Human castles may make UNESCO World Heritage list

by Sean McLachlan on

You gotta love Spain. Not only do they like having giant tomato fights and getting chased through the streets by bulls, but they build giant castles out of people.

That’s right. Not content with having some of the best castles in Europe, the Spaniards like constructing living towers up to ten people high. Called a castell, the tradition originated in the region of Catalonia in the 18th century.

A bunch of strong, big castellars make up the pinya (base) and support their teammates as they create level upon level with progressively fewer (and lighter) people. Once a level is complete, the people who make up the next one climb up the backs of the others and take their place. Then the top person, called an enxaneta (rider) climbs all the way to the very top and, supported by only two people, raises a hand with four fingers up to symbolize the Catalan flag. The enxaneta and the very top levels are often made up of children to lighten the load on the bottom levels. Then the castell disassembles itself from the top down by each level climbing back to the ground. Only when everyone is safely back on the ground is the castell considered a success.

It’s an unusual tradition and now the castellars are applying to get their art on UNESCO’s list of “intangible world heritage”. The list includes examples of rare cultural practices that are relatively unknown and unpracticed outside a certain region. Check out the website for more bizarre and amazing practices around the world.

Using slime mould to improve transportation

by Sean McLachlan on

“What idiot designed this highway?”

I’ve asked myself this question on more than one road trip. Sometimes the most straightforward journey can be slowed down thanks to bad highway planning. Now it turns out that slime mould may be an efficient designer of transportation routes. Slime mould resembles a giant amoeba that sends out networks of tubes to grab food from distant locations. Scientists have long known that slime moulds always pick the best route, so they wondered if this fact could be applied to human transportation.

In a recent experiment, Andy Adamatsky of the University of the West of England put a map of Mexico in a Petrie dish. He put a bit of slime mould where Mexico City is, and marked out Mexico’s other cities with oat flakes, a tasty treat loved by slime moulds everywhere. In this amazing timelapse video you can see how the slime mould grows its tubes and basically recreates Mexico’s transport network. He’s also done this with England’s road network and a different team tried it out on Tokyo’s subway system. Adamatsky hopes that in the future, transportation officials will use slime mould to help them in their planning. Feel free to make jokes about politicians and slime mould in the comments section.

[Photo courtesy Dr. Jonatha Gott and the Center for RNA Molecular Biology, Case Western Reserve University]

Best ESL video ever: Japanese diarrhea aerobics

by Sean McLachlan on

Teaching English as a Second Language can be a great way to see the world. You actually get paid to be immersed in a foreign culture and spend all your time speaking with the locals!

Here in Madrid most of the Anglos I know are English teachers, but they all complain that it can sometimes be hard to engage students. That may be because they’re teaching in a traditional classroom environment, like this room full of bored Chinese students submitted by user Strudelmonkey to Gadling’s flickr pool. What not try something different to liven up the lesson?

Back in the Nineties, Fuji TV in Japan decided to break the mold, and came up with Zuiikin’ English, a combination of catchy tunes, scantily clad female exercise goddesses, and important phrases such as “I was robbed by two men” and “It’s your fault that this happened.”

By far the best is the one below, which shows you how to tell someone you’ve eaten some bad sushi and are now paying the price. Note the biologically appropriate pelvic movement.

The Internet being what it is, many of these aerobic sequences have made it onto YouTube, including ones on how to avoid sexual harassment and important phrases for surviving a mugging. It’s all very educational, but don’t expect to scare off your attackers by singing “spare me my life” while hopping up and down and smiling.

If you can read Japanese, check out Zuiikin’ English’s official website and start getting into shape!

The Purgatory Museum

by Sean McLachlan on

I’m not sure what I’m looking at.

A rectangular slab of wood bears two burn marks–one in the shape of a cross, the other resembles a human hand. Nearby are other items–a shirt, a prayer book, a pillow–all with burns that look like they’ve been made by fiery fingers.

I’m in Rome’s smallest and strangest museum, the Piccolo Museo del Purgatorio, the Little Museum of Purgatory. Housed in the church of Santo Cuore del Suffragio, which is dedicated to relieving the souls tortured in Purgatory, it stands barely ten minutes’ walk from the Vatican. Small it certainly is, just one long case along a single wall, but the questions it raises are at the center of an increasingly acrimonious debate that’s dividing Western civilization.

Purgatory is a halfway point between Heaven and Hell, a place for the souls of people who lived good enough lives to avoid eternal damnation, but not quite good enough to join the angels. In Purgatory these souls suffer torment for enough time for their sins to be forgiven, a sort of celestial spanking with no Child Protective Services to intervene.

