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Can cbd oil reduce blood stress? this shows that cbd oil has the ability to, deliberately, reduce stress symptoms and does not let the situation aggravate further in any manner. reviews on cbd oil. meditation for stress management: meditation is one such thing that has been known throughout the work to enhance cognitive powers, concentration, mindfulness, positivity and even focus. cbd can regulate dopamine levels while promoting consistent focus and memory allowing for a fluid meditation practice. the conclusion the key to a healthy meditation practice is both stillness and focus. cbd can be found in all sorts of products including cbd oil, cbd edibles, cbd topicals, cbd cosmetics, cbd skincare, and so many more. it is incredibly versatile, it is quite easy to take ( depending on the type of cbd product you choose to use), and it can be presented in many different cbd strengths.
cbd oil can help calm your mind, and that is the main obstacle, when you begin learning to meditate. this is a long cbd oil and meditation article, however, it’ s just a simplified explanation of meditation, so if you find this interesting, please do research the subject. using cbd oil to complement your meditation practice could jump- start the experience by helping you do the really hard part, which is relaxing and focusing. taking receptra cbd oil 45 minutes to an hour prior to meditation can be your key to finally being able to sit still for more than five minutes without worrying about all the things you. blood pressure medication and cbd oil interaction because cbd oil can reduce blood pressure, you have to be careful when combining it with prescription hypertension medications. a growing number of americans are turning to cannabidiol ( cbd) to address a wide range of concerns from stress and anxiety, to pain and inflammation. cbd oil as a tool to deepen meditation. the similarities between the effects of meditation and the effects of cbd oil cbd oil is a powerful anti- inflammatory and muscle relaxant. in relaxing the muscles, it releases the tension around the body’ s channels, opening them up and increasing the flow of blood and oxygen to the body and brain. cbd oil and meditation: the calming combo we all could use modern life causes all kinds of physical discomfort – from cbd oil and meditation living an active lifestyle to sitting at a desk all day hunched over a keyboard – as well as the mental stress and fatigue that goes along with it.
cbd oil can help you meditate. cbd ( cannabidiol) an all- natural compound created in cannabis plants including hemp and marijuana. unlike thc, cbd is non- psychoactive, meaning it will not cause any high or “ stoned” feeling. kratom underground phone number. scientists know that cbd can increase levels of the body’ s own cannabis- like chemicals in the human endocannabinoid. however, we do know that by themselves, cbd oil and meditation are independently capable of helping a person relax and feel a sense of calmness. what the research says over the last 10 years, endocannabinoid research has been deemed one of the fastest growing fields in psychopharmacology. the plan had been to look into the growing trend of cbd oil use in meditation.
cbd near me. online testimonials said that the stress- relieving qualities of cbd and meditation could work in concert to melt away the anxieties of the modern world. chartiers health and wellness is a studio for mind, body and soul chartiers wellness explores the connection between mind, body and soul through health coaching, core fitness, meditation, reiki, and cbd oil. meditation is good for body, mind and soul. according to many health practitioners, frequent meditation reduces stress and improves overall health, and according to humankind’ s history, it is more effective when combined with our favorite companion – cannabis. on their own, both marijuana and meditation have similar effects. does cbd oil help for yoga? within the last 10 years, researchers have also suggested that cannabidiol ( cbd) may provide wonderful health benefits, including reductions in pain and inflammation. so what happens when we blend cbd oil and meditation together? let’ s first start with “ ommmmm”. what is meditation. cbd oil is like a lifetime of meditation in liquid form i just took my first dose of bluebrainboost' s cbd oil this morning ( i' m not affiliated with them but i' ll gladly endorse their product).
i put about 10mg under my tongue and let it sit for 5 minutes. where can i buy kratom in atlanta ga. studies have also shown that cbd activates the serotonin 5- ht1a receptor, which they say contributes to its calming and anti- anxiety effect. how to make cbd tincture with mct oil. how to combine cbd and meditation. if you are thinking of trying cbd oil with meditation, it is a good idea to determine how long it will take to apply the chosen cbd method. if you usually use cbd drops. cbd and meditation the effects of cbd on the body can be a great means of reducing the level of stress in the body.
it has a number of properties that helps to soothe and alleviate the level of anxiety in the body also, hence its use is always considered an effective mode of inducing relaxation in the body. more cbd oil and meditation videos. if you’ re a parent, you might also consider cbd oil for kids with anxiety as an alternative to prescription medication. consult with your pediatrician before beginning a treatment, and then start with the lowest possible dose and increase it very gradually if you don’ t see the desired effects. cbd tabs order online. like meditation, cbd oil has also seen a similar increase in usage and awareness. with the combined synergistic effects of cbd oil and meditation together, individuals may find several reasons to integrate cbd oil usage into their regular meditating routine. amongst other benefits, cbd oil has been shown to reduce blood pressure by relieving anxiety, reducing stress, and widening blood vessels. cbd oil’ s anti- anxiety and stress- relieving properties encourage a lower heart rate, which ultimately reduces blood pressure. cbd oil has been found to support the body' s normal inflammatory processes, have antioxidant properties, and help manage the stress response. * according to dr.
dsouza, it can be used safely by many people. " i have prescribed cbd oil and my experience suggests it is generally well- tolerated. the worst side effect i have seen is sedation. cbd oil for yoga many western folks are turning to yoga, the ancient indian practice that combines exercise with spiritual wellness, to combat stress and anxiety. that is because yoga is great for mental, emotional and physical health. cannabidiol ( cbd) is a compound in cannabis that has a lot of medical effects. it even functions in a neuro- protective way on your brain. the frequencies encoded in this video will program work as. cbd could help improve your meditation greatly and enhance your mindfulness. when we think of meditation we often think of sitting up straight in a posture very much like the picture you see.
the truth is that meditation is a very individual thing and t can be done in many ways. the basics are the same as are the desired outcomes. when paired with cbd, the benefits of meditation are amplified. this is because cbd oil helps quell anxious thoughts while also relaxing the body. what this does is allow individuals to more easily get into the proper mindset for meditation and other relaxing activities, such as yoga. if you’ re interested in learning about meditation, we’ ve written a beginners guide to fill you in! learning how to use cbd oil for anxiety can greatly improve your well- being! cbd oil and meditation are a grreat combination! for thousands of years meditation has been proven to help calm the body and mind. this has many knock on health benefits – from stress relief, reducing anxiety, helping sleep, reducing blood pressure – to strengthening your immune system and increasing longevity.
benefits of cbd for yoga and meditation you might be wondering what the benefits of cbd for meditation and yoga are. other than the simple fact that it is one way to help stop stress [ although i will personally always choose just to use meditation for my stress relief ]. yoga studios are even starting to offer cbd oil to take before a class or guided meditation. do cbd and meditation make a good pair? every individual’ s cbd experience is a bit different, but most have similar effects. meditation creates a calmer atmosphere within the body while cbd elevates the mood. adding cbd oil as a part of your meditation can also prove to be really effective in stimulating the benefits of meditation. cbd increases the thoughts and feelings growing at the subconscious level and helps in creating self- awareness. by raising our sensitivity towards the chakras and energy levels, it brings us closer to our spiritual self.
taking cbd oil an hour or two before you meditate could help you get into a zen state of mind. can cbd help you meditate all in all, there have been very few studies that have conclusively studied cbd oil and meditation and whether or not they are more effective taken together.

domain: psychology


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Police urge parents to especially monitor children in teen years.
Dubai Police have arrested four youths aged between 16 and 20 years old over accusations of assaulting another person, while one of them was making a video of the incident and sharing it on social media.
They were arrested within 24 hours after the video was posted online. In a statement issued by the Dubai Police, their case was submitted to the public prosecution for further procedures.
The police urged all parents to monitor their children’s behaviour, especially in their teenage years, and to encourage them to deal with problems with wisdom instead of resorting to violence.
The police added that parents should advise their children to not share any inappropriate videos or pictures on social media that negatively impact UAE society.
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Lord Finesse is a hip hop artist and producer from The Bronx, New York, best known as the leader of the D.I.T.C. rap crew.
"Lord finesse in effect cause I rhyme hard
Look good flow smooth yeah the whole nine yard"
"Now Im the man with intellect, no one to disrespect
I kick a rhyme and make mcs wanna hit the deck"
|2.||Large Hadron Collider|
The Large Hadron Collider (LHC) is the world's largest and highest-energy particle accelerator complex, intended to collide opposing beams of protons (one of several types of hadrons) with very high kinetic energy. Its main purpose is to explore the validity and limitations of the Standard Model, the current theoretical picture for particle physics. It is theorized that the collider will confirm the existence of the Higgs boson, the observation of which could confirm the predictions and missing links in the Standard Model, and could explain how other elementary particles acquire properties such as mass.more...
The LHC was built by the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN), and lies underneath the Franco-Swiss border between the Jura Mountains and the Alps near Geneva, Switzerland. It is funded by and built in collaboration with over eight thousand physicists from over eighty-five countries as well as hundreds of universities and laboratories. The LHC is operational and is presently in the process of being prepared for collisions. The first beams were circulated through the collider on 10 September 2008, and the first high-energy collisions are expected to take place after 6-8 weeks.
The LHC12 is the world's largest and highest-energy particle accelerator. The collider is contained in a circular tunnel, with a circumference of 27 kilometres (17 mi), at a depth ranging from ...


