Monthly Archives: September 2011

September 4-10

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Things will be shifting this week, including alliances and allegiances. You also might begin to feel that where you are living and what you are doing is reaching a point at which you cannot continue in that place or that occupation for much longer.  These are things that you have been aware of for some time,  but just as a nagging itch. Now you are becoming less tolerant and more anxious for things to get moving.  This is good. Take time this week to get rid of things that confine you to an image that no longer suits the new you that is rapidly coming out of the cocoon, getting ready to fly.  Hurrah.  You have known this would be happening, just not when;  The time is now as the energies all over are shifting.  There will be less judgement about what you are doing and why as others become very focused on the confusion in their own lives.  Corporations, institutions, and groups also will find themselves in turmoil and looking at what is happening to the greater whole.  So do not worry!  This is the perfect time to be WHO you are and go for it.  Look around for signs and symbols, even art work, that reflect your growing individuality, an individuality that belongs to a community.  You will also be noticing physical issues and weirdness.  This is the core of your physicality responding to the energetic shifts, blips, and changes. These changes are happening on every level, emotional, physical, spiritual, and mental.  Be kind to yourself and know that if what you are feeling rings true to your heart, your intuition, then all is well.  This is also a good time to backup, double check, and ascertain that things you are working on or planning are safe and available.  Things will be disappearing on all levels, from your computer, your files, etc..   Prioritize and be certain that what you need is protected.  (I have available in the GALLERY section some pieces that might help in this transition..  Or for some god karma, a donation goes a long way towards assisting with keeping things going and up to date)

On the larger scale things are starting this week in terms of Earth changes, however we are only seeing the tip of the iceberg here.  More will come into view as time goes by.  There are many things in this atmosphere that need to be equalized and what is going on right now indicates an attempt towards this.  There is a lot of crazy ego-bound anger that is working against the movement towards change.  All of this results in upheavals.  Spiritual crises on alarge scale cannot help but be mirrored in actual physical events.  So, tornadoes, hurricanes, earthquakes, volcanoes.  The energy of the galaxy that has been moving towards us is now in proximity and twists certainty into uncertainty.  This will leave those in the area of science wondering why their methods no longer yield predictable results. Prediction based upon the past has no future.  Prediction based upon uncertainty tells the truth.  But it is something that so many wish not to hear.  The easy, good, none-to-five, work and get a good retirement life is over.  The politicians do not know this on an intellectual level, but intuitively they are aware.  Therefore the whole political game, for game it is, is up in the air.  They do not know what they are saying, and they do not know what it means.  But there is a very large wedge moving into this whole thing — perhaps a wild card, but it will  make everyone see things in a different light.  Finances are as best they can be.  It is time to see it all for illusion, a game in which you do not hold the winning cards.  Best approach—follow your intuition.  Expect the unexpected.  Keep your eyes to the skies. And look below the surface.

Sunday, September 4:    Grainty White

Things will be in and out of focus today.  At times, that might just leave you feeling that you are going a bit daft.  This is not the case, however, it is just the way things are.  There is something that you have been searching for or wanting to do that has eluded you for quite sometime.  Today, it will be closer to you than before.  You will also get a sense as to how to achieve what it is that you have been desiring.  There is unexpected assistance coming your way.  Do not discredit such things as dreams, intuition, or coincidence.  Things are bringing themselves to the fore these days in ma ny different disguises.  This is a time for looking below the surface.  If you are not sure, ask questions.  If you are still not sure, ask more.  In terms of what it is that you are becoming, this is a good time for some meditation, journaling, or other creative work.  In these kinds of activities, you can contact layers of yourself that are often hidden.

Monday, September 5:    Cloudy White

Labor Day:    When dealing with people today, again, it will be important to understand what is being said and about whom or what it is being said.  There is a lot of confusion in the air, and people will be saying things out of sync with what is going on around them.  This is not a time to take tings seriously.  If you find yourself feeling out of sorts because of words or actions that you are not clear about, ask.  And if it is too late to ask, review the situation.  Much is happening today on all levels, and in this kind of energy it is hard to know on what level you are.  This is not a day for firm decision making or for making big changes.  Let the day be as it is.  Observe, question, and as best you can clarify.  There are things that happen today that will become important in the next few weeks in terms of getting it straight about some people, options, opportunities, and future plans.

