2013 Goldman Award Winner

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2013_azzamalwash_profile

Recently brought to our attention due to a short documentary, today’s news puts new wind in his sails with the award of this much-deserved prize (click the image to the right to go to the website):

Giving up a comfortable living and family life in California, Azzam Alwash returned to war-torn Iraq to lead local communities in restoring the once-lush marshes that were turned to dust bowls during Saddam Hussein’s rule.

The Mesopotamian marshlands in southern Iraq are known by many as the birthplace of civilization. Situated between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers, the area was once an oasis of aquatic wildlife filled with lush reed beds, water buffalo, lions, foxes and otters. It was also one of the world’s most important migratory flyways for birds.

In the mid-1990s, Saddam Hussein burned, drained and poisoned the area in retaliation of Shiite Arabs, who had staged uprisings following the Kuwait invasion and fled to the marshes for refuge. The wetlands once known as the Garden of Eden turned to dust bowls, driving out the descendants of ancient Sumerians who had inhabited the area for thousands of years. Continue reading →

A Great Magazine Becomes A Great Insititution

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The consistently superb essayist Adam Gopnik, who often writes about topics unrelated to the themes of our blog, in this week’s New Yorker writes on a topic close to our heart (click the image above to go to the article, subscription required):

Magazines in their great age, before they were unmoored from their spines and digitally picked apart, before perpetual blogging made them permeable packages, changing mood at every hour and up all night like colicky infants—magazines were expected to be magisterial registers of the passing scene. Yet, though they were in principle temporal, a few became dateless, timeless. The proof of this condition was that they piled up, remorselessly, in garages and basements, to be read . . . later. Continue reading →

Malik Ibn Dinar Mosque – Kasaragod, Kerala

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Photo Credit: Ramesh Kidangoor

Photo Credit: Ramesh Kidangoor

Malik Ibn Dinar Mosque is one of the oldest Mosques in Kerala. It was built by Malik Ibn Dinar, a missionary from Arabia who is credited with bringing Islam to the Malabar shores. The original mosque Dinar built in 648 AD was a small structure but with marble paving stones brought from Mecca. Continue reading →

Simple Superiority

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On the margins of topics we pay attention to on this site, there is a steady stream of posts related to some of today’s great thinkers and researchers on the topic of decision-making and related topics. Here is more.  But simpler, we presume. We have not read the book yet; only this review from the New York Times:

Less is more. The bare essentials. Back to basics. User-friendly. No fine print. Clutter-free. Transparent. Clean. Easy. Back in the mid-19th century Henry David Thoreau exhorted us to “simplify, simplify,” and his appeal to distill things down to “the necessary and the real” has only gained more resonance, as our Internet-driven, A.D.D. culture has grown ever more complex and frenetic. Continue reading →

Photographs Of Life In Pre-Soviet Russia

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From a photographer-centric website called Lens Culture, this photobook review of a collection called Nostalgia helps us visually ponder a now forgotten world through a particular lens:

Nostalgia: The Russian Empire of Czar Nicholas II Captured in Color Photographs

photographs by Sergei Mikhailovich Prokudin-Gorskii Continue reading →

Festival Of Kerala- Vishu

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Photo Credit: Abhay

Photo Credit: Abhay

Celebrated on the first day of the Malayalam month of Medam (which in 2013 falls on April 14th) Vishu is one of Kerala’s most important festivals. The parallel festival to the Onam harvest celebration, Vishu is the festival of sowing. All Hindu households begin the day with offerings called vishu kani. This consists of a ritual arrangement of auspicious articles like raw rice, fresh linen, golden cucumber, betel leaves, banana, jack fruit , yellow flowers (indian Laburnum) and a metal mirror. Continue reading →

Getting Grilled About Nests

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Photo by Sharon Obery, IL

In the past few years at the Celebrate Urban Birds Funky Nests in Funky Places competition we have seen a fair number of nests found by contributors in their grills. And although at first it might seem surprising to learn that so many people are finding nests there (and, as you can see from their captions, the photographers are usually pretty shocked to open up their grill and encounter eggs or nestlings!), if you think a little about what certain bird species look for in a nesting location, grills actually make sense as nest homes. Why? Well, let’s review a couple facts about bird nests.

First off, many species will always nest in a protected hole, or cavity. The most common of these that you could find around your house include (but aren’t limited to) European Starlings, House Sparrows, House Wrens, and Eastern Bluebirds. Next, we should remember that the most important factor for a nest location is its capability to provide shelter and protection from predators. Does it sound like a grill would meet these requirements? Here’s some of their nest-worthy qualities:

Continue reading →

Innovative Cross-Cultural Sound

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Thanks to the folks who created the music-recording studio (more on which to come) we had the opportunity to experience this live:

Hindugrass at Manifold Recording

Kicking off our recording sessions for the new album with a live performance in the magnificent music room at Manifold Recording. Continue reading →

Lake Vembanad

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Photo Credits: Ramesh Kidangoor

Photo Credits: Ramesh Kidangoor

Lake Vembanad at sunset is a vision of coconut palms reflected on calm water. Famous for its boat races, marine products and ubiquitous coir industry, this land of lush paddy fields is also referred to as the “Rice Bowl of Kerala” and one of the few places in the world where farming is done below sea level. Continue reading →

Weird Businesses, Natural History Edition

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Eric Prokopi, of Gainesville, in the five-thousand-square-foot fossil workshop that he built in his back yard. Photograph by Richard Barnes.

Eric Prokopi, of Gainesville, in the five-thousand-square-foot fossil workshop that he built in his back yard. Photograph by Richard Barnes.

I am not sure what to make of this.  Is it entrepreneurial conservation from a different angle? This story, in character with the New Yorker‘s brand of long form journalism, tells a remarkably odd story in must-read fashion:

Natural history goes to auction five or six times a year in America, and one Sunday last May a big sale took place in Chelsea, at the onetime home of the Dia Center for the Arts. The bidding, organized by a company called Heritage Auctions, began with two amethyst geodes that, when paired, resembled the ears of an alert rabbit. Then came meteorites, petrified wood, and elephant tusks; centipedes, scorpions, and spiders preserved in amber; rare quartzes, crystals, and fossils. The fossils ranged from small Eocene swimmers imprinted on rock to the remains of late-Cretaceous dinosaurs.

Continue reading →

Napier Museum – Thiruvananthapuram, Kerala

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Photo Credits: Nikhil Raj

Photo Credits: Nikhil Raj

The Napier Museum is also known as the Trivandrum Art Museum of Art. It was completed in 1880, making it the oldest museum in Kerala and one of the oldest in India.The museum houses an extensive collection of bronze and stone sculptures and wooden carvings dating from the 11th to the 18th centuries.  There are some very interesting musical instruments and a 400-year old clock.  The traditional ornaments used by Kerala women, elaborate lamps and  life -lized Kathakali figures complete with resplendent costumes add to the museum’s eclectic collection. Continue reading →

Coffee Maker Verification

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No promotion, per se.  We like the message, and we are curious, if you have had experience with this machine, whether you can verify for us the claims of the company:

By using hand-powered pressure coffee making becomes a more involving pleasure. As you become more experienced you can fine-tune how you use the ROK espresso maker to produce espressos to your personal taste.  Continue reading →