Communities of Learning, Science, And The Role Of Culture

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A meeting of doctors at the university of Paris. From a medieval manuscript of “Chants Royaux”, Bibliothèque Nationale, Paris.

A meeting of doctors at the university of Paris. From a medieval manuscript of “Chants Royaux”, Bibliothèque Nationale, Paris.

Click on the image to the right to go to the source, an online publication we have consistently enjoyed so far:

The lone survivor of traditional Western European ‘scientific’ culture is science.

It has survived because it is now the handmaid of technology, without which contemporary civilization would collapse utterly. Anyone who doubts this should try to get a research grant for genuinely “pure” research.Today, in European cultures, and in other cultures that have borrowed it, science per se is strictly peripheral at best. It is not only inseparable from technology; it is all but completely divorced from philosophy. This is a far cry from the Middle Ages.

The centrality of science in all spheres of Western European culture was ensured when the crucial elements — all of them — were borrowed during the Crusades, more or less simultaneously, from Classical Arabic civilization. Continue reading →

Ghana, Canopy Walkways, Conservation

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TNC Green Science Blog

 

Click the banner above to go to the blog, and the image below to go to the most recent post:

Boucher’s Birding Blog: Mamba Meets Bushbaby

MARCH 15, 2013  |  by: Timothy Boucher
Many visitors see the canopy walkway as a low-tech amusement ride. But look closely, and wonders await: like this green mamba slithering past. Tim Boucher/TNC

Many visitors see the canopy walkway as a low-tech amusement ride. But look closely, and wonders await: like this green mamba slithering past. Tim Boucher/TNC

Sometimes when you go birding, you can’t help but see other animals – elephants, army ants, beautiful butterflies.

Occasionally, if you get out early (as birders always do), you can get to a park before the crowds and you might see something really special (and, in this case, gruesome).

In January, we traveled to Ghana for some superb birding. Our visit included the famous canopy walkway at the Kakum National Park near the Ivory Coast. The seven bridges strung high up in the trees usually teem with visitors who have no appreciation of the amazing birdlife. Continue reading →

Coconut Toddy – Kallu

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Photo Credits: Vishnu Rajendran

Photo Credits: Vishnu Rajendran

Popularly known as kallu, toddy is Kerala’s own coconut liquor. In fact, kallu is probably the first (and perhaps the only!) Malayalam road sign a tourist will learn to read. Made from the sap of the coconut flower before it blooms, the drink gives no intoxication when freshly tapped, but the level of alcohol increases as it ferments. When fresh it has a mildly yeasty flavor. Continue reading →

Dance Of Kerala – Mohiniattam

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Photo credits:Ramesh Kidangoor

Photo credits: Ramesh Kidangoor

Mohiniattam is a gentle and graceful semi-classical dance form of Kerala. The orgins of this dance are traced to Dasiattam, the dance performed by women in temples as an offering to propitiate the Gods. The customary costume for Mohiniattam is a cream two-piece pleated sari with a wide gold border and traditional gold ornaments. The eyes are lined dramatically with kohl to enhance the dancer’s expressions. The hair is tied in a bun, placed at the side of the head and encircled by a string of fragrant jasmine flowers. Continue reading →

Sharks As Charismatic Megafauna

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If you are like most people, the words shark and trust do not normally work well together in the same sentence. Sharks are predators, and predators predate. So unless you are a professional you should not take anything for granted when in their waters. But the two words work together well in a sentence about this organization, and the project they have launched to help sharks is intriguing. Entrepreneurial, even.  Click the image above to read more about this initiative:

With over 600 species of skate and ray worldwide, at least 16 species have been regularly recorded in UK coastal waters; most of these species reproduce by laying tough leathery eggcases on the seabed. Of more than 30 species of British sharks, only two species lay eggcases that are commonly found on our beaches; the Smallspotted Catshark and the Nursehound. Continue reading →

End This Bling Now

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Carl Safina. In Amboseli National Park in Kenya, a herd of savanna elephants moved toward hills where they would spend the night.

What words might make us care enough to take action on behalf of these animals?  Perhaps the words of those in the field, watching the paramilitary-style poachers, and who have traced the value chain for which those killers kill. From today’s New York Times a powerful editorial from two such people:

…In China and other countries in the Far East, there has been an astronomical rise in the demand for ivory trinkets that, no matter how exquisitely made, have no essential utility whatsoever. An elephant’s tusks have become bling for consumers who have no idea or simply don’t care that it was obtained by inflicting terror, horrendous pain and death on thinking, feeling, self-aware beings…

Continue reading →

Thanjavur Memorial Shrines And Nandi Mandapa

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Photo credits: Ramesh Kidangoor

Photo credits: Ramesh Kidangoor

The temples and shrines at Thanjavur are amoung the finest examples of South Indian architecture of the late Chola period. Dedicated to Lord Shiva, the Breehadishwara Temple is considered the greatest single undertaking of its time, taking almost 15 years to complete the  full structure. Continue reading →

Pi With Pies

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Krulwich is our go-to guy on a certain kind of day. A day when important scientific ideas might otherwise put us to sleep, and just need a fresh approach to get our attention. Today is one of those days, and the pied piper of fun science delivers a short and sweet one:
Continue reading →

Really, Monsanto (Again)?

