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ABOUT WHAT’S HAPPENING? |
GENIUS OF NATURE This page is a resource page for further inspiration on the Genius of Nature. It provides links to further information on other websites, in books or dvds. We hope you'll enjoy this journey through the magical wonderland of pure genius in nature! "The goal of life is living in agreement with nature." - Zeno
THE GENIUS OF PLANET EARTH We highly recommend the David Attenborough dvd sets of Planet Earth and The Blue Planet. Fall in love with nature and be inspired and wonderfilled by the beauty and genius of planet earth!
"Those who contemplate the beauty of the earth find reserves of strength that will endure as long as life lasts." - Rachel Carsons "I am so absorbed in the wonder of earth and the life upon it that I cannot think of heaven and angels." - Pearl S.Buck THE GENIUS OF NATURE & IT'S CREATURES For a wonderful resource on the extraordinary magic in nature, read 'Hidden Nature' by Alick Bartholemew
"It is a wholesome and necessary thing for us to turn again to the earth and in the contemplation of her beauties to know of wonder and humility." - Rachel Carsons For a truly extraordinary understanding of nature and our connection to it - we recommend the Ringing Cedars of Russia series of books about an extraordinary woman who lives in the Russian Taiga forest - Anastasia. Written by Vladimir Megre and translated from Russian into English.
To order the books email: books@ringingcedars.co.za or phone: +27 (0)82 5533 775 (South Africa) Or you can order them on Amazon.com or Kalahari.net Two of the most amazing books about our connection to nature, are: 1.The Secret Life of Plants by Peter Tompkins and Christopher Bird and 2.The Secret Teachings of Plants: The Intelligence of the Heart in the Direct Perception of Nature by Stephen Buhner
"Everything in nature contains all the power of nature. Everything is made of one hidden stuff." - Ralph Waldo Emerson Ourselves as one of nature's creatures. One of my favourite books, written by a South African author, is Ecological Intelligence - Rediscovering Ourselves in Nature by Ian McCullum
A wonderful short clip narrated by oceanographer David Gallo of on the genius of some amazing sea creatures (including the amazing octopus!) can be viewed here: Underwater Astonishments on TED.com Other wonderful short videos on speakers revealing the genius of Amazing Animals: click here for link on TED.com Have you read about Modoc?: A True Story of the Greatest Elephant that Ever Lived
THE GENIUS OF TREES Have you seen Thomas Packenham's books?: "Meeting with Remarkable Trees" or "Remarkable Trees of the World".
A wonderful book, written almost as a loveletter to trees is The Secret Life of Trees, byColin Tudge
Click to link to a website for Exploring The Secret Life of Trees Click to link to the TREE WORLD website.
THE GENIUS OF WATER Water, the most amazing yet least studied substance. From times immemorial, scientists, philosophers and theologians tried to understand its explicit and implicit properties, which are phenomenal, beyond the common physical laws of nature. "If there is magic on this planet, it is contained in water." - Loran Eisley (Anthropologist), The Immense Journey, 1957 "Water is life's matter and matrix, mother and medium. There is no life without water." - Albert Szent-Gyorgyi, Hungarian biochemist and Nobel Prize Winner for Medicine. A new movie on Water has recently opened in the USA and will be coming to South Africa in the near future.
"A lake is the landscape's most beautiful and expressive feature. It is Earth's eye; looking into which the beholder measure the depth of his own nature." - Henry David Thoreau Some of the most genius information on water is from the water wizard - Viktor Schauberger who lived 1885-1958
You can read more about his insights and discoveries about water in a number of books, including the Water Wizard by Callum Coats and Living Water by Olof Alexandersson.
For even more wonder about the genius of water - read Dr Masaru Emoto's books starting with "The Hidden Messages in Water"
"To understand water is to understand the cosmos, the marvels of nature, and life itself. " - Masaru Emoto "Water, thou hast no taste, no color, no odor; canst not be defined, art relished while ever mysterious. Not necessary to life, but rather life itself, thou fillest us with a gratification that exceeds the delight of the senses." - Antoine de Saint-Exupery, From Wind, Sand and Stars, 1939 "We think of our land and water and human resources not as static and sterile possessions but as lifegiving assets to be directed by wise provisions for future days." - Franklin D. Roosevelt THE GENIUS OF SOIL
The soil is a living entity not just a substrate in which to grow plants. A living soil is teeming with life, from earthworms, centipedes and beetles to fungi and bacteria. Healthy soil has food, air and water to help plants grow. The more nutrients available in the soil, the more the plant can take up. The more nutrients in the plant - the more available for animals and humans. For this reason human health is affected by the health of the soil. Read about the wonders of soil in A Handful of Dirt by Raymond Bial
Permaculture, Biodynamic and Organic Agriculture are all methods that promote healthy soil. The importance of compost to build soil health is a key element of all of these methods. "To forget how to dig the earth and to tend the soil is to forget ourselves." - Mohandas Gandhi THE GENIUS OF LIVING IN HARMONY WITH NATURE The best way to reconnect with nature is to grow your own food, build your own soil, harvest your own water and supply your own energy by emulating the genius of nature!