Award-winning choreographer and director, Doug Varone works in dance, theater, opera, film, and fashion. He is a passionate educator and articulate advocate for dance. By any measure, his work is extraordinary for its emotional range, kinetic breadth and the many arenas in which he works. His New York City-based Doug Varone and Dancers has been commissioned and presented to critical acclaim by leading international venues for close to three decades. In the concert dance world, Varone has created a body of works globally. Commissions include the Paul Taylor American Modern Dance Company, Limón Company, Hubbard Street Dance Chicago, Rambert Dance Company (London), Martha Graham Dance Company, Dancemakers (Canada), Batsheva Dance Company (Israel), Bern Ballet (Switzerland) and An Creative (Japan), among others. In addition, his dances have been staged on more than 75 college and university programs around the country. In opera, Doug Varone is in demand as both a director and choreographer.
Among his four productions at The Metropolitan Opera are Salome with its Dance of the Seven Veils, the world premiere of Tobias Picker’s An American Tragedy, Stravinsky’s Le Sacre du Printemps, designed by David Hockney, and Hector Berloiz’s Les Troyens. He has staged multiple premieres and new productions for Minnesota Opera, Opera Colorado, Washington Opera, New York City Opera, and Boston Lyric Opera, among others. His numerous theater credits include choreography for Broadway, Off-Broadway and regional theaters across the country. His choreography for the musical Murder Ballad at Manhattan Theater Club earned him a Lortel Award nomination. Film credits include choreography for the Patrick Swayze film, One Last Dance. In 2008, Varone’s The Bottomland, set in the Mammoth Caves of Kentucky, was the subject of the PBS Dance in America: Wolf Trap’s Face of America. Last season he directed and choreographed MASTERVOICES production of Dido and Aeneas at NY’s City Center, starring Tony Award winners Kelli O’Hara and Victoria Clark, alongside the Company. Most recently, he staged Julia Wolfe’s Pulitzer Prize winning oratorio, Anthracite Fields featuring the Bang on a Can All-Stars and the Westminster Choir. Varone received his BFA from Purchase College where he was awarded the President’s Distinguished Alumni Award in 2007.
Numerous honors and awards include a John Simon Guggenheim Fellowship, an OBIE Award (Lincoln Center’s Orpheus and Euridice), the Jerome Robbins Fellowship at the Bogliasco Institute in Italy, and two individual Bessie Awards. In 2015, he was awarded both a Doris Duke Artist Award and the Lifetime Achievement Award from the American Dance Guild. Varone teaches workshops and master classes around the world for dancers, musicians and actors. He is currently on the faculty at Purchase College, teaching composition.


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The health of your mouth may shine a light on what’s happening in the rest of your body. (Kulka/Corbis)
You expect your dentist to flag cavities, but did you know your drill-wielding doc might also be able to spot trouble that extends well beyond your pearly whites?
“It’s becoming clear that we need to consider integrating oral and general health care,” says Steve Offenbacher, D.D.S., director of the Center for Oral and Systemic Diseases at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. “The oral cavity is the mirror to the rest of the body, so we can pick up on systemic problems by simple dental examinations.” In other words, the state of your smile may shine a light on the rest of your body — sometimes even before other symptoms show up.
Case in point: Offenbacher once told a middle-aged patient he suspected she was pregnant, based simply on the redness of her gums. “The next week, she came back and said, ‘I went to the doctor, and yes, I am pregnant!’’ he recalls. In that case, Offenbacher was the bearer of good news, but not all of the secrets your mouth may reveal are so positive. Your teeth may also provide clues about these five health-threatening conditions:
Your dentist isn’t just worried about how white your teeth are. In a 2014 study, nearly two-thirds of dentists said they’d refer a patient with periodontitis (inflammation around the gums) for a diabetes evaluation. Why that’s a good thing: “Diabetes is not only a common problem, but it’s also highly under-diagnosed,” says Offenbacher. Read: Lots of people have diabetes and don’t know it, which means adding your dentist to your team of health detectives is a smart idea.
So what’s the dental-diabetes link? High blood sugar may be as damaging to your oral health as the sweet stuff in a can of soda. That’s because the condition can cause dry mouth, which increases plaque build-up, making people with uncontrolled diabetes more prone to dental problems.
“[Periodontal disease in diabetics] is usually severe for their age or for local factors, meaning they have pretty clean mouths, but they still have a periodontal problem,” says Offenbacher.
Two common oral signs of diabetes: multiple abscesses on the gums and bad breath. “It’s kind of a sour fruit smell,” Offenbacher says. “It’s ketones — metabolic products associated with poor glycemic control — in their bloodstream that you can smell.”
Your teeth may reveal what’s going on with your ticker. A 2007 study review found that people with periodontal disease are significantly more likely to develop heart disease than folks with good oral health. Among people who have both diseases, “if the periodontal disease is treated, the heart disease is greatly improved,” says Marjorie Jeffcoat, D.M.D., a professor and dean emeritus of dental medicine at the University of Pennsylvania.
The common thread? Inflammation. “When you look in a patient’s mouth and you see chronic inflammation, you know that it’s creating systemic stress,” says Offenbacher.
Although there are no dental red flags specific to heart disease, “more severe periodontal disease is strongly associated with heart disease risk,” Offenbacher says. Signs include loose, shifting, or missing teeth, and increased probing depths, where the pockets around the teeth have deepened.
Can tooth loss indicate memory loss? In recent British research, a lack of teeth was associated with mental decline, while a 2012 study found that older adults with poor dental hygiene were 76 percent more likely to develop dementia. This is a relatively new area of research, which means the link between the two isn’t entirely clear, says Jeffcoat. However, a small 2013 study detected Porphyromonas gingivalis — a bacteria associated with gum disease — in the brains of people with dementia, suggesting that it may play a role in the inflammation associated with cognitive decline.
Osteoporosis won’t cause your teeth to decay — but your dentist may be able to spot bone loss in the surrounding structures, like the jaw, with digital X-rays, says Jeffcoat. Normal, healthy bone should be dense both at the edges and in the interior, and when that’s not the case, “the patient is more likely to have osteoporosis,” she explains.
In fact, in a 2013 study in the Journal of Research in Medical Sciences, the thickness of postmenopausal women’s jawbones — as measured with a panoramic X-ray — was correlated with the bone density of their spine. This means that dentists could potentially diagnose osteoporosis, which often goes undetected until a fracture occurs, in its early stages, the scientists say.
Acid reflux disease
You may feel heartburn most intensely in your chest, but its effects may be most obvious in your mouth. If you have acid reflux disease, the constant uprising of stomach acid could wear away at the enamel on your teeth, says Jeffcoat. “You’ll usually see it in the lower front teeth,” she says. “You’ll see erosion of the teeth — they get thinner. You can’t miss it.” Another sign you may be suffering from acid reflux disease: You have a persistent sour taste in your mouth, she says.
In a 2008 study review, researchers found that about a third of adults with dental erosion also had gastrointestinal esophageal reflux disease, or GERD. Keep in mind, this erosion can happen even in the absence of chest pain — that is, you may have reflux without knowing it, until your dentist points out the damage to your choppers.
Your Next Read: What to Avoid for Better Teeth — and Breath

domain: biology


Tottenham Hotspur manager Mauricio Pochettino has been nominated for the December manager of the month award.
Spurs enjoyed a fantastic festive season this year, thriving under the pressure of a congested schedule.
After suffering a bitter defeat to North London rivals Arsenal, Tottenham went on a five game win streak, scoring twenty goals in the process.
This included thrashings of Everton and Bournemouth either side of Christmas, with Spurs beating them 6-2 and 5-0 respectively.
Pochettino will be aiming to end Tottenham’s trophy drought this season, as the Lilywhites have now gone over a decade without a piece of silverware.
The Argentine gaffer has never won a trophy as a manager himself either, so will want to get something on his CV his season with Tottenham still fighting on four fronts.
Pochettino is up against Nuno Espirito Santo, Jurgen Klopp, Manuel Pellegrini, and Maurizio Sarri for the award.
Cast your votes here.
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Performance workstation grafic chip with DirectX 10 support and OpenGL 2.1 support. Probaby, it bases upon the NVIDIA GeForce 8600M GT.
It is intended for digital content creators, engineers, geologic scientists and other professional 3D applications.
The drivers of the Quadro FX series are certified for CAD applications (e.g. AutoCad, Inventor, Solidstation, Solid Edge, ...) and DCC applications (e.g. Maya, 3DS Max, Lightwave 3D, ...) and offer a 12-bit precision for subpixel, full image-antialiasing, hardware accelerated antialiasing for dots and lines and additional drivers are for CAD and DCC optimized settings.
Average Benchmarks NVIDIA Quadro FX 2500M → 100%n=4
Average Benchmarks NVIDIA Quadro FX 570M → 84%n=4
- Range of benchmark values for this graphics card - Average benchmark values for this graphics card * Smaller numbers mean a higher performance 1 This benchmark is not used for the average calculation
The following benchmarks stem from our benchmarks of review laptops. The performance depends on the used graphics memory, clock rate, processor, system settings, drivers, and operating systems. So the results don't have to be representative for all laptops with this GPU. For detailed information on the benchmark results, click on the fps number.


