The Mausoleum at Halicarnassus still existed after Columbus reached North America. It was disassembled between 1494 and 1530. It actually survived to the modern age but was destroyed to build a fort. The desire to kill people overwhelmed the desire to inspire humanity and celebrate the human spirit.
If one were to construct a list of the new seven wonders, what would they be? I can propose a few criteria:
1. It should be a permanent structure
2. Its design should be innovative for when it was built
3. Its construction should have been unbelievably difficult
Something easy, but tedious, should not be included. The Great Wall of China is just a row of bricks. Also as construction techniques improve the scale of the wonder should increase along with it. Building a 300 foot tall light house today would be very easy. To qualify as a wonder a structure should be wondrous. People should look at it and marvel that it was ever built at all.
I have thought of five of seven structures I would consider wonders.
New Seven Wonders
1. Giza Pyramid Complex
A complete map of the night sky, with the pyramids themselves as the stars of Orion (identified as Osiris) and the Nile as the Milky Way. The only member of the original seven wonders that still stands.
2. Borobudur
A one of a kind "learning machine" in Indonesia. After years of study, a student comprehends the meaning behind the hundreds of stone inscriptions on the spiral path up the monument and reaches enlightenment.
3. Leshan Giant Buddha
By far the largest pre-modern statue in the world.
4. Burj Khalifa
The tallest building ever.
5. Apollo 11 Landing Site (Sea of Tranquility, Moon)
The first (temporary) human habitation on another planet.
6. Undecided
7. Undecided
Potentials:
1. Kanishka's Stupa (Destroyed)
The tallest stupa ever built.
2. Sagrada Familia (Incomplete)
The greatest basilica in the world. Designed to perfectly combine ancient and modern architecture as well as elements from the human and natural world.
3. Hagia Sophia
Originally the largest church in the world, with the largest dome at the time enclosing the largest open space.
4. Larung Gar
Largest religious institution in the world, with over 40,000 monks and nuns.
Tuesday, October 27, 2015
Wednesday, October 21, 2015
What is a Mantra?
Swami Kriyananada talks about mantras, sound, and the power of intention. Runs 13 minutes.
Saturday, October 17, 2015
Alexander Seton, The Mysterious Alchemist
"Alexander Seton" also known as "The Cosmopolite", was a mysterious
alchemist whose career spanned 1602-1604, when he was apparently killed
by the ruler of Saxony for refusing to reveal the secret of the
Philosopher's Stone. A Polish alchemist Michał Sędziwój visited him in
prison and bribed a guard to let him escape. Alexander Seton allegedly
died a few days later, having never revealed his secret.
A few
years later, in 1618, another adept appeared in Europe, and again in
1666. I suspect the three men were the same person. It makes sense that a
man who is immortal would need to fake his death every few decades so
no one got suspicious.
In the video below Philip Coppens explores some of the places associted with the life of Alexander Seton.
alchemist whose career spanned 1602-1604, when he was apparently killed
by the ruler of Saxony for refusing to reveal the secret of the
Philosopher's Stone. A Polish alchemist Michał Sędziwój visited him in
prison and bribed a guard to let him escape. Alexander Seton allegedly
died a few days later, having never revealed his secret.
A few
years later, in 1618, another adept appeared in Europe, and again in
1666. I suspect the three men were the same person. It makes sense that a
man who is immortal would need to fake his death every few decades so
no one got suspicious.
In the video below Philip Coppens explores some of the places associted with the life of Alexander Seton.
Sunday, October 4, 2015
Equestria Girls: Friendship Games
How is sound coming out of Rainbow's electric guitar when it's not plugged into anything?
Evil Twi is the unibomber!
I find it hard to believe that she was able to create a magic detector having seen magic very briefly at best two times. There would have been no way to calibrate it. And when she touches the base of the statue ripples appear from the portal. When Pinkie Pie ran into it at the end of the first movie it was clear that the statue has turned completely to stone again. There should be no remnant of the portal left.
That city looks lazily done. The houses are bland and generic and the background is one solid piece. Sometimes that has been used to good effect in other cartoons, but it doesn't seem to fit here. It comes off looking rushed.
I don't like the idea of what appears to be rivals to mane six. The idea of "evil" counterparts again seems lazy. Rather than creating new characters let's just have anti-matter clones of everyone so everyone knows who they are and it saves a whole lot of time.
Hold on! Sunset has been on Earth for four years (she won that Fall Formal three times and lost the fourth to pony Twilight). How does she not know about Crystal Prep and yet everyone else does?
