What if the Black Plague had killed off almost all Europeans? Then the Reconquistanever happens. Spain and Portugal don't kickstart Europe's colonization of other continents. And this is what Africa might have looked like.
The map – upside down, to skew our traditional eurocentric point of view – shows an Africa dominated by Islamic states, and native kingdoms and federations. All have at least some basis in history, linguistics or ethnography. None of their borders is concurrent with any of the straight lines imposed on the continent by European powers, during the 1884-85 Berlin Conference and in the subsequent Scramble for Africa. By 1914, Europeans controlled 90% of Africa's land mass. Only the Abyssinian Empire (modern-day Ethiopia) and Liberia (founded in 1847 as a haven for freed African-American slaves) remained independent.
This map is the result of an entirely different course of history. The continent depicted here isn't even called Africa [1] but Alkebu-Lan, supposedly Arabic for 'Land of the Blacks' [2]. That name is sometimes used by those who reject even the name 'Africa' as a European imposition. It is therefore an ideal title for this thought experiment by Swedish artist Nikolaj Cyon. Essentially, it formulates a cartographic answer to the question: What would Africa have looked like if Europe hadn't become a colonizing power?
To arrive at this map, Cyon constructed an alternative timeline. Its difference from our own starts in the mid-14th century. The point of divergence: the deadliness of the Plague. In our own timeline, over the course of the half dozen years from 1346 to 1353, the Black Death [3] wiped out between 30 and 60% of Europe's population. It would take the continent more than a century to reach pre-Plague population levels. That was terrible enough. But what if Europe had suffered an even more catastrophic extermination – one from which it could not recover?
To read more - http://bigthink.com/strange-maps/africa-uncolonized
Shadyside, November 24 — The Shadyside Police Department reported a sharp spike in violent crime over the weekend, attributed to the early start of Christmas music in area stores.
The Department reported 7 aggravated assaults, 2 robberies at gunpoint, 3 car thefts and 24 arrests for public intoxication.
At a press conference late Sunday evening, Police Chief Jim Burgles remarked, “It appears that many subjects have been provoked by near-constant playing of Christmas carols throughout the city.”
One victim of one such a crime, Martha Vanderwhip, told of her horrifying experience. “I was shopping in Target, looking at the salad spinners on sale, and this man came up to me and started screaming,” recounted Mrs. Vanderwhip tearfully. “He was saying, ‘I can’t take it any more, I can’t take it any more,’ and he smelled like eggnog. He was holding this pink Christmas tree and waving it around like a weapon, knocking over all the candy cane displays.”
Store security staff managed to tackle the man and restrain him with strands of tinsel, according to Shadyside Target Manager Bing Whitman. The deranged man has not been identified by police.
The City Mental Health Commission also noted a rise in the volume of calls to the Municipal Crisis Hotline over the weekend. “People with fragile mental health may be driven over the edge by the unseasonably early excess of holiday spirit,” said Commissioner Luisa Gonzalez, “and they should not be afraid to seek help.”
Origin site - http://shadysideusa.wordpress.com/2008/11/26/violent-crime-spikes-over-weekend-due-to-early-christmas-music/
The Ouija board is so simple and iconic that it looks like it comes from another time, or maybe another realm. The game is not as ancient as it was designed to look, but those two arched rows of letters have been spooking people for over 125 years. Actually, the roots of the board go back even farther, according to Ouija historian Robert Murch. To understand where Ouija boards (generically called “talking boards”) come from, you have to go back to middle of the 1800s, to three sisters in New York.
[The Fox Sisters, Credit: Wikimedia Commons]
The Fox Sisters claimed to be mediums to the spirit world. In public demonstrations, they would ask questions of the spirits and receive audible knocks back on the wall, which they would translate into letters of the alphabet. The sisters popularized the growing movement known as Spiritualism,which held that the living could contact the spirits of the dead, who had secret knowledge to impart.
During and after the Civil War, people who had lost loved ones became enchanted with the idea of communicating with the dead, and came up with all different ways to contact the spirit world. In 1886 the fledgling Associated Press ran an article in papers all over the country about these new “talking boards” coming out of the spiritualist movement in Ohio. A few years later in 1890, a businessman named Charles Kennard pulled together a small group of investors and formed the Kennard Novelty Company to exclusively make and market talking boards...
Ouija, it turned out, was also a great thing to do on a date. The original Ouija board was placed on your lap, so your knees would be touching your partner’s knees. Your fingers would be touching your partner’s on the planchette. You might be playing by candle light. However romantic Ouija may have been, it was still innocent enough for Normal Rockwell, who made a painting of a Ouija-playing young couple that appeared in the Saturday Evening Post.
As of 2013, there’s a new version of the Ouija board, which has been redesigned to look even older than the classic board. “They’ve really gone for the older look,” says Ouija historian Robert Murch, “which is cool because people assume these boards have been around for thousands of years, which we know isn’t true, but belief is important to the Ouija board.”
Belief is very important to the Ouija board, especially subconscious belief. Which brings us finally, to how these things work. In 1852, an English physician and researcher named William Carpenter was studying Spiritualist phenomena, and coined the term “ideomotor effect.” The ideomotor effect describes what happens when subconscious thoughts guide muscular movements.
According to Professor Chris French, of the Anomalistic Psychology Research Unit at Goldsmith’s University of London, the ideometer effect can explain why, on the Ouija board, the planchette seems to be moving on its own. In truth, the players are guiding its movement subconsciously.
Some researchers have even tried to study the subconscious using Ouija boards.
To read the full article - http://99percentinvisible.org/episode/o-u-i-j-a/
In 1956, photographer Gordon Parks was hired by Life Magazine to follow and document the everyday life of a southern Black family. Twenty of these photos were published in Life’s September issue that year with an article titled “The Restraints: Open and Hidden.”
Of course, Parks snapped many more photos than actually made it to print, but these were thought to be lost. However, in early 2012 the Gordon Parks Foundation was going through several storage boxes and came upon a taped-up paper package labeled, “Segregation Series.” In it they found 70 more color photographs from Parks’ 1956 work.
Here are just a few of the pics, both the published and the rediscovered…
Feel free to share it with friends and let us know what you think on Twitter with the hashtag #GeekRain.
http://www.steadyrain.com/digital-clarity/infographics/geek-pride-day.aspx
Feel free to share it with friends and let us know what you think on Twitter with the hashtag #GeekRain.
http://www.steadyrain.com/digital-clarity/infographics/geek-pride-day.aspx