During most computer operations, copying, downloading or uploading a file requires duplicating the entire file every time. For example, if you copy a file to a USB drive, then modify one line in the original file and copy it again, your computer will overwrite the entire file in order to update it. Delta files reduce this workload by updating only the parts of a file that change.
Examples of Delta Files
Numerous programs and services use delta files as a form of compression or to save bandwidth. For example, when you run Windows Update, rather than completely replacing the system files, your computer downloads the parts of each file that have changed and applies those changes to your existing files. Synchronization software such as Dropbox uses delta files to upload the changes you make to your documents rather than re-upload the entirety of each file you modify. Some hard drive backup programs also use this technique to make backups run faster.
Video of the Day
Using Delta Files
Unless you're developing an application or working with advanced database software, you'll probably never need to manually use delta files. Software that makes use of delta files does so automatically in order to run faster and more efficiently; you won't need to open delta files directly or manage them by hand.


text: In March 2013, during the Supreme Court hearings leading to the overturn of Proposition 8 and DOMA, an estimated two to ten million Facebook users changed their profile pictures to images of red equal signs to show their support for marriage equality. In this clip, Anastasia Khoo of the Human Rights Campaign (HRC) explains that her organization created this social media campaign in order to send a message to at-risk LGBT youth that “there’s a community out there that loves and supports you.” The message of this visual activism campaign was thus not reducible to the graphic itself (which simply juxtaposes the standard HRC equality logo with the color red to symbolize love), but rather emerged from the way in which it visually manifests the identities of LGBT supporters. Such acts of conspicuous self-labeling, creating legible public visibility for a particular social group, point to an emergent form of activism stemming from the self-expressive possibilities of contemporary participatory culture. However, Facebook profile pictures are only one way in which communities can collectively announce their presence for social and political purposes. In recent years, LGBT groups at college campuses around the country have used the coordinated wearing of slogan T-shirts to send similar messages of support to those who may be struggling with their sexual identities. Like the graphic T-shirt, the social media profile picture has the capacity to serve as a visual representation of a person’s identity, and activists from a range of constituencies are beginning to realize how this identity-marking power can be utilized for visibility rhetoric. If one’s social media profile amounts to a “digital body,” as internet scholar danah boyd has argued, then the visual image one chooses to represent this body becomes, in a sense, its virtual clothing. This linkage between social media and dress may be a fruitful one moving forward for those who wish to investigate participatory visual campaigns like the red equal signs on Facebook. As scholars who study dress and society have long recognized, the social meaning of clothing cannot be understood by focusing only on the visual material itself. Rather, the analysis must also take into consideration the social identities of the wearers as well as their position in a web of social relations. As the digital body increasingly becomes a site for visibility-centered activism, such an approach can help to unlock the complexity of these performative visual practices.

domain: politics


The board of the Harris County Sports and Convention Corporation is expected to approve a preferred plan for the Dome that will then be presented to Harris County Commissioner’s June 25th.
Earlier this month, the Sports and Convention Corporation received close to 20 proposals on Dome projects and has been analyzing them since.
Willie Loston is the Corporation’s Executive Director.
“The board is going to vote on the recommendations from the staff regarding what should go to Commissioners Court at this time.”
Loston wouldn’t say which plan is the favorite right now, but does say the vote will be a big step in the right direction.
“I think we are clearly moving in a direction that will bring resolution to this issue sooner rather than later.”
Earlier this year, Harris County Judge Ed Emmett told KUHF that the ultimate decision on the Dome will likely be made by local voters sometime in the next couple of years.


text:
Production of Craft Beer Workshop
Wine, beer or cocktail tastings
Introduction to Cocktail and Bartending… to shine in any party!
Private supper clubs that can be specially designed for you with a theme or a particular kind of food that you’re looking for.
Wine Games, where you can have fun while you learn about wines…
Wine tastings with workshops, we’ll have special guests that will introduce you to wine culture.
Out of Office Work Party designed specially for you
Live Music at the Office
Live Sketching at the Office with an illustrator artist

domain: artistic


text:
Selected videos for topic: adopting a newborn from foster care
→ 3 Videos
Check also 51 Articles for this topic
Adoption and Foster Care - CCSEM
Are you pregnant and needing options for adoption? Are you considering providing foster care or adopting a child, teen or siblings? Are you willing to give of yourself for someone waiting to join a loving family? There are many children in Michigan from newborn to age 18 who need a caring, supportive, and long term family situation or to be adopted into a loving family. St. Joseph answered this call and we invite you to consider becoming a foster or adoptive parent.
Newborn Chihuahua finds second chance in foster home with adopted mother
Zeus is a Chihuahua puppy with a very special story. He was delivered by C-section and struggled to nurse from his mother. At 7 days old, and weighing just 40 grams, his owner surrendered him into the care of the Ontario SPCA Orangeville & District Animal Centre, where he was placed into foster care. Watch what happens when he's with his foster mom, Zebra!
From: Ontario SPCA
Related topics : adopting a newborn from foster care
Adopting Nash - 2011
Our first three months with God's latest little blessing! After nearly 2 and a half years waiting to adopt, we found the most awesome little man just a few miles away. Adopting from foster care was amazing! We had planned on doing a private adoption with a newborn, but God had other plans. :-)

domain: pet


text:
The so-called "Candyman" won't be getting a sweet gig in the Trump administration after all. Dr. Ronny Jackson, the White House physician who became the president's pick to head the Department of Veterans Affairs, has withdrawn his nomination amid misconduct allegations, per the Hill. Jackson put out a statement Thursday insisting the accusations against him—including charges of drinking on the job, creating a "hostile work environment," inappropriately doling out meds such as Ambien and Percocet, and even writing prescriptions for himself—were "false and fabricated" but that these issues had become a "distraction." A new accusation that emerged Wednesday: one from a report by Democrats on the Senate Veterans' Affairs Committee that Jackson had become intoxicated at a Secret Service party and "wrecked a government vehicle," per the New York Times.
Jackson said that if any of the allegations had any truth to them, "I would not have been selected, promoted, and entrusted to serve in such a sensitive and important role as physician to three presidents over the past 12 years," per Fox News. Rumors had started floating Wednesday Jackson would withdraw his name, with two White House officials telling the Washington Post that Jackson, 50, was telling co-workers he was getting fed up with the nomination process. Before he stepped away Thursday, the White House was still standing behind Jackson but was also prepared for him to walk away, the AP reports. After Jackson's announcement, Trump called into Fox & Friends and said Jackson "would have done a great job [and] … has a tremendous heart. These are false accusations, they are trying to destroy a man." (Read more Ronny Jackson stories.)


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Breaking Barriers: Empowering women and girls in Zanzibar to shape a gender-equal future in tech
Excitement and anticipation filled the air as a group of more than 50 young women and girls took their seats at the Jang’ombe Innovation Hub in Zanzibar, about to embark on a transformational journey: the first African Girls Can Code Initiative (AGCCI) coding camp for Tanzania, organized by UN Women.
For Zakia Shabani, this day held special significance. It wasn’t just the start of the coding camp, but the start of her new career in ICT. Her passion for technology began over a decade ago when she joined an after-school ICT club. Her mother disagreed with this path and pushed her towards a degree in social work. Despite this, Ms. Shabani never gave up on her dream of a career in technology.
“When I saw the advert for this coding camp, it felt like a second chance for me,” said Ms. Shabani.
According to recent estimates, 90% of future jobs around the world will require ICT skills. Yet, far fewer girls than boys are enrolled in science subjects, and women are significantly underrepresented in science and engineering professions.
In Tanzania, according to a 2020 ITU study, only one out of ten women reported having some level of digital skills, and a 2019 Tanzania National Bureau of Statistics report shows that only 18% percent of employed professionals in science and engineering fields are women.
To respond to this, UN Women and the African Union Commission (AUC) in collaboration with the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) and United Nations Economic Commission for Africa (UNECA) conceived the African Girls Can Code Initiative, a regional initiative funded by Belgium.
Currently implemented in Burundi, Mali, Mozambique, and Niger, in addition to Tanzania, the initiative aims to train and empower a minimum of 2000 young girls between the ages of 17-25 in these countries, placing them on track to take up studies and careers in the information, communication, and technology (ICT), education and coding sectors.
Following the camp, Ms. Shabani plans to combine her newly acquired skills with her background in social work, to design an information platform to share lessons and empowering stories from her work volunteering at the Association of People Leaving with Disabilities in Zanzibar.
“The camp has helped me realize that it’s not too late to change course, and it gave me the confidence I needed to go after what I want.”
And she's not alone, through AGCCI girls in Tanzania and beyond are being empowered to stay competitive in a rapidly changing world and lead the way.
“Empowering young women and girls with the skills and confidence to drive transformative change in their communities and beyond is the driving force behind the coding camp,” said Ms. Hodan Addou, UN Women Representative in Tanzania, at the camp’s launch event.
Ms. Addou also revealed ongoing plans to organize a second coding camp later this year in another region in Tanzania and encouraged the government and other stakeholders to undertake similar coding camps, and other initiatives to reach the growing demand for digital skills.
“We cannot leave any woman or girl behind," Ms. Addou stressed. "By providing opportunities like this, we are creating a future where women can fully participate in shaping the technological advancements that will impact our world for generations to come.”
On her part, the Deputy Minister for Community Development, Gender, Elderly, and Children, Anna Athanas Paul, reiterated the government’s commitment to uphold the rights of women and girls to have equal access to the digital world.
“Their creativity, knowledge, and perspectives can shape a future where technology contributes to transforming social norms, amplifying women’s voices, pushing forward against online harassment as part of gender-based violence, and distributing the benefits of digitalization to achieve the country’s development plans and Sustainable Development Goals,” added Ms. Paul.
Ashura Hassan,19, another participant in the AGCCI coding camp and a young woman living with disabilities, stressed that people living with disabilities are often forgotten in this field, not because they lack the desire, but because they aren’t given equal opportunities to learn.
“As a woman living with a disability, I am grateful to be part of this initiative and encourage other girls like me to fearlessly pursue their passion for technology,” she said.
Zamzam Hamad, 25, was also able to develop a newfound passion for coding through the camp and looks forward to using the skills she has learned to encourage more women and girls to pursue ICT careers.
“I have learned a lot through my experience here, but the most important of all is that anyone can code - regardless of gender or background. You just need to work hard and be willing to learn."
The AGCCI coding camps are designed to offer a comprehensive learning experience, imparting crucial digital literacy skills including modules on Design Thinking, Web Design, Robotics, Animation, and Gaming, among others.

