Mappinglife.org’s Map of Life
By Tony on May 15, 2012 | 1 Comment »
We’ve already mentioned this on our Facebook Fanpage, but recent discoveries mean this is definitely blog material.
Mappinglife.org’s Map of Life is an amazing new resource which seeks to integrate species distribution information into that wonderfully recognizable Google Maps interface. You search for an animal, and a magical little overlay shows you where it lives. Visitors to the site can already search for terrestrial vertebrates and limited fish species using both scientific and common names.
The goal is to make the open-source project a Wikipedia-like resource which allows researchers and citizen contributors to help refine and expand upon the content. Nature.com details the development and goals of the project in this recent post.
I immediately fell in love with the Map of Life and only later discovered that one of the creators of the site was an old friend of mine from high school, Robert Guralnick. What a kick! We can’t wait for more additions to the database including plant and select invertebrate species, which should be added later this year. (I’m keeping my fingers crossed for salt-water fish and birds. And dare I wish for nudibranchs?)
Wat Si Chum 360 View
By Tony on May 12, 2012 | No Comments »
Perhaps the most spectacular site in Sukhothai is the enormous Buddha in the ruins of Wat Si Chum. The Buddha’s stunningly elongated fingers are one of the most photographed things in Thailand. (There’s a picture of Thomas in the typical pose in our previous mini-pictorial.) To share this amazing location with everyone, we’ve put up a 360 panorama, so whirl around to your heart’s content.
By the way, I should mention that photographing this site without people in the picture – something which is necessary to make a 360 in such an enclosed space – was no easy task. Thomas is right outside convincing the hordes to stand back while I hurriedly snap away.
Sukhothai Historical Park
By Tony on May 9, 2012 | 2 Comments »
While there may be some debate among historians, Sukhothai is generally considered the birthplace of Thai culture. The sprawling Sukhothai Historical Park preserves what’s left of the first capital of Siam and makes for a leisurely day out biking through the ruins. The site features a series of crumbling monasteries, temples, stupas, palaces, and stunning Buddha statues as well as portions of the original city fortifications.
While not on the same scale as the Southeast Asian super-monuments of Bagan and Angkor Wat, Sukhothai is still quite impressive and rivals the grandeur of Ayutthaya. For its historical and cultural significance, Sukhothai has been declared a UNESCO World Heritage Site, and it’s definitely worth a day or two on the way north to Chiang Mai.
As with Ayutthaya, the Thai government has been playing around with ticketing and ended up with a rather absurd and impractical zone system. To make the situation worse, the current government has eliminated the combined ticket which requires visitors to buy individual tickets for each zone. Because the majority of the best preserved monuments are in the core zone, most visitors limit themselves to that single ticket. Despite the bureaucratic missteps, Sukhothai represents one of Thailand’s architectural and historical highlights.
The Tallest Buddhist Stupa
By Tony on May 7, 2012 | 2 Comments »
The Phra Pathom Chedi in Nakhon Pathom, Thailand is the tallest Buddhist stupa in the world. At 127 metres (417 ft), it’s taller than any stupa, dagobah, chedi, candi, chorten, pagoda or monastic complex anywhere. So how does it measure up to other religious buildings?
Not too bad for a chedi built in the 19th century, but it’s significantly shorter than the minaret at the Hassan II Mosque (210 m /689 ft) in Casablanca, Morocco, which claims the title of the world’s tallest religious monument. It’s also quite a bit shorter than the Ulm Minster (161.5 m /530 ft), which will hold the record for the world’s tallest church until La Sagrada Familia in Barcelona is completed. To be fair, the Phra Pathom Chedi predates both buildings.
No, Buddhists worry less about the height of their buildings and more about the height of their Buddhas. The tallest Buddhist monument in the world is now the recently constructed Spring Temple Buddha in Lushan, China. The Chinese constructed it exactly one meter taller than the Phra Pathom Chedi to claim the record. In fact, the three tallest statues in the world are Buddhas, including the Laykyun Setkyar, which we visited in Monywa, Myanmar.
So what would Buddha think about all this? Somehow, I strongly suspect he wouldn’t care at all. However, I wouldn’t be surprised if » Continue reading this post »
Another Day in Wonderland
By Tony on May 5, 2012 | 5 Comments »
During our travels, I find myself constantly making references to Alice in Wonderland. I think one of the hardest things to convey to family, friends and readers is the disorienting cumulative effect of living in a surrealistic landscape of shifting cultural and environmental norms. Every day is another page in a nonsensical narrative with characters speaking backwards, bombarding us with riddles and inverted logic. Even a simple trip to Seven Eleven can be an excursion into the bizarre. And for some reason, I suddenly seemed to notice it.
I was on a mission to buy potato chips. I always have the same options, but at that particular moment in time they seemed odd: seaweed, grilled lobster, hot and spicy crab, hot chili squid…
Can’t I just have BBQ or nacho cheese?!
A single bag of “Salt and Sour” chips drew my attention; unfortunately, “salt and sour” were the only English words on the bag. As always, I analysed the bag’s pictures for clues. A bottle of vinegar, a lemon, what looked like a glass of orange juice, and a pile of rice. Hmmm. Well, at least it didn’t appear to contain any sea life.
Stepping out of the Seven Eleven, the everyday atmosphere seemed noticeably strange. A group of Nigerian gigalos » Continue reading this post »
