Sebastien shares his bucket list with us.
To be fair, he was asked with little or no time to think about it, so maybe, if we did it again, as we most probably will do, the bucket list would probably be very fifferent than this one.
It is quite an interesting exercise to redo a bucket list, as in fact, it almost forces people to really think about what they would lreally like to do – hence a bucket list is created almost by accident.
Marrakech is famed for its pink walls and historic buildings and souks, but just as important to the city are its beautiful gardens.
From the lush courtyards of the riads to the expansive formal gardens of its palaces and museums, these green spaces are havens from the hustle and bustle of the city.
Here are Three of those gardens and palaces – Le Jardin Majorelle, Le Palais Bahia and Le Jardin Secret.
[embedyt] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vKifW8UDPQk[/embedyt]
The souks of Marrakesh Morocco, Marrakesh has the largest traditional Berber market in Morocco and the image of the city is closely associated with its souks.
The souks are the principal shopping attraction in the city: A honeycomb of intricately connected alleyways,
This section of the old city is a micro-medina in itself, Comprising a dizzying number of stalls and shops that range from itsy kiosks no bigger than an elf’s wardrobe to scruffy store-fronts that morph into glittering Aladdin’s Caves once you’re inside.”
Historically the souks of Marrakesh were divided into retail areas for particular goods such as leather, carpets, metalwork and pottery. These divisions still roughly exist but with significant overlap. Many of the souks sell items like carpets and rugs, traditional Muslim attire, leather bags, and lanterns. Haggling is still a very important part of trade in the souks.
One of the largest souks is Souk Semmarine, which sells everything from brightly coloured bejewelled sandals and slippers and leather pouffes to jewellery and kaftans.
Souk Ableuh contains stalls which specialize in lemons, chilis, capers, pickles, green, red, and black olives, and mint, a common ingredient of Moroccan cuisine and tea. Similarly, Souk Kchacha specializes in dried fruit and nuts, including dates, figs, walnuts, cashews and apricots. Rahba Qedima contains stalls selling hand-woven baskets, natural perfumes, knitted hats, scarves, tee shirts, Ramadan tea, ginseng, and alligator and iguana skins. Criee Berbiere, to the northeast of this market, is noted for its dark Berber carpets and rugs.
Souk Siyyaghin is known for its jewellery, and Souk Smatanearby is noted for its extensive collection of babouches and belts. Souk Cherratine specializes in leatherware, and Souk Belaarif sells modern consumer goods. Souk Haddadine specializes in ironware and lanterns.
The Ensemble Artisanal is a government-run complex of small arts and crafts which offers a range of leather goods, textiles and carpets. Young apprentices are taught a range of crafts in the workshop at the back of this complex.
[embedyt] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C1MIHG_E5x4[/embedyt]
Drowning in Plastic trailer – Liz Bonnin reveals the full scale of the world’s plastic problem and its impact on wildlife, exploring ways in which science can offer a solution.
Our blue planet is facing one its biggest threats in human history.
Trillions of pieces of plastic are choking the very lifeblood of our earth, and every marine animal, from the smallest plankton to the largest mammals, is being affected.
But can we turn back this growing plastic tide before it is too late?
In this 90-minute special, wildlife biologist Liz Bonnin visits scientists working at the cutting edge of plastics research.
She works with some of the world’s leading marine biologists and campaigners to discover the true dangers of plastic in our oceans and what it means for the future of all life on our planet, including us.
Liz travels 10,000 miles to a remote island off the coast of Australia that is the nesting site for a population of seabirds called flesh-footed shearwaters.
Newly hatched chicks are unable to regurgitate effectively, so they are filling up on deadly plastic.
Then, in America, she joins an emergency mission to save an entangled grey seal pup found in some of the world’s busiest fishing areas, and visits the Coral Triangle that stretches from Papua New Guinea to the Solomon Islands to find out more from top coral scientists trying to work out why plastic is so lethal to the reefs, fragile ecosystems that contain 25 per cent of all marine life.
Liz learns that the world’s biggest rivers have been turned into huge plastic arteries, transporting 50 per cent of all the plastic that arrives in the ocean.
