We are going to manage to catch this. There are a number of programs on streaming tv regarding new finds of terra cotta courtiers, etc. Interesting stuff! Look up: Xian tombs.
Terra Cotta Warriors exhibit…
by CJ | Aug 10, 2017 | Journal | 76 comments
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We saw an earlier tour a number of years ago (at Nat Geo in DC IIRC). Very interesting a well worth it. I can’t imagine how cool the actual site is !
The actual site is quite awesome, being spread across several buildings (covering the digs and a museum). We visited in Sept/Oct 2010. The rest of Xian was good too, but the downside was the air pollution in the region. Surprisingly (to me) Beijing’s air was really clear that trip. Loved China and would go back in a heartbeat.
I was there with my father in 1985. Truly amazing. Meant to take my family to the National Geographic exhibit in 2009 but got my dates wrong. Agree about returning to China. I have been four tomess and wound happily return every year.Comment
Potter Clay More!
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I’m considering getting some terra cotta and beige Sculpey clay, just to try it. — I’m also curious how they create ball jointed dolls and other things using whatever resins, vinyl, etc. they use. — I haven’t tried sculpting (or just playing with clay) since I was a kid, and I feel the urge to try it.
I love ancient China (and Japan); I wish I could go see them!
I’m lucky enough to have had the chance to see the site in China. It is awe inspiring. (also very touristy and tacky in places). How much is going on Tour? I know it’s coming to the UK sometime, but I’m not sure how much of the grandeur will travel with it. It’s mostly the scale that is so impressive, and just having a dozen or so representative figures wouldn’t be the same.
@weeble Aside — I ordered a nice trio of handmade small shallow bowls, with a blue and brown glaze, from Weeble and they arrived this week, wrapped within an inch of their ceramic lives, very professional and handsome. I’m looking forward to using them this weekend for fruit or sauce, possibly veggies. Thank you, Weeble. (These were through her Whistling Fish shop on Etsy.) — Note: I believe we have at least one other potter among the fans. If you all have shops on Ebay or Etsy (or elsewhere online) please let folks know.
SmartCat is a potter too but I don’t know if she has a shop/online sales or not. Certainly the work she has picked in the past for her avatar is lovely!
Thanks all for for the notes about pottery.
I haven’t been posting a lot lately to due keyboard issues. However I do visit and read often.
Thank YOU BCS! That size is one I also use for kitty noms (half a can or so of wet fudz) and nuts for snacking. SmartCat has some beautiful pottery too, and I’m pretty sure there are a few other potters lurking in our midst.
@Raesean , @Weeble , @SmartCat — Thank you all! With my situation slightly better now, but with much still in storage to go through, I’m missing kitchen utensils I need, for instance, and know I’ll be weeding out things I no longer need or can’t fit in my apartment. — SmartCat’s someone I’ve known indirectly as a fellow Farscape fan and forum/online friend for a long time now, but we’ve never really corresponded. Still, she’s great. Thus why I was asking about other potters, besides a wish to support the artists here among fans. 🙂
me too, but my stuff is not wholly practical! for Japan I have to seal the insides of my bottles with PVA so they can be used for flowers – is it okay to put website details on here?
THere are a number of sites with terra cotta warriors, courtiers, etc, and the bodies, as I take it, may have been press-molded, while the faces were perhaps press-molded to certain types, then given particular features while the clay was still unset. This would eliminate certain labor-instead-of-art processes of production, freeing the artists to do their thing at the last. One, at another site, had real clothing and wooden arms, both of which have decayed away, leaving limbless courtiers. Fascinating period. I have a suspicion it was a coveted honor to be thus invited to share the afterlife. Certainly it beats human sacrifice as in the Shang dynasty. Lady Hao, of that dynasty, took 16 people and 6 dogs with her into her afterlife.
Comment My son and I caught the Terra Cotta Warriors exhibit at the Field Museum in Chicago last summer by accident (we were in town for a few days to see a Cubs game and do a little sightseeing, saw it advertised). Marvelous experience, and the souvenirs at the gift shop were, in our opinion, above average and worth a look. They help keep the exhibit fresh in our minds.
FWIW, Worldcon will be in Dublin in 2019. (So at some point after that, it can be Dublin again.)
(Sorry…I couldn’t resist.)
Lol! That it would be!
May be of interest:
Scientists discover 91 volcanoes below Antarctic ice sheet
I did know there was magma involved over a wide area. Theoretically, or at least by some theory, releasing the weight of ice could have an interesting effect.
OTOH, this is one reason researchers try to be careful about data down there, because SOME melt may be due to earth’s heat, and they are trying to pin down and quantify causes.
If Antarctic vulcanism is moving into an active phase, it will throw a lot of calculations into a cocked hat.
