Maggie Baird, best known as the mother of Billie Eilish and Finneas O’Connell, is stepping into a much larger spotlight, this time as a climate storyteller.
Tillage is one of the clearest signals of how a farm treats its soil. Intensive plowing can degrade structure, release carbon, and increase erosion. Conservation practices—no-till, cover cropping, minimal disturbance—do the opposite. They build soil, retain water, and support biodiversity. But until now, measuring these practices at scale has been slow, expensive, and often self-reported.
Hydrophilis, Oliver Isler’s experimental rebreather suit, reimagines diving by reducing drag, eliminating bubbles, and bringing humans closer to the natural movement of marine life.
If you work as a roofer, landscaper, pool builder, or in construction, installing garden slabs or solar panels, building sheds, or working on outdoor home improvement projects, take note of new research that can help you protect your heart.
Maggie Baird, best known as the mother of Billie Eilish and Finneas O’Connell, is stepping into a much larger spotlight, this time as a climate storyteller.
Tillage is one of the clearest signals of how a farm treats its soil. Intensive plowing can degrade structure, release carbon, and increase erosion. Conservation practices—no-till, cover cropping, minimal disturbance—do the opposite. They build soil, retain water, and support biodiversity. But until now, measuring these practices at scale has been slow, expensive, and often self-reported.
Hydrophilis, Oliver Isler’s experimental rebreather suit, reimagines diving by reducing drag, eliminating bubbles, and bringing humans closer to the natural movement of marine life.
If you work as a roofer, landscaper, pool builder, or in construction, installing garden slabs or solar panels, building sheds, or working on outdoor home improvement projects, take note of new research that can help you protect your heart.
Maggie Baird, best known as the mother of Billie Eilish and Finneas O’Connell, is stepping into a much larger spotlight, this time as a climate storyteller.
Tillage is one of the clearest signals of how a farm treats its soil. Intensive plowing can degrade structure, release carbon, and increase erosion. Conservation practices—no-till, cover cropping, minimal disturbance—do the opposite. They build soil, retain water, and support biodiversity. But until now, measuring these practices at scale has been slow, expensive, and often self-reported.
Hydrophilis, Oliver Isler’s experimental rebreather suit, reimagines diving by reducing drag, eliminating bubbles, and bringing humans closer to the natural movement of marine life.
If you work as a roofer, landscaper, pool builder, or in construction, installing garden slabs or solar panels, building sheds, or working on outdoor home improvement projects, take note of new research that can help you protect your heart.
Maggie Baird, best known as the mother of Billie Eilish and Finneas O’Connell, is stepping into a much larger spotlight, this time as a climate storyteller.
Tillage is one of the clearest signals of how a farm treats its soil. Intensive plowing can degrade structure, release carbon, and increase erosion. Conservation practices—no-till, cover cropping, minimal disturbance—do the opposite. They build soil, retain water, and support biodiversity. But until now, measuring these practices at scale has been slow, expensive, and often self-reported.
Hydrophilis, Oliver Isler’s experimental rebreather suit, reimagines diving by reducing drag, eliminating bubbles, and bringing humans closer to the natural movement of marine life.
If you work as a roofer, landscaper, pool builder, or in construction, installing garden slabs or solar panels, building sheds, or working on outdoor home improvement projects, take note of new research that can help you protect your heart.
Maggie Baird, best known as the mother of Billie Eilish and Finneas O’Connell, is stepping into a much larger spotlight, this time as a climate storyteller.
Tillage is one of the clearest signals of how a farm treats its soil. Intensive plowing can degrade structure, release carbon, and increase erosion. Conservation practices—no-till, cover cropping, minimal disturbance—do the opposite. They build soil, retain water, and support biodiversity. But until now, measuring these practices at scale has been slow, expensive, and often self-reported.
Hydrophilis, Oliver Isler’s experimental rebreather suit, reimagines diving by reducing drag, eliminating bubbles, and bringing humans closer to the natural movement of marine life.
