The organic movement has infiltrated our minds and told us for years that all those pesticides on "normal" apples are bad and dangerous for us.
The truth us that you hardly find truly untreated & un-sprayed apples in organic markets.
Most unsprayed apple would have very ugly looking brown spots and often a peel – not the healthy and shiny natural look we are used to.
Many organic orchards use copper spray to keep their apples in shape. Copper is not a pesticide, but certainly not beneficial for humans either and our water supply.
Mass Food Production is a tricky thing and we might have to accept that almost all forms of mass production will put a strain on nature.
Humanity has always been lazy, but Segway makes many people extraordinarily lazy.
A nice walk to enjoy nature actually should include some damn "walking" or at least put some effort into riding a bike …
Damn City Slickers!
Click image for more cuteness.
We should watch nature more instead of eating everything we see.
No going back to living a "natural life" is not the solution for humanity. Many Africans live quite natural – and therefore starve, face terrible sickness, are uneducated and have shot life expectancies. That’s not what I would call a good life!
We develop human culture and technology to survive and have better, safer, healthier and longer lives.
And you can’t feed six billion people just with a hunting and ploughing the fields with horses.
So the days are already getting shorter – on the 21st June is the longest day of 2009. I wouldn’t know it since our weather is so shitty and skies are almost constantly grey. Instead of summer we have constant autumn. Everybody has their finest sweaters on …
With that kind of weather I won’t dance naked around the block like a proper Hippie to celebrate the old rite of passage.
Click image for a bigger critter.
Nature adapts slowly to change – it is not working on the same speed level as human technology races ahead and changes the environment.
Whole ecosystems are killed by small natural and unnatural changes. That is why fast climate change or the intrusion of foreign species (by human infrastructure and colonization) are so deadly.
And we human often think complex enough to see what consequences our "better lifestyles" have for nature.
We certainly can’t live without nature and a healthy ecosystem – in the long run we can only loose. Nature will recover, even when it takes millions of years.
Nature works in long time spans, we don’t.
Click the moth for a bigger image.
I am constantly amazed by the colours of insects and the Leopard Moth is simply a cool bugger. Looking at my pink skin I feel pretty boring and monochrome right now.
I guess you can bridge almost any differences if you grow up together and really get to know each other.
Humans once said they are the only ones that use tools. That has been debunked – many animals use tools. Humans once said only they had "real" language. That has also been debunked. Humans once said they are only ones that create art. That has been debunked by painting elephants and monkeys.
Now those creepy animals even use "our" toys!
Click image to see a larger version of the magnificent photo by Sarah-Fiona Helme – Summer stripes.
Garden Photography sounds pretty lame, but this competition is full of great snaps. Take some time to visit all the galleries like Plant Portraits, Trees and Wildlife in the Garden.
Website: International Garden Photographer of the Year competition
Click image for a bigger bird.
The most depressing think about winter – apart from the cold and xmas – is the lack of colors. You only get get the grey shades ranging white to black.
Spring´brings the colors back – and most of the colorful birds!
How many colors do we have: white, brown, red and so called yellow (has anyone ever seen a yellow Asian person?). And we are only uni-color: no patterns, no stripes, no dots, no gradients … boooooring!
I will never ever again hug a tree!
Click image for more green.
We humans have to use paint or clothes to be so colorful. Most other creatures are less boring.
Colors have also a natural functions – like indicating that certain creatures are poisonous or that a fruit is ripe and has reached the right ‘color’ to be eaten.
So some color combinations are more appealing or ’safer’ for us. So beauty is not just in the eye of the beholder, but also in our instincts what is ‘good’ and ’safe’ for us.
But the same color can have totally different meanings: you would eat a deep green Granny Smith apple, but you wouldn’t bite a green snake – would you?
Click Blob for more color.
Some deep sea creature defy our usual concept how an animal should look like. This odd blob is just brilliant.
Click image for a bigger frog.
Once again: Mother Nature’s colors are amazing. This frog (at least I think it’s a frog) is radiating in a mad orange tone. Brilliant.
Does anyone know the species and why it’s so bloody orange? I guess it must be poisonous – otherwise it wouldn’t give up it’s camouflage?
Photographer: unknown – can anyone help?
I still haven’t heard any good news about the Bees and their Colony Collapse Disorder.
So we still face a serious Bee problem here. If the numbers keep dropping like in recent years we lack enough buzzers to pollinate OUR crops and therefore keep our food production running.
We still don’t understand the CCD – and we are far from a "cure". And even if we find the reason for their disorder – it’s still not sure if we can "heal" our little friends. Vaccination is complicated to say the least …
National Geographic offers a brilliant image gallery with many amazing shots. You can even download those images as wallpapers.
Highly recommended.
Anyone remember the devastating fires in Greece last year?
This year it’s once again California’s turn to suffer fires and huge areas of nature destroyed. Yes, Mother nature uses fires to clear out forests – so big fires are not unusual. But climate change and human intervention have changed the equation.
We hardly can afford to loose huge amounts of trees – we need every tree to get rid of CO2.
New Scientist: The world’s most successful bug hits dolphins
How does a parasite found in kitty litter get into whales and dolphins? By hitching a ride down the sewage pipe and into anchovy guts, say researchers.
Gloeta Massie and Michael Black of California Polytechnic State University say this could explain why one of the most prevalent parasites in humans is now popping up in marine mammals. They presented their findings at the annual meeting of the American Microbiology Society on Monday.
