Above: Coming down from todays rhytmic Strategic Alert Run. Fresh, sunny, clear, Northern-wind-bitten, dune, Swash, Face, Wrack-beach training. 

 Above: Melting ice painted footprint on the first floor

Ice after training gives this great relief. It helps prevent injuries; a natural inflammation inhibitor. While the ice melts over time, the flipside of the coin is that it gives wet feet and leaves footprints all over the place. See also: Saturday_morning_midsummer_dirt_dive

More information about inflammation here http://www.marksdailyapple.com/what-is-inflammation/#axzz2vyNZCsV5

Above: Sliding in after todays (Saturday's) 30K SAR-training. Clear, sunny, wind from North-East.

Today the 'A' in SAR stands for 'Antertainment'. Like a Hollywood block-buster, that deals with a problem (zombies, monsters, terrorists from within the own troops, corruption, greed, fear) an injury is best treated as just that, Entertainment, a break from routine, FUN to deal with -- to be experienced as a major challenge. Training continues, while we take care of our injury (treating the effect, healing the injury and attacking the overload causing it, through improvement of the technique, eliminating the cause). My experience of today followed these steps:

Prior to training, warming-up fase:

1) Lokalize the exact problem-spot, characterize the injury;

2) Analyze the cause: find the fault in technique leading to overload;

Then, during the training, from the moment training starts -- simultaneously, as the flipsides of one coin:

3) Improve technique;

4) Heal the injury.

Post training (PT) attach ice to the affected muscles and/or tendons, and refuel (water, carbohydrates, protein and fat, NO sugar and s**t like that)-- as soon as possible.

Above:Todays PT ice-pack, as part of the final stage of training, is like the training itself: it surrounds the injury and smokes it out.Battling injury sometimes bears resemblance to the strategy of Siege Warfare: starvation until submission. it does, however, require a vulnerable mind-state to begin with -- otherwise wake-up signals and the direction to be given will get lost in confusion and mind-crap. It, thus, requires focus and awareness to come up with a strategy and to make it succeed. As said before: win the game in the mind first.

Above:Footprint after deserted dune-/beach-scape SAR 3. Fresh day, some wind from the South/West, with silver sun reflections -- 30K. Meeting Peer -- master-carpenter and builder of the new, still located at the geographical center of the Dune/Beach-training-route, 'Beach Inn'place -- driving his Land Rover on the beach, is always fun -- we regularly run into each other. Our talk lasted about 20 minutes while several flocks of returning birds from the South flew over and two bulldozers shovelled excess sand back into sea, to make way for the return of the summer-beach-houses.

Todays training dedicated to [Land Rover owner] Bastiaan Houtkooper and his web-hosting company 'Zebra hosting'. In a (telecom-)world dominated by moguls and morons, Bastiaan founded, owns and operates a state of the art web-hosting company -- his costumer support and brilliance in trouble shooting is beyond comparison, rooted in deep empathy and years of experience as high-end cinematographer for commercials mainly.

Zebra hosting website: http://zebrahosting.nl/

Bastiaan Houtkooper's personal showreel website: http://bastiaanhoutkooper.com/

Above: FP 30K SAR BL training. Identical to running… " [ a ] movie flows trough real time, like a river carrying you toward your destination. If you ask a question or think about something other than the movie, you're out of the river and up on the bank -- out of the flow. This is seldom good."  -- Howard Suber ' The Power of Film ' (page 168).