Doesn’t negate the atmospheric CO2 observations at the Mauna Loa Observatory’s Scripps-NOAA Earth Systems Research Laboratory:
https://www.esrl.noaa.gov/gmd/webdata/ccgg/trends/co2_data_mlo.png
It does not. But volcanoes are also producers of c02. Now, my bet, with yours, is that the c02 Mauna Loa is measuring comes predominantly from places northward, but the fact remains that at any time, Mama Nature can deliver us a punch, and being prepared and having answers is a good thing.
Very much in agreement. After all, I’m very much closer to the Juan de Fuca Plate boundary, aka Cascadia Subduction Zone, if a bit more upwind from the Yellowstone Super-volcano!
Nevertheless, may I also suggest agreement it’s wrong to use things we cannot control as excuses to avoid taking action on what we can control.
p.s. Volcanic causes since the Deccan, Siberian, and Columbian Traps have been highly individually episodic.
The short version being, the CO2 numbers are observed from a combination of human-made and Earth-natural processes, but if a sizable geologic, atmospheric, or astronomical event (meteor or asteroid) occurs, then that could add a significant factor to the already-high predictions. Geothermal warming under Antarctica, and any possible volcanic activity from under ice sheets or newly exposed raw land could add somewhat to that.
This summer here has been milder, within normal, compared to the previous two record-breaking hot summers and a very mild winter; and other hot or record-breaking summers over the last ten years. I don’t know now whether to expect a normal winter or a warmer-than-normal winter like last year. But enough years with higher highs and higher lows, and I’m a believer that we’re seeing an overall warming trend and global climate change influenced (or caused) by human interference.
I’m 51. There’s an above-average chance I could live to 100. That’s not quite to the US tricentennial, but it’s enough, I could see more hefty climate change. And the young adults born since 2000 sure will. Let’s hope the US in particular wakes up about this and takes positive action; though of course, it’s up to all countries too.
Yes, those numbers measure total CO2 for recent history. But from ice core bubbles we have data on the atmospheric CO2 going back 800,000 years; long, long before we started burning fossil fuels, e.g. coal, 4000BCE in China, 300BCE in Europe, and even then only to minor extents. We KNOW how much is man made and how much is natural.
The exhibit, btw, was really great. It was larger than the Pompeii exhibit, and also included the successors to Shih Huang Di, who was Qin—the Han came in, wrote the history, and continued pottery figure burials, but in the two-foot-tall size, also using real fabrics, and having wooden arms, neither of which survived as well as the clay.
It also pointed up one of the most cogent reasons for not immediately excavating the central mound: they found one pit in which the figures had conserved the colors of original paint. They took one into the sunlight, and the minute the sun hit the paint, it began to curl up and peel off, a loss of the information immediate and irrevocable except in photos.
I popped onto Amazon to check something, and they have an ad for “The New Statement Earring.” So naturally, I had to think of hani voyage earrings. 😀
I intend to watch a movie and read some tonight, and *not* watch news coverage for a day or so. It feels too much like that episode where our heroes land in an alternate dystopian timeline. How is it they always know the minute they get there that something’s gone wrong? If you were living in it, would you ever know or notice when the branch point was, what went wrong? How would you know it’s not “supposed to be that way?” Just pondering. (And it makes the dystopian future stuff I’d had in one story-universe plan look all too plausible, instead of too improbable, like I’d thought. I’m not sure I’m happy that’s so, but at least it’s, er, not so impossible. Geez….)
I may decide on a comedy instead of science fiction, but I have a backlog to watch, so….
The To-Read Pile is in danger of falling over, even the virtual one. So, reading and watching.
I found myself in similar emotional straights Tuesday night, ended up watching the first Addams Family movie which was a good choice and shut up my brain enough that I could sleep.
I spent Tuesday evening reading The Stone Sky. My socks will be back eventually, though it may be hard to grab them as they go by. (Cometary orbits are so much fun.)
Movie suggestions for BCS’s evening:
Adventures in Babysitting
Pirates of the Caribbean
Secret Life of Pets
Galaxy Quest
Ice Age
OOOOH Galaxy Quest would be my choice .. love it and of course lovely Alan Rickman. there would have been a sequel if he hadn’t died ……
Hmm, the only ones I’ve seen of those are Galaxy Quest and Pirates of the Caribbean and the two Addams Family movies from, wow, time flies! (I’m looking forward to the Orville this fall, btw.) So any of those would be good choices. I may have to check out the others soon.
Also likely on the list to check out: Harry and the Hendersons, because it’s been a while.
My copy of Space Camp (80’s movie) is maybe still in storage. So I broke down and pre-ordered a blu-ray, because the dvd’s are, whew, prohibitive now. That’s supposed to be released around the end of September.
