While I was looking for information about various types of smoke alarms I happened to find Babyproofingplus.com. Co-sleepers, fire escape ladders, VCR locks, corner protectors, lead test kits… After seeing the multitude of products designed to protect the toddlers from all the hazards in a typical modern home, I can’t help but wonder how kids survived before all these nifty safety products were invented.
Is all this “babyproofing” about protecting the baby from the dangers in home or protecting the home from the baby?
One of the most important methods of learning in childhood is “discovery learning” or learning by trial and error. I’m sure that if you used all the safety products in this particular catalog, you would seriously hinder that process.
Posted by api at 08:36 - No Comments »
Pathfinder Travels
In a breakout performance, unknown skier Julian Carr explains the mindset and the tub science required to jump “ginormous” cliffs without injury. Not wanting to be perceived as a rock star driven only by adrenaline, Julian believes that it takes not guts but rather self-confidence and knowledge of the snowpack to go big. An introspective film featuring some of the biggest jaw-dropping cliffs ever recorded, including a front flip off a 165-foot (50-metre) cliff.
I’ve seen ads for this festival in National Geographic Adventure magazine. I’m glad they finally have a world tour and instantly bought a ticket (15 euros btw) at Camu when I found out they are coming to Helsinki. It’s a one night show with six different films.
Posted by api at 13:51 - No Comments »
World66.com is one of the new open source web communities. It is aiming to become the wikipedia of travel related information. They have a nifty tool that let’s you make a map of the countries that you have visited.
EDIT: I just realized that I left Greece out of that personal sample map. South America and China also stand out as awfully big white areas.
Posted by api at 23:42 - 1 Comment »
Sarek
Sarek is strikingly alpine for Sweden with magnificent mountain ranges and narrow valleys, glaciers and wild rapids. It is a splendid piece of unspoiled wilderness. The park contains over 200 mountains over 1,800 metres. Six of Sweden’s 13 highest mountains are found here, as are about 100 glaciers. Rapadalen valley is the artery of Sarek. The Rapaätno river has an enormous flow and carries green glacial water from about thirty glaciers. Rapadalen contains dense thickets of mountain birch, osier and herbaceous plants.The flora is rather poor in most of the park, but the animal life in the great valleys is rich. If you are lucky you can see bear, wolverine, lynx or one of the unusually large elks. Sarek is not recommended for beginners. Those wishing to visit the park must have considerable alpine experience and the correct equipment and should be used to spending time outdoors. Sarek is an extremely inaccessible wilderness with no facilities whatsoever for tourists. Here, you are on your own. The foremost sights of Sarek are the alpine landscape with its sharp peaks, glaciers and narrow valleys, the animal life and the delta areas in Rapaselet and Rapadeltat.
I think I just found my holiday destination for summer 2006.
EDIT: Make that summer 2008. I visited Lappland and the Alps instead.
Posted by api at 15:53 - No Comments »
Stanislaw Lem
1921 – 2006
Dylan Thomas: And Death Shall Have No Dominion
And death shall have no dominion.
Dead men naked they shall be one
With the man in the wind and the west moon;
When their bones are picked clean and the clean bones gone,
They shall have stars at elbow and foot;
Though they go mad they shall be sane,
Though they sink through the sea they shall rise again;
Though lovers be lost love shall not;
And death shall have no dominion.
And death shall have no dominion.
Under the windings of the sea
They lying long shall not die windily;
Twisting on racks when sinews give way,
Strapped to a wheel, yet they shall not break;
Faith in their hands shall snap in two,
And the unicorn evils run them through;
Split all ends up they shan’t crack;
And death shall have no dominion.
And death shall have no dominion.
No more may gulls cry at their ears
Or waves break loud on the seashores;
Where blew a flower may a flower no more
Lift its head to the blows of the rain;
Though they be mad and dead as nails,
Heads of the characters hammer through daisies;
Break in the sun till the sun breaks down,
And death shall have no dominion.
Posted by api at 22:54 - No Comments »
ToTheGame – Cabela’s Outdoor Adventures (PS2)
Cabela’s Outdoor Adventures provides you with the hunting & fishing expedition of a lifetime with 22 outdoor adventures across North America and beyond. Fly, float and trek from Utah to Mexico to New Zealand in search of 10 different species of trophy bucks or stop off and angle for the local species of fish. While on your adventure, you’ll also have the opportunity to hunt 11 species of both big game and small game, compete in shooting contests and embark on varied missions. Your Cabela’s Guide introduces each true-to-life outdoor adventure where stealth, strategy and technique are of the utmost importance.
