Reports have been coming out in the mainstream news today that Bill Gates, the often wrongly assumed owner of 126 m Lurssen yacht OCTOPUS, is set to become the world’s first trillionaire within the next 25 years (the yacht is owned by his partner Paul Allen). Source
Bill Gates Yacht
Octopus is often referred to as the Bill Gates yacht. However Bill Gates is not the owner of the yacht Octopus.
OK, now I had to look into this more deeply. First of all, I know the significance of the OCTOPUS to the Elite, the OCCULT, the Illuminati , NASA and the Military, as well as the power it wields in the media. This yacht was not named Octopus by accident. Second, You are who your friends are, birds of a feather flock together. The relationship between Bill Gates, Jeffrey Epstein and Paul G. Allen implies that they are all interested in the same/similar/or related things.
If you look behind the surface you will begin to uncover the truth. If you research the lifestyles of these people you may begin to understand how/why they think that they are special and that people like you and me are just dispensable no counts. I have lived around and worked for many wealthy people in my life, who did not even come close to the level of a Bill Gates or Jeffrey Epstein, and without exception, they believe that they are above normal people. That they somehow deserve the life they live and those less fortunate are just living what they deserve. This attitude is the reason they can feel no remorse if their actions offend, injure or even kill us.
Putting this Post together, I just followed as I was lead. This article is in no way an exhaustive study of any person, event or item presented here. Those things are all so deep and multifaceted it would be impossible to present them in their entirety. I just want to bring enough things to light to make you think about how you are being lied to, hoodwinked, mislead, used, abused and destroyed by these people. s
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Exclusive: interior photos of Octopus! Inside the yacht.
Octopus Yacht Photo Gallery– Contains so many more photos and information on many more of Paul G. Allen’s holdings and properties. Just visit the page and keep scrolling down. There is so much I cannot post here.
SELKNAM USH/AFP/Getty Images Paul Allen also owns one of the world’s largest yachts. The 414-foot “Octopus” has two helipads, a pool, a basketball court, at least seven smaller boats, hatches from which to launch jet skis, and not one but two …
Getty ImagesSubmarines! While this one pictured isn’t one of Paul Allen’s, his Octopus yacht houses a 10-man yellow submarine(Allen’s a music fan) and a smaller, remote-control submersible for exploring the ocean floor.seattlepi.com illustrationThe Octopus could get you to either of the private islands in Fiji owned by James Jannard, the founder of the Oakley sunglasses company who now lives in the San Juan. Jannard’s islands, Kaibu and Vatu Vara (meaning:“to take heed of, beware,”) , can be seen on Google Maps. Chris Jackson/Getty Images for Goodwood Paul Allen seems to have plenty of disposable cash. In addition to funding part of CenturyLink Field, owning the Seattle Seahawks and Portland Trail Blazers, leading redevelopment of South Lake Union and bringing a streetcar to the neighborhood, Allen has a sizable collection of World War II-era airplanes. His Flying Heritage Collection (which you can visit — it’s at Paine Field in Everett) features an impressive display of WWII fighters, including a P-51 Mustang like the one pictured above. And, of course, it’s got a SpaceShipOne.
Octopus is a member of Automated Mutual Assistance Vessel Rescue (AMVER). Allen died in 2018 at the age of 65 from complications of non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma. In September 2019 the yacht was listed for sale, asking EUR 295 million.
If you have not seen the series on the Mari-time Ritual, you may not be familiar with the Octopus as it relates here. Check out the following link.
As you watch this next video, keep your eyes open and watching for the following symbols. These snips were taken right form this video. If you reviewed the Mari-Time Post you should be familiar with the image.
She is kept in a specially designed dry dock in the transom of the Owners Super Yacht. Equipped with water jet drive and MTU engines, this Dive Tender will deliver a blistering 40 knots of speed in deep or shallow water. This tender was one of three Vikal’s built for the Super Yacht.Aug 21, 2017
HomeLifestyle Partner of yacht OCTOPUS owner to become the world’s first Trillionaire
Reports have been coming out in the mainstream news today that Bill Gates, the often wrongly assumed owner of 126m Lurssen yacht OCTOPUS, is set to become the world’s first trillionaire within the next 25 years (the yacht is owned by his partner Paul Allen). This mind-blowing news comes from a report recently released by Oxfam, which cites ‘exponential growth of his existing wealth’.
Gates, the 61-year-old Microsoft co-owner, will be 86 by the time he surpasses the Trillion-net worth mark. Oxfam noted that there were 793 billionaires in the world in 2009. Total net worth of these crazy-rich individuals added up to an eye-watering $2.4 trillion. In 2016, the richest 793 individuals achieved net worths of $5 trillion – that’s annual growth of 11%.
“If these returns continue, it is quite possible that we could see the world’s first trillionaire within 25 years,” the report goes on to state.
To sum up, the report concludes that if the current trend continues, Bill Gates – who is top of Forbes’ billionaires ranking – may become the only occupant of the world’s trillionaire list. Madness.
For the record, Bill and Melinda Gates are some of the world’s most charitable individuals. A massive portion of their wealth is put back into philanthropy, meaning it’s unlikely that it will be Mr G who commissions that first highly-anticipated 200m+ yacht. Best leave that to the billionaires, eh
In a competitive era of ever-larger mega yachts that can rival cruise ships in size, it’s not just about mass, it’s also about quality and creative ship design, which can border on downright genius. Maybe the smartest mega yacht of them all design-wise is the late Paul Allen’s Octopus, an iconic vessel in the yachting universe.
Built by Lurrsen and delivered in 2003, at that time she was the world’s largest yacht, but she quickly lost that crown as part of an ongoing competition among the world’s yachting billionaires to have the biggest boat. Today she doesn’t even make the top ten list in terms of length (414 feet), but she certainly does in terms of displacement, which sits just shy of 10,000 tons—eclipsing the displacement of a Ticonderoga class guided-missile cruiser.
Her large floodable well-deck in her stern holds a yellow submarine named Pagoo. Pagoo can embark ten people on up to eight-hour-long underwater adventures. The sub can dive as deep as 1,000 feet.ISE Ltd. built the submarine, which has huge glass portholes for its occupants to gawk out of, for Allen. An unmanned remotely operated vehicle that can dive far deeper—thousands of feet below the surface of the ocean—is also stored and deployed from here along with the ship’s primary tender, Man Of War.The ship’s hull opens up in multiple places to deploy beach clubs and water toys, along with Octopus’s myriad tenders—seven are embarked including Man Of War. Octopus also has missionized spaces that can be reconfigured for different exploration voyages. Its well-deck can also accommodate specialized gear depending on what the goal of the mission is and what partners are embarked aboard, or on nearby on support and scientific vessels, to accomplish it. And it has accomplished some very high-profile missions indeed.
Seattle’s Jonathan Quinn Barnett designed its interior, which carries over its exterior’s blending of classical nautical design cues with a modern flare. The vessel is equipped with a large pool that can be converted into a dancefloor via a retractable glass system and is replete with a top-of-the-line lighting system.
She also features an absolutely top-notch recording studio—another one of Allen’s great loves was music. Many hitmakers have recorded in the sea-borne studio, such as Mickjagger, Usher, Johnny Cash, Bono, and god knows who else, but rest assured the secret list is extremely impressive. Of her eight decks, one is entirely dedicated to the owner alone. It features a private entertaining lounge with a full bar, its own jacuzzi, and dining area, as well as its own dedicated elevator, one of two on the entire ship.
A library, bar, movie theater, gym, observation lounge, and a complete dive center—with its own hyperbaric chamber—are all available to guests. The rear landing pad doubles as a basketball court, which makes sense as Allen owned the Portland Trailblazers. The list of accouterments goes on and on. It even has a glass-bottom viewing area!
The ship runs off a diesel-electric arrangement with eight diesel generators powering two electric motors that provide six megawatts of juice to drive her screws. It’s supposed to be remarkably efficient, giving the ship the ability to cruise a whopping 12,500 miles at 12.5 knots on a single tank of gas and hit a top speed of 19 knots.
You need extremely deep pockets not just to buy Octopus, but to keep it running. The rule of thumb is that a yacht costs roughly ten percent of its total cost to operate annually. So in this case, at least according to the sale price, we are talking $32.5M every year. But that number is probably even higher considering all the unique toys embarked aboard her and the specialized crew needed to maintain and operate them.
It is a ship that is uniquely capable of grand discoveries and adventure, as well as throwing unrivaled parties on the French Riviera. In fact, Octopus is still arguably the best design that can actually wear both hats, with other exploration-capable yachts looking far less glamorous and luxurious.
While other yachts may be far larger, like Azzam for instance, or a bit more flashy and entertainment-focused, like Serene, Octopus still seems to have its tentacles wrapped tightly aroundthe “best overall yacht in the world” mantle, and that my friends comes at a very high price to whoever will call her theirs next.
It’s traversed the frigid waters of the Antarctic and deep dark caves in the Indian Ocean, where the vessel was integral to studying the mysterious coelacanth fish—once thought to have gone extinct with the dinosaurs more than 65 million years ago, according to Allen’s official website.
One of the megayacht’s greatest successes was the 2015 discovery of the sunken Japanese battleship Musashi, one of the largest warships in naval history, which Octopus found off the coast of the Philippines after the wreck eluded search teams for 70 years, Burgess said in a news release.
Agents call it ” the pinnacle explorer yacht for those seeking a proven ‘go-anywhere, do-anything platform.’” Source
If you are wondering what kind of a yacht a person with all the money in the world might want to build, let me tell you about the Octopus. Remember the old quote from JP Morgan when someone asked the millionaire how much it would cost to have a yacht like his? He answered; “If you have to ask how much it costs, you can’t afford it.” In the case of the Octopus the late owner who had it built, had more than enough and surely did not need to ask how much. His name was Paul Allen and he, along with Bill Gates, founded Microsoft. He is reported to have been worth more than 20 billion dollars. He had homes in several countries, and he built a super-yacht called Octopus which is beyond lavish and on the level of the yachts built by oil barons of the Middle East. It is the world’s largest service yacht at 416 ft. When I thought about my dream yacht, I never considered it to be one of a fleet of yachts. Allen, at the time of his death, had a fleet of yachts, he owned two other monster yachts in addition to Octopus.His other yachts were grand, even the tender for Octopus was grand but, the grandest of them all is Octopus. For a better idea of how lavish Octopus is, here are her basic specs including her tenders.
Statistics: • Launched: 01 (8) Aug 2003, First Movement: 01 (1) Jan 2004 • Managed: Fraser Yachts, Fort Lauderdale • Crew: 60 permanent crew • Submarine: 40 ft, 10 man Olympic – Submarine Technologies Seattle, WA. • Main Tender: 63 ft “Man of War” Vikal International – Perth, Western Australia • Tenders: 7 x of various sizes • Dimensions: • LOA: 126.187 m (414feet) Beam: 21m (68.90 ft) Draught: 5.85 m (19.20 ft) Breadth Mould: 21 m Depth: 12.5Net Tonnage: 2,979 mt Deadweight: 1570 mt • Gross Registered Tonnage: 9,932 mt • Fuel: 849,446 liters (224,400 gls) Water: 174,886 liters (46,200 gls) Range: 8,000 nm Max speed: 20 knots • Engines: Eight x 2,400 hp Mercedes-Benz diesels + Two x 6 MW ABB electric motors
One would suppose that in the scheme of things if you are worth $20 billion dollars and growing, spending $250 million for your yacht is no big deal. This is especially true if you are not a J. Paul Getty type miserly kind of guy who keeps every nickel for himself. On the contrary, Allen was ranked the most generous living American by the Chronicle of Philanthropyafter he donated $72 million dollars to various charities. Paul and his sister founded the Paul G. Allen family foundation in 1988. Allen really worked at being a good guy. In August of 2017, his research vessel Petrel discovered the USS Indianapolis some 5,500 meters below the surface sunk to the ocean for in the North Pacific Ocean. It had been torpedoed by a Japanese submarine in the final days of World War II. The Indianapolis was in route home after delivering the atomic bombs that were eventually dropped on Japan. Then in-March of 2018, Allen’s research vessel Petrel found the sunken wreckage of the aircraft carrier USS Lexington which had lain at the bottom for 72 years. Back in March of 2015, Allen led a research team aboard the Octopus which found Mushai. She was one of the world’s largest and most advanced Japanese battleships sunk during WWII. Very much more than the plaything of a super-rich man, Octopus has provided detailed topographical data. She has assisted in rescuing disabled vessels as well. In 2012, the Royal Navy had decided they wanted to retrieve the bell from the HMS Hood.Allen loaned Octopus to the Royal Navy in their attempt to retrieve the ship’s bell from the Admiral-class battleship Hood. The Hood, which sank to a depth of 9,000 feet (2,700 m) in the Denmark Straitduring World War II. HMS Hood was hit by a shell from the German battleship Bismarck, its magazines exploded, and the ship sank in minutes with a loss of over 1,400 lives.The bell was located but not recovered, due to adverse weather conditions. On 7 August 2015, it was announced that the bell from HMS Hood had been recovered by the ROV operating from Octopus.After conservation, the bell was put on display in 2016 at the National Museum of the Royal Navy Portsmouth, England. The Octopus is a member of the Automated Mutual Assistance Vessel Rescue (AMVER) program. Octopus has very sophisticated manned resource equipment including a 10-person research submarine in its float-hanger and deep drone sub. There are two helicopters onboard, an MD900 and a Sikorsky S-76C. There are landing spaces at either end of the vessel.Her tender Man-O-War floats into its own private dock then is lifted out of the water and locked into the place. There is a full recording studio on the bridge deck Allen has loaned the studio to celebrities like Mick Jagger for use recording their music. The list of artists who recorded there includes Usher, Dave Stewart, U2, and Johnny Cash.Allen had collection guitars and was himself a guitar player. As one might expect, there was no limit to the innovation in navigation and search systems.The rear deck sports a basketball court, a movie theater and pool with a glass bottom. There are 41 suites for the 26 guest who were lucky enough to be invited onboard. There are some 28 crew cabins. All this for a cost of $384,000 a week to operate. While Allen had a passion for his three yachts, he also had several homes, a collection of airplanes including a Russian Mig fighter jet. He owned a Boeing 757 that he sold to Donald Trump.Two of Allen’s helicopters were assigned to the Octopus, but he also owned several others.And, of course, no billionaire’s life would be complete without them owning an Island. Allen owned his private Island in Washington and named it after a Navy Hero. Allan Island, named for a Navy hero (not the billionaire), is an almost entirely undeveloped 292-acre island jutting out of the Pacific Ocean, north of Seattle. Allan Island is one of 172 islands comprising the San Juan’s archipelago. The land boasts one modest house – a caretaker’s cabin fitted with water, septic and generator. There’s also a 2,400-foot grass airstrip and a boat dock, the only two means by which a person can access the island. There are rugged RV trails through the acreage and with beaches all along the coastline.Surprisingly, the island does not have electricity. Estimated for laying cable to bring in electricity are about three million dollars. Then again maybe someone who is stepped in electronics just needs to escape from time to time from the magic of electricity. Allen owned the Seattle Sea Hawks and also bought the Portland Trail Blazers of the National Basketball Association.Paul Allen was a man who worked and played even harder. Allen hosted a themed-party every year onboard the Octopus while docked at the Cannes film festival. Paul Allen certainly spread his wealth around and seems to have a great deal of fun doing. Unfortunately, Paul G Allan died onOctober 15, 2018. He was 65 years old. Co-founder of Microsoft, Bill Gates said of him, “From our early days together at Lakeside School, through our partnership in the creation of Microsoft, to some of our joint philanthropic projects over the years, Paul was a true partner and dear friend. Personal computing would not have existed without him.”
