Kathryn Gustafson’s Lurie Garden in Chicago | Harvard-Radcliffe Orchestra in Cuba AOC Style

Critics and curators say that Gustafson’s greatest contribution is the re-introduction of the human body to site design. She agrees: ‘For me, the form of the land and the form of the body come together somehow.” A former fashion student and 1970s design professional, critics maintain that the sensual draping of clothes has strongly influenced her landscape work.

Daily | Christine Lagarde Set for IMF Director | Top 20 TED Talks AOC FP

In this lunchtime interview with French Finance Minister Christine Lagarde, New York Times columnist Thomas L. Friedman goes right to the big issues—the world economy, the fate of the euro, and the plight of women.

Daily | Mrs Obama in South Africa | Rob MacInnis Animal Portraits AOC Daily

Rob MacInnis is clear about his mission.

“My photographs are inspired by photographers such as Annie Leibovitz and David Lachappelle except I use barn animals as my portrait subject. This allows me to draw parallels between the idealization of the human form in contemporary fashion photography and the subjugation of animals by humans.”

Charles Dharapak/ASSOCIATED PRESS - Huma Abedin, wife of now former Rep. Anthony Weiner, joins the likes of Hillary Clinton, Maria Shriver and Silda Spitzer as the latest to watch her husband go through a highly public scandal.

Daily | Green Jet Fuel | US Lags Cuba & Afghanistan in Women Politicians in Congress AOC FP

While less data exists on the fidelity of powerful women, we know that females don’t enter the political realm with the same goals as men. I talked to Siobhan “Sam” Bennett, president and CEO of the Women’s Campaign Fund and its affiliated program, The She Should Run Foundation, about these differences. Bennett explained, “Research shows that men run for office because they see it as a pathway to power, while women run because they want to help make change—in their communities, their cities, their states and the nation. This ego-driven, versus change-driven, difference predicts that men elected are far more likely to engage in behaviors destructive to them and to voters.” 

Despite studies that show voters perceive women as more trustworthy and that elected women are more productive than men, the U.S. is ranked 87^th in the world in the number of women serving in its national legislature, behind Cuba and Afghanistan.

Alice Newstead Submits to the Horrors of Shark Finning AOC Green Beings

Alice Newstead has taken her protest against shark fishing to Hong Kong, again back by Lush, the British cosmetics company. Instead of hanging in a store window as she did in Paris, Alice is hanging in an arts centre courtyard for 20 minutes at a time.

Her purpose is to protest the killing of 73 million sharks a year, threatening their extinction. The killing of the sharks is particularly inhumane. Their fins are sliced off to make the soup and they are thrown alive back into the water, unable to swim and sentenced to death.

Because Hong Kong serves as a key trend setting city among Asian communities, it’s only the people of Hong Kong who can lead the way to stopping this brutal luxury consumer practice of using shark fin soup as a display of wealth. Currently the fins are worth about $300 a pound.

Howard Buffett Gives $4 Million for Vitamin-Enriched Sorghum AOC Front Page

The Howard Buffett Foundation has donated $4 million on a project to develop sorghum that contains more Vitamin A, zinc and iron, and also has improved protein digestibility characteristics. Sorghum is a cereal similar to corn but more drought resistant and a staple part of the diet of Africans.

As an activist and philanthropist, Howard Buffett has expressed strong concerns that humanity may have moved beyond the tipping point, in terms of insuring future food supplies in Africa, India and other impoverished regions around the world. Climate change and over-fertilized soils threaten basic agricultural bounty and soil fertiity.

More reading:

Shakira & Howard Buffett: Attached at the Hip Philanthropy Bedfellows

Bill Gates Demands Cohesive Action on Global Hunger

Can Gates, Buffett, Obama, Clinton & Company Really Solve Global Hunger?

Lara Logan Speaks To Tahrir Sq Sexual Assault on 60 Minutes AOC Daily Musings

CBS correspondent Lara Logan will be interviewed on CBS’s 60 MInutes on Sunday, about her sexual assault in Cairo. Logan says she will discuss the Tahrir Square attack in detail in that single interview and then move on from the event, saying ‘I don’t want this to define me.’ …

Reflecting on her own 25 minute assault, Logan says: ’ What really struck me was how merciless they were. They really enjoyed my pain and suffering. It incited them to more violence.’

After Lara Logan’s assult, it was widely reported that a group of Egyptian women — many wearing niqabs — raced into the crowd of men brutalizing the correspondent and threw themselves on top of her, probably saving her life.

Egyptian Women Unite, Saying ‘We Are All Lara Logan’

Brutally Raped in Egypt | Lara Logan’s Career As Top Reporter

Tag: women of Egypt includes several stories about sexual harassment in Egypt before Lara Logan was assaulted.

Book | ‘Dancing in the Glory of Monsters’ Examines War in Congo AOC Shop

Jason Stearns, author of Dancing in the Glory of Monsters: The Collapse of the Congo and the Great War of Africa, says that Congo should be ranked with Germany, Russia and China as one of the great vortexes of recent human violence.

The Law of Mother Nature I Bolivia Stands Her Ground AOC Daily Musings

Reported by John Vidal, a story that provides much food for thought about Bolivia and the bold moves by Latin America’s first indigenous President Evo Morales to enact The Law of Mother Earth which will grant nature rights equal to that of humans.

Vice-President Alvaro Garcia Linera is quoted, “It makes world history. Earth is the mother of all. It establishes a new relationship between man and nature, the harmony of which must be preserved as a guarantee of its regeneration.”

Spring in Bloom | Daria Werbowy by Inez & Vinoodh for Vogue Paris April 2006

Each year more than 360 billion cigarettes are smoked in America. A new report released by the journal Tobacco Control — funded by the national public health foundation Legacy® — updates last year’s Earth Day post Please Stop Smoking and Carry a Ciggy Butt Bag Until You Do.

According to the new research, cigarette butts have potentially toxic effects on ecosystems. For example, in one laboratory test result, one cigarette butt soaked in a liter of water was lethal to half of the fish exposed.