Love Bugs

Dragonflies do it with an almost balletic grace, tortoise beetles are not without their own charm and butterflies protect their modesty with their wings.  As for the snout weevil? Well, they have faces only a mother could love. Yet the fact is, insects get down to doing the wild thing on a fairly regular basis.  The Ark in Space takes the plunge today with some fascinating anecdotes about the love life of the bug world.

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Image Credit Flickr User Westpark

Balance

It's almost new year, a time when many consider making a new start, an attempt to get the balance right. 

This short film is about Christian Clausecker, who tells us about his passion to balance his life.  He might be taking it a little more literally than most but I am still scratching my head about just how Shua Visuals managed to get some of these shots. Don’t try this at home, kids!

Space Cat Hob

A genetically engineered flying cat (yup) crash lands on a planet only to find that he is surrounded by more even more danger than he has just escaped.  Will he survive this new hostile environment?  This animated short was created by Liok, a Paris based concept artist and independent film maker.  Incredibly it was done with a zero budget but completed through sheer time and love, after two years of work.  It was worth it!

Sunday Short Movie: 1982

We’re not all about loud bangs, laser guns and space ships at Kuriositas.  This is a new feature for our readers – a Sunday Short Movie that will be entertaining, heart-warming and perhaps even uplifting while retaining our promise to you to only deliver the highest quality film and animation.  So, make a date each Sunday for something quite special.

Our first feature presentation is 1982, written and directed by Jeremy Breslau.  It tells the story of a blocked novelist reflects on a pivotal year in his life when he struggled for the attention of his bickering parents.  It may not, from that description, sound like something which will warm the cockles of your heart, but trust us!

The Leap

In 2069, New Earth is declared open for civilian migration, a decade after its discovery. As tales of wonder and opportunity reach the Old World, taking ‘the leap’ becomes the dream of millions. Unable to afford the journey, many of the less fortunate risk their lives being smuggled aboard cargo ships. The inter-planetary Migration Administration, or IPMA, deals with human trafficking on a biblical scale.

Fifteen years later, Jacob Reiss, a disillusioned IPMA veteran, has a fateful encounter with a young cartel prostitute. A meeting that forces him to confront a dark chapter from his past in order to save them both from a bleak future in one final, violent shot at redemption.

The Leap was written, designed and directed by Karel van Bellingen.

Onbashira: The Most Dangerous Festival in Japan

2016 was a special year in Japan. Every six years the men of the towns and villages around Lake Suwa in the Nagano Prefecture participate in the Onbashira festival (a matsuri in Japanese) and in 2016 it came round again.  It has been celebrated sexenially for over 1,200 years without interruption.

Translated as ‘the honored pillars’, Onbashira symbolically renews the Suwa Taisha shrine and is a dazzling display of the power of man over nature. It is also known as the most dangerous festival in Japan.  Broken limbs are inevitable during the festival and deaths have also, unfortunately, been recorded.


This festival would never happen elsewhere, frankly.  Hordes of health and safety inspectors would ensure that the huge logs would become nothing more than twigs. As for riding atop them at a breath-taking speed – this would simply be banned, interdit, verboten.  However, this is Japan.  Have you ever seen any of the country’s game shows which make demands on the body which should make most people quail? You may have wondered where anyone could get the idea for such risky physicality.  Perhaps their roots lie in Onbashira.

500 Years of Female Portrait Paintings in 3 Minutes

Five hundred years of beautiful, fascinating women in just three minutes? It may sound too good to be true but Philip Scott Johnson has put together this compilation of half a millennium of masterpieces. It is fascinating to see how art has evolved over the centuries.  Plus if you are an expert and want to see just how many of the ninety paintings you recognize, click here to see the answers!

The Irony of Viruses

About 8 percent of our DNA is made up of viruses known as Endogenous Retroviruses (ERVs). Over millions of years, these viruses have embedded themselves in our genome and now play an integral role in the functioning of our immune system.

In this short video, The Atlantic’s science writer Ed Yong explains how the very things that once made us sick now keeps us healthy.

Why Does a Dog Lick Its Nose?

Here is the question du jour – why does a dog lick its nose?  The Ark in Space has the answer (and it may not be the one that you assume) together with a large gallery of dogs being endearing while licking their noses. Just run with it. True, this may seem silly, yet there is a scientific reason behind this behavior. Pop over to the Ark in Space for a real cute fest and some science thrown in for good measure.

