20th August
My Grandfather's Last Tale.
'The mission? To carry forward the musical legacy of a
once-celebrated composer, as part of
the duties of a musically ungifted oldest grandson.
The stops along the way? The modernist
frenzy of 1920s Vienna and Berlin and the artistic
lassitude of 1940s and 1950s expatriate
Hollywood. The culmination? The stage of an
adventurous opera company in a little town in
eastern Germany that was by turns an SS and a Stasi
stronghold ... '
The
Giddings.
Great Gidding, Little Gidding and Steeple Gidding,
Cambridgeshire, UK.
The site won the
UK Villages Online Site of the Year Award.
Interesting villages.
Photos,
historical and
contemporary.
Virtual walk.
The Lott House
Restoration Project.
Brooklyn.
'The Lott House, built circa 1800, is one of the last
Dutch-American farmhouses in New York
City. It was occupied by descendants of Hendrick I.
Lott until 1989 when the house was
designated a New York City landmark.'
'The Lott House Preservation has secured permission to
commence immediate stabilization work.
The ultimate goal is acquisition by the City of New
York/Parks & Recreation, with the house
joining the Historic House Trust. The Association
will continue to operate the site as a
museum and community resource.'
House
tour.
Digital
Desert. The Mojave in California.
Slideshow.
Stedman
ghost town.
Darwin
Falls. Desert waterfall.
Daioh Temple of
Daioh Mountain.
'Welcome to Daioh Temple which is located in Kyoto,
Japan. Head Priest Shokyu Ishiko cordially
invites you to browse through the temple; visit the
various buildings, take a stroll through
the garden, and learn a little bit about its history
and teachings. The various pages about
Daioh-in represent an actual temple located in
north-western Kyoto. The pages about Jomoh
Temple, a sub-temple of Daioh-in, represent a virtual
temple created for the Internet. Please
take your time and enjoy the wonders of these two
splendid temples.'
June 4th Tiananmen Virtual Democracy Wall for China
Mainland.
Images of Colonial Africa.
'Welcome to a return trip to the early part of the
1900s through some of the photographs taken
or gathered by missionary Laura Collins. The images
displayed here are one woman's view, mostly
of Kenya, at the beginning of the twentieth century,
probably before 1914. They depict the
country's society, customs, economics, and geography,
as well as its growing Christian church,
the missionary community assisting in that endeavor,
and Collins herself. Also included are some
photographs from Cameroon, the Belgian Congo and
Uganda.'
The
New Guinea Sculpture Garden at
Stanford.
'During the summer of 1994, 10 master carvers from
Papua New Guinea worked in residence to
create a permanent outdoor sculpture garden of New
Guinea Art at Stanford University.'
'Jim Mason, Project Director and graduate student in
anthropology, is responsible for bringing
the artists from the Middle Sepik River Region of
Papua New Guinea to Stanford. '
'The project is not an attempt to recreate a
traditional New Guinea environment but,
according to Mason, "an opportunity to experiment with
and reinterpret New Guinea aesthetic
perspectives within the new context of a Western
public art space." '
Nursebot
Project.
Robotic assistants for the elderly.
The
Discovery of the
Galilean Satellites.
'Probably the most significent contribution that
Galileo Galilei made to science was the
discovery of the four satellites around Jupiter that
are now named in his honor. Galileo first
observed the moons of Jupiter on January 7, 1610
through a homemade telescope. He originally
thought he saw three stars near Jupiter, strung out in
a line through the planet. The next
evening, these stars seemed to have moved the wrong
way, which caught his attention. Galileo
continued to observe the stars and Jupiter for the
next week. On January 11, a fourth star
(which would later turn out to be Ganymede) appeared.
After a week, Galileo had observed that
the four stars never left the vicinity of Jupiter and
appeared to be carried along with the
planet, and that they changed their position with
respect to each other and Jupiter. Finally,
Galileo determined that what he was observing were not
stars, but planetary bodies that were
in orbit around Jupiter. This discovery provided
evidence in support of the Copernican system
and showed that everything did not revolve around the
Earth. '
Development Gateway.
A portal to many things green. Via
this Metafilter thread.
Gravity control investigation raises hopes.