If you work as a roofer, landscaper, pool builder, or in construction, installing garden slabs or solar panels, building sheds, or working on outdoor home improvement projects, take note of new research that can help you protect your heart.
Maggie Baird, best known as the mother of Billie Eilish and Finneas O’Connell, is stepping into a much larger spotlight, this time as a climate storyteller.
Tillage is one of the clearest signals of how a farm treats its soil. Intensive plowing can degrade structure, release carbon, and increase erosion. Conservation practices—no-till, cover cropping, minimal disturbance—do the opposite. They build soil, retain water, and support biodiversity. But until now, measuring these practices at scale has been slow, expensive, and often self-reported.
Hydrophilis, Oliver Isler’s experimental rebreather suit, reimagines diving by reducing drag, eliminating bubbles, and bringing humans closer to the natural movement of marine life.
If you work as a roofer, landscaper, pool builder, or in construction, installing garden slabs or solar panels, building sheds, or working on outdoor home improvement projects, take note of new research that can help you protect your heart.
Maggie Baird, best known as the mother of Billie Eilish and Finneas O’Connell, is stepping into a much larger spotlight, this time as a climate storyteller.
Tillage is one of the clearest signals of how a farm treats its soil. Intensive plowing can degrade structure, release carbon, and increase erosion. Conservation practices—no-till, cover cropping, minimal disturbance—do the opposite. They build soil, retain water, and support biodiversity. But until now, measuring these practices at scale has been slow, expensive, and often self-reported.
Hydrophilis, Oliver Isler’s experimental rebreather suit, reimagines diving by reducing drag, eliminating bubbles, and bringing humans closer to the natural movement of marine life.
If you work as a roofer, landscaper, pool builder, or in construction, installing garden slabs or solar panels, building sheds, or working on outdoor home improvement projects, take note of new research that can help you protect your heart.
Maggie Baird, best known as the mother of Billie Eilish and Finneas O’Connell, is stepping into a much larger spotlight, this time as a climate storyteller.
Tillage is one of the clearest signals of how a farm treats its soil. Intensive plowing can degrade structure, release carbon, and increase erosion. Conservation practices—no-till, cover cropping, minimal disturbance—do the opposite. They build soil, retain water, and support biodiversity. But until now, measuring these practices at scale has been slow, expensive, and often self-reported.
Hydrophilis, Oliver Isler’s experimental rebreather suit, reimagines diving by reducing drag, eliminating bubbles, and bringing humans closer to the natural movement of marine life.
If you work as a roofer, landscaper, pool builder, or in construction, installing garden slabs or solar panels, building sheds, or working on outdoor home improvement projects, take note of new research that can help you protect your heart.
Increasing evidence shows that sugar is a natural enemy to the body.
“Don’t you think I know how hard it is, honey/To get some “sugar” from the phone,” sings country singer Bonnie Raitt, vividly summing up the difficulty of maintaining a long-distance romance. Sugar represents all that’s sweet and desirable, but in the light of recent studies, sugar may come to stand for poison.
The historical statistics are startling. The average sugar consumption in 1700 was 4 lbs – a little under 2 kg, yearly. Compare that to the yearly sugar intake of as many as 50% of today’s Americans: 180 lb. (81.647 kg.) of sugar per year. That’s half a pound – 250 grams of sugar, every day. Looking at the numbers of obese people on the streets in many other countries, like in the Middle East, it’s easy to see that the rest of the world isn’t far behind.
Green Prophet’s resident photographer documents “cut” Hajar Mountains in the United Arab Emirates.
Huge swaths of the Hajar Mountains in the UAE’s northern emirates appear ghostly white when viewed on Google Earth. Closer examination of the satellite imagery reveals large chunks of missing hillside and some sort of quarrying operations, and my recent physical visit to the area revealed these to be mostly rock ‘crushers.’
