All posts tagged: waters

Reverence for the sacred waters of the Ganga and belief in its power to wash away sins bring millions to India’s Maha Kumbh festival

Reverence for the sacred waters of the Ganga and belief in its power to wash away sins bring millions to India’s Maha Kumbh festival

Published by skeptic

(The Conversation) — Millions of people have been visiting Prayagraj, a city in the northern Indian state of Uttar Pradesh, to take part in the Maha Kumbh festival – a six-week-long event that began on Jan. 13, 2025. Called the world’s largest religious gathering, the event has already drawn 148 million people. Attendance is expected to exceed 400 million by the time it ends on Feb. 26, and surging crowds have already claimed dozens of lives at the sacred site. Attendees range from Indian business tycoons and members of parliament to social media personages, film stars and celebrities, including the philanthropist billionaire Laurene Powell Jobs, widow of Apple founder Steve Jobs, who is a member of an ashram in Prayagraj. As a historian of the Ganga and its ecology, I am captivated by the enduring power of unwavering devotion that continues to drive pilgrims to this sacred site, despite the dangers posed by surging crowds and the spread of contagion. At least 30 people have been trampled to death and 60 have been injured in …

Hear Moby Dick Read in Its Entirety by Benedict Cumberbatch, Tilda Swinton, John Waters, Stephen Fry & More

Hear Moby Dick Read in Its Entirety by Benedict Cumberbatch, Tilda Swinton, John Waters, Stephen Fry & More

Published by José

Image of Moby Dick by David Austen. In 2013, Ply­mouth Uni­ver­si­ty kicked off Moby Dick The Big Read, promis­ing a full audio­book of Her­man Melville’s influ­en­tial nov­el, with famous (and not so famous) voic­es tak­ing on a chap­ter each. When we first wrote about it here, only six chap­ters had been unveiled, but boast­ed actors like Til­da Swin­ton (read­ing chap­ter one below), author Nigel Williams, and poet and jour­nal­ist Musa Okwon­ga. We’re glad to say the project reached its suc­cess­ful con­clu­sion. And they cer­tain­ly called on an impres­sive ros­ter of celebri­ty read­ers: Stephen Fry, Neil Ten­nant, Fiona Shaw, Will Self, Bene­dict Cum­ber­batch, Chi­na Miéville, Tony Kush­n­er, John Waters, Simon Cal­low, Sir David Atten­bor­ough, even for­mer Prime Min­is­ter David Cameron. Pulitzer Prize win­ning poet Mary Oliv­er fin­ish­es off the whole project, read­ing the Epi­logue. All 135 chap­ters are avail­able to be lis­tened to in your brows­er, down­loaded on iTunes, or streamed on Sound­Cloud. How­ev­er, do check them out online, as each chap­ter comes with a work of art each cre­at­ed by 135 con­tem­po­rary artists such as Matthew …

John Waters’ RISD Graduation Speech: Real Wealth Is Life Without A*Holes

John Waters’ RISD Graduation Speech: Real Wealth Is Life Without A*Holes

Published by José

John Waters’ rol­lick­ing com­mence­ment speech at The Rhode Island School of Design offered up some good one-lin­ers and a few pearls of wis­dom, though phrased, quite nat­u­ral­ly, in an irrev­er­ent way. Ready for some sage advice on what real­ly counts as wealth? And what career choic­es will make you tru­ly wealthy? Mr. Waters has this to say: Uh, don’t hate all rich peo­ple. They’re not all awful. Believe me, I know some evil poor peo­ple, too. We need some rich peo­ple: Who else is going to back our movies or buy our art? I’m rich! I don’t mean mon­ey-wise. I mean that I have fig­ured out how to nev­er be around ass­holes at any time in my per­son­al and pro­fes­sion­al life. That’s rich. And not being around ass­holes should be the goal of every grad­u­ate here today. It’s OK to hate the poor, too, but only the poor of spir­it, not wealth. A poor per­son to me can have a big bank bal­ance but is stu­pid by choice – uncu­ri­ous, judg­men­tal, iso­lat­ed and unavail­able to change. …

Dirty waters: how the Environment Agency lost its way | Environment

Dirty waters: how the Environment Agency lost its way | Environment

Published by skeptic

When Helen Nightingale joined the National Rivers Authority, the predecessor to the Environment Agency, in 1991, she thought of her work as a calling. She had been fascinated by nature since she was a child, when she used to poke around in the earth on her father’s allotment, looking for worms and beetles. In her job, Nightingale spent most of her time walking along the rivers in Lancashire and Merseyside, taking water samples and testing oxygen levels. She was responsible for protecting rivers, and she often learned about sewage and pesticide pollution from members of the public who called a dedicated hotline. “They’d phone you up and say, ‘There’s something wrong.’ And you would go out straight away,” she recalled. “You stood a much better chance of figuring out what was wrong if you could get there quickly.” Nightingale, who has a Lancastrian accent and curly blond hair, investigated pollution like a hard-nosed police detective inspecting a crime scene. She would visit dairy farms, industrial estates and sewage treatment plants, dressed in a raincoat and …

Testing the waters: Scotland surges ahead on ocean Power

Testing the waters: Scotland surges ahead on ocean Power

Published by skeptic

This article was originally featured on Undark. By quirk of geography, the Orkney islands, located off the northern tip of Scotland, are unusually well positioned to bear witness to the ocean’s might. On the archipelago’s western shores, waves crash relentlessly against the rocks. And within its numerous channels, the tides push an enormous volume of water from the North Atlantic to the North Sea and back again, twice every day, squeezing between and around the islands of Rousay, Westray, Eday, and a myriad of other ones. No wonder the European Marine Energy Center, one of the world’s leading agencies for developing and testing wave and tidal power technologies, chose to set up shop here; the nonprofit agency hosts both wave and tidal power testing facilities on Orkney. EMEC’s wave-energy testing site is at Billia Croo, located on the western shore of Orkney’s largest island. On a relatively calm day last spring, Lisa MacKenzie, EMEC’s marketing and communications manager, surveyed the gray waters from the Billia Croo site. “We get an average of 2-to-3-meter wave height,” …

