A blog about science and art - and all the wonderful things in between.
By the time the Spanish arrived in Peru at the beginning of the 16th Century the Chachapoya people had already been subsumed in to the great Inca Empire. Although they had resisted the Incas fiercely, the lands of these Warriors of the Clouds as they were known had been annexed and had been forced to adopt the customs and culture of their conquerors. Yet they left one thing behind – the strange…
I don’t know about you, but sometimes when I dig up parts of the garden, I come across the remnants of toys long ago abandoned. They’re the tiny ones – toy soldiers, pieces of Lego – you get the idea. This charming animation – A Tiny Tale - by students at Rubika takes the idea of toys left to their own devices in a garden and runs with it. We have, more or less, a micro-version of our own society,…
Why might a modern-day Odysseus be late home? This sketch, written and directed by Munya Chawawa , gives us a very British reason for his tardiness – and there’s no surprise when Penelope is a little bit miffed. His excuses aren’t terribly good, either! This particular Odysseus has been out with his mates to the pub (if you’re not aware of what that means, it’s short for Public House, which in its…
Back in 2023, Cody Fry first teamed up with the Blue Devils for his track Caves in their Drum Corps International competitive field show. If a collaboration works, then it’s worth revisiting, and so today we have the pleasure of seeing and hearing Magic in You . If you need a little cheering up today, this video may just do the trick. Its enormous joie de vivre is something to behold. The…
Although the subject of robots becoming self-aware is something that we are all a little overused to right now (especially with Ann Droid , courtesy of the BBC), having watched Andy , I felt I had to share it for several reasons. Created by Black Elk Productions , It tells the story of Anne Malone. Elderly, with a husband in a care home and a son, Nick, who is too busy to be around much, Anne has…
If there is one thing that will capture and hold the attention of most people, it’s a fast-paced game. It might be a video game, played competitively between family members or friends. It could be an intense esports match or even one of the crash-style casino games out there. Whatever the game, there are close connections to gaming psychology – that is the exploration if how game design works in…
Painted by Briton Rivière, this oil painting (usually dated as created in 1885) shows the reunion between Ulysses (also known as Ulysses), finally returned to Ithaca after twenty years (Troy!) and his faithful dog Ulysses. This video by Inspiraggio calls it “ one of the saddest paintings ever made ” and although there is a hint of hyperbole in that description, it is certainly one that is…
In Michigan, history is rarely held in one place. It sits in city archives in Detroit, parish memories in Grand Rapids, courthouse files in Lansing, small-town stories across the Thumb, and diocesan records from Marquette to Kalamazoo. The state’s religious history is shaped by distance as much as doctrine. A church in the Upper Peninsula may have served a close-knit town, while a parish in metro…
Always allow your dreams to last you your lifetime. I guess that’s the message behind this very sweet animated short, written and directed by Nicholas Arioli. A young boy wants to be an astronaut, as makes sure that he wears his space helmet wherever he goes, just in case he gets the chance to reach his destination – the moon. Then one day he comes across a coin operated ride which is – of course…
Roger Babson had a problem. His family thought he was crazy or felonious or both. He had started to carve mottoes in to the boulders which lay in the fields near the long abandoned settlement of Dogtown close to his home in Gloucester, Massachusetts. Image Credit Flickr User aaronknox Babson was later to write in his autobiography: My family says that I am defacing the boulders and disgracing the…
I had no idea that this existed until recently. Back in 2024, Kate Bush released a short animated music video called Little Shrew (Snowflake) – the word in brackets being the name of the track from her 2011 album 50 Words for Snow that is used as the soundtrack for this startling and poignant anti-war story. Apparently, the image of the destroyed block of flats that you see in the video is based…
Valencia is a remarkable city. On one hand you have the City of Arts and Sciences, which looks like it could be set from a science fiction movie (several have been filmed there). On the other you have the Old Town, with its sweeping historic squares, not to mention the cathedral and city hall. It’s like past and present come together in one seamless motion, particularly if you watch this…
