EZ Water Fountain

/ Seth Inman / 1 Comment

From the side the water fountain looks like most others: a spigot shoots arcs of water from a corner when you press a button somewhere. But when you face the EZH2O water station — a bottle-filling station — you see that the spigot in the corner is not the only mechanism on the wall.

I’ve been carrying around aluminum or hard plastic bottles for years, and am always annoyed when I have to replenish from a water fountain that doesn’t shoot water in a high enough arc so that my bottle can fill to the brim. With the EZH2O, all you have to do is place a bottle in front of the motion sensor in the back panel, or simply stand it on the grey plastic platform, and water will come down in a straight and soft stream.

As your bottle fills, a little meter in the top corner of the panel tallies how many plastic bottles have been saved by using reusable bottles. Also, the bottle filling station has a WaterSentry filter (and a light in the top right corner that shows when it needs to be replaced). So far, I have only seen these in Cornell’s Olin Library, both in the stacks and the basement. Hopefully they will spread to every building at Cornell.

An Abundant Life

/ Meg Chatham / Leave a comment

I recently read an essay in the Wall Street Journal titled, “Living to 100 and Beyond.”  As I read about the technology that is rapidly increasing human longevity, the movie Death Becomes Her began replaying in my mind.  I imagined myself following in Meryl Streep’s and Goldie Hawn’s footsteps and taking some magic potion that makes me immortal.  However, instead of the body deteriorating with age like the Streep and Hawn rivalry, advances in modern technology will likely not only increase life span but also health spans.   Living for centuries may seem appealing on the surface, but we should consider the overall effects of a longer life.

Continue reading →

Water Harvesting & Accumulated Wisdom

/ Organikos / 3 Comments

As Gourvjit pointed out in an early post, Cardamom County is in the process of revamping its water management systems.  The search is still on for learning resources.  Besides an accent and wit that are mesmerizing, this man’s stories and visual accompaniments are stunning.  Learning is sometimes a simple matter of respecting elders.  Especially those who are so at ease on a stage as big as this one.

From Sea to Sand

/ Amie Inman / Leave a comment

There seems to be no limit to the spirit of creativity!  Art often represents a “call and response” relationship to the natural world.

Water is elemental.  Earth and wind follow.   Are these the mechanics of life?

Cardamom County, Kids’ Country

/ Martin Smith / Leave a comment

The energy was different at Cardamom County today. The delighted squeals of children replaced the semi-usual morning chatter of monkeys outside my room. Infants, toddlers and their pre-teen brothers and sisters outnumbered the adults at the buffet line at least 2:1. The splashes in the pool were made not by raindrops but by curious children, the plasticky click of ping-pong balls filled the recreation area, and each unexplored nook of the property made a perfect hiding place for games of hide-and-seek. It’s a virtual summer camp around here! Parents followed their young ones, not even feigning a chase, patiently flicking their billowing saris over their shoulders. I felt like I was reliving family field day at my primary school all over again, but in an alternate cultural and physical context. Continue reading →

Desert Blues

/ Seth Inman / 3 Comments

Last year, during the summer prior to starting college, I worked at Feynan in Jordan teaching English to the children of the local Bedouin community.

The hybrid of Berber, Arab, Western and black African music styles of the Malian group Tinariwen serves as a sound track to his experience.  I had the pleasure of hearing some members of the group in a small venue last year, and that sound of desert yearning, or “asuf”, was almost palpable.   Take a listen to the embedded songs in the multimedia files in both of the above links and tell me if you agree.

…soon it will once again be time for Tinariwen — which operates as a collective, with anywhere from five to nine members, depending on factors like who has herds to tend or whose wife is pregnant — to move out of its cultural space and into ours.  And with that, the feeling of asuf will return, feeding a yearning for the desert even as it powers the music.

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Honey, Hope & Future Cod

/ Crist Inman / 11 Comments

Milo’s post yesterday is of special interest to various initiatives we support related to food.  We will have much more to say on bees (and honey), but for now, it gets us thinking. Combined with Seth’s recent post, touching on the subject of overfishing (do read Mark Kurlansky’s books related to food, in addition to Cod), provide a reminder to stop and take a breath.  In a world full of challenges that daunting, how do we keep our wits about us?  How do we remain, fundamentally, hopeful?  An answer, but not necessarily with explanation, can be found sometimes in art (defined as you choose).  If we do not solve the tragedy of the commons with fisheries, might we still hope for a beautiful future for marine life that looks something like this?

Honeybee Mystery: Solved?

/ Milo Inman / 5 Comments

For years now, scientists have been trying to determine why honeybees are suddenly falling off the face of the earth, and activists have been demanding a solution. Honeybees don’t just provide us with the sticky sweetener Winnie the Pooh loved so much – they are essential pollinators for many of our most important crops. Without pollinators, it is impossible for the agriculture of certain plants to occur on the scale necessary to sustain our population. This team of French scientists has apparently pinpointed the widespread use of insecticides as the cause of dwindling honeybee populations. Why has the production of fruits and vegetables come to these drastic measures? Are they really necessary? In the past, natural solutions were the only ones available for natural problems – to me it seems that reverting to the old ways (with a few possible improvements) is the only viable option if we want to save the bees (and therefore ourselves).

Can Your University Do This With Paper?

/ Organikos / Leave a comment

Originally motivated by the Big Ideas article, and further motivated by looking into Cornell University’s many resources to try to get answers to those questions, now Seth’s mention of banana paper deserves a pointer to the amazing university that got that movement started.  If you visit Costa Rica, you should visit EARTH University, which is oddly modest in mentioning its history with regard to banana paper.  If you are not on your way to Costa Rica, but live in the United States, try to find a Whole Foods supermarket if for no other reason that to purchase one of several EARTH-branded products.  EARTH is our idea of the perfect mix of practical education, entrepreneurial conservation initiatives, and quality outcomes–things we care deeply about–so purchasing their products may lead to the next breakthrough innovation in sustainable agriculture.

Environotes

/ Seth Inman / 4 Comments

While shopping for notebooks at Cornell University’s bookstore yesterday I came across a brand that I hadn’t seen before. The cover of the dark, forest-green notebook said “Environotes sustainable paper products” in the lower right corner, and a removable card-stock label declared the paper to be a “green” product.

I was somewhat skeptical, because I know how many trees are cut down in the US to provide Americans with paper (about a billion a year) and the only sustainable mass-produced paper I’d ever seen was the banana leaf paper sold in Central America.

Then I saw that the one of the companies behind the notebooks was called Cane Fields, and that the paper was not only made from sugar cane fiber, but the fiber left over from the sugar-making process. This reduces landfill waste, is recyclable, and saves trees! To make it even better, the manufacturing process is powered by wind and biomass renewable energy, doesn’t use acid or chlorine bleaches, and is carbon-neutral through carbon trading. Needless to say, I purchased one of these notebooks, and got a 3-subject one to save space.

I’m glad that the Cornell Store carries these sorts of products; just today when I stopped back at the Store to get small pocket notepads, I found notebooks made by one of Cane Fields’ partners, Roaring Spring Paper Products. With 60 sheets of recycled 5″ by 3″ paper, the so-called “little green book” has a nice little recycling symbol on the front. I bought two.

Copyrights & Creativity

/ Organikos / Leave a comment

After a bit more investigation, without even getting any lawyer friends involved, it becomes clear that there is plenty of thought going into the question of how Alan Lomax might own some of Jay-Z’s stuff.  This simplifies the history for us:

Nature’s Art

/ Amie Inman / 2 Comments

Our relationship with the natural world has shifted considerably along with our technological advances.

The drawings in Lascaux morphed into Egypt’s hieroglyphs; into Greece’s elaborately painted frescos and urns; into the Renaissance’s Nature morte. 

Photo by Milo Inman

But the more precise the depiction became, the more likely it was that the animal in question had to meet its demise in order to be immortalized. Continue reading →

Lomax Legacies

/ Crist Inman / 1 Comment

Creative effort always deserves credit, and on occasion deserves valorization.  The fellow that drew this chart definitely deserves credit:

He has done his homework, both musically and legally, to deliver a punchy sermon with good graphic and multi-media accompaniment. His moral question for us to wrestle with:

grateful as I am to Alan Lomax for recording and disseminating so much great folk music, I remain baffled as to why he was allowed to copyright it. Our creative heritage deserves better stewardship than our current laws provide.

Continue reading →

Nature Trumps

/ Milo Inman / Leave a comment

Following the line of thought in my previous post concerning the technological reproduction of biological processes, I was somewhat astounded when I read here that in the quest for efficient MAVs (micro air vehicles), nature has once again surpassed all engineers’ attempts to successfully manufacture functional diminutive aircraft. I write about this not because of its significance as a military breakthrough (which is no doubt the main purpose of the field of research), but because of the evidence it offers that nature trumps artifice.  Whether by divine design or simply millions of years to evolve the most efficient biological machines possible, nature (in all ways, shapes, and forms) is itself our greatest resource – in all fields.

“I just want to say one word to you. Just one word….Plastics” *

/ Amie Inman / 2 Comments

Yes, Plastics.  That ubiquitous, universal petroleum product that no one but a Hottentot can pass a day without touching.

It’s impossible to conceive of a world completely devoid of plastics, but we certainly can conceive of alternatives to at least some of its uses.  Forums such as Fortune’s Brainstorm Green bring together innovators and day dreamers with tangible results.

Eben Bayer and Gavin McIntyre, co-founders of Ecovative Design, aren’t much older than Benjamin Braddock *  was when he received that erstwhile advice. Continue reading →

Music To Travel With

/ Organikos / 1 Comment

Speaking of Wim Wenders and good music, one of the great musical entrepreneurs that Wenders has collaborated with more than once–see Paris, Texas (1984) and Buena Vista Social Club (1999)–is Ry Cooder.  If you daydream of traveling to Cuba, and there is a soundtrack to that daydream, it is very likely due to Cooder’s work starting in 1996 with a group of Cuban musicians that led to some performances, then several albums, and eventually that documentary film by Wenders.

If slide guitar evokes the southwest United States for you, that too is likely Cooder’s doing.  Bringing it closer to home (geographically but not in any other way) for those of us in Kerala, his cover of The Coast of Malabar, recorded with The Chieftains on their album The Long Black Veil is a melancholy ballad.  Do not listen to it unless you are in romantic wallow mode.

Instead, if you want to travel a bit more with music listen and kick your heels up at the same time, listen to the last track on that album. The Rocky Road to Dublin, a collaboration between The Chieftains and The Rolling Stones will send you off with a smile.  Back to Ry Cooder, thanks are due to for his reverential post (not really a review) about this new release.