The Water Cube

The National Aquatics Center in Beijing China is an architectural marvel. From the picture on page 166, the walls seem to be semi-transparent to some extent. How does one make a semi-transparent wall that can support anything? 

The building seems to be very large, and it is very cool to look at. Even though the architect did not use water, or anything looking like water, I still get a sense of water when I look at it. After doing some research on it, I discovered that the walls can actually change color. How cool is that?

So it turns out that I have seen this building before. In 2008, it was home to the Olympic swimming competitions. who would have known that most of the people in the class have already seen a building that is being featured in our book?

The building has gained popularity ever since it was built, and many movie productions have featured scenes filmed in the Water Cube, including the recently released Black Swan.

The building has one several awards. In a report from a jury who selected the building as its winner, they said: 

"The special award for the most accomplished work in the section Atmosphere is awarded to the Australian architecture firm PTW Architects, CSCEC + Design and Arup for the project National Swimming Centre, Beijing Olympic Green, China. The project demonstrates in a stunning way, how the deliberate morphing of molecular science, architecture and phenomenology can create an airy and misty atmosphere for a personal experience of water leisure"

The building still maintains its popularity as a tourist attraction when it underwent a two year revamp that turned a large section of the building into an indoor water park.

Terrorism

So I bet everyone reading this knows exactly who the guy is, and exactly what he is famous for. However, I doubt many know about his childhood, and the early stages of the man that would grow up to be known as the most powerful terrorist in the world.

Osama bin Laden, whose full name is Osama bin Mohammed bin Awad bin Laden, was born on March 10, 1957. He was born to his father’s tenth wife. His mother, Hamida al-Attas, divorced his father early on, and remarried one of Osama’s father’s friends. Osama then grew up in a household with four step siblings.
Osama bin Laden went to a secular school named Al-Thager Model School, and then went to college at Al-Thager Model School. Though neither school was radical-Islam based, bin Laden showed his interest in religion. He primarily studied the Quran and jihad. Many people feel that it was in college that bin Laden was first exposed to radical Islam.

When he was 17 Osama married his first of five wives. As it turns out, all of them have either divorced him or have gone missing in action. His father was killed in an airplane flown by an American, and his brother crashed an airplane into power lines while in Texas which led to his death.

Apparently, bin Laden did not grow up to hate Americans for who they are, but for what they did. He felt that America aided many anti-Muslim war efforts including America’s support of the Israeli forces in 1982. It is this that led to the 9-11 attacks, and it is this that led to the following statement:

"God knows it did not cross our minds to attack the towers, but after the situation became unbearable—and we witnessed the injustice and tyranny of the American-Israeli alliance against our people in Palestine and Lebanon—I thought about it. And the events that affected me directly were that of 1982 and the events that followed—when America allowed the Israelis to invade Lebanon, helped by the U.S. Sixth Fleet. As I watched the destroyed towers in Lebanon, it occurred to me punish the unjust the same way: to destroy towers in America so it could taste some of what we are tasting and to stop killing our children and women."
                                                                 
                                                                  – Osama bin Laden, 2004

Samba - Sweet Shoes, not a Sweet Painter

So I opened up the book to the reading assignment to find something to blog on, and the very opening picture catches my attention. There is a little child soldier with his hands up in surrender. But then I notice, he has a strange appendage growing out of his hip. At this point I pause, thinking what the heck is going on here?

I decided to read the caption at the bottom in order to be able to determine if the artist was in to some bizarre mutation type stuff or something. As it turns out, Cheri Samba was trying to show that it is an adult hiding behind the boy in a menacing way.

This bothers me. Not because of the meaning of the man, or the situation that the boy is in, but because there is absolutely no way that that hand can be attached to a full sized man. First off, the angle of the wrist suggests that the arm is angled around 20 degrees south of east. Estimating the mans arm to be around 2 feet, this would at best put the mans shoulder near the boys left thigh.

With the shoulder position considered, the man would have to be located right about where the AK-47 is located (by the way if there is such thing as a Gold Ak-47, I want one). With the body position considered, the man would either have to be sitting on the ground, born with no legs, or standing in a 3 foot deep hole in the ground. I am not an accredited Microsoft Paint artist, so bare with my attempt to show the man in actual size.

Perhaps I am looking in to this painting a little too much, but I feel that an artist should either paint the world as defying the laws of physics or sticking to them. Picasso defied the laws, and his paintings looked good. Samba here paints a realistic world, with gravity obeyed, size ration obeyed, color obeyed (neglecting the gold ak), and yet seems to forget how big the average adult human is.

Samba sucks as a painter, but I sure do like the shoes.

Swirly Thing vs. Palms

On page 158 I saw something that looked kinda cool. It was a giant swirl of dirt, placed in a large body of water, as seen to the side. But then I thought, well, that is sort of worthless. Its not big enough to do anything on, and it is not that creative of a shape. I guess I am biased, because I have seen better. But why is this hunk of junk in the book as opposed to what I have seen? Perhaps it is because this writer refuses to include anything of Arab origin.

