#and the fact he gas all that insight for THAT puzzle

[neutrinotempest]

Feel like your favorite Glass Onion cameo says a lot about you so tag yours, mine was Yo Yo Ma.

[noblecrumpet-dorkvision]

Gamifying D&D Encounters

Encounters in Dungeons and Dragons can be fun, but how do you make it so the battle isn’t just taking turns repeatedly taking the attack action? How can you encourage players to move around and make meaningful, tactical decisions? My solution is to think about how to gamify your encounters.

What exactly does it mean to make an encounter more “game-like?” D&D IS a game, so isn’t it game-like by default? Well, yes. But here, I’m talking about turning encounters into puzzles or riddles for the players to figure out, or making players think about when to use certain actions and where to best position themselves. If players “solve” the encounter and “play” their strategies effectively, they will be able to more easily tip the encounter in their favor.

The way a gamified encounter should go is thus:

Creatures in the encounter take actions

Players identify threats or weaknesses based on those actions

Players take steps to mitigate threats or take advantage of weaknesses they have identified on their turns.

Creatures continue to fight, but are now less effective.

Players feel accomplished for their cleverness.

(Optional) Enemies then change up their tactics, learning from the players and increasing the encounter’s complexity. Repeat.

There are several ways to go about gamifying your encounters. You don’t have to give your encounters every single one of these traits, but adding two or three will help push the encounter’s depth.

Several of these use examples from two boss battles I posted, which can be found here: Ilesstra and Kormak.

Creating Patterns

Give your creatures, particularly single-monster encounters, some sort of consistent pattern for players to recognize. This way, the players will get stymied the first time, but then the next round will be able to react appropriately. Keep in mind that Medium encounters typically last 3-4 rounds, which means the pattern needs to be pretty obvious that it will repeat. Players may not even realize it repeats until the second round, which means they only have a few rounds left to seize the advantage!

Samples:

Ilesstra: Ilesstra’s lanes in her lair’s battle map can fill with poison from obvious pipes on the map. Once players realize their significance and effect, they can work out a strategy to avoid them.

Kormak: Powering up his crystal takes a noticeable cause and effect by taking an action to charge (making it glow) by powering down once its charge is spent (so it’s no longer glowing). Players can visually see when Kormak is hard to hit and about to hit hard and conversely when his abilities and defenses are weak.

Synergizing Abilities

Your encounter can involve synergy. This can be between two creatures and their abilities, a creature and its environment, or between a creature’s own abilities. Players should be able to pick up on this synergy so they can attempt to disrupt it to their advantage. Often, synergy involves one part of the encounter being in a sometimes-state, then another part of the encounter gets more powerful when the other is in that state. 

In fact, the encounter could actually synergize to the players’ benefit.  Perhaps a creature could freeze players in ice while another creature’s thunder attack can shatter the ice thunder damage. Players could try to coerce the thunder creature into freeing their trapped companions.

Samples:

Ilesstra: Poisoned creatures take additional damage from her, and her actions can poison creatures in her lair. Her pet can drag away creatures attacking her.

Kormak: His crystal enhances his minor abilities when it’s charged. His minions jump in front of attacks with reactions.

Alternative Targets

If you have meaningful targets in the encounter other than the creatures, players will be tempted to use their actions to deal with those rather than the creatures, which can create a dilemma. Players only have so many actions, so using them on a different target has to be worth it for them; it should give them a meaningful advantage to do so.

Putting an innocent life in danger or having a target that is making a boss monster superpowered is a valid excuse to change focus. The idea is to split the players’ attention between at least two things so that they need to evaluate allocating their resources or action economy.

Samples

Ilesstra: If a pipe in her lair is destroyed or plugged, it will create a permanent safe zone for the players that won’t fill with poison gas. Her pet crocodile is actively trying to drag people into the water below, which can prove bothersome.

Kormak: If Kormak’s crystal is destroyed, he can no longer gain temporary HP or empower his attacks. If his allies are slain, he can no longer defer the damage he takes.

Alternative Victory Conditions

Adding a new way to “win” the encounter will make players need to decide between attacking the enemies or trying to achieve victory through the other means provided. Types of alternate victories might include:

Escaping the Lair

Grabbing the Macguffin

Disabling the Doomsday Device

Rescuing the Hostages

Stopping the Ritual

Completing the Ritual

Defending the Payload

Destroying the Villain’s Power Source

Racing to the Finish

Solving the Puzzle

The circumstances will always depend on your campaign, but you can always provide a miniature goal inside of an isolated encounter.

Ilesstra: Destroying the pipes that emit poison gas will put an end to her main form of attack, possibly forcing her to retreat.

Kormak: Destroying his crystal will severely weaken him, potentially causing him to retreat.

Hotspots and Safezones

Everyone knows adding environmental factors to a battle map will make it more interesting. It gives players ways to hide, cover for arrowfire, and hazards they must avoid and use to their advantage. When designing an encounter, particularly for boss battles, try adding some areas that are harmful for the players. Perhaps there are lava pits with trapdoor grates above them that the enemy can open, or maybe the enemy has an area attack that the players can work around. 

The goal is to give players areas that they are aware are dangerous and areas they know are safe so that they can take advantage of it or plan their actions around it. Bonus points if the areas move in a regular pattern.

Samples

Ilesstra: Her lair has three lanes that can be filled with poison gas using her action. Players can hide in the small space between the lanes or in the water below the grates. An alternative strategy for players is to spread out and limit the maximum number of targets since she can only affect one “lane” at a time.

Kormak: His crystal is trapped by the magic circle surrounding it, and his minions can attempt to push PCs into it.

Vary Enemies

An easy way to make an encounter require more thinking is to use different types of enemies with different abilities. Players will have to consider strategies for each different creature separately, which makes things different. Perhaps certain players will be better at facing one enemy, but not the others, forcing them to adjust their focus.

Samples

Ilesstra: She has a giant crocodile companion that is inoculated and immune to poisons. While Ilesstra is more of a glass cannon with low hit points and AC but high damage thanks to poison, the crocodile is a brute that can grapple creatures away from its master and hold them in a hotspot area.

Kormak: Kormak is a spellcaster and controller while his Barbed Devil minions are brutes.

Additional Phases

Give your encounters multiple, distinct phases that they enter once circumstances are met. These might be when a certain number of enemies are defeated, when the boss drops to half their hit point maximum, or when an alternative victory condition is met. Once this triggers, the encounter changes in a fundamental way to force players to change their tactics. Essentially, you’ve added a mechanical twist instead of a narrative. The best examples are from World of Warcraft raids where the bosses will have different phases.

Discoverable Vulnerability or Strength

The creatures have something obviously strong or weak about them that the players can easily identify in one round. Once players identify it, they can attempt to take advantage of a vulnerability or dampen/avoid the enemy’s strength. 

A vulnerability might be taking damage from a unique damage type, a character flaw that can be goaded into a bad decision, a macguffin that holds all their power, or perhaps they simply have certain targets on their body that can be hit at +5 AC but for double damage.

Meanwhile an enemy’s strengths should hopefully be visible right away. Players should have a good idea what a given creature is good at or what its abilities are as soon as a fight starts, whether this means it was foreshadowed earlier or is revealed in their appearance or attack methods. Players know what to do against a glass cannon rogue and a tanky bruiser warrior or a controlling mage. Likewise, if they find an unknown creature surrounded by petrified humanoid statues, they will know to keep their distance in case they befall the same fate. Their insights should be rewarded and should influence their thinking. Players should never feel totally unprepared.

Samples:

Ilesstra: Her strength is primarily using poison damage, but she is physically weak. Meanwhile, her companion giant crocodile is mentally weak but physically strong. These are both readily-apparent.

Kormak: His crystal visibly charges to empower his abilities and protect him; destroying it will hinder his powers. His strength lies in fire magic, which he and his minions are both immune to.

Moral Quandary

Adding a question of morality to an encounter is a good way to make it not only impactful but also create more decisions for players to make. Perhaps there are innocent lives in danger. Do players risk their lives and spend their valuable action economy to save them? Or do they let them perish to optimize their mechanics and defeat their foe?

Simply adding a hostage or bystanders can do the trick for the average encounter. For boss battles, though, you can increase the stakes even further. Perhaps killing the villain will somehow make things worse for the greater good, giving the players pause mid-combat. Maybe the villain is related to one of the players, or has charmed someone the players love into fighting them to the death. Maybe destroying the boss will take more time than it will to stop their cultists from finishing their spell to open a gate to Hell, so players will have to ignore them and stop their minions instead.

Morality can make fights much more interesting because it forces players not just to consider their strategy, but also their values.

Summary

Basically, the thesis of gamifying encounters is to force players to change their tactics each round, but in a way that makes players feel cunning and smart. Take all these tips into consideration and try and make your homebrew boss battles and encounters special:

Create Patterns

Synergize Abilities

Provide Alternative Targets

Provide Alternative Victory Conditions

Make Hotspots and Safezones

Vary the Enemies

Additional Phases

Discoverable Vulnerabilities or Strengths

Create a Moral Quandary

[t455a-rambles]

A Little Insight of StarCatcher Boyfriend and Girlfriend.

Since I've got nothing better to do, I might as well write what and how's the relationship between Boyfriend and Girlfriend.

Oh yeah! Don't forget to support the creators of the mod, Kip and Startdust Tunes.

Now, from my first post for Boyfriend's backstory, I briefly mentioned how he and Girlfriend are mostly fascinated in one another and they took the opportunity to hang out more as they are collecting the Star Gems. [I know I keep on switching from "stars" to "specific gem" to "Star Gems". But this time, this time it's called Star Gems, okay?]

But I want more in depth with it. And this is where it begins

...

Okay, now let's backtrack to when Boyfriend and Girlfriend first met. Now I mentioned Boyfriend was terrified yet curious with Girlfriend and vice versa. Boyfriend was the first who started the conversation. Of course he said "Hello" to Girlfriend.

And as you would guess it, Girlfriend did not pick up the language immediately and just responded with, "Bloop doo beep?" Boyfriend tried to slow down his speak and uses hand gesture. "Hello. My name is Boyfriend. What is your name?" To Boyfriend's surprise, Girlfriend understood what he was saying and responded with fluent English. "Oh. Nice to meet you! My name is [ [REDACTED] Because I dunno what an alien name suited for her lol]."

Boyfriend tried to pronounce Girlfriend's real name, but it ended up sounding so bad, to which he apologized for it. Girlfriend reassured Boyfriend and it was okay for him to not get it right. Girlfriend tried to come up with a name that is easy for Boyfriend to remember. Then an idea popped out. "How about you call me, Girlfriend."

