Rancher sees incredibly rare animal in his state – kills it

Originally posted by bolt-carrier-assembly

A rancher shot and killed the first wolverine spotted for more than a century in North Dakota — where the animals had been eradicated.

Researchers had been tracking the omnivorous animal, known as M56, since 2008, when a transmitter was placed under its skin after its capture just south of Yellowstone National Park, reported the Grand Forks Herald.

The North Dakota Game and Fish Department said the wolverine wandered into Colorado in 2009 and stayed for at least three years, but researchers lost track of M56 at that point because the transmitter’s battery apparently ran out of power.

Researchers wondered what had happened to the wolverine until last month, when the animal was shot and killed by a rancher in McKenzie County, North Dakota — about 700 miles from where it was last spotted.

“This guy definitely took the scenic route,” said Jeb Williams, wildlife chief for the Game and Fish Department.

The wolverine, the largest member of the weasel family, was the last seen in the state in the mid-1800s, when farmers, trappers and ranchers killed or drove out every single one in North Dakota.

M56 was killed for the same reason as many of its ancestors.

The rancher who shot the animal said he spotted the wolverine harassing his livestock, so he killed it.

State law permits landowners and their tenants or employees to kill any wild fur-bearing animal — except bears — to protect poultry, domestic animals or crops.

Authorities said the shooting was justified under North Dakota law.

A biologist who conducted a necropsy on the wolverine found the tracking device, which allowed researchers to identify it as M56, who was found to be about 8 or 9 years old and healthy when it was killed.

“A wolverine in North Dakota is pretty darn significant and neat,” Williams said. “We’ve had some reports and sightings in the past, but to have them confirmed and to have the transmitter associated with the history it provides is really cool for people to see.”

The last confirmed wolverine in North Dakota was seen about 150 years ago, and the closest population of the species is the mountains of Montana and the forests of northern Canada.

Bee deaths are a total buzzkill

Originally posted by discovery

Honeybees are in trouble. To many people, this comes as no surprise, but the preliminary results of an annual survey have thrown the problem into sharp relief.

In their tenth annual survey, the Bee Informed Partnership found that beekeepers across the United States lost 44 percent of their honeybee colonies during the year from April 2015 to April 2016.

The pollination services of these insects are vital, directly or indirectly accounting for a staggering one third of all food we eat, and the pollinators face many varied challenges.

“We didn’t expect there to be losses in the summer,” says Dennis vanEngelsdorp, project director for the Bee Informed Partnership, in a telephone interview with The Christian Science Monitor. “We started looking at summer losses five years ago, and there wasn’t much loss. Now, they [summer and winter losses] are basically the same.”

This particular study, which captures responses from about 15 to 20 percent of US commercial and recreational beekeepers, began in response to colony collapse disorder, but that seems less of an issue today.

So, what are the current problems?

“We think it’s three major factors,” says Dr. vanEngelsdorp, who teaches entomology at the University of Maryland. “Mites, pesticides, and poor nutrition, acting in concert.”

But all is not lost. Many groups are coming together to tackle the honeybee declines.

“This is a multi-factor problem requiring a multi-factor solution,” says Julie Shapiro, senior policy director of the Keystone Policy Center, in a telephone interview with the Monitor. “All of these are key issues that need to be addressed, and we don’t try to prioritize across these areas because they are all interacting.”

Mentally ill man attempts suicide after clinic replaces his meds with Bible study

Holy crap.

Literally:

Alex Jacobsen, 26, was suffering from mental exhaustion and anxiety. He hadn’t slept for days despite being in a faith-based treatment program. He felt hopeless and when he spotted a box knife he grabbed it and held it against his neck pressing harder as it cut through his skin.

This all happened 10 days after he stopped taking his medication, which was when he entered himself into the faith-based program, the Des Moines Register reports. He said he trusted his recovery to them and to God and he almost died from it.

[…]

The program replaced his mood stabilizers with a dose of Bible study, amino acids and GABA supplements which they told him would reduce stress. Rev. Kevin Grimes, told him “medicine alone wasn’t going to be the answer to my problems,” just a year before that. Grimes isn’t a doctor nor has he ever received any training in pharmaceuticals or medicine.

