Yelapa, Mexico
Bird of the Day: Magnificent Frigatebird
Yelapa, Mexico
Starry Night is one of the world’s most iconic paintings and this isn’t the first time we’ve shared unorthodox reproductions of the work.
This rendering may be considered iconoclastic by some, but I challenge you to find a more kinetic one!
Falling Stars
Azalea – Rhododendron
Azalea plants are flowering shrubs with colorful, trumpet shaped flowers in the genus Rhododendron. Native to Asia, North America and Europe, they are widely planted as ornamentals in the Western Ghats of India above 1500 meters. Continue reading
Nth Degree Ethics
It is a new publication, and we like its irreverence. Challenging vegan ethics, at least to those of us still carnivorously inclined, is a task best carried out by such audacious writers and editors tasked with building an audience (that actually reads) from scratch. We wish Aeon the best and will point to it whenever the story seems worth passing on, and can recommend this for starters (as if the picture did not already capture your imagination):
The animal rights movement wants to prevent the most powerful species on the planet from oppressing every other species, just as human rights campaigners try to stop the most powerful people from oppressing those who are least powerful. The problem, they say, is ‘human privilege’, a privilege that almost all of us abuse.
Natural Born
It is well-documented on this site that we are feline-lovers, but our Bird Of The Day commitments force our full disclosure of the facts. Among those of us contributing to this blog–or anyone otherwise affiliated with Raxa Collective–we are contributors to the problem reported here (citing numbers specific to the USA only):
Behind This Cute Face Is A Cold-Blooded Killer
There are as many as 47 million pet cats out hunting for prey. Add that to the tens of millions of feral cats and strays, and researchers estimate that the furry felines are responsible for billions of bird and small mammal deaths every year.
Click the image above to go to the story. Don’t ask us what we plan to do about it. If you have any suggestions, we are all ears.
Bird of the Day: Eurasian Spoonbill (Ranganthittu Bird Sanctuary, Mysore, Karnataka)
Murals – Kerala’s Temple Art
Kerala’s Temple Art is rich, vibrant and tells vivid stories. Most of Kerala’s temples built during the 15th and 16th centuries have murals depicting gods and goddesses, sages and episodes from Hindu mythology. These are mostly painted on the outer walls of the sanctum sanctorum. Continue reading
From Behind the Wheel: Metaphysical Mass Transit
Ernakulam
Happy 75th Anniversary Caldecott!
I’ve always loved books, and in many contexts those with fine illustrations are all the more powerful. That’s why I’m so grateful for the American Library Association’s Caldecott Medal for honoring the most distinguished American picture books.
The beloved titles are timeless – many are the same books that were read to me as I child, which I in turn read to my own children. I am confident this pattern will continue.
Listen to the story about this year’s winners here…
Industrialized Biofuels Part 2: Brazil’s Production
This post continues my discussion of biofuels from Part 1.
Brazil contains many of the world’s biodiversity hotspots, as well as one of the most important CO2-sinks in the form of rainforests. As the second largest sugarcane grower in the world, Brazil’s biofuel production relies heavily on sugarcane ethanol, which has one of the highest savings in GHG emissions compared to fossil fuels. However, increasing sugarcane production is not sustainable in the long-term if one of Brazil’s goals is to curtail GHG emissions, since growing more sugarcane means cutting down more rainforest. Instead, second- and third-generation (advanced) biofuels should be considered viable options for replacing sugarcane, or at least strongly supplementing it.
One Man Brand
We sometimes think we see his family name in too many places in India–it is impossible to go through a day without seeing the name stamped everywhere you look: on tea bags, tea cups and tea spoons; telephones on up to tipper lorries; enough! But when attached to this man, we are always delighted to see the name one more time. Click the image above to go to the video, which runs for just under one hour.
Star-Led Little Critters
Further on the the various compasses we navigate by:
Look up at the sky on a clear, moonless night, and you can make out the broad, hazy band of the Milky Way. For the longest time, observers were unsure what the milkiness was. Celestial clouds? Tiny stars? The “fiery exhalation” of large, sublunar stars, as Aristotle proposed? In 1610, using a telescope (a recent invention), Galileo revealed that the haze is made up of individual, barely visible stars; they are faint only because they are so distant. So continued the hard process of putting us in our proper cosmic place—an orientation that only gets more disorienting with each new scientific discovery. Continue reading
Bird of the Day: Black Vulture
Yelapa, Mexico
Power To The People, Dairy By Dairy
This photo shows a prototype of Promethean Power’s thermal storage. Inside the tank is a phase-change material that rapidly chills milk when it’s poured over the surface. Credit: Martin LaMonica
The MIT Technology Review provides a readable explanation of new technology, made even more readable due to the application of that technology:
Novel Energy Storage to Chill Milk in Rural India
After a few technology U-turns, startup Promethean Power moves ahead with thermal battery to overcome unstable grid at Indian dairies. Continue reading
Gravity and Grace
Arsenale installation from the 2007 Venice Biennale
During a recent visit to the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art in Kansas City I was struck by a 3-dimensional piece that combines the opulence of a Gustav Klimt painting and the earthy elegance of Ghanian Kente cloth. The comparison isn’t as bizarre as it might appear when it’s understood that its creator is the Ghanian artist El Anatsui. Over a decade ago the sculptor found a bag of thousands of colorful aluminum screw tops discarded by a local distillery. The artist began by cutting and folding the bottle tops into flat pieces then used copper wire to stitch them together, creating patterns inspired by his country’s iconic cloth. Continue reading
Alstroemeria – Peruvian Lily
Although native to South America, the Peruvian Lily now grows widely in India’s Western Ghats above 1500 meters. This member of the lily family blooms in a wide range of colors including yellow, orange, pink, red, lavender, purple, cream and white. Continue reading
Bird of the Day: Pied Kingfisher
Ranganthittu Bird Sanctuary, Karnataka
From Behind the Wheel: Sacked!
Photo Credit: Ramesh Kidangoor
Wild Periyar- Brown Fish Owl (Ketupa zeylonensis)
Periyar’s diverse forest types and ecosystems- moist deciduous and evergreen forests, shallow banks and wet lands – attract more than 360 species of bird life. The Brown Fish Owl chooses habitats near the ponds, streams and lakes of Periyar. Continue reading
Guyana’s Jaguars
Jaguars once roamed widely from the south-western United States to Argentina, but have lost nearly half of their natural territory and have disappeared altogether from some countries. Photograph: Mauricio Lima/AFP/Getty Images
Bravo to Panthera for its achievements in the couple of years since we first learned about it in this 60 Minutes segment. And thanks to the Guardian‘s ongoing coverage of such important topics:
The lushly forested nation of Guyana on Thursday joined a regional pact to protect jaguars, the elusive spotted cat that is the biggest land predator in the Americas but has become vulnerable as expanded agriculture and mining carves away at their fragmented habitat. Continue reading
Organikos 