#we discovered they create ecosystems around them through generations of shaping the land around them

[marsafter-dark]

Broke: the world is ending and we can’t do anything

Woke: the world is worth saving and we shouldn’t give up on it

Bespoke: the world is worth saving and writers can help by imagining a positive future and encouraging the society to hope again

[wonderfunio]

Discover the Exciting World of Elephants: A Fun and Engaging Guide for Kids!

Introduction to the Exciting World of Elephants

Welcome, young explorers, to the vast and fascinating world of elephants! These magnificent creatures roam the earth with a gentle might and a grace that belies their enormous size. Elephants are not just the largest land animals living on our planet today; they are also beings of intelligence, emotion, and complex social structures that can teach us much about the natural world and our place within it. As we embark on this journey of discovery, prepare to be amazed by what elephants can do and the secrets they hold.

Elephants have roamed the earth for millions of years, evolving into the incredible beings we know today. Their ancestors were quite different from the gentle giants we are familiar with, but over time, they adapted to their environments, shaping the landscape and influencing the biodiversity around them in significant ways. This introductory section will serve as your gateway into understanding these magnificent creatures’ importance, not just in their habitats but also in human culture and the environment at large.

As we dive deeper into the world of elephants, remember that these creatures are not just subjects of fascination but also symbols of conservation efforts worldwide. Their existence is a testament to the beauty and complexity of the natural world, and by learning more about them, we can learn how to better protect and preserve our planet for future generations.

What Makes Elephants Special?

Elephants are truly special for a myriad of reasons. Firstly, their size is awe-inspiring, with adult elephants reaching up to 11 feet in height and weighing as much as 6,000 to 15,000 pounds. However, it’s not just their size that makes them remarkable; their intelligence is profound. Elephants have been observed using tools, displaying empathy, and exhibiting mourning behaviors, indicating deep emotional capacities.

Another aspect that sets elephants apart is their incredible memory. This is not just a myth; elephants can remember water sources, their family members, and even humans they have not seen for years. This memory plays a crucial role in their survival, especially in the harsh landscapes they often inhabit.

Elephants also have a significant impact on their ecosystems. Through their daily activities, such as eating and moving through vast landscapes, they create pathways for other animals and help in seed dispersal, contributing to the health and diversity of their habitats. This interconnection between elephants and their environment underscores the importance of their conservation.

Learn More @

WonderWise Blog

[letterboxd]

Jungleland.

“You’re in the most beautiful place you’ve ever seen, but it’s hell.” Colombian filmmaker Alejandro Landes takes us deep inside the extreme filming conditions of his acclaimed jungle thriller Monos, and the art of letting life come onto the page.

Alejandro Landes’ second fictional film Monos follows a ragtag group of Colombian teen soldiers enlisted to care for an American hostage known as Doctora (played by Julianne Nicholson) and a conscripted milk cow, but struggling to function under power-trips and adolescent recklessness.

The film has been gathering awards all year, including Sundance’s World Cinema Dramatic Special Jury Award, and praise for Mica Levi’s score. Monos is Colombia’s submission for the Best International Feature Film Oscar (the Academy Award category that, until last year, was known as Best Foreign Language Film). Hot on the heels of last year’s Birds of Passage, Monos is a fresh source of pride for Colombian movie lovers.

With Landes’ raw approach, Monos belongs in the same club of gritty war films as Apocalypse Now, Full Metal Jacket and Come and See. Letterboxd members dig its “captivating, alluring atmosphere” and “the immensely physical performances”; it’s “a brutal, unflinching fever dream that takes you hostage for 102 minutes.”

‘Monos’ director Alejandro Landes.

We caught up with director Alejandro Landes, a journalist-turned-documentarian who has made his way to dramatic cinema, and asked him to take us into his experience of making the film.

What inspired this jungle thriller? Alejandro Landes: Coming from Colombia—a country that’s had six years of civil war—inspired the idea of making a film that is in part a war film. The nature of that conflict that’s in the shadows is very similar with what’s happening with war today. It doesn’t have those epic front lines that maybe our great-grandparents or grandparents experienced in WWI or WWII. Most operations are done by special forces or drones in Syria, Iraq or Afghanistan.

The idea of creating a film from the backlines is something that speaks to my generation, and creating a mirror to the conflict of adolescence when you’re between a child and being an adult. You want to belong but also be alone, hair comes out of places, your voice changes—and so the film is this exploration of this borderline.

You’re in the most beautiful place you’ve ever seen, but it’s hell. You don’t know if they’re fighting for left-wing guerilla forces or the right-wing paramilitary force. I wanted to create this allegory where you’re forced to latch onto the humanity and presence of the characters instead of a big ideology. That was very much what drew me into the film.

When it comes to the back-stories of the characters, and even the time and place where it’s set, you leave a deliberate ambiguity. What motivated that decision? Many times we latch onto first names and last names, ages, dates, names of places, because they make us feel safe. They’re kind of stickers. Like when you fill out a sheet at a job application or at a doctor’s office. But these hard facts can feed into your prejudices. I thought it was interesting because the world is so polarized today.

You don’t know if Doctora is a CIA operative or an NGO officer. You can’t look at the character through the lens of their occupation, or their last name even. That’s why the characters have a nom de guerre and I think that for me was key for the metaphor to act subversively and kind of just work against any prejudices you might have.

We always want back-stories to justify and explain actions and a lot of the time it ends up being expository or a filmmaker’s psychoanalysis. Here, I wanted to enforce something very radical which made people feel uncomfortable in war. I wanted you to experience it from the humanity of a group which is basically the lowest rung of the ladder—and many times they are kids.

As fantastical as it sounds, it’s actually very common. I read a lot of first-hand accounts of people who had been kidnapped by well-known organizations and although the high command had been the one negotiating—be it for political leverage or money—the day-to-day custodianship ended up being the youngest soldiers. The people that were kidnapped experienced being in the hands of kids going through their adolescence and it was a peculiar situation.

The film relies on its ensemble, so you really depended on efficient casting. What do you think it was that pulled these young actors through the brutal challenge to be a part of this film? I think it was the time that we spent together before we even started to shoot. I looked at over 800 kids all over Colombia and ended up bringing that down to about 25. We did a mock training camp and had them do acting improv exercises in the morning. They were doing pieces of the screenplay without knowing they were scenes from the same script. They thought they were random exercises.

In the afternoon they would do military drills; not classic military boot stomping, but sometimes dancing, barefoot drills, carrying a weapon. We were trying to create this clandestine army and by seeing them live together I was able to see who flirted with who, who fought with who, what chemistries there were, and that way we were able to build the group who would be the final eight.

During this process of the boot camp we wrote the screenplay, trying to bring the lives of each one of them [into it]. I knew that Boom Boom was a big hip-hop dancer. I knew that Rambo’s most important thing in her life is her brother. Certain things helped the screenplay and the emotional states that the actor would later go into during the shoot.

What were you looking for when recruiting the Doctora role, and why did Julianne Nicholson fit the part for you? I thought [Julianne] had this very loveable sweetness to her, and I thought it would be a challenge to take that sensitivity with the maternal instinct that she had with her captors and turn it violent. She was willing to bring that physicality to the screen and she’s got that iconic look to her that reminded me of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. I thought of the film as a sort of fairytale. I thought the way Julianne was able to portray that switch was something we haven’t seen on screen.

She was also willing to go down [to Colombia] and make it happen. That was a big thing. She spent time with the kids to really be there for weeks in these incredibly tough conditions. She was willing to go, not just when it was her scenes, but she spent time in [Doctora’s] cell. She drew all the charcoal paintings you see in her room, they were done by hand by her.

Much of the drama depended on your choice of shooting locations. How did you shape the narrative around these limitations and how did shooting in these remote places affect the cast and crew? Shooting 13,000 feet [above sea level], there was really very little oxygen up there. Going down to the jungle canyon where you have to take a donkey, take an off-road, take a raft, take a kayak all the way to reach base-camp. Everyone is at their limit. On the first day of shooting, we had to bring someone down from the camera department who had an epileptic fit. I needed to be carried out of the jungle [due to suspected appendicitis] on the shoulders on these gold miners that were there. They taught us how to live on the river.

Something the locations gave me that was really special was the narrative arc of the film. That highlands you see in the beginning, it’s a big reservoir of water which is a very delicate ecosystem called páramo. The water trickles down the mountain and gains more speed until it reaches the currents in the lowlands. That path of water was what we were following in the film. The idea of how a river moves in a winding way with different speeds and velocity was what we were trying to echo in the structure of the edit.

Remember too, that once the water reaches the lowlands, it condenses, goes up to the clouds and comes down again in the highlands. So in a way there’s something about the cyclical nature of violence and the circular movement of water that made sense to me. That all sounds great but it’s another thing to make it work in the edit, and we really worked hard so you never thought you were looking from the back of the river—you were always in the river.

The look of the film is remarkable. The clouds, the silhouettes, you have a literal ‘fog of war’. How did you set out to achieve this? The important thing is to look at what was in front of you. My first film was a documentary. I didn’t go to film school so making that film was my film school and a documentary forces you to look at what’s happening in front of you. As much as we had a very detailed screenplay and everything storyboarded, the locations change on a dime so we couldn’t count on luck every day.

We had to just to be there, be present, and have the confidence to move on, switch and let things come into the page. If a scene was under sun, and then on the day all you get is fog and rain, you discover a new way to come into the scene and let life come onto the page.

Mica Levi [also known as the musician Micachu] has already gained a strong reputation for film composing. How did you manage to wrangle her for Monos? Mica came on board after seeing a rough cut of the film. She connected immediately with it. I didn’t think it needed music but she was on it very quickly. She sent me a very epic whistle that reminded me of spaghetti westerns. The idea was to create something that was minimal but at the same time had that monumental, epic feel.

We wanted to juxtapose those very primal, basic sounds like blowing into a bottle with a quartet of strings, and later you have sounds that are a shot of adrenaline that sound like they could come out of a Berlin nightclub. That mash of sounds I felt was very important; it allowed you to give emotional cues to the characters, similar to [Sergei Prokofiev’s story-symphony] Peter and the Wolf. It was great working with her and my sound designer Javier Umpierrez because we were trying to make this soundscape that was specific but also otherworldly.

Monos has been submitted for Best International Feature Film at the Oscars. That must feel good. All these prizes help the film get seen and that’s an important thing. This is a film that started on a shoestring and we were trying to build something very radical. It’s a film that was done through absolute blood, sweat and tears of these people who believed in it so I’m just glad that it’s finding its public—and the fact that we’re distributing pretty big in the US for a Latin American film.

It’s going to open in more than 30 countries and it’s blowing up in the Colombian box office, which is really special because Colombia still hasn’t really seen their cinema. It’s a polarizing topic to have a war film after everything they’ve lived. Having more than 200,000 people go to see it in its first three weeks is a huge thing. For a point of comparison, it’s the same amount of people who went to see Tarantino’s film [in Colombia].

What film made you want to become a filmmaker? Wow. That’s your toughest question. I don’t know if I can point to one exactly. When I was young my dad wouldn’t let me watch TV. We had the apparatus but not cable so he had his own movies and I remember he had that German submarine film Das Boot. I watched it so many times I started to see the stitches of how it was made and that got me onto thinking “ah, okay I understand this, I like this”. I’ve never watched it in a movie theater, that would be cool.

Das Boot has a similar atmosphere to Monos so it’s an interesting choice for you. Yes, those were the films I was thinking for my second fiction film. I think it comes from that part of time when I watched those epics, including some David Lean films.

‘Monos’ is released by Neon and is screening in US theaters now. For more Colombian films, check out ‘Colombian Cinema: Six of the Best’, a list made for Letterboxd by ‘Birds of Passage’ directors Ciro Guerra and Cristina Gallego.

[doomedandstoned]

The Curious Case of Dr. Sludgelove and His Awesome Cosmic Adventures

~By Billy Goate~

There's something to be said for the enduring power of a Stanley Kubrick film. There's no denying his potent storytelling, especially when it's inspiring a new generation of bands to write music about 2001: A Space Odyssey. I mean, wasn't that movie released in the late-60s? It's tech is dated, as are much of the effects, yet here we have young musicians writing minor epics about Dave's star-tripping Jupiter run, raging apes, and that gosh-darned monolith. Hmmm, well if you look at your typical Sunn Amp, it's no wonder. Thing is a picture of solitary grandeur, to say nothing of its omnipotent, knee-bending sonority.

In our last globe-hopping journey, we landed in Mexico City where we met a band called MOONWATCHER, known to project scenes from the film while playing open amphitheaters at the dead of night. Our travels next take us to Hungary, a scene I've sorely neglected over the years. More specifically, we're going right into the heart of the action: Budapest. It's the birthplace of the great pianist-composer Franz Liszt, who is arguably the first rock star for taking his solo piano performances on the road, which ignited the swooning throngs.

Some of you may have been exposed to the Hungarian doom-stoner sound already and not even realized it. Bands like Apey and the Pea, for example, have demonstrated that Hungarians like their music spicy, served up with verve and gusto. I decided it would be a good time to open up the window and take give you all a peek at this world through the eyes of a band I stumbled upon at random a few weeks back, who endeared themselves to me almost from the start with their name: Dr. Sludgelove. C'mon, how can you not love it?

Another thing I admire about the band is their dedication to concept. The presser they sent out was helpfully annotated with scene-by-scene narration of each track, which I've decided to share with you as I walk you through them. Finally, we're going to meet the band and find out what they can tell us about what it's like to be Doomed & Stoned on their side of the planet. Buckle up, boys. We're about to take a ride with a pair of wild men out into the final frontier.

Dr. Sludgelove is:

János Papp

Attila Temesvári

János Paronai

This is the story of their excursion into the universe of Stanley Kubrick, relayed in their own words.

My Space Odyssey

I. Dawn of Man

This is the first song off of Dr. Sludgelove's debut album, inspired by the Stanley Kubrick movie 2001: A Space Odyssey. In this song, humanity has just been born. Apes are living their everyday lives, which is just about struggling, fighting for food, and finding a place to sleep. They gather into groups -- the groups are fighting with each other, as well. The Earth during these times is very unfriendly place, with big and wrathful storms. Green can be found barely in this region and the vegetation is not very rich.

At some time, in the morning a big black prism is just appearing in front of our group at the ape cave. The shape, color, and smell is just something that has never ever been seen on this planet before. It is a monolith. An ape shows interest at once, as he caught sight of it. He moves closer, wants to touch it, but at the same time he is afraid of the unknown. He starts to dance around it. Others are appearing, as well, but they have bigger fears and choose to watch him from a decent distance. After a while, our hero just decides to tap on it. Then after some quick taps, he constantly touches the Monolith, but nothing visible seems to happen.

My Space Odyssey by Dr. Sludgelove

After some days, the ape finds some bones of a guinea pig, which are just lying in front of him. He starts to play with a piece, but he realizes after a while what he can do with it. He holds it high, then smites it with all his power. At this moment, he realizes how to use something to achieve bigger force than he is able to provide with his bare hands. He has just started to use a tool! This is also the start of the intellect, which drives humanity to reach bigger and bigger improvements. The Monolith gives the possibility of having a better, more developed life than the miserable life of apes. This moment starts everything, a pathway to the modern person's future.

II. Discovery One

In this second song, humanity is in space, travelling between planets in the Solar System. There is a base at the Moon, which can be visited by the average person, as well. Traveling in space is not such a big thing any more.

My Space Odyssey by Dr. Sludgelove

After discovering the Monolith in the surface of the Moon, a group of elite astronauts and scientists start their travel to the planet Jupiter to discover an anomaly, marked by the Monolith on the Moon. Most of the scientists are in hibernation, though two astronauts are awake during the long journey to supervise. An artificial intelligence, called HAL9000 is supporting them, dealing with all the low level controls of the spaceship.

III. HAL-9000

In this song, HAL-9000 reveals his true colors, as he tries to kill all astronauts on the spaceship. Dave Bowman, the last astronaut, decides to switch off HAL's intelligence to stop its influence controlling the whole ship's whole ecosystem. During the switching off operation, Dave needs to wear a spacesuit, as maybe HAL will try to kill him by providing no oxygen. Because of the spacesuit, we can hear Dave breathe during the entire track. This gives a sense of great tension to the whole song and originally for the movie scene, as well. We can hear as HAL tries to convince Dave that everything is alright and it will have no problems continuing the mission successfully.

My Space Odyssey by Dr Sludgelove

In the meantime, Dave pulls out computer cards from HAL's central unit, so HAL gets more and more simple-minded. At a certain point, HAL tries to convince Dave by appealing to his emotions as it states it is AFRAID! During Dave's actions, the music is heavy, a really metallic riff suggests that Dave is doing some harmful thing to HAL. When Dave finishes with the shutting down process, HAL goes into standby mode. Then he starts to "sing." This is the first thing that was taught to HAL back in the day, when it was created by its instructor, Mr. Langley.

