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To what extent is "being a man" misunderstood in modern society?

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To what extent is "being a man" misunderstood in modern society?

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Men need meaning and responsibility | Modern Masculinity

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What a European education project can tell us about Brexit - podcast

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When the writer Peter Pomerantsev was a teenager, he was sent to a school that was part of the European Schools network, which counts Boris Johnson among its alumni. He discusses what the project can tell us about the EU.

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Study finds Mr Greedy rivals Grapes of Wrath in reading complexity

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Analysis for teaching resources body determines that Roger Hargreaves' use of unusual words and long sentences raises demands on the reader

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Anti-vaxxers, the Momo challenge ... why lies spread faster than facts

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With Trump making six false claims a day and bogus Brexit claims spreading, we live in a disorienting post-truth era. It all began with the David Irving trial, writes Jonathan Freedland

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Intention - He made this song because of the childhood bestfriend he accidentally killed

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As Músicas da Carochinha Vol. 2 - Joana Come a Papa!

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Intention - To say that everyone is beautiful in their own way and shouldn't be ashamed of it.
Quality- Good
Spectator Response - They create a connection with the song lyrics. Makes the viewer want to stand up for themselves and be proud of who they are.

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Intention - The theme was made for one of the ending scene of Blood Diamond.
Quality - The theme suits very well the image.
Spectator Response - The theme along with the images of the movie leaves the spectator inspired and light-hearted.

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Blood Diamond - James Newton Howard - London

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The intention of this music is about her missing her country (São Tomé and Príncipe)
Quality- SOOOOOO GOOOOOOOD

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intention: to tell a person that they are still in love with them
quality: subjective
spectator response: most spectators liked it

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Scorpions - Still Loving You (Official Video)

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Intention- create a good movie
Quality- really bad
Spectator response- it being so bad that it is funny

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Intention- create a good movie
Quality- really bad
Spectator response- it being so bad that it is funny

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It does check all this criteria:
1- intention
2- quality
3- spectator response

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DC cancels comic where Jesus learns from superhero after outcry

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The Second Coming series, which had been due to launch next month, has been pulled following campaign by conservative site CitizenGo

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"To create today is to create dangerously," Albert Camus wrote in the late 1950s as he contemplated the role of the artist as a voice of resistance. "In our age," W.H. Auden observed around the same time across the Atlantic, "the mere making of a work of art is itself a political act." This unmerciful reality of human culture has shocked and staggered every artist who has endeavored to effect progress and lift her society up with the fulcrum of her art, but it is a fundamental fact of every age and every society. Half a century after Camus and Auden, Chinua Achebe distilled its discomfiting essence in his forgotten conversation with James Baldwin:

Those who tell you "Do not put too much politics in your art" are not being honest. If you look very carefully you will see that they are the same people who are quite happy with the situation as it is... What they are saying is don't upset the system.

Iris Murdoch (July 15, 1919-February 8, 1999) - a rare philosopher with a poet's pen, and one of the most incisive minds of the past century - explores the role of art as a force of resistance to tyranny and vehicle of cultural change in an arresting address she delivered to the American Academy of Arts and Letters in the spring of 1972, later included in the altogether revelatory posthumous collection Existentialists and Mystics: Writings on Philosophy and Literature (public library).

Two decades after the Soviet communist government forced Boris Pasternak to relinquish his Nobel Prize in Literature, Murdoch writes:

Tyrants always fear art because tyrants want to mystify while art tends to clarify. The good artist is a vehicle of truth, he formulates ideas which would otherwise remain vague and focuses attention upon facts which can then no longer be ignored. The tyrant persecutes the artist by silencing him or by attempting to degrade or buy him. This has always been so.

In consonance with Baldwin's assertion that "a society must assume that it is stable, but the artist must know, and he must let us know, that there is nothing stable under heaven," Murdoch adds:

At regular intervals in history the artist has tended to be a revolutionary or at least an instrument of change in so far as he has tended to be a sensitive and independent thinker with a job that is a little outside established society.

In a sentiment that calls to mind the maelstrom of vicious opprobrium hurled at E.E. Cummings for his visionary defiance of tradition, which revolutionized literature, Murdoch considers how art often catalyzes ideological and cultural revolutions by first revolutionizing the art-form itself:

A motive for change in art has always been the artist's own sense of truth. Artists constantly react against their tradition, finding it pompous and starchy and out of touch... Traditional art is seen as far too grand, and is then seen as a half-truth.

Murdoch counts among the "multifarious enemies of art" not only the deliberate assaults of political agendas and ideologies, but the half-conscious lacerations of our technology - that prosthetic extension of human intention, the unforeseen consequences and byproducts of which invariably eclipse its original intended uses. In a passage of sundering pertinence to our present political pseudo-reality, reinforced by the gorge of incessant newsfeeds, she writes:

A technological society, quite automatically and without any malign intent, upsets the artist by taking over and transforming the idea of craft, and by endlessly reproducing objects which are not art objects but sometimes resemble them. Technology steals the artist's public by inventing sub-artistic forms of entertainment and by offering a great counterinterest and a rival way of grasping the world.

[...]

Today technology further disturbs the artist and his client not only by actually threatening the world, but by making its wretchedness apparent upon the television screen. The desire to attack art, to neglect it or to harness it or to transform it out of recognition, is a natural and in a way respectable reaction to this display.

In a lovely parallel to Kurt Gödel's landmark incompleteness theorem, demonstrating the existence of certain mathematical truths which mathematical logical simply cannot prove, Murdoch extols incompleteness as the hallmark of art - not its weakness but its supreme strength:

Great art, especially literature, but the other arts too, carries a built-in self-critical recognition of its incompleteness. It accepts and celebrates jumble, and the bafflement of the mind by the world. The incomplete pseudo-object, the work of art, is a lucid commentary upon itself... Art makes a place for precision in the midst of chaos by inventing a language in which contingent details can be lovingly noticed and obvious truths stated with simple authority. The incompleteness of the pseudo-object need not affect the lucidity of the mode of talk which it bodies forth; in fact, the two aspects of the matter ideally support each other. In this sense all good art is its own intimate critic, celebrating in simple and truthful utterance the broken nature of its formal complexity. All good tragedy is anti-tragedy. King Lear. Lear wants to enact the false tragic, the solemn, the complete. Shakespeare forces him to enact the true tragic, the absurd, the incomplete.

Great art, then,... inspires truthfulness and humility.

Much as the poet Edna St. Vincent Millay had ranked an art other than her own as the greatest - "Even poetry, Sweet Patron Muse forgive me the words, is not what music is," she exulted in one of literature's most splendid passages about the power of music - Murdoch concedes the superior power of art at the expense of her own primary vocation:

Great art is able to display and discuss the central area of our reality, our actual consciousness, in a more exact way than science or even philosophy can.

A decade and a half before Toni Morrison delivered her spectacular Nobel Prize acceptance speech on the power of language and a quarter century before Susan Sontag's poignant address on "the conscience of words," Murdoch writes:

There is no doubt which art is the most practically important for our survival and our salvation, and that is literature. Words constitute the ultimate texture and stuff of our moral being, since they are the most refined and delicate and detailed, as well as the most universally used and understood, of the symbolisms whereby we express ourselves into existence. We became spiritual animals when we became verbal animals. The fundamental distinctions can only be made in words. Words are spirit.

In a sentiment of grave poignancy amid our dispiriting and decivilizing atmosphere of "alternative facts," Murdoch adds:

The quality of a civilisation depends upon its ability to discern and reveal truth, and this depends upon the scope and purity of its language.

Any dictator attempts to degrade the language because this is a way to mystify. And many of the quasi-automatic operations of capitalist industrial society tend also toward mystification and the blunting of verbal precision.

With an eye to C.P. Snow's famed 1959 lecture "The Two Cultures" - a watershed case for the necessity of desegregating science and the humanities, of bridging investigation with imaginative experience - Murdoch exhorts:

We must not be tempted to leave lucidity and exactness to the scientist. Whenever we write we ought to write as well as we can... in order to defend our language and render subtle and clear that stuff which is the deepest texture of our spirit.

[...]

There are not two cultures. There is only one culture and words are its basis; words are where we live as human beings and as moral and spiritual agents.

Her closing words are part manifesto and part benediction - a meta-testament to the mobilizing, spiritualizing power of great writing:

Both art and philosophy constantly re-create themselves by returning to the deep and obvious and ordinary things of human existence and making there a place for cool speech and wit and serious unforced reflection. Long may this central area remain to us, the homeland of freedom and of art. The great artist, like the great saint, calms us by a kind of unassuming simple lucidity, he speaks with the voice that we hear in Homer and in Shakespeare and in the Gospels. This is the human language of which, whenever we write, as artists or as word-users of any other kind, we should endeavour to be worthy.

Existentialists and Mystics - which also gave us Murdoch on storytelling and the key to great writing - is a timelessly incisive read in its entirety. Complement this particular fragment with Toni Morrison on the power of language, then revisit Murdoch on causality, chance, and how love gives meaning to our existence and her almost unbearably beautiful love letters.

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Salvation by Words: Iris Murdoch on Language as a Vehicle of Truth and Art as a Force of Resistance to Tyranny

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"To create today is to create dangerously," Albert Camus wrote in the late 1950s as he contemplated the role of the artist as a voice of resistance. "In our age," W.H. Auden observed around the same time across the Atlantic, "the mere making of a work of art is itself a political act."

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As sessões fotográficas da Photo Ark podem tornar-se muito... selvagens!

29 nov, 2018 - 15:30

Fotografar 12.000 espécies de animais foi a missão a que Joel Sartore se propôs para criar uma arca fotográfica. Mas é claro que quando se tenta fotografar animais tudo pode acontecer e a prova está neste vídeo. Até 5 de maio de 2019 veja a exposição Photo ark, da National Geographic, na Cordoaria Nacional em Lisboa.

Entrevista ao Bispo do Porto

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As sessões fotográficas da Photo Ark podem tornar-se muito... selvagens! - Renascença V+

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Fotografar 12.000 espécies de animais foi a missão a que Joel Sartore se propôs para criar uma arca fotográfica. Mas é claro que quando se tenta fotografar animais tudo pode acontecer e a prova está neste vídeo. Até 5 de maio de 2019 veja a exposição Photo ark, da National Geographic, na Cordoaria Nacional em Lisboa.

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What issues about knowledge might come up on this trip?

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A 'Arca de Noé' de Joel Sartore está na Cordoaria Nacional de Lisboa até 5 de maio de 2019.

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What are the similarities?

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IAN McEWAN: That old, two-culture matter is still with us, ever since [CP] Snow promulgated it back in the 50s. It still is possible to be a flourishing, public intellectual with absolutely no reference to science but it's happening less and less. And I think it's less a change of any decision in the culture at large, just a social reality pressing in on us. And it's true that climate change forces us to at least get a smattering of some idea of what it is to predict systems that have more than two or three variables and whether this is even possible. The internet has created sites like John Brockman's wonderful edge.org, where it's possible for laymen to sit in on conversations between scientists. And when scientists have to address each other out of their specialisms they have to speak plain English, they have to abandon their jargons, and we're the beneficiaries of that.

IAN McEWAN: That old, two-culture matter is still with us, ever since [CP] Snow promulgated it back in the 50s. It still is possible to be a flourishing, public intellectual with absolutely no reference to science but it's happening less and less. And I think it's less a change of any decision in the culture at large, just a social reality pressing in on us. And it's true that climate change forces us to at least get a smattering of some idea of what it is to predict systems that have more than two or three variables and whether this is even possible. The internet has created sites like John Brockman's wonderful edge.org, where it's possible for laymen to sit in on conversations between scientists. And when scientists have to address each other out of their specialisms they have to speak plain English, they have to abandon their jargons, and we're the beneficiaries of that.

