ponedjeljak, 31. ožujka 2014.

No they don't, we steal honey from them, and it's not "symbiotic" thing as some want us to think. The whole "without us bees will die" argument is wrong, because bees literally die because of us.

Einstein once said: “If bees ever die out, mankind will have only four years left to live”. In the past five years, billions of honeybees simply vanished for reasons still obscure. If the bees keep dying, it will have drastic effects for humans as well: more than one third of our food production depends on pollination by honeybees and their life and death are linked to ours.
Life without the bee is unthinkable. But, between pesticides, antibiotics and monoculture, the queens and their workers are losing their power.
MORE THAN HONEY, a documentary by the Swiss filmmaker Marcus Imhoof, is looking into the fascinating world of bees, showing small family beekeepers (including the beekeeper of ERSTE Foundation beehive, Heidrun Singer) and industrialized honey farms. MORE THAN HONEY is a film on the relationship between mankind and honeybees, about nature and about our future. Honeybees show us that stability is just as unhealthy as unlimited growth, that crises and disasters are triggering evolution and that salvation sometimes comes from a completely unexpected direction.

Image courtesy of Per-Olof Gustafsson

Bee Products

Other products that come from the honey industry are:

Bee pollen: pollen collected by bees; their primary source of nutrition.
Royal jelly (bee milk): the pharyngeal gland secretions of the nurse bees. The queen larvae receives more of the royal jelly than the worker larvae, growing her into a queen bee.
Beeswax: secreted by bees to help build their hives.
Propolis: a brownish resinous material of waxy consistency collected by bees from the buds of trees and used as a cement and an antiseptic.
Bee venom: obtained from a bee sting. Honeybees die after stinging someone.

Bee with pollen in sacks, Image courtesy of Per-Olof Gustafsson

Bees gather pollen in sacs and nectar from the flowers. Honey is stored in the hive as winter food for the bees . Yes, sometimes they make more than they can eat, but do the beekeepers only take the extra? No, according to James E. Tew, an Extension Specialist in Apiculture at Ohio State University in Wooster, "Commercial beekeepers frequently extract [steal] all fall-season honey and then feed colonies either sugar syrup or corn syrup in quantities great enough to provide all the winter food the bees would need"

Why honey is not vegan

Image by davide vizzini from Milano, Italy

The simplest reason why honey isn't vegan is by definition. The term vegan was coined by Donald Watson in 1944 and was defined as follows:
Veganism is a way of living which excludes all forms of exploitation of, and cruelty to, the animal kingdom, and includes a reverence for life. It applies to the practice of living on the products of the plant kingdom to the exclusion of flesh, fish, fowl, eggs, honey, animal milk and its derivatives, and encourages the use of alternatives for all commodities derived wholly or in part from animals.

The honeybee.courtesy of John Kimbler/National Geographic

When you eat a vegetable or piece of fruit, chances are there is a honeybee to thank for the opportunity. According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, 25 percent of our diet is the result of pollination by the insect. The recent discovery of a rapid and widespread decline of honeybee populations has scientists mystified and very concerned

nedjelja, 30. ožujka 2014.

Henry Hargreaves + Caitlin Levin map the world’s most famous foods

The exploration of new countries and continents is often enhanced by the food eaten there, acting as a portal to the cultural complexities of that place. brooklyn-based photographer Henry Hargreaves and food stylist Caitlin Levin, motivated by a passion for travel, have created ‘food maps’, a playful cartography series of geographical locations made out of the iconic foods that best represent them. painstakingly crafted with real, unadulterated food, the silhouettes are packed with edible materials — corn in various forms fills the united states, vibrantly colored kiwis compose new zealand and biscuit bits build the united kingdom.

Many thanks to ASYLUM ART

subota, 29. ožujka 2014.

