When Target was, well, targeted by hackers in search of customer payment information late last year, legal backlash from banks was probably one of the last things the company’s brass was worried about. They’ve got to be singing a different tune now, …
When JetBlue took flight in 2000, the company aimed to “bring humanity back to air travel.” The team started by ordering a bunch of new Airbus A320 aircraft, filling them with comfy leather seats (and enough legroom), serving unlimited free snacks an…
It’s no secret that AT&T throttles its users unlimited data connections. The company has been rather open about the policy. However, the carrier insisted that the practice is used to reign in the biggest bandwidth consumers, only necessary to keep ne…
When we think of personal hygiene, things like soap, deodorant, and toothpaste come to mind. We use these items to remove smells, bacteria, dead skin, and all the other goodies that build up on our bodies. You can go overboard and buy a bunch of these different items, but it takes a few tries to find a combination that’s right for you. It always feels like there’s a new one coming out to try next. We forget that going the more natural route is oftentimes the best way to go.
While you wouldn’t think that putting oil on oily skin is a good idea, it can actually help normalize the oil production from your skin (do a little research if you plan on giving this a go). It feels the same way with brushing your teeth with charcoal. Why would you put black charred remains on your teeth with the hopes of making them whiter? In the olden days, you would brush your teeth with ashes, chalk, honey, and lemon juice. Minty cream toothpastes weren’t always available you know.
It only makes sense then that the Charcoal Toothbrush from Morihata would be good for your chompers. There is Binchotan charcoal blended into each bristle, which helps give off negative ions, and will help deodorize your teeth while preventing bad breath and bacteria. Obviously you’ll want to use toothpaste too, so this $11 toothbrush is technically another hygiene product to add to the list.
Available for purchase on Amazon
[ Morihata Toothbrush uses charcoal to clean your teeth copyright by Coolest Gadgets ]
Nintendo’s hit holiday season continues with an unlikely hero: Captain Toad, the toadstool-esque stock supporting character from Super Mario games, who takes the helm for a full-fledged puzzler based on mini games from Super Mario 3D World. Captain Toad: Treasure Tracker takes unique advantage of the Wii U’s capabilities, in addition to being just generally super fun, and while… Read More
It’s a blessing, it’s a life-changing experience, it is human evolution (in heart and in mind), but these days in Greece, parenting is in crisis. Traditionally, family has always been a precious value in Greece. Family bonds and ties have always been tight in my country, with love, nurturing and care being high in priorities. But these days, in the midst of an economic, political and social crisis, parenthood (and mostly motherhood) has become a struggle, a constant fight for survival.
It is the pressure of the economic crisis itself, it is the pressure from unemployment and it is also the often barbaric oppression on employees from companies and executives driven exclusively from economic values. A few days ago, I received an email from a pregnant mother in Athens, who was forced by her boss to face the dilemma of either abortion or unemployment. The moral and legal issues involved are obvious. But governmental care for families has been put down the row in priorities. Institutions and social agencies (disempowered themselves) are too slow to react.
No matter how encouraging and promising, it is sad to observe that parental care in Greece lies solely in the hands of citizens and volunteers, of mother groups and parent activists, on human networks that took over the responsibility to act for the protection of parents’ and children’s rights. It has become our own personal responsibility to protect family values, to create time for our families and a secure base for our children under the hardships of an invisible war.
Parents’ groups, citizens’ initiatives, non-profit organizations and volunteers in Greece are forming real-life and secure social networks with the aim to help parents and families. They have taken over the responsibility to work for the promotion of breastfeeding, for the women’s right to choose and experience the birth they want, to be protected from the hospitalization of pregnancy and birth, in a country where two out of three births are (most often unnecessary) cesareans.
We are all parents who live in Greece. We are left alone to fight an undeclared war, not only on childhood but also on family values and on our personal well being. We live our everyday lives with all the frustration, the disappointment and the resentment these scary times bring. But, at the same time, we begin to look to one another for help. We make conscious efforts to face the reality through the eyes of our children, through their need for a future of promise and of opportunity.
We’ve made the conscious decision to reconnect with our dreams to stay intact. We are all embattled, to save the relationships within the family. We are all in arms (although not armed with knowledge) and determined to work for what’s best for our children, whichever the circumstances. Mothers and fathers who cannot even afford the luxury to choose what kind of parents they want to be. Unemployed parents or purely paid but forced to work overtime, parents who rarely have the chance (not to mention the clear mind and light heart) to really talk and relate with their children.
