Tag Archives: landmark

Watch the oceans acidify in real time

by MaricruBarker Posted on February 18, 2015

Watch the oceans acidify in real time

By on 18 Feb 2015commentsShare

We have a new way to measure ocean acidification … from space! Just as it did for the rotary phone and the which-way-is-my-weathervane-pointing meteorology, satellite technology will give a big boost to the tech available to monitor ocean chemistry, according to new research. Scientists previously relied on a patchy network of buoys, ships, and lab tests to monitor acidification. By combining satellite measurements of salinity and other ocean variables, scientists can now paint a near-instantaneous picture of the ocean’s acid baseline at any one time.

And, bonus points: It turns out that five years of disastrous ocean acidification is pretty mesmerizing:

Here’s more from Climate Central:

The new monitoring techniques can help monitor hot spots such as the Bay of Bengal, the Arctic Ocean, and the Caribbean, three places where ocean acidification could have major economic impacts but where little research has been done.

New monitoring efforts may come in particularly useful in the coming months, when the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration says there is a risk of major coral bleaching in the tropical Pacific and Indian Oceans through May, an event that may rival severe bleaching that occurred in 1998 and 2010. Some island nations in the tropical Pacific including Kiribati, Nauru and the Solomon Islands are already seeing ocean conditions that can cause bleaching.

Source:
Ocean Acidification, Now Watchable in Real Time

, Climate Central.

Share

Please

enable JavaScript

to view the comments.

Get stories like this in your inbox

AdvertisementAdvertisement

Read this article: 

Watch the oceans acidify in real time

Posted in Anchor, FF, G & F, GE, LAI, Landmark, LG, Mop, Nespresso, ONA, Radius, Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Watch the oceans acidify in real time

50 Years Ago This Week We Started Bombing Vietnam

by NestorMathieu Posted on February 9, 2015

Mother Jones

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC “-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN” “http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/loose.dtd”>

This story first appeared on the TomDispatch website.

The 1960s—that extraordinary decade—is celebrating its 50th birthday one year at a time. Happy birthday, 1965! How, though, do you commemorate the Vietnam War, the era’s signature catastrophe? After all, our government prosecuted its brutal and indiscriminate war under false pretexts, long after most citizens objected, and failed to achieve any of its stated objectives. More than 58,000 Americans were killed along with more than four million Vietnamese, Laotians, and Cambodians.

So what exactly do we write on the jubilee party invitation? You probably know the answer. We’ve been rehearsing it for decades. You leave out every troubling memory of the war and simply say: “Let’s honor all our military veterans for their service and sacrifice.”

For a little perspective on the 50th anniversary, consider this: we’re now as distant from the 1960s as the young Bob Dylan was from Teddy Roosevelt. For today’s typical college students, the Age of Aquarius is ancient history. Most of their parents weren’t even alive in 1965 when President Lyndon Johnson launched a massive escalation of the Vietnam War, initiating the daily bombing of the entire country, North and South, and an enormous buildup of more than half a million troops.

Continue Reading »

Original source:

50 Years Ago This Week We Started Bombing Vietnam

Posted in alo, Anchor, Casio, Citizen, Everyone, FF, GE, LAI, Landmark, LG, ONA, oven, PUR, Radius, Uncategorized, Venta | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on 50 Years Ago This Week We Started Bombing Vietnam

This chart of rising ocean temperatures is terrifying

by HarrisoMahan Posted on January 22, 2015

This chart of rising ocean temperatures is terrifying

By on 22 Jan 2015commentsShare

This year’s biggest climate change news was that 2014 was hottest year on record. Turns out, there’s bigger news: It was also the hottest year in the oceans, which are warming so fast they’re literally breaking the NOAA’s charts.

Don’t think you mind a little jacuzzification in your ocean? You’re wrong. Warmer oceans matter because “global warming” doesn’t just mean above average air temperatures over the course of a year — it actually refers to an increase in the total amount of heat energy contained in the Earth’s systems. While air temperatures can fluctuate on any given year, they are usually matched by an increase or decrease of the amount of heat stored in the oceans (which, by the way, absorb around 90 percent of total global warming heat). To know whether the system as a whole is getting warmer or not, scientists need to take into account the temperatures of the atmosphere, land, AND oceans.

Luckily, NOAA has been tracking ocean energy data for decades, updating its charts every few months. Unluckily, the newest data shows that, on top of 2014’s record-breaking air temperatures, ocean temperatures have also increased — to put it in layman’s terms — a shit ton. The spike is so significant that NOAA will have to rescale its heat chart.

