Inspiration

We Had Never Seen It, And Almost Never Would Have

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The lizard’s superschnoz on display. Photograph by Alejandro Arteaga, tropicalherping.com

The lizard’s superschnoz on display. Photograph by Alejandro Arteaga, tropicalherping.com

News from Ecuador in recent weeks was mostly a bummer, environmentally speaking. The government there knew it was sitting on a gusher; specifically an extremely sensitive, biodiversity hotspot is sitting on that gusher; and they tried their best to offer the world an opportunity to help them avoid drilling.  Did they do everything conceivable before deciding to drill?  There is lots of opinion on that; no matter who is right, the outcome is not a good one. But let’s not throw the baby out with the bathwater.  This week, however, there is news out of Ecuador that brings a smile to the face:

It’s no lie—scientists have spotted a lizard with a nose like Pinocchio in an Ecuadorian cloud forest. What’s more, the long-nosed reptile was thought extinct, having been seen only a few times in the past 15 years. Continue reading →

In Praise of Slowness

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Slow Food, Slow Cities, Slow Travel…the element of time and how we either squander it or savor it has become a meme for the movement toward the local, the artisanal, the responsible. The idea that doing something slowly and carefully and taking the time to enjoy it can be almost universally applied.

There’s enough evidence that the stress of fast-paced, over-programed lives take a toll on our health and happiness, no matter what our age. Continue reading →

Hermes, Circa 1981

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In the avatar of a blacksmith, Hermes next caught my attention during the spring of 1981. I had never heard of a gap year, but as my freshman year of college was concluding the opportunity for passage came in the form of apprenticeship. I had started thinking, in Vourthonia two years earlier, that I was born into very good fortune, but somehow in the wrong century and the wrong language.

So the avatar’s greeting, in the form of a generous, simple man plying this old trade, was compelling. Some months later, after deciding I needed to connect that smithing experience to this old form of speaking and thinking, I found myself in the old market area of Athens, after a day with my tutor.  With me were two women, both my own age, one whom I knew well, the other not at all. Continue reading →

Hermes, Circa 1979

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OdesLPLabelAt Easter time, 1979, my mother and I traveled back to Vourthonia. Musical soundtrack can accompany an occasion in life, just as in film. Vangelis, in collaboration with Irene Pappas, had just released the soundtrack for that visit.  Click the image to the left to read a bit about the album; better yet find the music and listen.

The lamb had been over the fire since morning, and was now on the table. Feta, salads, and the best olives in the world were there too. That music was playing from the open doors of an old VW Beetle parked near where we were sitting–my mother, many villagers, and me. That god gave safe passage. Continue reading →

Walking the Talk

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Nowadays people are sitting 9.3 hours a day, which is more than we’re sleeping, at 7.7 hours. Sitting is so incredibly prevalent, we don’t even question how much we’re doing it, and because everyone else is doing it, it doesn’t even occur to us that it’s not okay. In that way, sitting has become the smoking of our generation.

If business innovator Nilofer Merchant had her way there would be a “surgeon’s general warning” placed on desk chairs around the world. But she isn’t only referring to the health reasons why we shouldn’t be sitting as much as we are. Continue reading →

Hermes, Circa 1969

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As one of the contributors referred to in this post, and as the one who took the photographs in that post, it occurred to me that I should comment further on the reference.  And in doing so, perhaps I could add to the small collection of personal statements that have been gathering on this site since mid-2011.  I am 100% sure I took the photograph above during that same visit to Greece in 2008.  As I snapped this photo my mother was at my side and we both remembered having stood in the same spot in 1969. Continue reading →

Photographic Wonder

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Marvin Heiferman. Photo: Alex Welsh/WIRED

We know that one day, hopefully not too far off, the wunderkind of La Paz Group’s photographic contributors will get his gear fired up and we will be displaying his latest wonders here again. We hear that his hiatus in Ithaca, NY since about one year ago has run its course, full of fascinations, back-looking reflections, photographic recapitulations, and even small distractions. Onward, westward, as ancestors of his did in previous centuries. More from Milo soon, we hope.

Meanwhile, on the topic of photography and wonders, Wired offers an interview to illuminate what might not otherwise be obvious at first glance:

For his book Photography Changes Everything, Marvin Heiferman spoke to experts in 3-D graphics, neurobiology, online dating, the commercial flower industry, global terrorism, giant pandas, and snowflake structure to understand the infinite ways imagery affects our everyday lives… Continue reading →

Dreamscapes

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Long exposure photo from Wadi Dana, Jordan Credit: Milo Inman

Long exposure photo from Wadi Dana, Jordan
Credit: Milo Inman

Before Vincent van Gogh painted his most iconic work in 1889 I doubt he had access to time-lapse images of the stars over Saint-Remy, but I’m confident there was something in his genius that connected his artistic vision with the realities of the nightly movements between earth and sky.

