. No. 103 and No. 104, both altered by the architectural firm of Clinton & Russell, and No. 107-109, altered by Tracy, Swartwout & Litchfield, were rebuilt using the original materials and retaining many architectural elements; No. 105 received a new facade designed by Bosworth & Holden. No. 332 West 83rd Street and the West 83rd Street facade of No. 107-109 remained unaltered as they do not face onto the Drive and were thus apparently not subject to the lawsuit. The sixth house at 102 Riverside Drive, to the south of the existing group, was later demolished for a corner apartment building, built in 1932.

The 104 Riverside Drive House

The 104 Riverside Drive House was purchased in 1904 by Frederick William Winterburn and his wife, the former Emily Vreeland. An application was filed for alterations in November of 1910 (Alt. 2722-1910) , and the changes were carried out by the well-known architectural firm of Clinton & Russell in 1911. Winterburn (1849-1930), born and educated in England, was listed in New York City directories from 1884 to 1913. For part of his career he worked for Clinton & Russell; he was listed as a superintendent for the firm at the turn of the century. Clinton & Russell, founded in 1894 by Charles William Clinton (1838-1910) and William Hamilton Russell (1856- 1907), was responsible for numerous buildings in New York City including early skyscrapers, luxury apartment houses, institutions, and fashionable hotels. The firm continued under that name until 1940; both founding architects were deceased when this alteration took place (the firm also executed the work on No. 103). In 1945 the property was sold by the estate of Emily Winterburn and the house was converted to a multiple dwelling.

The original design for the L-shaped 104 Riverside Drive House featured a four-story bowfront capped by a steeply pitched half-conical tile roof with a dormer, and a side courtyard. The main facade was dismantled in 1911 and rebuilt using the original materials, with some modifications, as a flat wall following the diagonal of the property line. Two bays wide, the facade is faced with light orange Roman ironspot brick and limestone trim. Original elements re-worked into the design were the watertable, the rusticated recessed entranceway with carved limestone ornament and a parapet, the ground-story round-arched window with a keyed surround, the second- and third-story rectangular windows with molded and keyed surrounds, the round-arched fourth-story windows with molded surrounds and keystones, and the quoins along the north edge of the facade. Surviving from the original design are the prominent chimney at the south end, one-over-one double-hung wood sash, and the north side of the building, facing a side courtyard bordered and divided by a wrought-iron fence with a gate. True's courtyard facades (the long side is largely unarticulated except for small windows) continue the general scheme of window surrounds: round arches on the ground story, molded and keyed surrounds on the second and third stories, and fourth-story round arches with keystones. The ground-story service entrance has been mostly filled in with brick; there is a basement entrance at the end of the court.

Modifications to the roof portion of the building in 1911 included the addition of a parapet above the cornice and the creation of a gable, faced with galvanized iron, containing a dormer with rectangular windows and a large broken scroll pediment. The face of the gable remained perpendicular to the side walls, rather than re-oriented to the new diagonal Riverside Drive facade. Apparently at the time of the building's conversion to a multiple dwelling in 1945-46 (Alt. 2019-1945), the top portion of the building received further alterations: the cornice and parapet were removed and a new brick parapet constructed, and the gable was built out (still at the same angle to the street) as a full story with three openings containing multipane sash; all of the work is of light orange brick. The entrance to the building has received metal and glass replacement doors (c. 1940-50s) and the ground-story window a wrought-iron grille.

No. 104, incorporating the work of two architectural firms in the house of 1898-99 and its 1910-11 alteration, basically remains a modified version of original picturesque Elizabethan Revival design.

- From the 1991 NYCLPC Landmark Designation Report

Model: perhaps Agnes "Aggie" Manetti or Fanny Cornforth

There has been some speculation regarding the model for this drawing. Modern experts have suggested that it depicts Agnes 'Aggie' Manetti, a Scotswoman who posed in a professional capacity for Rossetti for several paintings and drawings in the early 1860s. Rossetti felt that she had a profile that had some similarity to Napoleon and the model for this drawing has similar strong aqualine features to Aggie. It is recorded in George Price Boyce’s diary that she was sitting to Rossetti in October 1862. However Preston felt that the identity of the sitter was Fanny Cornforth. The earthy and buxom Cornforth was almost certainly Rossetti’s mistress even before his marriage to Lizzie Siddal in May 1860. She became his housekeeper when, following Lizzie’s death in February 1862, he settled at Cheyne Walk in Chelsea. She was the model for several important pictures from the 1860s, including The Blue Bower, Fair Rosamund and Lady Lilith and for numerous drawings and sketches.

The drawing dates from the early 1860s and the tender way the woman caresses the ears of the lap-dog suggests that the model was one that the artist knew well enough to depict so intimately. This perhaps points towards Preston being correct about the identity of the sitter. Although Rossetti was well-known as a lover of animals, this is the only known picture by him in which a model is shown with a dog.

Evelyn Waugh sympathised with Rossetti, but he also admired Rossetti’s integrity in forming the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, with an aesthetic creed independent of convention. Waugh also admired Rossetti’s perseverance once the movement had drawn the attention of contemptuous critics. Rossetti’s example showed that there was virtue, perhaps even reward, in following one’s own artistic instincts.’ John Howard Wilson, Evelyn Waugh, A Literary Biography, 1924-1966, 2001, p.32.

Woman Holding a Dog has a distinguished and interesting provenance. It was owned by the Bournemouth solicitor Kerrison Preston and the novelist Evelyn Waugh, two collectors who held a sustained interest in Pre-Raphaelite painting in the twentieth century when the popularity of Victorian art was at its lowest ebb. Preston reproduced the drawing in his book Blake and Rossetti in 1944. The second owner was Waugh, who acquired Victorian paintings assiduously and was related by marriage to William Holman Hunt.

Sotheby's

www.sothebys.com/en/auctions/ecatalogue/2013/mark-birley-...

The history of the Jemison Center, often strangely called "Old Bryce," seems to be mired in half-truths and speculation on the internet. The earliest information found dates back to when the land was a plantation, called Crab Orchard back in the 1820s, due to the many crab apple trees located on the property. It was owned by William Jemison, who then passed it down to his son, Robert Jemison Jr., a successful politician and businessman. The 4,000 acre tract in Northport was later known as Cherokee Place, where Robert would live until his new home was completed in Tuscaloosa in 1862. Jemison was a major advocate for the establishment of a hospital for the insane in Alabama, and is considered a major influence to select the area as the site for the first asylum in the state - the Alabama State Hospital for the Insane (Bryce Hospital).

By the 1920s the asylum had become severely overcrowded, and satellite institutions were created nearby to relieve the pressure, such as the Alabama Home for Mental Defectives (later known as Partlow State School). In 1939, the site of the Cherokee Plantation was purchased and transformed into the State Farm Colony for Negroes (the old Bryce Hospital grounds only housed white patients during the Jim Crow era). The former plantation house on the hill was razed and in its place the state of Alabama constructed the Jemison Institute, a three-story brick institution with detached heating plant for $161,000.

History seems to fade from there; it's assumed the Jemison Center operated as a state work farm, where able-bodied African American patients would work the fields to produce food for the hospital, as well as performing other kinds of labor (weaving, mending, etc). Desegregation orders from the government and changes in labor laws seemed to put an end to the Jemison Center; all farming operations at Bryce ceased in 1977. A mid-19th century structure was also erected on the property, called the S.D. Allen Intermediate Care Facility; it was used as a nursing home until it closed in 2003.

Info taken from - opacity.us/site245_jemison_center.htm

How Architecture Learned to Speculate

Mona Mahall and Asli Serbest

December 2009

For the first time, the speculative in architecture becomes a topic of critical research. It is investigated, not as idealistic but as strategic acting within endless modernity. This modernity implies that speculation, as strategic acting, is not only applied to economic, but also to political, and aesthetic values. The consequences? Values become mobile, valuations become a play with high and low, authors (architects) become winners or losers, and culture becomes fashion.

Including projects by Michael Najjar, Matthieu Laurette, NL Architects, PARA-Project, visiondivision, MVRDV, Aristide Antonas, David Schalliol, Kevin Bauman, FAT, David Trautrimas, JODI, Bernard Gigounon, Ralf Schreiber, Gitta Gschwendtner, Pascual Sisto, Darlene Charneco, Seyed Alavi, Helmut Smits, Ant Farm, 100101110101101.ORG, Caspar Stracke, and OMA.

ISBN: 978-3-00-029876-9

Number of pages: 246

Measurements: 19 x 12 x 1,1 cm

www.igmade.net/order.html

The Army Band lead the way at the start of the final departure parade from Column Barracks, Mullingar.

For over a year there was talk and speculation that Columb Barracks of Mullingar would be closed and all personnel plus equipment transferred to Custume Barracks in Athlone. Just a few months ago it was confirmed by the Government that four army barracks will close, including the one at Mullingar which has been here for nearly 200 years. The other three barracks to close are at Clonmel (27th March), Castlebar (18th March) and Cavan (closure date?), The 4th Field Artillery Regiment have been based at Columb Barracks in Mullingar since 1943. The military museum will also be moved to Athlone.

The barrack’s officer personnel and the remaining vehicles, guns, etc departed for a final parade through the town and finally at 12 noon the gates unceremoniously locked behind them. Hundreds of local people and school children let out for the occasion lined the streets. Everyone showed their appreciation with a generous round of applause as the final contingent left their barracks for the last time.

