text:
File:Bruno Jasieński - Palę Paryż.djvu
File usage on Commons
File usage on other wikis
Size of this JPG preview of this DJVU file: 422 × 599 pixels. Other resolutions: 169 × 240 pixels | 338 × 480 pixels | 540 × 768 pixels | 721 × 1,024 pixels | 1,467 × 2,084 pixels.
Go to page 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64 65 66 67 68 69 70 71 72 73 74 75 76 77 78 79 80 81 82 83 84 85 86 87 88 89 90 91 92 93 94 95 96 97 98 99 100 101 102 103 104 105 106 107 108 109 110 111 112 113 114 115 116 117 118 119 120 121 122 123 124 125 126 127 128 129 130 131 132 133 134 135 136 137 138 139 140 141 142 143 144 145 146 147 148 149 150 151 152 153 154 155 156 157 158 159 160 161 162 163 164 165 166 167 168 169 170 171 172 173 174 175 176 177 178 179 180 181 182 183 184 185 186 187 188 189 190 191 192 193 194 195 196 197 198 199 200 201 202 203 204 205 206 207 208 209 210 211 212 213 214 215 216 217 218 219 220 221 222 223 224 225 226 227 228 229 230 231 232 233 234 235 236 237 238 239 240 241 242 243 244 245 246 247 248 249 250 251 252 253 254 255 256 257 258 259 260 261 262 263 264 265 266 267 268 269 270 271 272 273 274 275 276 277 278 279 280 281 282 283 284 285 286 287 288 289 290 291 292 293 294 295 296 297 298 299 300 301 302 303 304 305 306 307 308 309 310 311 312 313 314 315 316 317 318 319 320 321 322 323 324 325 326 327 328
Original file (1,467 × 2,084 pixels, file size: 9.91 MB, MIME type: image/vnd.djvu, 328 pages)
Add a one-line explanation of what this file represents
Licensing[edit]
Bruno Jasieński: Palę Paryż ( )
Bruno Jasieński (1901–1938)
Wiktor Zysman
Description Polish poet, writer, science fiction writer and playwright
Date of birth/death 17 July 1901 17 September 1938 / 17 August 1938
Location of birth/death Klimontów Moscow
author QS:P50,Q993397
Start this Book
Palę Paryż
Towarzystwo Wydawnicze "Rój"
Language Polish
publication_date QS:P577,+1931-00-00T00:00:00Z/9
Place of publication Warsaw
This image is available from the Polish Digital Libraries Federation under the digital ID oai:kpbc.umk.pl:34760
This tag does not indicate the copyright status of the attached work. A normal copyright tag is still required. See Commons:Licensing for more information.
English | македонски | polski | +/−
(Reusing this file)
This work is in the public domain in its country of origin and other countries and areas where the copyright term is the author's life plus 70 years or fewer.
You must also include a United States public domain tag to indicate why this work is in the public domain in the United States. Note that a few countries have copyright terms longer than 70 years: Mexico has 100 years, Jamaica has 95 years, Colombia has 80 years, and Guatemala and Samoa have 75 years. This image may not be in the public domain in these countries, which moreover do not implement the rule of the shorter term. Côte d'Ivoire has a general copyright term of 99 years and Honduras has 75 years, but they do implement the rule of the shorter term. Copyright may extend on works created by French who died for France in World War II (more information), Russians who served in the Eastern Front of World War II (known as the Great Patriotic War in Russia) and posthumously rehabilitated victims of Soviet repressions (more information).
This file has been identified as being free of known restrictions under copyright law, including all related and neighboring rights.
current 09:18, 27 January 2015 1,467 × 2,084, 328 pages (9.91 MB) Ankry (talk | contribs) Reverted to version as of 12:44, 15 April 2011
20:50, 21 April 2011 No thumbnail 0 × 0 (9.77 MB) Tommy Jantarek (talk | contribs) + 5 blank pages
00:20, 21 April 2011 No thumbnail 0 × 0 (9.75 MB) Tommy Jantarek (talk | contribs) - preface, not PD, author Juliusz Kaden-Bandrowski died 1944
12:44, 15 April 2011 1,467 × 2,084, 328 pages (9.91 MB) Yarl (talk | contribs) == {{int:license}} == {{Book |Author=Bruno Jasieński |Title=Palę Paryż |Translator= |Editor= |Illustrator= |Subtitle= |Series title= |Volume= |Edition= |Publisher=Towarzystwo Wydawnicze "Rój" |Printer= |Date=1931 |City=Warsaw |Language={{language|pl}}
Usage on pl.wikimedia.org
Biuletyn/2020-03
Usage on pl.wikisource.org
Indeks:Palę Paryż
Strona:Bruno Jasieński - Palę Paryż.djvu/001
View more global usage of this file.
Items portrayed in this file
Retrieved from "https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=File:Bruno_Jasieński_-_Palę_Paryż.djvu&oldid=437618364"
Literary works by Bruno Jasieński
1931 books djvu files
DjVu files in Polish
Towarzystwo Wydawnicze "Rój"
Files from Polish Digital Libraries Federation
CC-PD-Mark
PD Old
Books without Wikidata item
Books uploaded by Ankry


text:
Dinosaurs Could Be Coming to Battlefield V
by Liana Ruppert May 20, 2019
Liana Ruppert May 20, 2019
Long-time Battlefield fans know that dinosaurs aren't as outlandish to the franchise as one might think. The popular FPS series has been known to tossle with a dino or two and it looks like Battlefield V could be gearing up to carry on the tradition.
The speculation of Battlefield V taking the FPS to prehistoric levels began with YouTuber JackFrags who shared a new video that presented quite a bit of evidence supporting the theory that dinosaurs are invading the latest Battlefield game. In addition to the small hints in-game that he brought up, he also shared a correlation between red flares in the game and how they match up with developer teasers.
Check out his evidence below:
One of the clues he talks about in the above video is the use of Morse Code that sounds out "Soon preround red flares," which many players are saying references Jurassic Park's flares and how they would work in-game. Adding fuel to the fire is a few of the Battlefield V developers themselves weighing in, including GIFs regarding the Jurassic Park movies – which, of course, just made that speculation inflame even more.
We know that Battlefield V and new content will be shown at EA Play this year during E3 2019, so maybe an official dino mode will be revealed then? Until that happens, it's all speculation, but that's half the fun! The community comes up with some wild theories sometimes, but when the devs themselves start to join the fun – it's too good to just ignore.
As for the game itself, Battlefield V is available now on Xbox One, PlayStation 4, and PC.

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaCommonCrawl


One Virginia lawmaker said Friday that safety and management issues surrounding Washington's transit system has caused a "crisis of confidence" among riders and lawmakers.
"I think that one of the consequences of this drip, drip, drip of safety concerns is a crisis of confidence in the riders and in stakeholders, including stakeholders in Congress," Rep. Gerald E. Connolly said on WAMU's The Kojo Nnamdi Show , when asked about the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority's ability to request assistance from Congress. Connolly called for a permanent general manager and said the federal government should make a larger financial investment in the system, which services the District of Columbia, Virginia and Maryland.
"In my view, the federal government is the biggest beneficiary of Metro," Connolly said, noting thousands of federal workers and visitors to the nation's capital use the transit system.
Recent issues regarding safety and service resulted in a federal takeover of oversight of the Metro system last week. On Oct. 9, Transportation Secretary Anthony Foxx announced he would direct the Federal Transit Administration to "directly enforce and investigate the safety oversight" of the system until the three regions can establish a functioning oversight agency. Both Foxx and the National Transportation Safety Board deemed the previous oversight agency, known as the Tri-State Oversight Committee, ineffective.
WMATA is also facing a potential federal funding cut of $50 million. While congressional Democrats and Republicans from the national capital region say the safety issues demonstrate the need for more funding, not less, Republicans on the Appropriations Committee cited financial mismanagement and safety issues during the debate over funding.
The issue will likely be one of many that lawmakers will look to resolve over the next several weeks as the House and Senate negotiate a long-term spending package with a Dec. 11 deadline.


text:
import Vue from "vue";
import VueJSModal, { VueJSModalOptions } from "../index";

Vue.use(VueJSModal);
Vue.use<VueJSModalOptions>(VueJSModal, {
  componentName: "another-modal-name",
  dialog: false
});

const vm = new Vue({
  template: `<vue-modal name="awesome-modal"></vue-modal>`
}).$mount("#app");

vm.$modal.show("awesome-modal");
vm.$modal.hide("awesome-modal", { customeEvent: "customEventParam" });
vm.$modal.toggle("awesome-modal");

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaGithub


AFC - 04/08/16 Use This Spring to Adopt!
Shelter for abandoned animals of the City of Zagreb "Dumovec", along with the City Office for Agriculture and Forestry and in cooperation with the Animal Friends organization, is holding this year's first "Adopting Is Cool" campaign. The goal is to encourage citizens to use the spring season to adopt animals and practice their responsible care towards them. The campaign will take place from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. on Saturday, April 9, 2016 at the Zagreb's main square.
Educational leaflets will be distributed at information desks, with the goal of raising awareness about abandoned animals. Shelter dogs looking for a new home will be presented to the visitors, who will also be offered shirts with a message supporting the adoption, rather than the purchase of animals.
"Adopting Is Cool" is linked to the ongoing campaign "Friends Throughout the Centuries", in which the organization called The Order of the Guardians of the City of Zagreb is encouraging citizens to care for the weak and the helpless. The goal of the campaign is to raise awareness about the importance of caring for every living being, regardless of their size, color or appearance.
Apart from adopting abandoned animals, anyone can help by volunteering, caring for a wounded animal, reporting animal abuse, and taking responsible care of pets. Also, with the arrival of spring and the return of wild animal communities into the city area, the principle of coexistence once again gains great importance. We urge everyone to greet those animals with joy, to help every lost baby bird find her nest, and to help a baby fox, hedgehog, or a marten reconnect with their families and habitats. We all have a right to enjoy our city and the spring.
In spring, the warm weather and the nature are perfect for spending more time outdoors, and what better way to do that than with a friend by your side? That is why Animal Friends is encouraging everyone to adopt animals instead of purchasing them, and thus enjoy this spring, as well as all the following seasons, with their new friend.


