“How did the 5 million to 10 million blocks, some weighing more than 1500 kilograms, reach Angkor? Researchers report in a paper in press at the Journal of Archaeological Science that when they examined Google Earth maps of the area, they saw lines that looked like a transportation network.”
Tag: 10.12.12
Print Yourself A Guitar! (Or Trumpet…)
3D printers are here. And they’ll revolutionize how we get stuff. Like this guitar: “The body is plastic with minor pieces printed in silver and stainless steel. It’s unique in that it may be the first 3D-printed acoustic guitar.”
Getting Canadians Comfortable With Homegrown Musicals
With only two exceptions (Martin Guerre and The Drowsy Chaperone), the few attempts at creating big musicals in the Great White North over the decades have generally flopped or fizzled. Says Martin Guerre‘s author, “Musical theatre is not a Canadian art form. It’s a Broadway art form or it’s … a British tradition.” (Canadians may lack the brashness the form requires.) But there are a few theatres trying to change that.
The Most Unexpectedly Influential TV Shows Of The Past 25 Years
A quarter-century ago, who would have suspected that, for instance, a cartoon could have the impact that The Simpsons has had on American culture?
Want To Read New Nobel Laureate Mo Yan? Here’s Where To Start
Sabina Knight, a scholar specializing in contemporary Chinese literature, offers an intro.
Louis Kahn’s FDR Memorial Is Built – Nearly 40 Years Later
“Kahn drew up the design in 1973, rendering it with soft charcoal on yellow tracing paper. He had readied it for construction in 1974, but New York Governor Nelson Rockefeller, a prime mover of the project, became vice president to Gerald Ford and got distracted by mightier demands.”
Opera Is Getting Dangerous (We Expect So Much More)
“With this growing emphasis on HD-quality realism, what physical skills must an opera singer have to make it today? Is opera becoming too dangerous?”
Learning To Be Human – By Reading, Of Course
“This is why novels are magic, and why they’re not only worth celebrating: at some level it’s probably necessary that we celebrate them. They are invented untruths, but without those untruths – those literal lies – we’d be severely limited in what we could ever understand about our real selves.”
That Painting In The Garage? It’s Important
The 1820s oil painting shows black 19th-century Shakespearean actor Ira Aldridge in a leading role – and so is an important “document of black history.”
Nick At Nite Takes On Grown-Up Fare – And Risks Losing It All
Parents freak out after the kids’ station Nick Jr.goes for the Fifty Shades of Grey sweet spot with a few racy shows in the evening.