“Here’s the digital avatar. Researchers, 10-year-old kids, artists—have at it.”

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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 →

If You Happen To Be In New York

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Carl Andre, 5 x 20 Altstadt Rectangle, 1967. Konrad Fischer Galerie. © Carl Andre/Licensed by VAGA, New York, NY.

Carl Andre, 5 x 20 Altstadt Rectangle, 1967. Konrad Fischer Galerie. © Carl Andre/Licensed by VAGA, New York, NY.

If you are in New York City you are close enough for a day excursion, so consider a visit some time in the next 10 months:

Dia Art Foundation to Present Carl Andre: Sculpture as Place, 1958–2010
May 5, 2014–March 2, 2015

The first major retrospective of Andre’s work in the United States since the late 1970s debuts at Dia:Beacon and then tours internationally

Andre’s signature floor-bound sculptures will be presented with the artist’s “typewriter drawings” and rarely exhibited objects known as Dada Forgeries

New York, NY–Tracing the full evolution over five decades of the thinking of Carl Andre, a crucial figure in the redefinition of contemporary sculpture, Dia Art Foundation will present Carl Andre: Sculpture as Place, 1958–2010 from May 5, 2014, through March 2, 2015, at Dia:Beacon. The retrospective will include approximately 50 sculptures displayed in Dia:Beacon’s main galleries; over 200 poems and works on paper presented in wooden vitrines designed by the artist; a selection of rarely exhibited assemblages known as Dada Forgeries; and an unprecedented selection of photographs and ephemera. This will be the first survey of Carl Andre’s entire oeuvre by a museum, and the first retrospective in North America since 1978-80. Continue reading →

Food, Form, Philibuster

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Tasters have compared Soylent to Cream of Wheat and “my grandpa’s Metamucil.” Photograph by Henry Hargreaves.

Life without food as we know it? After our inspiration and efforts to launch 51, and all kinds of other good reasons to love food as we know it (and all the forms of food we have yet to know), some tech fellows want to do away with all that? Food without form that we can recognize is fine for short term bursts of unusual pleasure, but not as a dominant replacement. We will resist and delay this as long as our breath and imaginations hold out:

In December of 2012, three young men were living in a claustrophobic apartment in San Francisco’s Tenderloin district, working on a technology startup. They had received a hundred and seventy thousand dollars from the incubator Y Combinator, but their project—a plan to make inexpensive cell-phone towers—had failed. Down to their last seventy thousand dollars, they resolved to keep trying out new software ideas until they ran out of money. But how to make the funds last? Rent was a sunk cost. Since they were working frantically, they already had no social life. As they examined their budget, one big problem remained: food. Continue reading →

Mattanchery – Fort Kochi

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Photo credits : Ramesh Kidangoor

Photo credits: Ramesh Kidangoor

Mattanchery is a part of Fort Kochi in Kerala, India. The first trade hub in the area, dealing primarily in spices and other agricultural products, it is now also a tourist destination, surrounded by the backwaters of the Arabian Sea.  Continue reading →

Another Million Reasons To Listen

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We have had a thing for India/USA crossover, for various reasons, since the outset of this blog. Today, a new landmark. Bollywood’s music man, for what seems like a million films here in India, meets Hollywood. Again. The Wall Street Journal review of this new film focuses on the topic we can most relate to, which is the continued crossover of India’s most important film scorer, who is noted for that Slumdog movie but not as much for Inside Man, which used perhaps his most obsessively loved (for good reason, we think) film music:

‘Slumdog’ Composer Steps Up to Bat for ‘Million Dollar Arm’

Disney Baseball Movie Will Feature Rahman’s Original Compositions

By CHRISTOPHER JOHN FARLEY  May 4, 2014 10:56 p.m. ET

Continue reading →

If You Happen To Be In Amsterdam

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Most of our followers know we love coffee. We love how it grows. We love how it tastes. We love the settings where we can drink it. Which makes it all the more unfortunate that we’re in India and not in Amsterdam this weekend to experience Coffee Week NL 2014.

The festival collaboration with the Allegra Foundation makes participation all the more enticing:

50% of all ticket sales to The Amsterdam Coffee Festival will go towards Project Waterfall, the charitable components of NL Coffee Week. Continue reading →

Nature Has The Long View

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MobiusII

When you love what you do, the hope is that you will do it indefinitely. E.O. Wilson shows little sign of slowing down any time soon, and his new book is the best evidence to date. Not exactly light weekend reading, nor summer beach fare, but from the sound of this review, worth the effort:

LOOKING FOR ETERNITY? LOOK TO NATURE

May 2, 2014

A Review of “A Window on Eternity” by E.O. Wilson

By Bill Chameides

To say that E.O. Wilson, arguably the greatest living biologist, is prolific is a bit of an understatement. At 84, Wilson continues to churn out books at a rate of one to two each year. Yesterday, Earth Day 2014, marks the release of his latest book, A Window on Eternity: A Biologist’s Walk Through Gorongosa National Park  (Simon and Schuster), and a DVD companion titled “The Guide.” Continue reading →

