Schuss' Run

For God's sake does a partially visible breast offend people that much? There are more offensive things we see in pools than just a breast…like G-string bikinis and transparent bathing suits that roam the public pools relentlessly. Will there be any rules against those fashion glitches? Talk about a sight for raw meat on display! I breastfeed my 2 daughters everywhere and I never had a problem, because I did it discretely, it's just a breast, men, women, we all got it...

However there’s greater concern on what kind of mother would subject her infant to the vulnerability of public pool water? It’s not clean water as they say...

Amelie

Nice bum, but...

Mothers plan breastfeeding protest in Calgary pool

Last Updated: Friday, April 3, 2009 | 10:57 AM MT

CBC News

A group of mothers plan to breastfeed in a Calgary pool Sunday morning to protest what they are calling harassment from lifeguards.

The women say it's their right to breastfeed wherever they want to, but the lifeguards at the southwest Killarney pool have asked them to get out of the water or use the change rooms for nursing.

Gemma Kelsall takes her two children to the pool every Thursday morning where they meet up with other families. If her 21-month-old Kaliya gets hungry, they don't leave the pool to breastfeed.

But lifeguards have told her she is not allowed to breastfeed in the water, she said.

More: ....
cbc.ca/canada/calgary/story/

Fish 'an ally' against climate change

13:02 16 January 2009 by Catherine Brahic

An unlikely ally may have been found in the fight against the effects of climate change. Fish excretions seem to play a key role in maintaining the ocean's delicate pH balance, says a study that also reveals that there are 2 billion tonnes of fish in the world's oceans.

Bony fish excrete lumps of calcium carbonate, known as "gut rocks" which are thought to dissolve in the upper layers of the ocean. A team led by Rod Wilson of the University of Exeter in the UK has now shown that the sheer amount of gut rocks produced plays a key role in buffering the carbon dioxide that acidifies seawater.

"This study really is the first glimpse of the huge impact fish have on our carbon cycle - and why we need them in the ocean," says Wilson's colleague Villy Christensen of the University of British Columbia in Canada.

Protective role

While marine biologists have known for some time that fish produce gut rocks, until now no-one had estimated just how much calcium carbonate is spewed out into the ocean in this way.

It was widely believed that most marine carbonate is provided by the external skeletons of marine plankton. These microscopic organisms are likely to be hard hit as climate change increases the acidity of the oceans and their skeletons literally dissolve away.

The new study reveals that fish play an important role in stopping this from happening.

The researchers used two different models to estimate the amount of fish biomass that is in the global oceans, and its distribution.

By drinking salt water, fish ingest a lot of calcium, and they excrete more or less calcium carbonate depending on their size and the temperature of the water. "For a given total mass of fish, smaller fish produce more than bigger fish, and fish at higher temperatures produce more than fish at lower temperatures," explains Wilso

[:MORE:]

* For similar stories, visit the Climate Change Topic Guide
www.newscientist.com/topic/climate-change

One year in two minutes

Images from the same spot through one year. Audio recorded from the same location. Visit his blog to download this in HD, get all the original images and read about how I did this.

www.youtube.com/user/eirikso

seasons, nature, spring, summer, autumn, winter, tree, trees, forest, norway, oslo, skøyen, nature

Whales are getting the worst... I think it's that they don't have the budget for surveillance anymore...

This here below is what they used to do!!

Gunboat diplomacy rules seas

December 29, 2007

Australia's deployment of an armed ship to monitor whaling is part of a bigger political picture, writes Andrew Darby.

Take a group of fit young paramilitary Australians, give them a need to let off steam while they policed a beat in the vast Southern Ocean, and a big ship to do it on.

What did they come up with? Dodgeball.

In a former life, the Australian fisheries patrol ship Oceanic Viking, now tasked with chasing Japanese whalers, was a cable layer. It carried long lines of undersea cable, coiled in tall cylindrical holds amidships.