Ocean heat content data to a depth of 2,000 meters

NOAA

OK, people. We don’t want to sound like a broken record about the reality of climate change … and actually this time we don’t have to. This is one broken record that speaks for itself.

Source:
The oceans are warming so fast, they keep breaking scientists’ charts

, The Guardian.

Share

Please

enable JavaScript

to view the comments.

Find this article interesting?

Donate now to support our work.

Get stories like this in your inbox

AdvertisementAdvertisement

Visit link:

This chart of rising ocean temperatures is terrifying

Posted in Anchor, Citizen, FF, GE, LAI, Landmark, LG, ONA, Uncategorized, Wiley | Tagged , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on This chart of rising ocean temperatures is terrifying

Now Republicans are trying to block international climate deals

by OctavioOlmstead Posted on January 22, 2015

Now Republicans are trying to block international climate deals

By on 22 Jan 2015commentsShare

Along with a whole mess of other amendments that senators are trying to tack on to Keystone pipeline legislation, there’s now one aimed at invalidating the U.S.-China climate pact announced last November. The amendment, offered by Sens. James Inhofe (R-Okla.) and Roy Blunt (R-Mo.), also takes a step toward derailing the world’s plans to reach some kind of greenhouse gas deal at the U.N. summit in Paris at the end of this year.

The amendment is a “sense of the Senate” measure designed to gauge how legislators feel. Even if it passed, it wouldn’t be legally binding, and it may not even end up receiving a vote in the Senate.

But, importantly, the amendment shows that the upcoming Paris conference is on congressional climate-change deniers’ radar, just as it is on the president’s. At the State of the Union address Tuesday, Obama gave the potential future agreement some significant verbiage, declaring, “because the world’s two largest economies came together, other nations are now stepping up, and offering hope that, this year, the world will finally reach an agreement to protect the one planet we’ve got.”

Diplomats from around the world have agreed to produce a nonbinding agreement in Paris specifically because a binding one would have to be ratified by the U.S. Senate, a prospect that is next to impossible. In this way, the world’s ambition to do something about the climate threat has already been derailed by the unscientific leanings of the U.S. Senate.

If legally binding legislation in the same vein as the Blunt-Inhofe “sense of the Senate” amendment were, in the future, to be proposed and passed, it would make negotiations even more difficult, and could scuttle a global climate agreement altogether.

Source:
GOP Knives Come Out Against US-China Carbon Pact, Paris Climate Talks

, National Journal.

Share

Please

enable JavaScript

to view the comments.

Find this article interesting?

Donate now to support our work.

Get stories like this in your inbox

AdvertisementAdvertisement

Source: 

Now Republicans are trying to block international climate deals

Posted in alo, Anchor, Citizen, FF, GE, LAI, Landmark, LG, ONA, Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Now Republicans are trying to block international climate deals

These Stunning Photos Show China’s Daily Onslaught of Toxic Smog

by NCSEmelybnkz Posted on November 19, 2014

Mother Jones

During the recent Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit in Beijing, something remarkable happened, as it does every time the world’s news cameras train their sites on the Chinese capital: The toxic gray air turned blue. The state-run press even gave it a name: “APEC blue”.

Magic! Not exactly. In a push to impress (pretend?), the magic wand that Beijing authorities waved to banish the smog was in fact a massive bureaucratic effort that could only be pulled off in one-party-rule China. Ten thousand industrial plants were temporarily shuttered, and nearly 40,000 others limited operating hours. An army of 434,000 staff and officials from provinces surrounding Beijing were called up to inspect the plants and enforce the order, according to the South China Morning Post.

In China, extreme tactics like this are not uncommon. The skies for 2008’s Beijing Olympics were cleared in part using cloud-seeding, a process that involves lacing clouds with chemicals to increase precipitation. The country boasts “the world’s largest rainmaking force, with 6,902 cloud-seeding artillery guns, 7,034 launchers for chemical-bearing rockets, more than 50 planes and 47,700 employees,” according to the Washington Post.

But now that APEC is over, so is APEC blue. The smog is returning with a vengeance as cars clog the streets and production gets back online:

To get a real sense of just how bad the air is in Beijing most of the time, check out this extraordinary series of photos taken by one Beijing man, who has been waging something of a social media war against the city’s toxic air since the beginning of 2013. Zou Yi has been taking photos of the Beijing sky every day and uploading them to his personal Weibo account (the rough equivalent of Twitter). The result—which we first saw in Petapixel and which was also reported in That’s, a Beijing expat magazine—is frightening:

A toxic view. Zou Yi/Sina Weibo via Petapixel/That’s

The daily photos of the Beijing Television Station building are taken from Zou’s apartment. They include the date and Beijing’s Air Quality Index readings. Independent US readings of the smog taken from atop its Beijing embassy were reportedly censored during APEC.

