New Law Could End Killer Whale Shows in California onlinecollegedegreee.blogspot.com

onlinecollegedegreee.blogspot.com New Law Could End Killer Whale Shows in California

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New legislation being proposed in California would begin to phase out the keeping of killer whales (Orcinus orca) in captive environments in the state. Democratic Assemblymember Richard Bloom of the state's fiftieth district announced the bill this morning at a press conference on the Santa Monica Pier. The bill, AB 2140, is informally called the "California Captive Orca Welfare and Safety Act."

If passed, the bill would end performance-based entertainment for all killer whales in California, end captive breeding programs for the species within the state, prevent the import and export of genetic materials for breeding programs elsewhere, prevent the import and export of the whales themselves, and more.

With the Pacific Ocean as his backdrop, Bloom began the announcement by describing the ways in which our relationship with one of the ocean's top predators has changed in the last forty years. "Not that long ago, the military used orcas for target practice because they were considered dangerous to humans or pests to fisherman, and were therefore deemed expendable. Well, things have obviously changed. Beginning in the 1970s, studies of these majestic creatures in the wild began to emerge, and over the next few decades we learned that orcas are neither mindless killers nor pests. In their natural habitat, orcas are docile, if not inquisitive." He went on to describe their social structure and cognitive sophistication: "Orcas are family-oriented, highly adaptable, [and] socially complex, with cultural traditions that trail only humans as the most intelligent creatures on the planet."

While Bloom has a track record of concern for the environment – he is a former California Coastal Commissioner and former Chair of the Santa Monica Bay Restoration Commission – he explained that it was his constituents and his staff who encouraged him to consider developing legislation on orca welfare. The film Blackfish was what initially sparked the interest, but Bloom also consulted with marine mammal researchers, including the Animal Welfare Institute's Naomi Rose, rather than relying entirely on the film to form his opinions. "[Blackfish] is helping to form peoples' opinions, but…that wasn't enough for me. I went out and spoke to the scientific community," Bloom said. "It wasn't until after I had gathered all of that information that I became convinced that this was an appropriate bill to carry."

While the legislation is designed to end the keeping of killer whales for entertainment purposes, the Assemblymember was clear that this was not targeted at SeaWorld per se. "This bill is not about SeaWorld and it is not intended to try and somehow harm SeaWorld and its business model." He said. "I am confident that SeaWorld can carry on without this one element of the many things that it does. SeaWorld does good work in the community. It provides funding for scientific studies, and it does marine rescue work that is highly thought of by the community."

Importantly, the proposed legislation also acknowledges the practical and scientific limitations involved in the release of captive-born animals. "Another misunderstanding about this bill is that it would somehow lead to the release of all the orcas that are currently in captivity, into the wild," he said. Because killer whale society is so complex, it would be a poor welfare decision to dump these animals back into the sea. "To simply release them into the wild would probably be releasing them to their deaths," Bloom correctly explained. Those whales for which wild release would be impossible are instead to be transferred to sea pens. Until sea pens, which are large enclosures anchored to the seafloor and attached to the shore, become available, the orcas are allowed to be kept in their existing enclosures, but not for performance or entertainment purposes.

That means that the orcas currently in marine parks and aquariums, some of whom will live out their lives in their enclosures, will still be properly cared for. The training that is necessary for veterinary care, psychological and physical enrichment, and management will still be permitted.

The full text of the proposed legislation can be found here. It's easy to understand and (in this writer's opinion) very well written. Here are the key points:

• The bill makes it illegal to hold in captivity a wild-caught or captive-born orca for "performance or entertainment purposes." That is defined as "any routinely scheduled public exhibition that is characterized by music or other sound effects, choreographed display or training for that display, or unprotected contact between humans and orcas. Holding of an orca is not, by itself, a performance or entertainment purpose."


• The bill also makes it illegal to import or export killer whales intended for performance or entertainment. It explicitly states that this provision would be waived for transferring an orca to a sea pen or to the wild, and doesn't apply to individuals who are "held for rehabilitation after a rescue or stranding, or for research purposes."


• The legislation, as written, would also end the participation of captive orcas in California in breeding programs. It would be illegal to breed or impregnate any of those orcas, and it would also be illegal to "export, collect, or import" any genetic materials from those whales "for the purpose of artificial insemination." Ostensibly this would mean that researchers could still collect genetic materials for research purposes.

