The Medici: Godfathers of the Renaissance

http://www.pbs.org/empires/medici/

The Relative Power of Nuclear Weapons

The relative power of nuclear weapons from kitup.military.com
Infographic by Maximilian Bode.

Roger Scruton – Why Beauty Matters

Seven Wonders of the Industrial World

From the bbc.co.uk website:
The Industrial Revolution changed the world in countless ways – and produced many technical wonders in the process. Seven of the most notable are described here, each one proving that human creativity is as much alive in the modern world as it was in ancient times.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/british/victorians/seven_wonders_01.shtml

Car Design as High Style

See more images here.

The Disappearing Male

The secret reason for the demise of Western Civilization. 

From the cbc.ca website:
“We are conducting a vast toxicological experiment in which our children and our children’s children are the experimental subjects.” Dr. Herbert Needleman

The Disappearing Male is about one of the most important, and least publicized, issues facing the human species: the toxic threat to the male reproductive system.

The last few decades have seen steady and dramatic increases in the incidence of boys and young men suffering from genital deformities, low sperm count, sperm abnormalities and testicular cancer.

At the same time, boys are now far more at risk of suffering from ADHD, autism, Tourette’s syndrome, cerebral palsy, and dyslexia.

The Disappearing Male takes a close and disturbing look at what many doctors and researchers now suspect are responsible for many of these problems: a class of common chemicals that are ubiquitous in our world.

See the video here.

The secret reason for the demise of Western Civilization.

Becoming human: A timeline of human evolution

NewScientist has an interesting interactive timeline of Human evolution. Unfortunately some of the older articles are restricted to subscribers. 

Check out the Timeline of Human Evolution here.

What is a Creativist?

I found this explanation of what a “Creativist” is and it is the best explanation I have been able to find. I think it sums it up clearly, it defines a spirit that is diminishing in our modern era and I think this diminution is a sign of the decline of mankind in general.

From timothyfalconer.com
A creativist is a human being with a heart-felt need to make things. However this need arises, it drives the creativist to write fiction, paint landscapes, compose symphonies, design computer programs, build sailboats, devise political systems … whatever is imaginable. Creativists use creativity to make things that are altogether new. They hope the fruit of their efforts will have lasting influence, and that their ideas will benefit all people. Creativists want to live on through their work. They’d also like to reap some reward while alive.

Sadly today’s society does not place enough emphasis on ingenuity and evolutionary thought. People are afraid of change. Our social environment rewards what has been successful in the past. Today most creative minds are forced to work within the confines of a consumer culture geared to get the little guy to pay his measly earnings for whatever product attracts attention. The best music, the best writing, the best planning, the best filmmaking, the best graphic design, goes toward the buy and sell of the business world. Art for art’s sake is left to the wealthy, the funded elite, the universities, the dedicated poor, and the many part-time creativists who must keep “real jobs” in order to survive.

Read the rest of the article here.

The Western Tradition

A video instructional series on Western civilization. You just have to register and then you can watch 52 half-hour video programs for free. 
Go here to see the series. 

From the learner.org website.

The Western Tradition covers the ancient world through the age of technology, this illustrated lecture by Eugen Weber presents a tapestry of political and social events woven with many strands — religion, industry, agriculture, demography, government, economics, and art. A visual feast of over 2,700 images from the Metropolitan Museum of Art portrays key events that shaped the development of Western thought, culture, and tradition.  

I personally love these videos, mostly because Eugen Weber makes the history so damn interesting. Mr. Weber strikes me as a very classy guy, as if he’s from some more erudite and noble era come to enlighten us. Unfortunately Mr. Weber passed away in 2007.

Eugen Weber info here.

Human exoskeleton suit helps paralyzed people walk

From the reuters.com article:

Paralyzed for the past 20 years, former Israeli paratrooper Radi Kaiof now walks down the street with a dim mechanical hum.

That is the sound of an electronic exoskeleton moving the 41-year-old’s legs and propelling him forward — with a proud expression on his face — as passersby stare in surprise.

“I never dreamed I would walk again. After I was wounded, I forgot what it’s like,” said Kaiof, who was injured while serving in the Israeli military in 1988.

“Only when standing up can I feel how tall I really am and speak to people eye to eye, not from below.”

The device, called ReWalk, is the brainchild of engineer Amit Goffer, founder of Argo Medical Technologies, a small Israeli high-tech company.

Something of a mix between the exoskeleton of a crustacean and the suit worn by comic hero Iron Man, ReWalk helps paraplegics — people paralyzed below the waist — to stand, walk and climb stairs.

Read the article here.