Hey guys, it's Adventure Van here with another This Thing Exists? This time I'll be talking about the Self Propelled Aquanaut Suit, or the SPAS. Working up to depths such as 1,000 feet, this would allow you to 'be' a submarine, with the added mobility of not being a huge clunk of metal in a sphere shape. There's also a camera that records everything that you can see, as well as 50 hours of life support and the ability to communicate with a control group even at such low depths. As much as they are awesome, the 825,000$ price tag may swerve off those who just have a hobby in exploring underwater.
That's Adventure Van, swimming away.
Saturday, July 1, 2017
Friday, June 30, 2017
A God That Could be Real
Hey guys, it's Adventure Van here with a blog about 'A God That Could Be Real' , a book that seems fairly unbiased and agnostic to an extremely controversial subject. It's seperated into 3 parts, parts disproving an all seeing, all knowing, all powerful gods, a part for proving that there in fact might be a god that follows a certain set of rules, and a last part about what to do whether or not you believe in the gods, and how to pray 'to the universe', even if it's just to get stress off your shoulders. I thought this book took a nice, calm, rational approach without being all uptight and tilted towards a side.
That's Adventure Van, thinking.
That's Adventure Van, thinking.
Wednesday, June 28, 2017
Fairy Tales!
Hey guys, it's Adventure Van here with a blog about Perrault's Fairy Tales. Charles Perrault was a writer who did revisons and original 'fairy tales' like Sleeping Beauty, Blue Beard, Cinderella, and Ricky of the Tuft. However, some of the tales are evil enough to make Grimms tales look even more child friendly.
The Sleeping Beauty In the Wood is a tale about a princess whose parents forgot to invite an evil fairy to her birth, and cursed her to die upon pricking her finger. The good fairies all had done their benefits to here, but one said that it'd be changed to having be kissed by a prince. After a 100 year respite, we come to the prince, who bears challenges to save her. Then he has two kids with her, but his mother, who is a troll, tries to eat them. The troll dies, and they become king and queen.
Little Red Riding Hood is a tale about a girl who goes to give her grandmother food. However, on the way to the house, she met a big bad wolf, who she was an idiot in dealing with and told him that he was going to her grandmother's house. The wolf ran before her, ate the grandmother, pretended to be a grandmother, and ate little red riding hood.
Blue Beard is a story about a man with a hideous beard who thrown grand parties in search of another wife. He eventually finds a young woman who marries him. She joins him in his castle, and is given a set of keys. She is told not to use the smallest key. Then he leaves and she uses the smallest key, which unlocks the door of a group of his dead wife. He finds out, tries to kill her, but her brothers come and kill him.
Puss in Boots is a well known story about a trio of kids who split their fathers inheritance. One gets the mill, another the donkey, and the youngest gets the cat. However, the cat ends up being the best gift, befriending a local king and then convincing him that the son is the Marquis of an area. On a trip to survey his lands, the king is convinced by the cat that the son was robbed of his clothing and carriage. The king gives him clothes and a place in the carriage, while the cat convinces workers to say the land belongs to the Marquis. As the king goes on, he gets more impressed. The cat then eats a the troll the land belonged to by tricking him to become a mouse, and the Marquis gets to marry the kings daughter.
The Fairies is a tale about two Sisters who are enemies. One is great, nice, and beautiful, and the other is evil, nasty, and ugly. The nice one goes down to a well to fetch water, and meets a poor, old lady who requires assistance in drinking. Of course, she helps and is blessed by the disguised fairy to always leave a trail of diamonds and flowers when talking. The other one goes and his confronted by the same situation, but refuses to help. She gets cursed to have toads and snakes fall out of her mouth.
Ricky of the Tuft is the story of a ugly man and a stupid woman who are both royalty, but have the ability to transfer the ability to be smart and beautiful to whoever they choose. They have parents who refuse to let them meet in order to keep superiority over them, but eventually meet anyway and transfer there powers, then own both of their parents kingdoms.
Little Tom Thumb is a mix between original and Hansel and Gretal. It follows the story of 7 children who follow the H&G storyline of the parents not having enough money to support them, and Tom Thumb being able to bring them back the first time with rocks. However, the next time they use breadcrumbs instead, and the birds eat them. They find shelter in a troll's cave, and the troll takes them in with the intention of cutting their throats and eating them. However, they switch with the troll's daughters, and the troll, after killing his own daughters,, in fury tries to kill them, but Tom leads him in a merry chase which resulsts in the troll dying from exhaustion.
That's Adventure Van, reading out.
