The agricultural heartland of India has turned into a suicide belt over the past two decades: Every 90 minutes, a small-scale farmer kills himself. It’s a shocking statistic that reflects an era of mass agricultural production and steep competition.
Ten years and two wars after 9/11, America’s struggle against Islamist terrorism is nowhere close to succeeding. If a superpower like America can’t vanquish this scourge, is there any force in the world that can?
There might well be: Bollywood, India’s flamboyant film industry. Just as the Beatles and rock ’n’ roll helped bring down the Kremlin, Bollywood might yet prove to be the undoing of the most noxious brand of Islamic fundamentalism.
Today’s young Muslims are not nearly as susceptible to the calculated chaos of Western pop culture as yesterday’s youth of the East Bloc. “While hip hop and heavy metal have helped inspire some of the street protesters demanding more freedoms across the Middle East and northern Africa,” Dalmia observes, “outside of the hardcore early adopters these cultural subgenres remain more voyeuristic than aspirational.”
There is hope on the cultural horizon, however. And, no, Lady Gaga will not have to suit up for battle. India’s film industry is the free world’s new shining star—all kitsched-up, scantily clad, and subversively cool.
We’ve learned, time and time again, that damming rivers causes all sorts of problems for both nature and society—and yet we keep building dams all over the world. World Rivers Review, the quarterly magazine of the advocacy group International Rivers, reports on the state of the world’s free-flowing rivers—those that remain, that is:
Of the world’s 177 largest rivers, only one-third are free flowing, and just 21 rivers longer than 1,000 kilometers retain a direct connection to the sea. Damming has led to species extinctions, loss of prime farmland and forests, social upheaval, loss of clean water supplies, dessicated wetlands, destroyed fisheries and more. …
Unfortunately, the nations building the most dams—India, China, and Brazil—do not have legislation to protect the free-flowing status of their rivers, and are not using the laws they do have to protect important rivers.
The Crockpot: A Weekly Link-Digest from Utne2
So you want to be a writer. Well, start reading. - God may or may not be dead, but churches have become collectible.
- Farewell, free will?
- Wow. Some gorgeous photos from Iceland.
- Sebastian Junger tells The Guardian why he’s getting out of war reporting.
- This year’s literary genius grant winners have been announced.
- A Muslim woman describes wearing a hijab—and how she felt going bareheaded in public for the first time at age 28.
- September 22 is the Day of the Girl. Some things you can do: Tell Facebook to take down “rape joke” pages, change the channel on sexist entertainment, and write a letter to the editor when you see negative portrayals of girls in magazines.
- A new take on the drinking fountain combines beauty and interaction. “As you approach it, it gently bows down to pour water into your glass.” Cool video…
- The Table Project (kind of like Facebook for Christians) draws more than 1,600 churches from around the country and of every denomination.
- Civilization is beautiful. Watch this time-lapse video taken by the International Space Station one night as it orbited around the earth.
- What does India’s lush Kaziranga National Park have that the rest of the country’s decimated reserves do not? Plenty of tigers, for starters. (The world’s highest density.) Fleets of endangered one-horned rhinos. (More than two-thirds of the remaining population.) And, since last year, a take-no-prisoners antipoaching policy that allows rangers to shoot on sight. Welcome to the future of conservation.
- Germany takes the hands-off approach: Driverless cars hit the streets of Berlin … and were completely functional.
- If President Obama had an LGBT Advisor, what would their job be like?
Meet Meng Hai Lin. She’s a 29-year-old mobile phone engineer from Beijing, China. She has learned some English and is skeptical of marriage. Meng’s voice is but a small murmur from an unprecedented global generation—one witnessing a dramatic restructuring of traditional relationships between countries, cultures, and people.
Photographer Adrian Fisk wants to show the world what Meng and the rest of her peers want to get off of their collective chest. Thus, iSpeak was born.
Traveling around China and India, Fisk gave random people 16- to 30-years-old a marker and piece of blank paper. Then he told them to write whatever they wanted. The iSpeak photographs are the result, and they channel the hopes, dreams, quibbles, and fears of a new generation.
(via Smithsonian)
A debate rages over preserving the awe-inspiring, 350-year-old monument that now shows signs of distress from pollution and shoddy repairs.
