Thanks to Carl Zimmer, a science writer we feature from time to time (and then again and again and whenever when we can) for reminding us why our youth-time go-to publication for tech-stuff is still worthy of visitation:

One morning in November 2011, trucks were roaring down the Pan-American Highway, carrying loads of ore from mines in the Atacama Desert to the port town of Caldera, Chile. The trucks screamed past a young goateed American paleontologist named Nicholas Pyenson, who was standing at the side of the road, gazing at a 250-meter-long strip of sandstone that construction workers had cleared in preparation for building new lanes. Continue reading →

Luis Guillermo Solis, presidential candidate of the Citizens’ Action Party (PAC), smiles during a walk in San Jose April 4, 2014. REUTERS/JUAN CARLOS ULATE

Raxa Collective is at home in India, which begins the world’s largest democratic elections this week, and in Costa Rica which just concluded its own national elections. We cannot point to many similarities between India and Costa Rica given the differences in size, population, history and just about every other dimension you can think of. But since the late 1940s both have been outlier democracies in their own ways. And maybe that is part of the reason we feel at home in both countries.

We congratulate Mr. Solis and all Costa Ricans on their recent election, and in India, as they say, may the best candidate win. Thanks to Reuters for this update on the election run-off in Costa Rica, and we will highlight as appropriate India’s election results:

A center-left academic who has never held elected office easily won Costa Rica’s presidential election on Sunday, ousting the graft-stained ruling party from power after its candidate quit campaigning a month ago.

Former diplomat Luis Guillermo Solis, of the Citizen Action Party (PAC), won with around 78 percent of votes by tapping in to public anger at rising inequality and government corruption scandals.

His win dislodges a two-party dynasty that has governed the coffee-producing country for decades. It is also another victory for Latin America’s center-left parties, which have steadily gained ground across the region in recent years. Continue reading →

We first heard of them, and heard them, on one of our favorite Public Radio (listener- and taxpayer-funded, thank you citizens of the USA) podcasts here:

Up with Switchel, Herman Melville’s Energy Drink

When we heard, at the end of the conversation with these entrepreneurs, that Melville was a switchel drinker, or at least that he mentions it in one of his books, we started thinking about a new 51 signature beverage. Melville, of course, knew a thing or two about sailors. And 51 is located within the property of Spice Harbour which, in a previous lifetime, was a “chummery” for ship captains coming in to Fort Cochin harbor.

Chummery, in Indian English from an earlier era, is akin to saying “boarding house for chums (male friends, buddies, guys what have you)” so it seems plausible that a captain who knew the drink switchel from a Caribbean or North American port of call might have once introduced this drink in the biggest harbor on the Malabar Coast. Even if none did, we will. In doing so, we salute our fellow entrepreneurs, and Melville, and the sailors. Also, we like what we read About them (the Vermont guys):

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We will walk the walk until March 29, when Earth Hour comes, and talk that walk too. To infinity, and beyond, if possible. Yesterday, when this campaign first came to our attention, we posted three samples from the campaign linked from Phaidon’s article. Today, straight from the source:

Our motto is Creativity vs Climate Change. Our product is a feed of beautiful, subversive and delightful inspiration made by great creative talent from around the world. Our aim is to inspire as many people as possible to live in a less selfish, less consumptive, more imaginative and more sustainable way. Try it. You might even like it. Continue reading →

Palm trees in the tiny fishing village of Brito. In the mid-nineteenth century, Cornelius Vanderbilt, the American steamship and railroad tycoon, developed a route across the Nicaraguan isthmus, and his passengers transferred from stagecoach to steamship here. Photograph by Jehad Nga.

When Xandari joined Raxa Collective in December, the Central America map became important in our office, and in our news tracking. Several contributors to Raxa Collective got their start in Central America in the 1990s, as did most of Xandari’s staff, most of whom have been working their for nearly two decades; so goings on in that region are of special interest.  Big goings on are of big interest. Especially when the socio-economic costs and benefits are understood in relation to ecological impact. In case you never heard the campaign slogan dating back to President Theodore Roosevelt’s time–A Man, A Plan, A Canal, Panama–it is worth noting it is a palindrome, a sort of word puzzle in that it reads the same forward and backwards.   In this week’s issue of the New Yorker, another kind of puzzle related to another Central American canal is reported by Jon Lee Anderson who profiles one (or more) man’s plan to:

…“launch the largest civil engineering and construction project in the world: a new transoceanic canal across Nicaragua.” The canal is a pet project of Daniel Ortega, the President of Nicaragua, who has argued that an Atlantic-Pacific shipping route “will bring well-being, prosperity, and happiness to the Nicaraguan people.” But while the canal’s supporters have praised its economic potential—Nicaragua is Central America’s largest and poorest country, and nearly half its population lives below the poverty line—opponents have criticized the lack of public input on the plan, which is expected to cost at least fifty billion dollars. They also argue that the project represents an affront to Nicaragua’s sovereignty: the Hong Kong Nicaragua Canal Development Investment Company, an obscure Chinese firm that holds the concession to build the canal, has been granted broad rights throughout the country, including the right to expropriate and develop private property. Continue reading →