domain: sociology


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text:
Talladega County District Attorney Steve Giddens said today that the four men arrested in the beating of Sylacauga High School student Brian Ogle could face different charges once their cases are presented to a grand jury.
Sylacauga police yesterday announced four men have been arrested in connection with the Sept. 30 beating of high school student Brian Ogle.
Police say Ogle was beaten in the parking lot of an old hardware store Sept. 30. He is being treated at UAB Hospital for multiple head injuries. Police have previously said the attack may have been racially motivated. All four of those arrested are black.
The men arrested were identified as Quartez Lamar Walker, 20, Bobby Ronchea Brown, 19, La Noah Grant Ealy, Jr., 18, and Daveon Shamareya Nix, 20.
Walker was charged with first degree assault, while the other men face second degree assault charges. Walker faces the more serious charge because investigators believe he used a weapon during the beating, Giddens said.
When reached for comment Tuesday night, Ogle's mother, Brandi Allen, said she was disappointed that the charges were not more severe. Giddens said the men were charged in accordance with what the investigation has uncovered so far.
"The charges are based on the evidence we have at the time," he said. "The grand jury can consider additional charges."
Giddens would not comment on any possible hate crimes charges "at this time."
The beating sparked at least one fight at Sylacauga High School and prompted several prayer walks and calls for civility on social media from police. Giddens said the investigation, while closely followed in public opinion, was still investigated in the same way as any other crime.
"The Sylacauga Police Department investigated it as a crime just like they do other cases," he said. "You can't let what may be going on outside affect how you do your job. You have to stick to the evidence."


text:
The Mongolian country singer’s version of “Don’t Be Cruel” is better than anyone else’s except for Elvis.
Enkh-Erdene Otgonbat is known as the “Asian Mongol” because of how good his singing is. He is known as the Mongolian cowboy and loves country music.
Enkh-Erdene Otgonbat loves to sing songs that Elvis Presley first sang. He chose to sing his song “Don’t be evil” for the semi-final round of Mongolia’s Got Talent.
He knows what is expected of him, so all he has to do is do his best on stage. He felt better when he sang Elvis Presley’s old hits. The judges were very impressed by this. One of the judges even started moving to the music while he was singing.

