CAROLINA NATURALLY: Apr 6, 2011

Wednesday, April 6, 2011

The Daily Drift

The Daily Drift

Today's horoscope says:
It's all about pushing boundaries today: Be the first person to bring up a taboo topic, and watch how everyone reacts.
Chances are, they're not afraid to talk about it.
You're able to trigger some interesting responses and get a long conversation going.
This skill you have for inspiring others to talk may overlap into other areas of your life as well.
Whether you share your tips on a hot new spot in town or post a review of your favorite restaurant, get your controversial opinions out there.

Some of our readers today have been in:

Kuala Lumpur, Wilayah Persekutuan, Malaysia
Brisbane, Queensland, Australia
Perth, Western Australia, Australia
Melbourne, Victoria, Australia
Auckland, Auckland, New Zealand
Montreal, Quebec, Canada
Kulim, Kedah, Malaysia
Hamilton, Ontario, Canada
Brussels, Bruessels Hoofdstedelijk Gewest, Belgium
Amsterdam, Noord-Holland, Netherlands
London, England, United Kingdom
Birmingham, England, United Kingdom
Reykjavik, Reykjavik, Iceland
Sydney, New South Wales, Australia
Bristol, England, United Kingdom
Zurich, Zurich, Switzerland
Pakanbaru, Riau, Indonesia
Gent, Oost-Vlaanderen, Belgium
Udaipur, Rajasthan, India
Berlin, Berlin, Germany

as well as Slovakia, Malta, Bulgaria, Israel, Finland, Austria, Norway, Georgia, Mexico, Peru, Kuwait, Serbia, Bangladesh, Latvia, Greece, Scotland, Hong Kong, Denmark, Wales, Iran, Singapore, Poland, Taiwan, Sweden, Afghanistan, Belgium, Tibet, Croatia, Pakistan, Romania, Paraguay, Sudan, Vietnam, Argentina, Cambodia, Egypt, France, Estonia, Puerto Rico, Maldives, Qatar, Brazil, New Zealand, United Arab Emirates, Slovenia, China, Iraq, Ecuador, Nigeria, Colombia, Chile, Honduras, Paupa New Guinea, Moldova, Venezuela, Germany, Mexico, Saudi Arabia, Ireland, Czech Republic, Vietnam, Norway, Finland

and in cities across the United States such as Knob Noster, Portage, Bonus Defeat, Encino and more.

Today is:

Today is Wednesday, April 6, the 97th day of 2011.

There are 268 days left in the year.

Today's unusual holiday or celebration is:

Tartan Day.

Don't forget to visit our sister blog!

Storms fell trees, crush homes in South, killing 9

An enormous tree limb that crashed through a Georgia family's bedroom killed a father and the young son he was holding in his arms Tuesday as a fast-moving storm system pounded the South with tornadoes, hail and spectacular lightning.

Full Story

Authorities confirm 2 Americans killed in Mexico

Two men killed by a gunman who opened fire while they waited at a Tijuana border crossing were U.S. citizens, a U.S. diplomat said Tuesday, and their San Diego employer described them as diligent workers who had moved to the border city so they could afford to live on the beach.

Full Story

OK ... that is different

http://img.ffffound.com/static-data/assets/6/02302185aacad0a69087774f7ab3847b13bc0183_m.jpg

NATO doesn't have enough aircraft for Libyan campaign

It's hardly a surprise, but did anyone really think the US had enough aircraft either? How many wars can be fought at one time? It's especially difficult now that we're in the age of austerity with budget cuts all around. The US military is barely cutting spending but everyone else in NATO is dealing with less money available. It's not right to ask voters to tighten the belt and fund undefined missions around the world.

The Guardian:

NATO is running short of attack aircraft for its bombing campaign against Muammar Gaddafi only days after taking command of the Libyan mission from a coalition led by the US, France and Britain.

David Cameron has pledged four more British Tornado jets on top of eight already being used for the air strikes. But pressure is growing for other European countries, especially France, to offer more after the Americans withdrew their attack aircraft from the campaign on Monday.