NIMA ARKANI-HAMED: It's an asymmetry that doesn't really need to exist. Certainly many scientists are very appreciative of the arts. The essential gulf is one of language and especially in theoretical physics, the basic difficulty is that most people don't understand our language of mathematics which we use to describe everything we know about the universe. And so while I'm capable of listening to and intensely enjoying a Beethoven sonata or an Ian McEwan novel it can be more difficult for people in the arts to have some appreciation for what we do. But at a deeper level there's a commonality between certain parts of the arts and certain parts of the sciences.

IM: I'm one of those know-nothing liberal arts students who at the age of 16 remembers a maths teacher coming into the room and saying "I'll take 10 of you volunteers and I'll get you through A-level maths" so us English, history, French types went and were patiently taken through and it was the most intellectually difficult and delightful thing I ever did. And the highest I got was calculus. I thought I had reached my intellectual ceiling. Now that's first steps for any maths undergraduate but it gave me a taste for the sort of respect for a society where you couldn't really claim to be any sort of intellectual unless you had some kind of foot in the world of mathematics. So I think we're in a situation of awkward respect. You go into Westminster Abbey and Dirac's equation is carved in stone. To stand there and look at it, I think even for those of us who've got very little grasp of maths, can be a kind of aesthetic experience.

NA-H: One of the things that we try to do sometimes in explaining what's going on in physics is to find useful analogies and metaphors. But we could be doing a better job explaining the structure in which we're having these thoughts, explaining why we're doing what we're doing, explaining the pursuit of truth with a capital T which is underlying all of it: what it is that motivates people to spend three decades working with not necessarily a payoff in sight until, every now and then, we celebrate these tremendous achievements. There is an obsessive element to it which should be familiar to the artist - to many people in society. And it's driven by the pursuit of something much, much bigger than ourselves and the little trivial concerns of everyday life.

SCIENCE, ART AND THE IDEA OF BEAUTY

NA-H: There's a very common metaphor for describing the Higg's particle. It's this idea of the universe filled with something and the little ball bearing or whatever it was passing through the fluid picking up some inertia. That's a good example of a metaphor that gives some sense of what's actually going on. There's a difficulty with metaphors, which is that you can't take them too far - they're not literally what's going on. And often when that analogy is used there's some clever person in the audience, normally a 12-year-old kid, who puts up their hand and says "Excuse me, isn't that just like the ether? Didn't you guys learn anything?" And that's when we have to say: "Trust us. It's something that fills the universe that's not like the ether" and so there's always a limitation to metaphors. It is possible to explain some of these things. This is one of the wonderful things about fundamental physics. The essential ideas are simple. The possible answers to essential open questions are more complicated but the essential issues are deep and they're simple to state. And with some patience it's possible to address them head on and get a sense for what's going on without all the details of the mathematics. But it requires a very engaged audience and it can't be done casually.

IM: Nima has written a stunning essay for the layman called The Future of Fundamental Physics. There's not a line of maths in it. I'm not going to pretend it's easy reading but you wrote it, I think, for anyone who's interested in that question, outside the field. I think we've lived through a golden age of science writing. Natural selection is not a very difficult idea but its consequences cascade beautifully. Bayes' Theorem is not very difficult, I mean it's almost arithmetic and yet the applications it now has in neuroscience are formidable. So I think we can cross these fields together and I'm very interested in the aesthetics of this. There's that famous remark of Jim Watson's, when Rosalind Franklin came to look at his and Crick's model of a DNA molecule, that it was too beautiful not to be true. Again we come into this field in which the aesthetics of something in the Keatsian sense - beautiful and true - must embrace both subjects.

NA-H: We often talk of the idea of beauty in theories. And I think if this is interpreted loosely you won't get really a sense of what we mean. We have to be a little more specific. Ideas that we find beautiful are not a capricious aesthetic judgment. It's not fashion, it's not sociology. It's not something that you might find beautiful today but won't find beautiful 10 years from now. The things that we find beautiful today we suspect would be beautiful for all eternity. And the reason is, what we mean by beauty is really a shorthand for something else. The laws that we find describe nature somehow have a sense of inevitability about them. There are very few principles and there's no possible other way they could work once you understand them deeply enough. So that's what we mean when we say ideas are beautiful. A year ago I ran into this great lecture on YouTube by Leonard Bernstein about the first movement of Beethoven's Fifth. And Bernstein used precisely this language - not approximately this language - exactly this language of inevitability, perfect accordance to its internal logical structure and how difficult and tortuous it was for Beethoven to figure out. He used precisely the same language we use in mathematics and theoretical physics to describe our sense of aesthetics and beauty.

IM: You don't hear beauty much mentioned even by composers in relation to modern music. It's not the common pursuit. For my taste all atonal music sounds like an expression of anxiety. And yet I think we do need a return to this in the arts. I don't think we have much trouble in poetry with this. Seamus Heaney died recently and there was a lot of time to reflect on his work, and the beauty of those lines, of his work was constantly referenced. Part of the problem was modernism, the great aesthetic revolution of the early 20th century to which we are all bound and must work in gratitude for - but we lost certain things. Along the way emotion and art were somewhat detached. When I was a student at Sussex University we had to write essays on a statement by the Spanish philosopher Ortega y Gasset in which he said "tears and laughter are aesthetic frauds". This was the pure, high, modernist statement, that you had to detach those feelings about emotion and beauty from art itself.

THE DAILY LIVES OF ARTISTS AND SCIENTISTS

IM: I often wonder what theoretical physicists do all day and my fantasy is they are rather like novelists. They sit around with their feet on the radiator staring out the window with a notepad within reach. They must be in the world of that kind of misty, drifting, creative thinking that has a bit of talent, a bit of luck, a bit of being shaped by current mood that can bring sudden insight. To wonder how to progress or even start a novel is to enter a state of what V S Pritchett called determined stupor, and those of us who are paid to be in that state count ourselves very lucky.

NA-H: I've always thought composers and novelists are probably very close to mathematicians and theoretical physicists psychologically in how they go about things.

Perhaps contrary to a certain sort of mythology people don't go to their offices and just churn through equations. You have a certain set of questions you are trying to solve and you have to imagine what the story could possibly be for what the solution is. You have to try to imagine what the sort of global answer could possibly look like - or at least chunks of the global answer. You try on stories - could it work like that? And often because of the underlying rigidity, the same thing that gives rise to the beauty that we talked about, it's beauty because there is a right and wrong. There is some problem that's being solved. If the story is a great story it has a better chance of being right than if it's a crappy story. And sometimes stories are too good to be true and that happens very often. And we try out what could possibly be solutions to the problems and then we have to prove ourselves wrong as quickly as we possibly can. And that's what 99% of our life is about. We try out stories and we prove them wrong. So you have this experience of failing day after day after day and it's a particularly intensely bad feeling to fail so much because you know what success looks like and you can't fool yourself when you're not there. So even though you don't know what the solution is, you know when you don't have it. You have to keep going and going until gradually you fail better and better and better and every now and then, once every two or three years, something works.

IM: Here is a major difference. I'm well aware in science how important it is to be first. Being second with the structure of DNA would consign you to the dustbin of history, whereas every novelist knows that you're in a self-sustaining world in which whatever you say is so. It's for others to accept it or reject it. I often pity those scientists who are in a race just to get on the public record for the first time - days, weeks before someone else - and your life can be transformed. Crick and Watson are a perfect case of this. If [Linus] Pauling had got there before them we wouldn't have heard of Jim Watson. It's a tougher world.

NA-H: It's one of the classic things we talk about, the difference between art and science. Even here there's more commonality than meets the eye. But I want to say one thing about originality at an even baser level of how easy it is to be original, how much innate, intrinsic talent is needed to be able to do something. And here we [scientists] have an advantage - there's this thing out there that we're not inventing but discovering. And because of that all you have to do is get somewhere in the neighbourhood of the truth. You don't have to get particularly close to it, you just have to know that it's there and then you have to not fight it and just let it drag you in toward itself. If you're very talented you might hack your way there more quickly. If you're less talented you might have to pinball around and it takes a little longer to get there.

IM: That fateful morning when one of his children was extremely ill and Darwin opened a 20-page letter from [Alfred Russel] Wallace and said "All my originality is smashed". The anxiety attack that Darwin had then, no novelist could have such a thing.

NA-H: What you're talking about - the anxiety, who gets the credit and so on - this is important to the individuals involved. It's of no importance in the grand scheme of things. But there is an important sense in which even the same discoveries, even the same existing body of knowledge, the things that are sitting there in textbooks for hundreds of years already, are perceived in different ways by different scientists. Because to be able to do anything new you have to organise the existing body of knowledge in some unique way that's your way of thinking about it. One of the deeper reasons why it's important to have different people approaching the same problem - even if they end up finding the same solution - is the path towards a solution suggests many divergent ways things could progress and having many of those paths is still useful.

IM: Writing a novel takes roughly about the time of an undergraduate course for me and you might draw on the work of a historian, you might need to read a biography of a composer. I would like to feel that we could think about science as just one more aspect of organised human curiosity rather than as a special compartment. And it has, as has been very clear from this discussion, a powerful aesthetic. I think we need to generalise it. We need to absorb it into our sense that we can love the music of Beethoven without being composers and we could love science as a celebration of human ingenuity without being scientists.

Science has had a huge effect on my own sense of the world. It certainly has helped me along the way to a general global scepticism about religion. The world of faith is inimical to the world of science and in that sense science has helped me want to write books every now and then that celebrate a full-blooded rationalism. It's one of our delightful aspects and it informs what we try to do with our laws and social policy. We don't succeed a lot of the time. And we despair of human relationships at the most private level when they're irregular or contradictory. We demand even of our lovers a degree of coherence and behind that lies a notion of consistency and rationality. Enduring Love was actually a novel wishing to oppose the romantic notion that abstraction and logic and rationality and science in particular was a cold-hearted thing, a myth I think which began with Mary Shelley's Frankenstein. We need to reclaim our own sense of the full-bloodedness, the warmth of what's rational.
Topics

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What is the common ground between art and science? And how is Beethoven like Darwin?

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IAN McEWAN: That old, two-culture matter is still with us, ever since [CP] Snow promulgated it back in the 50s. It still is possible to be a flourishing, public intellectual with absolutely no reference to science but it's happening less and less.

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To what extend can the concept and language of music produced by a robot tell us the emotion expressed though music?

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To what extend can the concept and language of music produced by a robot tell us the emotion expressed though music?

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https://www.designnews.com/materials-assembly/3d-printed-robot-hand-can-play-piano/12342121860107

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How far can our culture influence the scope in which we judge art  

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How far can our culture influence the scope in which we judge art  

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Carlos.

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The Brooklyn-based artist Ioana Manolache grew up in Babadag, Romania, a tiny village where her father was a minister. From an early age, she was drawn to the images that lined her church's walls, paintings that seemed to stare down at her from their holy perches. Along with other children, she learned how to paint in the manner of Orthodox icons, but always felt as if the attention was misplaced, and that the portraits of religious figures were of secondary importance.

Years later, Manolache is pursuing a career as an artist, having completed college and graduate studies in fine arts in New York. We caught up with the Brooklyn-based painter about her current series, "Mother's Knots," to discuss the evolution of her practice, her interest in objects and iconography, and just what it takes to complete these intricate, highly personal works of art.
How did you begin this series?
My current body of work-"Mother's Knots"-began when I asked my mother to bring me a flag from Romania, where she was going to visit for the first time in 16 years. She ended up coming back with even, all small flags, low quality-obviously mass produced to imitate a fine silk or satin, and meant to appear precious.

What attracted me to them were the details, physical moments that complicated the idealized symbol the object was meant to represent-the red thread used at the seams that puckered and warped the surface, or the plastic wrapping the flags were packaged in.
Do you prepare for the paintings in any way? How much stock do you put in translating your original idea into the finished product?
I usually make one sketch on loose canvas paper to help capture the key formal elements-the shape, color, and general composition-which I keep on my studio wall for the duration of the painting. The sketch helps me remember the essentials, from the initial moment that sparked my interest. It's usually a very quick and loose drawing, something that captures my first impulsive attraction. On a grand scale, the final paintings end up pretty similar to that original idea, but there are a lot of nuances that evolve over the course of the painting process. Everything is casually arranged to allow for changes of light, or accidents that might enter the work, making the object, and the painting more activated and alive.

I bring the object-in this case the (ribbon) flags-into the studio and let it develop its own history in my space. I actively try not to 'design' my compositions, as it's much more enriching to discover formal moments in something that was outside my control.
What kind of materials do you use?
While I'm not fetishistic about the tools I'm using, I need to know their characteristics intimately to employ them. I think of these materials as tools that allow me to get a painterly effect that matches the object's properties, as I imagine them. I invest in Old Holland oil paint for the brightest hues; the amount of pigment is high and this has a direct effect on the final painting, allowing me to capture the full range of blue, red, and yellow.
In this series, since it really is grounded in these primary colors, do you ever get tired of using the same three colors?
That's a great question, and this is actually my first time completing a series in this way. I actually really enjoy the simplicity of the idea, but really because [the flags] are such poor quality, so it gives me a lot of range.
It's not as if pure pigment comes straight out of the tube.
Right, and that's what attracted me in the first place to these flags, covered in plastic. You can see through the perforated holes of the plastic, a glimpse of the truer-color beneath, and so depending on the opacity, it changes the color. There is no such thing as a "true blue" or "true red," which is a perfect metaphor for these flags.

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How Artist Ioana Manolache Transforms Mass-Produced Romanian Flags Into Inspired Works of Art | artnet News

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The Brooklyn-based artist Ioana Manolache grew up in Babadag, Romania, a tiny village where her father was a minister. From an early age, she was drawn to the images that lined her church's walls, paintings that seemed to stare down at her from their holy perches.

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1) TWE does understanding of art change due to scope and/or application that people can see in it?           2) TWE is the value of art determined by its price? 

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1) TWE does understanding of art change due to scope and/or application that people can see in it?           2) TWE is the value of art determined by its price? 

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Cost of the paining is about 60 million dollars.
(created by :] and Gabriel)

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Learn more about Black Square by Kazimir Malevich.

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Temperatures of -40C (-40F) and -50C (-58F) in parts of eastern Russia haven't stopped people getting out and having some fun in the snow and ice.
According to the state news agency TASS, current temperatures in Russia are much colder than average for the time of year.

Unsurprisingly, the trick of throwing boiling water in the air and watching it turn into ice - which was popular in North America during the polar vortex - has become a trend. People across the country have been taking part in the "Dubak" challenge, which is Russian slang for bitingly cold weather.

Just a word of caution it can be dangerous to throw boiling water into the air in any direction.
By Andree Massiah, BBC UGC & Social News and Damien Sharkov, BBC Monitoring

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Russia's 'Dubak' challenge creates icy art

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Temperatures of -40C (-40F) and -50C (-58F) in parts of eastern Russia haven't stopped people getting out and having some fun in the snow and ice. According to the state news agency TASS, current temperatures in Russia are much colder than average for the time of year.

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Donate Blood for Art!

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Russian artists invite visitors to donate blood to exhibition

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Russian artists' show features blood pumped through tubes spelling out banned song lyrics

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What do we mean by minimalism in fashion?

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Emerging brands Gayeon Lee and Matter Matters address the rising levels of consumption with bespoke, longlasting garments inspired by wider culture.

Today, emerging fashion designers have much more to reckon with than their predecessors. In an age of rapid-fire references, lightning-quick trend cycles and often unsavoury fast fashion practices that allow consumers to remodel their wardrobes each season for a fraction of what it once cost, the competition is steep. Under these fast-moving circumstances, how are up-and-coming practitioners expected to create lasting impressions on their audiences as well as making garments that have a chance of standing the test of time?

For two young visionaries, Flora Leung of Matter Matters and Gayeon Lee of her eponymous line - both of whom present collections at the 2018 London Fashion Week Designer Showrooms - cross-pollinating between disciplines has become the key to making their mark, drawing deep on influences from the wider art world. Given that the renowned fashion week has played a role in the rise to public prominence of some of the best-known labels of the present scene - including Paul Smith, JW Anderson and Stella McCartney - this year's proceedings promise to be no different in their intent, providing a lasting platform for those shaping the industry and highlighting young innovators.

Armed with an arsenal of art world references and a sophisticated cache of influences, young talents are looking beyond the often self-referential confines of the fashion industry to create something completely new. Hong Kong-based Flora Leung is one of these, and she launched Matter Matters in 2012 as an offshoot of her degree show at the London College of Fashion. Having previously worked as a graphic designer and art director, she left her career behind to pursue designing full time. But it wasn't a totally fresh start: Leung came equipped with a creative eye and design methods which were borrowed from a background in the visual arts and a strong understanding of art history. "I take the same approach to fashion as to art," she explains, drawing on the sources that influenced her in her graphic work. "All of my pieces have an underlying structure of primary shapes." Leung cites Art Deco, Bauhaus, the post-modern aesthetics of 1980s Memphis Group and the dreamy, supersaturated paintings of David Hockney as the points of reference which she looks towards. "Art and bright colours are fundamental sources of inspiration," she notes. "Memphis used bright shocking motifs, which made the products look remarkable, whilst David Hockney's paintings captured humorous moments in daily life with pleasing colours. I've always thought of these two together; I love mixing inspirations to create something with wit."

Indeed, strong echoes of Hockney's vibrant tones and Memphis-style surface decoration are front and centre in the collection. Joyously bright shades, sleek graphic prints and clever, irreverent illustrations adorn garments that range from dresses, minimal tank tops, pleated skirts, wide leg trousers to knitwear. A confetti-style print that calls to mind Nathalie Du Pasquier's iconic 1980s-era patterns is sprinkled over a butter yellow sleeveless dress, whilst blocky 3D shapes pepper loose sack dresses and elongated tees, elsewhere squiggly lines and a series of words - who, which, was, where - wind around slip dresses and skirts. Accessories, too, are a major focus for Matter Matters. Their signature geometric leather handbags with sculpted resin details are produced in energetic palettes: alongside designs such as trapezoidal cross-body bags with orb-shaped clasps and chunky plastic feet, half-moon clutches with contrasting coloured wrist straps and richly pigmented bucket bags which also feature interchangeable straps. "I think handbags are always one of the most significant accessories in a woman's wardrobe," says Leung of their growing line. "They should always stand the test of time whilst style changes."

South Korean womenswear designer Gayeon Lee has a similar approach when it comes to seeking out influences. "I always take inspiration from art," she states as she explains the collection, which blends masterful tailoring, patchwork elements, sharp pleating and buoyant volumes on a series of dresses, skirts and blouses. "It could simply be the shape and colour of an artwork," she continues, "but also the story behind it." In the past, she has looked to 20 th century artists Eduardo Chillida and Albert Eugene Gallatin for inspiration. Their influence is easily recognisable in a collage-like, almost cubist use of colour and form that recalls Gallatin's abstract paintings. Meanwhile, an architectural treatment and understanding of proportion and weight clearly visible in the garments seems to find its precedents in Chillida's sensuous but monumental sculptures.

Prior to setting up shop in her hometown of Seoul, Lee cut her teeth at the MA womenswear course at Central Saint Martins in London under the direction of the acclaimed Professor Louise Wilson. In interviews, she credits Wilson with her drive to expand, telling the South China Morning Post in a 2016 interview: "Louise pushed me to the edge and taught me not fall back on my culture. She wanted me to explore other places that I hadn't been." That advice propelled Lee to some excellent spots. By her 2013 graduation, she had already provided garments to Lady Gaga and secured a design post at Marc Jacobs in New York. In 2015, whilst still at Marc Jacobs, Lee launched a first collection, and to date has produced six successful seasons under her own name.

"My only rule is to make something fun, that looks remarkable but remains timeless," says Matter Matters' Leung of the ethos behind the young brand. Creating a collection that moves easily through seasons and trends whilst remaining steadfast in an assured and individual aesthetic is not only a practice that builds a loyal customer base, it remains a somewhat radical act in an industry that has been overrun by underhanded practices. "I always wonder what keeps a garment relevant for five to ten years without becoming boring," says Leung of her research process, which looks to the vintage market as well as the art world to decode what stands a chance of staying fresh for years to come. "I really don't want to have a label that creates waste and loses its value after a single season," she continues. "I want to make the kind of art objects that people won't forget after they see them." The calculated decision to forgo chasing the trend cycle is central to both Leung's and Lee's practices. "I always wonder why designers feel the need to rack their brains to come up with new collections so quickly," says Leung of the choice to stay true to a single style across seasons and collections. "Instead, we should pay a bit more effort and create something timeless that will run for years."

But timelessness is tough in an ecosystem that constantly demands something new. In an industry where brand interaction is increasingly mediated by social media, the ability to stand out from the crowd is the difference between life and death for any young brand. Building online engagement and then translating that into actual real-world sales has become an increasingly tricky science as competition on social platforms for the attention of consumers continues to grow exponentially and the window of opportunity for reaching buyers shrinks in consequence. "You have two to three seconds for audiences to notice your brand and decide to check out your products," says Leung of the challenges that face emerging designers in trying to connect with potential consumers in these fleeting attention spans. "People are impatient and easily distracted. We want them to recognise and remember the brand."

But how does an emerging label ensure that their products will be noticed above all others, without hitching a ride on whichever gathering wave of a new trend that's splashing across Instagram with every screen refresh? "Art and fashion are about expression," Leung explains. "However, art is thought of as timeless and important whilst fashion is understood to be fickle and frivolous. That's why the label Matter Matters takes inspiration from Memphis, Bauhaus and the colours of Hockney. We're taking modern classics and creating something fun and new."

For emerging practitioners, these symbols are a clever way to ensure their collections are recognised and that like-minded consumers begin following their work. Of course, this isn't reinventing the wheel. Fashion and art have always been willing partners. Ever since Elsa Schiaparelli trotted dresses which were whimsically decorated in Salvador Dali's lobster illustrations down the runway in the 1930s, designers have fervently mined that world for references. There was Yves Saint Laurent's 1965 Mondrian collection, in which he paid homage to the Dutch minimalist by producing shift dresses in colour-blocked grids, followed up in 1981 with a couture collection of evening gowns covered in prints inspired by Matisse's cutout collages. In 2012 Rodarte's ethereal frocks were given the post-impressionist treatment, scattered with Vincent van Gogh's swirling stars and big-faced sunflowers and just last year Jeff Koons collaborated with Louis Vuitton on a line of purses which were plastered with the paintings of the great masters. Because who doesn't want a Mona Lisa backpack, or a Manet carryall for spring?

However, it works both ways - relevance is a symbiotic creature. "In a way, fashion has created a higher demand for art," explains Leung of the trend which is increasingly collapsing the two disciplines into one another. "Museums now display garments with as much consideration as they do other works." Perhaps one the best-known examples of this is the Costume Institute at The Met, hosting a yearly Vogue magazine-sponsored exhibition and accompanying media firestorm Met Gala. Indeed, this is also true of other sell-out shows like Iris Van Herpen's Transforming Fashion, which toured galleries such as The High Museum of Art, Atlanta (November 2015 to May 2016), as well as Viktor & Rolf: Fashion Artists, which took over NGV Melbourne (October 2016 to February 2017).

"Fashion is a possessive art," says Lee. "It's deeply connected to our daily lives. It's an expression of yourself and your best tool to show who you are." For designers looking to solidify a brand aesthetic and build up a recognisable collection, aligning themselves with the art world is another way of defining themselves, one reference at a time.
Laura May Todd
London Fashion Week runs 14-18 September.

www.londonfashionweek.co.ukmattermatters.bigcartel.com | www.gayeonlee.com

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Aesthetica Magazine - Inspiring Minimalism

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Today, emerging fashion designers have much more to reckon with than their predecessors. In an age of rapid-fire references, lightning-quick trend cycles and often unsavoury fast fashion practices that allow consumers to remodel their wardrobes each season for a fraction of what it once cost, the competition is steep.

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Activist Mommy Elizabeth Johnston is known for her take on the controversial issues of the day.

Her most recent rant comes against an art exhibit at a Brazilian museum that featured a fully nude man and allegedly encouraged participation from children.

In an article on her website, Johnston said she was contacted by a concerned mother who was outraged about the exhibit at the Museum of Modern Art (MAM) in San Paulo.
Click here to see the article. (Warning: Contains disturbing images)
She told CBN News, "A Brazilian mom emailed me about the story."

She said the mother wrote to her about the art exhibit and included pictures.

"The images she sent us, of little girls touching and holding hands with a grown, fully nude man, are highly disturbing, but the artist and the museum who hosted him simply brush the whole incident off as "art," Johnston said in the article.

A video of the exhibit seen online shows a little girl being encouraged to walking up to the man who is seen laying on his back.

The Daily Mail also reported on the controversial art exhibit.

The museum says the exhibit was not erotic and that the girl's parents gave her permission to take part.

"The performance was in a closed session for guests. The little girl was with her mother who is also an artist," the museum said of the incident, according to the Daily Mail. "Her daughter asked to enter the show after being given an explanation as to what it contained."

"The child wanted to participate and under her mother's guidance and supervision, she is seen on all fours going around the artist's naked body without showing any embarrassment or aversion," they continued.

"This work was authorized by the museum and is not about eroticism and does not include any erotic content," they added.

According to the Daily Mail, some are calling for charges against the artist and the museum saying the exhibit is "unacceptable, "pornography" and puts the "child at risk."

Johnston commented, "This is a global problem, and one that is nothing short of a demonic scheme to emasculate men, eliminate childhood, and destroy the family unit and with it, all virtue and morals."

"We are plunging into frightening times, but more than ever, we need to be the light of the world and reveal these evil happenings before it is too late," she said.

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Brazilian Museum Features Nude Man With 4-Year-Old Girl in Art Exhibit Performance

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Activist Mommy Elizabeth Johnston is known for her take on the controversial issues of the day. Her most recent rant comes against an art exhibit at a Brazilian museum that featured a fully nude men and allegedly encouraged participation from children.

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What is our knowledge on the role of animals in the arts? Especially in music?

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It's hard to imagine a teen asking their mother for approval on anything. But a new study shows that male zebra finches-colorful songbirds with complex songs-learn their father's tune better when mom "fluffs up" to signal her approval. This is the first time the songbirds, thought to be mere memorization machines, have been shown to use social cues for learning-putting them in an elite club that includes cowbirds, marmosets, and humans. The finding suggests other songbirds might also learn their tunes this way, and that zebra finches are better models for studying language development than thought.

"Female zebra finches play an important role in male learning, in some ways even rivaling that of the male tutors," says Karl Berg, an avian ecologist at the University of Texas in Brownsville, who was not involved in the new study. Previously, scientists knew only that the nonsinging females played some role in song acquisition, because males raised with deaf females develop incorrect songs.

Researchers have long known that female brown-headed cowbirds make quick, lateral wing strokes to approve the songs of juvenile males (as in finches, only male cowbirds learn to sing). Most scientists discounted the cowbirds' social cues as an isolated oddity, because the birds are brood parasites. But cowbirds' similarities to zebra finches-both are highly social and use their songs to attract mates rather than claim territories-led Cornell University developmental psychobiologists Samantha Carouso-Peck and Michael Goldstein to wonder whether female finches also use social cues to help young males learn the best, mate-attracting songs.

It takes a typical zebra finch 55 days to learn dad's rhythmic, beeping tune. Carouso-Peck and Goldstein selected nine pairs of zebra finch brothers that were raised by their parents until they were 35 days old and just starting to practice their fathers' songs. For 1 hour daily over 25 days, each brother sang by himself in a sound chamber equipped with a video monitor and camera. Whenever they sang, a scientist played a video of an unrelated adult female finch erecting her feathers and moving her upper body quickly from side to side; such "fluff-ups" signal that females like a male's tune. At the same time, the scientist played the video for the other brother, even if he wasn't singing.

When the birds were sexually mature at 90 days old, the scientists compared the young males' songs with those of their fathers. The birds that got female feedback in response to their singing were far more accurate than their peers, with eight of nine belting out melodies more acoustically similar to those of their fathers. "We've shown that a young male zebra finch isn't learning his song via a special imitation box in his head," Goldstein says. "He's learning it from his mom, who loves his dad's song and is already excited and aroused by that song."

Such active learning closely resembles how human infants learn speech, the scientists note, making these finches even better models for studying language acquisition across species. For a young male finch, mom's approval means he'll likely be successful at his chief job in life: attracting a mate and reproducing.

doi:10.1126/science.aaw8658

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Japan is in the grip of an elderly crime wave - the proportion of crimes committed by people over the age of 65 has been steadily increasing for 20 years. The BBC's Ed Butler asks why.

At a halfway house in Hiroshima - for criminals who are being released from jail back into the community - 69-year-old Toshio Takata tells me he broke the law because he was poor. He wanted somewhere to live free of charge, even if it was behind bars.

"I reached pension age and then I ran out of money. So it occurred to me - perhaps I could live for free if I lived in jail," he says.

"So I took a bicycle and rode it to the police station and told the guy there: 'Look, I took this.'"

The plan worked. This was Toshio's first offence, committed when he was 62, but Japanese courts treat petty theft seriously, so it was enough to get him a one-year sentence.

Small, slender, and with a tendency to giggle, Toshio looks nothing like a habitual criminal, much less someone who'd threaten women with knives. But after he was released from his first sentence, that's exactly what he did.

"I went to a park and just threatened them. I wasn't intending to do any harm. I just showed the knife to them hoping one of them would call the police. One did."

Altogether, Toshio has spent half of the last eight years in jail.

I ask him if he likes being in prison, and he points out an additional financial upside - his pension continues to be paid even while he's inside.

"It's not that I like it but I can stay there for free," he says. "And when I get out I have saved some money. So it is not that painful."

Toshio represents a striking trend in Japanese crime. In a remarkably law-abiding society, a rapidly growing proportion of crimes is carried about by over-65s. In 1997 this age group accounted for about one in 20 convictions but 20 years later the figure had grown to more than one in five - a rate that far outstrips the growth of the over-65s as a proportion of the population (though they now make up more than a quarter of the total).

Another example is Keiko (not her real name). Seventy years old, small, and neatly presented, she also tells me that it was poverty that was her undoing.

"I couldn't get along with my husband. I had nowhere to live and no place to stay. So it became my only choice: to steal," she says. "Even women in their 80s who can't properly walk are committing crime. It's because they can't find food, money."

We spoke some months ago in an ex-offender's hostel. I've been told she's since been re-arrested, and is now serving another jail-term for shoplifting.

Japan's Elderly Crime Wave can be heard on Assignment on the BBC World Service from Thursday 31 January - click here for transmission times

Michael Newman, an Australian-born demographer with the Tokyo-based research house, Custom Products Research Group points out that the "measly" basic state pension in Japan is very hard to live on.

"The pensioners don't want to be a burden to their children, and feel that if they can't survive on the state pension then pretty much the only way not to be a burden is to shuffle themselves away into prison," he says.

The repeat offending is a way "to get back into prison" where there are three square meals a day and no bills, he says.

"It's almost as though you're rolled out, so you roll yourself back in."

Newman points out that suicide is also becoming more common among the elderly - another way for them to fulfil what he they may regard as "their duty to bow out".

The director of "With Hiroshima", the rehabilitation centre where I met Toshio Takata, also thinks changes in Japanese families have contributed to the elderly crime wave, but he emphasises the psychological consequences not the financial ones.

"Ultimately the relationship among people has changed. People have become more isolated. They don't find a place to be in this society. They cannot put up with their loneliness," says Kanichi Yamada, an 85-year-old who as a child was pulled out of the rubble of his home when the atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima.

"Among the elderly who commit crimes a number have this turning point in their middle life. There is some trigger. They lose a wife or children and they just can't cope with that... Usually people don't commit crime if they have people to look after them and provide them with support."

Toshio's story about being driven to crime as a result of poverty is just an "excuse", Kanichi Yamada suggests. The core of the problem is his loneliness. And one factor that may have prompted him to reoffend, he speculates, was the promise of company in jail.

It's true that Toshio is alone in the world. His parents are dead, and he has lost contact with two older brothers, who don't answer his calls. He has also lost contact with his two ex-wives, both of whom he divorced, and his three children.

I ask him if he thinks things would have turned out differently if he'd had a wife and family. He says they would.

"If they had been around to support me I wouldn't have done this," he says.

Michael Newman has watched as the Japanese government has expanded prison capacity, and recruited additional female prison guards (the number of elderly women criminals is rising particularly fast, though from a low base). He's also noted the steeply rising bill for medical treatment of people in prison.

There have been other changes too, as I see for myself at a prison in Fuchu, outside Tokyo, where nearly a third of the inmates are now over 60.

There's a lot of marching inside Japanese prisons - marching and shouting. But here the military drill seems to be getting harder to enforce. I see a couple of grey-haired inmates at the back of one platoon struggling to keep up. One is on crutches.

"We have had to improve the facilities here," Masatsugu Yazawa, the prison's head of education tells me. "We've put in handrails, special toilets. There are classes for older offenders."

He takes me to watch one of them. It begins with a karaoke rendition of a popular song, The Reason I was Born, all about the meaning of life. The inmates are encouraged to sing along. Some look quite moved.

"We sing to show them that the real life is outside prison, and that happiness is there," Yazawa says. "But still they think the life in prison is better and many come back."

Michael Newman argues that it would be far better - and much cheaper - to look after the elderly without the expense of court proceedings and incarceration.

"We actually costed a model to build an industrial complex retirement village where people would forfeit half their pension but get free food, free board and healthcare and so on, and get to play karaoke or gate-ball with the other residents and have a relative amount of freedom. It would cost way less than what the government's spending at the moment," he says.

But he also suggests that the tendency for Japanese courts to hand down custodial sentences for petty theft "is slightly bizarre, in terms of the punishment actually fitting the crime".

"The theft of a 200-yen (£1.40) sandwich could lead to an 8.4m-yen (£58,000) tax bill to provide for a two-year sentence," he writes in his 2016 report.

That may be a hypothetical example, but I met one elderly jailbird whose experience was almost identical. He'd been given a two-year jail term for only his second offence: stealing a bottle of peppers worth £2.50.

And I heard from Morio Mochizuki, who provides security for some 3,000 retail outlets in Japan, that if anything the courts are getting tougher on shoplifters.

"Even if they only stole one piece of bread," says Masayuki Sho of Japan's Prison Service, "it was decided at trial that it is appropriate for them to go to prison, therefore we need to teach them the way: how to live in society without committing crime."

I don't know whether the prison service has taught Toshio Takata this lesson, but when I ask him if he is already planning his next crime, he denies it.

"No, actually this is it," he says.

"I don't want to do this again, and I will soon be 70 and I will be old and frail the next time. I won't do that again."

Just over a year ago, Greek pilot Vasileios Vasileiou checked into a luxury hilltop hotel in Kabul. The Intercontinental was popular with foreign visitors - which is why, on 20 January, Taliban gunmen stormed it, killing at least 40 people. Vasileios explains how he survived.

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The Australian Defence Force (ADF) says its fighter jets may have caused the deaths of up to 18 civilians in a strike on Islamic State (IS) militants in Iraq.

The incident in 2017 was part of the US-led coalition's bid to retake Mosul.

However, the ADF said it was impossible to "definitively know" whether its forces, another coalition strike or "other actors" killed the civilians.

The deaths were "highly regrettable", military officials said.

Air Marshal Mel Hupfeld said two Australian F/A-18F Super Hornets had bombed IS militants in a residential area on 13 June 2017, following a request by Iraqi ground forces.

A separate strike by unidentified coalition force took place simultaneously in the same street.

Despite post-strike surveys failing to detect civilian deaths, "credible" reports of casualties later emerged, Air Marshal Hupfeld said.

RAF 'may have killed civilians' in Iraq

US attack on IS killed 105 civilians

How the battle for Mosul unfolded

The allegations were first raised publicly by Airwars - a group monitoring civilian deaths - which suggested up to 34 people had died.

Following an investigation launched in January last year, the ADF determined that between six and 18 civilians were unintentionally killed - a figure based on population density estimates.

"Our pilots and decision-makers involved in the targeting process do everything they can to avoid civilian casualties, but sometimes it is not possible," he said.

Air Marshal Hupfeld said the Australian strikes had accurately hit their targets and been carried out according to protocol. As a result, no penalties or other actions would be taken.

At least 1,190 civilians have been "unintentionally killed" as a result of coalition air strikes in Iraq and Syria since 2014, the joint force said in a statement on Thursday.

It is still working its way through a list of other allegations.

Air Marshal Hupfeld said any compensation actions would be handled by the joint force's central command.

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Australia strike 'may have' killed Iraqis

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National Geographic has become synonymous with photography, with the magazine always showcasing the outstanding beauty and wonder of our planet. So naturally, their annual photo contest is a prestigious and hotly-contested event, with judges having thousands of breathtaking images to narrow down, to find the eventual winners.

This year's grand prize winner was Jassen Todorov, a violinist and professor of music at San Francisco State University, whose aerial shot shows a vast boneyard in Southern California's Mojave Desert. The area is well known for storing retired aircraft, where the dry air keeps corrosion away before they are eventually dismantled and scrapped for parts. What many are unaware of, however, is the huge stretch of land nearby that is set aside for recalled vehicles and is filled with row-upon-row of Audis and Volkswagens that cheated emissions tests between 2009-2015. "I have flown and explored the Mojave Desert area quite a few times," Jassen told Bored Panda about the winning shot. "There are several airports in the Mojave and at least 3-4 of them have large boneyards, which I have explored and photographed. It was my first photo flight over Southern California Logistics Airport. I had done some research using google maps, so I had a general idea of the position of the cars in relation to the airport."

Combining his 3 loves of flying, music and photography Jassen has really gotten into his aerial photography. Using a Nikon D810 with a 70-200 mm lens, he flies his single-engined Piper Warrior aircraft while listening to everything from classical music to country. "Music has a lot to do with structure and composition, colors and patterns, moods and characters - when I am looking at a photo, I am thinking about the same things," he told us. "By capturing scenes like this one, I hope we will all become more conscious and more caring for our beautiful planet."

Having previously had his photographs published in a variety of publications, from the Guardian to the Washington Post, this award is the highlight of Jassen's photography career so far. "To me, National Geographic has always been a very influential organization. I have always admired the mission, high professionalism and dedication of all people working there. I often doubt my own work, so having this type of recognition from National Geographic is not only very inspiring but also really meaningful."

Other winners in the contest included Pim Volkers' epic capture of wildebeests crossing Tanzania's Mara River, which took the Wildlife prize, while Mia Collis' portrait of a Kenyan photographer took first place in the People category. You can scroll down below to check out all the winners below, and don't forget to vote for your own favorites! For more breathtaking photos from National Geographic photo contests, check out these here and here.

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The role of "key knowers" in Natural Science

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The role of "key knowers" in Natural Science

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We need to put back the women who were written out of science history

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Can you name a female scientist from history? Chances are you are shouting out Marie Curie. The twice Nobel Prize-winning Curie and mathematician Ada Lovelace are two of the few women within western science to receive lasting popular recognition

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It is one of the most famous experiments in all of science history, but there's significant doubt about whether it actually took place. Did Galileo drop objects of differing mass from the Leaning Tower of Pisa in 1589 to demonstrate the theories proposed in his unpublished text De motu ("Of Motion")? Rice University's Galileo Project notes that scholars have long thought Galileo's references to experiments he conducted "were only rhetorical devices." As PBS's NOVA writes, "it's the kind of story that's easy to imagine, easy to remember, but whether he ever performed the experiment at the tower is debatable." That's not to say Galileo didn't test any of his ideas while he taught at the University of Pisa during 1589 and 1592, only that his most famous theory about the effects of gravity on free-falling objects rests mainly on a conceptual thought experiment.

In fact, it would have been impossible for Galileo to fully demonstrate his theory because of the effects of air resistance. Subtract the atmosphere, however, and we can easily confirm Galileo's hypothesis that any two objects, regardless of weight, shape, or material of composition, will fall at exactly the same rate when dropped. One of the most memorable times this experiment did take place was not in Italy or anywhere else on earth, but on the Moon, when astronaut David Scott, commander of the Apollo 15 mission, dropped a geologic hammer and a falcon's feather at the same time in 1971 (above).

As cool as Commander Scott's experiment is, it's still not as dramatic as the version of the experiment at the top of the post, conducted at NASA's Space Power Facility in Ohio in the world's largest vacuum chamber. A great deal of the drama comes courtesy of physicist Brian Cox, who presents the experiment for BBC Two's Human Universe, explaining the history and construction of the vacuum chamber, which simulates the conditions of outer space. Then we've got the multiple camera angles and dramatic music... typical TV show stuff, effective nonetheless at setting us up for the big drop. Even though we "know how the experiment will end," points out io9, and may have seen it performed before-on the Moon even-this demonstration is something special.

First, we get an anticlimactic drop of the objects-a bowling ball and a feather-while the chamber is still full of air. As expected, the ball plummets, the feathers gently drift. Then, in a sequence right out of a sci-fi film, engineers seal off the enormous chamber, and the three-hour removal of air is telescoped into a few second montage of pushings of buttons and mumblings into intercoms. What happens next will... well, you know the clickbait verbiage. But it certainly surprises Cox and a roomful of NASA engineers. Cox goes on to explain, using Einstein's theory of general relativity, that the reason the objects fall at the same rate is "because they're not falling; they're standing still." The science may be common knowledge, but seeing it in action is indeed pretty mind blowing.
Related Content: An Animated History of Physics Introduces the Discoveries of Galileo, Newton, Maxwell & Einstein Galileo's Moon Drawings, the First Realistic Depictions of the Moon in History (1609-1610) Bohemian Gravity: String Theory Explored With an A Cappella Version of Bohemian Rhapsody Free Online Physics Courses is a writer and musician based in Durham, NC. Follow him at @jdmagness

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See Galileo's Famous Gravity Experiment Performed in the World's Largest Vacuum Chamber, and on the Moon

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It is one of the most famous experiments in all of science history, but there's significant doubt about whether it actually took place. Did Galileo drop objects of differing mass from the Leaning Tower of Pisa in 1589 to demonstrate the theories proposed in his unpublished text De motu ("Of Motion")?

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To what extent is our knowledge on plague accurate and how can scientific discoveries change our perspective of it?

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To what extent is our knowledge on plague accurate and how can scientific discoveries change our perspective of it?

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It's a lot to conclude from just a few ancient teeth.

The team had set out looking for evidence of plague in publicly available genetic data sets. Getting DNA from ancient bones and teeth is still a fairly new procedure, and it has largely focused on the stuff from humans. But modern sequencing techniques actually pick out all of the genetic material in sample, including what is often a lot of contaminating bacteria. For this reason, "normally 95 percent, 99 percent of the data was just thrown into the dumpster," says Simon Rasmussen, who studies pathogen evolution at the Technical University of Denmark and co-authored the paper. The idea was to look through all this genetic detritus for signs of Yersinia pestis. When people die of the plague, they have high levels of bacteria in their blood, which leave a distinct genetic signature in the dental pulp inside teeth.

Rascovan ultimately sorted through the genomes of about 100 ancient individuals found throughout Europe. When he found Yersinia pestis in the teeth of the 4,900-year-old woman in Sweden, he looked at other people buried in the same tomb. Up to 78 people were buried all around the same time, suggesting a surge in deaths that could have become an epidemic. Indeed, a young man in the tomb also had fragments of plague bacteria in his teeth. The strain of Yersinia pestis in the gravesite was distinct from all others ever sequenced. The team thinks it diverged from other known strains 5,700 years ago.

Rasmussen and others had previously turned up plague bacteria in ancient human remains all over Eurasia. Prior to this discovery, the oldest and most genetically distinct strain was found in Central Asia. This fit a neat narrative: Steppe pastoralists from Eurasia began migrating into western Europe beginning around 4,900 years ago, and they could have brought the plague with them. The disease seemed to explain how they were able to supplant the farmers-like the Swedish woman-already living in Europe. In the span of a few centuries, the steppe pastoralists would replace 70 percent of the population in Central Europe and 90 percent in Great Britain. In fact, modern Europeans derive most of their ancestry from steppe pastoralists who came during this period.

But now, the dates don't match up. If the Swedish plague strain diverged from Central Asian ones 5,700 years ago, but human migration from the region didn't start until 4,900 years ago, how did plague get to Sweden? Rascovan and Rasmussen turned to their archaeologist colleagues, who saw that it fit into another pattern: Populations in Europe were falling even before people from the steppes migrated in.

Around 6,000 years ago, mega-settlements as big as 10,000 to 20,000 people sprang up in what is now Moldova, Romania, and Ukraine. The settlements were regularly abandoned and then burned. Perhaps, the new paper argues, plague spread through these sites. At the same time, innovations like wheeled transport and metallurgy allowed distant trade routes to emerge, possibly connecting mega-settlements with far-flung villages like those in Sweden. Thus, there were populations dense enough for a new pathogen to emerge, and trade routes to spread it across the continent. "This might actually be one of the first plague epidemics," Rascovan says.

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An Ancient Case of the Plague Could Rewrite History

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It's a lot to conclude from just a few ancient teeth. The team had set out looking for evidence of plague in publicly available genetic data sets. Getting DNA from ancient bones and teeth is still a fairly new procedure, and it has largely focused on the stuff from humans.

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How does space affect our long term decisions

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Elon Musk: we must colonise Mars to preserve our species in a third world war

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Founder of SpaceX, which is working on getting humans to the planet, speaks at SXSW amid rising nuclear tension

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1) To what extent does technology can change our perspective of space and its reality? 

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1) To what extent does technology can change our perspective of space and its reality? 

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2) How does method of exploring the world can change our borders or knowledge?

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Nasa probe reaches Bennu - asteroid that could one day hit Earth

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Osiris-Rex spacecraft will eventually scoop up material for analysis back home

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To what extent can faith be defined as knowledge?

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To what extent can faith be defined as knowledge?

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Professor Peter Millican | God does NOT exist

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How does your political bias affect your views in Science?

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How does your political bias affect your views in Science?

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https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2018/12/03/trump-isnt-driving-climate-change-conversation-decade-hes-been-following-it/?noredirect=on&utm_term=.4eb980895da6

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Award-winning Honduran indigenous rights activist Berta Caceres has been killed in the western town of La Esperanza.

