Showing posts with label history. Show all posts
Showing posts with label history. Show all posts

Tuesday, May 24, 2011

The Biggest Volcanic Eruptions In History

Some of the biggest volcanic eruptions in human history have not always occurred in the typical places of interest. For some of you the eruption may even be a little closer to home. Here is a list of the the Top 5 biggest volcanic eruptions in recorded history. 


Ilopango in El Salvador had its biggest eruption in 260 AD producing more than 10 cubic kilometers of volcanic ash. 


Taupo in New Zealand, it's largest recorded eruption happened in 186. A.D. and it produced 80 cubic kilometers of volcanic ash. The pyroclastic flow traveled for up to 100 kilometers. 


This is what is left of the the volcano in Santorini in Greece, the eruption in 1470 AD produced over 10 cubic kilometers of ash but worse still it completely destroyed the Minoan civilization (along with all the minotaurs).


Kikai is a mostly submerged caldera or super-volcano off the south coast of Japan. It exploded in 4300 BC and produced 100 cubic kilometers of volcanic ash, the pyroclastic flow spread across the ocean 100km and devastated parts of southern Japan. 


Mount Mazama otherwise known as crater lake in Oregon exploded in 4650 BC producing more than 100 cubic kilometers of volcanic ash, at this time this area of America was sparsely inhabited, if such an eruption were to occur today the consequences would be disastrous. 

Saturday, January 29, 2011

A Brief History of the Evolution of Psychedelic Cartoons

Since the advent of the colouring pencil, perhaps even before, cartoons and narcotics have gone hand in hand.


As we can see from this mild example Betty Boop and a clown become hysteric due to laughing gas, this cartoon was later banned and perhaps this repression sewed the seeds for later drug-laced cartoons. In the next clip we see the caterpillar from Alice in Wonderland an opium icon.


All this and the Sixties were yet to happen, the tripped out minds of a generation had failed to be influenced. I only intend to give you a snippet of the evolution of cartoon-narcotics because the spectrum is so broad and colourful, that an opiatic haze is the best impression one can inspect without a great deal of digging. I only have a trowel so this will have to suffice. 


For those of us who grew up with Ren and Stimpy even as our burgeoning child brains rolled and rippled as our gyri and sulci took shape, we could not help but cast some thoughts of introspection and wonder about the content of such a cartoon and consider how the mind-altered states the characters exhibited altered the state of our minds as they developed along Piagetian and Vygostkian highways. 

Eventually these minds grew up and some of them began to flex their creative cartoon muscles, and although the following two shows are less about the taking of drugs and more about the creative process that ensues. This cartoon was clearly drawn by the shaky hand of the junky and imagined by an LSD-soaked mind.


Enjoy the rage rainbow!!