"We will need more strike capability," a NATO official said.

Egypt militants seek power

Militants seek to fill Egypt power vacuum

Islamic hard-liners are trying to take advantage of the government's fractured condition.

christians attacked

Also:

Bahrain fires workers who participated in protests

When people wonder why our Middle East policies are so bad, it's partially because we support goons like the government of Bahrain.
Al Jazeera:

Bahraini firms have fired hundreds of mostly Shia Muslim workers who went on strike to support pro-democracy protesters, the opposition group Wefaq has said.

Officials at Batelco, Gulf Air, Bahrain Airport Services and APM Terminals Bahrain said they had laid off more than 200 workers due to absence during a strike in March.

"It's illegal in Bahrain and anywhere else in the world to just strike. You have to give two weeks' notice to your employer," one executive who did not wish to be named told Reuters news agency on Tuesday.

Bahrain's unions called a general strike on March 13 to support the Shia protesters against the Sunni-led government. The strike was called off on March 22.

Throwing the bums out

http://img.ffffound.com/static-data/assets/6/77ac0b7218b4374b32bf207eb4dacf6f7a00f125_m.jpg

We used to know how to get rid of bums(wingnuts) we tossed them out on their arses in the street!

What Wingnuts Dream About

Photo: Shutterstock

What do wingnuts dream about when they sleep? Crushing their liberal opponents in the 2012 Presidential Election? Repealing Obamacare and banishing the evil unions?
Well, aren’t you glad that somebody did the research? Jerry Kroth and colleagues at the Santa Clara University investigated the dreams of 48 female graduate students and found that the wingnut types are having these kinds of dreams:

Dreams of Falling
Dream Discontentedness
Dreams of Being Chased
Dreams of Being Famous

More repugican chicanery

The congressional budgetary office has analyzed Paul Ryan's budget proposal and says it will raise the debt and stick it to seniors and mydd reminds us that the repugicans won 2010 by scaring seniors about medicaid.

Stiglitz: wealth concentration will be America's downfall

Nobel-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz writes in this month's Vanity Fair about the corrosive, self-reinforcing wealth concentration that has hijacked American politics, in which the America's future is sacrificed to give ever more money to an ever-smaller group of oligarchs. We've heard lots of people talking about wealth concentration before, but Stiglitz combines impeccable credentials with a lay-friendly explanation:

America's inequality distorts our society in every conceivable way. There is, for one thing, a well-documented lifestyle effect--people outside the top 1 percent increasingly live beyond their means. Trickle-down economics may be a chimera, but trickle-down behaviorism is very real. Inequality massively distorts our foreign policy. The top 1 percent rarely serve in the military--the reality is that the "all-volunteer" army does not pay enough to attract their sons and daughters, and patriotism goes only so far. Plus, the wealthiest class feels no pinch from higher taxes when the nation goes to war: borrowed money will pay for all that. Foreign policy, by definition, is about the balancing of national interests and national resources. With the top 1 percent in charge, and paying no price, the notion of balance and restraint goes out the window. There is no limit to the adventures we can undertake; corporations and contractors stand only to gain. The rules of economic globalization are likewise designed to benefit the rich: they encourage competition among countries for business, which drives down taxes on corporations, weakens health and environmental protections, and undermines what used to be viewed as the "core" labor rights, which include the right to collective bargaining. Imagine what the world might look like if the rules were designed instead to encourage competition among countries for workers. Governments would compete in providing economic security, low taxes on ordinary wage earners, good education, and a clean environment--things workers care about. But the top 1 percent don't need to care. Or, more accurately, they think they don't. Of all the costs imposed on our society by the top 1 percent, perhaps the greatest is this: the erosion of our sense of identity, in which fair play, equality of opportunity, and a sense of community are so important. America has long prided itself on being a fair society, where everyone has an equal chance of getting ahead, but the statistics suggest otherwise: the chances of a poor citizen, or even a middle-class citizen, making it to the top in America are smaller than in many countries of Europe. The cards are stacked against them. It is this sense of an unjust system without opportunity that has given rise to the conflagrations in the Middle East: rising food prices and growing and persistent youth unemployment simply served as kindling. With youth unemployment in America at around 20 percent (and in some locations, and among some socio-demographic groups, at twice that); with one out of six Americans desiring a full-time job not able to get one; with one out of seven Americans on food stamps (and about the same number suffering from "food insecurity")--given all this, there is ample evidence that something has blocked the vaunted "trickling down" from the top 1 percent to everyone else. All of this is having the predictable effect of creating alienation--voter turnout among those in their 20s in the last election stood at 21 percent, comparable to the unemployment rate.