text:
Will '17 be the Year of the Pig?
You probably haven't heard of David C. Kelly; he doesn't write best-sellers or give TED talks, or study the center of the galaxy or the human genome or the social impact of algorithms. But he's inspired and nurtured hundreds of people who've done these things and much more. The vehicle of this inspiration is a summer program that that Allyn Jackson has called "a national treasure" and that for the past forty years has been quietly shaping American mathematics. Some people call it "Yellow Pig Camp", but many of its alums (including yours truly) simply call it "Hampshire". It's the Hampshire College Summer Studies in Mathematics program, or HCSSiM for short, founded by Kelly in 1971.
Hampshire doesn't teach students how to be better at high school math. It leapfrogs over AP Calculus and jumps directly to college- and graduate-level topics: graph theory, cellular automata, non-orientable surfaces, etc. If you went to Hampshire as a student in past decades, you might have gotten to meet visiting guest lecturers like Paul Erdős (one of the great mathematicians of the 20th century and also a great contributor to graph theory) and John Conway (whose Game of Life played a pivotal role in the theory of cellular automata). If you go to Hampshire nowadays, you're likely to get a free copy of Mathematica from Stephen Wolfram (another pioneer in the theory of cellular automata as well as the creator of Mathematica), or a free hand-blown glass Klein bottle from Clifford Stoll, 100% guaranteed to be non-orientable.
To get an idea of what a Hampshire course can be like, check out data-scientist and author Cathy O'Neil's blog about the three-week course she taught in 2012.
LEARNING HOW TO BE CONFUSED
If you go to Hampshire, the learning starts before you even show up. One of the ways Kelly figures out who's a good fit for the program is an ever-changing evaluation instrument called the Interesting Test. Kelly isn't interested in what you know; he wants to know how you think. So he deliberately chooses non-traditional, open-ended problems. Here's a sample problem, taken from the 1998 Interesting Test:
At time t=0, seventeen electrons are situated at various points on a circular track, seventeen miles in circumference. Some of the electrons are moving along the track in a clockwise direction and others are moving in a counterclockwise direction, but all of the electrons are moving at the same speed: 17 miles per second. Whenever two electrons collide, each instantly reverses direction, losing no time or velocity.
1. Prove that, at time t=1 second, each of the positions initially occupied by an electron will again be occupied by an electron traveling in the same direction as the electron initially at that location.
2. Prove that there will be a time when all 17 electrons will have simultaneously returned to their initial positions and directions.
These are not easy questions! You can see solutions in the Endnotes. In the meantime, to help you think about the problem, here's a GIF courtesy of Matt Enlow (a math teacher at the Dana Hall School, who goes by @CmonMattTHINK on Twitter). To make the action easier to follow, Matt's GIF shows 7 particles (rather than 17) going around a circular track, and (ignoring the collisions, which are marked with little halo-bursts) the particles are travelling at 1/10 of a revolution per second (rather than 1 revolution per second).
Seven electrons going around a circle. GIF courtesy of Matt Enlow.
If you're invited to HCSSiM, and you show up at Hampshire College, it's likely that the first thing you'll learn is that someone can solve Rubik's Cube faster than you, or juggle more balls than you. (Deal with it.)
Then, in classes, you'll learn that doing mathematics is, at base, about finding patterns, making conjectures, and proving things. Eric Lander (one of my teachers when I was a student at Hampshire) describes his own earlier experience as a student at Hampshire this way: "I discovered research that year. I learned a lot of number theory that summer, loved number theory. I hung out one afternoon in the library just picking up random number theory books. In one book, I found a discussion of quasiperfect numbers — including a reference to some obscure theorem of Sierpiński that provided a constraint about them. I said 'That's interesting; I wonder if you could say more?' I started working on it and managed to extend the result; it was the first real research problem I'd ever gotten involved in. The experience of proving something nobody had ever proven before was a life-changing experience. It was addictive."
LEARNING HOW TO BE WRONG
Hampshire students have to come to grips with the imperative of proving things rigorously. Some high school courses dabble in rigor, with artificial formats like two-column proofs in Euclidean geometry, but that's a far cry from the sorts of proofs mathematicians publish. Our proofs are more like essays — often written in deliberately drab, utilitarian prose featuring a monotony of word-choices that would horrify your freshman comp teacher, but still, essays: compositions made of words, not (for the most part) equations. Learning proof-craft is a challenge for most students, even the well-prepared students who attend Hampshire. Cathy O'Neil, in the midst of a teaching stint at Hampshire, wrote: "Every proof that one of these young kids offers up is an act of courage. They don't know exactly how to explain their thinking, nor do they yet know exactly how to shoot holes in arguments, including their own. It's an exercise in being wrong and admitting it. They are being trained to get shot down, to admit their mistake, and then immediately get back up again with better reasoning. The goal is to get so good at being wrong that it doesn't hurt, that it's not taken personally, and that it's even fun to be wrong and to improve your argument."
I remember visiting one Hampshire class in which a student, realizing the logical fallacy he'd fallen into, grinned and hooted "I been smoked!" That's exactly the sort of spirit Kelly tried to inculcate in us. We need to have wry admiration for the adversary who bests us, even when that adversary is our own human tendency to jump to conclusions. And then we need to dust ourselves off and try again.
It's not easy to admit error or confusion or ignorance, but it's key to making continued progress in domains like math. Making these sorts of admissions gets easier with practice, but even after decades of practice I still find it hard sometimes. Just this past week, I had to email a collaborator, a person much younger than I, and say "I seem to be confused about blah-blah, and here's why: … Can you please unconfuse me?" Confessing this sort of thing can be painful, but if we aren't willing to do it now and then, we won't grow.
Although here and elsewhere I like to lay emphasis on the idea of getting comfortable with being wrong (in part because it goes so much against the grain of the habits we inadvertently inculcate in our kids), I don't want to inadvertently make you think that this is the core of what programs like HCSSiM teach. Even more than teaching tough-mindedness and risk-taking, Hampshire's approach to math encourages teamwork. The program doesn't force students to work together, but it tries to get them to realize how much fun collaboration can be.
Mathematician and writer Steven Strogatz writes: "I was junior staff in the summer of 1979 just before my senior year at Princeton. That's where I met my friend and collaborator Rennie Mirollo, and I also had the pleasure of teaching differential geometry to a high school student named Lisa Randall, among others! It's absolutely true that that's where I learned how to teach – I got several hours a day of teaching experience, and learned many pedagogical strategies from such masters as Ken Hoffman (the one who taught at Hampshire College for many years). For instance, to introduce the basics of metric spaces, he asked the students: what's the distance between the sine function and the cosine function? This was so much more interesting than laying down the axioms. The students had to figure out various reasonable notions of what it would mean to define the distance between the graphs of two functions, and pretty soon the discussion and the theory was on its way! Beautiful."
My sentiments exactly. Co-teaching with Ken Hoffman on a daily basis gave me lots of opportunities to try things out and see what worked and what didn't, while getting exposed to great teaching every day. Ken provided a safety net; if at some point I realized that my planned lesson was a complete washout, I could just turn things over to Ken and he'd either put the lesson back on course or turn to a different topic.
If you want to learn how to teach, put yourself in a situation where you have to teach every day and see what works. It's all the better if you teach smart kids who ask lots of questions that you can't anticipate; you learn how to be fluid and improvise. I started out as a very rigid and non-interactive teacher; teaching at Hampshire gave me a chance to explore a style of teaching in which you share interesting ideas with students and then get out of their way.
LEARNING THAT YOU CAN DO IT
Mathematician Dana Randall told me about her first two years at Hampshire, and the difference between them:
"In addition to exposing me to mind-bending and fun mathematics, HCSSiM taught me one of the most valuable lessons of my career early on. Math crowds always seem to consist of the haves and have nots — some people just seem to get it, and others, not so much. The first summer I attended Hampshire, I went full of confidence and enthusiasm, and then found myself solidly in the second category. There were many incredibly talented students who seemed to be speaking a different language. The pieces I did understand were like magic, both for their beauty and the ways in which they were explained, and for the joy of experiencing crossing over that seemingly impenetrable border, when I was able. While I loved my time there and learned a ton, I left marveling at the true luminaries, convinced I could not be a mathematician — not with the great remorse or disappointment this might suggest, but simply with an enlightened realization that I was not part of the luckier, truly gifted crowd.
