Health & Lifestyle

(quote)

Pope Benedict XVI recalled the natural beauty he observed during his 20-hour flight to Sydney, saying he felt "a profound sense of awe," and denounced "insatiable consumption" as a threat to the world's environment.

The pope made his first major appearance on his Australia tour Thursday before an estimated crowd of 150,000 people at World Youth Day. The event is believed to be the world's largest Christian gathering and dubbed "the Catholic Woodstock."

He delivered his homily in several languages to people representing 70 countries, lamenting "erosion, deforestation, the squandering of the world's mineral and ocean resources in order to fuel an insatiable consumption." In his address, Benedict warned that mankind's "insatiable consumption" has scarred the Earth and squandered its resources, telling followers that taking care of the planet is vital to humanity — striking a theme that has earned him a reputation as the "green pope."  read more »

(quote)

FARNBOROUGH, England: Plane makers and airlines at the world's largest air show struck a tone between conciliatory and defensive on global warming Wednesday — pledging to make flying more fuel-efficient but bridling at a European Union emissions trading scheme. Executives from British Airways and Airbus used a "sustainable aviation" summit at the Farnborough International Airshow to attack the EU over its revised emissions trading scheme, which it said will cripple the European industry coming on top of soaring oil prices. BA Chief Executive Willie Walsh said he supported a trading scheme in general but had "serious reservations" about the EU proposal, which he said would encourage carriers to bypass European hubs. "The EU should look again at applying a scheme that is workable in the first place and able to be applied worldwide," Walsh said.

 read more »

(quote)

Jul 14 Bastille Day - the French Revolution begins with the fall of the Bastille Prison

Jul 14 Bastille Day - the French Revolution begins with the fall of the Bastille Prison, 1789
Parisian revolutionaries and mutinous troops storm and dismantle the Bastille, a royal fortress and prison that had come to symbolize the tyranny of the Bourbon monarchs. This dramatic action signaled the beginning of the French Revolution, a decade of political turmoil and terror in which King Louis XVI was overthrown and tens of thousands of people, including the king and his wife Marie-Antoinette, were executed.

Built in the 1300s during the Hundred Years’ War against the English, the Bastille was designed to protect the eastern entrance to the city of Paris.
The formidable stone building’s massive defenses included 100-foot-high walls and a wide moat, plus more than 80 regular soldiers and 30 Swiss mercenaries standing guard. As a prison, it held political dissidents (such as the writer and philosopher Voltaire), many of whom were locked away without a trial by order of the king.

Causes of the French Revolution

Despite inheriting tremendous debts from his predecessor, Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette continued to spend extravagantly, such as by helping the American colonies win their independence from the British. By the late 1780s, France’s government stood on the brink of economic disaster.  read more »

(quote)

In 1969, the American writer John Updike famously declared, "I see no intrinsic reason why a doubly talented artist might not arise and create a comic strip novel masterpiece."

The statement was immediately ridiculed by literary traditionalists, who disparaged comics as a "low" medium unworthy of serious critical attention. But it became a rallying cry among comic book creators, long second-class citizens in the art world.

Forty years has proved their prescience. Graphic novels – usually defined as extended-length illustrated books with mature literary themes – have risen to widespread prominence, spurred on by the work of respected talents such as Art Spiegelman ("Maus: A Survivor's Tale") and Will Eisner ("A Contract With God").

Graphic novel sales in Canada and the United States hit $375 million in 2007, five times the figure reported in 2001, according to ICv2, a pop culture site. "Jimmy Corrigan," a book by Chris Ware, has sold hundreds of thousands of copies alone; "Persepolis," originally a graphic novel by Marjane Sartrapi, picked up an Oscar for best animated film in February.

The world of comics and graphic novels is in the midst of a creative renaissance that may be greater than the dawn of the Marvel Universe in the 1960s. This development has been a longtime coming, considering that the beginnings of both newspaper comics and the cinema occurred at roughly the same time in the late 19th century. Film quite quickly matured into the 20th century's great American art form, while comics remained relatively insular and ignored by adults.

Alternative graphic novels are represented on film as well (Road to Perdition, Ghost World, American Splendor, Persepholis) and are increasingly making their presence felt at traditional book store chains where there are now entire sections devoted to graphic novels as well as manga (Japanese graphic novels, which are another subject entirely).

Generation Next folks currently coming-of-age are almost as conversant about the latest graphic novel as Generation X-ers were about grunge music. The main difference is that graphic novels show no signs of being a temporary trend. Indeed, they may be here to stay, well into the 21st century.

