nationalpost:

Toronto man raises $200K for elderly bus monitor bullied by students in viral video
Toronto’s Max Sidorov has never met Karen Klein, the 68-year-old bus monitor mercilessly bullied by schoolchildren in a viral video, but because of him, she’s poised to receive thousands of dollars to go on a luxury vacation.

The video, shot on a bus in Greece, New York, records middle school students peppering the grandmother with insults, calling her fat, taunting her for sweating and asking her if she has a sexually transmitted disease.

“I really felt almost heartbroken to see that people would do such a thing to a nice lady,” Mr. Sidorov, 25, said in an interview with the National Post. “So, I just thought I had to do something about it.”

I can’t watch this video because, quite honestly, seeing old people sad kills me. That being said, I really love that so many people were so affected by this (although I sort of feel as though maybe donating money isn’t really going to lessen her pain or the damage, unless she’s given enough to retire and not have to ride with those little assholes any more). I really do want to hear whether or not those students get punished or anything. Because after reading the articles about it and some of the things they said, those kids really need to get their asses handed to them one way or another. And their parents need to sit down and think about the mistakes they made in raising their kids, maybe send them off an ice floe and start over again with new ones or something.

nationalpost: The hunters become the hunted: Indian state sanctions shooting animal poachersA western Indian state has declared war on animal poaching by sanctioning its forest guards to shoot hunters on sight in an effort to curb rampant attacks against tigers, elephants and other wildlife.The government in Maharashtra says injuring or killing suspected poachers will no longer be considered a crime.According to the Wildlife Protection Society of India, 14 tigers have been killed by poachers in India so far this year — one more than for all of 2011. The tiger is considered endangered, with its habitat range shrinking more than 50 per cent in the last quarter-century and its numbers declining rapidly from the 5,000-7,000 estimated in the 1990s, according to the International Union for Conservation of Nature. (AP Photo/Corbett Tiger Reserve) “Let’s get this party started.”
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nationalpost:

The hunters become the hunted: Indian state sanctions shooting animal poachers
A western Indian state has declared war on animal poaching by sanctioning its forest guards to shoot hunters on sight in an effort to curb rampant attacks against tigers, elephants and other wildlife.

The government in Maharashtra says injuring or killing suspected poachers will no longer be considered a crime.

According to the Wildlife Protection Society of India, 14 tigers have been killed by poachers in India so far this year — one more than for all of 2011. The tiger is considered endangered, with its habitat range shrinking more than 50 per cent in the last quarter-century and its numbers declining rapidly from the 5,000-7,000 estimated in the 1990s, according to the International Union for Conservation of Nature. (AP Photo/Corbett Tiger Reserve)

“Let’s get this party started.”

nationalpost: Phobos-Grunt Mars probe could crash near Falkland Islands, Russian space agency saysConfusion about where a failed Russian Mars probe might crash back to Earth grew Friday when the Roscosmos space agency changed its prediction thousands of kilometres from the Pacific to the Atlantic Ocean.Roscosmos said the 13.5-tonne Phobos-Grunt probe would probably begin its final — and fatal — descent on Sunday evening Moscow time rather than in the afternoon, as it had originally said.This meant that “Phobos-Grunt will enter the atmosphere over Argentina and have its fragments splash down in the Atlantic Ocean,” an unnamed space official told the Interfax news agency.The latest estimate on a Roscosmos graphic showed the $165-million craft splashing down at 8:22 pm local time about 1,600 kilometres due south of Buenos Aires — a spot within geographic proximity of the Falkland Islands. And Margaret Thatcher’s day just got a little bit brighter…
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nationalpost:

Phobos-Grunt Mars probe could crash near Falkland Islands, Russian space agency says
Confusion about where a failed Russian Mars probe might crash back to Earth grew Friday when the Roscosmos space agency changed its prediction thousands of kilometres from the Pacific to the Atlantic Ocean.

Roscosmos said the 13.5-tonne Phobos-Grunt probe would probably begin its final — and fatal — descent on Sunday evening Moscow time rather than in the afternoon, as it had originally said.

This meant that “Phobos-Grunt will enter the atmosphere over Argentina and have its fragments splash down in the Atlantic Ocean,” an unnamed space official told the Interfax news agency.

The latest estimate on a Roscosmos graphic showed the $165-million craft splashing down at 8:22 pm local time about 1,600 kilometres due south of Buenos Aires — a spot within geographic proximity of the Falkland Islands.

And Margaret Thatcher’s day just got a little bit brighter…

sciencecenter: Modern human evolution observed in French-Canadian town It is quite commonly claimed that human evolution is done - we no longer have natural predators, modern medicine can cure or stave off many diseases, and people who might not have cut it in the caves and jungles are today reproducing happily and healthily. It’s plausibly true that selective pressure on humans has decreased in modern times, but the power of natural selection combined with the puny length of time that the ‘modern era’ composes means that human evolution is certainly still occurring. Geneticists in Canada believe they have one more clear example. The study took place in Ile aux Coudres, an isolated island in the Gulf of St. Lawrence, with detailed records stored in the local Catholic church. Researchers digging through the birth records show that, from 1800 to the 1940s, mothers first gave birth at a younger age - from an average of 26 years old down to 22. Age of first birth is a proxy for measuring fertility, and the town data fits the profile for a genetic, and not environmental, change (remember that, for evolution to occur, adaptations need to be heritable). Detailed records reassures the scientists that no other factors - nutrition, cultural changes, etc - could account for the data. The authors of the study postulate that increased fertility, and larger families, would have been adaptive for rugged rural life.
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sciencecenter:

Modern human evolution observed in French-Canadian town

It is quite commonly claimed that human evolution is done - we no longer have natural predators, modern medicine can cure or stave off many diseases, and people who might not have cut it in the caves and jungles are today reproducing happily and healthily. It’s plausibly true that selective pressure on humans has decreased in modern times, but the power of natural selection combined with the puny length of time that the ‘modern era’ composes means that human evolution is certainly still occurring. Geneticists in Canada believe they have one more clear example.

The study took place in Ile aux Coudres, an isolated island in the Gulf of St. Lawrence, with detailed records stored in the local Catholic church. Researchers digging through the birth records show that, from 1800 to the 1940s, mothers first gave birth at a younger age - from an average of 26 years old down to 22. Age of first birth is a proxy for measuring fertility, and the town data fits the profile for a genetic, and not environmental, change (remember that, for evolution to occur, adaptations need to be heritable). Detailed records reassures the scientists that no other factors - nutrition, cultural changes, etc - could account for the data. The authors of the study postulate that increased fertility, and larger families, would have been adaptive for rugged rural life.

sparepartsandbrokenhearts: producermatthew: The construction of One World Trade Center is hardly mentioned in the media, yet here it is: The first post-September 11 tower stands 76 stories high at the moment and will be at 104 floors high by the time it is finished. [August 2, 2011/AP Photo] I was in NYC in October 2010. It was just a steel frame back then, about 20/30 floors up. Crazy speed! I passed by it in July and was surprised at how much progress had been made.
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sparepartsandbrokenhearts:

producermatthew:

The construction of One World Trade Center is hardly mentioned in the media, yet here it is: The first post-September 11 tower stands 76 stories high at the moment and will be at 104 floors high by the time it is finished. [August 2, 2011/AP Photo]

I was in NYC in October 2010. It was just a steel frame back then, about 20/30 floors up. Crazy speed!

I passed by it in July and was surprised at how much progress had been made.

Source: matthewkeys