The Best of Kultura 2012

(Get image here)

The Photography

The title is a link to the original blogpost and the second link will take you straight to the article...Enjoy.

Hunters of the Himalayas by Eric Valli
http://www.ericvalli.com/index.php?/stories/caravans/

Dance by Seiji Shibuya
http://www.lensculture.com/shibuya.html 

Cuba, Carribean, etc.  by Max Cardelli (blog post includes music)
http://everyday-i-show.livejournal.com/143523.html

American Landscapes By Robert Adams
http://ajarnmike.blogspot.ca/2012/03/robert-adams.html

David Alan Harvey



The Articles

The CIA Burglar who went Rogue
http://www.smithsonianmag.com/history-archaeology/The-CIA-Burglar-Who-Went-Rogue-169800816.html

Sugar Should be Controlled like Alcohol: Report 
 http://www.vancouversun.com/health/Sugar+should+controlled+like+alcohol+report/6085350/story.html

The Mixtape of Revolution
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/30/opinion/the-mixtape-of-the-revolution.html?_r=0 

Mexican Police Charged in Attack on CIA

How One Man Escaped from a North Korean Prison Camp
http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2012/03/born-in-the-gulag-why-a-north-korean-boy-sent-his-own-mother-to-her-death/255110/

The Demise of Guys
http://www.cnn.com/2012/05/23/health/living-well/demise-of-guys/index.html

CIA-Sinaloa Cartel Connection Deepens
http://www.businessinsider.com/fast-and-furious-guns-sinaloa-cartel-2012-8

Marriage, McDonald's and Mexico

Deadly Medicine
http://www.vanityfair.com/politics/features/2011/01/deadly-medicine-201101

The Videos

Aokigahara Forest
http://www.vice.com/en_ca/vice-news/aokigahara-suicide-forest-v3 

The Free Climber
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yzA5S-5w13M&feature=endscreen&NR=1

Facebook's Craziest Stories

Three Videos to Warm the Soul Series

The Story of Amanda Todd
http://www.vancouversun.com/technology/Port+Coquitlam+teen+driven+death+cyberbullying+with+video/7375941/story.html

Man outsources his own job to China, watches cat videos

By all accounts, Bob was a model employee, a software developer who consistently wrote clean code for his company and never missed deadlines. Then investigators found out it wasn't Bob who was doing his job.

Turns out Bob had outsourced his work to China, paying a lowly overseas surrogate a fraction of his six-figure salary to do his 9-to-5 job. All the while, Bob sat at his desk, pretending to be busy while actually surfing the Internet, updating his Facebook page and watching cat videos.

READ MORE HERE...
http://news.msn.com/science-technology/man-outsources-his-own-job-to-china-watches-cat-videos?ocid=ansnews11

A Bird's Eye View of the World

 

See more of George Steinmetz's images here:

http://www.georgesteinmetz.com/index.php

The Multimedia videos are also worth a look...

http://www.georgesteinmetz.com/multimedia/empty-quarter

A Traveling Photographer

Even more proof that it doesn't matter what camera you have...it's the eye that matters...Kevin Russ photographs the American West armed with a simple IPhone camera...beautiful work...

Watch slideshow and video here...

http://vimeo.com/56803464

See more here...
http://kevinruss.tumblr.com/

The War Tourist

Bored with his job, a Japanese truck driver decides to travel to Syria, Afghanistan and other hot spots as a war tourist...

Excerpt:

"I'm not a target for snipers because I'm a tourist, not like you journalists," he told a reporter. "Besides, I'm not afraid if they shoot at me or that they might kill me. I'm a combination of samurai and kamikaze."

Fujimoto won't even wear a helmet or a flack jacket.

"They are very heavy when it comes to running and it's more fun to go to the front without anything. Besides, when they shoot it's fun and exciting."

Fujimoto said his employers don't know he's in Syria.  "I just told them I was going to Turkey on holiday; if I'd told them the truth, they'd tell me I'm completely crazy."

But though some might doubt his sanity, no one can question his financial foresight, which is rooted in the sadness of his personal life.

Fujimoto is divorced, and says "I have no family, no friends, no girl friend. I am alone in life."


READ MORE HERE...
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/01/03/toshifumi-fujimoto-syria-war-tourism_n_2400576.html?utm_hp_ref=world

Best Countries to be Born in--- 2013

Here's a list of the most desirable countries to be born in...very interesting.

http://www.thestar.com/news/world/article/1309424--canada-ranks-in-top-10-of-best-places-to-be-born-in-2013

Landfill Harmonic

 

A beautiful story.  Enjoy.  

PS:  Watch full 10 minutes...it's well worth it.

http://www.karmatube.org/videos.php?id=3704

Monks Lose Relevance as Thailand Grows Richer

Excerpt:

 

“Consumerism is now the Thai religion,” said Phra Paisan Visalo, one of the country’s most respected monks. “In the past, people went to temple on every holy day. Now, they go to shopping malls.”

The meditative lifestyle of the monkhood offers little allure to the iPhone generation. The number of monks and novices relative to the population has fallen by more than half over the last three decades. There are five monks and novices for every 1,000 people today, compared with 11 in 1980, when governments began keeping nationwide records. 

Although it is still relatively rare for temples to close, many districts are so short on monks that abbots here in northern Thailand recruit across the border from impoverished Myanmar, where monasteries are overflowing with novices. 

READ MORE HERE...

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/12/19/world/asia/thai-buddhist-monks-struggle-to-stay-relevant.html

Subway by Bruce Davidson

 

"I wanted to transform the subway from its dark, degrading and impersonal reality into images that open up our experience again to the color, sensuality, and vitality of the individual souls that ride it each day."  Bruce Davidson

See more incredible images here...
http://everyday-i-show.livejournal.com/194622.html