A log on the beach inspired this vision.

Nora

Eric is an amazing photographer specializing in surfing and ocean photography! Below is a current photo called “Honu”

photograph by eric minugh

more of Eric’s Flickr Photos click here!

there is an excellent short video on the BBC website documenting this bizarre relationship! see the link at the end of the article.
Nora

Gecko ‘begs’ insect for honeydew


Image courtesy of BBC One’s Life in Cold Blood

Saturday, 16 February 2008, 07:28 GMT

Gecko and bug’s bizarre relationship revealed

A bizarre relationship between a gecko and a sap-sucking insect has been caught on camera for the first time.

The day gecko, which lives in the forests of Madagascar, has been recorded begging a bug for its dinner.

The lizard repeatedly nods its head at the insect, called a plant hopper, until it flicks over small balls of honeydew for the gecko to dine upon.

It is not yet understood why the insect so willingly offers up honeydew at the lizard’s behest.

Some believe that the presence of the hungry geckos may keep other predators away from the insect.

The footage was recorded for the BBC One series Life In Cold Blood.

It took the crew several attempts to capture this strange behaviour on camera as plant hoppers are very well camouflaged.

Life In Cold Blood is on BBC One on Monday, 18 February at 2100 GMT and is repeated on BBC One on Sunday, 23 February.

SOURCE:

BBC NEWS SCIENCE

This post is best viewed with an open mind
It is from a 2004 article at www.indiadaily.com and with all the recent UFO sightings I thought it was appropriate for today. In 2012 what’s in store for humanity may be out of this world!
Nora

Remote viewing Tibetan monks see Extra Terrestrial powers saving the World from destroying itself in 2012

N.K. Subramanium, Special Correspondent

December 26, 2004

Remote viewing is nothing new in Tibetan monasteries. For thousands of years remote viewing in the middle of other spiritual activities have dominated Tibetan culture. What some Indian tourists came to learn from a few Tibetan monasteries under the current Chinese rule is extremely alarming and fascinating.

According to these tourists remote viewers are seeing world powers in the course of self-destruction. They also see that the world will not be destroyed. Between now and 2012 the world super powers will continue to engage in regional wars. Terrorism and covert war will be the main problem. In world politics something will happen in and around 2010. At that time the world powers will threaten to destroy each other.

Between 2010 and 2012, the whole world will get polarized and prepare for the ultimate dooms day. Heavy political maneuvers and negotiations will take place with little progress.

In 2012, the world will start plunging into a total destructive nuclear war.

And at that time something remarkable will happen, says, Buddhist monk of Tibet. Supernatural divine powers will intervene. The destiny of the world is not to self-destruct at this time.

Scientific interpretation of the monks’ statements makes it evident that the Extra Terrestrial powers are watching us every step of the way. They will intervene in 2012 and save the world from self-destruction.

When asked about recent UFO sightings in India and China, the monks smiled and said the divine powers are watching us all. Mankind cannot and will not be allowed to alter the future to that great extent.

Every human being though their current acts in life called “Karma” can alter the future lives to some extent, but changing the destiny in that large extent will not be allowed to that great an extent.

Monks also mentioned that beyond 2012 our current civilization would understand that the final frontier of science and technology is in area of spirituality and not material physics and chemistry. Beyond 2012, out technologies will take a different direction. People will learn the essence of spirituality, the relation between body and the soul, the reincarnation and the fact we are connected with each other are all part of “God”.

In India and China UFO sightings have increased in many folds. Many say the Chinese and Indian Governments are being contacted by the Extra Terrestrials.

In recent days most UFO activities have been seen in those countries who have indigenously developed Nuke capabilities.

When asked if these extra-terrestrials will show up in reality in 2012, the answers remote viewers are giving is: they will reveal themselves in such a way that none of us scared. They will reveal themselves only if they have to. As our science and technology progresses, we are destined to see them and interact with them any way.

According to the remote viewers, our earth is blessed and is being saved continuously from all kinds of hazards all the time that we are not even aware of. As our technologies progress we will realize how external forces saved us.

SOURCE:

www.indiadaily.com

Biofuels emissions may be ‘worse than petrol’

07 February 2008
NewScientist.com news service
by Jim Giles

Biofuels, once seen as a useful way of combating climate change, could actually increase greenhouse gas emissions, say two major new studies.

And it may take tens or hundreds of years to pay back the “carbon debt” accrued by growing biofuels in the first place, say researchers. The calculations join a growing list of studies questioning whether switching to biofuels really will help combat climate change.

Biofuel production has accelerated over the last 5 years, spurred in part by a US drive to produce corn-derived ethanol as an alternative to petrol.

The idea makes intuitive environmental sense – plants take up carbon dioxide as they grow, so biofuels should help reduce greenhouse gas emissions – but the full environmental cost of biofuels is only now becoming clear.

