Student Innovation Helping Make a Better World

/ Kendra Barnett / Leave a comment

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

/ Organikos / 3 Comments

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 →

Kochin Port

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Kochin Harbour

Photo credits: Ramesh Kidangoor

Kochi, Kerala’s business hub, is home to one of the best ports in the country. Before independence, a British engineer Mr. Robert Bristow developed Kochin port, now a gateway to international trade and tourism. It is an all-weather port, located on the East-West trade route and among Indian ports, situated closest to the international sea route. Continue reading →

Charm City

/ Seth Inman / Leave a comment

A fan sporting a dwarf beard and helmet woven from yarn. Both photos of convention by Flickr user Caliopeva.

My brother Milo and I spent the July 4th long weekend with some family friends in Baltimore, which neither of us had visited before. We were all there primarily for the North American Discworld Convention of 2013, a gathering of fan(atic) readers of Sir Terry Pratchett’s Discworld series at the Baltimore Waterfront Marriott, where the Church of God in Christ also had an event over the weekend (Marriott’s booking office has a sense of humor, it seems). We all had a great time attending various interesting panels and amusing activities, and seeing the diverse array of costumes that readers created and brought to display, and look forward to the next convention in 2015! If you haven’t read any of Pratchett’s work, he specializes in British satire and is often compared to P.G. Wodehouse and Douglas Adams. I like recommending Men at Arms or Night Watch to those interested in reading any of his Discworld series (soon over 40 books total), but he also wrote a book with Neil Gaiman called Good Omens that is one of my all-time favorites.

Speaking of books, if you’re ever in Baltimore on a weekend, you should most definitely check out the Book Thing and revel in the strange feeling of walking out of a building with bags full of books that you haven’t paid for: Continue reading →

Birthday Present For Mr. Tesla

/ Organikos / 4 Comments

Last August we recommended reading to the end of Mr. Inman’s mischievously hilarious tribute to Nikola Tesla, partly because every bit of it was great, but the end asked for attention to an initiative that rang true to us: the conservation of patrimony related to this exceptional man.  A couple months ago, when we saw on Mr. Inman’s site that the initiative had succeeded we decided to investigate further before celebrating this. Now, in honor of Tesla’s birthday, seems like a good time to highlight it.  Click the image above to see the results.  There have been some birthday tributes to Tesla elsewhere and we share one of those as well. Continue reading →

Vazhachal Waterfalls – Kerala

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Photo credits: Ramesh Kidangoor

Vazhachal Waterfalls is located 78 kilometers from Cochin. Set amidst the lush green foliage at the entrance of the Sholayar forest, the famous waterfall is a popular location in the Indian film industry. Continue reading →

The Upsides Of Downside Exploration

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The Shinkai6500 deep-sea submersible

The Shinkai6500 deep-sea submersible. Photograph: Jon Copley

Told in the first person, we appreciate Jon Copley’s account of his most recent amazing work, and the Guardian’s coverage of it:

Five kilometres, or 3.1 miles, is not a great distance on land – the length of a pleasant stroll. But five kilometres vertically in the ocean separates different worlds. On 21 June I had the opportunity to make that short journey to another world, by joining Japanese colleagues for the first manned mission to the deepest known hydrothermal vents, five thousand metres down on the ocean floor. Continue reading →

Reducing Waste While Contributing to Communities

/ Martin Bawden / Leave a comment

When “first world” travelers are planning a trip to the “third world”, their doctors often require them to take a handful of vaccinations, and a few prescriptions. This summer, about 40 students from a graduate program at the University of Western Ontario interned in Kerala, hosted by Raxa Collective; many of them, to err on the side of caution brought medicines for tropical diseases, including malaria. However, most of those medications are not needed in Kerala, whose health profile is comparable to Costa Rica, and which happens to be malaria-free.

As weeks progressed, many of the interns stopped taking their pills and consequently they were left with an excess, which are worth much more to those in need than in the garbage can back home. Continue reading →

Chettinadu Mansions – Tamil Nadu

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Photo credits : Ramesh Kidangoor

Photo credits : Ramesh Kidangoor

Chettinadu, loacated in the Sivagana district of southern Tamil Nadu, is the homeland of Nattukottai Chettiars (also known as “Nagarathars”), who are the highest class of the Chettiar Tamil community.  Nattukottai Chettiars, are often prosperous individuals in either the banking or business community.  Due to their rich cultural heritage such as their art, architecture, and antiques, their mansions are often a popular attraction for visitors. Continue reading →

Entrepreneurial Conservation Through Carbon Visualization

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Thanks to the University of Washington’s magazine Conservation, we found our way to this video, and the magazine’s blurb about the source of the video is a worthy introduction because of its explanations of the images that accompany:

For Antony Turner, pictures make a story come alive—and in the climate change story, one of the main characters is invisible. In 2009, together with artist/scientist Adam Nieman, he founded Carbon Visuals to help people “see” the carbon dioxide that’s trapping heat in Earth’s atmosphere. Continue reading →

Sourcing Icelandic Wilderness

/ Seth Inman / 5 Comments

Þórsmörk. Glacier descending from Eyjafjallajökull. Collodion print by Frederick W. W. Howell ca 1900. Bequest of Daniel Willard Fiske; compilation by Halldór Hermannsson; Cornell University Library Rare & Manuscript Collections.

How Icelanders themselves saw the inner regions of their country, and the differences in perspective between the more and less educated segments of the population, can give valuable insight to the environmental practices of Iceland today, as well as portray the influence of European teaching on the more erudite Icelanders.

Although my focus is on the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, it will be useful for me to explore the roots of Icelandic and European thought on unused open land and Nature, especially since much of the rural Icelanders’ perceptions were tinted by folklore and legend. Therefore, at least a cursory background of Icelandic folklore as it relates to my research topic is necessary, so I will consult the multitude of translated Icelandic myths, folk stories, and sagas, as well as the vast literature on wilderness and Nature in European thought, that Cornell Library owns in its Icelandic collection. Continue reading →

Search Well, Do Good, Avoid Not Being Evil

/ Crist Inman / Leave a comment

The big guns of the tech world have the financial weight to reinvest in new services, but can startups give them a run for their soul?

I have not tested it yet, but there is a new, alternative search engine worthy of checking out. Click the image above to go to the Guardian story about would-be giant-killing do-gooders (or is it giant-killing would-be do-gooders?):

A new breed of internet startup is taking on the big guns of the tech world. Seeking to capitalise on consumer disillusionment with the established order in the wake of headlines about tax-dodging, personal data profiteering and poor factory conditions, these startups represent the radical face of the internet.

Unusually for a tech company, however, it is not technological innovation that gives them their unique selling point. Rather it is the promise to do social and environmental good.

“They started with decent values – Google and Apple,” says Christian Kroll, founder of Ecosia, an eco-conscious search engine based in Berlin. “They wanted to build something that improves the world. But as soon as you become a public company, shareholders exert influence.” Continue reading →