June 28, 2014

Rare Pallas Cat discovers camera, investigates

Motion-sensing “camera traps” placed deep in remote ecosystems have been instrumental in recording the natural behavior of some of the world’s most elusive animals -- though sometimes they do catch something else: the earth-shattering moment they seem to realize that they’re being watched.

Just watch as this ferociously furry Pallas’s cat discovers the camera placed outside his den then move in for a better look.

These small felines, standing roughly the same size as a domestic house cat, are notoriously shy in their mountainous habitat high in the Himalayan mountain range. Footage like this, gathered from camera traps, is often the only evidence researchers have to go on that they are actually there.

In fact, just earlier this year, these majestic little Pallas’s cats was discovered living in Nepal for the first time ever -- offering tantalizing clues that the notoriously shy species’ range is larger than previously thought.

https://www.thedodo.com/watch-the-earth-shattering-mom-601443618.html

June 28, 2014

Chimpanzees observed making fashion choices

By Ben Guarino

It’s a trend that’s taken a troop of chimpanzees by storm: a blade of grass dangling from an ear. The "grass-in-ear behavior," as scientists have termed it, seems to be one of the first times that chimpanzees have created a tradition with no discernible purpose -- a primate fashion statement, in other words.

There’s no doubt that chimpanzees have culture, as different chimp groups will use unique tools: to groom, to crack open nuts, to fish for termites.

But, according to a study in the journal Animal Cognition, chimpanzee culture now includes something that seems altogether arbitrary: ear accoutrements.

“Our observation is quite unique in the sense that nothing seems to be communicated by it,” says study author Edwin van Leeuwen, a primate expert at the Max Planck Institute in The Netherlands.

To figure out if this was really a tradition, and not just chimpanzees sticking grass in their ears at random, van Leeuwen and his colleagues spent a year observing four chimp groups in Chimfunshi Wildlife Orphanage Trust, a sanctuary in Zambia. Only one troop performed the grass-in-ear behavior, although all of the chimps lived in the same grassy territory. There’s no genetic or ecological factors, the scientists believe, that would account for this behavior -- only culture.

more

https://www.thedodo.com/for-the-first-time-chimpanzees-605888880.html

June 28, 2014

Why Is the World Silent? (on Egypt)

Disappeared by Egypt’s Military
By KHALED AL-QAZZAZ

TORA, Egypt — In a few days’ time, I will complete 365 days of imprisonment, more than half spent in solitary confinement and under severe limitations in the maximum-security Scorpion wing of Tora prison in Cairo. I have spent the past year thinking about what drove me to where I am today. I have also been thinking about an explanation for why politicians, human rights activists and the media have largely been silent about my case.

I am an engineer by education and an educator by profession. After the Egyptian revolution in 2011, I became interested in politics. I joined the presidential campaign and then found myself chosen to be the foreign relations secretary to Egypt’s first democratically elected president, Mohamed Morsi, in July 2012.

When the military ousted Mr. Morsi’s government, it was predictable that the president and his aides would pay a heavy price. I made the decision, along with eight other staff members, to wait with the president for the moment of his arrest on July 3, 2013. On the orders of the newly appointed secretary of defense, the chief of the Republican Guard arrested Mr. Morsi along with the rest of us. I expected this. What I did not expect was the silence that followed our arrests.

Over the year of Mr. Morsi’s presidency, our government met with scores of world leaders, either through official visits or during international conferences. I attended almost every meeting as the president’s note-taker. We worked closely with Western leaders and their envoys to broker peace in the region.

more

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/06/28/opinion/khaled-al-qazzaz-disappeared-by-egypts-military.html

June 28, 2014

NASA Releases Beautifully Colorized Image of Our Sun

NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory (or SDO) just released this beautiful, painterly image of the Sun. The SDO was designed to help us understand the Sun's influence on Earth and near-Earth space by studying the solar atmosphere. In this photo, NASA's sun-gazing spacecraft spotted an unusual series of eruptions, forced by fast "puffs" from the Sun's outermost atmosphere (the corona), to interplanetary space. Starting on January 17, 2013, the puffs took place about once every three hours, then, after 12 hours, larger eruptions occurred.

"Looking at the corona in extreme ultraviolet light we see the source of the puffs is a series of energetic jets and related flares," said Nathalia Alzate, a solar scientist at the University of Aberystwyth in Wales. "The jets are localized, catastrophic releases of energy that spew material out from the sun into space. These rapid changes in the magnetic field cause flares, which release a huge amount of energy in a very short time in the form of super-heated plasma, high-energy radiation and radio bursts. The big, slow structure is reluctant to erupt, and does not begin to smoothly propagate outwards until several jets have occurred."

She continues, "We still need to understand whether there are shock waves, formed by the jets, passing through and driving the slow eruption. Or whether magnetic reconfiguration is driving the jets allowing the larger, slow structure to slowly erupt. Thanks to recent advances in observation and in image processing techniques we can throw light on the way jets can lead to small and fast, or large and slow, eruptions from the Sun."

This stunning image is a combination of three wavelengths of light. It shows one of the multiple jets that led to a series of slow coronal puffs. The stunning image has been colorized in red, green and blue.

http://www.mymodernmet.com/profiles/blogs/nasa-solar-puffs

http://www.nasa.gov/content/goddard/puffing-sun-gives-birth-to-reluctant-eruption/#.U6644BYspuZ

June 28, 2014

Bennett Toon- Can't tolerate a vigilante

June 27, 2014

Marijuana food truck set to roll into Washington state this weekend

Here's a new twist to the food truck fad: A converted school bus featuring marijuana-infused sandwiches and other treats is set to open for business in Washington state this weekend.