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www.smh.com.au/news/world/
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Australia govt says will not monitor Japan whalers

Friday, November 21 12:20 am
Reuters Rob Taylor

Australia will not send a fisheries patrol ship this year to shadow Japanese whalers and protests near Antarctica, the government said on Friday, appealing for activists to keep high seas protests peaceful.

Read more!

Great discovery that shows how old this part of the world is!!

This sarcophagus, is one of three found where Herod's fortress palace once stood, is seen at Hebrew University in Jerusalem November 19, 2008. Archaeologist has unearthed the 2,000-year-old remains of two sacrophagi in which a wife and daughter-in-law of the biblical King Herod had been interred.

The findings announced by Ehud Netzer of Jerusalem's Hebrew University could cast new light on the lavish lifestyle of the Roman-era monarch also known as the "King of the Jews."

REUTERS/Baz Ratner

Israeli archaeologists unearth Herod family tombs

Wed Nov 19, 2008 8:54pm GMT

By Allyn Fisher-Ilan

BEIT SAHOUR, West Bank (Reuters) - An Israeli archaeologist said on Wednesday he had unearthed what he believed were the 2,000-year-old remains of two tombs which had held a wife and daughter-in-law of the biblical King Herod.

Other findings announced by Ehud Netzer of Jerusalem's Hebrew University provided new evidence of the lavish lifestyle of the Roman-era monarch also known as the "King of the Jews."

Read more!

Seeing, hearing the beaked whales

A beaked whale is any of at least twenty species of small whale in the family Ziphiidae.

They are one of the least-known families of large mammals: several species have only been described in the last two decades, and it is entirely possible that more remain as yet undiscovered. Six genera have been identified.

Whilst sailing (or drifting as we were at the time) from Portugal to Lanzarote we enjoyed the company of these two beautiful beaked whales for most of the afternoon and early evening. One was a lot more curious than the other.

Three of these, Indopacetus, the Hyperoodon and the Mesoplodon, are united in a single subfamily, the Hyperoodontinae.

Beaked whales are creatures of the ocean deeps, feeding, so far as is known, on or near the sea floor. They have an extraordinary ability to dive for long periods—20 to 30 minutes is common, and 85 minute dives have been recorded—and to great depths: 1,899 metres and possibly more.

Blainville's beaked whale.
Image courtesy of Victor Gonzalez Otaola, University of La Laguna, taken under permit from the government of the Canary Islands.

The Blainville beaked whale is seen around the Canaries
Environment correspondent Richard Black joins researchers on board the yacht Song of the Whale as they look and listen for whales around the Canary Islands.

Beaked whales are probably the least understood large mammals on the planet, but sound can help us track their mysterious movements.

MONDAY 29 SEPTEMBER: FIRST SIGHT
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/7634123.stm

Two months after Cyclone Nargis flounced across Myanmar's Irrawaddy Delta, taking an approximately 134,000 lives and destroying crucial farm lands the military rulers are as secretive as ever and its people still linger far and removed from the rest of the world.

Burmese saved by survival instincts

SEVEN weeks have passed since Cyclone Nargis swept through the Irrawaddy Delta in southern Burma, leaving a trail of flattened villages and broken lives and arousing international sympathy that turned to anguish as the military government obstructed foreign aid.

While it is estimated that the cyclone may have killed 130,000 people, the number of lives lost subsequently is much lower than at first feared, in part because of the resilience of villagers used to coping with a brutal junta.

Reports from Burma, obtained despite heavy media restrictions which don't allow this journalist to give their name, find relief workers continuing to criticise the government's secretive posture.

They say the main problems include an obsession with security, restrictions on foreign aid experts, and weeks of dawdling that has left bloated bodies befouling waterways and survivors marooned with little food.

But the specific character of the cyclone, the hardiness of villagers and aid efforts by private citizens have helped prevent further death and sickness, according to aid workers

More...

news.scotsman.com/Burmese-saved-by-survival-instincts