Every summer, phytoplankton spread across the northern basins of the
North Atlantic and Arctic Oceans, with blooms spanning hundreds and
sometimes thousands of kilometers. Nutrient-rich, cooler waters tend to
promote more growth among marine plants and phytoplankton than is found
in tropical waters. Blooms this summer off of Scandinavia seem to be
particularly intense.
On July 18, 2018, the Operational Land Imager (OLI) on Landsat 8
acquired a natural-color image [below] of a swirling green
phytoplankton bloom in the Gulf of Finland, a section of the Baltic Sea.
Note how the phytoplankton trace the edges of a vortex; it is possible that this ocean eddy is pumping up nutrients from the depths...
In recent years, the proliferation of algae blooms in the Baltic Sea has led to the regular appearance of “dead zones”
in the basin. Phytoplankton and cyanobacteria consume the abundant
nutrients in the Baltic—fueled largely by runoff from sewage and
agriculture—and reproduce in such vast numbers that their growth and
decay deplete the oxygen content of the water. According to researchers
from Finland’s University of Turku, the dead zone this year is estimated
to span about 70,000 square kilometers (27,000 square miles).
A research team from Finland and Germany reported this month
that oxygen levels in recent years in the Baltic Sea are at their
lowest levels in the past 1500 years. More frequent and massive blooms,
combined with warming seas due to climate change, are making it harder
for fish and other marine life to thrive in this basin.
I cropped the top photo from the lower one; the tiny white dots are boats.
That's seems hard to believe, but that's the number cited by CNBC:
Seventy-eight percent of full-time workers said they live paycheck to
paycheck, up from 75 percent last year, according to a recent report
from CareerBuilder. Overall, 71 percent of all U.S. workers said they're now in debt, up from 68 percent a year ago...
Even those making over six figures said they struggle to make ends meet,
the report said. Nearly 1 in 10 of those making $100,000 or more said
they usually or always live paycheck to paycheck, and 59 percent of
those in that salary range said they were in the red.
The typical American worker now earns around $44,500 a year,
not much more than what the typical worker earned in 40 years ago,
adjusted for inflation. Although the US economy continues to grow, most
of the gains have been going to a relatively few top executives of large
companies, financiers, and inventors and owners of digital devices.
America doesn’t have a jobs crisis. It has a good jobs crisis...
Two fundamental forces have changed the structure of the US economy,
directly altering the balance of power between business and labor. The
first is the increasing difficulty for workers of joining together in
trade unions. The second is the growing ease by which corporations can
join together in oligopolies or to form monopolies...
This great shift in bargaining power, from workers to corporations, has
pushed a larger portion of national income into profits and a lower
portion into wages than at any time since the second world war. In
recent years, most of those profits have gone into higher executive pay
and higher share prices rather than into new investment or worker pay...
Another consequence: corporations and wealthy individuals have had more
money to pour into political campaigns and lobbying, while labor unions
have had far less...
The combination of high corporate profits and growing corporate
political power has created a vicious cycle: higher profits have
generated more political influence, which has altered the rules of the
game through legislative, congressional, and judicial action – enabling
corporations to extract even more profit. The biggest losers, from whom
most profits have been extracted, have been average workers.
The most striking example I can think of recently where a trailer was strikingly different from the movie was Suburbicon. The trailer suggests a Coen brothers-style black comedy in which Matt Damon is the hero. That would be the case only if gang rape and racial violence are considered comedic elements (and Matt Damon is the antithesis of a hero in the film).
I first took note of Imran Khan in this blog back in 2010, when he spearheaded a nationwide effort to address the crisis of massive flooding covering one-fifth of Pakistan. The following year The Guardian took note of his criticism of longstanding graft and corruption in Pakistan's politics.
