Photo credits: M N Shaji
Every year both Cardamom County staff and guests look forward to Christmas Eve; from the eco-friendly bamboo and paper tree to the fun and games at our restaurant roof top. This year was also a blast with guests mingling with each other and being good sports by taking part in games as both families and couples. Continue reading
Image © Natural Balance Foods
A few months ago I was introduced to the Nākd bars made by UK-based Natural Balance Foods, which are commonly described as being “nuts and fruits smushed together.” You can really tell this is the case from the ingredients list (see the Berry Delight above; the natural berry flavor is made up of extracts and spices). I sampled from of their wonderful range of flavors, and I think my favorite so far has been the Berry Delight, with Cocoa Orange as runner-up, but I’m also excited to try the Rhubarb & Custard some time. Continue reading
Robert Krulwich/NPR
Robert Krulwich makes us wonder, as always:
What Chickadees Have That I Want. Badly
First I look in my right coat pocket. Nothing. Then my left. Nothing. Then my pants, right side — no. Then my pants, left side — yes! This is me at my front door, looking for my keys. Every day.
Raxa Collective has at least as many neighborhoods to consider as we do properties under our management–each of which has a remarkable surrounding community–which is to say six in Kerala, one in Costa Rica, and one in Ghana. Continue reading
Photo credits: Ramesh Kidangoor
Munnar is the highest point in the Idukki district of Kerala ranging at above 4,500 feet, it is also one of the major tea producing areas of the country and has now become the headquarters for major tea producers in India. Continue reading
Mary Ellen Hannibal, author of The Spine of the Continent, and winner of Stanford’s Knight-Risser Prize in Western Environmental Literature, sheds light on the importance of butterflies to one of the previous century’s great writers:
The life and work of the novelist Vladimir Nabokov referenced many symbols, none so much as the butterfly. Butterflies prompted Nabokov’s travels across the United States, exposing him to the culture and physical environment that he would transform into his best-known novel, Lolita. Butterflies motivated his parallel career in science, culminating in a then-ignored evolutionary hypothesis, which would be vindicated 34 years after his death using the tools of modern genetic analysis. And it was the butterfly around which some of Nabokov’s fondest childhood memories revolved. Continue reading
In a story about the co-evolution of two sides of the “kindness of strangers” coin Ed Yong, one of the most readable of the current pantheon of great science writers shares some scientific findings that we consider to be heartening:
The common cuckoo is famed for its knack for mooching off the parental instincts of other birds. It lays its eggs in the nests of at least 100 other species, turning them into inadvertent foster parents for its greedy chicks. For this reason, it’s called a brood parasite. Continue reading
The article we linked to here is now unlocked so non-subscribers can access the full story, and the video currently posted on the New Yorker‘s website (click the image above to go to the source) is a good accompaniment:
Last week, in our World Changers Issue, Michael Pollan wrote about the growing field of plant neurobiology and the ways that plants seem to exhibit intelligence, intention, and even choice. Continue reading
Kabini Backwaters, Karnataka
6pm this evening, our neighborhood will be the scene of intense competition. Yet, of course, friendly. Raxa Collective, as sponsor, has a special seat of honor watching the event, so we will hope to photo/video-document the fun. Liveblogging, alas, is not going to happen this time. It is peak season here for lodging operations, and all hands are on deck elsewhere. The recap, we promise, will be worth a look.
Photo credit: Dileep Narayanan
Theyyam is one of the most popular ritualistic dances of Kerala. Of the variety of performing arts, most have roots in folk tradition and are often related to religious rituals and mythological stories. Theyyam is a devotional performance with surrealistic representations of the divine. Continue reading
Photograph: Arco Images GmbH / Alamy/Alamy
The Guardian is preparing us for 2014’s new lineup of nature shows on television by highlighting the role of technology in bringing us a closer view of all things wild, including more than one of the types of amazing creatures we like featured in the photo above:
An unusual line-up of stars will make their names on television next year. They include the gigantopithecus, a huge extinct ape – resurrected through the wonders of CGI – which will frolic in 3D with David Attenborough in Sky’s Natural History Museum Alive.
The south-east Asian tree shrew and the dung beetle will bear testimony to the hardships that the world’s tiniest animals endure, in BBC1’s Hidden Kingdoms, while Dolphins: Spy in the Pod, also on BBC1, will reveal the intimate lives of wild cetaceans through the use of cameras fitted to robot fish. Continue reading
Setting the Table for a Regal Butterfly Comeback, With Milkweed
From this week’s Science News section of the New York Times, an article by Michael Vines about how:
Conservationists have planted milkweed, a favored food of the butterfly, along migratory routes where natural habitat has been plowed under for crops.
Orhan Pamuk says that “C. P. Cavafy makes no explicit reference to himself in his best and most stirring work; and yet, with every poem we read, we cannot help thinking of him.”
Does it take an Istanbulian to know one? Does it take a great writer to know one? You do not need to be a fan of poetry, nor of this particular poet, to appreciate the observations of one of the great observers of our time, with regard to living here and there but neither here nor there, and with regard to the idea of universality in art:
Cavafy was born in Alexandria, Egypt, in 1863, to a Greek family of wealthy drapers and cloth merchants. (The word kavaf, now forgotten even by Turks themselves, is Ottoman Turkish for a maker of Continue reading
Off Bazar Road, Mattanchery
Navajo activist Klee Benally chains himself to an excavator on the San Francisco Peaks, which he and 13 tribes consider sacred. Ethan Sing
We are encouraged to see more coverage of these important cultural-ethical issues:
The Paris auction of 27 sacred American-Indian items earlier this month marks just the latest in a series of conflicts between what tribes consider sacred and what western cultures think is fair game in the marketplace. Continue reading
Photo credit: Ramesh Kidangoor
The Ananthapadmanabha Swami Temple is situated in Kasargod district in the midst of a serene natural lake. The temple, rich in murals, is believed to be the original seat of the Sri Ananthapadmanabha Swami Temple in Trivandrum. Continue reading
Walter Isaacson has done some remarkable things (according to his present byline he is “CEO of the Aspen Institute. Author of biographies of Steve Jobs, Albert Einstein, Benjamin Franklin, and Henry Kissinger. Former editor of Time, CEO of CNN”). Little reason for him to doubt his own authority, on anything. But he invites you to fact check the book he is currently working on, starting with a draft of a chapter published in Medium. I appreciate the creative spirit of collaboration, and his faith in the wider community to get his facts both straight and full of color:
The Culture That Gave Birth to the Personal Computer
I am sketching a draft of my next book on the innovators of the digital age. Here’s a rough draft of a section that sets the scene in Silicon Valley in the 1970s. I would appreciate notes, comments, corrections
In that draft he makes reference to the starting point of the Whole Earth Catalog, and the meme that came with it of using an image of the earth from space to communicate its fragility and limitations as much as its wondrousness; which, along with the rest of the draft (as if you needed convincing) makes the book sound worth the wait: Continue reading
Organikos 