Voynich manuscript

The Voynich manuscript has been described as "the world's most mysterious manuscript". It has been carbon dated to the 15th century and is possibly from northern Italy.

What's amazing is that it appears to be a manuscript with information and illustrations about plants and their uses but the plants don't match any known species.

Both fascinating and beautiful.

Educating the Next Steve Jobs

Interesting article over at The Wall Street Journal by Tony Wagner about how schools can teach students to be more innovative.

"In conventional schools, students learn so that they can get good grades. My most important research finding is that young innovators are intrinsically motivated. The culture of learning in programs that excel at educating for innovation emphasize what I call the three P's—play, passion and purpose. The play is discovery-based learning that leads young people to find and pursue a passion, which evolves, over time, into a deeper sense of purpose." 

The irony of course is that Steve Jobs was not a product of the education system either..... he dropped out of university and went his own way. So, while I agree with the article maybe Steve Jobs was a bad example to use.

Urban sprawl eating into wildlife habitats in Europe

 Another report from the EEA (European Environment Agency) with depressing undertones.....

"Our high-consumption lifestyles are putting more pressure on the land. But beyond the proportion of land we are covering with concrete, there is another important effect – roads and other infrastructure are carving valuable habitats into increasingly smaller fragments, with serious consequences for some of Europe’s most endangered species." EEA Executive Director Hans Bruyninckx.

Maybe we should take a leaf out of the 2012 Olympic Park's book (thanks to the wonderful people at Pictorial Meadows) and infuse all public spaces with as much wildlife habitat as is humanly possible. 

Rewilding Europe

WWF Netherlands, ARK Nature, Wild Wonders of Europe and Conservation Capital have got together and created Rewilding Europe.

Rewilding Europe "aims to rewild one million hectares of land by 2020, creating 10 magnificent wildlife and wilderness areas of international quality. We will especially focus on Europe’s huge areas of abandoned land, and on providing a viable business case for wild nature."

Sounds fantastic.

I'd also like to see a rewilding in our cities. After my inspirational visit to the Technical Museum Park in Berlin (see post below) where nature was allowed to take over, I think we need to think differently about our public green spaces. It's only social conditioning that means a park is not a park unless it has a serious amount of lawn and hardscape......

Populations of grassland butterflies decline almost 50 % over two decades

According to the European Environmental Agency, grassland butterflies have declined dramatically between 1990 and 2011, sadly "caused by intensifying agriculture and a failure to properly manage grassland ecosystems."

Hans Bruyninckx, EEA Executive Director, said: “This dramatic decline in grassland butterflies should ring alarm bells – in general Europe’s grassland habitats are shrinking. If we fail to maintain these habitats we could lose many of these species forever. We must recognise the importance of butterflies and other insects – the pollination they carry out is essential for both natural ecosystems and agriculture.”

The image above is of a Common Blue and its numbers have significantly declined. Tragic to think this little guy could completely disappear......

How to Change Education - from the ground up

I urge you to watch this and pass it onto any teachers you know. The podcast is worth listening too as it has a Q&A with the audience.

Here's a link to the article mentioned in Ken Robinson's talk.

The Deutsches Technikmuseum

Back from Berlin and I'd like to share with you one of my favourite places. The Deutsches Technikmuseum. I thought this would be a good choice for my boys and the museum is full of trains, planes and boats (and a scary looking one man U-boat)....... all of which I enjoyed but I absolutely loved the museum park.

"The museum park on the premises of the former freight depot of Anhalter station is home to a variety of plants unique in Berlin.

The knotgrass from the Russian Sakhalin peninsula, the mahaleb cherry from the southern Danube region or even plants from overseas have found their way to this park. Together with the restored locomotive shed complex, this area offers visitors the rare opportunity to get a taste of the tension between nature and technology."

My photo above doesn't do it justice.... I had such a feeling of nature "rewilding" and would love to see spaces like this cropping up in and around cities. We should should spend less time controlling nature in the city and more time encouraging it to take over. 

(Don't think architects would agree, it might hide their buildings..... oh, did I say that out loud?)