One of Paul Allen’s Mercer Island waterfront properties that have been sold, photographed Sunday. (Ken Lambert / The Seattle Times)
Immense love for the native land made Paul Allen spent billions and acquired a property in Seattle. He has an enormous beachfront residence in the outskirts of Seattle, which is spread over an area of ten acres. The mansion is built over the area measuring 10,000-square feet and shares the marvelous view sight of Lake Washington.
The mansion consists of 25 huge bedrooms, 28 bathrooms, a fully geared- up gym, and several other sumptuous facilities. The house is also known for the large catamaran, which is used by Paul as a waterfront concert hall and a floating helipad. Frequent renovations in the house have made it a little difficult to measure its exact value, however, many people estimate that the house’s price is approximately $20 million.
A – 4 buildings ~200 ft from water: 10,680 sq ft main building with gym and 2 indoor tennis courts; 5,220, 4,210, and 2,050 sq ft guest houses; and 12+ car garages for an antique and race car museum and guest parking.
B – Mother’s house, ~50 feet from water, 11,300 sq ft plus 7 car garage.
C – Catamaran, Dragonfly, to drag-and-fly helicopters.
D – Main house including attached indoor pool and lakefront building to the north and wood garden/lakefront house to the south, 9,890 sq ft.
E– Concert hall theater and guest facilities, 11,560 sq ft.
F – 1,750 sq ft house with 100 ft waterfront acquired in 2006 for $5.2 million.
It’s Whale Week here on Curbed and since we’ve already talked a little about Bill Gates, it only makes sense that we now talk a little Paul Allen. The co-founder of Microsoft has made his mark on the Puget Sound region and sometimes he seems intent on owning half of it as well.
Locally, he owns the Seattle Seahawks, a piece of the Seattle Sounders, EMP Museum and just about everything in South Lake Union. But when he’s not traveling the world aboard his megayacht Octopus or staying abroad in one of his many homes, he’s got plenty of places to choose from when he wants to settle down for a couple nights in Western Washington.
Take his 10,000-square-foot Mercer Island waterfront home (above), which is something to behold on its own. It includes a floating heli-pad and a concert hall. But what’s really “whale-ish” about this mansion…it’s only one of six mansions that Allen owns on the property.
One house is strictly for his mother while another houses a full-sized basketball court, fitness center, and swimming pool. The others? Guest houses, one of which is over 5,000 square feet.
As if that wasn’t private enough, Allen also owns his own island in the Sound.Originally purchased in 1992, 292-acre Allan Island was supposed to be the location of Allen’s vacation home.However, he scrapped those plans when hepurchased a site on Sperry Peninsula on Lopez Island and put Allan Island up for sale. It’s remained on the market for quite some time, so if you’ve got $13.5M burning a hole in your pocket, give Paul a call.
Octopus, the megayacht of Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen. – COURTESY OF BURGESS
Octopus, the epic megayacht of the late Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen—which includes its own submarine, remote-controlled deep-sea explorer, and on-deck gym—has hit the market for more than $300 million, boat broker Burgess announced this week.
At 414 feet, Octopus stretches longer than a football field and is at once a lavish floating resort with a spa and cinema, and a serious research vessel that provided Allen, who died last October at the age of 65, access to some of the Earth’s most remote places.
The billionaire philanthropist used the yacht to locate numerous sunken warships, downed aircraft, and even lent it to the British Royal Navy to pull a historic bell from the depths of the Denmark Strait in 2012.
It’s traversed the frigid waters of the Antarctic and deep dark caves in the Indian Ocean, where the vessel was integral to studying the mysterious coelacanth fish—once thought to have gone extinct with the dinosaurs more than 65 million years ago, according to Allen’s official website.
One of the megayacht’s greatest successes was the 2015 discovery of the sunken Japanese battleship Musashi, one of the largest warships in naval history, which Octopus found off the coast of the Philippines after the wreck eluded search teams for 70 years, Burgess said in a news release.
“Octopus offers an abundance of features and amenities specially tailored for those looking to explore the globe’s most remote and inaccessible destinations,” said the global brokerage, which is officially listing Octopus for €295 million (US$325.56 million). The yachting company, which has offices from Monaco to Phuket, Thailand, markets all of its boats in euros.
Such features include an eight-person submarine called Pagoo, a remote-operated vehicle capable of diving nearly 2 miles deep, helipads, and a garage capable of storing an SUV and two helicopters.
The yacht can accommodate up to 26 guests across 13 cabins in addition to a crew of 60, according to the agents, who called it “the pinnacle explorer yacht for those seeking a proven ‘go-anywhere, do-anything platform.’”
In addition to its research features, there’s also a large pool, spa and cinema. – COURTESY OF BURGESS
In his memoir, Allen wrote that he was stunned when Germany-based builder Lürssen delivered Octopus in 2003.
“It was a third longer than a football field, more than 20 yards wide, seven stories high,” Allen wrote in his 2011 book “Idea Man.” “When I first stood on the bridge, I felt as though I was on a spaceship.”
Beyond exploration, the ship brought together all of Allen’s passions in what he called “one moveable feast.”
A few years after the boat’s delivery, the tech titan parked it in the French Riviera to host a star-studded party during the 2005 Cannes Film Festival. Mick Jagger and U2 have performed on board, where he commissioned a soundproofed recording studio—a feat considering the vibrations of the engine, he wrote in his memoir.
By Danielle Wiener-Bronner, CNN Business Updated 4:05 AM ET, Tue October 16, 2018
New York (CNN Business)Paul Allen, the billionaire co-founder of Microsoft, died Monday. He was an investor, entrepreneur and philanthropist who influenced many aspects of modern life — from technology and science to sports and music.
Allen was 65, his investment firm Vulcan said in a statement announcing his death. He died in Seattle from complications related to non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma two weeks after Allen said he was being treated for the disease.
Non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma, like the less-common Hodgkin’s disease, is a cancer of the lymphatic system.
“My brother was a remarkable individual on every level,” Allen’s sister, Jody Allen, said in a statement on behalf of his family. “He was a much loved brother and uncle, and an exceptional friend.”
Allen founded Microsoft (MSFT) with Bill Gates in 1975, several years after the two met as fellow students at a private school in Seattle. Allen left the company in 1982 after he was diagnosed with Hodgkin’s disease.
PHOTOS:Paul Allen’s life and career
“I am heartbroken by the passing of one of my oldest and dearest friends, Paul Allen,” Microsoft founder Bill Gates said in a statement Monday. “Paul was a true partner and dear friend. Personal computing would not have existed without him.”
“As co-founder of Microsoft, in his own quiet and persistent way, he created magical products, experiences and institutions, and in doing so, he changed the world,” Nadella added.
Allen didn’t slow down after leaving Microsoft. He stayed on the company’s board of directors for several years while establishing his own philanthropic foundation, along with Vulcan,his investment firm.
Vulcan belongs to the most ancient stage of Roman religion: Varro, the ancient Roman scholar and writer, citing the Annales Maximi, records that king Titus Tatius dedicated altars to a series of deities including Vulcan.[3]
Vulcan belongs to the most ancient stage of Roman religion: Varro, the ancient Roman scholar and writer, citing the Annales Maximi, records that king Titus Tatius dedicated altars to a series of deities including Vulcan.[3]
Etymology
The origin of the name is unclear. Roman tradition maintained that it was related to Latin words connected to lightning (fulgur, fulgere, fulmen), which in turn was thought of as related to flames.[4] This interpretation is supported by Walter William Skeat in his etymological dictionary as meaning lustre.[5]
It has been supposed that his name was not Latin but related to that of the Cretan god Velchanos, a god of nature and the nether world.[6]Wolfgang Meid has disputed this identification as phantastic.[7] Meid and Vasily Abaev have proposed on their side a matching theonym in the Ossetic legendary smith of the Nart sagaKurd-Alä-Wärgon (“the Alan smith Wärgon”), and postulated an original PIE smith god named *wl̩kānos.[8] But since the name in its normal form is stable and has a clear meaning—kurd (“smith”) + on (“of the family”) + Alaeg (the name of one of the Nartic families)—this hypothesis has been considered unacceptable by Dumezil.[9]
Christian-Joseph Guyonvarc’h has proposed the identification with the Irish name Olcan (Ogamic Ulccagni, in the genitive).[citation needed] Gérard Capdeville finds a continuity between Cretan Minoan god Velchanos and Etruscan Velchans. The Minoan god’s identity would be that of a young deity, master of fire and companion of the Great Goddess.[10]
According to Martin L. West, Volcanus may represent a god of the fire named *Volca and attached to the suffix -no-, the typical appendage indicating the god’s domain in Indo-European languages. *Volca could therefore be a cognate of the Sanskrit words ulkā (“darting flame”) and/or várcas- (“brilliance, glare”).[8]
Worship
Vulcan’s oldest shrine in Rome, called the Vulcanal, was situated at the foot of the Capitoline in the Forum Romanum, and was reputed to date to the archaic period of the kings of Rome,[11][12] and to have been established on the site by Titus Tatius,[13] the Sabine co-king, with a traditional date in the 8th century BC. It was the view of the Etruscanharuspices that a temple of Vulcan should be located outside the city,[14] and the Vulcanal may originally have been on or outside the city limits before they expanded to include the Capitoline Hill.[1] The Volcanalia sacrifice was offered here to Vulcan, on August 23.[11] Vulcan also had a temple on the Campus Martius, which was in existence by 214 BC.[1][15]
The Romans identified Vulcan with the Greek smith-god Hephaestus.[16] Vulcan became associated like his Greek counterpart with the constructive use of fire in metalworking. A fragment of a Greek pot showing Hephaestus found at the Volcanal has been dated to the 6th century BC, suggesting that the two gods were already associated at this date.[12] However, Vulcan had a stronger association than Hephaestus with fire’s destructive capacity, and a major concern of his worshippers was to encourage the god to avert harmful fires.
Paul Allen in New York, Oct. 15, 2015. Joshua Bright/The New York Times
He bought two professional sports teams: the NBA’s Portland Trail Blazers and the NFL’s Seattle Seahawks. He was involved with both until his death.
“Paul Allen was the ultimate trail blazer,” NBA Commissioner Adam Silver said in a statement, adding that Allen was one of the league’s longest-tenured owners. “He was a valued voice who challenged assumptions and conventional wisdom.“
NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell called him the “driving force” behind keeping the NFL in the Pacific Northwest. In a statement, Goodell said Allen “worked tirelessly alongside our medical advisers to identify new ways to make the game safer and protect our players from unnecessary risk.”
Friends, family and other admirers also praised Allen for his significant philanthropic contributions.
The technologist, who Forbes says was worth $20.3 billion at the time of his death, donated more than $2 billion to charity. He also founded several organizations, including the space transportation company Stratolaunch, the Allen Institute for Artificial Intelligence and another Allen Institute that focuses on bioscience.Vulcan, which he founded, managed his business and philanthropic interests.
Richard Branson ✔@richardbranson
So sad to hear about the passing of Paul Allen. Among many other things he was a pioneer of commercial space travel.We shared a belief that by exploring space in new ways we can improve life on Earth. All our thoughts are with his loved ones.