IV. Alone Into The Void

After Dave Bowman successfully switches down HAL9000's high-level functionality, he continues the mission and heads towards the direction of Jupiter to investigate the enormously big copy of the Monolith found in the Moon. This is the focus of the fourth song. His colleague Frank Pool and all of the scientists held in deep hibernation were killed by HAL 9000 and the connection to Earth is also cut.

My Space Odyssey by Dr Sludgelove

During the long journey, therefore, he is really alone. The way to Jupiter lasts for long months. He tries to focus on the mission, but because he is lacking communication partner, Dave thinks a lot about his future, what he will find next to Jupiter, how the Monolith will behave, what will happen when he encounters it. A lot of questions and a lot of pressure on him and the prospect of the unknown drives him to depression, as he prepares to meet his doom.

V. My God, It Is Full of Stars!

For the fifth song, astronaut Dave Bowman encounters the Monolith. He says the following phrase just before losing contact with Mission Control: “The thing’s hollow -- it goes on forever -- and -- oh my God! -- it’s full of stars!”

My Space Odyssey by Dr Sludgelove

During the journey, he sees these stars as flashes, as the known three dimensional world falls apart. Time, direction, and all the usual physics does not make sense here anymore. Bowman is transported via the Monolith to an unknown star system, through a large interstellar switching station, and sees other species' spaceships going on other routes. Bowman is given a wide variety of sights, from the wreckage of ancient civilizations to what appear to be life-forms living on the surfaces of a binary star system planet.

VI. Death of Man, Born of The Starchild

After a journey through the wormhole, Dave Bowman finally arrives during the last song. The Monolith creates an environment for Dave to exist in that would not harm him in any way, making it look like a hotel room filled with familiar items to assuage any fear and appear welcoming.

Dave can't believe what he sees, but leaves the pod and explores the room in his suit. He sees the telephone and telephone book, but the phone doesn't work and the telephone book is blank.

He explores more and finds the refrigerator, where there is a variety of packaged food, but it is all "blue substance, about the weight and texture of bread pudding. Apart from its odd color, it looked quite appetizing." There are clothes in the closet, which are a bit out of date for Dave's time.

My Space Odyssey by Dr Sludgelove

Dave decides to trust the environment. "But this is ridiculous," Bowman tells himself in the novelization by Arthur C. Clarke. "I am almost certainly being watched, and I must look an idiot wearing this suit. If this is some kind of intelligence test, I've probably failed already. Without further hesitation, he walked back into the bedroom and began to undo the clamp of his helmet. When it was loose, he lifted the helmet a fraction of an inch, cracked the seal and took a cautious sniff. As far as he could tell, he was breathing perfectly normal air." He eats the blue food and drinks the water, showers, dresses, and he turns on the television.

Refreshed and exhausted, Dave lies down on the bed, turns off the light and "...for the last time, David Bowman slept." The Power behind the Monolith then transforms Dave into the Starchild, the next evolution of man.

Encounter With Dr. Sludgelove

I'm afraid 'My Space Odyssey' has only whet our appetite for more from Dr. Sludgelove. Where does the band go from here?

We are just starting to dive into the Hungarian stoner/doom/sludge scene. Our first release is more than a year old, but the needed band members have just been recruited. We started to rehearse and were able to find rehearsal room, so a lot of technical problems were solved in the last few months. Now we are planning gigs more gigs, after performing for the first time in this configuration during the spring. We are mostly close to Baby Gorilla Records and bands like Third Planet and Lanterni. We are planning gigs together first in Budapest, after that probably in some bigger cities around the country. Our one year goal is to be a band in Hungary that's invited to support a bigger foreign name, when such an act comes to play here. Our second album also will come out around the summertime, with the help of the sound engineer of the well-known band Red Swamp. Also merchandise, CD, and cassette releases are planned.

You mentioned a couple bands from the Hungarian scene. What are some others that doomers and stoners might check out?

Maybe the biggest name nowadays is Apey and the Pea. They usually play to sold out parties in Budapest, tour the whole country, and perform in foreign countries and festivals more and more. Their first releases were more grunge and stoner, then they delved into doom and sludge. Their most recent release is sludgier and contains thrash elements, as well. They are the best in Hungary right now.

Some other names worth checking out are Red Swamp, Lemurian Folk Songs, Űrhajó, Grizzly, Lanterni, Entrópia Architektúra, Alone in the Moon, Mighty Manlifter, and Third Planet, just to name a few top of mind.

For outside bands looking to tour through Hungary, what are some good booking agencies?

There is Baby Gorilla Records -- overall, really nice guys. They are managing and representing around 8-10 bands in the stoner, sludge, doom, noise, and prog rock subgenres. Also dealing with record releasing, of course, in addition to artwork, and organizing label nights, where their bands are usually supporting bigger names from foreign lands. While we're not on their label roster, we played one of their label nights in May, supporting the British band Famyne.

Thulsa Doom Booking is another one. They organize gigs for smaller foreign bands. Also they have their own group of bands, which they manage. They organize the underground festival called Thulsa Doom Fest, which you might have heard of.

Cudi Purci Booking is a bigger fish in this pond. They organize gigs with big foreign bands in the genre, like Elder, High on Fire, that kind of thing. They also organize the so-called Desszert Fest in Hungary.

What are some places that people like to hang there?

So, I'm listing some places where metalheads usually go out. Durerkert hosts a lot of live gigs in all rock and metal genres. This is a really cool place, we like it very much.

BARhole Music is the place where today's "rock stars" go to hang out in Budapest. If you want to meet with members from bands like Apey and the Pea, you will likely bump into them there.

Három Holló is a coffee house and restaurant at daytime, a cultural gathering at night -- including host to a lot of heavy music gigs and festivals.

Gólya is a cozy little place, which has lots of possibilities for smaller bands in our genre to perform live.

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[livingcorner]

A Beginner’s Guide to Fruit and Vegetable Gardening

People take an interest in gardening for a variety of reasons—higher quality produce, exercise in the great outdoors or saving money. Whether you hope to discover your green thumb or save a little green, growing your own fruits and vegetables can be an advantageous pastime. When you’re just getting started, gardening can be intimidating. How do you even know where to start? These gardening resources will help you learn the basics, starting with the five-step process outlined in this article.  

Step #1: Gather Your Gear

You should gather several gardening tools before getting your nails dirty. It is worth the investment to buy high-quality items, as broken or insufficient tools are not only frustrating, but cost you more money and time in the long run. Proper tools provide more comfort and efficiency, which means less work for you. You can find most of these items in home improvement stores, gardening supply stores (or nurseries) and online retailers. Here’s what you’ll need to get started:

Trowel: Used for weeding and digging small holes

Gardening gloves: As much as we like getting our hands dirty, we don’t like getting them that dirty. A good pair of gloves can also protect your hands from bugs (if you’re squeamish) and prickly plants and weeds.

Sun hat: For UV protection, make sure this is wide-brimmed and cinches.

Watering can and/or hose: What you need will vary depending on your garden’s water needs and proximity to your water source.

Wheelbarrow: For larger gardens, you’ll need one to transport mulch, dirt and compost.

Roundhead shovel: This is for digging larger holes.

Rake: Ideal for spreading mulch, and gathering or transporting debris that has collected around your garden and between plants.

Shears: Used to prune away browning leaves or snipping herbs.

Pitchfork: This is an essential tool if you are creating a compost heap or pile.

Step #2: Choose Where Your Garden Will Grow

There are three common types of gardens, all of which have their own pros and cons: traditional (in-ground), container and raised beds. Once you’ve picked out the sunny spot where your garden will reside, it’s time to decide on one (or a combination) of these three garden types, depending on your needs.

Traditional Garden: An in-ground garden often provides limitless options for what you can grow, while utilizing the natural ecosystem of nutrients, bacteria and insects already present to help your plants grow. Ideally, choose a site that receives at least six hours of direct sunlight and faces south.  

Container Garden: For those who can’t plant a traditional in-ground garden, whether because of poor soil or no soil at all (apartment or city dwellers), container gardening is a fantastic alternative. There are many different types of containers available at nurseries and home improvement stores. Containers can vary in shape, size and material to suit your gardening needs (and personality). Beyond terra cotta and clay pots, almost anything can work as a gardening container: plastic bins, untreated wood barrels, galvanized metal buckets, a hanging planter, a planter box on a windowsill—even a recycled yogurt container or an old boot! Every container is different; some lose moisture quickly and others retain heat, so research before you buy. Make sure the container has adequate drainage and the appropriate depth to sustain the roots of your plants. A container garden is ideal for using store-bought organic potting soil, which is aerated, nutrient-rich and weed-free. It is best to place plants with similar moisture and sun needs in the same container. Not every plant is suitable for container gardening, and not every container matches up well with every plant. Remember that deep-rooted plants (carrots, for example) require a deep pot (at least 10-12 inches). Ideal candidates for container gardens are leaf and head lettuces, spinach, green beans, peppers (require staking) onions, radishes, tomatoes (require staking), squash, carrots, garlic and herbs.  

Raised-Bed Garden: Raised beds are a happy medium between a traditional garden and a container garden. The benefits of this garden include better control over the soil, more manageable weed control and easier access for gardeners who experience pain from bending over too far or have limited mobility. Materials used to create raised beds include cinder blocks, bricks, untreated wood and even rocks. A raised bed can be anywhere from six inches off the ground to the height of a standard table, and generally, these beds are about three or four feet wide with a depth of at least 16 inches. (Make sure your beds are not so wide or so deep that you can’t reach the plants in the center.) Fill in these beds as you would a standard garden, using good soil enriched with compost. Carrots, cabbage and other deep-rooted vegetables do especially well in raised beds because you avoid compacted dirt that could be full of obstructions to their deep roots.

Step #3: Prepare Your Soil

Next, check your soil. Poor-quality soil can seriously hurt a gardener’s best efforts. What characterizes good soil? A high-quality soil for gardening will be:

Well-aerated, which means air circulates through it well. Dense soil, like clay, is often too thick for roots to grow properly and doesn’t drain well.

Free of stones and other obstructions. Soil shouldn’t be too sandy, either.

Rich in organic matter, such as compost or aged manure. Organic matter provides nutrients to plants. When a garden is rich in these resources, the soil itself will provide nutrients for the plants to grow, which means artificial fertilizers are often unnecessary.

Simple tests are available from any garden center to check the quality of your soil, including its pH. Generally, most plants thrive in soil with a pH that is slightly acidic. (There are exceptions to this, however, such as blueberries, which love an acidic soil, and beets, which enjoy alkaline conditions.) If your soil is too acidic, try adding bone meal, dolomitic limestone or wood ashes. To amend alkaline soil, try materials such as peat moss, sawdust or pine needles.

Beyond that, the entire permaculture of insects, bacteria and microbes do better in well-drained soil. If your soil is too thick and does not drain well or does not hold moisture well, the answer is compost, compost, compost. Thick soil also does well with the addition of some sand.

You're reading: A Beginner’s Guide to Fruit and Vegetable Gardening

If you are digging a garden on fallow land (or your garden needs a serious makeover), then you should prepare your plot in autumn by digging six to eight inches into the soil, removing visible rocks, and working in as much organic matter as you can before you start to plant the next spring.  

Step #4: Decide Which Plants to Grow

Deciding which fruits and vegetables to grow will depend on what appeals to your diet, which plants will fit within the size of your garden and which plants are appropriate for your hardiness zone. Could you grow something exotic that is hard to find at your local farmers market? Is your favorite produce too expensive to buy from the grocery? Are you unsatisfied with the quality or taste of your favorite vegetables?

For the cost of a packet of seeds (usually a few dollars), your garden will more than pay for itself with the amount of edibles it will produce—not to mention be superior in nutrient content, freshness and taste. Fresh fruits and vegetables—especially organic ones—are expensive to buy, but you could save a lot of money in just one season by growing some in your own backyard.

Read more: What To Do With Too Much Fresh Mint From the Garden

You can grow all plants from seeds, but many “starts” or seedlings are available from your local nursery—tiny tomato, pepper, onion, broccoli and melon plants, started in a nursery greenhouse, are usually ready to plant directly into the soil. Buying seedlings is more expensive than buying a packet of seeds, but it’s a great option if you’re a fledgling gardener or want to save time as many seeds need to grow indoors for weeks before they’re ready for the outdoors. If you’re starting from seeds, read the label on every packet. If a label reads “direct sow,” you can sow the seeds directly into the soil, while others need to be started indoors. Either way, the packet of seeds or starter plant will include directions about the spacing, watering, and thinning practices that are most suitable for that particular fruit or vegetable.  

Step #5: Ready, Set, Grow! 

You’ve got your gear, prepared your plot and soil and bought your plants. Next comes planting them to ensure they’ll get adequate sunshine and water as they grow.

Different plants have different needs for sunlight. Sun worshippers include tomatoes, squash, beans, eggplant, corn and peppers, while those less dependent on the sun are leafy vegetables, potatoes, carrots and turnips. You can sow plants that need less sun in early spring or late summer when the sun is less vibrant, too. When choosing what to put where, remember to place taller plants on the north side of your plot to prevent shadows from forming and inhibiting the growth of shorter plants.

After your seeds or seedlings are in the soil, you can use additional compost as mulch to improve water retention, help control weeds and keep the roots cool in hot weather. Other mulch options include straw, grass clippings, untreated wood chips, gravel or stone.

Unfortunately, Mother Nature isn’t always reliable enough to provide sufficient rainfall for a garden. Moreover, depending on your region, you might need to supplement it by watering your plants a little or a lot. If you notice a plant’s leaves, fruit or buds start to brown or droop, increase the water supply. Oddly enough, if a plant is waterlogged, oxygen is unable to circulate to its roots, and the plant will show signs of stress similar to dehydration. Green leaves and stems that turn yellow or lighten in color could also be a sign of overwatering. Waterlogged plants do not respond positively to more water. Some water-rich fruits and vegetables, such as melons and cucumber thrive when they receive more water, while others, such as tomatoes, hate getting their feet wet too long. Always water plants at soil level in the morning, as evening watering can make them more susceptible to disease and mildew. Sporadic deep watering is more effective than frequent shallow watering. Be diligent about watering and weeding your precious new garden and chances are, it will flourish before your eyes!

Finally, start small and begin with plants that are easy to grow. This way, you’ll avoid situations where the joy of your new hobby is replaced by frustration. Most importantly, relax! There will be successes and failures, but half the fun of gardening is learning as you grow!

Read more: How to Use Perlite to Improve Soil and Boost Plant Growth

Source: https://livingcorner.com.au Category: Garden

source https://livingcorner.com.au/a-beginners-guide-to-fruit-and-vegetable-gardening/

[juniperpublishers-agriculture]

Soil and Human

To know more about Journal of Agriculture Research- https://juniperpublishers.com/artoaj/index.phpTo know more about open access journal publishers click on Juniper publishers

Abstract

By “no soil” is meant that there is no sustenance of humans. We take birth on soil, live on soil, walk on soil, die on soil and finally vanish in soil. Soil is synonym to Soul with immense spiritual values. Our civilization has flourished because of soil. Soil is the biggest biodiversity reservoir. Our health, culture and social behaviour are dictated by soils. Soil in continuum is sounding Vasudevakutumbkam. Indians worship soil as Holy Mother. However, demand for this holy mother is pressing with increasing human population and shrinking trend of agricultural land areas. Even though humans in general are consciously trying to care for soil, most of the time, human interferences remain imbalanced as well as disastrous causing ecological instability. This chapter discusses on major human interferences with diversified types of soil that often cause imbalance in equilibrium on way to restore sustainability due to missing linkage in reliable management options and technology generation. Men are wandering in space to find water, air and rock with one of missions to discover soil for future shelter other than this earth. Soil is a complete prescription for livelihood security. In fact, human exists because of soil and both work in symbiotic relationship, but the driving force in restoring such unique partnership often rests on humans because of their capability in taking correct decision with intelligence and creativity. Soil biotechnology is a new area of research covering wide range of possibilities for protective medical treatments even. Soil battery is another emerging field of research to look for clean energy source..

Keywords: Soil and Soul; Holy mother; Population pressure; Soil human interactions; Disastrous consequences; Symbiotic relationship; Soil biotechnology and biodiversity

    Introduction

Soil being so vital for humans is least credited for its life supporting functions. However, the 2015 International Year of Soils has been committed for increasing awareness and understanding of the importance of soil for food security and essential ecosystem functions. As an infant depends on mother for his or her food so is the humans on soil, the only difference is that as the infant grows, he or she gets rid of dependency for physical need on his or her mother, but we humans, even after million years of evolution, depend so much on soil from birth to death. A man will die but the carbon will not; its career does not end with man. It will return back to the soil, and then a plant may take it up again with time, sending it again and again on a cycle of plant and animal life.