Boyfriend looked up to Girlfriend with a red blush on his face. "Y- You can't call yourself "Girlfriend". We're not even dating!" Girlfriend rolled her eyes and let out a sarcastic tone, but it's a playful one. "You're name is literally "Boyfriend" for crying out loud."

Girlfriend did have a point and never did Boyfriend felt speechless by that fact. He then agreed to call the alien "Girlfriend", but he still wanted to pronounce her name correctly. This made Girlfriend flattered by his determination.

Girlfriend then asked where did Boyfriend come from and his response was gotten suck by a powerful energy while he was out to take a planet's sample. He figured it was a wormhole which brought him here.

"You're lucky that the wormhole brought you here. Who knows where you might land. Maybe near the blackhole." Boyfriend was terrified by the possibility and Girlfriend said it in a calm manner did not help the situation at all.

Girlfriend asked about the planet Boyfriend previously visited, brushing what she said earlier. Boyfriend shook off the dread feeling and explained it excitedly.

Then a question came in Boyfriend's mind. "Uh... Girlfriend. Does this planet have a supply of oxygen? I'm worried my tank is running out of air." Girlfriend wasn't familiar with the word, "oxygen" and what's the use for it.

Boyfriend explained that it's a gas molecule which helps humans stay alive. He tried to find something to draw as a example on what it looked like. Sadly, there wasn't anything to draw.

Meanwhile, Girlfriend slowly understood why the oxygen was important. "Uh... Hate to break it to you, but I don't think there's a particular gas around here." Oh how Boyfriend was panicking because he would die quiet early. And if he died, he wouldn't be able to explore and study this different universe.

Seeing Boyfriend in distressed, made Girlfriend feel bad for him. She tried to come up with something that could help Boyfriend stay alive. Then, an idea struck. She took off her ring bracelet and transformed it into a star shape. And later slapped it onto Boyfriend's glass helmet. "There you go!"

Boyfriend was stunned on what happened and touched the area where Girlfriend "gently" pressed the item. "Uh... Girlfriend. What did you put on my helmet?"

"That's a Star Shield, it used to be my bracelet. What it does is for you to survive the harsh space out there. In this case, you are able to breath without even worrying about your low oxygen." Girlfriend explained it proudly.

Boyfriend slowly taken in the new information, which to him was another puzzle he needed to solve. "Okay. But why put it on my helmet?" He asked as he pointed the said object. "Oh! I just thought it looks cute there!" Girlfriend smiled happily.

Boyfriend smiled as well. "Thanks, Girlfriend. But, are you sure you're okay without your bracelet as your shield?" Girlfriend waved her hands dismissively. "It's okay. Besides, why do you think I have two more on my upper arms?" She showed her own Ring Shields.

"Huh. I thought they were just accessories." Girlfriend just scoffed playfully. "You'd be surprised what other things I can do with these bracelets." Boyfriend was all excited again. "Really?! Can you show me?"

"Hmm... Nah. That's top secret." She giggled as Boyfriend begged for her to tell.

.

Both Boyfriend and Girlfriend just wandered together through the crowded area. Even if it's a terrible idea to Boyfriend, but Girlfriend reassured him that her people have seen different species from different planets visited and left their planet occasionally. So Boyfriend wasn't that strange to them.

But even with Girlfriend's calm words, it didn't shake the crowd staring at Boyfriend curiously before moving on. Such an awkward and intense feeling there. But that didn't stop Boyfriend from examining some weird objects. Did I said some? I meant a lot of weird object and Girlfriend had to explain them all, which was tiring.

"Boyfriend, can we rest up? My feet are starting to sore." Boyfriend was so distracted that he didn't noticed how long they were walking. Sheepishly, he agreed and now Girlfriend was the one dragging Boyfriend to a quiet spot.

As the two sat beside each other, Boyfriend huffed out his breath, which caused a fog appeared on his helmet. He chuckled and watched the fog slowly evaporated. "Thank you, Girlfriend, for teaching me the wonders of your planet."

Girlfriend smiled and said "Your welcome" to Boyfriend. There was another request from Boyfriend himself. "Hey, Girlfriend. If you don't mind, can you teach me your language you've said the first time we met?"

"You mean the [REDACTED] or to put it simply, the Beep Language? Are you sure? It's kinda complicated for someone new to it." Boyfriend looked at Girlfriend with determination. "Yeah, I do! How else am I suppose to communicate with your native language? I uh... kinda feel bad for you to speak English all day." Boyfriend bashfully scratched his lower helmet.

Girlfriend found herself admiring Boyfriend's determination even more. "Alright. I'll tell you the basics and work up from there." Boyfriend nodded excitedly and their lesson began.

.

From this point, I mentioned one of the Royal Guard found Girlfriend and reported to Daddy Dearest, or should we say [REDACTED]. [Lol I'll never get tired of using that word. I promised I'll come up with the alternative names for the Dearest family. Or maybe not. Who knows lol].

Anyway, you know what happens after that. So let's just skip to the aftermath of the first battle.

.

So, the Star Gems are scattered, right? So, how would Boyfriend travelled without a vehicle? Simple, he rides on Girlfriend's speakers. At least, that's what I think. Besides, what's a flying object use for if it's not for transportation, right?

But you know what the coolest part when taking a cruise on a flying speaker with Girlfriend? They can watch a lot of beautiful stars and dust clouds up-close. Man, I wished I can do that too.

From there, Boyfriend's continued to asked more questions to Girlfriend. And even though it's annoying sometimes, Girlfriend didn't mind. So long as she could travel longer with someone other than her parents and relearning everything about the universe.

After all, Boyfriend gave some insights on what he knew during his astronaut training and from his reading. And with a little friendly conversation about themselves even more. Oh, and Boyfriend is getting fluent with the Beep Language.

I do think they slowly develop an attraction from one another before they meet the last two battles. Boyfriend and Girlfriend told each other how their respected species act and do when they are in love.

I will explain Girlfriend's side on my upcoming fanon world-building for Girlfriend's universe. So keep an eye for that ;]

...

And that's it for today's fanon story! Wooh! I had a lot of fun creating these interaction with two people and semi their personalities as I am impromptu writing this lol.

Anyway, thank you for those who had read this far!

Have a nice day!

[spaceaholic]

to tear apart a hero’s will

part one: the truth about heroics

The itch beneath his lungs was accompanied by the splintering wish from deep within his bones that urged and tugged towards the never ending doom hanging lowly against the smog that filtered through the cityscape. Clouds lidded the sky from its view of the surface of Earth with a grey shroud that the people who further lingered would lap up like a mule and spit back as they choked on their halos. It was a grand threat to society -- the way things were, not one would escape the noxious influence of heroes and their precautions and ideals before the end of the decade. It may have been nearly 10 years away (it was 2332, now), but the limelight always had a way of sneaking up on those who were least expecting of and prepared for its harsh rays.

People in power had great influence over their predecessors and others who lived beneath their fluorescent gaze (it illuminated the peace and glowered sunspots against their starry wish-dreams and long lost life insurance policies). It was the ones who took position for money and fame that really set a bug beneath his skin. The kind that (although all foreign creatures beneath the surface of mankind were most certainly unwelcome) he most prominently could come across were the ones that only few could appreciate the thrill of living beside. Like cockroaches. Their movements were unpredictable and slow in a manner made by the steady practice of dodging climbing boots and puzzle pieces that came crashing down utop their mini-utopia of rest and quiet in the walls of homes and public offices.

Moreso like the rats who dwelled in the underground tunnels of waste and rubbish beneath the weary feet of a passerby unsuspecting. He was a chameleon amongst a collection of rodents and hummingbirds and the most likely drone (the kind who followed a queen with mindless intentions and did every request of which they were asked).

And there is no such thing as a “perfect hero,” that much was clear (it had been for quite some time, however there were few who would dare to pursue legal action against the fine grouping of a selected board who more-or-less determined such). They took head on much of society’s heroics, including the development of their infamous war-machines bred from the insight of battle and gore and the glory in which it would beget. In the view of a perfect society -- an unimaginable balance between each end of the spectrum (truly there is little difference between the “heroes” and “villains” of their time, after all).

The man too fast for his own good, would be a prime example of the Commission’s product borne of stern and fear and a solid prospect of their “perfect hero.” From a young age he had been pruned for this. It was his reason of promise, his pride and his regret and the fact that, although he was made for the title of “spotless” and “impeccable,’ one would be remiss to ignore the aching spindle of terror and vain that tore short and bright round the organs of his self and rubbed tight against the bones in his limbs.

But he was not the first of his kind, oh not by a long shot. These heroic (sorry, “heroic”) developments had splintered all across the globe several centuries ago, back when the line was blurred just that much less and parallels between “good” and “evil” could be drawn by even the naked eye. Back when nobody was expected of less or more because of the power of which they were gifted (or lack thereof). Back when the Board was a lineup of level-headed men in their final years with enough experience on their backs to make even Atlas hold his head up high. 

Others would remain unnamed for the sake of plot relevance, as unfortunate as it may seem. It is without a doubt that the Commission had plagued their brains from such a young age anyhow that their intrusion would add nothing but more sides to the same two-faced war. A battle of brains and less of brawns, but amongst the born-and-raised-ish this was nothing uncommon to bestow upon.

The Public Hero Safety Commission was a group notorious for their unorthodox training methods. They, like many hero schools across the region, were birthplaces of child soldiers raised to fight the wars of today and the wars of tomorrow (should they make it that long, that is. And at least some people saw this fatal flaw amongst the fine-tuning of their masterplan, but by the time jurisdiction could be appealed, it would be too little too late. Most knew this, and therefore stayed quiet). Nothing ever changed, but perhaps that was a good thing (really, it wasn’t).

A wisp of hope was once born against the madness. But he, too, came along with its cliché double-edged-sword-shit of the balance of "good" and "evil" amongst the masses. And this hope was fickle and weak. The brother saw this and planned to make a fix, but it was never meant to be. 

They had started an endless battle before the true war had even began. 

Heroes against villains had always been in the eye of the beholder. But the terrors waged between the heroes and the people were just beginning, and they went off with a BANG! Had they not, there is no doubt one could be left with a mere inch of morality on such a topic. But that is nothing to dwell on, for the past can not be changed, no matter how much one may try. 

A new generation of lives to be lost sport the golden crest of the PSHC day after day in a haze of vengeance and honour and an honest-to-God love for the job they never had a choice in (not that most of them minded. Some people are just made to help others, after all). 

And he may have been, once. But in this reality? In this day and age? His entrance may as well have been a lover on the loose in a horde of mourning exes at a rock concert. So he would bring light back into their lives (Watashi ga-), just as he did his mother's (-kita!). Once upon a time ago. 