Fishing and hunting games for game consoles obviously have some sort of loyal following, since games of this sort are published every year. Someone has come up with a seemingly obvious idea of combining the two genres into a single game. The fact that it is being sponsored by a big outdoor retail chain tells a lot about the way how product and brand placement in entertainment has become increasingly important.
Posted by api at 16:15 - No Comments »
UHM – Stay Alive
Follows a group of young teens in New Orleans, who stumble upon a new video game called Stay Alive. The game details the grisly true story of a 17th century noblewoman known as “The Blood Countess.” A chilling connection is made when the gamers are murdered in the same method as the character they played in the game.
Existenz, Avalon and The Thirteenth floor are all intelligent studies about the way reality and virtual reality can get mixed up when computer games become more and more realistic. All of them have futuristic full sensory illusion game interfaces as part of their plots. Stay Alive on the other hand seems to be copying themes from horror movies such as The Ring and integrates the horror elements with the immersive nature of today’s console games. The trailer isn’t very promising… it looks like any of the other fast-paced screamer flicks aimed for the teenage audiences.
Sometimes you can make a good movie with a single idea, but I’m sure this isn’t one those. Like Howard Hawks said, for a good movie you only need “three good scenes, no bad scenes”. I have a creeping feeling that this one has only bad scenes.
Posted by api at 02:08 - No Comments »
Avatars of the Astrological Zodiac – by Patrice Guinard
The appearance of the Zodiac composed of 12 equal signs has been dated from the middle of the 6th century BCE. [2] In his recent work on the birth of astrology in Mesopotamia, Giovanni Pettinato reports the discovery of a tablet from the library of Sippar, unearthed not long ago by Iraqi archeologists: one finds in it, attested at about 600 BCE, a Zodiac divided into twelve sections. [3] The twelve Zodiacal signs of 30 degrees each, delimited on the ecliptic and without reference to the stellar constellations, are quite clearly attested in a tablet dating from 419 BCE. So it was during the 6th and 5th centuries BCE that the reforms of Babylonian astronomical and astrological conceptions of the heavens came into place, and were then passed to the Greeks, who about the same time invented metaphysics.
I don’t believe in astrology, but I find it very interesting how cultural traditions get passed on from generation to generation and sometimes even from civilization to civilization. In 1998 I worked on a video representation of the world view of the Assyrians with professor Simo Parpola and learned quite a lot about this fascinating era. After some digging in my archives I found a couple of images from that video. The picture on the right is probably the King or one of the Gods (which was almost the same thing during those days, since King was seen as the earthly representative of the Gods). Some people are even claiming that the Zodiac originates from the Babylonians or the Assyrians all the way back from about 5000 years ago. I’m not sure about that, but astrology itself certainly dates back a long, long time.
The appearance of the Zodiac does not necessarily include the usage of the astrological interpretations later attributed to the twelve Zodiacal signs when the stellar distribution came approximately to correspond to the months of the seasons. As Florisoone notes, quite appropriately: “Contrary to what one might think, the Zodiac was not an invention exclusively inspired by astrology, but also represents one of the first manifestations of the ’scientific’ spirit and the birth of a true astronomy in Mesopotamia.”
An important difference between scientific practice in those times and the modern world is that the ancient scientists had the luxury of working in a world view that combined religion, science and everything into a single and omnipresent tradition that explained the trajectories of distant stars and the life of little insects with a unified idea about Gods and the way the world simply works. Although many of their scientific concepts were clearly wrong, I do think that many modern cosmologists have a lot to learn from these old traditions. World may have indeed born from an egg.. it’s just up to the scientists to find out what kind of egg it was.
Posted by api at 11:23 - 1 Comment »
CNN travel
The Holy Land Experience is a $16 million Christian theme park, filled with such Bible-based attractions as a replica of Herod’s Temple and a re-creation of the street Jesus walked along before crucifixion.
There’s also a replica of Jesus’ tomb, and what founders say is the largest indoor model of first-century Jerusalem. Tourists who pay the $17 admission fee also can voyage to the Qumran caves, where the Dead Sea Scrolls were found.
The Holy Land Experience
What is your behavioral policy?
