For open minds
A wonderful comic from Goofy God Comics, who can also follow on Instagram.
A guy is calling out for Mother Gaia, and he’s worried because he thinks he cocked up. Gaia reassures him that should never get mad, no matter what he’s done.
The problem? He killed all the bees.
In Pure Spirit
Do you think governments around the world are doing enough to investigate the mysterious and devastating reduction in bee numbers?
LastTissue is the latest idea from a Danish company trying to save the world. We chop through millions of trees and pollute millions of gallons of water just for yucky disposable tissues.
Is there a better way?
[Back this Campaign]Every year 8,000,000 trees are felled just for American sneezes alone. That kills of habitat and therefore wildlife. At the same time, trees are no longer there to soak up the carbon emissions that are destroying the atmosphere.
The company behind LastTissue is LastObject, and they have a mission.
In Pure Spirit
Is LastTissue a good idea, or is it just a yucky gimmick?
You’ll be able to see Rachael Talibart’s beautiful photography in person at the Sohn Fine Art Gallery in Lenox, Massachusetts in the States from 7th of September through to 11th November.
The English photographer uses fast shutter speeds to freeze the water into shape, creating as a sculpture might clay and in doing so manages to, somehow, reveal faces in the waves.
Talibart is said to be inspired, in part, by Homer’s Odyssey and the stories of sea monsters there. Need to see more? Pop over to her website and check out her thoughtful range.
In Pure Spirit
Do you see the faces in the waves too?
Via This is Colossal.
As a freak storm battled the Chinese city of Qingdao social media began to buzz with the term ‘Seafood Rain’. Why?
It was raining octopuses, starfish and molluscs.
The bizarre storm featured winds as fast as 78mph and rain heavy enough to shatter windows. The weather in the Yellow Sea created waterspouts.
This octopus storm isn’t the first time that extreme climate conditions have resulted in sea creatures being sucked out of the sea and blown over land in a storm. Just last year a similar thing happened in the village of Jaffna in Sri Lanka, according to The Mirror who carried the story.
In Pure Spirit
Do you think we’ll start to see even stranger weather as the climate change takes effect?
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Image credit: AsiaWire.
When there’s a good movie to look forward to big brands, start thinking creatively about their messaging. Step forward E.ON who worked with PhD Physicists Toby Nonnemacher, Clarence Wret, Wilf Shorrock and the Post-Doctorate Physicist Phill Litchfield at the High Energy Physics Department at Imperial College London to think about dinosaurs and technology.
The team worked out that a dinosaur kingdom island done up as Jurrasic World would have an energy bill in the region of £48million. That’s about 30,000 UK homes.
Scott Somerville at E.ON helped explain why the bill would be so high.
With huge 10,000 volt electric fences and an aviary designed to house pterodactyls to name just two of the Dinosaur Kingdom’s unusual features, we suspected the energy needed to power the whole park would be big – possibly equivalent to powering a whole region within the UK.
“But what our figures show is that it’s actually a massive amount! It’s about the same as powering 30,142 average UK households a year – roughly equivalent to powering half the homes in Harrogate – but by adopting modern solutions, the power requirement and costs could be even less.
“For example, by generating electricity using technology like a biomass fuelled Combined Heat and Power station, park owners could turn dinosaur droppings into electricity. Add on other solutions like solar and battery storage then the park could ultimately benefit from a cheaper, sustainable and more reliable source of electricity instead having to deal with a ‘raptor rampage’ every time the generators that power the electric fences goes down.”
There’s some proper research in this piece. For example, running a dinosaur suitable aviaries was based on the amount of energy to keep the Eden Project in Devon going. That’s about 9,500 MkWh per year or £5,006,500. Ouch! If you want to see more of E.ON’s maths and investigation then pop over to their dinosaur kingdom post and have a gander.
If you’re thinking about changing energy supplier, there are some handy tools out there you might consider using. Energylinx has some, including a free Meter Point Administration Number Checker so you can examine your MPAN as well as a Gas Meter Point Reference Number (MPRN) tool. Lastly, on EnergyLinks is this comparison tool on suppliers.
Readers of In Pure Spirit will now we care about green issues. While we’re thinking about extinct species and energy we’d have to take a look at fossil fuels.
James Anderson, the joint manager of Scottish Mortgage Investment Trust, investors who take a long-term view on companies that might change sees a future in alternative energy generation.
…what seems to us to fall into the category of the well-nigh inevitable is that the age of fossil fuels is drawing to an end
In Pure Spirit
Which would you rather have? An island full of dinosaurs – many species brought back from extinction – or free energy for 30,000 homes for a year?
