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I just found this blog, http://sabreur76.wordpress.com/, offering my material for commercial sale. The person doing this is using a gmail account: sabreur76@gmail.com. This is not me, please, don't support this person. I have locked down access to my photostream until he or she takes down the blog. Thanks!
The soldiers who stand guard at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier are hand picked and rigorously trained. They have come from every state in the union, every walk of life. There are men and women. For some this is their first unit in the Army, others are veterans of many years. Over the years there have been Regular Army and Draftees.
The duty is not for everyone. Over 80% of the soldiers who tryout for this duty do not make it.
Each soldier must have strong military bearing, discipline, stamina and present an outstanding soldierly appearance. Each Sentinel must be able to flawlessly perform seven different types of walks, honors and ceremonies. They must retain vast amounts of knowledge concerning the Tomb, Arlington National Cemetery, the United States Army and their unit.
One of the first reactions of visitors at the Tomb, is to comment on how tall the soldiers are. While you might not notice the difference in height, a Tomb Guard can tell what Relief is working . . . . just based on their height.
There are three Relief's assigned to the Tomb Guard Platoon, each consisting of 9 enlisted soldiers (they use the same break-down as a Light Infantry Squad). The heights are equal on each Relief, with the tallest assigned to the 1st Relief.
1st Relief 6'2" to 6'4"
2nd Relief 6' to 6'2"
3rd Relief 5'11" to 6'
Each Relief is commanded by a Staff Sergeant (E-6) and has two "Teams", each consisting of an Assistant Relief Commander (E-5) and 4 Sentinels (E-4 and below), for a total of 9 soldiers per Relief. The Headquarter (HQ) Relief consists of the Sergeant of the Guard, Assistant Sergeant of the Guard, the Primary Trainer and a Driver.
If you have ever watched the Changing of the Guard, you will have noticed that not all Guards do the same thing. The Tomb is completely run by Non-Commissioned Officers (NCO). There are six different levels of responsibility at the Tomb:
Sentinel:
This soldier has the hardest job - to stand watch at the Tomb. They do this in one hour shifts, 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. These soldiers typically have the rank of Private First Class (PFC) through Specialist (SPC) and the average age is 22. The sentinels do not wear rank insignia on their uniforms so that they do not outrank the Unknowns, whatever their rank may have been. Soldiers serving in other roles, like Relief Commander and Assistant Relief Commander, do wear insignia of their rank when changing the guard only. They have a separate uniform worn when they actually guard the Unknowns or are "Posted".
Assistant Relief Commander (ARC):
An NCO with the rank of Corporal (CPL) or Sergeant (SGT), this is the Relief Commander's right hand. Each Relief Commander has two ARC assigned. The average age for an ARC is 24.
Relief Commander (RC):
An NCO with the Rank of Staff Sergeant (SSG). The RC has the greatest responsibility on a day-to-day basis. The RC is not only responsible for conducting the Changing of the Guard, but also for the welfare and morale of the Relief as a whole. In the absence of the Sergeant of the Guard, the RC is responsible for everything that happens at the Tomb. The RC typically has served in two different units in the Army, and the average age is 27. In this photo you see the RC (on the left) with the Relief Sentinel at the hourly Changing of the Guard.
Assistant Sergeant of the Guard (ASOG):
The ASOG is typically the senior Staff Sergeant (SSG) in the Platoon. The ASOG has the primary duty of conducting the daily administrative duties, to include oversight of the initial training phase for new Sentinels. The ASOG assumes the duties and responsibilities of the Sergeant of the Guard in his absence.
Sergeant of the Guard (SOG):
The buck stops here! The SOG is the Platoon Sergeant for the Tomb Guards , and holds the rank of Sergeant First Class (SFC). The primary duties and responsibilities of the SOG include Presidential Wreath Ceremonies, as well as the overall responsibility for the conduct and actions of the Platoon. The SOG has served in many different leadership positions in the Army, and typically has been a Platoon Sergeant once before. The SOG is the most experienced NCO in the Platoon, and has the added responsibility of mentoring and developing the junior NCO's. The average age of the SOG is 30.
(Technical note: I have to confess that the DoF and bokeh here are nothing more than Photoshop trickery. There is no way anyone could get this kind of blur at a f/6.3. Sorry if I misled you. Best; V)
Superga, the most beautiful shoes in the world... ever!
Visit the unofficial Superga web page
E buttate quei cessi di converse e vans da globalizzati schiavi delle marche USA!!
Through your ugly converse and vans!!!
COMPRO SUPERGA USATE E DISTRUTTE!!!
Mandatemi le foto delle vostre Superga a supergalove@yahoo.co.uk
I BUY VERY USED AND WORN OUT SUPERGA!!!
Send me your Superga pics at supergalove@yahoo.co.uk
Camera: Hasselblad 500C/M, Planar C T*3,5/100. Film: Rollei Digibase CN200 Pro, home-developed with the Rollei Digibase C-41 developer and the Tetenal Colortec C-41 Rapid Kit's bleach and stabilizer.
Used #averyelle Be A Unicorn stamp set; #SSSFAVE Stitched Squares, #SSSFAVE Mini Hearts, #yournextstamp Puffy Cloud Border dies.
Please see more at wp.me/p4J7Fn-xr
PGB Photographer & Creative - © Philip Romeyn - Phillostar Gone Ballistic 2021 - Photo may not be edited from its original form. Commercial use is prohibited without contacting me.
Taken using the Schneider 150mm Symmar-S f/5.6 lens @ f/16 on my Horseman 45FA. I've found that the Fotodiox 4x5 DSLR adapter fits on the back for the 45FA far better than on the Horseman L45's back. The image is made from two rows of three frames each, having flipped the adapter over to get the two rows. The results are perfect compared to when I tried using the rear standard rise and drop on the L45.
Copyrighted and All Rights Reserved. Unauthorized use, copy, display,
or distribution of any photographs by or of Stefano Carini Photography is strictly prohibited.
You do not have permission to use this photo in any form without the written consent of Stefano Carini.
©2009 Stefano Carini Photography
Please don't use this image on websites, blogs or other media without my explicit permission. If you wish to use this image, please, contact me through flickrmail or at vicenc.feliu@gmail.com. © All rights reserved...
The cavalier daring of John Hunt Morgan's cavalry alarmed authorities - Southern as well as Northern. The soft spoken son of a prominent Lexington, Kentucky, family, Morgan was a Mexican War veteran and commander of the Lexington Rifles Militia Company before the war. He made his mark in the Confederacy as the Colonel of the 2nd Kentucky Cavalry and as a Brigadier General commanding a cavalry division in the Army of Tennessee.
These two engraved Colt 1860 Army Revolvers with ivory Mexican Eagle grips were his and he carried them until his death in combat against Federal cavalry in Greensville, Kentucky, on 4 September, 1864.
My Mexican Eagles are not engraved but they remind me of this matched brace.
Museum of the Confederacy, Richmond, Virginia.
Camera used: Spartus 35F Model 400
Film used: Ilford Delta 100
Location: Mount Dandenong, Victoria, Australia.
Unless I'm mistaken, when this camera first came out in the late 1940s it was one of the cheapest 35mm film cameras available, though still expensive compared to the box cameras most people owned. The camera was made in Chicago....when was the last time ANYTHING was made in Chicago??
Use same photo twice.
I used one of these photos on my Thanksgiving (No Title) LO from Feb 3rd. I used Studio Calico tree ring paper and one of their sequin packets, which is what inspired the colors I used.
Graffiti (plural; singular graffiti or graffito, the latter rarely used except in archeology) is art that is written, painted or drawn on a wall or other surface, usually without permission and within public view. Graffiti ranges from simple written words to elaborate wall paintings, and has existed since ancient times, with examples dating back to ancient Egypt, ancient Greece, and the Roman Empire (see also mural).
Graffiti is a controversial subject. In most countries, marking or painting property without permission is considered by property owners and civic authorities as defacement and vandalism, which is a punishable crime, citing the use of graffiti by street gangs to mark territory or to serve as an indicator of gang-related activities. Graffiti has become visualized as a growing urban "problem" for many cities in industrialized nations, spreading from the New York City subway system and Philadelphia in the early 1970s to the rest of the United States and Europe and other world regions
"Graffiti" (usually both singular and plural) and the rare singular form "graffito" are from the Italian word graffiato ("scratched"). The term "graffiti" is used in art history for works of art produced by scratching a design into a surface. A related term is "sgraffito", which involves scratching through one layer of pigment to reveal another beneath it. This technique was primarily used by potters who would glaze their wares and then scratch a design into them. In ancient times graffiti were carved on walls with a sharp object, although sometimes chalk or coal were used. The word originates from Greek γράφειν—graphein—meaning "to write".
The term graffiti originally referred to the inscriptions, figure drawings, and such, found on the walls of ancient sepulchres or ruins, as in the Catacombs of Rome or at Pompeii. Historically, these writings were not considered vanadlism, which today is considered part of the definition of graffiti.
