NASA’s Earth Observatory has spent over fifteen years using satellites to collect hordes of real-time data across our planet’s surface. They reveal everything from temperature and energy use, to how much radiation we beam into space. Here’s how to understand satellite data maps to understand our planet’s vital signs.
Stevie Wonder never considered his blindness a “disadvantage,” and he’s proved his point for more than 50 years. But for all his fantastic talent, his blindness may have contributed to his skills nonetheless. Research has found overwhelming evidence to suggest that blind musicians’ brains can be a lot more musically attuned than those of sighted musicians.
The United States has long been a majority-Christian country, but it is by no means religiously static. In 2007, Pew Research found the religiously unaffiliated to be the second-largest religious group in the country, at 16 percent of the population.
As of 2014, the religiously unaffiliated now make up 22 percent of the American population, according to the new American Values Atlas from Public Religion Research Institute (PRRI).
“The U.S. religious landscape is undergoing a dramatic transformation that is fundamentally reshaping American politics and culture,” PRRI researcher Dan Cox told The Huffington Post.
Though the U.S. is still a Christian-majority country, Cox mused, how much longer will it remain so and what might be on the horizon?
Here are 9 facts that show some ways in which the American religious landscape is shifting:
I was fully awake and present when they wheeled me into the operating room. It was an unusual, but I needed to remain awake as long as possible before surgery. Twenty-five miles away in a yoga center in Manhattan my spiritual teacher and mentor, Sri Dharma Mittra, sat quietly in meditation instinctively knowing that I needed him. When I could no longer stay awake in the massive cold room of steel, it was OK because I felt Sri Dharma’s presence and knew that all will be well.
The serendipity that occurred is an example of the power of human connectedness. I remember Sri Dharma telling a story of how everything in the Universe is connected by an invisible silver thread. This thread is said to pierce through the heart of each individual. He went on to say that our true self-our spirit resides in our heart. Think of it as being sewn together into to the spirit of every person he continued. Like sewing fabric together I mused. It was then my “ah” moment occurred.
I thought back to several years earlier when I was on my way to Romania to help establish a much-needed medical clinic in Christicor, in the mountainous region of Romania. We were asked to bring a suitcase of clothes for a donation gift, as the families that were hosting us were in need. Priding myself on being a “fashionista” I had a closet filled with designer clothes that any Romanian would be proud to own.
I was excited to give my donation gift to my host family. They eagerly opened the suitcase and emptied the contents on the floor. Immediately the attention grabber was my silk pantsuit that had been my pride and joy. This is perfect my host mother said, and quickly whisked it away. My heart sang with joy that my pantsuit would be giving another person the same happiness I had given me.
My last week before returning home, my host family gave me a farewell party. The party was held in their dining room — a traditional gathering of family and friends, where love, food and friendship was shared. The whole village came to celebrate. It was a magical evening.
The day before my party my host family escorted me into the dining room. We have a wonderful surprise for you —I was shocked–there was my pantsuit proudly displayed as a window valance! How could they do this, I thought.
My beautiful pantsuit was destroyed. I now understand it was transformed.
The fabric of what once was my pantsuit, now a window valance, was sewn together with love and served as the centerpiece in a room, which was the place of human love, sharing, and celebration. It was the fabric of our being, connecting individuals together heart to heart, thread by thread.
“I’m really a witch,” rapper Azealia Banks quipped last January, shortly before all hell broke loose on her Twitter account.
Banks is known for her online rants. She tends to share fairly dense ideas, spontaneously spun out in punchy lines liberally interspersed with curse words. I don’t know a person on this earth who can agree with every one of them, but her opinions are smarter than she usually gets credit for.
Still, even by Banks’s standards, the witch thing was weird. It came out in the middle of a run about black Americans and their relationship to Christianity:
I wonder if most of the black American Christians in the US know WHY they are Christian. I wonder if they even consider for a SECOND that before their ancestors came to the Americas that they may have believed in something ELSE.
Not uncontroversial, but not wrong.
There is the occasional marvel that peaks the interest of experts, unfolding nature’s firsts or never-before observed peculiarities, and this is certainly one of those wonders.
