Parrots might be gravely endangered in their native rain forests, but not in Orange County, where they've taken up residence in large flocks, attracting both love and hate from people who share their space.More from Oscar Gonzales.
There's a mystery attached to the birds' presence. No one is exactly sure how they got here. One popular theory is that their ancestors escaped from commercial bird importers, surviving because they were wild birds that knew how to forage for food. Another is simply that they migrated north from rain forests in Central and South America.
Large flocks exist in Orange, Santa Ana, Tustin and elsewhere in the county. Some flocks can number hundreds of birds. They generally eat fruit and nuts of exotic plants that, like themselves, have been imported from tropical climates.
Amazon parrots found here include endangered red-crowned parrots, lilac-crowned parrots, red-lored parrots, white-fronted parrots, yellow-headed parrots and blue-fronted parrots. They can be distinguished by stocky bodies and short, squared tails. Mitred parakeets are also common here.
Also at Los Angeles Times, "Looming flood prompts North Dakota evacuations," and New York Times, "They Dropped Their Flood Insurance, Then the ‘Mouse’ Roared."
Plus, at Minneapolis Star Tribune, "Neighbors, strangers aid Minot flood victims."
Looks pretty real, but check MSNBC, "Lightning striking twice? Maybe not even once":
The first sign that the video might be fake, according to Vladimir Rakov, electrical engineer and co-director of the University of Florida Lightning Research Group, is that people almost never survive direct lightning strikes like the one shown in the video. "The chance of survival in the case of a direct strike is essentially zero," Rakov told Life's Little Mysteries. That's because lightning bolts emanating from storm clouds convey a gigajoule of energy, he explained — which is about enough to melt a ton of steel.
The vast majority of the 240,000 people who survive lightning strikes worldwide each year do not actually get hit directly. "They are struck by 'side flashes,'" Rakov said. "Lightning might strike a building near them, for example, and there's a side flash that jumps to them carrying a small fraction of the original lightning bolt's energy. In that case, they can survive and even walk away."
TOKYO—Mikiso Iwasa was 16 years old when the atomic bomb struck Hiroshima on Aug. 6, 1945. He was in the backyard of his house, a little less than a mile away from ground zero. He was smashed onto the ground by the force of the bomb.
Mr. Iwasa escaped, but the deadly effects of radiation caught up with him later: He suffered from skin cancer twice as well as prostate cancer. He lost his hair. His nose and gums bled. He developed rashes all over his body.
For the only country ever to have experienced the atomic bomb and the horrific effects of concentrated radiation exposure, the nuclear crisis escalating in Japan has had a crippling effect on the nation's collective psyche.
Scientists said Thursday that they had trained a bacterium to eat and grow on a diet of arsenic, in place of phosphorus — one of six elements considered essential for life — opening up the possibility that organisms could exist elsewhere in the universe or even here on Earth using biochemical powers we have not yet dared to dream about.And at National Geographic, "NASA Life Discovery: New Bacteria Makes DNA With Arsenic." With a link to NASA's homepage.
The bacterium, scraped from the bottom of Mono Lake in California and grown for months in a lab mixture containing arsenic, gradually swapped out atoms of phosphorus in its little body for atoms of arsenic.
Scientists said the results, if confirmed, would expand the notion of what life could be and where it could be. “There is basic mystery, when you look at life,” said Dimitar Sasselov, an astronomer at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics and director of an institute on the origins of life there, who was not involved in the work. “Nature only uses a restrictive set of molecules and chemical reactions out of many thousands available. This is our first glimmer that maybe there are other options.”
According to the Florida-based International Shark Attack File, before Friday's attack there had been only eight fatal attacks by white sharks on humans since 1916.Added: "Surf Beach Shark Victim is Identified."
However, there is a consensus among some scientists that white shark population off California is increasing.
Christopher Lowe, who runs the Cal State Long Beach Shark Lab, attributes this to a longstanding ban on fishing for white sharks, a longstanding ban imposed on gill-net fishing in white shark nursery areas close to the coast, and the phenomenal rise in the number of California sea lions, which constitute a readily available food source for large white sharks.
Lowe, however, has not implied that this will translate into more attacks on humans, because white sharks have evolved over millions of years into such specialized predators.
Patric Douglas, CEO of Shark Diver, which is a California-based commercial shark-diving company that has extensive experience with white sharks, has witnessed the predators' behavior up-close dozens of times and can attest to their cautious, investigatory approach to possible prey.
Douglas agrees with scientists that most, if not all white shark attacks on humans involve mistaken identity, and advises people to stay out of the water very early in the morning when the sun might be at such an angle as to make it difficult for sharks to discern people from prey -- notably pinnipeds.
"Because that's when most of the attacks happen," Douglas said. "Just stay out of the water and give the sharks their due, because that's their time."
The bedraggled Eagle circled me once - then lit atop a nearby fir tree. He had a six-foot wingspread and looked mighty angry. I was concerned that I might be his next target, but he was so exhausted he just stared at me. Then I wondered if he would topple to the ground. As he tried to dry his feathers, it seemed to me that this beleaguered Eagle symbolized America in its current trials ....Magnificent. View the whole series of ten photographs, here.
My half-hour wait was rewarded with this marvelous sight. He flew away, almost good as new. May America recover as well.