That populist approach has culminated in his successful election to lead the country; he is expected to easily form a coalition government and become Prime Minister. The video above is a 24-minute worthwhile longwatch that incorporates three regional journalists from Islamabad and Lahore. They make note of the breadth of his appeal, winning districts from the Khyber to Punjab, as well as he major cities. Perhaps because of his cricketing fame, he is hugely popular (with the people and the politicians) in neighboring India - a major advantage in securing regional peace. And this morning the India Times headline reads "Chinese media goes gaga over Imran Khan..." after his party Tweeted in Mandarin about improving ties with China.
He has a complicated task ahead, having inherited a government that for generations has been corrupt and has wasted the country's resources. He has to deal with military generals who have exercised immense control of national policies in the past. His country shares national borders with India, China, Afghanistan, and Iran. He will want to continue modernizing his country, with a major focus on the welfare of the common people rather than the military.
Pakistan matters because, with its youthful population of more than 200 million
(66% are under 30), it is a country of vast potential handicapped by
endemic poverty, illiteracy and inequality. It is also, not
coincidentally, a battleground pitting anti-western Islamists, schooled
in international jihad in Saudi-funded madrassas, against the secular,
anglophone elite. It is central to the “war on terror”. Its stability
and security, or lack of it, has a potentially global impact.
For the British, Pakistan exercises an abiding fascination, rooted in
the Raj’s disastrous part in its bloody 1947 birth and in continuing,
close ethnic and cultural ties. For the Americans, self-anointed heirs
to empire, Pakistan plays the dual role of indispensable ally and
duplicitous villain in their endless Afghan drama. For many in India,
Islamabad is the nuclear-armed bogeyman next door. For expansionist
China, Pakistan is a key link in its grandiose Belt and Road trading franchise, reliant on Beijing’s loans, investment and goodwill...
Pakistan’s generals are accustomed to exercising sole control of foreign
and security policy. Challenging them can be a career or even
life-ending experience. So if Khan, for example, wants to break with the
US, befriend India, or talk to terrorists, he had better watch his
back. Whatever the popular storyline says about democracy redux, the
hidden hand on the new prime minister’s shoulder is real. It will be
hard to shake off.
Pakistan has reached a turning point that could possibly alter its dysfunctional trajectory... Mr. Khan brings something new: more star power and mystique than any
recent Pakistani leader and perhaps a better chance to change the
country’s narrative... “Relatively few Pakistani leaders have won over the West... But
Khan is familiar with operating in the international world. He already
has strong name recognition. He doesn’t need to be introduced.”
Oxford-educated and once married to a
wealthy British woman, Mr. Khan is clearly comfortable in the highest
circles of Western power brokers. He was close friends with Princess Diana. (Shortly before she died, Mr. Khan has said, he was trying to help her find a new husband.)
Still, the old Mr. Khan is not necessarily the new Mr. Khan. In recent years, he has undergone a complex metamorphosis,
distancing himself from his days as a star athlete and ladies’ man. He
now expresses sympathy for the Taliban and for Pakistan’s harsh
blasphemy laws, which include the death penalty, positions that play
well domestically...
Take his views on religion. He has said that he wants to reform the
madrasa system in which countless young Pakistani boys have been
brainwashed in Quranic schools to fight for extremist groups. At the
same time, Mr. Khan has supported Pakistan’s blasphemy laws and teamed
up with hard-line religious groups that a few years ago rioted in
Islamabad, the capital...
To Western governments, Mr. Khan’s
idiosyncrasies may not even matter that much. Analysts say there are
only two issues the West really cares about in Pakistan: militant groups
and nuclear arms. Mr. Khan will not have much say in either. The
military and intelligence establishment handles both.
The
biggest issue that Mr. Khan will control is the economy. This is where
he could shine as a leader or quickly be subsumed. Pakistan is facing a balance of payments crisis, its currency has rapidly devalued, its debt is soaring.
Economists say the steps the next prime minister must take are obvious
but painful. The national budget (including the military’s) needs to be
cut, Pakistanis must pay more for energy, old state-run businesses need
to be privatized and taxes — many more taxes — need to be collected.