This is quite possibly one of the most unique bird stories ever told; This is a true phenomenon of nature that is garnering world-wide interest and attention not only from loyal followers of hummingbirds, but bird experts, rehabbers, and bird endocrinologists alike.
This real-life bending of Mother Nature’s rules is unfolding at Bellahummingbird.com, where our favorite hummingbird, Bella is performing her maternal duties raising twin baby chicks with a peculiar twist. This ain’t your run-of-the-mill nest experience with raw and captivating experiences. This involves an intruding relative that is making life in the nest difficult and often downright dangerous for Bella and the hummer chicks.
Bella is a real California girl from La Verne, Southern Cal who lives and raises chicks in a ficus tree. Our gracious host, “BH” has been watching hummers named Bella, build nests and raise babies since 2005. Our Bellas are Allens hummingbirds that build up to four nests per breeding season, November through June. There have been several “Bellas” and since they are not banded birds; there is no way of knowing how many different hummingbirds have raised their tiny families there.
These are all the makings of a Cinderella story; but the nemesis is not a hummer-in-law, it is the proverbial confused step-sister named Rosey (AKA Rosie), a Rufous/Allen’s hybrid.
Last year Rosey, instead of becoming her flying free – miss independent, preferred to stay close to her homestead and hang out with her mother. As Bella went on with her business raising her next clutch (group of hummer chicks), Rosey was reluctant to learn to feed and bug hunt on her own. She would sit close to where Bella was incubating eggs, noticeably all too dependent and reliant on mom.
BH observed the appearance that Rosey had wanted to jump back into the nest with her mother. But she didn’t do that …until this mating season.
Bella tolerated her being in her tree but Rosey’s curiosity ensued, initially with no aggressive behavior but that quickly accelerated. As concerns with hyper and strange behavior escalated, and Rosey becoming rather frenetic, our host BH brought this behavior to the attention of Terry Masear, hummingbird rehab specialist and author of Fastest Things on Wings: Rescuing Hummingbirds in Hollywood.
Rosey started coming to the nest after Bella’s babies hatched, appearing to practice nest building. She would curiously land on the edge of the nest and eventually started making stomping motions for up to 15 minutes at a time with the baby chicks inside.
Another first, Rosey has built her own nest remarkably close to Bella’s, in the same tree just a foot away. Whether or not Rosey will lay her own eggs in her nest remains to be seen. It is unknown if the Rufous/Allen’s hybrid can mate and lay eggs. In this case, her nest would remain an attempted duplication of her mother Bella’s.
Hummingbird experts do not think Rosey would deliberately harm the baby chicks, but her behavior may unintentionally hurt them. Initially, she mimicked feeding of the twin chicks by poking them, bringing bugs and fluff to embellish their nest, but recently has actually fed them nectar. Eventually, Rosey started preventing Bella from entering the nest leaving her unable to feed the babies, a serious complication because the chicks need to be fed often. In case of a nest mishap, there has been a safety net installed for their protection.
BH and rehab specialist Terry Masear continue to closely monitor the situation and have seriously considered taking the nest and chicks to rehabilitate. But at this point, it is looking good that the twin chicks will be able to live out and fledge from their nest in the ficus tree.
Nature watching web cams have become some of the hottest spectacles on the net. What is not to love about a hummingbird mother in the wild raising babies with an up close and personal window into their world? Millions world-wide have discovered the awe and joy that comes with experiencing a major look into the miniature world of nature’s parenting. In fact, the SW Florida eagles, Ozzie and Harriet were featured in the movie Mom’s Night Out starring eagle watcher Patricia Heaton.
They become virtual relatives, loving and caring people cheering on their “adopted” offspring. The delight of watching nest construction to the pride of the “fledge” of the babies brings joy to those who dedicate their time to “nesting” along with them. Sadly, there is the occasional heartbreak, observing birth to flying over the rainbow; any way you look at it, a pure front row window into nature in the raw.
We are thankful that BH has decided to share her wonderful experiences with nature’s phenomenon with the world via her web cam, focused directly on Bella’s chosen nest location.