But there is hope. Prayers by the living can reduce a soul’s time in Purgatory. Faithful relatives offer up prayers or even pay for entire masses to be said for the departed. Others neglect this spiritual duty, and it is said that sometimes a tormented soul will return to Earth and ask for help.

During the seventeenth to nineteenth centuries these visitations happened fairly often and took on a common pattern. A spirit would appear to a relative or friend, reveal it was in torment, and ask for prayers to shorten its time in the cleansing fires. As proof that the spirit had been there, it would touch its burning hand to a nearby object. These events were one of many types of miracles common in the Catholic world such as apparitions of the Virgin Mary and bleeding statues of Jesus.

The Purgatory Museum collects these soul burns and tells their story. The hand and cross that I am seeing was left on a table by Fr. Panzini, former Abbot Olivetano of Mantua. In 1731 he appeared to Venerable Mother Isabella Fornari, abbess of the Poor Clares of the Monastery of St. Francis in Todi. He appeared to her on November 1, 1731 (All Saints Day) and said he was suffering in Purgatory. To prove his claim, he touched his flaming hand to her table and etched a burning cross in it too. He also touched her sleeve and left scorches and bloodstains.

%Gallery-101999%I have to admit I’m skeptical. I am an agnostic, and while I can’t disprove the existence of some sort of deity, I’m having trouble believing this story. The hand doesn’t look quite right. I take several photos, including the negative black and white image shown here. On this image details become clear that aren’t easily spotted with the naked eye. The burnt hand and cross are made up of a series of circular patterns as if they were made with some sort of hot poker. Other objects, whose images and stories can be seen in the attached gallery, appear more convincing but could still easily have been made with a bit of flame and ingenuity.

This doesn’t dissuade the two guys I’m seeing the museum with. They are a devoutly Catholic gay couple here in Rome on pilgrimage, something I find far more mysterious than a few burns on a nightcap. They go from object to object with wonder in their eyes. Looking at that same hand they don’t see its shape as odd, and they don’t see the circular patterns that make it up as a sign of forgery. A burning hand, of course, would have flames coming out of it, which would distort its shape and lead to some areas of the imprint being more scorched than others.

And that, I realize, is what the Purgatory Museum has to teach. For the faithful, it is yet more proof of Divine Judgment. For an atheist, it is proof of the gullibility of religious people and the nasty web of lies that supports organized religion. For the agnostic standing between two fundamentalisms, it proves nothing. Personally I think these objects are the products of overzealous fraudsters wanting to make converts by any means necessary, yet debunking them doesn’t disprove the existence of spirits any more than showing there’s no life on Mars would disprove the possibility of aliens on other planets.

As I stand there wondering where the whole debate over religion is going to lead, an attractive young American nun walks in, hands me a pendant of the Virgin Mary, and hurries off before I can ask her what the Latin inscription says. This sort of thing happens a lot in Rome. The inscription reads, “O MARIA CONCEPITA SENZA PECCATO PREGATE PER NOI CHE RECORRIAMO A VOI” and bears the date 1850. Translation, anyone?

So I leave the same as I entered, “knowing” nothing but insatiably curious about everything. That’s a pretty good place to be, I think. Walking down the nave I see one of the gay Catholics gazing upon a reclining figure of the crucified Jesus. His face is transfixed with reverence, wonder, and sadness as he bends down and kisses the statue’s feet. His visit to Rome will be very different than mine.

This starts a new series called Vacation with the Dead: Exploring Rome’s Sinister Side. I will be looking at the Eternal City’s obsession with death, from grandiose tombs to saints’ relics, from early Christian catacombs to mummified monks. Tune in tomorrow for The Tombs of Rome!

Man arrested in Mexico smuggling 18 monkeys in his pants

by Meg Nesterov on

Are those monkeys in your pocket, or are you just happy to see me?

A Mexican man was arrested upon arrival in Mexico City after flying from Lima, Peru with 18 titi monkeys strapped around his waist. While the monkeys traveled in his luggage, Roberto Sol Cabrera placed the endangered monkeys into socks that fit into a waist girdle “to protect them from X-rays,” though two of the monkeys did not survive the journey, sadly.

Police said Mr. Sol Cabrera behaved “nervously” when questioned at customs, not surprising given the amount of squirming primates near his privates. He reportedly paid around $30 per monkey in Peru that could fetch up to $1,550 each as exotic pets on the Mexican market. He is being investigated on charges of trafficking an endangered species. After similar arrests of smuggling via hat and shirt, I look forward to a monkey-smuggling episode of Locked Up Abroad.

[Via BBC News.]

[Photo credit: Brian Gratwicke]