on the campus of Tennessee Technological University

WYSE Tech graff style. With lots of inspiration from Cole, Pax and Shan the "Seventh Letter" Crew of Lego Graffitti

The Discovery Museum, located in Blandford Square, Newcastle upon Tyne, Tyne and Wear, England, is a renowned institution that showcases the history and heritage of the region. With a rich and diverse collection, the museum offers visitors a glimpse into the industrial, scientific, and technological advancements that have shaped the area. In this historical account, we will explore the origins, development, and significant events of the Discovery Museum up until the year 2021.

 

Origins and Early Years:

 

The roots of the Discovery Museum can be traced back to the late 19th century when the Newcastle upon Tyne Corporation established a museum and art gallery in the city. In 1899, this original museum moved to a new building on Westgate Road, designed by the prominent architect Oliver Hill. The structure, known as the "Newcastle Museum and Municipal Art Gallery," aimed to provide educational and cultural resources for the community.

 

The Move to Blandford Square:

 

In the late 1970s, plans were made to relocate the museum to a larger premises in Blandford Square, a historic part of the city center. The move aimed to accommodate the growing collection and provide improved exhibition spaces for visitors. After extensive renovations and adaptations, the new Discovery Museum officially opened its doors to the public on May 18, 1993.

 

Collection and Exhibitions:

 

The Discovery Museum boasts an impressive collection that spans various disciplines, reflecting the industrial and scientific achievements of the region. The museum's exhibits cover a wide range of topics, including shipbuilding, coal mining, engineering, electricity, and local history. One of the museum's highlights is the iconic Turbinia, a steam-powered vessel designed by Charles Parsons, which became the fastest ship in the world in 1897.

 

The museum also features the Newcastle Story, a permanent exhibition that delves into the city's history, culture, and people. It showcases artifacts, photographs, and interactive displays that depict Newcastle's evolution from a Roman settlement to a thriving industrial hub.

 

Notable Events and Partnerships:

 

Over the years, the Discovery Museum has hosted numerous events, collaborations, and special exhibitions. These initiatives aim to engage and educate visitors of all ages, fostering a deeper understanding of the region's heritage. The museum has often collaborated with local organizations, universities, and artists to create unique displays and interactive experiences.

 

In recent years, the Discovery Museum has embraced technology to enhance its offerings. It has incorporated digital displays, virtual reality, and interactive installations to provide an immersive and engaging experience for visitors.

 

Community Engagement and Outreach:

 

The Discovery Museum has always prioritized community engagement and outreach programs. It has partnered with schools, colleges, and community organizations to deliver educational initiatives, workshops, and events that cater to different age groups. Through these endeavors, the museum has played a vital role in fostering an appreciation for science, history, and culture among the local population.

 

Recognition and Legacy:

 

The Discovery Museum has garnered several accolades and recognition for its contribution to the field of museums and heritage. It has been praised for its innovative exhibitions, dedication to education, and community involvement. The museum continues to evolve and adapt to the changing needs of its visitors, remaining a prominent institution in the cultural landscape of Newcastle upon Tyne.

 

Looking Ahead:

 

As we reach the present day, the Discovery Museum remains an important cultural institution, continuously striving to preserve and showcase the region's history. With ongoing efforts to expand its collection, improve accessibility, and develop engaging exhibits, the museum aims to inspire future generations to explore and appreciate the remarkable heritage of Newcastle upon Tyne and Tyne and Wear.

 

In conclusion, the Discovery Museum in Blandford Square, Newcastle upon Tyne, Tyne and Wear, England, stands as a testament to the region's industrial and scientific achievements. With its diverse collection, educational initiatives, and commitment to community engagement, the museum offers a captivating journey through history, making it a vital part of Newcastle's cultural landscape.

Santoshpur, Kolkata.

Firearm was a notorious, technologically-advanced bounty hunter who continuously threatened the Hero Factory. Firearm is a mercenary more than capable of carrying out assignments but lacking in the ambition to mastermind his own agenda.

 

Shortly before the betrayal of Von Ness, Firearm came to operate exclusively out of the Delta Quadrant, gaining experience as a mercenary and branching out his services. For some time, Firearm established his headquarters along the edge of the Necron Expanse, a vast region of frontier space with no stars systems for 200 lightyears. Following the success of Hero Factory in the galactic neighborhood, Firearm was able to inflate his service charges exponentially, with bounty hunters coming in short supply.

 

Over the course of his career, Firearm has utilized a number of weapons and gadgets to carry out his assignments, initially starting with standard issue Meteor Blasters and later diversifying to carry heavily customized gear for each mission. Most prominently, he has been known to carry a modified Combat Rifle looted from a Makuhero Industries factory.

 

Unlike many of his contemporaries, Firearm has been known to keep several extensive weapons and ammunition caches on planets around the Delta Quadrant, often containing launchers looted from Heroes or other criminals.

Île d'Orléans, Québec - juillet 2014.

Technologically advanced street vendor . The sugarcane press is electric and not hand cranked and she has a machine to seal the plastic cups.

Diese Aufnahme zeigt drei Generationen von Apple iPhone-Verbindern—30-Pin, Lightning und USB-C—in einer schwarzweiß-Nahaufnahme, aufgenommen in einem schrägen Winkel (Dutch Angle). Die Bildkomposition unterstreicht die technologische Evolution und den Designwandel der Apple-Schnittstellen, von der klassischen 30-Pin-Verbindung über den Lightning-Anschluss bis hin zum neuesten USB-C-Standard. Sie verdeutlicht den Übergang von proprietären zu universelleren Schnittstellen in der Apple-Mobiltechnologie und die kontinuierliche Entwicklung hin zu minimalistischerem Design und höherer Effizienz."

 

This image showcases three generations of Apple iPhone connectors—30-pin, Lightning, and USB-C—in a black-and-white close-up, captured at a Dutch angle. The composition highlights the technological evolution and design shift of Apple interfaces, from the classic 30-pin connection to the latest USB-C standard, illustrating the transition from proprietary to more universal interfaces in Apple mobile technology and the ongoing development towards minimalistic design and greater efficiency."

 

"この画像は、AppleのiPhoneコネクタの3世代（30ピン、Lightning、USB-C）を、ダッチアングルで捉えたドラマチックな白黒のクローズアップで紹介しています。この構図は、Appleインターフェースの技術的進化とデザインの変化を強調し、クラシックな30ピン接続から最新のUSB-C規格への移行を示し、Appleのモバイル技術における独自仕様からより汎用性の高いインターフェースへの移行と、ミニマリズムと効率性を追求する継続的な発展を表しています。"

  

Behold, the Aetherium Arcana, a technological marvel of perpetual motion that roams the skies high above the floating isles of the Old World. This grand vessel serves as a sanctuary of knowledge and lore, protecting the wisdom of ancient and modern times. Its proprietor, the enigmatic Professor Alistair Wrenwood, is a scholar of the techno-arcane arts, gathering rare manuscripts, mechanical blueprints, and alchemical tomes from lands both charted and uncharted. Professor Wrenwood, with his spectacled gaze and patchwork leather waistcoat, is a lifelong seeker of mysteries—an eccentric soul who created his airship as a gift to the world.

 

The Aetherium Arcana is no ordinary airship; it is powered by a rare crystal known as “aetherium,” which emits an iridescent glow and allows the ship to hover gracefully without the usual clanking gears and churning pistons. This crystal is housed within a chamber beneath the main library, guarded by a clockwork guardian, Sir Copperwell, a loyal automaton built by Wrenwood himself. The ship’s interior is lined with dark walnut shelves, adorned with gilded brass accents, and illuminated by warm lanterns that swing gently with the vessel’s movements.

 

Besides Professor Wrenwood, the ship is home to his eclectic crew: Marigold the Botanist, who cultivates rare floating plants in a tiny greenhouse on the top floor of the ship; Errol the Engineer, who tends to the intricate mechanics of the vessel and keeps the Aetherium chamber in pristine condition; and young Elara, a bright-eyed apprentice with an insatiable thirst for knowledge. Together, they sail the skies, visiting distant lands to share knowledge, trade stories, and uncover lost artifacts.

 

The Aetherium Arcana is revered by those lucky enough to glimpse it among the clouds. It is said that if you spot its shadow on a foggy night, a tome bearing a tale you most need to hear may find its way into your hands the next morning.

 

This was built for the Wandering Skies contest 2024.

 

This drawing was originally inspired by a discussion between Lawrence Weschler, Errol Morris, Dr. Kanan Makiya, and W.J.T. Mitchell as part of the Chicago Humanities Festival. The subject was the iconography of war and how people live with and process the myriad tragic and frightening images that have become a part of our everyday experience. It occurred to me that these iconic images fail us, or more that we fail them, in that we continually allow new atrocities to bloom, that we author many or most of these great calamities ourselves, and that we allow history to repeat itself over and over, only with more technological savvy as each new conflict arises so that we are further removed from the killing than we were the last time. When i see photos of depravity, of war, of suffering, of humiliation and dehumanization, such as the photos from Abu Ghraib that so many of us have seen, i want to believe that the images are powerful and profound enough to shock us into action, into some kind of patient and benevolent revolution to actually make the world better, to accept and respect all the differences in cultures and histories and ideologies and live amicably if not peacefully. Clearly i’m either too optimistic or too naive, because we fight, maim, lie and kill in the name of empire, religion, oil, just as we always have and likely always will. And many of us believe what we are told about the righteousness of our crimes and the trueness of our aim with little or no question because it is simply what we are told by those we expect to be in the know.

 

So the drawing at its inception was a collage of iconic images of war and struggle, a superimposed collection of calamity. It was my hope that the volume of sadness and destruction in this drawing would serve as a reminder for myself, an alarm to help me wake from my own apathy and disillusionment in the face of the grinding and monstrous engine of modern government and the political machine that can apparently function on nothing but the blackest crude, a reminder that i need to let history inform every decision and choice that i make so i’m not simply stumbling and blind as i move through the world, that if i am going to be a part of any change, it should be positive change.

