Click the photo to the left for a short essay about someone you almost certainly never heard of.
And never likely will again. It is worth the 20-30 minutes of reading time.
If he is an unsung hero, then song seems an appropriate response. You will recognize, hopefully, someone you know when you read about Raymond. Probably good to let them hear the song sooner, rather than later.
Despite the innumerable benefits of living abroad and the rich experience of new foods, cultures and lifestyles, the thrill of a gift box from family cannot be described. As time passes the requests have changed, but the comfort foods of Girl Scout cookies and organic macaroni and cheese still count for something to the teenager in our family.
The snap shot above shows the range of contents in a recent box. Continue reading
Having posted an item or two in the past about food, I am newly inspired to indulge my interest; inspired by a recent visit to Portland, Oregon. It was my first time to this city, a city that seemed to care more about its food than any other city I’d been to. (A bold statement I qualify with the varied ways in which a people can “care” about its food.)
Good food is a social backbone of many a metropolis.
They cultivate their gardens of superstar restaurants, or food trucks, whatever the case may be. The big and advanced cities have their bevies of bloggers and critics, evaluating the experience that comes with each bite. Each person I’ve met in each town I’ve been to, no doubt, cares to a certain extent about their food, but only in Portland did I feel the caring resemble something like the way a person cares about family. Like a pet-owner, plant-keeper, or passionate professional, the people of Portland appeared to feel invested in their food as an essential way of being good not only to themselves, but to some “other.” Continue reading
Small even for a damselfly, the White Dartlet measures about 18mm (under an inch). Continue reading
Credit: Bresson Thomas
Archaeological remains of small mammals generally weighing under 1kg, or micromammals, are important as environmental indicators, partly because they tend to specialize in certain habitats and are sensitive to change. Many factors affect their ranges of distribution, including predators, food requirements, competition, fire, shifts in precipitation patterns, and shelter availability. Micromammals such as voles and mice also tend to live in dense populations and have evolved rapidly through high fecundity. Due to these diverse and interrelated factors, the interpretation of micromammal remains—bones and middens, mostly—requires a deep understanding of the rodents’ relationship with its environment. In other words, ecological information is imperative to accurate assessment of archaeological data on micromammals.
But sometimes micromammal remains have answered modern ecological questions. For example, packrat middens in arid North America offer relatively high temporal, spatial, and taxonomic resolution (i.e., small intervals with which to measure time, space, or species range), and contain what is possibly the “richest archive of dated, identified, and well-preserved plant and animal remains in the world” (Pearson & Betancourt 2002, p500). Continue reading
Today I saw something very odd: dozens of ladybugs crawling along the top of a recycling bin. Some were the dark red that we normally associate with ladybugs, while others were a pale orange verging on yellow. Strange looking half-formed ladybugs, seemingly crouched in tight balls, adhered themselves along the surface as well. In the midst of it all swarmed long, fat black bugs with orange spotting along their backs. What was going on here? And what was this panoply of ladybug life occurring on a recycling bin in the middle of a college campus?
Two ladybug pupae
When I afterwards looked up ladybugs, I found that I had actually witnessed something pretty cool: the full life cycle of Coccinellidae, known as the ‘ladybug’ in America but the ‘ladybird’ elsewhere in the world. It’s also known as ‘God’s cow,’ the ‘ladyclock,’ or the ‘lady fly.’ There are over five thousand species worldwide, but the name ‘ladybug’ is perhaps most readily synonymous with the image of a small, round red bug with black spots.
The ladybug, as I had seen, has four distinct phases in its life cycle. The life of the ladybug begins in an egg; small clutches hatch after three or four days at which point the larval form of the bug emerges. It may molt three to four times over a period of about twelve days before pupation (i.e., the beetle creates a pupa). Continue reading
Morgan’s Rock, Nicaragua
The arts in all their glory are no more remote from the evolved features of the human mind and personality than an oak is remote from the soil and subterranean waters that nurture and sustain it. The evolution of Homo sapiens in the past million years is not just a history of how we came to have acute color vision, a taste for sweets, and an upright gait. It is also a story of how we became a species obsessed with creating artistic experiences with which to amuse, shock, titillate, and enrapture ourselves, from children’s games to the quartets of Beethoven, from firelit caves to the continuous worldwide glow of television screens.
