BEAVERS

BEAVERS

Mar 24, 2025 | ENVIRONMENT, WORLD

Beavers live where there is enough water to dive, they build the entrance to their burrows underwater for greater safety, then if the water level is not sufficient, they build a dam.

We learnt the ‘beaver – dam’ association of thought from an early age, do you remember any cartoons in particular?

I mention cartoons because the beavers I want to talk about are definitely characters.

The beavers I want to talk about live in Brdy in the Czech Republic.

The name of this area: Brdy comes from brdo meaning hill, precisely because it is a hilly/mountainous and wooded area.

The presence of a military zone in this area meant that the area was not affected by any urbanisation, thus preserving the naturalistic aspect: flora and fauna.

Having become an environmentally protected landscape for Brdy, it had become necessary to repair a drainage canal built by the army and restore the wetlands.

Huge and extremely expensive works, the plans for which had run aground under the weight of bureaucracy and waiting for appropriations.

But the beavers magically solved the issue by building a dam!

Zero cost and a great lesson to be learned.

Nature teaches us about life in harmonious balance.

‘Beavers always know what is best. The places where they build dams are always chosen in the right way, better than when we design them on paper,’ these words are from Jaroslav Obermajer, head of the Central Bohemia office of the Czech Agency for the Protection of Nature and Landscape (AOPK). 

What can I say?

I would use the words of Jules Verne:
Nature’s creative power is far beyond man’s instinct of destruction.

Do you know another similar case?

DECEPTIVE BEAUTY

DECEPTIVE BEAUTY

Jan 19, 2025 | ENVIRONMENT

Deceptive and dangerous is the beauty of the intense pink-orange and red sunsets that close the short winter days.

If you often witness these visual ‘spectacles’ it may be that you live in a wretchedly polluted area like mine. 

You must think I’m obsessed if I even associate sunsets with my periodic returns on the subject. 

Actually, these sunsets conceal a massive presence of nitrogen dioxide in the atmosphere.

ISPRA Istituto Superiore per la Protezione e Ricerca Ambientale  explains nitrogen dioxide (NO2):
a reddish-brown gas, poorly soluble in water, toxic, with a strong, pungent odour and strong irritating power. It is a pollutant with a predominantly secondary component, as it is the product of the oxidation of nitrogen monoxide (NO).

Nitrogen dioxide is a widespread pollutant that has negative effects on human health and, together with nitrogen monoxide, contributes to photochemical smog.

Photochemical smog i.e. the formation of secondary pollutants is conditioned by the presence of light radiation in the ultraviolet region.

We grow up learning that the sky is blue, did you as a child ever have the ‘why?’ period?

Why the sky is blue is explained to us by Rayleigh’s Scattering. 

To summarise the concept in a small format, a bit like espresso 🙂 the scattering of light reflecting off small particles.

I would also point you to an interesting publication reporting on a study of sunsets in paintings, and at this point I cannot fail to mention William Turner. 

Title of the article published by EGU European Geoscinces Union:
Further evidence of the important environmental information content in the relationships between red and green depicted in the paintings of the great masters.

Assumption: We examine sunsets painted by famous artists as information for the optical depth of particles after large volcanic eruptions. Images derived from precision colour protocols applied to the paintings were compared with online images and found to provide accurate information.

We can imagine what changed in the atmosphere after volcanic eruptions, but there are no volcanoes here, so what happens?

When nitrogen dioxide particles are present in the air, it is as if a kind of geometry is created that obstructs the sun’s rays.

In these cases the red light through an interplay of different frequencies and wavelengths somehow manages to prevail.

Deceptive beauty.

That is why we see sunsets of intense, bewitching colours and allow ourselves to be enchanted by what is invisible to the eyes …

RELIFE TORINO

RELIFE TORINO

Sep 28, 2024 | ECONOMY, ENVIRONMENT, ITALY

Relife Torino is the new student apartment complex created by transforming the former Lavazza factory. 

MuseoTorino: the virtual museum of Turin, which we had already visited talking about Bicerin, tells about Lavazza in Corso Novara in Turin from 1965 until 2017.

Then in June 2018, the Lavazza Nuvola is presented. 

Inaugurated last week, Relife Torino is therefore a so-called redevelopment project curated by Turin architect Stefano Seita and studio Lombardini22 on behalf of a Swiss company: RELIFE Nation.

Relife bases its concept on the social economy through the RELIFE Foundation which has the ambition to contribute concretely to the improvement of society by ‘creating a bridge between the academic world and the third sector.’

The presentation campaign was curated by FUD Design, brand of Lombardini22.

Out of home logo including a QRcode depicted through urban floor graffiti curated by GreenGraffiti. 

It all sounds very nice.

But there is no shortage of controversy: the flats are rather expensive and certainly not affordable for all students.

The message was sent back to the sender again in the form of writing on the walls.