Soil or human is virtually of least meaning if either of two exists in isolation, without one another. A crop is merely a product of the joint efforts of a man as well as a soil. Any blame upon man is merely possible because of the fact that man is conscious, intelligent and decision maker of such unique partnership that can be referred to be symbiotic, since the soil has significant relevance in almost all the necessities for the survival, nourishment, shelter and livelihood of human beings. Soil is not dead, inert or dirt, but a factory where raw materials are transformed and converted into finished products. When a soil is referred to as a tool in the hands of man to accomplish something with, it is not as a simple tool such as a saw or plane, but as a highly organized tool as a factory or an engine or an animal [1].

Indian civilization has flourished and sustained itself over thousands of years because it revered the soil as sacred and inviolable. Ancient Vedic people did have immense respect for soil as Mother Earth. The Atharva Veda invokes the prayer to prithvi, the Earth:

“Let what I dig from thee, O Earth, rapidly spring and grow again.

O Purifier, let me not pierce through thy vitals or thy Heart”

It is only India where plants, trees and animals including soils are worshipped. The soil of India witnesses the growth of one of the oldest civilizations in the world the Indus Valley Civilization.

It is the soil that dictates how survival, nourishment and livelihood of mankind are moving. Human population particularly in India is continuously increasing, while land is shrinking because of diversion in non-farming activities. Per head farm area has already become tiny. As a consequence, the equilibrium between man and land is imbalanced that results into pressing demand of land in India. Land is being used thus intensively and, more often, carelessly to meet the alarming people’s demand. This situation appears in over exploitation of soil as a finite resource for meeting infinite number of demands for humans and societies. The Chapter is an overview of the interactions between soil and humans under current scenario in India based on services rendered by soil as a natural resource since ancient civilization.

Soil and Human Evolution

It is well documented that human evaluation took place in African continent. Based on paleoanthropological discoveries in Ethiopia, Kenya, Tanzania, Uganda and Zaire, the African rift valleys are indeed considered the “cradle of mankind”, that is the place where human species evolved and diversified in the last million years. The Awash valley is the early home of human ancestors “the hominids”. It is one of the best open-air museums in the world in which the early direct ancestors of human being lived before millions of years. Moreover, it is the place of early human technologies “the Stone Age technologies” for the handy man lived there before millions of years. The archaeological sites of the Awash and Omo valleys, the Konsogardulla, Melka kontre etc are the live witnesses of this reality. The human evolution could be traced back to the palaeontologists with fossils of 6 million years old, recovered from Chad, Kenya, and Ethiopia belonging to the era of Ardiplthicus, the first phase of human evolution. It is followed by the famous Australopithecus era, (around 4.1 million years upto around 1.3 million years ago). First record comes from Kenya and Ethiopia and is known as Australopithecus anamensis. Our human ancestors had been walking on this planet for at least two million years before Australopithecus afarensis, or the famous skeleton found in the Hadar cave area in the deep Afar of Ethiopia, the Lucy’s group.

Ardiplthicus era was followed by the Homo or the genus Homo. Homo erectus with bigger brain, using stone tools (oldest record 2.3 million), were found closely identifiable with human race and that is from Ethiopia. Homo erectus is the species that we can find almost in all parts of the old world, almost about 600 to 500 thousand years ago and we find them in Europe, Asia and Africa. Later, about 165 thousand years ago, the size of brain ever grew, which is call the Homo sapiens, the first species, they went down around 100 thousand years to the “Middle stone age” [2]. The story went on further into “Later stone age” and so on. Till the time, dependency of humans on soil was indirect as they were the gatherers and hunters. Groups were formed, communities were taking its initial shapes and the concept of territory and ownership of territory was taking its rudimentary shape. The major breakthrough took place only about 20,000 years ago, when humans started cultivation. Subsequently, they shifted to fertile land to grow crop for survival. It was a paradigm shift towards land and soils.

Science Journal described that races in India have been broken up pulverized, kneaded by conquerors. Dravidians succeeded negroids, and there may have been Malay intrusions, but Australian affinities are denied. Then Aryan and Mongol succeeded forming the present potporri through conquest and blending [3]. Bates [4] compiled the race, caste and tribes in central India.

Also, the human race migrated from African origin places to highlands of central Asia. Migration was continued to different corners of the world probably due to geological disturbances followed by land and soil degradation resulting in scarce vegetation for their shelter and survival. It is believed that some homo sapiens (human group) were climbing down from central Asia to the Indus valley and settled there where they subsequently developed vedic civilization with a well-developed culture being supported by prosper agriculture-based economy. First protected village and further walled cities like ‘Harappa” and “Mohan-ja-doro” were created. Some of them migrated further to deep down into the forested land of the Ganga plain possessing fertile alluvial soils and a series of cities and kingdoms came into existence. Simultaneously, some might have migrating to southward in the fertile valleys of the Narmada and Tapti while others further down to the coastal plains of Konkan and subsequently to the eastern coast through the Godavadi and finally touched the southern extreme of Indian peninsula. A group of humans travelled far east up to the Kamchata peninsula and further entered into American continent. This generalized sketch of how humans with their evolution from Ethiopia and adjoining African territories got migrated to other parts of the earth in search of food and water for their survival would signify how soil is valuable to humans since evolution. Though they travelled through all terrains, tough and arduous, however, they settled and grow only on the fertile alluvial terrains.

The fertile soil was sufficiently capable to produce surplus food and so the human groups were made involved for other specialized jobs like carpenter, potter, mason, weavers, iron smith and so on. Such arrangement then led to the evolution of “Society” and subsequently of “Gram” representing agrarian society and “Pur” for urban society as translated with the birth to the Vedic Civilization in Indus valley region of Indian subcontinent. It is apparent that soil has remained silently but actively responsible behind growing human civilization.

Soil and the Soul

India is a land of ‘Guru’, as enlightened with spiritualism, wisdom and humanity. The soil or the ‘Bhumi’ or ‘Mrida’ is often meant for “soul of infinite lives”. The soul is basically a spiritual concept behind the existence of one’s identity with the surroundings. Every individual or creature does possess a “Soul” that is believed to drive and control the system of life, such as power of conceiving, listening, thinking, creating, cultivating, ploughing, etc. If we translate the concept of soul to some physical arena, we will see that ‘soil’ is the one that fulfils the basic essence of a ‘soul’. Soil is the basis for all terrestrial lives including humans. That is why the Indians prefer to sit and walk on bare soils for sustaining the hidden forces, energy, spirit and consciousness. Even the most vital ingredients of human viz. air, water and food are under the influence of soils. Although the soil is beneath our feet, it takes every cares of our survival, nourishment and even livelihood. This is why we worship soils in different forms and manners in different parts of India.

The worship is broadly a way to express solemnly the inner feelings and promises of life to one who cares. A small child says his inner feelings to his mother, because it is mother who cares for him. The Sita of Valmiki’s Ramayana is believed to have been discovered in a “furrow”, when her father King Janak was ploughing the field (soil). As cited in the Rigveda (4:57), the Sita is known as the Earth Goddess to bless the land for good crops. However, Laxmi Mall Singhvi in a link stated that the destruction of the life sustaining environment is a result of ignorance, greed and disregard for the richness of all living things and as a result of which the future generation is subject to inherit a dead world.

Further, as Lord Mahavira proclaimed a profound ecological truth, ‘One who neglects or disregards the existence of earth, air, fire, water and vegetation disregards his own existence.’ Even “The Buddhist Declaration on Nature” states that every cause follows the consequences and effects. The Vedic Hymn to the Earth, the PrithviSukta in Atharva Veda, is unquestionably the oldest and the most evocative environmental invocation, wherein the Vedic seer solemnly declares the enduring filial allegiance of humankind to Mother Earth: ‘Mata BhumihPutrohamPrithivyah (Earth is my mother, I am her son). In the Atharva Veda, this ecological theme is so very clear: “Mother Bhumi (Mother Earth), may whatever I dig from you grow back again quickly, and may we not injure you by our labour.” There are hymns to Mother Earth--BhumiSukuta: “Earth, in which the seas, the rivers and many waters lie, from which arise foods and fields of grain, abode to all that breathes and moves, may she confer on us her finest yield.” (Atharva Veda XII 1:3). So, human’s existence ultimately rests on the “state of soil”.

Major population in India is Hindu who believes on cremation i.e. burning after death except for pregnant women, children, saint and babies. Cremation is common in Buddhism, Jainism, Sikhism and few catholic with differing ideologies. Hindus believe soul being indestructible. It is believed that burning the dead body releases the spirit from the body in the form of flame that signifies the creator, Brahma. Cremation is thus seen as important for the safe transmigration of soul. In other religions, dead body is normally buried. Often, sands are supposed to be inert and inhibit microbial growth and risk of contamination and may be preferred. In fact, human body is a mass of five elements such as Agni (fire), Jal (water), Prithivi (earth/soil), Aakash (space) and Vayu (air), wherein Prithivi or soil has vital role to play in the existence of life.

Soil, Culture and Civilization

The oldest Indian Upnishad described “soil” as “Bhumi” meaning the land. The soil was the main yardstick enabling the human civilization to flourish on long term basis. Obviously, human was wondering in search of a land having productive soils with assured irrigation and easy transportation around a river basin. Indus river in the north-west (now in India and Pakistan) was the main river, where the earliest civilization in India flourished for nearly one thousand years. Even the prehistoric site of Mehragarh in Baluchistan is the earliest Neolithic site in the north-west Indian sub-continent, dated as early as 8500 BCE [5]. Another important river in ancient India was the Ganges, wherein settlements developed on their banks from as early as prehistoric times. Soil is thus responsible for survival, nourishment and livelihood of entire human beings. It is a natural resource like sun and others. If sun is a source of energy for us, the soil appears as a medium for getting food, fibre, fuel, fodder, forest, flower, furniture and floor in order to enable human beings for access to quality meal, clean water, pure air and comfortable livelihood. We stand on soil, which is beneath our feet and henceforth we often overlook its values. However, the method for stabilization of soil was first developed in India [6].

The sun is far away from our reach, whereas soil is in close proximity to human beings, where we live and let the soil work for our existence. Through all physical, chemical, biological and mechanical manipulations in open system, the soil does not take any rest and that too because of human interferences. The soil being a natural resource is not static and exists in dynamic state in the environment. The urban soils are nothing but the outcome of extreme human interferences in the city area.

Human creation was depicted by different forms of art. Painting was prominent among them. Soil was not only used as the base but also used to prepare colors. From farms to houses, from floor to courtyards, from pots to bricks and tiles, from prayers to rituals and from birth to the death, it is the soil which has always been the part of our life in Indian culture.

In India, soil is not just the part of socio-economic and religious- cultural setting but also a tool for expressing their creativity in the form of “Art” (Figure 1). Ranging from a rural village woman depicting her creativity on the earthen wall of her hut or house to the rural artisan manufacturing earthen pots, toys and idols to the traditional painters doing big decoration on the festivals, soil is used as the basic element of traditional colors (Figure 2). In this context, traditional Madhubani art of Mithalanchal in Bihar, variety of rangolies made at the doorstep of houses (Figure 3) or the temples in different parts of India, great painting of Ajanta caves and on the walls and curtains of monastery of Ladakh, Sikkim and Arunachal Pradesh including the monastery of Lahul and Spity are the masterpiece of arts where soil as a base for the colors have been used. The famous artist from Kerala, Raja Ravi Verma (1848- 1906) is honored as one of the greatest painters from the Indian soil and known for his portrays of scenes from the epic sagas of the Mahabharata and Ramayana. Ravi Varma had been using the indigenous paints made from leaves, flowers, tree bark and soil which his uncle Raja Raja Varma used to prepare for him [7].

However, among the cultural practices, idol immersion in the water bodies after celebration is common throughout the country. Idol is lavishly decorated with different paints such as varnish, paints, water colors and colored papers and foils etc. Mercury, cadmium, arsenic, zinc, chromium and lead are the common heavy metals present in such paints. The floating materials released through idol in the river and lake after decomposition result in eutrophication, increase in acidity and heavy metal concentration [8]. Heavy metal pollution caused by idol immersion can damage the ecosystem as it kills fishes, damages plants and blocks the natural flow of the water causing polluted water stagnation. Water from these sources is also used for irrigation particularly in the vegetable crops around the urban areas. Electrons present in soil and earth help to enrich immune system in our body and increase the oxygen level while walking barefoot. Nerves of the feet are stimulated, and cardiovascular system is improved by walking barefoot [9].

Soil, Dispute, Conflict and War

Soil as a basic resource plays an important role in running a family, society or a nation smoothly in harmony. However, the situation, contrary to this, instigates inter-family and intra-family disputes, resulting subsequently into conflicts between the administrative units within a nation and even a war between the nations. It is a common understanding that litigations occur mostly for three main issues viz. money, women and land, but the land (jameen) is the most common issue behind dispute. In India, joint family is not declared divided unless the ancestor’s land is legally distributed in black and white. In many instances, soil quality of land becomes an issue of conflict in the family causing disputes. During flood in Diara and Tal land in Bihar, civil wars are common to acquire lands after flood recession [10,11].

India is a peace-loving nation and believes in Vasudevkutumbkam as well as Satyamevjaiyete. Our neighboring nations must learn from the essence of soils to restore humanity, brotherhood and symbiotic mutual cooperation for the welfare of their citizens. If two nations suffer from conflicts, the soils in affected areas remain unutilized by the farming communities in either of the territories. This leads to unrest and violence among the common public in the affected areas. The 1992 Rio declaration states, “Warfare is inherently destructive of sustainable development. States shall therefore respect international law providing protection for the environment in times of armed conflict and cooperate in its further development, as necessary.” During such wars, besides killing of men and animals, the soil, air and water are severely polluted because of destroying impacts of the uses of weapons and chemicals including destruction of oil fields. War is a curse to soil, if warfare is on ground. Fuel, chemicals and nuclear contamination ultimately cause a typical soil infertility that is irreversible for a long period of time. Such infertility in the affected soils may be comparable to even a cancer disease. The soil in such a disputed land unit suffers from proper care and management and is subject to severe degradation. Such situation leads to a shift towards poverty, and threatens the livelihood leading to illiteracy and civil war subsequently.

In Sino-Indian war of 1962, a disputed Himalayan border (Figure 4) was the main pretext for this war. There had been a series of violent border incidents after the 1959 Tibetan uprising including several north of the McMahon Line, the eastern portion of a Line of Actual Control proclaimed by Chinese Premier Zhou Enlai in 1959. Such disputes are otherwise related to warfare and soils do suffer extensively. Government of India through Ministry of External Affairs in Rajya Sabha presented a generalized detail on 22nd November 2011 (question number 27 by YS Chowdary) that Pakistan has been in illegal occupation of around 78,000 square kilometers of Indian territory in Jammu & Kashmir, while China to be in illegal occupation of approximately 38,000 square kilometers in the Indian state of Jammu and Kashmir. Such illegal occupation of land area directly signifies the restrictions in productive uses of soils [12].

Soil and Human Health

Soil is intimately related to human health. The origin of food chain is soil and ends in human body through plant or animal. Mishra and Richa [13] have recently reviewed on scope of type specific soils as well as clays in medical treatments. The heavy metals of greatest concern for human health include As, Pb, Cd, Cr, Cu, Hg, Ni, and Zn [14]. It is well known in present context that the human health is virtually a finger print of soil health and one must try to keep the soil healthy, but he finds compelling situation to overlook even the known management issues. This is because the current demand from soil is increasing day by day with heavy pressure forcing soil resources to get deteriorated. In the modern world, we recognize that soils have a distinct influence on human health [13].

Approximately 78% of the average per capita calorie consumption worldwide comes from crops grown in soil, and another nearly 20% comes from terrestrial food sources that rely indirectly on soil [15]. Soils are also a major source of nutrients, and they act as natural filters to remove contaminants from water. However, soils may contain heavy metals, chemicals, or pathogens that have the potential to negatively impact human health. A mere 11 elements constitute 99.9% of the atoms in the human body. These are typically divided into major and minor elements. The four major elements, H, O, C, and N make up approximately 99% of the human body, and seven minor elements, Na, K, Ca, Mg, P, S, and Cl, make up another 0.9% of the body [16]. Approximately 18 additional elements called trace elements are considered essential in small amounts to maintain human life. Out of those, only around 29 elements are considered essential for human life, 18 are either essential or beneficial to plants and are obtained from soil, and most of the other elements can be taken up from the soil by plants [15]. A more recent health concern includes pharmaceutical waste derived from antibiotics, hormones, and antiparasitic drugs used to treat humans and domestic animals [17]. However, there is need to develop a systematic approach in India on soil and human health.

Soil is the biggest biodiversity reservoir. It contains bacteria and fungi which are the source of enzymes as well as other molecules with considerable industrial and pharmaceutical values. In fact, major antibiotics are derived from soil bacteria. Nowadays, metagenomic approach is being applied for extraction of bacterial DNA for sequencing on way to establish Metasoil DNA bank [18]. Selman Waksman first used the word antibiotic as a noun in 1941 to describe any small molecule made by a microbe that antagonizes the growth of other microbes. From 1945-1955 the development of penicillin, which is produced by a fungus, along with streptomycin, chloramphenicol, and tetracycline, which are produced by soil bacteria, ushered in the antibiotic age [19]. India must look for such opportunities in type specific soils in relation to human health. Soil biotechnology has brighter future than ever. Besides, efforts being made to develop soil battery opens avenue to look for clean energy source in days to come.

