Amazing People From India

/ Organikos / 4 Comments

In a post a couple days back, mentioning two artists of Indian origin, there was no intent to create a new focus on the theme of Indians in the so-called new world, but this catches the attention on its own:

Sir Jagadish Chandra Bose, the aforementioned carrot vivisector, was a serious man of science. Born in what is today Bangladesh in 1858, Bose was a quintessential polymath: physicist, biologist, botanist, archaeologist. He was the first person from the Indian subcontinent to receive a U.S. patent, and is considered one of the fathers of radio science, alongside such notables as Tesla, Marconi, and Popov. He was elected Fellow of the Royal Society in 1920, becoming the first Indian to be honored by the Royal Society in the field of science. It’s clear that Sir Jagadish Chandra Bose was a scientist of some weight. And, like many scientists of weight, he has become popularly known for his more controversial pursuits — in Bose’s case, his experiments in plant physiology.

And the source of this information is new to us, but seems worth the visit. Continue reading →

Meeting the Masai

/ Katrina Lee / 2 Comments

Although the Kenyan destination tourism market has commercialized the Masai name, I was pleasantly surprised to find the traditions and heritage of the Masai people thriving and vibrant in the Masai Mara. In Nairobi, you will find merchants and craft markets collectively selling Masai blankets, beaded jewelry, artwork and more. I would contend the Masai name is an over-utilized marketing tool, a clear indication it’s moving dangerously close to holding a “tourist trap” reputation. Although my position on the matter remains unchanged, the innate beauty of the Masai culture should not be dismissed. The Masai Mara may be best recognized as Kenya’s wildlife mecca, but the region is also home to over fifty authentic Masai villages of tremendous character and unique local charms.

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After our concluding full day safari game drive, our guide gave us the option of visiting a Masai Village near our camp. Indicating that the venture would cost us an additional 15USD, I immediately believed yet another “tourist trap” pitstop was in store. Nevertheless, faced with the alternative option of sitting in my non-electrified tent, I succumbed to the sales proposal and scrambled together 1500 Kenyan Shillings to visit this so called “authentic village”. The entrance fee granted us a traditional Masai welcome dance, entry into the villagers’ homes, a guided tour of the community, and complimentary photo opportunities. With my skepticism still intact upon entering, I anticipated some sort of lazily executed, artificial village re-creation of primitive Masai Mara life, à la Plymoth Plantation or some cheesy Renaissance Fair. While the community has certainly optimized their culture’s tourism appeal, I was happily surprised to find that what we witnessed wasn’t just for show or to indulge us “muzungus” (foreigners); conversely, it demonstrated how the native Masai currently lived day-to-day.

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National Geographic Channel In Panama

/ Organikos / Leave a comment

One of our Contributors recently posted from Panama, including a brief summary of his visit to the Panama Canal and Panama City.  Here is a nice two minutes worth of additional footage, courtesy of one of the few worthwhile channels on television.

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Sand Scripture

/ Milo Inman / Leave a comment

Not to be confused with sand sculpture, sand scripture is the graceful story a million grains of sand tell of the passing of time. Sand isn’t only found on the beach – riverbanks, empty fields, and desert dunes host the legion grains, akin in countlessness to the untold billions of stars in the universe.  The ocean’s tides tell stories, however, with the pliable mass of silica as the medium.

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When It Rains, It Pours

/ Organikos / 1 Comment

We try not to favor any one source when we link out to interesting items, but sometimes a source seems to have a “hot hand”.  Just after noting one great, short item of enormous consequence we can recommend another longer item (click the image to the right) for anyone–especially parents of those most likely to read this series–for whom quality of writing in the English language is a concern.  Not to mention that yesterday we had a completely unrelated reason to mention visiting Oxford…

Here is the shocking opening line that should get you reading this piece (and as always we encourage subscription to that publication, without which we would not get so much vivid, varied and valuable reportage):

At Oxford in the nineteen-forties, Professor John Ronald Reuel Tolkien was generally considered the most boring lecturer around, teaching the most boring subject known to man, Anglo-Saxon philology and literature, in the most boring way imaginable.

