Artemisia tridentata, or Big Sagebrush, is a ubiquitous herb in the North Fork Valley and elsewhere in the Rocky Mountains and beyond. It has been traditionally used by Southwestern Natives in many ways to many effects. It has been used to prevent contamination of wounds, ward evil spirits, relieving indigestion, and to treat colds and fevers, among many others.
Photo credits: Jossmon
Top Station, named for being the railway station with the highest elevation in the area, is one of the main attractions in Munnar. It is about 24 km from the town, and the view from Top Station provides us with a stunning bird’s eye view of Tamil Nadu, our neighboring state to the east. Continue reading
Sang Tan/Associated Press
Author Jhumpa Lahiri with her book ‘The Lowland’ at the Queen Elizabeth Hall in London.
Thanks to India Ink for an overview:
The 2014 Jaipur Literature Festival, now in its ninth edition, kicks off in the state capital of Rajasthan on Friday. Over the course of five days, celebrated writers from India and abroad will talk about not just their books but also about the two World Wars, Afghanistan after the withdrawal of American troops, Himalayan languages and the making of modern China.
This year’s highlights include:
The festival starts with an inaugural keynote address on Friday at 10 a.m. by the Nobel Prize-winning economist Amartya Sen, who will also talk about the workings of democracy and human freedoms with John Makinson, chairman of Penguin Random House, in another session later that day at 2:15 p.m.
Read the whole article here.
Thattekad Bird Sanctuary, Kerala
We normally don’t post advertisements on this blog, but the video above by the folks at Machine Shop, in collaboration with MJ Cole for the spice flavoring company Schwartz, is too cool and creative to ignore when we have such a deep connection to spices in Kerala, both historically and for visitors today. Continue reading
Photo credits: Ramesh Kidangoor
Thirumalai Nayak Palace was built in the year 1636 by king Thirumalai Nayak, designed by an Italian architect. The courtyard in this palace is 3900 sq meters and is surrounded by massive pillars. The courtyard was mainly used for daily dance and music programmes. Continue reading
A Vishnu-Lakshmi sandstone sculpture, one of three stolen from India, is seen during a repatriation ceremony of the artefacts at the Indian consulate in New York on Tuesday. Photo: Narayan Lakshman
For those contributors to Raxa Collective based in India, but of USA citizenship, it is no stretch to say that Indians in India have treated Americans in India with the same friendliness as ever, and then some, in spite of a recent diplomatic spat between the two countries (if you were not aware of it, don’t bother, as the storm appears to be passing). Ladies and gentlemen of India, we salute you. Now, news of gentlemanly behavior on the part of authorities in the USA, with uncanny timing as it comes on the heels of that diplomatic problem. The return of these antiquities is a seriously good thing on its own, but we would be happy to think that cultural heritage plays a role in improving relations between two countries:
The U.S. handover to India this week, of idols worth more than $1.5m stolen from temples in Rajasthan, and Bihar or West Bengal, marked what seemed to be a gradual thaw in bilateral frost following a month-long diplomatic crisis.
In a repatriation ceremony at the New York Consulate of India, where the diplomat at the centre of the crisis, Devyani Khobragade, used to work, the U.S. Customs and Immigration Enforcement (ICE)’s Homeland Security Investigations (HIS) on Tuesday returned two sandstone sculptures of “Vishnu and Lakshmi,” respectively weighing 159 and 272 kg. Continue reading
Part of what I call the previsualization process in photography relates to lighting. A good photographic artist must be able to understand their equipment well enough to blend what they see through the viewfinder and visualize the framing from the lens+camera combination.
I was walking in this path at Bharatpur when I saw this group of Rhesus Macaques coming from behind me. I saw this light patch in front of me and stopped for the Macaques to cross that patch.
I knew I would get the image I visualized if any of the macaques stopped at that point. Continue reading
After a brief and minor lapse the Guardian is back on game. Albeit with a hint of Monty Python. Sometimes a serious ecological challenge has a solution with an unexpected look or a funny ring to it, and we appreciate that this story was deemed worthy:
Thousands of Australian honey bees have been fitted with tiny sensors in a study to help understand what is causing the precipitous collapse of colonies around the world.
