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Fort Worth Bead Market FALL, http://www.thebeadmarket.net
November 21-22
Dallas Gem & Mineral Society's Gem, Mineral, Fossil, Bead & Jewelry Show, Mesquite, http://www.dallasgemandmineral.org/gem_
Looking for something to do now that Christmas has come and gone? The Chabot Space and Science Center is open this week, with the 10th annual New Year's Eve balloon drop, which has become a family tradition for many — a highlight on the center's schedule.
This would be a good week to see the new planetarium show "Tales of Maya Skies," which is a breathtaking immersion in Mayan science, art and mythology and is narrated by Grammy award winner and Oscar nominee Lila Downs. It is the first full dome digital show to highlight Latin American culture, and while it is scheduled to show in other planetariums in the U.S. and Latin America, it is having its world premiere here.
International Bar-B-Que Cookoff, Grand Prairie, http://www.tradersvillage.com/en/grandp
October 30-31
Fort Worth Alliance Air Show, http://www.allianceairshow.com
Dancers Annual National Competition Extravaganza, Dallas, http://www.dallasdance.com
September 3-6
Animefest, Dallas, http://www.animefest.org
September 10-12
National Championship Indian Pow Wow, Grand Prairie, http://www.tradersvillage.com/en/grandp
September 17-19
FenCon, Dallas, http://www.fencon.org
September 24-26
Salado's Chocolate and Arts Festival, http://www.saladochocolatefestival.c
September 25-26
Dallas Bead Market, Shttp://www.thebeadmarket.net
Let me know of any events I missed
Hot Springs Gem, Mineral, & Jewelry Show, http://aksshow.com/home.jsp
August 7-11
National SCRABBLE® Championship, Dallas, http://www.scrabbleplayers.org/w/2010_N
August 21
Austin Bat Fest!, http://www.roadwayevents.com/RoadStar/E
August 28-29
Dallas Comic Con, Richardson, http://www.scifiexpo.com/DCC/Home.html
Let me know if I missed any cool events
In the United States, most of the archaeology is about Native American cultures. Yet nationwide, there are only about 15 Native American doctorate-level archaeologists involved in the interpretation of their archaeological past. On Dec. 17, William “Rex” Weeks joined their ranks as the first Native American to receive a doctoral degree with a specialization in archaeology from Arizona State University’s competitive anthropology program. His inspiring success story was shared during the commencement ceremony.
Weeks is a member of the Echota Cherokee Tribe of Alabama, his clan being Anigatagewi, or “Of Wild Potato.” Born to Cherokee parents and raised in the foothills of the Great Smokey Mountains, the ancestral homeland of the Cherokee, he understands, speaks, writes and often thinks in the Cherokee language. Though he grew up in a poor rural community in eastern Tennessee, with the support of his family and the blessings of his elders, Rex achieved remarkable academic and personal success.
An outstanding scholar with numerous publications, Weeks was awarded several prestigious fellowships, scholarships and grants, including ones from the Ford Foundation, the National Science Foundation and ASU’s College of Liberal Arts and Sciences. He also received two teacher-training fellowships to design and co-teach undergraduate courses on rock art and Woodland Native American religions in the School of Human Evolution and Social Change, home of ASU’s anthropology programs.
he Egyptians supposedly used it to guide the construction the Pyramids. The architecture of ancient Athens is thought to have been based on it. Fictional Harvard symbologist Robert Langdon tried to unravel its mysteries in the novel The Da Vinci Code.
"It" is the golden ratio, a geometric proportion that has been theorized to be the most aesthetically pleasing to the eye and has been the root of countless mysteries over the centuries. Now, a Duke University engineer has found it to be a compelling springboard to unify vision, thought and movement under a single law of nature's design.
Also know the divine proportion, the golden ratio describes a rectangle with a length roughly one and a half times its width. Many artists and architects have fashioned their works around this proportion. For example, the Parthenon in Athens and Leonardo da Vinci's painting Mona Lisa are commonly cited examples of the ratio.
Adrian Bejan, professor of mechanical engineering at Duke's Pratt School of Engineering, thinks he knows why the golden ratio pops up everywhere: the eyes scan an image the fastest when it is shaped as a golden-ratio rectangle.
The natural design that connects vision and cognition is a theory that flowing systems -- from airways in the lungs to the formation of river deltas -- evolve in time so that they flow more and more easily. Bejan termed this the constructal law in 1996, and its latest application appears early online in the International Journal of Design & Nature and Ecodynamics.
