Marikanive State Forest, Karnataka
Back at Xandari
My first Xandari sunset of 2015.
This week, after about six months away from Costa Rica, I’m working at Xandari again, and it’s good to be back! On Saturday morning I walked around the trails for a couple hours and logged thirty-one bird species seen or heard, which counts as a pretty good list for Xandari, in my experience. Among the usual suspects were a few birds that are relatively uncommon sights, though not rare by any means: Chestnut-collared Swifts, Sulphur-bellied Flycatchers, and a male Long-tailed Manakin, which is always a pleasure to see or even hear. I also got an uncharacteristically good look at a Rufous-and-white Wren, a species that long eluded our efforts to spot when James and I first got here a year ago, despite its eerily human-sounding whistle that frequently pierces the forest trails. And although it’s a very common bird around here, I did get an okay photo of the male Red-crowned Ant-Tanager, which can be tough given their predilection for skulking around among dense vines.
One of the plots of coffee planted last June, now shaded by banana and tiquisque.
Are You Looking at My Shoes?
An ongoing exhibition at the Victoria and Albert Museum explores extremes of footwear from around the globe, in 200 pairs of shoes
If you happen to be on Cromwell Road in London, United Kingdom, then let your feet take you to the Victoria and Albert Museum. To be more precise, to this exhibition titled Shoes: Pleasure and Pain. Among the 200 plus pairs of footwear exhibited until January, 2016 are a sandal decorated in pure gold leaf originating from ancient Egypt and contemporary creations from Jimmy Choo, Manolo Blahnik and Christian Louboutin. The exhibit explores three different themes: transformation, status and seduction. Transformation looks at the mythical aspect of shoes in folklore. Status examines how impractical shoes are worn to represent a privileged lifestyle. Finally, seduction explores the concept of footwear as a representation of sexual empowerment and pleasure. Talk about history meeting its contemporary.
Speaking from the Roof of the World
New research challenges stereotypical views of Tibet as an isolated and inward-looking society before the British and Chinese arrived. PHOTO: Maxi Science
Tibet. It’s called the ‘Roof of the World’ with good reason — the Tibetan Plateau stands over 3 miles above sea level and is surrounded by imposing mountain ranges that harbor the world’s two highest summits, Mount Everest and K2. While the world’s mountaineers regularly attempt to summit the forbidding peaks, the remote area is home to a rich variety of cultures. Less well-known is the story of how the Tibetan Plateau and the craggy peaks that surround it formed. The geologic tale is familiar to many schoolchildren: About 50 million years ago, the Indian subcontinent began to collide with Eurasia, and as it slammed into the bigger landmass, the plateau and the Karakoram and Himalaya ranges were born.
Only recently did Tibetan scholar Lobsang Yongdan revisit a long-ignored section of a historic text to reveal how Tibetans were engaging with western scientific knowledge two centuries ago. His research into a geography of the world, first published by a lama (Buddhist spiritual leader) in 1830, challenges stereotypical views of Tibet as an isolated and inward-looking society.
Yoga – Popular and Partisan in Nature?
India celebrates its first International Yoga Day today. PHOTO: Members of the Navy performing Yoga at sea.
On Sunday morning, the Indian capital New Delhi’s broadest and grandest avenue, Rajpath, will be covered in a sea of yoga mats, with some 35,000 people expected to indulge in mass physical contortions to mark the first International Day of Yoga—a pet initiative of India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi. He pitched the idea to the U.N. General Assembly (UNGA) in his maiden speech at the annual diplomatic confab in September. A formal UNGA resolution to establish an international yoga day was passed in December, with more than 170 countries co-sponsoring the move. Modi’s government has since gone all out to promote the first yoga day, calling its diplomatic corps into service to plan events in more than 190 countries.
The Modi government is attempting to set two world records, including the largest yoga lesson (the current record was set in India in 2005, when nearly 30,000 students from more than 360 schools participated in a yoga session in the central Indian city of Gwalior). It also wants to set a record for the number of nationalities involved in a single yoga lesson, a category it hopes to pioneer.
What’s That You Hear on Uganda’s Streets?
Uganda has the world’s youngest population, with over 78% below 30 years of age. PHOTO: campustimesug.com
Uganda is a ‘young’ country if the above numbers are anything go by. And that makes the nation’s present population one that is acclimatized to he ways of the English language. A consequence of it is the development of a new language – Luyaaye. Designated an Urban Youth Language (informal varieties, the new variant is a combination of mostly English, Sheng (a Swahili-based cant, originating among the urban underclass of Nairobi, Kenya), and other Sudanese languages. Now, why should anybody pay attention to this nascent dialect, that is less rigid than traditional languages and mainly involves word play? And should its dark past be forgotten, the one about the language helping criminals do their business?