TYWKIWDBI wishes Imran Khan success in this enormous task. We will continue to follow events and blog them every now and then.
When Maura Caldwell was nine months pregnant
and working out at her Minneapolis gym, people would often ask to take
her photo. Not because she was deadlifting 135 pounds, but because she
was doing it with her toddler strapped to her back.
“I love working out and when
Grandma wasn’t able to come watch my son, I’d just wear him at the gym
and add a little extra weight to my workouts,” Caldwell said. “Now,
having had a second baby, I find babywearing even more valuable and
essential.”
“Babywearing” is a growing practice
among a new generation of parents who are ditching the stroller in
favor of strapping their babies — and sometimes even toddlers — into
carriers to tote around on their backs, chests or hips. Unlike baby
backpacks once used for toting infants to and from home, parents now
rely on slings and soft carriers to bring their children with them
wherever they go: to the gym, grocery store, concerts, even work.
Though babywearing has been met
with safety warnings from the medical field, proponents say it helps
infants thrive physically, socially and emotionally.
More information at the StarTribune (whence the photo, cropped for emphasis, credit Richard Tsong-Taatarii), and at Wikipedia, where there is a reminder that this is an ancient and worldwide practice.
Madison, Wisconsin is an urban island in a sea of farmland in southern
Wisconsin, so it's not surprising that there are probably 12-15 farmers'
markets scattered through the city and suburbs.
The one closest to home is within walking distance, between our house and the local library. The participants are mostly local farmers, but also bakers, beekeepers, cheesemakers, and other specialists.
There's no better place to get fresh food.
Tomorrow I'll be heading out to my favorite local farm to get the season's first sweet corn.
The images embedded in this week's gif-fest were selected from a gallery of "Garden Photography of the Year" (macro) entries posted at The Guardian; titles/content and credits at the link.
"The law against sodomy goes back fourteen hundred years to the Emperor Justinian, who felt that there should be such a law because, as everyone knew, sodomy was the principal cause of earthquakes.
"Sodomy" gets them. For elderly, good-hearted audiences, I paraphrase; the word is not used. College groups get a fuller discussion of Justinian and his peculiar law, complete with quotations from Procopius. California audiences living on or near the San Andreas Fault laugh the loudest - and the most nervously. No wonder."
--- Gore Vidal, Matters of Fact and Fiction, 1977
Cited in Simon Winchester's A Crack in the Edge of the World, which I'm currently reading.
When I travel I particularly enjoy driving secondary roads - the "blue highways," as William Least Heat-Moon designated them. And if time permits when I'm in a new area, I try to visit local county museums. These ventures, almost always staffed and maintained by local enthusiasts, offer better insight into local history than what one gets from large historical society or national museums.
Yesterday I had the opportunity to visit a new museum - the Driftless Historium in Mt. Horeb, Wisconsin. This is a brand-new, well-designed, spotlessly clean, well-lighted venue that focuses on this history of Dane County and the larger "driftless area" of southwestern Wisconsin.
The exhibits are extensively described, and are supplemented with historical information on an abundance of wall placards. The layout leads the visitor through a timeline that begins with glacial geology/landforms and moves on from there to native American history, to settlement and statehood, and eventually to modern times. Special exhibits feature arts and crafts of immigrant and local artisans.
I couldn't resist taking a photo of a product that screams Midwestern understatement: rubbers that were marketed as being "better-than-usual."
I recommend allotting a couple hours to explore this excellent museum - perhaps supplemented by a visit to the Sunn Cafe across the street for lunch.
Apparently these have been around for many years; I found articles dating back to 2002. at which time they were extolled as "the future of mass poultry farming." Some discussion of pros and cons at Owlcation. Photo via.
An elaboration on the important, but sometimes subtle distinctions in an article at the Pitt Rivers Museum:
Although at first sight ivory, bone, antler, and horn might appear difficult to distinguish their intrinsic qualities vary.
Strictly speaking, the word ivory only applies to the elephant tusks.