Structure: How reality affects story:

 "When I examined what the structure [ of the film 'Au Revoir les Enfants' ] should be, I thought it was important, little by little, to see the war breaking in. The central story is the arrival of this new boy and how he and Julien become friends; there's hostility at first and then step by step we see the birth of a friendship between two children who are equally curious about certain things, probably a little smarter than the rest of the students, and how they find their affinities." Louis Malle in 'Malle on Malle', edited by Philip French (Chapter 5, 'Coming Home', page 170 - 172)

Story: attempted quest for unity by the character(s):

" [...] "I don't want to bother you much with what happened to me personally," he began, showing in this remark the weakness of many tellers of tales who seem so often unaware of what their audience would best like to hear; "yet to understand the effect of it on me you ought to know how I got out there, what I saw, how I went up that river to the place where I first met the poor chap. It was the farthest point of navigation and the culminating point of my experience. It seemed somehow to throw a kind of light on everything about me -- and into my thoughts. It was sombre enough, too -- and pitiful -- not extraordinary in any way -- not very clear either. No, not very clear. And it seemed to throw a kind of light." Joseph Conrad 'Heart of Darkness', first published in 1899 (page 11)

As adapted in the 'Apocalypse Now' screenplay (John Milius and Francis Ford Coppola, narration written by Michael Herr):

               EXT. MILITARY COMPOUND - DAY

               A darkly painted Huey lands in a guarded military compound 
               somewhere in Nah Trang.  The two enlisted men jump out of 
               the helicopter, leading Willard, who seems in much better 
               shape.  As he gets out he sees a platoon of new men drilling 
               in the hot hazy sun.  They are clean and pale.

                                     MEN (Chanting)
                         I wanna go to Vietnam.
                         I wanna kill a Vietcong-

                                     WILLARD (V.O.)
                         I was going to the worst place in 
                         the world, and I didn't even know 
                         it yet.  Weeks away and hundreds 
                         of miles up river that snaked 
                         through the war like a circuit 
                         cable...plugged straight into Kurtz.

               He follows the escort across the fields as the platoon 
               drills.

                                     WILLARD (V.O.)
                         It was no accident that I got to 
                         be the caretaker of Colonel Walter 
                         E. Kurtz's memory, any more that 
                         being back in Saigon was an 
                         accident.  There was no way to 
                         tell his story without telling my 
                         own.  And if his story is really a 
                         confession, then so is mine.

               They approach a civilian-type luxury trailer.  It is 
               surrounded by concertina wire, and its windows have grenade 
               protection, but it still seems out of place in this austere 
               military base.

               CLOSER ON WILLARD

               He stands before the door for a moment, as the M.P.s 
               guarding the trailer check his papers.

Above: SAR-10 footprint

When we have dealt with the acuteness of the injury (cause and treatment of the injury and attention to technique) we arrive at a cross-point where we move on to start building up pressure and focus on further progression and loyal running-fun.

SAR training on the threshold of returning to best level:

1) Evolve Alert and creatively and efficient and technically sound

2) Put intensity up to good level (duration, resistance and distance)

3) Keep pressure on intensity (with Srategic use of resources)

4) Rise frequency (shorten rest-period, see 1)

5) Put intensity up (increase duration, resistance and distance, see 1)

6) Balance intensity and frequency into best level (and SAR on!)

More here: 

http://bartvanbroekhoven.com/en-US/running/51-introducing-sar-strategic-alert-running

http://bartvanbroekhoven.com/en-US/running/75-sar-9-injury-control-interim-management

http://bartvanbroekhoven.com/en-US/running/68-footprint-post-sar-2

http://bartvanbroekhoven.com/en-US/running/15-viewer-discretion-advised-frostbite-7th-update-02-05

http://navyseals.com/2341/sealfit-a-big-problem/

http://www.dezestigvantexel.nl/index.php/trainen-voor-de-zestig

http://web.fitdeck.com/blog/10-strategies-to-cope-with-injury

http://barefootrunning.com/?p=2052

Above: FP 30K Sunday-morning SAR BL training. Training-thought: ignorance lies at the foundation of bad-running-behaviour-and-injury, " [ the ] ignorance of believing in a truly existent self." (quoted from 'The Buddhist Way of Healing' by Dolkar Khangkar in 'Buddha's Medicine', first published in 2008 on YouTube, link below). It leads to the worshipping of (stiff- and greedy-man-made) lifeless monuments ( "'Course I'm respectable. I'm old. Politicians, ugly buildings, and whores all get respectable if they last long enough..." ) -- which -- like the (quoted above) Noah Cross character in Roman Polanski's/Robert Towne's 'Chinatown' (1974) -- point the way to resistance-to-change. We need training to be healthy, in balance. We need to stay flexible -- to be able to keep on training (health and flexibility are two sides of the same coin); stiffness is a symptom of ignorance and at the roots of injury!

