Friday, January 25, 2013

Mysterious Volgograd Balls

Mysterious Volgograd Balls | Atlas Obscura

Mysterious Volgograd Balls

Volcanic irregularity? Odd erosion? Alien eggs? Local legends compete to explain these strange orbs

Natural Wonders, Geological Oddities, Natural Wonders, Natural Wonders
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Contributors:ekoptev
Ever since these mysterious spherical objects were found in Mokraya Olkhovka, legend and mystery has surrounded them.
The first theory of their origin was that they were the eggs of a dinosaur. That idea was tossed out by scientific study, which concluded that they consist of metal, silicon and sand, not baby dinosaur. Another legend was that they could have been the product of a unique volcano that produced not just steam, but minerals that fell into these unusual shapes, but that didn't pan out either. Adding to the intrigue, the balls were located very close to each other and looked very alike, each having the same shape and size as the last, which undoubtedly led to the go-to answer for anything without a crystal-clear origin- aliens.
Further investigation reveals that Kazakhstan and New Zealand also has some of these "eggs" hidden in their remote areas. While conspiracy theorists sometimes insist these are deposits from another planet, they actually do have a scientific explanation.
The scientific term for these ancinent "eggs" is "concretions", and they are a fairly common, if not captivating, phenomenon. They are formed when mineral cement precipitates in spaces between sediment. They occur within layers of strata that has already deposited, and resist erosion so that as the centuries roll by, these pockets of spherical concretionary cement remain after everything else is washed away
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Wednesday, January 23, 2013

•RPG Superstar 2013 Top 32 Finalists Revealed‏

RPG Superstar 2013 Top 32 Finalists Revealed‏

 
 
Paizo.com
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Richard III: Visions of a villain?

Richard III: Visions of a villain? - Telegraph

Richard III: Visions of a villain?

As archaeologists prepare to announce the discovery of Richard III's remains, Alastair Smart looks for clues to the king's much-maligned character in early portraits of him.


Maligned: An unknown artist’s copy of an original portrait of Richard III (1520, Royal Collection)
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8:00AM GMT 20 Jan 2013
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Poor old Richard III. King for a mere two years, two months in the 1480s, he was a brave and astute military leader, who also introduced the nation’s first form of legal aid. Yet, still he’s the most reviled monarch in our history, his name even finding its way into cockney rhyming slang to denote excrement.
In large part, this is down to his depiction in Shakespeare’s Richard III (1592) as a “poisonous bunch-back’d toad”, who has his two young nephews murdered in the Tower of London to assure his position as king. No matter that no historical evidence for such a crime exists.
Our grim fascination with Richard shifted to another level in September, when archaeologists – seeking his lost remains near the site of his killing by Henry Tudor’s forces at the Battle of Bosworth – hailed potential success under a car park in Leicester. They will confirm their results, with considerable hoo-ha, any day now.
Drawing on biased historical accounts like Thomas More’s History of King Richard III (1519) – which basically amount to Tudor-legitimising propaganda – Shakespeare’s Richard is a limping hunchback with a withered arm: as deformed in appearance as he was in character. This indeed is how posterity “remembers” him, and much of the current fuss in Leicester has surrounded one particular skeleton’s curved spine.
Yet, how accurate was Shakespeare’s description of Richard really? And can contemporary imagery help us judge? Sadly, no portrait of Richard III, the last Plantagenet king, survives from his lifetime. However, the Society of Antiquaries does possess the earliest copy of one, from 1510, in which an earnest, upright Richard has no deformity whatsoever.
This is entirely in keeping with contemporary written sources, which speak only of his being short and lean: the Scottish ambassador complimented “so great a mind in so small a body”, while the Silesian knight Nicholas von Popplau observed that Richard “hardly touched his food”.
Demonisation began soon after his death, though, with the tinpot historian John Rous, who – keen to ingratiate himself with Henry VII, the new king – portrayed Richard as an anti-Christ: born with fully grown teeth and hair, as well as “uneven shoulders, the right higher [than] the left”.
Thomas More followed Rous’s lead, albeit switching the abnormality from right shoulder to left, presumably to play up Richard’s sinister side (sinister being Latin for left). A second Society of Antiquaries portrait, from 1550, duly depicts Richard with an unnaturally raised left shoulder. He also holds a broken sword, symbol of his broken kingship.
The hunchback tag now stuck, perhaps helped by the fact that Richard’s personal emblem was a wild boar – a naturally humpbacked animal – and the distinction between man and symbol grew blurred.
Most surviving portraits of Richard (20 or so in total) come from the late 16th century, when the fashion in great halls across the nation was to display a set of images of each English monarch chronologically. These were produced cheaply and formulaically in workshops, and based on a pre-established likeness: in Richard’s case a portrait from 1520 currently in the Royal Collection.
It is a work of subtle but significant slander. As would thereafter become the norm in pictures of him, Richard has uneven shoulders, villainously thin lips and malevolently narrow eyes.
Recent X-ray analysis reveals, though, that these slanderous touches were actually added soon after the painting was first completed. It seems to have started out simply as a copy of a now-lost portrait of Richard from life, only for alterations to be demanded by someone high up at the court of Henry VIII (in whose collection the picture was inventoried).
Shakespeare, then, was merely completing, with typical embellishment, a job already started by artists and historians – immortalising Richard III as a crookback Machiavel and implicitly championing his vanquisher, Henry VII, as founder of a heroic new dynasty: the Tudors. It’s a dynasty we associate to this day with thrusting England out of the Middle Ages and into the modern world.
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Monday, January 21, 2013