However, it is generally used more widely to describe the dentine
materials of other animals as well... The layers of dentine within the tusk form a wavy, interlacing pattern
(or 'grain'). This offers different surface effects and also gives ivory
its strength, making it suitable for long-lasting, detailed carving. An
oily substance within the pattern's cavities helps reduce brittleness
and give a smooth finish that can be enhanced with polishing to reveal a
range of colours...
Bone
refers to the hard parts of any vertebrate skeleton. Unlike ivory, which
is protected by a smooth enamel layer, the surface of bone naturally
appears rather grainy and coarse...
Antlers are outgrowths of bone... Cows, goats, and sheep, amongst other animals, carry horns rather than
antlers. Unlike antler, horn is formed by modified skin tissue and is
therefore naturally quite soft and flexible. Periodically new layers of
tissue are added to the base of every horn. The material has a fibrous
structure and can therefore be broken down into very thin translucent
sheets...
And some additional comments of varying quality in a Natureismetal discussion thread.
Yes, I know - everyone (including me) is tired of Putin this and Putin that. But this afternoon I was reading in a back issue of The Atlantic a story entitled "Putin's Game."
It wasn’t a strategic operation,” says Andrei Soldatov, a Russian journalist with deep sources in the security services, who writes
about the Kremlin’s use of cybertechnology. “Given what everyone on the
inside has told me,” he says, hacking the U.S. political system “was a
very emotional, tactical decision. People were very upset about the
Panama Papers.”
In the spring of 2016, an international consortium of journalists began publishing revelations from a vast trove of documents
belonging to a Panamanian law firm that specialized in helping its
wealthy foreign clients move money, some of it ill-gotten, out of their
home countries and away from the prying eyes of tax collectors. (The
firm has denied any wrongdoing.) The documents revealed
that Putin’s old friend Sergei Roldugin, a cellist and the godfather to
Putin’s elder daughter, had his name on funds worth some $2 billion. It
was an implausible fortune for a little-known musician, and the
journalists showed that these funds were likely a piggy bank for Putin’s
inner circle. Roldugin has denied any wrongdoing, but the Kremlin was
furious about the revelation. Putin’s spokesman, Dmitry Peskov, whose
wife was also implicated, angrily ascribed the reporting to “many former
State Department and CIA employees” and to an effort to “destabilize”
Russia ahead of its September 2016 parliamentary elections.
The
argument was cynical, but it revealed a certain logic: The financial
privacy of Russia’s leaders was on par with the sovereignty of Russia’s
elections. “The Panama Papers were a personal slight to Putin,” says
John Sipher, a former deputy of the CIA’s Russia desk. “They think we
did it.” Putin’s inner circle, Soldatov says, felt “they had to respond
somehow.” According to Soldatov’s reporting, on April 8, 2016, Putin
convened an urgent meeting of his national-security council; all but two
of the eight people there were veterans of the KGB. Given the secrecy
and timing of this meeting, Soldatov believes it was then that Putin
gave the signal to retaliate.
The
original aim was to embarrass and damage Hillary Clinton, to sow
dissension, and to show that American democracy is just as corrupt as
Russia’s, if not worse. “No one believed in Trump, not even a little
bit,” Soldatov says. “It was a series of tactical operations. At each
moment, the people who were doing this were filled with excitement over
how well it was going, and that success pushed them to go even further.”
Or other large trees located far away from others. I photographed this one today on a back road on my way to a local recycling center.
Here in the Upper Midwest, the story of such trees on farms usually begins with a great-grandparent, who spared a tree while clearing a field for agriculture, so that he and the hired hands would have a shady spot to rest for lunch during planting, weeding, or harvesting chores.
Over the subsequent years those trees often became surrounded by rocks and small boulders that the frost heaved up every spring, and which were thrown under the tree ("rock picking") to get them away from the tilling equipment. After a decade or two of this, the tree is de facto protected from being cut, even when the advent of tractors with air conditioning negated the original purpose of the tree.
