aballah

March 24, 2013

“Their intelligence. Elephants understand that ivory is the reason they’re being killed. There are very, very few big bulls with big ivory left in the world, and the two or three still in Tsavo have become nocturnal. I’ve seen a bull with big tusks by the road turn his back, trying to hide the ivory.”

—

What’s the biggest misconception people have about elephants?

Daphne Sheldrick, interview in TIME Magazine, June 4, 2012

(via ellephanta)

This makes me so sad.

(via unfriendlyjewishhottie)

Just like humans are either left or right handed, elephants have a dominant tusk that’s usually shorter than the other from being worn away. Now, elephants are purposefully grinding their tusks against trees and rocks to wear them out and shorten them. Many aren’t being born with long tusks or even tusks at all because those who survive maintain the genes that make their tusks virtually nonexistent. So through evolution and poaching, elephants are slowly losing their tusks all together.

machistado)

(Source: chalet2mi)

9:14am | URL: http://tmblr.co/ZBXRbyg-8Ypd

(Notes: 10,379)

February 25, 2013

parabola-magazine:

If diversity is a source of wonder, its opposite - the ubiquitous condensation to some blandly amorphous and singulary generic modern culture that takes for granted an impoverished environment - is a source of dismay. There is, indeed, a fire burning over the earth, taking with it plants and animals, cultures, languages, ancient skills and visionary wisdom. Quelling this flame, and re-inventing the poetry of diversity is perhaps the most importent challenge of our times.

―Wade Davis, The Wayfinders. Here is an extraordinary talk by Davis at TED: Ideas Worth Spreading.

Photograph by Wade Davis from A Life Among the Shamans for National Geographic

10:10am | URL: http://tmblr.co/ZBXRbyezjDUI

(Notes: 11)

Filed under: diversity difference life wonder generic modern culture environment wisdom poetry

February 21, 2013

kateoplis:

“Don’t play what’s there, play what’s not there.”

— Miles Davis

9:34am | URL: http://tmblr.co/ZBXRbyefS6pt

(Notes: 292)

Filed under: sound life jazz

February 12, 2013

From Mother Jones via The Dish:

Here’s a way to cut carbon emissions that is so easy, it actually makes you do less work: cutting back on your work hours. Anew study from the Center for Economic and Policy Research concludes that if we all worked fewer hours, we could cut future global warming by as much as 22 percent by 2100.

“The calculation is simple: fewer work hours means less carbon emissions, which means less global warming,”says economist and paper authorDavid Rosnick.His researchfound that dialing back the amount of time the average person works by 0.5 percent per year would mean a significant reduction in greenhouse gas emissions.

You only experience this life once. Capitalism, it seems, requires people spend their days in activity harmful themselves, to their children, and to the planet—all to profit another who already has more than they’ll ever be able to spend.

8:06am | URL: http://tmblr.co/ZBXRbyd_Ki2Y

(Notes: 1)

Filed under: work labour capitalism environment life leisure global warming

January 14, 2013

…where, exactly, are our origins?

From “David Ferry’s Beautiful Thefts,” by Dan Chiasson in The New Yorker.

10:21am | URL: http://tmblr.co/ZBXRbyblEexa

Filed under: poetry theft life origin originality inspiration

November 10, 2012

From Flavorwire:

Have you ever felt like dancing in the street? The subjects of Jordan Matter’s Dancers Among Us series are probably doing it better than you. The inspiration for the project, Matter says, came from watching his three-year-old son deep in rapturous play.

More here.

11:27am | URL: http://tmblr.co/ZBXRbyW_n92w

(Notes: 1)

Filed under: photo dancing dancer dance life work beauty play

October 24, 2012

theatlantic:

1 Picture, 9,000 Megapixels, 84 Million Stars

What you see about is the center of our galaxy, as seen by the powerful Visible and Infrared Survey Telescope for Astronomy (VISTA) instrument in northern Chile—but it’s just a thumbnail of the largest catalog of stars ever made. The original image, navigable and zoomable here, covers 108,500 by 81,500 pixels (just under nine billion pixels or nine gigapixels). If you were to print it out at normal book-level resolution, it would be something like 30 feet wide and 23 feet tall.

Read more. [Image: ESO]