(And boy were these stories not the ones you got read to as a kid.)
The Sleeping Beauty In the Wood is a tale about a princess whose parents forgot to invite an evil fairy to her birth, and cursed her to die upon pricking her finger. The good fairies all had done their benefits to here, but one said that it'd be changed to having be kissed by a prince. After a 100 year respite, we come to the prince, who bears challenges to save her. Then he has two kids with her, but his mother, who is a troll, tries to eat them. The troll dies, and they become king and queen.
Little Red Riding Hood is a tale about a girl who goes to give her grandmother food. However, on the way to the house, she met a big bad wolf, who she was an idiot in dealing with and told him that he was going to her grandmother's house. The wolf ran before her, ate the grandmother, pretended to be a grandmother, and ate little red riding hood.
Blue Beard is a story about a man with a hideous beard who thrown grand parties in search of another wife. He eventually finds a young woman who marries him. She joins him in his castle, and is given a set of keys. She is told not to use the smallest key. Then he leaves and she uses the smallest key, which unlocks the door of a group of his dead wife. He finds out, tries to kill her, but her brothers come and kill him.
Puss in Boots is a well known story about a trio of kids who split their fathers inheritance. One gets the mill, another the donkey, and the youngest gets the cat. However, the cat ends up being the best gift, befriending a local king and then convincing him that the son is the Marquis of an area. On a trip to survey his lands, the king is convinced by the cat that the son was robbed of his clothing and carriage. The king gives him clothes and a place in the carriage, while the cat convinces workers to say the land belongs to the Marquis. As the king goes on, he gets more impressed. The cat then eats a the troll the land belonged to by tricking him to become a mouse, and the Marquis gets to marry the kings daughter.
The Fairies is a tale about two Sisters who are enemies. One is great, nice, and beautiful, and the other is evil, nasty, and ugly. The nice one goes down to a well to fetch water, and meets a poor, old lady who requires assistance in drinking. Of course, she helps and is blessed by the disguised fairy to always leave a trail of diamonds and flowers when talking. The other one goes and his confronted by the same situation, but refuses to help. She gets cursed to have toads and snakes fall out of her mouth.
Ricky of the Tuft is the story of a ugly man and a stupid woman who are both royalty, but have the ability to transfer the ability to be smart and beautiful to whoever they choose. They have parents who refuse to let them meet in order to keep superiority over them, but eventually meet anyway and transfer there powers, then own both of their parents kingdoms.
Little Tom Thumb is a mix between original and Hansel and Gretal. It follows the story of 7 children who follow the H&G storyline of the parents not having enough money to support them, and Tom Thumb being able to bring them back the first time with rocks. However, the next time they use breadcrumbs instead, and the birds eat them. They find shelter in a troll's cave, and the troll takes them in with the intention of cutting their throats and eating them. However, they switch with the troll's daughters, and the troll, after killing his own daughters,, in fury tries to kill them, but Tom leads him in a merry chase which resulsts in the troll dying from exhaustion.
That's Adventure Van, reading out.
(And boy were these stories not the ones you got read to as a kid.)
Tuesday, June 27, 2017
O Captain, My Captain: A blog post.
Hey guys, it's Adventure Van here with a blog about American Poetry, and the one I'll be blogging on is O Captain, my Captain. It's a poem with the idea of Abraham Lincoln being a captain on board a ship that's survived many disasters, only to fall dead upon finally reaching the shore. It's a touching poem, and it shows the sympathy that the writer and others who agreed with him had. The poem is down below, so enjoy.
That's Adventure Van, crying out.
(Thanks to the Poetry Foundation for helping me not have to write the whole thing by hand.)
O Captain! my Captain! our fearful trip is done,
The ship has weather’d every rack, the prize we sought is won,
The port is near, the bells I hear, the people all exulting,
While follow eyes the steady keel, the vessel grim and daring;
But O heart! heart! heart!
O the bleeding drops of red,
Where on the deck my Captain lies,
Fallen cold and dead.
O Captain! my Captain! rise up and hear the bells;
Rise up—for you the flag is flung—for you the bugle trills,
For you bouquets and ribbon’d wreaths—for you the shores a-crowding,
For you they call, the swaying mass, their eager faces turning;
Here Captain! dear father!
This arm beneath your head!
It is some dream that on the deck,
You’ve fallen cold and dead.
My Captain does not answer, his lips are pale and still,
My father does not feel my arm, he has no pulse nor will,
The ship is anchor’d safe and sound, its voyage closed and done,
From fearful trip the victor ship comes in with object won;
Exult O shores, and ring O bells!