Most notable, was the absence of any official government representation, judging from the extent of comments heard today. Also, the question remains what is going to happen to the fine set of Georgian buildings and other architectural structures within the barracks. So far, the government have no ideas themselves.

www.independent.ie/national-news/no-regrets-for-penrose-a... (Alan Shatter, the Defence Minister reckons the closure of the four barracks will save around 5 million Euro a year but it is estimated that presence of Columb Barracks in the town contributes up to 10 million Euro per year to the local economy).

The history of the Jemison Center, often strangely called "Old Bryce," seems to be mired in half-truths and speculation on the internet. The earliest information found dates back to when the land was a plantation, called Crab Orchard back in the 1820s, due to the many crab apple trees located on the property. It was owned by William Jemison, who then passed it down to his son, Robert Jemison Jr., a successful politician and businessman. The 4,000 acre tract in Northport was later known as Cherokee Place, where Robert would live until his new home was completed in Tuscaloosa in 1862. Jemison was a major advocate for the establishment of a hospital for the insane in Alabama, and is considered a major influence to select the area as the site for the first asylum in the state - the Alabama State Hospital for the Insane (Bryce Hospital).

By the 1920s the asylum had become severely overcrowded, and satellite institutions were created nearby to relieve the pressure, such as the Alabama Home for Mental Defectives (later known as Partlow State School). In 1939, the site of the Cherokee Plantation was purchased and transformed into the State Farm Colony for Negroes (the old Bryce Hospital grounds only housed white patients during the Jim Crow era). The former plantation house on the hill was razed and in its place the state of Alabama constructed the Jemison Institute, a three-story brick institution with detached heating plant for $161,000.

History seems to fade from there; it's assumed the Jemison Center operated as a state work farm, where able-bodied African American patients would work the fields to produce food for the hospital, as well as performing other kinds of labor (weaving, mending, etc). Desegregation orders from the government and changes in labor laws seemed to put an end to the Jemison Center; all farming operations at Bryce ceased in 1977. A mid-19th century structure was also erected on the property, called the S.D. Allen Intermediate Care Facility; it was used as a nursing home until it closed in 2003.

Info taken from - opacity.us/site245_jemison_center.htm

We've now heard no end of speculation about how the tinsley towers were dropped, ranging from aliens hitting them from outer space with high energy particle beams to them being knocked over by hijacked aeroplanes ...

Apologise to the 8,24 truthers, if we sound cynical, but i've seen loads of controlled demolitions, and given that the debris from the towers landed pretty well in their own footprints, then it will take something other than wild, nay almost childish theories to convince us that the official story is not the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth ...

Having said that though, we will debunk here and now, one particularly pernicious rumour that is currently circulating; the one that states that whilst explosives may have been responsible for crumbling the towers' concrete skins, explosives could not have possible taken out the towers' numorous internal fixtures and fittings ...

To this WE say:

# i. the english heritage (listing) adviser's report, dated 10 march 2008 clearly states that:

# "All bar one pipe in one of the towers has been stripped out from the cooling towers" [1]

# We have no problem with believing this -- we think jacqui spliff is on to something when she suggests that poverty may lead to larceny ... and given what thatcher and macgregor did to this area, we find it very difficult to believe that even one pipe was left, unless of course, it was made of plastic

# ii. Even if the internal structure of the towers' had been composed of 47 steel box columns and designed to withstand all kinds of loads, bends and sheers, then it still doesn't matter does it, one can design blasting patterns, with staggered detonation, to cut and burn and collapse all the internals out of the way [cf 2] ...

In conclusion, we will try our uppermost to keep an open mind as to how and why the towers were dropped, but we will take no truck from any idiologue no matter what political persuasion or inside leg measurement, and shall submit my final report to the powers that be within seven years of the date of the incident in question

Upper West Side, Manhattan, New York City, New York, United States

The 105 Riverside Drive House, originally designed by well-known architect and developer Clarence F. True, was built on speculation in 1898- 99 as one house of a picturesque group of six houses on the southeast corner of Riverside Drive and West 83rd Street. Today the 105 Riverside Drive House is architecturally significant and as one of the five extant houses in this group represents the first period of development on Riverside Drive. True designed several hundred houses, primarily in groups, on the Upper West Side in the years between 1890 and 1901, and was largely responsible for promoting the development and establishing the character of lower Riverside Drive. The houses in the group at Riverside and West 83rd Street were designed in True's signature "Elizabethan Revival" style based on French and English Renaissance prototypes and built by True's development firm, the Riverside Building Company; they are the northernmost of True's designs built along the Drive. This L-shaped house was originally designed with a projecting three-sided bay and a low stoop, but these features (along with those of the adjacent houses) became the focus of an interesting legal controversy several years after construction. As the result of a lawsuit brought by an adjacent property owner, the court ruled in 1903 that no one had the authority to place permanent encroachments onto public thoroughfares, and the owners of the houses in the True group facing onto Riverside Drive were thus ordered to remove the projections. In 1911 the main facades were removed and rebuilt to follow the diagonal of the Riverside Drive property lines. No. 105 (owned by Goddard and Josephine DuBois, collectors of art and Egyptiana) received a partial new design by the firm of Bosworth & Holden. The True design is characterized by such surviving picturesque elements as contrasting light orange Roman ironspot brick and limestone facing, the steeply pitched tile roof with prominent front and side dormers, and the elaborate stepped end-wall gable and oriel on the southern elevation facing a side courtyard. The Bosworth & Holden design for the Riverside Drive facade is executed in matching materials and features a large arched opening on the second story with a delicate wrought- iron balcony and horizontal window groups on the third and fourth stories surmounted by a bracketed cornice. As seen today the 105 Riverside Drive House is a fine and compatibly integrated architectural design that reflects the work of two architectural firms.

The Development of Riverside Drive

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The Upper West Side, known as Bloomingdale prior to its urbanization, remained largely undeveloped until the 1880s. In the early eighteenth century, Bloomingdale Road (later renamed the Boulevard and finally Broadway in 1898) was opened through rural Bloomingdale and provided the northern route out of the city which was then concentrated at the southern tip of Manhattan. The Upper West Side was included in the Randel Survey of 1811 (known as the Commissioners' Map) which established a uniform grid of avenues and cross streets in Manhattan as far north as 155th Street, although years elapsed before streets on the Upper West Side were actually laid out, some as late as the 1870s and 1880s, and the land was subdivided into building lots. Improved public transportation to the area contributed to the growth and sustained development of the Upper West Side, particularly the completion in 1879 of the Elevated Railway on Ninth Avenue (renamed Columbus Avenue in 1890).

The biggest boost to the development of the West End (the area west of Broadway), however, was the creation of Riverside Drive and Park (a designated New York City Scenic Landmark). The presence of the Park and Drive was an important factor in making this area desirable for high-quality residential development. In 1865 the first proposal for converting the land on the Upper West Side along the eastern shore of the Hudson River into an ornamental park had been presented by Park Commissioner William R. Martin. The purchase of the park site and initial plans were approved in 1866. The drive, as proposed at this time, was to be a straight 100-foot wide road; however, this plan was impractical due to the existing topography. Hired by the Commissioners in 1873, Frederick Law Olmsted (1822-1903), already distinguished by his collaboration with Calvert Vaux (1824-1895) in the successful design for Central Park, proposed an alternate scheme. Olmsted's design for Riverside Park and Drive took into consideration the pre-existing topography, landscape possibilities, and views, resulting in a park and drive that would be amenable for horses and pleasure driving, would provide shaded walks for pedestrians, and would also allow easy access to and scenic vistas from the real estate bordering it on the east. Olmsted's plan was adopted by the Commissioners but the park was not executed under his supervision, due to his departure from New York City; it was actually developed between 1875 and 1900 by other designers including Vaux, Samuel Parsons, and Julius Munckwitz, who did not adhere to Olmsted's original scheme in its entirety. By the fall of 1879, work was completed between 72nd and 85th Streets, and Riverside Avenue (as it was called until 1908) was opened to the public in 1880.

The Drive, from West 72nd Street to approximately 129th Street, where it is effectively terminated by the viaduct and the Manhattanville fault, has a particularly strong character derived from its curves that break with the regular street grid and its location overlooking the park and the Hudson

River. Riverside Park and Drive fulfilled the Park Commissioners' plans for promoting the development of the area west of Broadway. The numerous and exceptional advantages of the location, namely, its situation on a plateau, its "advantages of pure air and beautiful surroundings, glimpses of New Jersey hills . . . [and] the nearness of parks," assisted in making the area along Riverside Drive prime real estate, deserving of the highest character of residential development. t

Development of the West End began slowly due to speculation, the hesitation of developers, and to the relative inconvenience of transportation compared to the area east of Broadway. By 1885, however, the whole Upper West Side had emerged as the area in the city experiencing the most intense real estate speculation. The expectation that the blocks along Riverside Drive and West End Avenue would be lined with mansions kept the value of these lots, as well as adjacent land, consistently higher and developers were willing to wait to realize profits from the potentially valuable sites.