Simply put, sections of the rocky mountainsides are blown up and crushed down to whatever grade of rubble is required. Dust suppression is an important consideration in this industry, but it’s effectiveness seems limited as a pale grey dust coats the mountains around the quarries.
Is the Red Sea shark spotted at Eilat beach, Israel escaping illegal hunters in Egypt?
While it’s rare to find sharks in the Mediterranean Sea (they are almost extinct), they are not so uncommon in the Red Sea. Its warm waters and ample food source bait sharks who sometimes get personal with bathers and divers. In 2010, a Red Sea white tip shark ate an elderly tourist and just this weekend, a Red Sea shark visited an Eilat, Israel beach, getting within feet of swimmers. There was no mention in media reports if it was a gentle whale shark or a white tip, but in any case no damage was done.
Irish artist David Thomas Smith weaves thousands of Google Maps screen grabs into intricate designs mimicking Persian rugs.
Look closer, and these symmetrical compositions reveal global landscapes transformed by mankind. Imagine a carpet made up of aerial satellite images of modern infrastructure: concrete roads and rooftops replacing fiber weft and warp. See this artist’s “rug” made from snaps of Beijing International Airport, above.
According to CoCreate, Smith said the works are meant to reflect upon “global capitalism, transforming the aerial landscapes of sites associated with industries such as oil, precious metals, consumer culture information and excess.”
Known as turmos in the Levant, lupine beans – poor folk’s food – are a tasty Middle-Eastern snack in need of more recognition.
Except in some South American countries, the Western world doesn’t give lupines much regard. Chickpeas get much more publicity (like our vegan chickpea and artichoke salad). Maybe it has to do with the long soaking and rinsing that the beans have to undergo in order to lose their bitterness and become edible. Real slow food. But with every food that’s good for you, the effort is worth it. Yes, and lupines are tasty and have high nutritional value. Not to mention that they are an eminently sustainable crop, fixing nitrogen into the soil and (so far) having escaped the clutches of GMO ideology. And of course, eating more pulses and less meat benefits you and the planet.
Mars is red and so is the Sahara desert, but the similarities between the two run deeper than that. Which is why the Austrian Space Forum (OEWF) dispatched a crew to Morocco, where they tested a series of communication, vehicular, wearable and other technologies that may eventually be deployed on the red planet, Gizmag reports.
The largest simulated space mission stemming from Europe, Mars2013 took place near Erfoud in the northern Sahara throughout February this year. During that time, scientists experimented with a simulated spacesuit called Aouda.X, a temporary emergency shelter, some rovers, and a slew of communication technologies, in addition to exploring other issues that might come up on a real Mars mission.
People who own cars want to at least have the option of taking an extended road trip, which has been a major barrier to the success of electric vehicles to date. Limited driving range and long battery charging times are two challenges that EV industry leaders have been working furiously to overcome, and a company from Israel believes they have devised an acceptable solution.
Phinergy’s air batteries made up of 50 aluminum plates can give EVs a range of up to 1,000 miles, according to Gizmag, with each plate providing enough energy for 20 miles. Weighing a total of 55 pounds, this fuel cell could be used in tandem with existing lithium-ion batteries, according to the developers, but the technology is far from ideal.
For centuries, kombucha lovers have been drinking the fizzy tea beverage and claiming amazing health benefits from it. Some people are now making hard kombucha… this is kombucha with alcohol.
The origins of kombucha tea are veiled in ancient history. Some say that man first brewed tea with a “mother” kombucha culture in Korea. Others say it was in China, or Japan.
While one website authoritatively states that it was first made in 415 AD, another just as firmly says that the brew was first noticed in 221 BC. Nobody really knows when that first time occurred, nor how it happened that someone made sweet tea, plunked a piece of pale, rubbery “mushroom” into it, and observed that the tea made them feel better. To learn more about conventional mushrooms and cancer research, click here. But it is known that the taste for kombucha spread by the Silk Road to Russian and from there across to Europe. In Israel, kombucha tea is mostly appreciated by the large Russian immigrant community.