domain: celebrity


text:
“The Last Seven Eternities of Dr. Julian Slade, PhD” by Joshua Kamin
My search for the journalist named Darius Sicory took me to some strange places, and at some point along the way I must’ve taken a wrong turn, strayed too far down a particularly dark path and never really found my way back — not all in one piece, at any rate.
I mean, that’s one hypothesis.
Step one: focus.
I see myself walking along a lonely undulating street. Dilapidated buildings spike up on either side, rows of rotting teeth, and the street rises and falls slowly like a colossal tongue. There are people up ahead. I wish I could talk to them, but they’re too far away — I’d have to run to catch them, and the thought of running is absurd.
Behind me the street stretches off into darkness under a navy slab of sky.
Is there a step two?
A shadow steals out from the recesses of a doorway and scuttles toward me. Its face is hidden beneath a hood. “I’m looking for this place,” it says. Its voice is like a dozen different voices all tangled up together. “A stone hallway with a tall vaulted ceiling, dark except for a few electric lanterns lining the walls. And heads, severed heads lined up like a shooting gallery, rows upon rows of them. Have you been to a place like that?”
“No,” I say brusquely. “Go away — ”
But the shadow’s already gone. I’m alone again beneath a lowering sky. My foot hits something — a glass bottle goes skidding off down the street, smashes against a lamppost, breaks into pieces —
Wait. I squint. There’s something lying there among the shards. A sheet of crumpled paper. The wind toys with it but doesn’t blow it away.
I go and pick it up, unfold it, but to my dismay it’s written in a language I don’t understand. Made-up letters. Nonsense words. I turn it on its side, flip it over, hoping that maybe I’m just looking at it upside-down or sideways, but no matter which angle I look at it from, it refuses to make any kind of sense.
So I let the breeze carry it away. Useless junk…
But I guess it means something, doesn’t it?
Someone’s trying to get ahold of you.
It’s an encouraging thought, I suppose. But whoever it is isn’t doing it very well.
I keep walking; eventually I come to a pub. The glowing neon sign above the door says SPIGOT, and I remember vaguely that they have good beer here. I steal a seat at the bar. “Step one,” says the bartender as he slides me a steaming mug: “focus. Step two: remember you’ve still got things to do.”
“Are you talking to me?”
The bartender shrugs. I huddle over my drink. It glows like the embers of a fire that raged long ago; I try to find my reflection in the surface but there isn’t any to be seen. Beside me, a hunched bearded man mutters to himself. “What do we know about it?” he drones. “Long ago, in a forgotten country, in a better world, people pretended to understand it. But…”
I tune him out. Turn back to the bartender: “Excuse me. You might be able to help me. I’m looking for someone. A journalist.”
The bartender grunts noncommittally.
“Named Darius Sicory.”
For a moment the bartender fixes me with a lurid gaze. Then he gestures to the bearded man. “Ask him.”
I nudge the bearded man gently with my elbow. “Excuse me, sir. Do you know where I might find someone named Darius Sicory? He, uh, he knows something I need to know.”
The bearded man shoots me a fleeting sidelong glance, then continues talking as though he didn’t even see me.
“…people understood that it existed, but that doesn’t mean they understood how… I mean, you can’t wrap your head around something that you can’t see from the outside — ”
I nudge him again. “Excuse me — ”
He grunts in surprise, turns, and glares. “Huh?” he demands with a quiet kind of fury. “Can’t you see I’m in the middle of an important lecture?”
“Well, it’s pointless now. You’ve ruined my momentum. You should’ve registered for the discussion section if you wanted to ask questions.” He grins garishly, revealing a mouth full of rotting teeth. “So? What d’you want?”
“Uh…” Have I forgotten already? Step one. “Darius Sicory! Do you know a man named Darius Sicory?”
“Sicory?” The would-be professor glances around surreptitiously, then leans in close. “Sicory’s here,” he whispers hoarsely. “In the back.”
“He — he is?” I look to the rear of the bar, but there’s nobody there — just a bunch of empty tables and chairs. “I don’t — ”
“Not there. Through the door.”
I squint, but I can’t see a door — just a dark brick hallway. Has it always been there? I look back at the bearded man but he’s murmuring to himself again. “So you see? We’ve constructed a simple word to define it. We’ve come up with ways to measure it — clocks, numbers, calendars…”
“Good luck with that,” I mutter. I get up, push my chair in. Cross the bar. Start down the hallway. The darkness swallows me and suddenly I can’t see a thing.
I look back. The dimly lit bar is much farther away than it should be.
I grope about in the gloom until I hit something. A wall? No, no — after a moment of fumbling I find a doorknob. I twist.
The door slides open.
The first thing I see is flickering amber light. Torchlight. Beyond the door is a crowded stone chamber. It’s filled with people, dozens of them, their faces shrouded in shadow, and they’re forming a circle around… what is that?
I thrust myself into the throng. “Darius?” I shout. “Darius Sicory!” Through the crush of clamoring bodies I see it: a raised altar, a dais in the center of the room, on which a naked man’s body lies supine and perfectly still. A woman wearing safety goggles and a bloodstained lab coat stands beside the dais. She raises something in the air — a hacksaw. It gleams in the stuttering torchlight.
“Stop!” I shout.
She pauses. Looks at me. Her safety goggles gleam frigidly. “What?”
“Darius Sicory,” I gasp. “I need to find him.”
“Him?” The woman in the lab coat smirks. “You’re not looking for Darius Sicory, my friend. You’re looking for the truth. Now watch.”
She swings the hacksaw. The scream leaves my lips before it even happens — I turn away but not quickly enough — I still see it, hear it too, the sickening crunch as the serrated blade is dragged through the unconscious man’s flesh. Blood sprays into the air and I’m pushing back through the crowd, but they’re all muttering in disgruntled voices and shoving me back towards the center of the room —
Someone grabs my arm. “No!” I shriek, but several hands are spinning me around. The mutilated body’s lugged away, the head barely recognizable anymore, just a droopy mass of bloodied flesh. Gravity sways, the ground swings sideways and the woman in the lab coat towers above me.
“If you cannot accept this, my friend,” she whispers, “then you will be lost until time itself rots.”
The room swims and blurs and then it’s empty, deathly silent, and I’m scrambling to my feet. A vision? There’s nothing left of the nightmare I just witnessed. Aside from the blood still dripping from the altar.
I’ve had enough. I lunge for the door, push through, into the shadowed brick hallway again, sprinting slowly, like I’m underwater…
…and eons later I emerge into the bar. The would-be professor’s still lecturing to himself — “You can’t wrap your head around something that you can’t see from the outside,” I catch him saying —
I brush past him, shove myself through the door and burst out into the lonely street.
It’s darker now. The sky’s a pitch-black vortex. Suddenly I find myself wondering what made me want to leave the bar so urgently. I screw up my face in concentration…
There was a brick hallway.
A door hidden behind curtains of darkness.
I know there was blood. Wasn’t there?
A wasted breeze runs its fingers over me. Abandoned buildings creak and groan. The street stretches on ahead, twisting into an infinite obscurity.
With a sigh I start walking again. There’s nothing better to do.
I have this theory. I forget about it sometimes, but every once in a while I’ll remember, and it’ll make sense for a while till I forget it again. See, when you stay awake for too long — I’m talking days on end here — you begin to see things. They start in the corners of your eyes, little shadows darting out of sight whenever you try to catch them. But they get closer and closer as time goes by, and soon you start to see that they have glowing eyes and sharp teeth. And then the sky starts swirling, the ground crumbles beneath your feet —
And somehow, cruelly, you’re still awake.
Thing is, I stopped asking how I got here a long time ago. I mean, I think it was a long time ago. But time works differently here. It’s lazier. And sometimes I think I’m not here at all, I’m back there… standing in a narrow hallway behind a stage, sweating through a thick blue gown, and I can hear the crowd just a few yards away.
“Organic human tissue, eh?” says the man behind me. He’s dressed identically to me, which irritates me, because I know there’s no way he even came close to what I’ve accomplished.
“Semi-organic,” I find myself telling him, “but the end result is the same. I’ll explain in a sec — ”
I hurry out into the blast of the spotlight and moments later I’m sitting at a table, chewing on the juiciest, most delicious chicken I’ve ever tasted. Faces stare expectantly at me. I gulp down some port, then —
“I suppose” — I speak slowly, savoring the attention — “the first problem was figuring out how to conduct radically complex electrical impulses.”
“How complex, exactly?”
I’ve grown to love saying those two words. I relish the dozens upon dozens of gazes fixed raptly on me. Just look at them. All of them in their ridiculous gowns, acting like they’re on top of the world. Some of them are considered the most sought-after professionals in their respective fields, but if you were to ask any of them what the Ion Pillar is for, or how to stop the Blackout Legion, not a single one of them could’ve told you.
And there I am, the most ridiculous-looking of all. Just look at me. Am I really even there?
No. I’m here. Watching them in a reflection in a windowpane out of the corner of my eye —
All right, let’s stop there. We’ve got to be more careful. It’s easy to get caught up in tangents. You start wandering down some stray twist of thought and suddenly you’ll find yourself miles away from where you started, hopelessly turned around, with no way of getting back. For instance, I remember a little while ago I was walking down a garden path, looking for Nyah, and I knew she was nearby, I knew I was so close…
But then I tripped and stumbled into a funny little daydream populated with people running around helter-skelter, all of them wearing gas masks and shouting, and every so often one of them bumped into me — except whenever I touched them they collapsed in upon themselves and were dust. And the whole while someone was screaming, shrieking in my ears louder than anything I’d ever heard before, so loud I couldn’t take it. My head flew to pieces, blood and brains strewn through the air like ribbons and party streamers, and it hurt, god it hurt so fucking bad…
…and then someone (don’t ask me who) picked up the pieces and fitted them back together like a grisly jigsaw puzzle, and after a time I could think straight again. “Thank you,” I remember saying, and the person who’d fixed me whispered, from behind a veiled distance, “Come find us, Julian. There isn’t much time.”
That was when I finally remembered my name.
It’s something, I guess.
I keep coming back to the same place. It’s this place we used to go to hide, a forgotten little pocket of existence. A hollow in the weave of the world. There’s a sea of golden grass on one side, just visible through the trees, and a patch of the softest moss I’ve ever felt beneath my bare feet. There’s an old tire swing hanging from that oak over there, a cracked stone sundial on the ground just a few feet away. And there’s a brook nearby. It’s out of sight but I can hear it.
Something happened here. Something that shouldn’t have happened. For some reason I can’t remember the details exactly — they’re all jagged angles and grotesque blurs, but one thing is clear: this is where it all went wrong.
I speak softly, tentatively. “Nyah?”
She’s not here. Of course not.
This is where I lost her.
Maybe, I start to think, I have to bring her here. I close my eyes — try to focus on her, on her face, her olive skin, her hazel eyes, her cascading nightshade hair.
I open my eyes, but she’s nowhere to be seen.
Not good enough.
I try again. Close my eyes, and with all the strength I can muster I reach deep deep down, like I’m reaching into a cold, murky pond, and I grasp at the memories that dart by like little fishes. I manage to catch one. I squeeze it tight. It’s a short memory, a few fleeting seconds, and in it I’m climbing a towering sequoia, and she’s up there, right at the top, clinging to the trunk. She looks down at me and grins, and I’m flooded with so much of something that I lose my grip on the branches —
My heart jolts and I’m lying beside the sundial. She’s nowhere to be seen… but her voice is still here, riding the air. It’s so real.
And then I remember something horrible. I look at my watch — the numbers on the display are dancing and twirling, they’re impossible to read, but the light streaming through the trees is like molten copper and I remember that I’m late, horrendously late, because daylight savings began today and it’s an hour ahead —
I’m an hour behind —
And that’s when I spot her shirt, a sky-blue summer top, under the tire swing. It’s torn and bloodstained. Her name rises like vomit in my throat.
Step one: focus.
But all I can think of is her.
Step two: remember you’ve still got things to do.
I have to find her.
Step three: make a list of what you know.
Clumsily I fish for more memories. A phone call. Her voice on the other end, quiet and halting. She wants to meet. Why? It’s something about the Blackout Legion — and about her half-brother, her demented maniac of a half-brother who’s apparently been sworn in. “I saw him take the oath,” she told me. “Right there in our basement. He’s one of them now — and he knows I saw it. He’s after me. They’re all after me. You know what he said? He said he was gonna silence me. And Mum and Dad — they’re probably dead by now. You’ve gotta help me, Julian. I’ve gotta hide. Please don’t be late. I’m scared. I’m really really scared — ”
Focus! It’s not too late. I can still find her. I grab her tattered shirt, shove it into my pocket and start running — down the hidden dirt trail, through the tunnel of roots and brambles, over the graffiti-drenched brick wall —
Has the Blackout Legion already found her?
And then it occurs to me. Her house. The basement where her half-brother was sworn in. I know where it is. I picture her half-brother dragging her down the steps, bolting the cellar door. She used to tell me campfire stories about him. Stories about girls lured into the woods to be tied up and tormented and slowly picked apart. I only half-believed her until now… but I remember the last thing I saw on the news about the Blackout Legion. They’re ambassadors of chaos. They think the only way to save the world is by tearing it apart, and so far it seems there are no lines they aren’t willing to cross —
If they really want to silence her —
I’m running as fast as I can through darkening streets, a maze of never-ending lanes and alleys. There’s the house, the one that looks like it’s been abandoned. No time for the door. I get to the basement window — my foot flies through it, shattered glass tearing gashes in my leg.