"Understanding is such a liquid path. Like walking on water. And words are drops.Their meaning changing like seasons. And yet in the circle they make while dancing i hear the truth. Self is not one of them." Rutger Hauer, commenting on his YouTube Channel (published 3 years ago, link below)

 "Dancing is especially known, by its circulation of the blood, to keep off the disease of old age." Ezra Pound and Ernest Fenollosa in 'The Classic Noh Theater of Japan', first published in the U.S.A. in 1917 (page 29)

"The only thing harder than getting a new idea into the [...] mind is to get an old one out." B.H. Liddell Hart as quoted in 'Changing Minds in the Army: why it is so difficult and what to do about it',first published in October 2013 (page 1)

"Individuals pay particular attention to information that supports their beliefs and either ignore or discount the value of evidence that contradicts their beliefs. [ When encountering information contrary to their own beliefs or opinions ] they face a condition known as cognitive dissonance, or the state of tension arising from holding two cognition's that are psychologically inconsistent. Researsers using images from MRI scans found that when subjects were confronted with dissonant information, they often used the reasoning areas of their brain not to analyse new data or information, but rather to develop a narrative that preserves their initial frames of reference. Once the narrative is created, the emotional areas of the brain happily light up. […] Individuals, when faced with dissonant information, use their reasoning skills to "twirl the cognitive kaleidoscope until they get the conclusions they want." The resulting release of neutrotransmitters gives strong reinforcement for justification of their existing  perspective. Conformation bias emerges as information is interpreted in a way to confirm old preconceptions and dismiss new contradictory evidence." Stephen J. Gerras, Leonard Wong in 'Changing Minds in the Army: why it is so difficult and what to do about it' (page 19, 'Conformation Bias')

"Oddly enough, the relationship between having smarts and having the propensity to change one's mind is counterintuitive. In his highly regarded book, The Righteous Mind, Jonathan Haidt asserts that intelligence quotient (IQ) is the biggest predictor of how well people argue, but only in terms of how well they support their own position. […] Smart people tend to excel at buttressing their own cases but often fail at exploring the issue fully to appreciate other perspectives and perhaps change their minds." Stephen J. Gerras, Leonard Wong in 'Changing Minds in the Army: why it is so difficult and what to do about it' (page 10, 'Nature and Nurture')

" [ Alex Simon: ] Brian De Palma made an interesting comment once about his group that hung out in the Malibu Colony during the ‘70s: him, Spielberg, Lucas, Coppola, Margot Kidder, that once the era of the blockbuster started after the mid-70s, and people began making astronomical amounts of money, as opposed to just making a comfortable living, that’s when the fractures started, in terms of their relationships with each other. [ 'Chinatown' screenwriter Robert Towne: ] That’s quite possibly true. I think the promise of making money split a lot of us up. [ AS ] Who’ve you remained friendly with over the years? [ RT ] You mean those of us who are still alive? (laughs) Well, I don’t see him much, but I’m friendly with Jack, very friendly with Warren (Beatty). [ AS ] Do you talk to Polanski at all? [ RT ] Oh yeah, we’re still very friendly. I forgot to mention him. I’ve managed to see him once a year or every couple years when I go to Europe." From: 'Robert Towne: The Hollywood Interview'by Alex Simon, first published Februari 2, 2014

'Robert Towne: The Hollywood Interview': http://thehollywoodinterview.blogspot.nl/2009/10/robert-towne-hollywood-interview.html

YouTube-Film-Factory-Shorts: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GVbqSkFgg1o

See also: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Avidyā_(Buddhism)

US Army War College/Strategic Studies Institute publication: http://www.strategicstudiesinstitute.army.mil/pubs/display.cfm?pubID=1179

Above: 30K SAR footprint

"Get in...get it over with...then get out" 

'The Ballad of Cable Hogue'(1970) -- directed by Sam Peckinpah 

As suggested in the previous post, best level is achieved when intensity and frequency are balanced.