Rush on over to Bella’s at Bellahummingbird.com. She’s there to amaze you. Videos of Bella, the hummer twins, and Rosey are located at http://www.ustream.tv/channel/bellahummingbird-s-show/highlights and http://www.ustream.tv/recorded/58938856/highlight/603320.
Sometimes, I think we’d be better off without the ability to re-watch old television favorites. “Sex and the City” is one of those iconic shows that probably shaped your cultural palette during your formative years. Yet, you may find that revisiting the show on the 10-year anniversary of its finale reveals it to be something of a hollow shell.
If you don’t know who Cookie Lyon is, you should. As the breakout character from the critically acclaimed hip-hop drama Empire, perhaps the biggest hit of this television season, she’s quickly become an American icon.
Planned Parenthood of South Texas is turning 76 this year, and so is Texas resident Gene Novogrodsky.
To mark the two occasions, Novogrodsky embarked on a 300-mile bike ride at 6 a.m. Thursday from his hometown of Brownsville to San Antonio. The ride, which he is calling the “Spirit of ’76,” has already raised more than $8,600 in donations for the Planned Parenthood clinics in Brownsville and Harlingen, two underserved areas in the Rio Grande Valley. He plans to arrive in San Antonio next Tuesday.
Novogrodsky, a longtime civil rights advocate and instructor at the University of Texas at Brownsville, said he is riding to raise awareness of dwindling women’s healthcare access in Texas. His wife, Ruth, works at the Brownsville Planned Parenthood health center.
“I don’t feel that this is heroic,” Novogrodsky told The Huffington Post. “I’d rather be doing something else. I can’t believe we’re talking about women’s reproductive rights in 2015 in Texas.”
A package of anti-abortion laws signed by former Gov. Rick Perry (R) in Texas has forced more than a dozen women’s health clinics to close or stop providing abortions. Those laws, combined with dramatic budget cuts to the state’s family planning program, have made basic women’s health services, including birth control and cancer screenings, extremely difficult to access in many parts of Texas, particularly for low-income women.
The Rio Grande Valley was hit the worst. The Huffington Post reported in 2014 that some women in the region have already been seeking illegal, clandestine abortions in the absence of safe and regulated providers. Novogrodsky’s 300-mile bike ride represents the distance that some women now have to travel to get to the nearest abortion clinic.
He said the fight is personal for him. “I have daughters, I have a wife,” he said. “These issues are important to me because I care about the health and well-being of my family.”
The HuffPost Style editors recently tried Glossier, a really cool new skincare line that has made us think twice about wearing makeup. After using the deep pore cleansing mask and hydrating moisturizer, all we needed was mascara, brow filler and lipstick.
But with Fashion Week ruining my sleep, I wanted to make sure that I looked like the best version of myself for every taxi selfie and Phhhoto video.
My lifeline came via BareMinerals Complexion Rescue.
What Is It?
This gel-cream product has the lightweight consistency of a tinted moisturizer and the skin-perfecting benefits of a BB or CC cream. Free of parabens, fragrance and oil, BareMinerals Complexion Rescue is formulated with hydrating ingredients like calcium and gylcerin, SPF 30 and heart-leaved globe daisy (fancy, huh?) for an additional barrier against toxins and pollutants.
It is available in an impressive 10 shades in cool to warm tones, making it super easy to find your perfect match without having to create a special blend. As a woman with a deeper skin tone, I truly appreciate the range.
How I Used It
In order to achieve sheer coverage, I buffed a quarter-sized amount of Complexion Rescue onto my face with a flat top foundation brush in swift, circular motions. I immediately noticed that my skin appeared less dull and the annoying acne scars along my jawline evened out. The beauty marks I inherited from my grandmother could still be seen.
While running around backstage at New York Fashion Week, I was shocked at how well the gel-cream held up throughout the day. My skin possessed a dewy and not greasy glow, and it garnered compliments from my fellow beauty editors.
I credited my seemingly flawless look to good skincare and drinking lots of water, but this product really was my little secret.
Rating: 5 out of 5. BareMinerals Complexion Rescue has changed the tinted moisturizer game forever.
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.
