Clipmarks | invictus's Culture collection

Siberian, Native American languages linked

Mon, 31 Mar 2008 15:19:38 GMT

clipped by: invictus

A fast-dying language in remote central Siberia shares a mother tongue with dozens of Native American languages spoken thousands of miles away, new research confirms. The finding may allow linguists to weigh in on how the Americas were first settled, according to Edward Vajda, director of the Center for East Asian Studies at Western Washington University in Bellingham (USA).
Since at least 1923 researchers have suggested a connection exists between Asian and North American languages—but this is the first time a link has been demonstrated with established standards, said Vajda, who has studied the relationship for more than 15 years. Vajda developed a nw method. "I'm providing a whole system of [similar] vocabulary and also of grammatical parallels—the way that verb prefixes are structured," he said. His research links the Old World language family of Yeniseic in central Siberia with the Na-Dene family of languages in North America.

Tags: linguistics, anthropology, culture, asia, siberia, native americans, language

Arthur C Clarke never lost his sense of wonder

Wed, 19 Mar 2008 17:27:06 GMT

clipped by: invictus
clipper's remarks: Saluting Sir Arthur... We lost one of the most inspiring figures of our time, clippers.

Clip Source: entertainment.timesonline.co.uk

His far-sightedness led him to write dozens of science fiction novels, of which perhaps the most famous is 2001: A Space Odyssey — made into a spectacular film by the late director Stanley Kubrick.

Clarke and Kubrick created a vision of outer space that was more than just technology but had a mythic quality that probed the philosophy of the universe.

The original story was a short novella dealing with the idea of Man’s evolution being inspired by the intervention of a distant god-like extra-terrestrial civilisation.

To the end of his life he never lost his sense of wonder, his sense of humour or his strong Somerset accent. While sorely disappointed with the failure of Man’s space flight to achieve the lofty goals that he had foreseen, he always retained an optimism about the Universe and Man’s place in it.

Tags: arthur c clarke, science fiction, science, universe, philosophy, literature

Undeciphered Scripts - Good Resource

Sat, 08 Dec 2007 15:49:19 GMT

clipped by: invictus
clipper's remarks: This was one of my "archaic" clips that went private a long while ago for exceeding the character limit. I'm re-clipping it now because so many new clippers joined since then and I believe this is a great source on ancient scripts and writing systems.

Clip Source: www.omniglot.com

Undeciphered scripts

The writing systems listed below have yet to be deciphered or have only been partially deciphered. In some cases the writing systems have been deciphered but the languages they were used to write remain a mystery.

Vinča / Old European

Indus/Harappa script

Proto-Elamite

Old Elamite

Linear A

Phaistos Disk

Voynich Manuscript

Rohonc Codex

Rongo Rongo

Other types of script

Abjads, Alphabets, Syllabic alphabets, Syllabaries, Semanto-phonetic writing systems, Undeciphered scripts, Alternative writing systems, Your con-scripts, A-Z index, Direction index, Language index

Tags: ancient scripts, alphabets, writing

Unplugged Schools

Sun, 30 Sep 2007 02:03:18 GMT

clipped by: invictus
clipper's remarks:

Unless emotionally connected to some direct experience with the world, symbols reach kids as merely arbitrary bits of data. A picture may be worth a thousand words, but to a second grader who has held a squiggly nightcrawler in her hand, even the printed symbol “worm” resonates with far deeper meaning than a thousand pictures or a dozen Discovery Channel videos.

Nature is, of course, the richest resource for firsthand experience. Individual teachers have long tried to provide some contact with the natural world by bringing plants and small animals into their classrooms—a limited approach yielding limited results.

Clip Source: www.orionmagazine.org

Educators say the darndest things. Consider this from a high school social studies teacher who told me, “Kids don’t read anymore. The only way I can teach them anything is by showing them videos.” Or this from a middle school principal who defended serving children junk food every day by telling me, “That’s what they’re used to eating. They won’t eat it if it doesn’t taste like fast food.”

Aside from their stunning capitulation of adult responsibility, these comments illustrate what has become a common disregard for one of schooling’s most important tasks: to compensate for, rather than intensify, society’s excesses.

If a culture becomes too enamored with competition, schools would emphasize cooperation; if it overemphasizes individuality, schools would emphasize community responsibility; if it allows poor children to go hungry, schools would (and do) develop lunch and breakfast programs to feed them; and so on.

Tags: culture, education, schools, living, alienation

Google Books Redesign

Thu, 27 Sep 2007 01:27:14 GMT

clipped by: invictus
clipper's remarks: Now it looks much better; like a real online library.