The only known source of the Safaitic language, an ancient form of Arabic, is from graffiti: inscriptions scratched on to the surface of rocks and boulders in the predominantly basalt desert of southern Syria, eastern Jordan and northern Saudi Arabia. Safaitic dates from the first century BC to the fourth century AD.
Some of the oldest cave paintings in the world are 40,000 year old ones found in Australia. The oldest written graffiti was found in ancient Rome around 2500 years ago. Most graffiti from the time was boasts about sexual experiences Graffiti in Ancient Rome was a form of communication, and was not considered vandalism.
Ancient tourists visiting the 5th-century citadel at Sigiriya in Sri Lanka write their names and commentary over the "mirror wall", adding up to over 1800 individual graffiti produced there between the 6th and 18th centuries. Most of the graffiti refer to the frescoes of semi-nude females found there. One reads:
Wet with cool dew drops
fragrant with perfume from the flowers
came the gentle breeze
jasmine and water lily
dance in the spring sunshine
side-long glances
of the golden-hued ladies
stab into my thoughts
heaven itself cannot take my mind
as it has been captivated by one lass
among the five hundred I have seen here.
Among the ancient political graffiti examples were Arab satirist poems. Yazid al-Himyari, an Umayyad Arab and Persian poet, was most known for writing his political poetry on the walls between Sajistan and Basra, manifesting a strong hatred towards the Umayyad regime and its walis, and people used to read and circulate them very widely.
Graffiti, known as Tacherons, were frequently scratched on Romanesque Scandinavian church walls. When Renaissance artists such as Pinturicchio, Raphael, Michelangelo, Ghirlandaio, or Filippino Lippi descended into the ruins of Nero's Domus Aurea, they carved or painted their names and returned to initiate the grottesche style of decoration.
There are also examples of graffiti occurring in American history, such as Independence Rock, a national landmark along the Oregon Trail.
Later, French soldiers carved their names on monuments during the Napoleonic campaign of Egypt in the 1790s. Lord Byron's survives on one of the columns of the Temple of Poseidon at Cape Sounion in Attica, Greece.
The oldest known example of graffiti "monikers" found on traincars created by hobos and railworkers since the late 1800s. The Bozo Texino monikers were documented by filmmaker Bill Daniel in his 2005 film, Who is Bozo Texino?.
In World War II, an inscription on a wall at the fortress of Verdun was seen as an illustration of the US response twice in a generation to the wrongs of the Old World:
During World War II and for decades after, the phrase "Kilroy was here" with an accompanying illustration was widespread throughout the world, due to its use by American troops and ultimately filtering into American popular culture. Shortly after the death of Charlie Parker (nicknamed "Yardbird" or "Bird"), graffiti began appearing around New York with the words "Bird Lives".
Modern graffiti art has its origins with young people in 1960s and 70s in New York City and Philadelphia. Tags were the first form of stylised contemporary graffiti. Eventually, throw-ups and pieces evolved with the desire to create larger art. Writers used spray paint and other kind of materials to leave tags or to create images on the sides subway trains. and eventually moved into the city after the NYC metro began to buy new trains and paint over graffiti.
While the art had many advocates and appreciators—including the cultural critic Norman Mailer—others, including New York City mayor Ed Koch, considered it to be defacement of public property, and saw it as a form of public blight. The ‘taggers’ called what they did ‘writing’—though an important 1974 essay by Mailer referred to it using the term ‘graffiti.’
Contemporary graffiti style has been heavily influenced by hip hop culture and the myriad international styles derived from Philadelphia and New York City Subway graffiti; however, there are many other traditions of notable graffiti in the twentieth century. Graffiti have long appeared on building walls, in latrines, railroad boxcars, subways, and bridges.
An early graffito outside of New York or Philadelphia was the inscription in London reading "Clapton is God" in reference to the guitarist Eric Clapton. Creating the cult of the guitar hero, the phrase was spray-painted by an admirer on a wall in an Islington, north London in the autumn of 1967. The graffito was captured in a photograph, in which a dog is urinating on the wall.
Films like Style Wars in the 80s depicting famous writers such as Skeme, Dondi, MinOne, and ZEPHYR reinforced graffiti's role within New York's emerging hip-hop culture. Although many officers of the New York City Police Department found this film to be controversial, Style Wars is still recognized as the most prolific film representation of what was going on within the young hip hop culture of the early 1980s. Fab 5 Freddy and Futura 2000 took hip hop graffiti to Paris and London as part of the New York City Rap Tour in 1983
Commercialization and entrance into mainstream pop culture
Main article: Commercial graffiti
With the popularity and legitimization of graffiti has come a level of commercialization. In 2001, computer giant IBM launched an advertising campaign in Chicago and San Francisco which involved people spray painting on sidewalks a peace symbol, a heart, and a penguin (Linux mascot), to represent "Peace, Love, and Linux." IBM paid Chicago and San Francisco collectively US$120,000 for punitive damages and clean-up costs.
In 2005, a similar ad campaign was launched by Sony and executed by its advertising agency in New York, Chicago, Atlanta, Philadelphia, Los Angeles, and Miami, to market its handheld PSP gaming system. In this campaign, taking notice of the legal problems of the IBM campaign, Sony paid building owners for the rights to paint on their buildings "a collection of dizzy-eyed urban kids playing with the PSP as if it were a skateboard, a paddle, or a rocking horse".
Tristan Manco wrote that Brazil "boasts a unique and particularly rich, graffiti scene ... [earning] it an international reputation as the place to go for artistic inspiration". Graffiti "flourishes in every conceivable space in Brazil's cities". Artistic parallels "are often drawn between the energy of São Paulo today and 1970s New York". The "sprawling metropolis", of São Paulo has "become the new shrine to graffiti"; Manco alludes to "poverty and unemployment ... [and] the epic struggles and conditions of the country's marginalised peoples", and to "Brazil's chronic poverty", as the main engines that "have fuelled a vibrant graffiti culture". In world terms, Brazil has "one of the most uneven distributions of income. Laws and taxes change frequently". Such factors, Manco argues, contribute to a very fluid society, riven with those economic divisions and social tensions that underpin and feed the "folkloric vandalism and an urban sport for the disenfranchised", that is South American graffiti art.
Prominent Brazilian writers include Os Gêmeos, Boleta, Nunca, Nina, Speto, Tikka, and T.Freak. Their artistic success and involvement in commercial design ventures has highlighted divisions within the Brazilian graffiti community between adherents of the cruder transgressive form of pichação and the more conventionally artistic values of the practitioners of grafite.
Graffiti in the Middle East has emerged slowly, with taggers operating in Egypt, Lebanon, the Gulf countries like Bahrain or the United Arab Emirates, Israel, and in Iran. The major Iranian newspaper Hamshahri has published two articles on illegal writers in the city with photographic coverage of Iranian artist A1one's works on Tehran walls. Tokyo-based design magazine, PingMag, has interviewed A1one and featured photographs of his work. The Israeli West Bank barrier has become a site for graffiti, reminiscent in this sense of the Berlin Wall. Many writers in Israel come from other places around the globe, such as JUIF from Los Angeles and DEVIONE from London. The religious reference "נ נח נחמ נחמן מאומן" ("Na Nach Nachma Nachman Meuman") is commonly seen in graffiti around Israel.
Graffiti has played an important role within the street art scene in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA), especially following the events of the Arab Spring of 2011 or the Sudanese Revolution of 2018/19. Graffiti is a tool of expression in the context of conflict in the region, allowing people to raise their voices politically and socially. Famous street artist Banksy has had an important effect in the street art scene in the MENA area, especially in Palestine where some of his works are located in the West Bank barrier and Bethlehem.
There are also a large number of graffiti influences in Southeast Asian countries that mostly come from modern Western culture, such as Malaysia, where graffiti have long been a common sight in Malaysia's capital city, Kuala Lumpur. Since 2010, the country has begun hosting a street festival to encourage all generations and people from all walks of life to enjoy and encourage Malaysian street culture.
The modern-day graffitists can be found with an arsenal of various materials that allow for a successful production of a piece. This includes such techniques as scribing. However, spray paint in aerosol cans is the number one medium for graffiti. From this commodity comes different styles, technique, and abilities to form master works of graffiti. Spray paint can be found at hardware and art stores and comes in virtually every color.
Stencil graffiti is created by cutting out shapes and designs in a stiff material (such as cardboard or subject folders) to form an overall design or image. The stencil is then placed on the "canvas" gently and with quick, easy strokes of the aerosol can, the image begins to appear on the intended surface.
Some of the first examples were created in 1981 by artists Blek le Rat in Paris, in 1982 by Jef Aerosol in Tours (France); by 1985 stencils had appeared in other cities including New York City, Sydney, and Melbourne, where they were documented by American photographer Charles Gatewood and Australian photographer Rennie Ellis
Tagging is the practice of someone spray-painting "their name, initial or logo onto a public surface" in a handstyle unique to the writer. Tags were the first form of modern graffiti.
