---

The "deepest ever" living fish have been discovered, scientists believe.

A UK-Japan team found the 17-strong shoal at depths of 7.7km (4.8 miles) in the Japan Trench in the Pacific - and captured the deep sea animals on film.

The scientists have been using remote-operated landers designed to withstand immense pressures to comb the world's deepest depths for marine life.

Monty Priede from the University of Aberdeen said the 30cm-long (12in), deep-sea fish were surprisingly "cute".

Nobody has really been able to look at these depths before - and I think we will see fish living much deeper Alan Jamieson, Oceanlab

The fish, known as Pseudoliparis amblystomopsis, can be seen darting about in the darkness of the depths, scooping up shrimps.

Alan Jamieson, from the University of Aberdeen, said: "It was an honour to see these fish.

"No-one has ever seen fish alive at these depths before - you just never know what you are going to see when you get down there."

The deepest record for any fish is Abyssobrotula galatheae, which was dredged from the bottom of the Puerto Rico Trench at a depth of more than 8km (5 miles) in 1970. However, it was dead by the time it reached the surface.

The previous record for any fish to have been spotted alive was thought to have stood at about 7km (4 miles).

Pressure points

The Hadeep project, which began in 2007, is a collaboration between the University of Aberdeen's Oceanlab and the University of Tokyo's Ocean Research Institute (Ori) and aims to expand our knowledge of biology in the deepest depths of the ocean.

It is funded by the Nippon Foundation and the Natural Environment Research Council (Nerc).

DEEP SEA DIVISIONS Bathyal zone: 1,000-3,000m (3,000-10,000ft) Abyss: 3,000-6,000m (10,000-20,000ft) Hadal: 6,000m-11,000m (20,000-36,000ft)

The researchers have been looking at the Hadal zone - the area of ocean that sits between 6,000 and 11,000m (20,000-36,000ft). It consists of very narrow trench systems, most of which are found around the Pacific Rim.

The researchers are able to explore them using specially designed remote operated vehicles that are fitted out with cameras.

Professor Priede, director of Oceanlab, said: "There is the question of how do animals live at all at these kinds of depths.

"There are three problems: the first is food supply, which is very remote and has to come from 8km (5 miles) above.

"There is very high pressure - they have to have all sorts of physiological modifications, mainly at the molecular level.

The lander was designed to withstand immense pressure

"And the third problem is that these deep trenches are in effect small islands in the wide abyss and there is a question of whether these trenches are big enough to support thriving endemic populations."

But this species appears to have overcome these issues, added Professor Priede.

"We have spotted these creatures at depths of 7,703m (25,272ft) - and we have actually found a massive group of them.

"And this video is pretty tantalising - the fact that there are 17 of them implies that they could well be a family group, begging the question of whether some form of parental care exists for these fish."

Vibration sensors

The researchers said they were surprised by the fish's behaviour.

"We certainly thought, deep down, fish would be relatively inactive, saving energy as much as possible, and so on," Professor Priede told BBC News.

The fish were surprisingly active

"But when you see the video, the fish are rushing around, feeding accurately, snapping at prey coming past."

Because the fish live in complete darkness, they use vibration receptors on their snouts to navigate the ocean depths and to locate food.

Professor Priede added: "Nobody has seen fish alive before at these depths - only pickled in museums - and by the time they come up from the depths they look in a pretty sorry state.

"But these fish are actually very cute."

Alan Jamieson added that he believed the team would find more fish during their next expedition in March 2009, which would probe the ocean between depths of 6,000m and 9,000m.

He told BBC News: "Nobody has really been able to look at these depths before - I think we will see some fish living much deeper."

ninjagarden

Even counting on the improbable
to occur
is safest, sometimes;
and most things tried are true;
and most lying words do
nothing but strike at reality's flint
in futility and are doused by their own
unshakable impossibility.

Traffic will always mean dominoes of flaring taillights,
muttered curses and blaring horns
like kites of weathered strings and polymers
that carry the fumes and the din
and any doubts as to Man's lot
up into the maw of the sky,
to float alongside God's pipesmoke
and be returned to the earth
by great silver birds
that can be expected to land
but never on time.

These are things I can predict;
causes and effects with no affection
for quantum physics.
The short straw will always poke its head out above the others for us.
First breaths shall have their last breaths,
and good things their ends,
and millions of tiny absurdities shall assert their common nature
and shall certainly nibble noisily on certainties
dangling from our ears like great silver talismans
that can be expected to land at our feet
but only when least expected to.

I know that footsteps
can only lead to a corpse or a cliff
if they are followed to their good ends,
and I can tell you that if a screaming comes across the sky
it's unlikely we'll hear the sound when its great silver tip parts our skulls
like the Red Sea.
These are things I can safely predict
because I have read about them in books,
because I have watched them,
because I have induced them into forming patterns,
and made them into sensible accounts, and dependable things,
kites on strings
and great silver wings
and the years of a tree
spelled out in rings
and plain on the face of a tenth-generation squirrel
nibbling noisily on some things he stole off the abacus
I use to count off the animals I've seen on the backs of clouds,
the probabilities,
things I expect that never arrive on time,
the good endings of movies, the cliffhangers,
all our short straws,
all the patterns picked out from amongst storms of uncertainties,
and all the things I hate but know to be true.

And I count here on these fingers what I'm sure of:
the sun,
the stars,
and you.

Las fechas son las siguientes:

29 nov 2008 Kafe Antzokia (Bilbao)
30 nov 2008 Heineken Club (Madrid)
2 dic 2008  Razzmatazz (Barcelona)

Opeth - Porcelain Heart

Cynic - The Eagle Nature

]]> http://writingpassion.wordpress.com/?p=50 Wed, 24 Sep 2008 19:03:59 +0000 writingpassion http://writingpassion.de.wordpress.com/2008/09/24/i-do/ So there we´ll be; watching the ocean and promising forever while we listen to the bashful waves, wondering if they can hear our pounding hearts. The sun will set and my cheeks will blush and we will raise our glasses to the pink skies above and hope.

But until somebody does, I give you this clip, affectionately titled "Assfuck On The Cliffs." And from that title, l can assure you that you get basically what it advertises there.

...and so much more. If you were to show this clip in black and white, and with a more attractive female lead, you could easily pass this off in style as the almost existential classic cinema of Italy or even as a possible entry into the French New Wave category. The woman in this clip reminds me of a trashier Monica Vitti, the star of L'Avventura, and you have to marvel at the way the camera melodramatically wafts over her body at the start. She gives us a breathy come hither look in the first few seconds as the golden waves move against the rocks behind her and in what almost passes as the height of cinema seduction, she reveals one of her breasts to us. She caresses it and her fingers then move over and around her clit, and then moves to her knees in front of her lover's cock and moans an invitation that almost says, "Fuck me in front of the ocean."

Ladies and gentlemen, I give you the Criterion Classic of Youporn clips here. Not everyone will appreciate it or enjoy it or even get it, but just having it, and just having viewed it, will make you feel instantly smarter and snootier. And maybe, just maybe, you might get off to it as well.

(You'll notice that I especially tie it more to L'Avventura, which is a favorite of mine, and not as much to something like From Here To Eternity. This clip is no From Here To Eternity.)

Extra special points to this bizarre near-masterpiece for it's near climax at the end: The lovers have actually moved ankle-deep into the water, the woman clinging to the rocks as the man pounds into her from behind, and the camera pushes in on her moaning face as she takes every thrust, propelling her closer and closer to an orgasm as powerful as the waves crashing around her.

Don't get me wrong, it's not nearly as erotic as the video for "Wicked Game" even, but I admire the fact that for what is probably a amateur production (but quite possibly not), it's ambitious as hell.

Also, while doing a very quick search to find more links to the same video for you lovely people (in case the above one fails at some point), I found instead a much weaker batch of clips set near the ocean (in those crashing waves), the beach, the rocks, or the cliffs. None of them contain the stabs towards high art that the main video of this post does, but such is the way of the tide...

A great friend of mine once told me “Sometimes you’re just going to need to have thick skin about some stuff man, you can’t let everything hurt you”. Hearing this, I immediately saw that my friend, Jeffrey Gardner [a UCF Knight], was telling me exactly what I needed to hear, and not what I wanted. And from that car ride down to Deerfield Beach, full of the great smell of sea air at night and the sounds of ‘Death Cab for Cutie’, I began to understand what the word resilience meant.