Empowering parents, offering knowledge and support, is a life task to overtake selflessly, if we want to move from drift sand and troubled waters to the solid and secure ground of the relationship. Parents in Greece need all the encouragement they can get. They need simplicity, they need protection from all kind of economic and political terror and they need ordinary moments just to be with their children. Now more than ever, they need a village to raise their kids. A village that they re-create, from scratch.
Lambrini Stamati, Athens Greece
Lambrini is a Simplicity Parenting Counselor (www.goneisapla.gr) and the editor of the online parents’ magazine ‘To Photodentro‘ (meaning ‘Tree of Light’) (www.photodentro.gr). She works with parents and families towards their personal development and empowerment, offering information & knowledge.
“Bend ze knees!” he shouted, “pretend like you are making love, ja!” Those were the memorable instructions I heard years ago from the Austrian ski instructor behind me on the Alps. They hold true today for all sports.
Watch a great surfer, the back leg is bent so far that the thigh is parallel to the board. A soccer player with power bends his planted leg in order to generate enough force with the striking foot to fire the ball into the net. The best linemen in the NFL bend low despite their massive size. And, like my instructor pointed out, who can make love without bending their knees?
Bending the knees sufficiently is the hardest part, and this only gets harder as athletes age. Golfers progressively stand up more, losing that ideal position for addressing the ball. Tennis players fail to get low enough to generate rotation power from their core. Bowlers don’t plant with enough knee bend and the ball hits the alley hard losing spin.
Knowing this, you might think that people train to bend their knees. Odd, but watch most people cross-train, if they do at all, they “go the gym” or “ride the bike” usually with the TV on; in the gym they might bench press or use the elliptical machines; they might even take a Yoga class, believing that is the key to improving their flexibility.
The reality is that most sports demand power in knee bending. To generate power for striking a ball, to hold a position while rotating the hips and the back, to get low enough to apply pressure to the back of a surf board or a ski, it takes concentric and eccentric power in the muscles, meaning the ability to generate force while bending and extending. You can only optimally develop that coordinated power by repeating that motion with progressively higher weights and volume of repetitions.
So if you are going to train to become a better athlete, the ideal method is the simple squat exercise. The squat, when done properly, perfectly trains all the muscles of the lower extremity and the core muscles, the gluteal (butt) muscles, the abdominal muscles and the paraspinal muscles, in a coordinated fashion. Done with body weight alone, it can be performed anywhere. When adding weights to a bar or making the squat more complicated, such as adding an overhead thrust of a bar with weights, more of the body is engaged and the goals of coordinated fitness are achieved earlier.
Proper squat form means the head is in a neutral position, the chest is upright, facing forward, the knees are bent over but not beyond the toes, the hips are lowered as far as they can go, the weight is on the heels, the abdomen muscles are sucked in, and the butt is pushed backwards. The cheapest, most available and best exercise for all sports exists right in your own body.
So “bend ze knees,” at the very least you may notice it improves your love life!
While playing with a submerged log in a pond, this 14 month-old cub spotted a deer in the distance. Photo: Steve Winter
Tiger Deaths Increase Inside Protected Areas
Inflamed By Poaching, Record-High Tiger Deaths Reported In India
What You Don’t Know About the Tiger Trade Is Killing Them
Tiger Poaching On The Rise With 73 Established Trade Hubs In India
Forest Dept Tries To Explain Away Missing Tigers
Malayan Tiger ‘Critically Endangered’
These are just a few of this fall’s tiger headlines. It’s been a barrage of bad news.
Legions of dedicated individuals are deep in the fight to save this majestic creature, the largest of the world’s cats. It’s an animal that faces myriad threats, as all carnivores do, but one factor is largely responsible for their current slide: poaching, driven by the Chinese demand for tiger products.
It wasn’t until three decades ago that scientists realized that traditional Chinese medicine was responsible for a precipitous decline in tiger numbers. Photo: Steve Winter
Tigers have had more conservation dollars spent on their behalf than any other creature on the planet, yet the cats continue to disappear. Some of that money has vanished, like smoke. Some large nonprofits advertise their plight on billboards and plead for them in TV campaigns, but the cash they raise is often funneled into general operating budgets, not tiger conservation. Some organizations send out regular press releases proclaiming they’re saving tigers, but numbers continue to dwindle. Others are truly making progress, beefing up protection, saving forests that are the cat’s home.
