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What Makes the Great Wall so Great? TedEd clip

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October 01, 2017

Here is a terrific TedEd video that reviews the history of the Great Wall and explains what makes it so great. You can view the TedEd lesson here.

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The Complexity of Islamic Design: Ted Talk

July 10, 2018

Here's a terrific TedEd clip on how Islamic artists use geometry to develop their designs. Eric Brough developed the clip and even has a book about the geometr of Islamic design.

Influence of Zoroastrianism on Modern Culture

July 06, 2018

Which religion influenced the beliefs of Christianity, Islam, and Judaism? Monotheism started with its founder long before Abraham. The idea of heaven and hell originated with it, as did the idea of good and evil. Not only did its ideas influence the Abrahamic religions, they also influenced culture. Richard Strauss' "Thus Spoke Zarathustra" can be seen in the score of Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey. Freddy Mercury, lead signer of Queen, got inspiration from the religion's founder and the Mazda car maker takes its name from the founder. Zoroastrianism started in Iran and grew with the three great Iranian empires which included that of Cyrus the Great, but began to weaken after the invasion of Alexander the Great and the later development of Islam. Many Zoroastrians fled and migrated to India where they became known as Parsis. In a terrific essay for BBC Culture , called "The Obscure Religion that Shaped the West, " Joobin Bekhrad examines the inf...

The Global Nature of WWI: Two Awesome Twitter Threads

November 12, 2018

The 100th anniversary of the end of World War I has spawned a number of new resources about the war. Two of those resources remind us of the global nature of that war. Both come from writers on twitter who tweeted the nature of the war in China and Africa I snagged both twitter threads and used a service to embed them below. My thanks to Angela Lee for tweeting both. The first comes from Eileen Cheng-yin Chow, Director of Shewo Institute of Chinese Journalism. Chow notes that although China contributed much to the war effort, including an untold story over 140,000 Chinese laborers who fought on the European frontlines beside French, Russian and British troops, she got few concessions at Versailles. The thread includes some interesting links including a trailer for a new movie from Yellow Earth Productions called "Forgotten" that is about China during the war. Another link takes you to a fascinating National Post Story about Chinese Labor C...