ScrewAttack Gaming Convention, Dallas, http://www.sgconvention.com/registe
July 9-12
Mythcon, Dallas, http://www.mythsoc.org
July 16-18
Journey to Where, Austin, http://www.anthonywynn.com/journeytowhe
Fans of Space 1999
July 23-24
Gourmet Chili Pepper & Salsa Festival, Wildseed Farms (seven miles east of Fredericksburg), http://www.tex-fest.com/gcp/
Newly discovered Mayan murals, uncovered during an excavation at Calakmul, Mexico, offer a glimpse of the life of ordinary people instead of the more common depictions of the concerns and lives of Mayan ruling elites, according to the researchers who found the artworks.
The wall murals, which probably date from the 7th century, were preserved by a layer of clay when new buildings were constructed over the original one. They show groups of men, women and children doing such ordinary things as preparing food and tobacco, drinking maize gruel, serving and eating maize-bread tamales, wearing tall decorated hats and carrying large rope-tied bundles. Hieroglyphic captions, including some using symbols that researchers hadn't encountered before, accompany some of the murals. The report of the findings, published recently in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, noted that about one-third of the drawings are of women, including what may be the only depiction known of an "nonmythological" elderly Mayan woman.
Texas Scottish Festival, Arlington, http://www.texasscottishfestival.co
June 4-6
A-Kon (anime convention), Dallas, http://a-kon.com
June 11-12
Ham-Com, Plano, http://www.hamcom.org
June 11-13
Auto Swap Meet, Grand Prairie, http://www.tradersvillage.com/en/grandp
June 12
Texas Blueberry Festival, Nacogdoches, http://texasblueberryfestival.com
June 12-13
Annual Eggs-Ibit International 2009, Dallas, http://dallaseggshow.com
June 25-27
Agents & Editors Conference, Austin, http://www.writersleague.org/events/ind
Let me know of any cool events I missed
Annual Cajun Festival, Grand Prairie, http://www.tradersvillage.com/en/grandp
May 15
Greater Fort Worth Herb Society Herb Festival, Fort Worth, http://www.gfwhs.org/index.htm
May 20-22
Martha's Sewing Market, Arlington, http://www.marthapullen.com
May 21-23
Dallas/Fort Worth Bead Renaissance Show, Grapevine, http://www.beadshow.com/shows/index.h
Main Street Days Festival, Grapevine, https://www.grapevinetexasusa.com
May 22-23
Cowtown Warbird Roundup, Fort Worth, http://www.cowtownwarbirdroundup.or
May 23-26
WINDPOWER 2010 Conference & Exhibition, Dallas, http://www.windpowerexpo.org (a trade show I want to attend)
May 28-29
Big Design, Dallas, http://bigdesignconference.com
May 28-30
43rd Annual National Polka Festival, Ennis, http://www.nationalpolkafestival.co
Deep Ellum Arts Festival, Dallas, http://www.meifestivals.com/deepspr.htm
April 3-5
Dallas Pottery Invitational, Dallas, http://dallaspotteryinvitational.co
April 10
35th Prairie Dog Chili Cookoff, Grand Prairie, http://www.tradersvillage.com/en/grandp
April 13-15
PubCon South, Dallas, http://www.pubcon.com
April 16-17
North Texas Book Festival, Denton, http://www.ntbf.org
April 18
Oak Cliff Earth Day, http://www.oakcliffearthday.com
April 22
EarthFest, Dallas, http://www.greendallas.net/EarthFest201
April 23-25
International Gem & Jewelery Show, Dallas, http://www.intergem.com
April 23-25
Denton Arts & Jazz Festival, http://www.dentonjazzfest.com
April 24
Fort Worth Prairie Fest, Fort Worth, http://www.tandyhills.org/prairiefest.h
April 24-25
Spring Festival in the Japanese Garden, Fort Worth, http://www.fwbg.org/calendar.php#s
April 29-May 2
MayFest, Fort Worth, http://www.mayfest.org
April 30-May 1
Southwest Ceramic Association Ceramic Show, Mesquite, http://swca-inc.com/default.aspx
April 30-May 2
Texas Frightmare Weekend, Irving, http://www.texasfrightmareweekend.c
Let me know of any cool events I missed
North Texas Irish Festival, Dallas, http://www.ntif.org
March 6-7
Fort Worth Bead Market Spring, http://www.thebeadmarket.net
March 12-13
Chocolate Fest, Grapevine, https://www.grapevinetexasusa.com/Festi
March 12-14
All-Con, Addison, http://www.all-con.org
March 13
National Storm Conference, Colleyville, http://www.tessa.org/meeting.html
March 14
Annual Antique Science & Retro-Tech Show & Swap Meet and World Championship Slide Rule Competition, Irving, http://www.slideruleguy.com/tx-1q10.h
March 16-19
Maya Meetings, Austin, http://www.utmaya.org
March 19-21
Texas Pinball Festival, Grapevine, http://www.texaspinball.com
March 19-21
Dallas Scrabble Open, Dallas, http://www.dallasopen.com/2010/
March 25-27
American Numismatic Association's National Money Show, Fort Worth, http://www.nationalmoneyshow.com
March 26-28
Texas Indian Market, Arlington, http://www.indianmarket.net/P1alt.html
March 26-28
Heart of Texas Arts and Craft Show, Plano, http://www.heartoftexasshow.com
March 27
Austin Bat Run 5K, http://www.runtex.com/web/2-2605.a
March 28
Tartan Day Ceilidh, Dallas, http://scotsindallas.org/ssod_tart
Let me know of any good events I missed
Designed to celebrate the region's Mayan history it is hoped the underwater museum will heighten environmental awareness in the area, by creating an artificial reef in the hurricane hit region.