I wrote some last night, scrapped some of that, kept some, and reread an old draft idea, which seems like a fair start. I’ve got a couple of story ideas I want to write out, but don’t yet have more than two or three characters and a setup, no plot points to hang on them past that. One of the ideas, I wrote some, but had interference from another two ideas (LOL) which hindered it. … So, I’m encouraged to write more, but I really wish (1) my writing impulses would calm down and concentrate on one idea to completion, and (2) dang it, come up with beginning, middle, and ending, and something that feels original to me, so it’ll be exciting. That said, after reading some comments from you, CJC, on various non-writing things lately, plus some writerly rumblings from John Scalzi’s blog, and YouTube ComicCon videos of various actors — I at least feel like I should pick up the writing again and try to find a way to handle points 1 and 2. 🙂
So therefore, I didn’t end up watching a movie last night, but now want to tonight.
And…yeah, taking a break from watching the news. Entirely too dang-fool crazy-stupid stuff going on.
The most musically perfect movie I know of is Mary Poppins. Each song is very different, but each melts into the others. It’s also fun to watch and sing along with.
I adore Mary Poppins. It was the first movie I saw as a child… And the Sound of Music was the second, so I tend to think that movies consist of perfect, superb singing… And Julie Andrews.
When I was 6 and saw Mary Poppins, I was swept away by the beauty of the song, Feed the Birds. I still find it exquisite and have it on my IPad, which I am typing this on. Perhaps I will go play it now. Thanks for the indirect suggestion, Tommie!
It looks like you will be seeing a 92% eclipse in Spokane today, and the weather will be good.
https://www.timeanddate.com/eclipse/in/usa/spokane
Happy viewing!
We had 99%. Still too bright to look at, as bright as around sundown, some cooling, some noticable dimming–enough that the IR-sensored patio lights came on because my sister and I were out in the yard trying to take pictures of the projection through field-glasses. It was about like a second-day waxing moon. But it was enough that I saw the shimmering “shadow bands” on the yard. Cool. Officially I guess those are “twinkle”.
Science News has a story about the warriors and other objects in the tombs – there are three distinct blends of clay used, one without sand in the tiles, one with sand for the warriors, and one with sand and grass for the bird statuettes (apparently to make them lighter weight).
Today, I ran across a musical piece, “Raga Malgunji,” by Ravi Shankar, and my mind did a double-take. “Ragi Malguri?” then, “Jumanji?” Oh well, I thought I’d share the fun.
That raga is almost 9 minutes long, relaxing and contemplative, for sitar and other Indian instruments.
I wish I knew more about Indian culture and music.
Humorous (but true) story for cat lovers, by First Dog on the Moon.
The radioactive cat and the well-meaning cartoonist
Chu Chu had to undergo radiation treatment for her thyroid which was either overactive or underactive. The only problem was her snot would be radioactive – and she sneezed a lot
Now there’s a superpower for ya. Slimer Cat!
Hurricane Harvey is due to make landfall southwest of here on Saturday morning. I’m in Houston. We’re expected to get around 15 inches of rain, with the hurricane stalling out after it makes landfall around Corpus Christi, where they will get around 3 feet of storm surge and rainfall or more. The hurricane has reached Category 3, a major storm with characteristics like Ike or Allison both.
I’ve called friends, who also will be affected, in case. I’m going to wait on a grocery trip until Monday to Wednesday, when we’ll still be getting rain, likely, but it may have settled down some by then. At lunchtime, I’ll be cooking some in preparation, and I have likely enough canned food, though low on drinks.
I’ve now been in the new apartment 6 months. I’m a little nervous about the winds and rain affecting the apartments, and hope I don’t get flooded, but I’m sort of expecting it will be all right. No one’s panicking around the complex. I’ve been through many major hurricanes and tropical storms here in town, so I know what to expect. (However, if I could’ve made the decision to evacuate a couple of days before Ike hit, I would have. That was bad, but we made it.) I have the cat carriers and can get a bag packed today, but likely, this won’t be needed.
If possible, I’ll post again tomorrow with an update. If I lose power, well, then it’ll be a while after, depending on how fast power is restored. — Again, Houston is expected now to be on the outer edge of the hurricane watch area, so we shouldn’t get the worst of the storm. Folks south of us are going to take a major hit, though, comparable to Allison, Katrina, Rita, or Ike. Things are going about like usual before a hurricane.
To give you an idea: We’re getting light rain already, which will build over the next day, culminating in when the storm reaches us (us meaning my entire city and a large section of the Texas coast). After that, there will be days of rain if it stays as predicted. It is also possible something odd could happen. These storms can park a while and build, or they can veer sharply before landfall. This one is expected to move in slowly, increasing the rains and flooding.
We’ll see how things go! — About to call friends again so we’re coordinated on plans.