Soil and Human Interactions

Mahatam Gandhi often used to say, “There is enough for everyone need but not for everyone greed.” The concept of development either at family or at the nation level is now centered at the economic growth and this leads to the race of achieving the ‘commercial production’. In such race, our soils have been exploited exhaustively without caring for sustainability. It is true that there would be no human existence without soil. However, anthropogenic interferences with soils lead to interactions in multidirectional facets resulting in certain negative impacts on soil qualities and characteristics of vital concerns. A selfish or excessive desire for more than is needed from a soil is disastrous.

Over 200 years of industrialisation have caused soil contamination to be a widespread problem in Europe. It is well documented now in India too that air and water pollution can have negative impacts on human health, but the impacts of such soil pollution on our health have had a much lower profile and are not so well understood. Farmers more often use the term ‘soil health’, which is similar to the term ‘soil quality’ used by soil scientists and researchers. A healthy soil has several physical, chemical and biological properties in definite balances in order to perform the defined functions. Soil needs to incorporate adequate organic matter, have a good structure, and should be home to a diverse mixture of organisms. Such properties allow the soil to carry out important functions and may be achieved in a natural setting by a soil attaining equilibrium with its surroundings, or in managed settings by human intervention to improve the soil’s health. Agricultural soil health is linked to human health, as poor soils yield fewer crops with decreased nutritional value. Healthy soils also limit erosion and help to improve air and water quality [15].

As regard to the routes from soils to human intake, soil can enter our bodies via three main routes viz. direct eating, inhalation and through the skin. Eating soil directly (geophagia) is a rare but surprisingly unique practice among children under three, while playing outdoors. It is commonly believed that direct ingestion is the most important pathway for human exposure to soil contamination, although other specific pathways have some importance in certain situations. Working with soil often releases particles into the air that may be inhaled by farmers, farm workers and others nearby. Absorption of muddy soil or clay through the skin tends to favour more volatile, organic compounds. In indirect contact, soil contaminants may move from soils into ground or surface water, leading to contaminated drinking water. They may also be taken up by plants which are subsequently consumed, either by humans or by agricultural livestock, causing contaminants to enter the human food chain. High levels of arsenic in drinking water supplies are often another significant indirect result of soil contamination. Arsenic may also be naturally present in groundwater. If a chemical accumulates in tissues and reaching the critical toxicity level, it is harmful. Factors that are relevant in this case are the body’s rate of elimination (by metabolism or excretion), and the overall ‘body burden’, the quantity of chemicals stored in body tissues [20]. Heavy metals occur naturally in rocks and in soils too in variable amounts. The heavy metals as health risks includes Arsenic (As), Lead (Pb), Cadmium (Cd), Chromium (Cr), Copper (Cu), Mercury (Hg), Nickel (Ni) and Zinc. Conversely, cadmium, lead and mercury have no known biological function and are toxic to humans. Soil acts as a repository for many heavy metals that human activity releases into the environment. However, the soil itself may then present a risk to those who live or eat crops grown on it [21]. Soil is truly a protective medical tool to keep human healthy. Human activities viz. farming, mining, smelting, industry as well as driving vehicles or burning fossil fuels all contribute to the burden of heavy metals in soils, as does our disposal of materials containing heavy metals, a long list which includes municipal waste, paint, electronic waste, and sewage [22]. Much of the evidence for the long-term effects of arsenic on human health comes from southeast Asia where there is a natural belt of arsenic-rich alluvium or sediments which were deposited millions of years ago in the Bramaputra and Ganges river basins. Bangladesh, parts of India, Myanmar and Nepal are all affected. An estimated 30 million people may be at risk from arsenic-related disease as a result of contaminated water in the region [23].

Sources of arsenic exposure includes

a. Natural routes viz. volcanic activity, minerals dissolving into groundwater, exudates from vegetation, and windblown dust.

b. Human activity, such as mining, metal smelting, fossil fuel combustion, pesticide production and use, and treating timber with preservatives.

c. Remobilization of historic sources, such as mine drainage water.

d. Mobilization into drinking water from geological deposits, e.g. by drilling wells [24].

Cadmium enters agricultural soils from the atmosphere and from application of phosphate fertilizers and sewage sludge. In heavily contaminated areas, re-suspension of dust can cause a substantial proportion of crop contamination and human exposure via inhalation and ingestion [25]. Industrial emissions are important sources of lead contamination of the soil and ambient air, and lead may also be ingested from atmospheric air or flaked paint that has been deposited in soil and dust, raising blood lead levels. At least 459 people died in Iraq, for example, when flour was made from grain treated with a fungicide containing mercury in 1971 [26]. Inappropriate agricultural practices include excessive tillage and use of heavy machinery, excessive and unbalanced use of inorganic fertilizers, poor irrigation and water management techniques, pesticide overuse, inadequate crop residue and/ or organic carbon inputs, and poor crop cycle planning [27]. Soils across the country are accordingly in-secured in terms of safety, productivity and sustainability. Soil degradation reduces crop yields by increasing susceptibility to drought stress and elemental imbalance [28].

Shifting cultivation and deforestation

Human induced deforestation is a serious problem across the country, particularly in the hilly and mountainous areas. Deforestation is conversion of forest land to other uses, while degradation refers to reduction in productivity and/or diversity of a forest due to unsustainable harvesting, soil erosion, removal of nutrients and loss of biodiversity and soil organic matter [29]. Around 80% area of India was forested during 3000 BC [30,31]. However, subsequent invasions changed entire landscape. First era in deforestation was shortly after absorption into British Empire [32]. The 1894 British Forest Policy accorded priority to commercial exploitation, state custodianship and permanent cultivation. Second major deforestation was in 1940s with demands of World War II and transition to independence for India and Pakistan in 1947 [33]. The National Forest Policy 1952 envisaged increasing forest areas to one third of the total land area but was difficult to implement. Report for post 1980 period indicates that rate of diversion of forest to non-forestry activities declined to around 15,5000ha per annum as compared to 150,000ha per annum prior to 1980 [34]. Total area under forests in India has nearly stabilized at around 64Mha and restoration of degraded lands assumes priority in planning and implementation. Between 1980 and 1990, forests were depleted at the rate of about 0.34mha annually while, afforestation efforts covered about one mha of area annually during the same period [35]. Overgrazing and deforestation have caused degradation in eight Indian states which now have >20% wasteland as reported by Bhattacharyya et al. [27] based on wasteland atlas of India prepared by National Remote Sensing Agency (NRSA).

Shifting cultivation predominantly in the North Eastern states, comprising of eight states namely, Arunachal Pradesh, Assam, Manipur, Meghalaya, Mizoram, Nagaland, Sikkim and Tripura, is another problem for environment and of course for the soil. This shifting cultivation, known as ‘jhum’ is widely distributed upland slash and burn agriculture system. Efforts to address jhum remained challenging tasks, more so due to its shortening cycle and ecological threats but continued livelihood dependency for a large population of upland communities. Such cultivation practices are linked with the ecological, socio-economic and cultural life of the people and are closely connected to their rituals and festivals. The current practice of shifting cultivation in the region is an extravagant and unscientific form of land use. Its evil effects are devastating and far reaching in degrading the soil, environment and ecology of this region [34]. Such areas could be easily recognized as a barren patch in the middle of the green surroundings. Though the state and central governments are making all possible effort to let the people settle down and follow sustainable agriculture, yet much more is needed through strategic planning.

Land degradation

Land degradation may be either a change to land that makes it less useful for human beings [35] or it may be a decrease in the optimum functioning of soil in ecosystems” [36] or the loss of utility or potential utility through the reduction or damage to physical, social, cultural or economic features and/or reduction of ecosystem diversity [37]. Estimated total area under soil degradation in India is around 147 million hectares (Mha) of land, including 94Mha from water erosion, 16Mha from acidification, 14Mha from flooding, 9Mha from wind erosion, 6Mha from salinity, and 7Mha from a combination of factors [27]. According to Sehgal and Abrol [38], about 187.8Mha (57% approximately) out of 328.73Mha of land area has been degraded in one way or the other. It appears, therefore, that most of our land is either degraded or is undergoing degradation or is at the risk of getting degraded. This is extremely serious because India supports 18% of the world’s human population and 15% of the world’s livestock population but has only 2.4% of the world’s land area. Despite its low proportional land area, India ranks second worldwide in farm output. Agriculture, forestry, and fisheries account for 17% of the gross domestic product and employs about 50% of the total workforce of the country. Causes of soil degradation are both natural and human-induced [27]. Human-induced soil degradation results from land clearing and deforestation, inappropriate agricultural practices, improper management of industrial effluents and wastes, over-grazing, careless management of forests, surface mining, urban sprawl, and commercial/industrial development. Inappropriate agricultural practices include excessive tillage and use of heavy machinery, excessive and unbalanced use of inorganic fertilizers, poor irrigation and water management techniques, pesticide overuse, inadequate crop residue and/or organic carbon inputs, and poor crop cycle planning. Some underlying social causes of soil degradation in India are land shortage, decline in per capita land availability, economic pressure on land, land tenancy, poverty, and population increase [27,37].

Land degradation is a cumulative term used to cover the type specific human induced processes that may impair the capacity of the soil to function. Soil degradation affects human nutrition and health through its adverse impacts on quantity and quality of food production. Soil nutrient loss is a major concern. Overgrazing can result in both sparse pasture cover and loss of the range species that are preferred by livestock and thus cause degradation. During the last few decades, emerging incidences of contamination (include arsenic, selenium, fluoride and radionuclides) are of serious concern to ecosystem and human health [27].

Desertification

The term desertification refers to specific degradation of land in arid, semi-arid and sub-humid areas. In fact, land degradation occurs everywhere but is known as desertification when it occurs in dry land ecosystem, where mean annual precipitation is less than two thirds of potential evapotranspiration. Desertification is a type of land degradation in which a relatively dry area of land becomes increasingly arid, typically losing its bodies of water as well as vegetation and wildlife. Desertification process leads to desert formation [39]. This may result either due to a natural phenomenon linked to climate change or due to abusive land use. World day to combat desertification and drought is observed every year on 17th of June to increase public awareness on such issue.

India, with about 32% of its land under degradation and 25% undergoing desertification, has a huge task cut out to ensure sustainable land management as well as food, water and livelihood security by adopting both preventive and curative strategies for moving towards land degradation neutrality in a realistic timeframe [40]. Latest Atlas of the Space Applications Centre (SAC, ISRO) published in 2016 revealed that 96.4Mha (29.32%) is undergoing land degradation while 23.32% area is under desertification (ICAR-Central Arid Zone Research Institute, Jodhpur). The Indian Desert is unique among deserts of the world, because it is heavily populated including humans and livestock [41]. The Rajasthan desert contains a mixture of peninsular, extra-peninsular, and Indo-Gangetic geographical features. Historically, it was the seat of the Mohenjodaro-Harappa-Kalibanga civilizatibns [39].

Desertification is the extreme degradation of productive land in arid and semi-arid areas. This can create poor quality of vegetation, and cause spreading of desert to areas that were not desert before. Earlier the problem was confined to only the arid and semi-arid regions, but now it has taken a wider expansion in different climatic zones of the country. Poor agriculture practices, mismanagement of surface and ground water, inappropriate irrigation practices, absence of aridity control program or desert control program, and the impact of climate change do aggravate the desertification process in India. Many of the present schemes and programmes of Ministry of Rural Development, Department of Land Resources, Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change, Ministry of Agriculture, Ministry of Water Resources, Ministry of Tribal Affairs, Ministry of Panchayati Raj, Department of Science and Technology, Department of Space have significant bearing for addressing the DLDD challenges. Though India does not have a specific policy or legislative framework for combating desertification as such, the concern for arresting and reversing land degradation and desertification gets reflected in many of our national policies (for e.g., National Water Policy 2012; National Forest Policy 1988; National Agricultural Policy 2000; Forest (Conservation) Act 1980; Environment (Protection) Act 1986; National Environmental Policy 2006; National Policy for Farmers 2007; National Rainfed Area Authority (NRAA)- 2007) which have enabling provisions for addressing these problems. It is also implicit in the goals of sustainable forest management (SFM), sustainable agriculture, sustainable land management (SLM) and the overarching goal of sustainable development which the country has been pursuing. The subject has in fact been engaging the attention of our planners and policy makers since the inception of planning. The first five years plan (1951-1956) had ‘land rehabilitation’ as one of the thrust areas. In the subsequent plans too, high priority for development has been consistently given to sustainable management of the type specific dryland soils in India.

Desertification often starts as patchy destruction of productive land. Increased dust particles in atmosphere lead to desertification and drought in margins of the zones that are not humid. Even the humid zones are in danger of getting progressively drier if droughts continue to occur over a series of years. Indications are clear that the temporary phenomena of meteorological drought in India are tending to become permanent one. This trend is not restricted to the fringes of existing deserts only. The ICAR-CAZRI [42] is devoted to;

a. Undertaking basic and applied research on sustainable farming systems in the arid ecosystem.

b. Act as repository of information on the state of natural resources and desertification processes.

c. Developing livestock-based farming systems and range management practices for the chronically drought-affected areas.

d. Generating and transferring location-specific technologies.

Erosion

It is the detachment, transportation and deposition of sediments mostly by natural factors like water and wind, but human induced accelerated erosion is also of serious concern. The NE Region, Himanchal Pradesh, Jammu & Kashmir, Jharkhand and Uttarakhand are typical for such erosion in India. Narayana and Ram Babu [43] analyzed the existing data on soil loss and concluded, as a first approximation, that soil was being eroded at an annual average rate of 16.35tonnes per hectare. Gurmel et al. [44] estimated that the annual erosion rate ranges from less than 5tonnes/ha for dense forests, snow-clad cold deserts, and arid regions of western Rajasthan to more than 80tonnes/ha in the Shiwalik hills. The arid and semi-arid regions of the north-west cover 28 600 square kilometers, of which the sand dunes and sandy plains of western Rajasthan, Haryana, Punjab, and Gujarat account for 66% [45]. Severe wind erosion is observed mostly in the extreme western sectors of the country. It is reported that the removal and deposition of sand during a 100-day period from April to June ranges between 1449 and 5560tonnes/ha [44]. The earlier estimates show that area affected by wind erosion is 13.5mha (4.1% of the total geographical area).

The loss of topsoil accounts for 1.9% of the total area under soil degradation; terrain deformation for 1.2%; and shifting of sand dunes another 0.5% [38]. At the Central Soil & Water Conservation Research & Training Institute, Dehradun, Dhruva and Ram Babu [46] presented a method to arrive at a first estimate of soil erosion, sediment loads of rivers and sedimentation in reservoirs. In this analysis, existing annual soil loss data for 20 different land resource regions of the country sediment loads of some rivers, and rainfall erosivity for 36 river basins and 17 catchments of major reservoirs are utilized and statistical regression equations are developed for predicting sediment yield. Using these expressions and corresponding values of area, rainfall, rainfall erosivity and surface runoff, annual values of total sediment loads of streams, sediment deposition in reservoirs, and sediment lost permanently into the sea are estimated. According to this estimate, which is treated as a first approximation, soil erosion is taking place at the rate of 16.35ton/ha/annum which is more than the permissible value of 4.5-11.2ton/ha. About 29% of the total eroded soil is lost permanently to the sea. Ten percent of it is deposited in reservoirs. The remaining 61% is dislocated from one place to the other [46]. Anthropogenic interferences are significant in accelerating the type specific erosion processes [47].

Acidification

This is more common in highlands like NE region. The acidification occurs when the basic cations (like calcium and magnesium) leach down from the soil, leaving the acidic cations on the soil surface (hydrogen, aluminium, iron and manganese). The pH decreases and soil becomes more acidic. In India, acid soils occur in Assam, Meghalaya, Arunachal Pradesh, Mizoram, Nagaland, Sikkim, Manipur, Tripura, West Bengal, Jharkhand, Uttar Pradesh, Himachal Pradesh, Jammu and Kashmir, M.P., Maharashtra, Kerala, Karnataka, Tamil Nadu and Andhra Pradesh. However, Punjab, Haryana, Rajasthan and Gujarat are the only states in India where acid soils do not occur naturally. Out of 142Mha of arable land, around 48-49Mha is occupied by acid soils, of which 25Mha show pH below 5.5 and 23Mha have pH between 5.6 to 6.5 [48,49]. Maji et al. [48] reported that out of the country’s total geographic area, strongly acid and moderately acid soils covered 6.24 (1.9%) and 24.41 (7.4%) Mha. In the north-eastern region of India, approximately 95% soils are acidic, and nearly 65% soils are suffering from strong acidity with pH less than 5.5 [48]. The soils of Mizoram are particularly the product of slow diagenetic changes of acidic parent material giving the soils inherent acidic character [50]. Continuous efforts by man for developing permanently submerged areas into cultivable land, or for improving drainage in submerged or saline lands, regular use of nitrogen fertilizers like ammonium sulphate which cause acidity in the soils are responsible for decrease of soil pH. In urban areas, industrial wastes containing sulphur or sulphur dioxide also contribute much in the development of acid soils.

