Five years ago this week, the BBC started broadcasting one of the most extraordinary documentaries ever to grace television:
Planet Earth. The culmination of
five years of field work, it employed
the most cutting-edge of techniques in order to capture life in all its forms, from
sweeping spaceborne vistas to shockingly intimate close-ups -- including
many sights rarely glimpsed by human eyes.
Visually spectacular, it showcased footage shot in
204 locations in 62 countries, thoroughly documenting every biome from the snowy peaks of the Himalayas to
the lifegiving waters of the Okavango Delta, a rich narrative tapestry backed by
a stirring orchestral score from the BBC Concert Orchestra. Unfortunately, the series underwent
some editorial changes for rebroadcast overseas. But now fans outside the UK can rejoice -- all eleven chapters of this epic story are available on YouTube in their original form: uncut, in glorious 1080p HD, and with the original narration by renowned naturalist
Sir David Attenborough. Click inside for the full listing (and kiss the rest of your week goodbye).
[more inside]
posted by Rhaomi
on Mar 7, 2011 -
69 comments
SEED Magazine:
Wealth of Nations:
"Shared natural resources underpin the global economy, but our current economic system does not acknowledge their worth. Can a major new effort to assess the costs of biodiversity loss force a paradigm shift in what we value?" [more inside]
posted by zarq
on Nov 30, 2010 -
10 comments
Hunting the Hidden Dimension. You may be familiar with fractals, but in this PBS Nova episode, divided online into 5 parts, fractals go beyond the impossible zoom of the
Mandelbrot set. Scientists are using fractals to describe complex natural occurrences, like
lava,
capillaries, and
rain forests. In part 5, scientists measure one tree in the rain forests, and the distribution of small and large branches mirror the distribution of small and large trees. Fractals, it seems,
are nature.
posted by plexi
on Nov 2, 2008 -
43 comments
Gary Snyder,
sublime and
seminal poet of
ecological awareness and
activism [YouTube link], Zen
appreciation of "ordinary mind" and American speech,
shamanistic intimacy with the natural world, and
surviving member of the Beat Generation (West Coast posse) at age 78, has
won the $100,000 Ruth Lilly poetry prize. "
Gary Snyder is in essence a contemporary devotional poet, though he is not devoted to any one god or way of being so much as to Being itself,"
said Poetry magazine editor Christian Wiman. "His poetry is a testament to the sacredness of the natural world and our relation to it, and a prophecy of what we stand to lose if we forget that relation.” Previous recipients of the Lilly prize include
Adrienne Rich,
John Ashbery, and
W.S. Merwin. [Previously mentioned
here.]
posted by digaman
on May 7, 2008 -
43 comments