Isn’t it amazing that we still don’t know how the moon came to be? I’d always been told that the moon was blasted out of the Earth after the planet impacted with a large asteroid. It’s a relief to know that that’s not the only possible explanation.
In Pure Spirit
What’s your favourite story about the moon?
Watch as thousands of clams emerge from the damp sands in Topsail Island, NC.
These are conquina clams and respond to the incoming waves. They’ll eat tiny plans and even animals that exist in the Atlantic waters. All along the beach, for miles and miles, these calms emerge at once to the same triggers and in this case, because so many appeared at once, it may have been a breeding event.
In Pure Spirit
Does this give you reason to wonder what might be under your feet on your next summer holiday?
It starts out looking like some shadowy tornado was crawling towards the plane. What’s really going on? This is actually a solar eclipse filmed far above the clouds.
As you can hear some of the passengers got very excited.
This is Alaska Airlines flight #870 on route from Anchorage to Honolulu. The airline kindly made some small adjustments so passengers could see the eclipse from out of their windows. This wasn’t a spur of the moment decision as Joe Rao, a year ago, worked out that the flight would intersect the “path of totality”.
As a result the associate astronomer at the American Museum of Natural History and a dozen other “eclipse chasers” were on board the flight.
What changes did Alaska Airlines make? They flew the flight 20 minutes early; otherwise they would have missed the sight.
Looking for a way to encourage your family to eat healthy food? There’s plenty of superhero action on the cinema screen, TV and Netflix these days so perhaps these superheroes could help out?
Fish is the Dish, a site from the Sea Fish Industry Authority, is here to help. They’ve put together some superhero sea food recipes. Here’s a few of their ideas.
Prep time: 10 minutes
Cooking time: 20 minutes
Serves 4
Ingredients:
400g skinless sustainable white fish, sliced into 12 strips
1 egg, beaten
85g white breadcrumbs, made from day-old or toasted bread
2 tsp olive oil
1 sheet of nori (seaweed), found in the sushi section of the supermarket
Salt and pepper to season
Method
1. Heat oven to 200C/180C fan/gas 6. Crack the egg into a shallow dish and beat.
2. Tip the breadcrumbs onto a plate and mix in some salt and pepper.
3. Cut fish into 12 strips of different lengths and widths. The more unique the sizes and shapes, the more like a skyline your fish fingers will look.
4. Brush a non-stick baking sheet with oil.
5. Dip the fish strips into the egg, then roll them in the breadcrumbs. Transfer to the baking sheet.
6. Bake for 20 minutes until golden.
7. If you want to get really creative, whilst fish fingers are baking, cut small squares out of the nori using scissors. Place the squares onto the fish fingers once out of the oven to look like windows.
Prep time: 10 minutes
Cooking time: 20 minutes
Serves 4
Ingredients:
2 red peppers
2 cups of cous cous (1/2 cup per person)
1 small onion, diced
1 yellow pepper, diced
½ red chilli, deseeded and diced
2 cloves garlic, crushed
2 fillets of smoked haddock
1 vegetable stock cube
2 tsp olive oil
2 tbsp butter
Method
1. Heat oven to 200C/180C fan/gas 6. Slice the red peppers into halves lengthwise (from stock to base). Remove the stock, insides and all seeds, lay on a baking tray and place in middle of the oven for 20 minutes. If you want to be extra creative, cut some ‘S’ shapes out of an additional red pepper and place them in the oven.
2. Heat the oil in a large non-stick pan. Add the finely diced red chilli and garlic. Simmer for 1 minute. Add the yellow pepper and onion. Leave to simmer until soft – this should take around 5-7 minutes.
3. Boil the kettle and dissolve the vegetable stock cube in one cup of boiling water. Pour the cous cous into a large bowl, pour the stock over and cover the bowl to keep the heat in.
4. Remove the vegetables from the pan and add the butter. Once the butter is melted, add the smoked haddock and cook for 2 minutes on each side. Remove from the heat.
5. Flake the haddock into the cous cous. Add the vegetables and stir.
6. Remove the peppers from the oven. They should now be softened. Spoon the mixture into the peppers, filling them to the top.
7. Serve – with the superman ‘S’ on top of the cous cous.
In Pure Spirit
Which techniques and tactics do you recommend to help encourage young ones to eat wisely?
Imagine plants building up so much pressure that seeds come bursting out like a fireworks display.
“Touch me Nots” live up to their name as even a slightest brush is enough for them to fire off their seeds. They’re not alone in using explosions as a tactic for dispersing seeds though; squirting cucumbers and violets use similar tricks.
In Pure Spirit
Do you think science has learnt pretty much everything there is to know about plants? Or are we just scratching the surface?
