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The Russian Empire in Color: Photography from 1909 - 1912
We are so used to black and white photography from the early 1900s, that it almost comes as a shock when you see these beautiful pictures by photographer Sergei Mikhailovich Prokudin-Gorskii (1863-1944). “He took three black and white images in fairly quick succession, using red, green and blue filters, allowing them to later be recombined and projected with filtered lanterns to show near true color images. Above a few of the hundred images made available by the Library of Congress, which purchased the original glass plates back in 1948.”
Have a look at the beautiful spread over at Ajanaku!
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The Purple Portal (by Stuck in Customs)
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![theatlantic:
Sparrows Actually Change Their Tune To Sing Over the Noise Of the City
Well it turns out city-dwellers aren’t the only ones miffed by urban noise pollution. Research has long suggested that wildlife – and birds in particular – may be impacted by the man-made sounds of the city, from car horns to traffic congestion. A new study confirms that sparrows in the Presidio District of San Francisco appear to have changed their tune and raised their voices to be heard over the increasingly noisy racket of the Golden Gate Bridge.
The researchers, George Mason’s David Luther and Louisiana State’s Elizabeth Derryberry, compared modern birdsong in the city to recordings of sparrows in the area taken in 1969. They also looked at historic noise-level data from the Environmental Protection Agency and San Francisco Department of Health, as well as traffic volumes over the Golden Gate Bridge across this time period.
They found that as noise in the city increased, so too did the pitch, or frequency, of the male white-crowned sparrow song. Higher frequencies of song allow the birds to keep twittering at each other over the low-frequency ambient noise of rumbling cars. Even more surprising, the authors write in the journal Animal Behaviour, the birds also seem in the last four decades to have literally changed their repertoire. […]
It’s probably good news for these sparrows that they’ve figured out how to adapt (and good news for urban bird-lovers that this wildlife isn’t simply fleeing the city all together). But there’s also something sort of disturbing about the implication that cities can distort the natural environment right down to birdsong. In some ways, noise matters even more for birds than it does for humans: Birds sing to defend their territory and to attract mates (life’s two most important goals!), and excessive noise threatens that.
Read more. [Image: Shutterstock]](http://24.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_m1ykhhLGWE1qcokc4o1_500.jpg "theatlantic:
Sparrows Actually Change Their Tune To Sing Over the Noise Of the City
Well it turns out city-dwellers aren’t the only ones miffed by urban noise pollution. Research has long suggested that wildlife – and birds in particular – may be impacted by the man-made sounds of the city, from car horns to traffic congestion. A new study confirms that sparrows in the Presidio District of San Francisco appear to have changed their tune and raised their voices to be heard over the increasingly noisy racket of the Golden Gate Bridge.
The researchers, George Mason’s David Luther and Louisiana State’s Elizabeth Derryberry, compared modern birdsong in the city to recordings of sparrows in the area taken in 1969. They also looked at historic noise-level data from the Environmental Protection Agency and San Francisco Department of Health, as well as traffic volumes over the Golden Gate Bridge across this time period.
They found that as noise in the city increased, so too did the pitch, or frequency, of the male white-crowned sparrow song. Higher frequencies of song allow the birds to keep twittering at each other over the low-frequency ambient noise of rumbling cars. Even more surprising, the authors write in the journal Animal Behaviour, the birds also seem in the last four decades to have literally changed their repertoire. […]
It’s probably good news for these sparrows that they’ve figured out how to adapt (and good news for urban bird-lovers that this wildlife isn’t simply fleeing the city all together). But there’s also something sort of disturbing about the implication that cities can distort the natural environment right down to birdsong. In some ways, noise matters even more for birds than it does for humans: Birds sing to defend their territory and to attract mates (life’s two most important goals!), and excessive noise threatens that.
Read more. [Image: Shutterstock]")
Sparrows Actually Change Their Tune To Sing Over the Noise Of the City
Well it turns out city-dwellers aren’t the only ones miffed by urban noise pollution. Research has long suggested that wildlife – and birds in particular – may be impacted by the man-made sounds of the city, from car horns to traffic congestion. A new study confirms that sparrows in the Presidio District of San Francisco appear to have changed their tune and raised their voices to be heard over the increasingly noisy racket of the Golden Gate Bridge.
