Telephone symbol

I was thinking about other kinds of analogue telephones and thought of phone boxes and how they are quite iconic in London to represent England.

Also they are not really used as much any more since the development of mobile phones but they remain pretty valuable to international visitors as a cheapish way to phone around which made me think about the symbol for a phone.

Above is a quite well known symbol for a pay phone.

When you look at the symbol you know exactly what it means immediately.

But if you actually examine it, it is really barely even recognisable as what it actually physically represents which is a phone receiver. It is strange how such simple shapes can be universally understood even when they hardly look like their signified subject. 

I started thinking how different the phone symbol can look with a few changes.

So if you turn it this way up.

And then edit the colours a bit...

It looks like a rainbow with two pots of gold at the ends!

This could be a conspiracy or I could just be a genius. 

So similarly if you do this...

It starts to look like a symbol for a magnet instead of a phone. 

So they weren't brilliant examples but you get the idea.

It's interesting how a simple symbol that could realistically look like several other things can specifically represent just one. 

Norse Mythology

Norse mythology is the ancient religion of the Nordic people. It focusses around a strict pantheon of gods and goddesses meaning that it is a polytheistic religion.

Norse people or 'Norsemen' were Scandinavian people who spread across different parts of Europe before Christianity took over.
Norse mythology is similar to Greek in the sense that there are loads of different gods and they kind of interchange between being physical beings and anthropomorphic representations of characteristics or emotions.

In the view of Norse Mythology, existence is comprised of nine worlds as follow:

• Midgard - The world of  "Average human experience" so basically living on Earth 
• Alfheimr - The world of Norse elves called Alfar
• Svartalfheim - The world of dark elves called Svartalfar 
• Vanaheimr - The world of the Vanir 
• Muspellheim - The world of fire
• Jotunheimr - The world of the Jotnar
• Niflheim - The world of Ice
• Asgard - The world of the Aesir 
• Hel - The netherworld just like our Hell I think

There are also these kind of "clans" which beings belong to: The Aesir, the Vanir, the Jotnar, the Alfar and the Dvergar. 

The Aesir are one group in the pantheon of Norse gods. The Aesir include Odin, Frigg, Thor, Baldr and Tyr.

Odin is basically the king of the gods, so the Aesir are a very important group. 

The Vanir are the other group of gods. There was a war between the Aesir and the Vanir in which the Aesir won and the Vanir basically became a subgroup so they are sometime just referref to as Aesir themselves. 

The Jotnar are Giants, the Alfar are Elves and the Dvergar are Dwarves. 

You can already see some quite big similarities between this and Greek Mythology such as the power stuggles between gods, the various worlds or planes and the mythical creatures like Giants and elves (Elves are basically just Nymphs in Greek Mythology). 

Symbology

I came up with these symbols to better and more simply represent the terminology of defining different types of belief in Gods. They are really simple vector drawings done in Illustrator with some weird brush stroke to make them look a bit more hand drawn.

This symbol represents God or a Deity. It is called the 'All Seeing Eye' or 'Eye of Providence' and features as a symbol in a number of present day uses including the great seal of the United States. It's a bit Christian but it still makes a good overall symbol. 

This is the symbol for the planet Earth. It has other meanings as well but it makes a good simple representation of the earth. I think that the 4 points of the cross represent the direction North, East, South and West.
Once I have these two simple symbols I can make each definition of the types of religious believing.

Monotheism

Polytheism

Pantheism

Panentheism

Stars

We all know roughly what a star is from school and stuff:
It's a big burning ball of gas in space.
Our sun is a star.
It creates our heat and radiates energy on to the earth.
Without it, nothing on the planet could live. There would be no such thing as life.
We revolve around it in an orbit with the rest of the planets nearby because it is huge and has a large mass which gives it a large gravitational pull.
The Latin word for our sun is Sol hence the term Solar System and the development of our Solar Calendar.
A galaxy is a big group of stars, each with their own solar systems.
There are billions of stars in a galaxy.
There are billions of galaxies in the universe.

A Star

A star is not actually made up of gas but rather plasma.
Plasma is effectively a state or matter phase (like liquids and solids) which is a gas with a proportion of its atoms ionized.
Ionisation is when a neutral atom gains or loses electrons creating anions (More electrons than protons) and cations (More protons than electrons).
Plasma and gas have only a few differences, the main one probably being the ability to conduct electricity.
Air is a really good insulator which is why it is used for insulation in houses between bricks and between panes in double glazed windows, but plasma has a practically infinite conductivity.
Plasma makes up the majority of matter in the universe by a long shot.
Every star is plasma (Which as we know is a lot of stars) and the majority of the vacuum between everything in space (although sparsely spread) is plasma as well.