Principal Celestia announces the games happen every four years. Then how the hell does everyone except Sunset know about them so well, and how are they all so bitter? The last Friendship Games would have happened before they all entered high school. Maybe if a few of them have older siblings they would have heard about it, but if the games happen every four years they would have only seen a few in their lives, and they would have been little kids who wouldn't have properly understood or even cared about them. 8 minutes in and I'm not liking this premise at all. It's just so contrived.
There's a song where RD wastes a couple minutes. It seems hinted that she's friends with the head of the school band. I hope we see that expanded instead of just a one off moment.
Okay, so everyone at school knows about magic and Sunset being from Equestria. Evil Twi knows. How is it no one else does? If a magical being from another universe came to this Earth and there was a huge battle we've all seen E.T., we know what would happen. There would be no way to hide this from the world. The government would have come in and taken over. It would not end well.
Sunny needs a hug.
Evil Twi gets a much better song, but how is it she is singing in the hall and no one notices, or cares?
Why would the principal want Evil Twi to compete in a sport event when she should know she has no athletic ability? That does not make sense. It doesn't make sense. It doesn't fit. If it doesn't fit, you must quit. If winning is so important then Evil Twi is the last person the evil principal would want competing.
And I would say that CHS building a "reputation" is the understatement of the century. Even if they somehow managed to keep magic under wraps, which would have been impossible, it would still be all over the news that the front of the school was destroyed for no reason after the battle with Sunny that no one knows about. Let's assume you could somehow hide the fact that a magical apocalypse almost took place. It would be impossible to hide a gaping hole in the front of the school that would have taken months to fix.
This is not me overthinking things. These are huge flaws in the whole premise of the story that anyone would notice. Me as a kid would have noticed this. This story just plain does not make sense. It could never work.
No one knows that's not pony Twi, that's Evil Twi, who so far isn't all that evil, but she's the evil twin counterpart from the evil school, so I expect her to do something evil soon.
That has to be the first really good part of this movie, where everyone talks to Evil Twi mistaking her for pony Twi and then Pinkie figures out who she really is.
Evil Twi happens to have a device that steals magic. That's can't possibly go wrong.
That principal's a bitch.
Poor Brad. No one told him yet.
Did dragon Spike and dog Spike switch places? Nope, dog Spike just gained a new power.
Sunny tears Evil Twi a new one! Way to go. Just like Ken Watanabe says in Godzilla "The arrogance of men is thinking nature is in our control and not the other way around."
Evil Twi wants to "learn" things by wrecking them. Just like in the 1950s when the Van Allen belts were discovered and the US and USSR wanted to see what would happen if you nuked them. "Here's this thing and it protects life on Earth from the solar wind, so let's see if we can blow it up!" No one thought that was a bad idea at the time!
It's just like GMOs. "Let's take something that at best we have no idea what will happen and release it into the wild and feed it to 300 million people. What could go wrong?"
But it's worse than not knowing what will happen. Genetically modified soy has been shown to produce sterility and birth defects. This has been demonstrated with hamsters and pigs and yet trillions of dollars are backing forcing this crap down the throats of Americans. Europeans are smarter than that. There are a lot of horrible chemicals and GM "foods" that are illegal in Europe that are perfectly legal in America. WORSE, it's illegal to tell the public that food might contain GMOs! Every time someone tries to pass a law that says companies have to lable their food, you know, so people at least have a CHOICE, it gets shot down. Apparently "pro-choice" only means "pro-abortion". You don't have a choice when it comes to anything else.
And what happens if those GM crops were to mate with wild species? What are the potential effects for the entire biosphere if this stuff escapes our control? When there is a lack of biodiversity there is crop failure. A single parasite can wipe out an entire species and then millions of people will starve. If something goes wrong with these GM crops that are replacing all the other varieties then it won't just be one country that is affected. Food production is spread out over the world. The failure of a crop could kill a billion people. We need to think things through first.
Enough damage has been caused by just rushing into things without thinking them through first (that hasn't stopped people from rushing even faster today). When the stakes are as high they are there is no margin for error.
Sunny has remorse for bringing magic to Earth.
Bitch principal is evil. She wants Evil Twi to use the stolen magic for evil. And that's terrible.
No one thinks giving super powers to the girl who everyone has been a dick to the entire movie is a bad idea?
Repeat of battle with Sunny with role reversal. It lacks the impact of the original.