The researchers, George Mason’s David Luther and Louisiana State’s Elizabeth Derryberry, compared modern birdsong in the city to recordings of sparrows in the area taken in 1969. They also looked at historic noise-level data from the Environmental Protection Agency and San Francisco Department of Health, as well as traffic volumes over the Golden Gate Bridge across this time period.
They found that as noise in the city increased, so too did the pitch, or frequency, of the male white-crowned sparrow song. Higher frequencies of song allow the birds to keep twittering at each other over the low-frequency ambient noise of rumbling cars. Even more surprising, the authors write in the journal Animal Behaviour, the birds also seem in the last four decades to have literally changed their repertoire. […]
It’s probably good news for these sparrows that they’ve figured out how to adapt (and good news for urban bird-lovers that this wildlife isn’t simply fleeing the city all together). But there’s also something sort of disturbing about the implication that cities can distort the natural environment right down to birdsong. In some ways, noise matters even more for birds than it does for humans: Birds sing to defend their territory and to attract mates (life’s two most important goals!), and excessive noise threatens that.
Read more. [Image: Shutterstock]
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World’s Largest Preserve Forming in Africa
Elephants have no respect for lines on a map, especially the artificial national boundaries established by Europeans after carving up Africa into colonial empires. But national boundaries have kept elephants and many other animals cooped up in southern Africa.
The nations of Angola, Botswana, Namibia, Zambia and Zimbabwe agreed to ease some of their own border controls in order to create what will be the world’s largest conservation area, reported PRI’s Living on Earth. A chunk of land the size of California will include a variety of habitats and allow wildlife to migrate to greener pastures in the dry season and keep their feet dry during the wet season.
Africa’s iconic wildlife — elephants, lions, crocodiles, leopards, rhinos, hippos, and buffalo — are expected to bring in tourist dollars. Without the incentive of tourist revenues encouraging conservation, the animals were just a danger and a pest to locals, who had to fear elephants raiding their crops and lions stalking them at night, without the legal right to hunt problem animals.
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"Don’t go around saying the world owes you a living. The world owes you nothing. It was here first."Mark Twain (via kari-shma)
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They say
every person is a new door
to a different world
and I’m in love
with this galaxy around me. -
We crossed the streams. This will break Tumblr.
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"
1. Never use a metaphor, simile, or other figure of speech which you are used to seeing in print.
2. Never use a long word where a short one will do.
3. If it is possible to cut a word out, always cut it out.
4. Never use the passive where you can use the active.
5. Never use a foreign phrase, a scientific word, or a jargon word if you can think of an everyday English equivalent.
6. Break any of these rules sooner than say anything outright barbarous.
"After David Ogilvy’s now-infamous 10 tips on writing and Henry Miller’s 11 commandments of writing, here comes a list of rules for writers from George Orwell circa 1946. (via explore-blog) -
![theatlantic:
Are We Teaching Kids the Wrong Lessons About Trayvon?
In the past few weeks, I have read a number of articles about conversations that I, as a black mother, should be having with my 9-year-old son. In his Time.com article “How to Talk to Young Black Boys About Trayvon Martin,” Touré begins by saying: “It’s unlikely but possible that you could get killed today. Or any day. I’m sorry, but that’s the truth. Black maleness is a potentially fatal condition.”
In a CNN blog post, Christy Oglesby speaks of the numerous warnings she has given her son, Drew, about how society might perceive him simply because of his race and gender. “He was only 3 when I got confirmation that being black could be the death of him,” she writes, recounting how a little white girl deemed her son “dirty and dangerous,” presumably because of the color of his skin.
In light of Trayvon Martin’s death, I, too, have cautiously begun the process of preparing my son for the challenges that likely lie ahead of him. I am unprepared for these conversations. I left the United States when I was 3 and spent most of my childhood in Kenya. While there are certainly issues with race and class in Kenya, I never experienced the kind of racism my son will have to deal with in the U.S. As a child, it never dawned on me that anyone would see me as any different, simply because my skin is brown. And so I was completely naïve and did not really think about how my child would be perceived, until last year. […]
I have been told by friends who grew up in the United States that I am going to have to give him lessons on how to behave around police officers. I am going to have to somehow get him to understand, though he certainly cannot wrap his mind around it now, that people will see him as a menace simply because of the color of his skin.