Salinization and sodification

The build-up of soluble salt on the soil surface or sub-surface often under faulty irrigation is serious soil problems particularly in arid and semi-arid environments. This is an alarming problem in the western states of Rajasthan and Gujarat as well as in adjoining areas. In most cases, salinization is associated with sodiumization or sodification or alkalinisation due to excess of exchangeable sodium on exchange surface. According to current estimates, about 6.74Mha of total land areas qualify for salt affected soils with 1.71Mha under saline, 3.78 Mha under sodic and 1.24Mha under coastal saline soils in India [51,52].

Murthy et al. [53] presented the details of occurrence of the salt affected soils of India. Salinity and alkalinity occur extensively in the northern alluvial soils, flanked by the Rann of Kutch and the Rajasthan desert in the west and subhumid to humid, deltatic, marshy and swampy lands of the Sunderbans subject to tidal action in the east. The salt affected soils also occur in the major deltas in the east along the coastline, in major river basins and local depressions in the semi-arid Deccan plateau and its periphery, extending to the states of Maharastra, Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka and Tamilnadu. Narrow coastal strips in Kerala and West Bengal have acid sulphate soils. The introduction of irrigation is likely to result in secondary salinization. The operating mechanisms of salt release, mobilization and accumulation under varying situations are presented by Bhargava et al. [54]. Salinity is usually the first stage of alkalinity. The problem of salinity is related to the presence of a permanent water table developed at some depth below the soil surface and depends largely on soil-crop management [55]. A rise in water table in the south-western part of Haryana has created a serious problem of soil salinization [56].

Sodic or alkali soils are characterized by a disproportionately high concentration of sodium (greater than 15% exchangeable sodium) in their cation exchange complex showing high pH, greater than 8.5. The soils occur normally within arid to semiarid regions and are exhibiting poor physical, chemical and biological properties, which impede water infiltration, water availability, root penetration and ultimately plant growth and development. The maintenance of high pH in alkaline soils indicates that the supply of binding divalent metals is limited. It describes the interrelationships between salinity, irrigation, drainage, and crops. The evolution of such soils is related with micro-relief, brackish ground water and high evapo-transpiration [57], wherein anthropogenic interaction seems to have ample opportunities.

Mining

Mining is primarily a manmade problem with soils. Surface mining may deform the landscape. Besides, mining of sand from rivers and stones from the surrounding hills are common phenomena nowadays. Mineral rich states like Jharkkhand, Chhattishgarh, Odissa, Karnataka, Andhra Pradesh and Tamil Nadu have larger area where the land is severely damaged, and soils are badly affected with the presence of mined materials like metals, minerals and even radioactive materials. Opencast mining is of particular focus because it disturbs the physical, chemical, and biological features of the soil and alters the socioeconomic features of a region. Negative effects of mining are shortage of water due to lowering of water table, soil contamination, loss of soil biodiversity with flora and fauna, increase in air and water pollution and acid mine drainage. Besides, overburden removal from mining sites results in considerable loss of top soils and vegetation [58]. Open-pit mines produce 8 to 10 times as much waste as underground mines [59].

Coal is one of the most commonly available fossil fuels which meets the requirements of major part of the energy for human consumption globally. India is the third largest coal producer in the world after China and USA. Coal mining and related activities provide huge energy resource; however, such human interferences adversely affect the soil as well as environment causing degradation and deforestation. The first published record of coal mining in India dates back to the year 1774 in coal mines in Bengal. The major coal fields include Jharia, Raniganj, Nagpur, Singareni, Talcher, Neyveli, and Chandrapur. Out of these, Jharia coal field (JCF) is the major storehouse of coking coal. Jharia has a long history of mining, which started around the end of the 19th century [60]. Haphazard mining by human beings over nearly a century has led to multiple deterioration in environmental and soil qualities besides degradation in landform, land use/land cover, vegetation distribution. Jharia is also known for widespread development of surface and subsurface fires due to unsustainable mining practices. These fires are burning over nearly a century and are a major cause of soil and air pollution, loss of vegetation as well as subsidence [61]. Some parameters such as total dissolved solids (TDS), Fe, nitrite, hardness, conductivity, heavy metals in the surface and groundwater exceed the defined quality standards [62,63].

Soil is polluted due to strip mining as it involves removal of top soil, wind erosion from dumps, coal heaps, tailing ponds, dust generated due to heavy machinery used for extracting coal, burning of coal, loading and unloading of coal as this dust settles on nearby areas. Soil has poor texture, low organic matter, and exhibits change in nutrient content due to heavy metal toxicity, change in pH and electrical conductivity. Also, the soil above the fire areas (Figure 5) is devoid of moisture and is baked making it biologically sterile [64]. The soil friendly organisms (bacteria, nematodes, earthworms, etc.) die under such harsh conditions, thus limiting the ability of the soil to support vegetation. The existing vegetation also dries up and ultimately dies due to the lack of water and other nutrients. The soil quality is affected by removal of top soil and low accumulation of humus resulting in lower organic content. The soils have high bulk density, large grain size, acidic pH and high electrical conductivity, which cumulatively make the soil less potent for plant growth [61]. Jharia coalfield is facing significant subsidence due to underground mining [65,66]. However, Sanjay et al. [67] attempted to restore soil development in 2-21 years old coalmine in Raniganj with trees, although such issue needs creative planning approach in view of the fact that mining is by and large a human necessity but not at the cost of soil. Tekedil and Srivastava [68] highlighted impacts due to mining based on a case study in Kerala.

Urbanization and industrialization

Rural inhabitants prefer to settle in the city for reasons of better employment opportunities and social as well as cultural mobility. Old cities in India have grown in a haphazard and unplanned manner and often remain impacted due to industrialization. Cities are over-populated and over-crowded as a result of the increase in population over the decades and partly as a result of migration. Ill-effects of fast-growing urbanization in India are documented [69]. Urbanization and industrialization are purely because of human interferences and cause abrupt changes in localized climate, polluted environment and land degradation.

Urbanization leads to irreversible shifting of agriculturally viable lands for non-farming uses. In fact, urbanization as well as industrialization is the two land uses, which bring the maximum change on the face of earth visibly. Changes appeared include non-farming through soil sealing irreversibly, wherein soil in the landscape is physically, chemically and even biologically distorted and it is often covered by stones or bricks with concretion or roads, buildings, playground or picnic spots or ponds and streams. Thus, land utilization types are virtually changed from agriculture to urban settlement and infrastructure. Importantly, the urban environment brings changes in the local climate invariably, wherein temperature is always warmer as compared to its surrounding areas and the city or town is like “heat-island”.

Urbanization is directly related to shrinkage of agricultural lands for non-farming purposes and thus directly responsible for localized climate warming besides promoting the soil pollution as well as erosion. Such serious issue deserves intervention of policies both at state and central government levels through planning. Urbanization would immensely accelerate the process of soil sealing. Soils are commonly disturbed, mixed and compacted resulting in changes in physical and chemical properties of soils. Besides, urbanization subsequently promotes the risk of floods and drought, endangers the soil biodiversity, influences the amount, chemical form and spatial distribution of carbon stocks leading to environmental change. In such unplanned package of alteration, soil gets often covered with impervious surfaces too. Soil sealing is the principal cause due to urbanization [70].

Topography, vegetation, climate, water table, and even the anthropogenic activities all are affected by urban growth through diverse mechanisms. The expansion of urban area of Gwalior in central India has been quantified by deriving data for four decades (1972-2013) from the Landsat images [71]. The urban builtup area has increased by 08.48 sq. km during the first eighteen years (1972-1990) which has increased to 16.28 sq. km during the next sixteen years (1990-2006). The built-up area has gone up to 23.19sq. km in the next seven years (2006-2013). Overall during the last 40 years, the growth of the urban built-up is nearly three times of the built-up areas in 1972. The average decadal growth rate of population is 27.28 percent while that of built-up land is 36.29 percent [71]. Such expansion in urbanization is directly proportional to shrinkage of land area following the irreversible change in productive soils too [72-74]. As Sanyal [75] remarked, the abuses and misuses of soil such as the irreversible destruction of good quality top soil in course of brick making and other activities like solid waste disposal (Figure 6) particularly in urban and industrial areas need to be highlighted to the public and policy makers in order that such practices are stopped or regulated and/ or reversed for saving the precious natural resource. The Yamuna in Delhi has been facing a challenge due to urban solid waste disposal.

Conclusion

The values of a soil are well established since time immemorial. However, since last century and so, the land-man ratio declined almost exponentially primarily due to rapid increase in human population (population density), diversion of agricultural land irreversibly for urbanization and other infrastructure purposes including type specific land degradation and desertification. The land resources in India are virtually scarce and threatened with multiple types of challenges. The ill-impacts on soils under such risk prone lands are infinite. Even though, in order to meet the people’s needs, the soils have been extensively and intensively utilized under imbalanced management practices for years together. This resulted in complex types of threats, pollution, vulnerability, toxicity, loss of biodiversity, decline in organic matter and unstable soil sustainability and resilience.

However, such deteriorating trends of soil health have now been gradually realized and understood by the farming communities as well as policy makers. They are being sensitized by the government agencies and research institutes and universities through their innovative research and development approaches. Indian soils are, by and large, correctable in general for improvement in order to attain the level of potential productivity of the soils. So, the humans would look for precision soil evaluation and turn the soil healthy, productive and sustainable for present and brighter future. It is in the interest of humans to keep the soils sustained as soil is the ultimate essence of our existence. Soil is still a strange full of wisdom that needs to be captured using classical laws of sciences.

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[eotheria]

The World of Eotheria According to Lady Valentine

Part 19: The Kingdom of Pecra

Continuing on with the seven human kingdoms, we now turn to the nation of Pecra. In terms of land mass, Pecra is the largest of the seven kingdoms. However, it has roughly half the population of Kresnik. There are a number of reasons for this, and going through the years, Pecra has had a long life of misfortune that is exceeded only by the kingdom of Laguna.

Ethnic Pecrans make up the most populous race in southwestern Suvitha.  Pecrans tend to be short and slim. They usually have dusky skin, dark eyes, and thick black hair. Pecrans make up roughly 80% of the human population of Pecra. Lagunese and Kresniks make up the rest.

The Kingdom of Pecra was founded in 1282 and is almost as old as Ledo is. Initially comprising of the city of Acacia and surrounding areas, it expanded further south to encompass the entirety of the Suvitar Penninsula. Their road to conquest was not an easy one: elves to the north, hobgoblins to the south, and yuan-ti and orcs all around, made for a long lifetime of war and strife. Today, Pecra is the least industrially developed of the seven human nations, though this isn’t because of an aversion to change, as it is in Ledo. It is because Pecra has spent so much of its existence fighting that advancements in technology are few and far between.

Despite this, Pecra, like Etrana has a rich history as a sea-faring nation. While not as successful as the Etranans, the Pecrans have discovered new islands in the western ocean, and have also made ground on the new world of Olbera (proving that the world of Eotheria was round in the process). Both Etrana and Pecra have small holdings in the new world, though little information has come back to Suvitha, outside of maps of the shape of the continent. The Pecrans have also served as a line of defense against the Kordran Empire beyond the Pecra Gulf to the east. This has not always been to their favor.

The Yuan-ti

Pecra has had a number of wars with different races. However, none have been as long and destructive as their wars with the yuan-ti. Before Pecra was founded, much of the peninsula was ruled by the many yuan-ti kingdoms. One by one, they fell to the humans, until the yuan-ti were forced to slink into the shadows and into the ruins of their once great palaces. Needless to say, the yuan-ti have a deep hatred for the humans of Pecra and have fought them in a holy war ever since. 

The yuan-ti worship Vritra, Demon Lord of Famine. Vritra promises prosperity for his followers, and absolute drought and starvation for the enemies of his followers. In terms of the hierarchy of the Demon Lords of Sheol, only Rakkadi, Demon Lord of Violence, is superior, mostly because of how widespread violence is in Eotheria, but Vritra can certainly point out how his followers have damaged Pecra so much that they actually affected its ecosystem. The yuan-ti dam and divert rivers and salt lands that would otherwise sustain the Pecrans. As such, much of southern Pecra is a vast, uninhabitable desert, when at the turn of the third age it was as fertile as the rest of the peninsula. The Pecrans have been fighting the yuan-ti for centuries, unable to win lasting victories, mostly because the yuan-ti purebloods can very easily blend in with human society. Every time the Pecrans think the yuan-ti gone, they return, stronger than ever.

After the great Cataclysm happened, however, something strange began to happen with the yuan-ti. Attacks on the Pecrans became dramatically fewer. For a long time, none could discern the reason for this. Soon enough, however, it would be discovered that the yuan-ti had become embroiled in a bitter civil war with one another. A faction of yuan-ti began to shun the worship of Vritra, pointing out that the damage the yuan-ti had caused to Pecra affected them as well. The war is still ongoing to this day, and the Pecrans have chosen to stay out of it. After all, no matter who wins, the winners will still be yuan-ti.

Invasion of the Kordran

Unfortunately for the Pecrans, the constant wars with the yuan-ti left them vulnerable to an even greater threat: the Kordran Empire. Though the Kordran’s northern campaigns against Laguna and LaCroix over the centuries had proven ineffective, they learned of Pecra’s weakness and saw them an easy target. In 904 GE, the Kordran Navy sailed across the Pecra Gulf and attacked, taking the port city of Olan and then continuing their push north in a blitzkreig, encountering weak resistance along the way. In only ten months, the Kordran forced a surrender from the maharaja of Pecra, and the nation became a part of the Kordran Empire.

The Kordran would find keeping a hold of Pecra quite difficult, however. The other six human kingdoms responded immediately. LaCroix and Laguna both immediately attacked the Kordran border in reprisal, forcing the High Imperator to redistribute his armies. Kresnik also made a strong push against the Kordran, showing off some of the earliest forms of their magitechnology as they vowed to retake the peninsula. However, the most unexpected resistance to Kordran occupation came from the yuan-ti. Though both the hobgoblins and the yuan-ti were at war with the humans, their mutual gods were polar opposites of one another. The Kordran worshiped a seraph (though they did not realize it at the time), and the yuan-ti worshiped a demon lord. Also, the yuan-ti found the Kordran to be a far greater problem for them than the Pecrans were. They were better equipped, and better trained. Though the yuan-ti did not cooperate with the humans, their continued efforts to defile the peninsula and starve the Kordran had greatly contributed to the war effort.

Liberation by Kresnik

The Kordran would not hold Pecra for long. Three years after Pecra fell, Kresnik forces recaptured the Pecran capital of Acacia, and from there began to force the hobgoblins further and further south. Finally, in 911 GE, seven years after Kordran had conquered Pecra, the last of the Kordran forces surrendered in the port city of Olan. Pecra would then become a part of the Kresnik empire as a vassal state, and Pecra has since enjoyed the protection of their greater brother to the east, as the Kresniks have strengthened Pecra’s defenses in the Pecra Gulf and rooted out yuan-ti wherever they were found. To this day Pecrans hold a very strong loyalty to Kresnik, unlike in Ledo, Laguna, and Creat Pristan. That’s not to say independence movements in Pecra don’t exist. They do; they simply don’t have near as much traction as they do in Kresnik’s other vassal states.

Pecra’s current ruler, Maharaja Dalij Baragai, is the oldest ruler of the Seven Human Nations at age 73. Coincidentally, he was born three days after Pecra was liberated by the Kresniks. He is also the sovereign who has ruled his nation the longest, having taken the throne in 939 GE following the death of his father in the great Cataclysm. Baragai has been a close friend of the Kresnik royal family all his life, having known three generations of Kresnik emperors, as well as Prince Adrian Kresnik, who often looks to his wisdom for advice. His opinions on Emperor Karol Kresnik’s recent expansionism are not known, but he has vowed to defend Pecra to the death from the Kordran Empire, should war break out.

Hayliel, Goddess of Nature

Pecra’s patron goddess is Hayliel, one of the older deities of Suvitha. Hayliel is viewed as a mother goddess, often depicted in the presence of children, and carrying a horn o’ plenty. She is a goddess of nature, fertility, prosperity, and good fortune. Small wonder that the Pecrans would turn to worshiping her, given that the yuan-ti god Vritra represents everything that she would be against. Unusual for the human goddesses, Hayliel has a few negative aspects about herself as well, notably the belief of her absolute terror towards irresponsible parents and unruly children. And here I thought Penemuel would be the only scary one among the goddesses. The yuan-ti have desecrated much of Pecra in the name of their demon god, but the Pecrans faith in Hayliel has endured like steel.

