Why agroforestry has struggled in Barrio Nuevo

/ Evan Barrientos / Leave a comment
The sacrifices of agriculture are obvious to some, yet unperceived by others.

The sacrifices of agriculture are obvious to some, yet unperceived by others.

Good news: after lots of talking, listening, and uphill walking, we’ve completed our work in Barrio Nuevo. Researching the shade coffee project in Barrio Nuevo was extremely insightful. I admit, the success of the project was a bit disappointing, but this itself was a lesson in being more detached form one’s research. From a research standpoint, there’s nothing wrong with a project failing. What good would this evaluation be if we were only confirming that everything was going well?

So what went wrong? Why did it go wrong? How can it be fixed? And is there hope for agroforestry in Barrio Nuevo still? These are the questions I’ve been asking myself for almost a month and here’s what I’ve concluded from the first stage. Continue reading →

Kashmir In Watercolor

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Thanks to India Ink for this story:

Four years ago, Masood Hussain, one of Kashmir’s most renowned artists, worked on a series of watercolors of places, people and activities in and around his city, Srinagar. Imbued with realistic touches, alive with filigree details, and emitting a translucence bequeathed by the medium in the hands of a master, the series “Transparent Strokes” was snapped up by visitors to the city. Continue reading →

To Read It To The End, You Must Disbelieve It

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Mark Thomas (left) and Guy Shorrock keep watch on Britain’s egg obsessives. “These are not normal criminals,” Shorrock says. Photographs by Richard Barnes.

Thanks to the New Yorker‘s commitment to a difficult topic–birds and their fate at the hands of regular and irregular people–and especially to Julian Rubinstein and his confidants for this taxing piece of journalism:

On the afternoon of May 31, 2011, Charlie Everitt, an investigator for the National Wildlife Crime Unit in Edinburgh, Scotland, received an urgent call from a colleague in the Northern Constabulary, the regional police department whose jurisdiction includes the islands off the country’s western coast. The officer told Everitt that a nature-reserve warden on the Isle of Rum, twenty miles offshore, had reported seeing a man “dancing about” in a gull colony. Everitt looked at the clock. It was 4 p.m., too late to catch the last ferry, so he drove Continue reading →

If You Happen To Be In London

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The National History Museum in London is offering an opportunity to see works by a photographer whom you might have first encountered here, or you may be a member of his online community:

The world premiere of Sebastião Salgado: Genesis unveils extraordinary images of landscapes, wildlife and remote communities by this world-renowned photographer.

Sebastião Salgado: Genesis
11 April – 8 September 2013
Waterhouse Gallery Continue reading →

Powdermill Avian Research Center (PARC)

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Thanks to Atlantic‘s website for hosting the Venue folks’ post about this remarkable research station devoted to a phenomenon we pay tribute to every day. In particular, this post helps understand a century+ of evolution in the research tools used to study the behavior of birds:

On a recent morning, Venue joined researchers Luke DeGroote, Amy Tegeler, Mary Shidel, Kate Johnston, and Matt Webb, as well as several dozen warblers, catbirds, and a cuckoo, for a tour of the various devices of bird surveillance at the Powdermill Avian Research Center (PARC), part of Carnegie Museum of Natural History’s Powdermill Nature Reserve. Continue reading →

Chellarkovil Waterfalls- Thekkady

/ Salim.E.I / 1 Comment
Chellarkovil Waterfalls

Chellarkovil Waterfalls

Chellarkovil Waterfalls is located just 14km from Thekkady. Especially during the monsoon the cascading waterfalls and the abundance of flora make this place a trekker’s and photographer’s paradise. Continue reading →

Impossible, Past Tense

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There are already more than a million views of this, in what looks like one day’s time (but may be a hoax and may be old news, but does not look like either as this is posted, so we hope to add to the hype if we are correct).  Thanks to the folks at The Verge for this story:

A Canadian duo and their Kickstarter-funded, pedal-powered helicopter have won one of the longest-standing challenges in the history of aviation — keeping a human-powered aircraft hovering up in the air at height of at least 9.8 feet, within a 32.8 by 32.8-foot square, for 60 seconds minimum. The challenge, known as the Sikorsky prize, has withstood at numerous failed attempts since it was established in 1980, 33 years ago, even with a $250,000 bounty. But it was finally bested earlier in June by the Atlas, a gigantic human-powered helicopter designed by Cameron Robertson and Todd Reichert, aeronautical engineers from the University of Toronto, who cofounded a company AeroVelo. Continue reading →

Sagan’s Pale Blue Dot

/ Organikos / 4 Comments

Scientists, among other communities we follow, make us smile when they speak in a language we can understand (those of us who are not scientists, which is most of us on this site). We have had occasion in the past to point to the famed scientist and former Cornell University professor Carl Sagan, and now Robert Krulwich shares this video on one of his Wonders posts (after clicking through, scroll down):

…Looking at this, Carl Sagan thought, first, how small we look, how small we are — which inspired him to write his eloquent Pale Blue Dot meditation, which, if you haven’t read it lately, take a minute and a half to look at this short version gorgeously animated by Joel Somerfield at Order, a British design studio. Carl Sagan himself is narrating. Continue reading →

Bird Dust-bathing in D.C. and Shark Tail-whipping in PH

/ Seth Inman / Leave a comment

These House Sparrows, one of the sixteen focal species of the Celebrate Urban Birds program, were all dust-bathing together next to the sidewalk near the Washington Monument as I walked past this week. Birds dust-bathe to clean their feathers of oils and parasites, and the behavior is well-documented in this species.

On the other side of the world, just a few days ago, footage was released of previously undocumented (but formerly observed) behavior in Philippine thresher sharks, pelagic predators with a prodigious posterior. A thresher shark’s tail comprises about half of the shark’s total length, and in the video Continue reading →

Student Innovation Helping Make a Better World

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Fasoap Founders Photo courtesy of gsvc.org

Moctar Dembele and Gerard Niyondiko are this year’s grand prize winners of Global Social Venture Competition, an annual competition that awards young entrepreneurs for ideas that can have a positive impact on the world. Their idea “Fasoap” hopes to help prevent the contraction of malaria, a disease that Johns Hopkins Research Institute states over 40% of the world is at risk for, including parts of Africa and India. Malaria a disease that is contracted through bites of infected mosquitoes. Once contracted the medical treatment for the malaria can be very costly, and many of the people who contract it have trouble seeking and paying for such medical care. Continue reading →

Smiling, Thinking Of Math As Language

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Planning our work with communities in diverse locations, language is a challenge, a puzzle. We are constantly on the lookout for new ways of thinking about how to resolve this puzzle, so when we hear this fellow speak on the topic, it makes us smile. Nothing to do with conservation, but everything having to do with community and collaboration at a very fundamental level, we thank Open Culture for bringing this wonderful recording to our attention:

The essay is called “The Common Language of Science.” It was recorded in September of 1941 as a radio address to the British Association for the Advancement of Science. The recording was apparently made in America, as Einstein never returned to Europe after emigrating from Germany in 1933. Continue reading →

Mahabalipuram Shore Temple – Tamil Nadu

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Photo credits: Ramesh Kidangoor

Photo credits: Ramesh Kidangoor

Completed in the latter half of the 8th century A.D, Mahabalipuram Shore Temple is one of the finest examples of structural temple architecture, meaning that it was built from granite block as opposed to being carved from solid stone. It belongs to a period when this temple construction style was at its peek. Continue reading →

Bay Area Branding

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Anyone who has been following the Raxa Collective blog would likely be aware that natural beauty trumps man-made wonders for us, hands down.  Because of that, rather than in spite of it, we have also been sensitive to built space because we live and work in it every day, and welcome travelers to such places.  Paying tribute to design, as we like to do from time to time, we recommend this item on Atlantic’s website about a new landmark building in the Bay Area and the ideas it represents (worth reading in full; excerpted here are the early and closing lines):

…The heart of the development is a ten-story tower that the company’s architect, NBBJ, says “will create a powerful brand image for Samsung.” Continue reading →