Modern graffiti art often incorporates additional arts and technologies. For example, Graffiti Research Lab has encouraged the use of projected images and magnetic light-emitting diodes (throwies) as new media for graffitists. yarnbombing is another recent form of graffiti. Yarnbombers occasionally target previous graffiti for modification, which had been avoided among the majority of graffitists.
Theories on the use of graffiti by avant-garde artists have a history dating back at least to the Asger Jorn, who in 1962 painting declared in a graffiti-like gesture "the avant-garde won't give up"
Many contemporary analysts and even art critics have begun to see artistic value in some graffiti and to recognize it as a form of public art. According to many art researchers, particularly in the Netherlands and in Los Angeles, that type of public art is, in fact an effective tool of social emancipation or, in the achievement of a political goal
In times of conflict, such murals have offered a means of communication and self-expression for members of these socially, ethnically, or racially divided communities, and have proven themselves as effective tools in establishing dialog and thus, of addressing cleavages in the long run. The Berlin Wall was also extensively covered by graffiti reflecting social pressures relating to the oppressive Soviet rule over the GDR.
Many artists involved with graffiti are also concerned with the similar activity of stenciling. Essentially, this entails stenciling a print of one or more colors using spray-paint. Recognized while exhibiting and publishing several of her coloured stencils and paintings portraying the Sri Lankan Civil War and urban Britain in the early 2000s, graffitists Mathangi Arulpragasam, aka M.I.A., has also become known for integrating her imagery of political violence into her music videos for singles "Galang" and "Bucky Done Gun", and her cover art. Stickers of her artwork also often appear around places such as London in Brick Lane, stuck to lamp posts and street signs, she having become a muse for other graffitists and painters worldwide in cities including Seville.
Graffitist believes that art should be on display for everyone in the public eye or in plain sight, not hidden away in a museum or a gallery. Art should color the streets, not the inside of some building. Graffiti is a form of art that cannot be owned or bought. It does not last forever, it is temporary, yet one of a kind. It is a form of self promotion for the artist that can be displayed anywhere form sidewalks, roofs, subways, building wall, etc. Art to them is for everyone and should be showed to everyone for free.
Graffiti is a way of communicating and a way of expressing what one feels in the moment. It is both art and a functional thing that can warn people of something or inform people of something. However, graffiti is to some people a form of art, but to some a form of vandalism. And many graffitists choose to protect their identities and remain anonymous or to hinder prosecution.
With the commercialization of graffiti (and hip hop in general), in most cases, even with legally painted "graffiti" art, graffitists tend to choose anonymity. This may be attributed to various reasons or a combination of reasons. Graffiti still remains the one of four hip hop elements that is not considered "performance art" despite the image of the "singing and dancing star" that sells hip hop culture to the mainstream. Being a graphic form of art, it might also be said that many graffitists still fall in the category of the introverted archetypal artist.
Banksy is one of the world's most notorious and popular street artists who continues to remain faceless in today's society. He is known for his political, anti-war stencil art mainly in Bristol, England, but his work may be seen anywhere from Los Angeles to Palestine. In the UK, Banksy is the most recognizable icon for this cultural artistic movement and keeps his identity a secret to avoid arrest. Much of Banksy's artwork may be seen around the streets of London and surrounding suburbs, although he has painted pictures throughout the world, including the Middle East, where he has painted on Israel's controversial West Bank barrier with satirical images of life on the other side. One depicted a hole in the wall with an idyllic beach, while another shows a mountain landscape on the other side. A number of exhibitions also have taken place since 2000, and recent works of art have fetched vast sums of money. Banksy's art is a prime example of the classic controversy: vandalism vs. art. Art supporters endorse his work distributed in urban areas as pieces of art and some councils, such as Bristol and Islington, have officially protected them, while officials of other areas have deemed his work to be vandalism and have removed it.
Pixnit is another artist who chooses to keep her identity from the general public. Her work focuses on beauty and design aspects of graffiti as opposed to Banksy's anti-government shock value. Her paintings are often of flower designs above shops and stores in her local urban area of Cambridge, Massachusetts. Some store owners endorse her work and encourage others to do similar work as well. "One of the pieces was left up above Steve's Kitchen, because it looks pretty awesome"- Erin Scott, the manager of New England Comics in Allston, Massachusetts.
Graffiti artists may become offended if photographs of their art are published in a commercial context without their permission. In March 2020, the Finnish graffiti artist Psyke expressed his displeasure at the newspaper Ilta-Sanomat publishing a photograph of a Peugeot 208 in an article about new cars, with his graffiti prominently shown on the background. The artist claims he does not want his art being used in commercial context, not even if he were to receive compensation.
Territorial graffiti marks urban neighborhoods with tags and logos to differentiate certain groups from others. These images are meant to show outsiders a stern look at whose turf is whose. The subject matter of gang-related graffiti consists of cryptic symbols and initials strictly fashioned with unique calligraphies. Gang members use graffiti to designate membership throughout the gang, to differentiate rivals and associates and, most commonly, to mark borders which are both territorial and ideological.
Graffiti has been used as a means of advertising both legally and illegally. Bronx-based TATS CRU has made a name for themselves doing legal advertising campaigns for companies such as Coca-Cola, McDonald's, Toyota, and MTV. In the UK, Covent Garden's Boxfresh used stencil images of a Zapatista revolutionary in the hopes that cross referencing would promote their store.
Smirnoff hired artists to use reverse graffiti (the use of high pressure hoses to clean dirty surfaces to leave a clean image in the surrounding dirt) to increase awareness of their product.
Graffiti often has a reputation as part of a subculture that rebels against authority, although the considerations of the practitioners often diverge and can relate to a wide range of attitudes. It can express a political practice and can form just one tool in an array of resistance techniques. One early example includes the anarcho-punk band Crass, who conducted a campaign of stenciling anti-war, anarchist, feminist, and anti-consumerist messages throughout the London Underground system during the late 1970s and early 1980s. In Amsterdam graffiti was a major part of the punk scene. The city was covered with names such as "De Zoot", "Vendex", and "Dr Rat". To document the graffiti a punk magazine was started that was called Gallery Anus. So when hip hop came to Europe in the early 1980s there was already a vibrant graffiti culture.
The student protests and general strike of May 1968 saw Paris bedecked in revolutionary, anarchistic, and situationist slogans such as L'ennui est contre-révolutionnaire ("Boredom is counterrevolutionary") and Lisez moins, vivez plus ("Read less, live more"). While not exhaustive, the graffiti gave a sense of the 'millenarian' and rebellious spirit, tempered with a good deal of verbal wit, of the strikers.
I think graffiti writing is a way of defining what our generation is like. Excuse the French, we're not a bunch of p---- artists. Traditionally artists have been considered soft and mellow people, a little bit kooky. Maybe we're a little bit more like pirates that way. We defend our territory, whatever space we steal to paint on, we defend it fiercely.
The developments of graffiti art which took place in art galleries and colleges as well as "on the street" or "underground", contributed to the resurfacing in the 1990s of a far more overtly politicized art form in the subvertising, culture jamming, or tactical media movements. These movements or styles tend to classify the artists by their relationship to their social and economic contexts, since, in most countries, graffiti art remains illegal in many forms except when using non-permanent paint. Since the 1990s with the rise of Street Art, a growing number of artists are switching to non-permanent paints and non-traditional forms of painting.
Contemporary practitioners, accordingly, have varied and often conflicting practices. Some individuals, such as Alexander Brener, have used the medium to politicize other art forms, and have used the prison sentences enforced on them as a means of further protest. The practices of anonymous groups and individuals also vary widely, and practitioners by no means always agree with each other's practices. For example, the anti-capitalist art group the Space Hijackers did a piece in 2004 about the contradiction between the capitalistic elements of Banksy and his use of political imagery.
Berlin human rights activist Irmela Mensah-Schramm has received global media attention and numerous awards for her 35-year campaign of effacing neo-Nazi and other right-wing extremist graffiti throughout Germany, often by altering hate speech in humorous ways.
In Serbian capital, Belgrade, the graffiti depicting a uniformed former general of Serb army and war criminal, convicted at ICTY for war crimes and crimes against humanity, including genocide and ethnic cleansing in Bosnian War, Ratko Mladić, appeared in a military salute alongside the words "General, thank to your mother". Aleks Eror, Berlin-based journalist, explains how "veneration of historical and wartime figures" through street art is not a new phenomenon in the region of former Yugoslavia, and that "in most cases is firmly focused on the future, rather than retelling the past". Eror is not only analyst pointing to danger of such an expressions for the region's future. In a long expose on the subject of Bosnian genocide denial, at Balkan Diskurs magazine and multimedia platform website, Kristina Gadže and Taylor Whitsell referred to these experiences as a young generations' "cultural heritage", in which young are being exposed to celebration and affirmation of war-criminals as part of their "formal education" and "inheritance".
