Photo credits: Ramesh Kidangoor
Kovalam beach is covered with coconut palms, and framed by the headlands that rise steeply above the shore. The crescent shaped beaches of Kovalam are an international tourist attraction. With golden sands, miles of shimmering sea, and picturesque beaches it is no wonder that this beautiful place is one of Kerala’s most popular destinations. Continue reading
It sure sounds like a great way to pass time, giving away billions of dollars. The fact that they seem to think deeply about the implications of their wealth, as well as their methods of getting and giving, makes them even more noteworthy. Thanks to tax-payer, and listener-supported National Public Radio in the USA for bringing the other brother/son to our attention with this story:
Get Howard Buffett into the cab of a big ole’ farm tractor and he’s like a kid — albeit a 58-year-old, gray-haired one. He’s especially excited when it comes to the tractor’s elaborate GPS system, which he describes as “very cool.”
“I’m driving hands-free,” says Buffett, the son of billionaire investor Warren Buffett. Continue reading
We send these invitations, modern messages in modern bottles, with discriminating intent, if random expectations. Luke reminds us of how much we miss the Raxa Collective Design Team, a 2012 phenomenon. We cannot see much about Luke except that he “does things.” The photography and film-making among those things, we like from what we see here. The welcome mat is out…
Photo credits: Ranjith
Attappadi is situated in the northeast part of Palakkad district, and is a stunning forest that is mainly inhabited by local tribes. The Malleshwarn peak of Attappadi is worshiped as a huge Shivalinga, the symbolic connection between male and female forces, by these tribes. They celebrate the festival of Shivratri with fanfare on the hill, by illuminating the top of this peak. Continue reading
Courtesy of Flavy Shankar. Deena Pinto, extreme left, with her friends during a Sunday brunch meeting in Bangalore, Karnataka.
Thanks to India Ink for this coverage of Bangalore’s social scene intersecting with its entrepreneurial innovation:
Deena Pinto, in her 30s and single, is much sought after in some social circles in Bangalore. Continue reading
As we start thinking through food programming at the two new properties we are working on here in Kerala, our attentions are scattered around the world, but eating wild keeps coming to us from all over. So when the great interviewer Dave Davies discusses this book with its author, podcast here, our attention is riveted:
In her new book, Eating on the Wild Side, Robinson argues that our prehistoric ancestors picked and gathered wild plants that were in many ways far more healthful than the stuff we buy today at farmers’ markets.
But this change, she says, isn’t the result of the much-bemoaned modern, industrial food system. It has been thousands of years in the making — ever since humans first took up farming (some 12,000 years ago, more or less) and decided to “cultivate the wild plants that were the most pleasurable to eat,” she writes. More pleasurable generally meant less bitter and higher in sugar, starch or oil.
Male – Los Quetzales, Panama
Bubbles at the surface of a freshly poured flute of champagne. Photograph by Gérard Liger-Belair.
Champagne is associated with celebration for many reasons, and having just learned that one of our former interns is planning a wedding we could not resist sharing this information in the spirit of citizen science-sharing (click the image above to go to the source in Scientific American‘s website):
…In Uncorked: The Science of Champagne, recently revised and translated into English, physicist Gerard Liger-Belair explains the history, science and art of the wine. His book also features high-speed photography of champagne bubbles in action and stop-motion photography of the exact moment a cork pops (potentially at a speed of 31 miles per hour (!). Continue reading
A fisherman on the Rio Negro – Photo courtesy of Discover Magazine
One would normally associate conservation with protecting the natural environment and the animals in it, but this Discovery Magazine article shows a new, almost counter-intuitive, way the local people are helping conserve and protect the Amazon Rainforest.
At sunrise on a September day in 1991, as Scott Dowd’s riverboat floated up the Rio Negro in Brazil, flocks of shrieking macaws streaked the sky red and gold. Otherwise, “my full field of vision was filled with jungle,” he remembers.
Best of all for the self-described “fish nerd” from Weymouth, Massachusetts, the dark waters beneath his boat teemed with beautiful fish—species he’d kept in aquarium tanks since he was 10. Now he was headed to the place they’d come from: Barcelos, a town of 20,000 in the heart of the Amazon.
But when he got there, he was horrified.
The riverfront was jammed with men in dugout canoes. They had come from the surrounding municipality, a rainforested area the size of Pennsylvania, bringing hand-woven baskets lined with plastic, now brimming with tiny, colorful fish. Tubs of the fish they caught would fill the entire bottom floor of an 80-foot ferryboat headed to Manaus, 280 miles to the south.
The fish were bound for exporters supplying home aquaria around the world. The estimated catch of tropical fish leaving the area, Dowd discovered, was more than 40 million fish per year. “My kneejerk reaction to this was, this was out of control!” he says.
But now, 22 years later, he eagerly admits: “I could not have been more wrong.” Continue reading
Kadavanthra, Ernakulam
Cardamom Plantations
Cardamom is popularly known as the “Queen of Spice” and is one of the important commercial crops found in the high ranges of Kerala. The best quality cardamom grown in and around the Idukkki District is the species Mysore Cardamom. Continue reading
Students in need of tuition money sometimes prove the saying that necessity is the mother of invention, as this New Yorker historical note indicates:
In 1843, a Dartmouth College freshman named Augustus Washington needed to earn some money for tuition. As a man of mixed-race—a black father, a South Asian mother—many professions were closed to him. But anyone could learn the new art of daguerreotype photography, which had been perfected and publicized a few years earlier by the French artist Louis-Jacques-Mandé Daguerre. After mastering the bulky camera, Washington opened a studio in Hartford, Connecticut, where he made a good living photographing middle-class families. Continue reading
Uzhunnu Vada
Uzhunnu Vada is a very common snack in South India, and is often found at breakfast with items such as Idli, Sambar and Chutney. The main ingredients for this dish are black lentils, ginger, onion, salt and curry leaves. Continue reading
Thank you, Mr. Cardoz, on behalf of all those who resist the family’s gravitational pull to other professions, and choosing food. And thanks to the New York Times for bringing your story in brief, thoughtful form:
In Edison, New Jersey, “Floyd Cardoz was scanning the shelves at a supermarket called Apna Bazar Cash and Carry, looking for inspiration,” Jeff Gordinier wrote in The New York Times. Continue reading
Milwaukee, Wisconsin
Photo credits : Ramesh Kidangoor
Kuttanad is a large area made up of low-lying land spread across Alappuzha District. Agriculture is the major occupation and paddy is grown as far as the eye can see. Duck rearing is a subsidiary occupation for many farmers and thousands of ducks wadding over the fields, lakes and rivers is a beautiful sight across the district. Duck growers from even distant places bring their flocks to Kuttanad during the harvest season. Continue reading
But where would I live? Royal BC Museum
From the fellow who brought you Dolly, a philosophical yet practical consideration of the ethics of cloning an extinct species:
It is unlikely that a mammoth could be cloned in the way we created Dolly the sheep, as has been proposed following the discovery of mammoth bones in northern Siberia. However, the idea prompts us to consider the feasibility of other avenues. Even if the Dolly method is not possible, there are other ways in which it would be biologically interesting to work with viable mammoth cells if they can be found. Continue reading
Our neighborhood buddies are almost always in cricket mode, but when they sense an audience the stance switches, as if on cue, to film star mode. Action!
Organikos 