Balanced frequency and intensity lead to progression and growth and fun.

See also:  

http://bartvanbroekhoven.com/en-US/running/77-sar-10-threshold

Above: Todays 30K Best-Level SAR training footprint comes from the other side of the "[...] luminous drawbridge trough which the story has to reach the audience and the audience has to acces the story..."  -- holding the 35- and 16mm Kodak Vision 3 filmstock, while standing at editing-desk: "Food should be something to chew on, right?"¹

"It is our natural birthright to be fit and healthy. Unfortunately, science and medicine have largely missed this point. Researchers look boldly to the future, to new medicines, genetic screening, and surgical procedures, yet never ask the question, "Why do we need theses advances?" and "Is there a simpler, better way to health and wellness?" If they were to ask these questions, they would realise that the key to the puzzle is to start at the beginning. Our health researchers, who currently lack a framework from which to assess the staggering volume of information they generate every day, flounder with basic questions: "What should we eat?" "How much and what types of exercise should we do?" "How can we live a healthy life?" Although these may seem like sound questions for health researchers to ask, the answers constantly change in response to politics, lobbying and the media. As a result, their recommendations are not based on science, but rather lobbying and political manoeuvring. [F] ew people make a real attempt to fix this mess. But who can really blame them. After all, it's hard as hell to make money off healthy people… unless you sell bicycles, running shoes or teach dance classes." 

Robb Wolf in 'The Paleo Solution: The Original Human Diet' on page 34 'Stop! Savannah Time!' (first published in 2010)

On- and off-site references:

http://bartvanbroekhoven.com/en-US/running/95-sar-6-along-the-way

http://bartvanbroekhoven.com/en-US/running/69-footprint-sar-3

http://bartvanbroekhoven.com/en-US/running/81-sar-14-14-epilogue-secured

http://bartvanbroekhoven.com/en-US/running/101-sar-11-along-the-way

http://bartvanbroekhoven.com/en-US/running/100-sar-10-along-the-way

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parkour

https://maps.google.nl/maps?client=safari&q=kennemerduinen&oe=UTF-8&ie=UTF-8&ei=V3-HU9fdIKqa1AXRioGgBA&ved=0CAgQ_AUoAQ

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flexibility(anatomy)

http://normanhollyn.wordpress.com/2008/04/13/walter-murch-talks-about-standing/

_____________

¹ Peter de Bie, in an interview we conducted in 2007 for our upcoming film 'Here Comes Big Trouble' (photographed on the filmfootage above, shot in 2007 in IJmuiden, The Netherlands)

Above: FP 30K SAR BL training. Start it, do it, consolidate it.

“A cinematographer is a visual psychiatrist, moving an audience…making them think the way you want them to think, painting pictures in the dark.” Gordon Willis on Jon Fauer's 'Film and Digital Times'

"I’m Gordon Willis. I’m a Director of Photography." Gordon Willis, ASC

"The largest grip/electric truck the world has ever seen backed down Mr. Willis’ precariously steep driveway. One slip of the brakes, and his very large, beautiful  house would be toothpicks. Gordon was watching, looking amused. “What’s with all this stuff?” he asked. Ken Perham,  gaffer, explained that he was under strict orders from Tibor not to scratch, blemish or scrape anything,hence lighting with big HMI PARs from outside, with no heavy metallic feet  touching the inside of the house. “Too complicated,” said Gordon. “Just bring in one Kinoflo.” So, one 4-bank 4-foot daylight Kinoflo it was. After it was all over, Gordon asked the electric crew to turn the light off. “Aha,” he said, “that’s better, isn’t it—no light at all.”" Jon Fauer in 'Remembering Gordon Willis, ASC'

