Bird of the Day: Great Cormorant on nest (Thekkady, India)
The Circle of Life
During my five day safari, I snapped over 1,600 photos. I became obsessive and treated each sighting like a magazine photo shoot. At every encounter, my right eye was glued behind my camera’s view finder. Nearing the end of my trip, I realized I needed to simply enjoy the view and action, not just capture the scene. But as the safari progressed, I became selfish; not only did I want to see the animals but I also wanted to see them in action. Fortunately, that’s what I got.
In the middle of the day, you don’t really expect to see much predator wildlife since the weather is so hot; Continue reading
Peter Donnelly, Come To India!
New Brighton Pier, in Christchurch New Zealand, is fortunate in many ways. Beautiful beach, wind for kites, friendly people. But most of all, that fellow with the rake and the spring in his step.
And, as far as one can tell from the 10 minutes below (after the jump), that fellow has something to say. As we did with another artist, we extend an invitation. Could someone let Peter know?
Water, Success, India
Those are three words that have a certain ring together. But as per their tradition of seeking out news with a purpose, we appreciate this story in the Monitor, not least because it has to do with our neighbors to the north. Click the image below to read the story at its source.
A laborer drinks water while taking a break from spreading paddy crop in a field on the outskirts of the western Indian city of Ahmedabad. In the tiny village of Wankute, water-management practices have eliminated the need to haul water to the village by truck, raised the water table, and widened the variety of crops that can be grown. Amit Dave/Reuters/File
Wankute, a tiny village located high in the Sahyadri mountain range of the Maharashtra state of India, was dry and near-barren in the 1990s. Agriculture was limited to crops that could withstand hot temperatures and little water, such as millet and certain legumes.
What Is India?
For any new resident of India, let alone its own citizens, the question is always interesting.
The following is the text of a speech delivered by Justice Markandey Katju, chairman of the Press Council of India, at Jawaharlal Nehru University on November 14, 2011.
Friends,
I am deeply honoured to be invited to speak before all of you. My time is limited, as I was told I should speak for 30 minutes and after that there will be a question answer session. As my main speech will be restricted to 30 minutes, I may come to the topic of discussion immediately, that is, What is India? …
…The difference between North America and India is that North America is a country of new immigrants, where people came mainly from Europe over the last four to five hundred years, India is a country of old immigrants where people have been coming in for 10 thousand years or so.
Bird of the Day: Golden Oriole with food (Vaduvur Lake, India)
Going With The Flow
Anyone who has ever driven (or been driven) in India knows well the experience of chaotic flow that can be overwhelming to a newcomer. When we first arrived here some 18 months ago I was given the helpful advice to “just look to the side”. The experience is unsettling in a variety of ways: firstly, unless you hail from either Japan, or one of the “Commonwealth Countries” your vehicle is on the “wrong” side of the road. But secondly (and umpteenthly) your vehicle, and all the neighboring vehicles are on every side of the road. Continue reading
Lion King in Real Life
As a kid, I loved watching the Lion King. Either on the Disney Channel, VHS or live on Broadway, I was hooked. For me, safari in the Masai Mara is story of The Lion King coming to life: The whole gang was there- Simba, Nala, Pumba, Timon and even Rafiki!
Wordsmithing: Zoo
It is one of the words that most children associate with wildlife. Does it qualify as a word? OED shows the etymology of these three letters as:
c1847 Macaulay in Life & Lett. (1878) II. 216 We treated the Clifton Zoo much too contemptuously.1886 C. E. Pascoe London of To-day (ed. 3) iv. 65 The ‘Zoo’ in time past was as favourite a fashionable resort as Rotten Row.