Stars are born when loads of big clouds of dust and hydrogen and helium collide together and create a huge dense mass and the elements ionize and it makes a star.

Stars 'burn' through thermonuclear fusion where atoms collide and each nucleus joins together which creates a lot of energy. Almost every element that isn't man made was created by a star.

Our Sun

Our sun is the biggest thing in our solar system by quite a lot.

It is obviously the most prominent as we all see it almost every day and we don't see much else of the solar system except the planet we are on.

The sun itself makes up 98% of the entire mass of the solar system. That gives you an idea of how big it is. 

It would take 109 planets the size of earth to cover the solar disk (the face of the sun that we see - the bit the moon goes in front of to make an eclipse).

In terms of overall mass the sun is equivalent to just over 1.3 million planet earths. 

This diagram shows the structure of the sun. The middle of the sun is called the core and this is where the thermonuclear reactions take place as described earlier. Thermonuclear sounds complicated and sciencey but actually 'Thermo' just means heat and it is called a 'Nuclear' reaction because it is literally the nuclei of the atoms reacting. 

The temperature at the core of the sun is 15,000,000° C which is quite hot. The pressure in there is 340 billion times earth air pressure because of the huge mass and gravity field that holds it all together. 

It is this huge temperature and pressure that makes the nuclear reactions. 

What happens is that 4 hydrogen nuclei fuse together which creates a helium nucleus. 

This finished helium particle has about 0.7% less mass than the original 4 nuclei and that remainder of energy gets released up through the layers of the sun through convection. Once it reaches the outside it is released as heat and light energy. The time for the energy to convect up through the layers of the sun is 1000000 years. 

Every second the thermonuclear process converts 700 million tons of hydrogen into helium. Out of this process, 5 million tons of energy is produced. 

That means that the sun is gradually getting lighter. 

The photosphere is the outside of the sun and it is the bit that we can see from here. The temperature is 6000°C on the photosphere.

The layer above this is called the chromosphere and that is where stuff like solar flares happen.

Finally there is the corona which is like the glow of the sun caused by luminescent gas from the chromosphere. 

Our sun is about half way through its life time at the moment. It has been active for around 4.6 billion years and has enough fuel for about another 5 billion.

Towards the end there will be less fuel and the sun will start fusing into denser elements and it will start to swell up and get bigger. Eventually it will be so big that it will swallow the earth completely. 

This stage is called a 'Red Giant' and after a billion years of that it's mass will become too great and it will collapse in on itself and become a 'White Dwarf' 

After that it could take a trillion years to fully cool off. 

Roman Postcard

I bought this postcard when I was in Rome last year from a really cool art museum.
The picture covers the entire ceiling of a huge room and it is immensely detailed.
It is actually one of the first recorded paintings of creating 3dimensional space on a 2dimensional surface.
Depending on where you stand in the room, it can look as though the painting is completely 3 dimensional, especially in the corners of the room where there is painted coving which took me a long time to realise was not actually real.
The post card does not do the painting justice, but you can see the detail that has been created.
The 4 large octagonal medallion looking things are in each of the corners of the room and the carious gods and beings are painted to give the illusion that they are transcending the painting and moving freely from the flat surface.

The above picture has a really in depth series of narratives and features some important Roman deities but I actually cant remember any of the stories. I will try to find out what the images depict and how the stories tie together again.

Roman and Greek mythology are basically the same thing but with different names and some different stories which I will go into more detail about.

The Age of Gods and Mortals

This is the stage of Greek Mythology where the Gods created Man and there are loads of individual myths about how Man and God lived together and interacted. A lot of them end in the human dying.

In the eyes of Greek Mythology, the Gods wanted to make some life like them but mortal instead of immortal and place them on earth.
The two Titans Prometheus and Epimetheus were spared from imprisonment in Tatrarus because they did not fight against Zeus when he defeated Cronus.
Prometheus was given the task of creating man, which he did so out of clay and then Athena breathed life into the clay. These gifts were things like speed and agility and fur.
Epimetheus gave out all of his gifts but left the humans bare.
Promethus was the creator of Man and had taken a liking to the race so he gave his own gifts to them.
To start with he made man stand up straight like the Gods. He then also stole and gave them Fire which until that point was a Gods-only thing.
Prometheus appointed himself the protector of the Human race and also decided to give them all of his knowledge.
This made Zeus pretty angry, so he punished Prometheus.
Prometheus was chained to a cliff peak with unbreakable chains for eternity.
Every day a giant eagle would peck as his abdomen and eat his liver.
At the end of the day the liver would grow back and the same thing would occur the next day, causing him eternal pain and discomfort.
In fact it wasn't eternal, as after 30 years the mortal hero Heracles freed him from his chains.