Of the 1%, by the 1%, for the 1%

Biggest Financiers of Mountaintop Removal Coal Mining Exposed

Image: Jake McClendon via flickr

PNC, Citi, and UBS are the top three financial enablers of mountaintop removal coal mining, according to a new report by Rainforest Action Network and the Sierra Club that ranks ten of the world's largest banks.

Article continues: Biggest Financiers of Mountaintop Removal Coal Mining Exposed

Government Shutdown: What To Expect

Question: What happens if the federal government closes its doors?

The 17 government shutdowns since 1977 have all been blips on the radar, with the longest lasting 21 days, from December 15, 1995, to January 6, 1996.
So what really happens when the government is shuttered? Not much. During the 21-day shutdown, less than 15 percent of the federal workforce was actually idled.
National-security and public-safety operations continue. So do benefit payments, medical care, tax collection, border protection, prison patrol, crime investigation, and air traffic control. The Postal Service and the Federal Reserve will both be open for business because they generate their own revenues.
Government museums close; people can’t apply for passports; tourism takes a hit. But the Office of Management and Budget, which set the basic rules for shutdowns back in 1981, stipulates that agencies continue to conduct essential activities “to protect life and property.”
Any employee deemed “essential”-- from Transportation Security Administration agents to Social Security check writers -- is considered exempt from the Antideficiency Act, which prohibits the acceptance of voluntary services and forbids federal officials to assign funds before an appropriations measure has been enacted.
Nonessential employees, on the other hand, cannot report to work. In the first shutdown in 1995, which lasted five days, some 800,000 workers were furloughed; the second, longer closure resulted in 284,000 being furloughed, according to the Congressional Research Service. When the government resumed operations in 1996, employees were paid retroactively, but that isn't a given.

On The Job

Middle-aged missing out on new jobs

Some firms won't hire people in their 40s or early 50s due to one big concern.

Older workers snag most offers

Also:

Why boomers fear retirement

Why baby boomers fear retirement

Many people don't think they'll have enough money when their careers end, one poll finds.

1 in 4 plan to never retire

Also:

Last-minute tax saving ideas

Last-minute ways to save on your taxes

Don’t miss these overlooked deductions and strategies that can cut your 2010 tax bill.

Six common mistakes

Also:

Wizard of Id

http://d.yimg.com/a/p/uc/20110406/largeimagecrwiz110406.gif

Culinary DeLites

It's grilled cheese month! Go ahead, eat a chips-and-guac grilled cheese

Eleven things to buy organic

11 things you should buy organic

One analysis found as many as 13 different pesticides on strawberries.

How nonstick cookware may harm you

Also:

Eight no-sweat calorie-burners

8 ways to burn calories without sweating

Stand at your desk – don't sit – and you'll burn twice as many calories.

Quick way to shed 6 pounds in a year

Also:

Ten depression-fighting mood boosters

10 depression-fighting mood boosters

Net Nuetrality

Obama promises to veto any house vote against net neutrality.

Bandwidth changes everything for cloud storage

Amazon's Cloud Player -- an online file storage service -- upsets the music labels because people could use it to share music instead of simply store and listen to it. Nilay Patel writes that earlier legal outcomes might not be a good guide this time around, because a legitimate role for 'digital lockers' is more obvious than in times past.