" […] media violence is causing its citizens to accept violence as a viable alternative. Governments around the globe, try as they might, have not been able to [ protect ] citizens [ from media violence ]. And they will never truly be able to control violent crime unless they stop infecting their children. One common response to any concern about media violence is, "We have adequate controls. They are called the 'off switch'. If you don't like it, just turn it off." Unfortunately, this is a tragically inadequate response to the problem. In today's society the family structure is breaking down and even in intact families there is enormous economic and social pressure for mothers to work. Single mothers, broken homes, latchkey kids, and parental neglect are increasingly the norm. The worst thing about the "off switch" solution is that it is so blatantly, profoundly racist in its effect, if not its intent, […] Bronson James, a black Texas-based radio commentator whose show I was on, observed that this is identical to the genocidal process in which for centuries the white man used alcohol in a systematic policy to destroy the culture of the American Indian. For a variety of cultural and genetic reasons, the Indians were predisposed toward alcoholism, and we dumped it into them as a crucial part of the process that ultimately destroyed their civilization. The pumping of media violence […] today is equally genocidal. Media violence-enabling […] is the moral equivalent of shouting, "FIRE!" in a crowded theatre. As a result, murder is the number-one cause of death among black male teens, and 25 percent of all black males in their twenties are in jail, on probation, or on parole. If this isn't genocide, then it is close.

What makes the "off switch" solution so racist is that, if these murders and incarceration rates were happening to the sons of white upper- and middle-class America, you can bet that we would have seen some drastic action by now. Viewed in this light, I think that most individuals would agree that the "just turn it off' solution probably rates right up there with "let them eat cake" and "I was just following orders" as all-time offensive statements. In developmental psychology there is a general understanding that an individual must master the twin areas of sexuality and aggression (Freud's Eros and Thanatos) in order to have truly achieved adulthood. In the same way, the maturation of the human race necessitates our collective mastery of these two areas. In recent years we have made significant progress in the field of sexology, […] After nuclear holocaust, the next major threat to our existence is the violent decay of our civilisation due to violence-enabling in the [...] media." Dave Grossman in 'On Killing: The Psychological Cost of Learning to Kill in War and Society', chapter: 'Introduction to the paperback edition', Page 23 'Just Turn It Off, or Let Them Eat Cake' (first published in 1995)

Gordon Willis interview here: http://www.fdtimes.com/2014/05/20/remembering-gordon-willis-asc/

Above: Footprint after today's 30K SAR13

"Discipline is the spark that ignites the fire of a habit." - Mark Divine

Read more: http://www.sealfit.com/blog/marks-blog-excerpt-way-seal/

Graffity wallpainting by Melle: https://www.facebook.com/MelleGraffiti

Above: FP SAR 30K BL. Running is very boring, is it not? [Silence]. Why do you go? To train; training creates unity, unity leads to acceptance of change. To keep doing it, training needs a code, a way. I would call it: the barefoot way -- [so, why?]  to train the barefoot way.

Above: Footprint after completion 32K SAR14

"We are human. When our ego is not engaged, we turn passive."  From: 'Forging an American Grand Strategy: Securing a Path Through a Complex Future. Selected Presentations from a Symposium at the National Defense University', chapter 7, 'GRAND STRATEGY AND HUMAN THINKING' by Evan M. H. Faber (link to full publication below)

"Abenteuer im Fleische und Geist, die deine Einfachheit steigerten, ließen dich im Geist überleben, was du im Fleische wohl kaum überleben sollst. Augenblicke kamen, wo dir aus Tod und Körperunzucht ahnungsvoll und regierungsweise ein Traum von Liebe er- wuchs. Wird auch aus diesem Weltfest des Todes, auch aus der schlimmen Fieberbrunst, die rings den regnerischen Abendhim- mel entzündet, einmal die Liebe steigen?" (Adventures of the flesh and in the spirit, while enhancing thy simplicity, granted thee to know in the spirit what in the flesh thou scarcely couldst have done. Moments there were, when out of death, and the rebellion of the flesh, there came to thee, as thou tookest stock of thyself, a dream of love. Out of this universal feast of death, out of this extremity of fever, kindling the rain-washed evening sky to a fiery glow, may it be that Love one day shall mount?)

