February 2012
19 posts
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100 days till the transit of Venus...
…and she’s already looking amazing, here to the bottom right of the Moon. Jupiter is just visible in the top left of the picture, taken by yours truly over London about an hour ago. In case you haven’t looked in the night sky this weekend, get outside right now. What you can see, through the naked eye, is what astronomers call a triple conjunction. Yesterday and today, the Moon,...
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Historical botanical illustration of the day
Gardenia taitensis, also known as Tahitian Gardenia or Tiare Flower, is a species within the Rubiaceae family of flowering plants. The anglicized name Tahitian Gardenia is something of a misnomer since it is neither native nor naturalised in Tahiti. It was recorded there for the first time, however, by the naturalists Joseph Banks and Daniel Solander, when they landed on the island in...
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Historical botanical illustration of the day
Arum Italicum, commonly known as ‘Italian Lords and Ladies’ is a member of the family Araceae – a group of monocotyledonous plants whose flowers are borne on a type of fleshy stem, called a spadix, surrounded by a leaf-like curved bract. Watercolours on paper, Sydney Parkinson, Madeira, 1768. Via nhm.ac.uk
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Historical botanical illustration of the day
Dicliptera bracteata is a species within the Acanthaceae family of flowering plants. Acanthaceae is a group of dicotyledonous plants containing almost 250 genera and about 2,500 species. The dicotyledons, also known as dicots, are plants whose seed typically has two embryonic leaves or cotyledons. There are around 199,350 species within this group. Flowering plants that are not...
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Historical botanical illustration of the day
Bougainvillea was discovered by French botanist Philibert Commerçon along the coasts of Brazil in the 1760s.
The naturalist named the plant after his captain Louis-Antoine de Bougainville, with whom he sailed around the world aboard La Boudeuse.
Also on board was Commerçon’s housekeeper and mistress, Jeanne Baré, who was disguised as a man since women were strictly forbidden on...
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Aphrodite’s Island
When French explorer Louis-Antoine de Bougainville landed at Tahiti in 1768, he immediately named the island ‘La Nouvelle Cythère’ (New Cytheria) after the birthplace of Aphrodite, the Greek goddess of love.
The origin of Aphrodite’s name is unknown but according to the poet Hesiod it derived from ‘aphros’ – Greek for ‘foam’ – suggesting her full name meant “risen from foam”....
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The sinister side of fairy tales
From Enchantment to Down, by Paris-based photographer Thomas Czarnecki, is a collection of photographs depicting fairy-tale heroines in scenes that are darker than their idyllic stories.
Above, ‘On the Other Shore – The Little Mermaid’.
Via gizmodo.com.au
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Sea Foam Blue
Sea Foam Blue is a performance from a trio of dancers and animators known as Wives, taking place as part of the 33rd annual Rhubarb Festival at the Buddies in Bad Times Theatre in Toronto this evening.
The central character is a sexually confused mermaid caught between wanting to mate as a fish and being attracted to Ladies’ Man, a drunken sailor who resembles Leonard Cohen.
For Wives...
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Wow! Mermaid tails for sale!
US$2,250 for the basic silicone model. Add on a full or tattered dorsal fin for US$250 extra. Made by Eric Ducharme, otherwise known as The Mertailor.
Pictures via Chris Cumley, a collection of which can be viewed alongside an interview with the photographer on Mermaid author Carolyn Turgeon’s I Am A Mermaid blog.
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Celebrities as mermaids #3
Stretching the term ‘celebrity’ just a little here I feel but this is Courtney Stodden, who as far as I can gather is famous for being the 17 year-old bride of 51 year-old actor Doug Hutchison.
Anyway, click on the link below for a few more.
Via huffingtonpost.com
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Celebrities as mermaids #2
Katy Perry by David LaChapelle.
Via au.lifestyle.yahoo.com
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Celebrities as mermaids #1
Julianne Moore by Annie Leibovitz
Via for-redheads.tumblr.com via Hansol on Pinterest
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Little Mermaid illustrators – a brief history #5
Anton Lomaev (1971-present) was born in Vitebsk, Belarus. His version of the Little Mermaid was published in 2009.
Via lomaevart.com
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Little Mermaid illustrators – a brief history #4
Lisbeth Zwerger (1954-present) was born in Vienna, Austria. Her version of The Little Mermaid came out in 2004 and last year the illustrations from this were used in an iPad app described as “the first ever underwater storybook experience”. She won the Hans Christian Andersen Award in 1990.
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Little Mermaid illustrators – a brief history #3
Boris Diodorov (1934-present) was born in Moscow, Russia. His version of The Little Mermaid was published in French in 1998 as ‘La petite Sirène’. He was nominated for the Hans Christian Andersen Award in 2000.
Via cizgilimasallar.blogspot.com
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Little Mermaid illustrators – a brief history #2
Edmund Dulac (1882-1953) was a French book illustrator born in Toulouse, who moved via Paris to London at the age of 22.
His pictures of the Little Mermaid featured in ‘Stories from Hans Christian Andersen’, published in 1911 by Hodder & Stoughton – a firm with which he retained a long association.
Dulac became a British Citizen in 1912 and among his many achievements, ended up...
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Little Mermaid illustrators – a brief history #1
Thomas Vilhelm Pedersen (1820-1859) was a Danish artist best known for being the first to illustrate the fairy tales of Hans Christian Andersen.
While Andersen’s earliest stories were published without pictures, as his popularity grew, a new five volume collection of his works was released in 1849 with 125 illustrations by Pedersen - a young naval officer at the time.
In Denmark...
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The age of the great plant hunter continues
A small group of “great plant hunters” are making the majority of the world’s botanical discoveries, a study led by Oxford University has revealed.
The report, which is published in this week’s Proceedings of the Royal Society B, revealed that more than 50 percent of the world’s plant species have been discovered by just two percent of plant collectors.
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