A renaissance man for the twenty-first century!
Continuing the series, European cathedrals seem really to be excellent candidates for having backs that are better than fronts.
This is Saint Étienne, also known in English as Saint Stephen:
And here’s the church Église Saint-Étienne in Mulhouse, Alsace. As with many churches, the front is really nothing special to see:
But walk around to the back of the cathedral, and you’ll find a real architectural wonder:
It seems unreasonable to think that the streets in medieval cities were somehow planned. But when I travel through medieval cities, I can’t help but notice the large number of small streets that are optimally laid out to frame a view of the large, central cathedral.
This one is Santiago de Compostella, in Spain (from which you can see the Cathedral of St. XXX):
This one is Mulhouse, in Alsace, France (from which you can see the Cathedral of St. Etienne):
And this one is Paradeplatz, in Zurich, Switzerland (from which you can see both the Grossmünster and Frauenmünster cathedrals):
Is this just coincidence – or are these cathedrals and towers visible because they were designed to be visible?
I ran across this termite mound in Bandipur, near Mysore:
At least when I was there, the park had wild tigers that could roam at free will; I never saw any, but I saw plenty of their footprints.
You can see my other Amazing Ants photographs here:
Recently a friend took me on a tour of Yorkshire, England, including the famous Yorkshire Moors. But the most stunning part of the landscape was a huge radar installation, operated as part of a giant system deployed in the Cold War to protect the U.S. against nuclear missles:
At first, it was a bit difficult for me to understand why a radar installation in northern England would be much use to safeguard the U.S. But when you look at how the different systems overlap, it becomes quite clear:
This is one of my favorite photographs that I took of a church in the Christian Quarter of Jerusalem. But this is no ordinary church. This is the Church of the Holy Sepulchre:
There are so many amazing things associated with this church – my blog is too small to hold them all! Top of the list: Christians will immediate cite this as the location where Jesus was crucified, and where his empty tomb was discovered.
By my favorite fact is an historical one, not a religious one. The Church is locked in the evening and opened again in the morning, and the holders of the key (the lockers / unlockers, if you will) have come from the same family (the Nusaybah family) and have been doing this job since the seventh century. Amazing! I’ve found the best place to read more details about this amazing story is the wonderful book by Simon Montefiori, entitles Jerusalem: the Biography.
Even though we are living in the 21st century, and have been for some time, still from time to time I discover something so simple yet so mind bogglingly cool:
In my opinion, the 60-foot-tall statute of the Indian god Bahubali (sometimes called Gommateshwara), carved out of a single piece of granite and located high on a mountain, is without doubt one of the most amazing things I’ve ever seen.
Here’s the top part of his body – and if you look closely, you can see the visitors on the tower just above his head:
Here is the lower part of his body – and again, be sure to look at the size of the people near his toes:
But if you want to visit ಶ್ರವಣಬೆಳಗೊಳ, also known as Shravanabelagola, it won’t look like these pictures. I was VERY fortunate and priviledged to be able to visit during the Jain religious ceremony called Mahamastakabhisheka, which is only held every 12 years!
Unfortunately, there is so much about this holy site that I do not know. I’ve never been able to find any documentation about who created the statute and why, how long it took, and how they managed to transport it intact up a very high and very steep mountain.
The Prime Meridian is the universal definition of 0-degrees longitude – but did you know that until recently, there were different prime meridians in use, such as the Greenwich PM and the Paris PM? I only learned this a few minutes ago, when posting this picture I took on the AP-2 highway, near Candasnos Spain between Zaragoza and Barcelona:
You can see the Cypress trees on both side of the arch, which are a well known sight in southern Europe.
It is wonderful that the Spanish would build an arch – but it is a bit sad they didn’t also add a turnoff, so that you could stop and enjoy the moment less fleetingly.
Continuing the series, if I see a peepal tree somewhere, you can be sure I’ll take a picture of it. I found this one in Goa:
While I lived in India I had an adopted dog. This looks like him, but this is not him:
These dogs are a common sight everywhere in India. They are called Indian Pariah Dogs, or INdogs for short, and sadly, most Indians I’ve met seem quite unaware just how remarkable these creatures are.
First of all, many scientists believe they are the oldest breed of dog in the world.
Second, no matter how hard humans try to control their population, still the INdogs win in the end, and the INdog population always rises or falls in tune with the available resources.
A very pretty village nestled deep in the Vosges Mountains of Eastern France:
It was named after Saint Deodat and dates back to the year 700.
But the most amazing thing about this little village is something that probably even the residents may not know. When news about the discovery of the new world by Amerigo Vespucci reached Europe, this was the village where the decision was made to name the New World America. In fact, here’s the snippet from a book printed here, Cosmographia Introductio, which was the very first time the word America appeared in print:
and the very first maps and globes using the word America were created here.
