Author: Organikos

Underdogs, Against All Odds, Stage Successful Comeback

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Thanks to the Atlantic Monthly‘s website for this story (click the image above to go to the source) about the resurgence of one of nature’s most historically feared beasts. Although the return of these animals has made relations between conservationists and farmers more difficult in Germany as elsewhere, the net gain for our natural world speaks for itself:

…Wolves have been absent from Germany for nearly a century, hunted out of existence by the end of the 1800s.

But over the past 10 years, they’ve made a comeback as packs from Poland and Russia have migrated into the sparsely populated eastern German state of Brandenburg. Today, some 160 wolves in 17 packs rove south and east of the capital Berlin, occasionally wandering into the city. Continue reading →

At Madurai’s Chithirai Thiruvizha Festival, Crowds, Flowers and a Golden Horse

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From the India Ink section of the New York Times website:

The city of Chennai, formerly Madras, may be the most famous of Tamil Nadu’s cities, but the historical and cultural heart of India’s southernmost state is arguably Madurai. Continue reading →

Mahadeva Temple – Vaikom, Kerala

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Photo Credits: Ramesh Kidangoor

Photo Credits: Ramesh Kidangoor

Vaikom Mahadeva Temple is one of the most famous and oldest Siva temple in Kerala. Legend has it that the Mahadeva Temple was constructed by Lord Parasurama, the 6th incarnation of Lord Vishnu and the mythological creator of Kerala. Continue reading →

For Bees, Europe Does The Right Thing

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A bee collects pollen from a sunflower in Utrecht, the Netherlands. EU states have voted in favour of a proposal to restrict the use of pesticides linked to serious harm in bees. Photograph: Michael Kooren/Reuters

A bee collects pollen from a sunflower in Utrecht, the Netherlands. EU states have voted in favour of a proposal to restrict the use of pesticides linked to serious harm in bees. Photograph: Michael Kooren/Reuters

At a time when news out of Europe often points to political dysfunction, on at least one front we can point to some good news for these creatures who need help perhaps more than ever, and deserve it; they are finally getting it in at least one part of the world:

Europe will enforce the world’s first continent-wide ban on widely used insecticides alleged to cause serious harm to bees, after a European commission vote on Monday.

The suspension is a landmark victory for millions of environmental campaigners, backed by the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA), concerned about a dramatic decline in the bee population. The vote also represents a serious setback for the chemical producers who make billions each year from the products and also UK ministers, who voted against the ban. Both had argued the ban would harm food production. Continue reading →

Lost City Of The Monkey God

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Another great article (click the image to the left to go to the source), complementing this recent one from the New Yorker, about one special location within the region several members of Raxa Collective have called home for most of the last two decades:

The rain forests of Mosquitia, which span more than thirty-two thousand square miles of Honduras and Nicaragua, are among the densest and most inhospitable in the world. “It’s mountainous,” Chris Begley, an archeologist and expert on Honduras, told me recently. “There’s white water. There are jumping vipers, coral snakes, fer-de-lance, stinging plants, and biting insects. And then there are the illnesses—malaria, dengue fever, leishmaniasis, Chagas’.” Nevertheless, for nearly a century, archeologists and adventurers have plunged into the region, in search of the ruins of an ancient city, built of white stone, called la Ciudad Blanca, the White City. Continue reading →

If You Happen To Be In New York (See This Street Art From Havana, Cuba)

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Thanks to MyModernMet for the notification about this:

Street artists JR and José Parlá recently teamed up to create enormous and yet very intimate portraits of senior citizens who survived the Cuban Revolution (1953-1959). Continue reading →

Basil Twist’s Puppetry Illuminated

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The New Yorker’s Joan Acocella profiled Basil Twist in a recent issue, and the magazine’s online team visited Twist at his studio, which you can see in the video above (click on the image), and the profile itself is worth a read:

“The crucial point about puppets,” Twist told me, “is that they are real and unreal at the same time.” At the beginning of the twentieth century, many writers and visual artists (Alfred Jarry, Paul Klee, Oskar Schlemmer, Sophie Taeuber-Arp), looking for something that was a little bit human, but much more art, made puppets, or works for puppets. The trend continues. Continue reading →

Sush, Future Tata Scholar & Cornellian, Made The Decision We Had Hoped For

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Sush Krishnamoorthy, a student at Sardar Patel Vidyalaya, in New Delhi, is one of eight high school seniors around the world blogging about their college searches.

We have enjoyed watching the decision-making process of Sush and her fellow-bloggers on this site, and especially Sush’s decision to join Cornell where several of our Raxa friends are based:

Sush Krishnamoorthy, a student from New Delhi, is part of “The Choice” class that includes student-bloggers from Nairobi, Kenya; Topeka, Kan.; Seattle; Rogers, Ark.; Las Vegas; New York City; and Hunting Valley, Ohio. Her tenth post is below. — Tanya Abrams

After receiving a dream acceptance, I have chosen to enroll at Cornell University. Continue reading →

Travel For The Marine Biodiversity, Support Conservation in Baja California Sur

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We’ve posted about the biodiversity of this spectacular region before so when we came across this article highlighting the Cabo Pulmo National Marine Park it definitely drew our attention.