I shove myself through the opening, slip into the warm gloom of the basement. “Nyah — ”
But she’s not there. Neither is her half-brother. There’s a desk stacked high with papers, and a woman sitting behind it. She’s got thick John Lennon glasses and unkempt gray hair. She looks like she hasn’t slept in months.
“Hello Julian,” she says with a tired smile.
“Nyah?” I gasp.
The smile fades. “Not exactly. My name is Darius Sicory. I think you’ve been looking for me. And I have most certainly been looking for you.” She motions to a chair. “Please sit down. We have a lot to cover, and time is not on our side.”
By the time I sit down I’ve already forgotten why I’m covered in sweat, why my heart’s going all machine-gun in my chest. A feeling comes over me, like I’m exactly where I’m supposed to be. Like I’m at the center of something cosmically important.
“Huh,” I say slowly. “I thought Darius was a boy’s name.” I can’t help how stupid it sounds.
A velvety laugh. “It’s a beautiful name, no?” She’s got an accent I didn’t notice before. Spanish? No, that’s not it. I lean back.
“So… you know something I need to know?”
“Yes. And you know it too, Julian. I’m simply here to remind you. There’s a native people in the Andes called the Seyura. Do you remember them?”
I shake my head.
“Not at all? Well. Hmm. Perhaps the fragmentation is worse than I thought. But… maybe this will jog your memory?”
She hands me an envelope. I open it. It’s filled with photographs, faded sepia images of a building — no, a complex of buildings, all rounded roofs and spires pointing to the sky. A vista of rolling foothills and mountains in the background.
“This temple,” says Darius Sicory, “goes by many different names. In fact, it has a different name for every language spoken in it, which makes for a considerable number. In our language it is called the Temple of the Crossroads. It is located near a Seyuran village. The monks who dwell there adhere to a particularly interesting creed, called the Way of the Crossroads.”
“The Way of the Crossroads,” I repeat. This all sounds… familiar. “But what does this have to do with — ”
“With anything? Well, the story is that the Seyura were a spiritual people. They would often hold ceremonies in which they consumed the flesh of the cacti which grew in the nearby mountains. These cacti contained alkaloids which would induce vivid hallucinations — visionary quests, if you will.”
Visionary quests. Something stirs in my memory. A foul taste in my mouth.
“The Seyura believed that when they embarked on these quests they could actually communicate with the souls of the dead — and with the gods or higher powers that ruled the cosmic planes of the universe.”
I must’ve looked dubious, because Sicory smiled dryly and added, “Whether you believe in such things or not, Julian, is quite irrelevant. The point is, one member of this society, Manioc, had an epiphany during one of these ceremonies. I had the chance to interview him some time ago — I have it recorded, but it’s in Seyuran, so you wouldn’t understand it. Let me read you the transcript of what he said.”
She fumbles on her desk for a moment, finds a thick stack of papers, flips through it and begins reading:
“‘I saw the entire world and all of time spread out before me, from its seeds and beginnings to the very present. I saw a beautiful oasis spinning through the vast emptiness of space. I saw it all shatter. In pain and suffering, in blood and guts spilled, in greed, cruelty, anguish, torment, it shattered. I saw a people who should be united torn apart by greed and haste. I saw needless quarrelling. Their gods and idols pitted against each other. They none of them realize that they worship the same god, a god of many faces, perhaps an infinity of faces. They refer to this god by different names, because it is difficult to gaze upon more than one of its faces at a time.
‘But I foresaw a remedy: a church built in these very mountains, to which I would summon peaceful representatives from all of the vast round world’s differing creeds and philosophies. Here we would discuss, deliberate, synthesize. We would attempt to divine the sacred truth of the universe. And I would say, most humbly and modestly, that after seven decades my vision has been realized.‘”
I’m silent. I wait for Sicory to continue. She puts the sheaf of papers away carefully before proceeding. “Manioc did succeed, Julian. This was a man who had never traveled to other countries. He never left his homeland. He saw nothing of the world beyond this desert plateau on which he lived, except in that vision. And yet he oversaw the building of the Temple of the Crossroads. He welcomed to it representatives from most — if not all — of the world’s religions.
“And that is where you are right now.”
I stare at her blankly. “Sorry?”
“You don’t believe me. I know it must seem wildly irrational. But you have got to believe. I know that for the past while you have been wondering where you are. Right at this moment you are in a hall in the Temple of the Crossroads, high in the Andes, in Peru.”
Something’s dislodged in my mind. I look around. I’m in a dingy basement. There’s a flickering light bulb dangling from a chain in the middle of the room. “Piss off,” I tell Darius Sicory. All this time I’ve been searching for her, and now that I’ve finally found her she tells me absolutely nothing I need to hear.
“Julian — ”
“FUCK YOU!” I scream. “WHERE’S NYAH?”
Sicory’s face has become a mask of rage. Papers scatter as she leaps over the desk, and I bolt — flee to the window, haul myself out of it. More cuts from the broken glass. I roll into the street, and I can’t breathe anymore — my lungs are searing, my throat tightening. The street’s flooded with people, they’re running and screaming, some of them are lying on the ground having fits — foaming at the mouth, eyes rolling back in their sockets. The sky above is the color of bloody vomit. I try to scream but I can’t. The corners of my vision blur, my stomach heaves — why can’t I see straight?
“IT’S HAPPENING!” a middle-aged lady screams. “IT’S HAPPENING!”
“Are we dying?” a little boy moans, right before collapsing into a convulsing heap.
“Masks! Masks!” somebody shrieks. “Get the fucking masks! THE MASKS!”
BANG! A gunshot blasts the air, and it’s hard to hear much of anything anymore. My legs buckle. Get back inside! I roll over, try to crawl back — but the house I just emerged from is ablaze, flames billowing out of every window, a funnel of black smoke spilling into the diseased sky. And someone’s coming toward me, shoving something over my head — a gas mask —
Air! I can breathe! I slurp it up, too fast, and my head breaks clean in two and my brain’s plucked out. What’s left of me collapses to the ground, lifeless, for the savage stampede to trample into the pavement.
I keep coming back to the same place. It’s this place we used to go to hide, a forgotten little pocket of existence. A hollow in the weave of the world. There’s a sea of golden grass on one side, just visible through the trees, and a patch of the softest moss I’ve ever felt beneath my bare feet. There’s an old tire swing hanging from that oak over there, a cracked stone sundial on the ground just a few feet away. And a brook nearby. Somewhere.
I look up. The sky through the eaves is a cold, crystal blue. The leaves are painted like stained glass in the light of the sinking sun —
Something makes me laugh, but it’s a chilly laugh, the kind where you know you shouldn’t be laughing, but you do it anyway because you just can’t stop yourself. And I remember that there is no sun. Not in this place.
Nyah’s supposed to be here. Where is she?
She’s not coming.
Maybe she’s running late. I check my watch, and the numbers on it are all dancing like they’ve got something to celebrate. She’s been late for ages. Part of me suspects that she’s been running late since the dawn of time —
That’s when I spot the shirt by the tire swing. Torn and bloody. My stomach swoops as I realize that I’m the one who’s late. Her voice echoes in my head:
“I know he’s completely fucked in the head. Of course he’d join the Blackout Legion. Just the kind of thing he’d do. I saw him take the oath. Right there in our basement. He’s one of them now — and he knows I saw it. He’s after me. They’re all after me. You know what he said? He said he was gonna silence me. And Mum and Dad — they’re probably dead by now. You’ve gotta help me, Julian. I’ve gotta hide. Please don’t be late. I’m scared. I’m really really scared — ”
I pick up the bloodstained shirt, unfold it. Something flutters out onto the ground. I pick it up. A note:
Step four: come home.
And then — “Julian.”
The voice is like an icicle plunged into my back. I turn and there she is — her name slips out of my mouth before I can help myself. She’s coming towards me, limping and smiling a strange, lopsided smile.
“I knew I’d find you here,” she says.
I’m backing away. It’s her, isn’t it? It’s her olive-colored skin, her jet-black hair, but —
Her eyes. They don’t look any different, but staring into them is like staring into two bottomless pits. A trickle of blood leaks out of her ear, creeps down the side of her neck.
And I know, in that moment, that something is very, very wrong.
“Nyah?” I whimper.
“Don’t worry, Julian.” Her voice is a spectral whisper, an echo of a whisper, and her lips aren’t moving as she speaks. “Please. It’s too late for me. Don’t worry.”
“Wha — what d’you mean?” I’m backing away from her now — my back grazes something and I’m up against a tree. “Nyah?”
“There’s nothing you can do. I don’t want you to be upset. It’s not your fault. You can’t blame yourself, Julian, even though I know you will. But I’m fine. It was horrible, for a little while back there, but I’m all better now. I’m going home…” She lifts up the corner of her shirt — the same shirt I’m holding in my hands — exposing a row of deep gouges. It’s only then that I notice that her arms are crisscrossed with cuts, too, and her emerald stockings are dark and wet with blood. There’s blood in her hair, a gouge drawn across her throat, blood pouring out of it —
“Forget about me.” Her voice is a drowning gurgle. “Try to, anyway.”
The scream explodes out of my throat like a peal of thunder, tearing the forest air apart, and before me Nyah falters, flickers like firelight, and sways like she’s been buffeted by a gale-force wind. Suddenly it’s much darker than it was before and I’m alone again, and there’s nothing left of Nyah but a sepulchral echoing laugh that strings its way through the air like dead leaves caught in an eternal journey to the ground.
But there’s something inside me now — a simmering ball of tightness deep in my chest, a knot of clotted despair, and Nyah’s half-brother appears before me in my mind’s eye. What’s his goddamn name?
I picture myself strangling him. Tearing his throat out. Chopping him into little pieces.
It’s my fault.
I press my face against the ground and sobs overtake me. It’s hard to be sure of how much time passes… but after a little while I’m walking again, shoving myself through tangles of branches and undergrowth and tumbling down a forgotten dirt trail. There’s a tunnel of roots, a graffiti-drenched wall, a street —
I’m blasted by the headlights of a cab. A horn wails in my ears, and for a moment I can’t move. Then I rush over to the passenger side door, open it, and climb in.
“Where to?” the driver asks.
“Home,” I croak.
“And where is that?”
“The land of the dead.”
The driver fixes me with a stern gaze. “Are you for real?” he demands.
I stare through his eyes into the depths of his soul. Then I give him Nyah’s address. He nods. It’s a short drive — painfully short — and soon we’re pulling up in front of Nyah’s parents’ house. At least, it’s where her parents’ house is supposed to be.
But the house isn’t there. It’s just a vacant lot. “No,” I snarl, my lips curling back over my gums. “No, no, no.”
And then I remember something. A handwritten note fluttering out of a blood-stained shirt.
Step four: come home.
I need to see her again. I need to.
And something occurs to me. There’s a place I’ve been told about. A place where I won’t be the only one who believes in ghosts.
I turn back to the cab driver. “Take me to the Temple of the Crossroads,” I tell him.
He sighs. “Buddy, you’ve got two choices: start making some sense, or get the hell out of my cab.”
“The airport. Take me to the airport.”
Everything’s going slower now. Every moment takes longer to click into place, longer to fade into the next one. It’s like time has… loosened.
Time itself is decaying.
How long’s it been since I set off to find the Seyura and the Temple of the Crossroads? Part of me feels like it’s only been a few moments. But the rational part knows that it’s been a very, very long time. There was the ride to the airport. The flight to the ends of the earth. A drive down a forgotten highway, and then the walk, the never-ending walk through valleys and up mountainsides, into the mouth of a great, seething wilderness.
But I’m here now. That’s what matters.
There’s a plateau among the mountains, a towering desert plain beneath skeins of scintillating stars. The Seyuran village is located dead in the center of this plateau, and the Temple of the Crossroads is right at the edge of it, built into the sandstone cliff face. After dusk it glitters like a piece of the night sky has been nailed to the edge of the rock.
There’s a stairwell clinging to the side of the cliff. It looks like it was built eons ago… or maybe it grew there on its own. Maybe the gods made it. We climb, emerge on top of the immense windswept plateau.
Before us: the temple gate. A towering sandstone archway. People gather beneath it, shadowed blurs at first, but coming into focus. Arms spread wide, welcoming, as though they’ve been waiting an eternity for my arrival. As though I’m some kind of Messiah.
I scan the crowd. “Where’s Nyah?” I demand.
But the people don’t answer, they just beckon silently. Some of them are wearing masks, leering animal faces, owls and tigers and rams. One of them grabs my arm. “Julian,” she says. She’s not wearing a mask, but her face is unfocused, twisted out of shape. The important parts are there, though — a head frosted with an ashy mop of hair, elfin ears, a crooked nose, and those John Lennon glasses.
Somehow I know, with an unshakeable certainty, that I’ve stood with her under this very archway before.
“It’s taken us a long time to get through to you, Dr. Slade.” Doctor? Yes. Yes! Dr. Julian Slade. PhD. How could I have forgotten that? A doctorate — my doctorate — in bioengineering, and Darius Sicory, Professor Darius Sicory, was my supervisor.
“Time is quite short,” she says. “Do you remember this place?” She guides me gently forward, into the yawning mouth of the Temple of the Crossroads. “You should be remembering now.”
“Yeah.” It’s a lie, or half a lie. Right at this moment you are in a vast hall in the Temple of the Crossroads, high in the Andes, in Peru. “Where’s Nyah?”
Sicory laughs, then sighs. “Nyah? I’m afraid I don’t know anybody by that name here.” I follow her down a torch-lit corridor. “It’s been difficult to get through to you, Julian. Your mind has fragmented. An unfortunate side effect.”
“I don’t — I’m not sure I underst — ”