The initial development along Riverside Drive mostly took the form of single-family town houses and rowhouses, although some freestanding mansions were built there. Luxury apartment buildings, as they gained in popularity toward the turn of the century, also appeared. Most of the single-family residences on the Upper West Side were speculatively-built rowhouses; along West End Avenue and Riverside Drive the houses tended to be larger and more elegant than those on the side streets. Architect-developer Clarence True, who characterized the Drive and its vicinity as "the most ideal home-site in the western hemisphere — the Acropolis of the world's second city," was largely responsible for the promotion of lower Riverside Drive as an attractive residential thoroughfare and his work there, like the group at 83rd Street, did much to establish the character of the area in the 1890s.

Clarence F. True and the Elizabethan Revival Style

Clarence Fagan True (1860-1928) was a prolific and well-known architect (and later architect-developer) who designed, almost solely, rowhouses and town houses and practiced mainly on the Upper West Side of Manhattan during the years from 1890 to 1901. Born in Massachusetts, he came to New York City in 1880 and was trained in the office of Richard M. Upjohn beginning around 1881; he was listed in directories in 1884 and established his own firm in 1889. True received his commissions primarily from speculative builders and developers who were rapidly constructing houses throughout the Upper West Side. True is documented as having designed at least 270 houses on the Upper West Side, the majority located west of Broadway between 71st and 107th Streets. Diverse and eclectic in architectural style and massing, these houses contribute greatly to the architectural character of the Upper West Side. He also designed some twenty houses in Harlem, including several now * located in the Hamilton Heights and Mount Morris Park Historic Districts. In 1893 he published a prospectus of his work, Designs of 141 Dwelling Houses, in which he stated his aim of creating distinctive well- designed houses, both in interior plan and exterior appearance, that would mark a shift away from the homogeneity of the standard New York City brownstone rowhouse. True's executed work demonstrated that he succeeded in

his ambitions.

True was primarily an architect of rowhouse groups. In his houses of the early 1890s, True employed a variety of contemporary architectural styles, frequently mingling them in an eclectic fashion; these included the popular Romanesque and Renaissance Revival styles, as well as the Francois I and a style he called "Elizabethan Revival" vjhich was based on French and English Renaissance prototypes. In 1894 True began to work in part as his own developer and later formed the Riverside Building Company. A second prospectus, fA True History ofl Riverside Drive (1899), pictured many of the houses for the Riverside Building Company, including the group of six houses at 102 to 107-109 Riverside Drive and 332 West 83rd Street which were then under construction and completed later that same year. In this prospectus True promoted the development of lower Riverside Drive:

Mr. Clarence True, who had erected houses upon some of the lower lots, became so thoroughly impressed with the possibilities of the river front as a residence district that he secured all the available property south of 84th street, and by covering it with beautiful dwellings, insured a most promising future for the Drive.

The area along and adjacent to Riverside Drive, from 75th to 85th Streets, includes the densest concentration of extant houses designed by True; many of these are now included in the West End-Collegiate and Riverside Drive-West 80th-81st Streets Historic Districts. These houses along the Drive — including No. 105 and the other houses in the corner group at 83rd Street — are characteristic of most of True's mature work; all were designed in the architect's highly idiosyncratic and readily identifiable "Elizabethan Revival" style. True's rowhouses in this vein are typified by lively silhouettes, composed of such elements as steeply-pitched roofs that often have curved or stepped gables, chimneys, stepped end-walls, turrets, bowed fronts, projecting three-sided and square bays, and dormers. The facades, varied within the group, also display a variety of contrasting materials, including fine brick and stone, and such features as quoins, keyed surrounds, stylized cornices, crenellation, parapets, and decorative ironwork. True's interest in the use of varied colors of building materials is also evident in the group at Riverside and 83rd — the brick colors graduate in hue from house to house, from tan to light orange to orange to red.

True was one of the architects who greatly popularized the American basement plan for rowhouse design in New York City during these years. He received much favorable notice in the architectural press of the 1890s, which published a number of his designs. Real Estate Record & Guide (1893) stated that True "has earned quite a reputation for the novelty of the ideas he has carried out in a large number of houses built from his designs on the West Side in the last few years. The old method of high stoop construction has been abandoned ... the houses are entered almost on a level with the street." Architecture and Building (1893) noted: "The facades show great variety and taste, and the plans, many of them upon narrow lots, ingenuity and skill in arrangement. "-- A History of Real Estate, Building, and

Architecture in New York (1899) considered True "probably the best known New

York architect designing almost entirely residential structures His

work as exemplified by his houses is a credit both to himself and the city."

True also designed several apartment houses, hotels, and small commercial structures, as well as a church building in Harlem. Little is known about the end of his career, but it appears to coincide with the demise of rowhouse construction in New York City after the turn of the century. His last directory listing was in 1910, although Clarence True & Son received a listing in 1916-17. True died in Greensboro, North Carolina, in 1928, and was buried in Middletown, Connecticut.

Ackerman vs. True

An interesting controversy developed around the construction of the houses at 102 to 107-109 Riverside Drive which affected the design of their facades eleven years after completion. On July 28, 1898, Clarence True applied, by letter, to the Commissioner of Buildings, Thomas J. Brady, for a foundation permit for six, five-story houses. According to his accompanying plans, each of the six structures partly extended beyond the property line, due to the oblique angle of the Drive, by incorporating stoops, areaway walls, and projecting bays and bowfronts. On August 8, Brady returned a permit to True granting him permission "to construct the foundation work provided for new buildings on E. S. Riverside Drive bet. 82 & 83 St. as per plans...." On August 16, True filed an application for the erection of these six new buildings (NB 730-1898), five fronting Riverside Drive and one fronting West 83rd Street. The Department of Buildings issued an objection to the application on September 15, stating that "projections beyond building lines are unlawful." True then obtained a letter from George C. Clauson, Commissioner of Parks, dated November 21, which granted consent "to the erection of projections on six proposed buildings" and exacted a fee based on the square footage of each projection. On November 28, True filed an amendment to the application which mentioned "consent from Park [sic] Department for projection beyond building lines is filed this date with

plans & etc " The structures were completed a year later in November

of 1899.

Building encroachments onto public property, a fairly common practice in New York City during the nineteenth century, became an increasingly debated topic at the turn of the century, as evidenced by the numerous lawsuits filed and by discussions in such periodicals as Real Estate Record & Guide. A lawsuit was brought against Clarence True, after the completion of the houses at Riverside Drive and West 83rd Street, by the adjacent property owner, Charlotte Y. Ackerman, who had purchased from True the lot to the south of the group. Ackermans case argued that the projecting bays, bowfronts and stoops on the houses next to her property were illegal encroachments upon the public street which also diminished the value of her property through the obstruction of her view, light, and air. Ackerman won the case in 1903 on appeal to the New York State Court of Appeals, which reversed the Appellate Division of the Supreme Court's finding in favor of True. The court ruled that New York City's ownership of streets from property line to property line was "inalienable," that an encroachment was an "appropriation of the public street for private purposes," and that no individual or agency had the authority to permit encroachments onto public property. Thus the owners of the five houses in the group facing Riverside Drive had to remove the projections on their buildings.

In 1911 the main facades of these houses were completely removed and rebuilt to follow the diagonal of the Riverside Drive property lines. No. 103 and No. 104, both altered by the architectural firm of Clinton & Russell, and No. 107-109, altered by Tracy, Swartwout & Litchfield, were rebuilt using the original materials and retaining many architectural elements; No. 105 received a new facade designed by Bosworth & Holden. No. 332 West 83rd Street and the West 83rd Street facade of No. 107-109 remained unaltered as they do not face onto the Drive and were thus apparently not subject to the lawsuit. The sixth house at 102 Riverside Drive, to the south of the existing group, was later demolished for a corner apartment building, built in 1932.

The 105 Riverside Drive House

The 105 Riverside Drive House was purchased in 1909 by Goddard and Josephine Cook DuBois. The DuBois were collectors of art, furniture, and Egyptiana who lent and later donated a portion of their collection to the Metropolitan Museum of Art. An application was filed for alterations in November of 1910 (Alt. 2703-1910) , and the changes were carried out by the architectural firm of Bosworth & Holden in 1911. Francke Huntington Bosworth, Jr. (1876-1949) and Frank Howell Holden (1870-1937) collaborated between the years of 1902 and 1918 on primarily residential and institutional design. Bosworth, born in New York and a graduate of Yale and the Ecole des Beaux-Arts, served with the American Red Cross in France in 1918-19. After his return to the United States, he became dean of the College of Architecture at Cornell (1920-28) and remained a professor there until his retirement in 1940. Holden, born in Chicago, studied at MIT and the Ecole and practiced for a short time in Aurora, 111. After his move to New York he worked in the offices of several prominent architectural firms, first [John Galen] Howard & [Samuel M.] Cauldwell, and later Carrere & Hastings and Heins & LaFarge, before joining Hoggson Brothers, specialists in bank design, as director of architecture. After World War I he was an associate in the firm of [Robert D. ] Kohn & [Charles] Butler. After working on the addition to the Macy's Department Store (1924 on), Holden became Macy's director of interior design. By 1932 he had returned to private practice and specialized in commercial design.