To tear apart a hero’s will, one must first make friends with their weaknesses. Take advantage of the middle-ground. Find calm from beyond enemy lines. The story of a starchild wise beyond his years is no different, except for the part where he rebels. Just as Takami wished he ever could.

[nobodyenjoysanything]

Ch1 so far

It is a longstanding conviction of this journalist that nobody enjoys anything.

In the bosom of my most cherished recollections, I do not picture myself happy, or even reconciled to occurrences: rather, I am excited for them to end.

Moreover, no magic is created in an event not improved after the fact in its reconstruction and retelling. It is the reliving of things that make them happen, and nothing happens that has no meaning else it is given one, regardless. So events happen after they happen and nobody is any the wiser.

Let me tell you - all pleasure is in imagining what will happen or has happened, and none in the moment. No-one can participate without experiencing, nor experience without reflecting; reflect without abstracting; and so, at the height of their satisfaction, an abstraction! No-one is actually there!

The implications for history are fascinating. There are many cases of, largely undocumented, historical vacancy. The Treaty of Versailles was signed, understandably, in a daze of psychological disaffection; Brahms was known to compose at an adjunct to reality so abrupt it was as if he was in an adjoining corridor; when the Hittites took Nineveh, everybody was somewhat distracted by effects of the light and how their kids were doing at school. Hannibal confessed his mind was elsewhere when he crossed the Alps, oscillating between a state of mild bemusement and regret.

Quite literally, and far more than one would have hoped or imagined, the vessel is empty: no-one is there and nobody has ever been there. The moment is the least explored territory of all, and very few set foot in it. Why send people to the Moon or Mars when, when they get there, they won’t be there until they get back?

“So, does that mean something happens because it means something or something means something because it happens?”

Flammarion wagged his finger, instructively. “Now we are getting somewhere! We have the tiger by the tail! For we routinely complain of a lack of meaning, but I think there is no such meaning - yet too much meaning! Our lives are awash with fatuous meaning - meanings that have no business our appropriating them! “Why, let us take an object!”

He was in full flow now and had begun to pace, his lederhosen creaking slightly and espadrilles clacking on the wooden floor. Penelope was, herself, distracted. She had trod this line of inquiry many times, as Flammarion tried to put his mathematical, mystical insights into everyday speech. He was working on some sort of existential calculus, and had, so far, made several minor contributions to a burgeoning field, but there had been objections. His work was seen by some as frivolous and not a suitable subject of investigation for a tenured professor. He was supposed to be making advances to the mathematical canon that would put his beleaguered college on the academic map, but had found it hard to take the work of his predecessors seriously, seeing as they had, almost universally, laboured at impossibly dry conclusions about curves.

Penelope was small, attractive, with a roguish stare that defied interrogation. Her attraction to Flammarion puzzled her friends and family - he was short, a little plump, circumspect, a dreamer: she had the decisiveness and battle-readiness of a seasoned military general. He was long-winded and elliptical, she, tacit, yet, when she did speak, commanding. He was a romantic, she, a devout epicurean and principled hedonist. She met challenges and new experiences with a sparkling eye and slight smile: he hated change and even very slight alterations to his diet would upset his stomach, giving him terrible gas.

There was a devoted companionship between them, but they were not exclusive lovers. Flammarion had a dismal sexual appetite, and Penelope was ravenous in her enthusiasm for passion and excitement of several flavours. She was a stallion in the bedroom and devoured stable boys, Dukes, Contessas and skullery maids with equal relish. For his part, Flammarion, although he was dimly aware of her sexual explorations, considered them a team, and his unspoken tolerance was a signal to her he appreciated he could not satisfy her needs himself. Although his devotion was divided equally between her and ‘the work’ - and there was the essence of the compromise - he regarded her dalliances, not as a distraction, but as part of her contribution. She would come back from her escapades with body and mind refreshed - a yet more ready foil for his rhapsodies of impenetrable logic, her listening ear sharpened, her questions more penetratingly naive .

This afternoon had been one of those moments. She had not slept in their rooms, but had returned shortly after breakfast, her riding breeches tied loosely and scuffed, her blouse untucked and top-unbuttoned. Her hair draped lankly across one shoulder in the aftermath of a bun, her yellow beak tinged with the remains of last night’s lipstick and this morning’s hastily consumed coffee. She wore an expression of quiet accomplishment and her recent swagger was a signal to all in the large country estate: “Envy me, even fear me, for I set out to be conquested and have been enjoyed”

They were in the middle of their enquiries - Flammarion pacing, scribbling fragments of thought on every available surface in chalk, including, but not limited to, the blackboard. The parts of the easy chairs not covered in fabric were scrawled with esoteric symbols, Greek letters, Arabic numbers and Hebrew incantations. There were quite a few portions of mirror-writing and a fair amount in various ciphers. He was in a kind of frenzy - a marvelous trance of periodic calculation and instruction, when Lord Archibald waddled in, demanding his attention, and the spell was broken, abruptly.

“Oh Flammy why are you working on this philosophical rubbish when the island is rising by the day?!” he barked in a commanding tone.

Lord Archibald was a duck, a statuesque one with white plumage and a golden beak. His webbed feet were yellow-orange like the trumpet part of a daffodil and his eyes were perfect black circles in tufted depressions on either side of his soft face. He beheld himself in the mantelpiece mirror – a draftsman’s rhapsody of lines and textures, from the elegant French Curve of his back to the rough hatching of his under-feathers, to the jagged planes of his folded flight-feathers – he was the archetype, the prototype, the very planotype, of a duck. This was the thought he burnished in his mind, adjusting his large, bicorne hat, decorated as it was with the flags of Italy and Eritrea, from his time in the old Italian quarter of Asmara, where he had served as a diplomat, heading the Italian Consulate there for a while: and it was this reflection on his own tremendous dignity and the heavy responsibility of his position that recalled him to the moment and the issue of the rising island ground.

The island was rising, that much was certain. Any day now the amount would be appreciable, quantifiable and measurable, but of course by then it would be too late. In fact, the only reason its elevation had not run away into the heavens was a sustained campaign of subsidence by the Bolsheviks - an underground society of anarchists loosely affiliated with Bolshevism, but also maintaining an esoteric tradition of some sort - though nobody knew exactly because the secret of the mysteries were so closely guarded. Lord Archibald had waged an open campaign against the Bolsheviks, but had so far been unsuccessful in penetrating their inner sanctums and thwarting the undermining work that maintained the ground at its usual level, but if they were not stopped soon the entire island would be replaced with a fake substance indistinguishable from the previous island but entirely controlled by Bolshevik spies, which was their real game - to gradually usurp the good and honest rock of the island with an inferior, yet inappreciably different, malign substance, that also functioned as a surveillance tool. To what purpose, nobody knew.

It had been pointed out to Lord Archibald, that, given the island’s height above sea level, as measured by their nautical instruments, remained reassuringly stable, whatever the Bolsheviks were doing, the island was in equilibrium - but this would not do. The problem remained intractable that, when a critical mass of the island had been replaced by fake island, a watershed would have been breached and a Rubicon crossed: the Bolsheviks would have won and the island would rise irredeemably, inexorably, skywards.

Further, scientists on the island had discerned using arcane instruments that bits of the island were being replaced at different rates: the ground where the school stood was being impersonated and the impostor ground inveigling itself at a faster rate than that surrounding the port - the shopping district was relatively facsimile-free whereas several quieter suburbs were now almost entirely complete replicas of their former selves.

It was Flammarion who had first grasped that the way to track the local rate of dissimulation was by dividing the local specific gravity by the average number of bins. His reasoning was confoundedly abstruse, but what could not be denied is it turned something that could not be conceived into a mappable attribute of the terrain. With the aid of calculators, geographers could update a diagram of the area in real time to indicate how far worse the situation had gotten, and what the overall realness quotient of the island currently stood at. It was a master stroke, but not a solution, and Lord Archibald was convinced that, if given a focusing urgency, discipline and the right incentives, the problem would quickly succumb to Flammarion’s genius. Flammarion, however, seemed to have lost interest.

[fizzingwizard]

So, Kyousei brings up two traditional Digimon themes: one is Sacrifice, and the other is the Big Picture. This is a Fizz Thinks About Things Through Writing post, so other insights are welcome. But it’s Looooong ahahaha.

LOTSA THOUGHTS UNDER THE CUT

First some background.

Adventure

In Adventure, the kids spent the first half of the season fighting for their survival/to get home. That was their goal. They learned things, about themselves and about the world. But after that, they made a decision together, understanding what they’d be facing, to return to the digital world - once again without an assured method for getting home. With the hope and optimism of children, as well as more grown up knowledge of the role they had to play, they returned and faced the Dark Masters.

Immediately they realized the situation was different. They watched a number of friends die one after another trying to protect them. They experienced loss after loss and failure after failure. They started to lose hope. Eventually this contributed to the fight between Taichi and Yamato and the subsequent breaking of the team.

In the end, Taichi learned to keep his eyes on the Big Picture by realizing that it’s made up of many different parts: there would be no victory unless they were united. At the same time, he made himself Piedmon’s sole target, refusing to let Koushirou fight with him. It was strategic - Gatomon was also there, but presumably tired from fighting LadyDevimon, and WarGreymon had a far better chance of enduring Piedmon than Tentomon did. But it also meant Taichi set himself up as a sacrifice in the name of the “big picture.”

Already, he’d learned to see himself not as a hero, not as a leader, but as a piece of puzzle. His expendability balanced with his individual worth. Most of the Chosen dealt with this question in some way in that final arc, notably Sora and Yamato and Jou.

One other relevant bit - Taichi throughout Etemon’s arc. His single-mindedness and desire to power up led to Agumon’s dark evolution. SkullGreymon was born. By a stroke of luck, he ran out of gas before he could do too much harm, but imagine if that hadn’t been the case. The kids were forced to witness one of their own turn against them as a direct result of their actions. On top of that, later Taichi got sucked into the warp created by Etemon/Datamon’s destruction, and while he was fine, the rest of the Chosen were left wondering if he was dead.

02

In 02, the new team was fortunate in that they only faced controlled or replica Digimon for the first half. It felt like Digimon was pulling its punches, until suddenly, with BlackWarGreymon, that was no longer the case. The new team had never killed real Digimon with hearts and struggled with it. Although weakened by lackluster writing, this dilemma became a real focus, and they couldn’t run away from it. I still remember Miyako protecting some dudes by attacking LadyDevimon (I think?? some digimon) with a skateboard, and then Silphymon destroying it for good. It was understandably difficult for Miyako to swallow, though she did. And then Oikawa died too, the show’s first human victim.

