Wednesday, November 13, 2002

Russian Style Sustainable Living Avery Johnson reports: Some environmentalists are taking the dacha idea a step further. They are forming small self-sufficient communities in the countryside where they can live in tune with nature year-round. Their so-called ecovillages are not always welcomed by the local administrators though, as one group, Rodnoye, discovered when it tried to create an environmentally friendly settlement in the Vladimir region. Rodnoye's 10 members, mostly young Muscovites in their late 20s and early 30s, say the idea of creating an ecovillage on land abandoned by a collective farm was greeted with derision by the local authorities. At best, the authorities said the project would not be solvent; at worst, they called the villagers members of a cult. Nevertheless, Russian history and literature are rich with ideas similar to Rodnoye's. Until the 1917 Revolution, 90 percent of the population lived in rural villages, and in the late 19th century, a revolutionary group of urban intellectuals called Going to the People pressed for a "return to the land." Rodnoye's members say they were inspired to set up an ecovillage by reading environmentalist Vladimir Megre's popular novels. His tales of a rural life in Siberia have sold more than 3 million copies since the first title in a series of six appeared in 1996.  (11/13/02) Whither Psychoanalysis in a Computer Culture? In the early 1980s, MIT professor Sherry Turkle first called the computer a "second self." With this essay, she presents a major new theory of "evocative objects": Wearable computers, PDAs, online multiple identities, "companion species" (such as quasi-alive virtual pets, digital dolls, and robot nurses for the elderly), "affective computing" devices (such as the human-like Kismet robot), and the imminent age of machines designed as relational artifacts are causing us to see ourselves and our world differently. They call for a new generation of psychoanalytic self-psychology to explore the human response and the human vulnerability to these objects. (11/13/02) Iranian Students protest Death Sentence of Teacher New York Times -- TEHRAN, Nov. 12 — Thousands of students ignored official warnings and demonstrated today for a fourth day over the death sentence for a reformist scholar charged with apostasy. Some 5,000 students gathered at Tehran University in support of the academic Hashem Aghajari, sentenced to hang for questioning clerical rule in the Islamic Republic. "The execution of Aghajari is the execution of the university!" demonstrators chanted. "Political prisoners should be freed!" The momentum of protests appeared to be growing, with more students gathering in Tehran each day and demonstrations spreading to the provincial cities of Tabriz, Isfahan, Urumiyeh and Hamedan. ... Mr. Aghajari was sentenced to death last week in a closed-door trial in Hamedan on charges that he had insulted the Prophet Muhammad. The charges stemmed from a speech he made in August in which he called on people to not follow religious leaders blindly. The demonstrations have been the largest since 1999, when students staged a week of protest throughout the country after hard-line vigilantes attacked a student dormitory. (11/13/02) President Mugabe's Politics Starving Africa Chistian Science Monitor-- As elsewhere in the region, there has been a drought in Zimbabwe. But in years past, Zimbabwe was able to sustain itself though similar drought periods – and even continue exporting to the neighbors. This year is a different story. President Robert Mugabe's controversial land-reform policy – taking land from minority white farmers and giving it to the landless black majority – has crippled the commercial farm sector. ... Mr. Mugabe's fast-track land-reform policies were intended to redress the imbalance in land ownership and wealth in Zimbabwe by transferring farms from the minority white commercial farmers – who sat on vast tracts of fertile land and produced over 80 percent of the country's food – to the majority landless blacks. But in practice, over the past two years, many of these farms were handed over to wealthy Zimbabweans connected to the government, like Rashal's family, who have little interest in farming. In other cases, the landless were trucked in to squat on these farms, but were not provided with the tools, seeds, or know-how needed to tend them properly. The former breadbasket of the region can no longer support even itself. Now, the continuation of bad governmental practices is making it hard for international aid organizations to remedy the food problem. Mugabe's government banned private food imports late last year. The government-run grain marketing board, which is managed by top military and intelligence officials, was given control over imports, allowing many of them to make a profit from the resale of food at exorbitant prices. ... The effects of these actions are that 14.5 million men, women, and children facing hunger in six Southern African countries. (11/13/02) Wolves are Bad! Deer are Good ? New York Times -- People long ago wiped out the wolves and other predators that kept deer populations in check. Then suburbanization created a browser's paradise: a vast patchwork of well-watered, fertilizer-fattened plantings to feed on and vest-pocket forests to hide in, with hunters banished to more distant woods. "Deer are an edge species," Dr. McShea said, "and the world is one big edge now." Deer pose problems because they are both loved and loathed — Bambi to children and Godzilla to gardeners. ... In the last decade, from the Rockies to New England and the Deep South, rural and suburban areas have been beset by white-tailed deer gnawing shrubbery and crops, spreading disease and causing hundreds of thousands of auto wrecks. But the deer problem has proved even more profound, biologists say. Fast-multiplying herds are altering the ecology of forests, stripping them of native vegetation and eliminating niches for other wildlife. Varmints of old were mainly predators, Dr. McShea said, but this is the age of the marauding herbivore. "I don't want to paint deer as Eastern devils," said Dr. McShea, a wildlife biologist associated with the National Zoo in Washington, "but this is indicative of what happens when an ecosystem is out of whack." The damage is worse than anyone expected, he and other scientists say. (11/13/02) Excess Deer draw Mountain Lions to Town New York Times -- The human population in states with mountain lions is surging, with hundreds of thousands of newcomers choosing to live at the wild edge of suburban sprawl, where cul-de-sacs meld into mountain lion turf. This mix has coincided with an increase of attacks on people, which now average about four a year, up from one a year before 1970. Since 1890, mountain lions have killed 17 people, 11 of them children, in the United States and Canada. More than half of these deaths, including Colorado's two confirmed fatalities, occurred in the past 12 years. Now evidence is growing that mountain lions, the world's fourth-largest cat, are moving east, pushed by their own breeding success and pulled by an abundance of deer, their favorite meal, on the far side of the Mississippi. A car killed a juvenile male last month on Interstate 35 near Kansas City. It was the first confirmed sighting of a free-roaming mountain lion in the region in more than 100 years. Scientists last year confirmed the presence of seven mountain lions in northern Michigan, where the animals were supposedly wiped out 95 years ago. Using cover along creek and river beds, the cats appear to be exploring east across the Great Plains, with confirmed sightings or roadside carcasses in Nebraska, Kansas, North Dakota, Iowa and Minnesota. Within the past decade, a thriving population has established itself in the Black Hills of South Dakota. Depending on where they live, mountain lions are also called cougars, pumas, panthers and catamounts. "They will eventually get to New Jersey," or at least close, said Dr. Paul Beier, a professor of wildlife ecology at Northern Arizona University, who has extensively researched mountain lions. "You need them back in the East because you got too many deer," he said. "They are part of a healthy ecosystem." (11/13/02) http://www.synearth.net/   6:06:01 AM

© TrustMark 2002 Timothy Wilken. Last update: 12/3/2002; 8:09:14 AM. This theme is based on the SoundWaves (blue) Manila theme.