10 Bizarre Death Rituals from Around the World I'm surprised that the historic funerary rites of the Iroquoian peoples aren't on here. The Wendat (also known as Hurons) would bury their dead twice. The first time was when the person died. They would then be buried again during a ritual known as The Feast of the Dead. Every 10 to 25 years, the Wendat would move their village to a new location (the soils in Wendake are rather are sandy and rather poor, so the Wendat engaged in slash and burn agriculture, and would move when yields went down) but before the move they would hold a Feast of the Dead. The bodies would be exhumed, any flesh that remained would be removed, and wrapped in beaver furs before being re-interned along with grave goods in a mass grave pit known as an ossuary. In 1636, Jesuit Missionary Jean de Brébeuf, was invited to a large Feast of the Dead outside the village of Ossossané, near what is now Elmvale, Ontario.
Describing a photo 20 different connected ways I love examining a good image. As a trained geographer I always examine an image in 20 different yet connected ways. Sounds intense but it really is quick and can be an extended starter task or a collaborative task on the same image. I like this avenue best:) I'll do it in numbered points so you can see the level of depth to the thinking that can be applied to a single photo. 1. You can extend these even more by applying the question matrix to each of the 6 senses and vary the thinking required as a personalisation strategy. As you can see this links to our senses. This all applied to the NOW. 7. Thinking of a photo in these four ways is fascinating and gets students being creative and also reflective. 11. Add further strength to this and allows imaginations to run riot:) The next few are geography categorising skills but can really focus students into specifics of an image or get them thinking of likely or possible issues: 13. 16. 17. I like multiple coloured post it notes. 18. 19. 20.
Why Don't You Try This?: Scientists Use Sound Waves To Levitate, Manipulate Matter A team of researchers in Switzerland have developed a way of levitating and transporting small objects using nothing but sound. Using ultrasonic waves – that is, sound waves whose frequency is too high for humans to hear – scientists at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich have made water droplets, instant coffee crystals, styrofoam flakes, and a toothpick, among other objects, hang in midair, move along a plane, and interact with each other. It is the first time that scientists have been able to use sound to simultaneously levitate several objects next to each other and move them around. Research published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences describes how objects placed between two horizontal surfaces, the bottom one emitting high-pitched sound waves and the top one reflecting the waves back, can be levitated and manipulated. As anyone with a subwoofer and a teenager knows, sound waves exert pressure. Full Article Related:
25 maps that explain the English language English is the language of Shakespeare and the language of Chaucer. It’s spoken in dozens of countries around the world, from the United States to a tiny island named Tristan da Cunha. It reflects the influences of centuries of international exchange, including conquest and colonization, from the Vikings through the 21st century. The origins of English 1) Where English comes from English, like more than 400 other languages, is part of the Indo-European language family, sharing common roots not just with German and French but with Russian, Hindi, Punjabi, and Persian. 2) Where Indo-European languages are spoken in Europe today Saying that English is Indo-European, though, doesn’t really narrow it down much. 3) The Anglo-Saxon migration Here’s how the English language got started: After Roman troops withdrew from Britain in the early 5th century, three Germanic peoples — the Angles, Saxons, and Jutes — moved in and established kingdoms. 4) The Danelaw 5)The Norman Conquest 9) Canada Learn more
Cold War tests in St. Louis raise concerns - Army News | News from Afghanistan & Iraq By Jim Salter - The Associated Press Posted : Wednesday Oct 3, 2012 18:52:04 EDT ST. After learning that the Army conducted secret chemical testing in her impoverished St. In the mid-1950s, and again a decade later, the Army used motorized blowers atop a low-income housing high-rise, at schools and from the backs of station wagons to send a potentially dangerous compound into the already-hazy air in predominantly black areas of St. Local officials were told at the time that the government was testing a smoke screen that could shield St. But in 1994, the government said the tests were part of a biological weapons program and St. Now, new research is raising greater concern about the implications of those tests. But her report, released late last month, was troubling enough that both U.S. senators from Missouri wrote to Army Secretary John McHugh demanding answers. Aides to Sens.
Train Rumbles Through Busy Thailand Market Food traders in Thailand have been filmed dodging trains that pass straight through their busy market. When the warning siren blares, traders have just three minutes to clear away their stalls and produce. Then, once the train has rumbled past, it is back to business for the fish and vegetable sellers in Mae Khrong, about 35 miles west of the Thai capital Bangkok. Eight trains pass through every day. "We have so little time (to move away from the tracks) but all the vendors can make it in time. We are used to it," said fishmonger Pailin Worakum. The market was originally behind the railway line but as it expanded, the vendors started spilling out over the tracks and their stalls now straddle a 500m stretch. It has become a popular sight with tourists who marvel at the traders' stall-clearing routine. Officials say there have been "no major accidents" since the railway market started.
Researchers Identify a New Form of Carbon: Grossly Warped 'Nanographene' Chemists at Boston College and Nagoya University in Japan have synthesized the first example of a new form of carbon. The new material consists of multiple identical pieces of “grossly warped graphene,” each containing exactly 80 carbon atoms joined together in a network of 26 rings, with 30 hydrogen atoms decorating the rim. Because they measure slightly more than a nanometer across, these individual molecules are referred to generically as “nanocarbons.” Credit: Nature Chemistry A team of researchers has identified a new form of carbon, a “grossly warped nanographene.” Chestnut Hill, Massachusetts – Chemists at Boston College and Nagoya University in Japan have synthesized the first example of a new form of carbon, the team reports in the most recent online edition of the journal Nature Chemistry. Until recently, scientists had identified only two forms of pure carbon: diamond and graphite. Graphene has been highly touted as a revolutionary material for nanoscale electronics.
A People's History of the United States The Note: This great book should really be read by everyone. It is difficult to describe why it so great because it both teaches and inspires. You really just have to read it. We think it is so good that it demands to be as accessible as possible. Once you've finished it, we're sure you'll agree. In fact, years ago, we would offer people twenty dollars if they read the book and didn't think it was completely worth their time. The disclaimer: This version is made from OCR.
Ed Resources Online - Home of the free Ed Resource Toolbar If you're new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed. Thanks for visiting!  By using multi-media geography resources you can make geography lessons come alive as you virtually transport your students/children to places they’ve never been before.  Take your students on a virtual field trip through the fifty U.S. states with Awesome America, featuring: Amazing photographs and links to additional state resources (state symbols, facts, trivia, state parks etc). A great way to take a virtual field trip through the fifty states.Earthcam.com links to live video cameras throughout the world. Your kids can explore exotic sites around the world (as well as within the US) from your computer. My kids enjoyed viewing Times Square and the Osprey web cam. This site does require supervision as some of the cameras are located in areas you may not wish them to see.
World's oldest and stickiest lab study ready for drop of excitement | Science | The Observer In terms of output, Queensland University's pitch drop study – the world's oldest laboratory experiment – has been stunningly low. Only eight drops have emerged from the lump of pitch installed in the university's physics building foyer in 1927. Watching paint dry looks exhilarating by comparison. But excitement is now rising over the experiment, which was set up to calculate the viscosity of the world's stickiest substance, pitch, which has been found to be at least 230 billion times more viscous than water. "No one has actually seen a drop emerge, so it is getting quite nervy round here," said Mainstone. The fact that pitch – which is so brittle it can be smashed with a hammer – behaves like a fluid is the most surprising aspect of the experiment, added Mainstone.
The crayola-fication of the world: How we gave colors names, and it messed with our brains (part I) | Empirical Zeal “Who in the rainbow can draw the line where the violet tint ends and the orange tint begins? Distinctly we see the difference of the colors, but where exactly does the one first blendingly enter into the other? So with sanity and insanity.” Spectral Rhythm. In Japan, people often refer to traffic lights as being blue in color. Blue and green are similar in hue. One of the first fences in this color continuum came from an unlikely place – crayons. Reconstructing the rainbow. In modern Japanese, midori is the word for green, as distinct from blue. And it’s not just Japanese. (Update: Some clarifications here. I find this fascinating, because it highlights a powerful idea about how we might see the world. Imagine that you had a rainbow-colored piece of paper that smoothly blends from one color to the other. A map of color for an English speaker. But if you think about it, there’s a real puzzle here. This question was first addressed by Brent Berlin and Paul Kay in the late 1960s.
40 maps that explain the world By Max Fisher By Max Fisher August 12, 2013 Maps can be a remarkably powerful tool for understanding the world and how it works, but they show only what you ask them to. So when we saw a post sweeping the Web titled "40 maps they didn't teach you in school," one of which happens to be a WorldViews original, I thought we might be able to contribute our own collection. [Additional read: How Ukraine became Ukraine and 40 more maps that explain the world] Click to enlarge. Silent Circle's latest app democratizes encryption. Governments won't be happy Courtesy of Silent Circle For the past few months, some of the world’s leading cryptographers have been keeping a closely guarded secret about a pioneering new invention. Today, they’ve decided it’s time to tell all. Ryan Gallagher is a journalist who reports on surveillance, security, and civil liberties. Follow Back in October, the startup tech firm Silent Circle ruffled governments’ feathers with a “surveillance-proof” smartphone app to allow people to make secure phone calls and send texts easily. “This has never been done before,” boasts Mike Janke, Silent Circle’s CEO. True, he’s a businessman with a product to sell—but I think he is right. The technology uses a sophisticated peer-to-peer encryption technique that allows users to send encrypted files of up to 60 megabytes through a “Silent Text” app. By design, Silent Circle’s server infrastructure stores minimal information about its users. The cryptographers behind this innovation may be the only ones who could have pulled it off.
Further evidence that Asians colonized the Americas long before Europeans did Contrary to the claims of a recent study, the multiregional model, which states that modern humans evolved from several different groups of hominids (including Neanderthals) that interbred at some point to produce modern humans, fails to explain the genetics seen in modern humans, Neanderthals, and early modern humans. The biblical model (stating that humans arose from one lineage from a single geographic location) still fits all the data better than the multiregional model. Previous anatomical studies have cast doubt on the likelihood of Neanderthals being the ancestors of modern humans. ...Rich Deem