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frankenstein-fruit-vegetable

There are plenty of reasons to be concerned about the intersection of business interests and political interests around the world.  As an entrepreneurial organization, we take a business approach to what we care about, and believe in the rights and responsibilities associated with influencing public policy.  But we also believe in the importance of transparency, clear rules of the game, and common sense decency.  We do not believe in making a buck at any cost.  We do not believe companies who cut corners and sacrifice others’ wellbeing for the sake of making a buck are serving society’s interests.

So, in a series of shout outs to investigative journalists whose critical work points us to the ugly back alley activities of businesses and open air atrocities of little countries as well as otherwise commendable huge countries, we now return to one company for the second time:

Remember that one time? In Congress? When an anonymous group of House Republicans tried and failed to sneak a rider into the farm bill that would have exempted agribusiness from liability for biotech crops and all but eliminated the government’s power to regulate them? Good times. Continue reading →

Foodways Through The Long Lens Of History And Brought To Your Attention By A Great Magazine

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In this week’s New Yorker, two great things that add up to more than two great things:

Jane Kramer reviews “Consider the Fork: A History of How We Cook and Eat,” by the British food writer and historian Bee Wilson. It’s more than a book review, though: The New Yorker’s European correspondent brings into it her own passion for cooking and her years of writing about food.

The book review mentioned above is discussed in a podcast on the magazine’s website, meaning the book to the left generating two contributions from one of that magazine’s finest writers.  How does 1 + 1 add up to more than 2?  Here is a magazine, against all odds of print journalism in the 21st century, adding value with the very technology that is killing other publications.  Creative destruction, culling out weaker publications, is also working its magic. Continue reading →

Cape Camorin, Known Locally As Kaniyakumari

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Photo credits: Prasanth

Photo credits: Prasanth

Kaniyakumari, also known as Cape Camorin, lies 90 km south of Trivandrum and is the southernmost tip of the mainland Indian sub-continent. The waters of the Indian Ocean, the Bay of Bengal, and the Arabian Sea converge here. The Vivekananda Memorial and recently erected statue of the great Tamil poet Thiruvallur are the main attraction of this place. A dip at the bathing ghat constructed at the confluence of the Seas is believed to cleanse and rejuvenate the pious.

Continue reading →

Rainbow Warrior, Greenpeace And New Zealand

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Our hope is that it is a peaceful vessel, bringing justice in a tough world for marine ecosystems:

The new Greenpeace Rainbow Warrior ship sailed into Melbourne’s Port Phillip Bay this week ahead of a six-week tour that aims to highlight the planned coal expansion projects that threaten the survival of Australia’s Great Barrier Reef

Kochi’s Foodways Celebrated

/ Amie Inman / 8 Comments
Joan Nathan's Cochin Coriander-Cumin Chicken for Passover, adapted from Queenie Hallegua and Ofera Elias - cooked and styled by Andrew Scrivani NYTCREDIT: Andrew Scrivani for The New York Times

Joan Nathan’s Cochin Coriander-Cumin Chicken for Passover, adapted from Queenie Hallegua and Ofera Elias – cooked and styled by Andrew Scrivani NYTCREDIT: Andrew Scrivani for The New York Times

We are always pleased to see Raxa Collective’s hometown in the news, but especially when the coverage focuses on cultural history in the part of town where we are developing a new property. Fort Kochi’s harbor area, including Bazaar Road where Spice Harbour (a waterfront hotel opening later this year, more on which in a future post) is located and where the spice trade is centered, completes the domestic route of the Malabar Coast’s spice trade. Spices are grown throughout the Western Ghats, they make their way down to sea level for transport in the coastal backwaters, and a large percentage end up on Bazaar Road where merchants, traders, godown (warehouse) keepers and others prepare them for shipment.  This has been the way of the spices for millennia, though Fort Kochi’s harbor has played its role in the spice route only in recent centuries. The New York Times writer Joan Nathan describes a culinary-religious heritage motivation for her visit here (minutes from our office location):

KOCHI, India — Dreaming of spices described in the Book of Kings, I came to this southern port city built in the 14th century to learn about its longstanding but tiny Jewish presence and its food, which some believe dates back to the time of the Bible. Continue reading →

Gangsta Guerilla Gardening

/ Amie Inman / 9 Comments

Food activist Ron Finley campaigns to “change the composition of the soil” in his hometown of South Central LA. In place of the “food desert” made up of liquor stores and fast food (not to mention drive-by shootings) he and his volunteer organization LA Green Grounds plants “food forests” in abandoned lots, traffic medians and sidewalk parkways.

Finley’s point of view is a call to arms to change our conversation about food.

The city of LA leads the United States in vacant lots. They own 26 square miles in vacant lots. That’s the equivalent of 20 New York Central Parks. That’s enough space to plant 724,838,400 tomato plants.

As a combination vegetable graffiti artist and gardening gangster, Continue reading →

Beauty Of Kerala – Palakkad

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Photo Credits: Jisa

Photo Credits: Jisa

Palakkad is a vast expanse of verdant plains interspersed with hills, paddy fields, rivers, mountains, streams and forests. A 40 km break in the mountains known as the Palakkad Gap serves as a gateway to Kerala from the north, giving access to the land situated at the foot of the Western Ghats. The pass acts as a corridor between Kerala and neighbouring Tamil Nadu and plays a major role in the trade contacts between East and West coasts of peninsular India. Continue reading →