The Samich bus is the latest example of businesses that are sprouting to cash in on the growing pot industry. It is a promotion for Seattle-based Magical Butter, a company that sells a kitchen appliance that creates cannabis-infused cooking oils, herbs and spices at home.

Washington and Colorado are currently the only two states with laws supporting recreational marijuana use. Next week, New York is expected to join 22 states, along with the District of Columbia, that have legalized medical marijuana usage in some form. Medical marijuana has been legal in California since 1996.

But because recreational marijuana retailers can't legally sell edibles in Washington until July, only customers wielding medical marijuana cards can order Samish's weed-laced dishes such as truffle popcorn, peanut butter and jelly, and a Vietnamese pork banh mi.

more

http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-marijuana-food-truck-20140627-story.html

June 27, 2014

Quebec unionized Wal-Mart workers win Supreme Court victory

The Supreme Court of Canada has sided with the union representing former Wal-Mart employees who claimed the company violated Quebec labour law when it abruptly closed its store in Jonquière, Que., not long after the workers voted to unionize.

In a 5-2 decision delivered Friday morning, the court ruled that the 190 employees who were terminated when the store was closed are entitled to compensation.

Bernard Philion​, one of the lawyers who represented the United Food and Commercial Workers Union in the nearly decade-long battle, said the decision sends a message.

"No matter how big the employer is, the Quebec legislation protects workers and their rights," he said.

The Wal-Mart employees in Jonquière became the first in North America to be unionized when they joined the union in 2004.

more

http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/montreal/quebec-unionized-wal-mart-workers-win-supreme-court-victory-1.2689646

June 27, 2014

A Blimp Flew Over the NSA in the Name of Surveillance Reform

One way to announce a new campaign against NSA surveillance, I suppose, is to fly a gigantic blimp over the NSA's most important data center. That's exactly what the Electronic Frontier Foundation and Greenpeace did this morning, turning the tables on government mass surveillance.

Parker Higgins, an EFF activist, hopped in a Greenpeace-owned blimp and flew it over NSA's sprawling, million square-foot, $1.5 billion Utah Data Center. He and some Greenpeace activists flew for about an hour, according to David Pomerantz of Greenpeace.

"We flew for just over an hour, which is what we had scheduled, and landed as planned," Pomerantz told me in an email. "We haven't heard anything from any government agencies to my knowledge."

As I heard about the stunt, I was on the phone with the Center for Democracy and Technology's Greg Nojeim, a lawyer who works on NSA surveillance issues. He hadn't heard about the stunt beforehand, but asked me, "Is it armed? That's very interesting."


more

http://motherboard.vice.com/read/eff-and-greenpeace-spent-the-morning-hovering-over-the-nsa-in-a-blimp

June 27, 2014

How the Clintons went from ‘dead broke’ to rich: Bill earned $104.9 million for speeches

Over seven frenetic days, Bill Clinton addressed corporate executives in Switzerland and Denmark, an investors’ group in Sweden and a cluster of business and political leaders in Austria. The former president wrapped up his European trip in the triumphant Spanish Hall at Prague Castle, where he shared his thoughts on energy to a Czech business summit.

His pay: $1.4 million.

That lucrative week in May 2012 offers a glimpse into the way Clinton has leveraged his global popularity into a personal fortune. Starting just two weeks after exiting the Oval Office, Clinton has delivered hundreds of paid speeches, lifting a family that was “dead broke,” as wife Hillary Rodham Clinton phrased it earlier this month, to a point of such extraordinary wealth that it is now seen as a potential political liability if she runs for president in 2016.

Bill Clinton has been paid $104.9 million for 542 speeches around the world between January 2001, when he left the White House, and January 2013, when Hillary stepped down as secretary of state, according to a Washington Post review of the family’s federal financial disclosures.

Although slightly more than half of his appearances were in the United States, the majority of his speaking income, $56.3 million, came from foreign speeches, many of them in China, Japan, Canada and the United Kingdom, the Post review found.

more

http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/how-the-clintons-went-from-dead-broke-to-rich-bill-earned-1049-million-for-speeches/2014/06/26/8fa0b372-fd3a-11e3-8176-f2c941cf35f1_story.html

June 27, 2014

Elizabeth Warren says the U.S. economy is rigged. Many americans agree.

BY JAIME FULLER June 27 at 6:30 AM
Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) has built a sizable political profile — including the requisite presidential speculation — by espousing a simple idea: that the system is "rigged" against average Americans.

And you might be surprised who agrees with her: A whole bunch of conservatives.


According to a new Pew survey, 62 percent of Americans think that the economic system unfairly favors the powerful, and 78 percent think that too much power is concentrated in too few companies. The discontent isn't limited to those who share Warren's liberal ideology; 69 percent of young conservative-leaning voters and 48 percent of the most conservative voters agree that the system favors the powerful, according to Pew.

Although Warren seems an outlier in the legislative branch for her fiery discontent with inequality — and the role she says Wall Street plays in exacerbating it — the Pew survey suggests that the vast majority of Americans are at least open to her underlying premise.

more
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/the-fix/wp/2014/06/27/elizabeth-warren-says-the-american-economy-is-rigged-many-conservatives-agree/?tid=rssfeed

title changed to better reflect the poll results