Uploads from tedesco57 -back from cruising Adriatic and Greece, with geodata

St Mark's Square and San Daniele Hotel

nobody@flickr.com (tedesco57 -back from cruising Adriatic and Greece) — Thu, 23 May 2013 11:33:26 -0700

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Viewed from deck 13 of the Costa Magica

Costa Magica in Venice - raring to go

nobody@flickr.com (tedesco57 -back from cruising Adriatic and Greece) — Thu, 23 May 2013 11:20:51 -0700

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St Mark's Square

nobody@flickr.com (tedesco57 -back from cruising Adriatic and Greece) — Mon, 20 May 2013 14:37:59 -0700

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Leaving Venice aboard Costa Magica. Eagle Effi ist immer dabei.

Exit Venice aboard Costa Magica

nobody@flickr.com (tedesco57 -back from cruising Adriatic and Greece) — Mon, 20 May 2013 14:38:01 -0700

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Exit from Venice aboard Costa Magica

nobody@flickr.com (tedesco57 -back from cruising Adriatic and Greece) — Mon, 20 May 2013 14:37:54 -0700

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St. Mark's Square Venice

nobody@flickr.com (tedesco57 -back from cruising Adriatic and Greece) — Mon, 20 May 2013 14:37:57 -0700

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Taken from deck 13 of the Costa Magica cruise liner

Exit from Venice on Costa Magica

nobody@flickr.com (tedesco57 -back from cruising Adriatic and Greece) — Mon, 20 May 2013 14:37:53 -0700

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Tuna

nobody@flickr.com (tedesco57 -back from cruising Adriatic and Greece) — Sun, 12 May 2013 12:59:51 -0700

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Tuna are incredible creatures. Highly migratory, they travel thousands of miles over their lifetimes. Despite weighing up to 700 kg, the majestic bluefin can accelerate faster than a Porsche and can swim as fast as 43mph - some species travel from North American to European waters several times each year. Yellowfin have been recorded travelling from the US Pacific coast to Japan, they travel at an average speed of ten miles per hour, but can reach up to 50mph. A bigeye tuna has been recorded diving 250 metres in less than one minute - see if you can do better!

Tuna are in trouble

zoom
A school of tuna
Globally tuna populations are in trouble. Every year there are more boats chasing fewer tuna as populations all around the world are declining. There simply aren't enough fish to sustain the world's voracious appetite for tuna. Rampant overfishing and pirates stealing tuna are making these once abundant, ocean giants harder and harder to find.
Bigeye and yellowfin are fully exploited or over exploited in all oceans - they are in serious trouble in the Western and Central Pacific Ocean, where they were relatively healthy just a few years ago. Stocks of the magnificent bluefin, the most iconic and valuable of all tuna species, are on the brink of collapse. In 1999, Greenpeace recorded how Mediterranean bluefin had declined by 80 percent.

And it's getting worse. Advances in technology mean large ships - floating factories - are now able to take as much tuna in 2 days as whole countries can take in a year. Increasing practices of tuna ranching are also further aggravating the crisis.

True cost of tuna

The biggest tuna fishery in terms of volume is skipjack - the tuna most likely to end up in cans. While skipjack is not yet overfished, if fishing continues at current rates it won't be able to sustain itself. What's more, the methods used to net skipjack all too often catch young yellowfin and bigeye, threatening these species further. Yellowfin, a much more commercially valuable species, makes up 35 percent of the world's catch. The majestic bluefin only represents 1.5 percent of the landed volume of tuna, but its dollar value is astronomical. In 2001, a single bluefin tuna set an all time record when it sold for US$173,600 in Japan.

Numerous other marine life are hooked and netted in the global tuna fisheries with 100 million sharks, and tens of thousands of turtles killed every year causing devastation to the entire marine ecosystems.

www.greenpeace.org/international/en/campaigns/oceans/tuna/

Moray Eel Madeira Island

nobody@flickr.com (tedesco57 -back from cruising Adriatic and Greece) — Sun, 12 May 2013 12:51:18 -0700

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The moray eel is a large species of eel found in warm and temperate waters all around the world. Despite their snake-like appearance, moray eels (along with other eel species) are in fact fish and not reptiles.
Moray eels are found in both deep and shallow waters in tropical and sub-tropical regions. Although moray eels can be find in cooler waters occasionally, they tend to remain in the crevices deep in the ocean rather than venturing into shore. The largest populations of moray eels are found around tropical coral reefs where they are numerous different marine species found in large numbers.