“We shared a belief that by exploring space in new ways we can improve life on Earth,” said Virgin Group founder and CEO Richard Branson.
“All of us who had the honor of working with Paul feel inexpressible loss today.” said Vulcan CEO Bill Hilf. “Today we mourn our boss, mentor and friend whose 65 years were too short — and acknowledge the honor it has been to work alongside someone whose life transformed the world.”
“Sad to hear of the passing of Paul Allen, who was a strong advocate for environmental protection,” DiCaprio said. “His legacy lives on via his incredible work as a philanthropist and investor.”
Allen was also known for his love of music. In a 2013 interview with Guitar Player, Allen recalled how listening to “Are You Experienced” by the Jimi Hendrix Experienceprompted him to start playing guitar.
“That was a life-changing moment,” he told the publication. “I think I was 14 when I heard it. That was just music from another planet.”
In 1995, Allen even loaned money to Hendrix’s family during a legal battle to regain rights to the guitarist’s image and music, The Washington Post reported. He also funded a $100 million museum for music and pop culture in Seattle, now called the Museum of Pop Culture.
Musician and music producer Quincy Jones mourned Allen’s death Monday evening, called him a “dear friend” and “killer guitar player.”
In his later years, Paul Allen took up a number of other projects -— from the charitable to the adventurous.
Allen was still finding other ways to leave his mark on the world this year. A team of explorers led by him discovered wreckage in March from the USS Juneau, a World War II cruiser sunk by a Japanese torpedo in 1942.
His efforts to build the world’s largest plane were also recently profiled by Paul Levy,an editor at large at Wired Magazine. Speaking at the WIRED25 conference in San Francisco on Monday, Levy praised Allen’s accomplishments and said he would leave a mark.
“He and his partner Bill Gates [were] instrumental in pushing the needle and helping make all the things happen that we’re talking about today,” Levy said. “His imprint will be on all of us.”
Mark Cuban, the billionaire entrepreneur and owner of the Dallas Mavericks, also tweeted his condolences. “You were a good man and will be missed,” Cuban said. “Rock and Roll Heaven just got a lot better.” — CNN Business’s Ahiza Garcia contributed to this story.
“In his own quiet and persistent way, he created magical products, experiences and institutions, and in doing so, he changed the world,” a Microsoft statement said.Credit…Béatrice de Géa for The New York Times.Paul G. Allen, the co-founder of Microsoft who helped usher in the personal computing revolution and then channeled his enormous fortune into transforming Seattle into a cultural destination, died on Monday in Seattle. He was 65.The cause was complications of non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma, his family said in a statement.
The disease recurred recently after having been in remission for years. He left Microsoft in the early 1980s, after the cancer first appeared, and, using his enormous wealth, went on to make a powerful impact on Seattle life through his philanthropy and his ownership of the N.F.L. team there, ensuring that it would remain in the city.
Mr. Allen was a force at Microsoft during its first seven years, along with its co-founder, Bill Gates, as the personal computer was moving from a hobbyist curiosity to a mainstream technology, used by both businesses and consumers.
When the company was founded, in 1975, the machines were known as microcomputers, to distinguish the desktop computers from the hulking machines of the day. Mr. Allen came up with the name Micro-Soft, an apt one for a company that made software for small computers. The term personal computer would become commonplace later.
The company’s first product was a much-compressed version of the Basic programming language, designed to suit those underpowered machines. Yet the company’s big move came when it promised the computer giant IBM that it would deliver the operating system software for IBM’s entry into the personal computer business. Mr. Gates and Mr. Allen committed to supplying that software in 1980.
At the time, it was a promise without a product. But Mr. Allen was instrumental in putting together a deal to buy an early operating system from a programmer in Seattle. He and Mr. Gates tweaked and massaged the code, and it became the operating system that guided the IBM personal computer, introduced in 1981.
Mr. Allen, left, and Bill Gates on Oct. 19, 1981, after signing a contract with IBM to supply its line of personal computers with Microsoft software. It was a watershed moment for both IBM and Microsoft.Credit…Microsoft
That product, called Microsoft Disk Operating System, or MS-DOS, was a watershed for the company. Later would come Microsoft’s immensely popular Windows operating system, designed to be used with a computer mouse and onscreen icons — point-and-click computing rather than typed commands. The company would also produce the Office productivity programs for word processing, spreadsheets and presentations.
“In his own quiet and persistent way, he created magical products, experiences and institutions, and in doing so, he changed the world,” Satya Nadella, Microsoft’s current chief executive, said of Mr. Allen in a statement.
Mr. Allen’s partnership with Mr. Gates began when they were teenagers attending the private Lakeside School in Seattle. It was there that they got their start in computing, working from a school Teletype terminal that was linked to a far-away mainframe computer under a so-called time-sharing computer system, in which operators paid for the computing time they used. Funds for the system were originally supplied by proceeds from a school bake sale.
Mr. Allen scored a perfect 1,600 on his SAT test, and went on to Washington State University. But after two years he dropped out to work as a programmer for Honeywell in Boston. Mr. Gates was nearby, attending Harvard University.
When an early microcomputer was introduced, appearing on the cover of Popular Electronics magazine, Mr. Allen persuaded Mr. Gates to drop out of Harvard and move to Albuquerque, where a start-up called MITS had built a machine that has been credited as the first personal computer. The machine lacked software, and Mr. Allen and Mr. Gates, showing up at the MITS offices, promised that they could supply it.
Their first offering was Microsoft Basic. Both Mr. Gates and Mr. Allen were skilled code creators, but Mr. Gates was more the hard-charging, volatile businessman, while Mr. Allen played the peacemaker and negotiator in those early days.
Within a few years, Microsoft moved from New Mexico to suburban Seattle. Though Mr. Allen stepped away from daily duties at Microsoft in the early 1980s, partly because of a deteriorating relationship with Mr. Gates, he remained on the Microsoft board until 2000.
The cover of Mr. Allen’s memoir, published in 2011.
“They were bemoaning my recent lack of production and discussing how they might dilute my Microsoft equity by issuing options to themselves and other shareholders,” Mr. Allen wrote.
But Mr. Allen held his ground and his shares.
Mr. Gates said in a statement on Monday: “From our early days together at Lakeside School, through our partnership in the creation of Microsoft, to some of our joint philanthropic projects over the years, Paul was a true partner and dear friend. Personal computing would not have existed without him.”
As Microsoft became the dominant personal computer software company, Mr. Allen, as well as Mr. Gates, who was the face of the company, became immensely wealthy. According to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index, he had a net worth of $26.1 billion.
He was also an investor and a generous philanthropist.
Mr. Allen donated more than $2 billion toward nonprofit groups dedicated to the advancement of science, technology, education, the environment and the arts. Among the scientific research organizations he funded were the Allen Institute for Brain Science in 2003 and the Allen Institute for Artificial Intelligence in 2014.
And while some of his philanthropy was global, like a passion for ending elephant poaching, much of his post-Microsoft work centered on Seattle, where he became a transformative force behind many of the city’s leading cultural institutions.
[Read more about Mr. Allen’s transformation of Seattle.]
He restored the old Cinerama movie theater to modern standards seemingly ideal for watching science-fiction films, and he hired Frank Gehry to design the Museum of Pop Culture,which Mr. Allen founded in 2000 under the original name of the Experience Music Project.The wild, undulating buildingdisplayed items revealing Mr. Allen’s cultural obsessions, including guitars owned by Jimi Hendrix and Captain Kirk’s command chair from the 1960s television series “Star Trek.”
Mr. Allen held the Vince Lombardi trophy after the Seahawks defeated the Denver Broncos in the 2014 Super Bowl, held at MetLife Stadium in New Jersey. The Seahawks had considered moving out of Seattle before Mr. Allen bought the team.Credit…Ray Stubblebine/Reuters
In the 1990s, Mr. Allen bought a swath of land in the South Lake Union neighborhood to help build a Seattle version of Central Park, but the public ultimately voted down the plans. He took those real estate holdings and, through his company, Vulcan,developed South Lake Union into the home of Amazon. Google and other tech companies have been opening offices in that now revitalized neighborhood.
“He has a definitive role of what we understand as today’s Seattle, which is about technology, about real estate and about a distinctive local culture with international visibility,” said Margaret O’Mara, a history professor at the University of Washington.
Mr. Allen also used his wealth to acquire the Portland Trail Blazers of the National Basketball Association in 1988and the Seattle Seahawks of the National Football League in 1996. (or666just turn the 9’s upside down)
Of all his investments, the ownership of professional sports teams was among the most incongruous. Sports owners, like it or not, are often in the spotlight, and Mr. Allen, by and large, had preferred to steer clear of media attention.
Yet in 1988, at 35 (3+5 =8, so 888), he bought the Trail Blazers and promised to keep the franchise in the city, one of the smallest in the league. He often flew to games from Seattle and sat courtside with his mother. Soon after he bought the team, the Trail Blazers had one of their best runs in franchise history, making it to the N.B.A. finals twice in three years, losing both times.
In a statement, Adam Silver, the N.B.A. commissioner, called Mr. Allen “the ultimate trail blazer — in business, philanthropy and in sports.” Mr. Silver said Mr. Allen, one of the longest-tenured owners in the league, was particularly interested in the league’s growth internationally(globally) and its embrace of new technologies.
In the mid-1990s, the owner of Mr. Allen’s hometown Seahawks, Ken Behring, was considering moving the team to Los Angeles because he was unable to get public funding for a new stadium in Seattle. Mr. Allen was urged to step in to keep the team in Seattle. In 1996, he bought an exclusive option to purchase the team from Mr. Behring by July 1997, an option he ultimately exercised, buying the team for $194 million.
Mr. Allen at his home overlooking Central Park in New York in 2015. Credit…Joshua Bright for The New York Times
Mr. Allen set about building the team a new home downtown. The team moved into CenturyLink Field in 2002, and Mr. Allen spent hundreds of millions of dollars to upgrade the stadium. Though he spoke infrequently to the media, he could often be seen at games, sometimes raising the “12” flag — representing the fans — before kickoff, a team ritual.
[Read more about Mr. Allen’s ownership of the Seattle Seahawks]
During his tenure the Seahawks made their only threeSuper Bowl appearances, winning the title once, in 2014.
“I personally valued Paul’s advice on subjects ranging from collective bargaining to bringing technologyto our game,” Roger Goodell, the N.F.L. Commissioner, said in a statement.
One of Allen’s companies also owned a stake in the Seattle Sounders, one of the most successful franchises in Major League Soccer. The Sounders won the league title in 2016.
It is unclear what will happen to Mr. Allen’s teams; the details of his estate are not public. The Seahawks alone are worth an estimated $2.58 billion. Few N.F.L. and N.B.A. clubs change hands, so any sale is likely to attract substantial bids.
Paul Gardner Allen was born in Seattle on Jan. 21, 1953, to Kenneth and Edna (Faye) Allen. His father was a librarian; his mother a schoolteacher. He is survived by his sister, Jody Allen.
Three years ago, when commemoratingMicrosoft’s 40th anniversary, Mr. Allen posted on Twitter a bit of the code for the company’s first software product. At the top, it said, “Copyright 1975 by Bill Gates and Paul Allen.”
“It’s weird to look at bits of code you wrote 40 years ago and think, ‘That led to where Microsoft is today,’ ” Mr. Allen said at the time. He sounded genuinely amazed.
Correction:
An earlier version of this obituary misstated the cities in which Mr. Allen owned professional sports teams. He owned an N.F.L. team in Seattle and an N.B.A. team in Portland, Ore.; the teams were not both in Seattle.
Correction:
An earlier version of this obituary misspelled Mr. Allen’s middle name. It is Gardner, not Gardener.
Ken Belson and Karen Weise contributed reporting from Seattle.
Paul Allen’s yacht, Tatoosh. Photo: courtesy Boat International.
Microsoft co-founder and noted art collector Paul Allen had a bit of an accident on his super-yacht, Tatoosh, destroying much of the coral reef off the coast of Grand Cayman on January 15, reports Page Six.
“Initial figures place the damaged area at 1,200 square meters… with 80 percent of the coral within that area destroyed,” said a Cayman Department of Environment representative in a statement.
Allen and his crew could face criminal prosecution and up to a $600,000 fine for violation of national conservation laws,which offer protection to the Caymans’ coral reefs.
Paul Allen ✔@PaulGAllen
Octopus’ ROV bringing the bell aboard. See more video & photos from the Hood expedition here
Tatoosh, at 300 feet long, is the the world’s 49th largest yacht according to Boat International. Though the mega-yacht could be seized in order to cover any fines, insurance coverage will likely prevent that from happening.
It has not been confirmed whether or not Allen was on board the ship during the incident. His company, Vulcan Inc., told Geek Wire that the billionaire is cooperation with local authorities and that “Tatoosh was moored in a position explicitly directed by the local Port Authority. When its crew was alerted by a diver that her anchor chain may have impacted coral, the crew promptly relocated to ensure the reef was protected.”
Prior to the purchase by Allen, when she was known as Acergy Petrel.
Allen also owned the Research Vessel Petrel. The 76 meter (250 ft) Petrel was acquired early 2017. It was retrofitted with state-of-the-art subsea equipment. Capable of diving to 6,000 meters (or three and a half miles). Source
The R/V Petrel is an underwater research and exploration vessel used specifically to locate historically significant shipwrecks and explore underwater ecosystems. Equipped with the latest state-of-the-art subsea technology including two onboard robots– an AUV (autonomous underwater vehicle) and a ROV (remotely operated vehicle) – we are able to search more than three miles below the sea.