Bird of the Day: Serpent Eagle (Bandipur, India)
Bumbling Back From The Brink
Cockerell's Bumblebee. (Credit: G. Ballmer, UC Riverside)
While news related to species loss seems almost always seem to be coming in at us like floodlights, occasionally there is a glimmer of hope shining outward in the headlines:
ScienceDaily (Dec. 5, 2011) — A team of scientists from the University of California, Riverside recently rediscovered the rarest species of bumblebee in the United States, last seen in 1956, living in the White Mountains of south-central New Mexico. Continue reading
Thinking, Fast And Slow
Speaking of awesome intelligence it was intended to make a small point (pop culture is not as kind to intelligence as it is to glossy, gossipy stuff) and later highlight that intelligence itself. While the accolades of scholars–those whose own work has been influenced by Kahneman–are interesting to read, so are those published by reviewers advising lay readers to read his most recent book. For example, last month in FT:
There have been many good books on human rationality and irrationality, but only one masterpiece. That masterpiece is Daniel Kahneman’s Thinking, Fast and Slow. Continue reading
A Campo Weekend
The weekend before last I was fortunate enough to be invited to the estancia of an artist with whom I am collaborating with on a joint project. A well established painter here in Buenos Aires, Marta Diez has had many exhibitions here in the city, as well as some abroad, most notably at the Palais de Tokyo in Paris last year. Her estate is still in the province of Buenos Aires, and yet is located a good 650 kilometers south from the city center, near a town called Bahia Blanca.
Thekkady’s Streets
Although I thoroughly enjoy viewing street photography for its spontaneity, diversity, and ability to display the flow of life of any culture, I generally refrain from partaking due to a generally awkward disposition and inhibitions around strangers. Being unusually tall (to Indians) and quite white, I also get a lot of stares as it is, and waving a camera around at people certainly does not make me go unnoticed. However, in areas more frequented by ‘foreigners’ such as Thekkady, a tall Caucasian isn’t all that exciting, and many locals are in fact enthusiastic to have their pictures taken.
Bird of the Day: White-throated Magpie Jay
San Juan del Sur, Nicaragua
Who, And How?
We can only guess from the profile.
What More About Picasso?
We had mentioned in an earlier post encountering this source of interesting observations, and now another from the same (click on the image for the full thought and information about the exhibition):
The idea of Picasso always precedes the experience of seeing Picasso’s art. Looking at drawings from the artist’s early years in the Frick Collection’s cramped basement, I wondered what we can say about Picasso that hasn’t already been said. I’ve previously encountered this question with artists whose reputations (and market value) are in such high esteem that it is almost impossible to see the work as separate from the artist’s image. Even in this small show, with works that look decidedly un-Picasso, I found it difficult to view the drawings as anything other than work of this great artist.
Flourishing Fynbos
Although it may seem counterproductive to conservation, there are quite a few plant and tree species that require the heat of fire to allow their seeds to germinate. The Lodgepole Pine is one such example, where the heat of the fire burns off the resin that normally seals the seed laden cones.
The South African Fynbos is another. Continue reading
World Development and South America
Guest Author: Denzel Johnson
The world is a big place, but each location is different and separated in such ways that can’t be explained merely by distance. What I mean by that is how people in the world are separated and so different yet so important to how each other person lives.
Let me introduce myself; I’ve lived in England for most of my life and have grown up in London. Life there has always increased my interest in travel, especially with my background in Geography. Continue reading
Popular Culture Celebrating Awesome Intelligence
Michael Lewis, a great journalist working for a glossy publication, popularized a smart baseball manager in a book and more recently a film adaptation of that book. A great 2003 interview with him can be found in podcast form here. Unique intelligence, it seems, is not as celebrated in popular culture as it should be (and is not, usually, in Vanity Fair or other glossy publications). But credit where due: Lewis recently followed up his success with that book and film giving credit where he saw it due. And celebrating an even grander unique intelligence in that very same glossy:
It didn’t take me long to figure out that, in a not so roundabout way, Kahneman and Tversky had made my baseball story possible. In a collaboration that lasted 15 years and involved an extraordinary number of strange and inventive experiments, they had demonstrated how essentially irrational human beings can be.
Organikos 