Much earlier, Ken lost his partner as a consequence of his own actions. Even before that, Taichi had to square off with Agumon who was under the Emperor’s control, and the reality that they would have to hurt him to save him. The goal was still “save him,” but it easily could have turned into a repeat of SkullGreymon. As a fan, I can’t imagine that Taichi didn’t flash back to that. In fact, even though the show doesn’t make it obvious  - we did see SkullGreymon as a result of the Emperor’s forced evolutions. I never thought about it as a kid, but now that reappearance, followed by having to fight a brainwashed MetalGreymon, seems deliberate and purposefully evocative.

Tri

Let’s start with Saikai.

A lot of fans were surprised/disappointed by Taichi in the first movie. He got easily distracted by the risk of causing more destruction. His fighting spirit seemed gone. He almost called Hikari in for reinforcements against Kuwagamon, but stopped himself. Then, although he hated the way people were talking about the Digimon, he commiserated with them as well, and he was at a loss for what to do. “The more I see, the less I understand,” or something of that nature, he said. Yamato, who wanted him to be the sure leader from the old days, was upset.

Taichi continued to be wishy-washy throughout Ketsui, and into Kokuhaku. Then comes Tri’s first big sacrifice: The Digimon prepare themselves for Reboot.

They do it willingly. They don’t want it to happen, but every one of them is prepared to have their memories wiped if it means saving their partners’ world. When it’s clear they won’t be able to save their partners in time, Koushirou tells Tentomon to go inside the box that will preserve his backup data, even if he’s the only one who can make it in. But Tentomon refuses to leave MetalGreymon, the only other one not yet infected, to fight alone. Good thing too, since MetalGreymon gets infected minutes later.

The Chosen watch helplessly as their partners sacrifice the substance of their bonds, along with all their memories, to save them.

Jumping forward to Soushitsu a bit: We learn that Maki and Daigo are Original Chosen Children. We learn they faced the Dark Masters and in order to beat them, four of the five partners evolved into the Digital Sovereigns who preserve the digital world’s balance. The fifth - Maki’s partner - for some reason doesn’t evolve, and becomes a sacrifice. The world is saved. Homeostasis was directly involved in it. As far as I can tell, neither Maki nor Daigo ever went back to the digital world (at least not until Maki began communicating with Yggdrasil). Maki grew obsessed with finding a way to save her partner, who was rendered unable to be reborn as a Digi-egg. Maybe Daigo joined their agency out of his own desire to know more about the other dimension he’d visited as a child, or maybe it was just to keep an eye on Maki.

Maki couldn’t live with the unfairness of the sacrifice her partner made. It was to save the world, but she couldn’t accept it. She wanted to find another way. Kyousei makes it seem to me like she thought she and her partner could fix the damage she caused in the process, once they were reunited. When that doesn’t happen, when Bakumon shows no sign of recognizing her, she loses it. Everything she’s worked for has failed - and she’s even undone what good her partner’s initial sacrifice did in the first place.

At the end of Kokuhaku, Koushirou works tirelessly to find a way to reunite with their partners. At this time, no one’s seeking to undo what happened - that thought doesn’t seem to occur to them - but they are seeking to influence the future. In the end they go to the digital world, and it’s like the first episode of Adventure in reverse: this time the children are the ones who have to convince the Digimon that they’re partners and meant to protect each other. The allusion is clear as crystal, especially with Sora, whose bond with Biyomon was cemented in the old days by how intently Biyomon tried to protect her, despite her lack of power. This time around, it’s Biyomon scolding Sora for being reckless when she’s “just a human,” and her comprehension of Sora’s love and care for her results in her mega evolution.

In other words, the Chosen were able to rebuild their bonds with their partners. Even lacking memories, they just believed that as partners, they’re meant to be together, and were willing to do the legwork it would take to prove themselves. This doesn’t seem to have occurred to Maki. Instead of trying to teach Bakumon about herself, she freaks him out - maybe she’s already too much under Yggdrasil’s influence or something, I don’t know, but the point is she never makes an attempt to accept Bakumon the way he is after the reboot. It seems like she wanted to go back in time and redo the day her partner died, even though she knew the reboot wasn’t going to make that happen. (By contrast, as far as we can tell right now, Daigo seems to have become resigned to his impotency - I am psyched to find out more about him at last in the final movie.)

So now we reach Kyousei.

The unthinkable has happened and a Chosen’s partner Digimon has become an extreme threat to both worlds. It’s SkullGreymon on steroids. As I wrote elsewhere, although SkullGreymon is never alluded to in Kyousei, Sora did bring him up in Kokuhaku - while talking to Meiko, no less. I can only think this was a deliberate set-up to make us draw parallels. Sora’s message was “but Agumon turned out fine in the end!” But in Kyousei, Meiko has to face the possibility that no, Meicoomon will not be fine.

First, Meiko doesn’t try to dodge when Meicoomon attacks her on the ship. She’s in shock, but personally, I also think she had a split second feeling of “I’m okay with this.” She is overcome with guilt that she’s not enough to save her partner, therefore she can’t bring herself to run from death. At least not death at Meicoomon’s hands.

As many have noted, Meiko’s questioning her validity as a Chosen is akin to what Sora and Yamato in particular went through at the end of Adventure. Why was I chosen, if I can’t save my partner? If my role as her partner has caused this to happen? The others try their best to comfort her by relating their own problems (”I was like that,” Sora says) and telling her to let her friends share her burden.

Meanwhile on earth...

Homeostasis announces that it will take the matter of Meicoomon into its own hands. Meicoomon has a shard of Apocalymon. Though her relationship with Meiko kept a lid on her powers, that is no longer functioning, and Meicoomon is a threat to everyone. Daigo takes this to mean Homeostasis has given up on the Chosen. It seems that way when the digital world itself tries to expel them. But Homeostasis does come upon Hikari and fill the Chosen in on what it’s doing, so maybe it does feel some obligation towards these kids it “used as pawns” as Daigo puts it. It’s also not all powerful, given that Omegamon is able to holds his own against Jesmon.

Homeostasis represents the Big Picture, and no one’s tender feelings towards Meicoomon are going to stop it from eliminating the threat. Jesmon’s attack - “one for all” - implies that sacrifices are necessary for the greater good.

This is a reality it’s hard to argue with. In our world, the non-anime one, unfairness and inequality result in all sorts of sacrifices big and small that can never be recovered. Adventure was not one of those happy-go-lucky kids shows where everything’s always all right in the end. It wasn’t gritty either, but somewhere in between. It acknowledged reality while also building its young viewers up to take risks in the name of those they love.

Which brings me to:

Abandoned by Homeostasis, under attack from literally everyone - other humans, the digital world, Yggdrasil - the Chosen have to decide what they’re fighting for. What’s worth fighting for, when the whole world’s turned against them? No one’s looking to them for heroics now. Not even the power that chose them in the first place has their back.

They decide they are fighting because they care about their friends, their partners, each other, and as Taichi says, “We don’t care if it’s right or wrong.”

That is to say, at this time they have not accepted the Big Picture, at least not as Homeostasis paints it. They are still fighting for the myriad smaller pieces that together form the Big Picture. They’re fighting to bring Meicoomon back to Meiko.

Time out to talk about Taichi again.

This movie is a sequel to Saikai as far as Taichi’s development is concerned.

Meiko is caught between memories of Meicoomon as she was and fear of her as she is now. Taichi overhears Meiko confess she loves Meicoomon, and wonder if she was wrong simply to want to have fun with her friend. Taichi basically explains to her the struggle he’s had since Saikai:

Is it so childish to want to remember the good times with your friend? To value those and wish to have them back? Is willingness to sacrifice them really the adult thing to do? Adults want the same things as children - Maki is living proof. I feel like Taichi is trying to tell Meiko what he learned as a child about balancing your expendability with your individual worth. That it’s possible to acknowledge reality while also valuing yourself. He yells at her for giving up on herself. Agumon makes his move next, and what finally gets Meiko to allow herself to cry? Agumon telling her he loves Meicoomon. The simplicity of his emotion echoes what Meiko truly feels towards her partner, and it makes her break down at last. It must be truly hard for her, wanting her partner back while surrounded by all these kids who are happy with their partners and being tormented by her own. Agumon’s pure emotion gave her permission to feel selfish, if only for a moment.

Agumon “reports” all this to Taichi. Taichi says:

Everything from this point on hearkens back to something Hikari said earlier about “we can never understand what others are going through until we experience it ourselves” or some such. This is the culmination of Taichi’s up-till-now wishy-washy behavior, which was his new adult understanding that there are going to be no take-backs. Taichi wanting to share Meiko’s feelings becomes very important after this.

Homeostasis comes on Hikari now, and for whatever reason, explains to them why what it’s doing is necessary and that their bonds as teammates obstruct the big picture. Hikari tells Homeostasis to get out of her.

This is super important too.

They fight Meicoomon, and are torn because while she’s incredibly dangerous, her battle is driven by intense fear, and while she keeps attacking them without mercy, she also appears to protect Meiko. They still want to believe Meicoomon can be saved, but Jesmon joins the fight, followed by Alphamon. They have to send Omegamon for their side. As four extremely powerful Digimon fight for dramatically different reasons, the children come to the realization that they have very little control over what happens now. All they can do is watch as a violent, heart-breaking, and ultimately pointless battle rages above them.

Meiko then says they should kill Meicoomon.

Meiko had asked this question earlier - if “partner” meant “hope,” then what was that hope as it pertained to herself and Meicoomon? Sora reacts like this. Mimi cries because of how tragic it is. Taichi reflects on Meiko’s simple love for Meicoomon she’d shown the night before when she thought no one was watching... and decides to do as she wishes.

“Meicoomon is one of us. I...”

As strange as it may seem, I think compassion is the motive behind Taichi’s decision, even though it aligns with what Homeostasis said about the Big Picture. They don’t pause to reflect on that, but I do. As long as the only goal was Meicoomon’s eradication, they are playing right into Homeostasis’s hands here. But their motive is different.

Of course this doesn’t go down easy with the others. Yamato, who relies on Taichi to make the big decisions, as well as to balance all of their feelings in the process, takes him to task for it, but in the end he can’t come up with any other plan. He lets out a badly animated anguished howl.

Meiko smiles.

And then she runs directly into battle. It’s the third time she’s let herself stay in harms way, and the first time she put herself there deliberately. Which is why I feel that lack of willpower/resignation to death has morphed into a full-on embrace. I think what ran through her head would be something like, “Yes, Meicoomon has to die, and I, her partner, will be there for her through it, no matter what happens to me.”

Yamato and Taichi run after her, are separated. Taichi makes the next sacrifice: he deliberately becomes a battle casualty so Omegamon can protect Yamato and Meiko. He didn’t do this for the Big Picture. He did it because he cares about his friends first and foremost.