Click the image to the left to go to the Kingdom of Bhutan’s website, which we have been visiting in recent months in advance of a planned visit for work. Our friends to the north will surely appreciate the sentiments and insights of this essay in the current issue of Orion magazine, which we find useful background preparation in case our visit, and prospective new project, come to pass:

FROM THE FORESTED HILLSIDE above us, a bulldozer sends giant rocks and tree limbs sailing down onto the hundreds-of-years-old footpath leading us from the Paro Valley floor to Dra Lhakhang, a cliffside temple where the six of us plan to sleep on the first night of our three-day hike to, Dragipangtsho, a lake considered holy. Karma Wangchuk, the leader of our hiking party, blows his pocket whistle and screams along with the rest of us, hoping our distressed voices will penetrate the roar of the machine. Finally, the bulldozer stops and the road crew hollers and waves down to us in acknowledgement, oblivious to our peril. Continue reading →

The following was contributed by Dr. Jason G. Goldman to Scientific American‘s blog. The author received his Ph.D. in Developmental Psychology at the University of Southern California, so when we read his views on camera traps, a subject that we have posted on as often as possible, we can feel confident that his scientific perspective is a worthy one:

…Maybe it’s because camera traps offer up a rare opportunity to catch a glimpse of nature on its own, undisturbed by our species. It’s a romantic notion, isn’t it? Nature untouched. It’s foolish to think that humans exist apart from nature; we are but one species in a massive tree of life. As in physics, so too in wildlife biology. Continue reading →

Blacksmithing and Greek language, two ambitions placed in my path by the trickster god of transitions, two ambitions that strengthened my arms and tongue and confidence that looking backward was not my future, were both important deviations. There had been no plan or map but both of these deviations helped ensure that my path would not be too straight or narrow. A couple years later I was preparing for another deviation. On September 23, 1983 I would get on an airplane and make another pilgrimage to Vourthonia. Continue reading →

The email yesterday was brief:

Back in MR, what a treat! There is wifi in the reception area, don’t remember that from last time… 😉

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Beautiful, environmentally valuable natural areas increasingly seem to fit the definition of luxury, based on their scarcity and the quality of the pleasure they provide.  Golf, also, is often defined as a luxury.  Can golf and pristine wilderness both be defined, correctly, as luxuries?  Linguists, please weigh in.

Meanwhile, above, a promo clip on a new documentary about a beautiful place, Trumped (talk about misdefining luxury!).  Thanks to the Green blog at the New York Times website, this story which even an avid golfer might wince at:

On July 15, Trump International Golf Links finally opened. But not everyone was delighted to see one of Britain’s last stretches of coastal wilderness transformed into a putting green. Continue reading →

The jungle forests of the Periyar Tiger Reserve continue to amaze me.  Every time I venture into this wild paradise, I leave with wonderful memories, already looking forward with great excitement to my next exploration.  I think it has become fairly obvious over the past year and a half or so of blogging for Raxa Collective that I have more than a slight interest in birds.  Even though Periyar has amazing four-legged animals such as elephants, bison, giant squirrels, and langurs, for me it is the two-legged ones that make this reserve so special.  In fact, the word “special” does not come close to expressing what I feel for this birding wonderland!

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Red-whiskered Bulbul

I awoke this morning to one of the loudest dawn choruses I have ever heard.  I quickly rushed outside, camera and binoculars ready, for what would be a fantastic day of birding.  Staying within the confines of the resort proved to be an insignificant handicap, as in the parking lot I was immediately surrounded by Red-whiskered Bulbul, White-cheeked Barbet, White-throated Kingfisher, Nilgiri Flowerpecker, Crested Treeswift, Common Tailorbird, Loten’s Sunbird, Greater Racket-tailed Drongo, Rufous Magpie, and Lesser Hill Myna.  The beautiful colors of an Orange Minivet radiated from the top of a nearby tree, and in the adjacent tree a Golden-fronted Leafbird was busy foraging.  Kites and eagles soared effortlessly overhead, and I soon understood why Kerala (and the Western Ghats in particular) is such an attractive birding location.

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Amie’s post about this careful observer and eloquent writer makes the reviews of this new book even more noteworthy.  While nominally about Graham Greene, according to the LA Times review it is as much a Pico Iyer-ish book as anything else published prior:

…But there he is, in spite of everything. Not a hero or a counselor or the kind of person I would otherwise want to claim as kin. I see the gangly, long-legged figure graciously receiving a visitor in his room and keeping the intruder at bay with an offer of a drink, folding his awkward limbs around himself on the sofa; I see the high color in his cheeks, and the pale, unearthly blue eyes that speak to everyone of the troubled depths he’s both concealing and perceiving in the world… Continue reading →