Permaculture (permanent agriculture) is the conscious design and maintenance of agriculturally productive ecosystems which have the diversity, stability, and resilience of natural ecosystems. It is the harmonious integration of landscape and people providing their food, energy, shelter, and other material and non-material needs in a sustainable way. Without permanent agriculture there is no possibility of a stable social order. Read more here. Click here to watch a 5minute video ("Greening the Desert") which reveals the genius of permaculture. To learn how to grow your own food using Permaculture principles in South Africa, contact:
Biodynamic agriculture Essentially, biodynamic farming and gardening looks upon the soil and the farm as living organisms. It regards maintenance and furtherance of soil life as a basic necessity if the soil is to be preserved for generations, and it regards the farm as being true to its essential nature if it can be conceived of as a kind of individual entity in itself - a self-contained individuality. It begins with the ideal concept of the necessary self-containedness of the farm and works with furthering the life of the soil as a primary means by which a farm can become a kind of individuality that progresses and evolves. For more information on Biodynamics click here. For books on Biodynamics, contact the local Biodynamic Agriculture Association of South Africa (BDAASA) email Aletta Venter at info@bdaasa.org.za Organic Agriculture The role of organic agriculture, whether in farming, processing, distribution, or consumption, is to sustain and enhance the health of ecosystems and organisms from the smallest in the soil to human beings. For more information on organic farming and organic food labelling - visit the IFOAM website. A great resource book if you want to grow your own garden organically, is The Encyclopaedia of Organic Gardening
"The sun, with all those planets revolving around it and dependent upon it, can still ripen a bunch of grapes as if it had nothing else in the universe to do."- Galileo "The best remedy for those who are afraid, lonely or unhappy is to go outside, somewhere where they can be quiet, alone with the heavens, nature and God. Because only then does one feel that all is as it should be and that God wishes to see people happy, amidst the simple beauty of nature." - Anne Frank
THE GENIUS OF ZERO WASTE Zero waste suggests that the entire concept of waste should be eliminated. Instead, waste should be thought of as a “residual product” or simply a “potential resource” to counter our basic acceptance of waste as a normal course of events. Opportunities such as reduced costs, increased profits, and reduced environmental impacts are found when returning these “residual products” or “resources” as food to either natural and industrial systems. This may involve redesigning both products and processes in order to eliminate hazardous properties that make them unusable and unmanageable in quantities that overburden both industry and the environment. Zero Waste strategies consider the entire life-cycle of our products, processes and systems in the context of a comprehensive systems understanding of our interactions with nature and search for inefficiencies at all stages. With this understanding, wastes can be prevented through designs based on full life-cycle thinking. Indeed, we should work to "design" our wastes, if any, so that they have future applications. The ZERO EMISSIONS RESEARCH & INITIATIVES (ZERI) organisation, has some genius ideas for zero waste systems of industry and agriculture. Watch Gunter Pauli, founder of ZERI speaking about the Wisdom of the Future here Read Gunter Pauli's books: Upsizing and Out of the Box
For more information on the work of ZERI in South Africa, visit the ZERI SA website or contact Nirmala Nair Mushrooms are vitally important in nature to ensure the cycling of materials and hence - zero waste. ZERI systems make use of mushrooms. For a genius book on How Mushrooms can help Save the World - read Mycelium Running by Paul Stamet
"Study nature, love nature, stay close to nature. It will never fail you." - Frank Lloyd Wright The concept of CRADLE to CRADLE developed by Bill McDonough and Michael Brangaurt is all about Zero Waste through design. Find out more about their book: "Cradle to Cradle" - one of the best books you'll read. In addition to describing the hopeful, nature-inspired design principles that are making industry both prosperous and sustainable, the book itself is a physical symbol of the changes to come. It is printed on a synthetic 'paper,' made from plastic resins and inorganic fillers, designed to look and feel like top quality paper while also being waterproof and rugged. And the book can be easily recycled in localities with systems to collect polypropylene, like that in yogurt containers. This 'treeless' book points the way toward the day when synthetic books, like many other products, can be used, recycled, and used again without losing any material quality—in cradle to cradle cycles.
"If a man walks in the woods for love of them half of each day, he is in danger of being regarded as a loafer. But if he spends his days as a speculator, shearing off those woods and making the earth bald before her time, he is deemed an industrious and enterprising citizen." - Henry David Thoreau The Genius of Biomimicry Janine Benyus draws her design inspiration from nature's wisdom, not people's cleverness. Some 3.8 billion years of evolution have exposed the design flaws of roughly 99% of nature's creations — all recalled by the Manufacturer. The 1% that have survived can teach powerful lessons about how things should be built if they're to last. For example, nature's design genius has led to the creation of bat-inspired ultrasonic canes for the blind, synthetic sheets that collect water from mist and fog as desert beetles do, and paint that self-cleans like a lotus leaf. Little plastic-film patches have been designed using adhesiveless gecko-foot technology, so that carpet tiles can be stored in a big roll, but also easily removed. Equally promising, we'll soon make solar cells like leaves, supertough ceramics that resemble the inner shells of abalone, and underwater glue that mimics the natural as forests. Biomimicry isn't biotechnology. Biomimicry learns and emulates how spiders make silk; biotechnology transplants spiders' silk-making genes into goats, then sorts silk from milk and hopes the genes don't get loose. Biotechnology is smart kids in an oil depot with matches; biomimicry is wise adults in a rain forest with flashlights. Biotechnology is pure hubris; biomimicry is luminous humility — treating nature as model and mentor, cherished not as a mine to be stripped of its resources but as a teacher. for more information visit: www.biomimicryinstitute.org and www.biomimicryguild.com. Read more about Janine Benyus as one of TIME Magazine's Heroes for Our Planet here A highly recommended book is Janine Benyus's book titled: Biomimicry - Innovation Inspired By Nature
"Today the network of relationships linking the human race to itself and to the rest of the biosphere is so complex that all aspects affect all others to an extraordinary degree. Someone should be studying the whole system, however crudely that has to be done, because no gluing together of partial studies of a complex nonlinear system can give a good idea of the behavior of the whole." - Murray Gell-Mann "Our life is an apprenticeship to the truth that around every circle another can be drawn; that there is no end in nature, but every end is a beginning, and under every deep a lower deep opens." - Ralph Waldo Emerson
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