Image Credit Flickr User WoofBC

Leh Palace: Abandoned Bastion of the Himalayas

In the early years of the seventeenth century the Lion King of Ladakh, Sengge Namgyal ordered the construction of a great palace.  Situated atop the Himalayan city of Leh, now in the Indian state of Jammu and Kashmir, it was the home of his dynastic descendants until their overthrow and exile in 1834.  Once the world’s highest building, Leh Palace has been abandoned since then.  Yet it remains a majestic presence in this area of India often referred to as Little Tibet.

Image Credit Flickr User Friars Balsam

If it seems familiar that is because it is thought to be modelled on the more famous Potala Palace in neighboring Tibet which was the home of the Dalai Lama until his flight from the country in 1959.   Some say that it is the other way around but the similarities are remarkable. It is smaller than Potala but nevertheless Leh Palace is hugely impressive in its own right.  Towering nine storeys high, its upper floors once echoed to the sounds of Namgyal royalty and their throngs of courtiers.  The lower floors were used for storage and to accommodate the precious horses of the army.

Action Bill

OK, I really couldn’t make this up.  Stratford Upon Avon – my guess around 1605.  William Shatner, for reasons that will soon become obvious, travels back in time in a robot with the express intention of killing William Shakespeare.  Who will save Master Shakespeare? His savior comes in the form of someone not unacquainted with his works.  Oh – and it’s all in Lego.  Created by AMAA Productions from Austin, Texas, this is an absolute riot.

Magical Europe - Timelapse

Stan Chang spent (what looks like the best part of) two years traveling around Europe with his wife and small son.  This is a compilation of time lapse videos that he created on his family’s sojourns on the continent and it is quite amazing.  I particularly enjoyed the transitions from day to night – but the most fun was trying to spot and name the places as this compelling video played. Have fun!

Danny Boy

What happens when the rest of the world loses its head? That question may seem rhetorically metaphorical but for Danny it is a real, literal quandary especially when love is beckoning, however blindly.  You will have to watch to discover how he resolves the situation in this superlatively crafted, enigmatic and multi-award winning animated short written and directed by Marek Skrobecki for Se-Ma-For Studios.

Steps That You Need To Follow When Starting a Business

Beginning a business is not an easy thing to do. Sometimes entrepreneurs do not know what to do when they start a business. It could be best payout casinos, online marketing or construction business. What entrepreneurs should know is that situations change and they have to adapt when these situations change. We are going to list some steps that you need to take when you start a business.

It Is Important to Refine your Idea

When you decide to start a business, you know what you want to do in terms of the market that yo9u want to enter. Start researching about that industry, look at some of the companies that are already in that business. There are companies that are leading in that industry, find out what they are doing and figure out a way to do better than them.

Create a Business Plan

There are a few important questions that you should ask yourself before you start your business. Your business plan should answer those questions like the purpose of your business, who you want to sell your products to and the goals that you want to achieve. Also it should answer how you will finance your business costs. You should know if there is demand for the product that you want to sell before you sell it.

Do Market Research

Market research is very important because this is how you find your target audience. Conducting surveys, holding focus groups, and researching SEO are some of the things that you can do when doing a market research. This helps you understand the customer better. Big casino review sites like casino us online casino, did not just get to Google without SEO.

Evaluate Your Finances

When starting a business, there are costs that are involved. You will need to figure out how you are going to cover those costs that you will have to face. This includes deciding whether you are going to continue working and supporting your business or quitting your job so that you can concentrate more on your business. The reason why you need to figure this out before you start is because you do not want to run out of money before you make profit.

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Best Disney Cartoon Movies of the 90’s

We cannot deny the fact that Disney has some of the best movies ever made in the history of man. And if there is something that most people love about Disney it’s the animations that they manage to come up when they deliver their movies. That is why today, we want to take a few steps back in time and revisit some of the best cartoon Disney movies of the 90’s.

Top Cartoon 90’s Disney Movies

The Lion King, 1994

One of the best Disney movies of all time has to be The Lion King, the story of Mufasa, Scar and Simba. The iconic movie even had a live action remake in 2019. After 15 good years, it got a live action remake and it still manages to narrate the story pretty well and give full outlines and the details almost as similar to the 1994 version. There are even online casino games for real money based on this movie.

Mulan, 1998

Another great movie that tells the story of a young girl who had to fight to be her true self. Mulan tells the story of going against all the odds and still being able to do what is right.

Hercules, 1997

There have been several movies about Hercules, but none has the great soundtracks that come with the Disney version. We are sure if we look hard enough we might even find an Australian casinos slots about Hercules. The Disney movies follows the story of a young lad who has to figure who he really is.

Anastasia, 1997

You need to know your past in order to figure who are and where you come from, that is the story that we are told in Anastasia. A young girl who loses her parents and tries to figure out who she really is. And at the end of it comes to a shocking realisation about who she is and where she comes from.