Maybe he wouldn’t have if he knew Hikari would go freaking berserk :P

I am wondering if there is not something Simon & River Tam going on with the way Taichi’s apparent death sets off Hikari. Her words, “I need to be with my brother,” are weird. And the result is a world-crushing monster. Now it’s not just Meiko whose partner is a threat to their survival - through that weird fusion, Hikari’s partner is now a part of that weapon herself. Surprise!

Here is the irony: At the very end, the concept of Big Picture is turned on its head. The key to global destruction was the upset of Taichi’s own very balance of expendability vs individual worth? What should be a small sacrifice, in terms of the Big Picture, has had devastating consequences. Did Homeostasis know this could happen, and that Taichi would trigger it? Did Yggdrasil? He (I mean, the “Mouth of Yggdrasil” that is) sure seems happy about it.

If somehow you made it through this whole long post, you may be wondering “Fizz, what’s your verdict on the Big Picture & Sacrifice thing?” I don’t have one. Now that I’ve written all this, I don’t have any conclusions and need to think more.

The Big Picture Taichi appears to have reconciled himself with is one that both takes risks for another’s desires and makes sacrifices for another’s resolve. Homeostasis’s is colder. Yggdrasil is all negativity, but there doesn’t seem to be anyone at bat who is pure Good, so. That’s interesting. I am not sure where Tri is going with this, only that it’s going somewhere. I’m putting my thoughts here to play with for the next almost full year (auuggghh!!) until the final movie.

One thing in particular: the question of what it means to be Chosen, and furthermore, why they were Chosen in the first place. I feel like everything hinges on this. The children are used to choosing for themselves regardless, that’s not an issue. But there must be a reason that at some point someone, apparently Homeostasis, thought partners was a good idea, as well as a reason why it changed its mind, and that’s what is going to lead the eventual outcome of Tri. It feels to me like maybe the idea for partners was meant to circumvent a big picture outcome that someone didn’t want to accept...

eta: one last note... for the time being, we are left with one partner without a Digimon (Meiko), and one Digimon without a partner (Koromon). [Well, actually two partners - Hikari as well - as a couple folks have pointed out.] I have no comment other than to put it out there...

[mckenziebentzen7-blog]

Reconditioned IPhone Offers At GAME.

Zynga is a leading developer of the world's most popular social video games that are played by countless individuals around the world every day. Genuine racing 3 has set a brand-new requirement for mobile racing games - you have to play it to believe it. It lets you take pleasure in a rich, next-gen game with the most sophisticated cross-platform social and competitive racing neighborhood dragonvale world cheats ever. Furthermore, biologists have utilized evolutionary video game theory and the ESS to explain the emergence of animal interaction 57 The analysis of signaling video games and other interaction video games has actually provided insight into the development of interaction amongst animals. Flipflop Solitaire reasons that a card game you play on an iPhone needs to be created for its screen and mobile play rather than a table. Now, this popular Facebook game is readily available Dragonvale World cheats for iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch. The game's top-down graphics are excellent, and the visuals and interface truly make it easy for gamers to command spaceships. Costing 99 cents, Angry Birds is one the best handle computer game. check this link right here now is a classic and one of the very first (and finest) liked tower defense video games for iOS. There are other enhanced gameplay functions and these, combined with sensational comic-inspired graphics, make dragonvale world cheats for a definitive Angry Birds games. This editor's picked super hit is offered free of charge on the app shop and for that reason got included in our list of best complimentary iPhone games. The tasks are easy tap-to-play ones, however like all social games, it might cost you a little waiting time or cash, depending upon which you 'd rather invest. Some gamers buy additional skins, while popular racing games make you run out of gas. Hacked dragonvale world guide or paid video games are pleasurable to have fun with. You can forget all those silly spin-offs since of Angry Birds 2 drills right to the core of the Angry Birds gameplay. 6 years and 14 video games after the original title comes Angry Birds 2; redefining the series in all the right ways. The problem is the number of freemium video games are offered that force players to invest cash dragonvale world hack. First Demeter worked at Storm8, a studio developed by former Zynga designer Garrett Remes-- behind Bubble Mania" and Dining Establishment Story." 2 years later on, he moved over to work as director of engineering at FoxNext Games. Online casino video games for the iPhone are available through the app store on your mobile device. This is a game I discover makes long journeys pass in a flash: I play only to obtain max stars on every screen - which is truly tough dragonvale world cheats and leads to lots of brief video games where you're continually trying to find out just how to do it. That makes time actually fly. It has actually been another fantastic year for iOS video games, as 2017 provided a heap of must-play iPhone and iPad choices. Last but not least, if you're just looking for something with a strong dragonvale world cheats story, TellTale video games like The Strolling Dead series (Free for episode 1, $4.99 for subsequent episodes on iOS, Android) are like interactive narratives that draw you in with terrific characters and voice acting. For those that miss the days of Zelda, Across Age brings the visual design and timeless gameplay of 16-bit console RPGs. And due to the fact that progression happens rapidly, it feels like the game rewards you for your time, even when you just dragonvale world guide dip into it for a couple of minutes. Building Simulator 2014 is one of the couple of very popular simulation-based iOS 7 games", letting you man the heavy and costly equipment from GUY and STILL. The game was popular adequate to release an entire series of merchandise, spin-off games, tv shorts, as well as an animated feature movie (and an upcoming follow up in 2019). While we don't dragonvale world hack declare to have actually noted the conclusive 10 best iPhone puzzle video games out there, we're happy to share up to 10 of our favorites. It is among the very best multiplayer iPhone video games. ALTHOUGH Palm is still rolling out the e-commerce portion of its own app store, called the App Catalog, the business wants to draw developers to compose for Palm devices like the Pre because Palm's os, called webOS, is based largely Dragonvale World guide on the very same programs languages utilized to develop Web sites-- meaning developers are currently knowledgeable about the tools they will need to develop mobile apps.

[ionecoffman]

The Wisdom of Running a 2,189-Mile Marathon

Of all the things that could have broken Scott Jurek on a 2,189-mile run, it was a small tree root that crushed his spirit. He was 38 days into an attempt to beat the speed record for completing the full length of the Appalachian Trail, the mountainous hiking path that snakes along America’s East Coast, from northern Georgia to the top of Mount Katahdin, in Maine. Jurek, one of the greatest ultramarathoners of all times, was in trouble. After battling through a succession of leg injuries, then slogging through Vermont’s wettest June in centuries, he had to make up ground over a particularly merciless stretch of the trail, New Hampshire’s White Mountains. Delirious from just two hours of sleep following 26 straight hours of hiking, he was stumbling along the trail when he encountered the root in his path.

“As I saw it coming, I didn’t know what to do,” Jurek recalls in his new memoir, North: Finding My Way While Running the Appalachian Trail, co-written with his wife, Jenny. “Was I supposed to step around it or over it? I just couldn’t remember.” So he hit it and toppled. “I’d forgotten how to raise my legs,” he writes. “How to run like a sane person.”

Jurek’s victories in punishing 100-mile races since the late 1990s—plus a starring role in the writer Christopher McDougall’s best seller, Born to Run—have made him a distance-running celebrity. But tackling the Appalachian Trail forced him to dig deeper than he ever had before. Five weeks in, he was down more than a dozen pounds, and his ribs were visible. His eyes bulged, feral and unfocused. His body reeked of apple-cider vinegar as his sweat excreted excess ammonia. And his mind was beginning to crack. Late one night, he was mystified by the lights of a house he spotted on top of a mountain. A running partner had to explain that what he saw was the moon.

Jurek joins a tried-and-true literary tradition: the extreme athlete telling a harrowing tale of making it to the edge and back. From Edmund Hillary’s account of scaling Mount Everest to the long-distance swimmer Diana Nyad’s Find a Way, the genre offers athletes a chance to articulate how and why the toughest humans on the planet are capable of persevering when so many others would give up. The implicit promise is that readers will get a chance to learn something about how far the rest of us can push ourselves. And while we’re at it, perhaps we’ll glean the insight we really want: how far we should push ourselves. But what if extreme athletes are the worst sources of wisdom, and that is precisely what makes them fascinating?

Little, Brown

To hear Jurek tell it, forcing himself to the limit is purifying and transformational. “Though man’s soul finds solace in natural beauty, it is forged in the fire of pain,” he writes. But listen closely, and bodily transcendence is not exactly grist for motivational posters. Jurek’s pages are haunted by comrades who didn’t make it through the fire unscathed. He was joined for part of the trail by Aron Ralston, the hiker famous for amputating his own arm to free himself from a boulder. Jurek’s friend Dean Potter, a legendary climber and base jumper, died in a wing-suit accident days before Jurek began his trek. “I had known ultrarunners to finish races as their kidneys were shutting down and they were losing control of their bowels,” Jurek reports. He recalls a runner who fought through debilitating headaches to finish a 100-mile race and then died of a brain aneurysm.

Jurek and his kind are masters of walking themselves to the brink, but how they get there is only dimly understood. North, in fact, makes the case that a lack of curiosity on that score has been a secret of Jurek’s success. While he eagerly experiments with unconventional ways to improve his performance—veganism, Abraham Maslow’s theory of self-actualization, the samurai code—he has spent most of his career willfully ignoring the basic question of what possesses him to compete in such a punishing sport in the first place. “You rarely ask why when you win,” Jurek writes. For athletes at his level, endurance justifies itself: “We all kept going.”

Science backs up the notion that this unflinching drive forward is as essential as physical talent for competitors like Jurek, if not more so. Endurance is not all in your head, but as the journalist Alex Hutchinson explains in Endure: Mind, Body, and the Curiously Elastic Limits of Human Performance, the brain plays a pivotal role in gauging exertion and ultimately dictating when it’s time to stop. “The psychology and physiology of endurance are inextricably linked,” Hutchinson writes. “Any task lasting longer than a dozen or so seconds requires decisions, whether conscious or unconscious, on how hard to push and when.” As things get tough, the mind constantly takes stock of physical reserves and negotiates with the body over just how long it can hold out.

This feedback loop is a relatively new model of endurance. Living creatures were long thought to be powered by some inscrutable, vital force. That belief gave way in the 20th century to what Hutchinson calls a “mechanistic—almost mathematical—view of human limits: Like a car with a brick on its gas pedal, you go until the tank runs out of gas or the radiator boils over, then you stop.” But more-recent research into the mind’s influence has made for much trickier analogies. All runners know that the racing experience is rarely linear. You might feel strong at the start, pained in the middle, then catch a second wind and charge to the finish. Some days you float; others you barely crawl. Physiologists broadly concur—despite plenty of heated debate over the specifics—that how your brain interprets your body’s signals sets the limit on the effort you can put in at any given moment. Tweak your mentality, and your sense of that limit can change.