But I with mournful tread,
Walk the deck my Captain lies,
Fallen cold and dead.That's Adventure Van, crying out.
(Thanks to the Poetry Foundation for helping me not have to write the whole thing by hand.)
Monday, June 26, 2017
Impressionism
Hey guys, it's Adventure Van here with a blog about Impressionism. It is an art style that had a short life span after it's creation, unlike most other certified art 'movements'. However, the art was beautiful, and the artists were close friends for the most part. It was also quite contemporary for the time, and broke several barriers of art that had been in place for thousands of years. So, how did this amazing art style break out? That's what we'll be talking about.
One of the most amazing artists for this art period is Claude Monet, who was expert at painting things to reflect the seasons in his artwork. The main things about Impressionism is using ideas over straight lines, and Monet embodies that perfectly. But he's not the only artist.We had others, such as Auguste Renoir, who said that the paintings were more like studies then art.
We also had people like Paul Cezanne making pieces of art for the movement, doing paintings that were some of the more realistic of for the collection, while we had Mary Cassatt, one of the group's only female artists,m who did amazing pieces of art with little to no honest shapes, but with some kind of firmness in the paintings.
Impressionist art is a beautiful thing if you don't like complete realism. It resembles life, but it has a glow about it and less straight lines. If you do like realism, you should go to the paragraph below and agree with the people there. However, the art is nice to the eye and if you squint, you can see precisely what the artist wanted people to see in this. In that perspective, you can see entire worlds.
But not everyone saw it like that. There was a large amount of push back from 'established' artists. And most people didn't see the point of it, but now, past the artists life span, We realize they did it for fun, and that the art they made was as great as they thought it was.
So, that's an overview over the Impressionist movement. I hope you enjoyed, because this was quite a fun topic to research.
That's Adventure Van, painting out.
One of the most amazing artists for this art period is Claude Monet, who was expert at painting things to reflect the seasons in his artwork. The main things about Impressionism is using ideas over straight lines, and Monet embodies that perfectly. But he's not the only artist.We had others, such as Auguste Renoir, who said that the paintings were more like studies then art.
We also had people like Paul Cezanne making pieces of art for the movement, doing paintings that were some of the more realistic of for the collection, while we had Mary Cassatt, one of the group's only female artists,m who did amazing pieces of art with little to no honest shapes, but with some kind of firmness in the paintings.
Impressionist art is a beautiful thing if you don't like complete realism. It resembles life, but it has a glow about it and less straight lines. If you do like realism, you should go to the paragraph below and agree with the people there. However, the art is nice to the eye and if you squint, you can see precisely what the artist wanted people to see in this. In that perspective, you can see entire worlds.
But not everyone saw it like that. There was a large amount of push back from 'established' artists. And most people didn't see the point of it, but now, past the artists life span, We realize they did it for fun, and that the art they made was as great as they thought it was.
So, that's an overview over the Impressionist movement. I hope you enjoyed, because this was quite a fun topic to research.
That's Adventure Van, painting out.
Sunday, June 25, 2017
Light!
Hey Guys, it's Adventure Van here with a blog about Light. Now, we've only recently discovered light, even though it's been around forever and a half. I mean, we've had fire since we actively became Homo Sapiens, but since we've now gone ahead with LEDs, and light bulbs, we've suddenly gotten to a point where we literally have 'light pollution' blocking out natural stars. So how did this come to happen? Why did we reinvent light?
While Fire was our main light source, our first attempt at controlling it was in Torches, so we could have mobile light and heat. But with the invention of Glass, the Egyptians could begin having Lamps. Then the Romans found out about it and it went everywhere, but that's another blog. And after having lamps in around 1300 BC, it just didn't advance from there. Then, in 200 AD, we discovered that wrapping tallow around a string resulted in a light source. It came with horrible smell and smoke, but most people lived with it. Then it stopped again. In 1200 AD, we have solid evidence that over seventy Chandlers were working in the city of Parisian. However, most people who were farmers made them themselves.
So, what advanced us in our quest for light? I mean, even up to the 1700s, we were using the tallow candles and fireplaces to light our life, and we had two separate sleeps called 'First' and 'Second'. So what happened? It's a tale about a dark and stormy night, when an Nantucket Ship captained by a man named Hussey was blown way off course into the North Atlantic. While trying to find their way back, the crew spotted a weird creature, the Sperm Whale. This whale was harpooned majestically, according to Hussey. Some hold beliefs that it was merely washed ashore in the storm and Hussey claimed the find for him. However, when the locals cut apart the mammal for food and supplies, they discovered a cavity filled with a white, oily substance above it's cranium.