Nissan accelerates fuel cell vehicle plans.
Arctic environment melts before our eyes.
(Via Booknotes).
Joseph Zoettl's Grotto.
Cheers to
jp.
Verba Volant
has some interesting stuff.
Linkmachinego now has an
RSS feed.
When I was muttering about
the prehistory of weblogs the other day,
I mentioned pillow books, cabinets of curiosities
and so forth, but forgot to nominate the
nineteenth century broadside as a forerunner
of the twenty-first century poliblog.
Take a look at
An American Time Capsule: Three Centuries of
Broadsides and Other Printed Ephemera
(Library of Congress) and
the Penny Magazine (a nineteenth century
politics and culture paper for the British
working classes).
Who Does What. Via
Booknotes.
Quote :-
' "Blog" used to mostly mean someone's personal online diary,
typically concerned with boyfriend problems or techie news, but after
Sept. 11 a slew of new or refocused media junkie/political sites reshaped
the entire Internet media landscape.'
'Blogs now refer to addictive web journals that comment on the news,
usually in rudely clever tones, with links to stories that back up the
commentary with evidence.'
Certainly the poliblogs form an important subset of
blogging, but there are many other kinds of
weblogs which are neither journals,
tech-blogs nor
overt
political commentary. One subset is
what I'd term (for want of a better word)
'curio-blogs' - weblogs which
pick out pieces which are culturally interesting,
much as collectors
of the past curated their 'cabinets of curiosities'.
Some of examples (there are many
others) :-
gmtPlus9,
Bifurcated Rivets,
the Museum of Online Museums,
the Apothecary's Drawer
and
Portage.
This type of weblog has been
around for quite some time, in web terms.
Then there are the literary weblogs
(e.g.
wood s lot,
In A Dark Time,
sixth edition),
pop culture weblogs
(e.g.
Pop
Culture Junk Mail,
Kookymojo),
weblogs about visual arts
(e.g.
Obliterated),
science weblogs
(e.g.
Honeyguide, one of the longest-running blogs on the web),
medical weblogs (e.g.
Nonharmful),
linguablogs
(e.g.
Morfablog,
Enigmatic Mermaid),
photo blogs
(e.g.
Spitting Image),
travel blogs, music blogs
(e.g.
New York London Paris Munich), film blogs
(e.g.
mises-en-scene),
ancient history blogs (e.g.
Bloggus Caesari), sex blogs,
soccer blogs, comic blogs, green blogs, blogs that are sui
generis (e.g.
dumbmonkey,
Abuddhas Memes,
Dr Menlo) etc.
And many which fall between several categories.
link
19th August
The Worshipful
Company of Clockmakers of London.
The
Flight of Ducks.
'This is an Australian on-line documentary spanning
more than 65 years. It began when my
father (F.J.A. Pockley) travelled to Central Australia
in January 1933 to take part in an
expedition from from Hermannsburg Mission to Mount
Liebig. He brought back cinefilm,
photographs, journals and Aboriginal objects. This
collection provides insights into the end
of the frontier period, when there were still isolated
groups of Aborigines yet to experience
non-Aboriginal contact. His companions were also
interesting men. They were: Hezekial, an
Aboriginal guide; the remarkable T.G.H. Strehlow;
artist, Arthur Murch and animal and skull
collector, Stanley Larnach.'
'My father rewrote his journal three times before his
death in 1990. His memories changed. He
added a post script about his return in 1976 where
huge changes can be seen, not only in
Central Australia but in himself. Another layer was
added in September 1996 when I took my own
children (his grandchildren) on a journey which
retraced the 1933 expedition.'
'The Flight of Ducks is a large evolving work. It is
no longer just about expeditions into
Central Australia, it is also a journey into the use
of a new medium for which we have yet to
develop a descriptive language. It is part history,
part novel, part data-base, part postcard,
part diary, part museum, part pilot, part poem, part
conversation, part shed ... '
The
Whole Brain Atlas.
Cultural
Survival.
The Noh Mask Effect: A Facial Expression Illusion.
