Quote of the Day: “Keep love in your heart. A life without it is like a sunless garden when the flowers are dead.” – Oscar Wilde (Happy Valentine’s Day!)
Photo: engin akyurt
With a new inspirational quote every day, atop the perfect photo—collected and archived on our Quote of the Day page—why not bookmark GNN.org for a daily uplift?
This Valentine’s Day, we are living in a world that needs some love—and we need to give it.
Loving is the way we wake up from the dream of powerlessness. Love is a game changer.
The Berlin wall fell. Slaves were freed. Someone published the book of their dreams today. Someone else rose up against cancer and booked a trip to Greece. Every single day, there are those who rise up in love. Love in the face of ugliness, defeat, or fiasco.
Love is spirit’s calling card. There are no weapons or conditions that can withstand the onslaught of consistent love. Love never fails.
Love never fails—it’s just that we fail to love.
Believe me, I’m not saying this is easy. After all, I’m the kind of girl who gets thrown off if you choose to visit your dying aunt over sitting with me, telling you about my 137 neuroses—and by thrown off, I mean, I will push the red button, because you’ve pushed my buttons.
We’re all human. We all find it easier to say, ‘I’ll be Gandhi tomorrow’, and meanwhile stagnate in our story about how the world should be.
It’s easy to fall onto the bandwagon of complaining. It’s a loud caravan passing through the streets daily. Ugliness gets media attention. There’s fanfare for foulness. Sometimes, it’s hard to hear anything else what with the noise of discontentment.
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Lovers turn their attention to love. It’s that simple—but it’s not simplistic. It’s not the work of simpletons. It’s the work of those who are committed to freedom, growth and cultivating capacities.
Love is a practice for those who care about how they feel each day and what words they allow to roll from their tongues into the waiting pores of those around them. This isn’t for the lazy. This isn’t for those who want to be right. This isn’t for those who want to feel wronged. This is for those who want to be free. This is for those who wish to be merciful to themselves yet uncompromising with their desires.
This is the Valentine’s Day I wish for the world. I want us to be lovers who use our power of attention to love. Lovers of others. Lovers of ourselves. I want us to do the work. I want us to be the ones who reach like seeds for the sun, because something deep within knows the light is there, even when we’re chilled by darkness.
I want us to be more than we think we can be. I want us to be what we know we can be. I want us to start now.
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What does it mean to turn your attention to love? It doesn’t mean we turn away from problems. It doesn’t mean we turn away from suffering.
We must tend to pain, especially our own. Because it’s almost impossible to love others, when we do not love ourselves.
We must find a way to rise. And this is what I know about rising. It’s about trying again. It’s about not giving up. It’s falling down 7 times and getting up 8, as the Japanese proverb goes.
Keep fighting despite your own resistance and justifications and the discouraging self-talk that diminishes who you really are.
WATCH: Therapy Dogs Surprise National Guard Troops in D.C. Who May Be Missing Their Own Pets
Of course, love doesn’t mean we don’t stand up against injustice. It means we might. But we don’t do anything out of bitterness. Bitterness eats your strength. Hate can deafen you to the voice or consciousness of the divine. Love is always merciful and yet never a doormat. It’s a firehose of strength. It’s an oracle of new perspective. Real love is a wild force that changes any landscape on any day.
Where do you need to give your love? Who do you need to love—and in what way? Or how can you love yourself more—right now?
Tama Kieves, an honors graduate of Harvard Law School, left her law practice to write and help others create their most extraordinary lives. She is the bestselling author of 4 books including A Year Without Fear: 365 Days of Magnificence and her latest Thriving Through Uncertainty. A sought-after speaker and career/success coach, she has helped thousands to thrive in their life, calling, and businesses. Sign up for your FREE digital fortune cookies and a free copy of her popular webinar Dare to Decide at www.tamakieves.com/dare.
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In time for Valentine’s Day we bring you a story of doggie love, direct from Washington, D.C. where thousands of National Guard troops will continue to be stationed away from their homes for at least another month.
More than 250 Guardsmen have been staying downtown at the Hamilton Hotel in the nation’s capital since troops were called in from around the country to protect the city after a siege on the Capitol Building one month ago.
Knowing the men and women had been away from their own families and pets for several weeks, the hotel surprised their guests with a visit from a dozen therapy dogs affiliated with the DC nonprofit People Animals Love.
The happy commotion in the lobby two weeks ago, shown in the video below, was designed as a gesture of thanks for the group’s round-the-clock service to their country.
The 12 dogs were accompanied by their owners who stood at various spots throughout the hotel located at 14th and K Streets—and all the pups were eager to extend a two-paw salute to our armed services members.
“Seeing hardened military men and women, roll around on the ground with these amazing dogs, as if no one is watching, truly filled our souls with happiness and gratitude,” Hamilton Hotel director Joe Palminteri told GNN. “It was only an hour, but the smiles and warm embraces will last a lifetime.”
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People Animals Love was founded in 1982 to proved a network of 500 individually-owned dogs and a few cats to provide comfort to people in places like care facilities, libraries, and schools. During the pandemic, the group began offering a virtual program where kids can practice reading to a PAL dog.
WATCH the video below…
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The beloved New York City landmark Empire State Building is now run entirely by wind energy—making it a green new year for the 15,000 people working inside.
Empire State Realty Trust, Inc. which owns the 102-story skyscraper along with 13 other office buildings, signed a three-year contract with Green Mountain Energy to power its entire real estate portfolio throughout New York and Connecticut with renewable wind electricity.
According to the federal EPA, it made the company the nation’s largest 100% user of green power in real estate.
More than a decade ago, the iconic building in Midtown Manhattan underwent a groundbreaking energy and efficiency retrofit, as part of the $550 million Empire State ReBuilding restoration program and has already delivered a 40% reduction in energy use and emissions.
100% of ESRT’s more than 10.1 million square-foot portfolio is now powered by renewable wind energy, which is estimated to avoid the production of 450 million pounds of carbon dioxide—equivalent to the savings if every New York State household turned off all their lights for a month, or the addition of two Central Parks to New York City.
Green Mountain Energy was awarded the electricity contract after a bid process that involved multiple electricity providers and is expected to result in more than $800,000 in savings to ESRT for the first year of the contract.
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Now the Art Deco decor isn’t the only charm for tenants who can now boast they work in all-carbon neutral offices.
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2020 was remarkable year for rhino protection in Kenya where not one single rhino lost its horn or lost its life last year—a feat not achieved since 1999.
Travel restrictions resulting from the COVID-19 pandemic was just one of the contributing factors. Other interventions include tackling poverty in nearby rural areas and increasing policing efforts to seize rhino horns being trafficked in the last few years.
In a statement, Kenyan Wildlife Service (KWS) Director retired-Brigadier General John Waweru said, “For the first time in 21 years, KWS reported zero poaching of rhinos in the year 2020. The last time this feat was achieved was in 1999.”
Rhinos aren’t the only animal benefiting from more stringent policing and lockdown measures. Elephants with their ivory tusks have experienced a marvelous reprieve in 2020.
Poaching of the two species hit a peak in 2012 and 2013, but since then elephant deaths have plummeted by 97% to a record of 11 nationwide in 2020—the lowest ever in KWS history.
South Africa, which contains 80% of all African rhinos on Earth, also reported some good news this week for the magnificent species.
The Ministry of Environment reported a 33% drop in the number of rhinos poached in the world-famous Kruger National Park last year.
2020 was the 6th year in a row in which rhino poaching incidents fell there—and since 2017, they have plummeted by 60%.
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Quote of the Day: “Patience is also a form of action.” – Auguste Rodin (French sculptor – The Thinker)
Photo by: Valentin B. Kremer
With a new inspirational quote every day, atop the perfect photo—collected and archived on our Quote of the Day page—why not bookmark GNN.org for a daily uplift?
Scientists, farmers, the USDA, and governments, are rallying around an idea that will see tons of carbon pulled out of the atmosphere and put back into the ground.
Regenerative farming practices aren’t new, but it’s new that the President of the United States should be talking about them.
A large study from the Nature Conservancy, one of the oldest environmental groups in the U.S, has shown that a particular kind of no-till farming involving the planting of cover crops and nutrient-dense food like root vegetables during the off-season could perhaps sequester as much as 10% of the world’s carbon footprint.
In a speech Biden gave in which he announced his Secretary of Agriculture as Tom Vilsack, the president mentioned how his policies will make “American agriculture the first in the world to achieve net zero emissions.”
To do this, Biden and Vilsack plan to “create new sources of income for farmers in the process by paying farmers to put their land in conservation, plant cover crops that use the soil to capture carbon.”
One such farmer is Marylander Trey Hill, featured in a Washington Post article introducing him as the first seller in a new private market of carbon credits based around this kind of farming.
The market already earned him $115,000, with buyers paying him for having returned 8,000 tons of CO2 back into the ground.
The image of the ancient farmer with his till, breaking apart the ground to make way for seed is an iconic and even romantic land-use image.
