Music Express

A Music Express is an amusement ride based on the original Caterpillar rides of Germany. Several near-identical ride designs are also produced by other companies; Musik Express by Italian company Bertazzon and US Majestic Rides, Himalaya by American company Wisdom Rides, German company Mack, and French company Reverchon, and Silver Streak by Wisdom Rides. This ride is a modern adaption of the famous Harry Traver Caterpillar rides.

Design and operation

The ride features twenty 3-passenger cars connected in a circle. These cars rotate on a track with alternating sloped and flat sections. Rotation is possible in both a backward and forward direction, as the ride is manually operated. The ride is powered by 4 DC motors, and can reach a maximum speed of 12 revolutions per minute. (Certain older models have a hydraulic tire/rim drive and they have a tendency to go faster).

The riders in each car are restrained by a single solid lap bar that is locked across the body of the car, making the ride unsuitable for young children or people of short stature. The bar must be manually locked or unlocked, and only locks in one position. Lights and music are also controlled by the operator, which (as the name suggests) contribute heavily to the ride experience. After a certain amount of rotations or minutes, the ride operator will be alerted by the control box that the speed is going to increase, usually by a light on the box. At that time the operator will speak on a microphone asking the riders if they would like to go faster. Sometimes the ride operator can do this earlier than the alert light to built suspense. After a minute or two of faster speed, the ride will then slow down, and the operator can then ask the riders if they would like to go backwards. The speed up element is then repeated again only done in reverse. The Most parks and carnivals require all riders to be at least 42 inches or even taller, depending on circumstances and ride design.

Himalaya (book)

Himalaya is the book that Michael Palin wrote to accompany the BBC television documentary series Himalaya with Michael Palin.

This book, like the other books that Michael Palin wrote following each of his seven trips for the BBC, consists both of his text and of many photographs to illustrate the trip. All of the pictures in this book were taken by Basil Pao, the stills photographer who was part of the team who did the trip (Pao also produced a book, Inside Himalaya, containing many more of his pictures).

The book contains eight chapters: Pakistan, India, Nepal, Tibet, Yunnan (China), Nagaland and Assam(India), Bhutan, and Bangladesh. The book is presented in a diary format; Palin starts each section of the book with a heading such as "Day Forty One: Srinagar". Not all days are mentioned, a result of the trip as a whole being broken up into shorter trips (a fact that is not mentioned in the series).

Palin makes several treks up into the mountains, including one trek up to Everest Base Camp at 17,500 feet (5,300 meters). Not bad, considering that Palin was 60 years old at the time. Other encounters and experiences that are related by Michael Palin include finding out that the Dalai Lama not only knew who he was, but was a fan of Palin's TV programmes.

Himalaya with Michael Palin

Himalaya with Michael Palin was a 2004 BBC television series presented by comedian and travel presenter Michael Palin. It records his six-month trip around the Himalaya mountain range area. The trip covered only 3,000 miles (4,800 km) horizontally, but involved a lot of vertical travelling, including several treks up into the mountains. The highest point attained by Michael Palin was Everest Base Camp at 17,500 feet (5,300 meters).

A book by the same name written by Palin was published to accompany the series. This book contained both Palin's text and many pictures by Basil Pao, the stills photographer on the team. Basil Pao also produced a separate book of the photographs he took during the journey, Inside Himalaya, a large coffee-table style book printed on glossy paper.

Episode guide

The series is divided up into six one-hour episodes

External links

WorldWideWeb

WorldWideWeb (later renamed to Nexus to avoid confusion between the software and the World Wide Web) is the first web browser and editor; and now discontinued. When it was written, WorldWideWeb was the sole method to view the Web.

The source code was released into the public domain on April 30, 1993. Some of the code still resides on Tim Berners-Lee's NeXT Computer in the CERN museum and has not been recovered due to the computer's status as a historical artifact. To coincide with the 20th anniversary of the research centre giving the web to the world, a project has begun in 2013 at CERN to preserve this original hardware and software associated with the birth of the web.

History

Berners-Lee wrote what would become known as WorldWideWeb on a NeXT Computer during the second half of 1990, while working for CERN. The first successful build was completed by December 25, 1990, after only two months of development. Successive builds circulated among Berners-Lee's colleagues at CERN before being released to the public, by way of Internet newsgroups, in August 1991. By this time, several others, including Bernd Pollermann, Robert Cailliau, Jean-François Groff, and graduate student Nicola Pellow – who wrote the Line Mode Browser – were involved in the project.

Process philosophy

Process philosophy (or ontology of becoming) identifies metaphysical reality with change and development. Since the time of Plato and Aristotle, philosophers have posited true reality as "timeless", based on permanent substances, while processes are denied or subordinated to timeless substances. If Socrates changes, becoming sick, Socrates is still the same (the substance of Socrates being the same), and change (his sickness) only glides over his substance: change is accidental, whereas the substance is essential. Therefore, classic ontology denies any full reality to change, which is conceived as only accidental and not essential. This classical ontology is what made knowledge and a theory of knowledge possible, as it was thought that a science of something in becoming was an impossible feat to achieve.

In opposition to the classical model of change as accidental (as argued by Aristotle) or illusory, process philosophy regards change as the cornerstone of reality — the cornerstone of Being thought of as Becoming. Modern philosophers who appeal to process rather than substance include Nietzsche, Heidegger, Charles Peirce, Alfred North Whitehead, Alan Watts, Robert M. Pirsig, Charles Hartshorne, Arran Gare, Nicholas Rescher, Colin Wilson, and Gilles Deleuze. In physics Ilya Prigogine distinguishes between the "physics of being" and the "physics of becoming". Process philosophy covers not just scientific intuitions and experiences, but can be used as a conceptual bridge to facilitate discussions among religion, philosophy, and science.

StarCraft

StarCraft is a military science fiction media franchise created by Chris Metzen and James Phinney, and owned by Blizzard Entertainment. The series centers on a galactic struggle for dominance between four species—the adaptable and mobile Terrans, the ever-evolving insectoid Zerg, the powerfully enigmatic Protoss, and the "god-like" Xel'Naga creator race—in a distant part of the Milky Way galaxy known as the Koprulu Sector at the beginning of the 26th century. The series debuted with the video game StarCraft in 1998. Since then it has grown to include a number of other games as well as eight novelizations, two Amazing Stories articles, a board game, and other licensed merchandise such as collectible statues and toys.

Blizzard Entertainment began planning StarCraft in 1995, with a development team led by Metzen and Phinney. The game debuted at E3 1996, and uses a modified Warcraft II game engine. StarCraft also marked the creation of Blizzard Entertainment's film department; the game introduced high quality cinematics integral to the storyline of the series. Most of the original development team for StarCraft returned to work on the game's official expansion pack, Brood War; the game's development began shortly after StarCraft was released. In 2001, StarCraft: Ghost began development under Nihilistic Software. Unlike the previous real-time strategy games in the series, Ghost was to be a stealth-action game. After three years of development, work on the game was postponed in 2004. Development of StarCraft II: Wings of Liberty began in 2003; the game was later announced on May 19, 2007 and was released on July 27, 2010. The StarCraft II franchise continued with the StarCraft II: Heart of the Swarm expansion, which was released on March 12, 2013. The third StarCraft II installment is titled StarCraft II: Legacy of the Void, released on November 10, 2015.