What's new for Amazon? Bandwidth, and tons of it. We've reached the point where uploading 5 or 15 or 20GB of data to a cloud service is a feasible task for most broadband-connected consumers, and that changes the nature of the argument entirely. If you're a Cloud Player customer, you get a defined 5GB or 20GB of storage, and the music that lives in that storage is your copy. Your copy that you're allowed to make. It's not "functionally equivalent" to a fair use copy anymore -- it is a fair use copy... This is going to completely fuck the labels, since they can't argue that Amazon is making unauthorized copies of songs. In order to stop Cloud Player, they're going to have to completely switch tactics and argue that it's actually the content that matters, and that Amazon doesn't have the rights to enable streaming content from their platform. But that's a ridiculous argument, since Amazon is just going to say that it's not actually doing much of anything -- it's just giving users some storage space and publishing an app that can play those files over the network. The labels will have to somehow argue that the content of the music files is protected, since they can't really touch what the users are doing to their own copies.

As an aside, Amazon seems to have timed this very well, working a subtle sea change in how people perceive the idea of online storage (even if usage of it remains quite niche.) I hope Dropbox, one of the killer apps that were a step ahead of it, can keep pace.

Amazon Cloud Player and how bandwidth killed the copyright star

For America's Cities, the Future Can Be Found in the Past

From our friends at Fast Company, "bridging the fuzzy border between design and business."

"The past is not dead. In fact it's not even past."--William Faulkner

Imaginary Cities

When looking at our cities, can you see the life that you imagined leading? Where do you spend your time? Are our cities inspiring and comforting? Do they offer beauty and health, opportunities and creative experience? Are they rich in culture and distinct in identity?

Article continues: For America's Cities, the Future Can Be Found in the Past

World's biggest private rocket

Plans for 'truly huge' private rocket unveiled

A new behemoth with twice the power of the shuttle could change the future of space missions.

See 'Falcon Heavy'

Also:

Dive Into The Deep

Virgin Oceanic

Sir Richard Branson, submarine designer Graham Hawkes, and sailor and aviator Chris Welsh launched Virgin Oceanic. Virgin Oceanic is taking the next step in human exploration. This time, the voyage is to the last frontiers of our own Blue Planet: the very bottom of our seas.

Over the course of 2011 and 2012, Virgin Oceanic's one-person sub will journey to the deepest part of each of Earth's five oceans. The first dive will be to the deepest place on the planet: the bottom of the Mariana Trench - 11 kilometers (7 miles) straight down. For the first time, the deepest trenches in each of the five oceans will be available for surveying, mapping and sampling from an occupied submersible.

Very odd home conversions

Homes that were once something else

Turning a grain silo, caboose, or fire tower into a house takes imagination.

See before-and-after photos

Also:

Plymouth, Montserrat

The Caribbean island of Montserrat once had its government and most of the island’s services centered in the small town of Plymouth. The community was evacuated in 1995 due to volcanic activity. In 1997, an eruption buried Plymouth under several feet of ash, rock, and lava. It has been an exclusion zone ever since, and no residents have returned.

See a collection of 40 pictures of what’s left.

Non Sequitur

http://d.yimg.com/a/p/uc/20110406/largeimagenq110406.gif

Revealing nature photos

Crafty photographers show nature's secrets

A hidden whirlpool is among the unusual phenomena captured using clever photography.

See where bees sleep

Also:

Ozone layer's record loss

Ozone layer experiences record loss

Part of the Earth's fragile shield has dropped 40 percent since winter, a U.N. agency reports.

The likely cause

Also:

Oklahoma sees driest 4 months since Dust Bowl

A drought stretching from the Louisiana Gulf coast to Colorado is contributing to wildfires and killing crops.

Full Story

In most years, the dark clouds over western Oklahoma in the spring would be bringing rain.

More Here

Fresh H2O - could change ocean current ...