There are around 200 different species of moray eel than can range in size from just 10cm long to nearly 2 meters in length. Despite their varying size and colour all moray eels are fairly similar in appearance with an elongated body, slightly flattened towards the tail. Moray eels also have large eyes and mouths which contain large teeth.

The moray eel is a relatively secretive animal, spending much of its time hiding in holes and crevices amongst the rocks and coral on the ocean floor. By spending the majority of their time hiding, moray eels are able to remain out of sight from predators and are also able to ambush any unsuspecting prey that passes.

Like many other large fish, the moray eel is a carnivorous animal surviving on a diet that consists of only meat. Fish, molluscs including squid and cuttlefish and crustaceans such as crabs are the main source of food for the moray eel.

The moray eel is often one of the most dominant predators within its environment but moray eels are hunting by some other animals including other large fish like grouper and barracuda, sharks and humans.

Moray eels tend to mate when the water is warmest towards the end of the summer. Moray eel fertilisation is oviparous, meaning that eggs and sperm are fertilised outside of the womb, in the surrounding water, which is known as spawning. More than 10,000 eggs can be released at a time, which develop into larvae and become part of the plankton. It can take up to year for the moray eel larvae to have grown big enough to swim down to the ocean floor to join the community below.
Moray Eel Facts

Kingdom:Animalia
Phylum:Chordata
Class:Actinopterygii
Order:Anguilliformes
Family:Muraenidae
Common Name:Moray Eel
Scientific Name:Muraenidae
Origin:Tropical and temperate waters
Diet:Carnivore
Size:11-400cm (4-157in)
Water Type:Salt
Optimum pH Level:5-7
Life Span:10-30 years
Conservation Status:Least Concern
Colour:Grey, Black, Brown, White, Yellow, Green, Blue, Orange
Skin Type:Scales
Favourite Food:Fish
Habitat:Coastal and deep waters
Average Clutch Size:10,000
Main Prey:Fish, Squid, Crustaceans
Predators:Sharks, Humans, Barracuda
Special Features:Sharp teeth and elongated body
a-z-animals.com/animals/moray-eel/

The Nile

nobody@flickr.com (tedesco57 -back from cruising Adriatic and Greece) — Sun, 12 May 2013 00:10:58 -0700

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Mummy mask of Hornedjitef

nobody@flickr.com (tedesco57 -back from cruising Adriatic and Greece) — Sun, 12 May 2013 00:00:23 -0700

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From the burial of Hornedjitef, Asasif, Thebes, Egypt
Early Ptolemaic Period, around 220 BC

Hornedjitef was a priest in the Temple of Amun at Karnak during the reign of Ptolemy III (246-222 BC). His high status is reflected in his elaborate funerary equipment, which is typical of a high-ranking dignitary of Thebes in the third century BC. CT scans of the mummy show that Hornedjitef was a mature man at his death. There were signs of osteoarthritis and osteoporosis, diseases of the bones, indicating that he might have reached an advanced age.

The form and decoration of Hornedjitef's coffins follow the pharaonic funerary tradition. The mummy was covered from shoulder to foot with a cartonnage cover. The cover and the mask placed on his head were both decorated with traditional funerary scenes.

Hornedjitef's idealized youthful face is golden, showing that he has become divine. Around his brow is a version of a spell in which the parts of his head are identified with the bodily members of various gods. Both the spell and the mask were intended to protect the head from being separated from the body, something that was greatly feared by ancient Egyptians, as it would prevent the deceased reaching the Afterlife, and also elevate the deceased to divine status.

Soon after the time when Hornedjitef died, Hellenistic influences brought great changes to the appearance of Egyptian burials. See, for example, the coffin of Taminis, and one of an unknown woman, also in the British Museum.

J. Mack (ed.), Masks: the art of expression (London, The British Museum Press, 1994)

S. Walker and M. Bierbrier, Ancient faces: mummy portrai-1 (London, The British Museum Press, 1997)
www.britishmuseum.org/explore/highlights/highlight_object...

