Puffinus puffinus Puffin des Anglais / Manx Shearwater The Manx Shearwater nests mainly in the North Atlantic ocean. During the migration period, it is found in the gulf of the Saint Lawrence and sometimes even as far as the estuary, as well as in Fundy Bay and in the waters off Nova Scotia. Sensitive to [...]
Archive for September, 2009
The Birds of America
Posted in Birds of America, tagged 295, 296, 297 on September 27, 2009 | Comments Off
Today in History – September 27
Posted in This day in history, tagged September 27 on September 27, 2009 | Comments Off
Today is Sunday, Sept. 27, the 270th day of 2009. There are 95 days left in the year. The Jewish Day of Atonement, Yom Kippur, begins at sunset. Today’s Highlight in History On Sept. 27, 1939, Warsaw, Poland, surrendered after weeks of resistance to invading forces from Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union during World [...]
Naming the sky
Posted in Space, Strange but true on September 27, 2009 | Comments Off
The true story of one man’s quest to give George Plimpton a permanent presence in orbit There’s something special about naming a celestial body, putting your thumbprint in the heavens up there with Jupiter and Mars and the Horsehead Nebula. The idea speaks to our desire for immortality–attaching a name to something that, if not [...]
Thinking literally
Posted in Language on September 27, 2009 | Comments Off
The surprising ways that metaphors shape your world WHEN WE SAY someone is a warm person, we do not mean that they are running a fever. When we describe an issue as weighty, we have not actually used a scale to determine this. And when we say a piece of news is hard to swallow, [...]
Seeing the future
Posted in The Word, tagged September 27 2009 on September 27, 2009 | Comments Off
We’ve been ‘looking to’ for a long time IN LAST WEEK’S NEWS, the United States was ”looking to move on” in its relations with Britain, Yahoo was looking to improve the search experience, Harrah’s was looking to dump debt, and Vladimir Sobotka was looking to make a big impression at the Bruins training camp. All [...]
Ring quartet
Posted in Economy and business, Other, Politics on September 27, 2009 | Comments Off
The Olympic games The first race in the Olympics is to decide which city hosts them Olympic infrastructure durability benchmark OLYMPIC sport demands many years of preparation, and not just for the athletes. On October 2nd in Copenhagen the International Olympic Committee will decide whether Chicago, Madrid, Rio de Janeiro or Tokyo will stage the [...]
The week ahead
Posted in The Week ahead on September 27, 2009 | Comments Off
Six big powers meet Iran to discuss its contentious nuclear programme • EFFORTS to curtail Iran’s nuclear programme will gather pace in Geneva on Thursday October 1st. The six countries negotiating with Iran—America, Britain, France, Russia, China and Germany—want Iran to come clean about its nuclear ambitions and to cease enriching uranium, which could be [...]
Let’s Beat the Extremists Like We Beat the Soviets
Posted in Conflicts and wars, Editorials and opinion on September 27, 2009 | Comments Off
America’s long war, which began on Oct. 7, 2001, when U.S. bombs and missiles started falling on Afghanistan, has become the longest in this country’s history. The eighth anniversary of the conflict beckons, with no end in sight. The counterinsurgency campaign proposed in Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal’s strategic assessment will prolong the war for an [...]
Mr. Obama Punts . . .
Posted in Conflicts and wars, Economy and business, Law on September 27, 2009 | Comments Off
. . . And the left cheers as the president embraces what it once decried as a lawless detention scheme. THE OBAMA administration announced last week that it did not need and would not seek new legislation to govern indefinite detention of some terrorism suspects at the U.S. Naval Base in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. In [...]
Not Far From the Tree
Posted in Editorials and opinion, Politics, tagged ACORN on September 27, 2009 | Comments Off
While everyone in Washington is suddenly pretending they’ve hardly ever heard of ACORN, they might want to pretend they’ve never heard of the SEIU, one of the nation’s largest unions. The Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now and the Service Employees International Union are as tight as Heidi Klum and a new pair of [...]
Nuclear Pushback
Posted in Conflicts and wars, Editorials and opinion, Politics on September 27, 2009 | Comments Off
Russian President Dmitry Medvedev, center, at a nuclear missile base in Teikovo, Russia, last year. President Obama’s dream of a world without nuclear weapons seems more like a nightmare to Russia and other nations that possess doomsday arms. Obama is pushing on a door that is closed, barred from inside and locked with a key [...]
The Devil Wears Crocs
Posted in Editorials and opinion, Politics on September 27, 2009 | Comments Off
At the end of many Shakespearean dramas, self-destructive leaders are usually strewn dead on stage. With modern presidencies, we have to watch the poignant tableau of such leaders realizing that they have squandered their chance for greatness even as they suffer the indignity of rejection by those who once sought their blessing. These painful periods [...]
The New Sputnik
Posted in Economy and business, Editorials and opinion, Energy and Environment on September 27, 2009 | Comments Off
Most people would assume that 20 years from now when historians look back at 2008-09, they will conclude that the most important thing to happen in this period was the Great Recession. I’d hold off on that. If we can continue stumbling out of this economic crisis, I believe future historians may well conclude that [...]
Obama at the Precipice
Posted in Conflicts and wars, Editorials and opinion, tagged Afghanistan on September 27, 2009 | Comments Off
THE most intriguing, and possibly most fateful, news of last week could not be found in the health care horse-trading in Congress, or in the international zoo at the United Nations, or in the Iran slapdown in Pittsburgh. It was an item tucked into a blog at ABCNews.com. George Stephanopoulos reported that the new “must-read [...]
The Birds of America
Posted in Birds of America, tagged 292, 293, 294 on September 26, 2009 | Comments Off
Podiceps cristatus Grèbe huppée / Great Crested Grebe The Great Crested Grebe has never been found on the American continent. Audubon painted the bird on the basis of specimens lent to him by John Gould. Obviously, the birds he had observed in Ohio were not of the expected species La grèbe huppée n’a jamais été [...]
Behind the Furor Over a Climate Change Skeptic
Posted in Energy and Environment on September 26, 2009 | Comments Off
Conservatives say Alan Carlin, a global warming contrarian at the Environmental Protection Agency, was muzzled there. Alan Carlin, a 72-year-old analyst and economist, had labored in obscurity in a little-known office at the Environmental Protection Agency since the Nixon administration. In June, however, he became a sudden celebrity with the surfacing of a few e-mail [...]
Enzyme Is Key To Clogged Arteries, Scientists Find
Posted in Health on September 26, 2009 | Comments Off
Scientists at Queen Mary, University of London have made an important discovery in understanding what causes arteries to clog up. They have discovered that an enzyme called matrix metalloproteinase-8 plays a crucial role in raising blood pressure and causing abnormal build-up of cells in the arteries – both of which increase the risk of heart [...]
US welcomes Iran inspection offer
Posted in Conflicts and wars, Politics, tagged Iran on September 26, 2009 | Comments Off
Mrs Clinton is in New York for the annual UN General Assembly US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has welcomed Iran’s decision to admit international inspectors to its newly revealed uranium enrichment plant. Speaking to reporters in New York, Mrs Clinton said it was always welcome when Iran decided to comply with international rules and [...]
No deal on Megrahi, says Gaddafi
Posted in Politics, tagged Libya on September 26, 2009 | Comments Off
Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi has denied any deal was done to secure the release of the only man convicted of the Lockerbie bombing. Abdelbasset Ali al-Megrahi was released on compassionate grounds by Scottish Justice Secretary Kenny MacAskill. Megrahi has terminal cancer and is said not to have long to live. In a TV interview with [...]
Superheavy Element 114 Confirmed: A Stepping Stone To The ‘Island Of Stability’
Posted in Physical sciences on September 26, 2009 | Comments Off
Scientists at the U.S. Department of Energy’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory have been able to confirm the production of the superheavy element 114, ten years after a group in Russia, at the Joint Institute for Nuclear Research in Dubna, first claimed to have made it. The search for 114 has long been a key part [...]
Life magazine opens archives
Posted in Computers, History, Media on September 26, 2009 | Comments Off
Famous photo of 3-D movie viewers that appeared in Life Magazine in 1952. Decades of Life magazine have been scanned and posted online, giving the public the first comprehensive electronic access to the iconic publication’s archives. Life already has made images available through the Life.com website and a partnership with Google Inc. The latest effort, [...]
Ottawa makes room for Gadhafi but shunned Mugabe
Posted in Politics on September 26, 2009 | Comments Off
Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi shows a torn copy of the UN Charter during his address to the 64th session of the United Nations General Assembly, Wednesday, Sept. 23, 2009. When it comes to Canada’s air space, there are dictators and then there are dictators. While Canada has given Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi permission to spend [...]
Egypt Pursues Europeans Taking Arabic Classes
Posted in Other on September 26, 2009 | Comments Off
Terrorists in the Making? Arabic language schools in Nasr City are doing well and many Salafists come to Egypt in to learn the language of the Koran. Many deeply religious students from Europe come to Egypt to learn Arabic. The question is: are these European Salafists coming to study the language of the Koran or [...]
Armenia revels in its chess prowess
Posted in Other, tagged Armenia, Chess on September 26, 2009 | Comments Off
Armenia, with a population of three million, has won the last two men’s world team chess championships, beating opponents including Russia, China, and the US. What is their secret? David Edmonds travelled to the country to find out. I speak not a word of Armenian, and the first man I met in Armenia spoke not [...]
Shooting down a plan
Posted in Conflicts and wars on September 26, 2009 | Comments Off
New missile defences in Europe America’s change of tack is placating some and worrying others WHEN a blue-painted Sejjil missile streaked into the Persian skies in May, to calls of “Allahu Akbar” (God is Great) from Iranian officials looking on, the world’s weapons experts took notice. It was Iran’s first successful test of a medium-range [...]
Much ado about multipliers
Posted in Economy and business on September 26, 2009 | Comments Off
Economics focus Why do economists disagree so much on whether fiscal stimulus works? IT IS the biggest peacetime fiscal expansion in history. Across the globe countries have countered the recession by cutting taxes and by boosting government spending. The G20 group of economies, whose leaders meet this week in Pittsburgh, have introduced stimulus packages worth [...]
Victim or villain?
Posted in Politics, tagged France, Sarkozy, Villepin on September 26, 2009 | Comments Off
France’s Clearstream trial The meaning of the trial of Dominique de Villepin, once President Jacques Chirac’s prime minister “I AM here because of the dogged relentlessness of one man: Nicolas Sarkozy.” With those words, uttered this week outside a Paris courtroom before he appeared in the dock, Dominique de Villepin, a former prime minister, doubtless [...]