However, according to Washington Post, this act of disturbing the soil—of breaking apart roots and exposing vulnerable microbes to the sun—has throughout human history sent up 133 billion tons of carbon into the atmosphere.
As Good News Network reported last year, regenerative agriculture, either through fancy jargon like “adaptive multi-paddock grazing” or “agroforestry” or “permaculture,” totals one-fifth of all farming activities in the United States.
Principle among the regenerative farming practices is the lack of tilling, as it not only sends carbon into the atmosphere to become carbon dioxide, but it exposes soil microbes and fungus to harmful UV light, reducing soil biodiversity.
Instead, as it relates to mono-cash-crop agriculture, the vast majority of farming in the U.S., it involves using root crops to loosen and aerate the soil, and cover crops to shade it from the sun, introducing more microbial diversity, and sequestering more carbon in the plants roots.
Estimating that soil sequestration could account for 25% of the total climate mitigation strategies, Bossio and the team at Nature Conservancy detail in Nature that 47% of this strategy will involve agriculture.
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Trey Hill uses clover, lentils, and rye as cover crops, and radishes and turnips for root crops as sequestration and regeneration agents in his corn field. Recently Hill’s farm of 10,000 acres sold its carbon credits for $16.50 per ton, through a Seattle-based startup called Nori, which allows companies and individuals to buy carbon credits to offset their own carbon emissions.
Who paid Hill for putting the carbon back into the soil? The e-Commerce platform Shopify, Arizona State University, and several individuals.
While Hill notes that many farmers are still on the sidelines due to the extra cost of special equipment and such, a market is forming of companies who want to work with farmers to sequester carbon for cash.
For example, while Nori has only a few farmers signed up to sell through them, an ag-tech company in Boston called Indigo-Ag, whose clients include Dogfish Head Breweries, and JP Morgan Chase, sells carbon offsets on one million acres across 21 states.
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Biden wants to ensure that large farms have the opportunity to expand their income and protect the climate in this way, which may boost American yields of root and cover vegetables, increasing food output as well.
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If you’re still looking for a romantic Valentine’s gift for your partner, how about a super rare Melo pearl? At $332,762, this particular one isn’t exactly cheap, but it does come with quite the backstory.
Struggling fisherman Hatchai Niyomdecha was picking up oyster shells with his family last month when they stumbled upon three beautiful shells sticking to a discarded buoy ball.
The 37-year-old and his brother picked the shells off the ball and took them home. They gave them to their father Angmad, then asked for a little help with the cleaning. When the pensioner had opened the third shell, he found something brilliant: an orange pearl slightly bigger than a US quarter.
He called his wife and two boys to inspect the beautiful 7.68-gram precious item. It turned out the fishing family had an extremely expensive pearl from a large snail, the Melo Melo, on their hands.
Hatchai, who spotted the shells, says he had a strange dream a few days before finding the gem: “An old man in white with a long mustache told me to come to the beach so I can receive a gift. I think he led me to finding the pearl.
He believes that the old man could be a deity who wanted to help him get out of poverty. as the pearl could be worth as much as 10 million baht ($332,762), explaining: “I want to sell the pearl for the highest price. The money won’t just change my life… My whole family will have better lives.”
A few days later, a wealthy businessman from another province heard about the pearl and offered to buy it for one million baht ($33,276), but the family refused.
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Another persistent luxury items collector increased the offer to five million baht but the family still declined, instead believing that they could get a much higher price for it.
A third potential buyer, this time from China, is now negotiating with the family to take the pearl for 10 million baht—its expected price—but he’s hoping to see it for himself to determine that it’s genuine Melo.
RELATED: Egypt Just Discovered 27 Sealed Coffins in An Ancient Cemetery That Were Buried 2,500 Years Ago
He’s expected to fly to Thailand next week, but will have to undergo the required two-week quarantine and other guidelines before reaching the pearl owner’s home.
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Melo pearls range from orange to tan to brown in color—with orange being the most expensive shade. They are usually found in the South China Sea and Andaman Sea off the coast of Burma and are produced by predatory sea snails called Volutidae. If you want to get your hands on this one? It sounds like now’s your chance.
Featured image: SWNS
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Steph Curry may be the greatest shooter in NBA history and treated as basketball royalty, but he’s also a generous supporter of charities lifting up folks in need.
Last summer, as the COVID-19 pandemic stalled the economy leaving many out of work, he and his wife Ayesha launched Eat. Learn. Play., a foundation that helps families struggling to put food on the table, through donations to the Alameda County Community Food Bank and the Oakland, California school system.