From the epilogue of Thomas Mann's 'Der Zauberberg' ('The Magic Mountain'),published in 1924.

As posted along the way: SAR training is Kick-Ass-training, taking-over from previous 'management' (that led to overload and injury -- usually fear driven management) and re-establish control ("Get in, get it over with and get out!"). 

Change requires collaboration on all levels. Trough the creation of unity the runner leads/inspires/guides/informs/balances the transformation at hand. It requires growth from egotistical overload-behaviour towards- and transformation into- an Alert-balanced runner, who emphatically and sensibly controls his behaviour.

SAR training (bottom-line) is trail-training, focussed upon improvement of technique and effeciency. NO MATTER WHERE, NO MATTER WHAT: create optimum character-exposure and accelerated progression (run, built, jump, plunge, climb, fall, swim et cetera). Evolve alert and creatively and efficient and technically sound. Trough strategic use of available resources, including time, terrain, weather, technical-support (and injury treatment, food and rest).

And the ego better has some (controlled = trained!) kind of job in the accomplishment or it will (being bored) start to run things amuck, frustrate healthy control -- trough destructive, passive, negative, (self-)injurious and greedy behaviour. If the ego is a flip-side of the coin, money should keep on flowing, generating powerful results. Unmoving money stinks, but that is another story!

Our bottom-line-training gives us the tools to kick fat egos lazy ass. If it takes an injury to get us aware and start doing the work that needs to be done passionately --we embrace that, doing so. 

Welcome to SAR training!

What is optimum (character-)exposure?

Let's look at the technique of motion-picture storytelling: it refers to the full use of the recording-system's latitude (film) or dynamic range (digital) to visualise the story at hand, from beginning to the end.

Roger Deakins, ASC, BSC: "For film I will take a meter reading to judge my exposure. With digital capture I will do the same but have the added advantage of checking that exposure on a calibrated monitor. I would surely do the same if I were working [with the Blackmagic camera]. I take a meter reading of a face, when I am shooting a medium or close shot of an actor, and I judge my exposure from the way I want that face exposed within the balance of the shot.

In a situation where sunlight is hitting a surface and bouncing light into a character's face, I will expose for the face to be where I want it to be in the final image. If the sunlight is in shot and it 'blows out' I am not worried by that. There are plenty of situations where I have lit a shot with a direct artificial source and where the highlights of that light source are completely white. I have lit like that when shooting film and continue to do so with digital capture. The idea of 'clipping' does, I think, come from a time when some cameras could not deal with extreme contrast ratios. The latest digital cameras can deal with extreme contrast in a far more natural (film like) way. That is why I was shooting film until quite recently."

See more: http://www.rogerdeakins.com/forum2/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2379

"Black is black and I am only concerned with exposing the 'bits' I want to be seen. The rest can go to black or to white when it feels right for them to go that way. For most of my time I struggle to reduce the light in a shadow, a task that becomes even more difficult [with a sensitive camera]"

See more: http://www.rogerdeakins.com/forum2/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=2938&sid=2381d5e2ee4c2edacb6c4e623c09e2ef

See also: http://278efy3ybwg25033p1al4ib176.wpengine.netdna-cdn.com/fma/files/2011/07/Hirschfeldonmeters.pdf

SSI publication: http://www.strategicstudiesinstitute.army.mil/pubs/display.cfm?pubID=1177

Great Black Magic camera test: http://bastiaanhoutkooper.com/blog 

Black Magic experience in Amsterdam: https://bartvanbroekhoven.com/en-US/running/166-25fps-black-magic-shoot-amsterdam

Related SAR post: http://bartvanbroekhoven.com/en-US/running/75-sar-9-injury-control-interim-management