Two men entered Ms Caceres' home on Thursday and shot her dead, Hugo Maldonado, of the Honduran Committee for the Defense of Human Rights, said.

Her mother said Ms Caceres had been killed "because of her struggle" for indigenous and environmental rights.

Ms Caceres had told police she had received death threats.

Deadly struggle

A member of the Lenca indigenous group, she was one of the founders in 1993 of the National Council of Popular and Indigenous Organizations of Honduras (COPINH).

In 2015, she was awarded the Goldman Prize, one of the most prestigious awards for grass-roots environmentalism.

The judges said she had "rallied the indigenous Lenca people of Honduras and waged a grassroots campaign that successfully pressured the world's largest dam builder to pull out of the Agua Zarca Dam".

The dam would have flooded large areas of land and cut off the supply of water, food and medicine for hundreds of Lenca people.

The United Nations' Special Rapporteur on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, Victoria Tauli-Corpuz, said she had heard the news of Ms Caceres's "dastardly" killing with "deep sorrow".

"It is highly probable that her assassination is linked with her work in protecting the human rights of the Lenca indigenous peoples to their lands and territories," Ms Tauli Corpuz said.

Ms Caceres's brother Gustavo said she had always confronted things "head on" but that she had never carried a weapon because "her voice was her weapon".

He asked Honduran President Juan Orlando Hernandez to investigate her murder and punish those responsible.

Honduras has one of the highest murder rates in the world.

Ms Caceres' mother said police had not ruled out a robbery gone wrong as the motive for the activist's murder, but she said "we all know it was because of her struggle".

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Award-winning Honduran indigenous rights activist Berta Caceres has been killed in the western town of La Esperanza. Two men entered Ms Caceres' home on Thursday and shot her dead, Hugo Maldonado, of the Honduran Committee for the Defense of Human Rights, said.

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To what extent can a key event in life change understanding of the world and society?

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To what extent can a key event in life change understanding of the world and society?

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What happens to your life after you accidentally kill someone?

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I'm an accidental killer - and thousands of Americans share this secret shame. How can you recover from the trauma of accidentally killing someone?

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To what extend will our mistkes destroy our world?

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To what extend will our mistkes destroy our world?

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The global food system is broken, leaving billions of people either underfed or overweight and driving the planet towards climate catastrophe, according to 130 national academies of science and medicine across the world.

Providing a healthy, affordable, and environmentally friendly diet for all people will require a radical transformation of the system, says the report by the InterAcademy Partnership (IAP). This will depend on better farming methods, wealthy nations consuming less meat and countries valuing food which is nutritious rather than cheap.

The report, which was peer reviewed and took three years to compile, sets out the scale of the problems as well as evidence-driven solutions.

The global food system is responsible for a third of all greenhouse gas emissions, which is more than all emissions from transport, heating, lighting and air conditioning combined. The global warming this is causing is now damaging food production through extreme weather events such as floods and droughts.

The food system also fails to properly nourish billions of people. More than 820 million people went hungry last year, according to the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation, while a third of all people did not get enough vitamins. At the same time, 600 million people were classed as obese and 2 billion overweight, with serious consequences for their health. On top of this, more than 1bn tonnes of food is wasted every year, a third of the total produced.

"The global food system is broken," said Tim Benton, professor of population ecology, at the University of Leeds, who is a member of one of the expert editorial groups which produced the report. He said the cost of the damage to human health and the environment was much greater than the profits made by the farming industry.

"Whether you look at it from a human health, environmental or climate perspective, our food system is currently unsustainable and given the challenges that will come from a rising global population that is a really [serious] thing to say," Benton said.

Reducing meat and dairy consumption is the single biggest way individuals can lessen their impact on the planet, according to recent research. And tackling dangerous global warming is considered impossible without massive reductions in meat consumption.

Research published in the journal Climate Policy shows that at the present rate, cattle and other livestock will be responsible for half of the world's greenhouse gas emissions by 2030, and that to prevent this will require "substantial reductions, far beyond what are planned or realistic, from other sectors".

"It is vital [for a liveable planet] that we change our relationship with meat, especially with red meat. But no expert in this area is saying the world should be vegan or even vegetarian," said Benton.

Rearing cattle and other livestock causes the same carbon emissions as all the world's vehicles, trains, ships and planes combined. "We have spent 30 to 40 years investing quite heavily on fuel efficiency in the transport sector," said Benton. "We need do something similarly radical in the farming sector and the scope for doing that by changing the way we raise the animals is much smaller than the scope we have by changing our diets."

The IAP report notes that in poorer countries meat, eggs and dairy can be important in providing concentrated nutrients, especially for children. It also says other things livestock can provide should be taken into consideration, such as leather, wool, manure, transport and plough pulling.

Jawaida, 12, (left) and her friend in Mpati, North Kivu province, Democratic Republic of the Congo, where the Norwegian Refugee Council ise helping displaced people. Photograph: Christian Jepsen/NRC

The UN climate change conference, COP24, which starts on Sunday in Katowice, Poland, is an opportunity for political action, said Joachim von Braun, a professor who co-chairs the IAP project. "Our food systems are failing us. Agriculture and consumer choices are major factors driving disastrous climate change."

Another member of the IAP editorial group, Aifric O'Sullivan, from University College Dublin, said: "We need to ensure that policymakers inform consumers about the climate impacts of their food choices, provide incentives for consumers to change their diets, and reduce food loss and waste."

The report recommends many actions that could help deliver the "whole-scale root and branch transformation" that is required, said Benton. These include crops that are more resilient to climate change, smarter crop rotation, soil protection, precier use of fertilisers and less use of pesticides. It also backs innovation such as laboratory-grown meat and insect-based foods.

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Global food system is broken, say world's science academies

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The global food system is broken, leaving billions of people either underfed or overweight and driving the planet towards climate catastrophe, according to 130 national academies of science and medicine across the world. Providing a healthy, affordable, and environmentally friendly diet for all people will require a radical transformation of the system, says the report by the InterAcademy Partnership (IAP).

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What is the value of scientific knowledge?

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As a warming world wreaks havoc, Trump wages war on climate science | John Podesta

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The US administration's politicization of science has led to big budget cuts for data and analysis. Others must fill the gap

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Should we care about one life of someone else like your own? 

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Should we care about one life of someone else like your own? 

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'When you rescue a trafficked child it's like saving a life'

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Despite challenges, efforts to help the huge number of children trafficked on India's railway system are proving increasingly successful

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Should we judge actions based on their intent or their consequences?

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Should we judge actions based on their intent or their consequences?

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The attackers are essentially gang members enforcing their own version of justice in communities where law enforcement is either unwelcome or fears to intervene. Sometimes they claim to be policing "anti-social behavior" such as drug dealing, but Harbinson says the perpetrators are often dealing drugs or participating in other criminal enterprises themselves and trying to protect their turf.

Unlike the violence that defined the Troubles, when members of different religious communities attacked each other in a struggle over British control of Northern Ireland, in these cases the assailants target their own.

"It's not sectarian at all. What this is, is Catholic on Catholic, Protestant on Protestant," Harbinson said. "It's about control within their own communities."

Northern Ireland's struggle with paramilitaries illustrates just how complicated it is to end a war, even in the event of a successful peace deal. For many conflicts around the world, the Good Friday Agreement represents the best-case scenario of power-sharing and disarmament. But Northern Ireland's continuing violence also shows how the societal distortions and the trauma of a long-ended conflict can continue to tear at communities, leaving them in a condition that's not technically war but is far short of real peace.
Read: The Good Friday Agreement in the age of Brexit
The attacks take the form of shootings in the ankles, elbows, or knees ("sometimes all six," Harbinson says), or beatings with hammers or clubs. The objective is not generally to kill, though some result in fatalities. Frequently, the victims know their attackers personally, since they all hail from the same close-knit communities. And often, as the new PSA depicts, the victims themselves show up, or their parents take them, to an appointment to be beaten or shot-they fear worse if they don't.

Northern Ireland police say so-called punishment attacks like this are markedly higher than five years ago. But the origins lie in the deeper dynamics of the conflict, which didn't so much end as shift into another domain.

The violence of the Troubles took some 3,600 lives over a 30-year period. When the Good Friday Agreement laid out provisions for a unity government and the disarmament of paramilitaries in 1998, sectarian violence across the country swiftly plummeted. Even then, though, there was evidence of a key problem left unsolved.

"It is a funny sort of peace in which people are regularly maimed and driven from their homes by paramilitary thugs," wrote The Economist in 1999, a year after the agreement was signed. The punishment attacks weren't mentioned in the accords; they weren't, after all, the kind of Catholic-on-Protestant violence that the peace deal was meant to stop.

But the phenomenon had developed alongside the Troubles, for different reasons in different communities, explains Rachel Monaghan, a senior lecturer in criminology at the University of Ulster who has researched intra-communal violence in Northern Ireland. In the case of Catholic republican communities, who sought independence from British control, paramilitaries formed in opposition to-or defense from-the police. In Protestant loyalist areas, they formed as a kind of auxiliary to the authorities.

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absence of other types of political violence

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members of different religious communities

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In Northern Ireland, Vigilante Violence Keeps Terrorizing Communities

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The attackers are essentially gang members enforcing their own version of justice in communities where law enforcement is either unwelcome or fears to intervene. Sometimes they claim to be policing "anti-social behavior" such as drug dealing, but Harbinson says the perpetrators are often dealing drugs or participating in other criminal enterprises themselves and trying to protect their turf.

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How can we know if an action is ethically correct?

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How can we know if an action is ethically correct?

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Chinese retail sites drop Dolce & Gabbana amid racist ad backlash

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Fallout continues after advert featuring Chinese model trying to eat pizza with chopsticks

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To what extent is our knowledge being affected by primary sources?

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To what extent is our knowledge being affected by primary sources?

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NASA's InSight Is One Day Away from Mars

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In just over 24 hours, NASA's InSight lander will complete its seven-month journey to the Red Planet.

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To what extend does art change the way people see the world?

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To what extend does art change the way people see the world?

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f we are to avoid irreversible global warming that will have devastating economic and social consequences for the world, "rapid, far-reaching and unprecedented changes in all aspects of society" are required. This was the conclusion of a special report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) published in October. We - the collective "we" - have been given 12 years to arrest climate change. The message is clear: everyone is responsible for creating a more environmentally sustainable world. And the arts and cultural sector is no exception.

We have been talking about these issues at the Arts Council for a long time, and over the past decade have worked with the climate change charity Julie's Bicycle to help arts and cultural organisations reduce their environmental impact. In 2012 we became the first cultural body in the world to include environmental reporting and action in our long-term funding agreements with arts organisations. Recognising that we had to create the conditions for change to happen, the Arts Council buttressed these requirements with a programme of support from Julie's Bicycle. Together we substantially increased understanding about the role of the sector in addressing environmental issues and associated social challenges.

The findings of our Annual Report on Environmental Sustainability, published on Tuesday, prove the value of that intervention and show that commitment and creativity can bring inspiring results. In six years we have seen a 23% reduction in energy consumption and a corresponding 35% reduction in carbon emissions. Theatres, libraries, museums and concert halls of all sizes - in cities such as Birmingham, Exeter and London and across the country from Cumbria to the Thames estuary - are taking significant steps to highlight the issue in their programmes and improve their own environmental practice, installing solar panels, switching to energy-saving lightbulbs and reducing travel.

We have seen the power of encouraging the arts and cultural community to go on a collective journey. Several major city-wide initiatives have been developed, including the Manchester Arts Sustainability Team - a group of organisations working together to help deliver the city's first-ever climate change strategy, Manchester: A Certain Future.

