YEEEEEEE HAAAAAA!!!!!! LET"S RIDE WILD CLICKERS!!!!!
(I sure am loud for being the newest member
)
I must be getting old. Took two days to catch up with you.
Amigo-
being seen by or being with the right people counts as much as the good time one is dancing.
Why is Carnival different in Vienna?
..Considering the love of the Viennese for festive occasions, it is all the more surprising that Vienna, unlike Venice, Rio de Janeiro or Cologne, does not have an extended period of cavorting in the streets with parades of masked revelers.
This tradition, or lack thereof, goes back to one of Austria's most beloved rulers, Empress Maria Theresia (1717-1780). Despite being much admired by her people, she often played the role of a stern mother figure: She did not approve of the Viennese Fasching of her day, which at that time still included wearing masks in the streets, because brawls and tumult sometimes erupted under the cover of anonymity. She therefore banned the wearing of masks in the streets of Vienna. But she permitted the aristocrats at her imperial court to celebrate with masks inside their own "homes" (which were, in fact, palaces or elegant mansions). After her death, her son Josef II, a "People's Emperor," who was even closer to the Austrian people than his mother, relaxed her rule and allowed all Viennese to celebrate Fasching indoors, with or without masks...
In Venice the beautiful masks and customs are again to be admired.
sooooooo beautiful
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aktbird57 - You and your 290 friends have supported 2,244,338.6 square feet!
Marine Wetlands habitat supported: 99,544.4 square feet.
You have supported: (0.0)
Your 290 friends have supported: (99,544.4)
American Prairie habitat supported: 48,033.8 square feet.
You have supported: (11,564.5)
Your 290 friends have supported: (36,469.3)
Rainforest habitat supported: 2,096,760.4 square feet.
You have supported: (168,754.1)
Your 290 friends have supported: (1,928,006.3)
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2244338.6 square feet is equal to 51.52 acres
Ah, ul,
Your description of life in Vienna and picture of the revelers in Venice bring back wonderful memories. Two of my favorite cities - Venice for its quaintness and Vienna for its sheer beauty and both for their facinating history.
I think I'll slip into Harry's Bar for a relaxing drink and some interesting conversation.
(for ya'll - Harry's Bar is where Hemingway virtually lived while in Venice.)
all clicked for MA 'n Me
Success. Now I will click...that I can do correctly.
Thoughtful words for thought, from today's editorials in The New York Times.
February 19, 2006
Editorial Observer
Good News From New Guinea
By VERLYN KLINKENBORG
No one, to my knowledge, keeps an index that measures just how bad the news is from day to day. But most of us can gauge its badness by the way good news makes us feel. A case in point is the article in this paper recently about a scientific expedition to the Foja Mountains of western New Guinea. During a monthlong field trip, biologists came upon new species of frogs, butterflies, birds, palms, and rhododendrons.
That field trip, whose rigors few of us can imagine, was the subject of conversation in many places the evening the article appeared, including the restaurant in the West Village where I was having dinner with friends. There was an excitement, an exultation in the voices at the table as they talked about New Guinea. It sounded as though a new continent had been discovered, not a few species in remote forests halfway around the world.
I noticed the same reaction during the rediscovery ?- contested, confirmed and now recontested ?- of the ivory-billed woodpecker, which was long believed to be extinct. The very thought that the bird had been heard in the Big Woods of Arkansas filled many people with hope and joy. But it also felt like the temporary lifting of some chronic biological melancholy, an oppression that bears a strange resemblance to the persistent numbness I associate with the nuclear standoff of the cold war.
Call it biophilia if you will ?- E. O. Wilson's term for the connections we "subconsciously seek with the rest of life." What Mr. Wilson means by the word is something like a strong but latent undertow in humans, a "richly structured and quite irrational" predisposition. What I'm hearing is more overt than that. It is something like a sigh of relief, a sigh that measures the bleakness of living in the midst of a mass extinction that we ourselves are causing.
Nearly the whole of the scientific history of the West has been spent in a perverse balance between identifying species and destroying them. The emotions we feel about ravaging the biological richness and complexity of Earth are made possible only by an awareness of how many life-forms science has discovered. To suspect how rich we might be is to know how poor we are busy making ourselves.