 

The drawing has changed, however, and is no longer based solely in the literal, in the photo realism of our recent past, but for me it has also begun to acquire a symbolism and metaphorical nature that feels relative to our future. This piece has taken on its own life, separate from me, and i don’t feel like i control it anymore, neither the direction of the imagery used nor the execution of each individual piece of imagery, but rather that i’m slowly opening and receiving what comes in. It feels akin to the process of pollination. Foreign bodies have entered and have had a profound effect, life-changing even, and in realizing that effect, those foreign bodies become familiar and essential.

 

i’ve rewritten these lines a dozen times and i’m never satisfied with what appears on the page. It could be that for me there is no satisfaction in talking about my own failures as a person living today, or maybe i don’t want to sermonize what i see as the collective failures of everyone. It’s also possible that instead of all this writing and talking, all i can really do is draw a picture and let you do with it what you will.

 

It was not my goal to make a drawing of ruin, but when i consider where we seem to be going and how desperately we seem to want to get there, i don’t know that i could avoid it. At least, not this time.

 

3-24-08

 

Since the 19th of March, when Chicago held its 5 year anniversary rally/march/protest for the invasion of Iraq, a great deal of information has come my way that is causing me a great deal of concern. And fear. And anger. And i don't know if anyone else out there who might intentionally or accidentally stumble upon these paragraphs knows more or less than i do, but my knowledge is only starting to expand regarding where we are as a country and as a society, and even in my peripheral knowledge of the kind of insidious and deep running corruption we're living with and in, i find myself in a state of shock because so few people are responding to this information...which is available, it's definitely out there...and i know so few people who have any sense of outrage at all, who feel that their rights are being taken from them and are not anything more than sarcastic about it. As if they simply expected it and are willing to accept it because, well, what can one person do?

 

Habeas Corpus is gone. None of the current politicians are talking about that. This scares me. This essential right, now taken away, is one of the major dividing lines between a free society and a police state. And there's so much to say that i can't do it here. There is so so much to talk about. Habeas Corpus is just the literal tip of a vast and murky iceberg that i fear is about to sink our titanic self-image and our possibly vague and misguided ideas about what America is. And i don't want to sink.

 

8-5-08

 

Since i last made an entry here, not much has changed. The telecoms have been granted retroactive immunity, which in short means that our channels of communication can be monitored, and done so with no repercussions to those doing the monitoring. Which means we should probably fear that anything critical we have to say about the society we live in could be used against us, but not in a court of law. A closed society, a police state, requires no court of law. Barack Obama supported this retroactive immunity, which elicited a long thin sigh of disappointment from myself and many others. The young people canvassing the streets to raise money for his campaign didn’t have much to say about that, at least not here in Chicago. Some of them didn’t seem to know what i was talking about, to be honest. He may have had his reasons. There may have been other items tacked on to this particular legislation that he wanted to see get “through the system.” But could those reasons really outweigh our civil liberties, our small comfort in thinking we can speak freely? i still think Obama is the only candidate running for president. But i also think he has only used his offices to get to bigger and better offices. He hasn’t done much for Illinois since he’s been Senator because he immediately started running for president. i hope that once he wins that office he’ll be able to get something done, anything, as long as it’s in the opposite direction our current administration has been taking us. Clearly it is the most unsuccessful administration in the history of our young country. The most insensitive, the most rash and unthinking, the most ignorant and arrogant. i’m happy i was around to see it. Witnessing this kind of colossal failure offers an infinitely important challenge to mankind: The chance to fix things. Our fuck-ups have been on a global scale, and we need to make global amends. Coming out of this fog of war and corruption, we have an opportunity. It isn’t the first time we’ve had this opportunity, and if it’s the last then we won’t be here to consider it.

 

Also:

 

How about we stop being so silly? The New Yorker cover? It’s satire. We of all people should know what satire is. And it’s ironic that so many of us, including the Obama’s, were so offended by this illustration. We call ourselves the land of the free, yet our country was founded on genocide. Is that not irony? Are we not a satire of what we claim to be? Liberators? Come on. i know it's hard to have a sense of humor in these dark ages, but if we fail to see the absurdity in such situations and responses to those situations it will only add to the already frightening pile of things we've failed at.

 

More very soon, if you care...

 

9-22-08

 

And now, a word from my paramour, Cassandra:

----------------

This is a bit long, but the financial cluster-f#@$ we're in is complicated and it seems the Bush administration would just like Congress to sign off on the bailout, no questions asked, no strings attached. So, if you can't slog through this whole text, could you, would you, please, skip to the end, call your elected officials and tell them you're not okay with signing off on a trillion dollar bailout without knowing the details or that only assists the companies that got us into this mess? And then, feel free to whittle it down, but could you pass it on? In email and/or phone calls to the folks you know that haven't yet crossed the digital divide? Yes, you know them; some of your parents, neighbors, etc. They don't really care for the world wide web, but they still believe in democracy and hopefully, the telephone. It's an awful lot of money that we're being asked to pony up. Wait! We're not being asked! That's why you have to call your Senator!

 

We've been told that in order to avert a major financial catastrophe, the bailout is necessary and needs to happen immediately. And that may be true, but it seems like we're not being told enough. Will the executives that run these companies that are crashing and burning, still receive their multi-million dollar pay and bonus packages while employees lose jobs, health benefits and retirement funds? Will there be any relief (of course we won't bail out your average working stiff, I'm not THAT naive) for the person who's losing their house, their business, their pension? Where is the money coming from? Where exactly are we borrowing $700 billion to a trillion from? What is the plan after? What will prevent this from happening again in a couple of months? We're going to be on the hook for this money (on top of the crushing debt we're already under) for a long, long, long, long time. Or is this another preemptive strike with no exit strategy? This feels a bit familiar, no? A dangerous set of circumstances that requires swift and bold (shock and awe) tactics to keep us all safe? Calling for nearly unfettered powers, (this time to the Treasury secretary)? "Decisions by the Secretary pursuant to the authority of this Act are non-reviewable and committed to agency discretion, and may not be reviewed by any court of law or any administrative agency." Intense pressure on Congress to pass a rescue measure quickly?

 

online.wsj.com/article/SB122200573768460503.html

 

www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/09/20/...

 

krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/09/20/no-deal/

 

Even this guy doesn't like the idea:

www.outsidethebeltway.com/archives/trillion_dollar_bailou...

 

Does anyone remember the S&L crisis? Which cost American tax payers, some estimate, $1.4 trillion dollars? Sound familiar? Some highlights: During the senior George Bush administration, Jeb Bush defaulted on a $4.56 million dollar real estate loan, paid $500,000 back, the $4million balance was paid of by... um... you, the taxpayer. Neil Bush became director of Silverado Savings and Loan in 1985. Three years later the institution was belly up at a cost of $1.6 billion to... you again! The taxpayer bailed them out!

 

A more thorough account here:

www.city-data.com/forum/politics-other-controversies/4386...

 

A 1989 Time Magazine article here:

www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,957083,00.html

 

(Note that Bush Sr. asked Congress to act within 45 days to prevent financial meltdown. Bush Jr. wants this passed tomorrow, Monday Sept 22, 2008. So, please don't wait to phone your elected officials.)

 

Accountability? Not much. We paid their bad debt and they went on their merry way. No indictments, no jail time, not even garnishments or freezing of assets to re-coup the embezzled money. Jeb even got to keep the building he took out the loan to buy! Bush Sr. wasn't re-elected, but Jeb was later elected Governor of Florida! (Schwing Vote!) An office he held during the Florida Supreme Court ruling that stopped the recount of the 2000 election his brother, W, "won". (Holy Serendipity!) Hey! Here's another interesting side note: did you know that this time last year August 30, 2007 Lehman Bros hired Jeb as an advisor?! Me neither! It's funny how these things go mostly unreported. Wonder why Lehman didn't get in on the bailout deal? Sibling rivalry? If you think your head won't explode, you should go here for Jeb's breathtaking resume:

www.atlargely.com/2008/09/what-is-jeb-bus.html

 

So, this is just one (eerily familiar) example of how the Bush family and their friends have been fleecing us for generations and we, the voters, the taxpayers, the people that our government is supposed to be "of, by, and for" are letting them have their very greedy way with us. Over and over and over again. They do it, frankly, because they can. We keep letting them fleece us (or another word that begins with "F") and we shrug, or rant, sometimes we take to the streets, but not often. But we don't act. We feel overwhelmed and totally hopeless, so we turn on the television or fire up the internets or find some other, any other diversion not to think about how overwhelming and hopeless it feels. But I am imploring you to call your elected officials, the ones who you took the time to vote into office, the ones you elected to represent you, call them and ask that they do what you elected them to do: Represent you. It's redundant, I know, but I think we forget that they work for US. (Even the ones you didn't vote for, still work for you.) Make them work. Tell them what you think. It'll take minutes. Minutes out of your day to use your voice to not allow our government to spend our money without accountability. Again. And if nothing happens, if we don't manage to start a movement today, that's okay. Because we did move. We stood. We didn't just sit idly by while we got filched. Or another word that starts with "F"...

 

Find your State Representative: forms.house.gov/wyr/welcome.shtml

 

Find your Senator: www.senate.gov/general/contact_information/senators_cfm.c...

 

Patriotically yours,

Cassandra

----------------

 

9-28-08

 

A New Delhi-based journalist who has worked with The Guardian and BBC invited me to contribute this image to a brief story about the assassination of Benazir Bhutto on a news-gathering website called NowPublic. Their motto is "Crowd Powered Media," which could be good or bad, depending on the crowd. To be honest, i think the crowd is ok, so i was happy to be invited. Here it is: www.nowpublic.com/world/un-investigate-bhutto-killing

 

It's small, but it's something. If one person wants to see it, i want them to see it. So thank you, Mr. Jha.

 

10-28-08

 

People! If you're still reading this far, please look at this:

www.youtube.com/watch?v=KdNgMKPV9xQ&eurl=http://gobnf...

 

We can't ignore it. We can't sit back and watch. We need to be active. Informed. Right now. We need to use our power and we need to remake our government, our country, our world.

 

11-04-08

 

Let us hope that this is the beginning of a new American era.

 

Marker on watercolor paper.

Late 2007 – Early 2008

30 x 22

  

وقت التصوير

  

The new Learning Hub Nanyang Technological University of Singapore.

The new Learning Hub which also known as "dim sum basket building" stems from a simple idea that people learn best from one another. Each of the new 56 new-generation, "smart" classrooms will be equipped with flexible clustered seating, electronic white boards, multiple LCD screens and wireless communication tools, bringing students together in a university environment, they can collaborate to develop their thoughts further and faster than would be possible alone.

Evening view of The Hive featuring purpose built student lounges and collaborative classrooms at Nanyang Technological University.

Advanced Technological Designs Incorporated is proud to present, hot off our assembly lines, the all new AWT (Assisted Walking Transport)!

 

Are you an older gentleman or gentlewoman? Are you tired of not being able to get around as easily as you could once? Well, that's not a problem anymore, with the AWT! Simply sit down into the comfy harness and strap your legs in for a wild ride!

 

There's no more need for your old canes. Throw those old things out, because you won't need them anymore. Not if you have the AWT! Completely self propelled, the AWT multiplies the energy you have stored in those run-down legs of yours and allows the owner to move at a much faster pace.

 

The AWT's padded design allows for strolls of comfort, making sure your skin never rubs against the joints of the suit. Are you ready to get back out on the streets? Call now and get your very own Assisted Walking Transport! Our operators will be standing by.

 

======================================================

 

Hope you like my second ever Steampunk build! Built for a Steampunk challenge in my local LEGO group. See the AWT in action here.

 

Enjoy!

My favourite fishy friend Ziekling Bunnyhug has a YouTube channel that you can subscribe to here and has just launched a documentary series detailing her start in the SL modelling world*, and mentions she got her confidence "just making silly dance videos." I used to do this myself mostly without telling anyone - if you're old enough to remember my 2009-2014 blog, you'll see a couple of them on there. There's also the one on strawberrysingh.com where I danced as Redfoo to troll Berry, but let's not bring that up as it was pre-mesh and oi the body distortion.

 

THEN today I bought something really, really cool. So great that no static pic could capture it. We aren't allowed to post commercial links but if you look at Dastan Rage's marketplace you'll see a few bodies with cell shaders. There was a Belleza Jake one on there earlier but I posted a glowing review on it and for some reason it instantly disappeared. I'm hoping this is just a temporary thing omg and I haven't broken this poor guy's store. EDIT: ITS BACK UP! There are so many different colours and types of animations and I loved it, I'm sure you would too.

  

Please be kind if this video sucks, this is new for me!

 

________________________________________________

  

Hoping this doesn't get taken down for the 30 seconds worth of Technologic by Daft Punk; yes the hiss is meant to be there. I'm using the Planet Trig 3 backdrop by Paparazzi, dance is Fuckability II 07 by Sync'd at TMD, pants are street shorts by REKT, and shoes are by Fli. I used Screencast-O-Matic to shoot.

 

*Yes that's me popping up around the 1:40 mark in the most recent one!

 

August 21, 2005

The Breaking Point

By PETER MAASS

 

The largest oil terminal in the world, Ras Tanura, is located on the eastern coast of Saudi Arabia, along the Persian Gulf. From Ras Tanura's control tower, you can see the classic totems of oil's dominion -- supertankers coming and going, row upon row of storage tanks and miles and miles of pipes. Ras Tanura, which I visited in June, is the funnel through which nearly 10 percent of the world's daily supply of petroleum flows. Standing in the control tower, you are surrounded by more than 50 million barrels of oil, yet not a drop can be seen.

 

The oil is there, of course. In a technological sleight of hand, oil can be extracted from the deserts of Arabia, processed to get rid of water and gas, sent through pipelines to a terminal on the gulf, loaded onto a supertanker and shipped to a port thousands of miles away, then run through a refinery and poured into a tanker truck that delivers it to a suburban gas station, where it is pumped into an S.U.V. -- all without anyone's actually glimpsing the stuff. So long as there is enough oil to fuel the global economy, it is not only out of sight but also out of mind, at least for consumers.

 

I visited Ras Tanura because oil is no longer out of mind, thanks to record prices caused by refinery shortages and surging demand -- most notably in the United States and China -- which has strained the capacity of oil producers and especially Saudi Arabia, the largest exporter of all. Unlike the 1973 crisis, when the embargo by the Arab members of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries created an artificial shortfall, today's shortage, or near-shortage, is real. If demand surges even more, or if a producer goes offline because of unrest or terrorism, there may suddenly not be enough oil to go around.

 

As Aref al-Ali, my escort from Saudi Aramco, the giant state-owned oil company, pointed out, ''One mistake at Ras Tanura today, and the price of oil will go up.'' This has turned the port into a fortress; its entrances have an array of gates and bomb barriers to prevent terrorists from cutting off the black oxygen that the modern world depends on. Yet the problem is far greater than the brief havoc that could be wrought by a speeding zealot with 50 pounds of TNT in the trunk of his car. Concerns are being voiced by some oil experts that Saudi Arabia and other producers may, in the near future, be unable to meet rising world demand. The producers are not running out of oil, not yet, but their decades-old reservoirs are not as full and geologically spry as they used to be, and they may be incapable of producing, on a daily basis, the increasing volumes of oil that the world requires. ''One thing is clear,'' warns Chevron, the second-largest American oil company, in a series of new advertisements, ''the era of easy oil is over.''

 

In the past several years, the gap between demand and supply, once considerable, has steadily narrowed, and today is almost negligible. The consequences of an actual shortfall of supply would be immense. If consumption begins to exceed production by even a small amount, the price of a barrel of oil could soar to triple-digit levels. This, in turn, could bring on a global recession, a result of exorbitant prices for transport fuels and for products that rely on petrochemicals -- which is to say, almost every product on the market. The impact on the American way of life would be profound: cars cannot be propelled by roof-borne windmills. The suburban and exurban lifestyles, hinged to two-car families and constant trips to work, school and Wal-Mart, might become unaffordable or, if gas rationing is imposed, impossible. Carpools would be the least imposing of many inconveniences; the cost of home heating would soar -- assuming, of course, that climate-controlled habitats do not become just a fond memory.

 

But will such a situation really come to pass? That depends on Saudi Arabia. To know the answer, you need to know whether the Saudis, who possess 22 percent of the world's oil reserves, can increase their country's output beyond its current limit of 10.5 million barrels a day, and even beyond the 12.5-million-barrel target it has set for 2009. (World consumption is about 84 million barrels a day.) Saudi Arabia is the sole oil superpower. No other producer possesses reserves close to its 263 billion barrels, which is almost twice as much as the runner-up, Iran, with 133 billion barrels. New fields in other countries are discovered now and then, but they tend to offer only small increments. For example, the much-contested and as-yet-unexploited reserves in the Alaska National Wildlife Refuge are believed to amount to about 10 billion barrels, or just a fraction of what the Saudis possess.

 

But the truth about Saudi oil is hard to figure out. Oil reservoirs cannot be inventoried like wood in a wilderness: the oil is underground, unseen by geologists and engineers, who can, at best, make highly educated guesses about how much is underfoot and how much can be extracted in the future. And there is a further obstacle: the Saudis will not let outsiders audit their confidential data on reserves and production. Oil is an industry in which not only is the product hidden from sight but so is reliable information about it. And because we do not know when a supply-demand shortfall might arrive, we do not know when to begin preparing for it, so as to soften its impact; the economic blow may come as a sledgehammer from the darkness.

 

Of course the Saudis do have something to say about this prospect. Before journeying to the kingdom, I went to Washington to hear the Saudi oil minister, Ali al-Naimi, speak at an energy conference in the mammoth Ronald Reagan Building and International Trade Center, not far from the White House. Naimi was the star attraction at a gathering of the American petro-political nexus. Samuel Bodman, the U.S. energy secretary, was on the dais next to him. David O'Reilly, chairman and C.E.O. of Chevron, was waiting in the wings. The moderator was an éminence grise of the oil world, James Schlesinger, a former energy secretary, defense secretary and C.I.A. director.

 

''I want to assure you here today that Saudi Arabia's reserves are plentiful, and we stand ready to increase output as the market dictates,'' said Naimi, dressed in a gray business suit and speaking with only a slight Arabic accent. He addressed skeptics who contend that Saudi reservoirs cannot be tapped for larger amounts of oil. ''I am quite bullish on technology as the key to our energy future,'' he said. ''Technological innovation will allow us to find and extract more oil around the world.'' He described the task of increasing output as just ''a question of investment'' in new wells and pipelines, and he noted that consuming nations urgently need to build new refineries to process increased supplies of crude. ''There is absolutely no lack of resources worldwide,'' he repeated.

 

His assurances did not assure. A barrel of oil cost $55 at the time of his speech; less than three months later, the price had jumped by 20 percent. The truth of the matter -- whether the world will really have enough petroleum in the years ahead -- was as well concealed as the millions of barrels of oil I couldn't see at Ras Tanura.

 

For 31 years, Matthew Simmons has prospered as the head of his own firm, Simmons & Company International, which advises energy companies on mergers and acquisitions. A member of the Council on Foreign Relations, a graduate of the Harvard Business School and an unpaid adviser on energy policy to the 2000 presidential campaign of George W. Bush, he would be a card-carrying member of the global oil nomenclatura, if cards were issued for such things. Yet he is one of the principal reasons the oil world is beginning to ask hard questions of itself.

 

Two years ago, Simmons went to Saudi Arabia on a government tour for business executives. The group was presented with the usual dog-and-pony show, but instead of being impressed, as most visitors tend to be, with the size and expertise of the Saudi oil industry, Simmons became perplexed. As he recalls in his somewhat heretical new book, ''Twilight in the Desert: The Coming Saudi Oil Shock and the World Economy,'' a senior manager at Aramco told the visitors that ''fuzzy logic'' would be used to estimate the amount of oil that could be recovered. Simmons had never heard of fuzzy logic. What could be fuzzy about an oil reservoir? He suspected that Aramco, despite its promises of endless supplies, might in fact not know how much oil remained to be recovered.

 

Simmons returned home with an itch to scratch. Saudi Arabia was one of the charter members of OPEC, founded in 1960 in Baghdad to coordinate the policies of oil producers. Like every OPEC country, Saudi Arabia provides only general numbers about its output and reserves; it does not release details about how much oil is extracted from each reservoir and what methods are used to extract that oil, and it does not permit audits by outsiders. The condition of Saudi fields, and those of other OPEC nations, is a closely guarded secret. That's largely because OPEC quotas, which were first imposed in 1983 to limit the output of member countries, were based on overall reserves; the higher an OPEC member's reserves, the higher its quota. It is widely believed that most, if not all, OPEC members exaggerated the sizes of their reserves in order to have the largest possible quota -- and thus the largest possible revenue stream.

 

In the days of excess supply, bankers like Simmons did not know, or care, about the fudging; whether or not reserves were hyped, there was plenty of oil coming out of the ground. Through the 1970's, 80's and 90's, the capacity of OPEC and non-OPEC countries exceeded demand, and that's why OPEC imposed a quota system -- to keep some product off the market (although many OPEC members, seeking as much revenue as possible, quietly sold more oil than they were supposed to). Until quite recently, the only reason to fear a shortage was if a boycott, war or strike were to halt supplies. Few people imagined a time when supply would dry up because of demand alone. But a steady surge in demand in recent years -- led by China's emergence as a voracious importer of oil -- has changed that.

 

This demand-driven scarcity has prompted the emergence of a cottage industry of experts who predict an impending crisis that will dwarf anything seen before. Their point is not that we are running out of oil, per se; although as much as half of the world's recoverable reserves are estimated to have been consumed, about a trillion barrels remain underground. Rather, they are concerned with what is called ''capacity'' -- the amount of oil that can be pumped to the surface on a daily basis. These experts -- still a minority in the oil world -- contend that because of the peculiarities of geology and the limits of modern technology, it will soon be impossible for the world's reservoirs to surrender enough oil to meet daily demand.

 

One of the starkest warnings came in a February report commissioned by the United States Department of Energy's National Energy Technology Laboratory. ''Because oil prices have been relatively high for the past decade, oil companies have conducted extensive exploration over that period, but their results have been disappointing,'' stated the report, assembled by Science Applications International, a research company that works on security and energy issues. ''If recent trends hold, there is little reason to expect that exploration success will dramatically improve in the future. . . . The image is one of a world moving from a long period in which reserves additions were much greater than consumption to an era in which annual additions are falling increasingly short of annual consumption. This is but one of a number of trends that suggest the world is fast approaching the inevitable peaking of conventional world oil production.''

 

The reference to ''peaking'' is not a haphazard word choice -- ''peaking'' is a term used in oil geology to define the critical point at which reservoirs can no longer produce increasing amounts of oil. (This tends to happen when reservoirs are about half-empty.) ''Peak oil'' is the point at which maximum production is reached; afterward, no matter how many wells are drilled in a country, production begins to decline. Saudi Arabia and other OPEC members may have enough oil to last for generations, but that is no longer the issue. The eventual and painful shift to different sources of energy -- the start of the post-oil age -- does not begin when the last drop of oil is sucked from under the Arabian desert. It begins when producers are unable to continue increasing their output to meet rising demand. Crunch time comes long before the last drop.

 

''The world has never faced a problem like this,'' the report for the Energy Department concluded. ''Without massive mitigation more than a decade before the fact, the problem will be pervasive and will not be temporary. Previous energy transitions (wood to coal and coal to oil) were gradual and evolutionary; oil peaking will be abrupt and revolutionary.''

 

Most experts do not share Simmons's concerns about the imminence of peak oil. One of the industry's most prominent consultants, Daniel Yergin, author of a Pulitzer Prize-winning book about petroleum, dismisses the doomsday visions. ''This is not the first time that the world has 'run out of oil,''' he wrote in a recent Washington Post opinion essay. ''It's more like the fifth. Cycles of shortage and surplus characterize the entire history of the oil industry.'' Yergin says that a number of oil projects that are under construction will increase the supply by 20 percent in five years and that technological advances will increase the amount of oil that can be recovered from existing reservoirs. (Typically, with today's technology, only about 40 percent of a reservoir's oil can be pumped to the surface.)

 

Yergin's bullish view has something in common with the views of the pessimists -- it rests on unknowns. Will the new projects that are under way yield as much oil as their financial backers hope? Will new technologies increase recovery rates as much as he expects? These questions are next to impossible to answer because coaxing oil out of the ground is an extraordinarily complex undertaking. The popular notion of reservoirs as underground lakes, from which wells extract oil like straws sucking a milkshake from a glass, is incorrect. Oil exists in drops between and inside porous rocks. A new reservoir may contain sufficient pressure to make these drops of oil flow to the surface in a gusher, but after a while -- usually within a few years and often sooner than that -- natural pressure lets up and is no longer sufficient to push oil to the surface. At that point, ''secondary'' recovery efforts are begun, like pumping water or gas into the reservoirs to increase the pressure.

 

This process is unpredictable; reservoirs are extremely temperamental. If too much oil is extracted too quickly or if the wrong types or amounts of secondary efforts are employed, the amount of oil that can be recovered from a field can be greatly reduced; this is known in the oil world as ''damaging a reservoir.'' A widely cited example is Oman: in 2001, its daily production reached more than 960,000 barrels, but then suddenly declined, despite the use of advanced technologies. Today, Oman produces 785,000 barrels of oil a day. Herman Franssen, a consultant who worked in Oman for a decade, sees that country's experience as a possible lesson in the limits of technology for other producers that try to increase or maintain high levels of output. ''They reached a million barrels a day, and then a few years later production collapsed,'' Franssen said in a phone interview. ''They used all these new technologies, but they haven't been able to stop the decline yet.''

  

The vague production and reserve data that gets published does not begin to tell the whole story of an oil field's health, production potential or even its size. For a clear-as-possible picture of a country's oil situation, you need to know what is happening in each field -- how many wells it has, how much oil each well is producing, what recovery methods are being used and how long they've been used and the trend line since the field went into production. Data of that sort are typically not released by state-owned companies like Saudi Aramco.

 

As Matthew Simmons searched for clues to the truth of the Saudi situation, he immersed himself in the minutiae of oil geology. He realized that data about Saudi fields might be found in the files of the Society of Petroleum Engineers. Oil engineers, like most professional groups, have regular conferences at which they discuss papers that delve into the work they do. The papers, which focus on particular wells that highlight a problem or a solution to a problem, are presented and debated at the conferences and published by the S.P.E. -- and then forgotten.

 

Before Simmons poked around, no one had taken the time to pull together the S.P.E. papers that involved Saudi oil fields and review them en masse. Simmons found more than 200 such papers and studied them carefully. Although the papers cover only a portion of the kingdom's wells and date back, in some cases, several decades, they constitute perhaps the best public data about the condition and prospects of Saudi reservoirs.

 

Ghawar is the treasure of the Saudi treasure chest. It is the largest oil field in the world and has produced, in the past 50 years, about 55 billion barrels of oil, which amounts to more than half of Saudi production in that period. The field currently produces more than five million barrels a day, which is about half of the kingdom's output. If Ghawar is facing problems, then so is Saudi Arabia and, indeed, the entire world.

 

Simmons found that the Saudis are using increasingly large amounts of water to force oil out of Ghawar. Most of the wells are concentrated in the northern portion of the 174-mile-long field. That might seem like good news -- when the north runs low, the Saudis need only to drill wells in the south. But in fact it is bad news, Simmons concluded, because the southern portions of Ghawar are geologically more difficult to draw oil from. ''Someday (and perhaps that day will be soon), the remarkably high well flow rates at Ghawar's northern end will fade, as reservoir pressures finally plummet,'' Simmons writes in his book. ''Then, Saudi Arabian oil output will clearly have peaked. The death of this great king'' -- meaning Ghawar -- ''leaves no field of vaguely comparable stature in the line of succession. Twilight at Ghawar is fast approaching.'' He goes on: ''The geological phenomena and natural driving forces that created the Saudi oil miracle are conspiring now in normal and predictable ways to bring it to its conclusion, in a time frame potentially far shorter than officialdom would have us believe.'' Simmons concludes, ''Saudi Arabia clearly seems to be nearing or at its peak output and cannot materially grow its oil production.''

  

Saudi officials belittle Simmons's work. Nansen Saleri, a senior Aramco official, has described Simmons as a banker ''trying to come across as a scientist.'' In a speech last year, Saleri wryly said, ''I can read 200 papers on neurology, but you wouldn't want me to operate on your relatives.'' I caught up with Simmons in June, during a trip he made to Manhattan to talk with a group of oil-shipping executives. The impression he gives is of an enthusiastic inventor sharing a discovery that took him by surprise. He has a certain wide-eyed wonder in his regard, as if a bit of mystery can be found in everything that catches his eye. And he has a rumpled aspect -- thinning hair slightly askew, shirt sleeves a fraction too long. Though he delivers a bracing message, his discourse can wander. He is a successful businessman, and it is clear that he did not achieve his position by being a man of impeccable convention. He certainly has not lost sight of the rule that people who shout ''the end is nigh'' do not tend to be favorably reviewed by historians, let alone by their peers. He notes in his book that way back in 1979, The New York Times published an investigative story by Seymour Hersh under the headline ''Saudi Oil Capacity Questioned.'' He knows that in past decades the Cassandras failed to foresee new technologies, like deep-water and horizontal drilling, that provided new sources of oil and raised the amount of oil that can be recovered from reservoirs.

 

But Simmons says that there are only so many rabbits technology can pull out of its petro-hat. He impishly notes that if the Saudis really wanted to, they could easily prove him wrong. ''If they want to satisfy people, they should issue field-by-field production reports and reserve data and have it audited,'' he told me. ''It would then take anybody less than a week to say, 'Gosh, Matt is totally wrong,' or 'Matt actually might be too optimistic.'''

 

Simmons has a lot riding on his campaign -- not only his name but also his business, which would not be rewarded if he is proved to be a fool. What, I asked, if the data show that the Saudis will be able to sustain production of not only 12.5 million barrels a day -- their target for 2009 -- but 15 million barrels, which global demand is expected to require of them in the not-too-distant future? ''The odds of them sustaining 12 million barrels a day is very low,'' Simmons replied. ''The odds of them getting to 15 million for 50 years -- there's a better chance of me having Bill Gates's net worth, and I wouldn't bet a dime on that forecast.''

 

The gathering of executives took place in a restaurant at Chelsea Piers; about 35 men sat around a set of tables as the host introduced Simmons. He rambled a bit but hit his talking points, and the executives listened raptly; at one point, the man on my right broke into a soft whistle, of the sort that means ''Holy cow.''