Tuesday, September 6:    Periwinkle Blue

There is much to be learned today in terms of your friends and your community.  In many cases, the communities are just beginning to be drawn together, and there will be indications of who it is that will be part of your community.  You are aware that you have been feeling the need to make some shifts in your life.  There are indications out there of what would best fit you.  Because of all the inner turmoil, you have lost touch with the really important aspects of yourself. This is a day in which you will find reminders of just what those are.  Be open to what is around you. Synchronicity is in the air.

Wednesday, September 7:    Violet

This is a day for staying strong in WHO you are and grounded in your core.  There is innuendo in the air.  People seem to be talking about you.This can lead to feelings of uncertainty and powerlessness.  Do not act before making sure that you know what its going on.  The imagination can definitely play tricks on one, and when you are in the midst of the shadows, it is easy to mistake one thing for another.  The nest thing to do today is to stay with your routine. Be with the people,  places, and things that you know and trust most.  If you have to go out and about, then plan your activities carefully.  Be observant and see how things are happening around you.  There is much to be learned.

Thursday,  September 8:    Medium Blue

At this time, more and more things are coming up from the past. Emotions will be close to the surface.  There can be exchanges about past matters and even a phone call from someone from long ago.  At this time, you are feeling somewhat off center and not balanced.  Today, the energies are letting you take what it is that you are feeling and make them into a  kind of basis for you to work from as time goes by.  You need perspective and this what they are giving to you.  There are opportunities around right now.  Do not let them pass.

Friday, September 9: Light Amber
Plans can be changed unexpectedly today. besides, there are so many lose ends that still need to be tied up before you can get started on… This is a day also for planning, for determining what it is that you are wanting to get done by the end of the month. thing are shifting and changing right now, as are you. You need to be okay with everything that is going on and everything that is happening in your life right now. Take some time to go inside and work with your core and your own personal heartfelt sense of destiny. Then write down what it is that you discover. Put together your month’s work and prioritize. Do not let the important things slip through the holes.

Crystal Energy: TurtleBack Stone—-A good mineral for cleansing and renewal. It assists with the inner journey of soul recognition. Resonates with the Divine Feminine. Vibrates to the Root and Heart Chakras.

Saturday, September 10: Chocolate Brown
This is a god day for enjoying the sweetness of life. Just do not overdo it. There will be temptations to go beyond what you usually think of as enough. these can be found in conversation, in emotion, in reaction, in physical movement, and of course, in eating. This is a good time to go within and become aware of what your limits are, how much you are willing to do, and how much you are willing to put up with. There are people out there who are watching you, waiting for you to make a mistakes. This is a good time to remember that you are in charge of all that you do and how you do that will present to those outside of you a picture of yourself. The bottom line is WHO you are. DO not worry about the watchers. They will always be there, but they will only be able to effect you if you let them.

Crystal Energy: Siberian Amethyst—-The energy of this stone assists with alignment of the true purpose of self with the All. It allows for vision into the truth of one’s being. Resonates with the Third Eye Chakra.

Dragon Con This Weekend

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Dragon*Con is the largest multi-media, popular culture convention focusing on science fiction and fantasy, gaming, comics, literature, art, music, and film in the universe!

This year, Dragon*Con will be held Labor Day weekend (September 2-5, 2011) in Atlanta, GA.

check out the website:    http://www.dragoncon.org/index.php

And here are some of the

FEATURED GUESTS

Note: Recent additions are marked with a » (within 7 days) or a » (within 14 days).

Authors:
Kevin J. Anderson Terry Brooks A. C. Crispin
Bill Fawcett Richard Garfield Richard Garriott
Laurell K. Hamilton Charlaine Harris Laura Hickman
Tracy Hickman Sherrilyn Kenyon Jonathan Maberry
Todd McCaffrey Rebecca Moesta Jody Lynn Nye
Mike Resnick John D. Ringo Robert J. Sawyer
Susan Sizemore Michael Stackpole S. M. Stirling
Janny Wurts Chelsea Quinn Yarbro Timothy Zahn

 