I mean, I have always been what I consider to be a strong person; I never have a problem contributing in class, trying new things, or saying what I mean. But as I entered my junior year, I was hit in the face with stress from ever direction and I was slowly letting it bog me down and I truly wasn’t allowing myself to shine. And I remember talking to Jeff a few days before and he told me he was coming down from Orlando for the weekend and if I wanted to hang out, to give him a call. So I did, and he picked me up, we got some Wendy’s, hopped on the highway and went to the beach. In the car, I just started exploding with all of the fears and aches that had been piercing my heart, especially what was going on at home with my parents and some of the downright negativity people were practicing at my school towards others. And on hearing his advice, it was a consolation of sorts because he told me that he had gone through many of the same things and I couldn’t just let it bring me down because I would be giving all I was away.

And that is what I know I can contribute to the community of UCF, resiliency. The resiliency that allowed me to leave my frustrations with the destructive relationship that was shattering my mom at home, to regrasp my love for theatre and photography no longer caring about the opinions of others as I pursued Romanticism, to be there for friends I thought I’d never make as they weathered the storm of ridiculous  high school pressures and putdowns along with troubled homes just like mine and to have the strength to have true inner peace during one of my most favorite years of living until now. Perhaps my greatest reminder of this, is on my journal that I received for Christmas of 2007, on top of it there is a Polaroid picture of a cloud and some trees, and all around the picture are some scribbled quotes and thoughts, second to the top lies one particular quote that’s from a song I love called Love Isn’t Made that says, “Don’t let the panic bring you down”, and looking back at it now the panic and all of the garbage it brought along with it, didn’t bog me down too much , it didn’t kill me so I plan on bringing resilience and peace along with me to the University of Central Florida as a Knight so that there I can pass that along to someone else as Jeff did to me.

Noch eine der Top-Bands dieser Welt! Aber über das Outfit müssen wir nicht sprechen... die 70er eben.

flawless!?

Lying with us when we sleep.  The greatest trick the Devil ever pulled was convincing the world he didn’t exist.  That and shitting in a box in our homes, and making us clean it up.  Fork-tongued proprietors of false love, purrs are the softened legato of the death rattle.

The most important thing you can do is convince yourself that you’re over it – whatever it may be.  Obviously, that depends on what the meaning of the word “is” is.  But focus on the manifest content of your dream and not that which is obfuscated.  Happiness lies in the perception of your current circumstances.  This is precisely why I ride the bus.

You’d think that after dipping my toe into today’s climate I’d say it was to be “green”, but personally, I think I look like shit in green.  Earth tones do my hazel eyes no justice.  Stop. Go. Stop. Go. Stop. Go.  Rhythmic gymnasts wish they had this kind of precision.  I wish rhythmic gymnasts had less smelly bums inside of them, but I digress.  The bus is a Petri dish on which to base the current state of society.

Where else can you find corporate bankers, students, day laborers, bums, nuns, musicians, pederasts, and the like, all in such an intimate space?  Well, besides church. Given the choice, I’d rather wake up early and ride the bus for two hours every Sunday.  Amazingly, all these people follow the bus rules: move to the back, give up your seat to the elderly, don’t talk loudly, etc.  When the buses go to shit, so shall society.

But while society is alive and kicking, so shall I be.  Butterflies-in-stomach, heart racing alive.

My eyes fall all over you.  You move and its fire.  This room turns to flames.

Oh, to be a fly on the wall in a house of cards.

Laajasta biisivalikoimasta tänään soi 'The Ocean':

Tämän biisin jäädessä soimaan katoan pariksi päiväksi haistelemaan ja maistelemaan tuota keskisen suomen kasvatille ja vuoristoja rakastavalle matkaajalle vieraaksi jäänyttä elementtiä. Pienellä kallioisella saarella, internetin ulottumattomissa, tulen siis etsiskelemään olemattomia kasveja kuvattavaksi tyrskyjä syleilevien kallioiden keskeltä. Ehkäpä kuvaan tällä kertaa graniittia ;)

See ya!

]]> http://sarahlynae.wordpress.com/?p=53 Mon, 18 Aug 2008 20:40:54 +0000 sarahlynae http://sarahlynae.de.wordpress.com/2008/08/19/day-5-weather-control/ Who started the rain that fell today?
Or told the clouds to form this way?
Or sets the sun upon its throne
And guides the moon back to its home?

Who flips the light that causes stars?
Or makes wind sing with all its bars?
Who causes mountains to gently wake
Or commands the earth to violently shake?

Who placed His hand within the sea
To cause these waves to lap at me?
Or divides the air with His strong hand
Giving lightning a place to land?