—Denis Dutton
The late philosophy professor, editor, writer (and occasional provocateur) Denis Dutton spent a great deal of his professional life closing the gap between art and science. Continue reading
This quote may not be clear without the context, so read the full story here. But following my previous mention of its author I was pleased to see that he is still writing from India, and I am most interested in this snippet because it captures a general point beyond the specific innovation he describes in the full article.
That conversation is the sound of history changing.
And not just for India. We’re at the start of a nonlinear move in innovation thanks to the hyperconnecting of the world — through social media, mobile/wireless devices and cloud computing — which is putting cheap innovation devices into the hands of so many more people, enabling them to collaborate on invention in so many new ways.
The transfer from Manuel Antonio to San Jose was a short one. During the one evening in San Jose, I visited a huge shopping center, called Multiplaza. I lost my rain jacket somewhere in Costa Rica, so I needed a replacement. This shopping center could be anywhere in the world, it looks and feels like its counterparts in the US, Switzerland or even Russia. All the global and expensive brands are there, they even had an Audi and a Swatch shop.
Early next morning I took a bus to the airport, where I boarded a 12 seat Cessna to fly to the Osa Peninsula. It was a nice flight in that small aircraft, and for once I could observe the pilots doing their job. Continue reading
It’s a staggering realization that something that tips a scale upwards of 2 tons, can run up to 40 mph and appears as powerful as ordnance is considered vulnerable in any way. Yet the confirmation that the Black Rhinoceros is officially extinct in West Africa says just that.
Did you read this? If so, how many times did you say out loud, as I did no less than 14 times: really, Coca Cola? Here is one example, among many, of a disturbing perspective:
A spokeswoman for Coca-Cola Refreshments USA, Susan Stribling, said … “Banning anything is never the right answer,” she said. “If you do that, you don’t necessarily address the problem.” She also characterized the bottle ban as limiting personal choice. “You’re not allowing people to decide what they want to eat and drink and consume,” she said.
Is this really about something as sacred as liberty? No. One of the greatest ideas of all time (the one about certain unalienable rights) is being invoked for purely commercial interests, and that is disturbing enough. Continue reading
Click on the image to the right to get the full story of a conservation whodunnit. After linking to Felicity Barringer’s investigative story on the scuttling of a trash reduction plan for one of the world’s most iconic national parks (really, Coca Cola?), some other conservation-focused articles seem worthy of attention.
The New Yorker has a deliciously quirky approach to covering environmental issues, and this one is representative. It delivers on multiple fronts, reading like a detective story while also informing about one of those before it’s too late topics.
Morgan’s Rock, Nicaragua
The Paddy Skimmer is one of the smaller species of dragonfly that can be seen in the Western Ghats. Measuring about an inch long, their flight range is very limited, although apparently their breeding capabilities are unhindered, as they are without a doubt one of the most numerous species to be seen in fields, both wild and cultivated. The teneral (young) male has a black and gold body, green and red eyes, and would be difficult to distinguish from the female if it weren’t for the differences in their wings – the male’s (both in youth and maturity) are about half black, with the other half equally divided between a white strip and a transparent tip. The female’s wings are more complicatedly patterned, although mainly transparent. Continue reading
Sometimes it takes another person’s perspective on a familiar place or object to see it in a new light–drawing an outline around a space highlights an additional dimension. Be it a Parisian bridge that is crossed by thousands daily without a second’s thought, or pathways through Manhattan’s Central Park, both locations represent an aspect of the “heart of the city”. (For centuries, the Pont Neuf has literally been the heart of Paris, connecting the Île de la Cité with the left and right banks of the Seine, and the eponymous nature of Central Park requires little explanation.)
Today major news organizations are reporting that, according to the IUCN, the Western Black Rhino is officially extinct. The BBC, CNN and others must have received a press release that is not yet available on the IUCN website (as of my writing and posting this), but if you search on the terms IUCN and rhino you will find a link to the following video that provides a good visual definition of melancholic beauty:
When I see news like this, I fight the natural inclination toward depression and channel the emotional energy as best I can, using the news as a reminder of how slowly we are working at the various tasks mentioned in a string of earlier posts. It is another example of the feeling I seem to have with increasing frequency: being late.
Organikos 