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Science &Environment Articles | Can China Turn Cotton Green? | Miller-McCune Online Magazine

Wed, 16 Dec 2009 01:26:38 -0800

out of our cotton pickin' minds...

That "all-natural" cotton T-shirt in your closet? The one with the eco-friendly message brightly printed on the front? Ounce for ounce, it could be the most environmentally toxic item of clothing you own. From the water and agrichemicals lavished on cotton grown in some of the world's driest regions (approximately one-third of the pesticide and fertilizer produced worldwide gets sprayed or dusted on cotton), through multihued rivers of waste streaming from textile mills to landfills bulging with castoff clothing, the life cycle of the humble cotton tee has left ecological wreckage in its wake.

As both the world's leading producer and biggest importer of raw cotton and its top exporter of cotton fabrics and apparel, China has experienced much of the damage.

details at the link

2009 in photos (part 1 of 3) - The Big Picture - Boston.com

Mon, 14 Dec 2009 21:45:30 -0800

some knockout pics from 2009!
Really worth a look.

Vertie Hodge, 74, weeps during an Inauguration Day party near Martin Luther King, Jr. Blvd.

in Houston on Tuesday, Jan. 20, 2009 after President Barack Obama delivered his speech

after taking the oath of office, becoming the first black president in the United States.

(AP Photo/Houston Chronicle, Mayra Beltran)

The sun shines on the skin of a hippo in its enclosure in the Zoo in Berlin, Friday, April 3, 2009.

(AP Photo/Franka Bruns)

Australian surfer Mark Visser surfs an 11 m (36 ft) wave at Cow Bombie, near the West Australian town

of Gracetown, south of Perth, Australia in this photograph obtained September 28, 2009.

The organisers claim that Visser had caught one of the biggest waves in Australia for 2009.

(REUTERS/Calum Macauley/Handout)

&Bizarre& Octopuses Carry Coconuts as Instant Shelters

Mon, 14 Dec 2009 16:45:57 -0800

This is the coolest thing I've seen in a while.
I just love it. The video makes me laugh every time.
Video and details at the link.

~

an octopuses garden...

Octopuses have been discovered tip-toeing with coconut-shell halves suctioned to their undersides, then reassembling the halves and disappearing inside for protection or deception, a new study says.

"We were blown away," said biologist Mark Norman of discovering the octopus behavior off Indonesia. "It was hard not to laugh underwater and flood your [scuba] mask."

:::::

eye spy

Insight Meditation Australia

Sun, 13 Dec 2009 18:38:31 -0800

ideas for the holidays and anytime.
Some buddhist talks at the link. Namaste.

~

DO IT ANYWAY

People are often unreasonable,
illogical and self-centered;
Forgive them anyway.

If you are kind,
people may accuse you of selfish ulterior motives;
Be kind anyway.

If you are successful,
you will win some false friends and true enemies;
Succeed anyway.

If you are honest and frank,
people may cheat you;
Be honest anyway.

What you spend years building,
someone could destroy overnight;
Build anyway.

If you find serenity and happiness,
they may be jealous;
Be happy anyway.

The good you do today,
people will often forget tomorrow;
Do good anyway.

Give the world the best you have,
and it may never be enough;
Give the world the best you've got anyway.

You see, in the final analysis,
it is about you;
It was never between you and them anyway.

~

Op-Ed Columnist - Hollywood's Brilliant Coda to America's Dark Year - NYTimes.com

Sun, 13 Dec 2009 14:24:11 -0800

up in the air : class war with george clooney

"What gives our Great Recession its particular darkness and gives this film its haunting afterlife is the disconnect between the corporate culture that is dictating the firing and the rest of us. In the shorthand of the day, the dichotomy between Wall Street and Main Street, though that oversimplifies the divide. This disconnect isn't just about the huge gap in income between the financial sector and the rest of America. Nor is it just about the inequities of a government bailout that rescued the irresponsible bankers who helped crash the economy while shortchanging the innocent victims of their reckless gambles. What 'Up in the Air' captures is less didactic. It makes palpable the cultural and even physical chasm that opened up between the two Americas for years before the financial collapse.

The private-equity deal makers who bought and sold once-solid companies like trading cards, saddling them with debt, never saw the workers whose jobs were shredded by their cunning games of financial looting. The geniuses in Washington and on Wall Street who invented junk mortgages and then bundled and sold them as securities did'nt live in the same neighborhoods as the mortgagees, small investors and retirees left holding the bag once the housing bubble burst.

Those at the top are separated from the consequences of their actions. "

(this is from page 2 of a terrific two page piece by frank rich. See page 1 for more)

The revolution will be televised | SocialistWorker.org

Sun, 13 Dec 2009 13:22:13 -0800

Just peeking out from behind the blinds

to wish everyone a safe and happy holiday season,

rich in kindness and caring and laughter,

and refreshing adventures in art, books, music, movies, TV

food, nature, tech, travel, and all else.

Plus plenty of fabulous friendship, calm contemplation, and luscious good lovin' .

May we all know peace.

Maneaters | n+1

Sun, 13 Dec 2009 13:10:29 -0800

~

food for thought

Consider this curious feature of the way we eat animals: unless you are a preening showman like Anthony Bourdain, you are always already a vegetarian of sorts relative to the vast majority of meats. You can't eat dog or rat or parakeet, even though these are perfectly reliable sources of calories. Arguments about the relative toughness or stringiness of their flesh do not get to the heart of the matter. You can't eat them because to do so would be to break the rules of the game. There are no such rules for the consumption of vegetable matter: whatever nourishes will do.

This distinction reveals something significant about meat eating: it is what you might call a charged domain of human activity, like sex and violence, and it is so no matter what kind of moral arguments you might offer up for or against culling deer herds, free range farming, and so on. Meat eating, like sex and violence, is regulated by religions, while for the most part plant-eating is not. Who can have sex with whom, or who can kill whom, or who can eat what meat when, are practically what religion is about. (The stuff about God is a later development, of interest to only a few.)

Why meat-eating should be seen as charged in this way, prior to any moral-philosophical considerations, is worth some reflection. see link for further reflection...

Little Red Riding Hound - Dog Pictures

Fri, 11 Dec 2009 14:16:40 -0800

A Man is Only as Good . . .

A man is only as good
as what he says to a dog
when he has to get up out of bed
in the middle of a wintry night
because some damned dog has been barking;

and he goes and opens the door
in his vest and boxer shorts
and there on the pock-marked wasteground
called a playing field out front
he finds the mutt with one paw

raised in expectation
and an expression that says Thank God
for a minute there I thought
there was no one awake but me
in this goddamned town.

~ Pat Boran ~

from New and Selected Poems
Dedalus Press, Dublin, 2007

dog image from the link
via the great saline

b/w image by cartier bresson via the great Aline with thanx.

Obamas Big Sellout : Rolling Stone

Thu, 10 Dec 2009 16:09:47 -0800

Another great Rolling Stone piece by Matt Taibbi

~

Obama's Big Sellout

The president has packed his economic team

with Wall Street insiders

intent on turning the bailout into an all-out giveaway

~

Catherine Shoard hails a new film hero - the arthouse stud monkey | Film | The Guardian

Thu, 10 Dec 2009 13:15:52 -0800

the "arthouse stud monkey" -
a new man in our midst
or just another figment...?

Jane Campion's luscious new film, Bright Star,
about the poet John Keats and his last passionate
love affair, wins high praise. some video clips here .

"arthouse stud monkey": Male leads who were well-groomed, sensitive, cultured and endlessly selfless in bed starred in three of the 20 films in competition. Was it any coincidence that they also happened to be the only three films directed by women?"