The raging ocean spurts and foams;
The howling wind forever roams;
The gentle spring light from above
Will whisper softly of His love.

The stars will shine with all their might,
But hardly break the darkest night;
The sun with boil and burst with fire,
But causes humans only to perspire.

Who started the rain that fell today?
The answer? All earth can surely say.
(Romans 1:19-23)

 Somewhere out there. A truth lay hidden, her feathers ruffling in the wind. She of all, was also lost, entrapped in a world unknown to any. Across the endless blue, upon a coast so far away, was love.

 We both were lost, adrift at sea. Never would we find each other. We were merely one boat, one witness to death. One boat sailing an ever moving sea.

Until that fateful morning, that fruitful day, when I of many set search upon the world. To find what was missing, what was forever taken from our hearts. I of many set search for the truth, the ugly and pitiful truth. Out at sea, above the blue abyss, was like a hell without heat, with merely the coldness of our own demonic sins.

Frantically we searched. Forever we failed. Slowly the setting sun fell to the ground. It's brightness ever waning and love forever forgotten. Like all, we shivered with grief, the wind blew harder. It's careless breath masked our love, and the truth that we so dearly wished to embrace.

Hope was thought to be gone, like all treasures. Like all gifts, it was lost at sea...

The Ocean - Precambrian 2CD (Metal Blade 2007)

"The Ocean Collective (usually referred to as "The Ocean") is an experimental rock band from Berlin, Germany. Their work combines elements of technical metal with classical music and electronic soundscapes. The band often describes its sound as "ambient soundtrack doomrock"." source : wikipedia

Réalisé par un collectif allemand ambitieux, Précambrian est un double album construit autour du thème de la création du monde, plus précisément des trois éons précédant l'éon Phanérozoïque. Évidemment vendu comme ça on n'a pas vraiment envie d'écouter, mais c'est au final l'un des disque les plus unanimement appréciés dans le monde du métal en 2007, très intéressant et stimulant pour l'amateur de doom-sludge-stoner-drone que je suis en train de devenir.
Fluxion, leur avant-avant-dernier album, est tout aussi recommandable.

C'est ce qu'on appelle du sludge metal, "a form of heavy metal music that fuses doom metal and hardcore punk, typically aggressive and abrasive, most often featuring shouted vocals, heavily distorted instruments and sharply contrasting tempos".
Un extrait du LP Aeolian en live à Berlin : Queen of the Food Chain (youtube)

www.myspace.com/theoceancollective

Of course OC is a party sport, especially for college kids, and is chock full of high rises and condos.  I prefer Rehoboth Beach because it has more of a community feel.  The town is still a livable town.  Whereas OC is much more commercialized.  Also I should note that Rehoboth Beach is the east coast beach destination for gays and lesbians.   While it doesn't matter to me if the beach is shared with homosexuals, I want to paint an accurate portrait of the place for readers.

Cheers,

Tom

At first I thought I ought to write something heightened and romantic to celebrate our six-month anniversary. It would be a vulnerable comeuppance, full of all the six-month sentiments I have developed for you in our time together. I thought I should go to a place fitting for this sort of letter, taking my quill and pen to the ocean, for instance, to write to you from the very edge of the continent. Or I could bring my pencil and notebook to the gardens at the Getty and tell you about art and flowers. Yet the more that I thought about the atmosphere for this letter, the more I realized that the most appropriate setting is right here, in the bedroom of my little, messy apartment, full of the every-day noises that are slowly becoming home.

Right now there are six of us living in our three-bedroom apartment, which is quite a change for the girl who used to live alone with her cat, slowly degrading into a life of crochet and watching library movies on her laptop computer. Four of us are legally bound to our place, and the other two are here for the summer, completing internships before they return to their respective institutions of higher learning, both in the South, where it rains. I would not have mentioned the South, except that it rains. I miss rain. You would not understand, Los Angeles. It has been so long since I have smelled the earth.

Right now the closest thing to rain is the sound of E's shower in the next room. There is also the faint movie mumblings from the living room where M and J are flattened against the couch, watching the TV, and there is the periodic clank of dish and spoon as G washes the dishes. I will never get used to the noise of our little house, nor your noise, Los Angeles. Over my bedroom balcony waft in the noises of the second largest city in the U.S. (I mean you, you fat, fat city) -- the distant freeway, the chatting pedestrians on their evening walk, the passing sirens, and the nightly helicopter hover, which I like to pretend is the news instead of the LAPD spotlighting its latest criminal's rise and fall.

