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New topic Photos

Started by scarface, February 01, 2015, 05:10 PM

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scarface

#140
I finally left Paris this morning. If you have a similar project, ie leaving a big town, you can certainly talk about your own projects.
we have many users living in capitals and their opinion is valuable (Im thinking about usman in Islamabad, humbert in san antonio, iih in jakarta, vadudev in bangalore, harkaz in Athens)

I will hold a conference with photos later

http://imgur.com/a/OsiLGUi

http://imgur.com/a/JQpDU8B

scarface

#141
Tonight, I'm holding a new conference with many photos. Note that I'll add some comments during the week end.


Some photos taken in 2016-2017.

In the 17th arrondissement, place du docteur Felix Lobligeois, where I was living in 2013 and 2014. Until recently, I was living near Metro Guy moquet, still in the 17th arrondissement.


near the Martin Luther King park


In la Défense...






in 2011, I worked in the grey tower on the right.




Some photos taken a few days ago.

In the 11th arrondissement. I lived in the vicinity between 2011 and 2013...





With the rout of facebook and his loss of 15 billion in one day, it seems that Mark Zuckerberg couldn't afford a night at the low budget hotel Formule 1 of porte de Saint Ouen.


On the St Germain boulevard, 6th arrondissement












On the rue de l'ancienne comédie in the 6th arrondissement






The Café Procope, in rue de l'Ancienne Comédie, 6th arrondissement, is called the oldest restaurant of Paris in continuous operation. It was opened in 1686 by the Sicilian chef Francesco Procopio dei Coltelli, with a slyly subversive name adopted from the historian Procopius, whose Secret History, the Anekdota, long known of, had been discovered in the Vatican Library and published for the first time ever in 1623: it told the scandals of Emperor Justinian, his consort and his court.



Throughout the 18th century, the brasserie Procope was the meeting place of the intellectual establishment, and of the nouvellistes of the scandal-gossip trade, whose remarks at Procope were repeated in the police reports. Not all the Encyclopédistes drank forty cups of coffee a day like Voltaire, who mixed his with chocolate, but they all met at Procope, as did Benjamin Franklin, John Paul Jones and Thomas Jefferson.







A view of Paris, from Saint Cloud.On the foreground, you can see Boulogne Billancourt.


A view of Saint Etienne.


In my opinion, without oil, it will be difficult to live in the largest urban areas in the world. And maybe it won't be possible to live in big towns altogether. undoubtely, Saint Etienne is less glamorous than Paris. But I chose Saint Etienne for many reasons: the relative cheapness of the real Estate (last year I visited a flat in Courbevoie with an oustanding view on la Défense, and near the line 1...250 000â,¬ for 30 square meters. I made an offer, but an investor bought 2 flats in the same building, so the owner chose the "investor" - That's not important because for that price you can get 200 square meters in Saint Etienne). On the photo you can also see some fields around the town. It means that food will be easily available in case of oil crisis. It's not the case in Paris. Some recent studies showed that the Ile de France region could only provide 2 million inhabitants with food (It means that most of the food of the Parisians come from other regions). It's true in many countries who are heavily dependent on imports too, like Egypt, UK, the states of the Persian Gulf...
As far as climate change is concerned, I'm aware that the situation of Saint Etienne is not ideal (winters of cold and summers tend to be quite hot). However the heatwaves are less intense than in Lyon for a simple reason. Indeed, there are only 2 towns in Europe with a population above 100 thousand at an altitude of more than 500 meters: Madrid and...St Etienne.
I noticed that many users on the forum live in big towns, notably in Asia. That's the case for Vasudev (bangalore), usman (islamabad), iih (jakarta)...who live in urban areas with more than 10 million inhabitants (or nearly). And I think that the others, like humbert, Maher, Ahmad...live in big towns too. I advise them to be aware of the benefits and the drawbacks of living in such towns and if you don't need it for your job, maybe you can go elsewhere.



aa1234779

It's interesting to know how the town you moved to looks like..

Please share some photos you take of the beautiful sites you see.
Prophet Muhammad (Peace be upon him) said “Surah (chapter of) Hud and its sisters turned my hair gray"

Hud (11)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uiqxo4UDVfU

scarface

#143
Quote from: aa1234779 on August 13, 2018, 02:59 PM
It's interesting to know how the town you moved to looks like..

Please share some photos you take of the beautiful sites you see.

Well, Finally I've been to Saint Etienne for the first time a few days ago. I already knew Lyon and Grenoble but I had never been there.
I've not been disappointed, that's what I was expecting...For the photos, well, to put it bluntly, I'm wondering if it won't disfigure the forum.
Actually, the problem is not the buildings or the surroundings, but the people in the street. Saint Etienne is a bit poor, that's why the real estate is cheap. I've been to a bar and there were drunkards. You wouldn't see that in Paris.