“Think of it this way.” I remember that Sicory has a gift for explaining difficult concepts. “When you were Julian Slade, your mind was a pond. It was fed by rains and perhaps by a brook or two, and it was deep, but it was just a pond.
“Now, some time ago, your mind was poured into an ocean. What was once Julian Slade melded with a thousand other minds that were no longer individual minds. It’s hard to explain. It really is. But you aren’t just Julian Slade anymore. You are the Nexus.” Sicory spreads her arms dramatically. “We are the Nexus. But right now…” She pauses. “Right now we need what’s left of Dr. Julian Slade, PhD.”
The hallway ends. We’re going down a stairwell. I’m at a loss for words. I look down at my hands, my feet, my body, and realize for the first time how grotesquely misshapen I am. Is this what human bodies are supposed to look like? With dulled horror I realize that I can’t quite recall.
“Do you remember now, Julian?”
It’s coming back in fragments. A war, or something like it. What was it called? “The Drone War,” I murmur.
Yes, I remember. I remember that Julian Slade was afraid, very afraid, just like everyone else was, because everyone was thinking the same thing: mutually assured destruction. I remember that every day the news got bleaker. Entire cities wiped out. Refugees scattered across the globe. The doomsday clock closing in on midnight. Nukes stolen from the United Kingdom’s stockpile. The Blackout Legion, appearing only in staticky clips on TV, hidden behind pale masks, promising chaos and then rebirth.
Further down the stairwell, and there’s a humming noise in my ears now. It’s faint but it’s growing — cold and alien but comforting, somehow.
“Do you remember?”
Her voice startles me. “Yeah,” I tell her. “The Blackout Legion nuked Yellowstone, right before the super-volcano blew. It was a calamity. You couldn’t breathe the air anymore, no matter where you were. North America was the worst, but they were suffocating in Europe, Africa, Asia — you couldn’t escape it. So they built the Ion Pillar to neutralize the toxins in the air, but it was a time bomb, it wasn’t stable — ”
“Good, good. Very good. You were my sharpest student. And it’s no easy mental feat, piecing together an unraveled mind. I’m proud of you.”
“But there’s more. I’m not finished.” The floodgates have opened — the memories coming fast now, too fast. The humming in my ears is getting louder and louder, it’s coming from the floor, from the walls and the ceiling. The staircase ends. We’re standing in front of a metal door with a triple-bolt lock.
The humming, a steady high-pitched whine now, is coming from inside. The project.
I remember that I got my doctorate degree on the same day that the Drone War broke out. The same day the world started sliding down to hell.
I remember finding Professor Sicory in her study, asking her about something she’d mentioned once, in passing, late at night in a cozy pub called the Spigot. “The Temple of the Crossroads,” I said. “It’s real, isn’t it? You’ve been there, haven’t you?”
I remember approaching this very door for the first time.
We go through, and we’re in a colossal chamber lined with pitch-black cylinders, a couple dozen of them, each one twice my height. They’re connected through thick pipes to a rail running down the center of the chamber.
“The energy cells,” says Darius Sicory. “They’re running out. Shutting down — you can feel it, can’t you? We knew this moment would come. We only have a day or two left before the whole system goes dark. In human time, that is.”
We follow the rail down the hall. There’s something at the end of the chamber. Something very very strange. At first I can’t tell exactly what I’m looking at.
The part closest to us is shaped like a beehive, only it’s dark chrome in color and it towers above us. It’s what’s making the noise; this close to it the sound is like a thousand people humming in unison. The rail connects to this beehive on one side, and from the other side emerges a tangle of wires — except they’re made of what looks like fleshy pink string.
Semi-organic biotic tissue.
The wires disseminate — like a flashlight beam dispersing into rays of color when shone through a prism — and lead to a shelf behind the beehive which stretches up, up, up, all the way to the distant recesses of the ceiling, and off to either side, covering the entire wall.
And lining this shelf: disembodied brains.
They’re sitting in plastic orbs, floating in murky broth, and the flesh-wires connect to the orbs. There must be over a thousand of them. A thousand human brains.
Your pond — your mind — was poured into an ocean.
“Julian Slade, I present to you Julian Slade’s masterpiece.”
I fall to my knees. How could I ever have forgotten? Forgotten the years and years I spent here, deep in the Temple of the Crossroads? Forgotten that as the world went to hell outside, as the Earth’s atmosphere turned toxic and the very act of breathing became a chore, we tried to save humanity?
“Human beings evolved to think,” Darius Sicory once said, always said, will always have said. “That is something worth preserving. Don’t you agree?”
How could I have forgotten my research? The countless hours spent in labs, poring over data? The early blueprints for the Nexus, collaborated upon by me and Sicory and Manioc and a hundred others? The race against time to finish it?
“Don’t be ashamed. You got lost inside the Nexus. We all did. But we need you back now. Time is running out. Soon the energy cells will die, and the Nexus will shut down, and our brains will shut down with it.” Darius Sicory kneels beside me, but I can only see her as a white blur. “Do you remember what I said to you, Julian, as we lay on this very floor waiting for the surgeon to saw our heads open? The Nexus wasn’t complete, we hadn’t finished the testing phase — but the Ion Pillar had just imploded and we were out of time. I said something to you then. Do you remember?”
The memory’s right here, waiting for me:
“It’s times like these,” said Darius Sicory, her voice trembling, her eyes tearing up, “times when hope is at its dimmest, when all the future seems to hold is bleakness and heartbreak, that we have to give it all or nothing. We have to think not just about surviving, but about evolving. Not just about adapting — about transcending. I don’t know if the Nexus will work at all, and even if it does I don’t know what will happen inside it. But if it does, then perhaps a thousand human minds working together can come up with a way to not only preserve human consciousness in some form, but to take the next step.”
“The next step?”
“Yes, Julian. The next step. Immortality.”
And then I spoke the last words that my fleshy mouth would ever speak: “I know how. Darius! I know what we have to do. Find me. Promise you’ll find me. You have to promise — ”
The surgeon towered over me. “Your turn, Dr. Slade.”
My time was up. I closed my eyes, drew in the last breath of oxygen that Julian Slade would ever taste.
Not just surviving: evolving.
And now they crowd around me, hundreds of others, and they are me. We are the Nexus. We are one.
Not just adapting: transcending.
But I am also Julian Slade. I’m separate. They need me to be separate. Sicory’s talking now, but it’s not just her; it’s many, many voices speaking in unison.
“It was difficult, Julian, but we found you. And now we find ourselves in a peculiar situation. The energy cells are dying. We don’t have physical bodies. There’s nobody left in the Temple of the Crossroads to help us. But you assured me a long, long time ago that you had the solution. The Nexus doesn’t have it, but you do. So where is it? What is it? Not to put unwarranted pressure on you, but the future of human consciousness depends on it. Time’s running out, so think. We all need you to think.”
We need more time. That’s the first problem.
A council of minds has assembled in the Hall of the Many-Headed God. They’re there, all of them. The others. Lining the pews, shifting in and out of focus, and sometimes I get the feeling that nobody’s there at all, even though the Hall is boiling over with a cacophony of voices.
“What we need to do,” somebody yells, in a voice barely louder than the others, “is transmit this united front of human consciousness to another vessel — one that can have agency in the physical world.”
“Yes,” another responds, “but that would involve physical labor, and there’s no way for a thousand-plus brains in tanks to move so much as a speck of dust — ”
“Unless psychokinetics is a real possibility.”
“And… is it?”
“I don’t think so.”
“Then what good is that?”
“Dr. Slade? Any ideas?”
I barely hear the question. I’m lost in thought. The Seyura believe unequivocally that the mountains, valleys and plains surrounding their village and the Temple of the Crossroads are populated by spirits — spirits of the dead, of the unborn. They communicate with these spirits during their ceremonies — like the ceremony Julian Slade partook in lifetimes ago, when he first came to Seyura. Perhaps —
“Are you suggesting that we command spirits to do our bidding, Dr. Slade?”
I start in surprise. Have I been speaking my thoughts aloud? Then Darius Sicory, or some part of her, appears by my side.
“The human mind goes infinitely inwards,” she reminds me.
So I leave the Hall of the Many-Headed God, I close my eyes and create a space deep beneath the Temple of the Crossroads: a little study with wooden floors and a fireplace. I put a desk against the wall, a window looking out over the misty Andes, a comfy chair to sit on. A clock’s mounted above the desk, but it doesn’t have hands to tell time with.
Darius Sicory sits on a couch across from the desk, gazing out the window.
“I had the solution once,” I mutter. “I remember knowing, unmistakably, what needed to be done. But I don’t remember what it was.” I turn to her. “I should’ve written it down, or…”
“Should-haves,” says Sicory, “are an insidious waste of time and thought.”
“I know. You taught me that years ago.” I smile. “You were Julian Slade’s mentor. First his idol, then his mentor, and then his friend.”
“We’re all friends here.” She speaks vaguely, as though she’s totally ambivalent about it. “We’re one and the same. And every person you ever meet keeps a little bit of you inside them.” Then she rises and drifts through the wall. For a moment her voice lingers in the air: “I’ll leave it to you. Focus, Julian.”
I stare at the papers cluttering the desk. Think.
The prospect of communicating with spirits comes back to me. It’s the best idea I have. First, though, I’ll have to determine if there’s any truth to the traditional Seyuran folklore —
No, no, it’s too late to be thorough. And then I remember something: standing in the woods, watching someone who shouldn’t, who couldn’t have been there limping towards me.
All doubt is erased from my mind. So. To business then. How does one make contact with a spirit?
The window draws my gaze. The not-so-distant mountains scintillate in the Peruvian summer heat. Winds toss the trees like salad.
Time’s running out.
For some reason this doesn’t trouble me as much as I know it should. In reality there might only be a day left before the energy cells shut down, but I’ve found this little pocket of timelessness here, deep inside my own mind, and I can’t let it go until I’ve solved the problem I’ve been charged with solving.
Step one: focus.
But there’s something tugging at the edge of my thoughts.
Step two: remember you’ve still got things to do.
Sunlight feathers the slopes of the nearby mountains. I glimpse something moving through the distant trees. An animal? A person?
I wonder, briefly, if her brain is one of the brains connected to the Nexus. It must be. I can feel her… can’t I? Maybe I’m just being wistful. And even if she is here somewhere, she’s scattered. Fragmented. Spread too thin, not enough of her in any one place.
I turn back to the papers on my desk. Step three…
Part of me drifts out through the window, leaving a slumped husk at the desk, and I glide through mountain forests beneath a glistening sun and a frosted moon. Seasons cycle through me, turning round and round like a great wheel, and I watch trees grow tall, reach for the heavens and then collapse, break down, topple, and rot. Stars sweep by overhead. Glaciers melt. Seas gather then evaporate, leaving nothing behind but silt and sediment.
Nothing lasts forever.
A river coils lazily through a valley.
Not even us…
In the real world this place is gray and deadlanded, covered in dust and ash, the trees are all dead and the river’s thick and black. But here it exists inside my head, green and gold beneath a sapphire sky.
“Nyah!” I call.
I spot her — spot her through the trees, lying impossibly still in the dappled shadows — and then the turning seasons catch her, the dirt swallows her, and I look up and I’m back in my room in the Temple of the Crossroads. The papers filled with blueprints and equations and charts and figures stare into my soul.
Something cruel occurs to me. Do Julian Slade’s memories of Nyah even belong to him? After all, he too was scattered, interlaced with hundreds upon hundreds of other minds…
But she said my name, didn’t she?
I wander through the Temple of the Crossroads. It’s losing shape now, all spiraling hallways and staircases that never end, and there are people here but nobody seems to want to talk anymore.
Time is decaying.
“Julian?” someone says. It’s Sicory, but I can’t see her anywhere. “I don’t mean to pressure you, but the cells are running extremely low. I estimate that we only have…”
I tune her out. I find my study again, but the desk’s overturned, papers strewn about everywhere. The clock lies face-down on the floor.
Out through the window again. I soar over a sea of trees. “Nyah!” I can feel her. She’s close. But she’s not all in one piece. And she got a head start.
I’ve fallen behind.
Sicory and the others are calling to me from a great distance, but I tune them out. Nothing was ever meant to last forever.
“Dr. Slade! You need to focus!”
Somewhere far away the Temple of the Crossroads crumbles, and the droning sound of the Nexus, a thousand human minds humming in unison, coalesces into one voice.
We are bound by time. It’s inescapable.
But if we could see the world outside of time, then we would realize that the eternal does exist, in a way, if you look at it from the right angle. It’s embedded in the natural order of things.
Step three: make a list of what you know.
Julian Slade will always be chasing after Nyah. But I am much more than Julian Slade.
Step four: come home.
I’m standing at the edge of a sprawling plain, a sea of grass painted a thousand different colors by a howling sunrise.
Come find me.
“Julian!” Sicory’s voice is faint and distant, but more urgent than ever. “We don’t have time for this! The cells are spent! It’s shutting down! Are you there? Please tell me you’re still there! They’re dying… please…”
I smile. Too late, my friend. I follow what’s left of Nyah into the vast unending sunrise, my smile widening into an infinite chasm, my entire being outstretched and immense — and I discover again, as I’ve discovered many times before, that in the end everything just has a way of falling into place.
|Joshua Kamin lives in Vancouver, Canada, where he divides his time between cycling, chasing sunsets, writing speculative fiction, and exploring the inscrutable border between dreams and reality.|


