As world leaders gather in Copenhagen this week to negotiate continued international action on climate change, they’ll have one good example of the kinds of pledges they’ll need to make: the Climate Quilt. A project of Habitat Heroes and The Green Schools Alliance, the Climate Quilt Campaign asks school kids from around the world to make “pledge patches” (from recycled materials, of course) that display individual promises “to preserve the future of the planet.” While the finished quilt won’t be available until Earth Day, 2010, panels from kids in New Jersey and Australia have made their way to COP15.
By internet standards, this video is prehistoric but too good and too cute not to share. Directed by acclaimed Malaysian director/writer/producer Yasmin Ahmad whose work is well-known for its humor, heart and love that crosses cultural barriers, this ad for Malaysian oil company Petronas was filmed for Malaysia’s 50th Independence Day.
Tan Hong Ming is Chinese while the object of his affection, Umi Qazrina, is Malay, but both children are of Malaysian nationality. It is a gentle reminder to all Malaysians, and in fact to everyone, to strive for ethnic harmony. If these two children are unafraid of falling in love with someone of a different ethnicity or race, why not the rest of us?
Unfortunately, Yasmin Ahmad died on July 25, 2009 from a brain hemorrhage.
THE LAZY ENVIRONMENTALIST, hosted by Josh Dorfman, screens Tuesdays at 9PM on Sundance Channel.
Episode two is definitely one of my favorites. In “Lazy Principal” I get to hang out with kids, gauge their point of view, and see how effectively I can engage them in environmental action. I’m also helped by my good friend and outstanding green innovator and teacher, Mike O’Brien, who I call upon to help me implement change in a classroom and in other areas around the school.
Italian photographers Romina Raffaelli and Stefano Marini of Winkler + Noah created this utterly uncanny collection titled “The Puppet Show” of “30 portraits of children from two to eight years old, taken very naturally and transformed into dolls by a subtle play of retouching.”
A recent study found that men may have a biological clock after all: The children of older fathers were found to have lower IQ scores than those of younger dads. And this is in addition to earlier studies showing that schizophrenia and autism are more common in the offspring of men who were in their mid forties or older when they fathered them.
But things get really interesting when you combine these results with the corresponding data for women, as our friend Emily Nussbaum at New York mag did: Older mothers have been shown to have smarter children. Going by this data alone, the most intelligent children would be the progeny of “45-year-old career women inseminated by their 21-year-old personal trainers.” In other words, science is squarely in favor of the cougar relationship. Perhaps the ne-plus-ultra cougar Madonna should be looking to her boytoy Jesus for a sperm donation instead of adopting another baby from Malawi.
But what this (admittedly loose) interpretation of the research misses out on is that half the appeal of the cougar is that she’s been there and done the whole kids and marriage thing. Either that or she never wanted it in the first place. Cougars are supposed to like sex and martinis in the afternoon — and even the smartest newborn in the world will put a damper on that hobby.
