Dance Now

/ Amie Inman / 3 Comments

Throughout human history Dance has been a form of culture that is much greater than the sum of its parts.  Wordlessly it has the capacity to tell stories, communicate with deities, perform rites of passage, lead a people to war or join them together.

Whether linked to seasonal activity in villages or the entertainment history of the 20th century, dance is part and parcel of the human condition.

In the cinematic world director Wim Wenders has made a career making films that do similar things.   Continue reading →

Garlic Vine (Mansoa alliacea)

/ Organikos / 1 Comment

The Garlic Vine is an ornamental plant with a woody stem growing as either a shrub or vine to a height of 2-3 meters. It has bright green leaves, strong twining tendrils and trumpet shaped flowers. The flowers bloom purple and change to a lighter shade of lavender with age, eventually fading to almost white. This climber is native to the Amazon forest but is currently abundant in southern India.

Continue reading →

Why Is Mimicry Funny?

/ Organikos / Leave a comment

In Latin it’s called Thaumoctopus mimicus, but I’d call it The Master. It’s Meryl Streep in octopus form. There are ocean animals that can change shape, imitate plants, rocks, flora, and I’ve blogged about some of them. But this octopus is special. It seems to study other creatures and then imitate them, copying their moves and their bodies. It can do sea snakes, lion fish, flatfish, giant crabs, seashells, stingrays, jellyfish and weird beings that have no name, and maybe no earthly existence. Is it imagining? I don’t know, but no scientist has ever seen a shaggy sprinting bipedal crab — until our octopus decided to be one.

Click the banner above to go to the remainder of Robert Krulwich’s blog post on this wonder.  A bit more on the same after the jump (click the image to go to the original)… Continue reading →

“Audrey” Redux

/ Amie Inman / 1 Comment

Robert Barker/University Photography

Last month I excitedly wrote about the soon-to-bloom Titan arum at Cornell University in a series of posts: here, here and here. I think I even made the promise not to subject our readers to more on the theme. But bear with me. One last post. Really… Continue reading →

Carbon Emissions Series: Why Hospitality?

/ Timothy Chen / 2 Comments

In the past two months, I’ve hammered through interview after interview for internships this summer, and sustainable hospitality is a subject that seems to always surface. Along with the standard boiler-plate questions, I noticed that one topic in particular would often be asked about my interest in hospitality: why target sustainability in this industry? Why not sustainability elsewhere? And is the Cornell Hotel School the best place to explore it? I must admit that I didn’t answer the question too well the first few times, but I’ve taken a step back to truly think about my answer.

The hospitality industry's reach is near endless. It is indirectly involved with the GHG emissions of six of the eight major contributors above: transportation, agriculture, commercial services, land use, waste, and power.

Continue reading →

Indian Balloon Frog – Uperodon globulosus

/ Salim.E.I / 6 Comments

Photo: Mr.Kannan

The Uperodon, commonly known as the Balloon Frog, is well known for its ability to puff up, expanding its lungs past its backbone. It has a small head, especially compared with its exaggerated body, with a narrow mouth and a rounded snout.

Continue reading →

Conducting, Captured

/ Organikos / Leave a comment

Since we began here last year, we have had some interns, volunteers and employees who graduated from some great programs at some great universities.  But NYU’s Mocap program is unlike any of those programs at any of those universities.  And we do not have anyone on our team who can do this.

Continue reading →

The Unseen Scenes

/ Milo Inman / 1 Comment

March 2012

A morning on Kerala’s Backwaters. Although in the general sense you know what to expect in terms of how the day will play out, you are guaranteed to see some strange and possibly surreal things between breakfast and lunch. More if you rise before the sun comes up. This is purely out of self-preservation – during the heat of the day, any significant physical activity ends up being exhausting, and the locals know best. That said, it’s worth being up early to catch a number of interesting photographs that you would have been unable to were you sleeping. To the left are two fishermen – one rowing slowly while the other (suitably attired for protection from the sun) checks nettings for a catch. This was my first time seeing fishermen wearing umbrella hats, but I see workers in the paddy fields with them often. Despite this fact, I haven’t photographed them due to poor lighting conditions and a significant distance between us every time. Continue reading →

Hypothetical Biology: In Conclusion

/ Seth Inman / 2 Comments

This post concludes the hypothetical discussion of my previous three posts, the first of which you can find here.

By the end of this long thought-exercise it would seem that the most feasible explanation for the barring and display is that the male turacos developed the barring to signal their quality—both to females and other males—not because the barring is expensive to produce, but because the standardized bars allow for close comparison of individuals. By relating directly with growth, bars should allow females to assess the males’ age and relative fitness; they also probably accentuate indicators such as body symmetry, foraging ability, and health. If snake and raptor predators do in fact rely on the ultraviolet pigments to hunt the male turacos, then the barring is probably not only an indicator of (or proxy for) fitness but also an honest handicap that allows males to demonstrate their higher quality (e.g. their low feather wear despite increased need for predator avoidance).

Continue reading →

Enchanting Backwaters – Kuttanad

/ Salim.E.I / 2 Comments

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

Kerala is a land of extensive networks of rivers, canals, streams and lagoons that form the Enchanting Backwaters which exemplify an amazing relationship between the ingenuity of man and the artistry of Nature. Its crisscrossing canals which were once busy waterways, have evoked comparisons with Venice since travelers began visiting them. The backwater region of Kuttanad is famous for paddy fields, duck farming and fishing. Most of Kuttanad consists of paddy fields that spill out into vast structures inland from the backwaters. With its abuntant paddy Kuttanad has been named the “Rice Bowl of Kerala”.

Continue reading →

Dance Then

/ Organikos / 3 Comments

Click the image to the right for a wonderful reminder, in the form of book review, of what makes dance uniquely suited to certain important cultural tasks:

Now that The Artist has whetted our interest in the silent film and the revolutionary impact of sound, it may be time to reconsider the career of the man who made the conversion to sound the basis of a whole new kind of movie, Fred Astaire. The Artist suggests quite accurately that the definitive event of the new sound era was the arrival of the film musical. Sound meant music; music meant jazz. But the technological transition was slow. After the first feature-length sound movie, The Jazz Singer (1927), which starred Al Jolson, it was six years before the advent of the Jazz Dancer proved that talking and even singing mouths were not nearly as expressive in the new medium as dancing feet, especially and almost exclusively the feet of Fred Astaire. Astaire and the difference he made to the film musical add up to more than the story of one career. No other film genre provided as perfect a synchronization of sight and sound or an experience as exhilarating, and that was very largely Astaire’s doing. Continue reading →

Aranmula Kannadi – An Ancient Indian Metal Mirror

/ Salim.E.I / Leave a comment

Aranmula, an ancient village in the district of Pathanamthitta on the banks of the famous Pamba River, has a special history of Kerala’s traditional arts. For centuries Indians have been experts in Metallurgy; Delhi’s ancient Mayuran Iron Pillar, and forged Damascus steel are part of an artisanal culture in South India that stretches back more than 2000 years. The Aranmula Kannadi (metal mirror) technology is part of this history.

Continue reading →

Bilimbi (Averrhoa bilimbi)

/ Salim.E.I / Leave a comment

Tree sorrel or cucumber tree is a tropical fruit tree which reaches 35 ft in height. It is cultivated in southern India, where it is commonly called Bilimbi (Averrhoa bilimbi).  In Kerala, it is widely used for making pickles. In other regions of the country, it is often eaten raw along with salt and chilli powder.

Continue reading →