There are numerous examples of genocide denial through celebration and affirmation of war criminals throughout the region of Western Balkans inhabited by Serbs using this form of artistic expression. Several more of these graffiti are found in Serbian capital, and many more across Serbia and Bosnian and Herzegovinian administrative entity, Republika Srpska, which is the ethnic Serbian majority enclave. Critics point that Serbia as a state, is willing to defend the mural of convicted war criminal, and have no intention to react on cases of genocide denial, noting that Interior Minister of Serbia, Aleksandar Vulin decision to ban any gathering with an intent to remove the mural, with the deployment of riot police, sends the message of "tacit endorsement". Consequently, on 9 November 2021, Serbian heavy police in riot gear, with graffiti creators and their supporters, blocked the access to the mural to prevent human rights groups and other activists to paint over it and mark the International Day Against Fascism and Antisemitism in that way, and even arrested two civic activist for throwing eggs at the graffiti.
Graffiti may also be used as an offensive expression. This form of graffiti may be difficult to identify, as it is mostly removed by the local authority (as councils which have adopted strategies of criminalization also strive to remove graffiti quickly). Therefore, existing racist graffiti is mostly more subtle and at first sight, not easily recognized as "racist". It can then be understood only if one knows the relevant "local code" (social, historical, political, temporal, and spatial), which is seen as heteroglot and thus a 'unique set of conditions' in a cultural context.
A spatial code for example, could be that there is a certain youth group in an area that is engaging heavily in racist activities. So, for residents (knowing the local code), a graffiti containing only the name or abbreviation of this gang already is a racist expression, reminding the offended people of their gang activities. Also a graffiti is in most cases, the herald of more serious criminal activity to come. A person who does not know these gang activities would not be able to recognize the meaning of this graffiti. Also if a tag of this youth group or gang is placed on a building occupied by asylum seekers, for example, its racist character is even stronger.
By making the graffiti less explicit (as adapted to social and legal constraints), these drawings are less likely to be removed, but do not lose their threatening and offensive character.
Elsewhere, activists in Russia have used painted caricatures of local officials with their mouths as potholes, to show their anger about the poor state of the roads. In Manchester, England, a graffitists painted obscene images around potholes, which often resulted in them being repaired within 48 hours.
In the early 1980s, the first art galleries to show graffitists to the public were Fashion Moda in the Bronx, Now Gallery and Fun Gallery, both in the East Village, Manhattan.
A 2006 exhibition at the Brooklyn Museum displayed graffiti as an art form that began in New York's outer boroughs and reached great heights in the early 1980s with the work of Crash, Lee, Daze, Keith Haring, and Jean-Michel Basquiat. It displayed 22 works by New York graffitists, including Crash, Daze, and Lady Pink. In an article about the exhibition in the magazine Time Out, curator Charlotta Kotik said that she hoped the exhibition would cause viewers to rethink their assumptions about graffiti.
From the 1970s onwards, Burhan Doğançay photographed urban walls all over the world; these he then archived for use as sources of inspiration for his painterly works. The project today known as "Walls of the World" grew beyond even his own expectations and comprises about 30,000 individual images. It spans a period of 40 years across five continents and 114 countries. In 1982, photographs from this project comprised a one-man exhibition titled "Les murs murmurent, ils crient, ils chantent ..." (The walls whisper, shout and sing ...) at the Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris.
In Australia, art historians have judged some local graffiti of sufficient creative merit to rank them firmly within the arts. Oxford University Press's art history text Australian Painting 1788–2000 concludes with a long discussion of graffiti's key place within contemporary visual culture, including the work of several Australian practitioners.
Between March and April 2009, 150 artists exhibited 300 pieces of graffiti at the Grand Palais in Paris.
Spray paint has many negative environmental effects. The paint contains toxic chemicals, and the can uses volatile hydrocarbon gases to spray the paint onto a surface.
Volatile organic compound (VOC) leads to ground level ozone formation and most of graffiti related emissions are VOCs. A 2010 paper estimates 4,862 tons of VOCs were released in the United States in activities related to graffiti.
In China, Mao Zedong in the 1920s used revolutionary slogans and paintings in public places to galvanize the country's communist movement.
Based on different national conditions, many people believe that China's attitude towards Graffiti is fierce, but in fact, according to Lance Crayon in his film Spray Paint Beijing: Graffiti in the Capital of China, Graffiti is generally accepted in Beijing, with artists not seeing much police interference. Political and religiously sensitive graffiti, however, is not allowed.
In Hong Kong, Tsang Tsou Choi was known as the King of Kowloon for his calligraphy graffiti over many years, in which he claimed ownership of the area. Now some of his work is preserved officially.
In Taiwan, the government has made some concessions to graffitists. Since 2005 they have been allowed to freely display their work along some sections of riverside retaining walls in designated "Graffiti Zones". From 2007, Taipei's department of cultural affairs also began permitting graffiti on fences around major public construction sites. Department head Yong-ping Lee (李永萍) stated, "We will promote graffiti starting with the public sector, and then later in the private sector too. It's our goal to beautify the city with graffiti". The government later helped organize a graffiti contest in Ximending, a popular shopping district. graffitists caught working outside of these designated areas still face fines up to NT$6,000 under a department of environmental protection regulation. However, Taiwanese authorities can be relatively lenient, one veteran police officer stating anonymously, "Unless someone complains about vandalism, we won't get involved. We don't go after it proactively."
In 1993, after several expensive cars in Singapore were spray-painted, the police arrested a student from the Singapore American School, Michael P. Fay, questioned him, and subsequently charged him with vandalism. Fay pleaded guilty to vandalizing a car in addition to stealing road signs. Under the 1966 Vandalism Act of Singapore, originally passed to curb the spread of communist graffiti in Singapore, the court sentenced him to four months in jail, a fine of S$3,500 (US$2,233), and a caning. The New York Times ran several editorials and op-eds that condemned the punishment and called on the American public to flood the Singaporean embassy with protests. Although the Singapore government received many calls for clemency, Fay's caning took place in Singapore on 5 May 1994. Fay had originally received a sentence of six strokes of the cane, but the presiding president of Singapore, Ong Teng Cheong, agreed to reduce his caning sentence to four lashes.
In South Korea, Park Jung-soo was fined two million South Korean won by the Seoul Central District Court for spray-painting a rat on posters of the G-20 Summit a few days before the event in November 2011. Park alleged that the initial in "G-20" sounds like the Korean word for "rat", but Korean government prosecutors alleged that Park was making a derogatory statement about the president of South Korea, Lee Myung-bak, the host of the summit. This case led to public outcry and debate on the lack of government tolerance and in support of freedom of expression. The court ruled that the painting, "an ominous creature like a rat" amounts to "an organized criminal activity" and upheld the fine while denying the prosecution's request for imprisonment for Park.
In Europe, community cleaning squads have responded to graffiti, in some cases with reckless abandon, as when in 1992 in France a local Scout group, attempting to remove modern graffiti, damaged two prehistoric paintings of bison in the Cave of Mayrière supérieure near the French village of Bruniquel in Tarn-et-Garonne, earning them the 1992 Ig Nobel Prize in archeology.
In September 2006, the European Parliament directed the European Commission to create urban environment policies to prevent and eliminate dirt, litter, graffiti, animal excrement, and excessive noise from domestic and vehicular music systems in European cities, along with other concerns over urban life.
In Budapest, Hungary, both a city-backed movement called I Love Budapest and a special police division tackle the problem, including the provision of approved areas.
The Anti-social Behaviour Act 2003 became Britain's latest anti-graffiti legislation. In August 2004, the Keep Britain Tidy campaign issued a press release calling for zero tolerance of graffiti and supporting proposals such as issuing "on the spot" fines to graffiti offenders and banning the sale of aerosol paint to anyone under the age of 16. The press release also condemned the use of graffiti images in advertising and in music videos, arguing that real-world experience of graffiti stood far removed from its often-portrayed "cool" or "edgy'" image.
To back the campaign, 123 Members of Parliament (MPs) (including then Prime Minister Tony Blair), signed a charter which stated: "Graffiti is not art, it's crime. On behalf of my constituents, I will do all I can to rid our community of this problem."
In the UK, city councils have the power to take action against the owner of any property that has been defaced under the Anti-social Behaviour Act 2003 (as amended by the Clean Neighbourhoods and Environment Act 2005) or, in certain cases, the Highways Act. This is often used against owners of property that are complacent in allowing protective boards to be defaced so long as the property is not damaged.
In July 2008, a conspiracy charge was used to convict graffitists for the first time. After a three-month police surveillance operation, nine members of the DPM crew were convicted of conspiracy to commit criminal damage costing at least £1 million. Five of them received prison sentences, ranging from eighteen months to two years. The unprecedented scale of the investigation and the severity of the sentences rekindled public debate over whether graffiti should be considered art or crime.