Extra emissions are created from the production of fertiliser needed to grow corn, for example, leading some researchers to predict that the energy released by burning ethanol is only 25% greater than that used to grow and process the fuel.
Carbon debt

The new studies examine a different part of biofuel equation, and both suggest that the emissions associated with the crops may be even worse than that.

One analysis looks at land that is switched to biofuel crop production. Carbon will be released when forests are felled or bush cleared, and longer-term emissions created by dead roots decaying.

This creates what Joseph Fargione of The Nature Conservancy and colleagues call a “carbon debt”. Emissions savings generated by the biofuels will help pay back this debt, but in some cases this can take centuries, suggests their analysis.

If 10,000 square metres of Brazilian rainforest is cleared to make way for soya beans – which are used to make biodiesel – over 700,000 kilograms of carbon dioxide is released.

The saving generated by the resulting biodiesel will not cancel that out for around 300 years, says Fargione. In the case of peat land rainforest in Indonesia, which is being cleared to grow palm oil, the debt will take over 400 years to repay, he says.
Missing corn

The carbon debts associated with US corn are measured in tens rather than hundreds of years. But the second study suggests that producing corn for fuel rather than food could have dramatic knock-on effects elsewhere.

Corn is used to feed cattle and demand for meat is high, so switching land to biofuel production is likely to prompt farmers in Brazil and elsewhere to clear forests and other lands to create new cropland to grow the missing corn.

When the carbon released by those clearances is taken into account, corn ethanol produces nearly twice as much carbon as petrol.

“The implications of these changes in land use have not been appreciated up until now,” says Alex Farrell, at the University of California, Berkeley, US.

Farrell adds that biofuels could still prove useful in the fight against climate change, but using different approaches – such as focusing on crops for both food and fuel, or new technology for generating biofuels from food waste.

Journal reference: Science (DOI:10.1126/science.1152747 and DOI:10.1126/science.1151861)

SOURCE:
New Scientist Environment

by G. Turnbull

Saturday morning, April 15, 2006, I was listening to a favourite radio station, Malaspina College radio CHLY-FM, from Nanaimo. They were interviewing Leuren Moret, a geophysicist from Berkeley CA, who had worked at US nuclear labs.

She went on for 40 minutes about the horrors of depleted uranium (DU) in munitions, which releases radiation into the atmosphere and its medical effects on, for instance, the first Gulf War veterans, where it was first used in quantity. Over 500,000 out of 700,000 vets are now on disability for something called “Gulf War Syndrome,” a ‘disease’ with many symptoms identical to radiation sickness. Or the test range off Vieques, Puerto Rica, where the residents are suing the US Navy for all the cancer, etc. That test range was finally moved to Rockhampton, Australia, where birth defects are starting to show up. Part way through the interview, she said, “The US navy used to test fire these munitions in Puget Sound until the local residents complained. They then moved north across the border to Nanoose Bay and now test in Canadian waters!”
Nanoose Bay means the Whiskey Gulf test range which is only 30 miles southeast of where I was sitting.

I had just been told I was 30 miles downwind of a nuclear test zone!

I went into a bit of an anxiety attack with all the attendant brain chemicals associated with “fight or flight,” where the risk is usually assessed fairly quickly. But the risk assessment of when and how much DU was only partially answered 11 days later, (and for that period some friends thought I was a bit off.) I was certainly running on adrenalin.

I started on the internet where googling ‘du Nanoose Bay’ brought up 16 sites but nothing conclusive. (There are now more than ten times the sites!) Googling ‘du’ confirmed the horrors of its use, the quantities used in the first Gulf War, the Bosnian carpet bombing (where Rumanian and Bulgarian atmospheric testing detected dirty radioactive isotopes found only in spent nuclear fuel rods, what’s called RU), the Afghanistan and Tora Bora bombings, and the second Gulf War, where the US admits to using 2.5 million kg.

And its definition: when uranium is ‘enriched,’ what is left of the original uranium is ‘depleted’ to 70% of its original radioactivity. There is a lot more of the depleted stuff than the enriched stuff, and its storage had always been a problem.
It was first used by the Germans in l943 when their tungsten supply was blockaded, according to A. Speer. Tungsten is used in armour piercing munitions. Replacing it with DU was more effective, DU being more dense, and had the added ‘benefit’ of being a gas weapon!

Yes, it is an excellent armour piercing weapon, but what is rarely mentioned is DU’s pyrophoric qualities. As a metal, it ignites and burns like magnesium at an intense 2-to-3000OC. Water does not put it out. It ignites at only 170OC, meaning it’s on fire as it comes out of the barrel of the gun, or, if used as a bomb, it ignites on impact, burning, vapourizing almost entirely, and condensing to tiny, hollow spheres with a density less than water that then float on the wind and water, and are just the right size to lodge in lungs. Essentially that 70% radiation is released to the atmosphere just as an atomic bomb releases its radiation to the atmosphere but in smaller doses.