The Holy land Experience is a Christian facility that purposes to exalt and uplift our Lord Jesus Christ. For that reason, the standard of The Holy Land Experience is distinctive and different from other, secular facilities in the area. If our staff observes a guest engaging in inappropriate behavior (i.e., drunkenness, lewd and lascivious conduct, etc.), The Holy Land Experience reserves the right to remove the individual from the premises.
Do you have a dress code?
We understand guests will be entering our facilities wearing a variety of attire. However, the following attire is not permitted at The Holy Land Experience, and the guest(s) will be asked to leave and/or change clothes before re-entering the facility. Guests may not enter in any kind of costume and will not be permitted to enter if, in our view, the dress is immodest. Guests must wear shirts and shoes. Guests may not wear halter-tops, short shorts, or bathing suits. We reserve the right to ask anyone to leave who is, in our judgment, wearing inappropriate or immodest attire.
Do you have a worship code?
We recognize that people of various faiths and denominations will visit The Holy Land Experience, and we appreciate and encourage the worship of God. However, we reserve the right to remove anyone (or any group of people) from the facilities if their religious activity, in our judgment, causes a disturbance.
Also see Florida’s parks that never happened.
Posted by api at 13:06 - 3 Comments »
Motion capture has come a long way within the last decade. The technology has been driven not only by the video game industry but also the film industry.
Gypsy Gyro Motion Capture System
Gypsy Gyro has redefined motion capture. Learning curve is 5 minutes. Requires little or no calibration, yet delivers ultra-clean data with little or no clean-up. The resulting production efficiency dwarfs every motion capture system ever developed.
It uses 18 small solid-state inertial sensors (‘gyros’) to accurately measure the exact rotations of the actor’s bones in real-time for amazingly lifelike motion capture. The system can easily be worn beneath normal clothing. Gypsy Gyro system works well with laptop computers and is compact and lightweight enough to fit in a briefcase. An optional 19th sensor can be used to record motion of ‘tools’ or ‘implements’.
The price for this high-end system is $80000 for the first suit.
Posted by api at 12:35 - No Comments »
Silkbody – Silk Technical
Silk is made of proteins, so it has thermal properties very similar to other, more common, protein fibres, such as wool. It will warm to the body’s temperature and provide a protective layer, trapping warm air like a fine second skin. Like wool, silk is exothermic, releasing energy in the form of heat when moisture is absorbed and warding off the chilling effect in a cool, wet environment. This means your Silkbody is warm when wet, too. The silk fibre is completely smooth and very fine. Its feels amazing against the skin and will never itch. Silk has a natural resistance to bacteria (doesn’t easily retain body odours), inherent flame retardence (more heat resistant than wool), resiliency (garments won’t lose their shape), and will not pill.
Silk is a truly superior fabric for outdoor clothing, but most of the silk clothes available in regular deparment stores are evening gowns and pajamas. Silkbody from New Zealand is the only outdoor clothing brand that is using silk that I’ve found so far. If you know of any other brands, I’d be happy to hear about them.
Posted by api at 11:18 - 1 Comment »
Simplified Sign System
Abstract
A simplified system of 500 signs is proposed to enhance the communication abilities of hearing, but nonspeaking, autistic, mentally retarded, and aphasic individuals, as well as their caregivers. The system contains formationally modified signs originally collected from more than 20 formal sign language dictionaries, and invented signs for the specific needs of the special populations. To evaluate the sign’s iconicity and ease of formation, each sign was presented to undergraduate student participants unfamiliar with sign languages. The simplified signs were presented together with their English translation equivalents in 6 lists of 20 word-sign pairs. The students were cued for sign recall by the English words immediately after each list was presented. The students’ sign recalls were scored as perfect, essentially correct, wrong sign, or no response. All signs recalled perfectly by at least 70% of the participants became part of a simplified sign lexicon. Signs with more than 30% non-perfect scores typically were either formationally modified, redesigned, or discarded.
When was the last time you had to talk with your hands, because the person you were talking to couldn’t understand your speech?
It’s relatively easy to get by without speaking in environments such as hotels, taxis and restaurants, but trying to handle more complex communication tasks without knowing the language can be really challenging.
Often it is easier to draw what you mean instead of trying to talk with your hands. There are also “visual dictionaries” that have drawings or photographs of common objects and situations which can make the task much easier. Playing games such as Cranium is good practice for trying to get other people understand what you mean. I think that games like that should be an integral part of modern basic education. Some things are just so much easier to learn when you do it in a playful way and enjoy what you are doing.