Clip Source: blogoscoped.com

The Google Book search homepage just received a redesign (some of you were able to spot this prototype before, but it just went live for all). It now looks more like book shelf than straight-forward search engine; instead of the typical Google logo + input box, you’ll be seeing a couple of pre-selected covers as images, making for a more explorative approach.

Tags: google, books, book search

The History of Writing

Fri, 20 Jul 2007 12:33:52 GMT

clipped by: invictus
clipper's remarks: Revisiting & re-clipping some of my old stuff. (I recommend the source article for an illustrated history of abstract thought and writing, with the evolution of alphabets.)

Clip Source: www.historian.net

Language existed long before writing, emerging probably simultaneously with sapience, abstract thought and the Genus Homo.

As long ago as 25,000-30,000 years BP, humans were painting pictures on cave walls. Whether these pictures were telling a "story" or represented some type of "spirit house" or ritual exercise is not known.

Around 4100-3800 BCE, the tokens began to be symbols that could be impressed or inscribed in clay to represent a record of land, grain or cattle and a written language was beginning to develop. One of the earliest examples was found in the excavations of Uruk in Mesopotamia at a level representing the time of the crystallization of the Sumerian culture.

For the next step toward the development of an alphabet, we must go to Egypt where picture writing had developed sometime near the end of the 4th millennium BC.

One of the earliest examples is the name of NAR-MER, either the first or second Pharoah of an united Egypt in 3100 BCE.

Tags: history, alphabets, writing, scripts

History of Goddess

Thu, 19 Jul 2007 13:15:43 GMT

clipped by: invictus
clipper's remarks: Revisiting & re-clipping some of my old stuff.

Clip Source: www.carnaval.com

Academics are generally comfortable with beginning humankind's history around 3000 BC, when the Sumerian civilization along the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers in today's Iraq invented an alphabet and made great strides as a civilization. Yet humankind left its mark for future generations many millennium before this in the form of assorted symbols.

Occasionally, an academic takes exception to the norm, and they usually find their audience elsewhere than the ivory tower. This is the case with the temples of Malta. These monuments communicate in the universal languages of mathematical measurements of stars and seasons, and their words are expressed in the universal picture language of dreams. It does not require extensive education to see the Malta artifacts as representations of Mother Earth, symbolizing rebirth in the cycle of life and death.

Tags: goddess, matriarchy, mother goddess, prehistory, marija gimbutas

Rastafarianism: Essence of Reggae

Thu, 19 Jul 2007 12:55:15 GMT

clipped by: invictus
clipper's remarks: Re-clipping my old stuff as promised.

Clip Source: religiousmovements.lib.virginia.edu

Rastafarianism

The original Rastas drew their inspiration from the philosphies of Marcus Mosiah Garvey (1887-1940), who promoted the Universal Negro Improvement Association (UNIA) in the 1920s. The organization's main goal was to unite black people with their rightful homeland, Africa. Garvey believed that all black people in the western world should return to Africa since they were all descended from Africans. He preached that the European colonizers, having fragmented the African continent, unfairly spread the African population throughout the world.

After spending nearly a decade in the United States and Great Britain, Garvey returned to Jamaica in 1927, where he spread his political views among the black working class.

In 1930, Prince Ras Tafari Makonnen was crowned the new Emperor of Ethiopia.

This announcement was a monumental event that many blacks in Africa and the Americas saw as the fulfillment of Garvey's prophecy years before.

Tags: religion, rastafarianism, culture, reggae, africa, ethiopia, jamaica

Route 66 Motels: Fading piece of Americana

Mon, 21 May 2007 16:08:29 GMT

clipped by: invictus
clipper's remarks:

Motels along Route 66, immortalized by John Steinbeck and Nat King Cole, are in disrepair

Clip Source: news.yahoo.com

MIAMI, Okla. - The Riviera Courts motel is crumbling away and nobody seems to care. Once a stop along Route 66, the 2,400-mile neon carnival that connected hundreds of communities from Chicago to Los Angeles, this late-1930s Mission Revival is just a weather-worn building on the side of a country road in far northeast Oklahoma.

The Riviera Courts is among hundreds of mom-and-pop motels that met their demise along the ribbon of Route 66 as America's interstate system siphoned traffic off the Mother Road onto a four-lane, divided highway called progress.

In Oklahoma, with more Route 66 miles than any of the eight states it flows through, many motels are derelict or abandoned, used as junk yards, makeshift car lots and flophouses.