The photo series has even been picked up by Chinese state-run press, in a further sign that the constraints around reporting the pollution problem in the media have been gradually loosening over the last few years. China Radio International’s website quoted Zou Yi as saying, “I hope the activity will cause more people to realize the significance of protecting the environment.”

According to environmental policy experts, China’s air crisis was a major driver behind the landmark US-China climate deal announced last week. Under the agreement, China’s greenhouse gas emissions would peak around 2030. China’s pollution—which is now a political headache for its leaders, not simply an environmental concern—has been central to its pursuit of alternative energy sources, including natural gas, that could wean China’s economy from dirty coal.

Originally posted here:  

These Stunning Photos Show China’s Daily Onslaught of Toxic Smog

Posted in alo, alternative energy, Anchor, FF, G & F, GE, Landmark, LG, ONA, PUR, Radius, solar, Uncategorized, Venta | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on These Stunning Photos Show China’s Daily Onslaught of Toxic Smog

Ruth "Baby" Ginsburg Is Absolutely Crushing Halloween This Year

by JackHutchins Posted on October 31, 2014

Mother Jones

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC “-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN” “http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/loose.dtd”>

For those in the need of any last minute Halloween inspiration, look no further than Ruth “Baby” Ginsburg, quite possibly the most adorable tribute to the badass Supreme Court Justice herself we’ve witnessed.

The perfectly oversized glasses! The dainty jabot. Just perfect.

Read original article:  

Ruth "Baby" Ginsburg Is Absolutely Crushing Halloween This Year

Posted in Anchor, FF, G & F, GE, Landmark, LG, ONA, Radius, Uncategorized, Venta | Tagged , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Ruth "Baby" Ginsburg Is Absolutely Crushing Halloween This Year

How We Learn – Benedict Carey

by Myrna Posted on October 10, 2014

READ GREEN WITH E-BOOKS

How We Learn

The Surprising Truth About When, Where, and Why It Happens

Benedict Carey

Genre: Psychology

Price: $11.99

Publish Date: September 9, 2014

Publisher: Random House Publishing Group

Seller: Random House, LLC


In the tradition of The Power of Habit and Thinking, Fast and Slow comes a practical, playful, and endlessly fascinating guide to what we really know about learning and memory today—and how we can apply it to our own lives.   From an early age, it is drilled into our heads: Restlessness, distraction, and ignorance are the enemies of success. We’re told that learning is all self-discipline, that we must confine ourselves to designated study areas, turn off the music, and maintain a strict ritual if we want to ace that test, memorize that presentation, or nail that piano recital.   But what if almost everything we were told about learning is wrong? And what if there was a way to achieve more with less effort?   In How We Learn, award-winning science reporter Benedict Carey sifts through decades of education research and landmark studies to uncover the truth about how our brains absorb and retain information. What he discovers is that, from the moment we are born, we are all learning quickly, efficiently, and automatically; but in our zeal to systematize the process we have ignored valuable, naturally enjoyable learning tools like forgetting, sleeping, and daydreaming. Is a dedicated desk in a quiet room really the best way to study? Can altering your routine improve your recall? Are there times when distraction is good? Is repetition necessary? Carey’s search for answers to these questions yields a wealth of strategies that make learning more a part of our everyday lives—and less of a chore.   By road testing many of the counterintuitive techniques described in this book, Carey shows how we can flex the neural muscles that make deep learning possible. Along the way he reveals why teachers should give final exams on the first day of class, why it’s wise to interleave subjects and concepts when learning any new skill, and when it’s smarter to stay up late prepping for that presentation than to rise early for one last cram session. And if this requires some suspension of disbelief, that’s because the research defies what we’ve been told, throughout our lives, about how best to learn.   The brain is not like a muscle, at least not in any straightforward sense. It is something else altogether, sensitive to mood, to timing, to circadian rhythms, as well as to location and environment. It doesn’t take orders well, to put it mildly. If the brain is a learning machine, then it is an eccentric one. In How We Learn, Benedict Carey shows us how to exploit its quirks to our advantage.   Praise for How We Learn   “ How We Learn makes for a welcome rejoinder to the faddish notion that learning is all about the hours put in. Learners, [Benedict] Carey reminds us, are not automatons.” — The New York Times Book Review   “The insights of How We Learn apply to far more than just academic situations. Anyone looking to learn a musical instrument would benefit from understanding what frequency and type of practice is most effective. Even readers with little practical use for Carey’s information will likely find much of it fascinating, such as how intuition can be a teachable skill, or that giving practice exams at the very beginning of a semester improves grades. How We Learn is a valuable, entertaining tool for educators, students and parents.” — Shelf Awareness “This book is a revelation. I feel as if I’ve owned a brain for fifty-four years and only now discovered the operating manual.” —Mary Roach, bestselling author of Stiff and Gulp From the Hardcover edition.