Left to themselves in the center of a field, the oaks fill out to a wonderful symmetry not achieved in the closer confines of a yard or roadside (though this one appears to have lost a branch UL in some remore storm).
Perhaps not apparent at this magnification is that the owners of this farm have placed a bench at the base of the tree, so that someone can still come down to spend a pleasant summer afternoon in the shade of a huge tree.
The study evaluated
all new voter registrations in the 39 states with available data since
February 14, 2018—the day of the Parkland shooting—and calculated the
change in the share of new registrants who are 18 to 29 years old.
Across the country, the share of youth registrants increased by a modest
2.16 percentage points. But in Indiana, Virginia, and New York—home to
some of this year’s marquee House and Senate contests—the share of youth
registrants increased by 9.87, 10.49, and 10.7 percentage points,
respectively. In Pennsylvania—where voters will decide as many as nine
competitive congressional races—the share of new registrants who are
younger than 30 jumped by a whopping 16.14 percentage points.
caveat:
... though there’s no guarantee that many of the new registrants will actually vote. Just under half of all 18-to-29-year-olds were registered to vote in 2014, but less than 20 percent of that population group ended up casting ballots that year.
Blake's Jerusalem will need to be rewritten if current climate conditions persist. The photo shows Hyde Park this summer (from a gallery at BBC. Another gallery here). I really don't want to see photos of Kew...
The arrival of the Northern Pacific Railway in 1883 led to a housing
boom along the tracks, particularly on the northern side where many of
the railway workers would reside. When the Higgins Avenue Bridge was
replaced in 1893, they debated whether the bridge should continue
southwest toward the Bitterroot Valley as it had earlier, or due south.
Attorneys W. M. Bickford and W. J. Stephens
had already laid out plots of land five years earlier for what they
hoped would be a new town of "South Missoula". The streets there were
perpendicular to the Bitterroot Wagon Road while Judge Hiram Knowles who
owned the land just south of the river preferred the north-south plan
and did not want to become part of South Missoula.
The result was a 7×14–block area along the west side of Higgins Avenue commonly referred to as the Slant Streets centered along what is now Stephens Avenue.
A suggestion for more effective deterrance of nuclear war was first made by Roger Fisher in the March 1981 issue of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists:
There is a young man, probably a Navy officer, who accompanies the
President. This young man has a black attaché case which contains the
codes that are needed to fire nuclear weapons. I could see the President
at a staff meeting considering nuclear war as an abstract question. He
might conclude: “On SIOP Plan One, the decision is affirmative,
Communicate the Alpha line XYZ.” Such jargon holds what is involved at a distance.
My suggestion was quite simple: Put that needed code number in a little capsule, and then implant that capsule right next to the heart of a volunteer. The volunteer would carry with him a big, heavy butcher knife as he accompanied the President. If
ever the President wanted to fire nuclear weapons, the only way he
could do so would be for him first, with his own hands, to kill one
human being. The President says, “George, I’m sorry but tens of
millions must die.” He has to look at someone and realize what death
is—what an innocent death is. Blood on the White House carpet. It’s reality brought home.
When I suggested this to friends in the Pentagon they said, “My God, that’s terrible. Having to kill someone would distort the President’s judgment. He might never push the button.“
Reposted from 2016 to add some updated material on how easy or hard it is for someone to start a global nuclear war. Herewith some excerpts from "How to Start a Nuclear War" in this month's Harper's Magazine:
Serving as a US Air Force launch control
officer for intercontinental missiles in the early Seventies, First
Lieutenant Bruce Blair figured out how to start a nuclear war and kill a
few hundred million people. His unit, stationed in the vast missile
fields at Malmstrom Air Force Base, in Montana, oversaw one of four
squadrons of Minuteman II ICBMs, each missile topped by a W56
thermonuclear warhead with an explosive force of 1.2 megatons—eighty
times that of the bomb that destroyed Hiroshima. In theory, the missiles
could be fired only by order of the president of the United States, and
required mutual cooperation by the two men on duty in each of the
launch control centers, of which there were five for each squadron.
