Give people options of what to look at. Members of one family will choose non-urban views most of the time (but not all of the time, as we have said more than once after visiting big cities). To each, their own. An article by Ariel Schwartz, a Senior Editor at Co.Exist, titled “The Hidden Beauty Of Suburban Sprawl” is on that magazine’s website: Continue reading
Month: September 2012
Muniyaras Dolmens
Muniyaras
Muniyaras Dolmens are burial chambers belonging to the Megalithic age made of huge rocky slabs. It is believed that this was the ideal place for the ancient sages for meditation and Yoga. There are many dolmens in and around Munnar especially Marayoor, Kovilkadavu and near the cliffs overlooking the Pambar River.
Nothing Is Good, Frequently
From a man who knows how to make loud noises worth listening to, the ideas (especially for those of us interested in reduction of noise pollution, click the image above to go to the full story) here are most welcome:
Music, more than many of the arts, triggers a whole host of neurons. Multiple regions of the brain fire upon hearing music: muscular, auditory, visual, linguistic. That’s why some folks who have completely lost their language abilities can still articulate a text when it is sung. Oliver Sacks wrote about a brain-damaged man who discovered that he could sing his way through his mundane daily routines, and only by doing so could he remember how to complete simple tasks like getting dressed. Melodic intonation therapy is the name for a group of therapeutic techniques that were based on this discovery.
Bird of the Day: Piping Plover
Cape May, NJ
Franzen On Birds
On this site we have a commitment to, bordering on an obsession with, birds. Every day you can find at least one post featuring a bird that a member of our team (employee, intern, staff photographer, or staff photographer’s brother) or a member of our extended network of birders. Recently, we have run several posts featuring the bird-loving writer featured in this video. We will continue this thread until we run out of material. Promise.
Cabbage
Cabbage is a powerfully medicinal vegetable that is a natural remedy for ulcers as it helps to clean the waste from the stomach and improves digestion. It is also proven to assist in the treatment of cancer. Continue reading
Platon, Come To India!
One of the greatest photographers of people we have ever seen, Platon, has been returning home every few years to the Greek island where he grew up. These photos, even viewed merely on websites and in video, are somehow conveying mythic modesty, and are very different from his normal work: Continue reading
Bird of the Day: Black-headed Ibis
Uda Walawe, Sri Lanka
A Man, A Plan, A Grain of Sand
Newspaper editor Brendon Grimshaw bought an “abandoned” Seychelle island in the 1960s and spent the rest of his life lovingly creating the habitat that is now Moyenne Island National Park, part of the Ste. Anne Marine National Park.
Together with a Seychellois named Rene Lafortune Grimshaw transformed the island, planting 16,000 trees by hand, including native hard woods such as mahogany. The trees attracted birds (some 2,000 make the island their home), and Grimshaw himself reintroduced over 100 giant tortoises, native to the Seychelles but almost hunted to extinction in the early 1900s. The labor of love resulted in Moyenne island now holding more than two thirds of all endemic plants to the Seychelles as well as the Seychelles government standing firm against the multiple advances offering millions of dollars to”develop” the island after Grimshaw’s death. Continue reading
Save Our Species (SOS) Needs Your Help
The IUCN released the most recent list of 100 Most Threatened Species last week. Read it and weep. Or get activated. Look at what SOS is doing and see what you can do to make a difference.
From Behind the Wheel: Rickshaw Stunt Rider Warning
Kadavanthra Junction, Ernakulam
Soft Shield Fern
The elegant Soft Shield Fern loves neutral, humus-rich, fresh soil. It is commonly found in the Western Ghats of India above 1000 meters. Continue reading
Community, Collaboration & Swiss Fun
While a group of graduate and undergraduate students from Singapore, Korea, the Philippines and the USA were in Kerala generating content for the stop motion summary of their internship experience, another group of students in Lausanne were just finishing their own stop motion fun. Watch to the end to see the “making of” segment, which is just as fun as the finished product.
Bird of the Day: Sandwich Terns (Sanibel Island, FL)
Photo credit: Stephen Crafts
Math & Confidence
Click the banner to the left to go to his blog site and on the image after the jump for the post in which Robert Krulwich wonders about the “Old Rice-Grains-On-The-Chessboard Con, With a New Twist”:
Once upon a time, says the science writer David Blatner, there was this con man who made chessboards for high-end clients — in this case, a king.
The craftsman was good; his chessboards were better than beautiful. The king, he knew, loved chess. So he hatched a plan to trick the king into handing over an enormous fortune. His plan? He figured, “This king is not too good at math.”
So when the craftsman presented his chessboard at court, he told the king,
“Your Highness, I don’t want money for this. Or jewels. All I want is a little rice.”
A Morning in Sapsucker Woods
Last weekend I ventured for the first time into Ithaca’s Sapsucker Woods – a forested area adjacent to Cornell’s Lab of Ornithology, which among many other projects, strongly influences ornithological citizen science far and wide. Sapsucker Woods, however, is not merely a place where birds nest and feed. It is a living, breathing organism – an ecosystem that is more than the sum of the parts of the intricate denizens, both biotic and abiotic, within it. The complexity of a forest is fractal – from the way sunlight is distributed to the canopy, to the well-known food chain, to the molecular structure of the enzymes saprophobic fungi use to break down the hydrocarbon bonds in the wood they devour. Through a magnifying glass, or a microscope, or out of an airplane’s window – a forest is beautiful. Continue reading
What Box?
From the innovators who get paid to think outside the normal boundaries, and who brought us the disposable cup above, the website explains what they do in general and what they did in this case:
Sardi Innovation is an Outsourcing Business Innovation Center.
Cookie Cup, “Sip the cofee then eat the cup” The cookie cup is made of pastry that is covered with a special icing sugar that works as an insulator making the cup waterproof and sweetening at the same time.
Cookie Cup [has collected] very important Awards in Ecology, Marketing, Business Strategy and Design sectors.
Thoovanam Waterfall
Thoovanam Waterfall
Thoovanam Waterfall is one of the largest and most beautiful falls in Munnar found enroute to the Chinnar Wildlife Sanctuary. The cascade is in the Pambar River, which flows East and joins the Amaravathi reservoir in Tamil Nadu. Continue reading
11 Minutes Of Heroic Arctic Activism
From The Guardian’s website, in the Environment section, a bit of videography that puts the James Bond-type action films, which after all are merely entertainment without any deeper purpose, to a bit of shame:
Behind the scenes of Greenpeace’s Arctic oil protest Continue reading
Bird of the Day: Rose-ringed Parakeet
Uda Walawe, Sri Lanka
Organikos 