DU tips, coats, and is solid in munitions from handgun caliber to 5000 pound bombs. Considering the quantities used (conservatively 3 million kg.), those small doses apparently add up to the radiation released by 400,000 Nagasaki A-bombs (500,000 by another source). I don’t know how to judge those numbers. There are 67 million kg. DU munitions ‘prepositioned’ in South Korea on three US bases!

The DU storage problem was solved and in fact DU is given free to the munitions manufacturers.

All this information wasn’t helping my anxiety and I still had nothing solid about Whiskey Gulf. I phoned a UBC professor who has been working on nuclear issues, asking whether he knew anything about DU testing in Whiskey Gulf. For 20 minutes we had the strangest conversation where, in a loud voice, he would say that the range is only used for torpedo testing, loudly that DU is safe, while in between, in a quiet voice, he would say that DU is ‘highly chemically and biologically reactive’ and that the Navy were using an anti-cruise missile gun, the Phalanx, that shot bursts of 60-120 rounds of 20 mm cannonfire at a time, up to 2000 per minute – an enormous quantity of DU vapourizing into the atmosphere. At the end he was saying, in the loud voice, that he believed that the 15 hijackers took out the World Trade Centre with nobody else aware. Loudly I agreed. Quietly he told me if I came on information to contact him by mail, not to phone, not to e-mail. The implication that I was talking on a monitored phone, and his anxiety, did not help me with my anxiety.

I started noticing clicking on my line.

I still didn’t know my risk from exposure and it seemed the only definitive way would be to scientifically measure the radiation in the environment around me. Not knowing how best to test for this I called the Provincial Public Health Officer on the morning of April 25. She was not interested, couldn’t help me and put me on to the Ministry of the Environment where a bureaucrat was interested, suggesting looking at disease statistics, but couldn’t help me on how to measure radiation. He put me on to the Ministry of Health Radiation Protection Branch, adding, “though they might have shut it down.” (Slight rise in anxiety: “they?”)
Other phone calls to government offices, ending up at the Ministry of Health Radiation Protection Branch, were less informative or dramatic.

Wednesday April 26th, I was talking to an unnamed source who used to be in the Canadian military and who was on board a Canadian naval ship when not only was the US navy test firing DU munitions in Whiskey Gulf but so was the Canadian navy and at least three other NATO navies, not only the Phalanx but every gun! This was in the late l980s, early l990, prior to their use in the l99l Gulf War. This source could face military justice for divulging this and therefore insists on anonymity. This information has since been confirmed by another ex-military person.

Finally, some sense of time and quantity though I don’t know about prior to this period (the Phalanx was being installed at this time). From then to now is also vague though the Phalanx has to be test fired twice a month to maintain correct calibration, 400-700 rounds each time. Presumably Canadian and US warships in these waters with this gun are test firing them still.
There is a concerned group in the Puget Sound that tries to keep track of this activity. There is no Canadian counterpart. In other test ranges it has taken years to get them to stop or move. The Brits tested in the Scottish Firth of Forth and it was the same procedure of secrecy, deny, deny and move finally. Here we have testing that has been secret for close to 20 years in which at least five countries are complicit.

Given this information my local MP did nothing more than open a file.

I am not a political animal and, feeling against a wall, I came back to my original concern about my health and started researching uranium detoxification. DU in the body acts as a toxin like other heavy metals such as mercury and lead, plus it is radioactive, doing DNA damage wherever it is. DU stays in the body much longer than other forms of uranium, according to H.D.Sharma.

Detox research consistently referred to the Japanese experience after Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The people that were irradiated but lived had a particular diet – miso, shitake and kombu [kelp]. The miso and shitake boosted health while the kelp detoxed. After Chernobyl, the Russians did a lot of research using this knowledge to test various algae and seaweeds, finally fixing on the brown kelp laminaria japonica and making a 40:1 extract that is sold in the US under the trade name Modifilan and in Canada as brown seaweed extract. I’ve been through the six month detox and feel much better.

After following the news of the CFB Gagetown NB Agent Orange class action suit and noting the similarities to Whiskey Gulf, I contacted the law firm about a possible suit here. After some correspondence, the prinicpal of the firm, Tony Merchant, agreed to pursue the action, stating that he thinks the case “ought to move forward.” He will need more input than just mine.
I lost a father and a number of then-young friends to diseases associated with uranium exposure (thyroid, brain, stomach cancers, etc.) in the early l990s, only over three years after DU was tested heavily in Whiskey Gulf.
Does that sound familiar to anyone living in the area of Texada, Lasqueti, Hornby, Denman, Comox, Quadra and Cortes Islands, or have you witnessed this activity?

