DC Comics has been making some ambitious moves lately, from a logo re-design to a 52 title relaunch, but their newest move should prove to be most heroic-a charity called We Can Be Heroes which will raise money to benefit humanitarian efforts in Africa. Here’s the dollars and cents of it all:

Donations of any amount made at the We Can Be Heroes site will reportedly be matched by DC Entertainment 100 percent, with 50 percent of branded “We Can Be Heroes” online merchandise sales being donated to the fund (unless you buy in Maine, Massachusetts and Alabama). Between these and other efforts, DC says that its three WCBH partners will receive a combined total of at least $2 million over the next two years.

Caped superfolks in print are fine, but stepping up to the plate and making a difference in the real world is truly noble indeed!

Link  –via ComicsAlliance

Photo: Hugo!/Flickr

No, that's not a photo of a flooded village. Rather, it's of the city of Ganvié in the Republic of Benin, which calls itself "The Venice of Africa." Kuriositas has the details on the history of this curious city:

At the beginning of the seventeenth century the country was called Dahomey and was one of the most powerful states in West Africa. The major ethnic and linguistic group was the Fon and they had made a deal with the Portuguese. Rather than their own people being captured and sold in to slavery they made a contract with the Portuguese to hunt and sell tribes people from smaller ethnic groups.

The Fon warriors were numerous and powerful and there was little other groups of people could do to defend themselves against this onslaught. Then, someone among the Tofinu people came up with an idea. Their name is lost to history but one wise person realized that they could take advantage of the religious practices of their

The Fon were forbidden by their religion to advance upon and water bound settlement. Any groups of people who lived on water were, by the law of the Fon, safe. Lake Nokoué is simply immense. Ganvié was established as a means to escape being sold in to a lifetime’s slavery and shipped across the world in appalling conditions. No wonder its name means the collectivity of those who found peace at last. The alternative translation is the much more to the point We Survived.enemy.

Link - via Look At This

The Cup of African Nations for Amputee Football (CANAF) concluded last month in Ghana, and Liberia won the tournament by defeating Ghana in the final game 4-2. Link -via Buzzfeed

By all scientific accounts, the rounded objects with even latitudinal grooves are 3 billion-year-old rocks that were naturally formed by carbonate concretions. Over the process of their development the tiny pyrophyllite spheres, which range in size from .5-10 cm, were created when minerals formed in the space between sediments. Weathering of these specimen left them as tiny balls, with evenly spaced lines circumscribing them.

Of course, this answer does not exactly satisfy those who believe the spheres are too perfect to have been created naturally, and since their first discovery in South African mines, they have been linked to intelligent beings from a different place or time.

Read more about Klerksdorp Spheres at Atlas Obscura. Link

There's another mysterious disease that emerged out of Africa: a nodding syndrome, which causes young children and adolescents to nod violently when they eat food.

Large areas of northern Uganda are experiencing an outbreak of nodding syndrome, a mysterious disease that causes young children and adolescents to nod violently when they eat food. The disease, which may be an unusual form of epilepsy, could be linked to the parasitic worm responsible for river blindness, a condition that affects some 18 million people, most of them in Africa.

According to Wikipedia, it's not as funny as it sounds: the disease also causes mental retardation, stunted growth, and a near 100% fatality rate.

Link

Could The Dark Tower by Stephen King have been inspired by Pico Cão Grande? This “volcanic plug” is in Obo National Park in the tiny island country of São Tomé and Principe off the coast of Africa. Photographs of this tower are hard to take because the top is usually in the clouds, but you’ll find some good ones at Dark Roasted Blend. Link

(Image credit: Antonio Martins and Jose Bazelga)

Ota Benga’s life was tragic from early on. He was a member of the Mbuti people who lived in the area then known as the Belgian Congo. Forces under the control of King Leopold of Belgium killed Benga’s wife and two children during a massacre – part of the drive to control rubber trees in the region. Benga escaped death because he was on a hunting trip when the slaughter occurred.

Benga was later captured by slavers, then sold to missionary Samuel Verner for a bolt of cloth and a pound of salt. Verner had been contracted by the Louisiana Purchase Exposition (otherwise known as Saint Louis World’s Fair) to find some pygmies for the fair. Four other Batwa or pygmy people and five non-pygmies eventually agreed to come on the trip.

After the World’s Fair, Benga was displayed at the Museum of Natural History in New York and the Bronx Zoo. Read his story at Environmental Graffiti. Link

The Horn of Africa is without question the hotbed of piracy today. A quick glance at the International Maritime Bureau’s Piracy Reporting Centre Live Piracy Map shows a dense thicket of attacks, and even though some analysis indicates that the areas of attacks may be decreasing in size, and that the frequency of successful attacks is decreasing, the density of attack is increasing and the risk  of attacks remains high. And the focus of this activity remains Somalia.