The original design for the L-shaped 105 Riverside Drive House featured a four-story three-sided bay capped by a steeply pitched tile roof with a prominent dormer, and a side courtyard. The main facade was dismantled in 1911 and rebuilt according to a new design as a flat wall following the diagonal of the property line. Original elements retained in the house (with their original orientation to the street) are the steeply pitched red tile roof, prominent pedimented front dormer with two windows, pilasters and a cartouche, the elaborate stepped end-wall gable facing the courtyard, the south end-wall and chimney, two courtyard dormers with broken scroll pediments, and the facades facing the courtyard which is bordered and divided by a wrought-iron fence with a gate. True's original courtyard facades, faced with light orange Roman ironspot brick and limestone trim, feature round-arched windows and a service entrance, all with keyed surrounds, on the ground story; a bowed oriel and windows with molded and keyed surrounds on the second and third stories; round-arched windows with keystones and a dentil led cornice on the fourth story; and the elaborate stepped gable embellished by scrolls, Ionic pilasters, a segmental pediment, a balcony supported by large scroll brackets, and openings with molded surrounds.

The Riverside Drive facade of 1911, also executed in light orange Roman ironspot brick and limestone, features a recessed rectangular entrance and a small window on the ground story, a large arched opening with a recessed surround and a delicate wrought-iron balcony on the second story, and horizontal window groups on the third and fourth stories separated by a decorative limestone spandrel and surmounted by a bracketed and modillioned cornice and parapet. More recent alterations have been the replacement of the entry doors with metal and glass doors (c. 1940-50s), the installation of a grille on the ground-story window, the filling in of some courtyard windows with brick, and the insertion of several small windows; it is likely that some of these changes were made in conjunction with the conversion of the building to a multiple dwelling in 1953-54. The fenestration of the 1911 facade has been replaced; it originally consisted of three glass doors and an operable transom on the second story and three casement windows each on the third and fourth stories, all with thinner framing members than exist today. Most of the one-over-one double-hung wood frame sash in the courtyard have been replaced with one-over-one metal sash.

No. 105, incorporating the work of two architectural firms in the original house of 1898-99 and its partial redesign in 1910-11, remains a fine and compatibly integrated architectural design.

1550 Marpole Avenue

Frank Peters Residence (1910)

Architect: Paul Marmette

No. 6 - 2012 Top10 Endangered Sites

Shaughnessy: Land Speculation

heritagevancouver.org/top10-watch-list/2012/6-shaughnessy...

A recent trend on the real estate market to sell property for land value alone has the potential to seriously harm the character of First and Second Shaughnessy neighbourhoods through loss of heritage properties. Realtors are advertising historic mansions as teardowns with the opportunity to “build your own dream home”. Heritage Vancouver has selected three homes to represent this growing concern in Shaughnessy, at the link above.

Balthasar de Monconys (1611-1665) was a French physicist and judge, born in Lyon. In 1618, Monconys' parents sent him to a Jesuit boarding school in Salamanca, Spain, as a plague had broken out in Lyon. Monconys was deeply interested in metaphysics and mysticism, and studied the teachings of Pythagoras, Zoroastrism, and Greek and Arab alchemists. From a young age, he dreamed of travelling to India and China. However, he returned to Lyon after finishing his studies. At the age of thirty-four years old he was finally able to leave behind the safety of his library and the theoretical speculation of the laboratory, and become a tireless traveller in Europe and the East.

Monconys travelled to Portugal, England, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Istanbul and the Middle East with the son of the Duke of Luynes. Even in his very first journey to Portugal, it is obvious that in each city Monconys is very soon able to connect with mathematicians, clergymen, surgeons, engineers, chemists, physicians and princes, to visit their laboratories and to collect “secrets and experiences”.

After Portugal, Monconys travelled to Italy, and finally departed to the East, to study the ancient religions and denominations, and meet the gymnosophists. In 1647-48 he was in Egypt. Seeking the Zoroasters and followers of Hermes Trismegistus, he reached Mount Sinai. In Egypt, the 17th century European was lost in a labyrinth of small and winding streetlets, and discovered different cults and religions, the diversity of ethnicities and their customs: Turks, Kopts, Jews, Arabs, Mauritans, Maronites, Armenians, and Dervishes. He followed several superstitious suggestions and discovered marvellous books of astronomy in Hebrew, Persian and Arabic. Later on, after his pilgrimage to the Holy Land, he crossed Asia Minor and reached Istanbul, from where he planned to travel to Persia. For once more in his life however, the plague forced him to change his course; he left for Izmir, and returned to Lyon in 1649.

Fron 1663 to 1665 Monconys travelled incessantly between Paris, London, the Netherlands and Germany. He visited princes and philosophers, libraries and laboratories, and maintained frequent correspondence with several scientists. Finally, after consequent asthma attacks he passed away before his travel notes could be published.

His travel journal (1665-1666) was edited and published by his son and by his Jesuit friend J. Berchet. The journal is enriched by drawings which testify to the wide scope of Monconys' interests. Monconys collected a vast corpus of material which includes medical recipes, chemistry forms, material connected to the esoteric sciences, mathematical puzzles, questions of Algebra and Geometry, zoological observations, mechanical applications, descriptions of natural phenomena, chemistry experiments, various machines and devices, medical matters, the philosopher's stone, astronomical measurements, magnifying lenses, thermometres, hydraulic devices, drinks, hydrometres, microscopes, architectural constructions and even matters connected to hygiene or the preparation of liquors.

The third volume includes a hundred and sixty-five medical, chemical and physics experiments with their outcomes as well as a sonnet on the battle of Marathon. There are five detailed indexes for the classification of the material. At the same time, this three-volume work permits the construction of a list of names (more than two hundred and fifty) of scholars, physicians, alchemists, astrologists, mathematicians, empirical scientists and other researches. From Monconys' text and correspondence a highly interesting network emerges, as it is possible for specialists of all disciplines to reconstruct the contacts between scientists and scholars of Western Europe, for a period spanning more than a decade in the mid-17th century.

Monconys' work is written in a monotonous style, but nevertheless possesses a perennial charm, as it is a combination of a travel journal and a laboratory scientist's workbook. The drawings accompanying the text make up a corpus of material unique in travel literature.

Written by Ioli Vingopoulou

Fransız asıllı fizikçi ve yargıç Balthasar de Monconys (1611-1665) (okunuş: Baltazar dö Monkoni) Lyon şehrinde doğar. Yaşadığı kentte 1618 yılında veba salgını baş gösterince, ailesi onu Salamanka şehrine bir Cizvit yatılı okuluna gönderir. Metafizik ve gizemcilik (mistisizm) için yoğun ilgi duyan Monconys, Pythagoras öğretilerini, Zerdüştlüğü, hatta Yunan ve Arap simyacıların eserlerini okur. Daha küçük yaştan beri Hindistan ve Çin'e kadar ulaşmayı düşlemesine karşın eğitimini tamamladıktan sonra Lyon'a geri döner ve nihayet 34 yaşındayken kütüphane güvenliğini ve teorik laboratuvar bilgilerini terkedip kararlı bir biçimde Avrupa ve Doğu'ya seyahat etmeye başlar.

Monconys, Luynes dükünün oğluyla birlikte Portekiz, İngiltere, Almanya, İtalya, Alçak Ülkeler (Hollanda), İstanbul ve Orta Doğu'ya seyahat eder. Daha ilk yolculuğundan (Portekiz'de) uğradığı her şehirde kısa zamanda matematikçi, rahip, cerrah, mühendis, kimyager, doktor ve prens gibi çeşit çeşit insanlarla bağ kurup laboratuvarlarını ziyaret ederek "sır ve tecrübeler" derler. Yazdığı metinde bu süreci izlemekteyiz. Portekiz'den sonra ilk kez olarak İtalya'ya gider ve nihayet çeşitli dogmaları, eski dinleri ve "gymnosophist"leri (çıplak bilgeler) incelemek üzere Doğu'ya doğru yola çıkar. 1647-48 yıllarında Mısır'da bulunmaktadır; Zerdüştçüler ve Hermes-Thot (Hermes Trismegistus) müritleriyle karşılaşmak için Sina dağına kadar ulaşır. Mısır'da 17. yüzyılın bu Batı Avrupalısı daracık sokakların oluşturduğu labirent içinde yitip, türk, kıptî, yahudî, arap, moritanyalı, maruni, ermeni, derviş gibi binbir çeşit dogma ve mezhep, milliyet ve kültürel adet keşfeder. Batıl inançlara uyar, ibranice farsça yada arapça dillerinde yazılmış şahane gökbilim kitapları keşfeder. Kutsal Yerlere hacılık ziyaretinin ardından Anadolu'yu boydan boya geçip İstanbul'a varır. Buradan İran'a gitmeyi planlar. Ancak veba salgını bir kez daha onu kaçmaya zorlar; İzmir'e geçip oradan 1649 yılında Lyon'a döner.

Monconys 1663'ten 1665'e kadar hiç ara vermeden Paris, Londra, Hollanda ve Almanya arasında mekik dokuyup prens ve filozoflarla konuşur, çeşitli kütüphane ve laboratuvarları ziyaret eder ve birçok bilim adamıyla yoğun bir mektuplaşma sürdürür. Ancak sonunda üstüste geçirdiği astım krizlerinden sonra seyahat notlarının kitap olarak basılmış halini göremeden ölür.