If so you could write your concerns to:
Re: File Number 402540, Merchant Law Group
#100-2401 Saskatchewan Drive
Regina SA Canada S4P 4H8

My interest in a litigious, rather than a political approach, is first to publicize this criminal activity and then possibly to seek justice. Feeling relatively fit for 60, I probably do not qualify for compensation, but some of you may.

G. Turnbull is an ordinary Canadian citizen concerned about some particular activities of his government.

More Information
Globalresearch.ca, wise-uranium.org, mindfully.org and stop-du.org all have good information and links about DU. Look for the 2001 report to the World Health Organization, Radiological Toxicity of DU. The Moret interview is archived at radio4all.net. You may wish to use public access internet to avoid being on a list.

Air Force Environmental Assessment
“Target 63-10 is the only air-to-ground gunnery range in the United States cleared to employ 30mm depleted uranium rounds from A-10 aircraft. The target area is restricted and is more than 10 miles from any community, facility, or home.
“A single depleted uranium penetrator, about the size of an adult’s little finger, is capable of penetrating the armor of a tank. As the round penetrates the armor, it burns at extremely high temperatures and sprays hot metal in the interior of the armored target.

“Depleted uranium is the by-product of converting natural uranium into enriched uranium. Depleted uranium is 40 percent less radioactive than natural uranium and is twice as dense as lead. The small depleted uranium penetrator weighs 1.7 pounds.

– Nellis Air Force Base, Nevada, http://www.nellis.af.mil/news/story.asp?storyID=123022433

The Watershed Sentinel is a bi-monthly magazine from the West Coast of British Columbia offering a unique mix of bioregional and global perspectives on environmental topics. The magazine focuses on society’s effects on the land, water, and air and on the solutions, large and small, that will eventually result in sustainability.

SOURCE:

http://www.watershedsentinel.ca

by Susan Casey, photograph by Gregg Segal

A vast swath of the Pacific, twice the size of Texas, is full of a plastic stew that is entering the food chain. Scientists say these toxins are causing obesity, infertility…and worse.

Fate can take strange forms, and so perhaps it does not seem unusual that Captain Charles Moore found his life’s purpose in a nightmare. Unfortunately, he was awake at the time, and 800 miles north of Hawaii in the Pacific Ocean.

It happened on August 3, 1997, a lovely day, at least in the beginning: Sunny. Little wind. Water the color of sapphires. Moore and the crew of Alguita, his 50-foot aluminum-hulled catamaran, sliced through the sea.

Returning to Southern California from Hawaii after a sailing race, Moore had altered Alguita’s course, veering slightly north. He had the time and the curiosity to try a new route, one that would lead the vessel through the eastern corner of a 10-million-square-mile oval known as the North Pacific subtropical gyre. This was an odd stretch of ocean, a place most boats purposely avoided. For one thing, it was becalmed. “The doldrums,” sailors called it, and they steered clear. So did the ocean’s top predators: the tuna, sharks, and other large fish that required livelier waters, flush with prey. The gyre was more like a desert—a slow, deep, clockwise-swirling vortex of air and water caused by a mountain of high-pressure air that lingered above it.

The area’s reputation didn’t deter Moore. He had grown up in Long Beach, 40 miles south of L.A., with the Pacific literally in his front yard, and he possessed an impressive aquatic résumé: deckhand, able seaman, sailor, scuba diver, surfer, and finally captain. Moore had spent countless hours in the ocean, fascinated by its vast trove of secrets and terrors. He’d seen a lot of things out there, things that were glorious and grand; things that were ferocious and humbling. But he had never seen anything nearly as chilling as what lay ahead of him in the gyre.

It began with a line of plastic bags ghosting the surface, followed by an ugly tangle of junk: nets and ropes and bottles, motor-oil jugs and cracked bath toys, a mangled tarp. Tires. A traffic cone. Moore could not believe his eyes. Out here in this desolate place, the water was a stew of plastic crap. It was as though someone had taken the pristine seascape of his youth and swapped it for a landfill.

How did all the plastic end up here? How did this trash tsunami begin? What did it mean? If the questions seemed overwhelming, Moore would soon learn that the answers were even more so, and that his discovery had dire implications for human—and planetary—health. As Alguita glided through the area that scientists now refer to as the “Eastern Garbage Patch,” Moore realized that the trail of plastic went on for hundreds of miles. Depressed and stunned, he sailed for a week through bobbing, toxic debris trapped in a purgatory of circling currents. To his horror, he had stumbled across the 21st-century Leviathan. It had no head, no tail. Just an endless body…
SOURCE and more:

http://www.bestlifeonline.com