Scientists are monitoring a massive pool of fresh water in the Arctic Ocean that could spill into the Atlantic and potentially alter the ocean currents that bring Western Europe its moderate climate.

Full Story

The floating stump of Oregon's Crater Lake

The Old Man of the Lake is the name given to a 30-foot (9.1 m) tall tree stump, most likely a hemlock, which has been bobbing vertically in Oregon's Crater Lake since at least 1896.

At the waterline, the stump is about 2 feet (61 cm) in diameter and stands approximately 4 feet (120 cm) above the water. The surface has been bleached white by the elements. The exposed end of the floating tree is splintered and worn but wide and buoyant enough to support a person's weight.

Fontinalis, a moss that is present in the waters of Crater Lake at a depth of 394 feet (120 m), also grows on the Old Man of the Lake, the only place the moss is found near the surface.

Full Story

The Poison in the Aquarium

An aquarium enthusiast who goes by the name Steveoutlaw on forums was poisoned while trying to rid his aquarium of an invasive colony of anemones. To kill it, he boiled the rocks from his fish tank, and accidentally inhaled some fumes. He ended up in the hospital, a victim of palytoxin, the second deadliest poison found in the natural world.

Palytoxin is shrouded in legend. Hawaiian islanders tell of a cursed village in Maui, whose members defied a shark god that had been eating their fellow villagers. They dismembered and burned the god, before scattering his ashes in a tide pool near the town of Hana. Shortly after, a mysterious type of seaweed started growing in the pool. It became known as “limu-make-o-Hana” (deadly seaweed of Hana). If smeared on a spear’s point, it could instantly kill its victims.
The shark god may have been an elaborate fiction, but in 1961, Philip Helfrich and John Shupe actually found the legendary pool. Within it, they discovered a new species of zoanthid called Palythoa toxica. The limu-make-o-Hana was real, but it wasn’t seaweed – it was a type of colonial anemone. In 1971, Richard Moore and Paul Scheuer isolated the chemical responsible for the zoanthid’s lethal powers – palytoxin. Now, Jonathan Deeds from the US Food and Drug Administration has found that the poison is readily available in aquarium stores.

The problem is that the anemones that contain palytoxin are almost impossible to distinguish from species that don’t.

Read more about it at Not Exactly Rocket Science.

Belly Dancer

http://25.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_laajw6byZd1qzv83io1_500.jpg

A Möbius Gear

Wait — a toothed gear that has only one side? Is that even possible? Aaron Hoover, a robotics student at Berkeley, says that it is:

[...] I convinced myself that this mechanism is indeed possible and that with right tools, a functional prototype could be built. (The entire mechanism essentially boils down to an oddly configured set of planetary gears. One can think of the black portion in the image as the ring with a fixed zero input velocity. A single blue gear is a planet, and the white strip is the sun. Output can be taken either from the sun or the planets (with no regard for practicality!). In practice, however, it’s easiest to actuate the Möbius strip (the white portion). So, using a combination of the Scene Language for Dynamic Environments (SLIDE), developed here at Berkeley, Tcl, Python, and Solidworks, I was able to create models of the constituent components. The base was fabricated on a Stratasys fused deposition (FDM) machine and took approximately 86 hrs. to finish. The “spur” gears were molded in silicone rubber using a two-part mold printed on a 3D Systems wax deposition machine (ThermoJet). And the central Möbius strip was also molded using molds printed on the 3DS machine. The Möbius strip was molded as a single linear strip then twisted and the ends were rejoined in a “guiding” mold and additional rubber was poured into that mold to bond the two ends together and form a single continuous ring. The end result is a functional prototype, but rotating the middle ring without having the blue gears pop out is a little tricky.

Full Story

Search may be over for Mona Lisa woman

Italian researchers said Tuesday they will dig up bones in a Florence convent to try to identify the remains of a Renaissance woman long believed to be the model for the "Mona Lisa."

