“[An] Eagle cam captures stunning footage of an imperial eagle descending over 2,700 ft (830 m) from the world’s tallest building, the Burj Khalifa, in Dubai.”
Goal: Take an Imperial Eagle (with a camera attached) to the tallest building in the world and from that height, have it locate its handler and land on the arm of that trainer. The bird looks around for quite some time until it sees the trainer and then it folds its wings (@ 1:40 +/-) and dives. What details could a human see from that height? (Admittedly, the trainer appears to be in the middle of a large red square, but still…)
Apparently this event was held to draw attention to the fact that these eagles are endangered.
Marina Abramović is a performance artist who now resides in the Hudson Valley of New York. Her one time lover and creative partner of a dozen years, Frank Uwe Laysiepen, also known as “Ulay” worked with Marina on several pieces that were on display as part of her “The Artist is Present” exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art in Manhattan.
“…After several years of tense relations, Abramović and Ulay decided to make a spiritual journey which would end their relationship. They each walked the Great Wall of China, in a piece called The Great Wall Walk, starting from the two opposite ends and meeting in the middle” for one last embrace and to say goodbye. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marina_Abramovi%C4%87 ]
As part of “The Artist is Present” exhibition, Ms. Abramović was to create one more piece of performance art by allowing total strangers who were visiting the gallery to sit opposite her in complete silence for a few moments during which time they would maintain eye contact.
Without any foreknowledge, and after more than 30 years of separation, Ulay took a seat across from Marina to stare into her eyes and the moment is overwhelmingly powerful. Watch it now on YouTube.
Bryan Stevenson – We need to talk about an injustice
Bryan Stevenson is an Attorney who fights for the rights of the poor, underprivileged and often disenfranchised people in the United States. His presentation is poignant and to the point. No American should feel at peace while justice is not served equally to all citizens regardless of economic, social, physical or other circumstances.
“Bryan Stevenson is the founder and executive director of the Equal Justice Initiative, fighting poverty and challenging racial discrimination in the criminal justice system.” – From the website of the Equal Justice Initiative
TED Take-A-Ways
Highlights excerpted from the transcript which can be viewed in full:
Bryan Stevenson – We need to talk about an injustice – Transcript
“The United States now has the highest rate of incarceration in the world. We have seven million people on probation and parole.”
“We have a system of justice in this country that treats you much better if you’re rich and guilty than if you’re poor and innocent. Wealth, not culpability, shapes outcomes.”
“The United States is the only country in the world where we sentence 13-year-old children to die in prison. We have life imprisonment without parole for kids in this country. And we’re actually doing some litigation. The only country in the world.”
“Death penalty in America is defined by error. For every nine people who have been executed, we’ve actually identified one innocent person who’s been exonerated and released from death row. A kind of astonishing error rate — one out of nine people innocent…In aviation, we would never let people fly on airplanes if for every nine planes that took off one would crash.”
“And yet, in this country, in the states of the Old South, we execute people — where you’re 11 times more likely to get the death penalty if the victim is white than if the victim is black, 22 times more likely to get it if the defendant is black and the victim is white…”
TED is an acronym that represents Technology, Entertainment and Design and refers to a series of conferences around the world that features “Ideas Worth Spreading.” From its small beginnings in 1984 as a single conference, it has developed into one of the premiere venues for the sharing of information and ideas.
Included among the TED presenters are:
Madeleine Albright, Former US Secretary of State
Isabel Allende, Novelist and author
Jeff Bezos, founder and CEO of Amazon.com
Bill Clinton, former President of the United States
Billy Graham, spiritual leader and consultant to many influential people
Japanese photographer Mitsuaki Iwago obviously has a passion for cats and one cat in particular. He has created a travelogue series featuring cats from around the world. In the clip below, he is filming in Okinawa, Japan where enjoys an up close and personal moment with a very cute kitten.
According an article from Mental Floss (We’re Running Out of Sand), the world is depleting this valuable resource which is essential for construction world-wide. One would think that with all the deserts, there would be enough sand for an infinite number of buildings, but the article is quick to note that desert sand is too fine and cannot be used for most construction projects.
Also keep in mind that when we do take sand from riverbanks, beaches and digging in the earth, we are usually tampering with ecosystems upon which we and our planet depend. Many scientists believe that we are already at the beginning of the Sixth Mass Extinction caused primarily by such human activity.
What can go wrong? Watch the video below!
Stanford researcher warns of sixth mass extinction.
Related to the Video:
“Published on Jun 19, 2015
There is no longer any doubt: We are entering a mass extinction that threatens humanity’s existence. That is the bad news at the center of a new study by a group of scientists including Paul Ehrlich, the Bing Professor of Population Studies in biology and a senior fellow at the Stanford Woods Institute for the Environment. Ehrlich and his co-authors call for fast action to conserve threatened species, populations and habitat, but warn that the window of opportunity is rapidly closing. Read more: http://stanford.io/1RgQBMj”
If this is a topic in which you are interested, I can highly recommend an intriguing book:
The Sixth Extinction: An Unnatural History
by Elizabeth Kolbert
The book is spellbinding because of the gravity of its message, but Elizabeth Kolbert is capable of putting it all in perspective in interesting and sometimes amusing ways. She clearly points out the follies of humankind as she explains how human activity, in the briefest of scientific time spans, has changed the earth’s ecology to the detriment of all living things.
Many of us have heard the musical piece The Flight of the Bumblebee by Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov. It seems to be quite a challenging piece with those fast-paced notes and changes in register and it is something to see, I mean hear!
I don’t think you have ever heard it like this though…a capella. How can they perform this without instruments and how good can it be; You decide.
For those who want to compare, here is a version played by an orchestra.
The camera and screen technology is demonstrated in Argentina where, as the video points out, a person dies in a traffic accident nearly every hour. With all of the one-lane roads, a number of those deaths are attributable to cars trying to pass on the narrow roadways.
Samsung shows how current technology in its Samsung Safety Truck can be put to use to save lives. After all, what is the value of a human life?
Apparently Jacob Tolliver walked into a hardware store in Ohio and found a piano that needed some work. He sat down to tickle the ivories. I think you will agree, he did a bit more than tickle them.
This was no “One Song Willie” either. Here he is again with a little Boogie Woogie!
“Swimming with humpback whales was the most magical, humbling, powerful experience of my life,” Karim Iliya writes, but things turned a bit scary when he jumped into the water in the middle of a fight between four adult males competing for the right to mate with a lone female
This video has beautiful, near stunning, pictures of one of earth’s most majestic creatures.
From the YouTube posting:
“Humpback whales are known to be one of the most majestic mammals on earth, but what happens when a diver winds up in the middle of a whale fight?
This weekly storytelling series uses the imagery of photographers and adventurers around the world to give us a deeper connection to and understanding of the human condition.”
