The American Statehouse: Interpreting Democracy's Temples

Temples on the Move

5 Thank you for the friendly introduction and for the invitation to share with you some ideas about architecture and its relationship with the automotive industry. One of the most striking aspects of this relationship is the different speed of development. In 1931, when Le Corbusier wanted to show that his Pavillon Suisse in Paris was really leading edge aesthetics he had the building photograp...

Drāviḍa Temples in the Samarāṅgaṇasūtradhāra

The relationship to actual practice of the vastuśāstras (or vāstuśāstras) and śilpaśāstras, the canonical Indian texts on architecture and sculpture, is a complex one. Scholarly attitudes to these texts range between an uncritical assumption that, traditionally, these texts set the rules for making buildings and sculptures, thereby holding the key to understanding them, and complete denial of t...

Interpreting American Sign Language with Kinect

Accurate and real-time machine translation of sign language has the potential to significantly improve communication between hearing impaired people and those who do not understand sign language. Previous research studies on computer recognition of sign language have taken input from technology including motion-capturing gloves and computer vision combined with colored gloves. These projects co...

Towns and Temples Along the Mississippi

The Astronomical Orientation of Ancient Greek Temples

Despite its appearing to be a simple question to answer, there has been no consensus as to whether or not the alignments of ancient Greek temples reflect astronomical intentions. Here I present the results of a survey of archaic and classical Greek temples in Sicily and compare them with temples in Greece. Using a binomial test I show strong evidence that there is a preference for solar orienta...