Some councils, like those of Stroud and Loerrach, provide approved areas in the town where graffitists can showcase their talents, including underpasses, car parks, and walls that might otherwise prove a target for the "spray and run".
Graffiti Tunnel, University of Sydney at Camperdown (2009)
In an effort to reduce vandalism, many cities in Australia have designated walls or areas exclusively for use by graffitists. One early example is the "Graffiti Tunnel" located at the Camperdown Campus of the University of Sydney, which is available for use by any student at the university to tag, advertise, poster, and paint. Advocates of this idea suggest that this discourages petty vandalism yet encourages artists to take their time and produce great art, without worry of being caught or arrested for vandalism or trespassing.[108][109] Others disagree with this approach, arguing that the presence of legal graffiti walls does not demonstrably reduce illegal graffiti elsewhere. Some local government areas throughout Australia have introduced "anti-graffiti squads", who clean graffiti in the area, and such crews as BCW (Buffers Can't Win) have taken steps to keep one step ahead of local graffiti cleaners.
Many state governments have banned the sale or possession of spray paint to those under the age of 18 (age of majority). However, a number of local governments in Victoria have taken steps to recognize the cultural heritage value of some examples of graffiti, such as prominent political graffiti. Tough new graffiti laws have been introduced in Australia with fines of up to A$26,000 and two years in prison.
Melbourne is a prominent graffiti city of Australia with many of its lanes being tourist attractions, such as Hosier Lane in particular, a popular destination for photographers, wedding photography, and backdrops for corporate print advertising. The Lonely Planet travel guide cites Melbourne's street as a major attraction. All forms of graffiti, including sticker art, poster, stencil art, and wheatpasting, can be found in many places throughout the city. Prominent street art precincts include; Fitzroy, Collingwood, Northcote, Brunswick, St. Kilda, and the CBD, where stencil and sticker art is prominent. As one moves farther away from the city, mostly along suburban train lines, graffiti tags become more prominent. Many international artists such as Banksy have left their work in Melbourne and in early 2008 a perspex screen was installed to prevent a Banksy stencil art piece from being destroyed, it has survived since 2003 through the respect of local street artists avoiding posting over it, although it has recently had paint tipped over it.
In February 2008 Helen Clark, the New Zealand prime minister at that time, announced a government crackdown on tagging and other forms of graffiti vandalism, describing it as a destructive crime representing an invasion of public and private property. New legislation subsequently adopted included a ban on the sale of paint spray cans to persons under 18 and increases in maximum fines for the offence from NZ$200 to NZ$2,000 or extended community service. The issue of tagging become a widely debated one following an incident in Auckland during January 2008 in which a middle-aged property owner stabbed one of two teenage taggers to death and was subsequently convicted of manslaughter.
Graffiti databases have increased in the past decade because they allow vandalism incidents to be fully documented against an offender and help the police and prosecution charge and prosecute offenders for multiple counts of vandalism. They also provide law enforcement the ability to rapidly search for an offender's moniker or tag in a simple, effective, and comprehensive way. These systems can also help track costs of damage to a city to help allocate an anti-graffiti budget. The theory is that when an offender is caught putting up graffiti, they are not just charged with one count of vandalism; they can be held accountable for all the other damage for which they are responsible. This has two main benefits for law enforcement. One, it sends a signal to the offenders that their vandalism is being tracked. Two, a city can seek restitution from offenders for all the damage that they have committed, not merely a single incident. These systems give law enforcement personnel real-time, street-level intelligence that allows them not only to focus on the worst graffiti offenders and their damage, but also to monitor potential gang violence that is associated with the graffiti.
Many restrictions of civil gang injunctions are designed to help address and protect the physical environment and limit graffiti. Provisions of gang injunctions include things such as restricting the possession of marker pens, spray paint cans, or other sharp objects capable of defacing private or public property; spray painting, or marking with marker pens, scratching, applying stickers, or otherwise applying graffiti on any public or private property, including, but not limited to the street, alley, residences, block walls, and fences, vehicles or any other real or personal property. Some injunctions contain wording that restricts damaging or vandalizing both public and private property, including but not limited to any vehicle, light fixture, door, fence, wall, gate, window, building, street sign, utility box, telephone box, tree, or power pole.
To help address many of these issues, many local jurisdictions have set up graffiti abatement hotlines, where citizens can call in and report vandalism and have it removed. San Diego's hotline receives more than 5,000 calls per year, in addition to reporting the graffiti, callers can learn more about prevention. One of the complaints about these hotlines is the response time; there is often a lag time between a property owner calling about the graffiti and its removal. The length of delay should be a consideration for any jurisdiction planning on operating a hotline. Local jurisdictions must convince the callers that their complaint of vandalism will be a priority and cleaned off right away. If the jurisdiction does not have the resources to respond to complaints in a timely manner, the value of the hotline diminishes. Crews must be able to respond to individual service calls made to the graffiti hotline as well as focus on cleanup near schools, parks, and major intersections and transit routes to have the biggest impact. Some cities offer a reward for information leading to the arrest and prosecution of suspects for tagging or graffiti related vandalism. The amount of the reward is based on the information provided, and the action taken.
When police obtain search warrants in connection with a vandalism investigation, they are often seeking judicial approval to look for items such as cans of spray paint and nozzles from other kinds of aerosol sprays; etching tools, or other sharp or pointed objects, which could be used to etch or scratch glass and other hard surfaces; permanent marking pens, markers, or paint sticks; evidence of membership or affiliation with any gang or tagging crew; paraphernalia including any reference to "(tagger's name)"; any drawings, writing, objects, or graffiti depicting taggers' names, initials, logos, monikers, slogans, or any mention of tagging crew membership; and any newspaper clippings relating to graffiti crime.
In use as a Mess Coach and Store for the staff re-painting the station at Barrow-In Furness, former BR Mark 1 First Open Coach W3012 (Built by BRCW to Lot 30008 in 1954), and transferred into the departmental fleet in the 1980's and renumbered DB975862, was stabled in the bay at the North end of the station on May 31st 1996. In faded yellow/grey Engineers livery, the well-worn coach had been modified with its corridor connections removed and plated over and most of the seats and tables removed. It was lettered 'QPV - CCE Staff Coach' and 'Allocated to Nottingham CS'.
Today a repaint of the station would require the use of around 10 car park spaces all cordoned off with security fencing, gates, masses of signage, an ex shipping container for all the equipment, a portable cabin for the staff amenities, a portable Toilet, a Generator, and a fleet of white vans.
Used more to store farm items than anything else,there are still a few interesting details to be found in the Spring Green,WI. abandonment.
And some signs that life still lives on there....
I tried one method of using it. It’s the same one as Lawrence Principe uses in his book, and indeed I asked him about it a year before the book was published. He said the secret was in the temperature, or words to that effect. I had previously tried it this way but had either left it in too long or made it too hot, or maybe not had a very good quality of ‘water’. It is worth nothing that the Leyden papyrus doesn’t specify how to use this water.
So first I dipped the silver into the liquid when it was cold, and not a lot happened except that over 10 minutes in it, the silver turned slightly yellow, but left for longer and it went black. Whilst black is an alchemical colour, it isn’t the one we want here, at the end of the process.
So I heated the golden liquid until it became more red, although nowhere near boiling. Say about hand hot. A few seconds immersed in it gave this, shown with some untreated silver:
Note the shine of the metal and the apparent depth of colour.
I stuck another sample in for longer, it turned black. I’d killed it! (Silver sulphides are black, but a thin layer of them is, as you can see, gold coloured)
Which is of course a possible aim, since much reference is made to the death of metals and their resurrection in Graeco-Egyptian alchemy.
The next step in the use of this substance would probably be to seal the colour in using some kind of varnish, because now, three weeks later, the colour on the silver has faded to a slight yellow as the sulphides have evaporated or oxidised.
The next step after turning the silver black would be to melt it with other ingredients, but exactly what I am not sure.
The funny thing is that I haven’t found any later mention of this recipe than a 9/10th century Arabic text. I suspect that might be because by that time and after, both in Arabic countries and in Europe, such a superficial colour change was nothing special and had no value, since it did not lead to anything really like gold. Whereas the Egyptian alchemists were more interested in the specific colour change using divine/ sulphurous substances, themselves of important colours and unusual behaviour and so it was of great use to them.
Some of the world's most famous scientists did indeed believe iron could be turned into gold, and several of them tried desperately to make it happen for hundreds of years. Long before much of modern science became known, many early scientists were fascinated by a practice called alchemy.
Alchemy was a secret and mysterious practice that reflected a spiritual worldview very different from our modern view of science. The metals we know today as individual elements were believed by alchemists to be alive and growing underground. Metals like iron and lead were thought to be merely immature and undeveloped “early" versions of precious metals, like silver and gold.
Alchemists believed they could refine base metals into precious metals if they could just find the mythical substance they called philosopher's stone. The philosopher's stone they searched for wasn't an actual rock. Instead, it was supposedly a magical wax, liquid, or powder that could heal ailments and prolong life, as well as change base metals into precious metals.