Film & Television:
Loni Anderson Ralph Bakshi Kristin Bauer
Trace Beaulieu Jim Beaver Julie Benz
Jon Bernthal David Blue Ernest Borgnine
Nicholas Brendon Beau Bridges Amy Bruni
Sara Canning Brian Cano Misha Collins
Frank Conniff Bill Corbett James Darren
Felicia Day Nicole de Boer Aaron Douglas
Robin Dunne »Eliza Dushku Elvira
Robert Englund Richard Epcar Beth Ezzo
Tom Felton Colin Ferguson Louis Ferreira
Lou Ferrigno Samantha Ferris Carrie Fisher
Sean Patrick Flanery Chris Gauthier Patrick Gilmore
Steve Gonsalves Erin Gray Joel Gretsch
Dean Haglund Doc Hammer Richard Hatch
Kyle Hebert Tricia Helfer Lance Henriksen
Howard Hesseman Virginia Hey Christopher Heyerdahl
Jordan Hinson Michael Hogan Sam Huntington
Tom Kane Clare Kramer Gary Kurtz
Martin Landau Madison Lintz Christopher Lloyd
Gareth David Lloyd Joe Manganiello James Marsters
Peter Mayhew Eddie McClintock »Sylvester McCoy
Mary McDonnell Gates McFadden Mike McFarland
Mercedes McNab Robert Duncan McNeill Julie McNiven
Addy Miller Temuera Morrison Kate Mulgrew
David Nykl Denis O’Hare Amy Okuda
Edward James Olmos Jim Parrack Tahmoh Penikett
Meaghan Rath Norman Reedus Chandler Riggs
Michael Rosenbaum William Shatner Mark A. Sheppard
Brent Spiner Dave Tango Amanda Tapping
Lea Thompson Robin Thorsen Tony Todd
James Tolkan James Urbaniak Laura Vandervoort
Nana Visitor Garrett Wang Wil Wheaton
Sam Witwer Steven Yeun Aimee Zaffis
Chris Zaffis John Zaffis

 

 

The Sex of Numbers

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People See Odd Numbers as Male, Even as Female

Daisy Grewal, ScientificAmerican.com
Date: 31 August 2011 Time: 03:08 PM ET
rainbow of numbers
In one experiment, when foreign names were paired with “1” participants rated them as masculine and when paired with “2” they were rated as feminine.
CREDIT: skvoor / Shutterstock

Gender is so fundamental to the way we understand the world that people are prone to assign a sex to even inanimate objects. We all know someone, or perhaps we are that person, who consistently refers to their computer or car with a gender pronoun (“She’s been running great these past few weeks!”) New research suggests that our tendency to see gender everywhere even applies to abstract ideas such as numbers. Across cultures, people see odd numbers as male and even numbers as female.

Scientists have long known that language can influence how we perceive gender in objects. Some languages consistently refer to certain objects as male or female, and this in turn, influences how speakers of that language think about those objects. Webb Phillips of the Max Planck Institute, Lauren Schmidt of HeadLamp Research, and Lera Boroditsky at Stanford University asked Spanish- and German-speaking bilinguals to rate various objects according to whether they seemed more similar to males or females. They found that people rated each object according to its grammatical gender. For example, Germans see the moon as being more like a man, because the German word for moon is grammatically masculine (“der Mond”). In contrast, Spanish-speakers see the moon as being more like a woman, because in Spanish the word for moon is grammatically feminine (“la Luna”).

Aside from language, objects can also become infused with gender based on their appearance, who typically uses them, and whether they seem to possess the type of characteristics usually associated with men or women. David Gal and James Wilkie of Northwestern University studied how people view gender in everyday objects, such as food and furniture. They found that people see food dishes containing meat as more masculine and salads and sour dairy products as more feminine. People see furniture items, such as tables and trash cans, as more feminine when they feature rounded, rather than sharp, edges.

to read more, go to:    http://www.livescience.com/15859-odd-numbers-male-female.html

 

Greenland Ice Chunk Ready to Go

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Giant Chunk of Greenland Ice Set to Break Away

by Andrea Mustain
Date: 02 September 2011 Time: 01:50 PM ET
greenland glacier ice berg, greenland glacier collapse, greenland ice island, ice shelf collapse, arctic ice melt, arctic melt season, sea level rise, glaciers and sea level rise, petermann glacier
August 5, 2009: This ‘before’ picture shows the disintegrating ice shelf before it floated away.
CREDIT: Jason Box, Byrd Polar Research Center, Ohio State University.