Owners who inherited these historical footnotes have no use for them, and would rather sell the properties to a developer if the price was right.

Tags: route 66, motels, america, city, culture, john steinbeck, grapes of wrath, nat king cole

Legends of America

Sun, 13 May 2007 20:01:34 GMT

clipped by: dorine
clipper's remarks: Fun site. Lots of information about the Old West!

Clip Source: www.legendsofamerica.com

Dodge City in 1874, courtesy Ford County Historical Society

Clip Source: www.legendsofamerica.com

Travel, History, Old West, Route 66, Ghost Towns,

Treasure Tales & More!

When you travel, do you often wonder what happened at "this place" in the past? Who lived here? What were they like? How did they live their daily lives? If that's the case for you, here at Legends of America, you will find content-rich travel destinations of the American West, including Route 66, ghost towns, outlaws, treasure tales, and even a few ghosts that we bump into along the way.

Filled with both vintage and current photographs, Legends of America focuses on small out of the way places and hidden attractions that appeal to the nostalgic and historic minded, giving you more than just a paragraph, we will take you there!

Tags: old west, legends, stories, history, america, photos

"The Mahabharata," dir. Peter Brook, 1989 -- resources

Wed, 14 Mar 2007 02:41:59 GMT

clipped by: enbar
clipper's remarks: UK director Peter Brook (Marat/Sade, 1967) did a 6-hour TV version of The Mahabharata in 1989 adapted from the stage. This is a collection of related information and resources from film professor Gloria Floren of MiraCosta College (Oceanside, CA).

Clip Source: www.miracosta.cc.ca.us

Ganesha
Scribe of the Mahabharata

THE MAHABHARATA
a film by Peter Brook

"It's about you . . . If you listen carefully, at the end you'll be someone else."

Director Peter Brook's screen presentation of the legendary Indian myth uses international cast, to emphasize the nature of the epic as a universal story of all humanity. The film stars Vittorio Mezzogiorno as Arjuna, the leader of the virtuous Pandava clan, which wages war throughout the epic with the power-hungry Kauravas, who are led by Arjuna's half-brothers, Karna (Jeff Kissoon) and Duryodhana (Georges Corraface). Although the benign Lord Krishna (Bruce Myers) cannot intervene, he provides advice for both clans on protecting dharma, the order of the universe.

Background on the Mahabharata and Online Texts |
Essays and Other Resources | FilmReviews |
Family Chart and Some Film Photos |
MiraCosta College Honors Enrichment Seminar on The Mahabharata

ESSAYS AND OTHER RESOURCES
Peter Brook | intercultural performance | soundtrack

Tags: film, religion, hinduism, art, literature, television

FAQ Kundalini Yoga

Sun, 07 Jan 2007 12:19:31 GMT

clipped by: wurdzgurl

Clip Source: www.yogayoga.com

Why do teachers of Kundalini Yoga often wear white?

For the practice of Kundalini Yoga, it is helpful to wear white, natural fiber clothing. The color white is good for the body energetically and for the nervous system. Natural fiber clothing (cotton is suggested) allows the body to breathe and is comfortable during yoga.

Why do some teachers of Kundalini Yoga have two names?

Many teachers of Kundalini Yoga request a “spiritual name”. This is a name that is given by Yogi Bhajan, the master teacher of Kundalini Yoga. It represents the highest purpose of the person who is called by that name. A spiritual name is like a personal mantra. Many Kundalini Yoga teachers use both their birth name and their spiritual name; these teachers have two names given for them on the schedule and are happy to be called by either name.

Why do some teachers of Kundalini Yoga wear turbans or head coverings?

Head coverings of any kind are useful for a meditative practice. Turbans in particular are useful for holding energy in, and for creating a meditative focus at the third eye point (brow point). In addition, the turban provides a nice cranial adjustment. Some teachers wear a turban or head covering for these yogic reasons alone.

TOP

Is yoga or Kundalini Yoga associated with a religion?

No. Kundalini Yoga (and yoga in general) is a technology for health and consciousness that predates religion. It is practiced by people of all faiths. Our teachers represent many paths including Christian, Buddhist, Jewish, Sikh, and others. Teachers who visually exemplify a religious path (such as Sikh teachers who wear turbans as part of daily attire) do so because of their personal beliefs.