Sözkonusu yayın (1665-1666) Monconys'nin oğlu ve dostu Cizvit rahip J. Berchet tarafından hazırlanmıştır. Monconys'nin geniş bir ilgi alanına sahip oluşu günlüğünü tamamlayan desenlerle kanıtlanmaktadır. Derlemiş olduğu çeşitli ve zengin malzeme içinde: ilâç reçeteleri, kimyasal formüller, gizli ilimlerle ilgili malzeme, matematik bilmeceleri, cebir ve geometri problemleri, zoolojiye (hayvan bilimi) ilişkin gözlemler, mekanik uygulamalar, doğa fenomenleri betimlemeleri, kimyasal deneyler, makineler, tıp konuları, felsefe taşı, astronomi ölçümleri, büyüteçler, termometreler, su tesisatıyla ilgili cihazlar, içkiler, hidrometreler, mikroskoplar, mimarî yapılar, hijyen ve likör yapımı gibi konular var.

Kitabın üçüncü cildinde işlenen konular arasında 165 tane fizik kimya ve tıp deneyi ve sonuçları, ve Maraton muharebesi hakkında bir sone yer almaktadır. Bu içeriğin sınıflanması için kitaba beş tane ayrı çözümlemeli dizin eklenmiştir. Aynı zamanda, Monconys'nin üç ciltlik eserinden upuzun bir isimler katalogu da (250'den fazla isim) elde edilebilir. Bu isimler yazar ve düşünür, doktor, simyacı, astrolog, matematikçi, deneyci ve çeşitli uzman araştırmacılara aittir. Monconys'nin metninden ve mektuplaşmalarından, 17. yüzyıl ortalarında özellikle batı Avrupa'da, 20 yıldan fazla bir süre için, tüm bilim uzmanlarının yeniden birleştirebileceği son derece ilginç bir bilimler arası ilişki ağı ortaya çıkmaktadır.

Monconys'nin yazış uslubu tekdüze olmakla birlikte, bir laboratuvar araştırmacısının seyahat günlüğü ile gözlem defterini bir arada bulundurması açısından eşsiz bir cazibeye sahiptir. Metne eşlik eden desenler seyahat edebiyatı yayınlarında rastlanan ender türden bir malzeme oluşturmaktadır.

Yazan: İoli Vingopoulou

On 4th September 2013, EU negotiators met to agree new rules on food speculation. On the morning of this crucial meeting, WDM campaigners joined up with other European campaigners (Friends of the Earth Europe, Oxfam Germany, SOS-Faim, CNCD, Fairfin) to perform a comedic street theatre production to call on decision makers to remove loopholes in legislative proposals. The key members of the European parliament came to hear our demands and were presented with some of the barrier tape to remind them of the 35k people who have signed up to call for an end to bankers betting on hunger.

Intrepid 4x5

Fomapan 100 @ 100

150mm, f/32, yellow filter

Rodinal 1:49

This is one of the most beautiful memorials in this cemetery. She is life-size, and the sun is always just to her back, and in the morning when there is sun at all on the face of the stone, it is blazing. Such a memorial to a person.

There is some history of her here with speculation that she died in the flu epidemic of 1918.

The new foliage and grass reacted to the yellow filter in a way that I didn't anticipate, which is to lighten. them. The magnolia leaves are deep green, but the other trees and grass appear nearly white.

The history of the Jemison Center, often strangely called "Old Bryce," seems to be mired in half-truths and speculation on the internet. The earliest information found dates back to when the land was a plantation, called Crab Orchard back in the 1820s, due to the many crab apple trees located on the property. It was owned by William Jemison, who then passed it down to his son, Robert Jemison Jr., a successful politician and businessman. The 4,000 acre tract in Northport was later known as Cherokee Place, where Robert would live until his new home was completed in Tuscaloosa in 1862. Jemison was a major advocate for the establishment of a hospital for the insane in Alabama, and is considered a major influence to select the area as the site for the first asylum in the state - the Alabama State Hospital for the Insane (Bryce Hospital).

By the 1920s the asylum had become severely overcrowded, and satellite institutions were created nearby to relieve the pressure, such as the Alabama Home for Mental Defectives (later known as Partlow State School). In 1939, the site of the Cherokee Plantation was purchased and transformed into the State Farm Colony for Negroes (the old Bryce Hospital grounds only housed white patients during the Jim Crow era). The former plantation house on the hill was razed and in its place the state of Alabama constructed the Jemison Institute, a three-story brick institution with detached heating plant for $161,000.

History seems to fade from there; it's assumed the Jemison Center operated as a state work farm, where able-bodied African American patients would work the fields to produce food for the hospital, as well as performing other kinds of labor (weaving, mending, etc). Desegregation orders from the government and changes in labor laws seemed to put an end to the Jemison Center; all farming operations at Bryce ceased in 1977. A mid-19th century structure was also erected on the property, called the S.D. Allen Intermediate Care Facility; it was used as a nursing home until it closed in 2003.

Info taken from - opacity.us/site245_jemison_center.htm

Upper West Side, Manhattan, New York City, New York, United States

The Eldorado, extending along the entire blockfront of Central Park West between 90th and 91st Streets, is the northernmost of the four twin-towered apartment houses that give Central Park West its distinctive skyline silhouette. The Eldorado was designed in 1929 by the architectural firm of Margon & Holder with the renowned early 20th-century New York City architect Emery Roth as consultant. These architects created one of the finest and most dramatically massed Art Deco style residential buildings in New York City.

The Eldorado is one of the most distinguished buildings erected as part of the early 20th-century redevelopment of Central Park West. Central Park West, a continuation of Eighth Avenue, runs along the western edge of Central Park. Development along this prime avenue occurred very slowly, lagging substantially behind the general development of the Upper West Side. When Frederick Law Olmsted laid out Central Park he saw that the presence of the park would raise the value of land immediately adjacent to it.

Olmsted expected these areas to develop as prime residential streets. Land speculation did indeed occur on Central Park West. However, the west side of the park never attracted the extremely wealthy people who could afford the inflated prices of land bordering on the park.

Thus, while the side streets of the Upper West Side were built up with rows of speculative houses, Central Park West remained largely undeveloped. A survey of Central Park West published in February 1893 shows that of the three blocks between 60th and 96th Streets nineteen were either totally vacant or contained old shanties and frame houses. Other blocks were partially vacant.

The earliest residential improvement on Central Park West, and one of its great architectural monuments, was the Dakota, a designated New York City Landmark, at 72nd Street. Built in 1880-84, this eight-story building established Central Park West's character as a street of multiple dwellings. In 1890, by which time the Dakota had been joined by two apartment hotels, the St. Remo on 75th Street and the Beresford on 81st Street, as well as several flat houses, real estate broker F.R. Houghton noted that:

Central Park West seems to have only one future— it is destined to become an avenue of grand apartment houses and hotels. Everything tends that way. It is too public a thoroughfare to become a private residential avenue.

However, it wasn't until several years later that Central Park West experienced the construction boom that Houghton had predicted.

The first concentrated building boom on Central Park West occurred at the turn of the century when a significant number of elegant residential and institutional buildings were erected south of 96th Street. These include some of the finest apartment houses in New York, such as the Prasada at 65th Street, the Langham at 73rd Street, the Kenilworth at 75th Street, and the St. Urban at 89th Street, as well as such institutional structures as the Ethical Culture Society School and Meeting House at 63rd and 64th Streets, Holy Trinity Evangelical Lutheran Church at 65th Street, the Second Church of Christ, Scientist at 68th Street, the Congregation Shearith Israel Synagogue at 70th Street, the Universalist Church of the Divine Paternity at 76th Street, and the Progress Club at 88th Street.

The presence of these fine apartment buildings and institutions on Central Park West reflects the coming of age of the Upper West Side. The Upper West Side had developed in the final decades of the 19th century as an enclave of upper middle-class life. Affluent middle-class families were attracted to the area by the quality of its housing, the presence of Riverside Park and Central Park, and by the accessibility of the neighborhood.

As the Upper West Side became more and more desirable, developers began to build on the more expensive sites bordering the parks, and Central Park West began to be transformed into an elegant avenue of tall buildings that contrasted dramatically in scale to low rise residential Fifth Avenue.

During World War I construction on Central Park West slowed, but between 1920 and 1931 the area was transformed as the vacant sites were filled and many of the early apartment hotels and flats were replaced by new apartment houses. This final phase of Central Park West's development culminated in 1929-31 with the construction of the four twin-towered buildings that give Central Park West its characteristic skyline.

The distinctive form of the Century at 62nd-63rd Streets, the Majestic at 71st-72nd Streets, the San Remo at 74th-75th Streets and the Eldorado at 90th-91st Streets has come to symbolize the high quality of residential design on New York's Upper West Side.

The Eldorado Apartments is not the first building of that name at this location. The present building replaces the Eldorado flats which consisted of two eight-story structures designed in 1901 by Neville & Bagge, "which for more than a generation have been among the best of the fine houses on Central Park West."

In addition to the old Eldorado, the new apartment building replaced five row houses on West 90th Street and three tenements and a row house on West 91st Street. This site was assembled in 1929 and sold to realtor Frederick Brown who retained ownership for several weeks before transferring the property to the Elkay Building Corporation, Louis Kloak, president. The architects commissioned to design the new Eldorado were the firm of Margon & Holder.

Irving Margon and Adolph M. Holder are architects about whom little is known. One of the few buildings known to have been designed by Margon is an Art Deco apartment house at 2805 Grand Concourse in the Bronx.

Although Margon & Holder were the chief architects for the new building, they do not appear to have had the experience to design such a large structure. Emery Roth, one of the most talented residential architects in New York during the early decades of this century was hired as a consultant.

