Scientists Find Thousands Of Previously Undiscovered Species Cowering In Amazon Rainforest As usual, The Onion’s best comedy is that which is just barely beyond truth. If you don’t laugh, you just may cry. “Our expedition has shown that the Amazon Rainforest is simply teeming with a multitude of creatures never before glimpsed in this region,” said lead researcher professor Courtland Gere, who personally observed a rare form of spider monkey as it huddled, shaking, inside the stump of a freshly felled tree. “Just mere minutes after our vehicles entered the forest, our team was lucky enough to hear the grief-stricken whimpers of a fascinating, previously unknown species of striped jaguar locked in the fetal position under a pile of leaves.” (via The Onion)
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Scientists Find Thousands Of Previously Undiscovered Species Cowering In Amazon Rainforest

As usual, The Onion’s best comedy is that which is just barely beyond truth. If you don’t laugh, you just may cry.

“Our expedition has shown that the Amazon Rainforest is simply teeming with a multitude of creatures never before glimpsed in this region,” said lead researcher professor Courtland Gere, who personally observed a rare form of spider monkey as it huddled, shaking, inside the stump of a freshly felled tree. “Just mere minutes after our vehicles entered the forest, our team was lucky enough to hear the grief-stricken whimpers of a fascinating, previously unknown species of striped jaguar locked in the fetal position under a pile of leaves.”

(via The Onion)

Source: The Onion

Oh hi, aliens, I didn’t know you were coming over. I would have cleaned up. SMBC takes a look at a future Earth, where we’re all a bunch of bachelors and an alien race is coming over to our pad to visit. We’ve got some cleaning up to do. Hint: It doesn’t go as planned. But it ends with hope. Check out the full saga. “Perhaps it was good that we believed aliens were coming. Perhaps we should always live as if we’re about to invite an otherworldly mate over to dinner. Perhaps… perhaps… for a moment, we all inhaled the chamomile odor of perhaps.” (via Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal)
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Oh hi, aliens, I didn’t know you were coming over. I would have cleaned up.

SMBC takes a look at a future Earth, where we’re all a bunch of bachelors and an alien race is coming over to our pad to visit.

We’ve got some cleaning up to do. Hint: It doesn’t go as planned. But it ends with hope. Check out the full saga.

“Perhaps it was good that we believed aliens were coming. Perhaps we should always live as if we’re about to invite an otherworldly mate over to dinner. Perhaps… perhaps… for a moment, we all inhaled the chamomile odor of perhaps.”

(via Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal)

Source: smbc-comics.com

Package Free, Zero-Waste Grocery Store to Debut in Austin

I don’t get to toot my own city’s horn quite as much as I would like to, so I’ll gladly take that opportunity now. I recently heard about a new grocery store debuting this summer in Austin called In.gredients. They will be the first package-free and zero-waste grocery store in the United States, an idea with small footholds in Latin America and Europe.

I’m really intrigued by this idea. You bring in your own reusable containers for, well, everything. That means no package waste, which is a huge fraction of the waste that goes into our landfills. It means less processed foods, which support subsidized and often unhealthy corn and soy products, in addition to a bunch of unpronounceable chemicals. It means seasonal, local foods, reducing transportation costs, pollution and promoting natural agriculture. It means less food waste, since you only buy what you need, and you don’t throw away spoiled food.

This is an environmentally-friendly idea that I think could be adapted in almost any city. It could also give major grocery chains some ideas on how to improve their big box offerings. 

I’d love to hear your thoughts. Is this an admirable but unscalable solution? Or is this something you’d like to see everywhere?

Glow-in-the-dark fish to detect water pollution Estrogen-like compounds in water supplies have been linked to numerous health problems in humans and animals. Plastic compounds like BPA have been known to leach these estrogen mimics into rivers and lakes, leading to a huge backlash against use of those products. University of Exeter biologists have now created a fish (the tiny model organism Danio rerio) that can sense these pollutants. When pollutants are detected in a certain tissue, a gene is activated that makes it glow green! It’s a living pollution sensor. It probably won’t show up in streams anytime soon, but it shows that we can use biology to engineer canaries for a multitude of coal mines. (via BBC News)
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Glow-in-the-dark fish to detect water pollution

Estrogen-like compounds in water supplies have been linked to numerous health problems in humans and animals. Plastic compounds like BPA have been known to leach these estrogen mimics into rivers and lakes, leading to a huge backlash against use of those products.

University of Exeter biologists have now created a fish (the tiny model organism Danio rerio) that can sense these pollutants. When pollutants are detected in a certain tissue, a gene is activated that makes it glow green! It’s a living pollution sensor. It probably won’t show up in streams anytime soon, but it shows that we can use biology to engineer canaries for a multitude of coal mines.

(via BBC News)

Source: BBC

todaysdocument: Written on April 13, 1989, this letter was sent from second-grader Kelli Middlestead of the Franklin School in Burlingame, California, to Walter Stieglitz the Regional Director of the Alaska Region of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, lamenting the Exxon Valdez oil spill of March 24, 1989.
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todaysdocument: Written on April 13, 1989, this letter was sent from second-grader Kelli Middlestead of the Franklin School in Burlingame, California, to Walter Stieglitz the Regional Director of the Alaska Region of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, lamenting the Exxon Valdez oil spill of March 24, 1989.
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todaysdocument: Written on April 13, 1989, this letter was sent from second-grader Kelli Middlestead of the Franklin School in Burlingame, California, to Walter Stieglitz the Regional Director of the Alaska Region of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, lamenting the Exxon Valdez oil spill of March 24, 1989.
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todaysdocument:

Written on April 13, 1989, this letter was sent from second-grader Kelli Middlestead of the Franklin School in Burlingame, California, to Walter Stieglitz the Regional Director of the Alaska Region of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, lamenting the Exxon Valdez oil spill of March 24, 1989.

climateadaptation:

“An Ocean of Plastic” - the NY Times David Pogue takes on plastic pollution.

Ocean plastic is a serious problem, and while the North Pacific Garbage Patch may be a little bit hyperbolated, you can’t deny the effect it has on wildlife, as seen in these sad photos.

Trees like this giant sequoia were seedlings as early as the time that Hatshepsut sat on the throne as the first female pharaoh of Egypt. That was 3,500 years ago. And today they are more threatened than ever. Sometimes you just need a beautiful slideshow of giant, old trees to remind you how of the splendor of nature, and how it’s worth protecting. (via guardian.co.uk)
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Trees like this giant sequoia were seedlings as early as the time that Hatshepsut sat on the throne as the first female pharaoh of Egypt. That was 3,500 years ago. And today they are more threatened than ever.

Sometimes you just need a beautiful slideshow of giant, old trees to remind you how of the splendor of nature, and how it’s worth protecting.

(via guardian.co.uk)

Source: Guardian