Krulwich Wonders About The Little Things

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Click above to go to the post where this video is hosted:

Every year, thousands of college graduates pour into big cities, find themselves a fun place to live in a cool neighborhood, great location, friends all around. But then, their luck turns, they run short of money, lose their first job, their second job, lose their lease, and then, step by step, find themselves in places that are less safe, less airy, less and less livable, until they’re on the bad side of town in a scary, dank room … and life is grim. You know people like this?

Well, this is their mascot: an animal with a serious real estate problem. Continue reading →

Pollution Solutions

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We are on the lookout for innovative, tested and workable public policy solutions to everyday waste–governments actively engaged in finding solutions.  Here is one. Click the image to the left to go to the New York Times video segment.

More On Mekong

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Jeff Opperman. Fishermen hurling nets along the banks of the Mekong in northern Laos.

Something about this river and its basin have brought it onto our radar twice already recently.  Now again:

Seventy-two hours after leaving Cleveland, I slipped away from Christmas Eve dinner with my family, walked down a dimly lighted path and crossed a rickety bamboo bridge to an island. I knelt down and dipped my hand into the Mekong River. Continue reading →

Classical Dance – Kerala

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Kerala’s dance traditions are not merely living traditions but cultural documents that reflect the socio-cultural surroundings. The  story reflected in the dance forms are rooted in the rituals of the indigenous people. Continue reading →

Atlas Moth – Attacus atlas

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Photo Credit : Ramesh Kidangoor

The Western Ghats is one of the richest treasure troves of biodiversity on this planet, haven for moths, butterflies and other insects. Among the diverse species is the Atlas Moth, with the largest wing surface area in the world having a span reaching over 25 cm (10 in). Continue reading →

Audubon’s Annual Bird Count

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Green Blog loaded that video with a reminder of the value of this annual tradition.  While not quite as exotic-heavenly as work coming out of the Cornell Lab of Ornithology that we have pointed out here and here, nor even work that our own interns have been carrying out, this more prosaic activity is the essential contribution of the modern bird-lover:

Binoculars at the ready, a small group of birders fanned out through the field, searching for a brown-and-gray bird that was stubbornly refusing to show itself. Continue reading →

The Gift, A Gift

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Recent guests of Raxa Collective, mentioned here, handed Amie and me this book prior to our parting ways. Upon reading this blurb, we expected to find it enriching if and when we could find the time to read the gift, The Gift, which:

“actually deserves the hyperbolic praise that in most blurbs is so empty. It is the sort of book that you remember where you were and even what you were wearing when you first picked it up. The sort that you hector friends about until they read it too. This is not just formulaic blurbspeak; it is the truth. No one who is invested in any kind of art, in questions of what real art does and doesn’t have to do with money, spirituality, ego, love, ugliness, sales, politics, morality, marketing, and whatever you call ‘value,’ can read The Gift and remain unchanged.”—David Foster Wallace

Continue reading →

High Lining Public Space

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‘One of those once-in-a-decade projects’: the mile-long High Line linear park in Manhattan. Photograph: Andria Patino/ Alamy

‘One of those once-in-a-decade projects’: the mile-long High Line linear park in Manhattan. Photograph: Andria Patino/ Alamy

We have written about it more than once, but here is an article quoting one of the architects of this public space on the relatively low expectations for success when it was first being designed and proposed:

The High Line, the mile-long park created on an old elevated railway in Manhattan, is one of those once-in-a-decade projects that, like the 1990s Guggenheim in Bilbao, both captures the imagination of the world and offers limitless inspiration to plagiarists. There are wannabe High Lines mooted for Calabria, Singapore, Jerusalem and Shenzhen, and in any number of American cities. Continue reading →

Starting 2013 With Promised Land

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Scott Green/Focus Features. Matt Damon stars in “Promised Land,” directed by Gus Van Sant.

Scott Green/Focus Features.
Matt Damon stars in “Promised Land,” directed by Gus Van Sant.

From Green Blog, a suggestion first to read the review of, then listen the actor/director conversation about, a new film related to the most controversial of the alternatives to old school fossil fuels:

Writing in The Times, A.O. Scott praises “Promised Land,” Gus Van Sant’s new film about the battle over fracking, as a film that “works,” mainly “by putting character ahead of story” and “inviting the actors to be warm, funny and prickly.” Continue reading →

Honor Thy Author And Others

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According to beliefs respected by much of the world’s population for the last several thousand years, there is a divine command to honor intergenerational commitments, aka “thy father and thy mother” in King James diction.  The linked multi-media honoring of one author and illustrator of a previous generation, by an author and illustrator of our own generation, serves as a reminder of that command and its application beyond direct family. We close out this calendar year–just another random date, really, but we will mark it with extra respect–taking the opportunity to honor all those before us who have shined a light on our path forward.

(spoiler alert: the linked video has reference to aging, death, atheism and other challenging notions, but in the hands of Christoph Niemann all’s well that ends well)

White Hibiscus

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White Hibiscus is an ornamental flower commonly growing in the hill ranges of Kerala. In Ayurveda medicine white hibiscus root is used for cough and hair growth. The flower and leaf is also used as shampoo and conditioner.

Just Keep Saying No To These

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The National Trust is against plans for a golf course at the edge of the Giant's Causeway in Northern Ireland. Photograph: Paul Faith/PA

The National Trust is against plans for a golf course at the edge of the Giant’s Causeway in Northern Ireland. Photograph: Paul Faith/PA

We have the occasional urge to just say no, site unseen. Anything with the name Trump  attached, especially if involving golf and Scotland, is generally a good candidate. This is another one:

Conflict is synonymous with the Giant’s Causeway. Children in Northern Ireland are weaned on the legend of how its rugged landscape was formed when the giant Finn MacCool confronted his Scottish rival, Fingal, by hurling rocks into the sea.

A more prosaic, but no less violent, explanation for the causeway’s genesis attributes the creation of its 39,000 hexagonal, basalt stones to a series of volcanic eruptions 60m years ago. Continue reading →

Good Goods And Value Proposition

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From free-range eggs to green energy, sales of ethical products and services are bucking the economic trend. Photograph: Daniel Berehulak/Getty Images

From free-range eggs to green energy, sales of ethical products and services are bucking the economic trend. Photograph: Daniel Berehulak/Getty Images

Some unusual news in tough times, about consumers spending more even when they have less, if the product speaks good:

Sales of ethical goods and services have increased despite the recession, growing to more than £47bn last year.

Since the onset of the economic downturn five years ago, the value of ethical markets from Fairtrade products and green energy to free-range and sustainable food has grown from £35.5bn to £47.2bn, according to a report produced by the Co-operative Bank.

The annual ethical consumer markets report shows that sales in the sector have grown from £13.5bn in 1999. Continue reading →