“In my mind, Alex’s anxiety was environmental,” the pastor said. “I knew he was stressed out. But I also knew he was taking all kinds of meds.”

So, Grimes checked Jacobsen into a faith-based treatment program called Teen Challenge in 2014, but Jacobsen was out of place among people who were meth and heroin addicts.

The contract Jacobsen signed the day he checked into the program requires all participants to swear and affirm they have no medical condition that prevents them from participating. It also said that by signing the agreement Jacobsen released the Dream Center of “any liability whatsoever arising as a result of death, injury or illness.”

Under Teen Challenge’s program, Jacobsen was directed by a doctor as he safely and slowly worked his way off of his medication. But under the Dream Center, Jacobsen was required to stop taking his medication the day he signed the paperwork.

Just a few days later, Jacobsen said that he told Rev. Hanges he “wasn’t feeling right and was suicidal.” Hanges told him that the feelings would pass.

Today Jacobsen blames himself. “Maybe I didn’t explain it to him well enough,” he said. “Maybe now Grimes will see faith doesn’t heal everything,” he scratched on a piece of paper to his mother while sitting in the hospital.

Jon Stewart has a few things to say about ‘man-baby’ Donald Trump

“Are you eligible to run if you’re a man-baby, or a baby-man?” Stewart asked David Axelrod during a live taping of Axelrod’s podcast in Chicago. “I don’t know if they’re referred to as man-baby Americans. He is a man-baby. He has the physical countenance of a man and a baby’s temperament and hands.”

Stewart recalled the argument that ensued online when the Republican presidential candidate revealed his full name on Twitter, prompting the show to begin calling him “F*ckface von Clownstick.”

“I don’t know that a man-baby can be president,” Stewart explained. “Character is destiny. And he is the most thin-skinned individual.”

While he said he preferred Hillary Clinton as a potential president — “At this point I would vote for Mr. T over Donald Trump,” he quipped at one point — Stewart did say that Clinton and the Democratic Party did not do enough to combat the rise of a figure like the real estate mogul.

“The door is open to an a*shole like Donald Trump because the Democrats haven’t done enough to show people that government, that can be effective for people, can be efficient for people,” Stewart told Axelrod. “If you can’t do that, then you’ve lost the right to make that change and someone’s going to come in and demagogue you.”

Education in Texas high schools takes a backseat to football

While Texas is dealing with this:

As Texas’ massive school finance case awaits a state Supreme Court ruling, per-pupil funding is falling farther below the national average.

The National Education Association announced data Friday showing state spending per K-12 student is $9,561 in 2015-2016. That’s $2 more than last school year’s total, but $2,500-plus below the national average.

Texas now ranks 38th nationwide in per-pupil spending.

The Legislature cut $5.4 billion from education funding and grants in 2011. More than 600 school districts sued in a case still being considered by the Texas Supreme Court.

This is happening:

Massive budget cuts to Texas schools in 2011 are still having ripple effects throughout the school system in the state, but apparently not in McKinney, Texas where a new $62.8 million stadium project passed with 63 percent of the vote on Monday.

The new stadium is expected to come in right at $50.3 million but there is an additional $12.5 million needed for roads, sewage and other infrastructure associated with the building itself. But compared to the $1.15 billion they spent on the Dallas Cowboy’s stadium in 2009, $62.8 million is just pocket change.

The new 12,000 person structure will be just four miles from Eagle Stadium in Allen, Texas, which was the previous home of the most expensive high school football stadium in the country at $60 million.

Penn professor booted from plane after passenger identified him as a ‘terrorist’ — for doing math

An award-winning economics professor from Penn was removed from an American Airlines flight on Thursday after his seatmate reported him as a terrorist — based on watching him do some math calculations while waiting for take off.

According to Philly.com, Guido Menzio was removed from the plane after it returned to the gate where he was forced to explain to FBI officials that he was doing research, not plotting a terrorist attack.

Menzio, who is tenured associate professor at the University of Pennsylvania after stints at Princeton and Stanford, said he was doing some calculations when he noticed his seatmate flag down a flight attendant, saying she was sick.

