As the sustainability dialogue moves forward, I’ve seen two interesting directions in which it’s being reframed and recontextualized from being something about “just surviving” the ecological crisis towards being about actually living in a green world. One is Jamais Cascio’s concept of “resilience”?
There have been some truly sensational crop circle formations appearing in 2009 and while I was hunting around for some good images to post here, I came across an article (on the BBC’s Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy forums, I think I should add) that contained this rather astonishing bit of information:
Crop circles are not a new phenomenon. There are 17th Century woodcuts that record the observation of what appears to be crop circles. One such woodcut, entitled The Devil Mower, appeared in a Hertfordshire newspaper dated 22 August, 1678. The article described the apparition overnight of a strange design in a field of oats, so neatly pressed that ‘no mortal man was able to do the like’ which was attributed to the ‘devil or some infernal spirit’. By convoluted logic this apparition confirmed the existence of God since, it was argued, if devils have a Hell then there must be a Heaven, and a God.
Here is what it says:
Being a True Relation of a Farmer, who Bargaining with a Poor Mower, about the Cutting down Three Half Acres of Oats: upon the Mower’s asking too much, the Farmer swore That the Devil should Mow it rather than He. And so it fell out, that very Night, the Crop of Oat shew’d as if it had been all of a flame: but next Morning appear’d so neatly mow’d by the Devil or some Infernal Spirit, that no Mortal Man was able to do the like. Also, How the said Oats ly now in the Field, and the Owner has not Power to fetch them away. Liscensed, August 22nd, 1678.
Arguments Against the Hoax Theory of Crop Circles by Joseph E. Mason (he works for NASA)
WELLINGTON, FL—Debra Mitchell is a lead code compliance officer for the Village of Wellington. During the collapse of the housing market, the community was left with a large number of foreclosed homes.
Pointing out one example Mitchell said, “It has an unsanitary, abandoned swimming pool, stagnant swimming pool. There’s no electricity running at this location.”
The code compliance department was paying nearly 7,000 dollars a year to dump chemicals into the pools to treat the scummy buildup.
That’s when Mitchell and some of her colleagues came up with an environmentally-friendly idea to get rid of the green. An idea with a much lower price tag of just 700 dollars.
“Some of us got clever and decided to try the fish-eating…er algae eating fish,” she said.
At a typical home that needed help Mitchell revealed, “We have dumped 15 pleco algae-eating fish in here to take care of the algae situation.”
Something’s fishy in Wellington
(via Arbroath )
Alisa Opar from Audubon Magazine says,
For the first time in nearly 70 years, an Amorphophallus titanum, dubbed the ?
Como fazer peras em formato de buda!
Update: Apparently these pears are grown in northern China’s Hebei province
(via bookofjoe )
I just saw Tom Petrie of Bank of America Merrill Lynch say on Bloomberg TV that we are at Peak Oil, and that in spite of BP’s “giant” oil find, there will be no major change in the oil supply. In other words, the World’s oil supply will continue to terminally decline…
This is a major admission coming from one America’s top banks. I can’t emphasize the importance of Petrie’s statement.
Say hello and goodbye forever to the Thylacine (above), and the Quagga (below). These are just two of the thought-provoking photos of long-gone animals gathered at Environmental Graffiti. Echoing Jared Diamond’s Collapse, Graffiti’s Karl Fabricius writes, “With modern photography having only been invented in the 1820s, these snapshots are a visible testament to just how recently the creatures shown were wiped out—and a jarring reminder of the precarious situation for many species still left on the planet.”
Well, all I can say is it’s a good thing cameras have come a long way since 1820! When it’s our time to go, and we need those final pictures, mankind can rely on automatic timers.
In Environmental Graffiti: Rare Photos Of Now Extinct Beats
See also: Jared Diamond speaks @ TED
Take a look at the fascinating work of Germany’s “trashy” answer to Christo, H.A. Schult:
Garbage is once again the leitmotif in Schult’s latest work. “We are living in the time of garbage,” says Schult. “We produce garbage and we will be garbage. I created a thousand sculptures of garbage. They are a mirror of ourselves.” Here, Schult is referring to his 1,000 trash people, humanoids he has created from trash. He first exhibited them in 1996 at the Roman amphitheater inside Xantene, a recreated Roman village in the western German state of North Rhine-Westphalia.
The figures triggered such an overwhelmingly positive response that he decided to take them on tour. “It is a social sculpture,” he explains. “It is not only a sculpture for the eyes. It’s a sculpture to spread the idea that we live in a time of garbage.”
Here’s an amazing 3D panoramic view photograph of one of Schult’s Trash People installations.
I was lucky enough to be in Austin, Texas during the Summer on three occasions and each time I saw hundreds of thousands of these bats waking up for the night and going out to look for a bite. During the day they slept under a bridge and at dusk they would start streaming out. It was an incredible sight. The sky would literally turn black with bats.
Obviously Texas is a great place to study bats and researchers at Texas A&M and the University of Texas, Austin have released the results of a new study that indicates bats sing “love songs”—a sort bat version of free jazz scat singing—to woo potential mates:
In the musical city of Austin, Texas, a group of smelly, pug-faced crooners is hoping to woo some females with surprisingly complex tunes.
That’s the finding of a new study of Brazilian free-tailed bats, which now join songbirds and whales as some of the only animals known to use a kind of musical language during courtship.
Also known as the Mexican free-tailed bat, the species is quite numerous in Austin and around the Texas A&M University football stadium in College Park.
Based on recordings of the animals from both locations, the researchers found that the bats’ songs contain definite phrases made up of birdlike chirps, buzzes, and trills.
Males sing their ballads as they hang upside down or sideways, sometimes flapping their wings and dripping a foul-smelling liquid that further attracts females.
Thanks Steve Silberman!
Evocative of early, apocalypse-prone Peter Weir,
These long, crazy-looking clouds can grow to be 600 miles long and can move at up to 35 miles per hour, causing problems for aircraft even on windless days. Known as Morning Glory clouds, they appear every fall over Burketown, Queensland, Australia, a remote town with fewer than 200 residents. A small number of pilots and tourists travel there each year in hopes of ?
I usually shoehorn my more dystopian views of the future into one of two possible models: The “Ballardian,” the one of malls, high rises, and airport concourses, and the “Waterworld-ian,” the one of pet sharks, rising sea levels, and one-eyed Dennis Hoppers.
Sharks aside, that last model might have just become a bit more endurable now that scientists have unlocked a way to engineer a rice plant that can “elongate rapidly in response to being submerged.” These plants, as Nature reports, “could also boost the production of rice in Asia and Africa, where up to 40% of crops are subject to flash floods or deep water.” To watch these amazing plants “snorkel” up and possibly save us all, follow this link to some unembeddable BBC footage.
I like how the AP writer tries valiantly to put a positive spin on this. It may well be that 100% of all fish in America has some level of mercury contamination, but only one fish in four has dangerously high levels. Dude, we are so screwed…
WASHINGTON (AP) - No fish can escape mercury pollution. That’s the take-home message from a federal study of mercury contamination released Wednesday that tested fish from nearly 300 streams across the country.
The toxic substance was found in every fish sampled, a finding that underscores how widespread mercury pollution has become.
But while all fish had traces of contamination, only about a quarter had mercury levels exceeding what the Environmental Protection Agency says is safe for people eating average amounts of fish.
Federal study shows mercury in fish widespread
As seen on Steve Silberman’s Twitter feed
The Indonesian Mimic Octopus, Thaumoctopus mimicus. This fascinating creature was discovered in 1998 off the coast of Sulawesi in Indonesia, the mimic octopus is the first known species to take on the characteristics of multiple species. This octopus is able to copy the physical likeness and movement of more than fifteen different species, including sea snakes, lionfish, flatfish, brittle stars, giant crabs, sea shells, stingrays, jellyfish, sea anemones, and mantis shrimp. This animal is so intelligent that it is able to discern which dangerous sea creature to impersonate that will present the greatest threat to its current possible predator.
(via Presurfer)
Robert Stone (the filmmaker, not the author) has a new documentary out today, Earth Days: The Seeds of A Revolution. In it, Stone hits the rewind button, taking us back to a time when recycling (or heaping scorn on those who didn’t) wasn’t such a reflexive action. Days features plenty of talking head philosophizing from Original Greensters like Whole Earth founder Stewart Brand, and “Population Bomb” author Paul Ehrlich (who has, incidentally, a great interview over on Seed). But what, if anything, does it add up to? Salon‘s Andrew O’Hehir sums it all up:
There really isn’t a single message to be gleaned from Stone’s challenging, paradoxical film, but here’s one I came away with: Politics really does matter, and the American people have consistently chosen narcotic reassurance over realism. Ronald Reagan, of course, had those communistic solar panels removed; it was morning in America, and morning was powered by Saudi oil.
Some astounding images of melting Antarctic icebergs. In them, you can see the stripes that were formed over time as layers of snow reacted with various ocean conditions. Thanks for the cool pix, global warming!
Via Daily Cognition: Striped Antarctic Icebergs
(Via Beyond the Beyond)
From BBC Worldwide: “A flood hits a fire ant colony in the Amazon jungle. An amazing chance to see footage on how the species has adapted to water to protect their queen.”
Almost psychedelic, certainly kinetic bug ballet.
Charlie McCarthy’s Flight Patterns
Thanks Brian Braun!
Travellers from all over the world now make The Giraffe Manor part of their East African safari, the only place in the world where you can enjoy the breathtaking experience of feeding and photographing the giraffe over the breakfast table and at the front door.
The Giraffe Manor is surrounded by 140 acres of indigenous forest just outside Kenya’s capital, Nairobi. As well as the giraffe, the property is also home to many species of birds, large families of warthogs and the elusive Bush Buck.
Thanks Olivia!
Touching video of an Asian elephant birth and new mum raising her calf at Taronga Zoo in Sydney, Australia. Taronga Zoo sez, “The elephant calf Luk Chai can be seen most days out in the paddock with his mum Thong Dee. They are usually bathed in their barn mid-morning and sometimes visit the waterfall in the afternoon, especially if the weather is fine.”
(via Arbroath)