An ice shelf is poised to break off from a Greenland glacier and float out to sea as an island twice the size of Manhattan, scientists say.

“I don’t know exactly when,” Jason Box, a climatologist with Ohio State Unversity’s Byrd Polar Research Center, told OurAmazingPlanet. “I wouldn’t be surprised if it happened today — or if it happened next summer.”

Just a year ago, in August 2010, the same glacier produced an even larger iceberg — a mass of ice four times the size of Manhattan, the largest in recorded Greenland history — yet researchers warn that the next spectacular break could have more-dire consequences.

Box said it’s not clear when the 62-square-mile (160 square kilometers) ice shelf, which is dangling from Greenland’s Petermann Glacier, will detach from the mainland. “I think it’s more likely to occur during periods of melt, and that’s coming to an end, so I’m losing confidence it’s going to break this year,” Box said.

Ice shelves are enormous plates of ice that float on polar seas but are connected to the shoreline by the land-bound glaciers that feed into them.

During much of the Arctic melt season, summer sunlight pounds the Earth’s highest latitudes nearly 24 hours a day. Melting typically draws to a close in early to mid-September, when cooler temperatures and shorter days arrive.

Box said scientists first noticed a jagged crack in the glacier’s ice — a growing rift he dubbed ‘The Big Kahuna’ — in 2008. However, a subsequent search through satellite data revealed the rift first appeared about eight years earlier.

“We can see the crack widening in the past year through satellite pictures, so it seems imminent,” Box said.

Ice shelf collapse can affect sea levels.

to read more, go to:   http://www.livescience.com/15890-greenland-ice-chunk-break.html

 

 

ET’s and Dolphins

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Dolphin Studies Could Reveal Secrets of Extraterrestrial Intelligence

Keith Cooper, Astrobiology Magazine
Date: 02 September 2011 Time: 01:49 PM ET
Analysis of Dolphin Communication
Analysis of dolphin communication with Information Theory has shown it to be surprisingly intricate and possibly second only to human communication in terms of complexity on Earth.
CREDIT: Wild Dolphin Project.

How do we define intelligence? SETI, the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence, clearly equates intelligence with technology (or, more precisely, the building of radio or laser beacons). Some, such as the science fiction writer Isaac Asimov, suggested that intelligence wasn’t just the acquisition of technology, but the ability to develop and improve it, integrating it into our society.

By that definition, a dolphin, lacking limbs to create and manipulate complex tools, cannot possibly be described as intelligent. It’s easy to see why such definitions prove popular; we are clearly the smartest creatures on the planet, and the only species with technology. It may be human hubris, or some kind of anthropocentric bias that we find difficult to escape from, but our adherence to this definition narrows the phase space in which we’re willing to search for intelligent life.

Technology is certainly linked to intelligence – you need to be smart to build a computer or an aircraft or a radio telescope – but technology does not define intelligence. It is just a manifestation of it, perhaps one of many.

Astrobiologists see intelligence a little differently. The dictionary defines intelligence as the ability to learn, while others see it as the capacity to reason, to empathize, to solve problems and consider complex ideas, and to interact socially.

Intelligence in the universe

If we take these characteristics to be a broad working definition of intelligence, our view of intelligent life in the universe suddenly looks very different. No longer are we confined to considering only life that has technology.

To be fair to SETI, at this moment in time it cannot search for anything other than beacons – the vast distances across the cosmos coupled with our own baby steps into the Universe mean that we don’t have the capability to search for any other form of intelligent life other than those that can deliberately signal their presence. However, what a wider definition of intelligence tells us is that we are not alone, not even on our own planet Earth.

Professor Robin Dunbar, an anthropologist and evolutionary psychologist from the University of Oxford, was one of the first to put forward the theory that the evolution of intelligence is driven by social factors, allowing animals to survive, interact and prosper in large and complex social groupings. These include notions of reciprocal altruism (I scratch your back, you scratch mine), politics (forming sub-groups and coalitions within the larger group) and understanding the emotions of others (empathy, which in turn relies on theory of mind, the ability to be aware of one’s self and others).

Looking at it that way, modern social networking on media such as Facebook may just be a symptom of what helped drive us to become intelligent in the first place, many tens of thousands of years ago.

