Category Archives: News to use

Useful news for all to advance knowledge of the world and how it works

Species Extinction: just how bad is it and why should we care?

Palm Oil Detectives

Euan Ritchie, Deakin University

“Dad, the world is missing amazing animals. I wish extinction wasn’t forever”.

Despite my wife and I working as biologists, our five-year-old son came to make this statement independently.

He is highlighting what I and many others consider to be society’s biggest challenge, and arguably failure: the continuing loss of species from Earth. The massive impact we are having on the planet has firmly entrenched us in a period of our history commonly called the Anthropocene.

The environment was front and centre of public consciousness and a key election focus in Australia in 2007, but following the global financial crisis and continuing economic uncertainty, we seem to care less and less about the environment and more and more about budgets and surpluses.

The passing of Lonesome George, the last Pinta Island Tortoise, is emblematic of the mass extinction of species the earth is currently…

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Google Online Security Blog: Google Protects Your Accounts – Even When You No Longer Use Them

The Colonial Pipeline ransomware attack came through an inactive account that didn’t use multifactor authentication, according to a consultant who investigated the incident. And in the case of the recent T-Mobile breach this summer, information from inactive prepaid accounts was accessed through old billing files. Inactive accounts can pose a serious security risk.

For Google users, Inactive Account Manager helps with that problem. You can decide when Google should consider your account inactive and whether Google should delete your data or share it with a trusted contact. Source: Google Online Security Blog: Google Protects Your Accounts – Even When You No Longer Use Them

The durability of immunity against reinfection by SARS-CoV-2: a comparative evolutionary study – The Lancet Microbe – (Me: Masking, contact tracing and boosters will have to continue)

The timeframe for reinfection is fundamental to numerous aspects of public health decision making. As the COVID-19 pandemic continues, reinfection is likely to become increasingly common. Maintaining public health measures that curb transmission—including among individuals who were previously infected with SARS-CoV-2—coupled with persistent efforts to accelerate vaccination worldwide is critical to the prevention of COVID-19 morbidity and mortality. Source: The durability of immunity against reinfection by SARS-CoV-2: a comparative evolutionary study – The Lancet Microbe

#AllOutForWedzinKwa

British Columbia, CA

LANDBACK Friends

I first heard of the Wet’suwet’en peoples and their struggle to prevent the construction of the Coastal GasLink (CGL) pipeline through their pristine land in January 2020. What caught my attention was the following video, “Coastal Gaslink Evicted from Unist’ot’en territory.” Having been engaged with protecting water from the Keystone XL and Dakota Access pipelines for years, I was amazed at the peaceful eviction of CGL workers from Wet’suwet’en territories, temporary as it turned out to be.

Unfortunately, the interactions between the Wet’suwet’en and the Canadian government have not been peaceful. There have been many conflicts and arrests of Wet’suwet’en people by militarized Royal Canadian Mounted Police. There are heightened tensions now as construction of CGL has reached the point of drilling under the sacred headwaters of the Wedzin Kwa river.

Under ‘Anuc niwh’it’en (Wet’suwet’en law) all Hereditary Chiefs of the five clans of the Wet’suwet’en have unanimously opposed…

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Day 9 of GED in 5 months, salt, trade, and transit

Context, Thought, and Learning: ShiraDest Offers Project Do Better

So, if salt is so important, how did they get it from one place to another before we had trains?   One of the key details of Phase I of the Four Freedoms movement is public transportation, as important back in time as today, right?

 

Day 9 Lesson Plan
Khan Academy Comparative and superlative adjectives and adverbs
optional extra GrammarBook.com activity: Comparatives & Superlatives
Khan Academy Multiplying Fractions
Khan Academy fractions-decimals
Day 9 ExitSlips
 
(Day 8Day 10)

Action Items:

1.) Why is salt important, biologically?

2.) Why was salt traded from place to place?

3.) Share your thoughts on whether salt supplies could have influenced wars.

4.) Write a book, story, blog post or tweet that uses those thoughts, and please tell us about it! If you write a book, once it is published please consider donating a copy to…

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