Aarakocra

High above in the mountain ranges that make up Pecra’s western border live the aarakocra. Though I’ve mentioned a tribe of black winged aarakocra that makes its home in Ledo, the vast majority of the race lives in Pecra’s mountains, high above the trappings of human society. The aarakocra are divided into different tribes, with tribe sizes ranging from dozens to hundreds. Though the aarakocra are peaceful in nature, they can be very dangerous when angered or threatened. The aarakocra are also no friends of the yuan-ti; the birdfolk revere nature and balance, which the yuan-ti are an affront to. The aarakocra have fought yuan-ti almost as long as the Pecrans have, and their mutual enemy has fostered a deep trust between the two races. The aarakocra have existed peacefully with the Pecrans for hundreds of years, engaging in trade with them and maintaining a strong relationship.

The aarakocra are known for their worship of the sun, and their priests are masters of reading the patterns of the sun and the sky to determine how long it would rain and how long dry spells would last. Given that they are a race that spends much of their time in the air, this only makes sense. For a long time, this was seen as primitive gibberish, but given how good the aarakocra are at predicting the weather, perhaps they’re on to something. Of course, I do not think the sun is a divine entity of any sort, but the aarakocra are still respected for their knowledge of the sky and weather patterns, and many humans have adopted their methods to better predict the weather.

In the next chapter I will speak on the kingdom that is no more: Laguna.

[hudsonespie]

How Does Plastic Pollution Affect the Ocean?

[By Emma Bryce and Mary Flora Hart]

Every day, eight million tons of plastic enter the ocean. That’s equivalent to one truckload dumped into the sea every minute of the day. From there, it goes on a long and destructive journey. “The plastic that enters the ocean can be carried vast distances by currents to all parts of the world, including remote Antarctica and the Mariana trench, the deepest place on Earth,” says Winnie Lau, senior officer for The Pew Charitable Trusts’ Preventing Ocean Plastics campaign. Along the way, it infiltrates ecosystems and causes untold harm to marine life.

Yet despite the scale of this problem, global plastic production continues, placing the oceans at ever-increasing risk. What makes the ocean so vulnerable to plastic pollution – and what can we do to limit the amount that gets in?

What’s the problem with plastic?

Plastic is almost inescapable in our daily lives. It’s used to make everything from food packaging to toiletries, clothing, furniture, computers and cars. This ubiquitous material is designed to be very durable – and as a result much of it doesn’t biodegrade. Depending on the type, plastic can take between a few decades to potentially millions of years to disintegrate in landfill. Consequently, unless it’s burned, which itself causes pollution, nearly every piece of plastic ever manufactured still exists today – and when it enters the ocean, its effects can be felt for centuries.

Where does waste come from?

Globally, we produce more than 300 million tons of plastic waste each year, and that number is rising. Yet of all the plastic waste ever created, only 9% has been recycled, while the rest has been incinerated or discarded, mainly ending up in landfills. A big reason for this is that 50% of the plastic we produce is single use, meaning it’s intended to be thrown away immediately after it has served its purpose – like straws, plastic carrier bags and water bottles. Because it’s so frequently produced and so rapidly discarded, single-use plastic increases the amount of waste entering landfills, and in turn, that increases the amount that inevitably escapes into the environment.

Why is the ocean so badly affected by plastic?

Incredibly vast and deep, the ocean acts like a huge sink for global pollution. Some of the plastic in the ocean originates from ships that lose cargo at sea. Abandoned plastic fishing nets and longlines – known as ghost gear – is also a large source, making up about 10% of plastic waste at sea. Marine aquaculture contributes to the problem, too, mainly when the polystyrene foam that’s used to make the floating frames of fish cages makes its way into the sea.

But the vast majority of waste enters the water from land. Extreme weather and high winds brings it there, and pollution along coastlines gets swiftly hauled out by the tides. The ocean is also the endpoint for thousands of rivers, which carry tonnes of loose litter and waste from landfills, ultimately depositing it into the sea. In fact, just 10 rivers worldwide, eight of them originating in Asia, are responsible for the bulk of river-borne plastic that enters the oceans: China’s Yangtze is the biggest source, contributing 1.5 million metric tonnes each year. That’s mainly because several countries outsourced their plastic waste management to China. Until January 2018, when it banned the trade, China imported almost half of the world’s plastic trash.

Once in the ocean, the harsh conditions and constant motion cause plastic to break down into particles of less than 5mm in diameter, called microplastics. This disperses plastic even farther and deeper into the ocean, where it invades more habitats and becomes effectively impossible to retrieve.

What’s the impact on marine life?

Hundreds of thousands of marine animals get entangled in plastic waste each year – especially in ghost gear – which limits their motion and their ability to feed, and causes injuries and infections. Less visible is the devastation that occurs through the ingestion of plastic: seabirds, turtles, fish, and whales commonly mistake plastic waste for food, because some has a similar colour and shape to their prey. Floating plastic also accumulates microbes and algae on the surface that gives it an odour that’s appetising to some sea animals. Once animals consume it, ingested plastic can pierce internal organs or cause fatal intestinal blockages; it also leads to starvation, because a stomach crammed with plastic gives an animal the illusion of being full.

Microplastics look similar to plankton, too, which is food for hundreds of species at the base of the food chain, meaning plastic infiltrates entire ecosystems. Researchers have even discovered that organisms as tiny as the polyps in corals regularly consume microplastics.

Furthermore, plastics absorb pollutants that are floating around in the ocean, and contain harmful chemicals themselves. Preliminary research suggests that when animals consume these toxin-infused particles, it could damage their organs, make them more susceptible to disease, and alter their reproduction. 

How bad is it, really?

Plastic pollution is so pervasive that it’s been found in some of the wildest and most remote locations on our planet, including Antarctica, and the deepest canyons of the Mariana trench. Ocean currents have coalesced floating plastic into five huge, swirling deep sea gyres – such as the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, which covers an area of ocean three times the size of France. Estimates suggest there could be upwards of 5 trillion individual pieces of plastic floating in the ocean. And if we continue producing plastic at current rates, the amount could outweigh all the fish in the sea by 2050. Research also shows that more than 800 coastal and marine species are directly affected by plastic waste through entanglement, ingestion, or damage to their habitats. Studies show that 90% of seabirds, and 52% of all turtles on the planet have consumed plastic. Additionally, a million seabirds and 100,000 marine mammals die annually because of plastic waste.

How does plastic pollution impact humans?

When marine animals consume plastic, the toxins it contains breaks down inside their bodies. So when humans eat seafood, we’re consuming these, too. Some of these plastic toxins are linked to hormonal abnormalities, and developmental problems. But researchers are still trying to understand exactly how our health is affected when we consume plastic via fish and shellfish. Analyses so far have suggested that microplastics don’t necessarily pose a risk to human health. But there’s still lots we don’t know. One concern is that plastics in the ocean eventually degrades into nano-plastics, which are so small they could enter human cells when consumed. In 2019, experts called for more research into the effect of micro- and nano-plastics on human health.

What can I do?

Undoubtedly, the biggest impact consumers can make is to reduce their use of single-use plastic, which contributes a significant share to plastic pollution in the sea. Recycling plastic wherever possible is also important. Volunteering for group clean-ups of rivers and beaches helps to reduce the amount of loose plastic that makes its way into the sea. Supporting campaigns and policy changes that reduce the production of unnecessary plastics is crucial, too. This has led to huge successes in the past, such as the ban in the United Kingdom, the United States and other countries on using microbeads – tiny spheres made of plastic – in toiletries and cosmetics. Similarly, in China government action on plastics led to a countrywide ban in 2008 on thin, single-use carrier bags. Now that’s being extended to gradually phase out single-use plastics across the country by 2025.

Can tedschnology help?

Researchers and innovators are developing solutions to stop plastic getting into the sea. A Dutch company called The Ocean Cleanup has invented a huge floating boom that siphons plastic waste out of the Great Pacific Garbage Patch. In the Chinese port city of Xiamen, university researchers are developing a camera surveillance system to identify plastic and forecast its trajectory downriver, so they can stop it before it enters the sea. The European Space Agency is even using its satellites to track plastic waste from space, in the hopes of informing new policies that will limit plastic pollution. Advances in developing biodegradable plastics could also have a huge impact on ocean health: researchers are currently working on a bioplastic that degrades in seawater, which could ultimately reduce the amount of waste that accumulates there.

But the only way to truly solve this problem is to dramatically reduce the production of plastic, which means curbing our addiction to it. “The most important thing we must do is stop plastic from getting into the ocean in the first place, because it is not feasible or cost-effective to do large-scale cleanups,” says Lau. “Once in the ocean, plastic waste will stay there for hundreds of years or longer. That is not a legacy I would want to leave for future generations.”

Emma Bryce is a freelance journalist who covers stories focused on the environment, conservation and climate change.

Mary Flora Hart is a UK-based freelance illustrator specialising in immersive scenes with high levels of detail. 

This article appears courtesy of China Dialogue Ocean, and it may be found in its original form here.

from Storage Containers https://maritime-executive.com/article/how-does-plastic-pollution-affect-the-ocean via http://www.rssmix.com/

[gamingtipsandtrickshacks]

Forever playing in Exile • Eurogamer.net

Once when I was small I went to the shops to buy an explosive - a tiny microdet designed for stage pyrotechnics. I've been fortunate that I've never really had blood on my hands when playing with fire, but that day I did get a lot of raspberry jam on them.

A school friend held a balloon open while I crammed in as much jam as possible before knotting it sealed. Then we pierced a small hole in a puppet's head and inserted the microdet followed by the balloon of clotted blood-like substance. I hooked the wires up to a 9-volt battery behind the camcorder, which was masking-taped to a makeshift dolly (a pram on rails). In exquisite anticipation I barked "Action!" But things didn't quite go to plan.

At that age, life only made sense when you were having fun. The freedom to play was why blood pumped through your veins. It was necessary to experiment and push boundaries, to test and meddle with the laws of physics. Teasing spiders, climbing trees, disturbing bee's nests, throwing snowballs at passing cars and building follies to set fire to. There was always a thrill to be had on the edge of mischief. That was instinctive, that... was boyhood.

But a back garden wasn't the only playground on offer in the mid to late 80s. Computer games were fast becoming portals into entire worlds with their own laws and abstracted physics. I was 11 years old and I was attempting to dock a rotating space station. Not Starbuck or Skywalker... me! I could barrel-roll a Spitfire, pilot fragile pods through planetary caves or hack into and fly remote-controlled robots. Exploring those digital playgrounds was my generation's undiscovered country and the thrills were intoxicating. Then at some point in those life-shaping years I found myself spellbound by an unusual game titled Exile, for the BBC Micro. And to this day part of me still hasn't been able to leave.

In 1988 games had to run in only 32k of memory. My phone now has 60,000 times that amount. And yet... there I was 30 years ago exploring a vast underground world simulating realistic physics with its own ecosystem, all running inside 32k of RAM. The wildlife and machines all had their own abilities and behaviours and even emitted digitised speech if you had the sideways RAM. This was absolute heaven to me, but it wasn't until I started making my own games that I came to fully appreciate how unlikely it was that all this ever came together in the first place.

Somehow the developers created a responsive 2D scrolling platformer with pixel-perfect collision, that worked in an engine where objects had properties and a mass effected by gravity, inertia, shock-waves and the elements earth, wind, fire and water. These days it's hard to appreciate now that physics engines are commonplace, but this was relatively new back then and Exile went all in to unprecedented lengths.

This was a new blend of platform game with true physical principles giving birth to a peculiar quality that sparked the imagination like nothing before - physical emergent narrative. It offered the player the ability to experiment and discover things outside the remit of whatever challenges the developer laid out for them. This alchemy for real tangible depth to interactive worlds can still prove painfully elusive for developers today. How can one offer the flexibility to experiment while maintaining a balanced ecosystem in which delicate puzzles have been woven? Maybe this is why it took so long for games like Minecraft and Disney Infinity to happen.

But even these days, how often do players find themselves trying to disarm a primed grenade that has escaped their grasp in a circular wind tunnel? How do you keep a flask from spilling water as you're caked by jetpack-clogging mushrooms thrown by cheeky imps? What do you do with a killer bee you've caught from its nest but stings while you flip through your inventory? What happens if you hold a frightened pink ball of fluff under red drops of acid jam? These just weren't the questions gamers were used to pondering. Equally important, it turned out nor were they questions a developer needed to contrive.

Exile.

The intelligence required for path-finding and strategy alone must have been a challenge in itself, but the indignance of that Darlek-esque sentinel as I landed politely on its head, the audacity of the villain Triax teleporting in and out to shoot me in the back, that endearing desperation whenever Fluffy clung to me for dear life... Was any of that real or did I imagine it? Advanced AI has often proved a poor investment in games. It can be so very clever but the bottom line is: if it's not noticed, it's completely wasted. The AI in Exile probably doesn't compare to what exists in today's games, but again... this isn't what's important. The secret is frequently staring right at us, through the eyes of a great movie star or even a wooden actor who knows when to exploit that unfortunate quality. Explicit emotional performances or Shakespearean monologues aren't necessary to immerse the audience in the mind of the character. Many actors have made the point that the power of ambiguity can be far more powerful. If there's drama in the situation, the audience can do all that leg work for the actor, who only has to project the illusion of thought. Artificial intelligence in entertainment is as much about anthropomorphism as it is about explicit communication or action. If it's done well it can be concocted in the eye of the beholder, emerging from situation, emerging from conflict, as an emergent... narrative.

Exile demonstrated a strong sense for crafting these natural unpredictable behaviour patterns, giving the illusion of a deeper intelligence and appearing to show changes in mood or temperament. Even if that sometimes just meant knowing when to hold still for a few seconds and do absolutely nothing, like when you give a spider a little poke to watch it play dead. How can something so motionless be so captivating? The AI was superb, but so was this pseudo AI.

For many reasons Exile was the game that made the biggest impression on me, and it wasn't long before I hooked up with school friend Chris Mullender to make our own game for the Amiga 500. What started out as a simple platformer inspired by Giana Sisters soon ballooned into our own sprawling world of bizarre creatures that followed their own laws and physical abilities. We realised then that we had both been heavily inspired by the land of Exile, even down to logistics such as memory management. It was literally impossible to store a map of that size into 32k. Chris' research uncovered how the map was constructed from selected procedural tile sets. This blew my mind, it felt like the big bang in reverse. Also, I remembered seeing the game played on an even less powerful machine, an Acorn Electron and noticed a large portion of the screen filled with corrupt graphics. It turned out this was no bug, but a technique that harnessed the screen buffer to store data. Genius! So we stored our game's hidden cave map data in the island's negative space - the sky. This instantly halved the size of our map data.

We learnt a lot regarding how so much could be put into so little space. It felt only natural to write a fan letter to the developers of Exile, and I was thrilled to receive a handwritten reply from Peter Irvin. However, it was in that letter I learned the tragic news of the death of his co-developer Jeremy Smith (who had previously created the much loved gravity game Thrust). Also sad was the speculation of what magic such a partnership would have gone on to create next.

In a strange mirroring of fate, a sequence of events followed that saw us releasing our game Odyssey under the same publisher as the Amiga version of Exile. My partner was hired to code for Peter's following projects and by the end of the next decade I had lost Chris, my co-creator and closest friend to a sudden illness. I was most touched when Peter reached out to console me, having been through the very same thing with Jeremy.

Reece Millidge and Chris Mullender.

When I look back on the development of Odyssey, before it entered that tough phase to bring it to completion, I remember the joyful fleshing out on whim and self indulgence. We drew on what excited us and made us laugh. I ate lots of biscuits and Chris drank lots of tea. We were making it because we enjoyed the process. Who knew that making a game could be as much fun as playing one?

When the red light blinked on the camcorder, I dollied towards the puppet and triggered the microdet. But the jam didn't explode. There was a loud pop and sparks flew from its head but the balloon was so tightly packed that it launched intact, remaining lodged and bulging out of its forehead. We were mucking about... and we mucked it up, but it was hilarious fun. Much like the time we filmed a firework backfiring a cardboard bazooka, singeing the armpit of my brother's favourite teddy bear. Or when a friend painted his face silver and climbed into his mum's washing machine, snapping the door off its hinges. We weren't playing to win, we were playing to play.

Now I find myself in the role of a responsible parent, supplying the back garden and fencing in the boundaries for my own kids to push. But like a lot of games developers still under the spell, I'm really just trying to recreate the playgrounds of my own childhood. If I'm still mucking around at middle age where things make only less sense, then it looks like I'll remain forever in exile, playing happily with grenades, pink balls of fluff and raspberry preserves.

[relatedrealtychicagoblog]

via Related Chicago - Feed

Rediscovering secret Chicago parks. Oases designed for us by some of the greatest landscape architects of all time.

Living in Chicago, it’s hard to forget that the city is famous for its’ architecture. Those who imagined and reimagined the landscape were visionaries, superstar architects and designers, such as William Le Baron Jenney, Louis Sullivan, Bruce Graham, William Holabird, and of course, Frank Lloyd Wright. These luminaries made their mark throughout the city. Their vision around us at every turn.