If successful, the research might help ascertain the identity of the woman depicted in Leonardo da Vinci's masterpiece - a mystery that has puzzled scholars and art ...

Full Story

Planes Used During World War I

image credit

Although Kitty Hawk would become home to the first manned flight of human kind, the Germans would take these physical parameters into a whole new realm. As the skies offered another battlefield in which to kill and mame, countries that did not embrace this new arena were quickly left behind.

During the first world war, the Germans would gain an early edge over most of the Allies as concerned with WWI aircraft. Planes used during World War I became designed around the many German models, which would help the Allies win many later battles of the global war. There are many WWI planes that were important during the war although some played far greater roles than others.

A 19th Century Woodblock Print Shows Modern Tower

Coincidence or Time Travel?

That’s "Toto Mitsumata no Zu," a drawing by artist Utagawa Kuniyoshi, showing a couple of men working to waterproof their boat. It’s a fine piece of ukiyo-e style woodblock print and a rather mysterious example of time travel artefact.
You see, the woodblock print, which is dated from 1831, clearly showed the Tokyo Sky Tree being built today:

The ukiyo-e print drew particular attention over mysterious tower depicted on the left part of the work, leading some to surmise that the artist had predicted the emergence of Tokyo Sky Tree in modern times. [...]
The left side of the work shows two thin, high-rise buildings looking down on the town of old Tokyo across the river. The one on the far left is believed to be a fire-watch tower. However, experts say no building as tall as the mysterious one next to it existed back in those days.

Full Story

B.C.

http://d.yimg.com/a/p/uc/20110406/largeimagecrbc110406.gif

Namecheap Raises $20k For Elephants In Response to GoDaddy CEO Killing One on Video

Photo by Mrs_B via Flickr CC

Last week we told you about the GoDaddy CEO who feels it is "rewarding" to shoot elephants in Africa on an annual basis. To make things worse, he made a video of his most recent shoot and posted it online. As a response, several domain name hosting companies offered deals to people who wanted to switch away from GoDaddy in protest, and several also offered a donation to elephant-related charities when people switched. Namecheap is one of those companies, and has raised a substantial amount after an estimated 20,000 users switched away from GoDaddy.

Article continues: Namecheap Raises $20k For Elephants In Response to GoDaddy CEO Killing One on Video

The 10 Strangest, Most Terrifying Creatures Ever Found

Strange creatures are found all over the planet and beg the question 'What the hell is that?' Pictures of them get circulated everywhere from some random no-name blog to national and international news networks, giving everyone a chance to make their own quasi-educated prediction regarding what scientists and internet skeptics will find out. Here's an article displaying both the hype and found reality of each of these weird creatures.

Joyous chimp reunited with woman who hand-raised her 30 years earlier

As a toddler Sally the chimp was always a bit of a handful – and 30 years later, when reunited with her human foster mother at Hamilton Zoo, New Zealand, her antics continued with a few handstands. Sally is one of the zoo's six chimpanzees, but had a rough start to life, being rejected by her mother soon after her birth at Auckland Zoo in the 1970s, which led the now 95-year-old Georgie Seccombe, the then head keeper's wife, to hand-raise the primate.

Although it had been decades since the pair had seen each other, the recognition was obvious when Sally saw Mrs Seccombe yesterday when she visited. "She's just really lovely," Mrs Seccombe said. "She knew my voice straight away. She was up on a hill and I called out `hey Sal' and she came bounding down. They are really intelligent." Hamilton Zoo primate keeper John Ray said he was "blown away" when approached by Mrs Seccombe's neighbour after giving a public talk at the zoo about six weeks ago.

"This woman just approached me with photos Georgie had given her of Sally being hand-reared at her home – it honestly blew me away," he said. Mr Ray said the zoo's keepers were aware 38-year-old Sally had been hand-reared due to her preference for human company. "She has always preferred to hang out with us and groom us rather than mix with the other chimps," he said. But Mr Ray said he would "never have expected" to meet the person who hand-reared the popular chimp.

