This quiz may or may not yield an accurate summary of your philosophical leanings, but some of the questions are interesting to consider: www.intellectualtakeout.org/blog/what-philosophical-school-thought-do-you-fall
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This GIF from the National Audubon Society and the Cornell Lab of Ornithology shows annual bird migrations in the Western Hemisphere. (These maps are based on bird observations from 2002 to 2014 and do not necessarily reflect the recent data finding that North America has lost nearly 30% of its bird population since 1970.) www.audubon.org/news/see-millions-places-migrating-birds-have-gone-one-gif
If you are in the Washington, DC area, there are several astronomy events scheduled for tomorrow (Saturday) night. The Capital Astronomers are meeting in Rock Creek Park and invite the public to join them, beginning shortly after sunset, to view the night sky through volunteer-provided telescopes: www.nps.gov/rocr/planyourvisit/expsky.htm In Fauquier County (VA), a similar event is taking place courtesy of the Northern Virginia Astronomy Club: www.novac.com/wp/outreach/stargaze/. The Fauquier County event actually begins mid-afternoon with other astronomy activities, including solar viewing and a human orrery. In College Park (MD), the University of Maryland Observatory is hosting an open house, including an opportunity to view the night sky through the observatory's telescope www.astro.umd.edu/openhouse/2programs/open-house.html
Students in my "Mission Possible: Global Issues, Leadership Choices" class have to manage a complex (if imaginary) economy that evolves, based on their prior decisions, over the course of the simulation. This map looks at services -- from haircuts to financial services -- as a proportion of national GDP around the world. (Next Thursday, I'll run a companion map showing industry as a proportion of national GDP.) howmuch.net/articles/role-services-around-the-world
The framers of the U.S. Constitution had serious concerns about the powers they were granting the person of the president and provided Congress with the power to impeach a president for "Treason, Bribery, or other high Crimes and Misdemeanors" (Article II, Section 4). Many other countries have adopted a similar approach, investing in their legislatures the power to impeach. After the U.S. House of Representatives launched a formal impeachment inquiry late last week, the Brookings Institution put together a panel on Monday to discuss how impeachment works and if and how it might proceed, "Impeachment: What Happens Now?" This is a recording of that discussion: www.youtube.com/watch?v=kpc4BxByKYE (For whatever reason, the program begins 30 minutes into the recording.)
A "census" of the world's major rivers finds they are in poor shape for a variety of reasons: "A recent synthesis of research on the world’s 32 greatest rivers reveals the perilous state of many large river basins. ... In addition to the relatively well-publicised stresses associated with climate change and large-scale damming, the world’s big rivers are also facing serious threats from other human activities. Pollution is now so bad in some big rivers, such as the Ganges, that the waters are a toxic mixture of faecal, industrial, agricultural, plastic and domestic waste, which causes widespread disease and thousands of deaths every year. ... Sediment mining and dredging are also now producing a crisis in the availability of sand, and causing deleterious effects on riverine ecology, river bank stability and the downstream accumulation of sediment in the world’s great river deltas, which support vital agricultural production and huge populations. The effects of sediment starvation caused by sediment mining and trapping behind dams add to the substantial problems already faced by such deltas, and their inhabitants, due to land subsidence, sea-level rise and the pollution of groundwater. As a catastrophic example, the World Health Organization has called the staggering scale of arsenic contamination in the groundwaters of the Ganges delta ‘the largest mass poisoning of a population in history’." geographical.co.uk/opinion/item/3322-dangerous-river-basins
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