Yogi Bhajan is the master teacher of Kundalini Yoga. He was the first yogi to begin teaching Kundalini Yoga in the West. He arrived in the United States in 1969 and began teaching Kundalini Yoga to help people live healthy, conscious lives. At that time he also started 3HO (Happy, Healthy, Holy organization)

Tags: kundalini, yoga

Tibetan Culture

Sun, 24 Dec 2006 01:10:52 GMT

clipped by: Socratoad

Clip Source: www.tibetanculture.org

Saturday, December 23, 2006

From the Dalai Lama

About us

Tibetan Film Director Uses Debut Film to Help Orphans

Neten Chokling Combines Cutting Edge Distribution Methods and Charity

BIR, INDIA --Neten Chokling, a 33 year-old Tibetan lama and filmmaker from Bhutan, defied both skeptics and the odds by successfully completing Milarepa, a full-length feature film about the life of Milarepa, an 11 century yogi and sorcerer who became Tibet 's greatest saint and folk hero. In the process, this soft-spoken lama, took in some 40 destitute young boys, many of them orphans, and found a way to use his movie to help feed, house and care for the boys. more

	North American Tibetan Community Cultural Needs Assessment
	The most detailed examination of the state of Tibetan culture in North America.

	Contemporary Tibetan Arts
	Folk Music and Dance
	Thangka Painting
	More Tibet arts ...

	Beyond the Land of the Snows
	Tibetans in India
	Tibetans in North America
	More Tibet in exile ...

	Butter Tea and Tsampa
	Games
	Picnics
	More Tibet traditions ...

	Nomads on the Tibetan Plateau
	Tibetan Language
	Tibetan Peoples
	More Tibet peoples ...

	Rethinking Tibetan Identity
	Tibetan Culture Beyond the Land of Snows
	Tibetan Culture in the 21st Century
	More article ...

Religion

Dalai Lama

Prayer Wheels and Prayer Flags

Rebirth and Reincarnation

Religious Storyteller

Renewal of the Nun Tradition

Ritual Dance and Chant

Sacred Monument

Tibetan Buddhism

Tibetan Muslims

Tags: tibet, culture, asia

Woodland Cree twelve moon cycles

Sat, 11 Nov 2006 08:33:15 GMT

clipped by: skwirlinator
clipper's remarks: this is interesting

Clip Source: www.kayas.ca

6 Seasons

The Woodland Cree have a way of marking the seasons that is unique, and which reflects the yearly cycle in a northern land of lakes and rivers. Two extra seasons have been added to the yearly calendar to reflect the yearly freezing and melting of the waterways.

The Woodland Cree had names for the twelve moon cycles (or months) of the year as well. Here are the names of the months and descriptions:

January - Opawuhchukunises - Frost - Exploding Trees - Moon - In deep winter, trees burst as their sap freezes. This makes sounds almost like gunshots on cold winter nights.

February - Kisepesim - The Great Moon - The coldest and most wind still time of year when hunting is difficult.

March - Mikisewipesim - The Eagle Moon - The month when the eagles return.

April - Niskipesim - The Goose Moon - The month when the geese return.

May - Uthekipesim - The Frog Moon - The month when the frogs come out.

June - Opiniyawipesim - The Egg Laying Moon - The month when the birds lay eggs.

July - Opuskowipesim - The Moulting Moon - The month when the young birds get their feathers.

August - Ohpuhowipesim - The Flying Up Moon - The month when the young birds are trying their new wings and practicing flying.

September - Onimituhumowipesim - The Mating Moon - The month when the moose are in rut.

October - Opimuhumowipesim - The Migrating Moon - The month when birds are migrating.

November - Kuskutinowipesim - The Freeze Up Moon - The month when the lakes freeze over.

December - Thithikopewipesim - The Frost Moon - A cold, frosty month.

Tags: woodland cree, twelve moon cycles, 6 seasons, indians, native americans, months, meanings

Australia will build the biggest solar power plant

Thu, 26 Oct 2006 03:58:13 GMT

clipped by: invictus

Clip Source: www.climateark.org

Australia faces blackouts, builds major solar plant

Australia will build the world's biggest solar power plant amid warnings of blackouts within five years unless it can increase electricity generation to meet growing demand for air conditioners.

With climate change becoming a major issue in Australia as a severe drought eats into economic growth and cities impose water restrictions, the government has begun to support alternative forms of energy.

Besides the new $420 million ($318 million) solar power plant, the government also announced on Wednesday a A$360 million pilot project to produce cleaner energy through brown coal drying and carbon capture and storage.

Australia, one of the world's biggest producers of greenhouse gases per capita, refuses to sign the Kyoto Protocol aimed at lowering greenhouse gases which cause global warming.

Tags: energy, climate change, environment, australia, solar power, alternative energy