Manny Patel made the first version of this over thirty years ago when he was a high school student. Now he has returned to his Star Trek Bohemian Rhapsody media mix as a celebration of the show’s 60 th anniversary (and Queen’s song is 50, so a double celebration). The footage has been upscaled to 4K, giving the original mashup a makeover. It is certainly a labor of love – each two or three second…
A little mouse, foraging for food, comes across and injured bird. It has been trapped by the wing and the mouse makes the decision, on the spot, to help the bird, release it and share its home with it until it is fully recovered and can fly again. That’s it – a very simple tale, but so beautifully animated and with great (wordless) character development that it’s simply (see what I did there?) a…
The skyline of modern Shanghai is something of a wonder – it’s like a mix of Bladerunner , Ghost in the Shell and The Fifth Element combined, even though that fairly lazy simile doesn’t do it justice (I shouldn’t really imagine the present using yesterday’s science fiction – it’s there in front of me). Yet although this is one of the most striking cityscapes on the planet by day, when the sun sets…
There are several films and shows that have phones boxes with connections to time travel. There is of course, Doctor Who – and who could forget the Bill and Ted movies? So, here’s another one to add to the list – in a way. Threads of Time was created by Kohei Yamashita in Tokyo, and it follows the trials and tribulations of a young man (played by Kazuma Ozaki). Perhaps he is a university graduate…
Have you ever felt that dread when, on their return from some far flung place, your friend threatens to show you their summer holiday photos? You may have to sit through that particular agony. In the meantime, here is a collection of photographs spanning the first seven decades of the twentieth century which show summer in all its glory. Times and social mores may have changed, but these may still…
This is precious. Le Grand Saut is the French title, so that translates as The Big Leap and I think it’s a great name for this animated short, given that the girl protagonist takes one literally and metaphorically . It doesn’t tell a big story, but for our young protagonist, it’s something of a coming of age . A simple day at the beach. There’s the sun, the sand – and, of course, the completely…
Have you ever taken a stroll through a wood and felt that you were being watched? Yet when you turn around, no-one is there. You carry on with your walk but that feeling of disquiet lingers. Perhaps you were being watched by something almost as disquieting as that galloping, mad axe murderer you were dreading. The Doll’s Eyes Plant could be eyeing you up as you innocently ramble. In North America,…
These days, most people know Kate Bush for Running Up That Hill , which was iconically featured on Stranger Things . However, outside of the US, ask people of a certain age and they will immediately cite Wuthering Height s , her 1978 hit, as her most popular song. In fact, inspired by the music video that went with it, each year women get together in community events all over the giff-gaff to…
It was a long time coming, but the Comic Relief people have finally released Spider-Plant Man on their YouTube channel. It was originally created for Red Nose Day (when people buy a red nose to wear to support charity) in the UK (back in 2006 so makes this sketch – astonishingly – 20 years old already). It quickly picked up something of a cult following as it very accurately takes the rise out of…
End of the World , is a track from the first album ( Asylum ) by Inpatient , and the video is a blast (well, it is the end of the world…). It’s lyrically dense – and very funny (love the line about the Vatican, allegedly, but there are too many standout lines to mention here). The song seems to be a (tongue in cheek) shrug of the shoulders at the world in general. Let’s self-medicate and get on…
Somehow we expect their faces to be different, not so staggeringly modern looking. Place them in contemporary clothing and all of these young men would not look out of place in a mall or a high school yearbook. Yet these extraordinary ambrotype and tintype photographs were taken during the American Civil War (1861-1865). Over 160 years separates their lives from our own yet their youthful faces…
So, now you have watched Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey , you think you know how the Trojan Horse was used to defeat the ancient city? Pah! Nolan knows nothing! Despite his movie being an extended homage to Old Hollywood in so many ways, what we really needed was a touch of The Python . And not one to disappoint, Ben Naumann’s new comedy short is something I could easily imagine young Cleese,…
It’s difficult to ascertain the damage that climate change has caused simply because there are so few places on the planet where we are not found. Human intervention creates artificial change, so in order to work out the real impact of climate change, you need to find somewhere pristine, somewhere we have never been. That’s quite difficult, considering the billions of us that have spread like a…