For a while I would miss home at these moments, and I still do sometimes. I miss the kids playing in the lot next to my dad's auto repair shop, above which my family lives. I miss the dank, musty basement smell of the shop, and having my dad make his living right underneath our home, just a staircase of 12 steps and three rooms away. I miss the quiet evenings and the settling of summer -- the stars in the corn fields and the country drivers, my church and my cousins, and the people who have known me longer than I've known me, the people who know me because they knew my grandparents. I miss the hospitality, the neighborliness of it all, in the place where all the Thrift Store Owners know me by name.

Do you remember, Los Angeles, a few months back when I left you for the first time in three months? And do you remember how hard it was for me to come back to you, how I cried all five hours back on the plane, and I wondered why I was coming back -- why I had to leave my parents and my niece and my nephew and all the comfort of being known? D was busy that week, and I felt so very alone, surrounded by thirteen-million people, coming home each night to this little apartment with a few roommates that I only just met. I think this is what they call culture shock, a thing I only mildly experienced when I moved from Minnesota to Arkansas for college. But after that initial breakdown, things got better. They really did. I think I came to the decision that I was here, with you, and here I would stay. Perhaps I needed that last goodbye, that last purge of what it was like to be a child.

At D's encouragement, I have recently begun reading The Lord of the Rings trilogy. It has been so very long since I have read a book. I think I've been afraid of falling back into my girlhood, where I would hide in my room, reading stacks of books, instead of making friends. It is a lot harder to be an obsessive reader when you have a job. I'm only about 100 pages into the first book, and oh, how I've cried. I know, I know, it's a little early to start crying, but Tolkien has just introduced one of the major themes of the book: Home. Frodo is speaking with Gandalf, and he is first realizing that there is a large and courageous journey he must take, and that no one else is going to do it for him.

He has never left his home, the Shire. He tells Gandalf, "I feel that as long as the Shire lies behind, safe and comfortable, I shall find wandering more bearable: I shall know that somewhere there is a firm foothold, even if my feet cannot stand there again."

I read this after I got off the phone with my mother, after I told her I will not be able to make it home for the Clipperton Family Reunion in August. High gas prices have made it nearly impossible. This is the first Clipperton Family Reunion I have missed in my life, ever since I was 6. And I will be 26 next month. Mark my words, Los Angeles: If you do something to prevent me from going home for Christmas Eve with my family, going to Grandma's church for the same Christmas Eve service I've attended since I was born, I will up and quit my job and move home.

You cannot ruin 26 years of Christmas, Los Angeles. I do not care how big you are.

All my love,

Ann

click it if you like it big.

We need to go on a break.. I don't always have to see you when you're in town. Enjoy your friends too. I want you here because I know this is where you want to be.. where you are happiest... let's work on being friends and we can explore that other part later... when we're both not as fucked up.

I sighed, a bit dejected. But I agreed. It really wasn't time yet. Who knows if it ever would be. Regardless of any feelings there may or may not be. And then he said...

...so, when are you coming back?

I honestly didn't know then. I still don't know right now. But we both know that I'll be back as soon as I can. The city.. the sea calls to me. That's home. And that's where he is. Triple hitter dose of I want to get there. My heart screams to get there.

Until then, I'm working on making the memory a reality again for more than those brief moments of levity. To take back those stolen moments, with pictures taken... words said.. kisses shared.. of laughter... longing looks across the room... and inside jokes.

We'll have to find a chinese restaurant to frequent when you move back...

Of working in an industry I loved... of sandy beaches and debauchery. Of living.. really living life in a city I never really got to experience until I left it.

I'll be home soon my love. I'll be home soon.

Oh sea of dreams. Oh magic city. Oh.. oh.. oh... man that makes me oh with such passion and attraction in phenomenal Ecstasy.

Yes, I'm fucked. I did something I vowed I wouldn't do. I fell in love. I committed the worst crime possible. Damnit damnit damnit.

Quickly gathering his stuff together!

Making a run for it!

  Almost there!

This guy has often been caught in my snaps of these rocks, which I see from my window, sometimes in conditions which kept most people well away, but the other day even he scared himself! As you can see, after braving the waves for a while he suddenly decided that dinner wasn't worth the risk, and made a quick dash for it!