Nepenthe

A vigência desta obra literária é a premissa fundamental do documentário que penetra na obra, na vida e no tempo em que foi escrita. O que significavam na época os livros de cavalaria? Porque Cervantes não gostava de tais obras? O que é um fidalgo? Quem é Sancho Pança e o que representa exactamente no livro? Qual é o segredo do sucesso desta obra? Qual é o significado actual de D. Quixote? Estas são algumas das perguntas que constituem a trama principal deste documentário, que conta com a participação de intelectuais, escritores, historiadores e especialistas da obra, da vida e do tempo de Cervantes, tais como, Martín de Riquer, José Saramago, Günter Grass, Mario Vargas Llosa, Jean Canavaggio, Felipe González, Carme Riera, Luis Rojas Marcos e Francisco Rico.

I found the photographer of these beautiful kittens: Sabine Rath from Tigers Deluxe

Rome was at its peak in the fourth century, with over a million inhabitants. It was the largest metropolis the world had ever seen: Not until Victorian London, 1500 years later, did an urban area surpass Rome’s size. This week, an unusual combination of classicists, engineers and archaeologists unveiled something not even HBO and Hollywood could manage – a complete 3-D model of Rome, circa 320 A.D. It’s a huge model for a huge city. Running a fly-through, real-time model of the ancient city requires serious processing power. “It’s a big engineering problem to have a big model of something that has to be rendered that fast,” says Bernard Frischer, director of the Institute for Advanced Technology in the Humanities at the University of Virginia and the “Rome Reborn” project’s organizer. To create the digital model, researchers scanned a 3,000 square foot, 1/250 plaster model of the city – the “Plastico di Roma Antica” – which was completed in the 1970s. Because of the model’s intricac...

Among the multilegged creatures in Robert Lang's airy studio in Alamo, California, are a shimmering-blue long-horned beetle, a slinky, dun-colored centipede, a praying mantis with front legs held aloft, a plump cicada, a scorpion and a black horsefly. So realistic that some people threaten to stomp on them, these paper models, virtually unfoldable 20 years ago, represent a new frontier in origami. No longer limited to traditional birds and boats, origami—the art of paper folding—is evolving artistically and technologically, thanks to a small but growing number of mathematicians and scientists around the world, including Lang. What's more, this group believes the ancient art holds elegant solutions to problems in fields as diverse as automobile safety, space science, architecture, robotics, manufacturing and medicine. A laser physicist and former researcher with NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Lang, 46, is a pioneer in technical and computational origami, which focuses on ...

The Guardian has an audio slideshow on whale slaughtering in Japan. Knut the bear, from the previous post, is one of the largest animals on this earth, and certainly the largest carnivore. I tell you, it takes a lot of strength to watch the largest animal on earth, endangered as it is, sliced, diced or sun-dried, as they say in the newspaper's piece. This happens in a developed, modern, affluent and whatnot country. Does their economy need this? My economy will most probably never allow me to visit Japan, or Norway, or wherever they still have to resort to this, poor countries. And yes, gotta love Portugal, 'cos our very own Azores Islands have had WHALE WATCHING for years, as opposed to what economy drove them to do ages ago. The label All things Japanese applies here, of course, it isn't merely for the good ones.

All about Knut ;)

"Exército de felídeos" afasta ratos das obras do Museu Hermitage O Museu Hermitage, em S. Petersburgo, está a ser guardado por gatos. A iniciativa é dos responsáveis do museu, um dos maiores do Mundo, mas não é uma novidade. Desde o século XVIII que os gatos fazem parte do Hermitage. Esta foi a forma encontrada pela Imperatriz Isabel para afastar os ratos dos tesouros e obras de arte do museu. A estratégia foi eficaz e perdurou, e ainda hoje os gatos convivem com os visitantes do Hermitage e são mesmo uma das suas atracções. Dois funcionários ocupam-se de tratar dos animais, e todos os empregados do museu contribuem para a compra da sua comida. Normalmente os gatos abandonados vão parar ao museu, juntando-se ao "exército" que afasta os ratos das obras de arte do museu russo.

Though this mapped poll might be as silly as the heavy drinking one below...

[ Muchos años de spués, frente al pelotón de fusilamiento, el coronel Aureliano Buendía había de recordar aquella tar de remota en que su padre lo llevó a conocer el hielo... ] Gabriel García Márquez's One Hundred Years of Solitude ( Cien años de soledad ) celebrates its 40th birthday this year. This is also the author's 80th birthday, and the 25th anniversary of his Nobel Prize for Literature. Maybe it's the coincidence of numbers, but Gabo, as García Márquez is known among friends, has never been so popular. Celebrations are occurring in his native Colombia and elsewhere in the Hispanic world. And an inexpensive anniversary edition of his epic novel, overseen by the author and published under the aegis of the Real Academia Española, with a first printing of a million, is on sale throughout the Spanish-speaking world. García Márquez's fame is nothing new. It came almost overnight, in 1967, with the hoopla surrounding the publication of One Hundred Years of Sol...

The life of a panda bear from birth to the look we know him to have. A ranting sea-otter. Now why doesn't our Oceanarium website show such creativity?

