Uttarakhand, India
Bird of the Day: Asian Barred Owlet
Uttarakhand, India
A Robot To Police The Oceans’ Ecosystems
National Public Radio (USA) is carrying this story, which we guess will catch the interest of Phil Karp, among others interested in the health of our ocean ecosystems:
Climate change, pollution, and unsustainable fishing practices have threatened the world’s largest coral structure but there’s some hope for Australia’s Great Barrier Reef. An intelligent robot is ready to protect it. Continue reading
New York Public Library, At It Again
We appreciate the efforts of the New York Public Library, which we have posted on numerous times previously for its innovative as well as its occasionally worrisome institutional changes, to make more of its collection more available to more people for more uses. This blog post by Shana Kimball, Manager of Public Programs and Outreach at NYPL Labs, explaining the value to all of us:
Today we are proud to announce that out-of-copyright materials in NYPL Digital Collections are now available as high-resolution downloads. No permission required, no hoops to jump through: just go forth and reuse!
The release of more than 180,000 digitized items represents both a simplification and an enhancement of digital access to a trove of unique and rare materials: a removal of administration fees and processes from public domain content, and also improvements to interfaces — popular and technical — to the digital assets themselves. Online users of the NYPL Digital Collections website will find more prominent download links and filters highlighting restriction-free content; while more technically inclined users will also benefit from updates to the Digital Collections API enabling bulk use and analysis, as well as data exports and utilities posted to NYPL’s GitHub account. These changes are intended to facilitate sharing, research and reuse by scholars, artists, educators, technologists, publishers, and Internet users of all kinds. All subsequently digitized public domain collections will be made available in the same way, joining a growing repository of open materials. Continue reading
Hello Again, Robert Krulwich
Artist’s reconstruction of a forest during the Carboniferous period. From ‘Science for All’ by Robert Brown (London, c1880). Illustration by World History Archive, Alamy
National Geographic‘s website has enlisted one of our favorite science communicators for its Phenomena section, and we are suddenly aware of how long it has been since we featured one of his ponderings (and excellent illustrations):
… whose trees “would appear fantastic to us in their strangeness,” write Peter Ward and Joseph Kirschvink in their book A New History of Life.
Some of them were giants: 160 feet tall, with delicate fernlike leaves that sat on top of pencil-thin trunks. This was the age when plants were evolving, climbing higher and higher, using cellulose and a tough fiber called lignin to stay upright. Had you been there, you would have felt mouse-sized.
Bird of the Day: Lineated Woodpecker
female – Tacacori, Costa Rica
Come to Kerala, Devi
Collecting stories by the river in Vicksburg, Mississippi. August 2013. Photograph by Devi K. Lockwood
You will be in good company, in terms of other “Come to Kerala” invitees mentioned on this blog. We appreciate the Folklore & Mythology, and especially the Art of Storytelling inspirations to your purposeful wandering form of activism. Come say hello.
LEO AND I SIT across the table from each other in the home his family rents in Dunedin, New Zealand. The kitchen smells of roast garlic. Two days ago I cycled up the big hill to his house with all my belongings strapped and clipped to my bicycle: clothes, food, audio recorder, and a tiny guitar. Continue reading
If You Happen To Be In New York City
Come say hello. Amie and I are representing Xandari at the Costa Rica stand in North America’s largest consumer travel show. Today through Sunday they are expecting nearly 30,000 visitors to enter the premises of this show. For $20 you can have a whirlwind tour of the world, and some interesting Event Speakers (for our few recommendations, click the titles to go to the ticket page): Continue reading
Bird of the Day: King Penguin – R and Gentoo Penguin – L
Tierra del Fuego, Argentina
Little People, Big Things
Adoniya. Daughter of Sini, cook in the staff cafeteria at Xandari Pearl, and Jimmy, a fisherman who fishes just outside the resort.
Sunset colors with the little one.
Freezing time with Adoniya and her mother.
Adoniya and her toy in the sky
“Unstuck”. The quotation marks in this post below are all too familiar. They stemmed from well-worded conversations that traveled across the 16,894 kilometers between Kochi, India, and Costa Rica. Between me and Crist Inman. About “getting back in”. Going back and forth on happiness and redefining it. On dreaming. Together.
And, I remembered this bouncing, hugging ball of happiness that owned me by the beach at Xandari Pearl in Kerala. Little person, but home of good things.
Welcoming Asian Oasis
The Raxa Collective blog caught the attention of colleagues in Thailand a few years ago, and we have been exchanging visits, and ideas, with those colleagues ever since. And now we have taken it from informal mutual admiration to formal collaboration. We have just started a strategic alliance with Asian Oasis, a pioneering sustainable tourism/hospitality company in Thailand.
Raxa Collective will now collaborate with Asian Oasis on the global promotion of their properties, which Amie and I have been getting to know with site visits over the last two years. We will begin introducing those properties on this blog, and look forward to your response.
One of their lodges in Northern Thailand, Lanjia Lodge, was recognized during 2015 as the Best in Community Engagement & Development in Asia by Wild Asia.
And that was last year, the Year of the Wooden Sheep according to local astrological tradition (search on that term for some interesting discoveries). The Year of the Red Fire Monkey (again, search it: you will find results describing it as the year of strength and determination; setting goals and achieving them; and business flourishing) begins February 8th, 2016 and ends on January 27, 2017. We look forward to earning the Monkey’s goodwill through our good works.