Among Roth's finest apartment buildings are three important Upper West Side structures designed just prior to the Eldorado—the Oliver Cromwell at 12 West 72nd Street, the San Remo at 145 Central Park West, and the Beresford at 211 Central Park West. It was undoubtedly Roth's experience with designing these large-scale residential buildings that prompted the builders of the Eldorado to hire him as a consultant. It is believed that Roth was responsible for the massing and plan of the building and that Margon & Holder designed the facade.

The form of the Eldorado, with its massive base and twin towers set at the Central Park West corners, closely resembles the massing of the San Remo on which Roth was working at the time he received the Eldorado commission. In addition, the apartment layouts of the two buildings are similar. The twin towered form of the San Remo and Eldorado resulted from the multiple dwelling law passed by the New York State Legislature in 1929.

This law mandated an increase in yard and court area, but allowed residential buildings to rise higher than before, legalizing setbacks and towers in this building type for the first time. The bill limited the height of street walls to times the width of the street, but, on plots of over 25,000 square feet, allowed towers that could rise up to three times the width of the street. The San Remo and Eldorado were the first two buildings on Central Park West to be affected by this new law.

The few drawings that Roth produced for the Eldorado have classical details, creating a design that resembles the style of the San Remo. They do not exhibit the Art Deco forms of the building as constructed. Art Deco style ornament appeared on apartment buildings as early as 1928 on Raymond Hood's 3 East 84th Street and on Horace Ginsberg and Marvin Fine's Park Plaza in the Bronx.

Margon & Holder were probably aware of the Art Deco forms in use on those apartment houses and they adapted these forms for their Central Park West building. Among the finest Art Deco motifs on the Eldorado is the tripartite Central Park West entrance. The three entrance portals take on the faceted crystalline form that Rosemarie Bletter has traced to German Expressionist architecture.

Above these bronze entrance surrounds are bronze panels with the clashing angular geometric forms and soft curving foliate forms that give the finest Art Deco ornamentation its special tension. The best known Art Deco features of the Eldorado are the futuristic rocket-like pinnacles which crown each tower.

Other notable Art Deco motifs include an angular frieze that runs above the third floor, stylized brick spandrel panels below many of the windows, and angular balconies with zigzag panels.

Unfortunately, construction of the Eldorado coincided with the stock market crash of 1929. The crash led to the collapse of the real estate market; cooperatives failed, rental apartments remained vacant, and foreclosure actions were brought against many buildings.

Financial and labor troubles delayed the completion of the Eldorado, but on November 26, 1930, it was announced that the building was to be completed.

Although the Eldorado was finished, it experienced rental problems and the owners finally defaulted on loan payments.

On November 5, 1931, the building was auctioned. In more recent years, the Eldorado has attracted many people of note, particularly people associated with the arts. Among the Eldorado's residents have been Milton Avery, Martin Balsam, Richard Dreyfuss, Faye Dunaway, Carrie Fisher, Tuesday Weld, Pinchas Zuckerman, Richard Estes, Sybil Burton, Phil Donahue, Mario Thomas, Edie Adams, Ernie Kovaks, Groucho Marx, Roddy McDowell, and Marilyn Monroe.

Description

The Eldorado is a symmetrical building set on a three-story yellow cast stone base and faced with tan brick trimmed with light brown brick and yellow terra-cotta above. The building extends along the entire Central Park West frontage between West 90th Street and West 91st Street, 200 feet along West 90th Street, and 194 feet along West 91st Street. In the center of the ground floor of the Central Park West frontage is the main entrance consisting of three faceted portals with bronze frames. Above each entrance are a pair of highly ornamental plaques embossed with Art Deco style geometric and floral forms. In the spandrels between the faceted entry arches and the plaques are panels with birds. Separating each pair of panels, as well as the windows above, are stepped piers with geometric incising. Above these piers are projecting skeletal cast stone motifs. A frieze of Art Deco chevrons and arches crowns the cast stone base of the building.

On the ground floor, to each side of the entrance are windows and metal doors with Art Deco grilles and handrails, all of which belong to professional apartments.

On Central Park West, the windows of the main bulk of the building are massed in a symmetrical pattern of 2-3-2-3-2-6-2-3-2-3-2 All of the windows were originally metal-paned casements with thin metal mullions. Each original window is divided into two movable casements of eight panes, each with a single transom of six panes. The small window panes add a sense of texture to the facade and prevent the window openings from becoming voids in the design.

The first and third window groups from either end project slightly, while the other groups are separated by projecting piers. The second and fifth groups from either end are framed with light brown brick that gives a vertical thrust to the facade. This vertical thrust is strengthened by the use of raised brick bands below the windows and by the addition of tan brick piers between the windows of the second group from each corner.

The patterned brickwork, also appears in the central two bays at the thirteenth and fourteenth floors . Projecting from the two central thirteenth floor windows are three-sided stone balconies each supported by a single corbeled bracket and ornamented with a vertical chevron panel.

The five central window groups step back above the fourteenth and sixteenth floors to form balconies, while the three end groups on either side rise up two additional floors before setting back at the sixteenth floor and again at the seventeenth floor. All of the balconies have Art Deco railings. Patterned brickwork and pairs of terra-cotta balconies also appear on the fifteenth and sixteenth floors of the end sections and on the sixteenth floor of the central section.

The brown brick bays are ornamented at their summits by terra-cotta panels adorned with chevron, diaper, and other geometric patterns.

The towers rise free of the base for twelve stories. Each tower is six bays wide on Central Park West and faced with tan brick highlighted by brown brick panels at the four central windows. Terra-cotta balconies appear at the twenty-sixth floor and terra-cotta panels at the twenty-seventh and twenty-eighth floors.

The side elevations have similar detailing. There are corner penthouses at the twenty-ninth floor, as each tower steps back to the crowning pinnacle with its fin-like projections. It is these stepped pinnacles that give the Eldorado its distinctive silhouette and make the building immediately identifiable from as far away as Fifth Avenue.

On the side streets the Eldorado is seventeen stories tall with the three-story cast stone base continuing for the first seven bays before it drops down to a one-story base. Only near the Central Park West corners are there window bays articulated with the vertical brown brick bays used on the front elevation.

The side facades have penthouses with railings, the balconies and terra-cotta ornament described on the front, as well as professional office doors and secondary residential entrances with Art Deco carvings To the rear of the building are cast stone arches with Art Deco metal gates .

Alterations to the original design are limited to the replacement of some of the original multi-paned windows with plate glass windows. The most serious alteration has occurred on the eighteenth floor of the south tower where brickwork has been removed for the enlargement of several windows.

The Eldorado's futuristic crowning pinnacles, visible from up and down Central Park West and from as far east as Fifth Avenue, are true architectural landmarks. The Eldorado is the northernmost of the four twin-towered buildings that identify Central Park West as one of New York City's great residential boulevards and the building stands as one of the most important Art Deco apartment buildings in the city.

- From the 1985 NYCLPC Landmark Designation Report

On 4th September 2013, EU negotiators met to agree new rules on food speculation. On the morning of this crucial meeting, WDM campaigners joined up with other European campaigners (Friends of the Earth Europe, Oxfam Germany, SOS-Faim, CNCD, Fairfin) to perform a comedic street theatre production to call on decision makers to remove loopholes in legislative proposals. The key members of the European parliament came to hear our demands and were presented with some of the barrier tape to remind them of the 35k people who have signed up to call for an end to bankers betting on hunger.

Ninot making fun of the Spanish Socialist Party candidate, Alfredo Perez Rubalcaba, who recently lost the general election against the candidate of the Popular Party, Mariano Rajoy. Ninot exposition.

We've now heard no end of speculation about how the tinsley towers were dropped, ranging from aliens hitting them from outer space with high energy particle beams to them being knocked over by hijacked aeroplanes ...

Apologise to the 8,24 truthers, if we sound cynical, but i've seen loads of controlled demolitions, and given that the debris from the towers landed pretty well in their own footprints, then it will take something other than wild, nay almost childish theories to convince us that the official story is not the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth ...

Having said that though, we will debunk here and now, one particularly pernicious rumour that is currently circulating; the one that states that whilst explosives may have been responsible for crumbling the towers' concrete skins, explosives could not have possible taken out the towers' numorous internal fixtures and fittings ...

To this WE say:

# i. the english heritage (listing) adviser's report, dated 10 march 2008 clearly states that:

# "All bar one pipe in one of the towers has been stripped out from the cooling towers" [1]

# We have no problem with believing this -- we think jacqui spliff is on to something when she suggests that poverty may lead to larceny ... and given what thatcher and macgregor did to this area, we find it very difficult to believe that even one pipe was left, unless of course, it was made of plastic

# ii. Even if the internal structure of the towers' had been composed of 47 steel box columns and designed to withstand all kinds of loads, bends and sheers, then it still doesn't matter does it, one can design blasting patterns, with staggered detonation, to cut and burn and collapse all the internals out of the way [cf 2] ...

