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Live Stream of the Parade Preparations

You can watch a live stream of ONDAR & the Eagles of Tuva as they prepare for the Tournament of Roses Parade on January, 2013, at 7AM PST: http://t.co/wsUHwXA 

They will be entry #47 in the Rose Parase.

Kongar-ol Ondar to Ride In Rose Bowl Parade

On January 1, 1993, three Tuvan horsemen and musicians rode down Colorado Boulevard in Pasadena, California, as part of the Rose Parade. Kongar-ool Ondar, Kaigal-ool Khovalyg, and Anatoly Kuular were accompanied by their friend and translator Rada Chakar at a time when Tuvan culture was almost completely unknown in North America, outside of a few persistent fanatics.

Since that time, Tuvan culture has become part of western pop culture, appearing everywhere from Hollywood movies (Geronimo), late night TV talk shows (David Letterman, Conan O'Brien, Chevy Chase) and TV situation comedies (Big Bang Theory).  Tuvan musicians have toured the world countless times and have recorded with musicians too numerous to mention, notably including Bela Fleck and the Flecktones as well as Frank Zappa, after meeting him on their trip to Pasadena for the Rose Parade.

To mark the twentieth anniversary of that epic journey from Tuva to California, the Rose Parade organization has invited Kongar-ol Ondar to ride in the Parade this January 1, with two wrestlers accompanying him on foot.

If you can't watch the parade in person, you can always try to catch it on TV!

You can help support Ondar's visit (which is funded entirely through personal donations) by making a donation yourself!

Ondar has established a relationship with Creative Visions Foundation that allows him to accept charitable donations to support his artistic endeavors in the USA.  Creative Visions Foundation is a publicly supported 501(c)3, which supports Creative Activists who use the power of media and the arts to affect positive change in the world.  All donations are tax deductible.

Kongar-ool Ondar's Facebook Page

You can get all the latest news about Ondar's current activities on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/GroovinTuvan

Check out the cool pics of Ondar at the monument to the Center of Asia in Kyzyl!

Feynman's Flowers

The scientific research project "Feynman's Flowers" is an open invitation to the general public to help advance the state of knowledge in the world, using only your ordinary average computer and a very small amount of your time.

The researchers behind this project have gathered many images of individual molecules using an instrument called a Scanning Tunneling Microscope (STM).  The public is invited to help out by measuring the relative position of the molecule in one or more of the images, and by gathering this information over very many images the researchers will be able to gain knowledge about the electronic and magnetic properties of the molecule.

The project is named partly in honor of Feynman because of his inspirational talk "There's Plenty Of Room At The Bottom" on the topic of the universe at an extremely small scale, and partly for the characteristic flower shape of the molecules as seen in the STM images examined in this project.

And of course, if you have been following Friends of Tuva online for long enough and if you have a particularly good memory, you will recall that the Friends of Tuva website was originally hosted by the STM group at the University of Manitoba.   You can't escape the STM!