Billion
21 creative works found
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The Existential Divide / The more observational of you will remember I put this up awhile ago. And it’s back, slightly different, added text and white not black. I worked on a version with some more emphasis on text woven through it after some people I trust gave some advice. However I went back to a slightly more simplified version as I think that it really shouts on it’s own. That the crisp stark iconic impression of a barcode combined with the ever-so-recognisable, and yet never actually seen in this way, map of the world, cause more avenues of thought than one can reasonably handle without a stiff drink. / But now I’m doing that weird ranting thing about my own work which I normally try and avoid, I like it, and really that’s all that fucking matters. Where’s the whiskey?
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A Lonely Planet In the Middle of Nothingness
by The wizard of edIt was March 2005, somewhere near St Kilda....
It was March 2005, somewhere near St Kilda. I was sitting in a room, on a sofa propped on milk crates, staring at the ceiling. Around my neck was a Philadelphia collar and in my hand was a bottle of gin. The collar was the only sign that I had recently broken my C1, 2 & T1 the gin was to stop me thinking about it. I was staring at the ceiling because it was reasonably tricky to stare anywhere else. I sat quietly contemplating my future. Next to me was a chap called Christopher Lansell, Crispy to his comrades, whom I’d known about 8 minutes. He started talking about some things, wild, imaginative things, I started to reply, and back he came with more, this went on quite successfully for a while. One of these crazy things was an idea he’d been playing with to install a 1:1 billion scale model of the Solar System somewhere in Melbourne. It seemed quite a good idea to me. Almost without any warning at all it was 9am on December 10 of that year, my return ticket to the UK forgotten in the back of a drawer somewhere, and 6 months out of date, my neck visible to all who cared to glance. I’m crouched at the door to our St Kilda studio, attempting to drill a hole into Pluto, except this Pluto is only 2mm in diametre, which makes it very tricky. And in half an hour it’s meant to be on a plinth somewhere near Port Melbourne. / / / / Building the Sun Having drummed up some media interest through an interview on ABC radio and an article in The Age and spent a few months constructing the Sun and nine planets by hand we were actually within minutes of taking our disjointed conversation live. / / / / / Painting the Planets / Planet bases Pluto / Mars / Neptune / Saturn / Jupiter / Having finally secured Pluto to it’s stand, we threw all the models in the back of a trailer and hightailed it to the beach, as we roared along the approach to the marina there was a sudden, and slightly sickening crunch. Crispy braked, we looked at each other in silent fear, then out through the back window of the Toyota. Rolling down the road in the vague direction of Acland Street was a 1.39m golden ball of plywood and satin. Hmmm. We exited the car at speed and, to the amusement of the residents, sprinted off after the star. It was not entirely unscathed, but it was still presentable, and anyway, we were out of time. The weekend was long and disgustingly hot, but the model was a success, large numbers of families turned up on their bikes, with their children, The Age article folded in their pockets, planning to ride the full 6km route to Pluto. And being mid summer the beach and passing traffic was plentiful. Seeing kids stand under the 1.28cm hand painted sphere that was Earth (I even managed to dust the Himalayas with some snow) and point out Australia before running 150m to the Sun and smacking it with their ice cream stained hands was quite rewarding. / Earth, a man with a beard & the Moon, which is as far as Man has ever actually travelled, allegedly. (But not the man with the beard, he may have been no further than Geelong, I don’t know) Mars / The Sun / / / By Sunday night we were knackered but content. Then things started getting interesting. Tony Wheeler, co-founder of Lonely Planet rang us up, said he’d heard about the project but had been out of the country and wondered if he could come and see the models, we, unsurprisingly said yes. Then the council rang us up and said they’d had a lot of calls from the general public asking when they were going to do the project again. They said they hadn’t done it in the first place. It was about this point that words like ‘permanent’ began to appear in conversations. We