After booking flights to Bali and a quick trip to the supermarket. Scrat and I loaded up our stuff together with two other researchers at the town house and waited for the bemo. Bemos are local buses that look like mini vans. Ours was driven by a man in his 70s. He’s married to a […]
November 9, 2014
That was the reaction of my well-travelled mate B in Bozeman. There is no doubt this city has a bad rep. I’ve not heard anything nice about Jakarta, so when I landed yesterday I was filled with apprehension but curiosity too. “How bad can it be?” I thought. If you’ve been to India, then Jakarta […]
April 11, 2011
It’s an image that would stir emotion in even the most hardened of hearts. What on earth would possess someone to do this to another living organism? This photograph was printed in yesterday’s UK newspaper News of the World, and is a clear example of man’s capacity to harm in the most primitive way. I […]
April 4, 2011
I’d like to think I’m not an ‘over-the-shoulder-reader’ when I travel on the tube. I find it really irksome when other people do it to me and I often want to turn and say, “Have you quite finished, can I turn the page now?!” I always carry a book or pick up a free paper […]
March 12, 2011
This week I was mortified to see just how much my electric bill has gone up. It’s a utility I know I can’t live without, but it makes me so cross that certain companies are hiking up their prices even when they’ve earned a bumper profit in the recession. Electricity is something I think we […]
March 7, 2011
A half-century ago, more than three-quarters of Indonesia, was blanketed in plush tropical rainforest. But today it’s a different story; the growing demand to feed the world with pulp, paper and more recently palm oil (which is used in everything from lipstick and soap to “clean-burning” fuel) has seen half those trees destroyed leaving the organtuan […]
February 22, 2011
These beautiful primate portraits are part of a project called 97% Human, which were taken at Melbourne Zoo by photographer Arthur Xanthopoulos. He wanted to bring out the human side to these animals (anthropomorphism). Arthur was originally inspired by primate documentaries, including BBC productions narrated by Sir David Attenborough, where the theme […]
February 14, 2011
She’s an ageing red-head, who’s had three “husbands” and four kids, but Nénette’s life is far from fulfilled. Unlike most Parisian women her age, she is not a lady of leisure, she is in fact a prisoner in her own home. The 40-year orangutan is the subject of the latest documentary by Nicolas Philibert, famed for […]
November 15, 2014
2