This year’s Earth Day (22 April 2017) has as its theme “Environmental & Climate Literacy.” In that spirit, I’d like to suggest that environmental and climate literacy require attention to the impact of industrial scale burning of forests, …
Category Archives: NRM/environment
Settlements on Mars? Start in Earth’s deserts
Elon Musk’s introduction of SpaceX’s plans to go to Mars was long on the how to get there, but short on the “now what?” once passengers land. What would cities on Mars look like, and how would they solve …
Biofuels reconsidered
Biofuels – fuel derived from organic matter – are generally considered to be more environmentally friendly than fossil fuels in that they are renewable and, in theory at least, “carbon neutral.” However there are downsides to biofuel, such …
Terralingua’s Langscape, CFP extended
Terralingua has extended the deadline for submission of proposed articles for the next edition of its Langscape magazine until 1 August 2016.
This is for a second issue on the theme of “Voices of the Earth” (Vol. 5, #2, Winter …
Mountainbiking in the Futa Jalon, 1986-87 (a Peace Corps retrospective)
A recent story in Wired magazine, “The Roots of Dirt: How Mountain Bikes Went From Clunkers to Global Phenomenon,” brings to mind a brief personal experience with the genre in Guinea, West Africa in the mid-1980s. Since …
Sumbala, and the shifting worlds of locust beans & soybeans in West Africa
One of the two foods highlighted in my chapter about soybeans in Africa in The World of Soy (published already 8 years ago now) was a pungent West African condiment, traditionally made with “African locust beans” but increasingly with soybeans, …