“Programmes have been carried out to spread information about AIDS but even with increased dissemination there was a decrease in the take-up of that information,” she said. “When asked what would help, people said ‘speak our language’.
Support Needed for Lionfish Jewelry Workshop
© Seavenger’s Trident Super Dive Store
For the past several years, I have been involved in helping to develop markets for lionfish jewelry as a way of addressing the threat posed by this invasive species, which is severely compromising the health of coral reefs throughout the Caribbean by eating reef-dwelling fish. Belize is home to the second largest barrier reef in the region, and its lobster and conch fisheries could really benefit from a break of overexploitation, so encouraging lionfish fishing in any way possible will promote reef recovery.
My last post, in fact, was about my trip to northern Belize last summer, when I collaborated with two local NGOs in Belize to train women from a coastal community on how to create lionfish jewelry. This August, I will again be joining one of these groups – Blue Ventures, for a lionfish jewelry workshop for women from other areas. As you can see from the pictures here and in my previous posts, lionfish fins, tails, and spines are beautiful; they’re also relatively low-cost to transform into jewelry. These parts of lionfish were previously discarded, but when kept and transormed into jewelry the value of landed lionfish catch increases by up to 40%, creating additional incentives for fishers to target and remove lionfish Continue reading
When Soap Makes the Difference
Sundara is a soap making operation in Mumbai that collects bar soap waste from hotels and recycles it for underprivileged children who cannot afford to buy soap. PHOTO: Sundara
Ever wondered what happens to the barely used soaps that you leave behind in hotel rooms? Think they get reused? We’ve got bad news – they don’t. In fact they are normally tossed away, cluttering our already crowded landfills. The solution at our Raxa Collective properties is to use dispensers filled with all-natural liquid soaps to avoid the waste of bar soaps. Sundara, a soap making operation in Mumbai has a community-based solution to the problem. They collect bar soap waste from hotels, sanitize and recycle it and distribute the new soaps to underprivileged children and adults who cannot afford soap. To date they have regular soap distributions reaching over 6,000 underprivileged children and adults in Mumbai slums. They have also saved thousands of kilograms of waste from going to landfills in the process.
And it started with a University of Michigan graduate. And she didn’t let a near-death experience with dengue hemorrhagic fever stop her from making the world and its people a little more clean.
Spider’s Silk, Minus the Crawlies
Bolt Threads’ technology was inspired by the spider, but it has broadened into a platform of programmable polymers: a protein material that can be tuned to create a nearly limitless array of properties PHOTO: Researchgate
Welcome to the age of slow fashion. Fashion that’s got its sense and sensibility focused on sustainability. Slow fashion represents all things “eco”, “ethical” and “green” in one unified movement. It was first coined by Kate Fletcher, from the Centre for Sustainable Fashion, when fashion was compared to the Slow Food experience. Carl Honoré, author of “In Praise of Slowness”, says that the ‘slow approach’ intervenes as a revolutionary process in the contemporary world because it encourages taking time to ensure quality production, to give value to the product, and contemplate the connection with the environment. And now meet Bolt Threads. A company that started out to make spider’s silk sans the creepy crawlies. Have they succeeded?
Bird of the Day: Blue-bearded Bee-eater
Bannerghatta National Park, Karnataka
Your Worst Dragons Are Your Best Teachers
PHOTOGRAPH BY ELI REED/MAGNUM
Amie and I lived around the corner from the Chelsea Hotel during the second term of Ronald Reagan’s presidency. At that moment in our lives, newly married and full of that kind of hope, we nonetheless observed with concern the culture of the USA changing radically around us. New York City, in particular seemed an epicenter for the demonization of “welfare queens” (Reagan terminology) and homeless people (of which there was a sudden massive increase due to various social safety nets being eliminated, a result of the “Reagan revolution”), while the values associated with speculative money, and cronyism, were ascendant.
It seems to me in hindsight that it was the moment when entrepreneurial capitalism receded as a driving force of the culture, giving way to a strong strain of some other form of capitalism. A much darker, or at least shadier, form that culminated in the economic tragedies of recent years in the USA, including contagious sub-strains that made their way to Europe and can be seen in the Greek tragedy today.
