Bottles Lead to a Whale of a Tale
canada.com - Jenelle Reece and her schoolmates had just finished tossing hundreds of beer bottles overboard when a humpback and her calf swam up for a friendly encounter.
The whales hung around for close to an hour, splashing their mottled flippers and sidling up so close the students could almost touch their huge heads. Then the humpbacks, like the beer bottles, headed for parts unknown.
"Just unbelievable," says Ernie Hill, principal of the school in Hartley Bay, a remote First Nations village on British Columbia's Central Coast, who welcomed a chance for his students to participate in a growing global experiment.
The drift bottle project, led by federal scientist Eddy Carmack at Fisheries and Ocean Canada, is charting surface currents and how they can carry things along -- be it beer bottles, young salmon or spilled oil.
Carmack's growing army of volunteers from Greenland to B.C. has dropped more than 4,500 bottles since 2000. Each one carries a message saying when and where it was tossed and asking the finder to contact Carmack's team.
Some bottles beach within days, many sink and the ones that meet their demise on rocks "return to the earth," says Carmack, as the glass, paper and cork break down.
But others make incredible journeys.
One far-flung "drifter" turned up in Puerto Rico after travelling about 15,000 kilometres -- almost a third of the way around the Earth -- from where it was dropped near Baffin Island four years earlier.
Another 50 bottles tossed off icebreakers and ships in Canada's North slipped out of the Arctic by Greenland, and were swept across the Atlantic, bobbing along at five to 10 kilometres a day, before making landfall in Iceland, the Faroe Islands, Norway and Denmark.
Carmack says the bottles do "a pretty good job of mimicking anything that is floating in the surface waters."
This fall's 500-bottle drop in B.C. waters helps underscore how poorly understood the currents are off the rugged Central Coast -- and the danger posed by plans to ship Alberta's crude oil to Asia and the United States, says Hill, who is also a hereditary chief in Hartley Bay.
The community, accessible by boat and air, is part of the growing coalition opposed to Enbridge Inc.'s proposed Northern Gateway project to pipe crude from Alberta's oilsands to a container terminal in Kitimat, B.C., where more than 200 supertankers a year would be filled and head down a long channel passing within sight of Hartley Bay.
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Three Brothers Lynched, Buried Alive
hindustantimes - At least four men, including three brothers, were lynched and buried alive for practicing witchcraft as part of "community justice" by a group of people in Bolivia, media reports said. On Friday, police found the body of a man who was beaten up and buried alive Aug 20 in a village in the central
Cochabamba region by peasants who accused him of practicing witchcraft to kill a farm worker.
According to newspapers, Jorge Cano Rojas, a peasant of Pajcha community, was beaten up and buried alive in front of his five children so that "justice was done" in the death of another local resident.
Three weeks ago a similar incident occurred in Cochabamba, where the community members tortured and buried alive three brothers whom they accused of killing another farm worker.
The government of the Aymara Indian Evo Morales and some indigenous organisations deny that lynching is part of "community justice" in the area.
The Catholic Church, ombudsman and the UN have expressed concern over the increase of lynching cases in the country.
According to the country's ombudsman, 20 lynching cases have been reported in Bolivia so far this year. The UN has counted at least 30 cases since 2009, without including 77 thwarted attempts.
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Druidry Recognized as Religion in Britain for First Time
telegraph - The Druid Network has been given charitable status by the Charity Commission for England and Wales, the quango that decides what counts as a genuine faith as well as regulating fundraising bodies.
It guarantees the modern group, set up in 2003, valuable tax breaks but also grants the ancient religion equal status to more mainstream denominations. This could mean that Druids, the priestly caste in Celtic societies across Europe, are categorised separately in official surveys of religious believers.
Supporters say the Charity Commission’s move could also pave the way for other minority faiths to gain charitable status.
Phil Ryder, Chair of Trustees for The Druid Network, said it had taken four years for the group to be recognised by the regulator. “It was a long and at times frustrating process, exacerbated by the fact that the Charity Commissioners had no understanding of our beliefs and practices, and examined us on every aspect of them. Their final decision document runs to 21 pages, showing the extent to which we were questioned in order to finally get the recognition we have long argued for,” he said.
Emma Restall Orr, founder of The Druid Network, added: “The Charity Commission now has a much greater understanding of Pagan, animist, and polytheist religions, so other groups from these minority religions – provided they meet the financial and public benefit criteria for registration as charities - should find registering a much shorter process than the pioneering one we have been through.”
In its assessment of the Druid Network’s application, the Charity Commission accepts that Druids worship nature, in particular the sun and the earth but also believe in the spirits of places such as mountains and rivers as well as “divine guides” such as Brighid and Bran.
The document lists the “commonality of practice” in Druidry, including its eight major festivals each year; rituals at different phases of the moon; rites of passage and gatherings of bards on sacred hills, known as “gorsedd”.
All charities must now demonstrate their benefit to the public, and Druidry was said to qualify since its followers are keen to conserve Britain’s heritage as well as preserve the natural environment.
The document even addresses the claims made by the Romans about Druids committing human sacrifice, but finds “no evidence of any significant detriment or harm” arising from modern beliefs.
It notes that although there are only 350 members of the Druid Network, a BBC report in 2003 claimed as many as 10,000 people followed the ancient faith across the country.
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Chicken Nuggets Are Made From This Pink Sh*t
The process works a little something like this:
There's more: because it's crawling with bacteria, it will be washed with ammonia, soaked in it, actually. Then, because it tastes gross, it will be reflavored artificially. Then, because it is weirdly pink, it will be dyed with artificial color.
