Dodo: The Bird behind the Legend - Alan Grihault

Mauritius is one of the best places on Earth. I love it: music is great, people are fantastic, and its cultural diversity is a glimmer of hope in a World increasingly divided along sectarian an ethnic lines. In Mauritius, Blacks, Muslims, Chinese, Indians, French, and other groups have learned to live next to each other.

But, as usual, there is a dark side to it: Mauritius is the first documented humankind-made ecocide. The Dodo is the most famous character of this tragedy, in great part thanks to Lewis Carroll.

Dodo: The Bird behind the Legend is a monography written by Alan Grihault, a former British overseas cooperation worker. Grihault's biography is fantastic. And this is a great book, too. With a lot of pictures (most of which were taken from the items in the private collection of Ralfe Whistler), and extremely didactic explanations, this is a book for children and for adults who'd like to learn more about the dodo.

After writing the book, Grihault set up a website dedicated to the dodo and to the solitaire (dodo's cousin from Rodrigues). Unfortunately, it looks like it hasn't been updated in a while, but it's worth checking out if you can't get the book.

The Cove - Louise Psihoyos

Stereotypes are a fact of life. Movies that break them are good.

When people think about Japan and the Japanese people, this is what they have in mind:

Source: Deviant Art

Or:

Source: flickriver

Or probably:

Source: Lifefashionfy.com

People who have traveled have this in mind when they think about Japan:

Source: Cure Byte

The Cove will take these stereotypes out of your mind. Instead, you will see Japanese as:

Source: Encyclopedia Britannica Advocacy for Animals

(the fishy things in the boat are dolphins, the boat is floating on a blood-tainted beach, and the people on the boat are Japanese dolphin hunters)

Dolphin hunting is an very important part of Japanese culture, and the Japanese government subsidizes it to annoy the West. 

It could be worst. They could be working on getting atomic bombs like Iran, building a mighty navy in the Pacific like China, or opposing Security Council resolutions against nasty Arab dictators like Brazil, India, South Africa, Russia, China (again) or Germany (Germany is not really Western; if they were, they wouldn't be sitting while the European project collapses).

The Cove is a great documentary. And the website is here.