Sudan, May 28: International wildlife experts have located hundreds of wild elephants on a treeless island in the swamps of south Sudan, where they apparently avoided unchecked hunting during more than 20 years of war. "We flew out of a cloud, and there they were. It was like something out of Jurassic Park," said Tom Catterson, working on a U.S.-funded environment program in south Sudan. Environmentalists are keeping the location of the island in the Sudd area secret to prevent poachers from killing the animals. Sudan`s north-south civil war caused massive displacement of animals as well as people into neighboring countries, according to southern environment ministry official Victor Wurda la Tombe. The conflict ended with a 2005 peace agreement that gave the south semi-autonomous status, but experts say game hunting is still unchecked in a region filled with guns despite a five-year ban on hunting to allow wildlife to replenish. Environmentalists are only now beginning to dis...

DUBLIN: For a manuscript written 1,200 years ago and revered as a wonder of the Western world practically ever since, little is known about the Book of Kells and its splendidly illustrated Gospels in Latin. But the book may be about to surrender a few of its many secrets. Experts at Trinity College in Dublin, where the Book of Kells has resided for the past 346 years, are allowing a two-year laser analysis of the treasure, which is one of Ireland's great tourist draws. The 21st-century laser technology being used, Raman spectroscopy, encourages hopes among those with a romantic view for an ecclesiastical intrigue like "The Da Vinci Code" or "The Name of the Rose." But the precise subjects are more mundane. The laser will study the chemicals and composition of the book, its pigments, inks and pages of fine vellum. Experts estimate that 185 calves would have been needed to create the vellum on which the art and scriptures were reproduced. Pending the laser an...

Everyone who can, remembers where they were on that July day in 1969. They remember what they were doing, too. They were watching grainy, black and white TV images. There was not much action and not much sound. But this was the moment the Earth stood still. They were transfixed, watching history as it was made. They were watching two men, high above them, walking on the moon. The moon has pulled at the souls and imaginations of people through the ages. Its attraction is like the lunar pull of the tides. It carries in its light a mystery, unfathomable and beyond reach, that goes to the core of the universe. It is our nearest touchstone to the galaxies. It fires our imagination and for a frenzied time last century it became the object of our desires. Well, at least the desires of the United States to be the first to walk on its airless plains. Gerard DeGroot, professor of modern history at St Andrews University, in Dark Side of the Moon explores this mission to fly to the moon. The subti...

Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered, weak and weary, Over many a quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore-- While I nodded, nearly napping, suddenly there came a tapping, As of some one gently rapping, rapping at my chamber door. "'Tis some visiter," I muttered, "tapping at my chamber door-- Only this and nothing more." Ah, distinctly I remember it was in the bleak December, And each separate dying ember wrought its ghost upon the floor. Eagerly I wished the morrow;--vainly I had sought to borrow From my books surcease of sorrow--sorrow for the lost Lenore-- For the rare and radiant maiden whom the angels name Lenore-- Nameless here for evermore. And the silken sad uncertain rustling of each purple curtain Thrilled me--filled me with fantastic terrors never felt before; So that now, to still the beating of my heart, I stood repeating "'Tis some visiter entreating entrance at my chambe...

Thanx to Poison Ivy ;)

Barbra Streisand's concert in Rome next month should be cancelled because of excessively high ticket prices, consumer groups in Italy have said. The Adusbef and Codacons groups urged the city and the Italian Olympic Committee to deny Streisand use of the Stadio Flaminio on 15 June. Prices, ranging from 150 euros (£100) to more than 900 euros (£600), were "absurd and shameful", the groups said. Streisand's Rome concert will kick off her European tour. The 24,000-seat stadium "is public property and cannot be used for immoral deals that are shameful to a civilized country", Adusbef and Codacons said. All but the cheapest tickets are still available to buy on the internet, the Reuters news agency reported. ...

Consumers need more information about the environmental impact of the food in their shopping basket if they are to make eco-friendly choices, according to researchers who have carried out a detailed analysis of the ecological costs associated with food. They argue that the focus on "food miles" is missing the bigger picture and may be counter-productive. Food stores such as Tesco and Marks & Spencer have said that they will label products that have been transported by air. But according to the researchers, only around 2% of the environmental impact of food comes from transporting it from farm to shop. The vast majority of its ecological footprint comes from food processing, storage, packaging and growing conditions. So food grown locally could have a considerably bigger footprint than food flown halfway around the world, and consumers who make their choices on air miles alone may be doing more environmental harm, according to the scientists. "I'm a bit worried ab...

Interested? Go The Observer

4. Save the planet. convert to veganism Meat? Or two veg? If you're remotely interested in saving this timeworn planet, then you probably need to become a vegetable-based life-form, and soon. A recent report in the New Scientist confirmed that meat and dairy production causes environmental degradation on a huge scale, including erosion, water pollution and loss of biodiversity. What's more, the world's one-and-a-half billion head of cattle (and 1.7 billion sheep, plus the odd pig and goat) produce enough methane and nitrous oxide to make up 18 per cent of greenhouse-gas emissions. That's a higher share than transport. A study conducted by the University of Chicago found that the typical US diet (about 28 per cent of which comes from animal sources) generates the equivalent of 1.5 tonnes more carbon dioxide per person per year than a vegan diet with the same number of calories. Ah, the burger brigade might retort, but veganism comes with its own gristly issues too. It te...

To cat-proof one's computer: