Amusing Planet

De Kas: Restaurant Inside a Greenhouse

2012-02-12T04:06:00.001-08:00

De Kas is a large restaurant and nursery located in a former greenhouse on the outskirts of Amsterdam. Back in 1926 the greenhouse was built to house Amsterdam’s municipal nurseries. All of the plants and flowers used for Amsterdam’s municipal plantings were grown on these grounds and in greenhouse. Over the decades, the nurseries were shut down and the buildings and greenhouse became dilapidated. About 10 years ago the greenhouse was scheduled for demolition, but chef Gert Jan Hageman saw the building and decided it would be perfect for a restaurant and vegetable garden. Hageman approached the city with the proposal and ended up buying it for just 1 Euro, which he renovated it completely into the restaurant it is today.

Located inside the Frankendael Park, the 8 meter high greenhouse restaurant stands out as a majestic building. The dining room is spacious and beautifully lit trees intersperse the tables. Every seat has a clear view of the garden, the sky and the semi-open kitchen, thanks to the glass ceilings and walls.

The restaurant has a garden nearby where it grows most of its own vegetables, herbs and edible flowers. They also have a large field about 10 kilometers from Amsterdam for seasonal vegetables, which are harvested at sunrise everyday so that guests can enjoy the freshest possible ingredients. Anything else they can’t produce themselves, they buy it from local farmers and suppliers around the city.

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The restaurant has no “regular” menu. It changes constantly, so they don’t even print it. Once you get seated at DeKas, the only question that is asked is whether anyone has dietary restrictions.

Chef Gert Jan Hageman sums up the nature of his restaurant as, “A kitchen surrounded by fertile soil where vegetables and herbs thrive. Where daylight shines in from all sides and where the chefs are free to express their creativity daily using the best the season has to offer. It seems an obvious concept, but I spent twenty years surrounded by white tiles under fluorescent lighting before I came up with it.”

Floating Villages Near Cat Ba Island, Vietnam

2012-02-11T23:55:00.001-08:00

Cat Ba Island is the largest of the 366 islands that comprises the Halong Bay archipelago in Northern Vietnam and the only one that hosts a substantial settlement. While the vast majority of Halong Bay's islands are uninhabited vertical rocks, Cat Ba has a few fishing villages, as well as a fast-growing town. Except for a few fertile pockets, the terrain is too rocky for serious agriculture. Hence most residents earn their living from the sea, while others cater to the tourist trade.

Roughly 13,000 inhabitants live on the island and 4,000 more live on floating fishing villages off the coast. The large majority of the population can be found in Cat Ba Town which is located at the southern tip of the Island and is the commercial center on the Island. Since 1997, Cat Ba Town has grown rapidly and has become a tourist hub for both the Island and greater Ha Long Bay. The fishing community at Cat Ba town has been transformed by travellers during the past decade as the island has become a summer favorite with domestic tourists and a year round option for backpackers and travellers with ample time to explore less visited parts.

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Life has always been hard here and many Cat Ba residents joined the exodus of Vietnamese boat people in the 1970s and '80s. Although the island lost much of its fishing fleet this way, overseas Vietnamese have sent back large amounts of money to relatives on the island, fuelling the hotel boom of the past decade.

Almost half of Cat Ba Island’s 354 square km, and 90 square km of the adjacent waters were declared a national park in 1986 to protect the island's diverse eco-systems. These include subtropical evergreen forests on the hills, freshwater swamp forests at the base of the hills, coastal mangrove forests, small freshwater takes and coral reefs. Most of the coastline consists of rocky cliffs. but there are a few sandy beaches hidden away in small coves.

Slindon Pumpkin Festival

2012-02-11T06:38:00.001-08:00

Every year in the month of October, the sleepy West Sussex village of Slindon, England, stirs up to the Pumpkin Festival – a seasonal display of hundreds of pumpkins, squashes and gourds. Now in its 44th straight year, the display attracts tourists from as far as Germany, Japan and Australia.

The tradition began in 1968 when Ralph Upton placed his yearly crop of pumpkins on his shed to ripen. The display attracted the eyeballs of the village folk. The next year he tried again, using the roof of his wooden shed as a canvas on which he created a mural with his harvest. Since then the display has been growing larger and more complicated. Each year there is new theme - the Universe, the Pyramids and the Rialto Bridge in Venice. Using helpers Ralph Upton used pumpkins to create boats, butterflies, witches, Noah's Ark and even dinosaurs.

"I can't paint pictures, but I can paint with pumpkins," says Upton. "Originally, we began lining pumpkins along the roof to cure the skins because they don't keep unless they're exposed to the sun. Gradually we worked out patterns and people have come to expect it."

Since the 1950s until his death in 2009, Ralph Upton was growing pumpkins, squashes and gourds in his six-acre plot and planted a staggering 15,000 to 20,000 seeds each spring to produce an organic harvest of more than 50 varieties. He was once nick-named The Pumpkin King - a title he truly deserved.

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Gun Totem by Boris Bally

2012-02-11T02:34:00.001-08:00

Standing in front of Providence's Federal Courthouse in Rhode Island is an unusual monument constructed out of steel, concrete and 1000 used handguns. Dubbed the Gun Totem by its artist, Boris Bally, the imposing obelisk was constructed in 2001 with guns from a firearm buy-back program called Guns for Goods, founded by Dr. Michael P. Hirsch.

Hirsch and former colleague Matthew Masiello founded Guns for Goods in Pittsburgh in 1994, while working in trauma centers at area hospitals during a time of high crime. Researching gun-buy-back programs in locations such as New York, Hirsch and Masiello decided to try their own version of the program in Pittsburgh – but instead of buying back guns for cash reimbursements, they offered gift cards from local merchants in trade for the forgotten or unwanted weapons. To date, Guns for Goods has collected more 11,000 weapons off the streets of Pittsburgh.

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When Hirsch and Boris Bally met, eventually the conversation morphed into a notion of making artwork out of the reclaimed guns – which typically would have been sent to a local metal shop for demolition. Gun Totem is a result of this coalition. More than 1000 guns went into the construction of the pillar, which was commissioned by the Providence Parks Department. All of the guns included in the project were disabled and fossilized beneath concrete, and bits of the pillar were chipped away so people could see the deadly interior.

Goatee The Surfing Goat

2012-02-10T23:52:00.001-08:00

Goatee the surfing goat isn’t the first animal to hop on a surfboard, but it is the latest to receive media attention. Two-year-old Goatee, the pet of Dana McGregor, became a local celebrity in Grover Beach, California.

Dana McGregor says: “I just think it’s all hilarious. It’s just funny. Going with her everywhere and friends calling me up everywhere and just going, your goats famous… You know it hasn’t gotten to her head yet. She doesn’t even know it and that’s probably a good thing.”

Mr McGregor had bought Goatee to eat weeds in his garden but soon became fond of her and kept her as a pet. He discovered her hidden talent after taking her to the beach for a treat.

Smoke Art in Bottles by Jim Dingilian

2012-02-10T21:39:00.001-08:00

Over the course of the past decade, American artist Jim Dingilian has developed a body of work in which he painstakingly renders ephemeral imagery by hand on found objects such as wooden desktops and aluminum soda cans, and particularly the impressive artwork he does inside discarded bottles.

Jim Dingilian collects empty glass bottles and smokes their interiors with candle soot. After laying a coat of soot on the lining of the bottles, he goes through a process of delicate scraping to depict meticulous landscapes.

“The miniature scenes I depict are of locations on the edge of suburbia which seem mysterious or even slightly menacing despite their commonplace nature”, Jim Dingilian says. “The bottles add to the implied narratives of transgression. When found by the sides of roads or in the weeds near the edges of parking lots, empty liquor bottles are artifacts of consumption, delight, or dread. As art objects, they become hourglasses of sorts, their drained interiors now inhabited by dim memories.”

Dingilian's bottles are currently on display at two exhibition spaces. They can be viewed as part of the group series entitled Swept Away: Dust, Ashes, and Dirt in Contemporary Art and Design at The Museum of Arts at The Museum of Arts and Design in New York until August 12, 2012 and at The Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum in Connecticut, under the exhibit title Subtractive Images, until June 10, 2012.

Fantastic Condo Wave Cloud Hits Florida Coast

2012-02-10T09:32:00.001-08:00

Helicopter pilot J.R. Hott captured these breathtaking images showing low-lying clouds swooping over the high-rise buildings lining the beaches of Panama City in Florida. At a glance, it appears as though a tsunami is poised to crash over the city.

Meteorologist Dan Satterfield explains the phenomenon:

Cool air offshore was very nearly at the saturation point, with a temperature near 20ºC and a dew point of about 19.5ºC. The air at this temperature can only hold a certain amount of water vapour, and how much it can hold depends heavily on the temperature. If you add more water into the air, a cloud will form, but you can also get a cloud to form by cooling the air. Drop the temperature, and it can no long hold as much water vapour, so some of it will condense out and a cloud will form.
In this case, the air was cooled by lifting it about 50 meters over the top of the condos. A parcel of unsaturated air will cool when lifted at a rate of 1ºC per 100 meters. In this case, it probably cooled about 0.5 degrees C, but that was all it took! On the back side of the condos, the air slowly sinks back down and warms at the same rate. As it warms the air can hold more water vapour and the cloud evaporates and disappears!

J.R. Hott, the owner of Panhandle Helicopters, says that he sees this effect a few times a year. This one was one of the best, because many times it fogs in before he can get his chopper in the air to grab a snap.

Gorgeous Photographs of Rain By Christophe Jacrot

2012-02-10T07:23:00.001-08:00

Christophe Jacrot lives and works in Paris. He started his photographic career with Paris sous la pluie (Paris in the rain), for which a book was edited in October 2008. Following this success, he photographed Hong Kong under the rain and New York under the rain. Aside from being a photographer, Christophe Jacrot has also directed a movie Prison Ã Domicile released in 1999.

“In my opinion, there are two ways of capturing the world for a photographer; on the one hand grasping its horror, and on the other sublimating it,” says French photographer Christophe Jacrot. “I have chosen the second. More specifically, I like the way rain, snow and “bad weather” awaken a feeling of romantic fiction within me (climatic excesses are another topic). I see these elements as a fabulous ground for photography, an under-used visual universe with a strong evocative power, and with a richness of subtle lights. This universe escapes most of us, since we are too occupied getting undercover. Man becomes a ghostly silhouette wandering and obeying the hazards of rain or of snow. My approach is deliberately pictorial and emotional.”

Cauliflower Explosions by Brock Davis

2012-02-08T00:27:00.001-08:00

Brock Davis is a Minneapolis-based artist and musician who works on primarily self-initiated projects in a variety of mediums. Humor is a constant in his work, transforming objects in unexpected ways to surprise the viewer. His Broccoli House and Exhibitionist Coffee Cup were viral hits over the Internet.

His latest addition to the ongoing Food Stuff series consist of famous explosions created with cauliflower heads.

Above is the Space Shuttle Challenger explosion of 1986 created with cauliflower, and below is the actual photograph.

Stunning Glasswork by Shayna Leib

2012-02-06T23:24:00.001-08:00

Shayna Leib was only seven years old when she saw glassblowing for the first time at a local university, an experience that changed her life forever.

While completing her Bachelors of Art degree in Philosophy at California Polytechnic State University in San Luis Obispo, California, Shayna also studied literature, glass, and concert piano. Accepted to pursue a Doctorate in Philosophy, she chose instead to enter the University of Wisconsin-Madison for graduate studies in glass and metal.

Her glass interests at UW-Madison led to an equal focus on functional and sculptural works, where she explored the subtly different ways in which glass' most unique qualities were captured in each. Shayna uses the flow of hot glass, its capacity to freeze an artistic moment in time, and the inherent ability of glass to manipulate optics to express her artistic vision and inner direction.

Each of the glass pieces takes nearly a month to create and involves a painstaking, multi-step process that begins with pulling individual 30-50 foot segments of glass called cane, a step that’s repeated 8 to 200 times depending on the scale of the piece. She generates over 1 mile of thin glass pieces from which she cuts into tens of thousands of segments organized by shape and length. Next begins the tedious process of building the actual sculpture, requiring roughly 45 minutes for each two square inch area.

Kizhi Pogost: 300 Years Old Multi-Dome Church Built Without Nails

2012-02-06T03:04:00.001-08:00

Kizhi is a narrow strip of island on Lake Onega in the Republic of Karelia, Russia. The island is popular for dozens of historical wooden buildings that were moved to the island from various parts of Karelia for preservation purposes during the 1950s. Today, the entire island and the nearby area form a national open-air museum with more than 80 historical wooden structures. The most famous among them is the Kizhi Pogost.

The Kizhi Pogost enclosure holds two wooden churches and an octagonal bell tower built during the 18th-century. The jewel of its architecture is the 22-domed Transfiguration Church with a large iconostasis—a wooden screen covered with religious portraits. This massive church is about 37 meters tall and made entirely of wood making it one of the tallest log structures in the world.

The Church of the Transfiguration was laid in June, 1714, after the old one was burnt by lightning. Its major basic structural unit is a round log of Scots Pine about 30 cm in diameter and 3 to 5 meters long. Many thousands of logs were brought for construction from the mainland, a complex logistical task in that time. A legend tells that the main builder used one axe for the whole construction, which he threw into the lake upon completion with the words "there was not and will be not another one to match it".

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According to the Russian carpentry traditions of that time, the Transfiguration Church was without using a single nail. All structures were made of scribe-fitted horizontal logs, with interlocking corners joinery. The basis of the structure is an octahedral frame with four two-stage side attachments called "prirub". The eastern prirub has a pentagonal shape and contains the altar. Two smaller octagons of similar shape are mounted on top of the main octagon. The structure is covered in 22 domes of different size and shape, which run from the top to the sides. The roofs were made of spruce planks and the domes are covered in aspen. The design of this elaborate superstructure also provided an efficient system of ventilation to preserve the structure from decay.

Fortune Telling Robots in India

2012-02-05T23:41:00.001-08:00

Fortune Telling is a cultural phenomenon at all levels in the Indian society. Various types of fortune telling are popular with the urban and even the highly educated, and over the years it has taken a number of different forms – horoscopes, palm reading, parrots, tarot cards and recently robots.

Scattered across fairs, markets and streets, mostly in southern India, are fortune-telling robots. They come in a range of shapes and sizes. These plastic and fiberglass fortune-tellers are studded with garish LEDs, usually an analog clock embedded in their crotch, and sometimes a pair of voltmeters or ammeters, one in each breast. On the waist or hips are multiple headphone sockets. For only 5 rupees (10 cents) are so, you can plug a pair of worn out headphones into its metallic underpants and listen as it tells your fortune from prerecorded tapes.

We couldn’t find anyone who has actually listened to these robots, but we have one who has met and talked to one of the robot owners.

Every Sunday there is a guy with fortune telling robot on the place opposite of the main entrance of Russell market in Bangalore. Apparently (the guy does not really speak English) the robot is about 5 years old, was built by someone from ‘down south’ who also supplies the tapes with the fortunes on them. Against a small contribution the robot will tell fortunes in one of four 4 different languages (Hindi, Tamil, Kannada & Telgu) through headphones that are attached to its body.

I could not find out more about the function of the clock that is attached to the body of the robot. The owner just told me that it is a clock and ‘tells the time’ which makes it a truly multi purpose robot: telling both fortune and time)

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Olympics for Rabbit: The Grand National in Harrogate

2012-02-02T09:45:00.001-08:00

An unusual sporting spectacle took place in Harrogate, Yorkshire, last weekend. More than 3000 rabbits as well as guinea pigs, hamsters, mice and rats took part in showjumping events in UK’s second Rabbit Grand National. The show is part of the Burgess Premier Small Animal Show which has been running for the past 90 years. The Rabbit Grand National is a new addition to the event.

The Rabbit Grand National, the entertainment centerpiece of the show saw Sweden’s finest rabbit jumpers return. Particpants are required to hop over twelve hurdles up to one meter in height during a timed display of agility unique to the show. The current world record for the highest jump was set in 1997 by Danish rabbit Tosen, who jumped almost a meter, and the long jump record was set by another Danish rabbit, Yabo, who hopped an amazing three meters (10ft) in 1999.

Intricate Paper Cut Drawings by Bovey Lee

2012-02-02T09:29:00.001-08:00

Pittsburgh-based artist Bovey Lee utilizes her background in Chinese paper cutting to produce these beautiful and amazingly detailed two-dimensional works of precision on Chinese rice paper.

Bovey Lee has been painting, drawing and practicing calligraphy since the age of ten. Shortly after graduation, she came to the U.S to obtain her masters of fine arts degree in painting and drawing in 1995. At that time, graphics software and the internet were budding as potential creative media and outlets for artists, and she obtained a second MFA degree in digital arts. After practicing digital arts for years, she began to miss creating with her hands. In 2005, Lee created her first cut paper work.

“My creative process is three-fold – hand drawing, digital rendering, and hand cutting,” Bovey Lee explains. “Typically, I develop drawings before making a digital template on the computer. After completing the template, I print it out and use it as a positioning and visual guide. The template is largely photographic and I spend a lot of time translating continuous tones into patterns of solid and void. The final step is to spend lots of hours, hand cutting the image.”

“I define what I do as drawing with a knife. when I cut paper, it is a visceral reaction and natural response to my roots and affection for precision, detail, and subtlety,” she says.

Waterfall Restaurant at Villa Escudero in Philippines

2012-02-02T02:52:00.001-08:00

Villa Escudero, located at San Pablo City in the Philippines, is a fine hacienda-style resort with cozy rooms and a museum that boasts a large number of weird stuff. But the villa’s true attraction is the amazing restaurant at the foot of a small waterfall.

Bamboo dining tables and grass-fringed buffet stations are set a few feet away from the cascading waters of the Labasin Falls. Diners enjoy delicious local dishes such as fish, curry meats and rice, as the sparkling water massage their feet. After lunch guests can even lie against the rushing water-covered wall and get wet.

As you can make out from the pictures below, Labasin Falls is a not a natural waterfall. It is actually a spillway of the Labasin Dam – the country’s first working hydroelectric plant – built by Don Arsenio Escudero in 1929.

A pioneering agriculture industrialist, Don Arsenio Escudero built it to supply his desiccated coconut factory and the Escudero Plantation house, which he and his wife Doña Rosario Adap built in the early 1900s.

The plantation was opened to the public in 1981 as a tourist attraction, offering glimpses of plantation life. The family's eclectic private collection was presented as a Museum tour. Carabao cart ride takes visitors to the resort area, surrounded by park-like setting while being serenaded by locals. Dining is, of course, under the spillway of the Labasin Dam. The dam’s reservoir has been turned into a lake where visitors go rafting in native bamboo rafts. Other attractions include live cultural dance show, sports facilities, and even more restaurants, albeit in dry places.

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Stunning Anatomical Cross-Sections Made From Paper by Lisa Nilsson

2012-02-02T01:47:00.001-08:00

Artist Lisa Nilsson creates beautiful anatomical cross sections of the human body using rolled pieces of Japanese mulberry paper, a technique known as quilling or paper filigree. Quilling was first practiced by Renaissance nuns and monks who made artistic use of the gilded edges of worn out bibles, and later by 18th century ladies who made artistic use of lots of free time.

“I find quilling exquisitely satisfying for rendering the densely squished and lovely internal landscape of the human body in cross section”, says Nilsson. “I employ a device of making all of the bones in my work from the gilded edges of old books. I do this for aesthetic reasons as well as a means of pulling the pieces away from the world of scientific specimens and a bit more in the direction of religious reliquaries.”

Lisa Nilsson is a Rhode Island School of Design graduate who lives in the northeastern U.S. Lisa's Tissue Series was exhibited last summer at a Massachusetts gallery, and featured quilled human anatomy cross sections displayed in silk covered, wooden boxes she made by hand.

Fritz's Railroad Restaurant: Food Delivery by Toy Trains

2012-02-01T03:23:00.001-08:00

Fritz's Railroad Restaurant is a family-friendly restaurant in Kansas City dedicated to trains, the city’s original form of transportation. At Fritz’s patrons order their food by telephone and it's brought to their tables by an overhead train.

Toy electric trains run around the the edge of the ceiling throughout the restaurant. There are railroad style whistles for sale and children under 12 get a free cardboard engineer's hat.

Orders at Fritz's Railroad Restaurant are called in from the booths on a telephone. A server brings the drinks, but the food is delivered by the overhead track. A mechanical arm stops your order at the platform above your table, which then lowers to deliver your food. This rig is a bit noisy and everyone watches when a meal is delivered. There's nothing quite like the look of wonder on a child's face as the train comes chug-chug-chugging along with their meal in tow.

Burgers are the main feature of the menu, but they also deliver hot dogs, grilled chicken, tenderloin and fish sandwiches, or grilled cheese.

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Fritz's Railroad Restaurant is owned by Fred Kropf whose family has been in the restaurant business since the 1920s. The restaurant was established in 1954. His father, Fritz, engineered what he called the ‘Skat Kat’ food delivery system, installing it in the 1970s. Patrons simply referred to it as a train and began bringing in railroad memorabilia, such as lanterns and toy engines, that quickly spread throughout the restaurant like the railroad stretched across Kansas in the 1800s.

The Trillion Dollar Campaign

2012-01-31T08:11:00.001-08:00

The Trillion Dollar Campaign was an innovative way to protest Zimbabwe’s record breaking hyperinflation which reached the unbelievable mark of 231,000,000% in October 2008. The campaign was launched in 2009 with the goal of promoting the newspaper called The Zimbabwean, whom President Mugabe was giving a hard time, as well as increasing awareness of the total collapse of the Zimbabwean dollar.

Instead of trying to explain all the problems faced by the newspaper the creative team of the advertising agency TBWA Hunt Lascaris went with a tangible symbol of the country’s collapse, the worthless currency. They designed an outdoor advertising campaign that threw away trillion dollar notes with a message. Large murals measuring 1.5 meters by 5 meters and composed of hundreds or thousands of banknotes were pasted across walls along streets with heavy foot traffic, and billboard spaces were purchased overlooking several highways. Bold messages such as "It's Cheaper To Print This On Money Than Paper" and "Thanks to Mugabe This Money Is Wallpaper" were printed on actual Zimbabwean 100 trillion dollar bank notes, whose value at that time was less than USD5. Bundles of cash were mailed to media personalities. The newspaper’s contact details were printed on bank notes and attached to posters wherever The Zimbabwean was sold.

Though the campaign was launched in 2009, the story of the campaign actually dates back to 1999, the year in which Wilf Mbanga founded an independent Zimbabwean newspaper titled The Daily News. The paper operated for three years before Mbanga was arrested for anti-government activities and The Daily News was banned by the Government of Zimbabwe. Though Mbanga was released, he faced several life threats in Zimbabwe and therefore fled to Europe. From there he started operating a new newspaper ‘The Zimbabwean’ featuring stories from the country and printed in South Africa.

Bled Island in Slovenia

2012-01-31T06:31:00.001-08:00

Bled is a town and a municipality in Slovenia, and like most European towns, is a popular tourist destination for its scenic beauty. The town is particularly popular for the glacial Lake Bled.

The lake is situated in a picturesque environment, surrounded by mountains of the Julian Alps and lush green forests. In the middle of the lake is Slovenia’s only natural island. The island has several buildings, the main one being the Pilgrimage Church of the Assumption of Mary, built in the 15th century. Its majestic 52 meter tower has a grand stairway consisting of 99 steps leading up to the top of the building. The church is most commonly used as a wedding venue because of its scenic location and the natural attraction of the place. There are several other notable buildings on the island, but the Pilgrimage Church tops the list, as the most elegant of all the buildings on this fairytale island of Bled.

Despite being tiny in size, Bled Island has attracted humans since the prehistoric ages. Archeologists have discovered traces of prehistoric human settlements dating back to the 11th century BC. In the early Middle Ages there was a pre-Christian, probably Old Slavic cult area in the location of the present day church. On the island 124 graves with skeletons from the 9th to the 11th century were also found.

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According to written sources, the first masonry church on the island, a three-naved Romanesque basilica, was consecrated by the Aquilean patriarch Pellegrino in 1142. In the 15th century, it was rebuilt in the Gothic style: a new presbytery, a freestanding bell tower and the main altar were built. The church's present form is from the 17th century when it was renovated after another earthquake.

Bled Lake is also very popular among rowing enthusiasts who like to row in its serene and calm waters. It has also been host to several World Rowing Championships.

Another popular attraction near Lake Bled is the iconic Bled Castle perched on a precipice overlooking Lake Bled. According to written sources, it is the oldest Slovenian castle and is currently one of the most visited tourist attractions in Slovenia.

Excalibur: The World's Tallest Climbing Wall

2012-01-30T06:36:00.001-08:00

Towering over 121 feet (37 meters) in the air, the Excalibur at the Klimcentrum Bjoeks (Bjoeks Climb Center) in the town of Groningen, The Netherlands, is considered to be the tallest climbing wall in the world. What makes climbing the Excalibur a challenge, aside from the monumental height, is a sleek curve 36 feet (11 meters) out from the base that creates an artificial overhang as one encounters when climbing a real peak. Because of the curve it is possible to climb the tower in many different ways, each posing a different challenge.

