Month: April 2011
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Native Indian Class Action Lawsuit Scores $680 Million From USDA
On Thursday this week a nationwide class action lawsuit was settled. The historic Keepseagle settlement agreement requires the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) to pay $680 million in damages to thousands of Native Americans and to forgive up to $80 million in outstanding farm loan debt. The Indians filed the Keepseagle class action lawsuit…
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Ant Fungus Farmers Hold the Answers for Human Farmers
With the Earth’s population exploding and nearly every arable acre already cultivated, the future of farming is a looming concern. For inspiration science is looking to the leaf-cutter ant which has mastered single crop agriculture and represents the apex of ant agriculture. Monoculture crops are the rule in modern agriculture. This is why modern crops…
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New Contender For World’s Hottest Chilli is Hot, Very Hot
Trinidad Scorpion Butch T Chilli. That’s the name of the new contender for the title of the World’s Hottest Chilli. Marcel de Wit, who was involved with developing and growing it had this to say about eating it: “I had hallucinations, I had to lie down, I couldn’t walk for 20 minutes, dizzy. This chilli…
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Jewish Passover and Christian Easter: What Do They Have In Common?
It is a little known fact that, in the early Eastern Christian churches, the timing of the celebration of Easter was based on the date of the Jewish Passover. According to ancient records Jesus was crucified just before Passover. The famous last supper was the day before that. While the sacrificial lambs were being slaughtered…
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Fantastic Realism Art Work of Russian Artist Boris Indrikov
Boris Indrikov is a talented and original artist born in Leningrad in 1967 and now lives and works in Moscow . From 1991 to 1997 he was a book designer and worked as an illustrator for the popular science magazine “Chemistry and Life.” He has been a member of the Creative Union of Artists of…
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Wild Horses at Sunset on the Bot River Estuary
Today at sunset I strolled down to the “lagoon” otherwise known as the Bot River Estuary. Lo and behold, the wild horses were grazing on the grassy banks in the distance about 200 meters (650 feet) away. The Bot River Estuary lies at the edge of the Kogelberg Biosphere Reserve near Hermanus in the Western…
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Terry Kobus Hermanus Based South African Artist
Local artist Terry Kobus is known for exquisite paintings of South Africa’s indigenous Nguni Cattle. Armed with a camera and his artists sketchbook he rides a mountain bike into remote rural areas where these unique indigenous cattle can be found. Terry works in oil and on wood and canvas to capture the magic of the…
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Rhino Massacre in South Africa Continues
In South Africa, home to 90% of the world’s population of rhinos, a war against internationally funded rhino poachers is losing ground. Last year 333 were killed, nearly half of them in the Kruger National Park. The year before that it was 209. The year before that, in 2008, the total jumped to a staggering…