William Morrow

Hutchinson tallies the conventional tools that any coach would recommend: positive thinking and visualization, good diet and hydration. He also delves into the more unsettling vanguard of expertise on breaking through the brain’s barriers. It includes “brain endurance training,” a weeks-long program of painfully boring computer tasks designed to help people fight off mental fatigue. Researchers, as well as an ever-growing scene of DIY enthusiasts, are trying transcranial direct-current stimulation (or “brain zapping”), which involves sticking dual electrodes to a subject’s skull in an effort to unlock the brain’s hidden reserves. (The practice is controversial, but some evidence indicates that it can enhance endurance and power.) In one series of experiments, scientists injected the powerful opioid fentanyl into the spines of cyclists so that they couldn’t register pain at all. The volunteers rode so hard that they couldn’t walk afterward—and they ended up pacing themselves so poorly that their times weren’t faster than usual.

Still, Hutchinson suggests, the single greatest impetus for stretching beyond your limits appears to be good old belief. No out-of-shape runner can crush a four-minute mile with motivation alone. But research shows that having an unshakable confidence in one’s ability and commitment reliably compels athletes to find that extra gear. “Training is the cake and belief is the icing,” Hutchinson reflects, “but sometimes that thin smear of frosting makes all the difference.” He offers a long list of studies that have sneakily goaded subjects into better performances:

Telling runners they look relaxed makes them burn measurably less energy to sustain the same pace. Giving rugby players a postgame debriefing that focuses on what they did right rather than what they did wrong has effects that continue to linger a full week later, when the positive-feedback group will have higher testosterone levels and perform better in the next game. Even doing a good deed—or simply imagining yourself doing a good deed—can enhance your endurance by reinforcing your sense of agency.

But beyond the boosts of trickery and experimental nudges, how is such belief instilled? How do you get the unrelenting sense of purpose that sustains, say, one of the world’s greatest ultra-marathoners? Not the way you might think: Avoiding introspection seems to be key. Hutchinson, a creditable runner himself (though his career never came close to matching Jurek’s), spends long passages puzzling over the mysteries of his own peak performances and dissecting his failures. Jurek, meanwhile, gives the impression that doubting his commitment hardly ever even occurred to him—until he hit the Appalachian Trail.

That challenge was different from any other he had attempted. His reflexive faith in glory was gone. This time he was motivated by an endurance athlete’s equivalent of a midlife crisis. In May 2015, Jurek was 41. He was a year past a promised retirement, and had been underperforming in races as he’d approached 40. His wife, Jenny, had just suffered a second miscarriage. Jurek felt buried under medical bills and a new mortgage, and he glimpsed salvation in running 84 consecutive marathons over “the gnarliest and oldest mountains in the world.”

Here was a chance to look inside himself and find direction. But beware self-scrutiny! Just seven days into navigating the rocky, often rain-soaked path, Jurek was already overcome by doubt. In agony, one quadriceps torn and the kneecap on his other leg severely inflamed, he was overtaken by the demon that success had so long shielded him from: “Why was I even out here in the first place?” he asked, hobbling beneath a canopy of oak branches. A mantra favored by one of the many veteran ultra-runners who accompanied Jurek for parts of the trail provided his answer: “This is who I am, and this is what I do.”

In other words, don’t ask why. Breaking through his own limits makes Scott Jurek Scott Jurek, for whom the mantra served to help reaffirm the value of his long-guarded myopia. Damp and miserable in North Carolina, he wrapped athletic tape around his battered legs and limped onward.

In her own more reflective way, Jennifer Pharr Davis—the very person whose record Jurek set out to break—ends up confirming the power of compulsive determination in her book The Pursuit of Endurance: Harnessing the Record-Breaking Power of Strength and Resilience. In 2011, she blitzed the Appalachian Trail in 46 days, 11 hours, and 20 minutes—an average of 47 miles a day. Though Davis’s ultrarunning credentials pale in comparison to Jurek’s, she’s no slouch: She’d already completed the trail twice and set the fastest time for women.

“Endurance isn’t a human trait; it is the human trait,” she writes, giving Jurek’s borrowed mantra more philosophical sweep. “We exist only as long as we persist.” Thanks to her gender, she had a sort of built-in Why? goading her. Male runners hold the world record in all commonly contested distances—from sprints to ultramarathons—by considerable margins. The best physical traits for taking on extreme distances on the scale of the Appalachian Trail, though, remain mysterious; men’s larger muscles and greater lung capacity may not hold up against women’s lighter frames and superior fat-burning abilities. As a sample of one, Davis couldn’t clinch the case, of course, but being a woman impelled her to prove herself on the trail.

Viking

Being a woman also gave her a reason to hang up her hiking shoes once the proof was in. “After the birth of my daughter, a part of me knew that I would never again be able to pursue an extended [trail record] with success,” she writes. Her body wasn’t the obstacle. You could say blinkered obsession was. “My transition to motherhood did not take a physical toll that would prevent me from setting a trail record, but emotionally I am no longer capable of putting my needs first for forty-six days.”

In detailing the loss of her competitive drive, Davis converges with Jurek, for whom extreme endurance is more a calling than a choice: Trail feats could no longer define her when something else did. Davis still glorifies endurance, and as she interviews many of the trail’s aging former record holders, she confesses to a certain envy of those who have never given up arduous regimens. “They have kept a part of themselves that I have let go,” she writes wistfully, a woman long wedded to tackling extreme physical challenges outdoors. But her admiration is tinged with an awareness that forging on, too, demands sacrifices. Most people find that there are many things well worth stopping for.

Not Jurek. After tripping over the root in New Hampshire, he picked himself up, charged forward in his delirium for another week, and defeated Davis’s time by a slim three hours: He finished in 46 days, 8 hours, and 7 minutes. Since then, two people have already beaten his record.

This article appears in the June 2018 print edition with the headline “The 2,189-Mile Marathon.”

Article source here:The Atlantic

[literatelobstersareliterate]

Boltzmann's Anthropic Brain - Cosmic Variance

By Sean Carroll | August 1, 2006 9:08 am

A recent post of Jen-Luc’s reminded me of Huw Price and his work on temporal asymmetry. The problem of the arrow of time — why is the past different from the future, or equivalently, why was the entropy in the early universe so much smaller than it could have been? — has attracted physicists’ attention (although not as much as it might have) ever since Boltzmann explained the statistical origin of entropy over a hundred years ago. It’s a deceptively easy problem to state, and correspondingly difficult to address, largely because the difference between the past and the future is so deeply ingrained in our understanding of the world that it’s too easy to beg the question by somehow assuming temporal asymmetry in one’s purported explanation thereof. Price, an Australian philosopher of science, has made a specialty of uncovering the hidden assumptions in the work of numerous cosmologists on the problem. Boltzmann himself managed to avoid such pitfalls, proposing an origin for the arrow of time that did not secretly assume any sort of temporal asymmetry. He did, however, invoke the anthropic principle — probably one of the earliest examples of the use of anthropic reasoning to help explain a purportedly-finely-tuned feature of our observable universe. But Boltzmann’s anthropic explanation for the arrow of time does not, as it turns out, actually work, and it provides an interesting cautionary tale for modern physicists who are tempted to travel down that same road.

The Second Law of Thermodynamics — the entropy of a closed system will not spontaneously decrease — was understood well before Boltzmann. But it was a phenomenological statement about the behavior of gasses, lacking a deeper interpretation in terms of the microscopic behavior of matter. That’s what Boltzmann provided. Pre-Boltzmann, entropy was thought of as a measure of the uselessness of arrangements of energy. If all of the gas in a certain box happens to be located in one half of the box, we can extract useful work from it by letting it leak into the other half — that’s low entropy. If the gas is already spread uniformly throughout the box, anything we could do to it would cost us energy — that’s high entropy. The Second Law tells us that the universe is winding down to a state of maximum uselessness.

Boltzmann suggested that the entropy was really counting the number of ways we could arrange the components of a system (atoms or whatever) so that it really didn’t matter. That is, the number of different microscopic states that were macroscopically indistinguishable. (If you’re worried that “indistinguishable” is in the eye of the beholder, you have every right to be, but that’s a separate puzzle.) There are far fewer ways for the molecules of air in a box to arrange themselves exclusively on one side than there are for the molecules to spread out throughout the entire volume; the entropy is therefore much higher in the latter case than the former. With this understanding, Boltzmann was able to “derive” the Second Law in a statistical sense — roughly, there are simply far more ways to be high-entropy than to be low-entropy, so it’s no surprise that low-entropy states will spontaneously evolve into high-entropy ones, but not vice-versa. (Promoting this sensible statement into a rigorous result is a lot harder than it looks, and debates about Boltzmann’s H-theorem continue merrily to this day.)

Boltzmann’s understanding led to both a deep puzzle and an unexpected consequence. The microscopic definition explained why entropy would tend to increase, but didn’t offer any insight into why it was so low in the first place. Suddenly, a thermodynamics problem became a puzzle for cosmology: why did the early universe have such a low entropy? Over and over, physicists have proposed one or another argument for why a low-entropy initial condition is somehow “natural” at early times. Of course, the definition of “early” is “low-entropy”! That is, given a change in entropy from one end of time to the other, we would always define the direction of lower entropy to be the past, and higher entropy to be the future. (Another fascinating but separate issue — the process of “remembering” involves establishing correlations that inevitably increase the entropy, so the direction of time that we remember [and therefore label “the past”] is always the lower-entropy direction.) The real puzzle is why there is such a change — why are conditions at one end of time so dramatically different from those at the other? If we do not assume temporal asymmetry a priori, it is impossible in principle to answer this question by suggesting why a certain initial condition is “natural” — without temporal aymmetry, the same condition would be equally natural at late times. Nevertheless, very smart people make this mistake over and over, leading Price to emphasize what he calls the Double Standard Principle: any purportedly natural initial condition for the universe would be equally natural as a final condition.

The unexpected consequence of Boltzmann’s microscopic definition of entropy is that the Second Law is not iron-clad — it only holds statistically. In a box filled with uniformly-distributed air molecules, random motions will occasionally (although very rarely) bring them all to one side of the box. It is a traditional undergraduate physics problem to calculate how often this is likely to happen in a typical classroom-sized box; reasurringly, the air is likely to be nice and uniform for a period much much much longer than the age of the observable universe.