Above: Footprint after Saturday's 32K SAR

"The effect of the successful adventure [...] is the unlocking and release again of the flow of life into the body of the world." - Joseph Campbell, in THWATF (page 40, 'The World Navel')

Above: Footprint after todays 32K SAR dune-beach training

"History does not repeat itself, but it does rhyme." Mark Twain, as quoted today by George Friedman in 'Borderlands: The New Strategic Landscape'

"Our feet flattened, our backs straightened, our buttocks strengthened their muscular arrangements to permit us to run. And as more and more we became specialised earthlings, so more and more it became anatomically impossible for us to return to the arboreal life. Such trends take place in an evolving world. A minor alteration of behaviour and body, a change of equivocal value, may command that further genetic alteration beer of increased specific value until a course is determined, and horses are set upon their way, men upon theirs. Now evolution becomes irreversible.

As important as our anatomical adjustments to the terrestrial life were the psychological changes which such life commanded. Shyness is a luxury permitted the mountain gorilla in his high, remote, cloud-softened bamboo thickets. The modesty once demanded of the tiny, primitive mammal in his monster-dominated times retained a value in the lives of jungle primates with profound green tangles of vine and leaf in which they might vanish. But for the ape of the field in those long-gone Miocene times, hiding places might be far from hand. Not unlike the baboon today, the aggressive spirit became a survival asset. Time and again we had no alternative but to stand and fight. And the social necessity, since the time of the true lemur a primate compulsion, doubled and redoubled its survival value."

Robert Ardrey, T'he Territorial Imperative', page 255 (published in 1966)

"The drive to maintain and defend a territory can be regarded not as a cause but only as a condition of human war. One can recognise its workings in the fury of a Finland attacked by a monstrous large enemy; in the madness of Hungarians attempting to reassert their land's integrity; or in the lonely, irrational heroism of the Battle of Britain, when never did so many owe so much to so few.
These were defensive social actions taken in strict accordance with territorial law and deriving from profound instinct the unbelievable magnitude of their energy. But in every case territory was the condition of war, not its cause.

Robert Ardrey, from: 'African Genesis' (1961) as quoted on page 245 of TTI

"For Poland, Slovakia, Hungary, Romania, Serbia and Azerbaijan […] there is not yet an emergency. But one could materialize with surprising speed. The Russians are not intrinsically powerful, but they are more powerful than any of these countries alone, or even together. Given American strategy, the United States would be prepared to begin providing aid, but substantial aid requires substantial action on the part of the buffer countries.

The first and second world wars were about the status of Germany in Europe. That was what the Cold War was about as well, although framed in a different way. We are once again discussing the status of Germany. Today it has no western threat. The eastern threat is weak, far away and potentially more of an ally than a threat. The force that drove Germany in two world wars is not there now. Logically, it has little reason to take risks."

George Friedman, 'Borderlands: The New Strategic Landscape'

Above: Footprint after today's completion of 32K-lunch-time-SAR 4. Todays weather was the experience of theCreation of the Heavens and the Earth within roughly 2 hours30. Start under fully-clouded-sky with rain. First step on the beach at sun-break: clear blue sky, fresh wind from South/West,deep-tide.Next: partly cloudy with silver sun reflections, then sky opened again to end the training and the day inFriday sunshine.

There is an excellent study to be found on the SSI Website (Strategic Studies Institute). From the booklet 'Forging an American Grand Strategy: Securing a Path Through a Complex Future Selected Presentations From a Symposium at the National Defense University' (pag.80): "... Our greatest problems are not political; they are biological. Specifically [...] that science and anthropology converge to prove that the human brain has not evolved to keep up with human progress. Complexity has outpaced the brain’s ability to process it. This causes it to hit [...] a cognitive threshold, defined as the difference between the slow speed at which the human brain can evolve and the rapid rate at which complexity grows".