No one who had read, let alone seen placed on film, this man’s writing would have guessed that to be the case. Continue reading →

Tools Of The Trade

/ Organikos / 1 Comment

Click the image to the left for context.  As we learn more on this complex issue, the enlightened position must be literally that–enlightened by fact.  Sometimes sarcasm is an easier position, especially when the facts seem outrageous.  But thankfully there are more and more facts to tone down sarcasm to a chiseled tool.   Our ever-appreciated investigator shares some this week in her usual venue and as always her balanced-yet-urgent perspective probably is appreciated:

Every kind of energy extraction, of course, poses risks. Mountaintop-removal mining, as the name suggests, involves “removing” entire mountaintops, usually with explosives, to get at a layer of coal. Coal plants, meanwhile, produce almost twice the volume of greenhouse gases as natural-gas plants per unit of energy generated. In the end, the best case to be made for fracking is that much of what is already being done is probably even worse. Continue reading →

Life Mein Ek Baar, Featuring River Escapes

/ Crist Inman / 4 Comments

Every minute of this is fun.  The 35th minute is particularly fun for those of us based in Kerala because members of our organization join the stage with the stars of this show.

About five months ago we were approached by a film production company about a show they were filming for National Geographic Channel.  They told us that River Escapes was recommended to them as having the best houseboats in the Kerala backwaters (a bit of music to our ears).  Then they proposed that their Kerala episode should be based on our houseboats (we danced to that music).

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Sledding a Volcano

/ Megan Currie / 5 Comments

One volcano-related assumption which I’ve had to let go of since arriving in Central America is that a volcano is a volcano.

Anyone who grows up in Scotland knows that mountains are not just ‘mountains’. There are mountains, but there are also ranges, hills, Bens, and Munroes. There are the kind that, although tall, the fitter of us can walk up without much in the way of equipment; there are others which may be smaller but are impassable unless you really know what you’re doing.

I wasn't expecting it to be so blue...

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Forbidden Fruit

/ Amie Inman / 2 Comments

Second only to bananas, apples are one of the most popular fruits in many parts of the world. Yet when domesticated and planted in monoculture production, they run the risk of falling into the same trap as their “homecoming king” cousins, i.e. susceptibility to pests that requires a great deal of chemical hand holding.

A member of the rose family, there are believed to be 7,500 cultivars of Malus domestica, stemming from their original Western Asian ancestors.  In fact, the apple is believed to be the earliest tree to be cultivated, beginning in what is now southern Kazakhstan and eastern Turkey. The fruit has played a staring role in mythology and folk tales, from the Greeks to the Germanic and northern European cultures, and finally taking center stage in Renaissance depictions of Biblical lore in the 15th Century CE. Continue reading →

Necessary Versus Sufficient

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There are needs, and there are wants.

A toothpick sculpture?  Not necessary for San Francisco to demonstrate its greatness (as might have been an underlying objective of the commission).  Not sufficient for that purpose either.

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Indians In North America

/ Organikos / 1 Comment

Click the photo to the left to read the interview of mother by daughter, artist by artist.  The interviewer shares this perspective on the interviewee’s art:

Her work has, over the years, centred on forgotten, vanishing worlds, art and language that exist on the margins. The epigraphs to her novels (TS Eliot, Emily Dickinson, Borges …) often make reference to the persistence of memory. She writes: “The ancient Chinese believed time is not a ladder one ascends into the future but a ladder one descends into the past.” Her new book, The Artist of Disappearance, is made of three delicate stories about the frailty as well as the transforming power of art.

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Voltaire Strikes Again

/ Organikos / 2 Comments

The cover illustration is not very inviting, but the reviews and blurbs in more than one newspaper make it sound worth the read:

Not really a dictionary, but a series of short essays on such topics as equality, Hell, miracles, religion, tyranny and superstition by one of the leading spirits of the Enlightenment. The tone is witty, catty, and there are many neat aphorisms such as: “Atheism does not prevent crimes, whereas fanaticism commits them.”

Incidentally, in case you are already a Voltairophile, you may want a deeper well from which to draw inspiration.  In which case you may want to pay a visit to Oxford.

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What The World Needs Now

/ Organikos / Leave a comment

Click the image above to go to the story.  Better yet, don’t.  This might already well be called the era of weaponized foodstuff (witness all that pepper spray), so a story about the goal of breeding the hottest chili pepper in the world (all in good fun, of course) does not bode well.

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Kerala’s Caterpillars

/ Milo Inman / 1 Comment

More than once I have failed to successfully (by my standards) photograph a butterfly’s larva due to insufficiently sophisticated equipment. However, those days are coming to an end, inching forward step by baby step, in odd undulating motions eerily akin to a caterpillar’s rolling gait.

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Culinary Landscapes

/ Amie Inman / Leave a comment

Matthew Carden

In this season of Thanksgiving and other food focused festivals, it seemed appropriate to highlight the artist Matthew Carden.  He and his wife Jennifer Carden clearly have a loving relationship with food that doesn’t take itself too seriously. Continue reading →