wait but why: Putting Time In Perspective Humans are good at a lot of things, but putting time in perspective is not one of them. It’s not our fault—the spans of time in human history, and even more so in natural history, are so vast compared to the span of our life and recent history that it’s almost impossible to get a handle on it. If the Earth formed at midnight and the present moment is the next midnight, 24 hours later, modern humans have been around since 11:59:59pm—1 second. And if human history itself spans 24 hours from one midnight to the next, 14 minutes represents the time since Christ. To try to grasp some perspective, I mapped out the history of time as a series of growing timelines—each timeline contains all the previous timelines (colors will help you see which timelines are which). A note on dates: When it comes to the far-back past, most of the dates we know are the subject of ongoing debate. For teachers and parents and people who hate cursing: here’s a clean, Rated G version.
Paris 1900-2013 en photos : pilotez notre fabuleuse machine à remonter le temps | Rue89 Culture Dix autochromes, commandés par un riche banquier, de la capitale au siècle dernier... en face de dix photos, prises par nous cette année. Rue89 vous invite à sentir le temps passé. Mode d’emploi - Les flèches à droite et à gauche de l’image, pour changer de photos. - La poignée rouge, pour remonter le temps. Ces photos parisiennes du début du XXe siècle, que vous connaissez peut-être, nous ont fascinés. Albert Kahn a envoyé des photographes à travers le monde entier pour réaliser un fonds photographique qui comprendra au final plus de 60 pays et 72 000 plaques autochromes. Plusieurs photographes (ou « opérateurs ») ont réalisé ces autochromes parisiens au début du siècle dernier. Nous avons voulu revoir ces endroits, sentir le temps passé. Making of Audrey est partie avec son appareil et son pied. Nous interrogions de temps en temps des vieux du quartier, Pascal leur demandant de commenter les images que nous leur montrions.
Bilresan till kontinenten 1939 (1939) - Filmarkivet Harry von Eckermanns samling nummer 6. Amatörfilm från resa genom Europa några månader innan andra världskriget bryter ut. Läs mer om filmen i SMDB "Genom Centraleuropa 23/4 - 20/5 1939. Perhaps Paris Listen, there is no way around it. In the article that follows I'm going to be forced to wield sweeping generalisations, peddle the occasional stereotype, and generally piss off the people of my adopted home. However. It needs to be done. It's like one of those difficult talks that normally take place in the kitchen and are basically painful for one party. Caveat in place, here we go. Paris, and France in general, is not a significant cultural centre. Perhaps a ridiculous thing to say, particularly in terms of art. And it is in this question that we start to approach the centre of what I'm getting at. Two things. Firstly a truly international outlook, a permeability and openness to things that are not French. Secondly, the energy and conditions that generate great art. Dealing with them in order. By way of an example. FIAC 2012 will bring together around 180 galleries from 24 countries at the Grand Palais. Here is the equivalant text from Frieze in London: And Basel: Second point.
Science Shows Prehistoric Gender Equality: Cave Women Rocked You know the cartoon where a caveman clubs a cavewoman over the head, then drags her to his lair by her hair? The blood-boiling message is that male dominance is natural and immutable, rooted deeply in our genes and behavior. Screw that. Scientists are finding that in prehistoric societies, females may have been equal to males in many ways. 1. Take the assumption that men painted and drew the images we can still see in their caves. It turns out that women made their mark too — they may even have been responsible for the majority of those pictures. 2. The stencils women made of their hands appear next to paintings of animals their societies hunted and ate. Some anthropologists argue that female Neanderthals participated in hunting, a dangerous activity, in part based on their skeletons’ displaying the same bone fractures as male skeletons do. 3. If everyone stayed in those little prehistoric cave clans and mated with the folks they knew, some scary inbreeding would result. 4.
Ristretto | Paris is Brewing Hoi Chi Ng Télescope, a cafe run by Nicolas Clerc and David Flynn in the First Arrondissement in Paris. Finally, Paris has a coffee scene. The city has always been the paradox of the industry, a great cafe town where an otherwise discerning audience happily throws back watery shots of ashy swill. I first wrote about Paris coffee in 2010, and after returning to the topic last year I decided to sit on my hands until somebody in the city figured out what it was missing. It happened. This year, three cafes opened that treat coffee as if it’s a part of the world of gastronomy , a drink to be crafted and savored, rather than a commodity, sold as if it’s fuel. The city is late to the dance — it’s easier to get a beautiful espresso by the Barbican than by the Bastille — but let’s not hold that against them.
From Angkor Wat to Stonehenge: How Ancient People Moved Mountains Jane J. Lee The temple of Angkor Wat, the Egyptian pyramids, Stonehenge, and the famous statues on Easter Island were all built without the conveniences of modern technology. Ancient peoples didn't have access to forklifts, hydraulic cranes, or flatbed trucks. So how did they build the temples and statues that we admire today? In some cases, all they needed was rope, a little manpower, and some ingenious carving. A new study published this week in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences finds that ice roads lubricated with water enabled workers in 15th- and 16th-century China to slide stone blocks to Beijing in order to build palaces in the Forbidden City. Making nature work for them is a common theme in the techniques experts think ancient peoples used to build their monuments and temples. "We forget that ancient people are just as smart as we are," said Terry Hunt, an archaeologist at the University of Oregon who studies the Polynesian culture of Easter Island.
Femen's topless warriors start boot camp for global feminism | World news | The Observer In a chaotic and crumbling former public washhouse in a rundown district of northern Paris, Inna Shevchenko was explaining how a large leather punchbag hanging from the rafters might be used by the foot soldiers of a new generation of feminists. As she prepared to welcome recruits to the Ukrainian-based feminist group Femen's first "international training camp", it was clear that the instruction would not be all ideological. The talk was of "war", "soldiers", "terrorism" and "enemies". Was it not also inconsistent, another asked, that the new feminists were using nakedness to rail against female exploitation? "Ah, but we have a different idea; we are talking about peaceful war, peaceful terrorism," Inna said. "We don't hide our bodies, we don't hide our faces, we confront our enemies face to face. On a less intellectual level, taking their clothes off ensures a lot of publicity. She added: "Believe me, it is really difficult for me to take my clothes off and stand in a public place.
Future Global Warming Impacts, by Region | UCAR - University Corporation for Atmospheric Research Roll your cursor over any region to view potential impacts Africa Increased water stress for 75–250 million people by 2020 Loss of arable land, reduced growing seasons, and reduced yields in some areas Threats to low-lying coastal areas posed by sea-level rise Further degradation of mangroves and coral reefs Decreased fish stocks in large lakes Asia Increases in flooding, rock avalanches, and water resource disruption due to glacial melt from Himalayas (medium confidence) Increased flooding of coastal areas in southern and eastern Asia Ongoing risk of hunger due to regional variations in crop productivity, combined with rapid population growth and urbanization, in several developing countries (medium confidence) Development challenges due to the mix of climate change impacts, growing economies and populations, and rural-to-urban migration Australia and New Zealand Europe Latin America North America Polar regions Small islands A text version suitable for printing is also available here.