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Earth as Art
bravehamster writes "There's a new exhibit at the Library of Congress displaying images taken of earth by the Landsat satellites. The exhibit displays satellite photos that have an intrinsic aesthetic quality, showing the beauty of Earth as seen from really far away. There's an article about it on MSNBC here, and don't forget to check out those fjords!"
...TROLL moderates YOU!
Fantastic photos. What a beautiful planet we live on. It would be great to see some shots of densely "humanised" places though, just to see how massively we have impacted the environment. Human structures all look grey from the sky. I guess it's the concrete.
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One thing that did stand out was the following:
http://astroboy.gsfc.nasa.gov/earthasart/images
Someone should let these farmers know that if they offset their irrigation circles just a little they'd be able to increase their land coverage. The picture clearly shows how wasteful commercial growing practises are. At times I suspect that commercial agri-techniques are geared to being as wasteful as possible. It's a seldom reported fact that organic, bio-intensive techniques can support an average human on about 200 square feet of land whereas commercial growers require several thousand times that much and they profoundly damage the environment with the introduction of harmfull pesticides and by denuding the local flora and fauna. I hate the way farmers maximise yields by torturing the Earth on government subsidies and then destroy the short term glut of produce to inflate market prices. It smells like a very dangerous short- termist conspiracy to sell more agri products to farmers (fertiliser, equipment and now GM).
How to stop the madness? Well, if you've got the time, organi-grow your own. Learn how to make fertilizer and become more self sufficient.
I'm a Systems Developer (so I know how much time work swallows up!) but I set aside a couple of hours at the weekend to cultivate a 200 sq ft patch of land in South London (UK). We have been very successful and have been richly rewared by a *surplus* of produce each year, to the extent that we give away about a third of it to neighbors and friends. We gather kitchen waste and go to the local organic markets to get the spoiling stuff to make our compost. It's very 'spiritually' rewarding and we eat fresh produce that hasn't been chilled, stored in warehouses for months on end or waxed to death and the local animals (butterflies, beetles, toads etc) aren't harmed by us "doing our human thing". But as importantly, we feel that we're just a bit more in control of our lives.
Here's a few books that we have found usefull.
http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/ASI
http:
http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/ASIN/
Unshackle yourself a little, feel the sun on your back and eat wholesome food...