RV Petrel and its mission, is a public outreach that started over a decade ago with Paul’s vision of research, archaeology and discovery, promoting and advocating education, history, and as a tribute to those who serve and came before us. With his guidance and unwavering support, our missions continue to safeguard ocean stewardship in pursuit of these common goals.
Wreckage from the USS Lexington was discovered by the expedition crew of Research Vessel (R/V) Petrel on March 4. The Lexington was found 3,000 meters (about two miles) below the surface, resting on the floor of the Coral Sea more than 500 miles off the eastern coast of Australia.
“To pay tribute to the USS Lexington and the brave men that served on her is an honor,” said Paul Allen. “As Americans, all of us owe a debt of gratitude to everyone who served and who continue to serve our country for their courage, persistence and sacrifice.”
As one of the first U.S. aircraft carriers ever built, the Lexington became known as “Lady Lex” and went down with 35 aircraft on board.
“Lexington was on our priority list because she was one of the capital ships that was lost during WWII,” said Robert Kraft, director of subsea operations for Allen. “Based on geography, time of year and other factors, I work with Paul Allen to determine what missions to pursue. We’ve been planning to locate the Lexington for about six months and it came together nicely.”
TheUSS Lexington was originally commissioned as a battlecruiser but was launched as an aircraft carrier in 1925. She took part in the Battle of the Coral Sea (May 4-8, 1942) along with the USS Yorktown against three Japanese carriers. This was the first carrier versus carrier battle in history and was the first time Japanese forces suffered a permanent setback in its advances on New Guinea and Australia. However, the U.S. lost the Lexington and 216 of its distinguished crew.
The Lexington had been hit by multiple torpedoes and bombs on May 8 but it was a secondary explosion causing uncontrolled fires that finally warranted the call to abandon ship. The USS Phelps delivered the final torpedoes that sank the crippled Lady Lex, the first aircraft carrier casualty in history. With other U.S. ships standing by, 2,770 crewmen and officers were rescued, including the captain and his dog Wags, the ships ever-present mascot.
During the Battle of the Coral Sea the Japanese navy sank USS Lexington (CV-2), USS Sims (DD-409), and USS Neosho (AO-23), and damaged the USS Yorktown. The Japanese lost one light carrier (Shōhō) and suffered significant damage to a fleet carrier (Shōkaku).
“As the son of a survivor of the USS Lexington, I offer my congratulations to Paul Allen and the expedition crew of Research Vessel (R/V) Petrel for locating the “Lady Lex,” sunk nearly 76 years ago at the Battle of Coral Sea,” said Navy Adm. Harry B. Harris Jr., head of the U.S. Pacific Command. “We honor the valor and sacrifice of the “Lady Lex’s” Sailors — all those Americans who fought in World War II — by continuing to secure the freedoms they won for all of us.”
The Battle of the Coral Sea was notable not only for stopping a Japanese advance but because it was the first naval engagement in history where opposing ships never came within sight of each other. This battle ushered in a new form of naval warfare via carrier-based airplanes. One month later, the U.S. Navy surprised Japanese forces at the Battle of Midway, and turned the tide of the war in the Pacific for good.
Based on some initial success with his M/Y Octopus, Allen acquired and retrofitted the 250-foot R/V Petrel with state-of-the-art subsea equipment capable of diving to 6,000 meters (or three and a half miles).Since its deployment in early 2017, the ship was active in several missions in the Philippine Sea before its transition to the Coral Sea off the Australian Coast.
Allen-led expeditions have also resulted in the discovery of the USS Indianapolis (August 2017), USS Ward (November 2017), USS Astoria (February 2015), Japanese battleship Musashi (March 2015) and the Italian WWII destroyer Artigliere (March 2017). His team was also responsible for presentation to the British Navy in honor of its heroic service. Allen’s expedition team was permanently transferred to the newly acquired and retrofitted R/V Petrel in 2016 with a specific mission around research, exploration and survey of historic warships and other important artifacts.
Read more at https://www.paulallen.com/uss-lexington-wreck-located-rv-petrel/#hHL1kyHop4jkk7X1.99
The Bell from HMS Hood, recovery funded by Paul G. Allen
The bell bears an inscription in memory of Rear-Admiral Sir Horace Hood, who died in the Battle of Jutland in World War One. It forms part of an exhibition commemorating Jutland, the biggest naval battle in the 1914-1918 war. The museum said the bell was a memorial to both battles, which happened 25 years apart.
Home › Conserved HMS Hood bell rings out on 75th anniversary of largest ever Royal Navy loss
• HMS Hood bell unveiled on 75th anniversary of sinking
• HRH The Princess Royal strikes eight bells at midday
• Official opening of Battle of Jutland exhibition gives first sight of conserved bell from “The Mighty Hood”
Nine months (a jestation period)after its retrieval from the murky depths of the Denmark Straits, the bell from HMS Hood was unveiled today by HRH The Princess Royal during a commemorative service to mark the 75th anniversary of the sinking of the ship.Hood was the largest Royal Navy vessel to have been sunk, causing the biggest loss of life suffered by any single British warship.
Princess Anne struck eight bells at middayat a ceremony at The National Museum of the Royal Navy, Portsmouth Historic Dockyard as descendants of some of the 1,415 sailors who lost their lives when the ship was hit by Bismarck on 24 May, 1941 looked on.Only threeof Hood’s crew survived and it was the expressed wish of one of them, Ted Briggs,to recover the ship’s bell as a memorial to his shipmates.
The name Ted is an English Baby Names baby name. In English Baby Names the meaning of the name Ted is: Wealthy guardian. From the Old English name Eadweard, meaning rich or happy, and guardian. Also a diminutive of Edgar: Fortunate and powerful.
The English surname Briggsderives from the Old Norse word “bryggja.” It is the Northern English form of the word bridge.
Following the unveiling, the bell was carried by a Royal Navy guard to Boathouse 5 for the official opening by Princess Anne of the exhibition 36 Hours:Jutland 1916, The Battle That Won The Warwhich marks the centenary of the Battle of Jutland. Lady Hood launched Hood in 1918in memory of her late husband Rear Admiral Sir Horace Hood KCB DSO MVO who was killed in his ship, HMS Invincible, at the Battle of Jutland, fought one hundred years ago on 31 May. An inscription on the side of the bell reads: “In accordance with the wishes of Lady Hood it was presented in memory of her husband to HMS “Hood” battlecruiser which ship she launched on 22nd (8)August 1918”
The bell’s retrievalfrom one and a half miles (7920 ft or 7+9+2 =18) below the surfacewas led by a team assembled by US philanthropist and entrepreneur, Microsoft co-founder Paul G. Allen and included Blue Water Recoveries. The expedition was launched from Allen’s his yacht M/Y Octopus, equipped with a state-of-the-art Remotely Operated Vehicle (ROV) that was adapted to safely retrieve the bell.
At the time of the recovery, the President of The Hood Association, Rear Admiral Philip Wilcocks, whose uncle died on board said:
“There is no headstone among the flowers for those who perish at sea. For the 1,415 officers and men who lost their lives in HMS Hood on 24 May 1941, the recovery of her bell and its subsequent place of honour in The National Museum of the Royal Navy in Portsmouth will mean that future generations will be able to gaze upon her belland remember with gratitude and thanks the heroism, courage and personal sacrifice of Hood’s ship’s company who died in the service of their country.”
Professor Dominic Tweddle, Director General of The National Museum of the Royal Navy received the bell formally from Navy Secretary, Rear Admiral Simon Williams and said:
“HMS Hood’s bell provides an extraordinary and moving link(bridge)between the sacrifice of the Royal Navy in 1916 at Jutland and those made by a new generation of sailors in the Second World War.The bell was presented to the Royal Navy’s newest battlecruiser when she was launched in 1918, by the widow of Rear Admiral Sir Horace Hood, great-great grandson of Sir Samuel Hood after whom the ship was named. Sir Horace died at the Battle of Jutland on 31 May 1916,one of 1,026 (1+2+6=9) officers and men who died in seconds when HMS Invincible blew up and sank, and the bell is inscribed to that effect. HMS Hood was, of course, subsequently destroyed in very similar circumstances by the German battleship Bismarck at the Battle of the Denmark Strait on 24 May 1941, with the loss of 1,415 (1+4+1+5=11) men. The bell is a memorial to two battles, separated by 25 years but joined by centuries of tradition and sacrifice.”
The project to assess and conserve the bell was managed at Portsmouth Naval Base by BAE Systems’ Non Destructive Examination Centre in collaboration with the Naval Air Squadron, as part of the company’s community investment fund. The conservation was by Mary Rose Archaeological Services, which was particularly keen to help The Hood Association, and funded by David Mearns of Blue Water Recoveries. The immediate priority was to place it in a tank of fresh water (baptism)to remove any salts absorbed over its 74 (11) years in the North Atlantic.
The bell was in good order, despite its long submersion, and there followed a series of metallurgical tests and analysis to consider its condition. After a discussion to determine the level of finish for the bell, it was concluded that there would be a minimum of surface cleaning, leaving the staining and the calcified work casts as evidence of the time spent in the sea.
The distinction of the Hood bell is the two engravings, one around the base and the other on the side of the bell and these would be made legible because of the story they tell.
The inscription around the base of the bell reads: “This bell was preserved from HMS Hood battleship 1891-1914 by the late Rear Admiral, The Honourable Sir Horace Hood KCB, DSO, MVO killed at Jutland on 31st May 1916.”
David Mearns, Director of Blue Water Recoveries said: “I am extremely pleased that we have been able to fulfil one of the last wishes of Ted Briggs to recover the ship’s bell as a memorial and we are delighted that it is now on display as a reminder of the service and sacrifice of her men.”
36 Hours: Jutland 1916, The Battle That Won The Waris open for threeyears. Details on visiting are available on www.jutland.org.uk
If by chance, you do not understand the significance of BELLS in the world of the Spirit/Supernatural/Paranormal, please review my article:
Paul G. Allen spends a lot of money supporting AI and Brain research as well as immunization. A lot of the same stuff that Bill Gates is using to take control of the world. He also supports software development for the medical industry to be used for medical tyranny.
Investor and philanthropist Paul G. Allen today announced a commitment of $100 million in seed money dedicated to brain research and unveiled the creation of the Allen Institute for Brain Science in Seattle. Founded as an innovative and unprecedented resource for neuroscientists around the world, the nonprofit Allen Institute – and its inaugural project the Allen Brain Atlas – will combine the disciplines of neuroscience and genomics to create a map of the mammalian brain at the cellular level. Through a collection of gene expression maps, brain circuitry and cell location, the Atlas will illustrate the functional anatomy of the brain. Building a publicly-accessible research tool that overlays structural imagery of the brain with specific details about the locations and functions of active genes will be carried out on an unprecedented scale, representing an immense advance in brain science. Long-term, the research will contribute to the work of scientists, medical researchers and educators around the world, supporting the development of new insights into normal brain function, as well as fundamental clues about the development and treatment of brain-related disorders, emotion, cognition, learning and memory. The findings will also provide valuable support for third-party research into the treatment and prevention of diseases such as Alzheimer’s, schizophrenia, clinical depression, autism, addiction disorders and more.
In addition to Allen’s significant investment of seed money, other sources of private and government funding are being explored. The 501(c)(3) Allen Institute for Brain Science is a private nonprofit organization.
“Over the last decade I have become increasingly interested in the fields of genomics and neuroscience, and their important role in human development, behavior, and health – and ultimately, understanding more about how the brain actually works,” said Paul G. Allen. “It’s awe-inspiring how a genome with only 30,000 genes can create the brain – a highly complex system of an estimated trillion nerve cells linked in an extraordinarily intricate network. We conceived the Institute and Atlas projects with a group of eminent neuroscience and genetics researchers, and are funding much-needed research efforts that will have a positive and lasting impact on all areas of brain science. By making the Atlas data accessible in the public domain, and by collaborating with scientific experts around the world, we believe this is a historic opportunity to unite the genome and the brain – and use the data and technology to tackle the challenges of neurodevelopmental, neurodegenerative and psychiatric disease.”
“This is yet another creative masterstroke by Paul Allen, who once again has thought up an unconventional but valuable outlet for his philanthropy,” said Dr. Steven Pinker, Johnstone Professor of Psychology at Harvard University and an advisor to the Allen Institute. “Paul asked the experts a simple question – how can a smallish genome build a complex brain? – and discovered that the answer required a new synthesis between neuroscience, genomics, and psychology that is unlikely to take place without a strategic nudge. The Allen Institute is like nothing else out there, and it could help to give rise to a whole new field of human knowledge.”
The Allen Institute for Brain Science
Based in Seattle, the Allen Institute for Brain Science is being founded to identify and address key issues in neuroscience, specifically those that can ultimately advance the study of human behavior. Through strategic partnerships and collaborations, the Institute will focus its efforts and resources on multidisciplinary research and development projects in neuroscience, psychology and behavioral studies, with an emphasis on understanding cognition, language, emotion and memory.