In fact, as Blair recounted to me recently, the system could be
bypassed with remarkable ease. Safeguards made it difficult, though not
impossible, for a two-man crew (of either captains or lieutenants, some
straight out of college) in a single launch control center to fire a
missile. But, said Blair, “it took only a small conspiracy”—of two
people in two separate control centers—to launch the entire
squadron of fifty missiles, “sixty megatons targeted at the Soviet
Union, China, and North Korea.” (The scheme would first necessitate the
“disabling” of the conspirators’ silo crewmates, unless, of course,
they, too, were complicit in the operation.) Working in conjunction, the
plotters could “jury-rig the system” to send a “vote” by turning keys
in their separate launch centers. The three other launch centers might
see what was happening, but they would not be able to override the two
votes, and the missiles would begin their firing sequence. Even more
alarmingly, Blair discovered that if one of the plotters was posted at
the particular launch control center in overall command of the squadron,
they could together format and transmit a “valid and authentic launch
order” for general nuclear war that would immediately launch the entire
US strategic nuclear missile force, including a thousand Minuteman and
fifty-four Titan missiles, without the possibility of recall. As he put
it, “that would get everyone’s attention, for sure.” A more pacifically
inclined conspiracy, on the other hand, could effectively disarm the
strategic force by formatting and transmitting messages invalidating the
presidential launch codes.
When he quit the Air Force in 1974, Blair was haunted by the power
that had been within his grasp, andhe resolved to do something about it.
But when he started lobbying his former superiors, he was met with
indifference and even active hostility. “I got in a fair scrap with the
Air Force over it,” he recalled. As Blair well knew, there was supposed
to be a system already in place to prevent that type of unilateral
launch. The civilian leadership in the Pentagon took comfort in this,
not knowing that the Strategic Air Command, which then controlled the
Air Force’s nuclear weapons, had quietly neutralized it...
Today, things are different. The nuclear fuse has gotten shorter...
Although fans imbibe copiously at concerts of every genre, all of which
boast songs about drinking, it’s possible that no slice of American life
has embraced alcohol with the enthusiasm of country music. The two have
gone hand-in-hand for decades, thanks in part to the so-called “tear in
your beer” songs that helped make the format famous.
But today, country music and alcohol are inextricably linked as never
before. Not only has the genre become known (and sometimes mocked) for
its sheer amount of drinking-themed songs, but an increasing number of
country acts have created their own brands of booze, including Chesney’s
rum, Blake Shelton’s Smithworks vodka, Miranda Lambert’s Red 55 wine
and Toby Keith’s Wild Shot mezcal.
In June, Shelton and Jason Aldean opened bars in downtown Nashville.
They join recent establishments from Florida Georgia Line, Alan Jackson
and Dierks Bentley, each of whom has a musical catalogue that pairs
naturally with a few drinks...
Traditionally, the conjured image is not flattering, from the early-1900s “drunk hillbilly” stereotype to summer 2014, when country concerts saw a spate of intoxication-related hospital trips and arrests, and one death.
But that connection is changing, as the genre is skewing younger and wealthier than ever...
Decades ago, when the country format was scorned as niche music of the
working class, the prominence of alcohol fed into the cliche of drowning
your sorrows at a honky-tonk. Now, it’s the reverse. Modern country
singers promote alcohol largely as an escape: partying with friends,
having wild nights on the town or — for singers like Chesney who lean
into the tropical, Jimmy Buffett vibe — sitting on the beach with a
drink in hand...
There’s no doubt the audience appreciates this. And as Nashville
continues to see dollar signs (a CMA study this spring found “country
music consumers are spending more on alcohol” these days), artists will
keep singing about it.
The mutual benefit is a marked difference from decades ago, when
there was a negative connotation of even listening to drinking songs in
country bars. Now, those establishments embrace the image. And even a
Sirius XM satellite radio station proudly plays “music of country-themed
bars and honky-tonks across America.” It’s called Red, White &
Booze.
