Environment – Page 3 – Mutantfrog Travelogue

Ruins of Shinbashi photo presentation up on eRenlai.com

The photo gallery I posted about three months ago of a condemned block in the Shinbashi region of Tokyo has been converted into a nifty animated slideshow for the eRenlai.com web magazine, by my good friend Cerise.

I particularly like the moody background music she added, which she claims is based on a phrase from the song I Could Have Danced All Night, but I’m afraid I just still can’t recognize as such.

While you’re there, have a look at some of the other pieces on eRenlai, such as this semi-abstract music video piece by Jose Duarte, not coincidentally one of my flat-mates from my time in Taipei.

A cure for the frogopalypse?

Some good news from New Zealand, scientists may have found a cure for the rampaging fungal plague that has been blamed for the extinction of 40 frog species since 1980 – one third of the 120 species which have gone extinct.

Chloramphenicol, currently used as an eye ointment for humans, may be a lifesaver for the amphibians, they say.

The researchers found frogs bathed in the solution became resistant to the killer disease, chytridiomycosis.

Help is on the way, slimy friends. Now, if only they could figure out a way to prevent whatever it is that eliminated the other 80 species.

Most exotic tourist spot

Until today I had thought that it might be Antarctica or the Aral Sea, but there’s a new contender: the Great Pacific Garbage Patch.

A looming environmental threat the size of Texas should be hard to miss, but when that threat is floating in a rarely-visited section of the Pacific Ocean and composed of a diffuse mass of plastic, it’s easy for it to avoid public attention. The recent establishment of a marine preserve north of the Hawaiian Islands has refocused attention on this floating refuse heap, which has picked up the moniker the Great Pacific Garbage Patch.