California is currently home to ten orcas held in marine parks or aquaria. Three of them were captured in the wild before it was made illegal, and seven were born in captivity.

At the end of the press conference, as if on cue, a bottlenose dolphin breached the surface of Santa Monica Bay, several hundred meters behind Assemblymember Bloom. It served as a good reminder that with a little patience and luck, it's even possible to witness a performance from a wild cetacean.

Header Image: Wikimedia Commons/Gordon2448.

onlinecollegedegreee.blogspot.com New Law Could End Killer Whale Shows in California

Revised Cosmological Constant Predicts a Collapsing Universe onlinecollegedegreee.blogspot.com

onlinecollegedegreee.blogspot.com Revised Cosmological Constant Predicts a Collapsing Universe

The going theory among cosmologists is that the universe will eventually rip itself to shreds owing to its ever-accelerating rate of expansion. Not so, say a pair of physicists who have just taken it upon themselves to reformulate an integral facet of general relativity: the cosmological constant.

Albert Einstein had to add the idea of the cosmological constant (i.e. the value of the uniform energy density that permeates the vacuum of space) to his theory of general relativity as a way to explain why the universe wasn't collapsing in on itself and why it appeared to be static. More recently, because the universe appears to be expanding, the cosmological constant had to be given a non-zero value.

The problem, say Nemanja Kaloper and Antonio Padilla, is that this "non-zero" value is very, very far from zero and that it's unreasonably huge. What's more, resulting "tuning" rationalizations, like the notion that the energy comes from a Higgs-like particle, are too unstable. Michael Schirber from the American Physical Society explains:

Because the cosmological constant is, by definition, constant throughout time and space, it's natural to associate it with the energy of the vacuum. Unfortunately, if one calculates the vacuum energy density from quantum zero-point fluctuations (i.e., when particles pop in and out of existence), the result is a factor of 10 ¹²⁰ higher than the value deduced from astronomical observations.

To address this problem, Kaloper and Padilla have slightly reformulated general relativity such that the cosmological constant is the historical average of the matter energy density in the universe, thus canceling out the input from quantum fluctuations.

The result is a relatively small cosmological constant — one which suggests that the universe's current rate of expansion will stop in the future and reverse direction, leading to the Big Crunch.

Read the entire study at Physical Review Letters: "Sequestering the Standard Model Vacuum Energy." It's also available here. Supplementary source: American Physical Society.

Top image: Computer simulation of the formation of large-scale structures in the universe, showing a patch of 100 million light-years and the resulting coherent motions of galaxies flowing toward the highest mass concentration in the center. Credit: ESO.

onlinecollegedegreee.blogspot.com Revised Cosmological Constant Predicts a Collapsing Universe

And now, a pangolin cavorting in the mud onlinecollegedegreee.blogspot.com

onlinecollegedegreee.blogspot.com And now, a pangolin cavorting in the mud

Did you all know yesterday was World Pangolin Day? Somehow we overlooked it, and we're kind of ashamed about that. Because look at this thing. It's an armor-plated mammal, for crying out loud. To make up for the oversight, here's a video of a pangolin wallowing merrily in a pool of mud.

These videos come by way of Earth Touch and feature footage captured in Namibia, Africa by the Rare and Endangered Species Trust. Read more about these surprisingly cute creatures here.

Spotted on Laughing Squid.

onlinecollegedegreee.blogspot.com And now, a pangolin cavorting in the mud

Stories of the Inner Life of Nerds onlinecollegedegreee.blogspot.com

onlinecollegedegreee.blogspot.com Stories of the Inner Life of Nerds

In this ongoing discussion about Geek representation on TV that has been bouncing about, Rictus asked:

By internal nerdiness, I mean the thought processes of nerds. How do nerds process the world? What does it mean to one to be a nerd? Why is this nerdy? In other words, what internal filters are brought to bear on the world that are unique to nerds, as opposed to jocks, fashionistas, bros, etc. If there is a "bro code," is there a corresponding nerd code? I am trying to contrast the outer trappings of what it looks like to be a nerd to what it feels like to be a nerd.

I tried to come up with some books that spoke to the issues Rictus raised, which I think take a really interesting angle ab0ut geekishness as being a constellation of ways of thinking and behaving, rather than an immutable, collective identity. (Be that liking SF or being socially awkward or being very enthusiastic about anything or a great many other things, and motivated by any combination of personality, background, social setting, interests, etc.)

