DAILY QUICK READ - JULY 25, 2016

“Barbaric elephant slaughter creates horror scene”

From Namibia’s Informante site.

Residents at a well-known Namibian tourist lodge on the banks of the Okavango River had to watch helplessly as a horrific slaughter of elephants played out in front of their eyes just across the border in Angola.

At least five men armed with AK-47 automatic assault rifles attacked a group of about 40 elephants grazing peacefully in the long grass along the river.

According to Hennie Burger who saw the horrific attack on the elephants the attack on the animals happened less than 150 metres from where he was standing.

“The men suddenly appeared out of the bushes on the Angolan side of the river. They started firing at the animals with the assault rifles set to full automatic and what ensued could only be described as tragic carnage. At least three elephants were mortally wounded and the noise they made was horrifying.”

Of course is this any worse than the Trump families contempt for wild creatures?

Donald Jr with tail of elephant he destroyed.

…photos quickly resurfaced of Donald Trump's sons, Donald Trump Jr. and Eric Trump, posing with the dead bodies of several exotic animals, including an African elephant and leopard, they had previously hunted for sport.

Speaking of Trump

Here’s a person who has no interest in anything but his own self-interest.

Donald Trump has vowed to continue fighting the windfarm development off the coast from his Aberdeenshire golf course, branding the project an act of “public vandalism”.

The US presidential candidate returned to the fray after Swedish energy company Vattenfall confirmed on Thursday that it is going ahead with its £300m investment, despite last month’s EU referendum vote.

The offshore windfarm has been dogged by years of bitter legal wrangles between Trump and the Scottish government over its impact on his golf course, which the tycoon ultimately lost in the courts last year.

A spokesperson for the Trump Organization insisted that several of planning conditions associated with the project had yet to be fully satisfied. They said that the New York-based billionaire would be lodging formal objections with Marine Scotland, as well as pursuing additional remedies before the European courts if necessary.

On Last Though on Donald Trump

He’s on the Russian payroll and wants to destroy the United States.  Or so it would seem.

Corruption Allows Poaching

Numerous African countries failing to enforce CITES provisions.  Corruption trumps (see what I did there) conservation.

Global wildlife conservationists are demanding parties to the Convention on International Trade in Endangered species of Wild and Fauna Flora (CITES) comply with wildlife laws.

Authors of a recent released report on the Elephant Wildlife Trade Information System, Traffic, a global network fighting ivory trade, told DW that governments were failing to submit annual reports about ivory stocks.

Tom Milliken, the Elephant and Rhino Program Leader for Traffic, said there had been an expansion of wildlife smuggling networks across Africa in which Chinese and Vietnamese nationals were working with corrupt local officials.

"They are involved in syndicates and moving ivory across Africa and then to Asia." he said.

He said that cooperation in law enforcement between the countries involved in smuggling the ivory and those where it originated could save elephants from extinction.

"If the governments of China and Vietnam were to station wildlife trade investigators who would work with Africans, we would be able to dismantle the transnational syndicates that are driving the trade." Milliken said.

What Good Are Zoos – Part Infinite

Scottish wildcats are probably hybrids, but they still carry the wildcat DNA.

Four astonishingly cute and vitally important kittens have been born at the Royal Zoological Society of Scotland’s Highland Wildlife Park.

These aren’t just any kittens. They’re Scottish wildcats (Felis silvestris grampia), one of the rarest feline subspecies on the planet. These wildcats—also known as Highland tigers—nearly went extinct due to habitat loss, persecution by farmers and game-bird hunters, and hybridization with feral and domestic cats (F. catus). Today just a few hundred of these critically endangered tabbies live in the wild, many of which now carry hybrid genetics.

That’s where the Highland Wildlife Park comes in. As part of the Scottish Wildcat Action initiative, the park has spent the past few years helping to breed these rare animals in captivity. The new kittens—three from one litter, one from a second—represent the latest victory in that effort.

Science – Most of the World is for it

Good stuff when science and technology are turned loose.