"Nonetheless, remembering how much I enjoyed the gems I did understand, and with a lack of imagination of what else to do, I returned the following summer. Suddenly a light went on! While still not among the most gifted, I suddenly found myself among the students leading the discussions, contributing solid ideas to problems, seeing the point of the lectures and even anticipating what would come next. I remember recognizing the remarkable difference, and wondering what really changed. More than the mathematics that I learned, it is this lesson that has helped me repeatedly throughout my career. Whenever I felt like an impostor I remembered all the previous times that that feeling suddenly went away and I recalled that it usually happened when I started focusing on the math and less on the particular situation."
I do sometimes worry that, for every student like Randall who initially feels like an outsider, there might be others who don't come back for that second year, and maybe are lost to mathematics even though they could make valuable contributions. It's a tough question. But I think that the way Kelly runs HCSSiM does a lot to counter the intimidating/competitive aspect of mathematics. An egalitarian ethos (reinforced by Hampshire College's barefoot image) prevails, and classroom show-offs are discreetly told to knock it off. You're not here to compete with other people; you're here to learn math, and to enjoy doing it. Math is a social process. Math is fun. And when the math stops being fun for you, or for the people you are teaching, or the people you are learning from, or the people you are learning with, that means you are doing it wrong.
One of my teachers at Hampshire was computer scientist Susan Landau, who herself was one of Kelly's first students. She says: "The program certainly was the single most important factor in my becoming a mathematician (and in my succeeding in graduate school). I came in 1971 to this summer math program and one of the things I learned was to find patterns, make conjectures, and prove theorems; if there is any impact that anybody has ever had on the research I have done in mathematics—which is highly computational work—it's the summer math program and Kelly. And the program also gave me the confidence to go on when I was dealing with sexism in the field. It's had a remarkable impact on my life."
LEARNING THAT YOU ARE NOT ALONE
Mathematician Dan Ullman said, at a gathering of past and present HCSSiM students: "I was inaugurated into this Yellow Pig club 32 years ago, and I wonder if the students who decided to come this summer knew what they were getting themselves into. This is a club that you now have membership in and you can never get out of." I should add that, although you can't get out of the club, and it's not easy to get invited to attend the program as a student, it's easy to get into the "Yellow Pig club" after high school, whether or not you were a student there: just visit HCSSiM for a day, or teach there, or send a child of yours to the program, or all of the above. This porosity of the ingroup/outgroup barrier makes this club less clique-ish (though that may not be much consolation to a non-HCSSiM high schooler forced to listen to HCSSiM-ers singing Yellow Pig carols on the long bus ride to the math team state finals).
Many mathematical collaborations came out of friendships that started or deepened at Hampshire. For instance, two of the earliest HCSSiMers, Eric Lander and Neil Immerman, collaborated on a paper on computational graph theory. I already mentioned how Steve Strogatz and Renato Mirollo met through Hampshire; the two did foundational work on synchronization in networks, described in Strogatz's book Sync.
Above and beyond its role in spurring collaborations years or decades later, Hampshire lets mathematically-inclined youngsters meet other members of their tribe. "Mathbabe" Cathy O'Neil, describing her arrival at HCSSiM (in her post about the origin of the name of her blog), says: "It was the first moment I had ever felt like I belonged somewhere, that I was with my peeps."
WHO PAYS FOR THIS?
Back in 1976 (the year I attended as a student), HCSSiM applicants whose parents couldn't afford the tuition received scholarships from the National Science Foundation, through its Young Scholars Program, which supported student participation in HCSSiM for most summers up through 1995. Then, in 1995, NSF cut the Young Scholars Program. Mathematician Robert Cowen, father of computer scientist and HCSSiM alum Lenore Cowen, wrote an impassioned letter protesting this governmental decision.
Fortunately, by 1995 there were hundreds of grateful alums, willing to step in and make sure that budding mathematicians had the opportunities that they had had. In the past two decades, the generous support of alums has enabled HCSSiM to keep a high faculty-to-student ratio (a senior professor and 2 math majors or grad students for each 15-student class) and to offer financial aid to qualified students who need it.
See Allyn Jackson's article "Supporting a National Treasure" and Susan Landau's addendum "Summer Studies Mathematician Alumnae".
YELLOW PIGS AND 17
Oh, yes, about those pigs (you knew I'd get to them eventually): the official emblem of the Hampshire program is a yellow pig. Don't ask why. The yellow pig can also be found adorning the covers of some books written by mathematician Michael Spivak. Don't ask about that either. The origins of the yellow pig have been shrouded in mystery and I plan to do my part to keep things that way. Here's all I'll say, straight from Kelly: "Mike Spivak was a grad student while I was an undergraduate at Princeton; we didn't know each other particularly well until I got him to teach in my 2 UNH programs. The Yellow Pig dates from those later years." (Here "my 2 UNH programs" refers to the two years during which Kelly's summer math program was run out of the University of New Hampshire instead of Hampshire College.)
Kelly has collected many yellow pigs, and his former students have sent him many more; his home and office jointly contain thousands of them. You can get more information about the yellow pig at the "17 (Seventeen) and Yellow Pigs" website. Unfortunately, that information is largely inaccurate.
The other emblem of the program is the number 17. Kelly has been collecting facts about 17 for many years. This is a respectable obsession, since math legend Carl Friedrich Gauss too was enamored of 17, largely because at a young age Gauss figured out how to construct a regular 17-gon with only straightedge and compass (the first new construction of this kind to have been discovered in two millennia). In fact, the Mathematical Sciences Research Institute, which was given free rein to name the street it occupied and pick its own address, chose to be at 17 Gauss Way. You can see a Numberphile video about Gauss' construction featuring MSRI director David Eisenbud, or you can just watch a wordless but pretty animation of the construction.
17 is also the number of distinct mathematical wallpaper patterns, and it's the minimum number of clues for a Sudoku puzzle. There are many other interesting mathematical properties of 17, but they would occupy a whole essay to themselves (and in fact Kelly has been known to give a full-length talk focused entirely on that one number). I'll content myself with just one sociological observation about 17: when asked to pick a random number between 1 and 20, more people pick 17 than any other option. Probabilist WIlliam Feller (who taught at Princeton at the time when David Kelly and Robert Cowen were both students there), as a running joke, would always pick 17 when a random number was required.
Kelly's obsession with 17 received an interesting recognition from Hampshire College: on his retirement from what he calls the College's "Off-season" (September-to-May), the campus speed limit was raised from 15 mph to 17mph in his honor. This was written about in the Hampshire College newsletter and in the Boston Globe.
Okay, but why might 2017 be the Year of the (Yellow) Pig?
Maybe the change won't be dramatic, but I think HCSSiM alums have reached a kind of critical mass in the mathematical community, and the recent collaboration between Cathy O'Neil and Susan Landau is the latest symptom of it. (The two met through HCSSiM in 2013 and published an article together a few weeks ago, listed in the References.) I think you'll hear a lot from O'Neil in 2017; her new book "Weapons of Math Destruction" may lead a new generation of data-scientists to take a harder look at the social uses to which algorithms are put. I suspect that in 2017, some HCSSiM applicants will say that they learned of the program through their parents, who discovered it by reading O'Neil's mathbabe blog.
Speaking of mathbabe, here are links to some particular mathbabe posts that relate to Hampshire:
* Why "mathbabe"?
* I love math nerd kids
* Mathematicians know how to admit they're wrong
* Exploit me some more please
* The 17-armed spiral within a spiral
* Yellow Pig carols
THE FUTURE OF HCSSIM
Kelly believes that a program that survived his loose reins and negative organizational skills should survive him. He's pleased that gifted and enthusiastic teachers are still drawn to the opportunity to live with and to do math with bright high school kids; and he learns a lot from them as the format, mathematical content, and pedagogy of the Summer Studies continues to evolve.
For 17 years Program Coordinator Susan Goff (whose address is 17 Newton Lane) has tracked down alums, managed budgets, returned phone calls, and done the rest of the non-teaching jobs of running a 60-person 6-week "college". The YP Math Foundation now exists and is making progress toward endowing program director and program coordinator positions on a permanent basis.
I take some solace in the fact that, even when Kelly stops running the program, its spirit will live on through his successors and all of us who carry its lessons. For instance, at mathforlove.com HCSSiM alum Dan Finkel works to revitalize math teaching. Former HCSSiM teacher Stephen Maurer directs a great summer program called MathPath, aimed at middle schoolers. For much of a decade, sarah-marie belcastro sparked and co-directed HCSSiM; she now runs MathILy.org, another "intensely residential" opportunity for excellent high school math students.