Cow Abuse

Many people saw this photo on the internet and made fun of the “dairy” cow by calling her “stupid” but no one has wondered why she would leave the huge, lush, green pasture behind her and climb over a fence. The cow in the photo is a “first-calf heifer” trying to find her stolen baby. These first time mothers will do literally anything to get to their babies.
A cow will continue to grow physically until she is 3-4 but a “dairy” cow is forcibly impregnated when she is only 15 months old and has her first calf when she is 2. A 2 year old cow is a teenager and will still be playful.

The term “first-calf heifer” is used very frequently in the dairy industry and refers to a cow who has had her first baby. The dairy industry uses the word “heifer” instead of “cow” to describe these first time mothers because they are yet to reach their full mature cow size.

Having not experienced the systematic loss of her babies yet thus very hopeful and ambitious, a “first-calf heifer” will be extremely determined to find and get to her stolen baby that she will literally do anything. This includes crawling over fences, breaking out of fields and walking for miles. To avoid this from happening, dairy farmers try to make their fencing escape-proof with hot electric fence, electric wire strands, steel panels, sturdy barbed/page wires.

Many thanks to Fighting for Animals on Tumblr

Cannon Fire And Crowds Salutes The Return Of A 262 Year Old Swedish Indiaman To London 2007

Credit: Phil Adams/Imagewise © Swedish East India Company

The East Indiaman Gotheborg III
Götheborg is a sailing replica of an 18th-century Swedish East Indiaman. It is the world's largest operational wooden sailing vessel.

How it's made: The Building of East Indiaman Götheborg Pt 1 - Hur Ostindiefararen Götheborg byggdes del 1

More http://goo.gl/obqB21
Website: SOIC | The Swedish Ship Götheborg soic.se/en/

Sequoia National Forest

Drive Thru Tree Sequoia National Forest, California

Sequoia National Forest is located in the southern Sierra Nevada mountains of California. The U.S. National Forest is named for the majestic Giant Sequoia trees which populate 38 distinct grooves within the boundaries of the forest. Wikipedia

Drive through General Sherman tree - The Biggest Tree in World at Sequoia National Forest

By Laura Austin

Photo by Kevin Graham

The Sequoia National Forest and Giant Sequoia National Monument manage 33 giant sequoia groves for their protection, restoration, and preservation
.

Fire is an essential part of Sierra forest ecology. Plants and animals have adapted to the periodic, low-intensity fires that naturally occur here. In fact, sequoias need fire to open their cones and release the seeds, and to leave cleared beds of ash where they sprout and grow best.

(George E. Stone Photo)

This is how the Wawona Tree in Yosemite appeared before it fell over in a storm. NPS Photo

The richness of the Sierran flora mirrors that of the state as a whole. Of the nearly 6,000 species of vascular plants known to occur in California, over 20% can be found within Sequoia and Kings Canyon National Parks.

Sequoia National Forest - Home - USDA Forest Service

Sequoia & Kings Canyon National Parks

petak, 28. ožujka 2014.

Auto-fill Shows Our Stands on Mental Illness

Historically significant persons who suffered from mental illness and nowadays most popular searching engine's auto-fill

(1) President Abraham Lincoln, who had depression

(2) Writer Virginia Woolf, who had bipolar disorder

(3) Artist Vincent Van Gogh, who had bipolar disorder

Via/More

Auto-fill Can Speak Volumes of Our Society

Ad Shows The World’s Popular Opinions Of Women Using Search Engine

Gender inequality exists in many parts of the world—women are still being denied proper work, wages, education and healthcare in some places.

UN Women teamed up with Christopher Hunt of Ogilvy & Mather to come up with a series of thought-provoking ads that highlight authoritative attitudes towards women.

The ads show the real Google search results of search terms like “women need to”, “women should” and “women cannot”, revealing the abhorrent opinions that people around the world have about women.

The words “women shouldn’t suffer from discrimination anymore” and “women cannot accept the way things are” appear in tiny, white print that are barely legible, showing how these opinions are largely ignored.