TAVEUNI, FIJI – We’re on our way back from Rainbow Reef, heading for a dive site called Orgasmic, when we see the buoy. There are three of us in the boat: me, and two Fijians. Jone (“Johnny”) is the lively, perpetually grinning divemaster at Susie’s Plantation — a rustic and welcoming resort down the west […]
VANUA LEVU, FIJI — In 1643, the year after he “discovered” New Zealand and Tasmania, navigator Abel Tasman threaded his ship between the treacherous reefs surrounding this volcanic island. Tasman’s report on the passage was so daunting that his fellow navigators would avoid the area for another 150 years. Four and a half centuries later, […]
In what may be the latest setback in Turkey’s ambitions to join the European Union, Judge Mustafa Yücel Özbilgin of the Second Chamber of the Council of State was fatally shot, and four other judges wounded, by an allegedly revenge-driven gunman. The gunman, a lawyer, was said to have shouted “I am a soldier of […]
Recently, considerable attention has been paid to tourism’s affect on particular travel destinations. One site under scrutiny is Machu Picchu, an ancient Inca city in Peru’s Andes Mountains. Geological research, controversial development projects, and actions by preservation groups have caused the world to turn an increasingly watchful eye on this historical landmark. A recent Newsweek […]
Recent promising reports of talks between the Burmese military junta and the Aung San Suu Kyi-led National League for Democracy (NLD), which convincingly won the country’s 1990 elections but was prevented from taking its role in the government, news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/1956562.stm , have been overshadowed by questions of Aung San Suu Kyi’s health and status. A letter […]
Amnesty International (AI) recently called on the European Union (EU) to step up pressure on Japan to abolish the death penalty at an April 24th Japan-EU Summit Meeting. The London-based human rights organization released the statement the same day it issued its annual report on the death penalty. http://www.amnestyusa.org/news/document.do?id=ENGIOR610112006 While, according to the report, the […]
CAT BA ISLAND, VIETNAM — “There are no guarantees,” says Rosie, “that you will see even one langur the whole time you are on Cat Ba Island.” Sure, I nod. I understand. I get it — but I don’t get it. True, it was a full four months before project director Rosie Stenke saw her […]
CAT BA ISLAND, VIETNAM — What’s an endangered monkey worth? If it’s a Golden-Maned Langur — found only on Cat Ba Island, off the coast of North Vietnam, a few hours’ drive from Hanoi — the answer is, about a hundred bucks. The Cat Ba langur is one of the world’s most endangered primate (second […]
TIWOHO, INDONESIA — One thing that strikes me about science, and the way we frame our discoveries, is that we’re no better than our metaphors. We observe a process of nature, and explain how it works by comparing to our own technology. For some of those processes, we have pretty good metaphors: the “holographic” theory […]