Reading that the Chelsea Hotel is g0ing “boutique” is at first depressing, but then not; it is a reminder of how New York City has been transformed by the new rules of capitalism; yet encouraging, even if the Chelsea Hotel’s role as an institution will be lost, because some of its core values remain intact as residents live out their terms there. The heartless strain of capitalism that bred and multiplied in the 1980s, which we have thought monstrous, has forced us to look for answers, which in turn has led us to the entrepreneurial conservation concept that animates our work, daily. The dragon sometimes teaches:
At a moment when the once beautifully entangled fabric of New York life seems to be unravelling thread by thread—bookstore by bookstore, restaurant by restaurant, and now even toy store by toy store—it might be time to spare a thought or two for the Chelsea Hotel. At the hotel on Twenty-third Street, famously rundown and louche—the Last Bohemia for the Final Beatniks, our own Chateau Marmont, where Dylan Thomas drank and Bob Dylan wrote “Sad-Eyed Lady of the Lowlands” and Leonard Cohen wore (or didn’t; people argue) his famous blue raincoat, and Sid Vicious killed (or didn’t; they argue that, too) Nancy Spungen—the renovators and gentrifiers have arrived. The plastic sheeting is everywhere, the saws buzz and the dust rises. In a short time, the last outpost of New York bohemia will become one more boutique hotel. Continue reading
Hawaii Hits the Road to Help Homeless
Old city buses in Hawaii are going to be converted into homeless shelters if architecture firm Group 70 International is successful.
Hawaii has one of the worst homeless rates in the country. In a 2014 “State of Homelessness in America” report, Hawaii ranked highest among the 50 states for homeless people per capita with 45.1 percent; the national rate was 19.3 percent. Up to 70 old city buses in Hawaii are going to be converted into homeless shelters if architecture firm Group 70 International is successful. The vehicles are to operate in fleets, with different units dedicated to different purposes, from living spaces to recreation rooms.
The design “is based on the premise that you could walk in to a hardware store, buy everything you need in one go and build everything with no trade skills,” so that it can be built by a team of untrained volunteers. LIFT, the volunteer organization helping to execute the project, hopes to build two buses by the end of this summer. 70 buses and all the material required for renovations will be donated.
Coca-Cola Thinking Plants
While PET recycling has a long way to go, Coca-Cola’s latest move highlights a long withstanding trend: the importance of businesses being more envronmentally conscious
Coca-Cola has unveiled a bottle made 30% of plant-based materials. The new Coke bottle is the latest sign of the company’s growing shift toward more environmentally friendly practices. Can it be sustained? That remains to be seen.
Since its introduction in 2009, PlantBottle packaging has been distributed in a variety of packaging sizes across water, sparkling, juice and tea beverage brands—from Coca-Cola to DASANI to Gold Peak. Today, PlantBottle packaging accounts for 30 percent of the Company’s packaging volume in North America and 7 percent globally, some 6 billion bottles annually, making The Coca-Cola Company a large bioplastics end user. In 2011, the company licensed PlantBottle Technology to H.J. Heinz for use in its ketchup bottles. In 2013, Ford Motor Company announced plans to use the same renewable material found in PlantBottle packaging in the fabric interior in certain test models of the Fusion Energi hybrid sedan. And in 2014, the first reusable, fully recyclable plastic cup made with PlantBottle Technology rolled out in SeaWorld and Busch Gardens theme parks across the United States. More.
The Food Cart Just Turned Green
One hundred of the first carts will be funded by MOVE and reserved for disabled veterans, and the remaining 400 will go to vendors who sign up—at no cost to them, because the pilot program will be sponsored. PHOTO: Today’s the Day I
Food carts are an iconic part of New York City’s street life. NYC has over 5,000 licensed trucks and carts, and an estimated 3,000 unlicensed ones on the streets. Cart operators, representing diverse ethnicities and cuisines, serve approximately 1.2 million customers every day. A food cart can be started with little capital and improved with sweat equity. However, until now, this industry has had no choice but to rely on smoke-spewing carts and their antiquated technologies that are dirty and unsafe. But hold on, the MRV100 is here.
Most food carts run off a diesel generator that’s designed to run only a few hours. Vendors run them for stretches of up to 14 hours, leading to a high output of greenhouse-gas emissions such as carbon monoxide, nitrous oxide, and particulate matter. You can see the smoke with the naked eye, but the hard facts are even more frightening: The research and consulting firm Energy Vision found that each cart produces the same amount of nitrous oxide as 186 cars on the road.