As I told some HCSSiM students at the first Yellow Pig Math Days conclave a few years ago: "The final thing I want to say to those of you who really like the program and are sad at the end of it, is: Cheer up, because you never have to leave! By this I mean not that you can stay in the dorm and never surrender your keys, but that you can take from this program some seeds, and plant them in the places that you'll go after today, and build other communities that are like this one, that have the same spirit. So in that sense you never have to leave."
Thanks to Dan Asimov, Matt Enlow, Sandi Gubin, David C. Kelly, Susan Landau, Eric Lander, Andy Latto, Cathy O'Neil, Dana Randall, Shecky Riemann, Rich Schroeppel, Steven Strogatz, James Tanton, and Peter Winkler.
Next month (Jan. 17): Avoiding chazakah with the Prouhet-Thue-Morse sequence.
#1: The trick hinges on being able to imagine the particles not as colliding with one another but as passing through one another. Matt Enlow and I designed the GIF to be deliberately ambiguous, so that through an act of will you can choose to see it whichever way you like! If in viewing the GIF you think of each particle as passing through other particles with its velocity unchanged, then after ten seconds each particle is back where it started. (The "halo burst" that surrounds each collision was included to foster the visual ambiguity of the GIF; without it, your eye's object-tracking firmware tends to strongly favor the passing-through-each-other interpretation. Also, if you look closely at the site of a collision, you can tell that the particles are passing through each other rather than rebounding off each other; the other reason we put the halo-bursts in was to distract you from looking too closely!)
If you view the particles in the GIF as passing through each other, then after 10 seconds, each particle is back where it was at the start and heading in the same direction. If you view the particles in the GIF as bouncing off each other, then after 10 seconds, each particle is back where some particle was at the start and heading in the same direction.
In the Interesting Test problem, the same reasoning applies, except that the time it takes for the repeat to occur is 1 second rather than ten seconds.
#2: Where are the electrons after 1 second? They don't pass through each other (even though we temporarily pretended that they did when we solved problem #1), so after one second they're in the same "cyclic order". But they need not be in the same exact positions. For instance, if we number the electrons 1 through 17 (going clockwise), then electron #1 might end up where electron #2 was before, and electron #2 might therefore end up where electron #3 was before, and so on. How can we figure out which electron is where? Is it possible that every electron is back where it started after 1 second?
A student tackling this aspect of the problem might write something like this: "I don't think that after 1 second the electrons can all be back where they started without having gone around the track once, because 17 is odd, so either there are more clockwise-going electrons than counterclockwise electrons, or the other way around, and either way, there's going to be a kind of swirl going on, with particles tending to go one way more than the other. Which I guess isn't a proof, because couldn't all the particles make a full trip around the circle? But I don't think that's possible either, because 1 second isn't long enough to allow all the particles to make it around, with all the collisions going on."
That's not a solution to the problem, but it's brimming with ideas, and more importantly, with an appreciation for what counts as a proof and what doesn't. A student who wrote something like that would definitely be on Kelly's short-list.
Let's try to make that idea of "swirl" more precise. It's helpful to think about angular velocity (though physicists might prefer to use angular momentum). Every time two particles collide, the total angular velocity of the two particles stays the same, because before the collision we have one clockwise-going particle and one counterclockwise-going particle, and after the collision we also have one clockwise-going particle and one counterclockwise-going particle; the fact that they've exchanged angular velocities doesn't affect the sum of their angular velocities. It follows that the sum of the angular velocities of all the particles is also unchanging over time. So if at the start (and throughout the process) there are k clockwise-going particles and 17 − k counterclockwise-going particles, after 1 second the total net angular displacement experienced by the particles (where clockwise counts as positive and counterclockwise counts as negative) is going to be k × (+1) plus (17 − k) × (−1) total revolutions, or 2k − 17. This can't be zero, since 17 is odd and k is a whole number. So it's simply not possible that, after 1 second, all the particles are back where they started, with each particle having done equal amounts of clockwise travel and counterclockwise travel.
(Note my use of the word "net" in the phrase "net angular displacement". When a particle travels clockwise all the way around the circle, its net angular displacement is 360 degrees in the clockwise direction. On the other hand, when a particle travels halfway around the circle, bounces off another particle, and then travels halfway around the circle in the other direction, arriving back at its starting point, its net angular displacement is 0 degrees. Instead of using degrees, we can measure angular displacement in full turns, where a full turn is 360 degrees. But we have to say whether the displacement is clockwise or counterclockwise.)
Going back to the student's analysis of what's happened after 1 second: Could each particle have undergone a net displacement of 1 full turn clockwise? No, because there isn't enough time in 1 second. (The only way a particle can return to its starting point in 1 second, traveling at an angular velocity of 1 revolution per second, is if it never bounces off another particle.) The same is true if we replace "clockwise" by "counterclockwise".
But wait! Is it possible that (say) some of the particles made 0 full turns, and others made 1 full turn clockwise or counterclockwise, so that the total net angular displacement of the 17 particles works out to be 2k − 17?
The answer is No, and it's because the particles aren't passing through each other. So you can't have one particle ending up at its starting place having undergone m full turns and another particle ending up at its starting place have undergone n full turns unless m=n.
This last insight unlocks the problem. After 17 seconds, the net angular displacements of the particles sum to 17 times 2k − 17, and each particle occupies the position that some other particle or itself occupied at the start of the process. This can be shown to imply that each particle is in fact back where it started, having undergone a net displacement of 2k − 17 full turns clockwise (which, when 2k − 17 is negative, means 17 − 2k full turns counterclockwise).
#3: Here's a different answer: As we saw in #1, at time t=1 every particle is occupying a spot that was occupied by some particle at time t=0. That is, during the intervening second, the particles have undergone some sort of permutation. Every permutation of 17 objects arranged in some initial order has the property that if you apply the permutation 17! times, you get back the arrangement you started with. Here "17!" means 17 factorial, or 1 × 2 × 3 × … × 16 × 17, which is about 356 trillion. A little more thought shows that 17! can be replaced by the least common multiple of the numbers 1, 2, 3, … , 16, 17, which is "only" about 12 million. But in fact the permutation of the particles must be a cyclic permutation (because they don't pass through each other), and every cyclic permutation of 17 objects has the property that if you apply the permutation a mere 17 times, you get back to the arrangement you started with.
Could there be an earlier time at which every particle has returned to its starting point? I'll leave that for you to figure out, taking into account the fact that 17 is a prime number.
In the GIF, the time it takes for each particle to return to where it started is 7 × 10 = 70 seconds. See if you can watch this happen without getting distracted along the way!
Robert Cowen, "Keep Young Scholars Programs Running", Notices of the American Mathematical Society, May 1998, page 569.
Allyn Jackson, "The Demise of the Young Scholars Program", Notices of the American Mathematical Society, March 1998, pages 381–387.
Allyn Jackson, "Supporting a National Treasure", Notices of the American Mathematical Society, November 2003, page 1221.
Susan Landau, "Summer Studies Mathematician Alumnae", Notices of the American Mathematical Society, February 2004, page 182.
Susan Landau and Cathy O'Neil, "Why Ghosts in the Machine Should Remain Ghosts", December 2016.
Cathy O'Neil, Weapons of Math Destruction: How Big Data Increases Inequality and Threatens Democracy, 2016.
Steven Strogatz, The Joy of x: A Guided Tour of Math, from One to Infinity, 2012.
Steven Strogatz, Sync: The Emerging Science of Spontaneous Order, 2004.
Peter Winkler, Mathematical Mind-Benders, 2007. The chapter "The Adventures of Ant Alice" contains many variants on the bouncing electrons puzzle. Winkler has also collected errata for the book.
← Breaking logic with self-referential sentences Avoiding chazakah with the Prouhet-Thue-Morse sequence →
5 thoughts on "Will '17 be the Year of the Pig?"
Margaret Wertheim December 17, 2016 at 10:35 pm
Very inspiring piece. I've just written article for Aeon magazine about math as performance. The spirit of math play seems much alive with the pigs.
Margaretw
Institute For Figuring
jamespropp Post author December 18, 2016 at 10:10 am
Can you give me (and my readers) a link to your article? I'm sure I'm not the only one who'd like to read it!
goldenoj December 20, 2016 at 7:52 am
Oh, the mystery of the yellow pig! I thought you were going to reveal the Spivak history I've wondered about for decades. Curse your fidelity!
But blessings on a deep and lovely meditation.
Pingback: Breaking logic with self-referential sentences |
Pingback: Carnival of Mathematics #170 |


