Chamois mountain goat in its natural habitat.
Credit: Shutterstock
Climate change is inducing some logically straightforward adaptations in plants and animals. As Earth’s temperature warms, species used to cooler climates make moves to escape the newfound warmth: Some bird species are shifting their ranges northward; some fish are moving towards the poles; and some plants are slowly moving upslope.
But recent research has uncovered another, less immediately obvious adaptation: As temperatures go up, some species are becoming—or are predicted to become—smaller.
Last month, for instance, a study found that the size of European House Sparrows living in Australia and New Zealand corresponded with their region’s maximum summer temperature, with the smallest birds living in the areas with the warmest summer highs. Sam Andrew, the lead researcher on the study, recently published a different study on zebra finches that found similar results: higher temperatures mean smaller finches. This correlation could have implications for the birds’ sizes in the coming decades, as Earth’s temperature […]
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Sunday, February 18th, 2018
Kyle Mantyla, - Right Wing Watch
Stephan: When you hear references on television or read in the paper about Trump's base this is who they are talking about. About a third of the country lives in this reality.
Carl Gallup, Trump supporter
Credit: Daily Mail
Carl Gallups, a right-wing pastor and conspiracy theorist who spoke at Trump campaign rallies in 2016, appeared on TheDove TV’s “Focus Today” program yesterday to discuss the mass shooting at a Florida high school earlier this week, which he said was part of a demonic attack aimed at weakening America through gun control in preparation for the rise of the Antichrist.
“This has it’s origins in the spiritual realms,” he said. “There is a concerted demonic attempt to undermine the United States of America, to bring it down, to destroy the most precious among us. Why is that such a demonic attempt? Because we know the scriptures say that there will arise a generation that will see this Antichrist system, this one-world order … The bottom line is we are headed that way.”
“The United States is the largest Christian nation the planet has ever seen,” Gallups continued. “It’s the number one military superpower, it’s the number one economic superpower and so there is a demonic attempt to destroy it, to bring […]
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Saturday, February 17th, 2018
, - Brennan Center for Justice
Stephan: Don't you find it interesting, particularly in light of the Special Counsel releases today, that while we have hundreds of billions of dollars for the military industrial complex, as President Eisenhower named it, and Trump wants to spend somewhere between $20-30 million for a classic fascist military parade, that neither Trump nor the Republican leaders of congress has said anything about fixing the shabby and antiquated state of the American electoral process.
Just how bad is it? The Brennan Center for Justice dug into the question, this is their report.
Credit: Brennan Center for Justice
New York, N.Y. – Election officials across the country say they are heading into the 2018 midterms with outdated voting machines and computer systems, and many of them do not have the resources to replace them. In response to a nationwide survey distributed by the Brennan Center for Justice at NYU Law, 229 officials in 33 states reported they need to replace their voting machines by 2020. Most of these officials do not currently have enough funds for those replacements. The Brennan Center says these old machines are more vulnerable to breakdown, malfunction, and hacking.
“Too much of the nation’s election infrastructure is crumbling,” said Larry Norden, deputy director of the democracy program at the Brennan Center. “More than two-thirds of officials who told us they need to replace their machines before 2020 also said they have inadequate funds to do so. Continuing to use this equipment not only makes our elections more vulnerable to breakdown and malfunction, but to hacking as well. Election officials across the country are […]
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Saturday, February 17th, 2018
SARAH JONES and EMILY ATKIN, - Mother Jones
Stephan: Yet another report on the state of tap water in the United States, particularly in rural areas, a true measure of the state of American infrastructure. Depending on where you are you can't be assured that what comes out of the tap is truly potable, as this report describes.
We've spent 5.6 trillion in Afghanistan and Iraq, and have what to show for it? How out of whack do things have to get?
Pay attention to this: You can already see the drive to privatize water instead of seeing if as a community effort. This is all part of the Neo-feudalism Trend. As we are going water will become a commercial commodity not a right.
Stories like this always make me think of myself in Mr. Pattison's history class reading the European history that led to World War I and wondering, why couldn't they see where they were headed? Then I ask myself how is this current situation going to look 100 years from now. Not pretty.
Dirty water coming out of a rural tap.
Credit: Getty Stock
“I’ll be honest with you,” said Gary Michael Hunt. “You never know when you go in there and turn on the faucet if you have water, or if you ain’t going to have no water.” Hunt, a former coal miner who lives in Martin County, Kentucky, said he has had reliability and safety issues with his drinking water for about 25 years—including water permeated by excessive amounts of disinfectant chemicals. “The water stinks. It’s cloudy-looking,” he explained. Hunt’s not alone: More than a thousand of his neighbors in Martin County regularly have to deal with creaky faucets that sometimes spew liquids of various scents and hues.
The county water board says these issues stem from old, busted-up water infrastructure and a “bleak” financial situation. To solve it, the board proposed raising water bills. That did not go well. At a fiscal-court meeting on January 11, Hunt stood up, used profanity, and shook a finger in the board’s direction. A […]
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