More: 

How We Learn – Benedict Carey

Posted in alo, FF, GE, Landmark, Uncategorized | Tagged , , | Comments Off on How We Learn – Benedict Carey

Top Immigration Court Hands Huge Win to Battered Women Seeking Asylum. Conservatives Freak Out.

by BrandenYarbro Posted on August 28, 2014

Mother Jones

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC “-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN” “http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/loose.dtd”>

On Tuesday, the country’s top immigration court ruled that some migrants escaping domestic violence may qualify for asylum in the United States. The decision, from the Board of Immigration Appeals (BIA), is a landmark: It’s the first time that this court has recognized a protected group that primarily includes women. The ruling offers a glimmer of hope to asylum-seekers who have fled horrific abuse. The decision has also infuriated conservatives, who claim that the ruling is a veritable invitation to undocumented immigrants and marks a vast expansion of citizenship opportunities for foreigners.

The case involved a Guatemalan woman who ran away from her abusive husband. “This abuse included weekly beatings,” the court wrote in its summary of her circumstances. “He threw paint thinner on her, which burned her breast. He raped her.” The police refused to intervene, and on Christmas 2005, she and her three children illegally entered the United States.

Before Tuesday’s decision, immigration judges routinely denied asylum to domestic violence victims because US asylum law does not protect people who are persecuted on account of their gender. The law only shields people who are persecuted because they are members of a certain race, religion, nationality, political opinion, or particular social group. Tuesday’s ruling, however, recognized “married women in Guatemala who are unable to leave their relationship” as a unique social group—giving the Guatemalan woman standing to make an asylum claim.

Continue Reading »

Continue at source – 

Top Immigration Court Hands Huge Win to Battered Women Seeking Asylum. Conservatives Freak Out.

Posted in alo, Anchor, Citizen, FF, GE, LAI, Landmark, LG, ONA, Oster, Pines, Radius, Uncategorized, Venta | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Top Immigration Court Hands Huge Win to Battered Women Seeking Asylum. Conservatives Freak Out.

Let Us Now Psychoanalyze Famous Men (And Their Photographs)

by MonikaNQAmqd Posted on August 20, 2014

Mother Jones

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC “-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN” “http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/loose.dtd”>

Bob Somerby calls my attention to the following bit of psychobabble from Peter Baker and Matt Apuzzo of the New York Times. The subject is a photo released by the White House:

Mr. Holder, 63, is the one leaning forward, both in the photograph released by the White House and on the issues underlying the crisis in Ferguson, Mo. A child of the civil rights era, he grew up shaped by the images of violence in Selma, Ala., and joined sit-ins at Columbia University where protesters renamed an office after Malcolm X. Now in high office, he pushes for policy changes and is to fly on Wednesday to Ferguson to personally promise justice in the case of a black teenager who was fatally shot by a white police officer.

Mr. Obama, 53, is the one seemingly holding back in the White House photograph, contemplative, even brooding, as if seeking to understand how events could get so out of hand. He was too young and removed to experience the turmoil of the 1960s, growing up in a multiracial household in Hawaii and Indonesia. As he now seeks balance in an unbalanced time, he wrestles with the ghosts of history that his landmark election, however heady, failed to exorcise.

Seriously? Take a look at other photographs of Obama when he’s conferring with someone. Take a look at other photographs of any powerful person when they’re conferring with an underling. The boss is the one who’s free to lounge back and relax. The underling is the one who has to lean forward and make his case. This is standard body language. Obama uses it so often that in just the August “Photo of the Day” gallery alone, I count it in three out of four photos where Obama is conferring with other people.

Look, I’ve been there. You want to say something interesting. You need a hook. But come on. If you want to make the case that racial issues are more immediate for Holder than for Obama, go ahead. But don’t pretend that a bog ordinary White House photograph tells you anything. That’s just embarrassing. Before long you’ll be hiring body language “experts” and handwriting “analysts” to help you with your leads. Here be dragons.