text:
Shocking image of rhino butchered by poachers wins Wildlife Photographer of the Year 2017
Photojournalist Brent Stirton has been named Wildlife Photographer of the Year 2017 for his image of a black rhino killed by poachers for its horns.
By David Sim
Updated February 12, 2018 12:32 GMT
A shocking photo of an endangered rhino that was shot and brutally butchered by poachers has won one of the world's most prestigious photography competitions. Photojournalist Brent Stirton has been named Wildlife Photographer of the Year 2017 for his compelling image Memorial to a species, which focuses on a black rhino that had been shot and de-horned in South Africa's Hluhluwe Imfolozi Game Reserve.
Grand title winner Wildlife Photographer of the Year 2017 and winner of The Wildlife Photojournalist Award: Story category: Memorial to a species by Brent Stirton, South Africa Brent Stirton / Wildlife Photographer of the Year
Once the world's most numerous rhino species, black rhinos are now critically endangered due to poaching and the illegal international trade in rhino horn, one of the world's most corrupt illegal wildlife networks. The killers were probably from a local community but working to order. Entering the Hluhluwe Imfolozi Game Reserve at night, they shot the black rhino bull using a silencer. Working fast, they hacked off the two horns and escaped before being discovered by the reserve's patrol. The horns would have been sold to a middleman and smuggled out of South Africa, probably via Mozambique, to China or Vietnam. For the reserve, it was grim news, not least because this is where conservationists bred back from near extinction the subspecies that is now the pre-eminent target for poachers, the southern white rhino. For the photographer, the crime scene was one of more than 30 he visited in the course of covering this tragic story.
Canon EOS-1DX + 28mm f2.8 lens; 1/250 sec at f9; ISO 200; flash.
Competition judge Roz Kidman Cox says 'To make such a tragic scene almost majestic in its sculptural power deserves the highest award. There is rawness, but there is also great poignancy and therefore dignity in the fallen giant. It's also symbolic of one of the most wasteful, cruel and unnecessary environmental crimes, one that needs to provoke the greatest public outcry.'
The winners of the 2017 Wildlife Photographer of the Year Competition were named on Tuesday 17 October 2017 during a ceremony at the Natural History Museum (NHM), London, which runs the annual competition. NHM Director Sir Michael Dixon said: "The black rhino offers a sombre and challenging counterpart to the story of 'Hope' our blue whale. Like the critically endangered black rhinoceros, blue whales were once hunted to the brink of extinction, but humanity acted on a global scale to protect them. This shocking picture of an animal butchered for its horns is a call to action for us all."
Daniël Nelson took the award for Young Wildlife Photographer of the Year 2017 with his portrait of a young western lowland gorilla, which captures the inextricable similarity between wild apes and humans, and the importance of the forest on which they depend.
Grand title winner, Young Wildlife Photographer of the Year 2017 and winner of the 15-17 years old category: The good life by Daniël Nelson, The Netherlands Daniël Nelson / Wildlife Photographer of the Year
Daniël met Caco in the forest of Odzala National Park in the Republic of Congo. A three‑hour trek through dense vegetation with skilled trackers led him to where the 16‑strong Neptuno family was feeding and to a close encounter with one of the few habituated groups of western lowland gorillas. In the wet season they favour the plentiful supply of sweet fruit, and here Caco is feasting on a fleshy breadfruit. Caco is about nine years old and preparing to leave his family. He is putting on muscle, becoming a little too bold and is often found at the fringe of the group. He will soon become a solitary silverback, perhaps teaming up with other males to explore and, with luck, starting his own family in eight to ten years' time. Western lowland gorillas are critically endangered, threatened by illegal hunting for bushmeat (facilitated by logging and mining roads), disease (notably the Ebola virus), habitat loss (to mines and oil‑palm plantations) and the impact of climate change. In his compelling portrait of Caco – relaxed in his surroundings – Daniël captured the inextricable similarity between these wild apes and humans and the importance of the forest on which they depend.
Canon 6D + Sigma 50–500mm f4.5–6.3 lens at 500mm; 1/30 sec at f6.3; ISO 800.
An international panel of judges also named 16 category winners, depicting the incredible diversity of life on our planet, from displays of rarely seen animal behaviour to hidden underwater worlds. IBTimes UK presents the winning photograph in each category and the story behind each image.
Winner 2017, Earth's Environments: The ice monster by Laurent Ballesta, France
Laurent and his expedition team were based at the French Dumont d'Urville scientific base in east Antarctica, recording the impact of global warming. They were awed by the magnitude of icebergs, and the fact that only 10 per cent of their volume is ever visible above the surface. When Laurent spotted this relatively small iceberg, he saw the chance to realise a long-held ambition – to show the underwater part. It took three days, in virtually freezing water, to check out the location, install a grid of lines from the seabed to buoys (so that Laurent could maintain a definite distance from it) and then take the series of pictures – a substantial number, with a very wide‑angle lens – to capture the entire scene. "None of us could see the whole thing under water. Close-up, it was overflowing from our view. From a distance, it disappeared into the fog." Back at the station, they had a tense wait at the computer, while the result of 147 stitched images came together on screen. The front of the vast foot of the frozen monster, polished by the current over probably many years, shone turquoise and blue in the light penetrating the ice ceiling, dwarfing Laurent's companions as they lit its sides.
Nikon D4S + 13mm f2.8 lens; 1/30 to 1/60 sec at f6.3 – 147 stitched images; ISO 3200; Seacam housing; flashlights.
Winner 2017, Earth's Environments: The ice monster by Laurent Ballesta, France Laurent Ballesta / Wildlife Photographer of the Year
Winner, Animals in Their Environment: The night raider by Marcio Cabral, Brazil
For three seasons, Marcio had camped out in Brazil's cerrado region, on the vast treeless savannah of Emas National Park, waiting for the right conditions to capture a special light display. It happens when winged termites take to the sky to mate. Click beetle larvae living in the outer layers of the termite mounds poke out and flash their bioluminescent 'headlights' to lure in prey – the flying termites. After days of rain, Marcio was finally able to capture the phenomenon, but he also got a surprise bonus. Out of the darkness ambled a giant anteater, oblivious of Marcio in his hide, and began to attack the tall mound with its powerful claws, after the termites living deep inside. Protected from bites by its long hair and rubbery skin, the anteater extracted the termites with its exceptionally long, sticky tongue. It has limited vision but a keen sense of smell to help locate insects. Luckily, the wind was in Marcio's favour, and the anteater stayed long enough for him to make his picture, using a wide-angle lens to include the landscape, a low flash and a long exposure to capture both the stars and the light show.
Canon EOS 5DS R + Nikon 14–24mm f3.5 lens + Fotodiox adapter + ND filter; 30 sec; ISO 5000; two Metz 32 flashes + diffuser; Manfrotto tripod.cc
Winner, Animals in Their Environment: The night raider by Marcio Cabral, Brazil Marcio Cabral / Wildlife Photographer of the Year
Winner, Black and white: Polar pas de deux by Eilo Elvinger, Luxembourg
From her ship, anchored in the icy waters off Svalbard, in Arctic Norway, Eilo spotted a polar bear and her two-year-old cub in the distance, slowly drawing closer. Polar bears are known as hunters, mainly of seals – they can smell prey from nearly a kilometre (more than half a mile) away – but they are also opportunists. Nearing the ship, they were diverted to a patch of snow soaked in leakage from the vessel's kitchen and began to lick it. "I was ashamed of our contribution to the immaculate landscape," says Eilo, "and of how this influenced the bears' behaviour." Mirroring each other, with back legs pressed together (cub on the right), they tasted the stained snow in synchrony. Such broad paws make fine swimming paddles and help the bears to tread on thin ice, and their impressive non‑retractable claws – more than five centimetres (two inches) long – act like ice picks for a better grip. Mindful of the species' shrinking habitat – climate change is reducing the Arctic sea ice on which the bears depend – Eilo framed her shot tightly, choosing black and white to "reflect the pollution as a shadow cast on the pristine environment".
Canon EOS-1DX + 200–400mm f4 lens at 200mm; 1/640 sec at f9 (+0.7 e/v); ISO 6400.
Winner, Black and white: Polar pas de deux by Eilo Elvinger, Luxembourg Eilo Elvinger / Wildlife Photographer of the Year
Winner, Animal Portraits: Contemplation by Peter Delaney, Ireland/South Africa
Totti couldn't have tried harder. For more than an hour, he posed, gestured and called to entice one particular female down from the canopy, but nothing worked. The object of his desire ignored him. Peter, too, was frustrated. He had spent a long, difficult morning tracking the chimpanzees – part of a troop of some 250 – through Uganda's Kibale National Park. It was humid, the ground was wet and the dense undergrowth meant that, whenever he did catch up with the chimpanzees, all he got was tantalising glimpses as they swung from tree to tree. "Photographing in a rainforest with dim light and splashes of sunlight means your exposure settings are forever changing. Keeping my camera at its optimum ISO setting meant low shutter speeds, and as the park authorities don't allow tripods and monopods, getting a sharp image with a hand‑held camera was a challenge," he says. Totti was on the ground at least, but he was busy with vigorous courtship, pacing and gesticulating. It was only when he finally flopped down, worn out with unrequited love, that Peter had his chance. "He lay back, hands behind his head, and rested for a moment, as if dreaming of what could have been."
Fujifilm X-T1 + 50–140mm lens at 140mm; 1/75 sec at f2.8 (–1.3 e/v); ISO 3200.
Winner, Animal Portraits: Contemplation by Peter Delaney, Ireland/South Africa Peter Delaney / Wildlife Photographer of the Year
Winner, Behaviour, Invertebrates: Crab surprise by Justin Gilligan, Australia
Out of the blue, an aggregation of giant spider crabs the size of a football field wandered past. Known to converge in their thousands elsewhere in Australian waters – probably seeking safety in numbers before moulting – such gatherings were unknown in Mercury Passage off the east coast of Tasmania. Justin was busy documenting a University of Tasmania kelp transplant experiment and was taken completely by surprise. A single giant spider crab can be hard to spot – algae and sponges often attach to its shell, providing excellent camouflage – but there was no missing this mass march-past, scavenging whatever food lay in their path on the sandy sea floor. "About 15 minutes later, I noticed an odd shape in the distance, moving among the writhing crabs," says Justin. It was a Maori octopus that seemed equally delighted with the unexpected bounty. Though large – the biggest octopus in the southern hemisphere, with muscular arms spanning up to three metres (10 feet) and knobbly, white-spotted skin – it was having trouble choosing and catching a crab. Luckily for Justin, the stage was set with clear water and sunlight reflecting off the sand. He quickly adjusted his camera and framed the octopus finally making its catch.
Nikon D810 + 15mm f2.8 lens; 1/100 sec at f14; ISO 400; Nauticam housing; two Ikelite DS161 strobes.
Winner, Behaviour, Invertebrates: Crab surprise by Justin Gilligan, Australia Justin Gilligan / Wildlife Photographer of the Year
Winner, Behaviour – Birds: The incubator bird by Gerry Pearce, UK/Australia