But, we are also a city of parks. I mean, our motto is literally, “City in a Garden,” translated from the Latin, “Urbo Hurti.” And we seem to be guided by it. With a park system made up of an astounding 8,000 acres of open space, wherever you are, an oasis of spectacular beauty and history is never far away.

Chicago has long been on the forefront of landscape architecture. From Jen Jensen’s Prairie-era masterpieces, Frederick Law Olmsted’s iconic lakefront parks, and Daniel Burnham’s masterful city planning, to prolific designers such as Alfred Caldwell and modernist Dan Kiley, our pedigree is long. So, while we are known for being the birthplace of the skyscraper, it’s our city’s park system that is quietly heralded as one of America’s greatest.

It wasn’t always this way. At first we had the motto, but no parks to speak of.

Jackson Park, 1891, before World’s’ Fair in 1893. Courtesy of the Chicago Public Library’s Special Collection.

Necessity is the mother of invention. A quick history –

Not wanting to be overshadowed by the creation of New York’s Central Park, it was in the mid 1800s’ when a group of visionary citizens rallied for the creation of Chicago’s first parks, starting with Lincoln. It was then, in late 1800’s, that the idea of neighborhood parks started to take hold. It was a time of great industrial growth and wealth in the city, along with extreme poverty, families living in overrun and dilapidated tenement houses. These smaller parks were born in large part to serve social purposes, like providing fresh milk, public playgrounds for children to play, or as a place to get a hot meal. They were meant to transform marginalized areas into beacons of civility. Jen Jensen, along with Jane Addams, founder of the Hull House, and other influencers of the time, championed for these public spaces, and went on to identify a series of forest preserves’ across western Chicago that were dedicated to the creation of our first neighborhood parks. They encircled the city in a green band and would come to be known as the Emerald Necklace.

As the 20th century unfolded, Jen Jensen designed four massive neighborhood parks; Garfield Park, Humboldt Park, Douglas Park and Columbus Park, while Alfred Caldwell designed The Lily Pond and Dan Kiley followed in the 1960’s with more formal gardens, such as The South Garden. One thing they all valued, was preservation and conservation of the land, and most important, that all citizens had a place to play, rest, meet and organize in an open green space. They felt it was the rights of all citizens to enjoy the city’s parks- and enjoy we do –

“There is nothing so American as our national parks.” Franklin Roosevelt

Bennett Park, One Bennett Park. Related Realty

And now in 2018, with a resurgence in landscape architecture around the city, comes a new generation of world-class designers, like Michael Van Valkenburgh, Carol Ross Barney and Jeanne Gang, helping to shape a Chicago of the future. They are innovative and driven by similar values as Olmsted, Jensen, Caldwell and Kiley before them, designing urban parks and streetscapes, urban trails and playground with an eye towards making our city’s ecosystems healthier and more biodiverse.

“I don’t so much think of a park as an escape from the city as I think of it as an escape in the city.” – Michael Van Valkenburgh , Designer, One Bennett Park

Take a pause between your busy day, amid the trees and gardens of these unique public spaces, gifted to us by our predecessors. It will surely transform your day.

THE LILY POOL Landscape Design by Alfred Caldwell

The sounds of birds singing and waterfalls breaking is just the kind of respite you need from a busy day. Nestled away in Lincoln Park, The Lily Pool is an almost otherworldly space in the middle of the concrete jungle. It was designed in the late 1930’s by Alfred Caldwell. He envisioned a refuge from the city, intending it to resemble “a river meandering through a great Midwestern prairie.” And it does. It remains one of the best examples of prairie-style landscape architecture which was what Caldwell intended. He was inspired by Jen Jensen’s use of the environment. His understanding of sky, the wind, the movement of water and seasons. Chicagoans flocked to the gardens for decades, which eventually took a toll on the space. Caldwell visited near the end of his life. The park, for which, at one time had cashed in his own $5,000 life insurance policy for a measly $250 in order to pay for the gardens much needed perennials, had fallen into deep despair and flowers grew no more. He declared, “It is a dead world.” But with the support of citizens, environmentalists and birdwatchers, artists and the like, The Lily Pool was refurbished in 2000. It is now deemed a National Historic Landmark and Chicago Historical Landmark status.

The Lily Pool, Lincoln Park

The Lily Pool, Lincoln Park 125 W Fullerton Pkwy 773-883-7275 lincolnparkconservancy.org

BENNETT PARK A garden hideaway in the heart of Chicago. As the designer of the celebrated Maggie Daley Park and The 606 Trail in Chicago and Brooklyn Bridge Park in New York City, world-renowned landscape architect, Michael Van Valkenburgh, appreciates how a park can truly be an escape within a city. He appreciates how a park can truly be “an escape within the city.” At Bennett Park, the idyllic gardens sit alongside two dog runs, meandering pathways, and steps leading to a shady grove. A sense of privacy is ensured with a frame of trees surrounding the park’s outer edge, yet the center of the park, which welcomes the sun, is bright and open. At the core of the park is what Van Valkenburgh calls a “lawn bowl”— an open bowl ringed with small flowering trees that get progressively larger and taller. It’s the perfect gathering place in the center of the 1.7 acre park. This magical area is the perfect place for children. “They can sit under the trees or run freely in this small world,” he says. Van Valkenburgh designed the park so that it will evolve through the seasons, with some trees maximizing their color each fall and others retaining their greenery throughout the year. As a result, the park will maintain a sense of life all year long as the beating heart at the center of One Bennett Park and the broader Streeterville neighborhood.

Bennett Park, Related Realty Bennett Park, One Bennett Park 451 E Grand Avenue onebennettpark.com

THE GARDEN OF THE PHOENIX Landscape Design by Frederick Law Olmsted

There is peace to be found in the lush, Garden of the Phoenix, nestled away on Jackson Parks’ Wooded Island, a true escape in the belly of the city. There is a feeling of otherworldliness in this hidden park, as you walk the gravel paths that wind through several acres of greenery. Although, this feeling is not just due though to the garden’s unique beauty, its’ landscape full of azalea trees, waterfalls, or its intelligent landscape design, which deliberately and perfectly obscures all sight of industry and commerce lurking nearby. But it is also the enormous history of the garden, that has twisted and turned, right along with our own for over a century. The parks website provides a fantastic timeline and history of the park, but it was in the 1930’s that the Japanese Emperor gifted the Phoenix pavilion to the city, reflecting his high hopes for greater understanding and a wish to showcase their nations heritage. Today, Yoko Ono’s Sky Landing sculpture conceived as a call for peace and respect among nations, stands on the spot of the original pavilion.

The Garden of the Phoenix

The Garden of the Phoenix, Jackson Park South Cornell Drive 773-256-0903 gardenofthephoenix.org

THE MONTROSE BIRD SANCTUARY Original Landscape Designed by Alfred Caldwell

Think of it like a stop-over point while travelling the world, a logical landing place for exhausted songbirds. Resting quietly on the shores of Lake Michigan, the Montrose Bird Sanctuary is home to over 300 species of birds and is considered the best bird watching spot in all of Illinois. The Great Lakes are an important area for migratory birds, the open water provides a resting point for them as they travel from one continent to the next. While there are other points in Chicago that are active during spring and fall migrations, it is Montrose Bird Sanctuary, nicknamed “Magic Hedge,” that stands above the rest. In the mid-1930s, Alfred Caldwell created a plan for the area that conveyed what he called a “naturalistic effect” with sweeping meadow spaces and layered native plant materials emphasizing the long view. In the late 1990s, the Chicago Park District undertook an expansion of the habitat for birds while retaining the historic integrity of what was intended, hundreds of trees and shrubs were planted. Thirty years later, this sanctuary is truly well worth discovering for yourself – bird lover or not.

Seagull, Montrose Beach at sunset.

The Montrose Bird Sanctuary 4400 N Simonds Dr 847-433-6901

THE SOUTH GARDEN Landscape Design by Dan Kiley

There is a timeless, simple quality to the South Garden, situated on top of a parking garage, along the Art Institute of Chicago on Michigan Avenue. The honey locust trees hang low, providing the perfect shade for your lunch break, or just to take a quick break from it all. The South Garden was designed and constructed by Dan Kiley between 1962 and 1967. Kiley is considered one of the most influential Modernist landscape architects of the 20th century, and the South Garden one of best commissioned pieces. Kiley believed that man was a “part of nature not separate from it.” Rather than forcing order into the landscape, he ignored obvious man-made boundaries. Nowhere is it any more clear than in The South Garden, which features The Fountain of the Great Lakes, a sculptural fountain from Lorado Taft, created in 1913. It is the centerpiece of the space and an “allegorical sculpture in which the five women are arranged so that the water flows through them in the same way the water passes through the five Great Lakes.”

The Fountain of the Great Lakes, by Lorado Taft – The South Garden, Art Institute of Chicago

The South Garden, Art Institute of Chicago 229 South Michigan Avenue

[decadentpizzadragon-blog]

“There is no truth. There is only perception”

In the text Communicating Nature, the author Corbet describes the different experiences that result in our overall environmental ideology. Our environmental ideologies are formed from beliefs about the natural world which shape the way we see and use the nature around us. The author breaks these experiences into three different categories, the first being direct experiences. These direct experiences involve being submerged with nature in an unguided, exploratory adventure. These experiences were a significant part of my childhood, creating a connection to the earth and to its ecosystems. As a child growing up in Michigan I spent most of my time exploring with friends. We would play at the neighborhood school’s playground and eventually wander the forest surrounding the school. I can remember sitting amongst the trees, listening to different birds and animals feeling a true inner peace.

The author describes that our childhood experiences are an important factor in shaping the way we interpret our place in the environment, along with our actions in that environment. This can be demonstrated by my love of the water. Being raised in michigan comes with an inherent love of the water and its ecosystem. We often spent weekends at local lakes exploring the differences which makes each unique. Occasionally we would take the trek to lake michigan which compared to other lakes seemed like an ocean. This is where my true love for the water arose from. Weekends spent with long days of sun and water to the horizon. Having these experiences as a child changed my outlook on water, creating an inner importance to preserve for future generations.

The next experience the author discusses are indirect experiences. These experiences are guided explorations, for example having a treasure hunt to discover different plants and species in a national park. Although you are in nature experiencing it for yourself, you are being guided in what you see and experience. These lack the level of curiosity of direct experiences, but they’re are important because they can teach us about places we have little personal experience with. Recently I went to the the meteor crater 30 miles east of flagstaff which was a really cool experience but most certainly guided. We learned about how the meteor hit thousands of years ago and the implications of the landing which was interesting because i have never learned much asteroids or meteors. This experience taught me that nothing is forever and that some things are inevitable. This made me think about our use of plastics and how it is inevitable that we use them because of their convenience, but how could it last forever. Although the use of plastics will hopefully be surpassed by some new inventions, the plastics that exist now, will exist forever in our ecosystems, slowly destroying our oceans.

Which brings me to the last experience the author brings up, the symbolic experience. This is how I was originally introduced to the problems with plastics in our ocean through the multiple films. They showed the beauty which most of us will never have the opportunity to see along with the destruction that threatens to take it all away. These experiences are important as well because it helps us understand problems we may have never discovered in our daily lives, like where might this plastic bag float one day.

Experiences are what give life meaning and purpose, and understanding the different environments, cultures, and people we help bring us together to solve some of the most important issues facing us today. (589)  

[gamingtipsandtrickshacks]

Forever playing in Exile • Eurogamer.net

Once when I was small I went to the shops to buy an explosive - a tiny microdet designed for stage pyrotechnics. I've been fortunate that I've never really had blood on my hands when playing with fire, but that day I did get a lot of raspberry jam on them.

A school friend held a balloon open while I crammed in as much jam as possible before knotting it sealed. Then we pierced a small hole in a puppet's head and inserted the microdet followed by the balloon of clotted blood-like substance. I hooked the wires up to a 9-volt battery behind the camcorder, which was masking-taped to a makeshift dolly (a pram on rails). In exquisite anticipation I barked "Action!" But things didn't quite go to plan.

At that age, life only made sense when you were having fun. The freedom to play was why blood pumped through your veins. It was necessary to experiment and push boundaries, to test and meddle with the laws of physics. Teasing spiders, climbing trees, disturbing bee's nests, throwing snowballs at passing cars and building follies to set fire to. There was always a thrill to be had on the edge of mischief. That was instinctive, that... was boyhood.

But a back garden wasn't the only playground on offer in the mid to late 80s. Computer games were fast becoming portals into entire worlds with their own laws and abstracted physics. I was 11 years old and I was attempting to dock a rotating space station. Not Starbuck or Skywalker... me! I could barrel-roll a Spitfire, pilot fragile pods through planetary caves or hack into and fly remote-controlled robots. Exploring those digital playgrounds was my generation's undiscovered country and the thrills were intoxicating. Then at some point in those life-shaping years I found myself spellbound by an unusual game titled Exile, for the BBC Micro. And to this day part of me still hasn't been able to leave.

In 1988 games had to run in only 32k of memory. My phone now has 60,000 times that amount. And yet... there I was 30 years ago exploring a vast underground world simulating realistic physics with its own ecosystem, all running inside 32k of RAM. The wildlife and machines all had their own abilities and behaviours and even emitted digitised speech if you had the sideways RAM. This was absolute heaven to me, but it wasn't until I started making my own games that I came to fully appreciate how unlikely it was that all this ever came together in the first place.

Somehow the developers created a responsive 2D scrolling platformer with pixel-perfect collision, that worked in an engine where objects had properties and a mass effected by gravity, inertia, shock-waves and the elements earth, wind, fire and water. These days it's hard to appreciate now that physics engines are commonplace, but this was relatively new back then and Exile went all in to unprecedented lengths.

This was a new blend of platform game with true physical principles giving birth to a peculiar quality that sparked the imagination like nothing before - physical emergent narrative. It offered the player the ability to experiment and discover things outside the remit of whatever challenges the developer laid out for them. This alchemy for real tangible depth to interactive worlds can still prove painfully elusive for developers today. How can one offer the flexibility to experiment while maintaining a balanced ecosystem in which delicate puzzles have been woven? Maybe this is why it took so long for games like Minecraft and Disney Infinity to happen.

But even these days, how often do players find themselves trying to disarm a primed grenade that has escaped their grasp in a circular wind tunnel? How do you keep a flask from spilling water as you're caked by jetpack-clogging mushrooms thrown by cheeky imps? What do you do with a killer bee you've caught from its nest but stings while you flip through your inventory? What happens if you hold a frightened pink ball of fluff under red drops of acid jam? These just weren't the questions gamers were used to pondering. Equally important, it turned out nor were they questions a developer needed to contrive.

Exile.

The intelligence required for path-finding and strategy alone must have been a challenge in itself, but the indignance of that Darlek-esque sentinel as I landed politely on its head, the audacity of the villain Triax teleporting in and out to shoot me in the back, that endearing desperation whenever Fluffy clung to me for dear life... Was any of that real or did I imagine it? Advanced AI has often proved a poor investment in games. It can be so very clever but the bottom line is: if it's not noticed, it's completely wasted. The AI in Exile probably doesn't compare to what exists in today's games, but again... this isn't what's important. The secret is frequently staring right at us, through the eyes of a great movie star or even a wooden actor who knows when to exploit that unfortunate quality. Explicit emotional performances or Shakespearean monologues aren't necessary to immerse the audience in the mind of the character. Many actors have made the point that the power of ambiguity can be far more powerful. If there's drama in the situation, the audience can do all that leg work for the actor, who only has to project the illusion of thought. Artificial intelligence in entertainment is as much about anthropomorphism as it is about explicit communication or action. If it's done well it can be concocted in the eye of the beholder, emerging from situation, emerging from conflict, as an emergent... narrative.

Exile demonstrated a strong sense for crafting these natural unpredictable behaviour patterns, giving the illusion of a deeper intelligence and appearing to show changes in mood or temperament. Even if that sometimes just meant knowing when to hold still for a few seconds and do absolutely nothing, like when you give a spider a little poke to watch it play dead. How can something so motionless be so captivating? The AI was superb, but so was this pseudo AI.

For many reasons Exile was the game that made the biggest impression on me, and it wasn't long before I hooked up with school friend Chris Mullender to make our own game for the Amiga 500. What started out as a simple platformer inspired by Giana Sisters soon ballooned into our own sprawling world of bizarre creatures that followed their own laws and physical abilities. We realised then that we had both been heavily inspired by the land of Exile, even down to logistics such as memory management. It was literally impossible to store a map of that size into 32k. Chris' research uncovered how the map was constructed from selected procedural tile sets. This blew my mind, it felt like the big bang in reverse. Also, I remembered seeing the game played on an even less powerful machine, an Acorn Electron and noticed a large portion of the screen filled with corrupt graphics. It turned out this was no bug, but a technique that harnessed the screen buffer to store data. Genius! So we stored our game's hidden cave map data in the island's negative space - the sky. This instantly halved the size of our map data.