Pony Twi shows up at the end, makes a reference to the as yet unaired season five finale, and then spots Once Evil Now Good Twi.
What else can I say. It began slowly, didn't really introduce any of the new characters except Bitch Principal and Evil Twi, and then there was maybe a minute or two of a battle I've already seen. It's been done. There were some entertaining parts toward the end, but that was it. There was nothing new or groundbreaking. There were hints of possible directions the story could have gone, better directions, and then they were dropped. I understand the target audience is adults with deep pockets who have below 70 IQs and only care about "ZOMG FUN! Infinity/10! Saying 'it's a kid's show' excuses piss poor writing!", but even me as a little kid would have been underwhelmed by this third movie. Maybe it would have captured my attention for an afternoon, but the previous movies still have not left me. They deal with great archetypal struggles (especially the first one), whereas Friendship Games was just the same thing done worse to make money. This reminds me of when The Land Before Time started making a new movie every year, with more songs and less plot every time, and they just kept getting crappier, just to make money.
When you have 20 characters in a 70 minute movie there's no way even half of them can be fully fleshed out. Some of them only get a couple of lines. Who the hell are Sour Sweet, Sugarcoat, and the rest, but gimmick characters? They have no personalities. They are boring. Even Evil Twi and Bitch Principal come off as flat. The writers must have spent all of ten seconds thinking them up.
This is the kind of movie where there are 20 good minutes if you shut your brain off, but if you dare spend more than a couple minutes thinking about it it starts to suck, and the longer you think the more it sucks. Rainbow Rocks created an extended world for the characters to explore and it did a fantastic job with that. Friendship Games tried to do the same and ended up sucking. It wasn't terrible, not season five terrible, but it wasn't good either. It existed, it had good moments, it had more bad moments, it does not bode well for the upcoming fourth movie, but it is what it is, and I have to say I'm glad I saw it.
70/100
Evil Twi is the unibomber!
I find it hard to believe that she was able to create a magic detector having seen magic very briefly at best two times. There would have been no way to calibrate it. And when she touches the base of the statue ripples appear from the portal. When Pinkie Pie ran into it at the end of the first movie it was clear that the statue has turned completely to stone again. There should be no remnant of the portal left.
That city looks lazily done. The houses are bland and generic and the background is one solid piece. Sometimes that has been used to good effect in other cartoons, but it doesn't seem to fit here. It comes off looking rushed.
I don't like the idea of what appears to be rivals to mane six. The idea of "evil" counterparts again seems lazy. Rather than creating new characters let's just have anti-matter clones of everyone so everyone knows who they are and it saves a whole lot of time.
Hold on! Sunset has been on Earth for four years (she won that Fall Formal three times and lost the fourth to pony Twilight). How does she not know about Crystal Prep and yet everyone else does?
Principal Celestia announces the games happen every four years. Then how the hell does everyone except Sunset know about them so well, and how are they all so bitter? The last Friendship Games would have happened before they all entered high school. Maybe if a few of them have older siblings they would have heard about it, but if the games happen every four years they would have only seen a few in their lives, and they would have been little kids who wouldn't have properly understood or even cared about them. 8 minutes in and I'm not liking this premise at all. It's just so contrived.
There's a song where RD wastes a couple minutes. It seems hinted that she's friends with the head of the school band. I hope we see that expanded instead of just a one off moment.
Okay, so everyone at school knows about magic and Sunset being from Equestria. Evil Twi knows. How is it no one else does? If a magical being from another universe came to this Earth and there was a huge battle we've all seen E.T., we know what would happen. There would be no way to hide this from the world. The government would have come in and taken over. It would not end well.
Sunny needs a hug.
Evil Twi gets a much better song, but how is it she is singing in the hall and no one notices, or cares?
Why would the principal want Evil Twi to compete in a sport event when she should know she has no athletic ability? That does not make sense. It doesn't make sense. It doesn't fit. If it doesn't fit, you must quit. If winning is so important then Evil Twi is the last person the evil principal would want competing.
And I would say that CHS building a "reputation" is the understatement of the century. Even if they somehow managed to keep magic under wraps, which would have been impossible, it would still be all over the news that the front of the school was destroyed for no reason after the battle with Sunny that no one knows about. Let's assume you could somehow hide the fact that a magical apocalypse almost took place. It would be impossible to hide a gaping hole in the front of the school that would have taken months to fix.
This is not me overthinking things. These are huge flaws in the whole premise of the story that anyone would notice. Me as a kid would have noticed this. This story just plain does not make sense. It could never work.
