Recently in Environment
Andrea James is a Los Angeles-based writer and troublemaker.
Following up on David Ng's great biodiversity posts, here's a nice video on graboids. If you only know about these land sharks from old skits or classic cartoons, filmmaker Frank Robnik put together this nicely animated piece that dispels many misconceptions about these misunderstood creatures. Great score by Sebastian Birkl, too!
Changing attitudes about sanitation through toilet malls
Andrea James is a Los Angeles-based writer and troublemaker.
Video link: not for the queasy of stomach.
David Kuria runs EcoTact Limited, an organization with a groundbreaking approach to a difficult issue. In many poor parts of Africa, basic sanitation is nonexistent, and open sewers drain untreated waste directly into the water supply, causing 80% of the disease.
Kuria quotes Gandhi: "Sanitation is more important than independence," adding, "We want to do a social transformation, where people don't think this is a toilet, where they think a toilet is a dirty place. So for us to change that community and social mentality of a toilet, then we want to put in more activities in the toilet. Then they start interacting with the facility not as a toilet, but more of a community convenient point."
Amenities include a small kiosk with snacks and personal items for sale. Kenyan comedian Makhoha Keya even worked up an act to make learning about basic sanitation entertaining. Ecotact provides safe drinking water at no cost, and the toilet usage fee is about five cents a day, usually recouped through fewer doctor visits and lost days of work.
"Not wearing a shirt only makes you look like a better fighter, but you'll still need to sneak up on your target and hit them in the face with a bottle. This next sentence is 100% accurate: I could take out Dominic Monaghan, Megan Fox, and Eminem, all together, even if they were all armed with toasters and I was asleep in a bathtub."—The Last Psychiatrist critiques a new Eminem video over which many pundits are wringing hands, due to its theme of domestic violence. [via danah] — Xeni • Comments: 9
And now, a word from our lemurs.
Image link. Related to an earlier post today about the very real, and very sad story of environmental devastation and lemur soup proliferation, in Madagascar. 'Shopped by Boing Boing commenter devophill.
Madagascar: The Rape of the Rosewood Forests (and lemur soup)
Via the BB Submitterator, Boing Boing reader Marilyn Terrell of National Geographic points us to a just-published feature article by Robert Draper (with an amazing accompanying photo-essay), and explains:
Roughly 90% of the flora & fauna of Madagascar is found nowhere else on Earth. lllegal logging of the island's endangered rosewood trees has escalated dramatically due to the collapse of the government in March, 2009—and "the insatiable appetite of Chinese timber procurers, who imported more than 200 million dollars' worth of rosewood from the country's northeastern forests in a few months." Now forests are "unpoliced and filled with organized gangs, a free-for-all of deforestation."All that and lemur soup. :-(
(Image courtesy National Geographic / by Pascal Maitre)
Andrea James is a Los Angeles-based writer and troublemaker.
Photo by Crystl, via Flickr (CC, some rights reserved)
Physicist Robert Richardson from Cornell University is warning against plans implemented via the Helium Privatization Act to sell off our National Helium Reserve by 2013.
Although cryogenic applications in magnetic resonance imaging, semiconductor processing and basic research consume the largest portion of the helium market presently, this light, inert gas has many other uses. NASA uses it in the pressurizing and purging of its rocket engines while civilian industries use approximately 13 million scm annually in various welding applications. By the time one accounts for helium's role in atmospheric control and leak detection as well as its obvious use as a lifting gas, it is clear that the industry is an important part of the U.S. economy.
Helium is a non-renewable material here on earth. About 80% of global reserves are in the American Southwest, created as a by-product of refining natural gas. Dr. Richardson recommends raising prices drastically, so a helium balloon would run around $100, to reflect the value of the gas inside.
World helium reserves are running out, Nobel laureate claims [telegraph.co.uk]
The Majestic Plastic Bag: nature mockumentary on "the plastic circle of life"
YouTube video link. Ah, the plastic cycle of life! Heal The Bay produced this advocacy video, the message of which is: put an end to plastic pollution. The short-form "nature mockumentary" is narrated by Academy Award-winning actor Jeremy Irons and tracks the "migration" of a plastic bag from a grocery store parking lot to the so-called Great Pacific Garbage Patch in the Pacific Ocean.
[via Submitterator]
A group of urban activists known as The Mower Gang have cleared the half-mile Detroit Velodrome track of weeds, beer cans, and other trash that kept bicycles away for decades. "It's really not about getting some 45-year-old guy a better place to ride his bike," said the Mower Gang's founder. "It's more about getting 10-, 12-, 13-year-old kids a better place to spend an afternoon." (freep.com, via Mr. Jalopy) — Xeni • Comments: 11
"Fires on these territories will without a doubt lead to an increase in radiation. The smoke will spread and the radioactive traces will spread. The amount depends upon the force of the wind."—Vladimir Chuprov, the head of the energy program at Greenpeace Russia, quoted in the NYT on the continuing wildfires that pose a newly recognized threat of radioactive smoke. — Xeni • Comments: 14
The damaging effects of the BP Spill: You ain't seen nothin' yet.
Mother Jones has pre-launched the magazine's September/October cover package online due to timeliness (for non-newsheads, this is the sort of thing Rolling Stone was criticized for not doing with the McChrystal interview). The short version: "BP and the government say the spill is fast disappearing--but dramatic new science reveals that its worst effects may be yet to come."
The Mother Jones articles "look past the recent positive spin on the Gulf oil spill aftermath, at effects of oil and dispersants on the deep ocean ecosystems that scientists are only just beginning to understand," editor Mike Mechanic tells Boing Boing.
Links: BP's Deep Secrets (the package overview link), and here's Julia Whitty's lead story. Another one in the series, not to miss, explores Corexit's toxicity.
[Illustration for Mother Jones by Tim O'Brien]
A beautifully-shot video documenting one hung-over guy's horrific day at rock climbing, and a rescue by very patient friends: "First of all, I got my knee stuck in the crack and I got quite scared and I couldn't get it out and then... I shit my pants." (thanks, Tara McGinley) — Xeni • Comments: 12
Massive scope of Pakistan flood damage revealed by NASA imagery
The seasonal Monsoon rains in Pakistan this summer have been extraordinarily heavy. Entire villages have been washed away, over a thousand people have died, and some 2.5 million people are affected by the resulting floods. Lack of safe drinking water and fears of a cholera outbreak are now big concerns. Above, NASA's Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on the Terra satellite captured the image at left on August 1, 2009, and the image at right on July 31, 2010. Both show the Indus River in northwestern Pakistan. View them in large format here.
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