Source: 

Let Us Now Psychoanalyze Famous Men (And Their Photographs)

Posted in alo, FF, GE, Landmark, LG, ONA, Uncategorized, Venta, Vintage | Tagged , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Let Us Now Psychoanalyze Famous Men (And Their Photographs)

Did the NRA Know About Robert Dowlut’s Reversed Murder Conviction?

by ArronKruger Posted on August 5, 2014

Mother Jones

For all its bluster, the National Rifle Association also knows how to maintain a disciplined silence in the face of uncomfortable questions. Most notably, it went to ground in the wake of the Newtown school shooting in December 2012, resurfacing after a few days with bland talking points, followed by Wayne LaPierre’s assertion that “The only thing that stops a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun.” Perhaps it’s not surprising, then, that in the week since I published an investigation into the complicated past of the NRA’s top lawyer, the gun lobby has not responded.

The subject of my article, NRA general counsel Robert J. Dowlut, is a low-profile yet influential legal expert who has spent more than 35 years pushing for an aggressively broad interpretation of the Second Amendment. In 1964, he was sentenced to life in prison for shooting his girlfriend’s mother in South Bend, Indiana. Several years later, the conviction was reversed due to bad police work and Dowlut eventually walked free.

Before I reported on Dowlut’s background, I contacted him 10 times by phone, email, and registered mail, explaining what I was writing about and inviting him to share his side of the story. When I did not hear from him, I asked the NRA and its public affairs head, Andrew Arulanandam, for comment multiple times. I also sent registered letters directly to NRA leaders including executive vice president Wayne LaPierre, president Jim Porter, and lobbying head Chris Cox. None responded.

If Dowlut or the NRA do decide to talk, here are the four questions I’d most like them to answer:

1. Did Dowlut ever disclose his past to his colleagues or the NRA? So far, none of Dowlut’s colleagues and friends have come forward to talk about what they did or didn’t know. David Hardy, a prominent gun-rights writer who’s known Dowlut “longer than I can remember” told me he had “no idea” about Dowlut’s previous conviction and reversal. Other gun-rights groups and bloggers have also been conspicuously silent since the story ran.

2. How did Dowlut’s experience influence his career? Dowlut’s writings strongly suggest that his legal odyssey played a role in shaping his philosophy. In a 1983 article, he disapprovingly cited Supreme Court Justice Byron White’s dissent in Miranda v. Arizona, a case very similar to his own. White had predicted that protecting criminal suspects’ rights “will return a killer, a rapist or other criminal to the streets.” Did Dowlut’s position—that gun rights are another essential defense against official overreach—stem from his time as the accused? Did this stance put Dowlut at odds with the NRA’s tough-on-crime talking points? (Consider that the NRA’s president from 1992 to 1994 was Robert Corbin, the prosecutor who made a point of retrying Ernesto Miranda after the landmark 1966 Supreme Court decision bearing his name. Corbin also served as the vice chairman of the NRA Civil Rights Defense Fund; Dowlut is the fund’s longtime secretary.)

3. Did Dowlut ever disclose his past to the bar? Several readers have asked if Dowlut disclosed his experience as a criminal defendant while applying for admission to the bar. (He was admitted to the District of Columbia Bar in 1980 and is also a member of the Virginia Bar.) I don’t know: bar applications are confidential and it’s not clear what was asked on the Character and Fitness sections of the DC and Virginia Bar applications four decades ago. Currently, the DC Bar asks applicants to disclose all previous arrests, charges, and convictions, even for matters that have been dismissed or expunged. The Virginia Bar asks applicants to disclose any involvement in criminal proceedings (including juvenile cases and traffic offenses). Assuming that Dowlut faced similar questions when he became a lawyer, how did he respond?

4. What really happened 51 years ago in South Bend? The South Bend police still consider the murder of Anna Marie Yocum on the night of April 15, 1963 to be an open case. Most of the main characters involved in Dowlut’s murder trial are dead; the victim’s daughter is alive, but refused to speak with me. The court records I obtained, while voluminous, offer competing narratives that leave a trail of nagging questions: The police interviewed several other potential suspects—what were they asked, and why were they released? If Dowlut had no knowledge of the crime, how was he able to lead detectives to a buried gun allegedly linked to it? Whom did the gun belong to? And finally, what does Dowlut think actually happened on that night?

Read original article: 

Did the NRA Know About Robert Dowlut’s Reversed Murder Conviction?

Posted in Anchor, FF, GE, LAI, Landmark, LG, ONA, PUR, Radius, Uncategorized, Venta | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Did the NRA Know About Robert Dowlut’s Reversed Murder Conviction?