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Goldsworthy ![](images/quickread.gif) As a chid, Andy Goldsworthy made his first outdoor sculptures in the woods near his childhood home in Scotland. Despite his poor academic performance throughout elementary and high school, and being rejected from his top choice colleges and fine arts schools, Andy stayed true to the artistic voice that shaped his first creations. Today he travels around the world, creating pieces that capture nat... posted on Mar 09 2005, 1,399 reads
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Food Fight ![](images/quickread.gif) Thanks to the ubiquitousness of junk food, obesity has become one of the top health problems in the US with one in six children considered overweight. Alice Waters, the visionary California chef of Chez Panisse, wants to nip obsesity in the bud. She founded the Edible Schoolyard, which transformed an unused tarmac in a Berkeley middle-school into a garden from which kids can grow and cook food whi... posted on Mar 02 2005, 1,136 reads
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Kyoto's Birth ![](images/quickread.gif) With Russia's ratification in 2004, The Kyoto Protocal came into effect on February 16th 2005. Now international law, the protocal's intention is for industrialized countries to cut their greenhouse gas emmissions to 5% below 1990 levels by the year 2012. How much is our economic behaviour changing the face of the earth? The images that photographer Gary Braasch has been recording and assembling s... posted on Mar 01 2005, 1,505 reads
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Madidi National Park ![](images/quickread.gif) For over 20 years, Rosa Maria Ruiz has been a one-woman army in the creation and defending of Bolivia’s Madidi National Park, a preserve roughly the size of New Jersey. Through her organization, EcoBolivia, she tirelessly battles lumber companies, land speculators, commercial hunters, oil interest, dam projects, and drug dealers to save the world’s most biologically diverse region from annihil... posted on Feb 10 2005, 1,267 reads
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Photographing Hope ![](images/quickread.gif) On a trip to Africa in 1971, while working as an economist for the World Bank, Sebastião Salgado picked up his wife’s camera and began photographing. Those images prompted him to leave his job and begin a 30-year journey documenting the migrations of the landless and the refugees of war. Now 60 years old, the Brazilian photographer is seeking out the most pristine places on earth in an effort ... posted on Feb 03 2005, 1,885 reads
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Solar Paint ![](images/quickread.gif) Scientists have invented a plastic solar cell that can turn the sun's power into electrical energy, even on a cloudy day. The plastic material uses nanotechnology and contains the first solar cells able to harness the sun's invisible, infrared rays. Like paint, the composite can be sprayed onto other materials and used as portable electricity. A sweater coated in the material could power a cell ph... posted on Jan 26 2005, 1,436 reads
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Gorillas of Saharan Africa ![](images/quickread.gif) Five million metric tons of bushmeat are traded each year, in the Congo Basin alone. Unfortunately, most of it is illegal and poses a major threat to African wildlife. And a scientist, David Greer, is risking his life virtually every day to run anti-poaching patrols to protect some of Africa's most significant animals, including western lowland gorillas and forest elephants. Smithsonian's Paul R... posted on Jan 14 2005, 1,228 reads
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The Penguin Escape ![](images/quickread.gif) It is home to 850,000 King Peguins. So when Antarctica was hit with an 8.1 earthquake -- strongest quake in four year, at the time -- many feared of the havoc on the penguin habitat. Much to everyone's surprise, all the Penguins had moved to safety the day before!... posted on Dec 29 2004, 1,556 reads
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Living Easy ![](images/quickread.gif) Greg and his wife were both mainstreamers in the USA, when a chance opportunity gave them a taste of life in the rural wilds. They were bewitched. There was no road or electricity or any of the conveniences we take for granted. Greg was just 30 then, but he set out to create his Walden. Twenty years later, electricity and the Internet came to his homestead. That impelled him to share his experien... posted on Dec 22 2004, 1,326 reads
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The Green Economy ![](images/quickread.gif) It's come a long way since the days of hippie hemp T-shirts. Today, the "green economy" is attracting multimillion-dollar companies in every sector. Socially responsible investment managers control $2.16 trillion, or 1 out of every 9 dollars invested in America. The U.S. organic food market is worth $10.38 billion, growing at almost 20% (compared to 3% for total food sales). Fair Trade sales are b... posted on Nov 13 2004, 1,364 reads
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