Amazon is building three spheres in downtown Seattle.

By Liz Stinson (May 6, 2017)

RON GAGLIARDO JUST might have the most unusual job at Amazon. He spends most of his time tending to the thousands of plants destined for the Spheres, the 90-foot bulbous glass dome in the middle of Amazon’s sprawling campus in downtown Seattle.

Last week, Gagliardo watched as workers pulled an Australian tree fern off of an Amazon Prime truck, carried it through a particularly wide door in one of the spheres, and plopped it into the soil. Australian tree ferns are hardy, primordial plants that can reach 50 feet tall and “a favorite among greenhouse staff,” says Gagliardo. This particular specimen spent three years growing in Amazon’s conservatory at the edge of town. It is the first of the 40,000¹or so plants destined for the domes, which open next year.

Maybe it’s all the screen time or mounting evidence that employees excel when surrounded by nature, but tech companies suddenly love plants. Airbnb installed a living wall in the lobby of its San Francisco headquarters. Apple wants a small forest of 8,000 trees at its new campus in Cupertino. Adobe incorporated biophilic design into its offices in San Jose, California. Yet they all pale compared to Amazon and its three conjoined spheres, which are both meeting rooms and conservatories that will house more than 400 species of rare (and non-rare) plants.

When Amazon began building its new campus five years ago, it insisted on incorporating nature in the design. Employees can open windows windows in Doppler, the 38-story tower downtown. Plazas teeming with trees dot a campus of 30 buildings. Dogs romp in a park designed just for them. And then there are those spheres, designed to bring the outdoors indoors within the confines of an office building. “The question was, how do we do this in a significant way,” says Dale Alberda, a principal architect at NBBJ, the firm behind Amazon’s new campus. “Just bringing plants into the office wasn’t going to cut it.”

The designers explored hundreds of shapes before choosing spheres. “It’s the most efficient way of enclosing volume,” Alberda says. The domes, made of glass panels on a steel frame, create enclosed biospheres that combine work and nature. That created a challenge, though, because plants and humans like different things. Plants thrive in warm, muggy environments. Humans do not. Amazon may love nature, but it still needs productive employees, so it compromised: The domes remain a pleasant 72 degrees with 60 percent humidity during the day, while at night they’re a more plant-friendly 55 degrees with 85 percent humidity.

“It’s people first,” says Gagliardo. “Then we figured out what plants we could put around people.” Gagliardo started with plants found in similar climates. Mid-elevation regions like the cloud forests of Ecuador, Costa Rica, and parts of China fit the bill. A crew will carefully crane a 60-foot tree from California into the domes next month. Once gardeners and horticulturalists plant everything, the dome and its 60-foot living wall will house vegetation from more than 50 countries.

Some of those plants, like moss, ferns and calatheas, have no problem with low light. Others, like the African aloe tree, require full sun. The architects shunned the triangular panels you may know from Buckminster Fuller’s famed geodesic dome in favor of the five-sided panels of a pentagonal hexecontahedron. That resulted in larger panels, which allows more sunlight into the sphere. Ninety LED fixtures with light sensors provide additional lighting when necessary.

All those plants need a lot of water, a task Gagliardo prefers to do by hand. “The collection is so diverse that putting everything on automatic sprinklers would be really difficult,” he says. Each day his team of horticulturists will wander the domes amid executives taking walking meeting and office drones doing whatever Amazon’s office drones do, tending to plants and rooting around in the dirt. “It’s a dream job,” Gagliardo says. “I never would have thought I’d be here at Amazon doing horticulture.”

¹UPDATE 11:55 AM ET 05/6/2017: This story has been updated to accurately reflect the number of plants in Amazon’s Spheres.

(Recommended by Calvin Harris, H.W., M.)

These are powerful times and this Full Moon in Scorpio adds intensity and a sense of urgency. All around the world things seem to be teetering and unstable. Even some of our former allies appear to be pulling away. When the Moon is in Scorpio,emotions and passions run deep and bring strong opinions to the surface. Scorpio is a water sign with a powerful and fixed sense of purpose and acute focus. Scorpio needs quiet and alone time to gain perspective and not lash out with that Scorpio stinger. This would be a good time to stay calm and out of the fray, no mater what your astrological sign, until Mercury is out of its storm phase on the 13th and beyond its conjunction to Uranus in Aries on the 20th. Very little good can come into a situation and stick as communications are mitigated by big changes and unexpected and aggressive shifts from Uranus in Aries.

With the Sun in Taurus, however, we feel an inner drive for harmony and balance. This energy is the polar opposite of Scorpio and lends more discipline to the urge to lose control. Remember that you are ultimate responsible for your responses to any situation. Taurus energy also pushes us to be more creative and to be in nature. These are high frequency energies which nurture and restore us. Find time for art and gardening and love in all its forms. Remember too that Taurus is a fixed sigh as is Scorpio. This means that you prefer at this time to have your will be the deciding factor in what you do. You will not like being bossed around or pushed until you decide you are ready to move.