The EuroScience Open Forum is a huge event held every two years that brings researchers, policymakers, and regular folks together to promote science and innovation. This year, Manchester will host a broad range of workshops, events, and contests.

And then in the United States.

Bill Nye “the Science Guy” worries kids are being brainwashed at Ken Ham’s Ark Encounter. Nye recently paid a visit to Ken Ham’s life-size version of Noah’s Ark. He was not pleased.

After the visit Nye expressed his frustration with the Christian fundamentalist project based on discredited science and a literal interpretation of Genesis. Noting that the Ark was an eye-catching attraction that was “much more troubling or disturbing than I thought it would be,” Nye told NBC News:

It’s all very troubling. You have hundreds of school kids there who have already been indoctrinated and who have been brainwashed.

DAILY QUICK READ - JULY 4, 2016 - HAPPY 4TH OF JULY

Look at all the trouble these 56 men started!

  

Bottled Water – Why?

The stuff isn’t any better that what comes out of the tap in most U.S. cities.  Of course there are exceptions, but maybe we should be fixing them and not filling the world with useless plastic bottles.

Nestlé is planning to open a bottled water plant in Phoenix. Yes, drought-stricken Phoenix, Arizona.

According to the Associated Press, Nestlé Waters will treat the city’s tap water and bottle it under its Pure Life brand. The plan is to extract about 35 million gallons of water in its first year to produce 264 million half-liter bottles.

Unsurprisingly, many people are wondering why it is necessary to bottle water in the middle of a desert when Arizonans can just drink it from the tap.

“Arizona is in drought conditions and with more people moving here each day it is imperative that we do everything we can to conserve water,” a Change.org petition signed by nearly 45,000 people states. “Even on the City of Phoenix website, we are reminded that the future of our city water supply is uncertain.”

We Can All Be Spider Man (or Woman)

Not sure about wrapping myself in spider web, but if Patagonia thinks It’s OK…then I’ll give it a try.

Spider silk’s qualities are nearly mythical. Its tensile strength is comparable to steel’s. Yet it is lighter, and can be as stretchy as a rubber band. Those traits in combination make it tougher than Kevlar. To give you an idea: If the spider webs that shoot from Spider Man’s wrists were real spider silk, the superhero could genuinely have pulled the runaway train to a halt in that dramatic scene in Spider Man 2.

So it’s no surprise that the race is on to create a synthetic version.

“We make protein microfibers, and they are inspired by nature, starting with spiders,” says Sue Levin, Bolt Threads’ chief marketing officer. “But we can riff off that in literally infinite directions.”

A real spider generates silk in specialized glands in its abdomen, and creates the silk strands using a spinning organ called a spinneret. Some spiders produce up to seven types of silk, each with its own purpose and attributes.

Synthetic spider silk could be used for everything from automobile parts to medical devices to performance outdoor gear, which is the area that’s attracting some of the most attention thus far. Bolt Threads recently announced a $50 million round of funding, as well as a new partnership with the outdoor brand Patagonia, which demonstrates a major vote of confidence in its technology.

Neither Bolt Threads nor Patagonia will give details on what products they’re working on just yet, but Matt Dwyer, Patagonia’s director of material innovation, promises when something does come out, it will be “awesome.”

“We think they’ve cracked the code,” he says. “For them to have come up with this capability… is just the kind of stuff that blows your mind.”

The War on Science

Right now it looks like ignorance is winning and sadly it is the media that is aiding the forces of ignorance.  Could be that the public’s right to know has been subverted by corporate interests.

Every so often a book comes along that changes the way you view the world. The War on Science: Who’s Waging It, Why It Matters, What We Can Do About It by Shawn Otto is one of those rare books. If you care about attacks on climate science and the rise of authoritarianism, if you care about biased media coverage or shake-your-head political tomfoolery, this book is for you.

In the week following the Paris climate accord, both the Democrats and the Republicans held presidential primary debates. Yet just days after 195 countries reached an historic agreement to begin rebuilding the world’s economy around clean energy, no journalist in either debate asked a single question about it.