Tea plantation owner killed by his own workers

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/india/9767629/Indian-tea-workers-burn-boss-and-his-wife-to-death-in-Assam.html

GAUHATI, India — Hundreds of tea estate workers surrounded the plantation owner's home in India's northeastern state of Assam and set it on fire over a labor dispute, killing him and his wife, police said Thursday. Police recovered the charred bodies of the couple, Mridul Kumar Bhattacharyya and his wife, Rita.  Most of the tea plantation workers are women and children.

Read more here: http://www.sanluisobispo.com/2012/12/27/2339173/tea-estate-owner-wife-killed-by.html#storylink=cpy

Can you spot the invisible wolf?

Photographer Art Wolfe has travelled to every continent to capture wildlife at its most invisible...

http://blog.artwolfe.com/tag/camouflage/

The Dakota 38

Dakota Indians and their supporters commemorated the largest mass execution in United States history in Minnesota yesterday:http://minnesota.publicradio.org/display/web/2012/12/27/dakota-38-photos/

The Mayan Magic of Mexico

Enjoyable travelblog in today's Daily Mail: http://travelblog.dailymail.co.uk/2012/12/the-end-of-the-world-maya-magic-in-mexico.html

The war against too much of everything

Photo of Kalle Lasn by Grant Harder

I wish I'd read this New York Times article BEFORE I did all my Christmas shopping this year. I've spent the past month agonizing over what to buy - or not buy - for friends and family and so this article struck a chord! http://www.nytimes.com/2012/12/23/business/adbusters-war-against-too-much-of-everything.html?_r=0&hp=&adxnnl=1&adxnnlx=1356200187-nBgjASbsjqsEm4tDhvxbfQ

So says Kalle Lasn, 70, maestro of the proudly radical magazine Adbusters, published in Vancouver, British Columbia. Mr. Lasn takes gleeful pleasure in lobbing provocations at global corporations — and his latest salvo is “Buy Nothing Christmas.” “As our planet gets warmer, as animals go extinct, as the humans get sicker, as our economies bail and our politicians grow ever more twisted, Americans just go shopping", Adbusters says on its Web site. Overconsumption is destroying us, yet shopping is “our solace, our sedative: consumerism is the opiate of the masses.We’ve got to break the habit,” Mr. Lasn said in a telephone interview. “It will be a shock, but we’ve got to shift to a new paradigm. Otherwise, I’m afraid we will be facing a new Dark Age.”

Winter Solstice Art

Above:Picasso's etching of a blind minotaur led by a little girl in the night. Photograph: British Museum/PA.  From Caravaggio to Picasso, artists have always been drawn to the darkness of deep midwinter: http://www.guardian.co.uk/artanddesign/jonathanjonesblog/2012/dec/21/winter-solstice-art-dark-night

Mayan apocalypse looms

I haven't had access to this blog for weeks due to being overseas. This Friday - December 21 - marks the conclusion of the "Long Count" Mayan calendar. Panic buying of candles and essentials has been reported in China and Russia, along with an explosion in sales of survival shelters in America. In France believers were preparing to converge on a mountain where they believe aliens will rescue them. http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2012/dec/16/mayan-apocalypse-looms-week-ahead

Photo: AFP/Getty Images