"TOWER FOR THE WATER-POWERED SPHERE AND GLOBE".

Song's greatest project was the 40-foot-tall Su Song's water-powered astronomical clocktower constructed in Kaifeng, the wooden pilot model completed in 1088, the bronze components cast by 1090, while the wholly finished work was completed by 1094 during the reign of Emperor Zhezong of Song.[40][41] The emperor had previously commissioned Han Gonglian, Acting Secretary of the Ministry of Personnel, to head the project, but the leadership position was instead handed down to Su Song. The emperor ordered in 1086 for Su to reconstruct the hun yi, or "armillary clock", for a new clock-tower in the capital city. Su worked with the aid of Han Gong-lian, who applied his extensive knowledge of mathematics to the construction of the clock-tower.[42] A small-scale wooden model was first crafted by Su Song, testing its intricate parts before applying it to an actual full-scale clock tower.[43] In the end, the clock-tower had many impressive features, such as the water-powered, rotating armillary sphere crowning the top-level and weighing some 10 to 20 tons,[43] a bronze celestial globe located in the middle that was 4.5 feet in diameter,[43] mechanically-timed and rotating manikins dressed in miniature Chinese clothes that would exit miniature opening doors to announce the time of day by presenting designated reading plaques, ringing bells and gongs, or beating drums,[44] a sophisticated use of oblique gears and an escapement mechanism,[45] as well as an exterior facade of a fanciful Chinese pagoda. Upon its completion, the tower was called the Shui Yun Yi Xiang Tai, or "Tower for the Water-Powered Sphere and Globe".

                                                               

THE OTHERS

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_UOwklALcuI


We believe that good storytelling strengthens social movements, so every year we want to select stories from Resist to turn into films. During 2008 we asked people to upload their stories of resistance and spoke with many writers and political thinkers.
Using what we've learnt, we've chosen to make our first film with the actor Gael Garcia Bernal about the wall that is being built between Mexico and America.The Wall that is being built along the entire USA border with Mexico. It is one of the greatest symbols of the divisions between rich and poor, and inspires a major investigation into the systemic causes of poverty and migration

ONLY HIMSELFT, AGAIN AND AGAIN, TRAPPED

Orpheus Alone

by Mark Strand

It was an adventure much could be made of: a walk
On the shores of the darkest known river,

Among the hooded, shoving crowds, by steaming rocks

And rows of ruined huts half buried in the muck;

Then to the great court with its marble yard

Whose emptiness gave him the creeps, and to sit there

In the sunken silence of the place and speak

Of what he had lost, what he still possessed of his loss,

And, then, pulling out all the stops, describing her eyes,

Her forehead where the golden light of evening spread,

The curve of her neck, the slope of her shoulders, everything

Down to her thighs and calves, letting the words come,

As if lifted from sleep, to drift upstream,

Against the water's will, where all the condemned

And pointless labor, stunned by his voice's cadence,

Would come to a halt, and even the crazed, disheveled

Furies, for the first time, would weep, and the soot-filled
Air would clear just enough for her, the lost bride,
To step through the image of herself and be seen in the light.
As everyone knows, this was the first great poem,
Which was followed by days of sitting around
In the houses of friends, with his head back, his eyes
Closed, trying to will her return, but finding
Only himself, again and again, trapped
In the chill of his loss, and, finally,
Without a word, taking off to wander the hills
Outside of town, where he stayed until he had shaken
The image of love and put in its place the world
As he wished it would be, urging its shape and measure
Into speech of such newness that the world was swayed,
And trees suddenly appeared in the bare place
Where he spoke and lifted their limbs and swept
The tender grass with the gowns of their shade,
And stones, weightless for once, came and set themselves there,
And small animals lay in the miraculous fields of grain
And aisles of corn, and slept. The voice of light
Had come forth from the body of fire, and each thing
Rose from its depths and shone as it never had.
And that was the second great poem,
Which no one recalls anymore. The third and greatest
Came into the world as the world, out of the unsayable,
Invisible source of all longing to be; it came
As things come that will perish, to be seen or heard
Awhile, like the coating of frost or the movement
Of wind, and then no more; it came in the middle of sleep
Like a door to the infinite, and, circled by flame,
Came again at the moment of waking, and, sometimes,
Remote and small, it came as a vision with trees
By a weaving stream, brushing the bank
With their violet shade, with somebody’s limbs
Scattered among the matted, mildewed leaves nearby,
With his severed head rolling under the waves,
Breaking the shifting columns of light into a swirl
Of slivers and flecks; it came in a language
Untouched by pity, in lines, lavish and dark,
Where death is reborn and sent into the world as a gift,
So the future, with no voice of its own, nor hope
Of ever becoming more than it will be, might mourn.

“Orpheus Alone,” from The Continuous Life: Poems by Mark Strand, © 1990 by Mark Strand. Used by permission oAlfred A. Knopf, a division of Random House, Inc.

The Women of the Avant-Garde / Avant-Garde All the Time : The Poetry Foundation

http://feeds.poetryfoundation.org/~r/AvantGardeAllTheTime/~5/TuSBCBLaen0/AGAT-WomenOfAvant-part1-10-19-09.mp3