Mummy mask of Hornedjitef

nobody@flickr.com (tedesco57 -back from cruising Adriatic and Greece) — Sun, 12 May 2013 00:02:23 -0700

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Rosetta Stone

nobody@flickr.com (tedesco57 -back from cruising Adriatic and Greece) — Sat, 11 May 2013 23:48:35 -0700

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Rosetta Stone

nobody@flickr.com (tedesco57 -back from cruising Adriatic and Greece) — Sat, 11 May 2013 04:20:54 -0700

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A valuable key to the decipherment of hieroglyphs, the inscription on the Rosetta Stone is a decree passed by a council of priests. It is one of a series that affirm the royal cult of the 13-year-old Ptolemy V on the first anniversary
of his coronation.

In previous years the family of the Ptolemies had lost control of certain parts of the country. It had taken their armies some time to put down opposition in the Delta, and parts of southern Upper Egypt, particularly Thebes, were not yet back under the government's control.

Before the Ptolemaic era (that is before about 332 BC), decrees in hieroglyphs such as this were usually set up by the king. It shows how much things had changed from Pharaonic times that the priests, the only people who had kept the knowledge of writing hieroglyphs, were now issuing such decrees. The list of good deeds done by the king for the temples hints at the way in which the support of the priests was ensured.

The decree is inscribed on the stone three times, in hieroglyphic (suitable for a priestly decree), demotic (the native script used for daily purposes), and Greek (the language of the administration). The importance of this to Egyptology is immense.

Soon after the end of the fourth century AD, when hieroglyphs had gone out of use, the knowledge of how to read and write them disappeared. In the early years of the nineteenth century, some 1400 years later, scholars were able to use the Greek inscription on this stone as the key to decipher them.

Thomas Young, an English physicist, was the first to show that some of the hieroglyphs on the Rosetta Stone wrote the sounds of a royal name, that of Ptolemy. The French scholar Jean-François Champollion then realized that hieroglyphs recorded the sound of the Egyptian language and laid the foundations of our knowledge of ancient Egyptian language and culture.

Soldiers in Napoleon's army discovered the Rosetta Stone in 1799 while digging the foundations of an addition to a fort near the town of el-Rashid (Rosetta). On Napoleon's defeat, the stone became the property of the British under the terms of the Treaty of Alexandria (1801) along with other antiquities that the French had found.

The Rosetta Stone has been exhibited in the British Museum since 1802, with only one break. Towards the end of the First World War, in 1917, when the Museum was concerned about heavy bombing in London, they moved it to safety along with other, portable, 'important' objects. The Rosetta Stone spent the next two years in a station on the Postal Tube Railway 50 feet below the ground at Holborn.
www.britishmuseum.org/explore/highlights/highlight_object...

Basalt block statue of Roy

nobody@flickr.com (tedesco57 -back from cruising Adriatic and Greece) — Fri, 10 May 2013 10:56:32 -0700

tedesco57 -back from cruising Adriatic and Greece posted a photo:

From the temple of Mut, Karnak, Egypt
19th Dynasty, around 1250 BC

A high priest of Amun of the reign of Ramesses II

The cult of Amun was central to the importance of Thebes, so the high priest of Amun commanded great power. He oversaw a large bureaucracy and a considerable amount of wealth. At the end of the New Kingdom (about 1550-1070 BC) the high priests effectively ran Upper Egypt, and some of them were even to use the title of king.

Roy was the high priest in the later part of the reign of Ramesses II (1279-1213 BC), and may have survived into the time of his successor Merenptah (1213-1203 BC). He commissioned several statues of himself. This block statue is one of four from the Temple of Mut at Karnak. Roy is shown presenting a large sistrum (rattle-like instrument), a symbol sacred to the goddess Hathor. The head of Roy is shown with a slightly oval face and elaborate shoulder-length wig, typical of the Ramesside period.

Roy was buried on the west bank of the Nile at Thebes in the area known as Dra Abul Naga, where there is a large and prominent group of tombs of Ramesside high priests; his tomb is given the number 283.

The statue was discovered by Napoleon's expedition to Egypt, and came to the British Museum after the Treaty of Alexandria.

