To the 2012 Summer Olympic Games in London have constructed the portable basketball arena.
The 2012 Olympic Games which will take place in London, will be rather burdensome for the British budget. For example, for the Olympic Stadium are invested more 500,000,000 pounds. Besides it, in plans the tens of Olympic objects, sport arenas, and infrastructural complexes. Among the Great Olympic objects is possible to name the Center of Water-sports (by Zaha Hadid), and the 1st Cable Car in London.
But, if the rope-way is necessary to London and after Olympic Games, but the huge basketball stadium it's a absolute anchor for a city. So for economy of the Olympic budget the decision to build portable arena for this sport was accepted.
Portable Olympic Arena
The project of the Basketball Arena which can accept simultaneously twelve thousand spectators, will be developed by the architectural and engineering companies: Sinclair Knight Merz, Wilkinson Eyre and KSS. The main feature of this arena consists that arena will be created from easily erected elements that has allowed to erect all complex for 15 months.
Thus, after the termination of the Olympic and Paraolympic Games this basketball stadium will be quickly disassembled. But not for ever. Further, the basketball arena can be collected again in any place.
Interior of Basketball Arena
Such portable arena will allow to save ten millions pounds. And, if it will be possible to sell this stadium it's even better.
Few people outside of the surfing world realise a debate has been raging for 42-years over which country is responsible for the shortboard revolution. A new surfing documentary from two-time Academy Award nominee David Bradbury seeks to settle the issue once and for all.
Going Vertical opens with some great vintage footage of surfers taking on huge waves on traditional longboards, complete with entertaining wipeouts. The film follows on with a who's who of the surfing universe explaining the significance of the shift from longboard to shortboard surfing. Now known as the shortboard revolution, it is the only time in surfing history that has a name. At the heart of the story are lifelong rivals and surfing royalty American Dick Brewer and Australian Bob McTavish, both now in their sixties (pictured above, promoting the film at the Currumbin surf museum). Filmed in Australia, Hawaii and California, and featuring extraordinary archive footage, the men each have a chance to explain why they were responsible for the shortboard revolution and how the other is, well, a phoney.
Sure, it may sound like two old-timers bickering but their stories are so extraordinary, so hilarious and so entertaining, you soon forget what these two were arguing over in the first place. Interviews with Kelly Slater, Mick Fanning, Layne Beachley, Laird Hamilton and Stephanie Gilmore add some colour as they weigh in on the debate and talk about the effect shortboards have had on the sport. Bradbury knows what he is doing and it shows in this sharp, memorable piece of filmmaking that chops from nostalgic recollections to cutting edge surfing footage like one of the film's stars on a wave.
The only criticism is Australian actor Simon Baker's narration, which sounds flat and lazy compared to the excited and vibrant voices of the surfers. Yet overall Going Vertical is slicker than your average surfing documentary, largely because of the juicy story behind it and the colourful array of characters on screen.This is a must-see for all surfing enthusiasts and lovers of quality documentaries. It is screening in limited release throughout Australian from Thursday, March 25 to Sunday, March 28.
A mummy from ancient Egypt was heavily tattooed with sacred symbols, which may have served to advertise and enhance the religious powers of the woman who received them more than 3,000 years ago.
The mummy's tattoos include two seated baboons depicted between a wadjet eye (top row), a symbol of protection [Credit: Anne Austin]
The newly reported tattoos are the first on a mummy from dynastic Egypt to show actual objects, among them lotus blossoms on the mummy’s hips, cows on her arm and baboons on her neck. Just a few other ancient Egyptian mummies sport tattoos, and those are merely patterns of dots or dashes.
Especially prominent among the new tattoos are so-called wadjet eyes: possible symbols of protection against evil that adorn the mummy’s neck, shoulders and back.
“Any angle that you look at this woman, you see a pair of divine eyes looking back at you,” says bioarchaeologist Anne Austin of Stanford University in California, who presented the findings last month at a meeting of the >American Association of Physical Anthropologists.
The mummy, found in the ancient village of Deir el-Medina, dates from 1300 to 1070 BC [Credit: Anne Austin]
Austin noticed the tattoos while examining mummies for the French Institute of Oriental Archaeology, which conducts research at Deir el-Medina, a village once home to the ancient artisans who worked on tombs in the nearby Valley of the Kings. Looking at a headless, armless torso dating from 1300 to 1070 bc, Austin noticed markings on the neck. At first, she thought that they had been painted on, but she soon realized that they were tattoos.
Hidden history
Austin knew of tattoos discovered on other mummies using infrared imaging, which peers more deeply into the skin than visible-light imaging. With help from infrared lighting and an infrared sensor, Austin determined that the Deir el-Medina mummy boasts more than 30 tattoos, including some on skin so darkened by the resins used in mummification that they were invisible to the eye. Austin and Cédric Gobeil, director of the French mission at Deir el-Medina, digitally stretched the images to counter distortion from the mummy’s shrunken skin.
Because the mummy's skin is distorted and covered in resin, it is difficult to see many tattoos — such as these Hathor cows — with the naked eye [Credit: Anne Austin]
The tattoos identified so far carry powerful religious significance. Many, such as the cows, are associated with the goddess Hathor, one of the most prominent deities in ancient Egypt. The symbols on the throat and arms may have been intended to give the woman a jolt of magical power as she sang or played music during rituals for Hathor.
