For at least three minutes, anyway. This awesome video gives us a brief glimpse of what's to come when Cthulhu awakens.
Octopus Walks on Land at Fitzgerald Marine Reserve - YouTube
Found on Boing Boing.
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Results tagged “eco”
Anyone else get a little misty-eyed at the end of this ad? Presumably this was the only man spared of its wrath.
4 great videos from melodysheep. You can download them from http://symphonyofscience.com.
Ruh-roh! Looks like kudzu has finally come to Canada. How bad is it? You can actually watch it grow:
The patch of kudzu vine was found on a bluff overlooking Lake Erie in Leamington, Ont., a farming community about 30 kilometres southeast of Windsor.It measures 120 metres by 50 metres and is "pretty well established" but contained, according to Rachel Gagnon, a co-ordinator with the Ontario Invasive Plant Council (OIPC).
"There's a possibility to control that spot before it starts spreading into new areas," Gagnon said.
If not destroyed immediately, the plant could wind up costing "millions of dollars to eradicate," said Rowan Sage, a biology professor at the University of Toronto, who began studying kudzu 20 years ago.
CBC News - Windsor - Invasive plant species takes root in Canada
May be going here for NoXmas. Sounds awesome.
Say goodbye to the scenic drive, hello to museums and thrift shopping for hula girl lamps and Hawaiian shirts, right? Wrong. Forty minutes later, the sky was azure, the sun ferocious.The small, old-fashioned city of Hilo is on the east coast of the Big Island of Hawaii, in a perfect position to catch the clouds that form when the warm, moist Pacific Ocean trade winds hit the long, cool slopes of Mauna Loa. The accordionlike folds and grooves of the jewel-green slopes and the uneven coastline and fluctuating ocean temperatures ensure that clouds meander around Hilo as unpredictably as ghost spirits. One day, around noon, I was walking down a sunny street in Hilo, worried because I'd left the sunscreen back in the room. Then I glanced across the street: the other side was shady and bathed in a vaporous mist.
I soon grew to love Hilo rain. It is a reason this city of around 50,000 has remained largely untouched since the days when it was the thriving center of the Big Island's plantation economy in the 19th and early 20th centuries. While the Kona area, on the west coast of the Big Island, has become a major Hawaiian tourist draw, Hilo remains sleepy and mostly condo-free -- few are enticed to build in an area that typically receives measurable rain 278 days of the year.
In retrospect, maybe locating your city on a tectonic plate boundary isn't such a good idea. I'm looking at you, Oakland.
First South American Civilisation Wiped Out by Earthquake
The downfall of this powerful civilization was its location. The Supe valley is where the Nazca Plate and the South American Plate crash. When the big one hit, this earthquake-prone region was also hit by mudslides, which clogged the rivers. This coincided with heavy rainfall brought on by a strong El Niño, thus forming a 60-mile-long ocean ridge, which sealed off coastal bays. These filled with sand and therefore eliminated the Supe society's source of food.Tough luck? Says archeologist Daniel H. Sandweiss of the University of Maine: "By not being able to look decades ahead, they [the inhabitants of Supe valley] were not able to cope with it." With the technology of the time, it was near impossible. Sometimes, when it rains it just pours.
No man is an island. Or is he?
Man (Re)Builds Mexican Island Paradise on 250,000 Recycled Floating Bottles | Ecoble
If you canâ..t afford to buy your own tropical island paradise, why not build your own? That is exactly what Richie Sowa did back in 1998, from over a quarter-million plastic bottles. His Spiral Island, destroyed years later by a hurricane, sported a two-story house, solar oven, self-composting toilet and multiple beaches. Better yet, he has started building another one! His ultimate goal? To build the island bigger and bigger and finally float out to sea, traveling the world from the comfort of his own private paradise.
I've already applied for this, so get lost!
BBC NEWS | Asia-Pacific | Wanted: Paradise island 'caretaker'
Tourism officials in Australia are describing it as 'the best job in the world'.They want someone to work on a tropical island off the Queensland coast.
No formal qualifications are needed but candidates must be willing to swim, snorkel, dive and sail.
In return, the successful applicant will receive a salary of A$150,000 ($103,000) for six months and get to live rent-free in a three-bedroom villa, complete with pool.
From the Time Magazine archives.
The Private World of Marlon Brando - TIME
"My first impulse," Brando later admitted, "was to run like hell and disappear into the bush. My second was to turn you upside down and plant you, head first, like a coconut tree." Janos spent two days with Brando on the island and escaped without being planted. His report:Beyond the sand bar, where we had walked the skiff over the shoals at the end of a languorous afternoon, the wind freshened suddenly ahead of a curtain of rain. The usually placid tropical lagoon hurled water into the skiff. The three of us were drenched. Willie, a local fisherman, grinned at the adventure. Our hulking captain frowned, grabbed a bucket and handed one to me. Brando read my fear. "Don't worry," he shouted. "When the rain hits, it will flatten the sea... the weight of the rain water." Our boat sped into the wall of rain; the sea flattened, and a few minutes later we beached the boat on the white sands of a small, S-shaped islandâ..Brando's bird sanctuary.
Slightly disturbing news on the climate change front.
Exclusive: The methane time bomb - Climate Change, Environment - The Independent
The first evidence that millions of tons of a greenhouse gas 20 times more potent than carbon dioxide is being released into the atmosphere from beneath the Arctic seabed has been discovered by scientists.The Independent has been passed details of preliminary findings suggesting that massive deposits of sub-sea methane are bubbling to the surface as the Arctic region becomes warmer and its ice retreats.