Design Thinking
Getting “unstuck” is our practical thought for the day:
Thinking’ for a Better You
A strategy called “design thinking” has helped numerous entrepreneurs and engineers develop successful new products and businesses. But can design thinking help you create healthful habits?
Bernard Roth, a prominent Stanford engineering professor, says that design thinking can help everyone form the kind of lifelong habits that solve problems, achieve goals and help make our lives better.
“We are all capable of reinvention,” says Dr. Roth, a founder of the Hasso Plattner Institute of Design at Stanford and author of the book, “The Achievement Habit.” Continue reading
If You Happen To Be In Hamburg
Our favorite illustrator has been busy. We have not pointed to one of his illustrations or shows in way too long…so to correct that:
CHRISTOPH NIEMANN
20 January 2016 until 10 April 2016
UNDER THE LINE
For the accountant, what’s under the line is the balance – and for the draughtsman? Strictly speaking, what’s under the draughtsman’s line is the paper – no paper, no line.
Over the River and through the Botanical Garden
At Xandari we offer a garden and farm tour that consists of showing guests through our botanical garden, Mandala garden, and orchid house and educating them on the properties of each of the plants. When I was asked to translate the tour for our head gardener Jose Luis I immediately accepted. However, after agreeing to be the translator it dawned on me that my rudimentary knowledge about plants (species, genus, and all that scientific terminology amounts to high school level biology) could be a limitation to the learning experience of the guests. Adding to my worry, the guests taking the tour are well versed in plant identification and were hoping to learn more about the tropical plants we have. To prepare myself, I skimmed the plant identification binder we have, decided to take it with me on the tour, and hoped for the best.
Beggar Thy Neighbor, By Any Other Name
South America, the EU and south E-east Asia are among the places from which the UK sources its food Photograph: Andre Penner/AP
We know local food is better for many reasons. We tend not to think about the negative impacts on those places where food is sourced from as a reason to source more locally. Thanks to the Guardian for this article:
More than half of the UK’s food and feed now comes from overseas, which is burdening poorer countries with the related environmental impact, a new study says.
More than two-thirds of the land needed to produce the UK’s food and feed is based abroad, researchers said, meaning 64% of the related greenhouse gases are emitted on foreign soil.
Since 1986, the size of this land has grown by 23% to match increasing demand, with associated CO2 emissions rising by 15%, the research published in the Journal of the Royal Society Interface states. Continue reading
Lepidopteran Diversity at Xandari
Over the last month or two one of my goals has been to identify as many of the butterflies and moths–or lepidopterans–that we have here at Xandari. Part of this work involves looking at old photos taken since 2014, when James and I first arrived on property and started taking pictures of wildlife; another element of the job is going out and photographing the lepidopterans in a more determined fashion.
Not an easy task, when butterflies can have such whimsical flight patterns and startle quite easily. Moths are a little simpler to chase because during the day they’re often focused on staying still and hiding out until evening. Continue reading
Parrot + Pebble = Collaboration
Greater vasa parrot. Credit: Frank Wouters
Thanks to Ed Yong, writing in National Geographic, for this brief look at how Tool-Using Parrots Use Pebbles to Grind Seashells:
In the spring of 2013, Megan Lambert noticed the greater vasa parrots of Lincolnshire Wildlife Park doing something odd. They looked like they were licking the cockle shells that lined the floor of their outdoor enclosure. But when Lambert looked closer, she noticed that they were holding a pebble or date pit in their beaks, and rubbing these against the shells.
They were using tools. Continue reading
Bird of the Day: Silver-breasted Broadbill
Nagaland, India
Unlikely Conservation Story
Black-footed ferrets (Mustela nigripes). Photo © Kimberly Fraser/USFWS
The first half of this article is a bit gruesome, due to the particulars of how this species arrived at the brink of extinction. The second half is the “bright horizon” side of the story, and thanks to The Nature Conservancy for sharing it (among all their other good works):
…Until 2013 willing landowners were hard to find. But that year the Fish and Wildlife Service implemented a “Safe Harbor” program by which the agency promises not to prosecute participants for accidental take of ferrets if they agree to protect prairie dogs and allow ferret monitoring and plague management. What’s more, in some states the Natural Resources Conservation Service pays them for hosting ferrets. Without Safe Harbor the Endangered Species Act tends not to work on private land; and without private land ferret recovery can’t happen. Continue reading
Ringing in the New Year at Xandari Resort
On the evening of December 31st, during the transition into the new year, Xandari Resort & Spa’s night receptionist, Lenar, took some video of the massive and lengthy fireworks display throughout the Central Valley. Xandari has a fantastic view of Alajuela and the surrounding towns, so there was gunpowder and colored light aplenty in the air as Lenar panned the night sky for images.
Shooting photos or videos at night can be challenging, so I was only able to extract a few good-quality images (see slideshow below) in addition to the brief footage above from Lenar’s video, but hopefully it gives a sense of the pretty fabulous experience of a new year celebration at Xandari Resort, Costa Rica.
If It Sounds Too Good To Be True…
A pilot well on Cadiz Inc. property in the Mojave Desert. Photo credit: Cadiz Inc.
The water shortage in California is complicated, to say the least. So, the solution, if there is one, is bound to be complicated. And expensive. We have no illusion that the cost of change in this case will be high, but this particular $2 billion price tag does not immediately sound like a good idea:
Scott Slater, CEO of Cadiz Inc., has a controversial plan. He wants to pump 814 billion gallons of water from the Mojave Desert to Los Angeles, San Diego and other drought-stricken communities in Southern California—making more than $2 billion in the process. Continue reading
