week 176

Mon: Intuition, defined as subconsciously digested experience, can be a useful guide in quick fight-or-flight decision making.

Tue: The Akha hill tribe in north-west Laos faces the usual generational frictions when trying to accommodate native and western lifestyles.

Wed: A peculiar community of young scavengers in Pisgah national forest, surviving from dumpster diving in nearby villages to mountain bear hunters kill donation, makes for a worrisome picture of the USA.

Thu: “Green helmets” NGO building schools in war and disease ravaged Sierra Leone deserves better support by global citizens.

Fri: Sea cucumber fishing in Belep island is becoming unsustainable although the designated protected marine area may help recovery.

week 175

Mon: Gender disparities when it comes to medical drug testing, car accident simulation or, bullet proof wardrobe are flagrant.

Tue: Kejimkujik park in Nova Scotia has become an area where to measure the effects of acid rain or mercury water content on wildlife well being.

Wed: Conecuh national forest, a Georgian swamp land bordering Florida, is a rather unwelcoming place to build a tree house for retirement; yet, some contrarians try hard at it.

Thu: Orango island people with their matriarchal traditions are an example of a viable non standard way of organizing society.

Fri: Desperate shepherd families migrating from the overgrazed steppe to the supposed riches of Ulan Bator are pursuing fool’s gold.

week 174

Mon: SUV drivers are reckless self dilussional people arguing that to protect their progenie from a traffic accident is fine to wreak their own kids future climate.

Tue: Wapusk national park, facing Hudson bay, is another example of a wise exercise by a people careful enough to preserve land intact for the benefit of wildlife.

Wed: Lake of the Ozarks state park does not provide a real path out of the rat race of western society and, as Ben’s host showed, it can be a distressing mirage.

Thu: Uganda, an ancestral land with multiple people like the pastoralist Karamojong, has had to deal with British imposed Indian indentured labor sequelae and a decade of military dictatorship mismanagement.

Fri: The “Baikal-Amur magistral” railway, started by the komsomol youth ardor in the 70s and finished 30 odd years later, has the 15 km. long Severomuysky tunnel as its crowning achievement.