Knowing what we do today about science, alchemy sounds crazy, doesn't it? After all, it's no surprise that alchemists ultimately failed in their quest, since the very idea of alchemy contradicts the basic laws of chemistry and physics. Rather than the atoms and elements we know today, alchemists believed everything in the world was made up of four elements: air, earth, fire, and water.
We now know that air, earth, fire, and water are not actual elements. Therefore, it's not possible to adjust the percentages of those elements within iron to turn it into gold. Despite the utter failure of alchemy to transform iron into gold, it wasn't a completely worthless pursuit. Scientists and historians now credit ancient alchemists for developing the groundwork for what would become modern chemistry.
In fact, you're probably already familiar with one of the more famous alchemists from ancient history. Ever heard of a guy named Sir Isaac Newton? That's right! Sir Isaac Newton, the guy who invented calculus and is considered the father of modern physics, was a devoted alchemist who believed at one time that he had discovered the mythical philosopher's stone.
Newton's dedication to alchemy has made modern scientists reconsider its importance in the history of the development of modern science. Many experts now agree that alchemy was an important natural step in laying the foundation for modern science. Instead of superstitious witchcraft, alchemy is now often seen as an ancient practice of early scientists trying to make sense of the world around them.
Other experts point out the many scientific advancements that can be traced back to alchemy. For example, alchemists created new alloys and manufactured acids and pigments for the first time. They also invented distillation apparatuses and conceived of atoms hundreds of years before modern atomic theory. Perhaps most importantly, though, they helped to forge the basis for the modern scientific method by repeating controlled experiments over and over.
For hundreds of years alchemists toiled in their laboratories to produce a mythical substance known as the philosopher’s stone. The supposedly dense, waxy, red material was said to enable the process that has become synonymous with alchemy—chrysopoeia, the metamorphosis, or transmutation, of base metals such as lead into gold.
Alchemists have often been dismissed as pseudoscientific charlatans but in many ways they paved the way for modern chemistry and medicine. The alchemists of the 16th and 17th centuries developed new experimental techniques, medicines and other chemical concoctions, such as pigments. And many of them "were amazingly good experimentalists,” says Lawrence Principe, a chemist and science historian at Johns Hopkins University. “Any modern professor of chemistry today would be more than happy to hire some of these guys as lab techs.” The alchemists counted among their number Irish-born scientist Robert Boyle, credited as one of the founders of modern chemistry; pioneering Swiss-born physician Paracelsus; and English physicist Isaac Newton.
But despite the alchemists’ intellectual firepower and experimental acumen, the philosopher’s stone lay forever out of reach. The problem, Principe says, is that the alchemists did not yet know that lead and gold were different atomic elements—the periodic table was still hundreds of years away. Believing them to be hybrid compounds, and therefore amenable to chemical change in laboratory reactions, the alchemists pursued the dream of chrysopoeia to no avail.
With the dawn of the atomic age in the 20th century, however, the transmutation of elements finally became possible. Nowadays nuclear physicists routinely transform one element to another. In commercial nuclear reactors, uranium atoms break apart to yield smaller nuclei of elements such as xenon and strontium as well as heat that can be harnessed to generate electricity. In experimental fusion reactors heavy isotopes of hydrogen merge together to form helium. (An element is defined by the number of protons in its nucleus whereas an isotope of a given element is determined by the quantity of neutrons.)
But what of the fabled transmutation of lead to gold? It is indeed possible—all you need is a particle accelerator, a vast supply of energy and an extremely low expectation of how much gold you will end up with. More than 30 years ago nuclear scientists at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL) in California succeeded in producing very small amounts of gold from bismuth, a metallic element adjacent to lead on the periodic table. The same process would work for lead, but isolating the gold at the end of the reaction would prove much more difficult, says David J. Morrissey, now of Michigan State University, one of the scientists who conducted the research. “We could have used lead in the experiments, but we used bismuth because it has only one stable isotope,” Morrissey says. The element’s homogeneous nature means it is easier to separate gold from bismuth than it is to separate gold from lead, which has four stable isotopic identities.
Using the LBNL’s Bevalac particle accelerator, Morrissey and his colleagues boosted beams of carbon and neon nuclei nearly to light speed and then slammed them into foils of bismuth. When a high-speed nucleus in the beam collided with a bismuth atom, it sheared off part of the bismuth nucleus, leaving a slightly diminished atom behind. By sifting through the particulate wreckage, the team found a number of transmuted atoms in which four protons had been removed from a bismuth atom to produce gold. Along with the four protons, the collision-induced reactions had removed anywhere from six to 15 neutrons, producing a range of gold isotopes from gold 190 (79 protons and 111 neutrons) to gold 199 (79 protons, 120 neutrons), the researchers reported in the March 1981 issue of Physical Review C.
The amount of gold produced was so small that Morrissey and his colleagues had to identify it by measuring the radiation given off by unstable gold nuclei as they decayed over the course of a year. In addition to the several radioactive isotopes of gold, the particle collisions presumably produced some amount of the stable isotope gold 197—the stuff of wedding bands and gold bullion—but because it does not decay the researchers were unable to confirm its presence. “The stable isotope would have to be observed in a mass spectrometer,” Morrissey says, “but I think that the number of atoms was, and is still, below the level of detection by mass spec.”
Isolating the minute quantities of gold would be even more difficult using lead as a starting material, but smashing high-speed nuclei into a lead target would indeed complete the long-sought transmutation. Some of the collisions would be expected to remove three protons from lead, or one proton from mercury, to produce gold. “It is relatively straightforward to convert lead, bismuth or mercury into gold,” Morrissey says. “The problem is the rate of production is very, very small and the energy, money, etcetera expended will always far exceed the output of gold atoms.”
In 1980, when the bismuth-to-gold experiment was carried out, running particle beams through the Bevalac cost about $5,000 an hour, “and we probably used about a day of beam time,” recalls Oregon State University nuclear chemist Walter Loveland, one of the researchers on the project. Glenn Seaborg, who shared the 1951 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for his work with heavy elements and who died in 1999, was the senior author on the resulting study. “It would cost more than one quadrillion dollars per ounce to produce gold by this experiment," Seaborg told the Associated Press that year. The going rate for an ounce of gold at the time? About $560.
If you had lived hundreds of years ago, do you think you would've wanted to be an alchemist? Be sure to explore the following interesting activities with a friend or family member:
You might not be able to turn iron into gold, but you can change the form of a simple compound you use every day. What are we talking about? Water, of course! Get an ice cube out of your refrigerator and turn it to liquid water. You can do that a number of ways. You could simply let it melt on the kitchen countertop, or you could put it in a pan and heat it up to watch it melt quickly. You will definitely need that pan if you want to turn your liquid water into a gas. Keep heating some water in a pan until it reaches the boiling point. When it does, you'll see the water in the pan turning into water vapor right before your eyes. Have fun exploring the different states of water!Want to learn more about Isaac Newton's Experiments with Alchemy? Just follow the link to watch videos of some of Isaac Newton's most famous alchemy experiments. How do you think these experiments helped Newton become the famous scientist he was? Was all of alchemy a waste of time? Why or why not?If you could turn one element into another, what would you do? Think about what elements or things you have plenty of. Then think about things that you don't have much of, but would like more of. For example, if you could do it, would you invent a machine that could change air into soda? How about vegetables into ice cream? Let your imagination run wild and write a short story about what you would do as a modern-day alchemist. Have fun and be sure to share your story with a friend or family member!
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I used to play here ( as a child !!) and have been meaning to stop and shot this little falls ....Another shoot when i return from NE India on a birding trip .
Catch up with everyone in a couple of weeks
Use what talents you possess, the woods would be silent if no birds sang there, except those that sang the best..
~ Henry Van Dyke~
Buffalo Games Inc. 17051
750 pieces, used and complete
24x18in
61x46cm
includes bonus poster
I wasn't too enthusiastic about this Buffalo Games jigsaw: a brooding sky and all that stonework seemed a daunting prospect, but as Mike liked it I was willing to go along with him. It turned out to be surprisingly easy and actually a pleasure to assemble after all. A (small) poster was included as the box lid image was rather small. The pieces weren't very thick but were sturdy enough and fit together well. Complete.
2021 piece count: 19502
Puzzle 23
Soft Stone Quarry used to run this old SD refuse cart , these were great old trucks and over the years I drove a few .
Used for the wedding of King Baudouin to Queen Fabiola in 1960
Chassis n° 5562377947
Zoute Sale - Bonhams
Estimated : € 70.000 - 90.000
Sold for € 86.250
Zoute Grand Prix 2021
Knokke - Zoute
België - Belgium
October 2021
Founded by Henry Leland and Robert Faulconer, the Cadillac Automobile Company of Detroit, Michigan completed its first car in October 1902, the firm's superior precision manufacturing technology soon establishing it as the foremost builder of quality cars in the USA. Cadillac was among the pioneers of the V8 engine and introduced the first synchromesh gearbox on its 1929 range. Always innovators in automobile technology, the company continues to produce cars recognised everywhere as symbols of wealth and prestige.
