Showing 99 articles
Ultraviolet – the Invisible Light
Author: Florimond KrinsJuly 26, 2016
Produced by the sun and invisible to the naked eye, ultraviolet light can cause sunburn and skin cancer by damaging the genetic material in our skin cells. However, its effects are not only negative, as it kills many of the bacteria and viruses in the atmosphere. It also induces the production of vitamin D in [...]
Renaissance Art and the Enigmatic Genius of Giorgione
Author: Agostino DominiciJuly 25, 2016
The Royal Academy of Arts has recently put together an excellent exhibition presenting some of the greatest painters of the high Renaissance (c. 1490-1530) in a single show. The main intent of the exhibition was to revisit in particular the enigmatic figure of Giorgione, considered by many to be the founder of Venetian painting of [...]
Gobekli Tepe – A New Look at Ancient Civilisation
Author: Florimond KrinsJune 16, 2016
A German archaeologist called Klaus Schmidt found the ancient site of Gobekli Tepe in Turkey in the early 1990s. It took Schmidt almost two decades of digging to unravel only a small part of the site, which is huge (around 30 times larger than Stonehenge). It is composed of large circles of T-shaped columns, most [...]
The Brilliance of the Bard!
Author: Siobhan FarrarJune 10, 2016
It is quite remarkable to consider how many words and phrases in regular use today were first penned by William Shakespeare. The literary critic Bernard Levin picked out a few of them: “If you have ever been tongue-tied, a tower of strength, hoodwinked or in a pickle, if you have knitted your brows, made a [...]
Prometheus the Awakener
Author: Natalya PetlevychJune 10, 2016
Busy as we are, it’s not easy to stop to admire the awakening of life in nature, but the growing light seems to be rekindling us too. Ancient myths tell us a story of another awakening that took place a very long time ago – the awakening of the human mind. One courageous, quick-witted and [...]
The Anthropocene Age
Author: Istvan OrbanMay 17, 2016
More than 40 years have passed since the original report of The Club of Rome entitled The Limits to Growth was authored by Meadows et al. The book demonstrated that an economy built on the continuous expansion of material consumption is not sustainable. It opened the eyes of many people to the environmental problems created [...]
Morphic Fields or the Habits of Nature
Author: Florimond KrinsMay 17, 2016
Some years ago, the biologist Rupert Sheldrake presented a new concept of evolution through what he calls “Morphic Resonance”. His ideas were inspired by a concept studied by Charles Darwin, namely the habits of plants and different organisms. The theory tries to explain the transmission of habits between organisms (animals, plants, unicellular beings). Modern scientists [...]
The Mind – a parent who just can’t say no
Author: Gilad SommerMay 15, 2016
“Nature is enough for everything she asks of us. Luxury has turned her back on nature (… ) pressing man’s intelligence into the development of vices. First she began to hanker after things that were inessential, and then after things that were harmful, and finally she handed the mind over to the body and commanded [...]
Dance and Sacred Stillness
Author: Miha KosirMay 13, 2016
After a long dark night and a very deep sleep a sound like a ray of light ignited a dense inertia. The movement started and there was time and the beginning of the universe. And so the cosmic dance started, moving galaxies, stars, planets and our souls. Shiva Nataraja. Shiva’s dance is life and death, [...]
Could geodesic domes be the homes of the future?
Author: Istvan OrbanMay 13, 2016
They look weird, but cool. Even film-makers are inspired by them: in the famous James Bond movie You only live twice the world leaders gather in a building that has a geodesic dome shape. But what are they like? According to mathematicians, the geodesic dome is a triangulation of a polyhedron to form a close [...]
William Morris, a 19th century idealist
Author: Natalia LemaMay 11, 2016
Although perhaps most famous as an English textile designer, William Morris (24 March 1834 – 3 October 1896) was also an artist, writer, translator and socialist activist. Inspired by the philosophy of John Ruskin (art critic and champion of the Pre-Raphaelites), Morris was against the tasteless industrial production of arts and promoted the hand-crafted art [...]
The Art of Creative Writing
Author: Natalia LemaApril 19, 2016
It is a common belief that writing is only for those who possess a talent and that creativity is something that some people have and others don’t. However, another way of looking at it is to see creativity as one of our human characteristics, and writing as a unique opportunity to nurture our mind and [...]