Lots more at the longread link. Image cropped from one of the originals there.
Not crop circles, mind you, but variations in crops that are indicative
of subsurface archaeological features. A heat wave and partial drought
in Great Britain have rendered such marks unusually prominent.
Last week the Royal Commission on the Ancient and Historical Monuments of Wales posted a well-illustrated article (schematic images embedded), showing how ancient earthworks create alterations in crop size and color by allowing water to be retained during times of scarcity. The advent of drone photography has obviously simplified the detection process immensely.
A previously unknown henge has been revealed in Boyne Valley, in the Brú
na Bóinne UNESCO world heritage site, in Ireland's County Meath.
Stretching 200m in diameter, 750m from the famous Newgrange monument... The henge is thought to date from the late Neolithic period, up to possibly the Bronze Age, from about 3,000 BCE...
The henge would have been made out of timber with two
concentric circles, which would possibly have been 'linteled' with
horizontal supports as well. "This is a time period where they're
building particularly in timber and earth, as opposed to stone which
went before," Davis says.
"We have this bizarre
broken ditch, which we don't really necessarily understand yet and
that's the most unusual thing about it," Davis says. This ditch is
causewayed, broken into lots of little bits, forming a "permeable
boundary" meaning it's not a form of defense. Although there are
discernible entries and exits, you could in theory enter the structure
at any point. "It makes it much more like a symbolic enclosure, rather
than a real enclosure."
This all points to the idea that the structure
was used for ritual ceremonies that involved feasting, gathering and
trading together.
Wow. I think I'll go climb a ladder in my front yard...
A
weathered juniper tree in Montana’s northern Rocky Mountains is filled
with arced star trails and in the centre sits Polaris, the brightest
star in the constellation of Ursa Minor. It took several test frames of
long exposures to make sure that Polaris was in the right position, but
eventually things lined up and the Moon provided enough light to the
foreground, yet plenty of dark skies to allow a high enough ISO to
capture lots of stars. Photograph: Jake Mosher/National Maritime Museum
Narration by ocean scientists monitoring the video feed. At various places where this video has been posted online I've seen incorrect comments about the burst of "squid ink." No squids were involved in the making of this video. The victim is a barracudina; the black ejecta from the pit must be subsurface mud stirred up by the actions of the toadfish.
"Schelde Sports is a Dutch manufacturer of basketballs and volleyballs.
Europe is their main market. Outside of the US, mass shootings at
schools are not an issue, few people would make the connection with
those instead of ‘shooting hoops’... Schelde Sports has since stopped printing ‘shooter’ on their
basketballs. Now the label on the balls simply reads ‘School’, ‘Pro’,
‘Club’, etc."
Like so many simple, short words, kerf is unchanged from the Middle English (the Old English predecessor was cyrf(“an act of cutting, a cutting off; a cutting instrument”).
The groove or slit created by cutting a workpiece; an incision.
The width of the groove made while cutting with a saw or laser.
The distance between diverging saw teeth.
The portion of hay, turf, wool, etc. yielded by a single cut or shearing stroke.
"This only shows part of the process. The kerfs will be filled with glue, and the perpendicular notches that run along the kerfs will get a
spline similar to a little biscuit joint. Then you trim off the excess
and sand the whole thing smooth. They're pretty tough once all the glue
is set."
Wisdom, the albatross supermom, has done it again. At 67, the world's oldest known wild bird has laid an egg at her home on the Midway Atoll. Wisdom and her mate, Akeakamai, return each year to the Papahānaumokuākea Marine National Monument
to nest and raise a single chick. On December 13, the U.S. Fish and
Wildlife Service (USFWS) confirmed the pair were incubating a new egg.
In her long life, Wisdom has outlived several mates and raised anywhere from 30 to 35 chicks.
She's also remarkable for having logged an estimated two to three million miles [migrating] since 1956.
