[Anonymous selections from recent correspondence]
"For astronomer, an insect is as worthy of observation as the cosmos" [Susan Gonzalez, Yale News] Excerpt:
As an astronomer, Pieter van Dokkum explores celestial marvels and mysteries, but one of the most wondrous sights he’s ever witnessed is much more earthly: the metamorphosis of the dragonfly.
In his spare time, the Sol Goldman Family Professor of Astronomy has dedicated countless hours over the past decade to observing and photographing dragonflies, and celebrates the insect in his recent book, Dragonflies: Magnificent Creatures of Water, Air, and Land. The book, published by Yale University Press, features more than 160 of van Dokkum’s own color photographs, which trace the entire dragonfly life cycle.
The pictures coming back from Pluto are still a bit fuzzy. But just wait.
As of Monday, NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft was still almost six million miles away — about 25 times the distance from Earth to the moon — but it is closing in fast. About 7:50 a.m. Eastern time July 14, New Horizons is expected to pass less than 7,800 miles above Pluto’s surface. Alan Stern, the mission’s principal investigator, likes to say that if New Horizons were to view Manhattan from a similar distance, its telescopic lens would be able to pick out the ponds in Central Park.
The beauty of this area is bringing more and more visitors each year, and unfortunately, they are having some negative effects on the whale sharks. There is an easy step to be taken in protecting whale sharks in this region, and we hope you’ll take just a moment to let Carnival and Royal Caribbean Cruises know how important it is to you that they adjust their course by 7 miles to protect these magnificent animals.
The massive fishing operations that catch tuna for Bumble Bee use huge nets and long lines of hooks, methods that snare tens of thousands of sharks and other marine animals every year. [Thousands of baited hooks attract not only tuna, but sharks, turtles, and other wildlife. When the lines are pulled up hours or days later, huge numbers of dead or dying sharks are simply tossed overboard.]
Bumble Bee is in the process of being acquired by one of the largest seafood companies in the world. Investors are paying close attention and all eyes are on their business. If America’s consumers — people like YOU — rise up to demand change now, the company will have to take action.
Send a message today to demand that Bumble Bee stop selling tuna tainted by dead sharks and start fishing sustainably.
Sharks are disappearing from our oceans at a terrifying rate. And destructive fishing practices are only making things worse. Most shark species are slow to reproduce, so it takes a long time to rebuild populations harmed by human activities — and every animal lost to industrial fishing gear sets their recovery back.
The CVS Health Corporation said on Tuesday that it would resign from the U.S. Chamber of Commerce after revelations that the chamber and its foreign affiliates were undertaking a global lobbying campaign against antismoking laws.
The $25 billion company has hired a lobbying firm in Washington to help eviscerate the law. Last month, Congressman Jeff Duncan (R-SC)—who received $23,000 in campaign contributions from Duke—introduced two measures that would cripple America’s oldest and most important bird protection law....
One of Rep. Duncan's measures, embedded in the appropriations bill for the Commerce and Justice departments, has passed the full House. Another is pending as a rider on the Interior Department appropriations bill. Together they would make enforcement of the 97-year old law impossible.
If these restrictions had been in place when the BP Blowout occurred in 2010, BP would not have been liable for the deaths of an estimated one million birds killed in that disaster.
Tell Duke Energy to stand down from its attacks on the Migratory Bird Treaty Act.
Millions of migratory birds die from man-made causes each year on their semi-annual journeys. Many of these deaths can be prevented with good planning and cost-effective preventive measures. This is a moment when we should be strengthening the MBTA and other conservation laws, not striking them from the books!
"The battle for control of the growing breast milk industry." [Michael Catalini, Associated Press, ksl.com] Excerpt:
It could trade for 400 times more than the price of crude oil and 2,000 times more than iron ore. If sold off the shelf, it could cost more than 150 times the price of a gallon of cow's milk and 15 times more than coffee.When PETA [People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals] rescued a family of adorable pigs and piglets from a squalid pen in North Carolina, we got it on camera—and the footage is undeniably heartwarming. (Wait until you see the tiny piglets run with glee as they feel fresh grass beneath their feet for what may be the first time!) [1:52]
Going for as much as $4 per ounce, breast milk is a hot commodity that is emerging as a surprisingly cutthroat industry, one that states are seeking to regulate amid a battle for control between nonprofit and for-profit banks that supply hospital neonatal units....
"You just never know who it's going to," said Kelli Russell, of Washington, North Carolina, who donates her breast milk. "It could go to someone who could someday cure cancer or it could be someone that marries my son or takes care of me if I need help one day if I'm in the hospital."
Rachel Palencik, of West Chester, Pennsylvania, said her breast milk was taking up space in her freezer, so she tried to donate it to a bank but didn't have enough. So she tried to sell it — and wouldn't try it again.
"A lot of it was either scammers or men wanting to consume it, which isn't my cup of tea," she said [emphasis ours]. So she ended up donating to an individual mother rather than through a bank.
So why are these wolves being exterminated?
Because a sheep producer moving sheep through the national forest requested they be killed. It’s that simple.