Here’s the trick – to be social, you must be communicative. Staying quiet is anti-social. Personal interactions require communication, of some form, and the more complex the interaction, the more complex the communication. So if intelligence and social behavior is linked – and many people agree that it is – then the best place to start looking for intelligence is in animals that like to chat with one another.

And that brings us to dolphins.

to read more, go to:    http://www.livescience.com/15889-dolphin-intelligence-search-extraterrestrial-life.html

Rick Perry Bumper Sticker

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Best Rick Perry Bumper Sticker Ever (PICTURE)

First Posted: 8/21/11 11:25 AM ET Updated: 8/21/11 11:55 AM ET

It’s not uncommon for political bumper stickers to crop up during campaigns, but sometimes an image goes above and beyond its simple purpose. This is one of those bumper stickers.

Granted, the tape might give them some problems down the road, but we think it gets their message across.


Hungry for more Perry awkwardness? Here’s the GOP candidate answering a child’s questions:

for more, go to:    http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/08/21/best-rick-perry-bumper-sticker_n_932400.html?ncid=txtlnkushpmg00000005

 

Americans and Religions

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10 things the Belief Blog learned in its first year

By Dan Gilgoff, CNN.com Religion Editor

(CNN) – In case you were wondering about all the balloons and cake: CNN’s Belief Blog has just marked its first birthday.

After publishing 1,840 posts and sifting through 452,603 comments (OK, we may have missed one or two) the Belief Blog feels older than its 12 months would suggest. But it also feels wiser, having followed the faith angles of big news stories, commissioned lots of commentary and, yes, paid attention to all those reader comments for a solid year.

10 things we’ve learned:

1. Every big news story has a faith angle. Even the ordeal of 33 Chilean miners trapped underground for more than two months. Even the attempted assassination of Arizona congresswoman Gabby Giffords. Even March Madness. Even – well, you get the point.

 

2. Atheists are the most fervent commenters on matters religious. This became apparent immediately after the Belief Blog’s first official post last May, which quickly drew such comments as:

acerider
Can we have a fairy tale blog too?

Sunil
This is nothing but America moving away from its wondrous spirit of Apollo 11 into a mindset of the perpetually intellectually challenged.
I think there was some news today about scientists having created the first artificial cell. That should have been a HUGE story. And yet, what do we get? A faith blog. Pathetic.

Rachel
This blog is terrifying. It’s amazing how much power the radical religious right is amassing in our country right now. If I can’t have some legislation, can I at least have some news that does not cater to zealots?

Those early comments presaged an avalanche of alternately humorous and outraged atheist responses on virtually everything the Belief Blog publishes. They’re more evidence that atheists are coming out of the closet to trumpet their disbelief, argue with the faithful and evangelize their godlessness. (It’s worth noting that the Belief Blog does plenty of atheism stories.)

3. People are still intensely curious about the Bible, its meaning and its origins.

It’s an ancient tome, but more than any other book in the Western tradition (with the Quran being the lone exception), the Bible still fascinates us. And it still feeds our most heated debates. In February, a guest post here arguing that the Bible is more ambiguous on homosexuality than traditionally thought elicited more than 4,000 comments. A response post insisting that the Bible clearly condemns homosexuality brought in an equal number of comments – and was the most popular story on CNN.com on the day it was published.

Other Belief Blog pieces about biblical scholarship – including a recent offering about biblical misquotations – have also caught fire. More of us may be reading it on iPhones these days, but the Good Book still matters a lot more than the popular culture lets on.

4.   Most Americans are religiously illiterate. Despite the appetite for stories and commentary about the Bible, most Americans know little about it. A huge Pew survey released in September found that most Americans scored 50 percent or less on a quiz measuring knowledge of the Bible, world religions and what the Constitution says about religion in public life. Ironically, atheists and agnostics scored best. How did you do on the quiz?

5. It’s impossible to understand much of the news without knowing something about religion. Why did the Egyptian revolution happen on a Friday? Why was Osama bin Laden’s body buried so quickly after he was killed? Why did Afghan rioters kill seven United Nations workers in April? You simply can’t answer those questions without bringing in religion.

6.  Regardless of where they fit on the spectrum, people want others to understand what they believe. That goes for pagans, fundamentalist Mormons,Native Americans, atheists – everyone.