We still have no clue why it's there. Some argue that it's there for buoyancy, others that it's there for echolocation amplification. However, the New Englanders who now had access to over 5 hundred gallons of this stuff, needed to find uses for it, as Hussey refused to let any part of it go to waste. So an Chandler tried to make a candle out of it after thickening it. It turned out to be a candle with a whiter light, and next to no smoke. So, for either epicness or hubris, the captain Hussey had forced a town to create an amazing light source. Even Benjamin Franklin loved working with them, George Washington spent over 15,000 a year for these candles, and the Declaration of Independence and the Bill of Rights were written under it's light.
However, a group of Chandlers combined forces under the Spermaceti Trust to make a monopoly over other chandlers and to force people who hunted these whales to go to them for creation, which made them able to put low selling prices and high buying prices. Despite that, it was still a very wealthy man who managed to bag one of these creatures, which boomed the sailing business. However, it was as dangerous as rewarding, resulting in thousands of lives and entire ships lost, as well as the sinking of the Essex, that gave the idea behind Moby Dick. And don't even start about getting the liquid out carefully. 8-13 year old children were lowered into a cut in the cranium to bucket out the liquid, which resulted in a horrible smell.
However, 300,000 sperm whales were lost, and it would have been possible for us to have wiped them out if it wasn't for the discovery of Oil in the 1850s, which resulted in gas lights which spared the beautiful creatures. Fossil Fuels, that we still use today, were easier to get your hands on and less likely to end up killing you. They were also up to 10 times brighter then the original candles and people began having enough light and time to read, resulting in a boom for the Magazine and Newspaper industries. However, it was still expensive, and only the High Class people could afford to have lights on all night every night.
But what about electric lights? 'Well, everyone knows that Thomas Edison created them.' Wrong. in the1879s, Edison had put in his patent for an Electric Lamp. The problem is, there are patents for around the same thing for over 80 years beforehand. Edison was also a jerk, using 'Vaporware' strategies to scare off competition. 'Vaporware' is simply: Oh, you're working on a thing? Well, we've already finished it, so why bother? An example of this can be found in his 'long lasting lightbulb', which could last up to weeks! The press were shuffled in and out so that every magazine could see this invention. And then we found out that Edison was switching out the light bulbs between visits. But it was already too late, and we now have his face plastered in every book.
So how did we get the amazing Neons associated with Las Vegas invented? Thank an actual inventor, George Claude. In discovering a system to make liquid air for mass production off pure oxygen and liquid nitrogen, he discovered a waste product from this intervention. Neon, as he named it, was the subject of his mad scientist hobby, and after passing electric current thru the isolated gas, he discovered it lit up red. He continue onward, lighting up things like Argon and Mercury. After discovering a wide variety of colors, he patented it as quickly as possible. As the growing demand of it surged, he built a company around it and soured up in the business.
But what about LV? It wasn't the insane city it is today, so how did the infamous signs get there? It's Tom Young's fault, a sign letterer who made words and shapes appear out of the electronic lamps.Tom was introduced to the Neon lights of Claude, and figured that building the glass in a certain shape would be easier then using trails of the one shape light bulbs. He built the YESCO company around this, and was soon building a sign for a obscure casino/hotel combo called the Boulders, which was in an obscurer city called Las Vegas.
And we slowly worked out way up from there.With movies and comics like Star Wars and Flash Gordon, a push from the Sci-Fi crowd worked its way up into the scientific community, because, who didn't want to see lasers become an reality? In the 1960s, we'd gotten Hughes Aircraft and Bell Labs working on creating these amazing heat rays of doom! So why didn't we get them? Because they weren't exactly 'doom'-y enough. But we still use these amazing things everyday. Where? In the supermarket. A Sci-Fi writer in the past's over powered weapon of then is now what you use when you buy a bottle of soda. It's how we check the bar code of the item without needing to manually do it.
That's Adventure Van, putting a light to it.
While Fire was our main light source, our first attempt at controlling it was in Torches, so we could have mobile light and heat. But with the invention of Glass, the Egyptians could begin having Lamps. Then the Romans found out about it and it went everywhere, but that's another blog. And after having lamps in around 1300 BC, it just didn't advance from there. Then, in 200 AD, we discovered that wrapping tallow around a string resulted in a light source. It came with horrible smell and smoke, but most people lived with it. Then it stopped again. In 1200 AD, we have solid evidence that over seventy Chandlers were working in the city of Parisian. However, most people who were farmers made them themselves.