One look at Indie Producer/Director and timelapse enthusiast Gavin Heffernan’s Death Valley Dreamscapes alongside Petros Vrellis’ innovative animation “Starry Night” was enough to convince me!

Continue reading →

Urban Muse

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It does not matter whether you are a farmer, a geneticist, or whatever you do with your time: you will almost certainly be affected in important, unexpected ways after time spent in Paris.   Continue reading →

Impossible, Past Tense

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There are already more than a million views of this, in what looks like one day’s time (but may be a hoax and may be old news, but does not look like either as this is posted, so we hope to add to the hype if we are correct).  Thanks to the folks at The Verge for this story:

A Canadian duo and their Kickstarter-funded, pedal-powered helicopter have won one of the longest-standing challenges in the history of aviation — keeping a human-powered aircraft hovering up in the air at height of at least 9.8 feet, within a 32.8 by 32.8-foot square, for 60 seconds minimum. The challenge, known as the Sikorsky prize, has withstood at numerous failed attempts since it was established in 1980, 33 years ago, even with a $250,000 bounty. But it was finally bested earlier in June by the Atlas, a gigantic human-powered helicopter designed by Cameron Robertson and Todd Reichert, aeronautical engineers from the University of Toronto, who cofounded a company AeroVelo. Continue reading →

A Future More Beautiful?

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We are completing the architectural designs on several new properties, and this talk had strong resonance on several dimensions:

Architect Thomas Heatherwick shows five recent projects featuring ingenious bio-inspired designs. Some are remakes of the ordinary: a bus, a bridge, a power station … And one is an extraordinary pavilion, the Seed Cathedral, a celebration of growth and light.

Click the image above to go to the TED Architectural Inspiration playlist.

Music, Duets, And Inspiration For Other Forms Of Collaboration

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Collaboration has been central to music since the beginning of time. Most of our posts about collaboration intend to point out more unusual, but much needed, forms of collaboration related to communities and their surrounding ecosystems. Something about this album captures our intent with this word better than most news items usually do.  Credit for our finding our way to this musical collaboration goes to the interview the duet gave some time back:

Emmylou Harris and Rodney Crowell were featured on today’s episode of NPR’s Fresh Air. The two spoke with host Terry Gross about their long friendship and their new album, Old Yellow Moon, a new 12-track duets album featuring song by Crowell and others that marks the first official collaboration from the duo since Crowell joined Harris’ Hot Band as guitarist and harmony singer in 1975. The two also discuss a few of their musical Continue reading →

Creative Uses Of Intelligence, Intelligent Uses Of Creativity

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How smart are they? Do they drink alot of coffee?  Find out by clicking the image above, or reading the following from the article accompanying that video:

…Google X seeks to be an heir to the classic research labs, such as the Manhattan Project, which created the first atomic bomb, and Bletchley Park, where code breakers cracked German ciphers and gave birth to modern cryptography. After the war, the spirit of these efforts was captured in pastoral corporate settings: AT&T’s (T) Bell Labs and Xerox (XRX) PARC, for example, became synonymous with breakthroughs (the transistor and the personal computer among them) and the inability of each company to capitalize on them. Continue reading →

False Starts, Heroic Conclusions

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ESSAY: A Different River Every Time
What is ‘smart’ and how does it fit our consciousness? Is there just one way to it? Are smarter people happier, richer? The answers may not always be that obvious. by SANDIPAN DEB

…Which, of course, brings us to that common capitalist question: “If you’re so smart, why aren’t you rich?” There is something abhorrent about this query. Of course, Mukesh Ambani is super-smart, but so was Jagadish Chandra Bose, who invented wireless communication at least a couple of years before Guglielmo Marconi, who received the Nobel prize for the breakthrough (It is now established that Marconi met Bose in London when the Indian scientist was demonstrating his wireless devices there, and changed his research methods after that meeting). Bose also invented microwave transmission and the whole field of solid state physics, which forms the basis of micro-electronics. Bose’s contributions are all around us today, from almost every electronic device we have at home to the most powerful radio telescopes in the world. But he steadfastly refused to patent any of his inventions, or to license them to any specific company. Some 70 years after Bose’s death, the global apex body, Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, officially acknowledged Bose to be the father of wireless communication.

