Author: Organikos

Ecological Modernism Elucidated

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Thanks  to Yale Environment 360 for this big mental poke:

New Green Vision: Technology As Our Planet’s Last Best Hope.

The concept of ecological modernism, which sees technology as the key to solving big environmental problems, is gaining adherents and getting a lot of buzz these days. While mainstream conservationists may be put off by some of the new movement’s tenets, they cannot afford to ignore the issues it is raising.

by Fred Pearce

There is a new environmental agenda out there. One that is inimical to many traditional conservationists, but which is picking up kudos and converts. It calls itself environmental modernism — which for many is an oxymoron. Continue reading →

Bull Festival Karnataka

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Photo credits: Ramesh Kidangoor

Photo credits: Ramesh Kidangoor

The Bull Worshiping Festival is celebrated by Indian farmers, mainly in the State of Karnataka. On this day farmers bathe their bulls, decorate them with ornaments and shawls, paint their horns, and place garlands of flowers around their necks. Continue reading →

Spirit + Energy + Water + Patience + Talent = National Geographic Traveler Photo Contest Winner

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Photo and caption by Wagner Araujo

Thanks to the National Geographic Society’s many innovations, and in particular for the small ones like this photo contest:

I was in Manaus, Amazonas, during the Brazilian Aquathlon (swimming and running) championship. I photographed it from the water and my lens got completely wet, but there was so much energy in these boys that I just didn’t worry about that. —Wagner Araujo Continue reading →

Protecting The Largest Forests

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Photo courtesy Valerie Courtois, Canadian Boreal Initiative. Migratory tundra caribou in the boreal region of Quebec migrate hundreds of miles and require large tracts of protected wilderness.

Photo courtesy Valerie Courtois, Canadian Boreal Initiative. Migratory tundra caribou in the boreal region of Quebec migrate hundreds of miles and require large tracts of protected wilderness.

Thanks to Krishna Ramanujan for this story in the Cornell Chronicle about the new mega-scale of conservation planning:

At least half of Canada’s 1.4 billion acre boreal forest, the largest remaining intact wilderness on Earth, must be protected to maintain the area’s current wildlife and ecological systems, according to a report by an international panel of 23 experts. Continue reading →

Those Fabulous Buffett Boys

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It sure sounds like a great way to pass time, giving away billions of dollars. The fact that they seem to think deeply about the implications of their wealth, as well as their methods of getting and giving, makes them even more noteworthy. Thanks to tax-payer, and listener-supported National Public Radio in the USA for bringing the other brother/son to our attention with this story:

Get Howard Buffett into the cab of a big ole’ farm tractor and he’s like a kid — albeit a 58-year-old, gray-haired one. He’s especially excited when it comes to the tractor’s elaborate GPS system, which he describes as “very cool.”

“I’m driving hands-free,” says Buffett, the son of billionaire investor Warren Buffett. Continue reading →

Luke Shepard, Come To Kerala!

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We send these invitations, modern messages in modern bottles, with discriminating intent, if random expectations. Luke reminds us of how much we miss the Raxa Collective Design Team, a 2012 phenomenon. We cannot see much about Luke except that he “does things.”  The photography and film-making among those things, we like from what we see here.  The welcome mat is out…

Mahashivratri Festival – Attappadi

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Photo credits: Ranjith

Photo credits: Ranjith

Attappadi is situated in the northeast part of Palakkad district, and is a stunning forest that is mainly inhabited by local tribes. The Malleshwarn peak of Attappadi is worshiped as a huge Shivalinga, the symbolic connection between male and female forces, by these tribes. They celebrate the festival of Shivratri with fanfare on the hill, by illuminating the top of this peak. Continue reading →

The New Social Work, A Bangalore Innovation

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Courtesy of Flavy Shankar. Deena Pinto, extreme left, with her friends during a Sunday brunch meeting in Bangalore, Karnataka.

Thanks to India Ink for this coverage of Bangalore’s social scene intersecting with its entrepreneurial innovation:

Deena Pinto, in her 30s and single, is much sought after in some social circles in Bangalore. Continue reading →

If You Are Planning Marriage

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Bubbles at the surface of a freshly poured flute of champagne. Photograph by Gérard Liger-Belair.

Bubbles at the surface of a freshly poured flute of champagne. Photograph by Gérard Liger-Belair.