A bottle of hard kombucha. Like beer but better for you?
Legends apart, if millions of people have been drinking tea fermented with kombucha over the centuries, there must be something to it. Kombucha is said to detoxify the body through improving liver and pancreas function. The outcome is relief from arthritic pain, improved digestion and gut health, higher immunities, and mood improvement – among many other good things. Another little-known natural remedy for arthritis is turmeric.
The more extravagant health claims (cures cancer! kills gout!) should be taken with a grain of salt, but modern studies show that kombucha actually is very rich in probiotic substances, beneficial acids and anti-oxidants. Drinking 4 ounces every day does encourage growth of friendly flora, and if you want to consider bacteria as fauna, that too.
Of course, it’s not a miracle drug. Anyone wanting to improve their health has to make other lifestyle changes. There’s hardly a need to repeat what everyone is tired of hearing and few seriously pursue: a healthy diet, adequate exercise, fresh air and a positive attitude (or at least regular stress-reducing activities like meditation, singing, etc.). And drinking more kombucha than your body is used to can bring on a good attack of diarrhea.
The sensible way to get your body acquainted with kombucha is to start with 2 oz. (1/4 cup) every day for a week, then move up to 4 oz. (1/2 cup). This is also true of other richly probiotic foods like kefir.
To brew kombucha at home, you need a mother culture, a clean glass jar, tea, sugar, and a thin dish cloth to cover the jar while the tea ferments. English-speakers refer to the mother culture as a SCOBY – a Symbiotic Culture Of Bacterias and Yeasts. You may obtain a SCOBY via the Internet, or put out a query on your neighborhood e-list. The process is truly a slow-food experience, as it takes a week until the first kombucha batch is fully fermented and ready to drink. But once you start a cycle of brewing, you won’t be without.
The following links are the ones I’ve found to be the most useful. Enjoy!
Middle East city heads want to make their cities more sustainable.
The Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region is 60 percent urbanized compared to the global average of 52 percent and is home to one of the world’s most rapidly expanding populations. By 2030, a 45 percent increase of MENA’s urban population will add another 106 million people to urban centres. Countries like Egypt, Iraq, Yemen, Kuwait, and Djibouti will see their urban population doubling over the next 20 years.
In Rabat last month I attended a series of fascinating exchanges among several Mayors and ministers of urban and local administration from Morocco, Tunisia, Jordan, Lebanon, Egypt, Yemen, and the Palestinian Territories. This initiative, supported by the Arab Urban Development Institute, the World Bank and the Center for Mediterranean Integration, was designed to connect MENA city leaders to urban leaders and experts from around the world so that they could explore urban opportunities and share growth management approaches.
An ancient Christian wine press 1500-years-old was uncovered in Israel, telling more about the customs of the people in the Holy Land of days gone by.
It may not have yielded a prize-winning bottle, but excavators in Israel are excited about uncovering an ancient wine press, probably used for making low quality wine and vinegar, according to the Israel Antiquities Authority which has just released news of the find. The wine press was found in a Byzantine settlement next to an ancient clay “light house” which resembles a small church, suggesting the press was owned by early Christians. The site was excavated before new construction took place at a spa in the area of Hamei Yo’av.
A small island off the coast of Abu Dhabi in the United Arab Emirates has announced plans to use the heat from burning trash to generate electricity for roughly 200 homes. Currently, Delma Island transports its household waste to the mainland, where it is dumped in already overburdened landfills.
The process called “waste to energy,” is employed in progressive countries throughout the globe – most notably in Copenhagen, arguably Denmark’s greenest city. This new initiative will not only free up landfill space, but it will also save costs and energy associated with transporting the waste.
Two years after the revolution in Egypt, sexual assaults against women are rising and becoming more violent, says several human rights organizations.