text:
I’m interested in refining my budget a little bit more than what I’m doing now, and was browsing the shelves of Target last night when I noticed the financial/budgeting software. Is there anything that you would recommend? What about the free offerings on the web? I’ve heard about different websites that offer the same thing, but am concerned about security and my data being sold to marketers. After all, my complete financial information would be out there if I went with that option.
Any advice? I’m looking for something where my banking transactions could be grabbed and dumped into one database, helping me to see what percentage I’m spending where.

domain: finance


text:
As you may recall, the maker of Italian dream machines opened the doors of its new Advanced Composites Research Lab in Seattle, Washington. Ever since, Lamborghini has been hard at work trying to figure out how to fill its exotic vehicles with more exotic materials. By the looks of things, the center may be on the cusp of making incredible breakthroughs
. The latest would send carbon fiber components into a frontier that seems too harsh for any non-metal element: the engine. One of the multiple projects that the center is currently looking into is forging connecting rods, the components that connect the piston to the crankshaft, out of carbon fiber. Carbon fiber is known for being one of the most strength-dense materials out there.

domain: design


text: An Important Mineral MSM is methylsulfonylmethane, an excellent source of organic sulfur. Sulfur is the third most abundant mineral in the body, and is found in concentrated amounts in connective tissues and joint cartilage. It is required for the formation of disulfide bonds, an important part of many molecular structures, and is needed for the functions of many enzymes. MSM is thought to be important for maintaining the structure and function of joints. Allergies and Other Effects MSM has been shown to improve allergic symptoms in response to a wide variety of allergens, as well as improving the effects of antiallergy medications. It has also been found to improve symptoms of gastrointestinal upset. It reduces inflammation and is therefore useful for joint pain. It reduces the buildup of lactic acid, which is what causes cramping during physical activity. It also enhances the absorption of other nutrients from food. A Good Source of Sulfur Although it is present in foods, MSM is readily lost when the foods are processed, heated or dried. Supplemental MSM has been shown to be safe and well absorbed. AOR’s MSM provides a convenient form of this important source of sulfur.

domain: chemistry


text:
Start a family tradition.
The museum covers everything chocolate.
That's a lot of driving.
An astounding amount of older Americans surveyed are planning to take a trip next year.
The busiest travel day isn't the Wednesday before Thanksgiving.
As families continue to look for meaningful experiences to share on vacation, they increasingly are seeking ways to give back.
From skiing in the winter to camping in the summer, Montana has something for everyone each season of the year.
Seattle has long been home to innovators.
Some airlines are reaching new heights with 'Frozen' and 'Star Wars' themed flights
Untamed Hawaii has plenty to offer fans of the dinosaur movie franchise.

domain: travel


text:
Having left the Kunsthaus behind us it was all eyes skywards to find our next destination. Vienna has a funfair at Prater Park and in its grounds is a very famous landmark, the Riesenrad.
The Riesenrad was erected by Walter B Basset, a British engineer, in 1897 to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the reign of Emperor Franz Joseph I. The wheel itself spans 200 feet and rotates at 0.65 m/sec. The wheel has featured in several films, The Third Man being one of the most, if not the most famous. In 1914 the wheel was used for a film stunt in which Madame Solange d'Atalide managed to complete one round on horseback on top of one of the cabins.
In 1944, at the height of WWII, the Giant Ferris Wheel burnt down, but was rebuilt in 1945. The Riesenrad is the only giant ferris wheel of its time which is still in use today.
We thought the charge of 7.50 euros was quite expensive until we walked into a room with showcases resembling the cabins on the wheel with models inside each one. The models give a brief history of Vienna over the last two thousand years, from Roman Times, through the Middle Ages and up to the Second World War.
Once inside the cabin we slowly rose above the nearby tree line to view the surrounding area.
We did not expect Prater Park to be the size it is, so a walk round will be necessary.
Here is the view from the top of the wheel.
Disembarking from the wheel we declined the tourist photo of us on the Riesenrad. Well it was a pretty poor mock-up of a cabin with Ian having an arm around Guzzisue and pointing to something in the distance (sic).
Two other things we got with our entry ticket were discount vouchers to be used in the gift shop, 40 cents and 30 cents for the restaurant. These stayed in our pockets.
During our stay in Vienna we had more than one visit to the park. Below are some shots of the wheel at different times of the day, finishing off with a small film clip I've edited.
Harry was nowhere to be seen so I assume he had already been on the wheel and was now hiding in the sewers.

domain: geography


The Debut EP from Bridge Under Fire from Syracuse, NY. The EP download contains the 6 songs, and the album sleeve. The disc was was recorded at The Hollow with Jim Goldsworthy, and Josh Coy.
1- Over Dressed and Under Qualified
2- The Brickwall at the End of the Tunnel
3- Gastanks Don't Run on Excuses
4- Midnight in the Olive Garden of Good and Evil
5- Alpackalips Now
6- I'm Getting Too Old For This Shit
name your price
Compact Disc (CD) + Digital Album
A physical copy of Bridge Under FIre's debut EP.
Includes unlimited streaming of The Night Court Sessions
via the free Bandcamp app, plus high-quality download in MP3, FLAC and more.