An international group of anthropologists offers a new theory about the diffusion of maize to the Southwestern United States and the impact it had.
Published the week of Dec. 7 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the study, co-authored by Gayle Fritz, Ph.D., professor of anthropology in Arts & Sciences at Washington University in St. Louis, and colleagues*, suggests that maize was passed from group to group of Southwestern hunter-gatherers.
These people took advantage of improved moisture conditions by integrating a storable and potentially high-yielding crop into their broad-spectrum subsistence strategy.
"For decades, there have been two competing scenarios for the spread of maize and other crops into what is now the U.S. Southwest," Fritz said.
According to the first, groups of farmers migrated northward from central Mexico into northwest Mexico and from there into the Southwest, bringing their crops and associated lifeways with them.
In the second scenario, maize moved northward from central Mexico to be Southwest by being passed from one hunter-gatherer band to the next, who incorporated the crop into their subsistence economies and eventually became farmers themselves.
"The case for long-distance northward migration of Mexican farming societies received a boost about 12 years ago when British archaeologist Peter Bellwood, joined a few years later by geographer Jared Diamond and linguist Jane Hill, included the Southwest in a grand global model in which long-distance migration of agriculturalists explains the spread of many of the world's major language families," Fritz said. "In the Southwest case, Uto-Aztecan-speaking peoples, ancestors of people who speak modern languages, like Comanche and Hopi, would have been responsible for the diffusion."
In this paper, the researchers summarize the most recent archaeological evidence, and integrate what is currently known about early maize in the Southwest with genetic, paleoecological, and historical linguistic studies.
Corn from five sites in Arizona and New Mexico now predates 2,000 B.C., which makes it too early to be explained by diffusion of settled Mexican villagers, said Fritz.
"No artifacts or features of any type point to in-migrating Mesoamerican farmers; in fact, continuity of local traditions is manifested, with independent invention of low-fired ceramics and with the construction of irrigation features in the Tucson Basin dating earlier than any known south of the border," she said. "We interpret the linguistic evidence as favoring a very early (beginning shortly after 7,000 B.C.), north-to-south movement of Proto-Uto-Aztecan hunter-gatherers and subsequent division into northern and southern Uto-Aztecan-speaking groups."
These two groups do not share words and meanings for maize because, according to the researchers' scenario, farming post-dates their separation.
"We think the Southwest stands as a region in which indigenous foragers adopted crops and made the transition to agriculture locally rather than having been joined or displaced by in-migrating farming societies," Fritz said. "Peter Bellwood may well be correct that long-distance movements account for some examples of the expansion of languages and farming technologies, but cases like that of the Southwest are very important in demonstrating that this pattern did not apply universally."
* Lead authors of this study are William L. Merrill of the National Museum of Natural History and Robert J. Hard of University of Texas at San Antonio. Co-authors are Fritz, Karen R. Adams of Crow Canyon Archaeological Center, John R. Roney of Colinas Cultural Resource Consulting and A.C. MacWilliams of University of Calgary.
Full text of the study is available at http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2
ecent studies show that one in three Canadians suffer from stress and the number is on the rise. But stress isn't a new problem.