Obviously there is also the engineer’s point of view to this dilemma. I’m not sure if computer assisted real-time translation systems are ready for prime time, but Sony has released an interesting Sony PSP title called Talkman to bridge the language gaps. It is basically a real-time translation software with a multilingual virtual bird called Max. The software comes with a special microphone.
“Bring the art of language to your gestures, put words behind the shrugs, turn Spanglish into perfecto Espanol, make the move on the girl or guy in that foreign bar who catches your eye – in short, become a jetsetter able to communicate in six languages with more than 3000 crucial phrases at your fingertips,”
Posted by api at 10:50 - No Comments »
Planeta Burg (Planet of Storms)
Discounting Kosmitchesky Reis (1935) for its heavy socialist-realism and Stalinism, Planeta Burg is the only truly well made and visually exciting Russian space travel film between Aelita (1924) and Solaris (1972), far better than the stodgy version of Efremov’s classic story Tumannost Andromedy (1968). Three spacecraft set out for Venus, two arrive, one commanded by Caotain Masha (Ignatova) which remains in orbit and one that lands on the planet. The rest is a fast-paced adventure story, told with considerable humor, involving volcanic eruptions, giant animals and hostile plants. The sets are stunningly designed with outlandish color schemes rendering the uncanny alienness of the Venusian landscapes as well as the spectacular aspects of space travel itself. The appearance of a Venusian is wisely delayed to the very end, and even then only suggested as being “just like us”. As in all popular space operas, there is a robot (called John) who occasionally goes out of control. Here he is given to talking gibberish and playing forties dance music, a more appropriate musical accompaniment to space fantasies than the monumentally majestic waltz of 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968). The result is the best straightfoward, unpretentious sf space travel movie made in the USSR.
This movie was made in the beginning of 60’s at the Leningrad Studio Of Popular Science Films. I’m not sure why the review talks about great color, since the movie is black and white as far as I know.
For more stills from the film, see this italian site. I wish there was a TV channel that showed only movies like this. That might not be such a bad idea considering that there seems to be an entire industry involved in producing virtual fireplaces.
Posted by api at 12:19 - 3 Comments »
Nepalese Porters May Be World’s Most Efficient Haulers
Twenty years ago Heglund studied African women in Kenya – who often balance loads atop their heads – to investigate their unique burden-bearing efficiency.
His latest study, which appears tomorrow in the journal Science, now suggests that the porters of Nepal are even more efficient at their tasks. Precisely why, however, remains a mystery.
So legendary are the load-carrying abilities of the Nepalese that the word Sherpa, a term for one of the country’s ethnic groups, has become synonymous with “porter.”
A typical Nepalese porter carries a load nearly as heavy as he is. When he does, the porter burns less energy per pound than a backpacker would need to shoulder about half the same weight, Heglund and his colleagues found.
Our guide at the Fox Glacier was a Sherpa called Passang. There was indeed something about the way he moved that made it look very effortless. He had climbed on the Mount Everest twice. I always try my best to get by with a miminum load and I was the only person without a backpack so he off loaded all the crampons of the party to me.
Posted by api at 10:16 - No Comments »
Discovering Sherlock Holmes – A Community Reading Project From Stanford University
Like the elusive Sherlock Holmes, his most famous creation, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle was a man of many contradictions. Scientifically educated, he believed in seances and fairies. An advocate for more equitable divorce laws, he believed that women should be denied the vote. A humanist who identified with oppressed peoples, he staunchly defended English colonialism at its most aggressive. He dreamed of being a serious historical novelist, yet he is best remembered for stories that he considered pot-boilers. The product of a pragmatic, fiercely protective mother and a detached dreamer of a father, Conan Doyle became a man with astonishing self-confidence, a tireless self-promoter who also retained some measure of childish innocence throughout his life.
As a teenager, I consumed a fair amount of british literature. For some reason, the detective stories were located closest to the children’s book section and it was convenient for me to upgrade from Edgar Rice Burroughs to Agatha Christie and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.
The ideals presented in books read during the childhood and teenage years can easily leave a lasting imprint on the moral standards and aesthetics of a person. Still, I think my main source of influence in such matters at that time were high fantasy and science fiction novels.
Posted by api at 09:57 - No Comments »
