This video shows a house sparrow in February 2008 in Sweden.
House sparrow in Sweden
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Daily Archives: May 30, 2017
Astronomy update
This video says about itself:
Backyard Worlds: The Search For Planet 9
15 February 2017
Citizen scientists join the search for Planet 9. Backyard Worlds enlists amateurs to look for celestial objects. By Ashley Yeager, 7:00am, May 29, 2017: here.
Why you can hear and see meteors at the same time. Radio waves may explain the mysterious phenomenon. By Thomas Sumner, 7:00am, May 30, 2017: here.
Climate changes associated with global warming can affect astronomical observations. That is the result of a study involving scientists from the University of Cologne. The international research team investigated a range of climate parameters at the Very Large Telescope (VLT) at the Paranal in the Atacama Desert in Chile, where the European Southern Observatory (ESO) operates its telescopes. Among other things, the team evaluated the data for temperature, wind speed and wind direction, and the water vapour content in the atmosphere over a period of several decades. This revealed an increase in temperatures above the world average and also increasing image blur due to air turbulence — so-called seeing: here.
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From Trump rhetoric to Portland train murders
This video from the USA says about itself:
Did Trump Campaign Rhetoric Empower the White Extremist Who Killed Two Bystanders on Portland Train?
30 May 2017
For the second time in a week, a military man was killed by a white extremist. On Friday, 53-year-old Ricky Best, a retired Army veteran, and 23-year-old Taliesin Myrddin Namkai Meche were fatally stabbed, with a third man critically injured, as they tried to defend two teenage girls against an attack by a man going on an anti-Muslim rant. The two young women, one of whom wore a Muslim hijab, were riding a commuter train when, according to witnesses, Jeremy Joseph Christian started shouting ethnic and religious slurs.
Police arrested Christian, a convicted felon, soon after the attack. “In many ways, I think his rhetoric has more to do with the campaign and the ideas unleashed in the campaign over the last 16, 18 months by the Trump folks than it does with hardcore neo-Nazism. Or at least it’s a mix of the two sets of ideas,” says our guest Heidi Beirich, Intelligence Project director of the Southern Poverty Law Center.
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Ancient sea scorpions’ tails, weapons?
From Science News:
Sea scorpions slashed victims with swordlike tails
New fossil suggests the body part was used for fighting, swimming
By Helen Thompson
11:00am, May 30, 2017
Ancient sea scorpions were hacks.
Some of the marine creatures had a thin, serrated spine on the tip of their tail — and that tail was surprisingly flexible, based on a 430-million-year-old fossil found in Scotland. Slimonia acuminata may have had the range of motion to strike large predators and prey, researchers report online April 18 in American Naturalist.
Scientists had thought that the ancient animals largely used their tails for swimming, primarily flapping them up and down like today’s lobsters and shrimp do and, to a limited degree, side to side like a rudder. But the tail on the new, well-preserved fossil curls dramatically to the side — a flexibility not seen in other sea scorpion specimens.
That bendiness suggests a purpose beyond propulsion, say study authors W. Scott Persons, a paleontologist, and John Acorn, an entomologist, both at the University of Alberta in Canada. The tail could have twisted around horizontally to strike a victim or dispatch a foe with the pointy end, and the saw-edged weapon would have encountered little water resistance.
Sea scorpions may have even pinned down prey with their front limbs while delivering lethal blows with their tails. Because S. acuminata appears quite early in sea scorpion evolution, slicing and dicing may have been the norm early on for the ancient critters, the researchers write.
Sea scorpions stabbed and slashed their prey to bits: here.
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Black-tailed godwit family video
This 9 May 2017 video is about a black-tailed godwit couple and their chicks in nature reserve De Wilck in the Netherlands.
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Flint, USA, toxic water and lies
This video about Michigan in the USA says about itself:
EXCLUSIVE: Flint Water Investigator Might’ve Lied
29 May 2017
TYT Politics Reporter Jordan Chariton reported on his investigation into Genesee County Prosecutor David Leyton’s campaign finance irregularities. Leyton is supposed to be one of the public officials in charge of the Flint water investigation.
Flint Is STILL a CRISIS.
Legionnaires’ Disease Bacteria Found in Flint Residents’ Water. The data cannot confirm whether an outbreak of cases in recent years in Michigan was caused by contaminated drinking water. By Aggie Mika, June 7, 2017.
Michigan Health Chief Charged With Involuntary Manslaughter For Role In Flint Water Crisis. The charges against Nick Lyon were announced Wednesday: here.
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Ringing young sea eagles, video
This 23 May 2017 Dutch video is about ringing young sea eagles at their nest in Oostvaardersplassen national park in the Netherlands.
See also here.
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From NATO’s Libya war to Manchester terror
This video from the USA says about itself:
From Libya to Manchester, Western Intervention Endangers Civilians
29 May 2017
Max Blumenthal, Senior Editor for Alternet‘s Grayzone Project, says the Manchester bombing’s ties to NATO intervention in Libya exemplify how Western policies overseas can help lead to attacks at home.
The Manchester Bombing Is Blowback from the West’s Disastrous Interventions and Covert Proxy Wars. How the U.S. and the U.K. helped bring jihadists like Salem Abedi to Libya and Syria. By Max Blumenthal.
This video from Britain says about itself:
Corbyn: War on Terror is not Working – We Need a New Solution
28 May 2017
Kam Sandhu of Real Media UK says that Corbyn has opened up a conversation in the UK that many people want to have but they have been under siege with ongoing terror attacks.
Spooks, torture, oil and war—how the British state brought terror to Libya. The British state has a long history of interfering in the Middle East. The carnage it sowed in Libya has now come back to expose the politicians who led it, argues Simon Basketter.
ISIS attacks in Europe coordinated from Libya, according to Italian weekly L’Espresso.
Britain is locked in ‘extraordinary’ feud with Libya over extradition of brother of Manchester suicide bomber who ‘played key role in atrocity’. Hashem Abedi, 20, accused of playing role in outrage which left 22 people dead. He is said to have helped brother Salman, 22, buy materials for device he detonated at concert on May 22. Britain had extradition agreement with Libya but it collapsed when Colonel Gaddafi was overthrown in 2011: here.
UK terror report confirms Manchester and London terror attackers known to MI5: here.
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Young Bermuda petrel gets adult feathers
This video from Bermuda says about itself:
Bermuda Petrel Chick Gaining Adult Plumage – May 30, 2017
The CahowCam is a collaboration between the Cornell Lab of Ornithology and the Nonsuch Expeditions. You can watch the cam live here
and learn more about Nonsuch Island‘s environs (including the cahow) here.
We’re excited to share a brand new live viewing experience featuring the critically endangered Bermuda Cahow, a kind of gadfly-petrel that nests nowhere in the world except rocky islets off the coast of Bermuda. In the early 1600s, this once-numerous seabird was thought to have gone extinct, driven out of existence by the invasive animals and habitat changes associated with the settlement of the island. In 1951, after nearly 300 years, a single bird was rediscovered, and since then the species has been part of a government-led conservation effort to revive the species.
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United States Washington Post and military-industrial complex
This 29 May 2017 video from the USA says about itself:
Washington Post Doesn’t Disclose Writers Paid By Defense Industry
Dear Kitty. Some blog 