Most birds incubate their eggs with their bodies. Not so the Australian brush turkey, one of a handful of birds – the megapodes – that do it with an oven. Only the males oversee incubation. In this case, a male had chosen to create his nest‑mound near Gerry's home in Sydney, bordering Garigal National Park. It took a month to build, out of leaves, soil and other debris, at which point it was more than a metre high – mounds used year after year can be more than 4 metres (13 feet) wide and 2 metres (6 feet 7 inches) high. The brush turkey then invited a succession of females to mate with him. If he and his mound were to their liking, they would lay a clutch of eggs in the mound. Always there was a chance that the eggs had been fertilised by a male she had visited previously, and that in a kind of nest‑relay, some of his own babies would hatch in another male's mound. As the organic matter in the mound decayed, heat was generated, and to check that the incubation temperature was the necessary 33°C (92°F), the brush turkey regularly stuck his head in and, using heat sensors in his upper bill, checked a mouthful. In this picture, he is piling on more insulation to raise the temperature. If it gets too hot, he will rake it off. Gerry spent four months watching the male and his mound, every day from dawn. After seven weeks, and despite egg raids by a large lace monitor (lizard), at least a quarter of the 20 or so eggs hatched. The big chicks were strong enough to kick (not peck) their way out of their shells and up through the compost heap. Fully independent, they left home straight away to start life on their own in the bush.
Canon 7D Mark II + 18–200mm f3.5 lens; 1/1000 sec at f9; ISO 1600; two Yongnuo Speedlite flashes + wireless trigger.
Winner, Behaviour – Birds: The incubator bird by Gerry Pearce, UK/Australia Gerry Pearce / Wildlife Photographer of the Year
Winner 2017, Behaviour – Amphibians and Reptiles: The ancient ritual by Brian Skerry, USA
Like generations before her, the leatherback turtle shifts her considerable weight with her outsized, strong front flippers and moves steadily back to the ocean. Leatherbacks are the largest, deepest-diving and widest-ranging sea turtles, the only survivors of an evolutionary lineage that diverged from other sea turtles 100–150 million years ago. Much of their lives are spent at sea, shrouded in mystery. When mature, their leathery shells now averaging 1.6 metres (5 feet 3 inches) long, females return to the shores where they themselves hatched to lay their own eggs. Sandy Point National Wildlife Refuge on St Croix, in the US Virgin Islands, provides critical nesting habitat, successfully managed for decades. Elsewhere, leatherbacks are not so lucky, threatened primarily by fisheries bycatch as well as factors including human consumption, coastal development and climate change. The females each lay about 100 eggs in nests dug deep in the sand. Some 60 days later, the hatchlings emerge, their sex influenced by incubation temperatures (hotter nests produce more females). Nesting turtles are not seen every night at Sandy Point, and were often too far away for Brian to reach. When after two weeks he got the encounter he wanted – under clear skies, with no distant city lights – he hand-held a long exposure under the full moon, artfully evoking a primordial atmosphere in this timeless scene.
Nikon D5 + 17–35mm f2.8 lens at 24mm; 10 sec at f8; ISO 1600; Nikon flash at 1/64th power + tungsten gel; Nikon remote release.
Winner 2017, Behaviour – Amphibians and Reptiles: The ancient ritual by Brian Skerry, USA Brian Skerry / Wildlife Photographer of the Year
Winner, Behaviour – Mammals: Giant gathering by Tony Wu, USA
Dozens of sperm whales mingled noisily off Sri Lanka's northeast coast, stacked as far down as Tony could see. This was part of something special – a congregation of dozens, perhaps hundreds, of social units, like a kind of gathering of the clans. Sperm whales are intelligent, long-lived and gregarious, and groups play, forage, interact and communicate in different ways and have distinctive cultures. Aggregations like this could be a critical part of their rich, social lives but are rarely reported. Some two thirds of the sperm whale population was wiped out during the peak of industrialised whaling in the twentieth century. But commercial whaling was banned in 1986, and this kind of major gathering could be 'a sign that populations are recovering', says Tony, who has spent 17 years studying and photographing sperm whales. Tactile contact is an important part of sperm whale social life, but rubbing against each other also helps slough off dead skin. So the water was filled with a blizzard of skin flakes. More photographically challenging was the smearing of the camera‑housing dome with oily secretions from the whales and thick clouds of dung released as they emerged from the gigantic cluster. But through continually swimming to reposition himself and the tolerance of the whales themselves, Tony got a unique photograph of the mysterious Indian Ocean gathering.
Canon EOS 5D Mark III + 15mm f2.8 lens; 1/250 sec at f6.3; ISO 800; Zillion housing + Pro-One optical dome port.
Winner 2017, Behaviour – Mammals: Giant gathering by Tony Wu, USA Tony Wu / Wildlife Photographer of the Year
Winner, Plants and fungi: Tapestry of life by Dorin Bofan, Romania
It was a quiet morning with flat light as Dorin stood alone on the shore of the fjord. He was contemplating the immense landscape bounding Hamnøy in the Lofoten Islands, Norway, when here and there, the clouds parted, allowing shafts of sunlight to fall on to the great walls of metamorphic rock, lighting up the swathes of vegetation coating the canyon and its slopes. The mountains here rise steeply from the sea – a sheer drop of 200 metres (660 feet) in some places – yet mountain birches manage to gain a foothold, some clinging to existence in the most precipitous spots. This mountain variety of downy birch is relatively small, and here in its autumn colours, is glowing gold. Dwarf willow species carpet much of the ground below. Drawn to the gentle curve at the base of the rock‑face – like the "moss-covered trunk of a veteran tree in a damp ancient wood" – Dorin composed his picture, waiting until a break in the clouds yielded this brief moment in a timeless landscape, cloaked in a tapestry of Arctic-alpine vegetation.
EOS 650D + 70–200mm f4 lens at 100mm; 1/100 sec at f5.6 (-1 e/v); ISO 200; Manfrotto tripod.
Winner, Plants and fungi: Tapestry of life by Dorin Bofan, Romania Dorin Bofan / Wildlife Photographer of the Year
In open ocean far off Tahiti, French Polynesia, Anthony regularly dives at night in water more than 2 kilometres (1¼ miles) deep. His aim is to photograph deep-sea creatures – tiny ones, that migrate to the surface under cover of darkness to feed on plankton. This lobster larva (on top), just 1.2 centimetres (half an inch) across, with spiny legs, a flattened, transparent body and eyes on stalks, was at a stage when its form is called a phyllosoma. Its spindly legs were gripping the dome of a small mauve stinger jellyfish. The pair were drifting in the current, the phyllosoma saving energy and possibly gaining protection from predators deterred by the jelly's stings, its own hard shell probably protecting it from stings. The phyllosoma also seemed able to steer the jelly, turning it around at speed as it moved away from Anthony. The odd thing about the jelly was that it had few tentacles left, suggesting that the little hitchhiker was using it as a convenient source of snacks. In fact, a phyllosoma has a special digestion to deal with jellyfish stinging cells, coating them with a membrane that stops the stings penetrating its gut. In several hundred night dives, Anthony met only a few lobster larvae, and it took many shots of the jellyfish jockey to get a composition he was happy with – a portrait of a creature rarely observed alive in its natural surroundings.
Nikon D810 + 60mm f2.8 lens; 1/250 sec at f22 (−0.3 e/v); ISO 64; Nauticam housing + Nauticam SMC-1 super-macro converter; Inon Z-240 strobes.
Winner, Underwater: The jellyfish jockey by Anthony Berberian, France Anthony Berberian / Wildlife Photographer of the Year
Winner, Wildlife Photojournalist – Single image: Palm-oil survivors by Aaron 'Bertie' Gekoski, UK/USA
In eastern Sabah, on the island of Borneo, three generations of Bornean elephants edge their way across the terraces of an oil-palm plantation being cleared for replanting. Palm oil is a lucrative global export, and in the Malaysian state of Sabah, where the majority of rainforest has already been logged (only 8 per cent of protected intact forest remains), the palm-oil industry is still a major driver of deforestation, squeezing elephants into smaller and smaller pockets of forest. Increasingly they wander into oil-palm plantations to feed, where they come into conflict with humans, with elephants being shot or poisoned. (In 2013, poison used in a plantation killed a herd of 14 elephants – the sole survivor, a calf, was found caressing its dead mother's tusks.) Reports of elephant attacks on humans are also on the rise. Today, the fragmented population of Bornean elephants – regarded as a subspecies of the Asian elephant that may have been isolated on the island of Borneo for more than 300,000 years – is estimated to number no more than 1,000–2,000. Elephants form strong social bonds, and females often stay together for their entire lives. Here, the group probably comprises a matriarch, two of her daughters and her grand-calf. With the light fading fast, Bertie acted quickly to frame an image that symbolises the impact that our insatiable demand for palm oil (used in half of the products on supermarket shelves) has on wildlife. "They huddled together, dwarfed by a desolate and desecrated landscape. A haunting image," he says.
Nikon D700 + 80–200mm f2.8 lens at 120mm; 1/500 sec at f3.2; ISO 400.
Winner, Wildlife Photojournalist – Single image: Palm-oil survivors by Aaron 'Bertie' Gekoski, UK/USA Aaron 'Bertie' Gekoski / Wildlife Photographer of the Year
Winner, 10 years and under: The grip of the gulls, Ekaterina Bee, Italy
Like all her family, five-and-a-half-year-old Ekaterina is fascinated by nature, and she has also been using a camera since she was four years old. But on the boat trip off the coast of central Norway, her focus was not on the white‑tailed sea eagles that the others were photographing but on the cloud of herring gulls that followed the small boat as it left the harbour. They were after food, and as soon as Ekaterina threw them some bread, they surrounded her. At first she was slightly scared by their boldness and beaks but soon became totally absorbed in watching and photographing them, lost in the noise, wingbeats and colours of feet and beaks in the whirl of white. Of all the many pictures she took that day, this was the one she liked best because of the way the birds filled the white sky and the expression on the face of the bird furthest away: "It looked very curious, as if it was trying to understand what was happening on the boat."
Nikon D90 + 18–70mm f3.5–4.5 lens at 18mm; 1/320 sec at f11 (+0.7 e/v); ISO 400.
Winner, 10 years and under: The grip of the gulls, Ekaterina Bee, Italy Ekaterina Bee / Wildlife Photographer of the Year
Winner, 11-14 years old: Stuck in by Ashleigh Scully, USA
Deep snow had blanketed the Lamar Valley in Yellowstone National Park, and the day was cold and overcast. This female American red fox was hunting beside the road, stepping quietly across the crusty surface of the snow. Every so often she would stop, stare, tilt her head from side to side and listen intently for the movement of prey – most likely a vole – beneath the snow. Ashleigh was also poised, her camera lens resting on a beanbag out of the back window of the car. Just as the fox came parallel with the car, she stopped, listened, crouched and then leapt high in the air, punching down through the snow, forefeet and nose first and legs upended. She remained bottom-up for about 10 seconds, waving her tail slightly back and forth before using her back legs to pull out of the hole. Ashleigh, who has been photographing foxes for many years, though mostly near her home, captured the whole sequence. "It was funny to see but also humbling to observe how hard the fox had to work to find a meal. I really wanted her to be successful." Unfortunately, she wasn't. But then the image, says Ashleigh, "illustrates the harsh reality of winter life in Yellowstone".
Canon EOS 7D Mark II + 500mm f4 Mark II lens; 1/640 sec at f5.6 (+1.7 e/v); ISO 1000.
Winner, 11-14 years old: Stuck in by Ashleigh Scully, USA Ashleigh Scully / Wildlife Photographer of the Year
This year's competition attracted almost 50,000 entries from 92 countries. One hundred selected images will go on show at the 53rd Wildlife Photographer of the Year exhibition at the Natural History Museum from 20 October 2017 to 28 May 2018. Book your tickets here.
The next Wildlife Photographer of the Year competition opens for entries on Monday 23 October. Find out more here.
More about photography competitions from IBTimes UK
Nikon Small World 2017: Microscope reveals surprising beauty of bugs, plants and minerals
Spectacular shots: National Geographic Nature Photographer of the Year
Astronomy Photographer of the Year 2017 winners revealed – and they're out of this world
This article was first published on October 17, 2017
Related topics : South Africa Photography Competition Pictures
YOU MIGHT LIKE THISSponsored Content by Taboola