The Allen Brain Atlas
The first endeavor of the Allen Institute for Brain Science is the Allen Brain Atlas project, the planning for which has been underway for two years. For decades, scientists have been eager for an intense, focused effort to develop a compendium of information that could serve as a foundation for general brain research. Instead of researching genes one at a time, the Allen Brain Atlas project will give scientists an unprecedented view of that portion of the genome that is active in the brain. This comprehensive view will help scientists quickly, cheaply and effectively translate the burgeoning knowledge of the human and other genomes into much-needed biological and medical advances. Completion of the Atlas project is anticipated to take approximately five years, with the first release of data scheduled for the first quarter of 2004.
Initially, the Allen Brain Atlas project will build a gene expression atlas of the brain of a mouse – an animal that has long been a human surrogate for biomedical research and whose genome map became available just one year after the human genome was completed. Through the process of comparative genomics, many of the findings in the mouse brain will be transferable to humans since both have approximately 30,000 remarkably similar genes. Discovering which genes are active in different regions of the brain is a first step toward understanding functional differences between neurons on the cellular and molecular level, and what percentage of the human genome is involved in building and operating the human brain. Because the brain is our most complex organ, it is estimated that up to 20,000 genes (2/3 of the entire genome) may play a critical role in the development and functioning of a healthy human brain. With a goal to comprehensively define the unique molecular properties of brain cells that may underlie neural functions such as learning, memory, emotions and cognition, the Allen Brain Atlas project will also add a new dimension to classical anatomy by defining molecular anatomy at a cellular scale of resolution and a genome scale of scope. The Atlas will also enhance the ability of scientists to build other types of maps, including those based upon proteomics (the study of large numbers of individual proteins) and functional imaging. Learn more about the Allen Brain Atlas online at www.brainatlas.org.
Project Team and Scientific Advisory Board
The Atlas project team is under the leadership of Allen Institute co-founder Jo Allen Patton, and comprises a multidisciplinary group of scientists and information technology specialists recruited from both academia and industry. Together, these experts are designing a database and a collection of software tools that will combine state-of-the-art technologies for information processing, storage and data mining, enabling Allen Institute researchers, and scientists everywhere, to exploit the data in their research.
In addition to the expert project team, the Atlas project has an international and illustrious board of scientific advisors, including: David Anderson from California Institute of Technology; Gregor Eichele from the Max Planck Institute; Richard Gibbs of Baylor College of Medicine; Steven Paul of Lilly Research Laboratories; Gregory Schuler from the National Center for Biotechnology Information; Joseph Takahashi of Northwestern University; Marc Tessier-Lavigne of Genentech, Inc.; and, Arthur Toga from the Laboratory of Neuro Imaging at UCLA. In addition, James Watson (who co-discovered the double helix structure of DNA) and Steven Pinker are advisors to the Allen Institute. Over the next several years, staffing plans include hiring approximately 75 more scientists, technology experts and other professionals to work on the Atlas project as well as additional initiatives of the Allen Institute for Brain Science.
About Paul G. Allen
Philanthropist and investor Paul G. Allen creates and advances world-class projects and high-impact initiatives that change and improve the way people live, learn, work and experience the world through arts, education, entertainment, sports, business and technology. He co-founded Microsoft with Bill Gates in 1976, remained the company’s chief technologist until he left Microsoft in 1983, and is the founder and chairman of Vulcan Inc. and chairman of Charter Communications (a broadband multimedia company). In addition, Allen’s multibillion dollar investment portfolio includes large stakes in DreamWorks SKG, Oxygen Media, Digeo, and more than 50 other technology, media and content companies. Allen also owns the Seattle Seahawks NFL and Portland Trail Blazers NBA franchises.
Named one of the top 10 philanthropists in America, with lifetime giving totaling more than $700 million, Allen gives back to the community through the six Paul G. Allen Foundations, which strengthen communities and support vulnerable populations in the areas of arts, health and human services, medical research and technology in education. Allen is founder of Experience Music Project, Seattle’s critically-acclaimed interactive music museum, the forthcoming Science Fiction Museum and Hall of Fame (opening June 2004), and Vulcan Productions, the independent film production company behind Todd Haynes’ critically- acclaimed Far From Heaven, the 2001 Evolution series on PBS, and last year’s The Blues series, executive produced by Martin Scorsese in conjunction with Allen and Jody Patton. Learn more about Allen online at www.vulcan.com and the Paul G. Allen Foundations at www.pgafoundations.com.
Matthew HerperFormer Staff Healthcare I cover science and medicine, and believe this is biology’s century.
Paul Allen, Airventure 2005 (Photo credit: Wikipedia) Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen is donating $300 million of his $14 billion fortune in his eponymous Allen Institute for Brain Science to fund new projects to map and observe the human brain and, in Allen’s words, “to one day understand the essence of what makes us human.” That brings the total amount Allen has invested in the Institute to $500 million. The announcement was made at a press conference today in Seattle and in a commentary in Nature, one of the world’s best scientific journals, written by Christof Koch, the Institute’s Chief Scientific Officer, and R. Clay Reid of Harvard Medical School. They lay out a way of doing brain research that involves optogenetics, a kind of deep stimulation of the brain using light, connectomics, the study of connections in the brain, and brain observatories, ways of monitoring what happens in the brain in real time. Right now, because the mouse is smaller and simpler, much of the early efforts focus on the mouse brain. One of Allen’s new efforts is to map the visual connections between the brain and the mouse. There, mice have perhaps 2 million neurons involved in vision, compared to 5 billion such cells for humans.
Today In: Forbes
Jupiter’s ‘Veiny Eyeball’ Moon Europa Is Spewing Water Into Space. Should We Taste It? What To Do If You Don’t Want To Go Back To Work Turns Out Sharks Are Picky Hunters “If you start out as a programmer, as I did in high school, the brain works in a completely different fashion than computers do,” Allen said, calling the effort “fascinating” and “noting that he’s been touched by neurodegenerative diseases” — his mother has Alzheimer’s. On the call he noted that while it’s possible to teach a student — a human brain — to program a computer in a matter of years, a computer can’t learn to function like a human brain even given a lifetime of opportunity. “”You can’t create an artificial intelligence,” Allen said, “unless you know how the real thing works.” Allen said he’s not interested in collecting intellectual property. The goal is to create open science at an industrial scale. The institute says that every month 50,000 scientists access its brain map data. PROMOTED Alteryx BrandVoice | Paid Program How A New Approach To Analytics Can Boost Your Bottom Line
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Paul Allen, Airventure 2005 (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
“We know that such an expensive project will have critics,” Koch and Reid write. “The resources required could fund hundreds of other projects, so why focus them in this way? Our response is that funding agencies are already spending billions of dollars on many smaller projects across all areas of biomedical research, and the Allen Institute wants to pioneer a new approach. We want to understand one piece of brain tissue by integrating knowledge across techniques and scales, rather than distributing the funds more widely.”
Ed Boyden, an associate professor at the MIT Media Lab who is one of the pioneers in the field of optogenetics, echoed that sentiment. “The Allen Institute is assembling an extraordinary set of tools to tackle brain circuitry in a vertically integrated way, from the parts lists to how they all work together,” he wrote via Facebook chat. “It is impossible for an ordinary lab group to bring all these pieces together.” Allen’s remarks were eloquent and inspiring, and I have included them in full below. Remarks of Paul G. Allen These prepared remarks closely, but not entirely, match the speech Allen gave today at a press conference in Seattle.
Good morning. Thank you all for joining us today. As you saw in the video, I have made a new financial commitment to the Institute – a pledge of $300 million to fund new programs you’ll hear more about today. I’ve always been fascinated by the workings of the human brain. I’m awed by its enormous complexity. Our brains are many magnitudes more advanced in the way they work than any computer software ever invented. Think about this: We can teach students to program computers in a couple of years of school. But even with a lifetime of learning, at present we are far away from fully understanding the brain. Thus, we have only begun to scratch the surface of the complex problems inherent in figuring out the deep, detailed knowledge of the brain’s inner workings. More than a decade ago, I was inspired to try to accelerate brain research by a host of leading scientists, including Jim Watson, the co-discoverer of the double-helix structure of DNA. They advised me to develop an accurate and comprehensive map of the brain detailing the expression of every single gene. This would be key to solving basic questions about human behavior, brain disorders and diseases. It was a call for “big science,” industrial-scale research. It was clear we would need the top researchers in the field, as well as large-scale, custom technology to capture and process enormous volumes of data. The goal was to spur progress across the field, and the best way to ensure that was to allow researchers anywhere in the world to access that data for free. This would set a benchmark for open science and our findings would be public. We’ve built that map, and scientists around the world have used our data for a variety of important projects, including research into Autism, brain tumors, Alzheimer’s, epilepsy and Down syndrome, to name just a few. Today the Brain Atlas is used by researchers studying just about ever facet of the brain. I’m very proud of the accomplishments Allan and others here have been able to share with the world. Allan is a brilliant researcher himself who put together a team of top scientists, staff and advisors. Together they generate, organize and curate the massive amounts of data that fuel discoveries by the global research community. I also want to take a moment to thank Christof Koch, the Institute’s Chief Scientific Officer who joined us from CalTech. Christof’s world-class talent in the biophysics of the brain and his vision have been key in launching the new initiatives we’re announcing today. The Institute’s work requires multidisciplinary collaboration. Our team comprises experts from different fields – from genomics and neuroanatomy to engineering, informatics and computer science. We also work with many universities and other laboratories. These partners bring their own strengths to our joint efforts and will further accelerate our progress. The job gets tougher now. We are going to tackle some of the biggest challenges in science today (as Allan and Christof will describe). My commitment today doesn’t just continue the work of the Institute. It greatly expands the scale and the scope of our mission. We hope to foment breakthroughs in neuroscience and unlock great unsolved mysteries of how the brain works. To understand this complex organ, we’re starting with individual cells, to better understand how they develop, integrate information, and make decisions. In parallel, we are studying how collections of brain cells act together to form circuits, and how information is input, transformed, and processed in those circuits. And we’re doing it in the open, community-based way we’ve followed for many years. We’re now launching our search for answers to the biggest questions in neuroscience today. Those answers will help unlock the principles that drive the fundamental functions of the brain. We are optimistic they will also apply to many diseases and disorders. Our dream is to one day uncover the essence of what makes us human – to explore and understand how the brain makes us remember, forget, interact with each other and become the people we are. Thank you again for coming today to share this exciting news with us.
University of Washington neurosurgeon Rich Ellenbogen was on the sidelines at a Seahawks game last year when he got word that “the boss” wanted to see him.
That would be the top boss, team owner and Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen.
“I’d never met him before,” recalled Ellenbogen, who volunteers as a neurological specialist for the Seahawks and the NFL.
But the UW scientist was thrilled to discover what was on Allen’s mind: concussion and brain injury, and what researchers could do to better understand the problem.
That conversation led to a Seattle-based collaboration launched Thursday — and bankrolled by Allen’s foundation — to study the way blows to the head can damage the brain. Among the questions the scientists hope to answer is whether even mild concussions early in life can lead to dementia decades later.
“I think we can answer some of these questions better than anybody else in the world because of the resources we have,” said Dr. Eric Larson, vice president of research for Group Health, which is involved in the study.
Shrugged off for years as a part of football, repeated concussions have now been linked to permanent brain damage and other neurological problems. Claims by thousands of former players led to a $750 million payout from the NFL earlier this year.
At the same time, the physical and mental fallout from head injuries suffered in Iraq and Afghanistan is taking a toll on a generation of veterans.
Allen, who has a longstanding fascination with neuroscience, is concerned about the long-term effects of traumatic-brain injuries, said Kathy Richmond, science officer for the Paul G. Allen Family Foundation.
As the NFL’s richest owner — and the only one with his own brain-research lab — Allen also has the means and inclination to help tackle the problem scientifically.
“He recognized the importance of this, and how many outstanding questions there are,” said Richmond. “He’s interested in getting to those answers, no matter what they are.”
The key to the Seattle project is Group Health’s collection of more than 500 brains, donated by patients over the past 25 years as part of an ongoing study of cognitive function and aging.
The brain bank is the largest in the world drawn from a general population, Larson said. And nearly 1 in 5 donors suffered some type of head trauma during their lives, as a result of everything from falls and car accidents to combat-related blast injuries.
During the two-year, $2.4 million study, scientists at the UW and the Allen Institute for Brain Science in Seattle will examine the brains at the structural, cellular and molecular levels, looking for changes related to traumatic-brain injury.
Because of the detailed health records on file for each patient, the researchers should be able to draw correlations between head injuries and later health problems, including Alzheimer’s disease.
“If I get in a car accident in my 20s, does that mean I’m going to get dementia in my 70s?” asked Ellenbogen, chairman of the UW Department of Neurosurgery. “Right now, we don’t know.”
The research might also reveal whether some people are more vulnerable to brain injury than others, because of their genes, Ellenbogen added.
Few of the people who donated their brains to Group Health experienced the kind of repeated head trauma common among professional athletes and military personnel who served in Iraq and Afghanistan, said psychiatrist Elaine Peskind, who studies brain injury at the Veterans Affairs Puget Sound Health Care System.
But the new research will provide valuable insights into how any kind of head injury can disrupt the connections between neurons and brain regions, said Peskind, who is not involved in the project.
All of the data will be freely available to researchers around the world, said Ed Lein of the Allen Institute.
“That will accelerate the whole field,” Lein said.
The institute is Allen’s single biggest philanthropic venture, receiving $500 million so far from the man who ranks number 23 on Forbes magazine’s “richest Americans” list.
Scientists at the institute use cutting-edge methods to map out brain structure and function.