This Furniture Can Grow You Dinner
Spirulina is said to be the richest food in iron, 20 times higher than common iron-rich foods; and its iron is twice as effective than iron found in most vegetables and meats. COURTESY: Esse Spirulina
In the living room of the not-so-distant-future, you might have a glowing green blob of microorganisms next to your sofa instead of a lamp. A new line of photosynthetic furniture is filled with spirulina—a tiny, edible bacteria—that the designers imagine could help feed us without the incredible environmental footprint of conventional agriculture.
A new line of photosynthetic furniture is filled with spirulina… The custom glass bioreactors use waste heat, light, and carbon dioxide from a home to feed the spirulina inside. Periodically, someone can turn a tap, empty out the green sludge, and eat it.
Bird of the Day: Ultramarine Flycatcher
Bhimtal, Uttarakhand
Stop Typing!
Sustainable fonts require the least amount of energy to load. Using one also allows one to process more even when internet speeds are low. Is Ryman Eco one of them?
It’s only been an exact week since we discussed the ‘most eco-friendly’ ad campaign. And we vaguely remember a 14-year-old from a Pittsburgh-area middle school challenging the government to use the Garamond font in official communication to save up to $136 million each year. Find the original study here. So, clearly the sustainability debate has reached the doors of design. Supporters and naysayers abound, as is the case with Ryman Eco, whose creators claim it can reduce ink usage by 33 per cent.
“Ink is only about 15 percent of the total carbon footprint of a printed page. Despite the rise of e-everything, paper use is prodigious in the United States. Americans still use an average of 10,000 sheets of office paper per year, which is a lot.”
Sri Lanka Takes the Ecofeminism Route
The new national scheme aims to set up 1,500 community groups around Sri Lanka’s 48 lagoons, which will offer alternative job training and micro-loans to 15,000 people. The groups will be responsible for the upkeep of designated mangrove forests. PHOTO: Outdoor Conservation
Big news for the environment: Sri Lanka’s new government just took the unprecedented, historic step to protect all of its mangroves. The move, the first of its kind anywhere in the world, will provide long-term environmental, social and, last but not least, economic benefits to the Indian Ocean island nation, and provide a model for other vulnerable tropical nations to follow. Whose are the champions of this mission? Women.
Started in the 1970’s and gaining in much popularity during the next two decades, ecofeminism seeks to foster a connection between repression of women with the damage caused to nature and natural resources. It is based on the philosophy that both women and nature exhibit the same values and characteristics like nurturing and hence see it as the responsibility of women to undertake ecological causes. One of the most memorable events of ecofeminism occurred in Kenya when rural women planted trees as part of a soil conservation effort to avert desertification of their land as a part of the Green Belt Movement formed by Wangari Maathai. The women of Greenham Common Peace Camp were instrumental in the removal of nuclear missiles there, a fight lasting for over ten years. Sometimes ecofeminism has also been an avenue through which minority and repressed communities like the Native Americans have found their voice. Mohawk women along the St. Lawrence River established the Akwesasne Mother’s Milk Project to monitor PCB toxicity while continuing to promote breastfeeding as a primary option for women and their babies. More.
Bird of the Day: Goliath Heron
photo credit: Andrew Murphy
Nech Sar National Park, Ethiopia
What’s in Your Tequila?
Although demand for tequila is booming, the younger generation are deserting the land of the agave in Mexico, from which the liquid is extracted. PHOTO: The Huffington Post
Find yourself taking a shot at the tequila often? Or are you one to cook with it, whipping up some tequila wings, tequila-cured salmon or infusing the liquid in cheesecakes and ice cream? Not to forget those breezy cocktail mash-ups featuring flavors of rose, mango, strawberry, and even pepper! Now that we have your attention, we are going to take a shot at bringing you this story from the home of the drink – Mexico. A story with a mood-board that will definitely not have you screaming “One tequila, two tequila, three tequila, floor”. One that may possibly leave you with questions about the future of the drink and Mexico’s loss of a family tradition.
The craft of the agave harvest, still done entirely by hand, has remained virtually unchanged since around 1600 when tequila was first invented by the Spanish conquistadors. It is also one that has traditionally remained in families, with each generation teaching the next, ensuring that the mechanization of the tequila harvest has been kept at bay.
Yet traditions of the jimador, a figure still cloaked in romantic mystique in literature and even Mexican telenovelas, are slowly disappearing. While the demand for high-quality tequila is rising year on year, with the industry worth over $1bn and seven out of 10 liters produced now exported worldwide, the younger male generations who would once have taken on the mantle of their fathers to become jimadores are turning away from the agricultural way of life in droves.
Organikos 