“We know the world is changing before our eyes in terms of dealing with the spread of coronavirus and we just found out that the Oakland Unified School District is closing the doors for the foreseeable future, so we want to intercede on behalf of the kids that rely on the daily services and try to help any way we can,” Steph Curry explained in a video tweet.
Oakland is closing schools bc of COVID-19. We support this decision but are concerned a/b the 18,000+ kids that rely on school for 2+ meals daily. @eatlearnplay is donating to @ACCFB to ensure every child has access to the food they need. Join us & donate https://t.co/nDqF7OoO0Z pic.twitter.com/nFp0w1eFqH
— Stephen Curry (@StephenCurry30) March 14, 2020
Since then, the initiative has expanded exponentially. After joining forces with the world-renowned, Chef José Andrés, founder of the nonprofit disaster-relief group World Central Kitchen, Steph and Ayesha’s foundation has gone from serving 4,000 meals a week to 300,000.
In total, more than 15 million meals—and counting—have found their way to those in need.
But more than just serving up meals, Eat. Learn. Play. is also giving the local economy a much-needed financial shot in the arm—about $20 million that has “led to the rehiring of more than 900 Oakland restaurant workers.”
“It’s like we’re feeding the restaurants to make sure they can feed the community,” World Central Kitchen’s restaurant operations lead Anna Shova told Sf-ist.
“Restaurant culture has changed. Popular Michelin star restaurants have now asked ‘What else can I do for the community?’”
“Everything happens for a reason,” Ayesha Curry told The SF Chronicle. “For us to start in July and then just a few months later have this crisis thrust at our community and be able to keep up with the demand has really been a blessing.”
“It’s all about impact,” Steph Curry added. “The things my wife and I try to do, separately and together, are to raise awareness, to find impactful partnerships, to be human and understand the urgency of the moment.”
And that’s the way this elite player scores big.
Featured image: @StephenCurry/Twitter
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The Lunar New Year is upon us, horoscopes are flying through the digital ether like fireworks above Beijing, and this time around—according to the Chinese Zodiac—it’s the year of the Ox.
If you were born in the following years, you’re an Ox: 1925, 1937, 1949, 1961, 1973, 1985, 1997, 2009, and 2021.
Honest and earnest, the Ox, or Chou (丑), is the ultimate rock around which one builds a family or a business. A rational mind and a strong belief that everyone should fulfill their responsibilities makes it difficult for Oxen to be reasoned with sometimes, but their values always shine through their actions.
Look for those with horoscopes most compatible with Oxen: Rats, Roosters, and Snakes. Pay attention to your lucky numbers 1 and 4, and the colors yellow, blue, and green. Travel east and southeast for auspiciousness, and south for love.
This year’s birth Oxen were born in the Metal phase or (辛 xīn), and while this means their upbringing was, is, or will be tough, no financial worries will befall them. Their retirement will also be enjoyable.
Chinese astrology states that the year in which the stars on your birth date come around again to sit opposite Jupiter is “Ben Ming Nian”, or the unlucky year, as Jupiter opposes the mythical Tai Sui—heavenly generals, or star gods, of your birth year.
In this year of Xīn Chou, one horoscope states “you may encounter unexpected challenges, especially in your career and studies, which can leave you feeling stressed out, distracted, and emotional.”
Another states that “In Ben Ming Nian, the overall horoscope of Ox people will become precarious.”
However, all acknowledge that the Metal phase which is generating with Earth, will benefit Oxen to some extent.
Furthermore, there is perhaps no sign more equipped to deal with Ben Ming Nian than Oxen, and none of these things should prevent an Ox from doing what they do best: working, speaking the truth, and developing oneself.
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If you find that Tai Sui starts playing hardball, be yourself, trust your own strengths, and you will find your way out again as the wheel of fortune spins ’round your way.
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In many ways the Xin Chou year, and the path forward through it, is demonstrative of the state of humankind in this difficult period. If we all borrow a little bit of Ox’s strength, the celestial wheel will turn all of our fortunes in time.
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Nearly six in 10 Americans are planning to make ‘carpe diem’—Latin for seize the day—their new mantra after the COVID-19 pandemic, according to a new poll.
The survey asked 2,000 Americans about the impact COVID-19 had on their lives and what lessons they’ve learned. It found 68% are planning to emerge from quarantine as new people. In fact, seven in 10 polled are planning to live each and every day to the fullest post-pandemic.
Conducted by OnePoll on behalf of Life Happens, a nonprofit educating consumers about the importance of life insurance, the survey found that 71% of respondents value the little things in life more than ever because of the past year.
Some of the ‘small wins’ Americans are pursuing at this time included speaking to their families more (45%), speaking their minds more truthfully (43%), and taking more vacation time when it’s safe to do so (42%).