I already found a 70 square meters flat, in a park (there is even a Jacuzzi shower). It's very quiet. There is a parking space, of course.
In this neoghborhood, it seems there was mostly old people. It's not the population of Bagnolet in Seint St Denis, for sure.
It's in Saint Etienne, but not in the center (I didn't like what I visited downtown). For 500â,¬ per month!
There is a little drawback though: there is no optic fiber connection available over there(at least not yet), while it can be available in the city center. I'll try to keep uploading interesting contents for the users of the forum though.
For such a flat, I would have paid at least 2000â,¬ per month in Paris. I don't know if you remember the photo of momo and koko with the eiffel tower in the background, in a discussion with Daniil, in 2013 or 2014.
I had an outstanding view on the Eiffel tower (on the photo it was smaller than in reality). It was rue Legendre, in the 17th. I was paying 800â,¬ per month (for 22 m²).

scarface

#144
I've just checked and I was right about the price...for 2000â,¬ you have sth around 60 m² in the 17th in Paris, usually in the ground floor (in ground floor, forget the view on the Eiffel tower, and in winter the rooms are very dark). In the upper floors, it's more expensive.
For example this one, for 2100â,¬...60m² in ground floor. And rue lemercier is not particularly chic. If Maher or aa1234779 are looking for a lease in the 8th, 9th or 6th...it would be even more expensive.
https://www.leboncoin.fr/locations/1456101989.htm/
With a sunny view of a wooded park, same size, it's 2300 €
https://www.leboncoin.fr/locations/1454979204.htm/

Actually, 3 years ago I could have bought sth in Paris. But I was certain that prices would drop. At least I didn't think they would go up And in 3 years they rose by at least 10%. In Saint Etienne, prices were already low 3 years ago. And they kept falling. To give you an indication of the prices, Lyon is twice less expensive, and St Etienne is roughly 10 times less expensive than Paris. Anyway, and I can be wrong, I think there is now a real estate bubble in certain towns (NY, Toronto, San Francisco, London, Geneva, Paris...). I could buy sth in Saint Etienne, but I'm going to verify if I can stay in this town. What's more the problem with Saint Etienne is not about buying sth, but about selling the real estate. It can take months.

aa1234779

If you save 1500 euros on rent where you are, it's definitely great and you can do something amazing with the money you save up, at least buy Gold or some other safe/low-risk investment. That is, of course, if you make the same salary or more than you made in Paris.

May Allah's generosity shower you.

p.s. The photos are going to look great. Don't worry just post them, I miss seeing small towns, aged buildings, parks, cemeteries.. you name it.. It will not shame you in any way.  ;D
Prophet Muhammad (Peace be upon him) said “Surah (chapter of) Hud and its sisters turned my hair gray"

Hud (11)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uiqxo4UDVfU

scarface

#146
Tonight, some new photos are available on the forum.


Those ones were taken in 2016 in the 1st arrondissement.

Rue St Anne



Place Louvois
























Here you will find some photos of the Institute of the Arab world, situated in the 5th arrondissement.


On top of the building




Some funerary steles with faces, from the Dubroff family collection. Yemen, 1st century BC.



























Rue Duret, 16th arrondissement


scarface

#147
Maybe some of you read the message presenting the skeleton of the Tyrannosaurus: http://www.nomaher.com/forum/index.php?topic=2283.msg29242#msg29242
In this case you will be interested in this conference about the "feathered revolution": How dinosaurs became birds ?

After agonizing over it for 20 years, Darwin finally published his theory of evolution, On The Origin Of Species, in 1859. But it was Darwin's "bulldog", Thomas Henry Huxley, who braced to defend the theory. To do so, Huxley desperately needed fossil evidence of a "missing link" to show how animals had transitioned from one species to another - evidence that Darwin himself admitted was sadly lacking.

Just two years later in Bavaria, the Jurassic-aged limestone deposits yielded a near-perfect fossil of Archaeopteryx. It had blade-like serrated teeth and many other features across the skeleton and skull that showed it was a carnivorous dinosaur. But the crow-sized specimen was covered in the impressions of bird-like feathers. For Huxley, this was the transitional form he was seeking: a dinosaur on its way to becoming a bird. The Germans referred to it as Urvogel, the first bird (its scientific name is derived from the Greek words, ancient feathers).
It was a coup for Huxley. It was also the beginning of the feather revolution.

Archaeopteryx's halo of feathery impressions may have been a 19th century game changer, but feathers were only just starting to overturn the evolutionary paradigm of the day.
Fast forward 137 years, and new discoveries of fossils with quills are continuing to rewrite the textbooks, not just on bird origins but across the entire dinosaur family tree.
The attempt by paleontologists to retrace the path of bird evolution makes for a rollicking tale full of sudden twists and turns. For starters, Archaeopteryx did not settle the matter of bird origins. In the early years of the 20th century, Huxley's proposition that birds descended from carnivorous dinosaurs, specifically the suborder known as theropods, fell out of favour.
One problem with the theory was that the skeletons of theropods were missing a crucial part of bird anatomy - the wishbone (furcula). It acts like a spring to assist flight and is made from the fusion of two collarbones. So for the first half of the 20th century, the search was on for a non-dinosaur ancestor to the birds.