While the physiological state wasn't properly named until the 1930s, new research from The University of Western Ontario proves stress has plagued humans for hundreds, and perhaps thousands of years.
The first study of its kind, published in the Journal of Archaeological Science, detected the stress hormone cortisol in the hair of ancient Peruvians, who lived between 550 and 1532 A.D.
When an individual is stressed – due to real or perceived threats – cortisol is released into nearly every part of the body, including blood, saliva, urine and hair.
Emily Webb, a PhD candidate at Western in Archaeological Science and the study's lead author, says the findings are important because it will allow us to better understand how ancient people behaved and felt during their time on Earth but more importantly, to better understand stress and how it affects us today.
"By studying the lives of people using traditional archeological methods like surveying and excavation and combining that with new research techniques like sampling ancient hair specimens, we can get a good picture of what life was like and how our ancestors may have responded to life-changing experiences like illness and disease," explains Webb.
Analysis of cortisol levels in ancient hair allows researchers to assess stress during a short, but critical, period of an individual's life. For this pilot study, the Western researchers selected hair samples from 10 individuals from five different archaeological sites in Peru, and analyzed them in segments to determine cortisol levels.
While many of the individuals studied showed high stress levels right before death, Webb noted that a majority also experienced multiple episodes of stress throughout their final years of their life, again proving that much like today, stress was very much apart of ancient Peruvian's daily lives.
Dallas Art Fair, http://www.dallasartfair.com
February 12-14
ConDFW, Dallas, http://www.condfw.org
February 20-21
TechFest, Dallas, http://www.natureandscience.org/kids/fa
February 20-21
Dallas Bead Market, Mesquite, http://www.thebeadmarket.net
February 26-28
Dallas Winter Gem, Jewelry, & Bead Show, Grapevine, http://events.constantcontact.com/regis
February 27
Beal Bank Dallas Regional Science & Engineering Fair, Dallas, http://www.dallassciencefair.org
February 27
Mad Scientist Ball, Fort Worth, http://www.fwmuseum.org/mad-scientist-b
February 27-28
Capital Confectioners' That Takes the Cake! Cake & Sugar Art Show & Competition, Austin, http://www.allinonebakeshop.com/cluband
The theme is Science Fiction and Fantasy (I have to enter this)
February 27-28
Fort Worth Coin Club 2010 Winter Show, http://www.fortworthcoinclub.org/
Let me know if I missed any events
3rd Coast Tribal Dance Festival, Fort Worth, http://www.3rdcoasttribal.us
January 16-17
Dallas Area Train Show, Plano, http://www.dfwtrainshows.com
January 22-24
Oklahoma City GEM, JEWELRY & BEAD SHOW, http://aksshow.com/home.jsp
January 23
Robert Burns Night Dinner and Dance, Richardson, http://scotsindallas.org/ssod_burnsnigh
January 23-24
Cowtown January 2010 Coin Show, Fort Worth, http://www.coinshows.com/ftworth_ga3.ht
January 30-31
Dallas Comic Con, Richardson, http://www.scifiexpo.com/DCC/Home.html
Let me know if I missed any good events
From http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m
While the hit film 2012 chills and horrifies filmgoers worldwide, its apocalyptic premise is completely false, according to author Bob Waxman in his new book 2012: The Ultimate Meaning, to be published by Paragon House and released on December 21, 2009 - exactly 3 years before the infamous date (http://www.2012theultimatemeaning.com/
And Waxman is so concerned he has retained the international public relations firm TransMedia Group (http://www.transmediagroup.com/) to tell the true story behind the end of the Mayan Calendar.
"Waxman believes Hollywood owes ancient Mayans an apology as they were not predicting anything of the kind depicted in the film," said TransMedia's founder Tom Madden, a former No. 2 ranked executive at NBC, where he was involved in promoting blockbuster miniseries and films on television.
"Our publicity will underscore that the date of 2012 was to mark the beginning of a new time-cycle which the Mayans were predicting as an era of heightened awareness and unitary consciousness," he said.
Madden has assigned the PR firm's top book publicist Kim Morgan to set the record straight. Waxman, whose expertise and scholarship is in Ancient Spiritual Wisdom, explains why Mayans believed that the year 2012 marks the process of a transition from one World Age to the next.
In the latest bizarre twist in the Colorado balloon boy story, an associate of Richard Heene revealed that Heene believes the world is going to end in 2012. Because of that, he wanted to get rich quick from a publicity stunt so he could afford to build an underground shelter, where he and his family could be safe from an exploding sun.