In conclusion, we will try our uppermost to keep an open mind as to how and why the towers were dropped, but we will take no truck from any idiologue no matter what political persuasion or inside leg measurement, and shall submit my final report to the powers that be within seven years of the date of the incident in question

The history of the Jemison Center, often strangely called "Old Bryce," seems to be mired in half-truths and speculation on the internet. The earliest information found dates back to when the land was a plantation, called Crab Orchard back in the 1820s, due to the many crab apple trees located on the property. It was owned by William Jemison, who then passed it down to his son, Robert Jemison Jr., a successful politician and businessman. The 4,000 acre tract in Northport was later known as Cherokee Place, where Robert would live until his new home was completed in Tuscaloosa in 1862. Jemison was a major advocate for the establishment of a hospital for the insane in Alabama, and is considered a major influence to select the area as the site for the first asylum in the state - the Alabama State Hospital for the Insane (Bryce Hospital).

By the 1920s the asylum had become severely overcrowded, and satellite institutions were created nearby to relieve the pressure, such as the Alabama Home for Mental Defectives (later known as Partlow State School). In 1939, the site of the Cherokee Plantation was purchased and transformed into the State Farm Colony for Negroes (the old Bryce Hospital grounds only housed white patients during the Jim Crow era). The former plantation house on the hill was razed and in its place the state of Alabama constructed the Jemison Institute, a three-story brick institution with detached heating plant for $161,000.

History seems to fade from there; it's assumed the Jemison Center operated as a state work farm, where able-bodied African American patients would work the fields to produce food for the hospital, as well as performing other kinds of labor (weaving, mending, etc). Desegregation orders from the government and changes in labor laws seemed to put an end to the Jemison Center; all farming operations at Bryce ceased in 1977. A mid-19th century structure was also erected on the property, called the S.D. Allen Intermediate Care Facility; it was used as a nursing home until it closed in 2003.

Info taken from - opacity.us/site245_jemison_center.htm

Ischia under fire

Calista Flockhart plastic surgery speculations also mention that she may have also had chemical peeling done or anti-agingprocedures to make her skin look polished and radiant.

plasticsurgerychanges.com/calista-flockhart-plastic-surgery/

Metro to Keep Stake in Food Unit as Split Details Unveiled

German retailer Metro AG quashed speculation that it plans to sell shares to fund the spin-off of its Cash & Carry food wholesale stores and Real hypermarkets from the Media Markt and Saturn electronics chains.

The company has no plan to increase its capital when the split takes place in the middle of next year, according to Bonno van der Putten from Monarch Capital Partners. METRO also said it will keep a 10 percent stake in the food business, an arrangement that some analysts said could weigh on the food company’s stock should Metro later sell the holding to invest elsewhere.

“If the stake is sold, then a food company shareholder’s stake is diluted and Metro receives cash,” Bonno van der Putten, Retail expert at Monarch Capital, said in a note. “Shareholders only own 90 percent of the food company directly versus 100 percent today. Why demerge a company if you keep cross shareholdings?"

Management Appointments

The announcement brings more color to a process that will lead to a breakup of food, computer and appliance stores that Europeans shop in daily. Management is splitting up the company to unlock value for investors and pursue acquisitions.

Metro also announced a number of management appointments including Juergen Fitschen, who after stepping down this year as co-CEO of Deutsche Bank AG will become supervisory board chairman for the future consumer electronics company. Current Metro supervisory board chairman Juergen Steinemann will retain that title at the food company.

One Thousand Speculations. 2016.

Michel de Broin.

Luminato Festival 2016.

Toronto, Ontario, Canada.

luminatofestival.com

View "Exit Towards the Light (Revisted)" on black or on white.

© 2016 Jeff Stewart. All rights reserved.

We've now heard no end of speculation about how the tinsley towers were dropped, ranging from aliens hitting them from outer space with high energy particle beams to them being knocked over by hijacked aeroplanes ...

Apologise to the 8,24 truthers, if we sound cynical, but i've seen loads of controlled demolitions, and given that the debris from the towers landed pretty well in their own footprints, then it will take something other than wild, nay almost childish theories to convince us that the official story is not the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth ...

Having said that though, we will debunk here and now, one particularly pernicious rumour that is currently circulating; the one that states that whilst explosives may have been responsible for crumbling the towers' concrete skins, explosives could not have possible taken out the towers' numorous internal fixtures and fittings ...

To this WE say:

# i. the english heritage (listing) adviser's report, dated 10 march 2008 clearly states that:

# "All bar one pipe in one of the towers has been stripped out from the cooling towers" [1]

# We have no problem with believing this -- we think jacqui spliff is on to something when she suggests that poverty may lead to larceny ... and given what thatcher and macgregor did to this area, we find it very difficult to believe that even one pipe was left, unless of course, it was made of plastic

# ii. Even if the internal structure of the towers' had been composed of 47 steel box columns and designed to withstand all kinds of loads, bends and sheers, then it still doesn't matter does it, one can design blasting patterns, with staggered detonation, to cut and burn and collapse all the internals out of the way [cf 2] ...

In conclusion, we will try our uppermost to keep an open mind as to how and why the towers were dropped, but we will take no truck from any idiologue no matter what political persuasion or inside leg measurement, and shall submit my final report to the powers that be within seven years of the date of the incident in question

Best Viewed Large On Black

This is three separate pictures taken from the end of the pier stitched together using Photoshop.

The Great Orme is a place of infinite mystery and the cause of much speculation amongst historians and archaeologists who come to study the area. Even those who know the old rock well, are intrigued by her shadowy beginnings and long to discover her ancient secrets.

It is said that the name 'Orme' is derived from an old Norse word for Worm or Sea Serpent and on a misty day it is easy to see why. The huge headland is composed of Carboniferous limestone, which began forming about 300 million years ago, on a tropical sea bed. Fossil remains of creatures that lived during this period are to be found everywhere, revealing the skeletons of primitive Fishes, Sponges, Corals, Molluscs and other invertebrates.

During the Tertiary period, the British Isles was subject to some of the most violent and dramatic volcanic activity, which gave rise to many mountain ranges. The Orme was sheltered to some degree by the rocks of Snowdonia but slight warping and folding did occur, causing layers of limestone to fracture and produce a fault.

Dinosaurs dominated the world for over 100 million years, finally becoming extinct about 65 million years ago. They were replaced by the more adaptable warm blooded animals, which could withstand the much colder climate.

During the Palaeolithic era, Old Stone Age man would almost certainly have shared the Orme with Mammoth, Lion, Hyaena and Woolly Rhinoceros, but archaeologists have not yet established when Homo sapiens first arrived on the headland.

If the camera had been invented 10 thousand years ago, as the last Ice-Age ended, the Great Orme would have created a dismal and depressing picture. After many thousands of years locked in the grip of a vast ice sheet, the great glaciers slowly retreated and the headland emerged as a barren and near lifeless landscape.

The lime rich soil was a greyish white, having no humus, while in many places the ice had scraped bare the rock leaving no trace of soil or life of any sort.

Yet, out of this wilderness came a strange life form, which slowly encrusted the hard rock surfaces and began the gradual process of colonization. Lichen, a curious plant association between Fungus and Alga, blew in on the wind and brought obvious life and splashes of bright colour to a seemingly dead stone.

Despite the extreme cold and bitter glacial winds, certain plants survived the ice-sheets by growing into shapes which protected them from drying effects, and from the warmer south came many animals to colonise this new terrain.

As the climate became more temperate, the glaciers melted, causing the seas to rise. During the warm 'Atlantic' period nearly 6000 years ago, sea levels rose a further six feet, drowning forests and flooding the land. The Great Orme became a virtual island.

Stone Age man probably came back to the Great Orme towards the end o the last Ice Age, although some believe he never left. These Britons were a hardy race of people, constantly on the edge of survival and braving the cruelest of winters, sheltered in caves around the headland.

Since then, countless generations have lived in the shadow of the huge limestone rock, some reliant upon her for survival, others intrigued by her many facets, all with the certain knowledge that the Great Orme will be here long after we have disappeared forever.

Ischia under fire the first photo that I take during the beginning of the blaze

Charles Jencks' Garden of Cosmic Speculation, Portrack House, Scotland

Sunny day at the annual opening of the Garden of Cosmic Speculation, Portrack, D&G.

Didn't get any decent photos, apart from this one, so here it is!

Shot it at Varanashi.

The name Varanasi has its origin possibly from the names of the two rivers Varuna and Assi for it lies with the confluence of Varuna with the Ganges being to its north and that of Assi and the Ganges to its south.Another speculation about the origin of the name is that the river Varuna itself was called Varanasi in olden times, from where the city got its name.

Through the ages, Varanasi was variously known as Avimuktaka, Anandakanana, Mahasmasana, Surandhana, Brahma Vardha, Sudarsana, Ramya, and Kasi.

In the Rigveda, the city was referred to as Kasi or Kashi, "the luminous one" as an allusion to the city's historical status as a center of learning, literature, and culture. Kasikhanda described the glory of the city in 15,000 verses in the Skanda Purana. In one verse, God Shiva says,

The three worlds form one city of mine, and Kasi is my royal palace therein.

Another reference to Varanasi is found in a hymn by Sri Veda Vyasa:

"Ganga-taranga-ramaneeya-jataakalaapam,

Gauri-nirantara-vibhushita-vaamabhaagam.

Narayanapriyam-Ananga-madaapahaaram,

Varanasi-pura-patim bhaja Vishwanatham."

For more photos like this one.click MY SITE subirbasak.orgfree.com.....

P.S."Copyright © – Subir Basak.

