Number 85 - To see a tree asmiling.

Maybe if we asked them?

Oh, you are right however. At least I still click each day. Not a very exciting thing to sit and watch a tree grow........... I guess people like more moving conversations.

I actually didn't visit the mosque site. Everyone has their own ideas about it. It really doesn't matter to me. I always thought the towers should have been reconstructed to look like the originals except plane proofed. Now I think that should be done and mosque domes added to the top. That would show them.

Oh, well.

It is nice to say hi to you two each day. This is the only site I normally visit.

Not a big talker.

Nor I, but we love to listen to you talk.

Thanks, sumac.

I wonder if they named the Peruvian wren Tin Tin??

You guys have to see this to believe it. It's the world's largest digital photo and is of Vienna, Austria. It was just sent to me by Ul - one of our clickers........

Let the thing load - you can see the bar at the bottom. Then click on the RED camera icon and then click on the little STAR box at the bottom. Then scroll right - left - up - down, etc also plus or minus........ To see what stuff is just click on the little STAR and point to the different things. The ones with camera image are great - you go inside and then can scroll around. Here it is =

http://photoartkalmar.com/Photoart%20Kalmar%20high%20res/Gigapixel/Vienna%2050%20Gigapixel/Donauturm.html

Happy looking............

This is so weird, Danon. I am looking at the Castle of Schoebrunn with the Vienna Philharmonic playing outside on PBS, while I look at the castle here. The picture is tremendous!

Dan, nothing i enjoy better than sitting on the porch watching...

Their aura, working to produce clean breathable air, letting us know when the seasons shift...all the good stuff.

The Mosque is located a few blocks away...not a Mosque yet...but the Burlington Coat Factory building. Still believe they're pushing the envelope, and not for any good reason either. Just my opinion.

They talk about freedom and rights. Ok, we have the right and freedom to not want a Mosque anywhere near ground zero. Has nothing to do with religion. Has more to do with respect.

Oh well, we'll see how it all plays out.

Sue, lets ask everyone to please return to the thread and say hi.

I just did

That is so cool!

Probably the closest i'll ever get to seeing Vienna in person.

Luv the site! Thanks Dan

sumac, Schlos Schonbrunn was originally built to be the hunting lodge for the Emperor of Austria and Hungary. Napoleon stayed there during his visit in the early 1800's. Also at the S.W. end of the garden behind the main building is the very first (and obviously) the oldest zoo on earth. It's still there and is great to visit.
Vienna is my favorite city to visit in Europe. Beauty and history is everywhere.
In the 5th District King Richard the Lionhearted of England was captured in civilian clothing trying to sneak through the city. His ransom, finally paid a year or so later, is what built most of the beautiful buildings in and close to the city center.

Ahhhh, the history.

The food is the best from anywhere on earth. http://www.ichkoche.at/

The Vienna Philharmonic plays Strauss at the Musikverein each New Years Day and the program is aired on TV worldwide.

Wonderful place.

About a hundred years ago (so it seems) I was married to a lady from Vienna (for about a hundred years - so it seemed) actually 17yrs. Every other year we would travel to Vienna and visit. Every alternate yr her parents would travel to USA and visit. Some years our friends who live in Vienna would visit us in USA. Almost each morning when we visited Vienna I would awaken early and walk to the city center (the old part) and go exploring. I've walked places even most Viennese have never set foot on. Great place to go exploring. I found Mozart's actual resting place (which tourists don't usually see, visit or even know about because there is a great monument to him along with all the other great musicians in the large city cemetary. The house he died in is gone (bombed during WWII) but, I walked past it. Ate at the oldest cafe house in town. Visited the oldest beer parlor in town. Etc.

Great place to visit. I'll start posting some pics I have.

My marriage seemed the same way. A thousand years. LOL

Sounds like a marvelous place, Dan. Would luv seeing pics.

Hi, here's a shot of the front of Schonbrunn Palace with my Patti in the middle and our friends Arthur and Herta.


Here's a shot I made of the back of Schonbrunn.

This is the zoo behind Schonbrunn.
At least the efelents part - it's a huge zoo. (I like efelents - there was a baby efelent running around)

The distant building is part of the Royal Palace - the door looking part is named Michaelers Tor (Michael's Door). Just to the left of the door looking at it as we do in the photo is the stalls and show place for the famous Lippizaner (sp) horses.


Here's a shot of Michael's Door from the inside - that's a TWO WAY street going under the Gate. Big door. Turn right through the door to the horses.

Here we are on stage at the opera house (me behind camera as usual). The man is another good friend from Vienna and is my junking buddy. He likes old stuff like me. His name is Hansi. It's very unusual to be given a personal tour of the stage when they are setting it up for a show. The lady is our friend from MS who went with us on the trip - she is Ruthie.


Here we all are at the Vienna Flea Market - famous the world over. Wonderful stuff there and I have my share now.


Heading back to apartment after a long day sight-seeing. I call this pic 'waiting for the bus with the terrorist' -- but of course he was a nice young man in real life.

The gate was there when Mozart died and his body went through it to a paupers mass grave with many others. The bottom pic is the site with Patti hiding behind it. When I first found it many yrs ago (70's) it was just an overgrown piece of land not taken care of and the monument wasn't there. Glad they changed it.


Me by a statue behind the Belvedere Castle - Inside are rooms full of Klimpt paintings.


Enough for today. More later.

You look like John Wayne! Marvelous pictures. Thanks. And more tomorrow?

All clicked and time for a morning drop.