To punish man (which seems a bit harsh seeing as Prometheus just gave us this stuff), Zeus made his son Hephaestus create a stunningly beautiful mortal woman with lots of positive gifts. He then made Hermes give the woman "a deceptive heart and a lying tongue".
This creation was Pandora, the first woman.
He finally gave her a jar (Not a box as we usually know it; This turned out to be a mistranslation) which she was forbidden to open. Zeus then sent her down to earth to live with the men.

Eventually her curiosity about the jar became too much (As Zeus thought it probably would) and she opened it. Out of the jar came evil and sorrow and misfortune and plagues and all other kinds of bad stuff. Everyone thought that this meant the end of happiness and that everything was ruined but the final thing to come out of the jar was hope, reminding man kind to be optimistic and not give up.

There are a lot of stories in which Gods and Man interact and they are sometimes split into two categories which are Tales of Love and Tales of Punishment.
"Tales of Love" is an interesting name for the category, as they are usually tales involving incest between the gods or seduction and rape when it comes to mortals. When Gods and mortals reproduce it often creates a Hero.
"Tales of Punishment" are what they sound like. Mortals disrespect the gods or steal from them or challenge them and it almost always ends in painful death.

I remember one specific tale of punishment from my A level art course when I was doing which involved Apollo - The God of healing, archery, light and truth and also music. I remember it because it was pretty horrible.
Basically there was this guy called Marsyas who one day found an instrument called the Aulos. He reportedly found the instrument in the spot that the Goddess Athena had discarded it after the other Gods made fun of the way her cheeks puffed out when she played it (It was a double piped reed instrument like the oboe or the bagpipes). He became a master at the instrument and got a bit cocky.
He challenged Apollo to a music contest judged by the muses themselves.
Apollo was renowned for his skill at playing his golden Lyre (A hand held stringed instrument).

Aulos                                     Lyre

  

Marsyas was doing quite well for himself until Apollo turned his instrument upside down and managed to play the same song which Marsyas could not do with his instrument.
The muses voted that Apollo had won and the terms of the contest were that the winner could treat the loser in any way they wanted.
Apollo proceeded to flay Marsyas alive.
Flaying is the systematic removal of the skin while trying to keep it intact.
It's pretty rough.
After flaying Marsyas, Apollo nailed his skin to a pine tree surrounded by the reeds that made up the aulos instrument.
Marsyas' brothers and sisters and friends wept for him and the tears flowed in to a river in Phrygia which was named Marsyas.

Different phones

There are a lot of different types of telephone that you can buy which range between different styles and looks and greater functionality and stuff.

The first telephones were hand cranked and attached to the wall. They had to be cranked to generate the electricity before it could be sent across the phone line by the switchboard.

The phone then developed to become slightly more portable but still had to be hand cranked.

Hand cranking to generate power became obsolete and the phone became much more symmetrical in design.

Some phones went for this design where the mouth piece was attached to the main part of the phone and the listening part was on a wire hanging from the main telephone. Phone design also became very important.

This is the typical kind of shape of a landline wired phone.

Comical and novelty phones are also quite common.

Ahoy hoy?

The telephone is a pretty standard bit of technology and almost everybody has a landline or a mobile.

I don’t really care about mobiles that much and they are all just becoming little computers anyway so I want to focus on land line phones.

The derivation of the word is simple and derives from Greek; “Tele” means ‘far’ and “Phone” means ‘voice’. That’s why we call it the far voice machine.

It turns out that a lot of different people think they invented the Telephone but these are the main guys:

Whoever actually invented it or came up with the idea or whatever, it was Bell and Edison that had the successful patents for commercialisation and development of the technology so they came out on top.

Bell was granted the patent on March 7^th 1876 and transmitted the first telephone call that same year just 3 days later. The message was, “Mr Watson, come here! I want to see you.”

Early development

There were other ways of transmitting and receiving messages at a distance which would develop to become the telephone.

I guess the most obvious first step of the telephone is the classic 2 cups and a string phone that everyone makes at some point in their lives.

The string gets stretched tight so that it can carry the vibrations across the line so that when one person speaks into one end then the other person can hear a rubbish muffled version of whatever the first guy was saying.

The next big step in the development was the electric telegraph.

It was originally invented in 1804 in the Catalan Countries next door to France by Francisco Salva i Campillo.

Later in 1837 there was a patent granted on another electrical telegraph in the US by Mr. Samuel Morse. He also invented the Morse code with his assistant and sent the first telegram in 1838 in the US.

He later worked on trying to improve telegraphs communication with other scientists including Alexander Graham Bell and these attempts at development eventually ended in the invention of the telephone.

Konbanwa

Japanese Animation (sometimes called Japanimation) or Anime is a distinctive form of film making which has been increasingly more accepted in the western world in recent years. It probably originated at the beginning of the 20^th Century around the same time as Cinema hit England and the USA and was probably inspired by them. Japan also has a notable film cinema industry that developed around the same time and is still around today.