About 5,000 bees will carry the 2.5mm x 2.5mm sensors, like hi-tech backpacks, for the next two months at the study site in Hobart. Continue reading
Bangalore, Karnataka
Hot springs in Iceland’s Fjallabak Nature Reserve. Photo via DailyMail Online
As I wrote in Part 1, I think a brief inspection of Murray guidebooks over time hints at the image that a Briton considering a voyage abroad would hold in his mind of a place like Iceland. The first edition of A Handbook for Travellers in Denmark, Norway, Sweden and Russia, an 1839 volume by Murray intended for travel through most of Scandinavia, states in the Preface that, Continue reading
Photo credits: Ramesh Kidangoor
The temples of Kerala offer various artistic and cultural events during festival time. During these periods, previously limited space become public as people gather to celebrate together, making carpets of natural materials, which we have described before. Continue reading
Harvard Business Review offers this interview with the founder of Khan Academy, a non-profit educational initiative that has been succeeding the way many dot-com businesses succeed–the difference being that all the benefits accrue to students and their educational attainment around the world. Bravo, Mr. Khan:
…In the traditional academic model, you’re passive. You sit in a chair, and the teacher tries to project knowledge at you; some of it sticks, some of it doesn’t. That’s not an effective way to learn. Worse, it creates a mind-set of “you need to teach me,” so when you’re on your own, you think, “I can’t learn.” Anyone in any industry will tell you there’s new stuff to learn every week these days. So you have to say, “What information and people do I have at my disposal? What questions do I need to ask? How do I gauge whether I’ve really understood it?” Khan Academy is designed to give students that agency. If you want to get more tangible, I would say learn how to program a computer, more about the law, and definitely statistics… Continue reading
Photo credits: Ramesh Kidangoor
The Aranmula boat race is held during the harvest festival of Onam, on the Pamba River near the Sree Parthasarathy Temple at Aranmula. The head of the boat is usually fantastically decorated with golden lace, a flag, and chains of flowers; often the boats have an ornamental umbrella towards the centre of the vessel. Continue reading
The phrase “flying fox” in our experience has been used to describe the huge bats that can be found around Cardamom County in Thekkady, feasting on fruit and insects. In the video above, however, we learned that even common ground-dwelling foxes can reach stunning heights — in their pursuit of rodents living underneath deep layers of snow!
A protest outside the Dallas Convention Centre against the auction of a black rhino hunting permit. Photograph: Tony Gutierrez/AP
This coverage in the Guardian provides an answer to the lingering question of how much good the killing of an endangered animal can do, but does not answer the fundamental question raised by this endeavor:
A permit to hunt an endangered African black rhino sold for $350,000 at a Dallas auction held to raise money for conservation efforts but criticised by wildlife advocates.
Steve Wagner, a spokesman for the Dallas Safari Club, which sponsored the closed-door event Saturday night, confirmed the sale of the permit for a hunt in the African nation of Namibia. He declined to name the buyer. Continue reading
This photo of a tiger cub with its mother was taken at Tadoba Tiger Reserve. Composition is an art and it takes time, patience and perseverance to collect your thoughts and compose the image you’ve visualised.
There are guidelines for composition, but as the name implies, they are just guidelines to be aware of. In this photo I composed an image where the mother’s face isn’t seen, and the legs and majority of the tigers’ bodies are cropped out of the frame…but still, I feel this image has a strong visual impact. Continue reading
If more conversation is the goal, and as we have indicated we should put everything we have on the table regardless of how difficult the topic, then we should not add too many caveats. But after listening to this young man, we are tempted to create some rules for the game:
Phuc Tran grew up caught between two languages with opposing cultural perspectives: the indicative reality of Vietnamese and the power to image endless possibilities with English. In this personal talk, Tran explains how both shaped his identity. Continue reading
One of the more interesting profiles of a photographer that we have seen in quite some time is located somewhere we had not seen until today. This excerpt is near the end, but we highly recommend the whole thing:
…A COUPLE OF MORNINGS after our first encounter, I arrange to meet Magyar at Alexanderplatz, one of Berlin’s busiest subway stations, for a demonstration of the Stainless project. I arrive at the height of rush hour, and wait for ten minutes at one end of the crowded platform before he appears. His long hair spills over his black parka, which is matched by black work boots, black jeans, and a black daypack. Continue reading
Organikos 