T.G.H. James and W.V. Davies, Egyptian sculpture (London, The British Museum Press, 1983)

S. Quirke, Ancient Egyptian religion (London, The British Museum Press, 1992)

R. Schulz, Die Entwicklung und Bedeutung (Hildesheim, 1992)

T.G.H. James (ed.), Hieroglyphic texts from Egyp-2, Part 9 (London, The British Museum Press, 1970)

"Get that Front Door, Albert!"

nobody@flickr.com (tedesco57 -back from cruising Adriatic and Greece) — Thu, 09 May 2013 23:00:15 -0700

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Whilst in Berkshire I used my National Trust App to find this little treasure only half an hour away - so we had to pop in...

Surrounded by beauty... steeped in history
An intimate family home, the history of the Vyne spans the centuries. From its royal beginnings in Tudor times to its place today as a intriguing retreat for you to explore, you can lose yourself in the surroundings that inspired great authors such as Jane Austen. Discover a chapel where sunlight streams in through stained-glass windows, a ring that inspired Tolkien or an oak gallery fit for a king.

You could enjoy the view from the house in winter of the first hoarfrost or the autumnal glow of the woodland on a misty morning. Can you see yourself spending lazy summer days picnicking on a lawn that stretches to a shimmering lake?

The gardens are a peaceful escape with secret picnic spots, or you can stroll by the ornamental lake. Why not take in the restored Walled Garden, now a working kitchen garden providing delicious, fresh and seasonal produce to our Tudor tea-room.

The ancient woodlands are a great place in every season from the carpet of spring bluebells to autumn leaves. Sneak into the wetland bird hide and experience glimpses of wildlife. Come alone or with friends and family, there's plenty to see and do for all ages of adventurer.

A quick history

1268 - The first recorded reference to the Vyne
1488 - The Vyne passes down through three men all named William Sandys
1510, 1531 - Henry VIII visits. He brings Anne Boleyn in 1535
1653 - Colonel Sandys's son sells the Vyne to raise money
1770 - John Chute adds staircase hall and other fashionable pieces
1842 - Wiggett Chute renovates the Vyne, adds heating in stone gallery
1956 - Sir Charles Chute dies and leaves the estate to us
2000 - Work under tomb chamber reveals empty vaulted chamber
www.nationaltrust.org.uk/vyne/

The Great Seal of England 1651

nobody@flickr.com (tedesco57 -back from cruising Adriatic and Greece) — Thu, 09 May 2013 22:56:09 -0700

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www.google.co.uk/imgres?imgurl=http://farm4.staticflickr....

Great Seal of the Commonwealth. It was designed by Thomas Simon and struck in1651, 5.5 inches in diameter, and was so highly crafted that the name of each county can be read on a map of the British Isles.
The image above is a printed replica about 4 times original size.

yeomenoftheguard.com/great_seals_of_state.htm

Falcon waiting for his mate....

nobody@flickr.com (tedesco57 -back from cruising Adriatic and Greece) — Wed, 08 May 2013 23:55:09 -0700

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www.esslinger-zeitung.de/webcam/

The Atomium in Brussels

nobody@flickr.com (tedesco57 -back from cruising Adriatic and Greece) — Wed, 08 May 2013 23:30:46 -0700

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The Atomium is an iconic building in Brussels originally constructed for Expo '58, the 1958 Brussels World's Fair. Designed by the engineer André Waterkeyn with interiors by architects André and Jean Polak,[1] it stands 102 m (335 ft) tall. Its nine 18 m (59 ft) diameter stainless steel clad spheres are connected so that the whole forms the shape of a unit cell of an iron crystal magnified 165 billion times.
Tubes connect the spheres along the 12 edges of the cube and all eight vertices to the centre. They enclose escalators and a lift to allow access to the five habitable spheres which contain exhibit halls and other public spaces. The top sphere provides a panoramic view of Brussels. CNN named it Europe's most bizarre building.[2]

Renovation

Renovation on the Atomium began in March 2004; it was closed to the public in October, and remained closed until February 18, 2006. The renovations included replacing the faded aluminium sheets on the spheres with stainless steel. To help pay for renovations, the old aluminium was sold to the public as souvenirs. A triangular piece about 2 m long sold for €1,000.

Cherry blossom

nobody@flickr.com (tedesco57 -back from cruising Adriatic and Greece) — Mon, 06 May 2013 04:09:44 -0700

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