30 December 2011
24 December 2011
17 December 2011
12 December 2011
scared to death
(from: Vancouver Sun, Dec. 9, 2011, By Margaret Munro, Postmedia News)
" ...Clinchy says cats should not be allowed in wildlife areas as previous studies have shown that feral and domestic cats directly kill 22 per cent of birds in Victoria parks. He says the fear effect is likely reducing the number by another 20 per cent... "
Life on idyllic-looking islands in British Columbia took a noisy and decidedly deadly turn when biologist Liana Zanette set out to measure the effect of fear.
She and her colleagues hung speakers near song sparrow nests and began broadcasting the sounds of hawks, raccoons and other predators.
The sparrows were so scared they experienced something akin to post-traumatic stress. They laid fewer eggs and were so flustered many of their chicks starved to death.
By the end of the four-month experiment the sparrows had produced 40-per-cent fewer young than normal, demonstrating what scientists say is the very real effect of fear.
The results, published today in the journal Science, indicate the mere sound and presence of predators can be just as deadly as their claws and fangs.
"This effect can be as important as direct killing," says Zanette, of the University of Western Ontario.
She and her colleague, Michael Clinchy, a biologist at the University of Victoria, say the fear effect is common in animals and needs to be considered when managing wildlife: be it elk looking over their shoulders for wolves in national parks or birds flitting away from urban rats and cats.
"Wild animals are in peril every moment of every day of being torn limb from limb by any number of predators," says Clinchy, who says the stress response to predators may have parallels with post-traumatic stress disorder in humans.
Read more: The Vancouver Sun
" ...Clinchy says cats should not be allowed in wildlife areas as previous studies have shown that feral and domestic cats directly kill 22 per cent of birds in Victoria parks. He says the fear effect is likely reducing the number by another 20 per cent... "
Life on idyllic-looking islands in British Columbia took a noisy and decidedly deadly turn when biologist Liana Zanette set out to measure the effect of fear.
She and her colleagues hung speakers near song sparrow nests and began broadcasting the sounds of hawks, raccoons and other predators.
The sparrows were so scared they experienced something akin to post-traumatic stress. They laid fewer eggs and were so flustered many of their chicks starved to death.
By the end of the four-month experiment the sparrows had produced 40-per-cent fewer young than normal, demonstrating what scientists say is the very real effect of fear.
The results, published today in the journal Science, indicate the mere sound and presence of predators can be just as deadly as their claws and fangs.
"This effect can be as important as direct killing," says Zanette, of the University of Western Ontario.
She and her colleague, Michael Clinchy, a biologist at the University of Victoria, say the fear effect is common in animals and needs to be considered when managing wildlife: be it elk looking over their shoulders for wolves in national parks or birds flitting away from urban rats and cats.
"Wild animals are in peril every moment of every day of being torn limb from limb by any number of predators," says Clinchy, who says the stress response to predators may have parallels with post-traumatic stress disorder in humans.
Read more: The Vancouver Sun
7 December 2011
Aphyosemion elberti JVC 07
5 December 2011
beating the bullies 6
To all my friends and supporters,
I made this video 4 months ago just before school was about to start. I was 13. It was a very emotionally dark time in my life. I made the video at 4:00am in the morning; I hadn't been sleeping at night for a long time, too many things going on in my head. I was dreading going back to school and I had not come out to my family yet. Only my closest friends knew. I didn't know how to say what I needed to say. All I could think about were all the bad things that had been happening at school last year, every year for that matter. I just couldn't bare to go through that anymore. I was done being fake happy, pretending hateful words didn't hurt, done hiding it from my family.
So this video was made for my friends that had moved on to High School who were worried for me, to say to them that I was going to take a stand, and to the haters at my middle school that I'm not going anywhere. I am who I am. I posted the video here and told people were to find it. That was it.
My friends were moved by the video and thought I did something important. I was encouraged to upload it to my Facebook page so more people could see it. Maybe it could help someone else going through the same thing. So I linked it Dec. 1st. My Parents saw it for the first time Dec, 2nd.
Then..... all this happened.
I never expected in a million years that it would have such a wonderful impact on so many people. I am truly humbled and truly thankful for all the love, encouragement and support from people all over the world. It's been incredibly overwhelming. I don't know what to say. Thank you so, so much!
Lastly, yes you have seen me happy in a couple short videos replies I posted; I would think that would be a good thing , and yes I do have friends, my High School friends, and I have made friends because when I came out they realized that they had hurt me and that they fealt sorry. The video is real, and true.
In the last few months everything eventually came out in the open, I felt a huge weight off my shoulders; I'm happy, I'm excepted for who I am, I'm more confident and feel stronger every day.
Thank you all, Love and peace to all who are hurting.
Jonah Mowry
BlahBlahBlah2145
everynone
1 December 2011
no ethics without god
(from: Vancouver Sun, Dec. 1, 2011, by Randy Shore)
"Religious believers distrust atheists more than members of other religious groups, gays and feminists, according to a new study by University of B.C. researchers.
The only group the study’s participants distrusted as much as atheists was rapists, said doctoral student Will Gervais, lead author of the study published online in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology.
That prejudice had a significant impact on what kinds of jobs people said they would hire atheists to do.
“People are willing to hire an atheist for a job that is perceived as low-trust, for instance as a waitress,” said Gervais. “But when hiring for a high-trust job like daycare worker, they were like, nope, not going to hire an atheist for that job.”
The antipathy does not seem to run both ways, though. Atheists are indifferent to religious belief when it comes to deciding who is trustworthy.
“Atheists don’t necessarily favour other atheists over Christians or anyone else,” he said. “They seem to think that religion is not an important signal for who you can trust.” ..."
read more at the Vancouver Sun
atheist registry
"Religious believers distrust atheists more than members of other religious groups, gays and feminists, according to a new study by University of B.C. researchers.
The only group the study’s participants distrusted as much as atheists was rapists, said doctoral student Will Gervais, lead author of the study published online in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology.
That prejudice had a significant impact on what kinds of jobs people said they would hire atheists to do.
“People are willing to hire an atheist for a job that is perceived as low-trust, for instance as a waitress,” said Gervais. “But when hiring for a high-trust job like daycare worker, they were like, nope, not going to hire an atheist for that job.”
The antipathy does not seem to run both ways, though. Atheists are indifferent to religious belief when it comes to deciding who is trustworthy.
“Atheists don’t necessarily favour other atheists over Christians or anyone else,” he said. “They seem to think that religion is not an important signal for who you can trust.” ..."
read more at the Vancouver Sun
atheist registry
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