"Toxoplasma gondii is the most successful protozoan pathogen on the planet," says Michael Grigg of the US National Institutes of Health. The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimate that nearly one in four people aged 12 or older in the US have been infected with the parasite.
This is another great example how little we often about the consequences about our actions. Nature is a complex system and even small & stupid acts can have serious consequences.
A lot of science is "wasted" by finding out these often destructive connections and their consequences.
They will survive us all!
New Scientist: Jesus-era seed is the oldest to germinate
Forget cryopreservation – hot and dry conditions might be all you need to awake far into the future. A date palm seed some 2000 years old – preserved by nothing more than storage in hot and dry conditions – has germinated, making it the oldest seed in the world to do so.
The ancient seed was found along with several others in the 1960s in the Masada fortress on the edge of the Dead Sea in Israel. Recently, three were planted in soil and one germinated.
Wow! Nature is pretty inventive and tough. This shows us that we humans might be able to kill ourselves and damage nature. But in the long run nature will survive and regenerate itself.
We humans have always loved to associate ourselves with animals: strong as a bear, cunning as a fox and being a chicken.
Now a stallion and the white horse are in particular interesting: strength, grace, white (as in innocent), potency, speed, freedom, independence, power (as leader of his herd) and war (because horses were only for rich people and knights need a horse).
So … no surprise "chicks" love riding horses.
BBC News: Vast cracks appear in Arctic ice
It’s melting and melting and melting. I wonder when we start to RALLY do something about climate change? When New Orleans is an underwater museum or Venice a diver’s Disney Land?
Interesting video – didn’t know that Sir Attenborough also did porn voice overs. Overall I am happy that my penis isn’t located behind my head – although sometimes it feels like my head is located in my penis. And another note: you can show almost any animal fucking on national TV – except homo sapiens … why is that?
*Thanks to Olivia for that scientific video*
We humans are so often amazed by natures inventions – but we often fail to see that many creatures and plants are just transitions from one “model” to the next.
Only a few of natures experiments have been around for a long time and proven themselves worthy to continuing: the shark is one of the oldest “models”, so are the bees and crocodiles.
We humans are pretty new and I am not sure if we make it for several million years like the sharks have …
Tree Kangaroos are pretty amazing and cuddly. I really envy the countries down under for all their strange and rare animals. 
Forests need small fires to ‘clean’ themselves – but since most of our Forests no longer are in a natural condition fires sometimes get totally out of hand. Climate change and extreme weather increases the disastrous effects even further.
Another problem is that we humans have intervened before the fires in a bad way and do so after the big barbecue. Instead of supporting nature to rebuild itself – we use the new ‘free space’ for property development or farming.
Not good.
Click image for an even bigger bang.
BBC – on this Day: Now that was a big bang and all the dust contributes to global warming today. It’s not only we humans that pollute the atmosphere, but also events like this – although volcanic eruptions are pretty rare and lame compared to some earlier earth periods.
More? Wikipedia entry and don’t miss the 1980’s section with some great images! Then you can ‘feel’ how massive that explosion was.
Fish and Beef are a luxury. It takes big amounts of primary food sources like wheat to produce the same amount of calories in meat.
So instead of eating such luxuries items every day, we should change our habit and ignore the 99¢ burgers with fries and diet coke – and get some apples or pasta instead.
I am not a 100% sure but I think this is evening in Europe. Since the planet rotates counter clockwise this should be the transit into darkness.
Click image for a bigger stone.
If you click the image and feel small by what you see – you are correct. Compared to nature’s awesome monuments we are small and short lived. That’s why our admiration should be huge and timeless.
Climate Change, reduced consumerism, no more cheap flights to your favorite party location, less cheap petrol, more expensive food, responsible consumerism, less convenience food, less lead and cheap toys, more reusing things – less shopping for new stuff …
Sure all that complicated and a serious effort for humans.
But how would you explain to those two chaps why we fucked up the whole planet. Most animals will simply be destroyed by more and extreme climate change. Sure nature will survive and produce some new amazing species after we have killed ourselves and the rest of the inhabitants of planet earth.
We need change – but not at a snails pace and with much more brains. Aren’t we always saying we are the smartest life form on earth? Time to prove it.
Cute baby Knut.
Very Knute.
Super cute Knute.
Not so cute Knute anymore.
So – now Kute is one year old and no longer so small and harmless. The media is hardly interested in him anymore and so are the kids.
Modern Media Cuteness doesn’t like the natural way: polar bears get bigger and more dangerous. So all the Knute merchandise will show him as a baby forever, even when he is an old fart and maybe has eaten his care taker …
Not all animals are created equal, especially not in terms of intelligence. Nobody would consider Cows, Chicken or Snakes as especially smart.
Very different to Elephants, Squid, Chimps and most of all Dolphins. Recent stunning experiments with Dolphins have revealed that they ‘understand’ basic concepts of language and can answer questions with the capability of small kids.
In nature the fight for food and survival is a tough one. That is why huge amounts of easy to get food are so devastating to us humans. We were made to survive on little food, trying to burn as few calories searching for more. How many calories have you burned to hunt your last steak? How much physical work is left in our life’s?
Humanity isn’t built for office work, fast food and extreme couching.
Madame Modotti had a keen eye for beauty. Her gentle photos of people and flowers always touch my heart …
An interesting scientific article about the development of breasts. No easy reading, but excellent of you want to learn more about evolutionary biology.
Ragnar has a sharp eye for amazing moments! Visit his fascinating gallery for a shot trip to some harsher places and of our globe like the Faeroe Island or Siberia. Wow!
