2 mrt 2010

Circus animals



Many animal welfare and animal rights organizations are opposed to the use of wild animals in circuses. The animal rights groups also oppose the use of domestic animals, such as horses or dogs, in circuses. Many of these groups actively campaign against circuses by staging protests to increase awareness of animal rights' violations and to urge circus-goers to boycott circuses and to patronize only animal-free circuses. The groups assert that animals used in the circus are subjected to cruel and inhumane treatment during training, harsh conditions during transport, and a general lack of mental and physical stimulation.
An official dutch university report concluded;
Wild animals in circuses suffer through the inability to exhibit natural behavior and boredom, lack of exercise, overcrowding and frequent, prolonged transport situations.
From the observed animals in the Netherlands showed 71% clinical abnormalities.
Elephants are the most affected of all circus animals. They are approximately 17 hours per day (unnecessarily) chained to a front and rear leg and have averaged over 10 hours a day deviant behavior, which is a symptom of chronic and severe stress.





28 feb 2010

Fishing village in green Spain




In photography, panning refers to the horizontal movement or rotation of a still or video camera, or the scanning of a subject horizontally on video or a display device.
Movie and television cameras pan by turning horizontally on a vertical axis, but the effect may be enhanced by adding other techniques, such as rails to move the whole camera platform. Slow panning is also combined with zooming in or out on a single subject, leaving the subject in the same portion of the frame, to emphasize or de-emphasize the subject respectively.

In video technology, the use of a camera to scan a subject horizontally is called panning.

The term panning is derived from panorama a word originally coined in 1787 by Robert Barker for the 18th century version of these applications, a machine that unrolled or unfolded a long horizontal painting to give the impression the scene was passing by.


27 feb 2010

The Elephant .........man!!


The Elephant Man is a 1980 drama film based on the story of Joseph Merrick (called John Merrick in the film), a severely deformed man in 19th century London. The film was directed by David Lynch The screenplay was adapted by Lynch, Christopher De Vore, and Eric Bergren from the books The Elephant Man and Other Reminiscences (1923) by Sir Frederick Treves and The Elephant Man: A Study in Human Dignity by Ashley Montagu. It was shot in black-and-white.

The Elephant Man was recognized as a critical and commercial success, and received eight Academy Award nominations, including Best Picture in 1981.

Some critics have dismissed The Elephant Man as an exercise in emotional manipulation, however I believe this completely misses the point. All films are manipulative to some degree, but it is a manipulation in which we as an audience engage by consent. The Elephant Man will stand the final test and it will be appreciated fully by future audiences, in much the same way as Citizen Kane had to wait for some decades until audiences were able to fully comprehend its greatness.





23 feb 2010

Roman aqueducts & waterworks



Although particularly associated with the Romans, aqueducts were devised much earlier in the Near East and Indian subcontinent, where peoples such as the Egyptians and Harappans built sophisticated irrigation systems. Roman-style aqueducts were used as early as the 7th century BC, when the Assyrians built an 80 km long limestone aqueduct, 10 m high and 300 m wide, to carry water across a valley to their capital city, Nineveh.


Purchased film content is downloaded onto an editing work station hard drive and third-party editors manually re-edit the video and audio tracks, removing objectionable content. Some manual re-edits are done by fans