 

Simmons didn't let up. ''We're going to look back at history and say $55 a barrel was cheap,'' he said, recalling a TV interview in which he predicted that a barrel might hit triple digits.

 

He said that the anchor scoffed, in disbelief, ''A hundred dollars?''

 

Simmons replied, ''I wasn't talking about low triple digits.''

 

The onset of triple-digit prices might seem a blessing for the Saudis -- they would receive greater amounts of money for their increasingly scarce oil. But one popular misunderstanding about the Saudis -- and about OPEC in general -- is that high prices, no matter how high, are to their benefit.

 

Although oil costing more than $60 a barrel hasn't caused a global recession, that could still happen: it can take a while for high prices to have their ruinous impact. And the higher above $60 that prices rise, the more likely a recession will become. High oil prices are inflationary; they raise the cost of virtually everything -- from gasoline to jet fuel to plastics and fertilizers -- and that means people buy less and travel less, which means a drop-off in economic activity. So after a brief windfall for producers, oil prices would slide as recession sets in and once-voracious economies slow down, using less oil. Prices have collapsed before, and not so long ago: in 1998, oil fell to $10 a barrel after an untimely increase in OPEC production and a reduction in demand from Asia, which was suffering through a financial crash. Saudi Arabia and the other members of OPEC entered crisis mode back then; adjusted for inflation, oil was at its lowest price since the cartel's creation, threatening to feed unrest among the ranks of jobless citizens in OPEC states.

 

''The Saudis are very happy with oil at $55 per barrel, but they're also nervous,'' a Western diplomat in Riyadh told me in May, referring to the price that prevailed then. (Like all the diplomats I spoke to, he insisted on speaking anonymously because of the sensitivities of relations with Saudi Arabia.) ''They don't know where this magic line has moved to. Is it now $65? Is it $75? Is it $80? They don't want to find out, because if you did have oil move that far north . . . the chain reaction can come back to a price collapse again.''

 

High prices can have another unfortunate effect for producers. When crude costs $10 a barrel or even $30 a barrel, alternative fuels are prohibitively expensive. For example, Canada has vast amounts of tar sands that can be rendered into heavy oil, but the cost of doing so is quite high. Yet those tar sands and other alternatives, like bioethanol, hydrogen fuel cells and liquid fuel from natural gas or coal, become economically viable as the going rate for a barrel rises past, say, $40 or more, especially if consuming governments choose to offer their own incentives or subsidies. So even if high prices don't cause a recession, the Saudis risk losing market share to rivals into whose nonfundamentalist hands Americans would much prefer to channel their energy dollars. A concerted push for greater energy conservation in the United States, which consumes one-quarter of the world's oil (mostly to fuel our cars, as gasoline), would hurt producing nations, too. Basically, any significant reduction in the demand for oil would be ruinous for OPEC members, who have little to offer the world but oil; if a substitute can be found, their future is bleak. Another Western diplomat explained the problem facing the Saudis: ''You want to have the price as high as possible without sending the consuming nations into a recession and at the same time not have the price so high that it encourages alternative technologies.''

 

From the American standpoint, one argument in favor of conservation and a switch to alternative fuels is that by limiting oil imports, the United States and its Western allies would reduce their dependence on a potentially unstable region. (In fact, in an effort to offset the risks of relying on the Saudis, America's top oil suppliers are Canada and Mexico.) In addition, sending less money to Saudi Arabia would mean less money in the hands of a regime that has spent the past few decades doling out huge amounts of its oil revenue to mosques, madrassas and other institutions that have fanned the fires of Islamic radicalism. The oil money has been dispensed not just by the Saudi royal family but by private individuals who benefited from the oil boom -- like Osama bin Laden, whose ample funds, probably eroded now, came from his father, a construction magnate. Without its oil windfall, Saudi Arabia would have had a hard time financing radical Islamists across the globe.

 

For the Saudis, the political ramifications of reduced demand for its oil would not be negligible. The royal family has amassed vast personal wealth from the country's oil revenues. If, suddenly, Saudis became aware that the royal family had also failed to protect the value of the country's treasured resource, the response could be severe. The mere admission that Saudi reserves are not as impressively inexhaustible as the royal family has claimed could lead to hard questions about why the country, and the world, had been misled. With the death earlier this month of the long-ailing King Fahd, the royal family is undergoing another period of scrutiny; the new king, Abdullah, is in his 80's, and the crown prince, his half-brother Sultan, is in his 70's, so the issue of generational change remains to be settled. As long as the country is swimming in petro-dollars -- even as it is paying off debt accrued during its lean years -- everyone is relatively happy, but that can change. One diplomat I spoke to recalled a comment from Sheik Ahmed Zaki Yamani, the larger-than-life Saudi oil minister during the 1970's: ''The Stone Age didn't end for lack of stone, and the oil age will end long before the world runs out of oil.''

  

Until now, the Saudis had an excess of production capacity that allowed them, when necessary, to flood the market to drive prices down. They did that in 1990, when the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait eliminated not only Kuwait's supply of oil but also Iraq's. The Saudis functioned, as they always had, as the central bank of oil, releasing supply to the market when it was needed and withdrawing supply to keep prices from going lower than the cartel would have liked. In other words, they controlled not only the price of oil but their own destiny as well.

 

''That is what the world has called on them to do before -- turn on the taps to produce more and get prices down,'' a senior Western diplomat in Riyadh told me recently. ''Decreasing prices used to keep out alternative fuels. I don't see how they're able to do that anymore. This is a huge change, and it is a big step in the move to whatever is coming next. That's what's really happening.''

 

Without the ability to flood the markets with oil, the Saudis are resorting to flooding the market with promises; it is a sort of petro-jawboning. That's why Ali al-Naimi, the oil minister, told his Washington audience that Saudi Arabia has embarked on a crash program to raise its capacity to 12.5 million barrels a day by 2009 and even higher in the years after that. Naimi is not unlike a factory manager who needs to promise the moon to his valuable clients, for fear of losing or alarming them. He has no choice. The moment he says anything bracing, the touchy energy markets will probably panic, pushing prices even higher and thereby hastening the onset of recession, a switch to alternative fuels or new conservation efforts -- or all three. Just a few words of honest caution could move the markets; Naimi's speeches are followed nearly as closely in the financial world as those of Alan Greenspan.

 

I journeyed to Saudi Arabia to interview Naimi and other senior officials, to get as far beyond their prepared remarks as might be possible. Although I was allowed to see Ras Tanura, my interview requests were denied. I was invited to visit Aramco's oil museum in Dhahran, but that is something a Saudi schoolchild can do on a field trip. It was a ''show but don't tell'' policy. I was able to speak about production issues only with Ibrahim al-Muhanna, the oil ministry spokesman, who reluctantly met me over coffee in the lobby of my hotel in Riyadh. He defended Saudi Arabia's refusal to share more data, noting that the Saudis are no different from most oil producers.

 

''They will not tell you,'' he said. ''Nobody will. And that is not going to change.'' Referring to the fact that Saudi Arabia is often called the central bank of oil, he added: ''If an outsider goes to the Fed and asks, 'How much money do you have?' they will tell you. If you say, 'Can I come and count it?' they will not let you. This applies to oil companies and oil countries.'' I mentioned to Muhanna that many people think his government's ''trust us'' stance is not convincing in light of the cheating that has gone on within OPEC and in the industry as a whole; even Royal Dutch/Shell, a publicly listed oil company that undergoes regular audits, has admitted that it overstated its 2002 reserves by 23 percent.

 

''There is no reason for any country or company to lie,'' Muhanna replied. ''There is a lot of oil around.'' I didn't need to ask about Simmons and his peak-oil theory; when I met Muhanna at the conference in Washington, he nearly broke off our conversation at the mention of Simmons's name. ''He does not know anything,'' Muhanna said. ''The only thing he has is a big mouth. We should not pay attention to him. Either you believe us or you don't.''

 

So whom to believe? Before leaving New York for Saudi Arabia, I was advised by several oil experts to try to interview Sadad al-Husseini, who retired last year after serving as Aramco's top executive for exploration and production. I faxed him in Dhahran and received a surprisingly quick reply; he agreed to meet me. A week later, after I arrived in Riyadh, Husseini e-mailed me, asking when I would come to Dhahran; in a follow-up phone call, he offered to pick me up at the airport. He was, it seemed, eager to talk.

 

It can be argued that in a nation devoted to oil, Husseini knows more about it than anyone else. Born in Syria, Husseini was raised in Saudi Arabia, where his father was a government official whose family took on Saudi citizenship. Husseini earned a Ph.D. in geological sciences from Brown University in 1973 and went to work in Aramco's exploration department, eventually rising to the highest position. Until his retirement last year -- said to have been caused by a top-level dispute, the nature of which is the source of many rumors -- Husseini was a member of the company's board and its management committee. He is one of the most respected and accomplished oilmen in the world.

 

After meeting me at the cavernous airport that serves Dhahran, he drove me in his luxury sedan to the villa that houses his private office. As we entered, he pointed to an armoire that displayed a dozen or so vials of black liquid. ''These are samples from oil fields I discovered,'' he explained. Upstairs, there were even more vials, and he would have possessed more than that except, as he said, laughing, ''I didn't start collecting early enough.''

 

We spoke for several hours. The message he delivered was clear: the world is heading for an oil shortage. His warning is quite different from the calming speeches that Naimi and other Saudis, along with senior American officials, deliver on an almost daily basis. Husseini explained that the need to produce more oil is coming from two directions. Most obviously, demand is rising; in recent years, global demand has increased by two million barrels a day. (Current daily consumption, remember, is about 84 million barrels a day.) Less obviously, oil producers deplete their reserves every time they pump out a barrel of oil. This means that merely to maintain their reserve base, they have to replace the oil they extract from declining fields. It's the geological equivalent of running to stay in place. Husseini acknowledged that new fields are coming online, like offshore West Africa and the Caspian basin, but he said that their output isn't big enough to offset this growing need.