What languages are these pirates saying? Based on the IMB’s reported risk zones, and country data for Somalia from the CIA’s World Factbook, they are probably speaking in Somali, Arabic (probably a Yemeni dialect), Italian (a vestige of Somalia’s colonial heritage) or English.

Wired’s Danger Room blog has a handy chart with common phrases you may need if you encounter these pirates, in English, Somali, and Yemeni. Link -via Boing Boing

The nursery takes in orphan elephants from all over Kenya, many victims of poaching or human-wildlife conflict, and raises them until they are no longer milk dependent. Once healed and stabilized at the nursery, they are moved more than a hundred miles southeast to two holding centers in Tsavo National Park. There, at their own pace, which can be up to eight to ten years, they gradually make the transition back into the wild. The program is a cutting-edge experiment in cross-species empathy that only the worst extremes of human insensitivity could have necessitated.

Be sure to read the whole thing to learn all kinds of fascinating information about the group, the elephants and the amazing people working to improve the lives of these majestic creatures.

Link

Wildlife photographers (and brothers) Will & Matt Burrard-Lucas created the BeetlCam. It’s a remote-control 4-wheel-drive miniature vehicle (toy) with a remote-control camera mounted on top, designed to take pictures of dangerous wild animals. Here we see the gadget in action in Tanzania. It appears to work very well! -via Laughing Squid

Cultural differences can manifest themselves in ways people never consider until they cross from one culture to another. In this clip, refugees from Sudan encounter America for the first time, and find it quite different from their homeland. This is from the 2006 National Geographic movie God Grew Tired of Us.  -via reddit

You may think the baboon is not too smart because it fell for that old trick, but at least it knows where the water is! From the 1974 documentary Animals Are Beautiful People. -via Cynical-C

A few of humanity’s worst citizens – poachers – snuck in to the Kruger National Park in South Africa in the middle of the night. They’d planned on checking traps, but instead found themselves in the deadly gaze of angry hippopotamuses. Hippos are the animal kingdom’s number one killer of humans in Africa, so the men scattered. Two made it out alive; the third’s remains were found, ostensibly devoured by lions.

This story should serve as a cautionary tale for any would-be poachers considering a career in illegal wildlife trade. While authorities may have their hands full when it comes to stopping [them], there remains a more natural form of justice, lurking among the wildlife so often pillaged–and in this case justice, like dinner, was served.

Link |  BBC Brasil Link (Well-Fed Lion Photo: laherenger’s Photostream)

Wells’s own journey of discovery began as a child whose zeal for history and biology led him to the University of Texas, where he enrolled at age 16, majored in biology, and graduated Phi Beta Kappa three years later. He then pursued his Ph.D. at Harvard University under the tutelage of distinguished evolutionary geneticist Richard Lewontin. His landmark research findings led to advances in the understanding of the male Y chromosome and its ability to trace ancestral human migration.

All of the topics are intriguing and made more accessible through Wells’ evident passion for the subject matters.  Here he talks about how the human population went from the brink of extinction (world poulation: 2,000, all in Africa) to migration and adaptation with development of better tools, art, and language.

Link to video.  Link to bio and video directory.

Photo: Wikipedia

Starbucks launched their campaign against AIDS in Africa by putting together singers from 156 countries in one video performing The Beatles’ song All You Need is Love. Link -via Buzzfeed

Enjoy this piece on Scienceray about the wonderful Giraffe-Necked Antelope of East Africa.  Just as their taller friends have evolved to get to the higher branches of green in a barren landscape, this unique species also took to the higher branches of smaller flora.

It’s also obvious, but worth pointing out ~ they’re as cute as all getout.

They will use their forelegs to pull down branches that are even higher than they are and can get to tender new leaves that other animals cannot.  As a plus, the GNA does not need to drink water at all – it gets all the moisture it needs from the plants they devour.

Link |Image by Flickr user nonisense.

Biologist Charles Anderson has uncovered what he believes to be the longest migration route of any insect in the world. He plotted the appearance of the dragonflies known as globe skimmers in the Maldives and deduced that they must fly from Africa!

In Uganda, they appear twice each year in March or April and again in September, while further south in Tanzania and Mozambique they appear in December and January.

That strongly suggest that the dragonflies take advantage of the moving weather systems and monsoon rains to complete an epic migration from southern India to east and southern Africa, and then likely back again, a round trip of 14,000 to 18,000km.

Link

From the Upcoming ueue, submitted by healthylivinggal83.