Styled like a contemporary jet fighter, the 1955 Cadillacs were little changed from '54 but featured a redesigned front grille, parking lights beneath the headlights and, of course, tail fins. General Motors' chief stylist Harley Earl had introduced fins on the 1948 Cadillacs and the device would reach its zenith in 1959 before fading away. All '55 Cadillacs came with a 331ci (5.4-litre) V8 engine producing 250bhp (standard trim) or 270bhp (Eldorado), plus GM's excellent Hydra-Matic automatic transmission. A landmark collectors' car, the 1955 Series 62 Convertible is one of the most sought after of post-WW2 Cadillacs.
Long, low and elegant, this wonderful Series 62 Convertible dates from the middle of Cadillac's spectacular 'fins' period. A classic Cadillac 'rag top', the car was first owned by the Belgian Royal Family, belonging to King Baudouin and his wife, Queen Fabiola. Ordered in 1953, it was delivered in 1954 and is a 1955 model. Serving as an official 'parade car' the car was delivered with some unique features including the split front bench, and the handle on the windscreen pillar. On 15th December 1960, the Cadillac served as the Royal couple's wedding car when they were married in Brussels, and over the years it participated in many more state occasions. It also served as the official 'parade' car of the City of Brussels for some 12 years. Newsreel footage showing the Cadillac participating in these various events may be found online, and it also comes with a substantial quantity of related press cuttings.
After it left official service, the Cadillac passed through the hands of various Belgian dealers before passing to an enthusiast. The current vendor bought the Cadillac in Luxembourg in 2012; he is a Cadillac enthusiast and collector, and this car has been regularly maintained as part of his Cadillac collection. The car was in need of restoration when acquired, and this was undertaken at great expense by specialists L'Atelier Des Coteaux in France, we are advised that the restoration totalled more than €50,000. The engine, mechanicals and electrics were overhauled and the interior completely re-trimmed, while the soft-top and carpets are new. Original and well-preserved, the body did not require any serious attention. A very rare feature, the 'Bubble top' or Plexiglas roof that was made to measure by Duchatelet from Liege by the end of the 1950's as requested by King Baudouin, was professionally restored to the specification it was in at the time of the royal wedding in 1960 and cost a small fortune to do. It should be noted that the Serie 62 has been adapted to also run on LPG, a modification that is easily reversible. The vendor advises us that the car is very reliable and that it will be driven to the auction in Knokke. A set of chromed wheel discs is included in the sale.
Offered with a French Carte Grise, this spectacular Cadillac Series 62 Convertible represents a unique opportunity to own a state car that served the Belgian Royal Family for many years, featuring prominently in the newsreels and press reports of the period.
The Atlanta Braves’ home base is SunTrust Park. The Battery is a large mixed-use development that is adjacent to the ball park. On Friday, the 9th of August, I was able to spend some time there and took a few dozen photos. This one of them.
The word, “THE” on the sign is redundant as the Spanish word, “EL” means the same thing! I purposely popped the colors on these shots to make them look like photo postcards.
The Wheel of Fortune, or Rota Fortunae, is a concept in medieval and ancient philosophy referring to the capricious nature of Fate. The wheel belongs to the goddess Fortuna, who spins it at random, changing the positions of those on the wheel - some suffer great misfortune, others gain windfalls. Fortune appears on all paintings as a woman, sometimes blindfolded, "puppeteering" a wheel.Origins[edit]
The origin of the word is from the "wheel of fortune" - the zodiac, referring to the Celestial spheres of which the 8th holds the stars, and the 9th is where the signs of the zodiac are placed. The concept was first invented in Babylon and later developed by the ancient Greeks. The concept somewhat resembles the Bhavacakra, or Wheel of Becoming, depicted throughout Ancient Indian art and literature, except that the earliest conceptions in the Roman and Greek world involve not a two-dimensional wheel but a three-dimensional sphere, a metaphor for the world. It was widely used in the Ptolemaic perception of the universe as the zodiac being a wheel with its "signs" constantly turning throughout the year and having effect on the world's fate (or fortune). Ptolemaic model of the spheres for Venus, Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn with epicycle, eccentric deferent and equant point. Georg von Peuerbach, Theoricae novae planetarum, 1474.
Vettius Valens, a second century BC astronomer and astrologer, wrote. There are many wheels, most moving from west to east, but some move from east to west.
Seven wheels, each hold one heavenly object, the first holds the moon... Then the eighth wheel holds all the stars that we see... And the ninth wheel, the wheel of fortunes, moves from east to west, and includes each of the twelve signs of fortune, the twelve signs of the zodiac. Each wheel is inside the other, like an onion's peel sits inside another peel, and there is no empty space between them.[this quote needs a citation] In the same century, the Roman tragedian Pacuvius wrote: Fortunam insanam esse et caecam et brutam perhibent philosophical, Saxoque instare in globoso praedicant volubili: Id quo saxum inpulerit fors, eo cadere Fortunam autumant. Caecam ob eam rem esse iterant, quia nihil cernat, quo sese adplicet; Insanam autem esse aiunt, quia atrox, incerta instabilisque sit; Brutam, quia dignum atque indignum nequeat internoscere. Philosophers say that Fortune is insane and blind and stupid, and they teach that she stands on a rolling, spherical rock: they affirm that, wherever chance pushes that rock, Fortuna falls in that direction. They repeat that she is blind for this reason: that she does not see where she's heading; they say she's insane, because she is cruel, flaky and unstable; stupid, because she can't distinguish between the worthy and the unworthy.
—Pacuvius, Scaenicae Romanorum Poesis Fragmenta. Vol. 1, ed. O. Ribbeck, 1897
The idea of the rolling ball of fortune became a literary topos and was used frequently in declamation. In fact, the Rota Fortunae became a prime example of a trite topos or meme for Tacitus, who mentions its rhetorical overuse in the Dialogus de oratoribus. Fortuna eventually became Christianized: the Roman philosopher Boethius (d. 524) was a major source for the medieval view of the Wheel, writing about it in his Consolatio Philosophiae - "I know how Fortune is ever most friendly and alluring to those whom she strives to deceive, until she overwhelms them with grief beyond bearing, by deserting them when least expected. … Are you trying to stay the force of her turning wheel? Ah! dull-witted mortal, if Fortune begin to stay still, she is no longer Fortune."
The Wheel was widely used as an allegory in medieval literature and art to aid religious instruction. Though classically Fortune's Wheel could be favourable and disadvantageous, medieval writers preferred to concentrate on the tragic aspect, dwelling on downfall of the mighty - serving to remind people of the temporality of earthly things. In the morality play Everyman (c. 1495), for instance, Death comes unexpectedly to claim the protagonist. Fortune's Wheel has spun Everyman low, and Good Deeds, which he previously neglected, are needed to secure his passage to heaven. Geoffrey Chaucer used the concept of the tragic Wheel of Fortune a great deal. It forms the basis for the Monk's Tale, which recounts stories of the great brought low throughout history, including Lucifer, Adam, Samson, Hercules, Nebuchadnezzar, Belshazzar, Nero, Alexander the Great, Julius Caesar and, in the following passage, Peter I of Cyprus. O noble Peter, Cyprus' lord and king,
Which Alexander won by mastery, To many a heathen ruin did'st thou bring; For this thy lords had so much jealousy,
That, for no crime save thy high chivalry, All in thy bed they slew thee on a morrow. And thus does Fortune's wheel turn treacherously And out of happiness bring men to sorrow.