Most of us will never come in contact with more than a tiny fraction of the species on this planet. Most of us, in fact, know so little about the life-forms around us that the distinction between known and unknown species is nearly meaningless. Practically speaking, nearly all the species in New Guinea are unknown to most of us. We may know none of the names of these newly found creatures or their distinctive traits or the habitats where they live. And yet the thought of them exalts us.
Part of the pleasure of reading about this expedition to the Foja Mountains is the pleasure we always derive from the thought of an undiscovered country, from imagining, for instance, those long-ago days when the middle of America was still an Amazon of grasses. It's tempting to say that what really moves us in the news of this expedition is simple possibility, the feeling that discovery is still alive, that the Earth has not been entirely trampled or paved.
But that makes the value of these newly identified species ?- and of all others ?- merely symbolic. They become important to us for the feelings, the possibilities, they arouse. The hard part is remembering that all these species, discovered and undiscovered alike, are important in themselves. Their existence has no reference whatsoever to humans or their minds. The tragedy is that their survival depends on the interest we take in them.
We will be identifying new species for many decades to come, although most of them will not be nearly as photogenic as the new honeyeater recently found in New Guinea. The test for us is the same as it has always been. It is not how many species we discover. It is how to protect them once we have found them and how to keep from destroying the species we do not know before we have a chance to find them.
http://www.thestate.com/mld/thestate/news/nation/13909330.htm?source=rss&channel=thestate_nation
"Hurricanes reshape Gulf's natural order
By CAIN BURDEAU
The Associated Press
Severity produced mind-boggling, unprecedented changes
OVER THE NORTHERN GULF COAST ?- Last year's record hurricane season didn't just change life for humans. It changed nature, too.
Everywhere scientists look, they see disrupted patterns in and along the Gulf of Mexico. Coral reefs, flocks of sea birds, crab- and shrimp-filled meadows and dune-crowned beaches were altered by the force of hurricanes Katrina, Rita and Dennis.
The damage, still being studied, could be unprecedented. And if predicted weather patterns hold, the changes to nature could become something all too familiar ?- for the Gulf Coast and Southeastern coast alike."
http://www.casperstartribune.net/articles/2006/02/19/news/regional/b43d0506203232a687257117007437c2.txt
"Glacial retreat
By SUSAN GALLAGHER
Associated Press writer Sunday, February 19, 2006
HELENA, Mont. -- Glacier National Park in Montana and adjacent Waterton Lakes National Park in Canada should be declared endangered by the United Nations because climate change is melting glaciers and threatening the parks' environment, a dozen organizations argue in a petition.
The Rocky Mountain parks, together known as Waterton-Glacier International Peace Park, are covered by a 1995 treaty as a UNESCO World Heritage Site. Now they should be designated as a World Heritage Site in Danger, the groups say.
Mechtild Rossler, chief of the U.N. World Heritage Committee's European and North American section in Paris, said the organization had received the petition, but has not yet reviewed it.
Glacier park has 27 glaciers, down from about 150 in 1850, said Dan Fagre, who coordinates global change research for the U.S. Geological Survey at West Glacier, Mont. The USGS says the mean summer temperature at Glacier park has risen by about 3 degrees Fahrenheit over the past century.
"We haven't seen any warming to this degree as far back as we can go, and we can go back about 500 years," Fagre said."
http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20060219/sc_afp/usclimatefloods_060219062543
"Scientists say California quake could cause Katrina II
Sun Feb 19, 1:25 AM ET
ST LOUIS, Missouri (AFP) - Many densely populated US regions face the threat of flooding as disastrous as after Hurricane Katrina, due to urban spread into river floodplains, scientists warn.
An earthquake or even a moderate flood could destroy the levee system protecting towns and cities along the Sacramento and San Joaquin rivers in northern California, said Jeffrey Mount of the University of California.
"The probability of a catastrophic levee failure in the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta in the next 50 years is two in three," Mount said on the sidelines of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) annual conference."
http://www.redorbit.com/news/science/397044/species_richness_and_nesting_success_of_migrant_forest_birds_in/index.html?source=r_science
"Species Richness and Nesting Success of Migrant Forest Birds in Natural River Corridors and Anthropogenic Woodlands in Southeastern South Dakota
By Gentry, Dale J; Swanson, David L; Carlisle, Jay D
Abstract.