Tigers are in the emergency room, but few people seem to be aware of exactly how precarious their future is. That may be because we regularly see them in zoos, circuses, even roadside attractions, but those animals are strictly for entertainment and in no way help their wild relatives. Although tens of thousands live in captivity worldwide, most of these tigers could never be released into the wild: many are inbred, lack survival skills, and their familiarity with humans makes them dangerous.
Perhaps 3,000 wild tigers survive. That’s frighteningly few. (For context: There were 100,000 at the turn of the 20th century.) Most of those, about 1,700, are India’s Bengal tigers. The other 1,300 are divided among five other subspecies: Indochinese, Siberian, Malayan, South China and Sumatran. There’s a new tiger census underway, so we’ll have updated estimates soon.
With adequate food, water, and a safe home (large enough for a wide-ranging predator), tigers thrive. But threats are intensifying and tiger poaching is spiking, hunted for a lucrative international market in illegal wildlife products that’s estimated at $19 billion a year. This trade is masterminded by the same international cartels that run guns, drugs and human trafficking operations — and they ship tigers almost exclusively to China.
A tiger peers at a camera trap it triggered while hunting in the early morning in the forests of northern Sumatra, Indonesia. Trying to photograph the critically endangered Sumatran tiger is difficult: not only do few remain, but those that do mostly live in rugged mountains. Information on where to set this camera came from a former tiger hunter who is now employed as a park ranger. Photo: Steve Winter
Across their range, tigers are snared, poisoned and shot to fill a growing demand among China’s elite. Today’s market is not mired in traditional or cultural use of tiger products, nor are they used as ingredients in life-saving traditional medicines. These are incredibly expensive luxury items bought by or gifted to high-level government officials and wealthy businessmen. Serving tiger meat or tiger bone wine (made by steeping tiger bone in rice wine) often seals a business deal, and gifting this wine or displaying a tiger skin is a preferred way to flaunt wealth and power.
China’s tiger farms — industrial breeding facilities that house some 6,000 tigers — make tiger products widely available, increasing demand. Undercover investigators from the UK-based Environmental Investigation Agency documented stockpiles of skins and bones that feed a shadowy black market. This thriving domestic trade violates Chinese federal law prohibiting sale of tiger bone, a trade that could not occur without the aid and complicity of government officials charged with wildlife protection, the State Forestry Administration.
Continued tiger farming also violates a decision by the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES), which regulates that trade under a treaty signed by 180 nations. In 2007, the world voted that tigers should not be bred for trade, including domestic trade, and tiger farms must be phased out. Meanwhile, China’s tiger farms continue to expand, and EIA discovered that at least one factory is pumping out tiger bone wine in substantial quantities.
This commerce puts wild tigers in the crosshairs, especially in India. Wild tigers are coveted, considered to be highly superior to captive-bred cats. It’s also far cheaper to kill one than to raise one to adulthood. China’s growing tiger industry is directly responsible for this latest spike in poaching.
The tigers that are hanging on in the wild have a housing crisis. On a satellite map, tiger habitat looks like green measles. Disparate green dots punctuate human landscapes cut by roads and railways, cities, towns, crop fields, mines, factories. More than half of all tigers live in India, a country of 1.3 billion people competing over land and resources — and increasingly lax environmental protections.
The current census will soon report that tiger range has again contracted. Tigers once inhabited 30 Asian countries; that had dropped to 13. Now, very few, if any, are left in Cambodia, Laos, and Vietnam, and those living in China mostly wander in from neighboring countries.
This leaves tiger populations scattered about in disconnected, sometimes tiny groups that are too small to maintain a healthy gene pool. Young tigers must establish their own territories, nature’s way of preventing inbreeding, but once they step outside of reserves, relatively few survive. And with such a huge price on their heads, more and more tigers are killed inside those “sanctuaries.”
Then there’s the lack of food. People hunt and eat the same deer, wild pigs and other game that tigers eat. Hungry tigers then eat livestock — and end up dead.
Each of these threats are quite serious, but the pink elephant in the room in nearly every international “save the tiger” meeting these days is the demand. Because of China’s global economic muscle, neither world governments nor conservation organizations are stepping up to hold the nation’s leaders accountable for illegal trade and consumption of wildlife products. And it’s not only tigers, but also snow leopards (for skins), lions (for bones) — and so many other species, from elephants (for ivory) and pangolins (for scales) to bears (for bile), turtles (for meat), and more.
