The cable is still out, so I am posting this on Dial-Up!
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"The winning idea of the fun theory award, submitted by Kevin Richardson, USA. Can we get more people to obey the speed limit by making it fun to do? This was the question Kevin's idea answered and it was so good that Volkswagen, together with The Swedish National Society for Road Safety, actually made this innovative idea a reality in Stockholm, Sweden."
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Freshwater turtles and tortoises may be slow movers – but when it comes to moving toward extinction, they are alarmingly speedy.
Dear Friend of Wildlife, Turtles are in trouble. Don't let your lawmakers give up on a future with freshwater turtles and tortoises. Write them today!
More than half of these species worldwide are threatened with extinction.
You and I know how important it is to preserve turtle populations for future generations. We want to live in a world with thriving, vibrant wildlife. But we'll be living in a far emptier and more impoverished world unless we turn the heat up on a key player – our government.
Congress will be marking up its budget for the Wildlife Without Borders Program, and if we don't speak up now, they could make short-sighted cuts. If we want to continue protecting and preserving key endangered turtle populations, we need to step in while turtles still have a shot at survival.
Please, send a letter to your members of Congress right now and ask them to stand firm on funding for the Wildlife Without Borders Program.
Once roaming the Earth with dinosaurs, turtles have survived for 220 million years. But now, populations are shrinking nearly everywhere, gravely threatened by habitat loss and the illegal wildlife trade. No other vertebrate group – neither birds, nor mammals, amphibians, or sharks – are more endangered. It's impossible to overstate the impact of conservation programs like Wildlife Without Borders Program.
That's why WCS is launching a global effort to save more than a dozen of the most endangered turtles and tortoises through its New York Zoos and Aquarium, and Global Health and Global Conservation Programs. But without your help, government programs that support conservation could disappear – and so could the turtles and tortoises that depend on them.
Now is not the time for the U.S. Government to back down on our commitment to save threatened wildlife and wild places. We're working with conservation leaders in Washington to make sure they support this funding, but we need your help too!
Don't let turtle and tortoise species slip away forever. Send your letter right now.
Thanks for all your help. Sincerely, Wildlife Conservation Society
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Cancer-fighting sponges
The chemicals that help corals and sponges survive are also helping people. Halaven, a drug derived from a sea sponge compound came on the market in Nov. 2010, and has improved survival among women who have metastatic breast cancer. NBC’s Anne Thompson reports.
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Picture yourself in a national park from April 21 - 29 as America celebrates National Park Week –– a chance to hike, learn, share, and give back in the nation’s 397 national parks. Each year, we take this time to celebrate what we all have inherited as Americans – 84 million acres of the world’s most spectacular scenery, historic landmarks and cultural treasures.
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It’s National Volunteer Appreciation Week! We love our volunteers – from rescuing animals after a hurricane to answering calls to our dogfighting tip line - they work hard every day to make the world a more humane place.
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Bum Steer: How Big Pharma Dominates Meat Science —By Tom Philpott
That's a hefty 30 percent gain. What gives? According to Peterson, the main reason is pharmaceutical: heavy use of antibiotics, hormones, and other growth-enhancing drugs. Peterson untangles the web that connects pharmaceutical giants like Merck to professors at big public land-grant universities, who not only act as paid researchers to develop new products but also as shills who appeal directly to cattle feedlot operators." From: http://motherjones.com/tom-philpott/2012/04/bum-steer-how-big-pharma-makes-dominates-animal-science
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On This Day:
Rome founded, Apr 21, 753 B.C.:
According to tradition, on April 21, 753 B.C., Romulus and his twin brother, Remus, found Rome on the site where they were suckled by a she-wolf as orphaned infants. Actually, the Romulus and Remus myth originated sometime in the fourth century B.C., and the exact date of Rome's founding was set by the Roman scholar Marcus Terentius Varro in the first century B.C.
According to the legend, Romulus and Remus were the sons of Rhea Silvia, the daughter of King Numitor of Alba Longa. Alba Longa was a mythical city located in the Alban Hills southeast of what would become Rome. Before the birth of the twins, Numitor was deposed by his younger brother Amulius, who forced Rhea to become a vestal virgin so that she would not give birth to rival claimants to his title. However, Rhea was impregnated by the war god Mars and gave birth to Romulus and Remus. Amulius ordered the infants drowned in the Tiber, but they survived and washed ashore at the foot of the Palatine hill, where they were suckled by a she-wolf until they were found by the shepherd Faustulus.
Reared by Faustulus and his wife, the twins later became leaders of a band of young shepherd warriors. After learning their true identity, they attacked Alba Longa, killed the wicked Amulius, and restored their grandfather to the throne. The twins then decided to found a town on the site where they had been saved as infants. They soon became involved in a petty quarrel, however, and Remus was slain by his brother. Romulus then became ruler of the settlement, which was named "Rome" after him.
To populate his town, Romulus offered asylum to fugitives and exiles. Rome lacked women, however, so Romulus invited the neighboring Sabines to a festival and abducted their women. A war then ensued, but the Sabine women intervened to prevent the Sabine men from seizing Rome. A peace treaty was drawn up, and the communities merged under the joint rule of Romulus and the Sabine king, Titus Tatius. Tatius' early death, perhaps perpetrated by Romulus, left the Roman as the sole king again. After a long and successful rule, Romulus died under obscure circumstances. Many Romans believed he was changed into a god and worshipped him as the deity Quirinus. After Romulus, there were six more kings of Rome, the last three believed to be Etruscans. Around 509 B.C., the Roman republic was established.
Another Roman foundation legend, which has its origins in ancient Greece, tells of how the mythical Trojan Aeneas founded Lavinium and started a dynasty that would lead to the birth of Romulus and Remus several centuries later. In the Iliad, an epic Greek poem probably composed by Homer in the eighth century B.C., Aeneas was the only major Trojan hero to survive the Greek destruction of Troy. A passage told of how he and his descendants would rule the Trojans, but since there was no record of any such dynasty in Troy, Greek scholars proposed that Aeneas and his followers relocated.
In the fifth century B.C., a few Greek historians speculated that Aeneas settled at Rome, which was then still a small city-state. In the fourth century B.C., Rome began to expand within the Italian peninsula, and Romans, coming into greater contact with the Greeks, embraced the suggestion that Aeneas had a role in the foundation of their great city. In the first century B.C., the Roman poet Virgil developed the Aeneas myth in his epic poem the Aeneid, which told of Aeneas' journey to Rome. Augustus, the first Roman emperor and emperor during Virgil's time, and Julius Caesar, his great-uncle and predecessor as Roman ruler, were said to be descended from Aeneas."
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Yesterday was another day spent mostly trying to fix the Error 401 and 403 so that Live Writer and this blog would speak to each other. I searched and tried so many things until I am just disgusted with the whole idea of blogging! It is just too difficult to use Blogger for drafting posts, after using Live Writer for all these years. This has really got me down, I don't know what else to try, as I am not puter savvy.
We had a rain storm in the afternoon, and the Internet cable went out, but we still had power and the cable TV.
About the only other thing I managed to do was to groom little Maddie, the Yorkie, yesterday.
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