found a sculptor, Cameron Robbins, an eccentric and extremely talented man based in Collingwood, and commenced talks with the council. It was estimated at costing around $70,000, and so the tedious process of money raising became the focus, Tony pledged a large sum of his personal finances, as did some universities. Things looked good. Then the university pulled out, and we experienced our first wedge of bureaucratic council red tape. Things look bad. And that high and low was a microcosm of how it progressed for the next two years. With a hefty focus on the ‘This is just never going to happen’ line of thought. But now, three years and six months after a conversation on a sofa in St Kilda, there are some people down at the foreshore tidying up the metre high bluestone plinths the planets rest on, and no doubt someone polishing the 360kg of bronze that makes up the Sun, in preparation for the opening on September 21. And I’m going to miss it, because I’m in London, so if you have nothing better to do please pop down to the reserve north of the Marina at 4.45, take some photos, get yourself an epic sense of how fragile and unique Earth really is and give Crispy some support for the endless phone calls and meetings and rolls and rolls of tape he’s deftly sliced through. Pouring the bronze Planets / Saturn, Jupiter, Neptune, Uranus cooling off / Half of the Sun / All of the Sun / Polishing the Sun / The sculptor Cameron Robbins next to polished Sun / Saturn / Venus, Mars, Earth, Mercury & Pluto (yeah it’s not a planet anymore, but it was then) / Pouring concrete base for the Sun / Diamond saw cutting bluestone plinths for the planets / Plinths being lifted into place / / The Sun being moved into place / / / / Model Location / And if you ever see anyone chasing an enormous shining sphere down a road, go and give them a hand.
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A fairly long hike in and we came to the secret spot where the massive hive had regathered. Billions of them on the rocks, trees, ground, lichen, and finally everything I owned: shirt, pants, glasses, camera and camera bag, tripod, Pepsi, shoes, socks – you name it. Then I looked at the tree next to me and saw the creek through it. Carefully hopping rocks protruding above the crystal clear water around to the other side, I saw what you are seeing now. It seemed like hours that I stood there, trying not to fall into Spring Creek with my Nikon or my Olympus, trying/failing again and again to get anything out of a magical spot, one I wasn’t going to go home without capturing. My trusty guide/best friend was ever the patient one and kept the others in the area at bay while I struggled to get The Shot. Too bright. Too dark. Auto-focus in the wrong spot. Shaking hands from no support because leaning on the tree would be crushing hundreds more spots of walking beauty. I finally slipped off the rocks and fell into the icy water – fortunately no deeper than my ankles but unbelievably cold – back a distance away from the tree and too far for the macro of the Olympus which I put back into my pocket. And as soon as I got the Nikon ready again, it was perfect: with the maximum focal length of my wide angle lens and with manual focusing, I was able to grab about 10 perfect shots before my feet reminded me that I was still standing in spring run-off water elevated more than 2000 feet up in the mountains. The D80 was set with a bias towards very vivid colour and PhotoShop Elements was used solely to make a bigger, cleaner enlargement than my usual PaintShop Pro XI editing program. This shot, with all its set-up and blunders, and perseverance is “as is” and easily one of my best.
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One single canola flower amongst a field of billions. Another image in my canola series, taken just outside Gawler, South Australia. More Canola Images
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Meet Maximillion von Billions
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I cannot imagine.. how much paper it will take.. trees to die.. cause there certinly no dang Gold to back this mess up.. to print 700 billion dollars.. for real? I LOVE RON PAUL.. HERE HE IS AHEAD OF HIS TIME.. ABOUT WHAT MONEY VALUE REALLY IS.. HERE / / OK THIS IS A GOOD TALK BY RON PAUL TOO
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There are more stars in the universe than there are grains of sand on earth – so eminent astronomers tell us with a straight face. Who’s counting I wonder. This is my attempt to paint just one galaxy among billions. One has to ask ‘Are we the only planet with life out of that number?’ Acrylic painting.