~ Geoffrey Chaucer, The Canterbury Tales, The Monk's Fortune's Wheel often turns up in medieval art, from manuscripts to the great Rose windows in many medieval cathedrals, which are based on the Wheel. Characteristically, it has four shelves, or stages of life, with four human figures, usually labeled on the left regnabo (I shall reign), on the top regno (I reign) and is usually crowned, descending on the right regnavi (I have reigned) and the lowly figure on the bottom is marked sum sine regno (I am without a kingdom). Dante employed the Wheel in the Inferno and a "Wheel of Fortune" trump-card appeared in the Tarot deck (circa 1440, Italy). The wheel of fortune from the Burana Codex; The figures are labelled "Regno, Regnavi, Sum sine regno, Regnabo": I reign, I reigned, My reign is finished, I shall reign
In the medieval and renaissance period, a popular genre of writing was "Mirrors for Princes", which set out advice for the ruling classes on how to wield power (the most famous being The Prince by Niccolò Machiavelli). Such political treatises could use the concept of the Wheel of Fortune as an instructive guide to their readers. John Lydgate's Fall of Princes, written for his patron Humphrey, Duke of Gloucester is a noteworthy example. Many Arthurian romances of the era also use the concept of the Wheel in this manner, often placing the Nine Worthies on it at various points....fortune is so variant, and the wheel so moveable, there nis none constant abiding, and that may be proved by many old chronicles, of noble Hector, and Troilus, and Alisander, the mighty conqueror, and many mo other; when they were most in their royalty, they alighted lowest. ~ Lancelot in Thomas Malory's Le Morte d'Arthur, Chapter XVII.[3] Like the Mirrors for Princes, this could be used to convey advice to readers. For instance, in most romances, Arthur's greatest military achievement - the conquest of the Roman Empire - is placed late on in the overall story. However in Malory's work the Roman conquest and high point of King Arthur's reign is established very early on. Thus, everything that follows is something of a decline. Arthur, Lancelot and the other Knights of the Round Table are meant to be the paragons of chivalry, yet in Malory's telling of the story they are doomed to failure. In medieval thinking, only God was perfect, and even a great figure like King Arthur had to be brought low. For the noble reader of the tale in the Middle Ages, this moral could serve as a warning, but also as something to aspire to. Malory could be using the concept of Fortune's Wheel to imply that if even the greatest of chivalric knights made mistakes, then a normal fifteenth-century noble didn't have to be a paragon of virtue in order to be a good knight. The Wheel of Fortune motif appears significantly in the Carmina Burana (or Burana Codex), albeit with a postclassical phonetic spelling of the genitive form Fortunae. Excerpts from two of the collection's better known poems, "Fortuna Imperatrix Mundi (Fortune, Empress of the World)" and "Fortune Plango Vulnera (I Bemoan the Wounds of Fortune)," read: Sors immanis et inanis, rota tu volubilis, status malus,
vana salus semper dissolubilis, obumbrata et velata michi quoque niteris; nunc per ludum dorsum nudum fero tui sceleris. Fortune rota volvitur; descendo minoratus; alter in altum tollitur; nimis exaltatus rex sedet in vertice caveat ruinam! nam sub axe legimus Hecubam reginam.Fate - monstrous and empty, you whirling wheel, status is bad,
well-being is vain always may melt away, shadowy
and veiled you plague me too; now through the game
bare backed I bear your villainy. The wheel of Fortune turns;
I go down, demeaned; another is carried to the height;
far too high up sits the king at the summit - let him beware ruin! for under the axis we read: Queen Hecuba. Later usage:
Fortune and her Wheel have remained an enduring image throughout history. Fortune's wheel can also be found in Thomas More's Utopia. Wheel of fortune in Sebastian Brant`s Narrenschiff, woodcut by A. Dürer William Shakespeare in Hamlet wrote of the "slings and arrows of outrageous fortune" and, of fortune personified, to "break all the spokes and fellies from her wheel." And in Henry V, Act 3 Scene VI[4] are the lines: Bardolph, a soldier who is loyal and stout-hearted and full of valour, has, by a cruel trick of fate and a turn of silly Fortune's wildly spinning wheel, that blind goddess who stands upon an ever-rolling stone—
Fluellen: Now, now, Ensign Pistol. Fortune is depicted as blind, with a scarf over her eyes, to signify that she is blind. And she is depicted with a wheel to signify—this is the point—that she is turning and inconstant, and all about change and variation. And her foot, see, is planted on a spherical stone that rolls and rolls and rolls. Shakespeare also references this Wheel in King Lear.[5] The Earl of Kent, who was once held dear by the King, has been banished, only to return in disguise. This disguised character is placed in the stocks for an overnight and laments this turn of events at the end of Act II, Scene 2:Fortune, good night, smile once more; turn thy wheel! In Act IV, scene vii, King Lear also contrasts his misery on the "wheel of fire" to Cordelia's "soul in bliss". Shakespeare also made reference to this in "Macbeth" throughout the whole play. Macbeth starts off halfway up the wheel when a Thane, but moves higher and higher until he becomes king, but falls right down again towards the end as his wife dies, and he in turn dies.
In Anthony Trollope's novel The Way We Live Now, the character Lady Carbury writes a novel entitled "The Wheel of Fortune" about a heroine who suffers great financial hardships.
Selections from the Carmina Burana, including the two poems quoted above, were set to new music by twentieth-century classical composer Carl Orff, whose well-known "O Fortuna" is based on the poem Fortuna Imperatrix Mundi.
Jerry Garcia recorded a song entitled "The Wheel" (co-written with Robert Hunter and Bill Kreutzmann) for his 1972 solo album Garcia, and performed the song regularly with the Grateful Dead from 1976 onward. The song "Wheel in the Sky" by Journey from their 1978 release Infinity also touches on the concept through the lyrics "Wheel in the sky keeps on turnin' / I don't know where I'll be tomorrow". The song "Throw Your Hatred Down" by Neil Young on his 1995 album Mirror Ball, recorded with Pearl Jam, has the verse "The wheel of fortune / Keeps on rollin' down". The term has found its way into modern popular culture through the Wheel of Fortune game show, where contestants win or lose money determined by the random spin of a wheel. Also, the video game series character Kain (Legacy of Kain) used the wheel of fate. Fortuna does occasionally turn up in modern literature, although these days she has become more or less synonymous with Lady Luck. Her Wheel is less widely used as a symbol, and has been replaced largely by a reputation for fickleness. She is often associated with gamblers, and dice could also be said to have replaced the Wheel as the primary metaphor for uncertain fortune. The Hudsucker Proxy, a film by the Coen Brothers, also uses the Rota Fortunae concept and in the TV series Firefly (2002) the main character, Malcolm Reynolds, says "The Wheel never stops turning, Badger" to which Badger replies "That only matters to the people on the rim". Likewise, a physical version of the Wheel of Fortune is used in Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome, a film by George Miller and George Ogilvie. In the movie, the title character reneges on a contract and is told "bust a deal, face the wheel." In the science fiction TV series Farscape, the fourth episode of the fourth season has main character Crichton mention that his grandmother told him that fate was like a wheel, alternately bringing fortunes up and down, and the episode's title also references this. Unlike many other instances of the wheel of fortune analogy, which focus on tragic falls from good fortune, Crichton's version is notably more positive, and meant as a message of endurance: those suffering from bad fortune must remain strong and "wait for the wheel" of fortune to turn back to eventually turn back to good fortune again. Ignatius J. Reilly, the central character from John Kennedy Toole's novel A Confederacy of Dunces, states that he believes the Rota Fortunae to be the source of all man's fate. In the Fable video game series, the wheel of fortune appears twice, somehow perverted. The Wheel of Unholy Misfortune is a torture device in Fable II. It is found in the Temple of Shadows in Rookridge. The Hero can use the wheel to sacrifice followers to the shadows. In Fable III, Reaver's Wheel of Misfortune is a device that, once activated, sends to The Hero a round of random monsters. The Wheel of Fortune is featured in a Magic: the Gathering card by that name that forces all players to discard their hands and draw new ones.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rota_Fortunae
Wheel of Fortune is R.O.T.A or TARO and TORA all 3 are born in same meaning :the workings of a social engine ROTARY'S WHEEL EMBLEM
A wheel has been the symbol of Rotary since our earliest days. The first design was made by Chicago Rotarian Montague Bear, an engraver who drew a simple wagon wheel, with a few lines to show dust and motion. The wheel was said to illustrate "Civilization and Movement." Most of the early clubs had some form of wagon wheel on their publications and letterheads. Finally, in 1922, it was decided that all Rotary clubs should adopt a single design as the exclusive emblem of Rotarians. Thus, in 1923, the present gear wheel, with 24 cogs and six spokes was adopted by the "Rotary International Association." A group of engineers advised that the geared wheel was mechanically unsound and would not work without a "keyway" in the center of the gear to attach it to a power shaft. So, in 1923 the keyway was added and the design which we now know was formally adopted as the official Rotary International emblem. www.icufr.org/abc/abc01.htm
www.rotaryfirst100.org/history/history/wheel/
The most popular symbol is the All seeing eye, and most popular hand signs are the Horn and the 666. Any study of Music and ... Circle (Rotary symbol)
[These are the symbols used by the Reptilian proxy group, the Reptoids (Illuminati, & Freemasons), collectively are known as Satanists or Luciferians. The signs of Evil. The most popular symbol is the All seeing eye, and most popular hand signs are the Horn and the 666. Any study of Music and Movies will find all the usual suspects (proving Satanic control), along with some symbols for mind control. If you want a symbol to use stick with the heart, the exact opposite of Evil. They like to cut them out and offer them to Lucifer, see Blood sacrifice. All the worshiped 'Gods' are a few Anunnaki/Reptilians going under various names down the years such as: Nimrod/Anubis/Horus/Osiris/Baal/Shamash/Janus/Quetzalcoatl/Baphomet/Lucifer/Moloch etc, hence all the snake and horn symbols. The symbols are their secret language, and you can see the connections down the years by the use of the same symbols, e.g. Freemasonry, the US Government, and Communism with the Hidden hand, the hidden hand of history.]