There is more interesting stuff to be found in the book; such as the case around a questionnaire that asked people in many different disciplines across the sciences, engineering, arts, futurists and other fields too numerous to mention about their projections of the future.From page 103: "...the possibility of a technological singularity by 2060 is noted, when robots will be smarter than human beings..."

Read te paper here: http://www.strategicstudiesinstitute.army.mil/pubs/display.cfm?pubID=1177

Above: Footprint after Today's 32K SAR dune/beach-traning. Not all trainings-days are created equal; some are more handsome than others… The intertwining wind, sun, high-tide provide great touch to circumstances and training-experience.

"The most difficult task for today's director of photography is to "think" in black and white again. He must become mentally color-blind, imagining what each scene will look like on the screen when it loses the colors it has in reality. Because black and white provides less visual information, I [...] use more lights than usual. To "draw" characters and objects, I almost always [ need ] a backlight to avoid confusing the foreground figures with the figures in the background. On the other hand, my work [ is ] made easier because I […] blend lights with different color temperatures without any problem; for instance, I [...] mix daylight with electric light without needing corrective gels.

As I have said before, I feel it is almost impossible for a black-and-white film to be in bad taste visually. The variegated, vulgar colors of contemporary life vanish, and are replaced by an absolute elegance -- like evening dress."

Nestor Almendros: 'A Man With A Camera', page 272 (first published in Switserland in 1980)

Above: After todays SAR-training. Fresh, clear-view, sunny, deep-tide, gentle wind.

In KNMI (Royal Netherlands Meteorological Institute) language: 
 
ZCZC


SA251655 EHAM AMSTERDAM/SCHIPHOL NLD -3 m.


METAR EHAM 251655Z 04013KT CAVOK 09/00 Q1011 NOSIG=
 
 See more: knmi.nl

Above: FP 32K SAR Best-Level-Training on dunetrails and in beachscape. Intertwining wind, rain and high-tide provide excellent dynamic circumstances.

" […]… suddenly it rained, there was a storm. We decided to use it. We grabbed the Steadycam and we just did it. Then the rain stopped. I think we could do it in two takes. That forced us afterwards to get rain on the street because there was only a dissolve and it was supposed to be three minutes later, but that worked in our favour. This is a very old trick. If you wet all the streets you have twice as much light. It doubles all the reflections. It has been used in old gangster movies of the thirties and forties. in our case it just happened and we where forced to do it."

Nestor Almendros about his work on the Three-part-anthology' New York Stories ', episode -- ' Life Lessons ', directed by Martin Scorsese (1989), in the (unpublished) report ' Framing; A Symposium on Cinematography, 1990 ', edited by Andreas Fischer-Hansen, Igor Koršic and Tina Sørensen (page 81)

Above: Footprint after 32K SAR-training. Clear-, refreshing-, sunny-, with playful-tide-, friendly wind and general-summer-atmosphere on beach and in dunes.

Above: Footprint after 32K SAR BL training.

"The roaring of lions, the howling of wolves, the raging of the stormy sea, and the destructive sword, are portions of eternity too great for the eye of man."

William Blake as quoted by Joseph Campbell 'The hero with a thousand faces'('The world navel', page 44)

"Photography is a luminous drawbridge trough which the story has to reach the audience and the audience has to acces the story, the DP and the director have to built it together with the same objectives. Cinema is synthesis: the rapid and ever increasing popularity of the cinema is due to the possibility of concentrating huge amounts of information in its images, and the immediacy of the process with which the eye transmits them to the brain.

The set of rules that technique [...] allows us are indispensable to express ourselves better, more thoroughly and rapidly with the available means. It would be almost impossible to do […] without a great technical training. Everything is to be measured in terms of balanced relationships to serve the story that is committed to us. The enjoyment of the cinematographic show will be the more complete, the less the technique disturbs the story.

To know one's limits is indispensable even to a director of photography -- it is an invaluable gift because the curiosity it generates stimulates one to invent and experiment."

Guiseppe Rotunno in 'Guiseppe Rotunno', published in 1999 by Camerimage, Poland (page 30, 31, 69)