River deltas, the fans and fingers of land created when the sediment carried by a river settles out at the river's mouth, grew by an average of 54 square kilometers per year between 1985 and 2015. A quarter of that growth was due to greater upstream erosion caused by deforestation "freeing soil from the grip of tree roots, allowing rivers to carry more of it downstream." More than half the global growth in deltas occurred in South, Southeast, and East Asia. North America, by contrast was the only continent to lose delta area, "partly due to damming along the Mississippi River."
Dutch researchers "examined 10,848 deltas to quantify humans’ impact. Three primary forces shape deltas: rivers delivering sediment; tides pushing or pulling sediment; and waves redistributing sediment along the coast. Humans exert a lot of control over how much sediment a river carries: While deforestation feeds the flow of soil, dams plug it up. ... In about 1,500 deltas, soil erosion due to deforestation increased sediment loads by more than 50 percent. ... Dams reduced sediment supply by more than 50 percent in 970 other deltas." www.sciencenews.org/article/many-river-deltas-are-growing-fed-human-caused-erosion
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Many Americans don't appreciate the size of Australia or the scope of the country's current wildfire season. This map, from ABC News, superimposes Australia and the location of last month's active wildfires on a map of the contiguous U.S. s.abcnews.com/images/International/AustralianWildfires_v01_sd_hpMain_16x9_992.jpg
Aristotle was overly given to categorizing things, not always correctly, but his observations about friendship have stood the test of time rather well. In the Nichomachean Ethics, Aristotle distinguishes between friends of utility (people who are friends because they are useful to each other), friends of pleasure (people who are friends because they enjoy doing the same things), and friends of virtue (people who are friends because they value the same things, want the best for the other, and respect each other as equals). Because what is useful to us or is "fun" often changes over time, the first two kinds of friendships can be rather short lived, but friends of virtue may endure.
"Now those who love each other for their utility do not love each other for themselves but in virtue of some good which they get from each other. So too with those who love for the sake of pleasure; it is not for their character that men love ready-witted people, but because they find them pleasant. ... And thus these friendships are only incidental; for it is not as being the man he is that the loved person is loved, but as providing some good or pleasure. Such friendships, then, are easily dissolved, if the parties do not remain like themselves; for if the one party is no longer pleasant or useful the other ceases to love him. ... Perfect friendship is the friendship of men who are good, and alike in virtue.... mutual love involves choice and choice springs from a state of character; and men wish well to those whom they love, for their sake, not as a result of feeling but as a result of a state of character. And in loving a friend men love what is good for themselves; for the good man in becoming a friend becomes a good to his friend. Each, then, both loves what is good for himself, and makes an equal return in goodwill and in pleasantness; for friendship is said to be equality, and both of these are found most in the friendship of the good." classics.mit.edu/Aristotle/nicomachaen.8.viii.html U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo was in the news recently when he claimed that an NPR reporter, who has a master's degree in European studies from Cambridge, misidentified Bangladesh as Ukraine on a blank map. In response, RadioFreeEurope/RadioLiberty has put together a short quiz challenging users to correctly identify 10 Eurasian countries on unlabeled maps: www.rferl.org/a/pompeo-npr-kelly-ukraine-map-quiz/30403854.html
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