The term ‘anime’ in Japan is literally just the Japanese word for animation and is synonymous for all animation in the world by definition.

Manga is another term for the style of Japanese animation but in England this is more specifically used to describe the Japanese comic books. These comics tend to be black and white and are read in the traditional Japanese way; Back to front and top to bottom.

There are some things which are pretty much expected with anime.

Usually male characters have big spiky hair. I don’t why this is, but they just do.

Characters usually have large eyes, small noses and mouths and their faces generally come to quite a point. They also have these really strange representations of emotion through really a-typical ways.

I found these pictures which show what I mean:

                    Angry                            Angry                         Angry again

                    Dead                           Confused                           Smile

                    Love                              Happy                          Still Angry

                    Scared                               Sad                                Sigh

I think the first feature length anime I ever watched was ‘Howl’s Moving Castle’ and it is still one of my favourites. I was really impressed by the magical kind of imagination that the directors and animators could project and the impressive realism through a completely unrealistic style and theme. It is really easy to sustain disbelief when watching the films despite the fact that they are clearly hand drawn. That says something about the production.

I had seen other Japanese animations before I watched Howl’s Moving Castle but they were more like action cartoons like ‘Dragonball’ and ‘Pokemon’ and never had the same kind of personality.

A Short History

The Japanese Anime style has definitely developed as a kind of symbol of Japanese culture and creativity but it started as a much more practical purpose.

Japan has never been a particularly wealthy country but it has always had some very creative and intelligent minds and some seriously hard workers.

As I said, When cinema was invented in the western world Japan were eager to get involved in their own cinema which they did, the problem of course being funding.

There were some companies that could afford to make films but funds were short and it was difficult to find a high budget.

This meant that there could be no kinds of special effects or pyrotechnics of any kind and more importantly no one could afford to hire European looking actors so Japanese film directors had some serious walls surrounding their creativity.

The answer was animation, in which a character can be drawn to represent any age, gender and ethnicity and the stylised look can create impressive special effects all on a very low budget.

The issue here of course was finding talented artists and hard workers which as I also said is not so much of a problem in Japan.

So what started as a solution to a lack of money became an important industry which is still thriving today with independent anime production companies and bigger world cinema directing companies such as Studio Ghibli.

Studio Ghibli is probably the most successful and renowned Japanese animation company in the world. It is responsible for producing ‘Spirited Away’ which won the 2002 Oscar for Best Animated Feature and is still the only foreign film to have done so. 

That sounds like a pretty big achievement to me.

The company was founded in June 1985 by Hayao Miyazaki and Iaso Takahata after the success of another of my favourite films ‘Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind’ which was directed by Miyazaki. It was originally a manga comic which got turned into a feature length animation as had become the fashion for many comics.

Miyazaki has directed the majority of the Ghibli films.

The company is also known for its strong zero-tolerance stance on editing the films for international release (such as cutting so that scenes fit with the dubbed audio). This was because of the release of ‘Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind’ in the US where the title was changed to ‘Warriors of the Wind’ and huge parts of the plot were edited in the typical American way and large sections of the film were completely cut. As such they now have a strong opinion about cutting.

The Co-Chairman of Miramax suggested editing the hit studio Ghibli film “Princess Mononoke” for the US market, to which Miyazaki replied by sending a genuine Katana samurai sword with a note attached.

The note simply read, “No cuts”.

Childish

One issue that is difficult for Japanese animations to overcome is the look of childishness. When people see animation they generally assume that it is for children and that it is a comedy. Looking at animation in this way is really naïve but it is understandable as most of us have grown up watching cartoons which are for children and are all light hearted. When we get older we generally move away from cartoon animation and start watching programs with actors because they are more serious and grown up, and from that we get the idea that cartoons were just for when we were young.

Animation is not the same as cartoons and it is definitely not for kids.

In fact, a child watching some of these anime films would almost definitely not understand the point and would probably be scarred for life.

As far as I know, all Studio Ghibli films are a PG at most apart from “Grave of the Fireflies” which is a 12 and does have some much more disturbing material.

This film pretty much revolves around death and destruction during WWII from the perspective of a pair of Japanese children. We know that Japan was hit pretty hard during this war and they did not come out on top, so you can guess that the film isn’t a happy one.

This is the opening quote from the film:

“September 21, 1945... That was the night I died.”

You can pretty much understand how the film might be going from there.

Although all Studio Ghibli films are rated at a maximum of 12 in terms of the BBFC, that is only Studio Ghibli.

There are hundreds of other producers and animators of all different fame and wealth status who have different styles and stories to tell.

There are some really tame anime films and there are some which really aren’t.