How San Francisco Got Its New Rider-Friendly Transit Map

"To survive, I had to grow a skin as thick as a cast-iron pot and this is now almost impenetrable. I am not convinced this was a positive modification to my character, but it is definitely an important survival adaptation for a woman conservationist in East Gippsland.

So why continue to be in this front line situation in constant conflict, having to justify your beliefs to a hostile public on radio interviews and in the papers?

It’s not my idea of pleasant country living. I’d like nothing better than to get on with my plans to breed Clydesdales, grow walnuts, work on the eco-tourism business, weave baskets from willow and honeysuckle and weed the carrot bed.

It is my sense of injustice, my own convictions and determination that keep me in there. Sometimes I wish I was as apathetic and ill-informed as the general population seems to be. But once you become aware of the injustices being done, the lies being told, the legalised vandalism being paid for by our taxes, you can never allow yourself the luxury of putting the blinkers on.

Though sometimes I wish I could.”

- Jill Redwood, forest campaigner and conservationist in East Gippsland for over 30 years, writing in Women and Migrants associated with the Timber Industry in East Gippsland (2000)

Setting up any business is a challenge but in Ethiopia those range from daily operating headaches such as on-off internet to even more fundamental business challenges

“The internet goes out a couple of times a week — when that happens, there is not much we can do but rely on phone lines to take orders,” said Feleg Tsegaye, manager of Deliver Addis.

But he also believes the Horn of Africa nation — the second most populous on the continent — offers enormous opportunities.

Tsegaye was born and brought up in the US but moved to Ethiopia, the homeland of his parents, hoping to tap into a still largely untapped but swiftly growing market he believes is one of the most promising on the continent.

“The IT sector is still in its infancy — typically in these markets there is a way to transfer money very quickly and very easily, but here that doesn’t exist quite yet,” he added.

“Once you have a way for entrepreneurs to make money through technology, I think you are going to see that change very quickly.”

With a growth rate of nearly 10 per cent a year over the past decade, according to the World Bank, Ethiopia has attracted entrepreneurs eager to take their cut of a market with over 94 million potential consumers.

The Ethiopian capital Addis Ababa now has three “start-up incubators”, some supported by foreign investors, to help Ethiopian entrepreneurs launch their own business.

Breathtaking Images of Underwater Life Captured by Freediving Photographers Alex Voyer and Alex Roubaud

A good way to remember the human bones in the body. Dope pic

www.learninghumananatomy.com

Breathtaking Images of Underwater Life Captured by Freediving Photographers Alex Voyer and Alex Roubaud

Richard Feynman’s legendary lectures on physics, all fifty-two chapters, are now available to read online via Caltech.

Of course, you can always watch seven of them in video form thanks to Bill Gates.

If anyone needs me, I’ll be in my physics bunk.

 This is just great.

Earth Could Lose a Third of Its Topsoil

You might think that dirt doesn’t matter that much — after all there seems to be so much of it all over the planet.

But researchers warn that the world’s precious supply of topsoil — which we need to grow food crops, absorb excess carbon and supply us with new antibiotics — is being lost faster than it can be replenished through natural processes. And the decreasing supply of soil could have a catastrophic effect on agriculture and the world supply of food.

The UN, which designated 2015 as the International Year of Soils, warns that 33 percent of the planet’s soil resources are being degraded due to erosion, pollution, acidification and nutrient depletion — destructive processes that are caused by bad land management. And unless new approaches are adopted, the amount of productive farmland on Earth per person will only amount to one-fourth of the amount available in 1960.

In December, the UN is set to release a report on the state of the world’s soil, and it’s likely to present an even more grim picture, according to a preview in New Scientist. We’re losing soil at the rate of 30 soccer fields per minute, and if we don’t slow the decline, the planet’s entire supply of soil for farming could be gone by 2075.

The World's Commercial Shipping Routes

by Grolltech on Wikipedia: 

This map of shipping routes illustrates the present-day density of commercial shipping in the world’s oceans.

Via Reddit and Wikipedia, data from the National Center for Ecological Analysis and Synthesis 

Byzantine 'flat-pack' church to be reconstructed in Oxford after spending 1,000 years on the seabed

Centuries before the Swedes started flat-packing their furniture, the Holy Roman Emperor Justinian had his own version, sending self-assembly churches to newly conquered parts of his empire.

Now one of the “Ikea-style” churches, which spent more than 1,000 years on a seabed after the ship carrying it sank, is to be reconstructed for the first time in Oxford.

The Byzantine church will be on display at the Ashmolean Museum of Art and Archaeology as part of the exhibition Storms, War and Shipwrecks: Treasures from the Sicilian Seas, opening in June. 

Paul Roberts, co-curator of the exhibition, said: “Everything in the exhibition will be from under the sea. It’s very different from what’s been done before. Read more.