Forest fragmentation is thought to be partially responsible for declines in many Neotropical migrant birds due to the combined effects of higher rates of brood parasitism and increased predation near forest edges. A majority of the forested habitat in the northern prairie region is found in riparian corridors, but this native habitat has been much reduced from its historical extent. However, additional woodland nesting habitat has been established within the last century in the form of isolated woodlots on farms. We compared abundance, species richness, and nesting success of migrant forest birds breeding in native riparian corridors and anthropogenic woodlots. The two habitats had similar bird abundances but native riparian woodlands were more species-rich than woodlots. We located a total of 650 nests, with 320 nests of 15 species in woodlots and 331 nests of 25 species in riparian corridors. Nesting success was not significantly different between the two habitats for all species combined or for individual species with = 15 nests in each habitat. Nests above 5 m were more successful than lower nests, but distance to woodland edge did not influence nesting success. Nests initiated in the middle and late portions of the nesting season were more successful than early season nests, significantly so in woodlots. Thus, anthropogenic woodlots were as suitable as natural habitats for successful nesting. However, many of the Neotropical migrants occurring in riparian habitats were absent from woodlots, which suggests that riparian corridors are especially important habitats for breeding birds in the northern prairie region. "
http://www.redorbit.com/news/science/397045/a_possible_role_for_red_squirrels_in_structuring_breeding_bird/index.html?source=r_science
"A Possible Role for Red Squirrels in Structuring Breeding Bird Communities in Lodgepole Pine Forests
By Siepielski, Adam M
Abstract.
Nest predation is thought to play an important role in structuring certain breeding bird communities. One potential consequence of nest predation is lower recruitment in breeding birds, which may be manifested as lower breeding bird abundance. Lodgepole pine (Pinus contorta ssp. latifolia) forests east and west of the Rocky Mountains became isolated following glacial retreat 12 000 years ago and differ in whether or not red squirrels (Tamiasciurus hudsonicus), which are a key nest predator, are present. Breeding bird abundance in lodgepole pine forests was compared between four ranges with red squirrels and four ranges without red squirrels. Species grouped into canopy and understory nesting guilds were, on average, two and three times more abundant, respectively, in forest ranges without red squirrels than in ranges with red squirrels; no statistically significant differences were found for midstory, ground, or cavity nesters. These results suggest that geographic variation in the presence or absence of red squirrels is likely important in structuring breeding bird communities in lodgepole pine forests across the landscape. "
sumac, your knowledge of facts and where to find the information is astounding! I haven't had time time to click them all yet. You are very knowledgeable!
And thanks, Beth, for the click today! I'm having a "good computer" day - who knows about tomorrow! = S
Mardi Gras poster above.
Thanks for the kind words. I just subscribe to a bunch of stuff and pick out interesting stuff.
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/02/19/national/nationalspecial/19mardigras.html?ei=5094&en=81d9636d04cecfa3&hp=&ex=1140411600&partner=homepage&pagewanted=print
"February 19, 2006
The Celebrations
In Mardi Gras, a City Learns to Party Again
By DAN BARRY
NEW ORLEANS, Feb. 18 ?- Trumpets sounded, drums pounded and the feet of a city marched in place, tapping an anticipatory beat on asphalt. Someone gave the noontime signal for a parade to move forward, and it did: exuberant, silly, gaudy, giddy, diminished, defiant.
It could have been just another parade, even just another Mardi Gras parade. But Saturday's train of floats and marching bands ?- five parades that seemed to blend into one ?- was the joyous first step of this year's Mardi Gras season in New Orleans, and the first since Hurricane Katrina altered the physical and psychic landscape here nearly six months ago. Every tossed string of beads, every flipped plastic coin carried the weight of added meaning.
While this city tradition of celebration continued, things looked and felt different. The crowds were far thinner than usual, and not because the chilly day had the gray cast of a fish's belly. No more than 200,000 residents have returned to what had been a city of 465,000, and those who ventured to the parade route were joined by only a scattering of tourists. A sense of absence, though gradually lifting, still lingered."