This is an excerpt whose catchy question pervades an essay worth reading in full. Intelligence, specifically smart Indian people, is the subject of a whole special issue of Outlook magazine. We have pondered amazing people from India on occasion in the past, and if the brief tale above intrigues you then see this post about Tesla versus Edison, but for now Continue reading →

Sanskrit poetry: “If my absent bride were but a pond”

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Sanskrit lyric poetry is often noted for its sexual nature and flourished in the eleventh century where it was compiled by Vidyakara under the title “The Treasury of Well-Turned Verse”. Vidyakara, was a poet and a scholar of the XIth century.  Although he is thought to have been a buddhist monk, his “Treasury” is well versed on the matters of heart . This anthology of sanskrit court poetry addresses themes such as sex, love, and heroes, peace and nature.

Ponds in the woods of Thekkady

If my absent bride were but a pond, Continue reading →

“3 idiots”: a Bollywood must-see

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3 idiots

One of the most memorable weeks of my childhood was during a summer holiday in Mauritius spent with my brother and cousins with no adult available to take us to the beach. We kept going back and forth to the video store because all there was on television were Bollywood movies with no subtitles. Since then I’ve been pretty biased against Bollywood movies, there’s only so much Shannen Doherty direct-to-video one can take, you know? So when I met friends from Bombay, I asked them for an outstanding Bollywood movie. They said: “You’ve got to see 3 idiots“. That same night a friend from Tanzania wrote on his Facebook wall: “Make your passion your profession.! #The 3 Idiots.” So it was written in the stars, I had to see this movie.

Continue reading →

WED 2013 : Avoiding waste. Outsider art. Donation meals… World Environment Day is on its way!

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WED 2013 - Raxa Collective

On June 5, we’ll celebrate World Environment Day. This year UNEP focuses on the theme Food waste/Food Loss. At Raxa Collective we’ll be carrying out actions and sharing experience and ideas. Come and join us with your ideas and tips to preserve foods, preserve resources and preserve our planet.

Installation by Chandran at the Kumily Akasha Parava credit Ea Marzarte - Raxa Collective

Tomorrow we’ll be celebrating World Environment Day at the Kumily Sneshashram, a long-term shelter for homeless, disabled and elderly people. Locals call this place run by Franciscan sisters, “Akasha parava”: birds in the sky. We’ll be bringing a special meal and one of the people we will be working with is Chandran, the artist behind this brilliant installation made of coffee tins, religious artefacts, procession lights and flowers. Meet Chandran… Continue reading →

World Building Through Media

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Every day for the past three years or so we have posted a few personal accounts, links to news stories, sometimes told through video, etc. all in the interest of highlighting collaborative, community-based contributions to conservation.  We reach far and wide for inspiration, and some daily features are there not as a direct statement about conservation but about the world we see around us. So when we see a story about world building though media, and a name like 5D Institute, it catches our attention. According to their website, the future of narrative media is a form of world building, and an important contribution to it can be found here:

5D Institute is a cutting edge USC non-profit Organized Research Unit dedicated to the dissemination, education, and appreciation of the future of narrative media through World Building. World Building is the interdisciplinary process of building worlds that evolve into containers for the new narrative resolutions. World Building is the intersection of creativity and technology for students in academia and industry who need to understand now how to thrive in the media jungle of the future. World Building works beyond the edges of known media to express the full arc of our creative role in making new narrative worlds. Continue reading →

Getting It Done, With Attitude

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Richard_Saul_Wurman2

Harvard Magazine writes about a man we have appreciated since hearing him interviewed on a show whose podcasts with some of our heroes we have mentioned in previous posts.  It is easy to perceive Wurman as a world class pain in the neck. Listen to the end of that podcast and you learn that he is self-aware of this. For those who know ourselves to come across as unreasonable, contentious, etc. Wurman is an inspiration worthy of the pantheon:

Described by Fortune magazine as an “intellectual hedonist with a hummingbird mind,” Wurman created and chaired the TED conference from 1984 through 2002, bringing together many of the world’s pathbreaking thinkers to share their ideas and spark discussion.  Continue reading →

A Great Magazine Becomes A Great Insititution

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The consistently superb essayist Adam Gopnik, who often writes about topics unrelated to the themes of our blog, in this week’s New Yorker writes on a topic close to our heart (click the image above to go to the article, subscription required):

Magazines in their great age, before they were unmoored from their spines and digitally picked apart, before perpetual blogging made them permeable packages, changing mood at every hour and up all night like colicky infants—magazines were expected to be magisterial registers of the passing scene. Yet, though they were in principle temporal, a few became dateless, timeless. The proof of this condition was that they piled up, remorselessly, in garages and basements, to be read . . . later. Continue reading →