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
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
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
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
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…
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
Photo credit: 10 year old Anup Prakash
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.
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!
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
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
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
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
Thanks to Paul Rosenfeld and Atlantic for this post and accompanying video, which is not just a nature-lover’s four minutes well spent, but a subtle tribute to the importance of collaboration in individual accomplishment:
“It’s in the wild places, in the damp clean air of an ancient forest, on a heaving ocean with unpredictable winds, on a snowy summit at the top of the world that I enter my own personal cathedral, and know where I fit in the vastness of creation,” says Jim Whittaker. Continue reading
Organikos 