As academic psychologists have ventured beyond institutional and national boundaries, they have come upon an impressive influence of culture upon cognition. A canonical example of this is the relative tendency of East Asians to see visual scenes via a holistic mindset in contrast to the Western style of focusing on salient objects. Nevertheless, within these cultural categories, there is considerable intrinsic variation, which can be uncovered, for instance, in comparisons of Chinese and Japanese. Colzato et al. have looked at the linkage between religious upbringing and visual perception in three somewhat less heterogeneous populations—neo-Calvinists in the Netherlands, Roman Catholics in Italy, and Orthodox Jews in Israel—and found that adherents of each of these religions differed from atheists of the same cultural background. The Calvinists, whose tradition emphasizes the role of the individual, showed greater visual attentiveness to local features, whereas the big picture perspective was favored by Catholics and Jews, whose traditions stress social togetherness.
Cognition 117, 10.1016/j.cognition.2010.07.003 (2010).

A different point of view from what is normally found here.


ugust 26, 2010
Aw, Wilderness!
By TED STROLL
San Jose, Calif.

ONE day in early 1970, a cross-country skier got lost along the 46-mile Kekekabic Trail, which winds through the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness in northern Minnesota. Unable to make his way out, he died of exposure.

In response, the Forest Service installed markers along the trail. But when, years later, it became time to replace them, the agency refused, claiming that the 1964 Wilderness Act banned signage in the nation’s wilderness areas.

Despite the millions of people who have visited the country’s national parks, forests and wildernesses this summer, the Forest Service has become increasingly strict in its enforcement of the Wilderness Act. The result may be more pristine lands, but the agency’s zealous enforcement has also heightened safety risks and limited access to America’s wilderness areas.

Over the last 45 years Congress has designated as wilderness 40 percent of the land in our national parks and one-third of the land in our national forests — more than 170,000 square miles, an area nearly as large as California, Massachusetts and New Jersey combined — as wilderness. In March 2009, President Obama signed a law protecting 3,125 more square miles, the largest expansion in more than a generation.

Wilderness, according to the act, is space “where the earth and its community of life are untrammeled by man, where man himself is a visitor who does not remain.” Within those areas, the act forbids cars, roads, structures and anything else that could impair the “outstanding opportunities for solitude.”

At the same time, though, Congress wanted people to use the land for recreation, so it allowed access to wilderness areas for hunting, hiking, canoeing and climbing.

Over the decades an obvious contradiction has emerged between preservation and access. As the Forest Service, the National Park Service and the Bureau of Land Management — each of which claims jurisdiction over different wilderness areas — adopted stricter interpretations of the act, they forbade signs, baby strollers, certain climbing tools and carts that hunters use to carry game.

As a result, the agencies have made these supposedly open recreational areas inaccessible and even dangerous, putting themselves in opposition to healthy and environmentally sound human-powered activities, the very thing Congress intended the Wilderness Act to promote.

Part of the problem is that many of today’s common outdoor activities were unheard of in 1964, including trail cycling and wind-powered skiing. In forbidding them, the agencies invoke the Wilderness Act’s ban on “mechanical transport.” But the act’s legislative history makes clear that Congress never intended to stop people from using their own power to travel or shepherd their children, or from using light mechanical assistance that leaves no lasting trace.

The agencies have even taken on Capitol Hill: in 1980 Congress authorized bicycling in Montana’s Rattlesnake Wilderness, but the Forest Service refused to allow it.

The official resistance to wilderness signage, in particular, has become a safety issue. Every summer numerous backpackers, hikers and hunters get lost in the wilderness, with occasionally fatal results. In 2008, two experienced hikers along the Kekekabic Trail — the same Minnesota trail where the skier perished in 1970 — were lost for days and nearly ran out of food. The Forest Service listened to their complaints about the lack of signage but refused to act.

In response to the agencies’ inflexibility, groups of outdoor enthusiasts have lined up against any expansion of wilderness areas — an unfortunate result, because these people should be the natural constituents of a wilderness protection program.

The Wilderness Act is a monumental achievement in national resource conservation. But unless federal agencies begin to interpret it more reasonably, it is an achievement that even fewer numbers of people will want, or even be able, to enjoy.

Ted Stroll is an attorney.

Good morning, sumac.
Yet another interesting article - reminded me of something I read many years ago. On average an Asian's IQ is 2 points higher than Caucasians. Also, the most interesting thing I remember is that Asians THINK with opposite sides of their brains than Cau's - Math side and Art sides are reversed. I always wondered about that.

Well, yesterday I left you with me standing by the statue at the Belvedere - which I think is one of the nicest looking palaces in Vienna. Here is the front gate to the Belvedere.


A bit of a change - one day my friend Hansi asked if I would like to take a small walk in the hills S. of Vienna. I (not in my right mind) said yes. After an hour on a bus filled with other walkers we all started to follow a steep trail UPWARDS --- this HILL turned out to be the ALPS mountains. Here I am about halfway along the TWENTY or so MILE (SMALL) walk in the hills.

It was a fun walk.

BACK in Vienna - here is a shot of the auto (complete with original bullet holes) that Archduke Ferdinand and his wife were killed in at Sarajevo - which precipitated WWI. Their clothing and the actual pistol that was used is there also.


Also back in Vienna, close to the Royal Residence is what was the City Library but is now another museum. Here in 1938 the Nazi's occupied Austria and Adolf Hitler made a famous first speech. The balcony of this building is where he stood to make that speech.


More later.