7. Americans still have an uneasy relationship with Islam. Nearly 10 years after the September 11 attacks provoked many Americans to pay attention to Islam for the first time, much of the country is still somewhat uncomfortable about the religion, which counts 1.5 billion followers worldwide.

The biggest domestic religion story in the Belief Blog’s young life was probably last year’s opposition to a proposed Islamic Center and mosque near New York’s ground zero. And with the 10-year anniversary of the 9/11 attacks approaching, domestic tensions around Islam may flare again. The Arab Spring, meanwhile is raising weighty questions about Islam’s role in post-autocratic regimes, guaranteeing the religion – and its relationship with the U.S. – will be one of the world’s big stories for years to come.

8. God may not prevent natural disasters, but religion is always a big part of the response. We see it play out every time Mother Nature delivers a punishing blow, from March’s Japan earthquake and tsunami to the recent tornado that flattened much of Joplin, Missouri.

9. Apocalyptic movements come and go. The May 21st doomsdayers drew loads of interest, largely thanks to a massive ad campaign, but they’re hardly original.

10. Most Americans don’t know that President Barack Obama is a Christian. It’s ironic, since church-based community organizing led him to politics and since hisclose relationship with a pastor almost sunk his presidential campaign, but that’s what a Pew poll found last year.

Only about a third of Americans correctly identified Obama’s religion, while nearly one in five said he’s a Muslim. Another irony: The longer Obama’s been in office, the smaller the proportion of Americans who can correctly name his faith. As the 2012 presidential race approaches, this story bears watching, since views of candidates’ religion influence voting patterns.

More on Lee and Katia

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Tropical Storm Lee moving ashore; Katia continues northwest
Posted by: JeffMasters, 1:53 PM GMT on September 03, 2011 +6
Tropical Storm Lee is marching steadily northwards towards landfall in Louisiana, and continues to slowly intensify. The storm’s central pressure is now down to 993 mb, as measured by an Air Force hurricane hunter aircraft at 7am CDT. However, the center of Lee is now very close to the coast, and the storm doesn’t have much time to intensify further before the center moves over land. The main impact from the storm on the coast thus far has been heavy rains. At New Orleans Lakefront Airport, 5.88″ inches of rain had fallen from Lee as of 8 am CDT this morning. Top winds were 35 mph, gusting to 55 mph. Though Lee’s top winds are rated as being 60 mph, it is difficult to find any land stations that have reported sustained winds of tropical storm force, 39 mph or greater. One station that has is at the tip of the Mississippi River Delta, where Southwest Pass measured sustained winds of 40 mph, gusting to 58 mph, at 7:03 am CDT. Upper-level winds out of the southwest are creating a moderate 10 – 20 knots of wind shear over Lee, keeping the storm’s heavy thunderstorms pushed to the east side of the storm. Latest satelllite loops show Lee is becoming increasingly organized.
Figure 1. Radar-estimated rainfall from Lee from the New Orleans radar. Lee has dumped a large region of 4 – 8 inches so far (orange colors.)


Figure 2. Predicted rainfall for the 5-day period ending at 8 am EDT Thursday Sep 8, 2011. Lee is expected to bring a large swath of 4+ inches of rain all the way to New England. Image credit: NOAA/HPC.

Forecast for Lee
Lee’s large size, ill-formed circulation center, and the presence of dry air on its west side due to an upper-level trough of low pressure make Lee look a lot like a subtropical storm on satellite imagery, with a broad center and the majority of the heavy thunderstorms in a broad band well removed from the center. Subtropical storms can undergo only relatively modest rates of intensification, and Lee is unlikely to become a hurricane. Also tending to slow intensification will be the fact that much of its circulation is over land. Damages from Lee are likely to be less than $100 – $200 million, with the greatest threats being fresh water flooding from heavy rains. Given that much of the region Lee will traverse over the next few days is under moderate to severe drought, the storm’s rains may cause more economic benefit than damage. Since Texas is on the dry side of the storm, that state will see very little rainfall from Lee, except very close to the border with Louisiana. The rains from Lee appear to have mostly ended across extreme southern Louisiana, so the feared 10 – 15 inches of rain does not look like it will materialize there. One possible concern for Lee’s rains will be the mid-Atlantic and Northeast, where recovery efforts from the devastating flooding due to Hurricane Irene may be hampered by the additional 2 – 4 inches that may fall from Lee’s remnants by the middle of the week.Tornadoes from Lee are potential hazard today, as NOAA’s Storm Prediction Center is highlighting the Northern Gulf Coast in their “slight risk” area for severe weather. A tornado watch is posted for the region, but no tornadoes have been reported as of 8 am CDT.