Wolf packs like this one will never have a chance if all the odds are against them. There was no effort made to utilize non-lethal methods to prevent conflicts between wolves and sheep. Defenders’ wolf specialist in Idaho pleaded for a chance to help intervene with non-lethal strategies. However, because the rancher complained about the wolves, lethal force was immediately taken – and the U.S. Forest Service (USFS) is standing by and letting it happen! Now, wolves are dying, and supporters just like you are being denied access to trails on public land where the kill order is being carried out.
Defenders of Wildlife is pressing USFS to push back and have the kill order called off. We don’t know how many wolves are already dead, but we haven’t given up hope of saving at least some of them.
U-S-A, U-S-A!
To recap a week of legislative disgrace: They voted to take away your right to battle unwanted developments by eliminating zoning-protest petitions. They proposed a bill to ward off pesky groups like the Sierra Club and the Southern Environmental Law Center from challenging their destructive environmental policies. And then, because that wasn't enough, they revamped the Greensboro City Council, which had entirely too many Democrats on it, just like they did Wake County's commission and school board. Democracy is for suckers, guys.
Spot the common thread? We did: The rights of the powerful need protecting, while, for the rest of you common peasants wanting to prevent congestion and preserve the clean-water supply and have your votes count, well, tough shit. Which, naturally, is exactly what the Founders had in mind 239 years ago.
Or, you know, not.
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| Peter G. Neumann, a computer security pioneer |
An elite group of security technologists has concluded that the American and British governments cannot demand special access to encrypted communications without putting the world’s most confidential data and critical infrastructure in danger.As you get older, it is easier to be positive. You care less about what other people think. I don't question myself anymore. I've even earned the right to be wrong.
A new paper from the group, made up of 14 of the world’s pre-eminent cryptographers and computer scientists, is a formidable salvo in a skirmish between intelligence and law enforcement leaders, and technologists and privacy advocates. After Edward J. Snowden’s revelations — with security breaches and awareness of nation-state surveillance at a record high and data moving online at breakneck speeds — encryption has emerged as a major issue in the debate over privacy rights.
That has put Silicon Valley at the center of a tug of war. Technology companies including Apple, Microsoft and Google have been moving to encrypt more of their corporate and customer data after learning that the National Security Agency and its counterparts were siphoning off digital communications and hacking into corporate data centers.
Yet law enforcement and intelligence agency leaders argue that such efforts thwart their ability to monitor kidnappers, terrorists and other adversaries. In Britain, Prime Minister David Cameron threatened to ban encrypted messages altogether. In the United States, Michael S. Rogers, the director of the N.S.A., proposed that technology companies be required to create a digital key to unlock encrypted data, but to divide the key into pieces and secure it so that no one person or government agency could use it alone.
The encryption debate has left both sides bitterly divided and in fighting mode. The group of cryptographers deliberately issued its report a day before James B. Comey Jr., the director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, and Sally Quillian Yates, the deputy attorney general at the Justice Department, are scheduled to testify before the Senate Judiciary Committee on the concerns that they and other government agencies have that encryption technologies will prevent them from effectively doing their jobs.
You thought you were having a bad day?
If you think lawyers don't have heart, read the best lawyer story of all time, bar none.
The Salvation Army realizes that it has never received a donation from the city's most successful lawyer. So a volunteer pays the lawyer a visit in his lavish office.
The volunteer opens the meeting by saying, "Our research shows that even though your annual income is over two million dollars, you don't give a penny to charity. Wouldn't you like to give something back to your community?"
The lawyer thinks for a minute and says, "First, did your research also show you that my mother is dying after a long, painful illness, and she has huge medical bills that are far beyond her ability to pay?"
Embarrassed, the rep mumbles, "Uh, no, I didn't know that."
"Secondly," says the lawyer, "did it show that my brother, a disabled Veteran, is blind and confined to a wheelchair and is unable to support his wife and six children?"
The stricken rep begins to stammer an apology, but is cut off again.
"Thirdly, did your research also show you that my sister's husband died in a dreadful car accident, leaving her penniless with a mortgage and three children, one of whom is disabled and another that has learning disabilities requiring an array of private tutors?"
The humiliated rep, completely beaten, says, "I'm so sorry. I had no idea."
And the lawyer says, "So, if I didn't give any money to them, what makes you think I'd give any to you?"
I didn't say it was your fault, I said I was blaming you.
Limerick of the week:
There was an old bastard named Lenin[By Robert Conquest, as recounted in Christopher Hitchen's memoir, Hitch-22, pp. 173-174.]
Who did two or three million men in.
That's a lot to have done in
But where he did one in
That old bastard Stalin did ten in.
| Copyright © 2015 by Morris Dean |
Many thanks for the correspondence: An insect is as worthy of observation as the cosmos, Pluto's close-up, the largest fish in the ocean, Bumble Bee killing sharks, U.S. Chamber of Commerce lobbying globally against antismoking laws, Duke Energy trying to defeat the Migratory Bird Treaty Act, defeat Citizens United. Who will control the growing breast milk industry? Pig family rescued, wolf pack being trapped and killed, farm animal care conference. How did you celebrate the Fourth of July? Support the Sierra Club and the Southern Environmental Law Center, remember the Gun Powder Plot, opposition to governmental access to encrypted communication, positively aging, bad wet day, the heart of a lawyer, not your fault, two old bastards....
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