At Bjoeks Climb Center, there is an array of indoor climbing walls, including one designed for first-timers and another that’s at a 45 degree angle. There’s also a large indoor-outdoor bordering area with 117 boulders to scamper over.

The Bjoeks Climb Center was started in 1996 by Gert van deer Veen and his friend and climbing partner, Alco Pols.

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Movies From an Alternate Universe by Peter Stults

2012-01-30T05:44:00.001-08:00

Classic films often get remade with new actors and sometimes modern storyline, but what would happen if it went the other way? Imagine what if movies of the present age were thrown back to the old era? Who would star? How would the posters look like.

Artist Peter Stults created some wonderfully creative posters reimagining what popular movies of today would be like should they have been made in a different time with Hollywood stars of yore.

Awhile back a friend of mine forwarded me a site where artist Sean Hartter made posters of films that, title wise, we were familiar with, but there was a slight difference; they were remade as if they belonged to a different era or a different genre, the name of the movie was there, but the actors were different, the style was different, and I loved the concept. So I went forward with this theme; what if movies we were all familiar with were made in a different slice of time? Who would be in it? Who would direct it? So here we are…

Motion Blurred Pipe Sculptures by Kang Duck-Bong

2012-01-29T23:58:00.001-08:00

These incredible sculptures are the work of Korean artist Kang Duck-Bong and they are made out of PVC pipes, glued together and coated with paint, giving an awesome sense of movement.

Maramadi: Bull Surfing in Kerala, India

2012-01-29T23:35:00.001-08:00

At the annual Maramadi festival during the post harvest season in the villages of Kerala in southern India, a peculiar bull race takes place. A pair of bulls are sent charging down the football field-sized rice paddy field soaked in ankle deep water, while their guides hang onto the tail or onto a harness and slide through the mud. The fields are freshly ploughed and the muddy water splash about as the bulls are raced by their guides. The villagers gather around these fields keeping safe distance. The air is rent with excitement fervor as there is stiff competition over these races.

A pair of oxen is usually managed by three persons forming a participating unit. Nearly 30 such units participate in the race which starts at noon and continues up to dusk. Like professional Jockeys these persons are also well trained and are experts in managing the oxen during the race. The oxen participating in for these races are specially fed and trained.

The most famous among the Maramadi races is held in Anandapali village Pathnamthitta District near Adoor City in Kerala. Here it is held around August 15th every year and coincides with the Onam celebrations.

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Camouflaged Self Portraits by Cecilia Paredes

2012-01-27T05:35:00.001-08:00

Cecilia Paredes was born in Lima, Peru, and currently lives and works between San Jose, Costa Rica and Philadelphia. Her artistic career began as a painter but her creative concepts evolved, revealing themselves first in three-dimensional objects, then through photography. This works is a series of self portraits where Paredes paints her own body to blend in with the background.

Working with her assistants, Cecilia covers herself with make-up, body paint and clothes to literally vanish into the background. Her works reminds me of the Liu Bolin who is a master at disappearing.

Giethoorn: The Village With No Roads

2012-01-25T20:30:00.001-08:00

Giethoorn is a well-known tourist village in the Netherlands, dubbed the "Venice of the North". This is because of the fact that the village has no motor-able roads, and all transport is done by water over one of the many intersecting canals.

The water surrounds came from the big flood of St Elizabeth in 1170, and the village itself was founded and developed back in 1230 when Mediterranean fugitives came to settle here. The fugitives discovered many horns of wild goats which had probably died in the flood, and that is where the name comes from. Originally they called the settlement ‘Geytenhorn’ which means ‘horn of goats’, eventually becoming Giethoorn over the years.

The village owes it characteristic appearance to peatdigging. The peatdiggers dug up the peat-soil at the places that most suited them, mixed it in a trough and spread it out on the land to dry. This led to the formation of large and small lakes. To transport the peat, ditches and canals were excavated. Many houses are as it were built on little islands, reached through a high bridge. The villagers use small boats with a quiet electric motors known as whisper boats, and wooden bridges are used to connect one island with another.

Giethoorn became famous, especially after 1958, when the Dutch film maker Bert Haanstra made his famous comedy "Fanfare" there.

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