The take off to Syracuse was soon aborted, with Menzio stating he and the woman were both escorted off the plane where he was confronted by security officials.

After being asked about the woman, Menzio was told that she “thought I was a terrorist because I was writing strange things on a pad of paper. I laugh. I bring them back to the plane. I showed them my math.”

Saying he was treated “respectfully,” Menzio said that the response to her accusation shows a “broken system does not collect information efficiently.”

He added that it was not unexpected in a political season where suspicion of dark-complected people has heightened because of GOP presidential candidate Donald Trump.

“What might prevent an epidemic of paranoia? It is hard not to recognize in this incident, the ethos of (Donald) Trump’s voting base,” he stated.

Parents of transgender children speak out about their kids

In a stunning — and at times heartbreaking video — mothers of transgender children push back at the vitriol expressed toward the transgender community, while expressing their love for their children just the way they are.

According to the video, called “Meet My Child,” transgender adults and children are under attack from politicians in 20 states who have, “Attempted to advance over 50 pieces of legislation attacking transgender people. These policies are a real danger to transgender people and hurt the most vulnerable, including America’s transgender children.”

In the video moms reminisce about their children admitting to them that they are transgender, before expressing a parent’s fear of a world that refuses to accept their kids.

In one heartbreaking excerpt, a mom tears up and says of her daughter, “She’s my heart and I don’t want to lose her.”

Watch the video below via YouTube from the Trans United Fund:

Manufacturer of ‘Debunk evolution’ wristbands trolls Creationists – donates proceeds to science education

Originally posted by educational-gifs

Creationists inadvertently supporting heresy:

 As the CEO of RapidWristbands.com,Fiyyaz Pirani was happy to take anorder  over a hundred thousand wristbands. But dismayed that that the order camne from a creationist ministry and the bands were to read: “DEBUNK EVOLUTION.”

So he donatyed the proceeds —over $4000—to the National Center for Science Education, the nation’s foremost organization working to defend the integrity of science education against creationist assaults.

“We admire RapidWristband.com’s way of responding to unwelcome orders,” commented NCSE’s executive director Ann Reid. “It’s more ethical than refusing to fulfill them—and more constructive.”

The donation is slated to pay help  NCSE’s efforts to defend the teaching of evolution.

Amen.

AirBnB – blacks need not apply

A trending social media hashtag has highlighted experiences of possible racial bias by users of the AirBnB rental app.

Quirtina Crittenden, a 23-year-old business consultant living in Chicago, who is African-American, started the hashtag #AirBnBWhileBlack after noting how often she was declined by hosts when seeking a place to rent – even when the apartments advertised appeared to be available.

“The hosts would always come up with excuses like, ‘oh, someone actually just booked it’ or ‘oh, some of my regulars are coming in town, and they’re going to stay there,’” Crittenden said in an NPR interview.

“But I got suspicious when I would check back days later and see that those dates were still available.”

AirBnB users have both a photograph and name as part of their profiles. After Crittenden created the hashtag, many other people of color have described similar experiences.

As an experiment, Crittenden changed her photograph from a self-portrait to one of a generic cityscape, and shortened her first name from “Quirtina” to “Tina”. She found that her requests to rent were then accepted.

“Ever since I changed my name and my photo, I’ve never had any issues,” Crittenden said.

Earlier this year, Harvard Business School researchers ran an experiment (PDF) exploring racial discrimination in what has become known as the “sharing economy”.

The study found that, on the AirBnB platform, “requests from guests with distinctively African-American names are roughly 16 percent less likely to be accepted than identical guests with distinctively white names”.

The investigation targeted around 64,000 AirBnB listings in five US cities (Los Angeles, Dallas, Baltimore, St Louis and Washington). The guest accounts created in the experiment were identical apart from the differences in what the researchers considered names to fit stereotypical ideas of race.

For instance: Tamika, a female name the researchers considered to be African-American sounding, received the most positive responses for African-American sounding female names. But Tamika had fewer positive responses than the least popular apparent white-sounding name tested (in this case, Kristen). The same pattern was true for male names.

Something we can all agree on….