Author: Daniela
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Pesticide Residue Strengthens Case for Organic Farming
My Google Alerts is ablaze with articles about pesticide residue found on organic produce. Paul Hanley’s level-headed piece in the Star Phoenix explains why this finding “drives home the importance of expanding pesticide-free organic farming practices.” Providing food free from chemical residues is just one goal of organic farming and perhaps not the most important.…
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The Sea Turtle and the Megapode
Alanna Gisonodo shares a story told to her by Joshua Eberdong, a sea turtle expert from Ollei, a small village located in the northern end of Ngarchelong state of Palau. The legend goes that a woman who lived in a small village near Ollei gave birth to a hawksbill sea turtle and a megapode. Every day, while…
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Website Provides Access to Splendid Collection of Urdu Poetry
Lovers of Urdu poetry will be delighted to know there is a website that provides access to more than 8,000 ghazals and 1,000 e-books. Its promoter said: “I am happy to say that the website has more than 8,000 ghazals, 700 nazms and 1,000 e-books from across 700 poets,” Sanjiv Saraf, an IIT-Kharagpur graduate and…
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Sunday Prayer – Mast Qalandar!
Nicholas Schmidle relates his experience at the annual three-day festival marking the death of Lal Shahbaz Qalandar at Smithsonian.com. Every year, a few hundred thousand Sufis converge in Seh- wan, a town in Pakistan’s southeastern Sindh province for the festival. In the desert swelter of southern Pakistan, the scent of rosewater mixed with a waft of…
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Photo of the Day
This, from MMM, “Viewed at an astounding magnification of over 250 times, tiny grains of sand are surprisingly colorful and extremely unique. Each piece is either a fragment of crystals, spiral fragments of shells or crumbs of volcanic rock.” You can view more images here.
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In Memoriam: Carter Camp – An American Indian Warrior
Neeta Lind (navajo) posts a beautiful tribute to Carter Camp who walked on the afternoon of Dec. 27, 2013. Much has been written about Carter, but many have not heard of him. He was one of the original organizers of the American Indian Movement, a pan-Indian movement sparked in part by the civil rights movement of African…
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Plants Can Talk
Originally posted on The Dish: Sort of: It turns out almost every green plant that’s been studied releases its own cocktail of volatile chemicals, and many species register and respond to these plumes. For example, the smell of cut grass — a blend of alcohols, aldehydes, ketones and esters — may be pleasant to us…
The Village Market 