A recent New York Times piece created a storm of reactions with it’s portrayal of the dangers to women in Egypt since the Arab Spring. According to the story, at least 18 rapes ocurred on the second anniversary of the revolution, and Tahir square, the symbol of freedom, has “become a no-go zone for women, especially after dark.” The Times article goes on to describe the increased level of violence of these assaults.
They state: “In the 18 confirmed attacks that day, six women were hospitalized, according to interviews conducted by human rights groups. One woman was stabbed in her genitals, and another required a hysterectomy.”
Women’s rights are fundamental human rights and environmental concerns. As the world reacts to the rise in assaults on women in Egypt, it’s going to take more than rhetoric to halt sexual assaults and violence against women.
Want to go from one high fashion look to a completely different one without getting undressed? Hussein Chalayan is a high-end transformer clothing designer.
Turkish Cypriot Hussein Chalayan’s double-duty dresses are sensual and slightly sustainable: two-in-one haute couture arrives in a single shipment. London-based designer Chalayan unveiled a line of tranformative clothing in the runways of Paris Fashion Week not long ago. Without any help from stylists and dressers, these kinetic clothes actually morph before your eyes into completely different looks. Check out the videos below.
https://youtu.be/r6m8rSBuejY
His Paris show featured garments with built-in technology that caused necklines to deepen, skirts to balloon, and floppy hats to slowly hug the models’ beautiful faces, but also included simpler frocks that depend on simple tailoring to transform. A single tug to a neckline releases shoulder-line snaps: a top layer of material cascades down the body, revealing a different underlayer. A new full-length outfit is magically created!
This Black Line collection also features peeling wall prints in 3D textures on dresses and trousers. According to Dezeen magazine, Chalayan says he developed the collection around the “concepts of disembodiment and metamorphosis”.
The designer has stated that the top layers are “like the alter egos of the garments beneath, floating above them as if they are about to leave but never completely going, like a spirit reluctant to escape the body”. Sounds dangerously close to star-chitect talk, which makes some sense, as Chalayan is as much a fine artist as a designer of pricey duds for the ladies.
At university in 1993, he buried his garments in his back garden before exhuming them to include in his graduate collection. An instant sensation, that whole collection was purchased by a London luxury goods store. His work’s been exhibited at the Istanbul Modern, Victoria & Albert Museum, Tate Modern, and Venice Biennale and he’s dressed iconic singers Lady Gaga and Bjork.
In early 2008, in collaboration with Swarovski Crystal, Chalayan designed a series of dresses illuminated by laser LEDs, his riff on the electrical nature of the human form.
Peeling clothes appeal to you? You’ll be peeling off more than a few shekels to cover the tab. Past seasons’ garments from this designer can be found online, on retailer Net-A-Porter as example, with a basic top selling for about $1200. Check out his website for a list of retailers and a better look at the full collection.
Young Syrian refugees are being forced into sex and child labor in Jordan
Abdul Rahman, an eight-year-old refugee from Syria, rummages through a trash container along the side road of north Amman’s bustling Sweileh neighborhood. His sparkling green eyes stare out from his dirty, emaciated face. His bony legs appear from under torn blue trousers. The pint-sized child separates soda cans and scrap metal. “One bag for cola cans and a second for toys and old gadgets,” he explains.
Rahman’s six-year-old brother Ahmed tries to hide from the scorching sun, finding relief in the shade provided by the container.”I work with my brother for a man who sells scrap metal from a truck,” Abdul Rahman tells The Media Line. “We travel everywhere from the morning until late in the afternoon,” he says, wiping the sweat off his forehead.
What’s more, he and the rest of his team have introduced the technology to Sahara nomads, who frequently struggle to find water that isn’t inundated with salt. Called the Waterpod, the wooden box was recently demonstrated to a captive audience at the Nomadic Festival in M’Hamid El Ghizlane in southern Morocco.
Increasing evidence shows that sugar is a natural enemy to the body.