'The full-face masks worn by skilled actors in
Japanese Noh drama can induce a variety of
perceived expressions with changes in head
orientation. Rotation of the head out of the
visual plane changes the two dimensional image
characteristics of the mask which viewers may
misinterpret as non-rigid changes due facial muscle
action. The figure below shows the same
Edo-period Noh mask, Magojiro, at three inclinations
... '
Related :- Noh
masks.
Hindu
Temple of Atlanta.
Islamic
and Geometric Art.
'... You have reached a site
that is dedicated to the beauty that is
Islamic and Geometric design. '
'It has been designed with both entertainment and
enlightenment in mind. You are free to wander
around the site and simply view the delights that
geometric design offers, or if, like the
author, you are fascinated by the construction process
an explanation of each design is also
available.
Arms
Around the World.
(Mother Jones) Atlas of the arms trade.
A Short History of Axel Erlandson and his Tree
Circus.
'Erlandson was born in 1884, the son of Swedish
immigrants. He raised beans in Central
California near Turlock. There, Inspired by observing
a natural graft between two sycamore
trees. (inosculence) He began to shape trees, by
planting in specified patterns; then pruning,
grafting and bending them. This began as a hobby for
the amusement of himself and his family. '
'In 1945 Erlandson's daughter and wife took a trip to
the ocean near Santa Cruz. There they saw
people lined up to pay to see such oddities as tilted
buildings and optical illusions. They
returned home and convinced Axel that his trees could
draw people who would pay to see them;
if they were on a well traveled tourist route. Axel
bought a small parcel of land in Scotts
Valley on the main road between the Santa Clara Valley
and the ocean; and started the process
of transplanting the best of his trees to their new
home. The Tree Circus opened in the spring
of 1947 (See photo at left) ... '
Dorothea
Lange Photos.
'Dorothea Lange (1895-1965) has been called the
greatest American documentary photographer.
She is best known for her chronicles of the Great
Depression and for her photographs of
migratory farm workers. Below are 24 pre-World War II
photographs, taken for the U.S. Farm
Security Administration (FSA), investigating living
conditions of families hired to work in
cotton fields and farms in Arizona and California.
Many of the families had fled the Dust
Bowl, the lengthy drought which devastated millions of
acres of farmland in Midwestern states
such as Oklahoma.'
'
Back in the day, everything was text based. To learn about
someone else on the net, one of the first things you could do was to 'finger'
them. When you fingered someone, you'd get a basic set of info they had
written to identify themselves. One of the files that could be used was
known as the .plan file [ ... ]
In my mind, these .plan files were the true origin of weblogs. ' Via
Rebecca's Pocket.
(Not forgetting
cabinets of curiosities,
pillow books and
Samuel Pepys).
Kunstkamera.
'Located on the banks of the Neva in the center of St.Petersburg, the
Kunstkammer has been the symbol of the Russian Academy of Sciences since
the early 18th century. Founded to Peter the Great's Decree, the Museum
opened to the public in 1714. Its purpose was to collect and examine natural
and human curiosities and rarities. Today, collections of Peter the Great's
Museum of Anthropology and Ethnography (Kunstkammer) are among the
most complete and interesting in the world. These collections contain over
one million artifacts and reflect the diversity of traditional cultures in the Old
and New World ... '
'Yes, we need a 'regime change' in this rogue state...'
'Its government has no majority. It refuses arms monitoring. Its
opponents are locked up without trial ... ' (Who could he be talking about?)
link
17th August
British
Lawnmower Museum.
The world of
lawnmower
racing.
'The modern sport of lawn mower racing has its origins
in a meeting of enthusiastic beer
drinkers at the Cricketers Arms, Wisborough Green,
West Sussex, one evening in 1973. At the
time, motor sport consultant Jim Gavin had just
returned from a rally reconnaissance in the
Sahara, and talk naturally turned to other forms of
motor and motorcycle sport. The main point
of discussion turned around the horrendously
escalating costs involved in all branches of motor
sport, whether it be rallying, racing, scrambling or
whatever. So a few beers later, minds
began to explore thoughts of an alternative form of
motor sport with the main criteria since
it is competitive, lots of fun and above all cheap ...
'
US Lawnmower Racing
Association at letsmow.com.
St.
Laurence's Chapel,
Bradford-on-Avon.