(unquote)

Images courtesy of Marjane Satrapi. Art Spiegelman, Naoki Urasawa, Neil Gaiman, and Evanston Review

Original Source: Christian Science Monitor and Evanston Review

(quote)

July 10 (Bloomberg) -- A third of the world's corals could be dead within a few years, a shocking new report warns today. The biggest study of its kind has found that 200 out of 700 species of coral are on the brink of extinction - far more than was previously thought. If they die, some of the most beautiful and colourful reefs - home to millions of species of marine life - could be devastated. The speed of decline has shocked the 39 scientists who carried out the survey. Just 10 years ago only 13 species of coral were endangered. Researchers, who published their findings in the journal Science, say they have been badly hit by climate change, coastal development and overfishing.

A team of 39 researchers assessed the state of 704 coral species and found 32.8 percent are threatened with extinction. The study results, published today in the journal Science, are "worse than expected," said co-author Suzanne Livingstone, a marine biologist at Old Dominion University in Norfolk, Virginia. "When we began this process, we didn't think it would be anywhere near as high as that," Livingstone, also a marine species assessor for the International Union for Conservation of Nature, said yesterday in a telephone interview. "Climate change is the overarching threat which comes in on a much larger, global scale," adding to localized disturbances, she said. Death of corals can lead to the collapse of entire ecosystems.

 read more »

(quote)

Researchers at MIT have created a new way to harness the sun's energy - by turning windows in big buildings into solar panels. The new technology, dubbed solar concentrators, harvests light over a wide area such as a window pane and then concentrates or gathers it at the window's edges, said Marc Baldo, a professor at MIT and head of the effort. Three members of the research team, which is publishing its findings in Friday's edition of Science, are in the process of incorporating a startup called Covalent Solar to develop the technology. The team has spent two years identifying organic dyes, painted onto glass or plastic, that can effectively concentrate the sun’s light onto solar cells, enabling them to produce more electricity from fewer cells.

The dyes basically reflect the light (technically, it’s actually absorbed and then sent back out), so that some of it is trapped inside the plane of glass, said Jon Mapel, a member of the research team. With the help of a scientific principal called "internal refraction," which is the same principal that keeps light trapped in optical fibers, the light bounces to the edges of the glass, which have been equipped with strips of solar cells that convert it into electricity.  read more »

(quote)

SEOUL (Reuters) - South Korea said on Sunday it was implementing a multi-stage contingency plan aimed at reducing energy consumption before the skyrocketing oil prices push Asia's fourth-largest economy into a full-fledged crisis.

Prime Minister Han Seung-soo told a televised news conference the government would restrict driving of cars owned by public organizations as part of the measures, adding a tougher set of steps would be adopted if oil prices rose further. The move marks the first direct restriction on energy consumption introduced by the world's fifth-largest oil consumer since the country imposed some restrictions on transportation in the capital during the 1988 summer Olympics held in Seoul.

Thousands of public-sector vehicles will be allowed on the road only on alternate days, and air conditioning in government buildings will be restricted, according to Prime Minister Han Seung-soo. The restrictions will be introduced July 15 and will apply to 15,000 public-sector vehicles and more than 800 public offices and institutions. There are also plans to replace half the fleet of public-sector vehicles with compact or hybrid versions by 2012.

"Even the (oil) producing countries are now trying to save energy costs. We need to try twice as hard as they do... it's a matter of survival," Han said. South Korea covers almost all of its energy needs with imports and its economy, relying heavily on manufacturing of goods for exports, lags far behind the more advanced countries in energy efficiency.

"We expect to spend $111.2 billion this year on crude oil imports, up from $60.3 billion last year, due to prices that have more than doubled," Han said. The Finance Ministry cut last week this year's economic growth target to a three-year low of 4.7 percent from 6 percent and warned the country would post its first current account deficit in 11 years of about $10 billion due to high oil prices.

Finance Minister Kang Man-soo told the news conference the country's economic forecasts, based on the assumption of prices at $120 a barrel on average for the second half, would have to be revised further if crude oil continues to gain.

The measures -- restricting driving, raising average temperatures at government-owned buildings, and regulating use of power at public facilities -- would help reduce energy consumption by the public sector by 6.6 percent. But they are still largely symbolic and the total amount of energy saving will be small because they apply only to the public sector, which accounts for less than 4 percent of South Korea's total energy consumption. The government will consider imposing restrictive measures in the private sector only when the supply of crude oil is disrupted.

(unquote)

Photos courtesy of AP Photo/Ahn Young-joon, Chung Sung-Jun/Getty Images

Original Source: Washington Post and United Press International