Four in 10 respondents also shared they plan to be more confident and express themselves creatively as a part of this small-win revolution.
This isn’t to say respondents aren’t focusing on big life decisions during this time, however, as three quarters of those polled said it’s important for them to get their finances in order in 2021.
In fact, achieving financial security is the most important milestone for Americans to achieve for the second year in a row (38% in 2021 compared to 36% in 2020).
Faisa Stafford, President and CEO of Life Happens said: “Traditional milestones and outlooks on life have been upended, leading many to reevaluate what’s important in life and their relationships. For many, the past year has emphasized that there is no better financial security for your loved ones than life insurance, with our survey showing that more than a quarter (29%) consider getting life insurance a ‘small act of love.’”
Another important milestone for Americans includes becoming debt free—up 8% compared to last year’s survey (26% in 2021 compared to 18% in 2020).
RELATED: 8 in 10 Americans Say Positive Memories Have Been a ‘Lifeline’ During the Pandemic
The year-to-year results also showed that two milestones in particular are less of a focus in 2021—the first being marriage (down 11%) and achieving a successful career (down 5%).
CHECK OUT: These Bad Habits Americans Picked Up in 2020 They Want to Get Rid of in 2021
This is most likely due to the pandemic, as 58% of respondents said this has drastically changed which milestones they’d like to accomplish in life.
MORE: Nearly 70% of Americans are More Appreciative of Loved Ones Than Ever Before
When it comes to reasons for avoiding talking about finances during the pandemic, men (31%) and women (37%) both agreed that arguing with their significant other/spouse over money was the leading cause for choosing to eschew the topic.
TOP ‘SMALL WINS’ PEOPLE ARE PURSUING DURING THE PANDEMIC
See/speak to their families more – 45%
Speak their minds more truthfully – 43%
Take more vacation time when it’s safe – 42%
Be more confident – 41%
Express themselves creatively – 41%
Take better care of their mental health – 31%
Don’t cancel plans in the future – 26%
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Quote of the Day: “No winter lasts forever; no spring skips its turn.” – Hal Borland
Photo by: Ravi Patel
With a new inspirational quote every day, atop the perfect photo—collected and archived on our Quote of the Day page—why not bookmark GNN.org for a daily uplift?
Non-profits need profits, and one Portland interior designer has found a subtle, effective way to fund projects looking to alleviate the Oregon homelessness epidemic.
A short-hand equivalent of when grocery stores ask shoppers to round up and give the surplus to charity, she’s adding a 1% line item on every client invoice as a way of generating money for non-profits: and other interior designers in the state have been joining her.
Despite having one of the highest state tax burdens in the nation, Oregon struggles with homelessness rates.
Seeking to utilize the real estate and home furnishing industry’s familiarity with the problem, Jessica Helgerson started the One Percent Project and found that among her interior design business’ 25 clients, only one opted out of the voluntary 1% charge.
“When you’re working with people who can afford an interior designer, that might not be a lot of money to them,” explains Helgerson to Fast Company. “That has really fostered a lot of enthusiasm; people are excited they can be part of it.”
Launched in 2019, the One Percent Project is now generating revenue for nine Portland and Oregon state organizations that work ro alleviate homelessness, including Community Warehouse—a sort of Salvation Army that allows people transitioning out of homelessness to shop for free.
The grant they’ve received through the One Percent Project has so far come to a whopping $150,000, which Community Warehouse used to buy a new van to make deliveries.
How did such a big fundraising number happen? In 2019, more than a dozen interior-related businesses in the Pacific Northwest got onboard with the project—and that number is only rising.
“It was important that it not just be interior design,” Helgerson said. “But that it be all aspects of the home world. Real estate agents, architects, plumbing, contractors, supply places. It’s a very broad world.”
Another grant recipient benefitting from the increased participation was Portland Homeless Family Solutions, a shelter and support center that helps homeless folks stay safe and positive while seeking long-term housing.
The One Percent Project provided a $40,000 grant to fund the project and over 800 pro-bono hours of interior design work. Using concepts from trauma-informed design, the remodeled space is grounded in safety, accessibility, flexibility, connectivity, inclusion, health, and healing.
The One Percent Project finds that the 1% line item makes it easy for businesses to add it into their operations without expanding software or personnel, while the association between the housing industry and the homelessness epidemic makes sense to clients—similarly, perhaps, to the no-brainer of an airline buying carbon offsets, or a paper company planting trees.
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Neurologists looking to understand how perfect pitch affects the brain found an altogether different and inspiring conclusion about music and brain function.