The molecular and genetic atlases they have compiled of the human and mouse brain are accessed online by more than 40,000 researchers every month.
Officials from the NFL will visit the institute in early December, when the Seahawks face off against the New Orleans Saints, Ellenbogen said.
The NFL has already donated $30 million to the National Institutes of Health for research on concussions and other health issues and is exploring possible collaborations with Seattle scientists, he said.
Sandi Doughton at: 206-464-2491 or sdoughton@seattletimes.com
SEATTLE, April 30, 2015 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ — The Paul G. Allen Family Foundation announced today the award of Allen Distinguished Investigator (ADI) grants to six groups of researchers with projects at the frontier of one of the most challenging roadblocks in neuroscience: growing mature human brain cells in the laboratory. The projects are funded at a total of $7.5 million over three years.
“This new cohort of Allen Distinguished Investigators and their research is especially significant because the field of neuronal maturation is at the leading edge of bioscience,” says Tom Skalak, Ph.D., Executive Director for Science and Technology for the Paul G. Allen Family Foundation. “The awardees’ broad talents and areas of expertise are what we need to explore this beckoningundiscovered territory.” (Type A personalities driven to push the envelope regardless of consequences.)
Studying human brain cells is one of the most promising ways to better understand the function of the healthy brain as well as provide insight into the development of diseases like Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s. “Despite this potential, progress has been limited by a major gap in our scientific understanding,” comments Skalak. It typically takes more than a year to develop cells that come close to resembling fully mature neurons, and even then, yield is often low and full maturity has not been reached.
The six projects chosen to receive ADI grants in the field of neuronal maturation all tackle one or more of these challenges in bold new ways, including using innovative technologies and novel points of view.
Research in neuronal maturation is fundamental to many aspects of neuroscience research, including the work being conducted at the Allen Institute for Brain Science. The projects chosen for ADI grants complement the work at the Allen Institute and neuroscience as a whole.
“Our work at the Allen Institute for Brain Science has revealed that the field of neuronal maturation is in great need of exploration,” says Christof Koch, Ph.D., Chief Scientific Officer at the Allen Institute for Brain Science. “This inspiring cohort of national innovators identified by the Foundation will make important advances using their own ideas, and we expect the resulting insights will in turn accelerate the Institute’s work to understand neural function and human cognition itself.”
The Foundation seeks to open new frontiers in science, and the ADI program supports early-stage research with the potential to re-invent entire fields. Successful neuronal maturation would have widespread impact on the field of neuroscience, including changing how researchers study the healthy brain as well as how they seek treatments for diseases like autism, Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s. (Researches studying the BRAIN has been the source of so much evil related to mind control, torture, abuse, and transhumanism or “the end of HUMANS”as it is called.)
About the ADI Recipients Allen Distinguished Investigators are passionate thought leaders, explorers, and innovators who seek world-changing breakthroughs. With grants between $1 million and $1.5 million each, the Foundation provides these scientists with enough funds to produce momentum in their respective fields. The new ADI recipients are:
Daniel Geschwind and Steve Horvath, University of California, Los Angeles ($1.2 million)
One of the major obstacles to using human stem cells in the laboratory is that even the best protocols yield immature or inconsistent cells. Geschwind and Horvath are using mathematical predictions to identify factors that drive neuronal maturation in the human brain but that are absent in neurons grown from stem cells in cell culture. They will use these factors to create more stable cultures that are more similar to functioning neurons in the brain. They have also identified an aging clock based on genetic measurements from thousands of cells and tissues, and will use similar methods to mimic the effects of aging in the laboratory. (I would like to see disclosure as to WHERE THEY ARE OBTAINING ALL THESE CELLS THOUSANDS OF CELLS.)
Feng Zhang, Massachusetts Institute of Technology($1 million)
Understanding the biological mechanisms of neuronal differentiation and maturation is fundamental to rapidly replicating the diversity of cells in the human brain. Zhang’s project focuses on developing a highly scalable genomic engineering system that can reliably evaluate the genetic activity that leads to differentiated and matured cells, as well as produce differentiated and matured cells by modifying this genetic activity. He will apply the transcriptome analysis and powerful perturbation systems previously developed in his lab to study and later generate a number of human neuronal cell types relevant to neurological disorders.
Jeffrey Macklis, Harvard University($1.5 million)
Macklis’ project has four proposed aims. The first is to develop a molecular-DNA “flight data recorder” inserted into individual cells, both to observe the rare cells that undergo remarkably appropriate partial maturation, and those that becomes stalled, confused, delayed, or immature. The second aim builds molecular timekeepers in order to better understand maturation time for individual cells. The third aim develops entirely novel synthetic biology technology to discover biological interactions during development that neurons may require to sequence through maturation “checkpoints.” The fourth aim develops first-in-field analysis of neuronal diversity and maturation at a deep level, in order to understand the basis of brain wiring and circuitry.
Erik Ullian and David Rowitch, University of California, San Francisco($1 million)
Astrocytes are the most abundant cell type in the human brain, providing signals that are essential for all aspects of neuronal function and survival. But just as no two neurons are the same, astrocytes are incredibly diverse and specialized. Different types of astrocytes can provide different kinds of support and signals to the neurons they surround. In this proposal, Ullian and Rowitch will test whether the signals from different types of human astrocytes are necessary for the proper maturation and function of human iPSC-derived neurons. Their previous work in mouse models indicates that generating astrocytes that are matched to their partner neurons will be essential to studying and understanding human neuronal function in both health and disease.
William Lowry and Kathrin Plath, University of California, Los Angeles($1.3 million)
Another obstacle to creating useful pluripotent stem cells is purity, since it is nearly impossible to create pure populations of particular subtypes of neurons or glia, and those that are generated are more similar to those found during early fetal development as opposed to the cells that are needed clinically. Lowry and Plath have devised a model system to isolate and identify very specific types of neurons, which they can use to create neurons that are more like those found in the adult nervous system. These particular types of neurons are thought to be dysfunctional in various disorders including autism, Alzheimer’s and schizophrenia, so increased knowledge of these specific neurons could dramatically facilitate the study and eventual treatment of these devastating disorders.
Thomas Reh, Rachel Wong and Fred Rieke, University of Washington($1.3 million)
This project will address two major roadblocks in neuronal maturation—diversity of cells in the brain and the developmental “clock”—in the context of the retina. The retina is ideal for these studies because it is a self-contained part of the nervous system with known cell types and stereotypic connections that have well-defined functions. The project will determine how closely the neural circuitry in a stem cell-derived retinaresembles its normal in vivo counterpart, and will also investigate whether small RNAs, called microRNAs, control the developmental clock of maturation in the retina. Understanding the function of microRNAs in the retina, which appear to control the clock of maturation throughout our lives, will lead to better models of neurological diseases of aging and provide a basis for building a functional nervous system in the laboratory.
About The Paul G. Allen Family Foundation Launched by Microsoft co-founder and philanthropist Paul G. Allen and Jody Lynn Allen in 1988, the Allen family’s philanthropy is dedicated to transforming lives and strengthening communities by fostering innovation, creating knowledge and promoting social progress. Since inception, the Foundation has awarded over $550 million to more than 1,400 nonprofit groups to support and advance their critical charitable endeavors in the Pacific Northwest and beyond. The Foundation’s funding programs nurture the arts, engage children in learning, address the needs of vulnerable populations, advance scientific and technological discoveries, and move new knowledge to global impact that creates economic growth and societal benefit. (All of those issues are related to global domination. Did you see anything in their that could be viewed as charity to assist people who are displaced, hungry, or homeless in any way that can improve their life NOW? Poisoned vaccines forced on starving people is not charity! Hungry, homeless, jobless people are not concerned with faster internet or transhumanism, medical data software, tracking systems, or space exploration! Show me something that proves these people are doing anything to improve the lives of needy individuals and not the profits of greedy corporations/foundations. ) For more information, go to www.pgafamilyfoundation.org.
Media Contact: Rob Piercy, Sr. Media Relations Specialist 206.548.8486 | press@alleninstitute.org
SOURCE The Paul G. Allen Family Foundation
We are human. We are the next frontier.
The Allen Institute is fiercely committed to solving some of the biggest mysteries of bioscience, researching the unknown of human biology, in the brain, the human cell and the immune system. At the same time, we are pushing the frontiers of bioscience to continue to explore the edges of scientific discovery. (Transhumanism, Digital ID, Vaccines, Changing DNA, Mind Control)
Our scientists within each division collaborate in a team science approach, tackling big science projects. And everything learned within our walls is shared publicly across the world in what we call open science.
All this work is done to fulfill our founder Paul G. Allen’s vision for accelerating global progress towards improving health and lengthening life. (Don’t get excited, it isn’t YOUR LIFE they want to lengthen, unless you take the chip and become their slaves.)
Project Alexandria – a new research initiative on common sense artificial intelligence
Paul G. Allen Frontiers Group/Exploring Frontiers of BioScience
Precision Medicine Developer Using Patient-Derived 3D Micro-Tissues
InvivoSciences, Inc. (IVS) is a precision medicine company personalizing the drug development process by introducing the next-generation, best-in-class patient-derived and gene-edited human samples, including automated, scalable, functional 3D engineered micro-human heart tissue platform. Our unique integration of cell & tissue handling automation, tissue phenotyping assays, computational biology (AI), and human organ/tissue data enables rapid identification of safety and efficacy profile of a given treatment for specific patient group significantly cost-effective prior to expensive clinical trials. IVS’s technology for matchmaking the best treatment for the patient group will expedite the early discovery and clinical trials as well as support post-product launch monitoring. Thus, our approach brings tremendous value to pharmaceutical developers who area evaluating the safety and efficacy of new drug candidates before investing significant resources in human trials and who wants to increase their success rate of drug approvals. As such the technology can dramatically help 1) mitigate the historically high risk of clinical trial failure because of the treatment-induced arrhythmia, and heart failure and 2) develop patient-specific heart failure treatments.
Super yachts, a collection of war planes, Impressionist masterpieces and star-studded parties a feature of lavish spending
Autobiography accuses Gates of trying to swindle him out of fortune while he was sick with cancer
Microsoft recently celebrated its 36th birthday.
The occasion was not marked with bright smiles and felicitations, but with ugly scowls and recriminations between the two men who could have been blowing out the candles together.
News of a seismic clash between the empire’s founders will have come as a shock to many.
Not so much the rift, but the fact there were two of them — and that the company that revolutionised the world of computing was set up by anyone other than Bill Gates.
Paul Allen enjoyed the company of fellow Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates at a Portland Trail Blazers basketball game in this undated photograph. But their relationship allegedly soured
And that seems to be precisely Paul Allen’s point in writing an autobiography — published this week — that has finally pulled him out from his former partner’s shadow and exposed the abiding tensions between them.
The media fracas began when an extract from Idea Man: A Memoir By The Co-founder Of Microsoft appeared in the current issue of Vanity Fair magazine.
In it, Allen painted a less than flattering portrait of Bill Gates, with whom he co-founded Microsoft in 1975, as a slave-driving micro-manager who publicly belittled co-workers.
‘To anybody who disagreed with himhe would reel out his favourite insult: “That’s the stupidest f****** thing I’ve ever heard!”,’Allen recalls in the memoir.
Gates would jeer at colleagues if they wanted to take time off,Allen adds. He also claims that his former friend and colleague attempted to swindle him out of his fair share of the business, most notably in 1982, when Allen was suffering from cancer.
Low profile high roller: Allen does not have the profile of his old partner Gates but he is known to the stars, such as Paris Hilton for his lavish parties
This week, Allen admitted in an interview that Gates’ demanding and confrontational style ‘gradually destroyed our friendship and our ability to work together’.
The relationship never recovered, and Allen left Microsoft in 1983. Gates went on to create a fortune estimated at £35 billion and devote his life to philanthropy; Allen, whose accusations of foul play this month earned him the sobriquet ‘the bitter billionaire’ in the U.S. press, appeared to vanish completely and has spent the past 20 years as a Gatsby-esque recluse.
So obsessively private is he that even guests to his famously lavish parties have to sign non-disclosure agreements. (Is that because he is a recluse, or because of the things they may see while at his party?)
Indeed, the man — so reclusive he was once described as the ‘Loch Ness Monster of the internet age’ — garners far fewer headlines than one of his obscenely-proportioned yachts.
Unless you are a rock star who relishes playing at billionaires’ birthday parties, a Hollywood actress in need of a free French mansion, or a supermodel looking for the ultimate yacht on which to sunbathe, you are unlikely to have even heard of Allen, the ‘other man’ in the Microsoft story.
If you are any of the above, though, you may well have encountered the shy, slightly dumpy, serious-looking man who stood out like a sore thumb at any number of the wild, star-studded parties that turned out to be his.
‘My face is not well-known,’ he admits.
‘So if somebody runs into me at a party, typically they have no idea if I’m just one of the guitar players in the band or if I’m the host.’
He may be well behind his old sparring partner in the Forbes rich list — Gates is 2nd in the world while Allen has sunk to 57thon a trifling £8billion — but Allen punches well above his weight in opulence, spending incredible sums to enjoy one of the most lavish lifestyles of this age.
Specky, wiry Gates may look more the part, but 58-year-old Allen acts the part to perfection of the computer nerd suddenly given more money than anyone could possibly spend.
In Microsoft’s early days, Allen provided the technical vision while Gates was the business brains. (So Gates was not even the brains in technology… he is only a very aggressive businessman, motivated by money and measurable progress/success.)
Even so, Allen has long had to put up with the unflattering moniker of ‘the accidental zillionaire’, a reference to the fact that virtually all his money came from the rocketing share value of Microsoft after he left.
He owns spectacular homes in France including a villa at Cap Ferrat, in London’s Holland Park, and in New York.
The founders: A 1978 photo of the 11 people who started Microsoft with Bill Gates on the left of the front row and Paul Allen on the right
His main residence, outside his home town of Seattle, features an art gallery stuffed with Impressionist masterpieces, a basketball court lined with Renoirs and Monets, and an underground car park where he keeps a huge collection of sports cars.
He has his own hangar at Seattle’s airport where he keeps his various jets, including two Boeing 757s and a Challenger 601 and another — in deference to a childhood spent making model airplanes — where he keeps 15 flyable planes from World War II.
They include a Curtiss Tomahawk, a Messerschmitt 109, a Grumman Hellcat and a Spitfire.
But neither the houses nor the planes hold a candle to the yachts. Allen has three of them, each vast and crewed to the hilt.
His flagship, the 414 ft Octopus, has eight levels, a crew of 60 including former U.S. Navy Seals, two helicopters, seven boats, a remote-controlled vehicle that crawls across the ocean floor, a recording studio and a ten-man submarine where the Beastie Boys recorded their last album.
The Octopus alone, the world’s biggest when he bought it, costs £12 million a year to keep up and £483,000 for a full tank of fuel.
Lavish: Paul Allen’s yacht Octopus, pictured here in Beaulieu, has eight levels, a crew of 60, two helicopters, seven boats and a recording studio where the Beastie Boys recorded their last album
For Allen, it’s a small price to pay to get the likes of Mick Jagger, Brad Pitt, Angelina Jolie, Cameron Diaz and Paris Hilton on board.
Insiders say Allen has few close friends, although he is devoted to his widowed mother, Faye, 85, and sister, Jody, 53.
Many of the celebrities who throng his parties are simply friends of friends, they say. He has relied on the media mogul David Geffen and the actress Carrie Fisher to introduce him to Hollywood and Dave Stewart, the former member of the band The Eurythmics, to do the same in the music world.
His propensity for party-giving may be Gatsby-esque, but looks-wise Allen is no Robert Redford. He remains terminally uncool, snipe those who wolf down his champagne and caviar canapés.
Acquaintances are pleasantly surprised to find Allen is not the usual aggressive ‘alpha male’ billionaire. Still, sadly people don’t seem to go to Allen bashes for the host’s bonhomie and sparkling conversation.
Allen is apparently so socially gauche that if a conversation takes a direction he doesn’t like he just walks away.
Girlfriends: Socially awkward Allen once dated tennis star Monica Seles
One guest told Allen’s biographer, Laura Rich: ‘He’s not particularly gracious or particularly witty or particularly funny . . . he’s not good at being desperately interested in what other people are saying.’
Allen has never married, but he has certainly had girlfriends. Although he was once romantically linked with Jerry Hall, who joined him on his yacht in the south of France shortly after her break-up from Mick Jagger in 1999, the dalliance — if there was one — was short-lived.
He also once dated tennis star Monica Seles.
The maudlin songs he wrote with titles such as Rhythm Of Hearts and Kingdom Of The Lonely for his rock band, Grown Men, are believed to have been his way of coping with the break-up many years ago.
Non-famous girlfriends report being treated rather less sensitively, several saying he unceremoniously dumped them without explanation and further contact.
In 1998, Allen ended up in court after Abbie Phillips, who he had employed to run his film and TV production company, Storyopolis, accused him of sexually assaulting her.
He denied the charge and the case was settled out of court, but not before her lawyer had accused him of mistreating four other women — ‘developing crushes, lavishing gifts and vacations on, and then firing, married female employees’.
Women say he has nice, kind eyes and is ‘sweet’, even if he has the pallid complexion of someone who spends too much time on his computer.
Some report being terrified by his much fiercer sister, Jody, who appears to function as his gatekeeper. And well she might, given the size of his fortune.
Romance may be complicated, but Allen is on surer ground entertaining en masse.
His parties are the stuff of whispered conversations even among the top tier of Hollywood. ‘No one entertains like that any more,’ says one Hollywood producer.
‘He is like a Medici prince, a grand seigneur, someone who entertains in the old style.’
In 1998, Allen celebrated his 45th birthday with a week-long luxury cruise to Alaska that cost him £5.5 million. Guests — ‘friends’ might be going too far — included Jerry Hall, Francis Ford Coppola and Candice Bergen.
Hobby: Allen loves playing the guitar and is pictured here on stage with the American band Presidents of the United States of America
Two years later, he trumped that with an £8 million extravaganza in which he flew 200 guests, among them Sir Paul McCartney and Tom Hanks, to Helsinki and then on to St Petersburg at the cost of £860 per head per night.
Robin Williams can hardly be alone in admitting, after being flown to Allen’s masked ball in Venice, that he didn’t know the man at all. ‘I guess it’s a “Hi, I’m a billionaire, let’s have a party” kind of thing,’ he said.
Once, he lent Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie his French villa while she was pregnant.
If there’s only one obvious quid pro quo to Allen’s famous generosity, it seems to be a musical one.
At least one of his musician guests always ends up performing at his parties and Allen usually joins them on stage, the Jimi Hendrix devotee thrashing away on his guitar while guests politely cheer and think of the goodie bags.
The post-cruise ones included cashmere socks, rucksack, travel rug and binoculars. Jagger repaid Allen’s hospitality by letting him perform a guitar solo at his own 56th birthday party.
Party boat: Allen has two other yachst aside from the Tatoosh – including the Octopus (pictured)
Allen spent £148 million just building a Frank Gehry-designed rock museum in Seattle.
Playing guitar is one of his two great passions. The other is sport. He might like shooting a few basketball hoops, but he’s also keen on owning entire sports teams.
His collection includes the U.S. football team the Seattle Seahawks, the Seattle Sounders soccer team and basketball’s Portland Trailblazers.
Allen attends almost every Trailblazers home game, memorising every statistic and barraging the manager with text messages during the game. In 2007, he reportedly offered £50 million for Southampton FC, but the deal — probably to the manager’s everlasting relief — never happened.
Other interests more closely fit the geek stereotype. A Star Trek fan, he owns Captain Kirk’s chair from the original TV series which now sits proudly in the Science Fiction Museum and Hall of Fame he created in Seattle.
He wants to be a spaceman, too, and even has his own rocket, the SpaceShipOne, which won him a prize for putting the first privately-funded craft into space.
Star power: Allen with Star Wars creator George Lucas, one of the many film personalities he likes to keep company with through his contacts
Can it be any surprise to learn that Allen is a major contributor to the SETI, or Search for Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence, project?
As for Microsoft, he now concedes his old firm is way behind the curve, saying the company has suffered a ‘decade of missed opportunities’ while Apple, Google and Facebook stormed ahead in their respective fields.
But he focuses his venom on Sergey Brin and Larry Page, the co-founders of Google, saying their actions are questionable at best and ‘evil’ at worst.
Meanwhile, his own post-Microsoft business career has been anything but stellar.
While the singleminded Gates devoted himself to advancing Microsoft, Allen, who met Gates while they were both pupils at a Seattle private school, branched out, showering money on dozens of ventures.
Always overshadowed by Gates in how much money he could earn, Allen has now been trumped in how much he is willing to give away, too
He has sunk many millions into more than 50 companies, but his track record has been generally pretty poor, dragging him down the rich list (he was once at number three) and reinforcing the ‘accidental zillionaire’ reputation he is said to loathe.
He was a major investor in DreamWorks, the Steven Spielberg Hollywood studio, though yet again he was trumped by Gates, who got far more attention a week later when he announced Microsoft was putting £61 million into the studio.
But at least it got Allen, an inveterate movie buff, smart invitations to Hollywood parties.
Allen may have taken a very different path to his Microsoft partner, but he will always be measured against him. Always overshadowed by Gates in how much money he could earn, Allen has now been trumped in how much he is willing to give away, too.
While Gates and his wife Melinda have now given to charity about 35 per cent of their fortune — some £17 billion — Allen has given away only three-quarters of a billion of his. (Ok, let’s be clear… the Gates aren’t giving anything… They are a foundation and their personal money is protected. The money they do throw around is really being used to create income for his other ventures or the ventures of his cohorts, who in turn send corresponding returns his way.)
More than a decade ago, he once complained to his friend the author Douglas Adams that he felt frustrated with his wealth.
‘I’ve spent money on jets, boats. I don’t know what to do next,’ he said.
Adams replied that he wanted to bring together a group of ‘brilliant thinkers’ to dream up some great philanthropic endeavour. Would Allen throw in a billion dollars, he asked.
Adams died and it never happened.
As Allen remains adrift on his luxury yachts and his spendthrift playboy existence, some must wonder if it ever will.
Lesley Stahl speaks to Microsoft co-founder and billionaire Paul Allen in his first interview about his upcoming book in which he criticizes his Microsoft co-founder, Bill Gates.
1 of 8 | Paul Allen smiles as he listens during the dedication of the Paul G. Allen Center for Computer Science & Engineering at the University of Washington in October 2003. In 2017, the computer science department became the Paul G…. (AP Photo/John Froschauer) More
Paul Allen intended to give away the majority of the $20 billion-plus fortune he accumulated as Microsoft co-founder,technology investor, real estate magnate and NFL and NBA team owner.
A little more than a year after his death, the course he charted for doing so remains a closely guarded secret, its execution a complex, high-stakes work in progress. Chatter earlier this month that Jeff Bezos was interested in buying an NFL team, possibly the Seahawks — which are not for sale, according to team sources — renewed interest in the disposition of the rest of the Allen empire.
The many, wide-ranging constituencies for Allen’s endeavors — from Seattle and Portland sports fans to connoisseurs of fine art and pop culture to nonprofits, real-estate investors and academic and scientific leaders — have questions: What will be kept and what will be sold? What form will the promised philanthropy take and what will its focus be? When will it all happen?
The answer to that last one, at least, seems clear: Not yet, and probably not soon.
Estate experts say it can take years to unwind holdings such as Allen’s — an expansive collection of businesses, investments, properties, world-class art and other eclectic and valuable assets. Then there’s the process of thoughtfully and effectively giving away what could be as much as $10 billion or more.
A view of CenturyLink Field, home of the Seattle Seahawks, owned by Paul Allen. Allen formed First & Goal to develop and run the stadium and was closely involved with its construction and design. (Erika Schultz / The Seattle Times)
The Frank Gehry-designed MoPop, that Paul Allen co-founded with sister Jody. It was formerly known as the Experience Music Project. (Ken Lambert / The Seattle Times)
At the helm of it all is Jody Allen, trustee, sister and, with her family, sole heir. Jody Allen “has responsibility for preserving and implementing Paul Allen’s vision for generations to come,” according to a biography on the website of Vulcan, the business they co-foundedthat serves as the hub of the Allen empire.
Her specific intentions are unknownoutside of a tight and protective inner circle. A Vulcan representative declined interview requests, saying “there are no updates to discuss.” She added, “Vulcan remains committed to tackling the world’s toughest problems.”
The expectations are great, based in large part on Paul and Jody Allen’s long and varied record of philanthropy — he gave away some $2 billion while alive — and contributions to the business, scientific and cultural fabric of Seattle and beyond.
Shannon Halberstadt, chief executive of Artist Trust, a Seattle-based group that supports artists with grants and advocacy, called Allen’s support “transformative for the arts community in Seattle. But if there’s one thing to criticize, it would be the lack of transparency and what to expect.”
If $10 billion were to end up in a single foundation, it would be the sixth largest in the U.S. today, said Jacob Harold, executive vice president of Candid, which provides data and services to philanthropies and nonprofits.
Since Allen died Oct. 15, 2018, at age 65 of complications of non-Hodgkin lymphoma, some things have changed in the multitentacledAllen enterprise. But for the most part, it’s business as usual.
“I wouldn’t expect to see very much or know very much. In an estate such as this, this is still very early in the proceedings,” said Douglas Lawrence, an estate planning attorney who works with high-net worth clients at Stokes Lawrence in Seattle.
Allen’s mega-yacht Octopus is shown anchored off Villefranche, France in June 2004. The 414-foot, seven-deck vessel was refitted and put on the market earlier this year for $325 million. (Dana Jinkins / The Associated Press)
Allen’s largest mega-yacht, Octopus, was refitted and put on the market for $325 million, as was a Beverly Hills development property and an estate in Atherton, California. But another large yacht, Tatoosh, as well as the rest of Allen’s globe-spanning private residences — from a villa on the French Riviera to Georgia O’Keefe’s home in New Mexico — aren’t for sale
Two area golf courses, Willows Run in Redmond and Druids Glen in Kent, have been sold — though Allen was considering their sale as early as 2015. The costly Stratolaunch space venture shed employees, achieved the giant rocket-launching airplane’s first flight, and then changed hands, going to an unknown buyer. The Upstream Music Fest, begun in 2017, wasn’t held this year.