"To be honest I would have expected them to have either passed on or moved well away from the area – so to meet Georgie and be part of this reunion has been an incredible experience." Mr Ray said chimpanzees were known for "incredible memory recall", which was obvious when Mrs Seccombe approached Sally at the zoo yesterday. "There is no doubt in my mind that she [Sally] recognised Georgie – it was actually quite overwhelming." The Seccombes lived next door to Auckland Zoo, and had no hesitation in raising the baby chimp as one of their own. The nappy-clad primate features prominently in family photo albums being pushed in a pram or playing with family members.

With large photo gallery. There's a news video here.

Family dog protects missing 2-year-old overnight

The only things that protected 22-month-old Tyler Jacobson Elgin, S.C. from the frigid overnight temperatures on Friday were a T-shirt, a diaper and his favourite buddy — a mixed Labrador retriever. “To tell you the truth, that dog is what kept him alive,” Kershaw County Sheriff Jim Matthews said. The heat from that dog may also be what prevented an infrared equipped search helicopter from spotting the missing child.

Authorities weren’t told that the child’s best buddy was also missing when the 911 call came in to the Kershaw County Sheriff’s Department at around 8 p.m. on Friday night. The boy’s mother, Jacklyn Marie Jacobson, and her boyfriend Jose Gloria told investigators that Tyler went missing after leaving the bedroom where they were all watching a movie to get some juice. The call to authorities about 45 minutes later prompted a massive search of the wooded area radiating out from the home on Ashley Creek Drive in Elgin.

Bloodhounds and about 25 members of area fire and police departments combed the woods while a helicopter ran a tight search pattern overhead. “The infrared picked up a lot of deer and other animals but no little boy,” Matthews said. The chopper flew until the need to refuel and increasing winds forced it to ground around 3 a.m. The searchers checked a nearby stream, and the above-ground pool in the Jacobsons’ backyard, to no avail.

YouTube link.

The search resumed on Saturday morning with about 75 police, fire department and civilian volunteers. A man walking down the street alerted some searchers that he thought he heard crying in the woods. A crying Tyler, and his dog, was found about 200 yards from the road, a quarter-mile from his home. Cold but otherwise, apparently, OK. He was examined by emergency personnel on the scene and taken to a local clinic for evaluation. The boy’s biological father was flying home from his military assignment in Hawaii on Saturday night. Matthews said the state Department of Social Services had been notified that the living conditions in the boy’s home were “deplorable.”

The loneliest whale in the world

In 2004, The New York Times wrote an article about the loneliest whale in the world. Scientists have been tracking her since 1992 and they discovered the problem:
She isn’t like any other baleen whale. Unlike all other whales, she doesn’t have friends. She doesn’t have a family. She doesn’t belong to any tribe, pack or gang. She doesn’t have a lover. She never had one. Her songs come in groups of two to six calls, lasting for five to six seconds each. But her voice is unlike any other baleen whale. It is unique—while the rest of her kind communicate between 12 and 25hz, she sings at 52hz. You see, that’s precisely the problem. No other whales can hear her. Every one of her desperate calls to communicate remains unanswered. Each cry ignored. And, with every lonely song, she becomes sadder and more frustrated, her notes going deeper in despair as the years go by.
Just imagine that massive mammal, floating alone and singing—too big to connect with any of the beings it passes, feeling paradoxically small in the vast stretches of empty, open ocean.
Forever. alone.

Increasing Number of Leatherback Turtle Nests Not All Good News

With fewer natural predators, baby turtles have a better chance of reaching adulthood.

Photo credit: ZA Photography/Creative Commons

The number of leatherback sea turtle nests at 68 different Florida beaches, a new study reveals, has increased dramatically since 1979. Since that time, Duke University researchers report, the number of nests has increased more than 10 percent each year.
This trend is good news for the endangered species, but researchers point out that the turtle's success may come at the expensive of other ocean species.

Article continues: Increasing Number of Leatherback Turtle Nests Not All Good News