In his art blog called Atlas, Spanish artist Fernando Vicente takes the distinct forms of landmasses and convert them into fantastic images. I particularly like the map of Africa turned into a skull (with Europe being the exploding head – lots of political imagery there).

Check out the entire series here: Link | Fernando’s other work: Anatomías (and for those of you who like politics, check out his work for Diario El País)

In 2007, photojournalist Brent Stirton went to the Omo River Valley in Ethiopia to document the life of people of remote tribal groups that continue to live as their ancestors did hundreds of years ago. Except that they have AK-47. Plenty of AK-47s:

In the sprawling, desolate Southern Omo River Valley region of Ethiopia are several tribes living as they have for centuries, in voluntary isolation from the modern world. Recently, however, the tribes — Dassanech, Mursi, Hamar, Karo, Bume, Beshadar and others — are under increasing pressure from the outside world. Most recent is the Omo River dam project to provide hydroelectric power to Ethiopia’s capital, Addis Ababa. This will reduce the river to one-fifth its size and eliminate the flood plain so valuable to Omo Valley tribal farmers. The geographically distant government in Addis Ababa appears to place little importance on the threat to these unique Omo Valley cultures, and the days of their existence as intact cultures are numbered. [...]

Outsiders are regarded as a source of money, AK47s are everywhere and people are aggressive in their pursuit of cash for photographs. It’s sad really, for the people of the region have a limited idea of what money can buy but already have a taste for it. As money acquires more value in their society, it will eat away all that makes their society unique.

Brent’s photo gallery make for a very interesting visit: Link (warning: some indigenous tribes nudity) – via CreativeRoots | Brent’s blog Photo Journeys at Discovery Channel

A glimpse of the amazing artistic heritage of the Edo people of Nigeria.  Their exquisite bronze sculptures showcase the rich and ancient culture of this part of the world.  With this art, you can get a true feeling of Africa before the arrival of the European.

Nigeria is one of the most art-oriented countries in Africa. It consists of many different tribes who possess different unique cultural artistic styles and tastes. One of those places is Edo state. Known as the heartbeat of the nation, Edo state is located in the south-eastern part of Nigeria. Benin City, its capital, is inhabited by the Bini people who, apart from other exciting forms of art they are involved in, specialise in a different but unique form of art-Bronze casting and sculpture-related artworks.

Link – via yourlewishamcollege

From the Upcoming ueue, submitted by taliesyn30.

Alfred Sirleaf is a blogger. Not just any blogger – no sir, Alfred is an analog blogger. He runs the "Daily News," a news hut in the middle of Monrovia, the capital of a Liberia, a country on the west coast of Africa. The lack of electricity doesn’t even faze him:

Alfred serves as a reminder to the rest of us, that simple is often better, just because it works. The lack of electricity never throws him off. The lack of funding means he’s creative in ways that he recruits people from around the city and country to report news to him. He uses his cell phone as the major point of connection between him and the 10,000 (he says) that read his blackboard daily.

Not all Liberians who read his news are literate, so he makes use of symbols. Whether it’s a UN or military helmet, a poster of a soccer player or a bottle of colored water to denote gas prices, he is determined to get the message out in any way that he can.

Link | A 2005 article on NYT on Alfred Sirleaf – via Onelargeprawn

French street artist JR has just completed an art project in the slums of Kibera, Kenya, where he covered the rooftops of homes with a material printed with the pictures of eyes of the women who live in them.

The art does have a practical purpose: the material help protect the houses from heavy rain:

Today, after more than a year of planning, 2000 square meters of rooftops have been covered with photos of the eyes and faces of the women of Kibera. The material used is water resistant so that the photo itself will protect the fragile houses in the heavy rain season. The train that passes on this line through Kibera at least twice a day has also been covered with eyes from the women that live below it. With the eyes on the train, the bottom half of the their faces have be pasted on corrugated sheets on the slope that leads down from the tracks to the rooftops. The idea being that for the split second the train passes, their eyes will match their smiles and their faces will be complete.

Link – via monk

From the Upcoming ueue, submitted by The Monk.

The budding lovebirds, identified as Mika and Anna-Lena, packed bathing costumes, sunglasses and a lilo and headed for the airport. They even had the presence of mind to invite along an official witness – Anna-Lena’s seven-year-old sister. [...]

The following morning, as their parents slept, the intrepid trio walked 1km (0.6 miles) to the local tram station at Langenhagen, where they hopped aboard a tram for Hanover central station.

But the group aroused the suspicion of a guard as they waited for a train to the airport, and police were called in.

Officers persuaded the children they would not get far without tickets and money, but consoled them with a free tour of the police station, where they were shortly picked up by relieved parents.

Link – via Blue’s News