Lee is the 12th named storm this year, and came eight days before the half-way point of the Atlantic hurricane season. Climatologically, September 10 marks the half-way point. A typical hurricane season has just 10 – 11 named storms, so we’ve already had more than a whole season’s worth of storms before reaching the half-way point. At this rate, 2011 will see 24 – 26 named storms, making it the 2nd busiest season on record, behind 2005. Lee’s formation date of September 2 puts 2011 in 5th place for earliest date of arrival of the season’s 12th storm. Only 2005, 1995, 1936, and 1933 had an earlier 12th storm.

Hurricane Katia 
The latest set of model runs show very little change in the outlook for Hurricane Katia. Katia will continue its long trek across the Atlantic Ocean, and will not pose a danger to any land areas over the next five days. Katia is still struggling with dry air and wind shear that has risen to a high 20 – 25 knots. Latest satellite loops show a lopsided hurricane that is suffering from the impacts of dry air and wind shear on its southwest side.

Bermuda Triangle to Host Humpbacks

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Bermuda Triangle to Become Humpback Whale Haven

Katherine Tweed, OurAmazingPlanet Contributor
Date: 02 September 2011 Time: 09:28 AM ET
humpback whales
Humpback whales feeding.
CREDIT: NOAA

The Bermuda Triangle holds an often maligned and mysterious place in ocean lore, but for endangered humpback whales, it’s about to get a little more welcoming.

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) recently announced a letter of intent signed by the Bermuda Department of Environmental Protection to establish a sister sanctuary to NOAA’s Stellwagen Bank National Marine Sanctuary for the gentle giants.

The sister sanctuary would not be the first for Stellwagen Bank, located in the Gulf of Maine, and its humpback whales. Beginning in 2007, Stellwagen established the world’s first sister sanctuary with the Dominican Republic’s Santuario de Mamiferos Marinos de la República Dominicana to protect the endangered migratory marine mammal on both ends of its range.

Whale populations

There are five distinct populations of humpbacks in the North Atlantic, with Stellwagen Bank being the feeding grounds for one of the groups. The other four are off the coasts of Nova Scotia, Norway, Greenland and Iceland. Down in the Caribbean, the whales mingle during breeding season, and one of the largest congregation spots is off the coast of the Dominican Republic.

But protecting just two points in the humpbacks’ range is not enough to ensure their survival. Bermuda will protect the species in its migratory corridor, rather than the furthest reaches of its range, the first marine mammal sanctuary to offer such a waypoint.

“This is a first step in putting together conservation stepping stones throughout their migration,” said Nathalie Ward, coordinator of the Sister Sanctuary Program for Stellwagen Bank National Marine Sanctuary.

to read more, go to:  http://www.livescience.com/15881-bermuda-triandle-humpback-whale-sanctuary.html

Sleeping with the Chimps

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Scientist Snoozes for 6 Nights in Chimp Nests

Stephanie Pappas, LiveScience Senior Writer
Date: 02 September 2011 Time: 10:24 AM ET
Chimpanzees build a new nest every night.

 
A chimpanzee nest in Kenya.
CREDIT: Joey Verge, under a Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license

Every night, wild chimpanzees build themselves nests high in the trees and tuck themselves in for a good night’s sleep. But no one knows exactly what makes these nests good sleeping spots for chimps. So biological anthropologist Fiona Stewart decided to find out — by bedding down in the chimp nests herself.

Stewart, a research fellow at the University of Cambridge, found that the shaggy arboreal assemblages in her field site in Tanzania weren’t exactly five-star lodgings, but they did keep hertemperature up and the bug bites down. Sleeping high above ground also eased the anxiety of hearing hyenas call to each other in the East African night.

Stewart “is a very adventurous person,” said William McGrew, Stewart’s former doctoral adviser and a professor of archaeology and anthropology at the University of Cambridge. Her findings could help explain why early humans broke from the chimp tradition of sleeping in trees, McGrew said.

to read more, go to:    http://www.livescience.com/15883-scientist-sleeps-chimpanzee-nest.html