Editorial Product Review: :This beautiful but tragic video offers a thorough overview of the delicate and varied ecosystems found on the Hawaiian Islands. More than almost anywhere else in the world, these islands had been untouched and have existed in 'splendid isolation.' But since humankind's arrival, nearly 70 percent of Hawaii's native species have disappeared. The non-native feral pig, for instance, is the worst scourge; this pig has no natural predators and has invaded every island. Neither sugar cane nor pineapples are native. ...
Editorial Product Review: :Jane Goodall is legendary among primate researchers, and for good reason--she learned more on her own studying chimpanzees than all who went before her combined. National Geographic's Among the Wild Chimpanzees looks at her life's work from 1960, when she first came to Tanzania's Gombe Reserve, to the early 1980s, showing her quiet determination to observe these animals closely while disturbing them as little as possible. Gaining their trust through months and years of noninterference, she gathered an unprecedented wealth ...
Editorial Product Review: :Who were the Mayans? The answer depends on who you ask. Legend has it that the gods made them from corn. Armchair cultural critics with little more than a page-long encyclopedia entry's worth of knowledge see them as a ritualistic, dynastic people with a strong penchant for boulder hackysack. Take an hour-long tour of Lost Kingdoms of the Maya with host Susan Sarandon, however, and you'll see a culture that defies any handy categorization. Composed of a web of several ...
Editorial Product Review: :There's a plug for environmental causes (song lyric: 'If there's a place worth saving, this must be the place'), a Darwinian crack aimed at parents, and faux news broadcasts to keep things moving. But most of all there are animals, animals, animals in this 37-minute National Geographic video. If a trip to the South American rain forest isn't part of the vacation plans, this video tour aimed at kids from preschool through grade school will more than suffice. Comparing the ...
Editorial Product Review: :There's a plug for environmental causes (song lyric: 'If there's a place worth saving, this must be the place'), a Darwinian crack aimed at parents, and faux news broadcasts to keep things moving. But most of all there are animals, animals, animals in this 37-minute National Geographic video. If a trip to the South American rain forest isn't part of the vacation plans, this video tour aimed at kids from preschool through grade school will more than suffice. Comparing the ...
Editorial Product Review: :Comedian Leslie Nielsen says that his garden is a 'realm of stalkers, serial killers, and aerial combat' just as a bat swoops in and beheads a praying mantis. Is this a video for budding naturalists or for horror flick fanatics? It's unclear. While the cinematography may be noteworthy, the results are altogether too fantastic. Special effects create speed-eating fire ants devouring a dragonfly and a wildly dancing vine. The shrew in Nielsen's garden might as well be the pesky gofer ...
Editorial Product Review: :Rain Forest, the classic National Geographic special, is still a joy to behold. The photography of the Costa Rican jungle is rock-steady, lush, and fascinating; Richard Kiley's narration is absorbing and informative; and the real stars--the animals and plants--are charismatic and entertaining. Watch a deadly coral snake grab a drink, a mother sloth s-l-o-w-l-y take her baby for a walk, and a colony of ants defend its home (an acacia tree) from encroaching vines and grasshoppers. Learn the secrets of ...
Editorial Product Review: :Mystery, danger, splendor, adventure. Since 1964, National Geographic has been broadcasting television specials that created and, many would argue, still maintain the standard for all nature programming since. Vigilantly focusing on what came before human beings, this special is a grand slam of 30 years (1964-1994) of painstaking exploration and documentation. Its narrative sounds almost biblical: 'In the beginning...' there was molten lava. The footage is, as you would expect, dazzling but it is the agile editing and well-crafted storytelling ...
Editorial Product Review: :Sunny the honey possum watches an eagle glide gracefully across the sky and muses about how wonderful flying must feel. After listening to Uncle Balzac poetically discuss the funny-looking flamingo, Bobby the bush baby comes to the conclusion that it is feathers that enable birds to fly--you can imagine the outcome of his test flight! Sprinkled between a multitude of beautifully photographed scenes of birds in the wild are two musical sequences, 'Alphabet Rock' and 'Animal Doo-Wop,' that teach kids ...
Editorial Product Review: :Ashes to ashes and dust to dust... most of the time. Occasionally, by chance or design, human bodies are preserved for thousands of years as mummies. National Geographic unwraps their story in Ancient Graves: Voices of the Dead, a captivating program that searches high and low throughout the world to find and learn from preserved bodies. Celtic 'bog men' whose skins were tanned while their bones dissolved make quite a contrast to the Peruvian mummies freeze-dried in the arid mountaintops, ...
This raw work-flow application isn't the Holy Grail many hoped it would be, but Apple Aperture 1.5 could make life easier for photographers who need to cull, retouch, and output large numbers of photographs quickly and efficiently.
This raw work-flow application isn't the Holy Grail many hoped it would be, but Apple Aperture 1.5 could make life easier for photographers who need to cull, retouch, and output large numbers of photographs quickly and efficiently.