Champagne is associated with celebration for many reasons, and having just learned that one of our former interns is planning a wedding we could not resist sharing this information in the spirit of citizen science-sharing (click the image above to go to the source in Scientific American‘s website):

…In Uncorked: The Science of Champagne, recently revised and translated into English, physicist Gerard Liger-Belair explains the history, science and art of the wine. His book also features high-speed photography of champagne bubbles in action and stop-motion photography of the exact moment a cork pops (potentially at a speed of 31 miles per hour (!). Continue reading →

19th Century Modern

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daguerrotype-004-580

Students in need of tuition money sometimes prove the saying that necessity is the mother of invention, as this New Yorker historical note indicates:

In 1843, a Dartmouth College freshman named Augustus Washington needed to earn some money for tuition. As a man of mixed-race—a black father, a South Asian mother—many professions were closed to him. But anyone could learn the new art of daguerreotype photography, which had been perfected and publicized a few years earlier by the French artist Louis-Jacques-Mandé Daguerre. After mastering the bulky camera, Washington opened a studio in Hartford, Connecticut, where he made a good living photographing middle-class families. Continue reading →

Uzhunnu Vada – Flavours Of South India

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Uzhunnu Vada

Uzhunnu Vada

Uzhunnu Vada is a very common snack in South India, and is often found at breakfast with items such as Idli, Sambar and Chutney. The main ingredients for this dish are black lentils, ginger, onion, salt and curry leaves. Continue reading →

Ducks at Kuttanad

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Photo credits : Ramesh Kidangoor

Photo credits : Ramesh Kidangoor

Kuttanad is a large area made up of low-lying land spread across Alappuzha District. Agriculture is the major occupation and paddy is grown as far as the eye can see. Duck rearing is a subsidiary occupation for many farmers and thousands of ducks wadding over the fields, lakes and rivers is a beautiful sight across the district. Duck growers from even distant places bring their flocks to Kuttanad during the harvest season. Continue reading →

Extinction Is Forever, Except When It Is Not

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But where would I live? Royal BC Museum

But where would I live? Royal BC Museum

From the fellow who brought you Dolly, a philosophical yet practical consideration of the ethics of cloning an extinct species:

It is unlikely that a mammoth could be cloned in the way we created Dolly the sheep, as has been proposed following the discovery of mammoth bones in northern Siberia. However, the idea prompts us to consider the feasibility of other avenues. Even if the Dolly method is not possible, there are other ways in which it would be biologically interesting to work with viable mammoth cells if they can be found. Continue reading →

Convocation Power Well Used

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Open, N.Y.

Open, N.Y.

We are grateful when people whose name and heritage give them convocation power use their power on behalf of others less fortunate (until they shake our confidence), so we give thanks to the New York Times and to Peter Buffett, both privileged, for sharing this startling opinion piece. We, a small group of moderately privileged people with a small platform for sharing ideas, are particularly interested in the intersection of good and market forces, so Mr. Buffett’s challenge here is germane to our mission and to our practice:

I HAD spent much of my life writing music for commercials, film and television and knew little about the world of philanthropy as practiced by the very wealthy until what I call the big bang happened in 2006. That year, my father, Warren Buffett, made good on his commitment to give nearly all of his accumulated wealth back to society.

Continue reading →

Noise Pollution’s Viral Enemy

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Yesterday was another milestone for anti-noise pollution’s cleverest activists in India. We have mentioned this project, introduced here when it was still just a catchy much-needed idea, but it has now become a movement. We are still hoping for an update in person from the idea’s originator, but meanwhile: don’t honk if you like HNOP, but like it on Facebook!

Suburbanosity

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St. Andrews Manor, Shanghai, China (2009)

St. Andrews Manor, Shanghai, China (2009)

Thanks to Atlantic’s far-reaching reviewers and commentators for their attention to this book:

Swedish-born photographer Martin Adolfsson has been living in New York City since 2007, but he’s spent a lot of his time documenting upper middle-class suburban enclaves outside the U.S. Continue reading →

Really, Charles?

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Prince Charles

Prince Charles, who has criticised the global food industry for shipping ‘vast quantities of commodities halfway round the world’. Photograph: Tim Ireland/PA

We have been impressed with him on occasion in the past, so it was with some surprise, and a tinge of nausea, that we read this :

Prince Charles is funding his charities with profits from shipping royal-branded mineral water 6,000 miles to the Middle East in an arrangement that has been described by Friends of the Earth as “completely insane”. Continue reading →

Reconsidering Deaccession

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DIA-II We understand and sympathize with Mr. Schjeldahl’s reconsideration of the implication of his earlier post, considering the volume of vitriol among the comments that followed it. But the core point of that post was lost in the reconsideration:

I take back my endorsement, in an earlier post, of the idea that the city of Detroit should ease its financial crisis by selling art works from the collection of the Detroit Institute of the Arts. I also apologize to the many whom my words pained. Continue reading →

Merging Urban & Rural

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Pastoral, rural, city, urban…words with plenty of meaning on their own.  Now, from Gus Petro, ideas and images merging them:

In the end of 2012 I travelled to USA to experience something new. And it was something I didn’t expect: emptiness and density. Continue reading →