They found that both perfect pitch—the ability to identify a note simply by the sound—and musical training in general led to greater functional connectivity between the regions of the brain.
Perfect pitch is something associated with musical genius, and is a talent possessed by such titans as Mozart, Pavarotti, Tchaikovsky, Jimi Hendrix, and Mariah Carey.
Using state-of-the-art methods of assessing the synchronized activity between brain hemispheres and regions, Simon Leipold and the other researchers found “robust effects of musicianship in inter-and intrahemispheric connectivity in both structural and functional networks.”
The trial consisted of 153 female and male participants; 52 perfect pitch musicians, 51 non-perfect pitch musicians, and 50 non-musicians.
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“Crucially, most of the effects were replicable in both musicians with and without absolute pitch when compared to non-musicians,” write the authors of the corresponding paper, who are neurologists at the University of Zurich and at Stanford. “However, we did not find evidence for an effect of [perfect] pitch on intrinsic functional or structural connectivity in our data: The two musician groups showed strikingly similar networks across all analyses.”
They also found that musical training at a young age produces stronger structural connections—as in, connections that help distinct areas of the brain work together to perform complex cognitive tasks—which has important implications outside of musical education.
Leipold and the team have unknowingly produced a very strong case for musical education in schools, as their finding of structural connections is nothing trivial. Rather, it’s one of the most important metrics of brain health and development.
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The paper is a great case of unexpected discoveries in science: how setting up studies to examine one hypothesized effect can sometimes lead to the discovery of a totally different one, with widely different implications.
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Taking a moment away from your work to stretch out your mind can be a great way to manage stress, and these NASA videos of our Sun, Moon, and Earth are perfect ways to do so.
Buried in our screens, buried under a curtain of artificial light, humans can lose connection with an intangible part of our heritage—looking at a sky filled with planets and stars.
Imagining that a nighttime picture from a cosmic observatory is the kind of thing every one of our ancient ancestors saw every time they looked at the night sky is a wild thought.
Yet now we have methods of seeing space that our ancestors didn’t, and it’s thanks to things like Hubble or NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory, but also the world’s astronauts and astro-engineers who have been bringing 4K ultra-HD video cameras up to the International Space Station with them.
In NASA’s video gallery, one can take a vacation from Earth for a few minutes, as well as a broader perspective about one’s place in the world, and the place of one’s planet in the galaxy—all through the advent of positively stunning ultra-HD video quality.
You’ll learn a lot, since the video captions are well-written and, without using too much jargon, don’t spare any details.
As a species, sungazing is not recommended. The ultraviolet light emitted from the Sun can quickly damage our eyesight, but the cameras aboard NASA’s suite of solar observatories have no problem spending all year staring right at it.
The videos in the NASA video gallery show our star in 10 different light spectrums, allowing us to see colors of the Sun which our eyes cannot perceive.
They include videos of Mercury—as small as a marble, passing in front of the Sun, of solar flares and coronal mass ejections, and even a one-hour video featuring a solid decade of solar activity measured at one day per second, all in 4K-UHD.
For those who like to get a satellite’s-eye view of our home planet, the video gallery is filled with pass-overs of continents, as well as different atmospheric effects.
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Jack Fischer, Jeff Williams, and other astronauts aboard the ISS sometimes record videos for us unfortunates stuck down below, and they include dizzying and varied views of the blue marble, including a slow fly-over of Europe, including helpful designations of cities, and the glint of the moon off the surface of the ocean.
RELATED: NASA Uses Supercomputers and AI to Count Earth’s Trees From Space for the First Time
Other observations include several space walks, and a five-minute montage of the Aurora Borealis and Aurora Australis taken at different points in orbit that are mind-bogglingly gorgeous.
As our nearest cosmic neighbor, enormous bodies of imaging data exist of the Moon, including a spectacular 4K recording of its permanently-shadowed far side, where the viewer can see exactly what the Apollo 13 astronauts saw all those years ago.
Another slow, sweeping, 4K journey across the pockmarked surface is set to Claude Debussy’s Clair de Lune, performed by the National Symphony Orchestra on NASA’s 60th anniversary, which all together is enough to bring a tear to your eye.
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The footage is courtesy of the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter that’s currently circling the Earth.
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Controlled avalanches are generally set off in order to prevent larger ones from happening, but that doesn’t mean they’re not without danger.
Jesse Dahlberg was watching as railroad crews using explosives set off a series of small avalanches near the town of Field in southeastern British Columbia when he noticed a lone elk directly in the path of the next manmade snow tsunami.
Although he hoped the elk might be able to outrun the oncoming peril, the animal was engulfed in a wave of white as the avalanche coursed around it on its way down the mountainside.