The tattoos may also be a public expression of the woman’s piety, says Emily Teeter, an Egyptologist at the University of Chicago’s Oriental Institute in Illinois. “We didn’t know about this sort of expression before,” Teeter says, adding that she and other Egyptologists were “dumbfounded” when they heard of the finding.
Some tattoos are more faded than others, so perhaps some were made at different times. This could suggest that the woman’s religious status grew with age, Austin says.
Anthropologist Ghada Darwish Al-Khafif uses infrared imaging to examine tattoos on the mummy's back [Credit: Anne Austin]
Penetrating gaze
She has already found three more tattooed mummies at Deir el-Medina, and hopes that modern techniques will uncover more elsewhere.
Even infrared imaging can’t penetrate an intact mummy’s linen binding. But a nineteenth-century penchant for unwrapping mummies could enable the discovery of more tattoos, says Marie Vandenbeusch, a curator at the British Museum in London. Such examples could provide needed evidence “to really pinpoint the use of those tattoos”, she says.
Austin argues that the scale of the designs, many of them in places out of the woman’s reach, implies that they were more than simple adornment.
This enhanced image of the mummy's skin reveals tattoos of two cows [Credit: Anne Austin]
The application of the tattoos “would’ve been very time consuming, and in some areas of the body, extremely painful”, Austin says. That the woman subjected herself to the needle so often shows “not only her belief in their importance, but others around her as well”.
The British Government is refusing to negotiate with Greece about the return of the so-called Elgin Marbles despite a request to do so from the United Nations, a decision that could prompt Athens to begin legal action for the first time.
Athens prepares legal action over the UK's 'grubby' refusal to negotiate [Credit: Independent]
British campaigners likened the UK’s stance to “clinging on to stolen booty for dear life” and contrasted it with the “generous act” of returning the sculptures to help a friendly country on the brink of economic collapse. Youth unemployment has hit 50 per cent and suicide rates have soared amid a crisis so severe the Financial Times has warned Greece could turn into a “quasi slave economy”.
In 2013, the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO) invited the UK to take part in mediation about the marbles, created 2,500 years ago to decorate the Parthenon temple in Athens. Then last year it asked for a response by 31 March.
However a Government source said the UK “won’t be able to make any significant announcement this side of the [May] election”.
A motion calling for the UK to reply to Unesco and move to return the marbles is to be filed in the House of Commons on Monday.
The failure to respond in time could prompt Greece to abandon decades of diplomacy and take legal action, possibly in the European Court of Human Rights. A team of lawyers in London, including leading QC Geoffrey Robertson and Amal Clooney, wife of actor George, is preparing a “book-length” document setting out the options.
A source who has advised successive Greek governments said the main problem was finding a court to take jurisdiction in the case, but once that hurdle was overcome “then the lawyers are saying there is about a 75 to 80 per cent chance of success”.
The marbles are regarded as some of the finest works of art in history and a symbol of the birth of Western civilisation. Some sculptures were taken to Britain by Lord Elgin in controversial circumstances just over 200 years ago when Greece was ruled by the Ottoman Empire.
Dr Elena Korka, director of antiquities at the Greek Culture Ministry, said the central issue was “reunifying these exceptional, outstanding and most important sculptures, which belong as an integral part of a unique symbolic monument for the whole world”.
“This is the essence of it, making something which exists today as whole as it can be… this is what the public wants, every poll shows it. It’s such an important issue. Even if Greece didn’t ask for it, the whole world would,” she said.
She said if the British authorities relented it would be “a day of true joy, not only for the monument itself but I think for the value of the gesture for the sake of co-operation”. “It would definitely help the [public] morale. It would be a huge boost,” she said.
Asked about the prospect of legal action, Dr Korka said Greece was “still so much into the process of mediation that we’re not thinking of the next step”. “We haven’t exhausted the possibilities so let’s not go so fast,” she said.
She added that the UK’s silence since 2013 was “not so polite really”.
David Hill, chairman of the International Association for the Reunification of the Parthenon Sculptures in Australia, said there was a “growing appreciation even among people who are timid about the prospect of litigation that we have reached the point of last resort if this UNESCO gambit fails. The diplomatic and political strategies of the last 30 years have not produced any progress at all.”
Polls have consistently showed strong support in Britain for returning the marbles. In November, a survey for The Times found there was a two-to-one majority in favour.
Andrew George, chairman of Marbles Reunited and Liberal Democrat MP for St Ives, said: “One of our friends is down on their uppers and we can offer something to them that might make their lives easier and give them a lift, which can only be good for their economy.
“It would be a generous act which would improve Britain’s standing in the world. At the moment we look rather grubby… like we are clinging on to stolen booty for dear life.”
He said he planned to lodge an early day motion in the Commons tomorrow calling for the Government to “demonstrate that Britain is prepared to... reunite these British-held Parthenon sculptures with those now displayed in the purpose-built Acropolis Museum in the shadow of the monument to which they belong, the Parthenon in Athens”.
The British Museum, which denies Elgin stole the marbles, argues that it “tells the story of cultural achievement throughout the world” and the Parthenon sculptures are “a significant part of that story”. It regards itself as “a unique resource for the world” with visitors able to “re-examine cultural identities and explore the complex network of interconnected human cultures” within its walls.
“The Parthenon Sculptures are a vital element in this interconnected world collection. They are a part of the world’s shared heritage and transcend political boundaries,” it says.
The Department for Culture, Media and Sport said it would “respond in due course” to UNESCO.
Author: Ian Johnston | Source: Indpendent [March 07, 2015]