Cool information from Mental Floss about hurricanes. Good to know with all the recent meteorological occurrences going on these days.
mental_floss Blog - How Do Hurricanes Get Their Names? (And Other FAQs)
Military meteorologists started giving female names to storms during World War II, and in 1950 the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) adopted the method. The WMO devised a system of rotating, alphabetical names. (Names can be retired at WMO meetings by request from a nation that has been hit by the storm. The name is then not used for 10 years, which makes historic references and insurance claims easier.)In 1979, the system was given a dose of political correctness: male names were added to the list, as were French and Spanish names, reflecting the languages of the nations affected by hurricanes.
Today, the WMO uses six lists of 21 names (Q, U, X, Y and Z names are not used) that it cycles through every six years, with the gender of the seasonâ..s first storm alternating year to year, and genders alternating through the rest of the hurricane season. If there are more than 21 named storms in a year, as there were in 2005, the rest of the storms are named for letters in the Greek alphabet.
Occasionally, a storm suffers something of an identity crisis and has its name changed. This happens when a storm crosses from one ocean to another, or if it dies down and then redevelops.
Aw, come on, this is funny.
Think Progress - Global warming deniers forced to cancel meeting due to Tropical Storm Fay.
This week, Americans for Prosperity (AFP) planned to have town hall meetings in Ft. Myers and West Palm Beach, FL. As the Wonk Roomâ..s Brad Johnson notes, â..AFP is a front group for the right-wing pollution company Koch Industries, with an agenda of attacking â..global warming alarmismâ.. and promoting increased offshore drilling.â. In an ironic twist, AFP has canceled its meetings because of Tropical Storm Fay.
Bush is such a dick.
President George Bush: 'Goodbye from the world's biggest polluter' - Telegraph
The American leader, who has been condemned throughout his presidency for failing to tackle climate change, ended a private meeting with the words: "Goodbye from the world's biggest polluter."He then punched the air while grinning widely, as the rest of those present including Gordon Brown and Nicolas Sarkozy looked on in shock.
Mr Bush, whose second and final term as President ends at the end of the year, then left the meeting at the Windsor Hotel in Hokkaido where the leaders of the world's richest nations had been discussing new targets to cut carbon emissions.
Well, this isn't very good.
Exclusive: No ice at the North Pole - Climate Change, Environment - The Independent
It seems unthinkable, but for the first time in human history, ice is on course to disappear entirely from the North Pole this year.The disappearance of the Arctic sea ice, making it possible to reach the Pole sailing in a boat through open water, would be one of the most dramatic â.. and worrying â.. examples of the impact of global warming on the planet. Scientists say the ice at 90 degrees north may well have melted away by the summer.
"From the viewpoint of science, the North Pole is just another point on the globe, but symbolically it is hugely important. There is supposed to be ice at the North Pole, not open water," said Mark Serreze of the US National Snow and Ice Data Centre in Colorado.
Of course, Fox News goes on about how cool it will be to be able to sail to the North Pole:
The unique prospect of sailing in open waters at the North Pole during the minimum ice cover in August and September has about a 50-50 chance of becoming reality, says one climate scientist's prediction holds true.
This is terrible. I love teff. I wonder what it'll mean for getting it here in North America.
Israel's Ethiopians Forced to Give Up Traditional Bread
Tens of thousands of the expatriates are being forced to abandon their traditional diets because of the skyrocketing cost of teff grain.Teff, a nutritious and hardy cereal domesticated in Ethiopia thousands of years ago, is the primary ingredient in injera, a round flatbread that accompanies most Ethiopian meals.
A drastic shortage has caused the price of teff to jump by some 300 percent over the past year.
The Justin O. Schmidt Pain Index is a pain scale rating the relative pain caused by different kinds of stings. Like the Scoville scale, which measures the heat index of chili peppers, the Schmidt Pain Index increases as the pain does. His descriptions are rather like trying to define the various flavours in a glass of wine, and bring horrific imagery to the index.
The J-Walk Blog: Rating The Sting Pain (Comments)
Case in point:
2.0 Bald-faced hornet: Rich, hearty, slightly crunchy. Similar to getting your hand mashed in a revolving door.
Huh oh!
BBC NEWS | Science/Nature | Vast cracks appear in Arctic ice
According to another scientist on the expedition, Dr Luke Copland of the University of Ottawa, the new cracks fit into a pattern of change in the Arctic."We're seeing very dramatic changes; from the retreat of the glaciers, to the melting of the sea ice.
"We had 23% less (sea ice) last year than we've ever had, and what's happening to the ice shelves is part of that picture."
When ice shelves break apart, they drift offshore into the ocean as "ice islands", transforming the very geography of the coastline.
I've often thought about the kind of crap that's on my keyboard. But what can I, as just one person, do about this horrible problem?
BBC NEWS | UK | Keyboards 'dirtier than a toilet'
Consumer group Which? said tests at its London offices found equipment carrying bugs that could cause food poisoning.Out of 33 keyboards swabbed, four were regarded as a potential health hazard and one harboured five times more germs than one of the office's toilet seats.
Microbiologist Dr Peter Wilson said a keyboard was often "a reflection of what is in your nose and in your gut".
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