unjapanologist

Remember Cecilia Gimenez, the lady who tried to restore a fresco in a church near Zaragoza and did it wrong? The story is twisting down some interesting paths, copyright-wise.

According to El Correo (in Spanish, English via gTranslate), thousands of people started visiting the church in the town of Borja after the botched restauration became famous on the internet. The church placed a collection box next to the "creatively restored" fresco, but few people left donations, so it was decided to charge admission to the building instead. Apparently they've earned about 2000 euros in just four days. Now Gimenez' family has called in lawyers to claim that she should get royalties, because the foundation that operates the church is making money off her work.

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Current Mood: thoughtful
Crossposts: http://unjapanologist.livejournal.com/56502.html

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Theo Gray, element collector and many other things, constructed a table with a hand-carved wooden tile for every element in Mendeleev's periodic table. Each tile hides a sample of the element inside the table. It's a beautiful piece of work, and I love how it shows that there are real, physical, interesting things behind that perfectly boring grid full of letters I was presented with in high school and forgot as quickly as I could possibly manage. Maybe I'd have tried harder to take an interest in chemistry if the periodic table had been presented as this intricate ordering of actual materials that look and feel absolutely fascinating. Most of the video is Gray showing off his collection of element samples, and oh, I wish I was in that room right now and could touch all that stuff. (New thing learned today: tungsten is an incredibly heavy element, and one actual use of tungsten powder is sprinkling it on wax in dog's ears so the ears will lie flat.)

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Current Mood: calm

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The last few days have been absolutely surreal. I spent the whole weekend tracking down my Japanese friends and all the students from our Japanese Studies department who are currently studying in the country. Apart from that, I've been glued to the Japanese TV news and didn't accomplish much of anything productive.

For help_japan, I'm offering a fic of at least 3000 words for Avatar, and a piece of art (or several) for Avatar or Harry Potter.

BTW, there's a handy delicious account tracking all the help_japan offers. There's also a