Shellfish industry on a ‘knife edge’ as sewage dumped in designated waters for 192,000 hours last year | Climate News

Shellfish industry on a ‘knife edge’ as sewage dumped in designated waters for 192,000 hours last year | Climate News

Published by skeptic

Untreated sewage was released into designated shellfish waters for 192,000 hours last year, new research has found. The dirty water pouring into English seas was a 20% jump from 159,000 hours in 2022, according to the analysis of Environment Agency data by the Liberal Democrats, shared with Sky News. The number of individual incidents in 2023 reached 23,000, the equivalent of 64 times a day, a slight fall from 24,000 in 2022. Some fishing waters in Cornwall were forced to close last year after high levels of e.coli were found in oysters and mussels, and norovirus can also be transported via human waste. While the fishing industry can use sterile seawater to clean their catch before it reaches the plate, it has branded the situation a “stitch-up” because it foots the bill for the process. Liberal Democrat environment spokesperson Tim Farron MP said: “This environmental scandal is putting wildlife at risk of unimaginable levels of pollution. “The food we eat, and the British fisheries industry, must be protected from raw sewage.” The Lib Dems are …

These photos show how a warmer climate is damaging Earth’s waters

These photos show how a warmer climate is damaging Earth’s waters

Published by skeptic

In her new book, Entropy, photographer Diane Tuft explores the damage that a warmer climate will have on bodies of water. The Great Salt Lake in Utah (pictured above) is a stark example. Here, climate change has ramped up temperatures, while demands for fresh water from industry and agriculture have reduced the flowing of mountain streams to a trickle, shrinking the lake to two-thirds the volume of what it was in 2000. The colour split, captured by Tuft from a helicopter, is a result of differently pigmented algae that either live in high salinity (pink) or lower salinity (blue) water, bisected by a railroad causeway. The second image, shown above, shows what was once a rice field in Kutubdia Island, Bangladesh, transformed into a field of salt. This is a country at peril from changing waters – projections suggest 17 per cent of it may be submerged by sea by 2050, with the saltwater making much of the land unsuitable for crops. With one having too little water and the other too much, “both locations …

Thames Water’s extra £1.1bn will do little to steady the sinking ship | Thames Water

Thames Water’s extra £1.1bn will do little to steady the sinking ship | Thames Water

Published by skeptic

Thames Water has made a £1.1bn stab at answering the questions swirling around the troubled company, updating its five-year business plan. But it failed to address the one issue that will define its future: how it will find the funds to survive, other than trying to squeeze more money from customers. Since its spending plan was first submitted to the regulator Ofwat in October, the government has accelerated contingency plans in case Thames goes bust, its shareholders have pulled the plug on £500m of funding and industry “bruiser” Chris Weston is now its chief executive. On Monday, the plan – covering 2025 to 2030 – was updated with fresh statistics. The firm now promises to spend extra £1.1bn on top of the £18.7bn already pledged to tackle environmental issues. (The Guardian revealed last week that Thames was deliberating whether to add £1bn or £1.5bn to figure, and considering approaching debt markets). The company hasa £15.6bn debt mountain. Thames was reluctant to spell out what precisely the £1.1bn will be spent on. The main reason for …

North Korea fires ballistic missile into the waters off east coast | World | News

North Korea fires ballistic missile into the waters off east coast | World | News

Published by skeptic

South Korea’s military says it has detected that North Korea fired at least one ballistic missile toward waters off its eastern coast, adding to a series of weapons demonstrations that have raised tensions in the region. South Korea’s Joint Chiefs of Staff on Tuesday did not immediately confirm how far the missile flew. It was the North’s first known launch event since March 18, when North Korean leader Kim Jong Un supervised a live-fire drill of artillery systems designed to target South Korea’s capital. Tensions on the Korean Peninsula have risen since 2022 as Kim used Russia’s invasion of Ukraine as a distraction to accelerate his testing of missiles and other weapons. The United States and South Korea have responded by expanding their combined training and trilateral drills involving Japan and sharpening their deterrence strategies built around strategic U.S. assets. There are concerns that North Korea could further dial up pressure in an election year in the United States and South Korea. We’ll be bringing you the very latest updates, pictures and video on this …

Children of the flood: what can lands lost to rising waters tell us? | Environment

Children of the flood: what can lands lost to rising waters tell us? | Environment

Published by skeptic

When writer Gareth E Rees stands on the muddy foreshore at Pett Level in East Sussex, his mind turns to the Mesolithic peoples who hunted, lit fires and dreamed their very human dreams on the lands now subsumed by the steel grey swell of the English Channel. It’s low tide at Pett Level and, as at every low tide, the withdrawing waters have exposed a landscape of twisted and pocked tree trunks that is illegible to many of today’s brisk dog-walkers and young families out on the migrating shingle. It is one of many sunken lands around the world that Rees has become fascinated by – places where people used to live that have been lost beneath the waves throughout history – areas from the past that may tell us something about our own climate-change induced predicament of today. “What I love about this place is that I get such a buzz from seeing the layers of history open out,” Rees tells me as we brave a southerly wind that whips scarves about our cheeks. …