I bet some of you have seen what I am about to show you, but I bet there are also a large number who have not. The people of the United States tend to ignore some really cool stuff just because it does not exist between the Atlantic and the Pacific.

The structures that greatly exceed the "swirly thing" that I speak of are commonly known as Palms. They are located in the city of Dubai which is in the United Arab Emirates. For those of you who didn't do so well in geography, thats to the right of Saudi Arabia on a map. Below is a picture of one of the Palms:

There is really no denying that that thing is absolutely awesome. They are completely man made, they have roads, buildings, and houses on them..... and did I mention that they can be seen from space?

I feel that anyone writing a Humanities book needs to take a field trip to Dubai. They have structures seen from space, and they even have the world's tallest building, they have islands that are in the shape of continents, forming a miniature world. If you think the "swirly" looks cool, try googling Dubai.

Background info for United Fruit Co

So I decided to go with a short poem for my last blog of the midterm. Pablo Neruda uses an American owned company that specializes in the sales of fruit from third world countries - bananas in particular. I have never really been one to read into a poem and try to find the underlying story, but in this one, I feel that we can not ignore what the writer is trying to say.

For some background information, The United Fruit Co was disliked by many of the indigenous people from the Latin Americas. The company specialized in screwing the little guy by land control. What I mean by this is that the company purchased way more land than they would ever use, and then withheld it from peasant farmers who wanted a cut in the banana industry. Capitalism at its finest... right?

So just when we all thought preventing a poor man from supporting his family, we find out the company may have been involved in killing some of the low-lifes. On November 12, 1928 a group of workers were striking against the banana king. Unfortunately for these workers, Mr Banana King got pissed. The Columbia army, led by General Cortés Vargas opened fire on the strikers. The shooting of unarmed strikers, according to some congressman, was ordered by the United Fruit Company. I know the numbers vary greatly, but it is estimated that between 47 and 2000 people were murdered in what is now known as the Banana Massacre. I guess this picture below shows how they meant business.

Jacob Lawrence

Well, today I opened the book up to find something cool to blog on. Unfortunately, I was rather disappointed at the underwhelming selection. I troubled for a bit, but then decided to do a blog on Jacob Lawrence. At first I did not know who he was - all I knew is that he draws just like all of the little junior highers. With a quick wikipedia expedition, I learned a decent amount about Mr. Lawrence.

Besides his name sounding like some boring banker, Jacob was born in 1917 and croaked it 11 years ago in 2000. He describes himself as having a style of "dynamic cubism." However, I would refer to it more as "dynamic boring-ism."

His self portrait, featured right below here, looks more like the work of someone who can't seem to figure out depth or colors.

Jacob Lawrence was known (though I have not figured out how he ever became famous) for portraying the life and struggle of African Americans. One thing I actually like about this dude is that he used multiple paintings to tell a story. His most famous story series is "Migration of the Negro" which is comprised of 60 panels. Ironically, people must have felt uncomfortable using the given title, so it is now called "The Migration Series" which sounds tons more politically correct.

In 2007, the white house was spruced up with one of Lawrence's paintings. It was called "The builders" and was painted in 1947. A staggering 2.5 million dollars was spent on the painting - don't worry, I took the time to look up whether or not it was tax dollars; it wasn't.

Frank Lloyd Wright - Out of nature and into the city

Most of us known Frank Lloyd Wright as the guy who has all of those nature based buildings... At least that is what I thought of him until I opened our marvelous book and saw some very different Frank Lloyd Wright buildings than what I expected. At first, I just marveled at the architectural genius that was displayed in three out of the four pictures on pages 92 and 93 (Yes, I regret to inform you that the mundane Seagram Building did not make the cut).

After the "wow" factor had its time to work, I actually began to think about the FLW buildings a little more. Then it dawned on me; I have seen one of these before. I realized that the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum was from a movie produced not too long ago. After a quick google search, I came to find that it was featured in The International. As I recall, the movie was a bit of a let-down, except for one pretty sweet shootout scene that took place in Mr. Wright's creation.

This building, so very much unlike Fallingwater, shows just how versatile FLW really is. It takes skill in order to be able to create a style of building such as Fallingwater, but it takes an extremely talented person to be able to have one style, and then to be able to completely put on a different hat and create something so unlike his other works.

Frank Lloyd Wright has the ability to captivate those who view his works. Just now, as I wrote this blog, a friend walked up, stopped, and said "Man, that's a cool building!" while she indicated the bottom right picture on page 93. Frank Lloyd Wright chose to stand out with this creation, while other times he chooses to blend in.

Here is a link to the scene, but I warn it is quite gruesome, and your mother may not approve of the language.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QyaAuRYNuS0
The architecture of the building can been seen more towards the end of the scene, starting around 6 minutes.