Cloudbreak

Taken with a Minolta Weather-matic, dual fixed focus 35mm. camera & Fuji Provia 100 film, hand held.
This was atop a hill outside of Dutch Harbor where there were WWII lookouts and gun emplacements.

Russian Orthodox Priest's House, Unalaska

The Holy Ascension Russian Orthodox Church was originally built in Unalaska, Alaska around 1825. Though, I'm not sure, I believe that the priest's house may have been built sometime in the 1880's. It is presently under renovation, as you can see.

This was taken with a Minolta weather-matic, fixed dual focus 35mm. camera and Fuji 100ISO Provia film.

Lookout Post for ships that never came

The view out of the lookout post atop a hill at Dutch Harbor, Alaska.
This lookout is part of a larger shore gun battery that was defending Dutch Harbor during WWII. The remnants of the facility are still up on the hill and it's now a historical site. Today, the facility lies in decay. There would have been far worse places to have been assigned to during the war.

Dutch was bombed in June of 1942 by the Japanese. It was the only aerial bombing of a city on the North American continent during the war. Sixteen people were killed and numerous others were wounded.

Unalaska, Alaska

Reflections

Memorial Day

Vision & Perception

"In a 2001 study published by Nature, Frank S. Werblin, professor of molecular and cell biology at the University of California at Berkeley, and doctoral student Boton Roska, M.D., showed that the optic nerve carries ten to twelve output channels, each of which carries only minimal information about a given scene.”

“Although we have the illusion of receiving high-resolution images from our eyes, what the optic nerve actually sends to the brain is just outlines and clues about points of interest in our visual field. We then essentially hallucinate the world from the cortical memories that interpret a series of extremely low resolution movies that arrive in parallel channels."

-The Singularity Is Near, by Ray Kurzweil pp.186

Downtown Eagle in January, -35 and windy

Happy New Year!

Isn't it time you went on a hadj?

Useful English System Conversions

Ratio of an igloo's circumference to its diameter: Eskimo Pi

2.4 statute miles of intravenous surgical tubing at Yale University Hospital: 1 I.V. League

2000 pounds of Chinese soup: Won ton

1 millionth mouthwash: 1 microscope

Speed of a tortoise breaking the sound barrier: Mach Turtle

Time it takes to sail 220 yards at 1 nautical mile per hour: Knot furlong

365.25 days of drinking low calorie beer because it's less filling: 1 lite year

16.5 feet in the Twilight Zone: 1 Rod Sterling

Half of a large intestine: 1 semicolon

1000 aches: 1 megahertz

Weight an evangelist carries with God: 1 billigram

Basic unit of laryngitis: 1 horsepower

Shortest distance between two jokes: A straight line

Time between slipping on a peel and smacking the pavement: bananosecond

A half bath: 1 demijohn

453.6 graham crackers: 1 pound cake

Given the old adage "a journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step," the first step of a one-mile journey: 1 Milwaukee

1 million microphones: 1 megaphone

1 million bicycles: 2 megacycles

365.25 days: 1 unicycle

2200 mockingbirds: two kilo mockingbirds

10 cards: 1 decacards

1 kilogram of falling figs: 1 Fig Newton

1000 grams of wet socks: 1 literhosen

1 millionth of a fish: 1 microfiche

1 trillion pins: 1 terrapin

1 million billion piccolos: 1 gigolo

10 rations: 1 decoration

100 rations: 1 C-ration

10 millipedes: 1 centipede

3 1/3 tridents: 1 decadent

10 monologues: 5 dialogs

5 dialogs: 1 decalog

2 monograms: 1 diagram

8 nickels: 2 paradigms

2 wharves: 1 paradox

100 Senators: Not 1 decision

Credit - Neal Jackson

Below, from a while ago, but still funny....

Here is the Washington Post's Mensa Invitational which once again
asked readers to take any word from the dictionary, alter it by
adding, subtracting, or changing one letter, and supply a new
definition.

1. Cashtration (n.): The act of buying a house, which renders the
subject financially impotent for an indefinite period of time.

2. Ignoranus: A person who's both stupid and an asshole.

3. Caterpallor (n.): The color you turn after finding half a worm in
the fruit you're eating.

4. Reintarnation: Coming back to life as a hillbilly.

5. Bozone (n.): The substance surrounding stupid people that stops
bright ideas from penetrating. The bozone layer, unfortunately, shows
little sign of breaking down in the near future.

6. Foreploy: Any misrepresentation about yourself for the purpose of
getting laid.

7. Giraffiti: Vandalism spray-painted very, very high.

8. Sarchasm: The gulf between the author of sarcastic wit and the
person who doesn't get it.

9. Inoculatte: To take coffee intravenously when you are running
late.

10. Hipatitis: Terminal coolness.

11. Osteopornosis: A degenerate disease. (This one got extra credit.)


12. Karmageddon: It's like, when everybody is sending off all these
really bad vibes, right? And then, like, the Earth explodes and it's
like, a serious bummer.

13. Decafalon (n.): The grueling event of getting through the day
consuming only things that are good for you

14. Glibido: All talk and no action.

15. Dopeler effect: The tendency of stupid ideas to seem smarter when
they come at you rapidly.

16. Arachnoleptic fit (n.): The frantic dance performed just after
you've acciden tally walked through a spider web.

17. Beelzebug (n.): Satan in the form of a mosquito, that gets into
your bedroom at three in the morning and cannot be cast out.


The Washington Post has also published the winning submissions to its
yearly contest, in which readers are asked to supply alternate
meanings for common words.

And the winners are:

1. Coffee, n. the person upon whom one coughs.

2. Flabbergasted, adj. appalled by discovering how much weight one
has gained.

3. abdicate, v. to give up all hope of ever having a flat stomach.

4. Esplanade, v. to attempt an explanation while drunk.

5. Willy-nilly, adj. impotent.

6. Negligent, adj. absentmindedly answering the door when wearing
only a nightgown.

7. Lymph, v. to walk with a lisp.

8. Gargoyle, n. olive-flavored mouthwash.

9 flatulence, n. emergency vehicle that picks up someone who has been
run over by a steamroller.

10. Balderdash, n. a rapidly receding hairline.

11. Testicle, n. a humorous question on an exam.

12. Rectitude, n. the formal, dignified bearing adopted by
proctologists.

13. Pokemon, n. a Rastafarian proctologist.

14. Oyster, n. a person who sprinkles his conversation with
Yiddishisms.

15. Frisbeetarianism, n. the belief that, after death, the soul flies
up onto the roof and gets stuck there.

16. circumvent, n. an opening in the front of boxer shorts worn by
Jewish men.