The Oceans Wikizine is dedicated to information about the Earth's oceans and the life within them. Articles here explore what the ocean means to people, but also what they mean on their own terms. Oceanographic research, marine biology...
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The Oceans Wikizine is dedicated to information about the Earth's oceans and the life within them. Articles here explore what the ocean means to people, but also what they mean on their own terms. Oceanographic research, marine biology, ethical seafood and the environmental crisis within the seas are all topics that may be reported upon here. Ocean activism, to deal with issues like overfishing, pollution and the impact of climate change on the oceans, also belong here.
Back from Portugal to find the garden overgrown and mass of news to digest. While in Lisbon I wa5ched far more television than I do here, largely to work on my Portuguese comprehension. Canada made the news a couple of times—a second death due to AH1N1, the Stanley Cup finals (only on BBC sports,) Alice Munro winning the International Man Booker, J’ai tué ma mère running away at Cannes and the CAW making more concessions to GM. Other big stories here didn’t rate a mention there. It’s going... Read Full Story
Picture this: It's Monday morning, and you wake up groggy to your alarm because the incessant traffic and blaring of truck horns from the local highway kept you from getting a good nights' sleep. You'd go back to sleep, but your spouse is already up watching TV and that annoying anchor for the 6 AM news is peppily rambling about how great his week abroad in Hawaii was - like an image of him in a speedo is what you need in your head first thing. You hop in the shower, if only to drown out the... Read Full Story
How do you like to prepare your slimehead? That’s not a nonsense question - there really is a popular food known as slimehead, though you’ve probably heard it under a different name. It’s a fish that fine restaurants prefer to call orange roughy . The orange roughy is a long-lived deep sea fish that is being pulled out of the oceans at a rate that threatens it with extinction because, well, orange roughy does sound delicious, doesn’t it? As long as we’re playing around with food names here... Read Full Story
W orld's B est W hale W atching Baja/Sea of Cortez, Mexico (December-April) I n the breeding lagoons in Baja, you go out in a small 18-foot skiff and a 40-foot grey whale mother will rub against the boat for an hour, or a whale will lift its head out of the water for you to touch them. This close contact is a strictly regulated experience. The animals are not trained—it turns out they're just bored and curious. Grey whales are intelligent creatures. It's something for them to do to pass the... Read Full Story
As I explained over the weekend, Social bookmarking and wikimedia have turned me sour. I’m remain open, however, to other sorts of collaborative media experiments online.
One such experiment is Zimbio, a place where authors, graphic designers and videographers can contribute their efforts to the construction of online magazines that focus on particular topics. It’s kind of like Squidoo, only more cooperative in structure. A Squidoo lensmaster controls a lens fairly tightly, whereas the who... Read Full Story
Here's a photo taken near Naples, Florida. There were literally piles of shells washed up on the beach. I thought this photo made for a pretty decent free desktop wallpaper. Click on the image to get the full resolution and save it as your background. Enjoy :)OmniSwami.com - Tomorrow the truth will be revealed... Read Full Story
If you've been reading the news, people are reacting strongly to a new study which reported ocean acidification due to CO2 output is occurring at a faster rate than expected. But what is the deal with acidification, anyway? The worst part of a change in ocean pH is that it shifts the balance of carbonate ions. As the pH of the oceans drops, it is harder for animals to fix calcium carbonate. Therefore, with oceans acidifying at an alarming rate, the threat to calcified organisms is also rising... Read Full Story
Oh, how the Library of Congress gets under my skin! The Library of Congress is supposed to be the library of libraries. It’s bigger in scope and size than the famed ancient library of Alexandria. Goodness me, but it’s also a rat’s nest. The people working at the Library of Congress are the most powerful librarians the world has ever known, but they’re supposed to be working in the service of the American people. To that end, dealing with the amount of important material they do, with its... Read Full Story
Republican insiders and anti-Obama power brokers like Thomas Buffenbarger have spent the last few months trying to make elitist the official word of the 2008 election.
What makes someone an elitist, in their opinion? Drinking coffee with milk (a latte), some say. Driving a hybrid car to save money on regular unleaded gasoline that will soon be five dollars per gallon, others say.
That doesn’t make sense to me.
You want to see what real elitists look like? Consider the people who bought... Read Full Story
If you want to know what a truly endangered species is, look at the North Atlantic Right Whale. There are only 350 of the slow-to-breed animals left alive , and the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration has concluded that the death of even one of pregnant North Atlantic Right Whale could make the difference between species survival and species extinction.
So, scientists in the federal government were given the task, mandated by the law, of determining how to prevent right... Read Full Story