Parambikulam Wildlife Sanctuary – Kerala

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Photo Credits : Surus

Photo Credits: Surus

Parambikulam is located in the Palakkat district of Kerala. It is one of the world’s biodiversity hotspots that supports diverse types of habitat and wildlife. Considering its biological richness, abundance of wildlife and  scenic beauty, the Sanctuary is one of the most attractive national parks in the entire stretch of the Western Ghats. Continue reading →

In With Flynn

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Another look at Flynn, this one in the Sunday Magazine of the New York Times some months ago (click above for the video and below for the story):

MAGAZINE

The Kid’s Table

Flynn McGarry wants to open the best restaurant in the world. So what if he’s only 15?

Sapthaha Yagnam – Temple Festival

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Photo credits : Ramesh Kidangoor

Photo credits: Ramesh Kidangoo

Sapthaha Yagnam is among eighteen ancient puranas (stories) that are still told today, and one of the most important in the Srimat Bhagavatha Purana (Holy Book of Hindu), which deals with Sri Krishna. Sri Krishna temples host a ritualistic event of intense tradition in which this text is read. Continue reading →

Travel, Stimulation, Writing

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Prochnik-2a In a post on the New Yorker website just now we discovered that last August we had neglected to read what we surely would have passed along here, an article that fits our blog’s themes well. George Prochnik had us with the first sentence:

Travel is my favorite stimulant, and while I was writing “ The Impossible Exile,” a portrait of the Viennese author Stefan Zweig, hunting-and-gathering expeditions to Zweig’s far-flung haunts felt imperative. Zweig was born in Vienna in 1881, but he became one of the most representative Viennese writers largely in absentia—idealizing the city’s cosmopolitanism while doing his best to embody it by making himself at home all across Europe. After the First World War, he set up his primary residence in Salzburg, but for large parts of the following years he was on the move—writing, in hotels, the short stories, essays, and biographies for which he became famous  Continue reading →

Dutch Cemetery – Cochin

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Photo credit : Ramesh Kidangoor

Photo credit: Ramesh Kidangoor

The Dutch cemetery in Fort Kochi, which is about 290 years old, is an authentic record of hundreds of Europeans — despite its name both Dutch and English — who arrived in India to expand their colonial empire. It is considered the oldest European cemetery in India. Constructed in 1724, the cemetery has over a hundred tombs.

Jack Fruit, Again

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Jackfruits grow on the branches and trunks of tall trees. You don't wait to harvest until they drop of their own accord — by that time, they'd be overripe. iStockphoto

Jackfruits grow on the branches and trunks of tall trees. You don’t wait to harvest until they drop of their own accord — by that time, they’d be overripe. iStockphoto

We recently started noticing interest in our hometown fruit, and here is some more courtesy of the Salt program on National Public Radio (USA):

It’s not every fruit that gets its own international symposium.

Then again, the jackfruit is not your typical fruit. It’s got a distinctive, musky smell, and a flavor that some describe as like Juicy Fruit gum.

It is the largest tree fruit in the world, capable of reaching 100 pounds. And it grows on the branches — and the trunks — of trees that can reach 30, 40, 50 feet. (Trunk-growing is a good thing because it reduces the odds of a jackfruit bopping you on the head.) Continue reading →

Building An Invasivore Economy

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wild-city-pigeon Since Phil first started posting his series on possible solutions to invasive species last year, in conjunction with the theme of citizen science that Seth has been writing about for the last couple years, we have been on the look out for citizen solutions to environmental challenges–stories that match our interest in entrepreneurial conservation. Phil’s series suggests that citizen science may be the best path to building what might be called an invasivore economy. As it happens, just after his first couple posts there was an article in Conservation that dealt with this very issue:

SEND IN THE INVASIVORES

Recipes for Ecosystem Recovery By Sarah DeWeerdt

“We’re trying to be unsustainable,” says University of Vermont conservation biologist Joe Roman. And he says it with glee. Roman runs www.eattheinvaders.org, a compendium of invasive species recipes. He is one of a growing number of people who advocate controlling invasives by eating them. Instead of relying on toxic pesticides, expensive eradication campaigns, or risky introductions of biological control agents, “why not use our own appetites to good advantage?” he suggests.

Continue reading →

Flavours Of Kerala – Ela Ada

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Photo credits : Jithin

Photo credits: Jithin

Ela ada is an authentic recipe of Kerala cuisine. A mixture of grated coconut, sugar and cardamom is layered inside a rice flour batter and wrapped in banana leaf and steamed. It is served as evening snack. Continue reading →