True Colors of Ancient Greek Statues

From smithsonianmag.com:
Call them gaudy, call them kitsch, but archaeologist Vinzenz Brinkmann insists his eye-popping reproductions of ancient Greek sculptures are right on target.

Read this article here.

See more painted statues here.

World population to hit 7 billion in 2012

The world’s population will reach 7 billion in 2012, even as the global community struggles to satisfy its appetite for natural resources, according to a new government projection.

There are 6.7 billion people in the world today. The United States ranks third, with 304 million, behind China and India, according to projections released Thursday by the Census Bureau.

The world’s population surpassed 6 billion in 1999, meaning it will take only 13 years to add a billion people.

By comparison, the number of people didn’t reach 1 billion until 1800, said Carl Haub, a demographer at the Population Reference Bureau. It didn’t reach 2 billion until 130 years later.

“You can easily see the effect of rapid population growth in developing countries,” Haub said.

Read the article here.

Unicorn-like deer spotted in Italy

From the breitbart.com article:
Officials at a nature center in Italy have spotted a 10-month old deer that looks a lot like the mythical unicorn, the Italian news agency ANSA reports.

Instead of a normal pair of antlers, the young buck has only a single horn.

“Our deer may be aware that he is different since he doesn’t allow himself to be seen very easily,” Gilberto Tozzi, director of the Prato Natural Science Center in Tuscany, told ANSA.

Tozzi says an anomaly similar to that of the center’s deer may be responsible for unicorn mythology that dates back to the writings of the Greek historian Herodotus in the Fifth Century B.C.

“It’s proof that the mythical unicorn celebrated in iconography and legends was probably not just a fantastic creature but a real animal,” Tozzi said.

See the article here.

Pandora Radio

I recently discovered this music service called Pandora. It has probably been around for a while but I had never heard of it before. It’s like a radio station that you can direct the playlist by letting it know what type of music or specific bands you like and then rating the tracks it plays with either a thumbs up or down. The thing that I find to be the most useful aspect of Pandora is finding new music and not just typical radio crap. If you have become tired of listening to the same stuff over and over give Pandora a try.

Go to Pandora.
See more about Pandora here.
See more about The Music Genome Project here.

Conversations with History: Victor Davis Hanson

This is an interesting video, however it is nearly an hour long.

From the UCTV youtube channel:
Conversations Host Harry Kreisler welcomes historian and classicist Victor Davis Hanson for a discussion of the Peloponnesian War and its lessons for today. He compares that conflict with the war in Iraq. He talks about imperial ambition, the conflict between civilizations, and military power as an instrument to achieve democratization in the struggle between modernity and tradition.

Fight Over Land Use at Valley Forge

From the nytimes.com article:

A local planning board has approved a proposal to build a $250 million visitor center and conference facilities on privately owned land in Valley Forge National Historical Park. Opponents say the decision increases the risk of commercial development in other scenic and historic national parks.

The Planning Commission of Lower Providence Township, about 15 miles northwest of Philadelphia, voted unanimously late Wednesday in favor of the project, the American Revolution Center.

The center, on 78 acres inside the park, will include a 142,000-square-foot museum commemorating the American War of Independence, a 145,000-square-foot conference complex with as many as 99 rooms for overnight guests, and parking for 600 cars.

The center was conceived by the Valley Forge Historical Society to be the first national museum dedicated to the process of independence from Great Britain. It would be close to where Gen. George Washington’s troops camped during the winter of 1777-78, the period commemorated by the park.
…
“If we can build on hallowed ground that was occupied by George Washington and the Continental Army, then nowhere is safe,” said Cinda Waldbuesser, a spokeswoman for the National Parks Conservation Association. “This is a prime example of what happens when Congress doesn’t provide the funding to purchase the lands.”

Read the article here.