But here’s the thing—I don’t want my son to grow up with these thoughts in his head. My parents never had to give my brother or me these survival tips, and so we were able to grow up blissfully unaware of racism, at least the American variety. I want the same for my child. It is such a burden having to live by a different set of rules, knowing that society at large views you as “less than” because you are black, and male.
Read more. [Image: Reuters]](http://25.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_m22m4wCxhV1qcokc4o1_500.jpg "theatlantic:
Are We Teaching Kids the Wrong Lessons About Trayvon?
In the past few weeks, I have read a number of articles about conversations that I, as a black mother, should be having with my 9-year-old son. In his Time.com article “How to Talk to Young Black Boys About Trayvon Martin,” Touré begins by saying: “It’s unlikely but possible that you could get killed today. Or any day. I’m sorry, but that’s the truth. Black maleness is a potentially fatal condition.”
In a CNN blog post, Christy Oglesby speaks of the numerous warnings she has given her son, Drew, about how society might perceive him simply because of his race and gender. “He was only 3 when I got confirmation that being black could be the death of him,” she writes, recounting how a little white girl deemed her son “dirty and dangerous,” presumably because of the color of his skin.
In light of Trayvon Martin’s death, I, too, have cautiously begun the process of preparing my son for the challenges that likely lie ahead of him. I am unprepared for these conversations. I left the United States when I was 3 and spent most of my childhood in Kenya. While there are certainly issues with race and class in Kenya, I never experienced the kind of racism my son will have to deal with in the U.S. As a child, it never dawned on me that anyone would see me as any different, simply because my skin is brown. And so I was completely naïve and did not really think about how my child would be perceived, until last year. […]
I have been told by friends who grew up in the United States that I am going to have to give him lessons on how to behave around police officers. I am going to have to somehow get him to understand, though he certainly cannot wrap his mind around it now, that people will see him as a menace simply because of the color of his skin.
But here’s the thing—I don’t want my son to grow up with these thoughts in his head. My parents never had to give my brother or me these survival tips, and so we were able to grow up blissfully unaware of racism, at least the American variety. I want the same for my child. It is such a burden having to live by a different set of rules, knowing that society at large views you as “less than” because you are black, and male.
Read more. [Image: Reuters]")
Are We Teaching Kids the Wrong Lessons About Trayvon?
In the past few weeks, I have read a number of articles about conversations that I, as a black mother, should be having with my 9-year-old son. In his Time.com article “How to Talk to Young Black Boys About Trayvon Martin,” Touré begins by saying: “It’s unlikely but possible that you could get killed today. Or any day. I’m sorry, but that’s the truth. Black maleness is a potentially fatal condition.”
In a CNN blog post, Christy Oglesby speaks of the numerous warnings she has given her son, Drew, about how society might perceive him simply because of his race and gender. “He was only 3 when I got confirmation that being black could be the death of him,” she writes, recounting how a little white girl deemed her son “dirty and dangerous,” presumably because of the color of his skin.
In light of Trayvon Martin’s death, I, too, have cautiously begun the process of preparing my son for the challenges that likely lie ahead of him. I am unprepared for these conversations. I left the United States when I was 3 and spent most of my childhood in Kenya. While there are certainly issues with race and class in Kenya, I never experienced the kind of racism my son will have to deal with in the U.S. As a child, it never dawned on me that anyone would see me as any different, simply because my skin is brown. And so I was completely naïve and did not really think about how my child would be perceived, until last year. […]
I have been told by friends who grew up in the United States that I am going to have to give him lessons on how to behave around police officers. I am going to have to somehow get him to understand, though he certainly cannot wrap his mind around it now, that people will see him as a menace simply because of the color of his skin.
But here’s the thing—I don’t want my son to grow up with these thoughts in his head. My parents never had to give my brother or me these survival tips, and so we were able to grow up blissfully unaware of racism, at least the American variety. I want the same for my child. It is such a burden having to live by a different set of rules, knowing that society at large views you as “less than” because you are black, and male.
Read more. [Image: Reuters]
About me
It does not do to dwell on dreams and forget to live.