Faced with the deep puzzle of why the early universe had a low entropy, Boltzmann hit on the bright idea of taking advantage of the statistical nature of the Second Law. Instead of a box of gas, think of the whole universe. Imagine that it is in thermal equilibrium, the state in which the entropy is as large as possible. By construction the entropy can’t possibly increase, but it will tend to fluctuate, every so often diminishing just a bit and then returning to its maximum. We can even calculate how likely the fluctuations are; larger downward fluctuations of the entropy are much (exponentially) less likely than smaller ones. But eventually every kind of fluctuation will happen.

You can see where this is going: maybe our universe is in the midst of a fluctuation away from its typical state of equilibrium. The low entropy of the early universe, in other words, might just be a statistical accident, the kind of thing that happens every now and then. On the diagram, we are imagining that we live either at point A or point B, in the midst of the entropy evolving between a small value and its maximum. It’s worth emphasizing that A and B are utterly indistinguishable. People living in A would call the direction to the left on the diagram “the past,” since that’s the region of lower entropy; people living at B, meanwhile, would call the direction to the right “the past.”

During the overwhelming majority of such a universe’s history, there is no entropy gradient at all — everything just sits there in a tranquil equilibrium. So why should we find ourselves living in those extremely rare bits where things are evolving through a fluctuation? The same reason why we find ourselves living in a relatively pleasant planetary atmosphere, rather than the forbiddingly dilute cold of intergalactic space, even though there’s much more of the latter than the former — because that’s where we can live. Here Boltzmann makes an unambiguously anthropic move. There exists, he posits, a much bigger universe than we can see; a multiverse, if you will, although it extends through time rather than in pockets scattered through space. Much of that universe is inhospitable to life, in a very basic way that doesn’t depend on the neutron-proton mass difference or other minutiae of particle physics. Nothing worthy of being called “life” can possibly exist in thermal equilibrium, where conditions are thoroughly static and boring. Life requires motion and evolution, riding the wave of increasing entropy. But, Boltzmann reasons, because of occasional fluctuations there will always be some points in time where the entropy is temporarily evolving (there is an entropy gradient), allowing for the existence of life — we can live there, and that’s what matters.

Here is where, like it or not, we have to think carefully about what anthropic reasoning can and cannot buy us. On the one hand, Boltzmann’s fluctuations of entropy around equilibrium allow for the existence of dynamical regions, where the entropy is (just by chance) in the midst of evolving to or from a low-entropy minimum. And we could certainly live in one of those regions — nothing problematic about that. The fact that we can’t directly see the far past (before the big bang) or the far future in such a scenario seems to me to be quite beside the point. There is almost certainly a lot of universe out there that we can’t see; light moves at a finite speed, and the surface of last scattering is opaque, so there is literally a screen around us past which we can’t see. Maybe all of the unobserved universe is just like the observed bit, but maybe not; it would seem the height of hubris to assume that everything we don’t see must be just like what we do. Boltzmann’s goal is perfectly reasonable: to describe a history of the universe on ultra-large scales that is on the one hand perfectly natural and not finely-tuned, and on the other features patches that look just like what we see.

But, having taken a bite of the apple, we have no choice but to swallow. If the only thing that one’s multiverse does is to allow for regions that resemble our observed universe, we haven’t accomplished anything; it would have been just as sensible to simply posit that our universe looks the way it does, and that’s the end of it. We haven’t truly explained any of the features we observed, simply provided a context in which they can exist; but it would have been just as acceptable to say “that’s the way it is” and stop there. If the anthropic move is to be meaningful, we have to go further, and explain why within this ensemble it makes sense to observe the conditions we do. In other words, we have to make some conditional predictions: given that our observable universe exhibits property X (like “substantial entropy gradient”), what other properties Y should we expect to measure, given the characteristics of the ensemble as a whole?

And this is where Boltzmann’s program crashes and burns. (In a way that is ominous for similar attempts to understand the cosmological constant, but that’s for another day.) Let’s posit that the universe is typically in thermal equilibrium, with occasional fluctuations down to low-entropy states, and that we live in the midst of one of those fluctuations because that’s the only place hospitable to life. What follows?

The most basic problem has been colorfully labeled “Boltzmann’s Brain” by Albrecht and Sorbo. Remember that the low-entropy fluctuations we are talking about are incredibly rare, and the lower the entropy goes, the rarer they are. If it almost never happens that the air molecules in a room all randomly zip to one half, it is just as unlikely (although still inevitable, given enough time) that, given that they did end up in half, they will continue on to collect in one quarter of the room. On the diagram above, points like C are overwhelmingly more common than points like A or B. So if we are explaining our low-entropy universe by appealing to the anthropic criterion that it must be possible for intelligent life to exist, quite a strong prediction follows: we should find ourselves in the minimum possible entropy fluctuation consistent with life’s existence.

And that minimum fluctuation would be “Boltzmann’s Brain.” Out of the background thermal equilibrium, a fluctuation randomly appears that collects some degrees of freedom into the form of a conscious brain, with just enough sensory apparatus to look around and say “Hey! I exist!”, before dissolving back into the equilibrated ooze.

You might object that such a fluctuation is very rare, and indeed it is. But so would be a fluctuation into our whole universe — in fact, quite a bit more rare. The momentary decrease in entropy required to produce such a brain is fantastically less than that required to make our whole universe. Within the infinite ensemble envisioned by Boltzmann, the overwhelming majority of brains will find themselves disembodied and alone, not happily ensconsed in a warm and welcoming universe filled with other souls. (You know, like ours.)

This is the general thrust of argument with which many anthropic claims run into trouble. Our observed universe has something like a hundred billion galaxies with something like a hundred billion stars each. That’s an extremely expansive and profligate universe, if its features are constrained solely by the demand that we exist. Very roughly speaking, anthropic arguments would be more persuasive if our universe was minimally constructed to allow for our existence; e.g. if the vacuum energy were small enough to allow for a single galaxy to arise out of a really rare density fluctuation. Instead we have a hundred billion such galaxies, not to count all of those outside our Hubble radius — an embarassment of riches, really.

But, returning to Boltzmann, it gets worse, in an interesting and profound way. Let’s put aside the Brain argument for a moment, and insist for some reason that our universe did fluctuate somehow into the kind of state in which we currently find ourselves. That is, here we are, with all of our knowledge of the past, and our observations indicating a certain history of the observable cosmos. But, to be fair, we don’t have detailed knowledge of the microstate corresponding to this universe — the position and momentum of each and every particle within our past light cone. Rather, we know some gross features of the macrostate, in which individual atoms can be safely re-arranged without our noticing anything.

Now we can ask: assuming that we got to this macrostate via some fluctuation out of thermal equilibrium, what kind of trajectory is likely to have gotten us here? Sure, we think that the universe was smaller and smoother in the past, galaxies evolved gradually from tiny density perturbations, etc. But what we actually have access to are the positions and momenta of the photons that are currently reaching our telescopes. And the fact is, given all of the possible past histories of the universe consistent with those photons reaching us, in the vast majority of them the impression that we are observing an even-lower-entropy past is an accident. If all pasts consistent with our current macrostate are equally likely, there are many more in which the past was a chaotic mess, in which a vast conspiracy gave rise to our false impression that the past was orderly. In other words, if we ask “What kind of early universe tends to naturally evolve into what we see?”, the answer is the ordinary smooth and low-entropy Big Bang. But here we are asking “What do most of the states that could possibly evolve into our current universe look like?”, and the answer there is a chaotic high-entropy mess.

Of course, nobody in their right minds believes that we really did pop out of a chaotic mess into a finely-tuned state with false memories about the Big Bang (although young-Earth creationists do believe that things were arranged by God to trick us into thinking that the universe is much older than it really is, which seems about as plausible). We assume instead that our apparent memories are basically reliable, which is a necessary assumption to make sensible statements of any form. Boltzmann’s scenario just doesn’t quite fit together, unfortunately.

Price’s conclusion from all this (pdf) is that we should take seriously the Gold universe, in which there is a low-entropy future collapsing state that mirrors our low-entropy Big Bang in the past. It’s an uncomfortable answer, as nobody knows any reason why there should be low-entropy boundary conditions in both the past and the future, which would involve an absurd amount of fine-tuning of our particular microstate at every instant of time. (Not to mention that the universe shows no sign of wanting to recollapse.) The loophole that Price and many other people (quite understandably) overlook is that the Big Bang need not be the true beginning of the universe. If the Bang was a localized baby universe in a larger background spacetime, as Jennie Chen and I have suggested (paper here), we can comply with the Double Standard Princple by having high-entropy conditions in both the far past and the far future. That doesn’t mean that we have completely avoided the problem that doomed Boltzmann’s idea; it is still necessary to show that baby universes would most often look like what we see around us, rather than (for example) much smaller spaces with only one galaxy each. And this whole “baby universe” idea is, shall we say, a mite speculative. But explaining the difference in entropy between the past and future is at least as fundamental, if not more so, as explaining the horizon and flatness problems with which cosmologists are so enamored. If we’re going to presume to talk sensibly and scientifically about the entire history of the universe, we have to take Boltzmann’s legacy seriously.

(via Boltzmann's Anthropic Brain - Cosmic Variance : Cosmic Variance)

[lucaskrausphotographyweb-blog]

The 10 Secrets You Must Know To Choose A Good Wedding Photographer

Choosing your wedding picture taker isn't a troublesome assignment. By taking in my 10 insider facts you will take out a large number of the traps it is so natural to fall into. It is vital that you make your determination of picture taker at an opportune time in your wedding designs. The best and most prominent picture takers get booked early, regularly a year or two ahead of time. So once you have set your date and masterminded the wedding setting, the following thing on your rundown ought to be your picture taker.

In the event that you were getting hitched an age prior in the 1930's or 40's, your decision would have been fairly restricted. In those days photography was all the while something of a 'dim workmanship'. Truly the picture taker or his associate would invest hours oblivious room creating movies and making photographic prints by hand. Your choices for the big day would have been restricted. The picture taker would ordinarily turn up toward the finish of your wedding administration and meet you at the congregation entryway. He would then grasp a modest bunch of pictures on his vast camera. Normally a full length photo of the couple at the congregation entryway, a nearby on the off chance that you were fortunate and after that maybe a family gathering or two. Shading pictures were a positive extravagance in the 30's as shading film was still in its early stages. A gifted photographic artist may offer you hand tinted or shaded pictures which he would make from high contrast firsts, however these eventual a costly choice.

It was normal to travel to the picture takers studio either on your big day or in no time a while later. The entire business turned out to be a significant event. Posturing before hot studio lights was something you just did on uncommon events. It was the best way to get photos of a sensible quality. Straightforward cameras were winding up more accessible to general society, yet they were exceptionally essential with few control. In those days the expert picture taker still had a puzzling quality; part craftsman, part scientist and part conjurer. He could deliver photos you just couldn't accomplish yourself with your 'Crate Brownie' camera.