Mercury, the lower mind, and Uranus, the higher mind, while in a conjunction, can spur futuristic ideas and flashes of insight, while working in the positive. But caution is required as it can produce sudden bursts of anger and impatience. These to mind generators are also in a trine to Saturn in Sagittarius. Saturn represents the structure, duty and work side of things. What work do you need to do or finish up to claim your reward or desire. Use the good idea aspects of Mercury and Uranus to inspire your commitment to do your personal work. On a global level these energies are helping inspire ideas that will help humanity moving forward to create structures that are sustainable and healthy for our earth and in the best interest of us all. Send your love and blessings to those on the front lines of this critically important work.

In addition to the above mentioned aspects, there is a lovely trine with this Scorpio Full Moon and Neptune and Chiron in Pisces.This can bring a sweet healing and compassionate element to your spiritual pursuits and your relationships. This Full Moon window of the next couple of days is a good time for you to spend quiet time in meditation or conversation with your God and your guides to deepen and broaden your spiritual practice and connection. This is the time you can get more clear about what your soul wants you to do next. Follow that instruction.

Written by Wendy Cicchetti

Ken Russell Film with William Hurt

Note from Robert McEwen: In this William Hurt movie he explores what the Prosperos School of Ontology call “fear aggression” memories.

In this 1980 sci-fi horror film, William Hurt plays Eddie Jessup, a scientist obsessed with discovering mankind’s true role in the universe. To this end, he submits himself to a series of mind-expanding experiments. By enclosing himself in a sensory-deprivation chamber and taking hallucinogenic drugs, Jessup hopes to explore different levels of human consciousness, but instead is devolved into an apelike monster. Director Ken Russell helmed Altered States from a script by Paddy Chayefsky, who adapted his own novel of the same name. Unhappy with the finished product, Chayefsky had his name replaced.

In this exciting new e edition, Temple Grandin returns to her groundbreaking work, Animals in Translation, to address the last ten years of developments in behavioral research, animal welfare, and farming regulations. Originally published in 2005, Animals in Translation received unanimous critical praise and was a bestseller in both hardcover and paperback, and Grandin’s Q&A updates this classic text with the most current scientific research.

Grandin’s training as an animal scientist and her experience as a person with autism give her a perspective unlike any other expert in the field. Grandin and coauthor Catherine Johnson present their powerful theory that people with autism may be able to empathically understand animal behavior in a way that eludes neurotypical people—putting them in the ideal position to translate “animal talk.” Exploring animal fear, pain, aggression, love, friendship, communication, learning, and even genius, Grandin is a faithful guide into their world.

Grandin, standing at the intersection of autism and animal science, offers unparalleled observations and extraordinary ideas, revealing that animals are smarter and more complex than anyone could have imagined.

(From Amazon.com.  Book recommendation from Hanz Bolen, H.W., M.)

Link to pdf:  http://www.cabrillo.edu/~ewagner/WOK%20Eng%202/Animals%20in%20Translation.pdf

To quote Heather Williams, H.W., M., “Translation is the creative process of re-engineering the outdated software of your mind.” Translation is a 5-step process using syllogistic reasoning to transform apparent man and the universe back into its essential whole, complete and perfect nature.  Through the process of Translation, reality is uncovered and thus revealed. Through word tracking, getting to the essence of the words we use to express our current view of reality, we are uncovering the underlying timeless reality of the Universe.

Sense testimony:

Communication is not always clear and effective.

Conclusions:

1. Truth is one individual communicating with Itself; always clear, always in effect.
2. Truth Consciousness Beingness is all one abundant common self evident communion.
3. To come.
4. To come.

[The Sunday Night Translation Group meets at 7pm Pacific time on Skype.  Translators are welcome to join or start your own group.]

Film américain de Michael Curtiz (1942) VF. L’un des plus grands chefs-d’oeuvre de l’histoire du cinéma.

Pourtant… Les producteurs changèrent deux fois de metteur en scène avant de lancer le film. Le rôle principal masculin fut proposé à George Raft, qui refusa et le regretta toute sa vie, puis à… Ronald Reagan, avant d’être offert à Humphrey Bogart, encore peu connu. Pour le premier rôle féminin, on pensa d’abord à Michèle Morgan, que “Quai des brumes” avait rendue célèbre, puis on le donna à Ingrid Bergman. Le scénario était écrit au fur et à mesure du tournage, de sorte qu’Ingrid Bergman ignora pendant presque tout le film si elle partirait finalement avec Paul Henreid (Victor Laszlo) ou resterait avec Humphrey Bogart (Rick), ce qui rend son personnage si ambigu.

Avec Conrad Veidt (le commandant allemand) et Claude Rains (le commissaire français).

La scène de La Marseillaise rappelle trop une scène analogue de “La Grande Illusion” (Jean Renoir, 1937) pour qu’il s’agisse d’une vraie coincidence : http://www.dailymotion.com/RioBravo/v…

(Recommended by Bruce King)