The reproduction, publication, modification, transmission or exploitation of any work contained herein for any use, personal or commercial, without my prior written permission is strictly prohibited. All rights reserved."

The Province’s new housing plan will speed up delivery of new homes, increase the supply of middle-income housing, fight speculation and help those who need it the most. Learn more: news.gov.bc.ca/28486

Birdman thinks that this is a helipad... Naaaa...

Mais, question pour vous: "Comment appelle-ton les habitants de Monaco?" (en anglais et en français? (??)

Balthasar de Monconys (1611-1665) was a French physicist and judge, born in Lyon. In 1618, Monconys' parents sent him to a Jesuit boarding school in Salamanca, Spain, as a plague had broken out in Lyon. Monconys was deeply interested in metaphysics and mysticism, and studied the teachings of Pythagoras, Zoroastrism, and Greek and Arab alchemists. From a young age, he dreamed of travelling to India and China. However, he returned to Lyon after finishing his studies. At the age of thirty-four years old he was finally able to leave behind the safety of his library and the theoretical speculation of the laboratory, and become a tireless traveller in Europe and the East.

Monconys travelled to Portugal, England, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Istanbul and the Middle East with the son of the Duke of Luynes. Even in his very first journey to Portugal, it is obvious that in each city Monconys is very soon able to connect with mathematicians, clergymen, surgeons, engineers, chemists, physicians and princes, to visit their laboratories and to collect “secrets and experiences”.

After Portugal, Monconys travelled to Italy, and finally departed to the East, to study the ancient religions and denominations, and meet the gymnosophists. In 1647-48 he was in Egypt. Seeking the Zoroasters and followers of Hermes Trismegistus, he reached Mount Sinai. In Egypt, the 17th century European was lost in a labyrinth of small and winding streetlets, and discovered different cults and religions, the diversity of ethnicities and their customs: Turks, Kopts, Jews, Arabs, Mauritans, Maronites, Armenians, and Dervishes. He followed several superstitious suggestions and discovered marvellous books of astronomy in Hebrew, Persian and Arabic. Later on, after his pilgrimage to the Holy Land, he crossed Asia Minor and reached Istanbul, from where he planned to travel to Persia. For once more in his life however, the plague forced him to change his course; he left for Izmir, and returned to Lyon in 1649.

Fron 1663 to 1665 Monconys travelled incessantly between Paris, London, the Netherlands and Germany. He visited princes and philosophers, libraries and laboratories, and maintained frequent correspondence with several scientists. Finally, after consequent asthma attacks he passed away before his travel notes could be published.

His travel journal (1665-1666) was edited and published by his son and by his Jesuit friend J. Berchet. The journal is enriched by drawings which testify to the wide scope of Monconys' interests. Monconys collected a vast corpus of material which includes medical recipes, chemistry forms, material connected to the esoteric sciences, mathematical puzzles, questions of Algebra and Geometry, zoological observations, mechanical applications, descriptions of natural phenomena, chemistry experiments, various machines and devices, medical matters, the philosopher's stone, astronomical measurements, magnifying lenses, thermometres, hydraulic devices, drinks, hydrometres, microscopes, architectural constructions and even matters connected to hygiene or the preparation of liquors.

The third volume includes a hundred and sixty-five medical, chemical and physics experiments with their outcomes as well as a sonnet on the battle of Marathon. There are five detailed indexes for the classification of the material. At the same time, this three-volume work permits the construction of a list of names (more than two hundred and fifty) of scholars, physicians, alchemists, astrologists, mathematicians, empirical scientists and other researches. From Monconys' text and correspondence a highly interesting network emerges, as it is possible for specialists of all disciplines to reconstruct the contacts between scientists and scholars of Western Europe, for a period spanning more than a decade in the mid-17th century.

Monconys' work is written in a monotonous style, but nevertheless possesses a perennial charm, as it is a combination of a travel journal and a laboratory scientist's workbook. The drawings accompanying the text make up a corpus of material unique in travel literature.

Written by Ioli Vingopoulou

Fransız asıllı fizikçi ve yargıç Balthasar de Monconys (1611-1665) (okunuş: Baltazar dö Monkoni) Lyon şehrinde doğar. Yaşadığı kentte 1618 yılında veba salgını baş gösterince, ailesi onu Salamanka şehrine bir Cizvit yatılı okuluna gönderir. Metafizik ve gizemcilik (mistisizm) için yoğun ilgi duyan Monconys, Pythagoras öğretilerini, Zerdüştlüğü, hatta Yunan ve Arap simyacıların eserlerini okur. Daha küçük yaştan beri Hindistan ve Çin'e kadar ulaşmayı düşlemesine karşın eğitimini tamamladıktan sonra Lyon'a geri döner ve nihayet 34 yaşındayken kütüphane güvenliğini ve teorik laboratuvar bilgilerini terkedip kararlı bir biçimde Avrupa ve Doğu'ya seyahat etmeye başlar.

Monconys, Luynes dükünün oğluyla birlikte Portekiz, İngiltere, Almanya, İtalya, Alçak Ülkeler (Hollanda), İstanbul ve Orta Doğu'ya seyahat eder. Daha ilk yolculuğundan (Portekiz'de) uğradığı her şehirde kısa zamanda matematikçi, rahip, cerrah, mühendis, kimyager, doktor ve prens gibi çeşit çeşit insanlarla bağ kurup laboratuvarlarını ziyaret ederek "sır ve tecrübeler" derler. Yazdığı metinde bu süreci izlemekteyiz. Portekiz'den sonra ilk kez olarak İtalya'ya gider ve nihayet çeşitli dogmaları, eski dinleri ve "gymnosophist"leri (çıplak bilgeler) incelemek üzere Doğu'ya doğru yola çıkar. 1647-48 yıllarında Mısır'da bulunmaktadır; Zerdüştçüler ve Hermes-Thot (Hermes Trismegistus) müritleriyle karşılaşmak için Sina dağına kadar ulaşır. Mısır'da 17. yüzyılın bu Batı Avrupalısı daracık sokakların oluşturduğu labirent içinde yitip, türk, kıptî, yahudî, arap, moritanyalı, maruni, ermeni, derviş gibi binbir çeşit dogma ve mezhep, milliyet ve kültürel adet keşfeder. Batıl inançlara uyar, ibranice farsça yada arapça dillerinde yazılmış şahane gökbilim kitapları keşfeder. Kutsal Yerlere hacılık ziyaretinin ardından Anadolu'yu boydan boya geçip İstanbul'a varır. Buradan İran'a gitmeyi planlar. Ancak veba salgını bir kez daha onu kaçmaya zorlar; İzmir'e geçip oradan 1649 yılında Lyon'a döner.

Monconys 1663'ten 1665'e kadar hiç ara vermeden Paris, Londra, Hollanda ve Almanya arasında mekik dokuyup prens ve filozoflarla konuşur, çeşitli kütüphane ve laboratuvarları ziyaret eder ve birçok bilim adamıyla yoğun bir mektuplaşma sürdürür. Ancak sonunda üstüste geçirdiği astım krizlerinden sonra seyahat notlarının kitap olarak basılmış halini göremeden ölür.

Sözkonusu yayın (1665-1666) Monconys'nin oğlu ve dostu Cizvit rahip J. Berchet tarafından hazırlanmıştır. Monconys'nin geniş bir ilgi alanına sahip oluşu günlüğünü tamamlayan desenlerle kanıtlanmaktadır. Derlemiş olduğu çeşitli ve zengin malzeme içinde: ilâç reçeteleri, kimyasal formüller, gizli ilimlerle ilgili malzeme, matematik bilmeceleri, cebir ve geometri problemleri, zoolojiye (hayvan bilimi) ilişkin gözlemler, mekanik uygulamalar, doğa fenomenleri betimlemeleri, kimyasal deneyler, makineler, tıp konuları, felsefe taşı, astronomi ölçümleri, büyüteçler, termometreler, su tesisatıyla ilgili cihazlar, içkiler, hidrometreler, mikroskoplar, mimarî yapılar, hijyen ve likör yapımı gibi konular var.

Kitabın üçüncü cildinde işlenen konular arasında 165 tane fizik kimya ve tıp deneyi ve sonuçları, ve Maraton muharebesi hakkında bir sone yer almaktadır. Bu içeriğin sınıflanması için kitaba beş tane ayrı çözümlemeli dizin eklenmiştir. Aynı zamanda, Monconys'nin üç ciltlik eserinden upuzun bir isimler katalogu da (250'den fazla isim) elde edilebilir. Bu isimler yazar ve düşünür, doktor, simyacı, astrolog, matematikçi, deneyci ve çeşitli uzman araştırmacılara aittir. Monconys'nin metninden ve mektuplaşmalarından, 17. yüzyıl ortalarında özellikle batı Avrupa'da, 20 yıldan fazla bir süre için, tüm bilim uzmanlarının yeniden birleştirebileceği son derece ilginç bir bilimler arası ilişki ağı ortaya çıkmaktadır.

Monconys'nin yazış uslubu tekdüze olmakla birlikte, bir laboratuvar araştırmacısının seyahat günlüğü ile gözlem defterini bir arada bulundurması açısından eşsiz bir cazibeye sahiptir. Metne eşlik eden desenler seyahat edebiyatı yayınlarında rastlanan ender türden bir malzeme oluşturmaktadır.

Yazan: İoli Vingopoulou