'This website results from work on one of the
best-preserved early church buildings in England,
the chapel of St Laurence at Bradford-on-Avon, to mark
the millennium of the gift of Bradford to
Shaftesbury Abbey in 1001. It is composed of a series
of self-contained sections, three that
give background about the building, one that describes
an excavation carried out in 2000 and
another that gives the detailed interpretations that
result from it. The final section describes
and shows a three-dimensional computer reconstruction
model of the building as it might have
looked. '
The Mammal
Society. 'The voice for British
mammals.'
Garden
mammal distribution
maps.
Fossil
Horse Cybermuseum.
Gallery
of fossil
horses.
International Forgiveness Institute.
A
Virtual Visit to the Archives
of Tibet. (UNESCO)
'The Tibetan literature, emerging in the 7th century,
covers, in addition to the rich corpus
of religious texts, a wide range of literature from
legend and tales, to historiography and
philosophy. These documents were mainly kept by
monasteries where there were subject of
research and of tools of furthering Tibetan culture
and traditions.'
Comfort
Women.
Korean sites.
In
photos.
Stories.
Art.
Passport
to Paradise.
'Passport to Paradise is an exhibition program
concerning arts of the Mourides, a mystical
Muslim movement originating in Senegal, West
Africa.'
Some
murals.
'
More than 100 public figures have sent a protest letter to the
BBC protesting at the ban on atheist contributors to the Radio 4 Thought for
the Day slot.' (This isn't a new thing, though). Via
nullzilla.
'
Almost half of all adults in the UK say they have no religious
affiliation, according to a new survey. ' (BBC, 28 Nov 2000).
BBC - Your licence fee, paid by the British
public.
British Humanist Association.
Mock cyberwar fails to end mock civilisation. Via
Linkmachinego.
International
Dark-Sky Association.
" To preserve and protect the nighttime environment
and our heritage of
dark skies through quality outdoor lighting."
John
Baeder. Wonderful paintings of
roadside Americana.
Weird
Wisconsin.
Weird
stories.
National Geographic - Remembering Pearl Harbor.
A Slave Ship Speaks.
'The Henrietta Marie sank near Key West in 1701 after delivering
a consignment of African captives to the island of Jamaica. These two
essays thoughtfully explore the history of the ship and the nature of slavery. '
Virginia Colonial Records Project.
'A fully-searchable index to nearly 15,000 reports that survey and
describe documents relating to colonial Virginia history that are housed in
repositories in Great Britain and other European countries. The survey report
images are available online, and there are references to microfilm reels for the
original documents. '
link
16th August
The Book of
Deer Project.
'The Book of Deer is a tenth century illuminated
manuscript from North East Scotland. As
the only pre-Norman manuscript from this area known as
"former Pictland" it provides us with a
unique insight into the early church, culture and
society of this period. '
'Amid the Latin text and the Celtic illuminations
there can be found the oldest pieces of
Gaelic writing to have survived from early Medieval
Scotland. '
The Highland
Clearances.
First hand accounts, photographs, passenger lists.
'The website will tell some of the stories from the
Highland Clearances, their aftermath and
consequences. There is no shortage of literature on
the subject but most of it concentrates on
the what and the why. This site is more concerned with
the who: whether one considers the
Clearances ethnic cleansing or economic necessity or
something in-between, the whole is made
up of many different stories: most sad, some happy; of
greed, of despair and, occasionally, of
altruism. Some of them are not even narrative - a
passenger record, 'died on board, aged 8'.
One account cannot reconcile them. Form your own
conclusions or reinforce prejudices you
already hold but all the stories are important, to our
past, our present and our future. '
Highland cottages: the taigh dubh or black
house.
'
The clearances in Assynt were the result of
cunning strategy on the part of William Young
and Patrick Sellar acting for the Sutherland estate
and the naivety of local tacksmen. In
November 1811 Young organised an auction at the
Golspie Inn for five sheep farms in Assynt.
The Assynt tacksmen crossed the country to attend and,
it is said 'promised anything rather
than lose the land'. This promise entailed taking on
the responsibility of clearing the
people and of paying economically unaffordable rents.