 

''You look at the globe and ask, 'Where are the big increments?' and there's hardly anything but Saudi Arabia,'' he said. ''The kingdom and Ghawar field are not the problem. That misses the whole point. The problem is that you go from 79 million barrels a day in 2002 to 82.5 in 2003 to 84.5 in 2004. You're leaping by two million to three million a year, and if you have to cover declines, that's another four to five million.'' In other words, if demand and depletion patterns continue, every year the world will need to open enough fields or wells to pump an additional six to eight million barrels a day -- at least two million new barrels a day to meet the rising demand and at least four million to compensate for the declining production of existing fields. ''That's like a whole new Saudi Arabia every couple of years,'' Husseini said. ''It can't be done indefinitely. It's not sustainable.''

 

Husseini speaks patiently, like a teacher who hopes someone is listening. He is in the enviable position of knowing what he talks about while having the freedom to speak openly about it. He did not disclose precise information about Saudi reserves or production -- which remain the equivalent of state secrets -- but he felt free to speak in generalities that were forthright, even when they conflicted with the reassuring statements of current Aramco officials. When I asked why he was willing to be so frank, he said it was because he sees a shortage ahead and wants to do what he can to avert it. I assumed that he would not be particularly distressed if his rivals in the Saudi oil establishment were embarrassed by his frankness.

 

Although Matthew Simmons says it is unlikely that the Saudis will be able to produce 12.5 million barrels a day or sustain output at that level for a significant period of time, Husseini says the target is realistic; he says that Simmons is wrong to state that Saudi Arabia has reached its peak. But 12.5 million is just an interim marker, as far as consuming nations are concerned, on the way to 15 million barrels a day and beyond -- and that is the point at which Husseini says problems will arise.

 

At the conference in Washington in May, James Schlesinger, the moderator, conducted a question-and-answer session with Naimi at the conclusion of the minister's speech. One of the first questions involved peak oil: might it be true that Saudi Arabia, which has relied on the same reservoirs, and especially Ghawar, for more than five decades, is nearing the geological limit of its output?

 

Naimi wouldn't hear of it.

 

''I can assure you that we haven't peaked,'' he responded. ''If we peaked, we would not be going to 12.5 and we would not be visualizing a 15-million-barrel-per-day production capacity. . . . We can maintain 12.5 or 15 million for the next 30 to 50 years.''

 

Experts like Husseini are very concerned by the prospect of trying to produce 15 million barrels a day. Even if production can be ramped up that high, geology may not be forgiving. Fields that are overproduced can drop off, in terms of output, quite sharply and suddenly, leaving behind large amounts of oil that cannot be coaxed out with existing technology. This is called trapped oil, because the rocks or sediment around it prevent it from escaping to the surface. Unless new technologies are developed, that oil will never be extracted. In other words, the haste to recover oil can lead to less oil being recovered.

 

''You could go to 15, but that's when the questions of depletion rate, reservoir management and damaging the fields come into play,'' says Nawaf Obaid, a Saudi oil and security analyst who is regarded as being exceptionally well connected to key Saudi leaders. ''There is an understanding across the board within the kingdom, in the highest spheres, that if you're going to 15, you'll hit 15, but there will be considerable risks . . . of a steep decline curve that Aramco will not be able to do anything about.''

 

Even if the Saudis are willing to risk damaging their fields, or even if the risk is overstated, Husseini points out a practical problem. To produce and sustain 15 million barrels a day, Saudi Arabia will have to drill a lot more wells and build a lot more pipelines and processing facilities. Currently, the global oil industry suffers a deficit of qualified engineers to oversee such projects and the equipment and the raw materials -- for example, rigs and steel -- to build them. These things cannot be wished from thin air or developed quickly enough to meet the demand.

 

''If we had two dozen Texas A&M's producing a thousand new engineers a year and the industrial infrastructure in the kingdom, with the drilling rigs and power plants, we would have a better chance, but you cannot put that into place overnight,'' Husseini said. ''Capacity is not just a function of reserves. It is a function of reserves plus know-how plus a commercial economic system that is designed to increase the resource exploitation. For example, in the U.S. you have infrastructure -- there must be tens of thousands of miles of pipelines. If we, in Saudi Arabia, evolve to that level of commercial maturity, we could probably produce a heck of a lot more oil. But to get there is a very tedious, slow process.''

 

He worries that the rising global demand for oil will lead to the petroleum equivalent of running an engine at ever-increasing speeds without stopping to cool it down or change the oil. Husseini does not want to see the fragile and irreplaceable reservoirs of the Middle East become damaged through wanton overproduction.

 

''If you are ramping up production so fast and jump from high to higher to highest, and you're not having enough time to do what needs to be done, to understand what needs to be done, then you can damage reservoirs,'' he said. ''Systematic development is not just a matter of money. It's a matter of reservoir dynamics, understanding what's there, analyzing and understanding information. That's where people come in, experience comes in. These are not universally available resources.''

 

The most worrisome part of the crisis ahead revolves around a set of statistics from the Energy Information Administration, which is part of the U.S. Department of Energy. The E.I.A. forecast in 2004 that by 2020 Saudi Arabia would produce 18.2 million barrels of oil a day, and that by 2025 it would produce 22.5 million barrels a day. Those estimates were unusual, though. They were not based on secret information about Saudi capacity, but on the projected needs of energy consumers. The figures simply assumed that Saudi Arabia would be able to produce whatever the United States needed it to produce. Just last month, the E.I.A. suddenly revised those figures downward -- not because of startling new information about world demand or Saudi supply but because the figures had given so much ammunition to critics. Husseini, for example, described the 2004 forecast as unrealistic.

 

''That's not how you would manage a national, let alone an international, economy,'' he explained. ''That's the part that is scary. You draw some assumptions and then say, 'O.K., based on these assumptions, let's go forward and consume like hell and burn like hell.''' When I asked whether the kingdom could produce 20 million barrels a day -- about twice what it is producing today from fields that may be past their prime -- Husseini paused for a second or two. It wasn't clear if he was taking a moment to figure out the answer or if he needed a moment to decide if he should utter it. He finally replied with a single word: No.

 

''It's becoming unrealistic,'' he said. ''The expectations are beyond what is achievable. This is a global problem . . . that is not going to be solved by tinkering with the Saudi industry.''

  

It would be unfair to blame the Saudis alone for failing to warn of whatever shortages or catastrophes might lie ahead.

 

In the political and corporate realms of the oil world, there are few incentives to be forthright. Executives of major oil companies have been reluctant to raise alarms; the mere mention of scarce supplies could alienate the governments that hand out lucrative exploration contracts and also send a message to investors that oil companies, though wildly profitable at the moment, have a Malthusian long-term future. Fortunately, that attitude seems to be beginning to change. Chevron's ''easy oil is over'' advertising campaign is an indication that even the boosters of an oil-drenched future are not as bullish as they once were.

 

Politicians remain in the dark. During the 2004 presidential campaign, which occurred as gas prices were rising to record levels, the debate on energy policy was all but nonexistent. The Bush campaign produced an advertisement that concluded: ''Some people have wacky ideas. Like taxing gasoline more so people drive less. That's John Kerry.'' Although many environmentalists would have been delighted if Kerry had proposed that during the campaign, in fact the ad was referring to a 50-cents-a-gallon tax that Kerry supported 11 years ago as part of a package of measures to reduce the deficit. (The gas tax never made it to a vote in the Senate.) Kerry made no mention of taxing gasoline during the campaign; his proposal for doing something about high gas prices was to pressure OPEC to increase supplies.

 

Husseini, for one, doesn't buy that approach. ''Everybody is looking at the producers to pull the chestnuts out of the fire, as if it's our job to fix everybody's problems,'' he told me. ''It's not our problem to tell a democratically elected government that you have to do something about your runaway consumers. If your government can't do the job, you can't expect other governments to do it for them.'' Back in the 70's, President Carter called for the moral equivalent of war to reduce our dependence on foreign oil; he was not re-elected. Since then, few politicians have spoken of an energy crisis or suggested that major policy changes are necessary to avert one. The energy bill signed earlier this month by President Bush did not even raise fuel-efficiency standards for passenger cars. When a crisis comes -- whether in a year or 2 or 10 -- it will be all the more painful because we will have done little or nothing to prepare for it.

 

Peter Maass is a contributing writer. He is writing a book about oil.

 

Copyright 2005 The New York Times Company Home Privacy Policy Search Corrections XML Help Contact Us Work for Us Back to Top

Technological window at midday ...

"This quadrangle was part of the grounds of the University of Dixie, commonly called "Dixie College," chartered 18 Nov. 1909. Jere Whitson and other Cookeville citizens led the drive for the college; Whitson donated twelve acres for the institution. Construction began 16 May 1911. In Sept, 1912, high school and junior college classes began in a building where Derryberry Hall now stands. In 1915 the Dixie Board ceded its property to the State to endow the present University"

 

Once the college was endowed to the State, it was renamed Tennessee Polytechnic Institute and remained known as TPI until 1965. At this time, the name was changed to Tennessee Technological University and it continues to operate as TTU or just simply Tech today.

 

In the background of this photograph is Derryberry Hall (aka the Administration Building). It is the oldest building on campus… more or less. When Jere Whitson donated land for the formation of the private school, this was the first structure built on the land. In its early years, the Administration Building was the center of most activities at the college. It held the offices and classrooms. In 1921, the rather simple building had an east and west wing added and was completely overhauled. As time went on and the campus grew, the Administration Building continued to be the main part of campus. It housed all the administrative offices, the Business Department, and the Home Economics Department. In 1960, TPI mostly tore the Administrative Building down so that it could be rebuilt better than before. The new building was doubled in size, was fireproofed, and modernized. In 1962, the State Board named the new building after the Derryberrys. At that time, Everett Derryberry served for over 20 years as the University president with his wife, Joan Derryberry, who was a major supporter and developer of the Art and Music Departments at Tech.

 

Three bracketed photos were taken with a handheld Nikon D7200 and combined with Photomatix Pro to create this HDR image. Additional adjustments were made in Photoshop CS6.

 

"For I know the plans I have for you", declares the LORD, "plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future." ~Jeremiah 29:11

 

The best way to view my photostream is through Flickriver with the following link: www.flickriver.com/photos/photojourney57/

Betty said she prayed today

For the sky to blow away

Or maybe stay

She wasn't sure.

 

For when she thought of summer rain

Calling for her mind again

She lost the pain

And stayed for more.

 

Going to see the river man

Going to tell him all I can

About the ban

On feeling free.