Álfaskólinn - Elf School

Álfaskólinn - Elf School | Atlas Obscura

Álfaskólinn - Elf School

Learn about Iceland's hidden folk at this school dedicated to the study of elves

Repositories of Knowledge, Hoaxes and Pseudoscience, Cultures and Civilizations
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Contributors:Oliver Hong
Some Icelanders take their belief in elves very seriously.
For example, road crews in Iceland will sometimes hire folklore experts to determine if certain boulders are homes to elves, and will divert the road around the boulder if it turns out there are little people living within it.
This belief in elves doesn't stop with road workers and superstitious locals either. After escaping a car crash unscathed, a member of the Icelandic Parliament had a 30-ton boulder moved near his home because he believed that the local elves inside the boulder used their magic to save him. While there are many Icelanders who pay no mind to the superstitious elf-talk, there is a higher than average number of citizens that are believers.
With all that said, it's not surprising to see that there's an entire school dedicated learning about these hidden people. Located in the thoroughly modern city of Reykjavik, the school has a full curriculum of study about the 13 types of elves in Iceland. This concentration comes with a set of published textbooks with drawn depictions of these creatures for reference in the classroom, or just in case you encounter one in the wild.
The school studies Iceland's other supernatural flora as well, such as fairies, trolls, dwarves and gnomes, but they mainly focus on elves, because they are the most commonly believed in and "seen".
The school also offers five hour classes for curious travelers, which includes a tour of hidden folk habitats and ends with coffee and pancakes with the school's headmaster. Students receive a diploma at the end of the class, which shows that you were sufficiently educated in the affairs of elves.
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King Alfred's Tower |

King Alfred's Tower | Atlas Obscura

King Alfred's Tower

Gothic tower mentioned in Thomas Hardy poem "The Channel Firing"

Architectural Oddities, Follies and Grottoes
0
Contributors:ronin, Nicholas Jackson, Dylan
King Alfred's tower is one of many "follies" built in Britain. Follies are those buildings erected by the upper classes during the heights of British power for the sole purpose of displaying wealth and entertaining friends. This particular folly was built to celebrate a victory by the Saxon, King Alfred, over the Danes in AD 878 and is the legendary site where the King raised his standard prior to the battle.
Built by the Hoare banking family, the triangular tower is constructed from over a million red bricks and stands 50 meters in height. Work on the tower began in 1762 and was completed in 1779 with the addition of a ten foot high statue of King Alfred in an alcove above the entrance.
This tower was mentioned in a poem by the British poet, Thomas Hardy, in his poem entitled “The Channel Firing” written in 1914.
Damage to the tower occurred during World War II when an American plane crashed into it, severely damaging the upper 10 meters of structure. The turret was repaired in 1986 with a helicopter used to lower the new cone onto the tower
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Beazer Garden Maze

Beazer Garden Maze | Atlas Obscura

Beazer Garden Maze

Created by one of England's most prolific labyrinth designers, inspired by Bath city history

Mazes
5
Contributors:Annetta
Alongside the river in Bath near Pulteney Bridge, a small garden labyrinth made of paving stones weaves around a mosiac center.
Although called a maze the design is technically a labyrinth. Unlike a maze, which has a multicursal or branching pattern, a labyrinth has only a unicursal path, a single line woven back and forth in a complex pattern but never branching. Despite the story of Minotaur - in which the labyrinth described would be correctly called a maze - true labyrinths are impossible to get lost in, go in either direction and you eventually reach the place where you began.
The notion and pattern of the labyrinth, shows up throughout world cultures, and often has religious meaning as a path to god, ancestors, or enlightenment. In early Christian cultures, believers are thought to have walked the labyrinths endlessly obtaining an altered mind state as they did so.
The Beazer Garden Maze however, generally does not have monks tripping on spirituality wandering around on it, but rather local children while there parents sit and enjoy the park.
Named for the local construction company who donated the land on which the paver stone labyrinth was built, the labyrinth was designed by deceased diplomat (and perhaps spy), maze designer and "labyrinthologist" Randoll Coate in 1984. Coate designed over 50 mazes in England which are known for their hidden symbolism. Coate, who was also a friend of labyrinth enthusiast Jorge Luis Borges, said labyrinths gave "our world of harsh reality and mindless speed a timeless oasis, a leisurely paradise, the substance of a dream."
The petite labyrinth in Bath is inspired by the city's Georgian architecture, Isambard Kingdom Brunel's railway designs and is centered around a large Roman-inspired
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