Stratolaunch Systems Corporation, founded by Paul Allen, rolls out the Stratolaunch to begin fueling tests on May 31, 2017. The Stratolaunch completed its first flight on April 13, 2019… (Courtesy of Stratolaunch Systems) More
The Allen Institute, at Mercer Street and Ninth Avenue North in South Lake Union, was founded in 2003 to unravel the mystery around how the brain works. (Mike Siegel / The Seattle Times)
Meanwhile, Allen’s multibillion-dollar investment firm opened a new office in Singapore and continues pouring capital into new ventures.Vulcan Real Estate continues buying and selling properties, in the past few years with a greater emphasis on Bellevue. Allen’s research vessel, Petrel, continues discovering historically significant shipwrecks.The Paul G. Allen Family Foundation continues issuing grants.The two research institutes Allen established in Seattle focused on artificial intelligence, brain and cell science and immunology are growing.
Perched on opposite ends of Lake Union, the institutes, with an estimated 650 employees between them, have “transformed the landscape of Seattle as a center of research in these fields, complementing existing organizations,” said Ed Lazowska, professor at the University of Washington’s Paul G. Allen School of Computer Science & Engineering.
Vulcan Real Estate, which rebuilt South Lake Union and developed assets worth some $4.3 billion over the last two decades, is “the crown jewel of (Allen’s) business ventures,” said longtime Seattle developer Kevin Daniels.
Daniels and other real estate watchers aren’t anticipating a mass liquidation or diminished activity.
“It’s not a plaything. It’s not a toy,” he said of Vulcan Real Estate’s substantial holdings. “They’re a formidable competitor. I stay out of their way.”
The sale of cash-consuming assets, such as yachts or space ventures, is a standard part of cleaning up an estate “so that when the time is right, you can distribute cash, cash equivalents and other what I would call useful assets,” Lawrence said.
But that typically takes years for estates of this size. Estates have up to 15 months from the date of death, including extensions, to file estate tax returns. The executor must pay estimated taxes, which can run to 52% of assets not passing to charity. As a practical matter, major distributions often have to wait until after state and federal tax officials sign off, he said.
Allen’s will gives most of his estate to a living trust he established in 1993, with Jody Allen as trustee. Its provisions would spell out any specific philanthropic plans Allen made and could also potentially create additional trusts, direct any distributions to individuals and handle taxation.
“It all depends what that trust says,” Lawrence said.
In life, Paul Allen’s philanthropy was many-faceted and deep. He funded research institutes and tiny preschools,museums and housing, ocean surveys and responses to Ebola outbreaks.
He was among the first to take the Giving Pledge in 2010 — a billionaires’ pact to donate most of their wealth — but had planned to do so long before. People who worked with him said he would view investment decisions in part through the lens of whether he’d have more or less to give away at the end. They also said he sometimes made contributions anonymously.
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One of the main channels for philanthropy is the Paul G. Allen Family Foundation, set up by Paul and Jody Allen in 1988. It has since given away at least $575million.
Philanthropy-watchers wonder whether Allen’s wealth will ultimately be placed in that foundation, a new one, or in some other structure. Several tech industry fortunes in recent years have been pledged for philanthropic purposes through limited liability companies rather than private foundations, among them the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative of Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg and wife Priscilla Chan, and Laurene Powell Jobs’ Emerson Collective. (Exactly, keep it in the family so to speak. It is all part of the Octopus. Most of the money today is going to AI, Mind Control and Medical Tyranny)
“The big tech donors over the last decade or so have tended to put their money into a more complex structure,” said Harold, the Candid executive.
This structure provides wealthy donors with more flexibility to make investments, political contributions and otherwise engage in advocacy, as well as making charitable grants.
“Another interpretation is that they’re an attempt to avoid transparency,” he said. “There’s some truth to both of those.”
Beyond its structure, big philanthropy is coming under increasing criticism “as a product of inequality, which it clearly is, kind of by definition,” he said
The Allen Family Foundation’s recent giving could be a window into its future, or it could be a mere snapshot of a philanthropy in transition.
At the end of 2018, the foundation had assets worth more than $931 million and made more than $48 million in contributions. Foundations must distribute 5% of their assets each year, on average.
Recipients range from a handful individuals given $200 for educational projects to $2.6 million for the UW’sAllen Discovery Center for Cell Lineage Tracing, according to federal tax filings. The majority of the largest grants went to fund scientific and medical research at preeminent institutions, and to environmental causes, such as combating illegal ivory trafficking, inventorying sea life around the globe and developing climate models.
The foundation also funded Allen’s museums devoted to the histories of computers, military armor and aviation; a “smart city” program in Columbus, Ohio; improvements to a hospital cafeteria in Yreka, California; Mercy Housing Northwest’s construction of apartments for homeless families; and community development near a safari lodge in Zambia.(The foundation is also a funder of The Seattle Times’ reporting on homelessness.)
Some in the local arts community said the foundation’s giving has diminished since 2014, and hope it will again be a priority.
“That support before 2014 was major – it was one of the biggest grants we got in this region,” said Sharon Williams, chief executive of the Central District Forum for Arts & Ideas, adding that the organization hasn’t been invited back for funding since.
There was more to Paul Allen than tech and science. He was also a well-regarded art collector. The public got a rare glimpse of some of what he owned in a show at MoPOP in 2006. The smaller painting… (Alan Berner / The Seattle Times) More
Arts-focused grants from the foundation in 2018 include $300,000 to the Oregon Shakespeare Festival Association for the Allen Elizabethan Theatre in Ashland; $125,000 to Performing Arts Center Eastside; and $100,000 to a five-year-old hip-hop artist residency program, a collaboration among Arts Corps, Macklemore and Ryan Lewis and the MoPOP museum co-founded in 2000 by Paul and Jody Allen.
Halberstadt of Artist Trust said Jody Allen was “so supportive in the past when she was leading the foundation. … She was looking at the whole spectrum of arts organizations, the smaller and scrappier as well as the more established.”
In addition to supporting artists, Allen had a seldom-seen personal art collection that is considered world class.
“In terms of buying art, Paul was extraordinarily well advised and had an extraordinary eye for some of the greatest works of art that have ever been made,” said Benedict Heywood, who led a short-lived private museum, Pivot Art + Culture, that displayed some of Allen’s collection. He referred to a Lucian Freud painting in Allen’s collection that was “literally one of the most important pieces of portrait painting in the 20th century, in my opinion. … One can infer that the rest of his collection was equally great.”
Will those great works find their way to public display or be auctioned off to fund other initiatives? As with the rest of the Allen estate, that remains to be seen.
Paul Allen at Vulcan headquarters in Seattle’s International District in January 2014. Allen died Oct. 15, 2018, at age 65 of complications of non-Hodgkin lymphoma. (John Lok / The Seattle Times)
Bill Gates reportedly has his eye on the world’s first hydrogen-powered superyacht — a $644 million, environmentally friendly oasis on the sea with its own infinitypool, helipad, spa and gym.
The billionaire Microsoft co-founder was initially rumored to have already commissioned the 370-foot luxury Aqua yacht in a report Sunday in the UK paper The Telegraph.
However, the Dutch design firm Sinot insisted Monday that Aqua had yet to be sold to Gates, stressing it did not yet have a “business relationship” with the second-richest person in the world. (which we must assume, they do. What exactly is that “business relationship”? Part of the Octopus that is the NWO.)
“We invite any visionary client to show their interest,” insisted the company — clearly aiming at eco-warrior billionaires just like him, with designer Sander Sinot saying the inspiration was “the lifestyle of a discerning, forward-looking owner.”
The vessel is powered by two 28-ton vacuum-sealed tanks cooled to minus-423 degrees Fahrenheit and filled with liquid hydrogen — with the only emission being water, according to the report. It will reach a top speed of 17 knots(19.5 mph)and be able to cross the Atlantic, the report says.
While far from the world’s largest yacht, plans show extreme luxury for the 14guests and 31 crew members who can be accommodated.
It includes its own fully equipped gym, yoga studio, beauty room, massage parlor and a stunning outdoor infinity pool.
Along with luxurious bedrooms, there are numerous outdoor lounges, a giant spiral staircase and an amazing observation room at the front.
Gates’ main motivation in wanting to commission the yacht would be to signal his backing for new, clean technology to cut carbon emissions, the Telegraph said.
He regularly takes superyacht vacations — but usually rents yachts rather than owning his own.
Whoever buys it will not be able to enjoy it for a few more years, however, with the report saying Aqua will not be ready until 2024.
The Gates Foundation and Gates Ventures declined to comment to the Telegraph for its report.
“Aqua is a concept under development and has not been sold to Mr Gates,” Sinoit insisted.
Sinot Yacht Architecture and Design‘s 112 metre hydrogen-electric yacht concept Aqua was designed for “a discerning, forward-looking owner”.
Extensively developed over a period of five months, Aqua was created in collaboration with Lateral Naval Architects, which developed the yacht’s hydrogen technology and naval architecture.
The yacht was extensively developed over a period of five months
Fusing ground breaking technology with cutting edge design, Aqua features a hydrogen-electric system. The hydrogen propulsion package is based on the use of liquified hydrogen, which is stored at -253C degrees in two 28 ton vacuum isolated tanks.
The hydrogen is converted into electrical energy by proton exchange membrane fuel cells, with the generated energy powering the propulsion, auxiliary systems and hotel services. Water is the only by product of the system, which also sees large batteries buffer the generated electricity. The result is a top speed of 17 knots, cruising speed of 10-12 knots and range of 3750 nautical miles.
Aqua is powered by electric energy created by a hydrogen-electric system
Speaking about the concept, designer Sander Sinot said: “For development of Aqua we took inspiration from the lifestyle of a discerning, forward-looking owner, the fluid versatility of water and cutting-edge technology to combine this in a 112 metre superyacht with truly innovative features.”
“Our challenge was to implement fully operational liquid hydrogen and fuel cells in a true superyacht that is not only groundbreaking in technology, but also in design and aesthetics.”
The yacht’s bow observatory
The interior meanwhile has been designed around providing as much privacy and space as possible. Accommodation is for a total of 14 people and 31 crew. The full 15.4 metre beam owner’s “pavilion” occupies the front half of the upper deck.
Key features of the owner’s pavilion include an open plan layout divided by wooden screens, floor to ceiling windows on the port and starboard sides, a large central skylight and crafted wooden structure. The apartment also include a large bathroom, dressing room and spa.
The hexagonal hydrogen tanks
Other interior features include the Aqua room, which is located at the bow at the far end of the owner’s pavilion for far reaching ocean views and a “top-of-the-world” feeling.
Aqua also features an indoor health and wellness centre with a hydro massage room, yoga space and workout floor.
The huge full beam owner’s pavilion
A circular staircase sits at the core of the yacht, linking all five decks. Described as “a true spectacle”, the staircase bypasses the two hexagonal liquified hydrogen tanks, which sit behind a screen of strengthened glass.
The exterior meanwhile has been inspired by “ocean swells”, and features a curved top deck, integrated bow observatory, glass band windows and a raised front profile.
I hope that you are beginning to understand that these people are NOT philanthropists, they are not generous, they are not working thanklessly to ease the pain and suffering of others. EVERYTHING they do has an alternative motive. If either they are benefiting personally in their finances, social upward mobility or in the growth of their businesses and returns on their investments, or they are assisting their friends and/or associates to benefit in those areas.
The truth is that in the world, no one gets to build an empire and acquire that much wealth unless they are connected through blood or by contact to the ELITE who rule the WORLD or the DEMONIC FORCES behind them.
These phonies have given charity and philanthropy a bad reputation. It is not wise at this point in time to trust ANYONE who claims to be working for CHARITABLE or PHILANTHROPIC Organizations, including CHURCHES.
1a: generosity and helpfulness especially toward the needy or sufferingalso: aid given to those in needreceived charity from the neighbors
b: an institution engaged in relief of the poor raised funds for several charities
c: public provision for the relief of the needy too proud to accept charity
2: benevolent goodwill toward or love of humanity The holidays are a time for charity and goodwill.
3a: a gift for public benevolent purposes
b: an institution (such as a hospital) founded by such a gift
4: lenient judgment of others The critic was liked for his charity and moderation.
to non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma two weeks after Allen said he was being treated for the disease.
Non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma, like the less-common Hodgkin’s disease, is a cancer of the lymphatic system.“My brother was a remarkable individual on every level,” Allen’s sister, Jody Allen, said in a statement on behalf of his family. “He was a much loved brother and uncle, and an exceptional friend.”Allen founded Microsoft (MSFT) with Bill Gates in 1975, several years after the two met as fellow students at a private school in Seattle. Allen left the company in 1982 after he was diagnosed with Hodgkin’s disease.
to non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma two weeks after Allen said he was being treated for the disease.
“As co-founder of Microsoft, in his own quiet and persistent way, he created magical products, experiences and institutions, and in doing so, he changed the world,” Nadella added.
Allen didn’t slow down after leaving Microsoft. He stayed on the company’s board of directors for several years while establishing his own philanthropic foundation, along with Vulcan,his investment firm.Vulcan(Latin: Volcānus[wɔɫˈkaːnʊs] or Vulcānus[wʊɫˈkaːnʊs]) is the god of fire[1] including the fire of volcanoes, deserts, metalworking, and the forge in ancient Roman religion and myth. He is often depicted with a blacksmith’s hammer.[2] The Vulcanalia was the annual festival held August 23 in his honor. His Greek counterpart is Hephaestus, the god of fire and smithery. In Etruscan religion, he is identified with Sethlans.
“As co-founder of Microsoft, in his own quiet and persistent way, he created magical products, experiences and institutions, and in doing so, he changed the world,” Nadella added.
ABOUT PETREL
Paul Allen helps find lost wreckage of USS Indianapolis in Philippine Sea with latest sonar technology