The evening ended with much revelry
and Sellar singing Auld Lang Syne. '
The
voyage of
the Jupiter.
Some of the emigrants from the Higlands went to
Pictour, Nova
Scotia.
Trees
for Life.
The Sad Tale of a Buran Space Shuttle. A Russian
space shuttle displayed in
Australia is stranded there because the company
exhibiting it is no more. Photographs.
'Most Australians, myself included, had or have no
idea that the Russians had even developed a
spacecraft that is re-usable for tasks such as
launching satellites. That was until November
last year, when the covers came off a Buran located in
the centre of Australia's biggest city,
Sydney.'
'A very sad story indeed of a company with grand ideas
of displaying the massive ship to the
paying public, going into administration.'
Buran official site
in Russian and English.
Musical
Sand. The science of singing
beaches.
'The colloquially called "singing sand" in the beach
is small scale phenomenon
and "booming sand" in the desert is very large scale
one, but the sounding
mechanism and the quality of the sounds are,
essentially, same. '
'Here we call "musical sand" which includes above
both sands. '
'As the peculiar sound was lovely one, the sand have
called as musical sand.
Since the nineteenth century, discoveries of this sand
have been reported by excited
scientists and researchers all over the world.'
Musical
sand world map.
Shin-Yokohama
Ramen Museum.
'Japan is a country filled with ramen fans, ramen
connoisseurs, and certifiable ramen maniacs,
and now the city of Yokohama has opened an entire
museum devoted to the ubiquitous Chinese
noodle. More than just an ordinary museum, it's also
part historical theme park and part
hyper-specialized restaurant mall. And, unlike your
usual dusty museum, it stays open till
11pm to accommodate hungry concertgoers returning from
the nearby Yokohama Arena. '
More
pictures of the
museum on another site.
The
Stories of 4 Nuns.
'The first two nuns are from Nichungri Nunnery, near
Lhasa, and were released from prison
in
Tibet and are now studying at Dolma Ling. Here are
their stories... '
Tibetan Nuns
Project.
Supporting Tibetan nuns in exile.
Jane's
Papua New Guinea.
A personal site with articles and photographs.
Historical
images.
Ethnology.
Papua
New Guinea postcards.
'The following are a random collection of ceremonial
images from Papua New Guinea.'
Carhenge.
'Just north of Alliance Nebraska, along Highway 87,
stands a replication of Stonehenge,
England's ancient mystical alignment of stones that
chart the sun and moon phases. Stonehenge
stands alone on a plain in England. Carhenge, created
from vintage American made automobiles,
towers over the plains of Nebraska.'
The
Work of Charles and Ray Eames.
Influential American designers of the 1950s.
'Charles and Ray Eames practiced design at its most
virtuous and its most expansive. From the
1940s to the 1970s, their furniture, toys, buildings,
films, exhibitions, and books aimed to
improve society--not only functionally, but culturally
and intellectually as well. The Eameses'
wholehearted belief that design could improve people's
lives remains their greatest legacy.
Even more remarkable is how they achieved their
seriousness of purpose with elegance, wit, and
beauty.'
(Library of Congress)
18th
Century
Islamic Erotic Pictures. For sale, on Antiques
Online. (Possibly not suitable for work).
Photographic Views
of Dresden, Germany.
Aerial view of Zwinger
Palace, 1933 and Zwinger Palace Crown Gate,
1967.
Dresden floodwaters break record.
Two
Little-Known Museums of the Macabre in Rome.
'... The somewhat grandiosely-termed Museum of the Souls of Purgatory is
housed entirely in one small room next to the sacristy in the Church of the
Sacred Heart of Sufferance. The church itself faces onto the Lungotevere
Prati and is easily recognized because, although it was built as recently as
1927 (or 1890, by some accounts), it is in Rome a unique example of clearly
Gothic inspiration. It was actually built in an eclectic style that borrowed
bits and pieces from all the previously important architectural styles, but
the dominant characteristic is Gothic. '
'What exactly is on display? There are objects or photos of objects that
show tangible traces of apparitions made by various souls in Purgatory to
those left behind on earth. All are hung on the left wall of the display
room. There are several images of hand or fingerprints on book pages, wooden
boards or articles of clothing ... '
link
