|
|||||
|
Discovery Channel and National Geographic are neat. I like to see the specials on different cultures that showcase where they live. Here’s some ideas from projects that were the result of that curiosity. Too see the image in higher resolution click here. Martial arts primates in defiance of their master? Oh yes, and the spot does thicken. Lo Wung, 42, taught the monkeys so they could entertain crowds outside a shopping centre in Nshi, in eastern China’s Hubei province. But the money-spinning primates turned the tables on their trainer when he slipped during a show, with one quick-thinking monkey [...] St. Wenceslas, the patron saint of the Czech Republic, is honored with many statues around the country. But the sculpture of St. Wenceslas Riding a Dead Horse in Prague turns those monuments — literally — upside down. Hanging in the gallery of a shopping and entertainment complex, it was created in 1999 as a parody [...] Are you a fan of Gundam? I sure am, and wish I could see this guy in real-life. Check out video of the installation here. A perplexing array of geometry has been located 3.5 miles below the surface of the ocean. Could it be the long lost city heralded in myths of centuries past? Thanks to Google Earth adding new ocean mapping features, the question is now being pursued on a new platform. The satellite image captured from Google Earth The [...] A goat is being held in jail at this time. Before getting into details, a quick look into the folklore’s definition may help to quantify other situations a bit more… ….Popular shapeshifting creatures in folklore are werewolves and vampires (mostly of European, Canadian, and Native American/early American origin), the fox spirits East Asia (including the Japanese [...] Food and water. Yeah it’s something we need. What if something cataclysmic where to happen (nuclear winter, asteroid collision, pole shift) and most agriculture was wiped off the face of the map? Not a pleasant thing to hypothetically brood over, but a tangible architectural [...] Old frescos and architecture are interesting. We pass them in towns and cities, walking by banks and court buildings occupying blocks of development. Because they are ingrained into our routine of everyday visual cues, the iconic idea becomes a familiarity while their intentions and origins remain detached. In the eye of the rotunda of [...] First there were dancing robots, then house-sitting robots and now a new breed of acting robots is making its big debut on the Japanese stage. The play, which had its premiere at Osaka University, is one of Japan’s first robot-human theatre productions. The machines were specially programmed to speak lines with human actors and move around the [...] One of the T-shaped monoliths in Gobelki Tepe, this one bearing a relief of a fox. It’s more than twice as old as the Pyramids, or even the written word. When it was built, saber-toothed tigers and woolly mammoths still roamed, and the Ice Age had just ended. The elaborate temple at Gobelki Tepe in southeastern [...] I was rummaging through old work in storage and found some entertaining drawings from 4th grade: warriors with mechanical birds perched on their shoulders to aid in battle. I wasn’t sure where the idea came from then, but now know that its origins started in Falconry. There are even places allow you to [...] I think I can speak the mind of most people tied into the world economy and say things are a bit on edge right now. As I wrote about earlier, most of this debacle was heralded by the situation with Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. This maelstrom, however, has been brewing for years. One of my [...] In totality as a civilization, how do we rank on a cosmic level in energy processing and efficiency? Haha, apparently dudes like Carl Sagan put us low on the scale. It’s interesting to think if we even hope to ascend to a point where one could travel from one star system to another, [...]  August 25th, 2008 | Category: cultureThe Royal library of Alexandria in Egypt was once the largest of its kind in the ancient world. The story behind its foundation in the 3rd century BC, destruction, and eventual rebuilding is shown below. If indeed the original library was met with destruction on several occasions, it leaves one wondering what ancient knowledge [...] Something that interests me between different cultures, and even within a culture is the coexistence of the acceptable and taboo. A friendly gesture by a group is an insult to another. What is sacred to one is seen as insane by the next person. The video explores one example of this in [...] August 2nd, 2008 | Category: cultureMichael Tellinger talks about what he believes to be the discovery of the oldest man-made structure on Earth, around 75,000 years old. A new book by Johan Heine and Michael Tellinger outlines the events that led to this discovery in South Africa by explorer/pilot Johan Heine. Scientists were fascinated by the ghostly find: a human skeleton buried in an Aztec temple with a clay, skull-shaped whistle in each bony hand. But no one blew into the noisemakers for nearly 15 years. When someone finally did, the shrill, windy screech made the spine tingle. If death had a sound, this was it. Roberto Velazquez believes [...] Jeh United Ltd in Bangkok promoted the Sylvania Light Bulb as the way to keep monsters at bay in this off beat TV ad from Thailand. A child at a picnic points out figures from South East Asian mythology. His father fearlessly names them as Kra Sue, the floating head of a female vampire ghost, [...] July 1st, 2008 | Category: cultureThough the living modern lemurs are only found in Madagascar and several surrounding islands, the biogeography of extinct lemurs extending from Pakistan to Malaysia inspired the name Lemuria, which was coined in 1864 by the geologist Philip Sclater in an article “The Mammals of Madagascar” in The Quarterly Journal of Science. Puzzled by the presence [...] I am curious about the controversy surrounding knowledge of ancient cultures such as the Dogon Tribe, some of which is said to measure equal to astrophysics and super string theory. In addition, how did the Dogon have knowledge of far away star systems that we have only discovered recently with our technology? Was it [...] |
|||||
|
All original artwork and content © 2010 nick reid / www.tragnark.com |
|||||