But there is hope, mainly because of the relentless efforts of innovative, dedicated people. True heroes. In some places, tigers populations are holding steady or recovering. Wildlife crime is now being recognized as a criminal industry that’s reached crisis proportions, thanks to efforts by TRAFFIC, a global wildlife trade monitoring organization, and new efforts from the UN Environment Programme, UN Office on Drugs and Crime, the World Bank-led Global Tiger Initiative, and others. The Wildlife Protection Society of India has amassed one of the world’s largest wildlife crime databases.
With a string of coordinated, immediate efforts, there may be hope. Remaining tiger habitat must be safeguarded: if those lands continue to be pillaged and developed, the cat has no future. Tigers live in the crosshairs, in constant danger: Without careful monitoring and armed protection, poachers will wipe them out. Tiger-range countries must prosecute poachers and wildlife traffickers with serious penalties at home and coordinate across borders with neighboring countries and INTERPOL to apprehend the cartel kingpins behind the trade. It’s up to individual countries to protect their tigers and their forests, and it’s up to the global community to support them and hold them accountable.
But in the end, poachers are smart, driven by huge profits. Neither the most innovative conservation programs nor the best, top-notch enforcement will save this magnificent animal unless China can be persuaded to shut down its farms, end commerce in tiger products, and step up enforcement.
Jackie Chan, Yao Ming, and other celebrities have partnered with WildAid, a San Francisco-based conservation nonprofit, to help sway public opinion in China against consumption of wildlife products. Their message: “When the buying stops, the killing can, too.”
We need to make that happen.
This post is part of a series produced by The Huffington Post in conjunction with Nat Geo WILD’s Big Cat Week. To see all the other posts in the series, click here. For more information about big cats, check out National Geographic’s Big Cats Initiative.
How much is a Nobel prize worth?
If you’re James Watson, who shared a 1962 Nobel for his role in the discovery of the structure of DNA, it’s worth about $4.76 million. That’s how much his 23-carat gold medal fetched at auction in New York City on Thursday night (the price includes the buyer’s premium).
The auction house Christie’s said the medal, which went to an anonymous bidder, was the first ever sold by a living recipient, the Associated Press reported.
Watson, 86, was there to watch the auction with his wife and one of his sons, the New York Times reported. After the sale he said he was pleased, adding, “It’s more money than I expected to give to charity.”
He said some of the proceeds would go to the University of Chicago, Cold Spring Harbor Lab, and other charities, the paper reported.
Watson told Nature that selling his medal was aimed at redeeming his reputation, which had been tarnished by comments he made linking race and intelligence. In 2007, he was suspended from his job at Cold Spring Harbor Lab after furor erupted when he suggested that black people are less intelligent than white people.
The controversy over his remarks also left him strapped for cash, he told the Financial Times.
“No one really wants to admit I exist,” Watson said. “Because I was an ‘unperson’ I was fired from the boards of companies, so I have no income, apart from my academic income,” he said.
Watson later attempted to clarify his comments in a piece published in 2007 by The Independent that ran under the headline “James Watson: To question genetic intelligence is not racism.”
In the piece, he offered his apologies to those who had “drawn the inference” from his words that he thought that Africa was genetically inferior. “That is not what I meant,” he wrote, adding:
“We do not yet adequately understand the way in which the different environments in the world have selected over time the genes which determine our capacity to do different things. The overwhelming desire of society today is to assume that equal powers of reason are a universal heritage of humanity. It may well be. But simply wanting this to be the case is not enough. This is not science.”
Watson shared the Nobel prize with Francis Crick and Maurice Wilkins.
Beyonce is officially the queen of the Grammys. As the nominations for the 57th annual Grammys rolled in on Friday, Beyonce became the most Grammy-nominated woman of all time, surpassing Dolly Parton.
Before this year’s nods were announced, Beyonce and Parton had 46 nominations apiece, but with the nomination of “Beyonce” for Best Urban Contemporary Album, Bey jumped ahead with 47 Grammy nominations. Because some of this year’s nominations — including the coveted Album of the Year — have yet to be announced as of this writing, Beyonce could further widen the gap.
Beyonce has won 17 Grammys over the years, for her work in Destiny’s Child and as a solo artist. Notably, in 2004, she was nominated for six awards and took home five; in 2010, she won in six out of the 10 categories she was nominated. Bow down … again.
This is site is run by Sascha Endlicher, M.A., during ungodly late night hours. Wanna know more about him? Connect via Social Media by jumping to about.me/sascha.endlicher.