So, what advanced us in our quest for light? I mean, even up to the 1700s, we were using the tallow candles and fireplaces to light our life, and we had two separate sleeps called 'First' and 'Second'. So what happened? It's a tale about a dark and stormy night, when an Nantucket Ship captained by a man named Hussey was blown way off course into the North Atlantic. While trying to find their way back, the crew spotted a weird creature, the Sperm Whale. This whale was harpooned majestically, according to Hussey. Some hold beliefs that it was merely washed ashore in the storm and Hussey claimed the find for him. However, when the locals cut apart the mammal for food and supplies, they discovered a cavity filled with a white, oily substance above it's cranium.
We still have no clue why it's there. Some argue that it's there for buoyancy, others that it's there for echolocation amplification. However, the New Englanders who now had access to over 5 hundred gallons of this stuff, needed to find uses for it, as Hussey refused to let any part of it go to waste. So an Chandler tried to make a candle out of it after thickening it. It turned out to be a candle with a whiter light, and next to no smoke. So, for either epicness or hubris, the captain Hussey had forced a town to create an amazing light source. Even Benjamin Franklin loved working with them, George Washington spent over 15,000 a year for these candles, and the Declaration of Independence and the Bill of Rights were written under it's light.
However, a group of Chandlers combined forces under the Spermaceti Trust to make a monopoly over other chandlers and to force people who hunted these whales to go to them for creation, which made them able to put low selling prices and high buying prices. Despite that, it was still a very wealthy man who managed to bag one of these creatures, which boomed the sailing business. However, it was as dangerous as rewarding, resulting in thousands of lives and entire ships lost, as well as the sinking of the Essex, that gave the idea behind Moby Dick. And don't even start about getting the liquid out carefully. 8-13 year old children were lowered into a cut in the cranium to bucket out the liquid, which resulted in a horrible smell.
However, 300,000 sperm whales were lost, and it would have been possible for us to have wiped them out if it wasn't for the discovery of Oil in the 1850s, which resulted in gas lights which spared the beautiful creatures. Fossil Fuels, that we still use today, were easier to get your hands on and less likely to end up killing you. They were also up to 10 times brighter then the original candles and people began having enough light and time to read, resulting in a boom for the Magazine and Newspaper industries. However, it was still expensive, and only the High Class people could afford to have lights on all night every night.
But what about electric lights? 'Well, everyone knows that Thomas Edison created them.' Wrong. in the1879s, Edison had put in his patent for an Electric Lamp. The problem is, there are patents for around the same thing for over 80 years beforehand. Edison was also a jerk, using 'Vaporware' strategies to scare off competition. 'Vaporware' is simply: Oh, you're working on a thing? Well, we've already finished it, so why bother? An example of this can be found in his 'long lasting lightbulb', which could last up to weeks! The press were shuffled in and out so that every magazine could see this invention. And then we found out that Edison was switching out the light bulbs between visits. But it was already too late, and we now have his face plastered in every book.
So how did we get the amazing Neons associated with Las Vegas invented? Thank an actual inventor, George Claude. In discovering a system to make liquid air for mass production off pure oxygen and liquid nitrogen, he discovered a waste product from this intervention. Neon, as he named it, was the subject of his mad scientist hobby, and after passing electric current thru the isolated gas, he discovered it lit up red. He continue onward, lighting up things like Argon and Mercury. After discovering a wide variety of colors, he patented it as quickly as possible. As the growing demand of it surged, he built a company around it and soured up in the business.
But what about LV? It wasn't the insane city it is today, so how did the infamous signs get there? It's Tom Young's fault, a sign letterer who made words and shapes appear out of the electronic lamps.Tom was introduced to the Neon lights of Claude, and figured that building the glass in a certain shape would be easier then using trails of the one shape light bulbs. He built the YESCO company around this, and was soon building a sign for a obscure casino/hotel combo called the Boulders, which was in an obscurer city called Las Vegas.
And we slowly worked out way up from there.With movies and comics like Star Wars and Flash Gordon, a push from the Sci-Fi crowd worked its way up into the scientific community, because, who didn't want to see lasers become an reality? In the 1960s, we'd gotten Hughes Aircraft and Bell Labs working on creating these amazing heat rays of doom! So why didn't we get them? Because they weren't exactly 'doom'-y enough. But we still use these amazing things everyday. Where? In the supermarket. A Sci-Fi writer in the past's over powered weapon of then is now what you use when you buy a bottle of soda. It's how we check the bar code of the item without needing to manually do it.
That's Adventure Van, putting a light to it.
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