The park is

a 27.5-square-mile ecosystem with an unusual history and an uncertain future. At least 226 fish species live in the park, and it is home to the only living hard coral reef in the Sea of Cortez. But environmentalists fear that a major resort development could significantly alter this delicate fringe of Baja, both above ground and underwater. Continue reading →

Sticky Science Reporting

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Thanks to Mr. Krulwich for pointing this out:

In a cluttered, noisy world with so many distractions, it’s yet another way to stop people in the middle of their day and make them say, “Really?” Science intimidates people. Yet we’re all curious. The sly goal here is to poke folks with a good question, and then say, “You want to know the answer?”…

Continue reading →

Rural Bees

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Our soft spot for bees is self-evident. We also have a soft spot for Greece in general and the Peloponnese in particular, the southern part of this southern European country that forms the “sweet spot” for olives, olive oil, wine and yes, honey.

Unblended honey is one of the world’s amazing taste experiences, with sensory “notes” as varied as herbal, floral, citrus and wood. The Peloponnese and the rest of the country provides a wide range of habitats with distinct blooming periods because the majority of its land is home to forests and wild ecosystems with less than a third of it allocated to farming.

“Colony collapse disorder”,  a problem in the United States and some European countries has not yet reached Greece, partially because the beekeepers are still able to maintain a safe distance from commercial farming, and the pesticides so frequently used there.

Beekeeping is a way of life in rural Greece. Continue reading →

Cooked By Pollan

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A new book by one of our go-to food writers in a publication new to us:

The following is an excerpt from Michael Pollan’s Cooked: A Natural History of Transformation, out from the Penguin Press on April 23.

As I grew steadily more comfortable in the kitchen, I found that, much like gardening, most cooking manages to be agreeably absorbing without being too demanding intellectually. It leaves plenty of mental space for daydreaming and reflection. One of the things I reflected on is the whole question of taking on what in our time has become, strictly speaking, optional, even unnecessary work, work for which I am not particularly gifted or qualified, and at which I may never get very good. This is, in the modern world, the unspoken question that hovers over all our cooking: Why bother? Continue reading →

The Darien Gap, Panama

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Darien

 

Remarkably, a second article in the same issue of the New Yorker devoted to one of our favorite topics–the wonders of nature. Click the image above to go to the source. The first one we linked to is by one of the magazine’s most distinguished writers, and we are pleased to encounter the author of the following for the first time:

The Pan-American Highway runs sixteen thousand miles, from Anchorage to Tierra del Fuego, with one significant interruption: an expanse of rain forest along the border of Colombia and Panama. The road ends abruptly on the Panama side, just north of a national park, and picks up again as a dirt path, sixty miles southeast, in Colombia, in the floodplain of the enormous Atrato River. The region in between, which spans two coasts with jungles and mountains and a confounding web of rivers, is known locally as the Tapón del Darién—the Darién Plug—for its seeming impassability. Continue reading →

Swept Away

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The “Three C’s” on our banner are more than words. They solidify into reality and action when people with similar views and interests reach out to us after reading them. This is what happened recently when Jennifer Harrington, a Toronto-based illustrator, writer and graphic designer introduced herself to us. Her collaboration with illustrator Michael Arnott on an eBook and animated short film versions of the The Spirit Bear and other stories is aimed at educating children about conservation while entertaining them at the same time.

Although sounding like a character out of Native American legend, the ghost or spirit bear actually

come from a small community of bears called Kermodes, which are a subspecies of black bears. Kermode bears may be black or white, but they all carry the recessive gene for white fur. 10% of Kermodes will fully express the recessive gene, and will be born with white or cream-coloured fur. Continue reading →

If You Happen To Be In Ithaca

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Not sure what to do this upcoming Earth Day?  If you happen to attend Cornell University here’s a suggestion: If “Nature never stands still”, taking an interdisciplinary approach toward her recovery and restoration seems like a logical step.

We especially like the circular nature of choosing Dr. Kareiva to give the 2013 Iscol Distinguished Environmental Lecture. Kareiva received his PhD in Ecology and Evolutionary Biology from Cornell University in 1981 and after serving on the faculties of Brown University and University of Washington he is now the Chief Scientist for The Nature Conservancy. Continue reading →

Flavours Of Kerala – Halwa

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Photo Credits: Ramesh Kidangoor

Photo Credits: Ramesh Kidangoor

There is no written history as to when Halwa first came to Kerala but considering that it appears where Arab culture took root in matters of cuisine, this sticky sweet must have its origins in the Middle East. While Halwa is also native to many other parts of India, what is essentially different about the Kerala Halwa are the basic ingredients used. In other regions either wheat paste or white flour with sugar forms the base; here it is rice flour with jaggery, with the addition of cardamom, nuts and occasionally grated fruit or vegetable. Continue reading →

For Your Consideration

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If you follow American popular culture, and care about race relations, you may find this piece interesting:

In a recent article on the lack of ethnic diversity on American television, the critic Emily Nussbaum paused from pondering the absence of blacks on TV — the usual complaint against homogeneity — to note the sudden ubiquity of South Asians. “Black and white are not the only colors of diversity,” she wrote, and listed roles accorded to desi actors in The Office, Parks and Recreation, Community, Smash, The Big Bang Theory, Whitney, and The Good Wife. Continue reading →