This strikes me as a much more intriguing and original way to approach the question of geek representation, not to mention less offensive and marginalizing.

Because Kinja is a mess of a system and because my Goodreads tags are incomprehensible even to myself, I'm dragging it out here to see if anyone has more suggestions, (including other mediums, like games or comics that i'm not familiar with) because I know i'm missing obvious stuff.

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To quote myself and add pictures, (because i'm lazy about rewriting and I like pictures):

As to showing the inner world...well, you kind of need literature for that. Have you tried The Brief and Wonderous Life of Oscar Wao? Or maybe some of Michael Chabon's stuff? Or Iain Banks (note the lack of an "M") - I haven't read them, but I think The Wasp Factory and The Quarry both have these geeky characters dealing with the world.

Or, come to think of it, The Remains of the Day - it's a psychological portrait of, admittedly, a middle aged butler in 50's England, but it deals very intensely with social awkwardness and isolation, and people wrapping themselves up in labels and social divisions and working hard at pouring meaning into them because they're afraid of the intimacy of dealing with others bereft of those protections and so on. It's a fantastic book.

Oh, or Jo Walton's Among Others. (I didn't love it that much, but it has it's good parts, about relating to the world through books, SF and fannishness, finding or losing friends that way, etc.)

In short, TV (mostly) just aint the medium, though, well, I do like TBBT because I do think it gets under the skin of geekishness as a practice, and asks - well, why? Why would this person live like this? What are the consequences? Some of the answers are positive, some aren't.

You could also try Ready Player One, actually - I found it alienating and melancholy, while the rest of...everyone ever, as far as I can tell, though it was a incredibly fun, (probably the same complex that leads to my odd reading of TBBT, now that I think of it,) but if you look past the nostalgia and the fun of recognizing the references, I think there's a much more interesting current there about escapism, fannishness, obsession, fitting in/getting out, etc.

Of course, Abed in Community does a bit of that too, but like I said, I think Community is just too nice about geekishness to be really interesting at all. It's all flattery, no criticism. I find it far more compelling on that level in terms of, say, seeing myself in Britta as pretentious liberal activist than I do seeing myself in Abed as an obsessive geek.

Maybe also Leverage, for Hardison and Parker making up the twin sides of geek - Hardison is the enthusiastic, brilliant, fannish, Parker is socially awkward - not to say stunted - and obsessive.

onlinecollegedegreee.blogspot.com Stories of the Inner Life of Nerds

I accidentally carbonated ice cream... and you can too! onlinecollegedegreee.blogspot.com

onlinecollegedegreee.blogspot.com I accidentally carbonated ice cream... and you can too!

You want to add a little kick to your ice cream — or anything else? Try one strange trick, and you can make anything fizzy. All it takes is some dry ice and a strong stomach.

If you want to eat ice cream while camping in the desert, you have two options. You can grow up, or you can get some dry ice and put that dry ice in a cooler and, with a sublime lack of interest in whether the cooler explodes, lock some ice cream in there with it. I didn't become a blogger to grow up — so you can guess which option I chose. I have to say, despite occasional eruptions of carbon dioxide from the cooler, it worked pretty well. If anything, the ice cream was a little too cold and had to warm up slightly before we ate it.

It was also a little . . . off. We didn't pin down the flavor change at first. There was a weird tang, somewhat like citrus but without the exact flavor of a fruit. Or perhaps it was just more acidic. And there seemed to be little bursts of flavor and pressure on our tongues as we ate.

That's when we realized: The ice cream was carbonated. The carbon dioxide gas had pushed through the cardboard carton, and filled our ice cream with bubbles. The slight acidity of the ice cream came from the carbonic acid formed when carbon dioxide mixes with water.

You too can carbonate your ice cream. In fact, you can carbonate a lot of things. Drop almost anything, as long as it has a lot of liquid content, into a container with dry ice, and you'll make it acidic and fizzy. Fruit is a popular version, but you can try it with coffee (either put the dry ice directly in it, or put it in a paper cup on top of dry ice), or marshmallows, or jellybeans or anything else that doesn't have quite the fizz you want it to have. Remember to put some holes in the large container with the dry ice, so it doesn't explode, and make your life sparkle.

Top Image: cyclonebill

onlinecollegedegreee.blogspot.com I accidentally carbonated ice cream... and you can too!