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All the world population have rated you.. 4 stars and 1/2 ..not bad ;)
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Cave of Remouchamps, Belgium, Europe The longest subterranean navigation in the world. / It is needless to describe the caves of Remouchamps. / Open to the public in 1912 and in 1924 equipped with lights to give a fairy-like impression.This jewel of Liège is divided into two parts. / The first part is to be visited on foot until the first hall, which 8.000 years ago was inhabited by Paleolithic hunters. Always against a fabulous background, full of colours and life, you will pass corridors, filled by the subterranean river Rubicon, until the big hall of the Cathedral. The paths are easy to walk, clean and nonslip. Whilst going deeper and deeper, following the guide, you’ll be able to admire the wonders of nature. Each wonder is explained to you in details. / After the apotheosis of the Cathedral, the second part is to be visited by boat, which glides mysteriously and without a sound over the winding subterranean river of almost 600 m in lenght. Here one will discover new beauties, including the waterfountain that sprays under the subterranean roof, forming a magnificent curtain.
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McDonald’s has been both a blessing and a curse.
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Amazing Star fact (solar system star not a celeb star!)
by PaulHealeyA Neutron star has the mass of 1.5 times our sun but is only the size of a city. Its incredibly dense and 5ml of its core material would …
A Neutron star has the mass of 1.5 times our sun but is only the size of a city. Its incredibly dense and 5ml of its core material would weigh a billion tons on earth…. That is just mind-bogglin hey?!!!
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Model: Justine Grass
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Title: $14.83 Billion / Camera: Nikon D80 / Capture Date: 09/20/2008 / Dimensions: 2379×3554 / Exposure: 1/30 sec at f/5.6 / Focal Length: 112mm / ISO: 1600 / Filter: None / Flash: None / Tripod: None / Uploaded Date: 10/31/2008 / Comments: © 2008 Charles Dobbs Photography. All photographs and artworks in this portfolio are copyrighted and owned by the artist, Charles Dobbs. Any reproduction, modification, publication, transmission, transfer, or exploitation of the content, for personal or commercial use, whether in whole or in part, without written permission from the artist is strictly prohibited. All rights reserved.
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Meet Maximillion von Billions
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original image: www.uncorrelated.com John McCain pledged during the Republican primary to follow Osama bin Laden to the gates of hell. But he told Larry King on Monday that he won’t go after bin Laden in his new sanctuary in northwestern Pakistan. Since Cerberus is not known to be perched on the Pakistani border, which is it? McCain keeps complaining that he can’t break through the media’s obsession with Barack Obama. But he should be grateful for their diverted gaze, because if anyone was actually paying attention to his incoherent ramblings they would find out that he doesn’t have a firm grasp of his own foreign policy positions and a shocking ignorance of the threats arrayed against the United States. It is equal parts depressing and alarming to learn of the resurgence of al-Qaida and the spread of violent Islamist ideology. US and European intelligence agencies concluded last year that al-Qaida and its senior leadership had regrouped in the tribal areas of northwestern Pakistan and that the terrorist organisation had the ability to plan, train for and orchestrate attacks on the US homeland. During that time, the Pakistani Taliban has strengthened in the same areas along the Afghan border and dramatically increased cross border attacks, including the attempted assassination of Afghan President Hamid Karzai and a suicide bombing of the Indian embassy in Kabul. This development is not an accident, as the Pakistani Inter-Services Intelligence agency (ISI) that helped start the Taliban in Afghanistan is actively supporting the militants. It has gotten so bad that the deputy director of the CIA flew to Pakistan last month to confront the government with evidence that the ISI was linked to the perpetrators of the Indian embassy bombing. But McCain doesn’t seem to know or care about the Pakistani government’s direct ties to terrorists. When King asked him whether, as president, he would send in US forces to get bin Laden should he find out where in Pakistan he was hiding, McCain responded: “Larry, I’m not going to go there and