A velociraptor

The next twist in the tale of bird evolution was added by American paleontologist John Ostrom. He resurrected Huxley's theory by showing numerous similarities between the skeletons of Deinonychus, a theropod from the Montana Badlands, and Archaeopteryx. Ostrom was able to show that Deinonychus and other theropods did actually have a furcula; it had previously been mistaken for an extra pair of ventral ribs. Even more exciting was the fact that this fusion of the two collarbones had clearly occurred in the theropods well in advance of the evolution of flight capability.

But it was feathers that provided the final incontrovertible evidence that birds evolved from dinosaurs. In the early 1990's researchers began recovering extraordinary fossils of a wide range of creatures from the late Jurassic and early Cretaceous periods (150 million to 100 million years ago).
They came from Liaoning province in northern China, and, unlike most fossils, their soft tissues were still preserved.
In 1996 the Liaoning deposits surrendered their first feathered dinosaur, the 1.5 meter long theropod dinosaur, Sinosauropteryx. While it had no wings, it was covered in a feathery fuzz.
Since then, a spectacular array of small, feathered dinosaurs have been recovered from Liaoning and a few other sites around the world, which plot every conceivable evolutionary step from small fuzz-covered, meat-eating theropods through to fully feathered and winged birds.
This transition is not so much a linear path as a dense maze, with many paths leading to dead ends.





For 130 years, we thought we understood the broad architecture of the dinosaur family tree. British paleontologist Harry Seeley pointed out in 1887 that dinosaurs could be divided into two groups based on whether their hips were lizard-like (where the pubis points forward) or bird-like (where the pubis points back). Confusingly, it was members of the lizard-hipped rather than bird-hipped variety that gave rise to birds.

The lizard-hipped saurischians were in turn divided between the long-necked plant-eating sauropods, such as Brachiosaurus, and the meat-eating theropods.
The bird-hipped ornithischians included a huge variety of plant-eating dinosaurs that could be divided into three smaller groups: the armoured dinosaurs including Stegosaurus, the bird-footed ornithopods such as Iguanodon and the horned dinosaurs like Triceratops.

Bottom line: Brachiosaurus and Tyrannosaurus were relatively close cousins. Iguanodon, Stegosaurus and Triceratops were more distantly related.
Palaeontologists were quite happy with this binary arrangement until 2017, when another British palaeontologist, Matthew Baron from Cambridge University, completely redrew the family tree.

Baron looked at 74 species of exceedingly rare early dinosaurs from the first half of the Age of Dinosaurs. By analysing a very large set of characters from all over the skeletons, he was able to tease out how the early branches divided right down at the base of the tree.
His first finding pushed back the origin of dinosaurs by around five million years to about 247 million years ago. The second completely rewrote dinosaurian prehistory. Instead of a neat, early split between the lizard-hipped and bird-hipped branches, Baron found an even earlier split that placed the lizard-hipped theropods onto the same branch as the bird-hipped group.

So now Tyrannosaurus is nestled in with Triceratops.

This new and, at present, controversial arrangement of dinosaur relationships lay hidden in a soup of confusing lumps and bumps on bones; there was no single feature that you could point to and say "dinosaur X belongs on this branch or that".
Except, perhaps, feathers.
Feathers and their hairy antecedents have been found on many theropod dinosaurs and also on several different bird-hipped dinosaurs. But they have never been found among the sauropods. So the new group of dinosaurs consisting of the theropods and the bird-hipped dinosaurs (which has been named the ornithoscelidans) may be defined by the presence of feathers or feather-like structures covering some portion of the animal.
So feathers may be telling us a lot more about the structure of the dinosaur's family tree than simply "here are the birds". They may actually be the defining feature of one of the most fundamental splits in the dinosaur tree that occurred very early in their evolution.

The revolution is still underway and many of the preliminary conclusions presented here are far from settled and confirmed. There is still a lot of work to be done, more species to find and classify.


Incontrovertible evidence: the Sinosauropteryx fossil, discovered in Liaoning province in 1996, revealed a dinosaur covered in downy fuzz.

scarface

#148
a few days ago aa1234779 was asking for new photos. And I know that he is looking at them with great attention. Maybe some other users are looking at them too.


Here we have two photos taken place des ursules in St Etienne.

On the foreground, those young people seem to be outsiders, drinking beers and smoking. We can't see it here, but half of the shops are closed, even in the center of the town. Saint Etienne is a town that was devastated by the closure of coal mines. And it's still the case. Since 1970, it lost 25% of its population. Now the population has stabilized at about 170 000.
I was looking for some Chinese spring rolls, but I've been unable to find this kind of shop in the center of the town. Where I was living in the 17th arrondissement I was spoilt for choices when it came to dining.
But unlike Paris which is cloudy most of the time, the weather was fine and we have a sunny day.


Some young asian girls. I must say there are more Muslim people in the streets, and Maher would be surprised because there are many kebab shops. Unfortunately, I'm not a fan of "junk food". On the wall, a weird graffiti.




Note that I found a code to use the internet connection of the neighbor.

scarface

Here is another photo, taken in a park in St etienne. The environment is restful. We don't hear the sounds of the birds but there are a few pigeons. The Parisian frenzy doesn't seem to exist here, but the noises of the cars are spoiling this subtle harmony.
https://i.imgur.com/7bnI7KA.jpg

I hope aa1234779 and usman are enjoying the photos.