Today things are altogether different. Photography has been turned on its head. Gone are the renowned organizations like Agfa and Kodak. Film based photography has been supplanted totally by advanced innovation, the nature of which enhances significantly step by step. The vast majority now have a camera of some sort and are content with the photos they take. Fast advances in computerized imaging have guaranteed that the 'auto' work on your camera will give you an adequate picture. Today you don't need to stress over screen speed and 'f' stops to get a sensible picture. Simple to use is the simple choice. In any case, specialized advance does not imply that everybody realizes what they are doing.

Look in any Yellow Pages or some other registry, Google 'wedding picture taker' for any town or city and you will discover a consistently expanding number of passages under the posting. Why would that be? It is basically in light of the fact that innovation has enhanced to such a degree, to the point that even the most humble and reasonable camera is fit for delivering incredible pictures.

Unfortunately you will find that few out of every odd supposed picture taker is an expert photographic artist. Some work at it on low maintenance premise and may be a cleaner, cab driver or office laborer from Monday to Friday and a wedding picture taker at the end of the week. It has turned into low maintenance occupation for some, sharp beginners hoping to make some additional money at the end of the week.

The inquiries you should ask yourself are; would I go to a dental practitioner on the off chance that I wasn't sure they had the preparation, experience and capabilities to deal with my teeth securely and cleanly? Would I believe a handyman to introduce a gas fire in the event that he were not qualified and enlisted? No, it could involve life and passing.

Would I believe my wedding pictures to a picture taker who may work low maintenance at ends of the week, shoots everything with his camera set to 'auto', guarantees me many pictures on a circle for a couple of hundred pounds? Tragically numerous individuals do!

The purposes behind doing this are charming. Aside from the innovation issue I have just specified, the other current impact is mold. The present design in wedding photography can be portrayed by the terms 'narrative', 'reportage', and 'way of life'. More or less, today it is cool and stylish to have wedding photos that resemble depictions! Pictures that look unconstrained, which isn't arranged and catch the feeling of the day without being meddling or formal in any capacity.

What does this mean in actuality? Right off the bat, it is expected that to accomplish this 'narrative' or 'reportage' look, you should simply to take an over the top number of pictures and chances are that you will get some appropriate ones in the blend. So snap away is the attitude of numerous unpracticed picture takers. All things considered, after you have purchased your camera and memory cards, the pictures are free. There are no preparing costs as with film, if the picture is no great simply erase it, it costs nothing!

In all actuality, to take great 'narrative' pictures you likewise require different abilities. You have to foresee the activity, be in the perfect place at the ideal time, know when to press the screen to get that unequivocal minute, know how to adapt to an assortment of lighting conditions that will trick your camera, make your photo accurately, lastly have the capacity to control the visitors such that things you need to photo happen normally.

How would you keep away from the entanglements? It can be troublesome, however here are 10 privileged insights that will help you while picking your wedding picture taker!

1. Looking in a catalog will just give you contact subtle elements. Taking a gander at a site is a decent begin; at any rate you get the opportunity to see a few pictures. Today a decent and very much delivered site is inside the financial plan of a great many people who need to set up in business. So you can't expect that somebody with a favor site is the best decision. He may have another occupation to pay the home loan. Does the site have a bio page? What amount of data does it give about the picture taker, their experience and their expert capabilities? To what extent have they been doing business?

2. Do they have a place with a perceived proficient photographic affiliation, or only a camera club? It is safe to say that they are liable to an expert Code of Conduct? Will you have anyplace to engage if things turn out badly? Unfortunately a man can get down to business and purchase a favor camera with his excess cash on Friday and call himself an expert picture taker on Saturday. In the U.K. there is no control of picture takers right now. Anybody can legitimately set themselves up in business as a picture taker and they don't need to enlist with anybody. People in general isn't secured by any enactment. Throughout the years the significant expert photographic relationship in the U.K. have campaigned progressive governments in regards to this issue, however without progress.

3. Is a postal address recorded on the site, or only a versatile number and email address? In what capacity will you discover them if there is an issue? Only one out of every odd picture taker has a high road studio, much work from home authentically. A legitimate picture taker will dependably distribute an address.

4. In the event that the picture taker telecommutes he/she is probably not going to have an extensive studio unless it has been reason manufactured or adjusted from a carport or other room. They are probably not going to take numerous representations amid the week. Would you be able to orchestrate to visit them to see a current choice of wedding pictures, or do they demand coming to see you at your home? With regards to taking a gander at tests, collections containing an assortment of weddings can look fine. Picture takers constantly jump at the chance to flaunt their best pictures. Continuously request to see finish weddings from beginning to end. That will give you a superior sign of the photographic artists' aptitude level, instead of respecting pretty pictures.

5. Is it true that they are qualified? I'm not discussing a degree in photography. As far as anyone is concerned there are no degree courses in wedding photography at any school in the U.K. There are degree courses in Documentary photography, yet weddings or social photography are not canvassed in any profundity. There are wedding capabilities granted by the principle photographic bodies in the U.K, for example, the MPA, BIPP, SWPP. These are granted by the accommodation of real work that has been attempted. So search for proficient capabilities. There are three levels: the essential level being Licentiate (LMPA or LBIPP). This level shows the picture taker can deliver work of an equipped and expert standard. They will likewise have great business abilities in the event that they have accomplished a Diploma in Professional Photographic Practice (DipPP). The second level of capability is the Associate (AMPA or ABIPP). This demonstrates significant experience and an ability to deliver imaginative and inventive photography. The second level is hard to accomplish, accordingly there are less Associates than Licentiates. The best level of capability and extreme point of every single seeking proficient is to be a Fellow (FMPA or FBIPP). To be a Fellow is an uncommon accomplishment. It demonstrates the largest amount of fitness, experience and creativity and shows the picture taker has a remarkable style. These are the best experts who have been perceived as pioneers in their field.

6. Will's identity taking your wedding photos? Get the chance to meet the individual him/herself. Numerous picture takers as opposed to dismiss a wedding commission, will sub-get the work to a right hand, sharp beginner, or camera administrator. Continuously discover who your picture taker will be and get the chance to see their arrangement of work. The manager may take great pictures, however shouldn't something be said about his colleague?

7. Ask what protection they hold. Your 'cowpoke' won't have Professional Indemnity cover if his gear comes up short. He won't have Public Liability cover should a visitor stumble Wedding photography in Toowoomba  over his camera pack. On the off chance that he says his camera is safeguarded that is not a similar thing. That lone spreads him if his camera is stolen.

8. Try not to be tricked by proclamations like 'honor winning'. Continuously ask "what grants"! Are t

[nobodyenjoysanything]

Beginning

It is a longstanding objection of this journalist that nobody enjoys anything.

In the bosom of my most cherished recollections, I do not picture myself happy, or even reconciled to things occurring: rather, I was excited for them to end.

Moreover, no magic is created in an event not improved after the fact in its reconstruction and retelling. It is the reliving of things that make them happen, and nothing happens that has no meaning else it is given one, regardless. So events happen after they happen and nobody is any the wiser.

Let me tell you - all pleasure is in imagining what will happen or has happened, and none in the moment. No-one can participate without experiencing, nor experience without reflecting; reflect without abstracting; and so, at the height of their satisfaction, an abstraction! No-one is actually there!

The implications for history are fascinating. There are many cases of, largely undocumented, historical vacancy. The Treaty of Versailles was signed, understandably, in a daze of psychological disaffection; Brahms was known to compose at an adjunct to reality so abrupt it was as if he was in an adjoining corridor; when the Hittites took Nineveh, everybody was somewhat distracted by effects of the light and how their kids were doing at school. Hannibal confessed his mind was elsewhere when he crossed the Alps, oscillating between a state of mild bemusement and regret. Quite literally, and far more than one would have hoped or imagined, the vessel is empty: no-one is there and nobody has ever been there. The moment is the least explored territory of all, and very few set foot in it. Why send people to the Moon or Mars when, when they get there, they won’t be there until they get back?  “So, does that mean something happens because it means something or something means something because it happens?” Flammarion wagged his finger, instructively. “Now we are getting somewhere! We have the tiger by the tail! For we routinely complain of a lack of meaning, but I think there is no such meaning - yet too much meaning! Our lives are awash with fatuous meaning - meanings that have no business our appropriating them! “Why, let us take an object!” He was in full flow now and had begun to pace, his lederhosen creaking slightly and espadrilles clacking on the wooden floor. Penelope was, herself, distracted. She had trod this line of inquiry many times, as Flammarion tried to put his mathematical insights into everyday speech. He was working on some sort of existential calculus, and had, so far, made several minor contributions to a burgeoning field, but there had been objections. His work was seen by some as frivolous and not a suitable subject of investigation for a tenured professor. He was supposed to be making advances to the mathematical canon that would put his beleaguered college on the academic map, but had found it hard to take the work of his predecessors seriously, seeing as they had, almost universally, laboured at impossibly dry conclusions about curves. Penelope was small, attractive, with a roguish stare that defied interrogation. Her attraction to Flammarion puzzled her friends and family - he was short, a little plump, circumspect, a dreamer: she had the decisiveness and battle-readiness of a seasoned military general. He was long-winded and elliptical, she, tacit, yet, when she did speak, commanding. He was a romantic, she, a devout epicurean and principled hedonist. She met challenges and new experiences with a sparkling eye and slight smile: he hated change and even very slight alterations to his diet would upset his stomach, giving him terrible gas. There was a devoted companionship between them, but they were not exclusive lovers. Flammarion had a dismal sexual appetite, and Penelope was ravenous in her enthusiasm for passion and excitement of several flavours. She was a stallion in the bedroom and devoured stable boys, Dukes, Contessas and skullery maids with equal relish. For his part, Flammarion, although he was dimly aware of her sexual explorations, considered them both a team, and his unspoken tolerance was a signal to her he appreciated he could not satisfy her needs himself. Although his devotion was divided equally between her and ‘the work’, he regarded her dalliances, not as a distraction, but as part of her contribution. She would come back from her escapades with body and mind refreshed - a yet more ready foil for his rhapsodies of impenetrable logic, her listening ear sharpened, her questions more penetratingly naïve. This afternoon had been one of those moments. She had not slept in their rooms, but had returned shortly after breakfast, her riding breeches tied loosely and scuffed, her blouse untucked and top-unbuttoned. Her hair draped lankly across one shoulder in the aftermath of a bun, her yellow beak tinged with the remains of last night’s lipstick and this morning’s hastily consumed coffee. She wore an expression of quiet accomplishment and her recent swagger was a signal to all in the large country estate: “Envy me, even fear me, for I set out to be conquested and have been enjoyed”