“I didn’t know how big the avalanche was going to be so I was hoping for the best… When I saw it, I thought there’s no way that elk is going to survive,” Dahlberg told CBC News. “That wall of snow caught up to that elk so fast and just blasted it.”
Enlisting the aid of a friend, Dahlberg decided to drive over to see if there was any chance the elk might have survived. After parking at a spot close to where the elk was felled, they followed a trail of debris uphill.
Miraculously, Dahlberg saw a portion of the animal’s face peering out from its snowy prison. The elk was also totally immobilized by the weight of the snow in which it was buried.
Once Dahlberg realized the elk was alive, he knew they’d have to act quickly to extricate it. He could only hope that none of its limbs had been fractured by the impact of the avalanche.
Dahlberg began digging with his hands, sending his friend back to their vehicle for a shovel.
Working steadily, it took them only 15 minutes to dig the elk’s hind legs free. Then, with a little prompting, the hapless critter was able to shake its way clear and walk out of the snowdrift.
“I put my arms up and started cheering because I was so excited that it was alive,” Dahlberg said. “I was so happy.”
Rather than take flight, the forest denizen stood by calmly gazing at its rescuers as they left the scene as if saying a silent “thank you.”
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To which Dahlberg might have rightly replied, “You’re very welkcome.”
(WARNING: Jesse’s video of the avalanche happening contains lots of swearing.)
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The world’s oldest recipes, eating habits, and even culinary culture have been decoded by Babylonian scholars at Yale.
The four dishes, recreated by measuring ingredient portions in a scientifically averaged way, turned out to be different types of lamb stew, and connects culinary traditions in modern Iraq, Iran, and Syria to their Mesopotamian ancestors.
Aromatic Persian shallot, leek, onion, and garlic join fine-grained salt and meat which—when mixed with water, milk, and barley cakes—gives the cook a tasty stew.
How much garlic, how much milk? It’s impossible to ask, because whoever created this staple, reminiscent of pacha, a modern-day soup eaten in Iraq, has been dead for thousands of years.
When Assyriologists realized that—lying among the thousands of clay tablets carved with cuneiform letters that make up Yale’s Babylonian Collection—there were the intimate details of not only recipes, but food preparation and dialogue on world cuisine, they must have seen an incredible opportunity to gain insight on the everyday world of this ancient civilization.
Culinary historians and food scientists joined the cuneiform readers in forming a team to decode these ancient eats, and after some trial and error, assembled four recipes for different stews, giving a fascinating insight into the culture of Babylonian and Sumerian kitchens.
Three tablets contained the working recipes, with the largest hosting 25 ingredient lists. Their simplicity paralleled someone explaining how to make a hamburger today—the current cultural setting would make it so obvious, but 4,000 years from now the method may be a mystery.
The first dish, called me-e puhadi, is seasoned with garlic, onion, and a lot of coriander, but the principle component is the melting of sheep’s tail fat in the pot. This base is used to sauté (sort of) the lamb meat.
Known as alya in Arabic, rendered sheep’s tail was an “indispensable ingredient in Iraq, until around the 1960s,” culinary historian and Medieval Iraqi cuisine expert Nawal Nasrallah said in a BBC Travel piece on the recipes.
“I was really surprised to find that what is a staple in Iraq today, which is a stew, is also a staple from ancient times, because in Iraq today, that is our daily meal: stew and rice with a bread,” said Nasrallah. “It is really fascinating to see how such a simple dish, with all its infinite variety, has survived from ancient times to present.”
Another dish, which the BBC has written down completely in our own language, is called Tuh’u, and contains red beetroots, lamb, coriander, and beer. It’s reminiscent, Nasrallah argues, of Ashkenazi-Russian borscht, or a stew made by Iraqi Jewish communities called Kofta Shawandar Hamudh, which means beetroots and meatballs.
The last deciphered recipe was like a chicken pot pie, with layers of dough filled with chunks of bird cooked in something like a béchamel sauce.
The tablets demonstrated another fascinating cultural development in our history: the recognition of cuisine.
“Elamite stew” titles one recipe. Bearing the name of another very early civilization from the time of Babylon and Sumer, and one which would be an almost perennial pain in the backside for conquering kings of Babylon and later Assyria, this stew is based with animal blood, and the texts recognize it in the way which we would recognize something like tacos, or Pad Thai, something which once was foreign but has become a ubiquitous menu item known by all.
“There is a notion of ‘cuisine’ in these 4,000-year-old texts. There is food which is ‘ours’ and food that is ‘foreign,’” Gojko Barjamovic, chief translator on the team, told BBC. “Foreign is not bad—only different, and sometimes apparently worth cooking, since they give us the recipe.”