This is Yorkshire Gorse growing wild in the Yorkshire Moors. Even the best scientists could never genetically engineer a plant to be more dangerous than gorse, since it is covered with the most razor sharp thorns that would kill anyone unlucky enough to fall into it:
Funny story: until I visited Yorkshire, I’d never heard of gorse before. But in the local dialect it’s pronounced goss, so naturally I assumed it was spelled g-o-s-s. It took me quite some time on Wikipedia to discover the real name of this extremely thorny plant (ulex europaeus).
Continuing the series, if you find yourself in the Middle Ages and are looking to find a nice place for your market, you’ll probably locate it on a river or a creek. Easy way to bring in the goods and the people – and easy way to float away the trash and the refuse.
You would never guess it by this photo taken in Muhlouse, Alsace, but here I am standing on a market built over a canal:
Outside you’ll find the outdoor market, a vegetable market, as you can see here. And that yellow building in the distance is the indoor market, the Marché de Canal Couvert de Muhlouse. To provide that I’m really over a canal, here’s that same yellow market from the rear:
And here is a view looking down the canal, away from the market:
If you look closely you’ll see that it’s not just a natural creek but rather it’s lined with cut stones. Muhlouse sits at the intersection of several shipping canals, so most of the small creeks in the area have been long since under active management.
Located deep in Southern German Schwabian landscape, it does not look impressive from the outside; in fact, it is one of the most boring, plain church facades I’ve ever seen:
But when you step inside, your brain explodes:
As you walk around the church and look deeper and deeper, you’ll find that even the gold and diamond encrusted details have gold and diamond encrusted details:
It might be so boring on the outside because in fact it is not a church, but a Benedictine Abbey.
If you want to visit, don’t worry about tourists. I don’t think anyone outside of the locals know that this place exists – and probably even they avoid it, to keep their brains from exploding.
I saw this fellow in the Southern German town of Zwiefalten. At over an inch long, he looks somewhat like a cross between a Jerusalem cricket and an earwig – maybe a Jerusalem earwig? It on my to-do list to one day learn what kind of a bug he is.
In case you didn’t catch it, the town is named Zwiefalten, not Zweifalten. I’ve never understood why, but vowel shifts from /e/ to /i/ (Gleichfalls –> Gliichfaus) are a common feature of the Alemannisch language, which is spoken in that area.
I don’t know if it is or it isn’t. But this photograph was taken at the Gotthard Pass in Switzerland, at an elevation of 2106 m high in the Swiss Aps:
And hundreds of feet below this open shaft is the Gotthard Tunnel, a two lane road that lets automobiles and trucks pass underneath the Swiss Alps. It was build in 1882 and until recently one of the world’s longest tunnels. Even from the point at where I am standing you can hear the roar of the traffic deep underground.
An amazing bit of trivia that goes directly to the heart of Swiss innovation: dynamite was invented in 1867, and this tunnel project was the first large scale industrial use of dynamite in the world.
Even though I am an American, I’ve long known about fish and chips. In fact, I can still sing the Arthur Treater’s (“the original fish and chips”) jingle – and what you might not know is that Arthur Treater’s is an Ohio establishment, from just a few miles from where I grew up!
So when a good friend of mine invited me to try some real fish and chips and mushy peas – in the part of Northern England where it’s most famous, no less! – I immediately thought: Peas? Mushy peas? What do peas have to do with fish and chips? And are English cooks so bad they can’t cook up nice, firm peas – do they have to be mushy?
Well, here is what one of the best fish and chips restaurants in the seaside Yorkshire town of Whitby:
And those green things: that’s the mushy peas. I would have never believed it until I tried it, but mushy peas do go well with the fish. And of course the fish itself – I can tell you, this batter fried fish is in a completely different category than anything I’ve ever tasted.
Oh, and that plastic bowl in the middle contains little pieces of batter that have dripped off into the oil. Not shown is the mash vinegar that the English love to pour over their fish.
(Correction: Above I stated “one of the best fish and chips restaurants” but I have since learned that this was Hadley’s, which has been rated THE BEST fish and chips restaurant!)
The nineteenth century saw an explosion of canal building, and with good cause: railroads were a monopoly, and trucks and automobiles had yet to be invented.
But today, many of these canals are disappearing fast – but not overnight. So they present a wonderful opportunity to watch how and where they slowly slip from reality into archaeology. I’ve provided some examples here and here.