We learnt a lot regarding how so much could be put into so little space. It felt only natural to write a fan letter to the developers of Exile, and I was thrilled to receive a handwritten reply from Peter Irvin. However, it was in that letter I learned the tragic news of the death of his co-developer Jeremy Smith (who had previously created the much loved gravity game Thrust). Also sad was the speculation of what magic such a partnership would have gone on to create next.

In a strange mirroring of fate, a sequence of events followed that saw us releasing our game Odyssey under the same publisher as the Amiga version of Exile. My partner was hired to code for Peter's following projects and by the end of the next decade I had lost Chris, my co-creator and closest friend to a sudden illness. I was most touched when Peter reached out to console me, having been through the very same thing with Jeremy.

Reece Millidge and Chris Mullender.

When I look back on the development of Odyssey, before it entered that tough phase to bring it to completion, I remember the joyful fleshing out on whim and self indulgence. We drew on what excited us and made us laugh. I ate lots of biscuits and Chris drank lots of tea. We were making it because we enjoyed the process. Who knew that making a game could be as much fun as playing one?

When the red light blinked on the camcorder, I dollied towards the puppet and triggered the microdet. But the jam didn't explode. There was a loud pop and sparks flew from its head but the balloon was so tightly packed that it launched intact, remaining lodged and bulging out of its forehead. We were mucking about... and we mucked it up, but it was hilarious fun. Much like the time we filmed a firework backfiring a cardboard bazooka, singeing the armpit of my brother's favourite teddy bear. Or when a friend painted his face silver and climbed into his mum's washing machine, snapping the door off its hinges. We weren't playing to win, we were playing to play.

Now I find myself in the role of a responsible parent, supplying the back garden and fencing in the boundaries for my own kids to push. But like a lot of games developers still under the spell, I'm really just trying to recreate the playgrounds of my own childhood. If I'm still mucking around at middle age where things make only less sense, then it looks like I'll remain forever in exile, playing happily with grenades, pink balls of fluff and raspberry preserves.

[gamingtipsandtrickshacks]

Forever playing in Exile • Eurogamer.net

Once when I was small I went to the shops to buy an explosive - a tiny microdet designed for stage pyrotechnics. I've been fortunate that I've never really had blood on my hands when playing with fire, but that day I did get a lot of raspberry jam on them.

A school friend held a balloon open while I crammed in as much jam as possible before knotting it sealed. Then we pierced a small hole in a puppet's head and inserted the microdet followed by the balloon of clotted blood-like substance. I hooked the wires up to a 9-volt battery behind the camcorder, which was masking-taped to a makeshift dolly (a pram on rails). In exquisite anticipation I barked "Action!" But things didn't quite go to plan.

At that age, life only made sense when you were having fun. The freedom to play was why blood pumped through your veins. It was necessary to experiment and push boundaries, to test and meddle with the laws of physics. Teasing spiders, climbing trees, disturbing bee's nests, throwing snowballs at passing cars and building follies to set fire to. There was always a thrill to be had on the edge of mischief. That was instinctive, that... was boyhood.

But a back garden wasn't the only playground on offer in the mid to late 80s. Computer games were fast becoming portals into entire worlds with their own laws and abstracted physics. I was 11 years old and I was attempting to dock a rotating space station. Not Starbuck or Skywalker... me! I could barrel-roll a Spitfire, pilot fragile pods through planetary caves or hack into and fly remote-controlled robots. Exploring those digital playgrounds was my generation's undiscovered country and the thrills were intoxicating. Then at some point in those life-shaping years I found myself spellbound by an unusual game titled Exile, for the BBC Micro. And to this day part of me still hasn't been able to leave.

In 1988 games had to run in only 32k of memory. My phone now has 60,000 times that amount. And yet... there I was 30 years ago exploring a vast underground world simulating realistic physics with its own ecosystem, all running inside 32k of RAM. The wildlife and machines all had their own abilities and behaviours and even emitted digitised speech if you had the sideways RAM. This was absolute heaven to me, but it wasn't until I started making my own games that I came to fully appreciate how unlikely it was that all this ever came together in the first place.

Somehow the developers created a responsive 2D scrolling platformer with pixel-perfect collision, that worked in an engine where objects had properties and a mass effected by gravity, inertia, shock-waves and the elements earth, wind, fire and water. These days it's hard to appreciate now that physics engines are commonplace, but this was relatively new back then and Exile went all in to unprecedented lengths.

This was a new blend of platform game with true physical principles giving birth to a peculiar quality that sparked the imagination like nothing before - physical emergent narrative. It offered the player the ability to experiment and discover things outside the remit of whatever challenges the developer laid out for them. This alchemy for real tangible depth to interactive worlds can still prove painfully elusive for developers today. How can one offer the flexibility to experiment while maintaining a balanced ecosystem in which delicate puzzles have been woven? Maybe this is why it took so long for games like Minecraft and Disney Infinity to happen.

But even these days, how often do players find themselves trying to disarm a primed grenade that has escaped their grasp in a circular wind tunnel? How do you keep a flask from spilling water as you're caked by jetpack-clogging mushrooms thrown by cheeky imps? What do you do with a killer bee you've caught from its nest but stings while you flip through your inventory? What happens if you hold a frightened pink ball of fluff under red drops of acid jam? These just weren't the questions gamers were used to pondering. Equally important, it turned out nor were they questions a developer needed to contrive.

Exile.

The intelligence required for path-finding and strategy alone must have been a challenge in itself, but the indignance of that Darlek-esque sentinel as I landed politely on its head, the audacity of the villain Triax teleporting in and out to shoot me in the back, that endearing desperation whenever Fluffy clung to me for dear life... Was any of that real or did I imagine it? Advanced AI has often proved a poor investment in games. It can be so very clever but the bottom line is: if it's not noticed, it's completely wasted. The AI in Exile probably doesn't compare to what exists in today's games, but again... this isn't what's important. The secret is frequently staring right at us, through the eyes of a great movie star or even a wooden actor who knows when to exploit that unfortunate quality. Explicit emotional performances or Shakespearean monologues aren't necessary to immerse the audience in the mind of the character. Many actors have made the point that the power of ambiguity can be far more powerful. If there's drama in the situation, the audience can do all that leg work for the actor, who only has to project the illusion of thought. Artificial intelligence in entertainment is as much about anthropomorphism as it is about explicit communication or action. If it's done well it can be concocted in the eye of the beholder, emerging from situation, emerging from conflict, as an emergent... narrative.

Exile demonstrated a strong sense for crafting these natural unpredictable behaviour patterns, giving the illusion of a deeper intelligence and appearing to show changes in mood or temperament. Even if that sometimes just meant knowing when to hold still for a few seconds and do absolutely nothing, like when you give a spider a little poke to watch it play dead. How can something so motionless be so captivating? The AI was superb, but so was this pseudo AI.

For many reasons Exile was the game that made the biggest impression on me, and it wasn't long before I hooked up with school friend Chris Mullender to make our own game for the Amiga 500. What started out as a simple platformer inspired by Giana Sisters soon ballooned into our own sprawling world of bizarre creatures that followed their own laws and physical abilities. We realised then that we had both been heavily inspired by the land of Exile, even down to logistics such as memory management. It was literally impossible to store a map of that size into 32k. Chris' research uncovered how the map was constructed from selected procedural tile sets. This blew my mind, it felt like the big bang in reverse. Also, I remembered seeing the game played on an even less powerful machine, an Acorn Electron and noticed a large portion of the screen filled with corrupt graphics. It turned out this was no bug, but a technique that harnessed the screen buffer to store data. Genius! So we stored our game's hidden cave map data in the island's negative space - the sky. This instantly halved the size of our map data.

We learnt a lot regarding how so much could be put into so little space. It felt only natural to write a fan letter to the developers of Exile, and I was thrilled to receive a handwritten reply from Peter Irvin. However, it was in that letter I learned the tragic news of the death of his co-developer Jeremy Smith (who had previously created the much loved gravity game Thrust). Also sad was the speculation of what magic such a partnership would have gone on to create next.

In a strange mirroring of fate, a sequence of events followed that saw us releasing our game Odyssey under the same publisher as the Amiga version of Exile. My partner was hired to code for Peter's following projects and by the end of the next decade I had lost Chris, my co-creator and closest friend to a sudden illness. I was most touched when Peter reached out to console me, having been through the very same thing with Jeremy.

Reece Millidge and Chris Mullender.

When I look back on the development of Odyssey, before it entered that tough phase to bring it to completion, I remember the joyful fleshing out on whim and self indulgence. We drew on what excited us and made us laugh. I ate lots of biscuits and Chris drank lots of tea. We were making it because we enjoyed the process. Who knew that making a game could be as much fun as playing one?

When the red light blinked on the camcorder, I dollied towards the puppet and triggered the microdet. But the jam didn't explode. There was a loud pop and sparks flew from its head but the balloon was so tightly packed that it launched intact, remaining lodged and bulging out of its forehead. We were mucking about... and we mucked it up, but it was hilarious fun. Much like the time we filmed a firework backfiring a cardboard bazooka, singeing the armpit of my brother's favourite teddy bear. Or when a friend painted his face silver and climbed into his mum's washing machine, snapping the door off its hinges. We weren't playing to win, we were playing to play.

Now I find myself in the role of a responsible parent, supplying the back garden and fencing in the boundaries for my own kids to push. But like a lot of games developers still under the spell, I'm really just trying to recreate the playgrounds of my own childhood. If I'm still mucking around at middle age where things make only less sense, then it looks like I'll remain forever in exile, playing happily with grenades, pink balls of fluff and raspberry preserves.

[gamingtipsandtrickshacks]

Forever playing in Exile • Eurogamer.net

Once when I was small I went to the shops to buy an explosive - a tiny microdet designed for stage pyrotechnics. I've been fortunate that I've never really had blood on my hands when playing with fire, but that day I did get a lot of raspberry jam on them.

A school friend held a balloon open while I crammed in as much jam as possible before knotting it sealed. Then we pierced a small hole in a puppet's head and inserted the microdet followed by the balloon of clotted blood-like substance. I hooked the wires up to a 9-volt battery behind the camcorder, which was masking-taped to a makeshift dolly (a pram on rails). In exquisite anticipation I barked "Action!" But things didn't quite go to plan.

At that age, life only made sense when you were having fun. The freedom to play was why blood pumped through your veins. It was necessary to experiment and push boundaries, to test and meddle with the laws of physics. Teasing spiders, climbing trees, disturbing bee's nests, throwing snowballs at passing cars and building follies to set fire to. There was always a thrill to be had on the edge of mischief. That was instinctive, that... was boyhood.

But a back garden wasn't the only playground on offer in the mid to late 80s. Computer games were fast becoming portals into entire worlds with their own laws and abstracted physics. I was 11 years old and I was attempting to dock a rotating space station. Not Starbuck or Skywalker... me! I could barrel-roll a Spitfire, pilot fragile pods through planetary caves or hack into and fly remote-controlled robots. Exploring those digital playgrounds was my generation's undiscovered country and the thrills were intoxicating. Then at some point in those life-shaping years I found myself spellbound by an unusual game titled Exile, for the BBC Micro. And to this day part of me still hasn't been able to leave.

In 1988 games had to run in only 32k of memory. My phone now has 60,000 times that amount. And yet... there I was 30 years ago exploring a vast underground world simulating realistic physics with its own ecosystem, all running inside 32k of RAM. The wildlife and machines all had their own abilities and behaviours and even emitted digitised speech if you had the sideways RAM. This was absolute heaven to me, but it wasn't until I started making my own games that I came to fully appreciate how unlikely it was that all this ever came together in the first place.

Somehow the developers created a responsive 2D scrolling platformer with pixel-perfect collision, that worked in an engine where objects had properties and a mass effected by gravity, inertia, shock-waves and the elements earth, wind, fire and water. These days it's hard to appreciate now that physics engines are commonplace, but this was relatively new back then and Exile went all in to unprecedented lengths.

This was a new blend of platform game with true physical principles giving birth to a peculiar quality that sparked the imagination like nothing before - physical emergent narrative. It offered the player the ability to experiment and discover things outside the remit of whatever challenges the developer laid out for them. This alchemy for real tangible depth to interactive worlds can still prove painfully elusive for developers today. How can one offer the flexibility to experiment while maintaining a balanced ecosystem in which delicate puzzles have been woven? Maybe this is why it took so long for games like Minecraft and Disney Infinity to happen.

But even these days, how often do players find themselves trying to disarm a primed grenade that has escaped their grasp in a circular wind tunnel? How do you keep a flask from spilling water as you're caked by jetpack-clogging mushrooms thrown by cheeky imps? What do you do with a killer bee you've caught from its nest but stings while you flip through your inventory? What happens if you hold a frightened pink ball of fluff under red drops of acid jam? These just weren't the questions gamers were used to pondering. Equally important, it turned out nor were they questions a developer needed to contrive.

Exile.

The intelligence required for path-finding and strategy alone must have been a challenge in itself, but the indignance of that Darlek-esque sentinel as I landed politely on its head, the audacity of the villain Triax teleporting in and out to shoot me in the back, that endearing desperation whenever Fluffy clung to me for dear life... Was any of that real or did I imagine it? Advanced AI has often proved a poor investment in games. It can be so very clever but the bottom line is: if it's not noticed, it's completely wasted. The AI in Exile probably doesn't compare to what exists in today's games, but again... this isn't what's important. The secret is frequently staring right at us, through the eyes of a great movie star or even a wooden actor who knows when to exploit that unfortunate quality. Explicit emotional performances or Shakespearean monologues aren't necessary to immerse the audience in the mind of the character. Many actors have made the point that the power of ambiguity can be far more powerful. If there's drama in the situation, the audience can do all that leg work for the actor, who only has to project the illusion of thought. Artificial intelligence in entertainment is as much about anthropomorphism as it is about explicit communication or action. If it's done well it can be concocted in the eye of the beholder, emerging from situation, emerging from conflict, as an emergent... narrative.

Exile demonstrated a strong sense for crafting these natural unpredictable behaviour patterns, giving the illusion of a deeper intelligence and appearing to show changes in mood or temperament. Even if that sometimes just meant knowing when to hold still for a few seconds and do absolutely nothing, like when you give a spider a little poke to watch it play dead. How can something so motionless be so captivating? The AI was superb, but so was this pseudo AI.

For many reasons Exile was the game that made the biggest impression on me, and it wasn't long before I hooked up with school friend Chris Mullender to make our own game for the Amiga 500. What started out as a simple platformer inspired by Giana Sisters soon ballooned into our own sprawling world of bizarre creatures that followed their own laws and physical abilities. We realised then that we had both been heavily inspired by the land of Exile, even down to logistics such as memory management. It was literally impossible to store a map of that size into 32k. Chris' research uncovered how the map was constructed from selected procedural tile sets. This blew my mind, it felt like the big bang in reverse. Also, I remembered seeing the game played on an even less powerful machine, an Acorn Electron and noticed a large portion of the screen filled with corrupt graphics. It turned out this was no bug, but a technique that harnessed the screen buffer to store data. Genius! So we stored our game's hidden cave map data in the island's negative space - the sky. This instantly halved the size of our map data.

We learnt a lot regarding how so much could be put into so little space. It felt only natural to write a fan letter to the developers of Exile, and I was thrilled to receive a handwritten reply from Peter Irvin. However, it was in that letter I learned the tragic news of the death of his co-developer Jeremy Smith (who had previously created the much loved gravity game Thrust). Also sad was the speculation of what magic such a partnership would have gone on to create next.

In a strange mirroring of fate, a sequence of events followed that saw us releasing our game Odyssey under the same publisher as the Amiga version of Exile. My partner was hired to code for Peter's following projects and by the end of the next decade I had lost Chris, my co-creator and closest friend to a sudden illness. I was most touched when Peter reached out to console me, having been through the very same thing with Jeremy.

Reece Millidge and Chris Mullender.

When I look back on the development of Odyssey, before it entered that tough phase to bring it to completion, I remember the joyful fleshing out on whim and self indulgence. We drew on what excited us and made us laugh. I ate lots of biscuits and Chris drank lots of tea. We were making it because we enjoyed the process. Who knew that making a game could be as much fun as playing one?

When the red light blinked on the camcorder, I dollied towards the puppet and triggered the microdet. But the jam didn't explode. There was a loud pop and sparks flew from its head but the balloon was so tightly packed that it launched intact, remaining lodged and bulging out of its forehead. We were mucking about... and we mucked it up, but it was hilarious fun. Much like the time we filmed a firework backfiring a cardboard bazooka, singeing the armpit of my brother's favourite teddy bear. Or when a friend painted his face silver and climbed into his mum's washing machine, snapping the door off its hinges. We weren't playing to win, we were playing to play.

Now I find myself in the role of a responsible parent, supplying the back garden and fencing in the boundaries for my own kids to push. But like a lot of games developers still under the spell, I'm really just trying to recreate the playgrounds of my own childhood. If I'm still mucking around at middle age where things make only less sense, then it looks like I'll remain forever in exile, playing happily with grenades, pink balls of fluff and raspberry preserves.