CMS Content Management System. A CMS or Content Management System is perfect if your goal is to change, update, delete and add content to your website independently.
CMS – Content Management Systems for a Better Website Content Update, Management and Editing!


text:
Fear, Emptiness, Despair: Ranking the Work of Napalm Death Mk. 3
Napalm Death fans generally fall into two categories. There are those perceptive individuals among us who believe their finest moment was Scum, particularly Side A (aka, those who are RIGHT) and untrustworthy mountebanks who argue the band's best representation was From Enslavement to Obliteration (aka everyone else who is WRONG). But endlessly debating the relative merits of two albums (especially since we've already established the correct answer is Scum Side A) kinda ignores the fact that the band has recorded a dozen other albums since.
The quintet of Mark "Barney" Greenway, Shane Embury, Mitch Harris, Jesse Pintado and Danny Herrera—in various juxtapositions over two decades—took their predecessors' grind and alloyed it with spine of death metal crunch and crust punk apocalypse, forging a new middle path that was often delivered in the same indecipherable gibberish language that the cast of The Red Riding Trilogy tried to pass off as English. And whatever you might think about the legitimacy of Napalm Death Mk. 3, that's an assload of material worth consideration and closer scrutiny. So let's rank the work of the lineup that has defined Napalm Death for past two decades.
12. Inside the Torn Apart
The accurately-titled Inside the Torn Apart was the low point of Napalm Death's nearly three decades history. Tensions in the band were so fraught that Napalm Death and Extreme Noise Terror briefly swapped singers. Once heads cooled and apologies were exchanged, Napalm Death completed their 1997 album, a frustrating, nearly blastbeat-free record that sounds just as off kilter and out of synch as the band was at the time. While leadoff track "Breed to Breathe" was an adequate entry into Napalm Death's catchy crusted death metal arsenal—at least as far as their mid-'90s output goes—the album quickly tails off after that as passionless songs blur into a mire that was one egomaniacal therapist and a film crew away from being Some Kind of Monster.
11. Time Waits for No Slave
Century Media
After a late career renaissance that peaked with the superlative Smear Campaign, Napalm Death stubbed their toe a little with Time Waits for No Slave. Not a bad album necessarily, but there's just something flat about the proceedings that felt leaden after its punk toned predecessor. Time Waits for No Slave is a little overlong at 50 minutes and some judicious pruning could have made this a tighter banger overall. There are still some great moments like that roaring "Diktat," which finds Barney snarling his way into paroxysms of moralizing outrage, which is pretty much everything you demand from Napalm Death these days.
10. The Code is Red…Long Live the Code
After a pair of supremely aggressive and punchy albums in Enemy of the Music Business and Order of the Leech, Napalm Death returned to the comfort and familiarity of their death metal fetish for their first Century Media effort and official debut as a quartet. While it lacks the speed and pop of its twin predecessors, The Code is Red…Long Live the Code finds Napalm Death hitting a comfortable stride as death metal elder statesman, focusing more on their own fun than meeting any fan's or critic's expectations. In that vein, Napalm Death corralled a whole host of their friends, including Jeff Walker, Jello Biafra and Jamey Jasta for a sing-along effort that hearkens back to the way hardcore bands were always piling in and out of each other's albums on guest spots. It's certainly not the strongest album to ever bear the Napalm Death logo, but it's probably the closest the band has ever come to just kicking back and throwing a party.
9. Fear, Emptiness, Despair
For traditional grind fans who stuck with Napalm Death through the decidedly more death metal shift of Harmony Corruption and the Mick Harris-less Utopia Banished, this is probably where things got wonky and they started to jump ship. Fear, Emptiness, Despair is not a bad death metal album at all. In fact, it's a pretty good death metal album. It's just not what you would have expected from Napalm Death if you were a fan forged in the late '80s or early '90s. The blast beats come farther apart and there's more emphasis on writing perceptible song structures than there is on savaging the legacy of hardcore. The art, which nods back to the famous Amebix face, hinted at the crust that still lurked in Napalm Death's core, but now that was being hammered in the forge of death metal to create a perverse new alloy that maybe wasn't to everyone's taste.
8. Diatribes
Diatribes represents a confounding transitional album for Napalm Death. On one hand, it boasts some of the best songs that particular lineup ever crafted in "Greed Killing," "Corrosive Elements" and "Cursed to Crawl." But it was also hampered by a glossy, too clean production job that was almost poppy, sapping the band of any bass heft and neutering their rage. Now I remember the mid-'90s and, in retrospect, we can all acknowledge it was an…odd…period for Western civilization. But whoever told Napalm fucking Death that green and purple would be an appropriate color scheme needs to have what little is left of their taste slapped right out of their mouth. Also videos apparently demanded random Asians? But to get a proper appreciation of these songs, seek out one of Napalm Death's later BBC sessions where they just ripped "Greed Killing" live. Mitch Harris was down with the flu so Jesse Pintado handled the whole song solo and killed it. It's rather poignant when you think about what would happen to him in the next decade.
7. Words From the Exit Wound
Napalm Death's Earache kiss off Words From the Exit Wound is an underappreciated effort, reveling in the sound that they should have captured for Diatribes with another handful of punked out death metal songs that hit like cannons. Actual bass tones, what a novel concept! Songs like "The Infiltraitor" were the kind of explosive detonations fans had come to expect from that lineup and that era of the band. But then, in a harbinger for strangeness to come, Napalm Death also threw in a few curveballs like the slow build landmine of "Next of Kin to Chaos," the odd "Trio-Degradable/Affixed by Disconcern" and the first hints of the Gregorian chanting vocals that would sneak into plenty of their later efforts. Words From the Exit Wound is an all around strange little critter and that's part of its perverse charm. You could tell Napalm Death were feeling restless, ready to cut ties with the label that had made them and suddenly there were no more barriers. Anything could be tried. Wearing my spiffy Words From the Exit Wounds concert tee at a show in DC in 1999 once got me groped by a metal celebrity. But that's a story for another day.
6. Order of the Leech
Order of the Leech saw Napalm Death continuing down the path they blazed with Enemy of the Music Business. It still wasn't quite a true grind record, but it nodded back to the death-grind hybrid of Utopia Banished. Napalm Death were pissed (in all senses of the word) once again. If you wouldn't listen they would grab you by the throat and start ranting into your ear until you were hacked off enough to finally get up off your indolent ass and start doing something about the shitty state of the world. Songs like the grammatically challenged "Out of Sight Out of Mind" found that sweet spot where Barney's commanding vocals crested some of the catchiest, punkiest tunes the band had ever penned and performed. And about those guitars—though he's credited on the album, Jesse Pintado didn't play a note on the record. His health and relationship with the band were frazzling at that point and shortly after Order of the Leech he'd set off to recreate Terrorizer before eventually succumbing to a fatal combination of alcoholism and diabetes. It says a lot about Napalm Death's character that they gave him full credit anyway.
5. Utilitarian
If you told me in advance that album number 14 would Napalm Death's most varied, experimental and downright enjoyable in their cannon as well as one of the best records of 2012, I would have politely inquired about your delicate mental health. But there it is. Shows how much I know. While I could still do with a tad less of the chanting, I can't deny that Utilitarian was a whopper of a record that spanned Napalm Death Mk. 3's career from excitingly intense pit-stirrers like "Collision Course" to the John Zorn horn freakout of "Everyday Pox" and the Voivodian "The Wolf I Feed." There's something here that every fan who has stuck by the band through shit and shine can be totally fucking chuffed about. Twenty years on we're not looking for this lineup to innovate anymore. Instead, we just want them to bang out exciting albums that build on the groove they've worn into the earth. If they happen to crack a few new ruts along the way, all the better.
4. Utopia Banished
After Mick Harris' ceremonial defenestration, Napalm Death recruited a new drummer in Danny Herrera and turned out an album that sounds pretty much exactly what you'd expect the guys responsible for Terrorizer, Righteous Pigs and Defecation to pull together. After the pure death metal pivot of Harmony Corruption, Utopia Banished brought sexy back with a leaner, more hungry effort that played grindcore antagonism off of death metal's heavy trod and dedication to recognizable song structures. What that turned out to be was the best of both worlds, a death grind amalgam of ferocity and craft. Is it wrong that 20 years after he pounded the shit out of the toms on "Dementia Access" that I still mentally refer to Herrera as the new guy?
3. Smear Campaign
Napalm Death's first Century Media record, The Code is Red…Long Live the Code, was worrisome, seeming to indicate that the Birmingham bastards had lost the fire that immolated their two Spitfire records. Napalm Death seemed content to once again churn out the comfortable and unchallenging death metal that had defined them for the bulk of the '90s. But a funny thing happened when it came time to record their follow up. Apparently somebody pissed in their cider because Napalm Death were royally cheesed off. Smear Campaign just seethes with barely contained outrage. It's probably the most aggressive album to ever boast the ethereal presence of The Gathering's Anneke van Giersbergen, which is probably the last cameo anyone would have guessed. After an unexpectedly operatic opening in "Weltschmerz," Napalm Death established from the outset that they were returning to their proper killing configuration a decade and a half into their partnership with the blistering "Sink Fast, Let Go," which got an added boost from Barney passing the mic to unleash a Cerberus-headed vocal tirade.
2. Harmony Corruption
Lineup overhauls were nothing new to Napalm Death—even occasionally coming in between Side A and Side B of genre defining albums—but the debut of Napalm Death Mk. 3 turned a lot of heads not just because they culled members of Terrorizer, Righteous Pigs and Benediction into a Beneton ad for international extremity. Napalm Death had gone full death metal. The band that had pushed the short, fast and loud mantra to its reduction ad absurdum conclusion was now spending a baroque five minutes on songs with recognizable structures and distinct choruses. While it's understandable to want to pin this one on the n00bs taking over the band, most of the music bears tenured member Mick Harris' imprimatur. While Napalm Death shed a lot of grind cred, Harmony Corruption is probably the album that's done the most to boost the band's profile in the wider metal world as they gnaw their way some choice death metal cuts in "Unfit Earth" (a personal favorite), "The Chains That Bind Us" and what's surely become their signature song, "Suffer the Children." Napalm Death weren't grinding any more, but they were just as intense and angry as we'd come to expect.
1. Enemy of the Music Business
After their relationship with Earache soured and ground to an acrimonious halt, Napalm Death roared back with an album that can only be seen as a gigantic fuck you to their prior label. Out was that hideous '90s logo and in its place reigned Jeff Walker's scratchy font classic. Moribund death metal likewise got jettisoned in favor of the fastest, leanest and hungriest sounding songs in Napalm Death's arsenal since Utopia Banished. Enemy of the Music Business represents the culmination of all of the potential Napalm Death's latter lineup had teased for the preceding decade in one perfectly executed smartbomb of anger and derision. This was the album the steadfast fans who suffered through the mid-'90s wilderness years had been clamoring for. Finally Napalm Death sounded dangerous again. A rough and tumble production job let flash all the razor edges that past albums had filed away behind shiny, big budget studio sessions. This was a return to form that saw Napalm Death regress into their apotheosis. Some of the credit has to be due to Nasum. Shane Embury has been pretty open with his praise for the Swedes and the way they kicked the Brits in the rump to get them up and raging again. The only complaint I have with this album is that Napalm Death felt the need to tack 10 minutes of silence on to the last track before ending on some bullshit bonus track crap (a scam repeated on Order of the Leech). I fucking hate that shit. But if that's the most glaring fault to be found, then we're dealing with one king hell of a fucking record.
Labels: diatribes, enemy of the music business, fear emptiness despair, harmony corruption, napalm death, order of the leech, smear campaign, time waits for no slave, utilitarian, utopia banished
love this band!
good post Andrew! I think I'll revisit some of these records tomorrow.
way more detail than I could have ever given this band. Wish you did this for Agathocles so I knew what fuggin albums to buy (been putting this off for years).
"A Guide to Mince" would be be a nice addition to my "How to Shelf."
Full Metal Attorney said...
OK, as someone who is a huge fan of things that should also make me a huge fan of Napalm Death, but who has only one Napalm Death album (because of the Mortal Kombat soundtrack) and had no idea where to start on their extensive and widely varied discography:
Thank you. This was much needed.
that's the beauty of napalm death, fma, they've changed so much over 30 years that there's an album for everyone.
also you're the fourth of fifth person i've heard say the MK soundtrack was their first exposure. may have to write something about it one day and its impact.
Make me the sixth, haha. It was my introduction to extreme metal. It led me to Fear Factory, which was the first band I ever liked with growled vocals. All downhill from there.
/bill
awesome! personally, i'd move "Exit Wound" and "code" up a bit more, certainly above "order of the leech" leech has good songs and some of barney's most intense performances, but those goddamn triggered drums make it sound like a freakin Fear Factory album...
Just to chime in: this was a great article; I haven't listened to their 90s stuff in a long while! Fear, Emptiness, Despair was the first ND album I bought, so I would have that one higher up on the list haha. Again, cool article! --Steve
There is no denying how powerful and primal those early albums are but I always find myself listening to the middle era stuff a lot more. It took me a little while to come to terms with some of the 90s stuff but now I feel it's all good top to bottom. Great article, great band!
Good Reads: A Man Chooses; a Slave Obeys
G&P Review: Who's My Saviour
Good Reads: Higher Forms of Pornography
The Namesake Series: "Cleptocracy"
Good Reads: Double Live Gonzo
G&P Review: Wake
Good Reads: Intergalactic Planetary, Planetary Int...
Fear, Emptiness, Despair: Ranking the Work of Napa...
Packaged Rebellion: When Presentation Enhances the...


