Headliners

Celine Dion lost her husband and brother within a few days of each other?
Wow.....no amount of money can comfort that.

 

british politics..gotta love em!

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-35365560

 

CORK MAN DROWNS!

 

Westminister Dog show winner.....beautiful dog.....My favorite dog of show never wins....it is funny to imagine that a different judge would produce different results......This dog is beautiful, though, with gait of a horse....

 

My favorite, because she had my heart in the 7 best of category line ups this year was Annabelle...the bull dog....

 

Sad about Angela who died this month on the 18th...I saw the Mob Wives a couple of times. Angela was bigger than life all right, and I was sad to hear she died of brain and lung cancer....



https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oMcNBOK1zkw

 

Prince died.
Age 57
Flu or respiratory something
Sad

 

heres one thats worse..

plus they were on the way to their fathers funeral



http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/montreal/jean-lapierre-dead-plane-crash-%C3%AEles-de-la-madeleine-1.3510975

 

Article in New York Times....


"

University of Miami Establishes Chair for Study of Atheism

By LAURIE GOODSTEIN

MAY 20, 2016
Continue reading the main storyShare This Page
Continue reading the main story






Photo










Louis Appignani, a retired businessman, endowed a chair “for the study of atheism, humanism and secular ethics.”Credit Max Reed for The New York Times


With an increasing number of Americans leaving religion behind, the University of Miami has received a donation in late April from a wealthy atheist to endow what it says is the nation’s first academic chair “for the study of atheism, humanism and secular ethics.”
The chair has been established after years of discussion with a $2.2 million donation from Louis J. Appignani, a retired businessman and former president and chairman of the modeling school Barbizon International, who has given grants to many humanist and secular causes — though this is his largest so far. The university, which has not yet publicly announced the new chair, will appoint a committee of faculty members to conduct a search for a scholar to fill the position.
“I’m trying to eliminate discrimination against atheists,” said Mr. Appignani, who is 83 and lives in Florida. “So this is a step in that direction, to make atheism legitimate.”
Religion departments and professors of religious studies are a standard feature at most colleges and universities, many originally founded by ministers and churches. The study of atheism and secularism is only now starting to emerge as an accepted academic field, scholars say, with its own journal, conferences, course offerings and, now, an endowed chair.
“I think it’s a very bold step of the University of Miami, and I hope there will be others,” said Richard Dawkins, an evolutionary biologist and atheist luminary who is the author of “The God Delusion.”


Advertisement

Continue reading the main story
“It’s enormously important to shake off the shackles of religion from the study of morality,” Mr. Dawkins said in a telephone interview from his home in Britain.
The percentage of Americans who claim no religious affiliation has risen rapidly in a short time, to 23 percent of the population in 2014, up from 16 percent in 2007, according to a report by the Pew Research Center. Younger people are even less religious, with 35 percent of millennials saying they identify as atheist, agnostic or with no religion in particular.
Secular Americans are beginning to organize themselves politically. Next month, nonbelievers are headed to Washington to lobby Congress and hold a “Reason Rally” at the Lincoln Memorial to showcase their numbers and promote the separation of church and state.
With atheists still often stigmatized and disparaged in this country, it took some persuading for the University of Miami to agree to create a chair with the word “atheism” in the title, according to Harvey Siegel, a professor of philosophy who has helped to broker the arrangement. He said that more than 15 years ago, when he was chairman of the philosophy department, he and Mr. Appignani first began discussing the idea for a chair to study atheism and secularism.
“There was great reluctance on the part of the university to have an endowed chair with the word ‘atheism’ in the name, and that was a deal-breaker for Lou,” Mr. Siegel said. “He wasn’t going to do it unless it had the word atheism in it.”
The university had reason to be cautious, Thomas J. LeBlanc, executive vice president and provost, said in an interview.
“We didn’t want anyone to misunderstand and think that this was to be an advocacy position for someone who is an atheist,” he said. “Our religion department isn’t taking an advocacy position when it teaches about Catholicism or Islam. Similarly, we’re not taking an advocacy position when we teach about atheism or secular ethics.”
Asked whether he anticipated any backlash, Mr. LeBlanc said: “This is an area where people can get overly excited if they don’t actually look carefully at what’s happening. The idea that there are nondeity approaches to explaining our surroundings is not controversial in the academy.”


Advertisement

Continue reading the main story
Mr. Appignani said he rejected a last-minute proposal from a dean to call it a chair in “philosophical naturalism.” Instead, he and the university leaders worked out the title, broadening the scope by including humanism and secular ethics.
Mr. Appignani was raised a Roman Catholic in the Bronx by Italian immigrant parents. His father was a clothing presser in the garment district. He attended Catholic schools and said he became a nonbeliever at the City College of New York when he discovered the work of Bertrand Russell, the British philosopher and Nobel Prize winner.
With the money he made from the Barbizon school, he said, he created the foundation that has given grants to groups like the American Humanist Association and the Secular Coalition for America, and the Appignani Humanist Legal Center.
Over the years, Mr. Appignani has sponsored two public lectures by Mr. Dawkins at the University of Miami. The discussions about a chair gained momentum last year with the arrival of a new university president, Julio Frenk, Mr. Siegel said.
Dr. Frenk announced that he intended to recruit new talent by creating 100 new chairs in time for the university’s centennial anniversary, in 2025, said Margot S. Winick, an assistant vice president at the university. The chair in atheism is the fifth he has added so far, she said.
Pitzer College, a liberal arts school in Southern California with about 1,000 students, became the first to begin a program and major in secular studies five years ago. Phil Zuckerman, a sociologist of religion who founded the program, said it now offered four courses on secularism of its own and many others by the six professors associated with the department. Only two students have chosen to major in secular studies, he said, but the courses are popular. For its “Secularism and Skepticism” class last year, he turned away 25 students, more than the 22 he was able to admit.
Scholars have formed a “Nonreligion and Secularity Research Network,” which is holding its fourth conference this summer in Zurich. A peer-reviewed journal, “Secularism and Nonreligion,” is now up and running.
“There is a real need for secular studies,” Mr. Zuckerman said. “As rates of irreligion continue to rise, not only here in the U.S.A. but all over the world, we need to understand secular people, secular culture, and secularism as a political and ideological force.”

Correction: May 20, 2016
An earlier version of this article, relying on information from a source, misstated the number of conferences held by the Nonreligion and Secularity Research Network. It will be holding its fourth conference this summer in Zurich, not its second."


Continue reading the main story

 

Quite a few awesome headlines from my National Geographic newsletter today.....I am going to try to copy and paste all of them in replies here, as copying and pasting all of them is too many images for one reply....so here are the first two., and then hopefully, etc.



How a Tiny Fish Survives in a Sea Cucumber’s Bum View in web browser. How Much Does the Milky Way Weigh? New measurements suggest that the sun is about 0.0000000001 percent of our galaxy’s mass. And believe it or not, that actually puts the Milky Way on the slimmer side. Millions of Orchids Are Blooming in an Abandoned Iron Mine The plants are thriving in a wetland that sprang up after the mine was shuttered in the 1970s. Learn more about the area’s shockingly rich diversity.

 

How This Fish Survives in a Sea Cucumber’s Bum

Pearlfish fight their way into their host’s rear end, only to find a toxic environment to call home.

Get the gross—and very cool—details.









Leopards Have Lost Three-Fourths of Their Territory

A new, comprehensive study sounds a warning on the survival of the iconic big cat.

Find out which areas are hurt most—and what you can do to help.








Want Humans on Mars? Start With a Martian Space Station.

A major aerospace company’s audacious new plan could put humans in orbit around Mars by 2028.

Here’s how it would work.








These 15th-Century Maps Show How the Apocalypse Will Go Down

Amid plagues and political turmoil, one long-forgotten manuscript declared the apocalypse was coming—and mapped it.

Find out the circumference of hell.

 

A Starfish Baby Boom Catches Scientists by Surprise

A devastating disease keeps “melting” sea stars along the U.S. Pacific coastline—but a huge new crop of babies is trying to beat the odds.

Could they be resistant to the disease?








Meerkats Mysteriously Know to Outgrow Rivals

For the ultrasocial animals, being bigger than rivals is better—so they tune their appetites to keep up, to scientists’ surprise.

Find out how hard-boiled eggs led to the discovery.










TripAdvisor Accused of Promoting Cruel Animal Attractions

The travel website has come under fire from animal welfare advocates for promoting and profiting from inhumane wildlife attractions.

Learn more.








Indonesia’s Gold Mines Are Toxic Killers

More than a million small-scale miners in the island nation are poisoned—leaving children with crippling birth defects.

Read the victims’ powerful stories.

How a Tiny Fish Survives in a Sea Cucumber’s Bum

View in web browser.








How Much Does the Milky Way Weigh?

New measurements suggest that the sun is about 0.0000000001 percent of our galaxy’s mass.

And believe it or not, that actually puts the Milky Way on the slimmer side.









Millions of Orchids Are Blooming in an Abandoned Iron Mine

The plants are thriving in a wetland that sprang up after the mine was shuttered in the 1970s.

Learn more about the area’s shockingly rich diversity.









How This Fish Survives in a Sea Cucumber’s Bum

Pearlfish fight their way into their host’s rear end, only to find a toxic environment to call home.

Get the gross—and very cool—details.









Leopards Have Lost Three-Fourths of Their Territory

A new, comprehensive study sounds a warning on the survival of the iconic big cat.

Find out which areas are hurt most—and what you can do to help.








Want Humans on Mars? Start With a Martian Space Station.

A major aerospace company’s audacious new plan could put humans in orbit around Mars by 2028.

Here’s how it would work.








These 15th-Century Maps Show How the Apocalypse Will Go Down

Amid plagues and political turmoil, one long-forgotten manuscript declared the apocalypse was coming—and mapped it.

Find out the circumference of hell.










A Starfish Baby Boom Catches Scientists by Surprise

A devastating disease keeps “melting” sea stars along the U.S. Pacific coastline—but a huge new crop of babies is trying to beat the odds.

Could they be resistant to the disease?








Meerkats Mysteriously Know to Outgrow Rivals

For the ultrasocial animals, being bigger than rivals is better—so they tune their appetites to keep up, to scientists’ surprise.

Find out how hard-boiled eggs led to the discovery.










TripAdvisor Accused of Promoting Cruel Animal Attractions

The travel website has come under fire from animal welfare advocates for promoting and profiting from inhumane wildlife attractions.

Learn more.








Indonesia’s Gold Mines Are Toxic Killers

More than a million small-scale miners in the island nation are poisoned—leaving children with crippling birth defects.

Read the victims’ powerful stories.

 

Anyway, if any of these articles interest you, you can look it up yourself with headline and national geographic.

 

This caught my eye on MSN the other day.....

Tolkein had it right all along....lol

Here is the link, as well...as the photos and video arenot copying and pasting, as usual...Dammit!

http://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/holy-frodo-hobbits-really-did-walk-the-earth-scientists-say/ar-AAgO97u?li=BBnb7Kz&ocid=mailsignout




Holy Frodo! Hobbits really did walk the Earth, scientists say



USA TODAY

Traci Watson 2 days ago



SHARE 










The foolproof method for cooking medium-rare steak




Court: Kansas can't block voters























Replay Video









Obamas celebrate Malia's high school graduation

It will be a day of tears and happiness for President Obama and his family, as his oldest daughter, Malia, receives her high school diploma on Friday. We've watched her grow up since her father entered national politics 12 years ago, and the president has shared his emotional struggle with this milestone. Margaret Brennan reports on their special father-daughter relationship.

CBS News





Man lives 555 days without a heart

A 24-year-old man survived 555 days without a heart with the help from a portable artificial heart.

CNN





Obama: "We lost an icon" with death of Ali

U.S. President Barack Obama praises boxing legend Muhammad Ali in a Facebook video tribute and says, "I grew up having my identity shaped by what he accomplished." Rough Cut (no reporter narration).

Reuters













i



CC



























Archaeologists say they’ve discovered the mysterious origins of real-life hobbits














































































































 The cozy-burrows part isn’t true, but J.R.R. Tolkien got it partly right: hobbits really did walk the Earth.

According to many scientists, a species of miniature beings distantly related to Homo sapiens once lived on the Indonesian island of Flores. Now, in a find that has intrigued and surprised scholars, an international team has unearthed fossils of the hobbits’ ancestors — fossils that may point to a radical explanation for why hobbits, officially known as Homo floresiensis, were so small.

The fossils suggest hobbits descended from much bigger forebears who “experienced extreme dwarfism on the island of Flores,” team member Gerrit van den Bergh of Australia’s University of Wollongong told reporters Tuesday. Their height “was reduced to two-thirds of ancestral body size, and brain volume shrank to half the size.”

That explanation is already sparking debate, but there’s little dispute that Flores’s hobbits, discovered in a cave in 2003, were astoundingly small. The most complete hobbit skeleton found in the cave suggests adults were far shorter than the average American kindergartner. From that specimen and others at the cave, scientists have pieced together a portrait of a small-brained species that made crude stone tools and resided on Flores from at least 50,000 to 100,000 years ago.

The new fossils, discovered in 2014 at a site called Mata Menge, are a whopping 700,000 years old and just as tiny as the hobbits from the cave, the team reports in this week’s Nature. A partial jawbone found by van den Bergh’s team “would fit in the palm of my hand,” says Debbie Argue of The Australian National University, who was not part of the study team.

© (Kinez Riza via AP) This 2016 picture provided by Kinez Riza shows teeth which scientists say are about 700,000 years old, from either from Homo floresiensis or a related species. In a paper released Wednesday… Van den Bergh and his colleagues say the Mata Menge hobbits are closely related to the younger cave hobbits and might be the same species. But the Mata Menge hobbits also show similarities to yet another species: much larger hominids – a category that includes modern humans and our ancient relatives — who turned up on the island of Java more than a million years ago.

The researchers think bigger hominids from Java or nearby locales made it across the sea to Flores. Once there, the new arrivals were subjected to “island dwarfing,” the tendency for some species marooned on islands to shrink. Never before have hominids been known to succumb to island dwarfing.

“No one predicted this … would happen to our own human relatives,” says the University of Iowa’s Russell Ciochon, who was not part of the Flores team.

Debate over the hobbits of Mata Menge has already kicked off. Argue questions whether the new hobbits are dwarfed descendants of larger hominids who floated to Flores. She notes, for example, that scientists have found no fossils of these bigger hominids on Flores.

© (Kinez Riza via AP) This 2015 picture provided by Kinez Riza shows a reconstruction model of Homo floresiensis by Atelier Elisabeth Daynes at Sangiran Museum and the Early Man Site. In a paper released… Other researchers are skeptical of the idea that the cave hobbits and the Mata Menge hobbits are closely related. Traits of the Mata Menge fossils show “minimal” overlap with the description of the cave hobbits, say Robert Eckhardt of Pennsylvania State University and Maciej Henneberg of Australia’s University of Adelaide.

More bones may help settle the matter, and scientists continue to dig on Flores in hopes of finding hominids a million years old or more.

“We want to know what the very, very first hominids to set foot on the island looked like,” Adam Brumm of Australia’s Griffith University, a co-author of the new research, told reporters Tuesday. “The search is ongoing.”

 

http://nypost.com/2016/06/10/drunk-elephants-sad-tigers-and-more-surprisingly-human-things-animals-do/




Living

10 surprisingly human things animals do

By Amanda Bell

• View author archive
• Get author RSS feed

Contact The Author


Name(required)
Email(required)
Comment(required)







June 10, 2016 | 11:18am

Modal Trigger
Photo: Photo Illustration by Emil Lendof/New York Post

 

12th time this year a child has died in a hot car...............

[SIZE=14pt]Houston Toddler Dies After Being Found in Hot Car, Police Say[/SIZE]

[SIZE=12pt]A 3-year-old boy has died after being left in a hot car in Houston on Thursday, officials said.[/SIZE]

[SIZE=12pt]The toddler is believed to have wandered out of his house and entered the car in what may have been an attempt to retrieve a toy, Houston Police said.[/SIZE]

[SIZE=12pt]Child-safety locks were somehow engaged and the boy was locked inside for about 30-45 minutes until his family — who'd realized he was missing — found him in the vehicle and called 911, KPRC reported.[/SIZE]

[SIZE=12pt]The toddler was transported to a local hospital in cardiac arrest but later died, according to the Houston Fire Department.[/SIZE]

[SIZE=12pt]In a press release about the incident the Houston Fire Department warned residents that "rising summer temperatures can cause an increased risk of heat stroke resulting in brain damage and death from children being left in hot cars.[/SIZE]


[SIZE=12pt]Hotwater[/SIZE]

 

http://www.cnbc.com/2016/06/20/once-in-a-generation-strawberry-moon-tonight.html



Once-in-a-generation strawberry moon Monday night

Robert Ferris | @RobertoFerris
8 Hours AgoCNBC.com








































































28
COMMENTSJoin the Discussion




<p>Full 'strawberry' moon shines during summer solstice</p> <p>Viewers were able to see the once-in-a-generation full moon Monday night, for the first time since June of 1967.</p>


For one night, it was the Summer of Love all over again. Astronomically speaking.


For the first time since June 1967, two astronomical phenomena occurred at the same time. Monday evening, a full "strawberry" moon shone in the night sky during the summer solstice — the longest day of the year.

EarthSky.org said a full moon on a summer solstice is a rare event, and another one is not likely to come around until June 21, 2062.

Why is it called a strawberry moon? The Old Farmer's Almanac says the Algonquin tribe of indigenous Americans called the June full moon by that name because it occurred around the time the strawberries were being picked.

The moon reached its fullness Monday morning, and the actual evening solstice took place at 6:34 p.m. Eastern time.

Two hours after that, the moon rose at 8:41 p.m. Eastern time, and lucky viewers saw an event that occurs only once every half-century.

Read the full article in EarthSky.

 

rising murder count of environmentalists....What else is new in this hell hole we called life...made a hell hole by humans?
I cannot help but being angry here.

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/06/21/science/berta-caceres-environmental-activists-murders.html?ref=world&_r=0




The Rising Murder Count of Environmental Activists

By RACHEL NUWER

JUNE 20, 2016
Continue reading the main storyShare This Page
Continue reading the main story

• Share
• Tweet
• Email
• More
• Save

Photo







A picture of Berta Cáceres placed at an altar during a demonstration outside Honduras’ embassy in Mexico City on June 15.Credit Eduardo Verdugo/Associated Press
On March 3, two armed men entered the home of Berta Cáceres, an environmental activist in Honduras, and shot her dead. For years, Ms. Cáceres had vigorously opposed the proposed Agua Zarca Dam, to be built on the land of an indigenous people, the Lenca.
Ms. Cáceres was one of 185 environmental activists killed in 16 countries last year, according to a new report published by Global Witness, a nonprofit organization dedicated to exposing environmental abuses. Those murders represent a 59 percent increase over the number murdered in 2014, according to the report, and the highest since Global Witness began compiling data in 2002.
“The environment has emerged as a new battleground for human rights,” said Billy Kyte, a campaign leader at Global Witness and the report’s author.
Brazil saw 50 activist murders in 2015, mostly tied to agricultural encroachment and illegal logging in the Amazon rain forest. The Philippines had 33 and Colombia 26. In both countries, some mining and agribusiness companies are backed by paramilitary groups, Mr. Kyte said.



Sign Up for the Science Times Newsletter
Every week, we'll bring you stories that capture the wonders of the human body, nature and the cosmos.



Nearly 40 percent of the victims were from indigenous groups, reflecting an increased demand for natural resources — minerals, timber, land and hydropower — that are often found in remote areas, Mr. Kyte said.


Advertisement

Continue reading the main story
Investors in the United States, European Union and China are tied to many of those projects, he added.
Global Witness is analyzing data on arrest and conviction rates, though the organization says that the vast majority of perpetrators escape justice.
Facing mounting international pressure, Honduran authorities in May arrested four men in connection with Ms. Cáceres’s murder. But Global Witness and other organizations continue to push for an independent investigation.
“We’re sure the masterminds behind Berta’s killing have yet to be charged,” Mr. Kyte said.

 

so senseless these killings when we have the technologies to not need to kill anyone nor destroy their environments to rob their resources.

 

The Florida Keys endangered deer and other livestock and animals are being screwed by the return of the screw worm....so aptly named. If it is not one thing, it is another.

http://www.wftv.com/news/local/infestation-of-screw-worms-eating-endangered-deer-alive-in-florida-keys-officials-say/456052247