 

If he tells me all he knows

About the way his river flows

I don't suppose

It's meant for me.

 

Oh, how they come and go

Oh, how they come and go.

Inspired by these guys and what P@UŁ♤ said.

One of Tennessee Tech’s oldest and most historic buildings is Jere Whitson Hall, which originally housed the university library. It has now been transformed into a campus visitor and welcome center housing the offices of admissions, financial aid, advisement, academic services, records and registration and military and veteran affairs. Renovation of the building began in 2016 and ended 2017. It was originally built in 1949 and named for Jere Whitson, one of the founders of Dixie College (the original name of Tennessee Tech University).

 

Three bracketed photos were taken with a handheld Nikon D7200 and combined with Photomatix Pro to create this HDR image. Additional adjustments were made in Photoshop CS6.

 

"For I know the plans I have for you", declares the LORD, "plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future." ~Jeremiah 29:11

World War II Aviation

Aircraft demonstrating some of the major technological advancements during World War II.

 

The story of World War II land-based fighter aviation.

 

The Udvar-Hazy Center in Chantilly, Virginia is our companion facility to the Museum on the National Mall in Washington, DC. Opened in 2003, its two huge hangars — the Boeing Aviation Hangar and the James S. McDonnell Space Hangar — display thousands of aviation and space artifacts, including a Lockheed SR-71 Blackbird, a Concorde, and the Space Shuttle Discovery. The Center also offers the Airbus IMAX® Theater and the Donald D. Engen Observation Tower, which gives you a 360-degree bird's-eye view of Washington Dulles International Airport and the surrounding area. Udvar-Hazy Center is also home to the Mary Baker Engen Restoration Hangar where preservation of the National Air and Space Museum's collections takes place. A glassed-in mezzanine provides a view of restoration projects in progress. Researchers will also find the majority of the Archives' collections at the Udvar-Hazy Center reading room.

  

(It continues, Robbe)

 

As technological advance resulted in sophisticated cybernetic augmentation, wetware computing, and nano-technology, it also resulted in greater sophistication in criminal activity. Some security providers began to understand the safety risk of over-reliance on technology. The Mk.10 provided a simple, reliable, and -more importantly- unhackable security armament.

A low tech security solution to the high tech criminal infiltration.

 

(Comments and Notes welcomed)

Technological waste in the leaves ...

DSCF5183-Edit

 

I believe we are in the middle of a new technological revolution. On an almost weekly basis, I am seeing things become possible in video and stills and it is so exciting. Of course those angel wings aren't real, but they are pretty detailed and they could be real, or rather they are closest I have got to creating realistic angel wings in the digital space. The feathers and the shadow they cast look pretty real on the original, but there was a lot (I mean the fair part of a day) 'mucking around' to see what worked and jettison the rubbish (of which some was pretty laughable). But, I am going to enjoy AI I think. Apart from the gravestone, the background is all generated. Thanks to Jorji for braving chilly January weather. 2 strobes used on her portrait.

 

I noticed the 1k wide image wasn't doing this process justice, so I have replaced with the full sized image.

 

Folks, I am trying to grow my YouTube channel. There are travel videos, a camera or lens review here and there and just nice views of nice places. If any of that piques your interest, can you follow me up there?

 

www.youtube.com/@nicklaytonUK

 

Plus, in the near future, 'how to shoot a levitation' video, a visit to Wroclaw and another fashion style about to shoot. Thanks!

 

Eobard Thawne - Born in the 25th century an era where technological advances made the want for metahuman abilities nearly redundant, Eobard Thawne idolized the time in which powers were at the forefront of human evolution. Thawne had a passion for history in the realm of metahuman abilities, especially towards one man specifically, the Flash. His passion quickly turned to obsession as he became the head curator at the world famous Flash Museum. While working at the museum, Eobard obsessively read through all material on the Flash and began to fantasize about being celebrated like him. Eobard made his crazed fantasy a reality when he managed to recreate the accident that gave Barry Allen his powers.

 

Using his newfound powers and a stolen suit from the Flash Museum, Eobard made his way back to the 21st century in an attempt to befriend his hero. At first, Barry was accepting of Eobard because he saw him as another person who was given powers due to a massive storm across the Gem Cities. However, after Eobard became jealous of the fact that Barry’s attention was split between so many people in his life, Eobard began to plot against those who Barry held dear. Starting with killing Barry’s girlfriend Iris and her nephew Wally, Eobard became a vengeful killer in Barry’s life. After killing two of Barry’s closest acquaintances, Eobard realized that he could do much more damage to the life of a man who wouldn’t accept him as a friend.

 

So with sadistic jealousy and rage clouding his judgement, Eobard time traveled back further in time to the point when Barry was only nine years old to murder his parents. Unbeknownst to Thawne, his frequent time traveling made him a target of the reapers of the Speed Force. Because of this, Eobard was only successful in killing Barry’s mother before Black Flash pulled him into the Speed Force to stop him from further tampering with the timeline. However, the effects of what Thawne did were irreversible and would cause ripple effects throughout Barry Allen’s life.

 

Eobard was able to escape the clutches of Black Flash and laid low in Central City for years as he planned his next attack on Barry Allen. While laying low, Eobard assumed the identity of a Central City University professor named Harrison Wells. Under the alias of Professor Wells, Eobard became one of the founders of Star Labs as an attempt to gain the trust of the public eye.

 

After the Barry of this timeline was given Speed Force abilities, Thawne made himself known by kidnapping Iris West once again. This time however, Barry was able to stop Thawne from killing his girlfriend. In doing so, Barry helped create a new wing of Iron Heights that would be the home to many metahuman criminals. Unfortunately however secure the power dampening restraints seemed to be, Thawne always found ways to repeatedly break out and again cause mayhem in Allen’s life. Unlike most of the Flash’s Rogues who commit crimes for their own gain, Thawne has made it clear that his only goal is to make Barry Allen’s life a living hell.

The Nuva archer is a skilled warrior and technological wonder. The concept was brought about by General Taka's imagination and executed by the hands of the most skilled matoran. This archer differs from traditional archer units in that he does not need to carry his ammunition on his body during battle. His "arrows" or bolts are stored, generated, and replinished within his technologically advanced left arm which coordinates with the "crossbow" or bolt thrower that he wields. The bolt thrower is one of a kind and is viewed as a breakthrough in modern weaponry. Though quite bulky, the bolt thrower allows the archer to fire single highly charged energy bolts, which have the power to penetrate light/medium armor, at a rate of 1.5 seconds. After firing 10 bolts the archer's arm requires a cool down period which lasts approximately 8 to 10 seconds. Once completed, the archer may continue raining destruction down upon the enemy. The archer's built-in optical system allows the archer to target enemy's from a greater distance than the typical archer. The Nuva archer's advanced weaponry and overal engineering give the Nuva army a great advantage on the battlefied when facing overwhelming numbers.

 

I hope you guys enjoy this one! Building him really inspired me to go back and revamp General Taka and the Nuva Infantry, so stay tuned for those guys in the future! Thanks for all of your support this past year! Looking forward to the next year!

These guys know folks don't particularly like them coming across their yards, digging holes, messing up grass, etc. but it is all in the name of technology.

 

MetroNet is coming to our state and may come to yours in the near future. Here is a blurb from the Internet on what to expect! (Just hoping your yard doesn't get this treatment. It is day two! But, I know they are trying hard to keep it clean. And I hear they level the dirt and plant grass seed! So, we will see!)

 

From their website: Metronet specializes in fiber-optic internet, which generates a more reliable connection that won’t slow down when neighborhood demand goes up. Our users see average speeds around 415 Mbps, with the highest averages in Indiana and Illinois. Upload speeds are as fast as download speeds with Metronet’s Fiber internet service, also known as symmetrical speeds.

__________________________________________________________________________________

 

Even in our seemingly rational and technological world, myths and legends have their place. While most do not believe in evil wizards and fairies good, but. Poisonous spider in the Yucca or parallel civilizations in the sewers Our modern fairy tale called Urban legends. And a friend of a friend of a ... she has really experienced.

 

My friend, is a stewardess. And a colleague of hers who has experienced quite a crazy story : On a flight from New York to LA, it was found that an elderly lady was sitting next to two African-Americans in the same row. She had them less than enthusiastic and tried several times to make the flight attendant on these 'maladministration' attention . After subtle hints were ignored, the lady put her concerns quite dramatically ,

 

"Well, now listen here ! This is an outrage that I have to sit in these niggers here ! I refuse to continue to sit with such sub-humans in the same bank "

 

The flight attendant recognized the situation at a glance and then smiled warmly . " Yes , of course , I understand. Gentlemen , please come. In the first Class are still two places free! "

 

This story tells of a 27 year old engineer from Hamburg. He was deemed to wearing it when he completed an internship at Airbus. The story is quite popular with people who work in the airline industry . It also circulates in this or similar form as a joke and to point out the absurdity of prejudice and xenophobia.

___________________________________________________________________________________

 

Auch in unserer scheinbar so rationalen und technisierten Welt haben Mythen und Legenden ihren Platz. Zwar glauben die meisten nicht mehr an böse Zauberer und gute Feen, dafür aber an die giftige Spinne in der Yucca-Palme oder an Parallelzivilisationen in der Kanalisation. Unsere modernen Märchen heißen Urban legends. Und ein Freund von einem Freund von einem … hat sie wirklich erlebt.

 

Also, meine Freundin, die ist Stewardess. Und eine Kollegin von ihr, die hat eine ganz verrückte Geschichte erlebt: Bei einem Flug von New York nach L.A. ergab es sich, dass eine ältere Dame neben zwei Afroamerikanern in derselben Sitzreihe saß. Sie war davon alles andere als begeistert und versuchte mehrfach, die Stewardess auf diesen „Missstand“ aufmerksam zu machen. Nachdem subtile Andeutungen ignoriert wurden, formulierte die Dame ihr Anliegen recht drastisch: „Also, jetzt hören Sie mal! Das ist eine Unverschämtheit, dass ich hier bei diesen Niggern sitzen muss! Ich weigere mich, weiterhin mit solchen Untermenschen in derselben Bank zu sitzen!“ Die Stewardess erfasste die Situation mit einem Blick und lächelte dann freundlich. „Ja, natürlich, ich verstehe. Meine Herren, kommen Sie doch bitte mit. In der 1. Klasse sind noch zwei Plätze frei!“

 

Diese Geschichte wurde von einem 27jährigen Ingenieur aus Hamburg berichtet. Zugetragen wurde sie ihm, als er ein Praktikum bei Airbus absolvierte. Die Geschichte ist recht beliebt bei Leuten, die in der Luftfahrbranche arbeiten. Außerdem kursiert sie in dieser oder ähnlicher Form auch als Witz und soll auf die Absurdität von Vorurteilen und Fremdenfeindlichkeit hinweisen.