Arts and cultural companies possess significant purchasing power and can be instrumental in persuading suppliers to make ethical decisions and develop greener products and services. A quarter of our funded organisations are now on a green energy tariff, helping to drive demand for clean energy across the UK. Of course, the overall contribution made by the arts and cultural sector to energy conservation and carbon reduction is comparatively small. But for large parts of our audience it has become paramount that these institutions are setting an example in embracing and advocating for change.

Arts and culture make a vital contribution to the creation of a more inclusive and more confident society. They have the power to delight, educate, stimulate and inspire and, at a time of increasing division and inequality, we need their influence more than ever. As the IPCC report emphasised, the response to global warming must cover every aspect of life. We need action within the commercial sphere and engagement from the public. Artists and arts organisations can shape conversations about the environment. They can challenge and be provocative, both informing and opening our minds.

In recent years, there has been an overwhelming response from arts and cultural organisations eager to put this conversation centre stage. They are presenting a range of innovative projects that engage audiences in the issue of climate change. Last week, I visited Invisible Dust in Scarborough, which works with leading visual artists, creative technologists and scientists to encourage meaningful responses to environmental issues. In Kendal, Brewery Arts Centre showed Plastic on the Menu, highlighting issues around plastic in drinking water; a VR installation at Leicester's Phoenix Arts Centre put audiences In the Eyes of the Animal to raise awareness of biodiversity in UK woodlands; and University of Cambridge Museums developed Operation Survival, in collaboration with Fire Hazard Games, a high-energy competition asking participants to come up with solutions for a world in crisis.

When it comes to the environment, time is fast running out. We have to accelerate our response to the threats. The arts has an important role in helping society to face up to the challenge of climate change and create a more sustainable future for us all.

Nicholas Serota is chair of Arts Council England

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The arts have a leading role to play in tackling climate change | Nicholas Serota

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
f we are to avoid irreversible global warming that will have devastating economic and social consequences for the world, "rapid, far-reaching and unprecedented changes in all aspects of society" are required. This was the conclusion of a special report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) published in October.

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How does a 'conspiracy theory' become accepted knowledge?

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How does a 'conspiracy theory' become accepted knowledge?

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What happens when you say Lil Uzi Vert fast (its lucifer) @daylyt2k

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QK-   What roles does our creative streak play a role/influence in our academia achievement?

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Eighteenth-century schoolboy's doodles uncovered as library is restored

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William John Chute - 'not known for his academic prowess' - is believed to have scribbled in the margins of a Euripides book when he was 15

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To what extent did attitudes towards careers in music change through time?

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To what extent did attitudes towards careers in music change through time?

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Devonté Hynes And Philip Glass Compare Notes

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To what extent is evidence being affected the human knowledge?

# data[].attributes.subject
To what extent is evidence being affected the human knowledge?

# data[].attributes.headline
To what extent does technology affect the history development?

# data[].attributes.subject
To what extent does technology affect the history development?

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
You need to enable JavaScript to run this app.

This company specialises in talking, AI-powered sex dolls.

Artificial Takeover

Experimental developments in technology and how it's changing the way we live.

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This company specialises in talking, AI-powered sex dolls - BBC Reel

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This video contains images of a sexual nature. China's online sex toy market is worth nearly $3 billion. That includes a factory that pumps out sex dolls with artificial intelligence.

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To what extend can time change the way we see something?

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To what extend can time change the way we see something?

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John Lennon's killer says he feels 'more and more shame' every year

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Mark David Chapman told parole board members about his remorse at 10th hearing in August, according to transcript

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To what extent is China's investment in Africa truly beneficial for the African people?

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To what extent is China's investment in Africa truly beneficial for the African people?

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China knows how to buy their allies.

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🚨 IF YOU'RE NOT REGISTERED TO VOTE YET, CLICK HERE! 🚨

2. Shelly Simonds vs. David Yancey: Decided by a hat.

Jordan Pascale / City of Newport, VA / Via pilotonline.com

Just last year, Democrat Shelly Simonds and Republican David Yancey were locked in a tight battle for a seat in Virginia's House of Delegates, which was split 50/50 between the two parties. After losing by 10 votes, Simonds asked for a recount, miraculously putting her ahead by one tiny, but historic vote.

Alas, a Virginia Circuit Court ultimately decided that a crossed out, previously uncounted ballot should go towards Yancey, resulting in a tied race. (Usually, confusing ballots are usually voided and the voter is granted a fresh ballot.) They settled the matter by drawing names from a bowl and Yancey won the seat, giving Republicans control over the House.

Final tally: 11,608 vs. 11,608 (+/- a name drawn from a hat)

12. Tanya Flanagan vs. Linda Meisenheimer: Decided by a game of cards.

Need help registering and getting ready to VOTE? Sign up at TurboVote and get access to a 50% off Lyft promo code for your ride to the polls 👉 HERE 👈!

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14 Close-Call Elections That Prove Voting Actually Matters

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Sometimes an election comes down to a handful of votes...or a deck of cards?

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Under what circumstances can we make ethical decisions based on the consequences and intentions?

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Under what circumstances can we make ethical decisions based on the consequences and intentions?

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Fears for Amazon as Bolsonaro plans to merge environment and agriculture ministries

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Conservationists fear move will put short-term business interests ahead of the world's biggest terrestrial carbon sink, indigenous communities and rich eco-systems

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How far does religion affect our perception of what is right and wrong?

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How far does religion affect our perception of what is right and wrong?

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BlacKkKlansman Trailer #1 (2018) | Movieclips Trailers

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To what extent does technology affect historical development of the science knowledge?

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To what extent does technology affect historical development of the science knowledge?

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The miraculous house in the middle of the desert - BBC Reel

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OFIS Architects and Guardian Glass have worked together to take on the extremes of the Gorafe Desert in Spain with this incredible glass house.

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To what extent can violence be justified?

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To what extent can violence be justified?

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Israel says its fighter jets have hit dozens of Palestinian militant targets overnight in Gaza after militants fired 370 rockets at Israel.

At least three Palestinians died in the strikes on Gaza, while a civilian was killed in a rocket attack in the Israeli town of Ashkelon.

Both Israel and Hamas, which rules the Gaza Strip, have threatened to escalate their actions.

Violence erupted when a covert Israeli mission got exposed in Gaza on Sunday.

Seven Palestinian militants, including a Hamas military commander, were killed during the incident, including a member of the Israeli undercover unit.

How serious is the upsurge?

After a brief lull following Sunday night's violence, a barrage of rockets was launched towards Israel late on Monday. A bus, which had reportedly been carrying troops, was hit by an anti-tank missile in a kibbutz, seriously wounding a male soldier.

Overnight rockets hit border communities, including the city of Ashkelon several miles north of Gaza, where a building was struck, killing a civilian and seriously wounding another.

Israel carried out waves of air strikes against Hamas and the smaller Palestinian Islamic Jihad faction across the Gaza Strip.

The Israeli military said more than 100 military targets were hit, including "a unique vessel" belonging to Hamas in a harbour in southern Gaza.

Palestinian officials said at least three people, two of them militants, were killed and another died after being injured earlier.

The building housing Hamas's Al-Aqsa TV was hit and destroyed after being evacuated, disrupting broadcasts. Israel said the outlet "contributes to Hamas's military actions".

It is one of the most serious rounds of fighting since Israel and Hamas fought a war in 2014.

Israel has warned it is prepared to "dial up its response" to Hamas, while Hamas's military wing said it was ready to "expand the circle of fire" against Israel.

UN Middle East envoy Nickolay Mladenov said efforts were being made with Egypt to pull Gaza "back from the brink".

"The escalation in the past 24hrs is EXTREMELY dangerous," he tweeted on Monday night.

How did the violence start?

Palestinians said they discovered an undercover Israeli unit in a civilian car about 3km (2 miles) inside the Gaza Strip late on Sunday.

A firefight ensued in which the Hamas commander was killed. Israel launched air strikes and opened fire with tanks on the area, witnesses said. Six other militants were killed as well as one of the Israeli special forces soldiers.

The incident is reported to have happened east of Khan Younis, in the south of the territory.

Life in the Gaza Strip

Gaza protest image likened to famous painting

Why did Israel kill the commander?

Due to the secrecy of the operation, Israel has not revealed specific details about the mission.

The IDF said, however, that the operation was "not intended to kill or abduct terrorists, but to strengthen Israeli security".

The BBC's Tom Bateman in Jerusalem says that according to a former Israeli general, the incident was likely to have been an intelligence-gathering operation that went wrong.

The exposure of such an operation by Israeli special forces inside Gaza would be extremely rare, he says.

Fawzi Barhoum, a spokesman for Hamas, denounced Sunday's incident as a "cowardly Israeli attack".

Why are Israel and Hamas enemies?

Hamas won Palestinian elections in 2006 and reinforced its power in the Gaza Strip after ousting West Bank-based Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas's rival Fatah faction in clashes the following year.

While Mr Abbas's umbrella Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO) has signed peace accords with Israel, Hamas does not recognise Israel's right to exist and advocates the use of violence against it.

Israel, along with Egypt, has maintained a blockade of Gaza since about 2006 in order, they say, to stop attacks by militants.

Israel and Hamas have gone to war three times, and rocket-fire from Gaza and Israeli air strikes against militant targets are a regular occurrence.

Sunday night's incident comes after apparent progress in an Egyptian- and UN-brokered process to mediate after a series of escalations between the two sides in recent months.

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Israel says its fighter jets have hit dozens of Palestinian militant targets overnight in Gaza after militants fired 370 rockets at Israel. At least three Palestinians died in the strikes on Gaza, while a civilian was killed in a rocket attack in the Israeli town of Ashkelon.

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To what extent has the Myanmar government violated Article 15.1 of the Human Rights Declaration (states that "every one has the right to nationality") in refusing to give citizenship to the Rohingya muslim group?

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To what extent does art contradict religious knowlegde?

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How will future historians interpret our era?

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Humanity has wiped out 60% of mammals, birds, fish and reptiles since 1970, leading the world's foremost experts to warn that the annihilation of wildlife is now an emergency that threatens civilisation.

The new estimate of the massacre of wildlife is made in a major report produced by WWF and involving 59 scientists from across the globe. It finds that the vast and growing consumption of food and resources by the global population is destroying the web of life, billions of years in the making, upon which human society ultimately depends for clean air, water and everything else.

"We are sleepwalking towards the edge of a cliff" said Mike Barrett, executive director of science and conservation at WWF. "If there was a 60% decline in the human population, that would be equivalent to emptying North America, South America, Africa, Europe, China and Oceania. That is the scale of what we have done."

"This is far more than just being about losing the wonders of nature, desperately sad though that is," he said. "This is actually now jeopardising the future of people. Nature is not a 'nice to have' - it is our life-support system."

"We are rapidly running out of time," said Prof Johan Rockström, a global sustainability expert at the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research in Germany. "Only by addressing both ecosystems and climate do we stand a chance of safeguarding a stable planet for humanity's future on Earth."

Many scientists believe the world has begun a sixth mass extinction, the first to be caused by a species - Homo sapiens. Other recent analyses have revealed that humankind has destroyed 83% of all mammals and half of plants since the dawn of civilisation and that, even if the destruction were to end now, it would take 5-7 million years for the natural world to recover.

The Living Planet Index, produced for WWF by the Zoological Society of London, uses data on 16,704 populations of mammals, birds, fish, reptiles and amphibians, representing more than 4,000 species, to track the decline of wildlife. Between 1970 and 2014, the latest data available, populations fell by an average of 60%. Four years ago, the decline was 52%. The "shocking truth", said Barrett, is that the wildlife crash is continuing unabated.