In your opinion, can we really talk about a better society if it is expensive?

While you tell me your student experience, shall we have a Lavazza this time?

 

HABITAT

HABITAT

Aug 10, 2024 | BOOKS, ENVIRONMENT

Habitat: the natural environment in which an animal or plant usually lives.

Here, I was thinking that I would like to see a series like ‘animals in their habitat’ instead of The Animals in my zoo.

No doubt it is very important that children learn about animals, but why the zoo?

The advertisement says that the characters were developed by a team of pedagogues.

Now, I am nobody, but wouldn’t it be nice to teach the concept of habitat?

Besides, it would also be very useful for geography.
Do you think kids know geography properly?

Zoos are becoming facsimiles – or perhaps caricatures – of how animals once were in their natural habitat.
Michael J Fox

Going back to the series, have you ever collected editions in weekly or otherwise periodical issues?

Are you the patient type who likes to wait and see your collection grow slowly and progressively?

Or rather do you prefer to search independently from bookshop to bookshop for the volumes that interest you?

Precision or inspiration?

Talk about creative ability:
Evolution is so creative. That’s how we got giraffes.
Kurt Vonnegut

Photo by BiancaVanDijk

DESIRABLE FOR ANOTHER TEN YEARS

DESIRABLE FOR ANOTHER TEN YEARS

Nov 25, 2023 | ENVIRONMENT, ITALY, WORLD

Italy appreciates the great collective effort made by Member States, EFSA, ECHA and the Commission to finalize a new evaluation of glyphosate, which took place a few years after the previous one and involved the examination of a very considerable amount of data.

However, regarding some issues for further investigation as highlighted by the EFSA opinion and which emerged in the discussions to adopt the renewal regulation, Italy deems it appropriate to underline that it is desirable:

• to launch, at community level, of further integrative studies for collection of data to fill data gaps in order to protect biodiversity and the various environmental matrices;

• to complete, without undue delay, of the evaluation of the dossiers relating to the approval or renewal of the approval of active substances that are potential alternatives to glyphosate;

• that the use of the active substance is not authorized in the pre-harvest phase.

This is our ‘contribution’ … i.e. Italy’s signature on the extension for a period of ONLY TEN YEARS! To the use of glyphosate. 

Sure, why do not go on for a decade?

After all, Sleeping Beauty has been asleep for a hundred years, what can be ten in comparison?

In the meantime it is desirable, DESIRABLE! that Roundup is not used pre-harvest, of course, better not to have it freshly harvested in the dish, but nicely grown and integrated into the food.

Forgive my sarcasm, but I can’t stand these two sides: in recent years, governments have been ‘very concerned’ about our health, but apparently only about certain sides.

I wonder why, in this case, MORE studies are needed for at least ANOTHER ten years.

Yeah, another ten years, because, as I told you before, this story goes way back. 

All this while a Californian jury found Bayer, the company that acquired Monsanto liable in a lawsuit brought by a man who claimed his cancer was due to exposure to the company’s Roundup herbicide, and ordered it to pay $332 million in damages.

The verdict includes $7 million in compensatory damages and $325 million in punitive damages awarded to plaintiff Mike Dennis, who was diagnosed at the age of 51 with non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma, according to a company spokesman. 

But it is desirable that the use of the active substance will not be authorised in the pre-harvest phase for another ten years.

AKTION GEHT UNTER DIE HAUT

AKTION GEHT UNTER DIE HAUT

Sep 16, 2023 | ENVIRONMENT, WORLD

Aktion geht unter die haut means action gets under the skin.

Literally, in this case.

What case? What action?

The case refers to Austrian Federal Minister Gewessler’s public relations campaign.

The action consists of a tattoo in exchange for an annual ticket valid for public transportation: a Klimaticket. 

Klimaticket tattoo, then.

This campaign took place at the Electric-Love Festival in 2023. The executing company is One Mobility GmbH, founded specifically for the Klimaticket and 64.417 percent owned by the Republic of Austria. 

Leonore Gewessler was at the Frequency Festival to promote the Klimaticket tattoo in person with the motto: aktion geht unter die haut “this campaign gets under your skin.”

Volunteers were able to choose one from a range of drawings and get tattooed directly on the spot.

All themes had to do with the “for the climate” ticket or the environment.

Samples included, for example, the word “Go Green” surrounded by a heart but also the words Klimaticket.

The first three people tattooed on the spot each received a free ticket valid for one year.

The promotion of public transportation is not in question, but the manner?

I find it offensive to young people in the first place, since place and conditions point to them as the main target audience.

We are really showing the young people the worst: our inadequacy, our incompetence, our lack of criterion, of values, of common sense.

Not even Orwell came up with such an idea.

By now we are not even consumers anymore, but merchandise, with an expiration date moreover.

Even our skin becomes an advertising space, to be sold off, by the way.

Am I exaggerating?

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