Below you’ll see a new landmark site in the middle of downtown Strasbourg, the Rivetoile “complex.” It’s a shopping center / underground parking garage / apartments / movie theater all rolled into one. The old historic cranes are a reminder of the industrial past, and the water looks wonderful, filled with seagulls, swans, and an exploding community of muskrats:
(By the way, a few years ago it was rare to see a single muskrat, but now there are so many – including some really big, fat ones – and they are not shy about approaching visitors and begging for food. This is probably why the population has exploded.)
But this is about all the visitors and tourists will see. If you don’t mind the smell of urine and the occasional homeless person, you can explore further down the canal and you’ll find the original railroad tracks that were used to pull the boats down the canal:
Back in the day, even this would have been quite modern. The earliest canals relied on horses to pull the barges along.
Ash – POTASH, that is. I first learned about this after driving around the Alsacian countryside and discovering this abandoned mine:
To make matters more interesting, it is located in a small town called Pulversheim,
After a bit of Internet research, it turns out the history is very interesting. Potash was discovered here in 1904 – and at the time, the only other source of potash was in Germany, leading to the Germans having a monopoly on the market. So naturally it was a huge benefit to have a second source. One good source for more information is this site, Les Mines.
This is an authentic Russian Mil Mi-24 attack helicopter, of precisely the sort that chased Rambo.
I took this picture just outside the National History Museum, in Sofia, Bulgaria. Imagine a national history museum that greets visitors with this – how cool is that?!
(Believe it or not, Sylvestor Stallone visited Sofia just a few weeks after I took this picture, planning to film a new movie here.)
Recently I took a guided tour of the Zürich Zoo, and I had the chance to ask one of the zoo keepers why these elephants were sticking their trunks in strange places, as this one is here:
He told me that to keep the elephants happy, they hide individual peanuts in strange places, so the elephants will look for them.
WAIT! STOP! (This is exactly how I reacted when he told me this.) How can it be that a five thousand pound animal will spend hours looking for a little peanut? That’s like me spending hours looking for a single M&M. Sadly, the zoo keeper could not answer my question; he said he did not know.
On that day, I don’t know if I lost respect for elephants (because they are more stupid than I thought) or gained respect for elephants (finding happiness in very simple pleasures). Anyway, it reminds me of a blog that my mother recently wrote, entitled The Zen of Polished Chrome.
This photo is a well-known sight for anyone who’s been to Esslingen am Neckar, a wonderful town in Southern Germany:
Interestingly, there is a similar scene in Strasbourg – and next time I’m in Strasbourg I will take a photo of it. I am curious whether this is just coincidence – or maybe it is the same artist?
I think the most amazing room in the Herriot Musuem is the kitchen, which guests are free to enter and examine. It is a 100% accurate reproduction of how the kitchen would have looked in the 1930’s.
Some items are instantly recognizable: such as a bag of flour or a tin of salt. Some items take on a new light when you see their intended purpose: such as a cabinet that today would hold decorative plates, but back in the day displayed mason jars of canned food. And some items were a real mystery (and still are): the clothes drying rack positioned above the wood oven is a wonderful idea – but was it only used for drying clothes, or also for adding a bit of humidity to the room?
For a long time I have had an idea about how viral pathogens may have contributed to the development of human intelligence.
This is a picture of the vericella zoster virus:
This is a picture of herpes simplex virus:
Once you are infected with either of these viruses, and after the initial infection subsides, the virus will retreat but continue to live dormant in your nerve cells.
Here’s the truly amazing part: these dormant viruses are sensitive your to emotional mood! After infection, at times of emotional stress, both viruses can re-emerge and become infectious again: vericella zoster expresses itself as shingles, an intensely painful disease; and herpes can again erupt and cause severe skin eruptions and infections of the mucous membranes.
So . . . think about what affect these diseases might have had on our ancestors, tens of thousands of years ago? If the early precursors of these diseases were more severe and had a higher mortality (as they usually do), then these viruses might have had a significant impact on the development of human intelligence: those people who were more intelligent and could think more rationally would be better able to control their stress, so they could inhibit these diseases, live longer and produce more offspring; those people who were less intelligent and could think less rationally would be less able to control their stress, so they would be more likely to be re-infected and therefore removed from the breeding population.
Succinctly put, my hypothesis is this: these viruses may have been a driving force that helped shape the development of human intelligence, or possibly favor one species (such as homo sapiens) over another (such as homo neanderthalensis).
Of course, I am a physicist by training, not an evolutionary biologist – so this idea is purely speculation on my part. I’ve tried discussing it with two professors of evolutionary biology, including a very famous professor at Stanford – and unfortunately, they seemed (much) less enthralled by the idea than I am. Since the effects of these viruses are mainly in human flesh and not bones, it is doubtful the archaeological record could provide much elucidation.
I took this snap just north of Bangalore, on the way to the so-called Nandi Hills.
You can see my other Amazing Ants photographs here: