In the heartwarming video below, a group of beagles rescued from a research laboratory in Spain experience sunlight for the first time. The 72 beagles arrived in Los Angeles last week, after they'd been saved by the Animal Rescue, Media & Education's (ARME) Beagle Freedom Project. On its web site, the Beagle Freedom Project describes itself as a "mission to rescue beagles used in animal experimentation in research laboratories and give them a chance at life in a loving forever home." Huffington Post writer Laura Hibbard spells out the intense deprivation the puppies have suffered:
ARME's Beagle Freedom Project spokesman Gary Smith said the beagles, all between ages 4 and 7, had lived in cages their entire lives. "We've been told they lived one per cage in rooms of 10 beagles, but they never had any physical interaction with one another," Smith told the station. "They've been in kennels since they were rescued about a week ago, but aside from that, they've spent most of their lives locked up." (source)
It's good to remember that there are A LOT of good people out there doing good things.
When I do good, I feel good. When I do bad, I feel bad. That's my religion.
~ Abraham Lincoln
(Thanks for the great quote, Don! And Abe, of course.)
Pardon me,
But, did you know that sea otters hold hands (paws) while they're sleeping to keep from drifting away from one another? Well, they do.
And I could just DIE! COULDN'T YOU DIE??? BECAUSE, I COULD. (Jesus Christ, they're so fucking cute! AAHH!! I know they'd rip my face off, but I want to SMUSH THEM IN MY GOD DAMN FACE!!)
And besides all the cooing and squealing bishes on here, check out what goes down at 1:20 in. You'll die. TRUST ME. (YOU'RE GONNA FUCKIN' DIE!!)
Sorry. I'll stop yelling now. They just melted at least a year of bitterness off me. And you know what? I'm kinda thinking it might be worth it to lose part of your face to hug one of those little assholes.
So, I do declare... (sorry, I have to yell one more time.)
So, Will and I are watching this FANTASTIC Ken Burns' series right now that we checked out from the library (speaking of "fantastic" - remember the "library"?) and it reminds me how very proud I am to be an American. "NATIONAL" parks and "libraries"?? Something for a classless society? Well... How wonderfully social and evolved of US.
Narrative begins 1 minute in.
THE NATIONAL PARKS: AMERICA'S BEST IDEA is a six-episode series produced by Ken Burns and Dayton Duncan and written by Dayton Duncan. Filmed over the course of more than six years at some of nature's most spectacular locales – from Acadia to Yosemite, Yellowstone to the Grand Canyon, the Everglades of Florida to the Gates of the Arctic in Alaska - THE NATIONAL PARKS: AMERICA'S BEST IDEA is nonetheless a story of people: people from every conceivable background – rich and poor; famous and unknown; soldiers and scientists; natives and newcomers; idealists, artists and entrepreneurs; people who were willing to devote themselves to saving some precious portion of the land they loved, and in doing so reminded their fellow citizens of the full meaning of democracy.
Oh, and John Muir? TOTAL badass if there ever was one.
You may have seen this little guy recently:
A rare albino seal pup with ginger-colored fur was abandoned by the colony in Tyuleniy Island, Russia. He was hiding beneath logs when the photographer spotted him. “The poor seal is almost blind and so was unlikely to survive in the wild,” said the photographer, who was with staff from a dolphinarium who took it into their care. (source)
Democracy Now! Special Report from Troy Davis Execution: Did Georgia Kill an Innocent Man?Troy Anthony Davis was killed by lethal injection by the state of Georgia at 11:08 p.m. EDT last night, despite widespread doubts about his guilt. The execution occurred shortly after the U.S. Supreme Court declined to stop the execution. Democracy Now! was the only news outlet to continuously broadcast live from the prison grounds last night, where hundreds of supporters Troy Davis held an all-day vigil in Jackson, Georgia. Today we hear the voices of Troy Davis’s sister Martina Correia, hip-hop artist Big Boi, NAACP President Benjamin Jealous, Ed DuBose of the Georgia chapter of the NAACP, two members of the Troy Davis legal team, and more. We also hear from journalist Jon Lewis, a witness to the execution: "[Davis] said to the family [of slain police officer Mark MacPhail] that he was sorry for their loss, but also said that he did not take their son, father, brother. He said to them to dig deeper into this case, to find out the truth... And then he said to the prison staff, the ones he said 'who are going to take my life,' he said to them, 'May God have mercy on your souls.' And his last words were to them: 'May God bless your souls.'"
ScienceDaily (May 12, 2011) — "Dalhousie Ph.D. student Shane Gero has recently returned from a seven-week visit to Dominica. He has been traveling to the Caribbean island since 2005 to study families of sperm whales, usually spending two to four months of each year working on the Dominica Sperm Whale Project. One of the goals of this project is to record and compare whale calls over time, examining the various phrases and dialects of sperm whale communities.
When they dive together, sperm whales make patterns of clicks to each other known as "codas." Recent findings suggest that not only do different codas mean different things, but that whales can also tell which member of their community is speaking based on the sound properties of the codas. Just as we can tell our friends apart by the sounds of their voices and the way they pronounce their words, different sperm whales make the same pattern of clicks, but with different accents.
Caribbean and Pacific whales have different repertoires of codas, like a regional dialect, but the "Five Regular" call -- a pattern of five evenly spaced clicks -- is thought to have the universal function of individual identity because it is used by sperm whales worldwide.
These discoveries were recently published in the journal Animal Behaviour, in an article authored by University of St. Andrews PhD student Ricardo Antunes, Dal alumnus Tyler Schulz, Mr. Gero, Dal professor Dr. Hal Whitehead, and St. Andrews faculty members Dr. Jonathan Gordon and Dr. Luke Rendell.
Mr. Gero and Dr. Whitehead explain that the sperm whale's biggest threat is human pollution. Not only do humans introduce toxins into the ocean, but they also generate harmful sound pollution. Increased shipping traffic, underwater explosions caused by searching for oil, and military sonar all contribute to ocean noise that masks communication between whales. "No one wants to live in a rock concert," says Mr. Gero, adding that noise pollution is especially troublesome in the ocean because "it is a totally different sensory world." The sperm whales can dive to depths of over 1000 metres and depend on sound for communication and navigation in the pitch black of the deep water."
This is fricking awesome... And really, when we actually "think" about it, we shouldn't be surprised.
The below video is really quite cool. If you can get over the guy being a Kindergarten teacher (because I want to slap the Legos clean out of him), it's cool.
Even MORE pertinent and immediate reason to not allow bullshit like the following.
A Debate: Should the U.S. Approve TransCanada’s Massive Keystone XL Tar Sands Oil Pipeline?Thousands of environmental activists from across the continent plan to gather in Washington, D.C., tomorrow to launch a two-week protest against the proposed Keystone XL pipeline that would carry tar sands oil from Alberta, Canada, to U.S. oil refineries in the Gulf of Mexico. The massive pipeline would cross the Yellowstone River, as well as the Ogallala Aquifer, the largest freshwater aquifer in the United States.
And if that shit isn't bad enough, we have California's new environmental curriculum including a section on "The Advantages of Plastic Shopping Bags". Why, you ask? Because lobbyists for the American Chemistry Council — the same front-group that spent millions to defeat the statewide bag ban last year — convinced school officials to include it. You can find out more and sign a petition against this delusional bullshit here.