She travels to Indonesia, where she watches a horrifying raft of plastic rubbish travel down one of the main rivers, the Citarum. Here, 60 per cent of fish species have died, so fishermen are now forced to collect plastic to sell instead of fish.
With the world only now waking up to this emerging crisis, Liz also looks at whether scientists have found any solutions.
She meets the 24-year-old inventor of a monumental 600-metre construction that will travel across the ocean’s ‘garbage patches’ collecting millions of pieces of plastic pollution. She also meets a local environmental campaigner who is working with volunteers and the Indonesian army to clean up the worst affected areas, and a young entrepreneur who has invented an alternative to plastic packaging that is made from seaweed.
Plastic in our oceans is one of the greatest environmental challenges of our time, and this film hopes to add to the urgent and vitally important debate about how to solve this global crisis.
But is it too late to reverse the damaging effects of plastics.
Why you forget your words when speaking English
Aphasia is an inability to comprehend or formulate language because of damage to specific brain regions.
This damage is typically caused by a cerebral vascular accident (stroke), or head trauma; however, these are not the only possible causes.
To be diagnosed with aphasia, a person’s speech or language must be significantly impaired in one (or several) of the four communication modalities following acquired brain injury or have significant decline over a short time period (progressive aphasia).
The four communication modalities are :
The difficulties of people with aphasia can range from occasional trouble finding words to losing the ability to speak, read, or write; intelligence, however, is unaffected.[
Expressive language and receptive language can both be affected as well. Aphasia also affects visual language such as sign language.
In contrast, the use of formulaic expressions in everyday communication is often preserved.One prevalent deficit in the aphasias is anomia, which is a deficit in word finding ability.
The term aphasia implies that one or more communication modalities in the brain have been damaged and are therefore functioning incorrectly.
Aphasia does not refer to damage to the brain that results in motor or sensory deficits, which produces abnormal speech; that is, aphasia is not related to the mechanics of speech but rather the individual’s language cognition (although a person can have both problems).
An individual’s “language” is the socially shared set of rules as well as the thought processes that go behind verbalized speech.
It is not a result of a more peripheral motor or sensory difficulty, such as paralysis affecting the speech muscles or a general hearing impairment.
Aphasia affects about 2 million people in the US and 250,000 people in Great Britain.
Though nearly 180,000 people in the US acquire the disorder a year, 84.5% of people have never heard of the condition.
Try the lesson here
The worst polluters in the world are generally assumed to be the oil, mining and manufacturing industries.
Industrial wastes are one of the top sources of environmental pollution.
Across the world, untreated or improperly treated industrial waste pollutes the air, water, and soil in and around the industrial sites. The pollution caused by an industry often depends on its nature with some industries generating more toxic wastes than others. Pure Earth, an international non-profit organization, has compiled a list of the 10 worst polluting industries in the world.
Pure Earth, formerly known as the Blacksmith Institute until on 10 March 2015, is a New York City-based international not-for-profit organization founded in 1999 that aims to identify and clean up pollution, focusing primarily on contaminated sites and soil in developing countries.
Over the last decade it has cleaned up 84 sites in 20 countries,focusing on communities where children are most at risk. These communities suffer disproportionately from pollution-related diseases.
Blacksmith changed to a new name – Pure Earth – with the aim of broadening awareness of global toxic pollution issues to the general public.
The clothing industry is the second largest polluter in the world…second only to oil, although this is often disputed.
Criticisms of fast fashion include its negative environmental impact, water pollution, the use of toxic chemicals and increasing levels of textile waste.
Vibrant colours, prints and fabric finishes are appealing features of fashion garments, but many of these are achieved with toxic chemicals. Textile dyeing is the second largest polluter of clean water globally, after agriculture.
Greenpeace’s recent Detox campaign has been instrumental in pressuring fashion brands to take action to remove toxic chemicals from their supply chains, after it tested a number of brands’ products and confirmed the presence of hazardous chemicals.
Many of these are banned or strictly regulated in various countries because they are toxic, bio-accumulative (meaning the substance builds up in an organism faster than the organism can excrete or metabolise it), disruptive to hormones and carcinogenic.
Please don’t be put off by the quality of the podcast, as I was interviewing Susan on a boat. 😁