I've had some fun this week sewing some of this month's Block Lotto blocks. I must say that they looked a bit complicated, but really went up beautifully with the Tri Recs tool. I also like the black background that was called for this month. I'd love to see these set on point in a quilt.
I've spent my sewing time this week with a pile of mending and "have to do" sewing, but it feels good to have it done. I did get a bit of fun sewing in with a couple of trick or treat bags for the littlest ones here.
We took some of the little ones to the pumpkin patch this week and had a great time.
We continue to celebrate October birthdays here. I had a request from one of the granddaughters for a princess cake. The problem was that she wanted one of our family's favorite cakes which is a yellow cake with hot fudge drizzled over the top. I usually make it in a rectangular pan. I decided to get creative and made a bundt cake, stuck a doll in it and make a gathered skirt to cover the plain cake. Then when we served it we just removed the doll, sliced the cake and drizzled the chocolate over each piece. It worked out perfectly.
The birthday girl was pleased. That's what matters.
Over the weekend we attended the children's school gala at the Reagan Library. It was a spectacular evening for the event and dinner was served underneath Air Force One. It was quite impressive to look up at the massive plane above the table.
View looking up from our table.
The very talented Soma from Whims and Fancies is going to be hosting a "Trunk Full of Quilts" event on her blog in November. Pop over and check out a way that you can share your favorite quilts that you have completed over the years.
After RNG selected two "no reply" comments from my recent Halloween Haunts blog hop, I have finally notified the winner - Angelia (no blog). Hopefully, I will hear back from her soon.
Welcome! First of all, I would like to thank Marian of Seams to be Sew for our Halloween Blog Hop. Many of us have really missed our great hops and it is a thrill to see so many "old friends" have signed up and have been sharing their incredible projects. Halloween has always been a holiday that I love. To me, it is a "kick-off" into the fall with Thanksgiving and Christmas right behind. So.....Happy Fall Y'All!
Grab a few drinking cups in two different sizes. You will also need starch or white school glue, paper towels, a toothpick, a styrofoam ball (I used a 2 1/2 inch one), spray paint and items to decorate your witch or ghost.
Take your bigger cup and turn it upside down. You are going to take four paper towels and soak them in undiluted starch or a school glue that is diluted about 1/2 and 1/2. Drape the four towels over the paper cup - arranging them in a pleasant manner.
Take your small cup and place it on the top, gently pushing it down to mold the top to accept it.
Remove the top cup and allow the paper towels to dry completely. They will become stiff. I let mine sit overnight.
The next day apply a bit of glue to the inside lip of the small cup and place it on top of the dried first cup. Continue to soak and drape four more paper towels over the top of the small cup - just like you did with the first cup. Arranging the drapes in a pleasant manner.
For the witch you will need to take the toothpick and insert a small portion of it into the styrofoam ball to form a nose. Make it as long as you want. Omit this step for the ghost.
Place a bit of glue on top of the small cup and attach the ball with the nose in the appropriate spot. Again.....drape four more soaked paper towels over the top of the ball, molding them around the toothpick and draping downwards. You will now wrap a rubber band or some sort of string around the base of the ball to form a neck.
Now for the fun part. Remove the rubber band. Spray paint as desired. I used black for the witch and white for the ghost, but I am sure a hot pink ghost would be perfect too. ;-) Decorate as desired.
Dressed for a night on the town.
Be sure to visit my fellow "hoppers" for today and sign in to the Rafflecopter on any blog for a chance to win a great gift from the Fat Quarter Shop.
As well, I have a small giveaway for the fall season. It is a grouping of six fall fat quarters. Please leave a comment below and I will select a winner at the end of the hop.
A full list of all of the participants is included below. You can still go back and check out their blogs and get some great ideas for Halloween decorating as well as enter their giveaways. Also, be sure to stop at Marian's blog, Seams to Be Sew, to enter her pattern contest, collect today's pattern and vote on today's projects.
I have had the fun chance to pattern test Bandbox for Emily of Aunt Em's Quilts and am quite pleased with the way it turned out. I have been wanting to use some of the reproduction feedsack fabrics and decided this was the perfect pattern for them.
The quilt is crib size - 42x54 inches.
I used a white flannel on the back which will make the quilt very soft and comforting.
While we were away on vacation several delightful packages arrived in my mailbox. It's always fun to come home to such fun surprises.
First off was a box filled with goodies from Ida at My Sis Made Me Do It. There were wonderful fall kitchen towels, an adorable hankie doll card and amazing pincushions that she made. I fell in love with her cactus pincushion when she had her Pincushion Parade and she mailed it to me. Thank you so much, Ida.
Then there was a book from Linds at Rocking Chair Reflections. Her review of it sounded wonderful so I am looking forward to digging into this one. Thanks, Linds.
I received three patterns from a giveaway that Carol of Just Let Me Quilt had. I think I need to make the hanging bat one for my next Halloween project. That is so cute and the grandchildren would love it. Thanks, Carol.
Lastly, I received a box with a fat quarter bundle of Frosty Forest from My Fabric Relish. I was the winner from Lisa's Christmas in July Hop. I posted about the patterns that I also received from Cherry here. I think the tree skirt is in my future!
I'm looking forward to getting back to the sewing machine on a more regular basis once I finish emptying boxes and cleaning up from the remodel. I was spoiled when I had an excuse for not cleaning house!!!
Halloween Haunts Blog Hop starts today. I am so excited to see all of the great projects that people have been working on for the Hop. There will be great prizes along the way so be sure to check it out.
Come back on the 26th and see what I am doing with this crazy project.
The old blog has been a bit quiet here. We were actually away on vacation for the last two weeks – over 5,600 hundred miles, thirteen states and way too many meals out! If was great to get home again, but life has been completely hectic since arriving. Plus….someone turned on the heat here. Yikes. We actually recorded the hottest temp in the nation with a temperature of 108* on Friday. It is suppose to remain warm for at least another week, but we did get some nice cool temperatures on our trip.
We visited all three of the grandkids who headed off to colleges this year – NAU in Az, University of Dallas in TX and Benedictine College in KS. They are all settling in and enjoying college life. We saw amazing scenery along the way.
Late evening harvesting of corn. DH got to help each day as my cousins did beans and corn from 7a.m. until past 11 each night. They farm over 3500 acres.
Amish farming at a neighboring farm....a different technique for harvesting their beans.
A new batch of pigs arrived while we were there.
Cattle too....it's a busy farm.
My grandmother's home. A cousin now lives there.
The beautiful Stanley hotel in Estes Park, CO.
Elk roam the town in Estes Park.
Splashes of fall colors in the Rockies.
The scenery was so pretty along the routes that we took so I got very little stitching done along the way, but I did catch up on my Minion beanies!
It felt good to be home again and back to our busy schedules here. Construction should be completed by tomorrow and now the cleaning will begin. I may surface one of these days!!!!


Garry is an education specialist and Director of Technical Design at NBRSARCHITECTURE. He provides holistic advice throughout the design process to assist with the development of project specific details, directing the design team in the areas of architectural standards, as well as performing ongoing technical reviews.
Having joined NBRS in 1984, he has delivered a variety of projects across many complex building typologies. This includes schools and universities, residential developments, correctional facilities, heritage buildings, as well as churches.
Over the years Garry has developed a speciality in the masterplanning, design and documentation of educational facilities. He is committed to creating inspirational learning environments that promote active learning whilst being safe, secure, functional and sustainable.
Due to his experience in the sector, Garry assisted with the delivery of a new web based Educational Facilities Standards and Guidelines platform for the NSW Department of Education. Garry is also a member of the Association of Learning Environments and he regularly attends conferences to remain a thought leader of current educational pedagogy.
NBRSARCHITECTURE is a people focused, research based studio that aims to enrich lives. Above all NBRS seeks to design environments that will have positive life changing affect.