“Mu elamutum” as it’s called, includes dill, an ingredient demonstrative of its foreignness, since dill isn’t used in Iraqi cooking, and isn’t mentioned in any of the Babylonian recipes—which Yale have put online for others to try making.
Iranian cuisine on the other hand does use dill, and it is modern-day Iran where the Elamites lived. So trade between the two nations created an understanding of food culture, and an appreciation of different flavors.
Archaeologists and scholars have decoded a lot of ancient texts that give us insight into how people lived in the so-called, “black and white era” of history.
In his book Babylon, Paul Kriwaczek details translations of Babylonian and Sumerian receipts, athletic competitions, and even humor, while ancient Greek scholars decoded the musical notation for the world’s oldest song, the Epitaph of Seikilos.
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Food though, is maybe a little bit more universal than music, sports, or commerce, and in the writings of the Babylonian chefs we find an incredible human connection to the past, enshrined in lamb and coriander.
(WATCH the dishes being made in the Yale video below.)
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Quote of the Day: “If we had no winter, the spring would not be so pleasant: if we did not sometimes taste of adversity, prosperity would not be so welcome.” – Anne Bradstreet
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With a new inspirational quote every day, atop the perfect photo—collected and archived on our Quote of the Day page—why not bookmark GNN.org for a daily uplift?
Virtual courtrooms of course have their drawbacks, but who could know one of them would see a serious lawyer explaining to a judge, “I’m not a cat?”
When Rod Ponton was unable to turn off a cute kitty Zoom filter in a Texas court hearing, it’s safe to say he got into a bit of a flap.
He promised the judge his legal assistant was working to rectify the issue. With his fluffy kitten’s eyes growing ever wider, more confused, and more expressive, Ponton then felt the need to let Judge Roy Ferguson know he wasn’t actually a feline. Ferguson replied kindly, “I can see that.”
Watch the video and let us know if you think the most amazing part of this Zoom call is: a) That no-one on the call laughed at the mishap b) That this pandemic-era video is seemingly impossible to watch just once.
With 20 million views online, if you do keep pressing play—know you’re likely not the only one.
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Ponton is in on the laughs. He doesn’t seem to mind the attention at all, telling the New York Times, “If I can make the country chuckle for a moment in these difficult times they’re going through, I’m happy to let them do that at my expense.”
(WATCH the video below.)
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Four Nigerian famers have won a 13-year legal battle against Shell Oil after a spill allegedly contaminated their lands.
The David vs Goliath story went all the way from the rural Niger Delta to The Hague Court of Appeal, resulting in the farmers being compensated, with further mandates for both safety and cleanup being pressed upon parent company Royal Dutch Shell.
It was on Friday that the Netherlands ruled in favor of farmers from the Goi and Oruma communities, rejecting Shell Nigeria’s claim that oil spills in the area were the result of sabotage.
Nigerian law requires claims of sabotage to be proved with evidence beyond any reasonable doubt, something which the defenders could not do.
“Finally, there is some justice for the Nigerian people suffering the consequences of Shell’s oil,” said Eric Dooh, one of the complainants in a statement from Friends of Earth Netherlands, a grassroots organization that took on the case as a major rallying call.
“It is a long time victory that we have been dreaming of. It is not only a victory for me, it is a victory for the entire Niger Delta region, the Ogoni people, the civil society organizations. It is a victory for me and my family. It is a victory for humanity,” he added.
A decade had passed before the case began to make real headway after The Hague Court of Appeal ruled that it had jurisdiction over the case in 2015 (Shell’s headquarters are based in the Netherlands).
“This is fantastic news for the environment and people living in developing countries,” said Friends of the Earth’s Netherlands head, Donald Pols. “It means people in developing countries can take on the multinationals who do them harm.”
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Along with arbitrating a settlement, the court found that Shell Nigeria lacked any kind of leak detection system in the pipelines and wells in and around the Goi and Oruma communities, and that state-of-the-art systems must be installed, or risk a €100,000 per day ($121,000 per day) fine.
Furthermore, a local cleanup operation was found to be insufficient, and it was ruled that Shell must conduct a much more thorough cleaning of the oil from the waters and farmland.
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This wasn’t the only court case won by locals in developing countries over the last 12 months. A succession of legal victories for Indigenous groups, both in Panama and Brazil, transferred approximately 250,000 hectares—more than half a million acres of rainforest from state ownership, under which illegal logging thrived, to tribal communities.
Featured image: Quino Al
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