 

Aufgezeichnet von Janika Rehak

 

Copyright: Goethe-Institut Prag

Dezember 2012

 

Source: jadu || More UrbanLegens: jadu - UrbanLegens

While no technological masterpiece, this old egg beater is an obsolete dinosaur by today's standards - these days cakes are mostly made using electric mixers or food processors. But this old egg beater has served me well, having mixed cakes week in, week out when my family was growing up.

 

I could have taken a shot of the egg beater doing nothing, but thought I should whip up a 'throw it all in together and mix' type cake. The recipe called for the eggs to be beaten with some caster sugar till thick and creamy and then add the rest of the ingredients and combine. Now it's cooked, I suppose I'm going to have to eat it so my efforts aren't wasted.

In recent years, Simon Denny’s research-based art projects have explored aspects of technological evolution and obsolescence, corporate and neoliberal culture, national identity, tech-industry culture, and the internet.

His Biennale Arte 2015 project, Secret Power, was partly prompted by the impact of NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden’s leaks of PowerPoint slides outlining top-secret US telecommunications surveillance programmes to the world media, which began in 2013. These slides highlighted New Zealand’s role in US intelligence work, as a member of the US-led Five Eyes alliance. Now in the open, the slides have come to represent international surveillance work and its impact on individual privacy.

Secret Power takes its title from investigative journalist Nicky Hager’s 1996 book, which first revealed New Zealand’s involvement in US intelligence gathering.

Secret Power addresses the intersection of knowledge and geography in the post-Snowden era. It investigates current and obsolete languages for describing geo-political space, focusing on the roles played by technology and design. The contexts and histories of both venues provide highly productive frameworks for Secret Power, and have been directly engaged with through the work.

In the Library, Denny has installed a server room, with server racks and a workstation. In addition to holding computer equipment, the server racks and workstation double as vitrines, displaying a case study in NSA visual culture, consisting of sculptural and graphic elements based on the work of a former NSA designer and Creative Director of Defense Intelligence David Darchicourt and the Snowden slide archive, suggesting links in iconography and treatment. The server room resonates with the Library’s decorated Renaissance-period interior, with its maps and allegorical paintings—Denny’s inquiry into the current iconography of geopolitical power being framed within an obsolete one.

Advanced Technological Designs Incorporated is proud to present, hot off our assembly lines, the all new AWT (Assisted Walking Transport)!

 

Are you an older gentleman or gentlewoman? Are you tired of not being able to get around as easily as you could once? Well, that's not a problem anymore, with the AWT! Simply sit down into the comfy harness and strap your legs in for a wild ride!

 

There's no more need for your old canes. Throw those old things out, because you won't need them anymore. Not if you have the AWT! Completely self propelled, the AWT multiplies the energy you have stored in those run-down legs of yours and allows the owner to move at a much faster pace.

 

The AWT's padded design allows for strolls of comfort, making sure your skin never rubs against the joints of the suit. Are you ready to get back out on the streets? Call now and get your very own Assisted Walking Transport! Our operators will be standing by.

 

(Hey, man) Oh, Henry, don't be unkind, go away

(Hey, man) I can't take you this time, no way

(Hey, man) Dear droogie, don't crash here

There's only room for one and here she comes, here she comes

 

Oh, don't lean on me, man, 'cause you can't afford the ticket

Back from Suffragette City

Oh, don't lean on me, man, 'cause you ain't got time to check it

You know my Suffragette City

Is outta sight

She's all right

Oh, hit me

Firearm was a notorious, technologically-advanced bounty hunter who continuously threatened the Hero Factory. Firearm is a mercenary more than capable of carrying out assignments but lacking in the ambition to mastermind his own agenda.

 

Shortly before the betrayal of Von Ness, Firearm came to operate exclusively out of the Delta Quadrant, gaining experience as a mercenary and branching out his services. For some time, Firearm established his headquarters along the edge of the Necron Expanse, a vast region of frontier space with no stars systems for 200 lightyears. Following the success of Hero Factory in the galactic neighborhood, Firearm was able to inflate his service charges exponentially, with bounty hunters coming in short supply.

 

Over the course of his career, Firearm has utilized a number of weapons and gadgets to carry out his assignments, initially starting with standard issue Meteor Blasters and later diversifying to carry heavily customized gear for each mission. Most prominently, he has been known to carry a modified Combat Rifle looted from a Makuhero Industries factory.

 

Unlike many of his contemporaries, Firearm has been known to keep several extensive weapons and ammunition caches on planets around the Delta Quadrant, often containing launchers looted from Heroes or other criminals.

Buy it, use it, break it, fix it,

Trash it, change it, mail - upgrade it,

Charge it, point it, zoom it, press it,

Snap it, work it, quick - erase it,

Write it, cut it, paste it, save it,

Load it, check it, quick - rewrite it,

Plug it, play it, burn it, rip it,

Drag and drop it, zip - unzip it,

Lock it, fill it, call it, find it,

View it, code it, jam - unlock it,

Surf it, scroll it, pause it, click it,

Cross it, crack it, switch - update it,

Name it, rate it, tune it, print it,

Scan it, send it, fax - rename it,

Touch it, bring it, Pay it, watch it,

Turn it, leave it, start - format it.

 

Technologic. Technologic. Technologic. Technologic.

 

Anyone else on Tumblr? You can listen to this song there.

 

Strong, technological, powerful: it’s the almighty Miami Bull.

 

This masterfully crafted sculpture is a futuristic symbol of modern finance and is a precious statue that was inspired by the City of Miami.

 

The Miami Bull can be admired in all its glory at Miami Dade College in downtown Miami, Florida.

 

The Miami Bull is the result of a unique collaboration between a team of talented artists specializing in concept design, specialty statues, and creative communications.

 

The concept was ideated by talented creatives from the NYC-based advertising agency SMALL who, together with brand strategists from Octonano, enlisted the help of acclaimed artist Furio Tedeschi and the revolutionary Onyx Forge Studio, to bring the ultramodern robotic bull to life.

 

Furio Tedeschi, the award-winning concept artist behind the sculpture’s design, has over 20 years of professional experience in the entertainment industry, and has worked on some of Hollywood’s biggest hits, including Raised by Wolves, Transformers: The Last Knight, and A Quiet Place. Most recently, Tedeschi was responsible for creating the Transformers’ Bumblebee design, as well as designs for the latest in the live-action film series, Transformers: Rise of the Beasts (2023). Tedeschi was nominated for an Art Directors Guild Award in Creature Concept for his work on the 2019 horror film A Quiet Place and was also the winner of the ZBrush Summit Sculpt Off for three consecutive years.

 

Finally, the world-renowned design and build studio Onyx Forge was ultimately responsible for bringing the Miami Bull to life. Merging traditional and digital sculpting, Onyx Forge specializes in handcrafting skills, fabrication, 3D printing and more. Onyx Forge has worked on some of the most iconic films of all time, including Predator (1987), Hellboy (2004), Underworld Evolution (2006), and Beauty and the Beast (2014).

 

The process of creating the Miami Bull involved a team of more than 30 people and took over six months to complete

  

Credit for the data above is given to the following websites:

www.miamibull.com/meet-the-artists/

miamifilmfestival2024.eventive.org/films/65e00a0bff80d000...

 

© All Rights Reserved - you may not use this image in any form without my prior permission.

  

Curtis Wharf, Guemes Channel.

Built in 2019 by Dakota Creek Industries (DCI) Anacortes, Washington.

"This US flagged Amendment 80 replacement vessel designed for Fishermen’s Finest by Skipsteknisk AS (ST-116XL) specifically for catching and producing frozen at sea white fish products, groundfish, including yellow and rock sole species. Operations will be the North Pacific Gulf of Alaska, Chukchi Sea and Bering Sea."

dakotacreek.com/project/fishermens-finest-trawler/

 

"The Vessel joins 6 other ST-116 design trawler (ST116 Class), operating around the world and will be the first ST-116XL, and first to operate in the United States. The Vessel will be powered by a MAN 8L32/44CR diesel engine, utilizing the latest Common Rail technology." - Fishermen’s Finest

This image presents a striking portrait of a human face composed of—or dissolving into—fragments of technological components. The right side appears to disintegrate into cables, circuitry, and micro-elements, while the serene expression evokes introspection and calm. The contrast between organic form and mechanical disarray invites reflections on identity, the fusion of human and machine, and the fragility of technological being. It serves as a powerful allegory for the interface between consciousness and artificial intelligence.

 

You can use this image free of charge. The terms of use and the image download are available via the following link: pixabay.com/illustrations/face-fragment-technology-woman-...

 

#AIart #cyberportrait #digitalidentity #futuristicart #humanmachine #techfusion #conceptualart #posthumanism

technological retrograde...

In this technological era, I am sure there are still a few hobbyist's and craftsman, who love to create with their hands. In Alaska and the Yukon, cabins have their own unique wall art. I thought this wooden saw complete with bears, was a great gift idea. With Christmas less than 2 months away - some folks might want to give it a try.

"Simply Technological"

 

Bü 131 Jungmann - Journées Portes Ouvertes à l'aérodrome de Vesoul-Frotey (Bourgogne/Franche-Comté 2017)

 

Website : www.fluidr.com/photos/pat21

 

"Copyright © – Patrick Bouchenard

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

TECHNOLOGICAL MURMURS IN A RED WORLD BY AEON VON ZARK.

Así, casi así es, como me gustas, como más me gustas.

 

*

 

This way, that's almost as, I like, as I like you the most.

 

#

  

Part of Pandora's hub series

Curls up on Kindle , instead of "old fashioned book" LOL !!!!!!!!!!!!!

Happy Caturday !