No one knows that's not pony Twi, that's Evil Twi, who so far isn't all that evil, but she's the evil twin counterpart from the evil school, so I expect her to do something evil soon.
That has to be the first really good part of this movie, where everyone talks to Evil Twi mistaking her for pony Twi and then Pinkie figures out who she really is.
Evil Twi happens to have a device that steals magic. That's can't possibly go wrong.
That principal's a bitch.
Poor Brad. No one told him yet.
Did dragon Spike and dog Spike switch places? Nope, dog Spike just gained a new power.
Sunny tears Evil Twi a new one! Way to go. Just like Ken Watanabe says in Godzilla "The arrogance of men is thinking nature is in our control and not the other way around."
Evil Twi wants to "learn" things by wrecking them. Just like in the 1950s when the Van Allen belts were discovered and the US and USSR wanted to see what would happen if you nuked them. "Here's this thing and it protects life on Earth from the solar wind, so let's see if we can blow it up!" No one thought that was a bad idea at the time!
It's just like GMOs. "Let's take something that at best we have no idea what will happen and release it into the wild and feed it to 300 million people. What could go wrong?"
But it's worse than not knowing what will happen. Genetically modified soy has been shown to produce sterility and birth defects. This has been demonstrated with hamsters and pigs and yet trillions of dollars are backing forcing this crap down the throats of Americans. Europeans are smarter than that. There are a lot of horrible chemicals and GM "foods" that are illegal in Europe that are perfectly legal in America. WORSE, it's illegal to tell the public that food might contain GMOs! Every time someone tries to pass a law that says companies have to lable their food, you know, so people at least have a CHOICE, it gets shot down. Apparently "pro-choice" only means "pro-abortion". You don't have a choice when it comes to anything else.
And what happens if those GM crops were to mate with wild species? What are the potential effects for the entire biosphere if this stuff escapes our control? When there is a lack of biodiversity there is crop failure. A single parasite can wipe out an entire species and then millions of people will starve. If something goes wrong with these GM crops that are replacing all the other varieties then it won't just be one country that is affected. Food production is spread out over the world. The failure of a crop could kill a billion people. We need to think things through first.
Enough damage has been caused by just rushing into things without thinking them through first (that hasn't stopped people from rushing even faster today). When the stakes are as high they are there is no margin for error.
Sunny has remorse for bringing magic to Earth.
Bitch principal is evil. She wants Evil Twi to use the stolen magic for evil. And that's terrible.
No one thinks giving super powers to the girl who everyone has been a dick to the entire movie is a bad idea?
Repeat of battle with Sunny with role reversal. It lacks the impact of the original.
Pony Twi shows up at the end, makes a reference to the as yet unaired season five finale, and then spots Once Evil Now Good Twi.
What else can I say. It began slowly, didn't really introduce any of the new characters except Bitch Principal and Evil Twi, and then there was maybe a minute or two of a battle I've already seen. It's been done. There were some entertaining parts toward the end, but that was it. There was nothing new or groundbreaking. There were hints of possible directions the story could have gone, better directions, and then they were dropped. I understand the target audience is adults with deep pockets who have below 70 IQs and only care about "ZOMG FUN! Infinity/10! Saying 'it's a kid's show' excuses piss poor writing!", but even me as a little kid would have been underwhelmed by this third movie. Maybe it would have captured my attention for an afternoon, but the previous movies still have not left me. They deal with great archetypal struggles (especially the first one), whereas Friendship Games was just the same thing done worse to make money. This reminds me of when The Land Before Time started making a new movie every year, with more songs and less plot every time, and they just kept getting crappier, just to make money.
When you have 20 characters in a 70 minute movie there's no way even half of them can be fully fleshed out. Some of them only get a couple of lines. Who the hell are Sour Sweet, Sugarcoat, and the rest, but gimmick characters? They have no personalities. They are boring. Even Evil Twi and Bitch Principal come off as flat. The writers must have spent all of ten seconds thinking them up.
This is the kind of movie where there are 20 good minutes if you shut your brain off, but if you dare spend more than a couple minutes thinking about it it starts to suck, and the longer you think the more it sucks. Rainbow Rocks created an extended world for the characters to explore and it did a fantastic job with that. Friendship Games tried to do the same and ended up sucking. It wasn't terrible, not season five terrible, but it wasn't good either. It existed, it had good moments, it had more bad moments, it does not bode well for the upcoming fourth movie, but it is what it is, and I have to say I'm glad I saw it.
70/100
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