here’s why, because Pakistan is a sovereign nation. … But I want to assure you I will get Osama bin Laden as president of the United States, and I will bring him to justice no matter what it takes.” That just doesn’t make any sense. How can you pledge to bring bin Laden to justice “no matter what it takes”, or to “follow him to the gates of hell”, if you rule out sending US forces into Pakistan, which is looking more and more like exactly what it will take to get him? There certainly can be a reasonable debate about whether it is a good idea to send US troops into such a hostile environment, due to concerns that it will further fuel anti-Americanism. I happen to think that the prospect of capturing or killing Osama bin Laden is worth that risk. But in any event, that’s not what McCain is saying. He’s ruling it out because “Pakistan is a sovereign nation.” That is not going to change any time soon. I guess in a McCain administration, any operation to capture or kill bin Laden will be conducted at the whim of the Pakistani government, the same government that US officials now believe are “increasingly providing militants with details about the American campaign against them”. That’s a great plan. With a President McCain comfortable with bin Laden safe behind the shield of Pakistani sovereignty, it seems a little odd to ask him what he would do in the unlikely event that bin Laden is captured during his presidency. But he was asked that on CNN last week, and his answer was surprisingly reasonable. McCain said: “We have various options. The Nuremberg Trials are certainly an example of the kind of tribunal that we could move forward with.” Its surprising, not because it comes from McCain, but because after Barack Obama said in June that Nuremberg would be a good model for any bin Laden trial, this is how McCain responded: “Senator Obama’s failure to comprehend the implication of the supreme court decision he embraced and the historical precedent of Nuremberg raise serious questions about judgment and experience and whether senator Obama is ready to assume the awesome responsibilities of commander in chief.” So McCain thinks a Nuremberg-style trial for bin Laden is great idea, except when Obama proposes it. Then it’s another example of how Obama is not ready to be commander in chief. That’s kind of like when McCain says Obama’s 16-month timetable for withdrawal of American troops from Iraq is surrender but Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki’s 16-month timetable for withdrawal of American troops from Iraq is “a pretty good timetable”. McCain has built his entire political career around his experience as a prisoner of war. That service and sacrifice deserves the unyielding gratitude of all Americans. What it does not deserve is the blind acceptance that because he was a POW, he is automatically an expert on national security and foreign policy. Wake up people and listen to what he is saying. If anyone other than McCain had demonstrated this level of confusion on critical questions of national security, they would never be considered a serious candidate for president. Ken Gude guardian.co.uk, Friday August 1 2008
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FROM THE BEGGINING OF OUR SOLAR SYSTEM, OUR SUN HAS BEEN SLOWLY BURNING ITSELF OUT. THOUGH IT WILL NEVER, OR MOST LIKELY WILL NEVER HAPPEN IN OUR LIFE TIME, OUR SUN WILL EVENTUALLY GO SUPER NOVAE. AS IT EXPANDS, IT WILL BURN OUT THE PLANETS, FIRST MERCURY, THEN VENUS, NEXT OUR PLANET EARTH AND THE MOON. THEN MARS WILL GO AND EVENTUALLY JUPITER WILL LOOSE IT’S LAYER OF CLOUDS AS THE SOLAR WINDS RIP THEM AWAY FROM THE GIANT MASS LIKE PAPER BLOWING IN THE BREEZE. THE TIME THIS IS FORSEEN TO HAPPEN BY TODAYS SCIENTISTS IS “5 BILLION YEARS AD”. WHO KNOWS IF MAN WILL EVEN BE ALIVE TO SEE THE BEGINNING OF THE END. WILL HE HAVE BEEN ABLE TO LEAVE THE EARTH’S SURFACE AND TRAVEL FARTHER INTO SPACE? NO ONE KNOWS THE ANSWER TO THAT QUESTION. ONLY TIME WILL EVER TELL THE STORY OF WHAT WILL HAPPEN TO MANKIND IN THE YEARS TO COME.
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For billions, the greatest view in the world (and for once, an accurate statistic & marketing claim!), but for Dr Atkins his last rites …
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This photo was the two billionth upload on Flickr site. / It’s a photo of the sculpture in front of Market City, Chinatown in Sydney.
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ten billion years from tonight
by jdworldlyquasars quaking and sirens wailing
looking toward the future
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I love sand. I love wondering who the footsteps belong to, where they were going..
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