Wildlife and the ecosystems are vital to human life, said Prof Bob Watson, one of the world's most eminent environmental scientists and currently chair of an intergovernmental panel on biodiversity that said in March that the destruction of nature is as dangerous as climate change.

"Nature contributes to human wellbeing culturally and spiritually, as well as through the critical production of food, clean water, and energy, and through regulating the Earth's climate, pollution, pollination and floods," he said. "The Living Planet report clearly demonstrates that human activities are destroying nature at an unacceptable rate, threatening the wellbeing of current and future generations."

The biggest cause of wildlife losses is the destruction of natural habitats, much of it to create farmland. Three-quarters of all land on Earth is now significantly affected by human activities. Killing for food is the next biggest cause - 300 mammal species are being eaten into extinction - while the oceans are massively overfished, with more than half now being industrially fished.

Quick Guide
Wildlife losses around the world

African elephants: With 55 being poached for ivory every day, more are being poached than are being born, meaning populations are plunging

Orangutans: More than 100,000 were lost in Borneo alone between 1999 and 2015, largely due to forest destruction for timber and palm oil, leaving the great apes critically endangered

Whale sharks: Numbers of the largest fish have collapsed by two thirds in the last 75 years in the Indian and-Pacific Oceans, due to overfishing and ship collisions.

Wandering albatross: Populations are declining rapidly, driven largely by accidental catches in long line fisheries. One monitored population on South Georgia fell by half between 1972 and 2010

Jaguar: The razing of forests in South America is driving the decline of this big cat, which prefers to live in dense jungle

Gharials: There are now just 200 breeding adults of the fish-eating crocodile in the wild in India and Nepal, the result of rampant fishing, poaching and drops in river flow.

Chinese giant salamander: This creature is one of 545 critically endangered amphibians, decimated by hunting for food, destruction of rivers and lakes and pollution.

Hedgehog: This animal is among the fifth of UK mammals at high risk of extinction, with populations having fallen hugely in both urban and rural locations.

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Chemical pollution is also significant: half the world's killer whale populations are now doomed to die from PCB contamination. Global trade introduces invasive species and disease, with amphibians decimated by a fungal disease thought to be spread by the pet trade.

The worst affected region is South and Central America, which has seen an 89% drop in vertebrate populations, largely driven by the felling of vast areas of wildlife-rich forest. In the tropical savannah called cerrado, an area the size of Greater London is cleared every two months, said Barrett.

"It is a classic example of where the disappearance is the result of our own consumption, because the deforestation is being driven by ever expanding agriculture producing soy, which is being exported to countries including the UK to feed pigs and chickens," he said. The UK itself has lost much of its wildlife, ranking 189th for biodiversity loss out of 218 nations in 2016.

The habitats suffering the greatest damage are rivers and lakes, where wildlife populations have fallen 83%, due to the enormous thirst of agriculture and the large number of dams. "Again there is this direct link between the food system and the depletion of wildlife," said Barrett. Eating less meat is an essential part of reversing losses, he said.

The Living Planet Index has been criticised as being too broad a measure of wildlife losses and smoothing over crucial details. But all indicators, from extinction rates to intactness of ecosystems, show colossal losses. "They all tell you the same story," said Barrett.

Conservation efforts can work, with tiger numbers having risen 20% in India in six years as habitat is protected. Giant pandas in China and otters in the UK have also been doing well.

But Marco Lambertini, director general of WWF International, said the fundamental issue was consumption: "We can no longer ignore the impact of current unsustainable production models and wasteful lifestyles."

The world's nations are working towards a crunch meeting of the UN's Convention on Biological Diversity in 2020, when new commitments for the protection of nature will be made. "We need a new global deal for nature and people and we have this narrow window of less than two years to get it," said Barrett. "This really is the last chance. We have to get it right this time."

Tanya Steele, chief executive at WWF, said: "We are the first generation to know we are destroying our planet and the last one that can do anything about it."

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Humanity has wiped out 60% of animal populations since 1970, report finds

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Humanity has wiped out 60% of mammals, birds, fish and reptiles since 1970, leading the world's foremost experts to warn that the annihilation of wildlife is now an emergency that threatens civilisation. The new estimate of the massacre of wildlife is made in a major report produced by WWF and involving 59 scientists from across the globe.

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How far does this reveal affect what we believed to be the truth?

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How far does this reveal affect what we believed to be the truth?

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Artist Mat Collishaw attempts to unmask this famously image-conscious monarch.

Hidden Histories

Delving into the mysteries of the past to shed light on the present.

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To what extent can we value scientific knowledge?

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How far does this change in the monarchy affect Indian's history?

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The South Korean first lady, Kim Jung-sook, is in the northern Indian state of Uttar Pradesh where she is visiting the ancient city of Ayodhya.

Ayodhya, which is best known as the birthplace of the Hindu god Ram, also however, holds special significance for some South Koreans - many believe they can trace their ancestry to the city.

This belief comes from several historical Korean stories which tells the story of an Indian princess - Suriratna - who married a South Korean king and started a dynasty.

What does the legend say?

According to the legend, Princess Suriratna, also known as Heo Hwang-ok, went to Korea in 48 AD, some 2000 years ago, and started the Karak dynasty by marrying a local king.

Some Chinese-language texts claim that the then King of Ayodhya had a dream where God ordered him to send his 16-year-old daughter to Gimhae city in South Korea to marry King Kim Suro.

A popular South Korean book comprising fables and historical stories, Samguk Yusa (Memorabilia of the Three Kingdoms), mentions that Queen Hwang-ok was the princess of "Ayuta" kingdom.

The royal couple prospered. They had 10 sons and both lived to be over a 150 years old.

An anthropologist named Kim Byung-mo Ayuta appeared to confirm the widely held belief that Ayuta was actually Ayodhya, as the two names are phonetically similar.

Korean reunions: Families divided by war meet in North

But there is no clear evidence to show that the princess even actually existed.

"Her origin story is considered to be mythical and is not considered to be history by academics," says David Cann of the BBC's Korean Service.

"There have been several fictional renditions of the story as there is plenty of room for imagination."

The Karak dynasty

Kim is a common surname in Korea and King Kim Suro is considered to be the father of the Kim clan which is based in Gimhae.

"While traditionally children in Korea take their father's surname, the queen is said to have been sad that her children could not bear her surname," says Minji Lee of the BBC Korean Service.

"The legend says that therefore King Suro allowed two of their sons to take her name (Heo), which is used to this day."

Today, historians say, descendants of the couple number more than six million, which is roughly about 10% of the South Korean population.

People from the Karak dynasty have also preserved the rocks that are said to have been used by the princess during her sea voyage to Korea to keep her boat stable.

Former South Korean presidents Kim Young-sam and Kim-Dae Jung, and former prime minister Kim Jong-Pil claim their ancestry to the Karak dynasty.

Is the legend popular in South Korea?

Some of our colleagues in the BBC Korean Service say that they have heard about this legend but don't believe it's a widely talked-about story because "it goes back so far in the past".

"I remember hearing about it when I was in primary school or junior high and my friends and I were fascinated how our ancestry involves someone from so far away," says Ms Lee.

Some say that there is speculation that the princess is actually from Thailand since Ayuta may actually be Thailand's Ayutthaya Kingdom.

Stories on the internet say that some people from Gimhae refer to this legend "like a family joke" especially if they have darker skin, attributing it to their "ancestor who may or may not have come from India".

"Some believe that while it may be true that she came from a 'southern country over an ocean' the story was heavily embellished when Buddhism took root in Korea," says Mr Cann, who also remembers going for a musical rendition of the legend as a child.

How has the legend impacted modern ties?

An agreement was signed to develop Ayodhya and Gimhae as sister cities in 2000.

Then in 2001, more than 100 historians and government representatives, including the North Korean ambassador to India, unveiled Queen Hwang-ok's memorial on the west bank of the River Saryu in Ayodhya.

Every year, people who claim to be from the queen's lineage come to Ayodhya to pay tribute to the princess at her motherland.

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In 2016, a Korean delegation sent a proposal to the Uttar Pradesh government to further develop the memorial.

As part of her visit from 4 to 7 November, the first lady will attend a ceremony that marks a start on the upgrade of the monument - a joint project between South Korea and India.

Prof Kim-do Young, a Delhi-based expert on Korean studies, says that this shared history started being recognised in India "after diplomatic and economic relationship" between the two countries developed.

"Whether it is history or legend - based on it - mental or spiritual gap [between the people] is reduced and a common cultural ground is made," he adds, pointing out that it's interesting that there maybe an "ancient bond" between the two nations.

Queen Hwang-ok's story has been and can be the "foundation for building better relations" between South Korea and India.

Prof Young says the South Korean first lady's visit is yet another step towards that.

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The Indian princess who became a South Korean queen

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The South Korean first lady's visit to India is tied to a legend linking Korean ancestry to Ayodhya.

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To what extent can the government manipulate our idea of what is right and wrong?

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Supreme Leader of Democratic People's Republic of Korea has done it again. Kim Jong-Un was named the Best Dressed Man in DPRK last year. This was published by official DPRK's news service Twitter account recently. Apparently Kum Jong Un was also named the best dressed man in North Korea for the last five years.

On 2015, Kim Jong Un made world headlines with his new flat top haircut that defies gravity and newly shaved tiny eyebrows. The haircut then became a mandate for all men in North Korea. All males are required to have no longer than 2 cm hair even top cut with the same sides. All females are also advised to have the same haircut style as Kim's wife Ri Sol-ju.

His new haircut also made it to CNN news.

At 33, Kim Jong Un is one of the youngest state leader in the world. Apart from being being the Best Dressed Man in DPRK. On April 2015, Kim Jong Un conquered the highest mountain Mount Paektu in North Korea wearing only suit at 9000 ft. Kim Jong Un was also said to be a child prodigy where he could drive a car at the age of 3

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Supreme leader has also received many other awards both inside North Korea and Internationally. Previously Kim received Global Statesmen Award from Sukarno Center and Honory Doctorate award from Help University in Malaysia. Kim also made it to 43 on the Forbes list of The World's Most Powerful People.

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Kim Jong Un named Best Dressed Man in North Korea, again

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Supreme Leader of Democratic People's Republic of Korea has done it again. Kim Jong-Un was named the Best Dressed Man in DPRK last year. This was published by official DPRK's news service Twitter account recently. Apparently Kum Jong Un was also named the best dressed man in North Korea for the last five years.

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A 15-year-old Australian boy has been crowned overall champion at the FAI Drone Racing World Championships.

Rudi Browning beat more than 120 competitors at the event run by the World Air Sports Federation (FAI) in Shenzhen, China.

His success also helped the Australian team win the group title ahead of Sweden and South Korea.

An 11-year-old racer from Thailand, Wanraya Wannapong, won the the women's title.

In drone racing, participants steer crafts at high speed around a race course with obstacles.

Pilots control the drones through special headgear connected to their craft's cameras.

Mr Browning beat three other pilots in a final on Sunday to win the gold medal for overall champion. He also received a $24,000 (£18,000) cash prize.

"I'm still shaking actually. I have had a lot of ups and downs in races, like everyone, and this is definitely one massive high," he said after the race, according to a statement from the FAI.

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Wanraya Wannapong was one of 13 female contestants in the competition and had been coached by her father.

"I fly every day, and all day when I am not at school," Miss Wannapong said in a statement.

Drone racing is a one of the world's fastest growing sports, says the FAI. There are a number of different competitions staged around the world.

Broadcasters ESPN and Sky also televise the US-based Drone Racing League, a professional division.

Races for the inaugural FAI Drone Racing World Championships were streamed online and broadcast across China's Tencent network.

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Rudi Browning, 15, and his drone beat more than 120 other racers at the world finals in Shenzhen.

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Carlos and Auriane:Japanese island disappears, without anyone noticing 

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