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The Book of Eels – Patrik Svensson

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The Book of Eels

Our Enduring Fascination with the Most Mysterious Creature in the Natural World

Patrik Svensson

Genre: Life Sciences

Price: $14.99

Expected Publish Date: May 26, 2020

Publisher: Ecco

Seller: HARPERCOLLINS PUBLISHERS


Part H Is for Hawk, part The Soul of an Octopus, The Book of Eels is both a meditation on the world’s most elusive fish—the eel—and a reflection on the human condition Remarkably little is known about the European eel, Anguilla anguilla. So little, in fact, that scientists and philosophers have, for centuries, been obsessed with what has become known as the “eel question”: Where do eels come from? What are they? Are they fish or some other kind of creature altogether? Even today, in an age of advanced science, no one has ever seen eels mating or giving birth, and we still don’t understand what drives them, after living for decades in freshwater, to swim great distances back to the ocean at the end of their lives. They remain a mystery. Drawing on a breadth of research about eels in literature, history, and modern marine biology, as well as his own experience fishing for eels with his father, Patrik Svensson crafts a mesmerizing portrait of an unusual, utterly misunderstood, and completely captivating animal. In The Book of Eels, we meet renowned historical thinkers, from Aristotle to Sigmund Freud to Rachel Carson, for whom the eel was a singular obsession. And we meet the scientists who spearheaded the search for the eel’s point of origin, including Danish marine biologist Johannes Schmidt, who led research efforts in the early twentieth century, catching thousands upon thousands of eels, in the hopes of proving their birthing grounds in the Sargasso Sea. Blending memoir and nature writing at its best, Svensson’s journey to understand the eel becomes an exploration of the human condition that delves into overarching issues about our roots and destiny, both as humans and as animals, and, ultimately, how to handle the biggest question of all: death. The result is a gripping and slippery narrative that will surprise and enchant.

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The Book of Eels – Patrik Svensson

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This herb could be the secret to curbing cows’ climate-changing burps

This herb could be the secret to curbing cows’ climate-changing burps

By on May 13, 2016 3:50 pmShare

Oregano may seem like an unlikely ingredient in the fight against climate change. But this modest herb could make cows’ methane-heavy belches — a big contributor to the warming of our planet — a little less potent.

Oregano’s essential oil contains carvacrol, an antimicrobial that kills off some of the methane-producing bacteria in the cow’s rumen. Danish researchers who are investigating oregano’s methane-suppressing abilities hope that it could reduce cows’ methane emissions by a quarter. Nearly 15 percent of all human-caused greenhouse gas emissions can be attributed to livestock, and 65 percent of that total comes from raising beef and dairy cattle.

NPR points out that oregano oil isn’t the only solution to cutting down cows’ ballooning emissions. Scientists have explored unpronounceable alternatives like 3-nitrooxypopanal, a methane-inhibiting chemical. But those may not be compatible with organic guidelines, and many of the people who care about cows’ methane emissions are the same ones who buy organic milk.

We could just eat less dairy and beef. But while some Americans are starting to shift away from meat, that change may not happen soon enough. It might behoove us to get our cows chewing oregano cud, since that could be one small solution we could implement fast.

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This herb could be the secret to curbing cows’ climate-changing burps

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Renewable Fuels: Creating Jobs and Spurring Innovation

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Renewable Fuels: Creating Jobs and Spurring Innovation

Posted 3 February 2015 in

National

Since its passage in 2005, the Renewable Fuel Standard (RFS) has sparked innovation and investment in communities across the United States. More than just spurring growth in the traditional ethanol industry though, the RFS has also accelerated and encouraged the development of the next generation of clean, renewable fuel.

As an op-ed in Roll Call notes, at a time when overall foreign direct investment was falling in the United States, projects in the biofuels sector were attracting hundreds of millions of dollars from around the world. These investments were on the verge of launching a whole new era of economic growth for rural communities across the United States when the EPA threatened to change the way it administers the RFS.

Though the EPA has since delayed that decision, the uncertainty has led foreign investors to pause as they wait to see whether the Obama administration will recommit to a strong RFS.

The impact of this uncertainty has been immediate and damaging for this growing industry.

Despite the successful completion of a $500 million production facility in Kansas, Abengoa, a Spanish company, is no longer considering additional investments in cellulosic ethanol in the U.S.
After investing some $500 million in R&D and production in California, Nebraska, and North Carolina, Novozymes, a Danish biotech company, is not planning further investment in the U.S. advanced biofuels market.
After opening a cellulosic plant in Iowa with American partner POET, DSM, a Dutch company, now sees China as the best place to invest.

These projects show the promise and possibility of sustained commitment to cellulosic ethanol in the U.S. Now, more than ever, we need President Obama to stand up for a strong RFS.

It’s not too late to get the final rule right and to make sure the United States is the leader in producing the cleanest fuels in the world.

Read the Roll Call column.

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Renewable Fuels: Creating Jobs and Spurring Innovation

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Inhofe’s Grand Climate Conspiracy Theory: It’s All About Barbra Streisand

Mother Jones

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The recent news on the front page of the New York Times was stark. As thousands of diplomats were gathering in Lima, Peru, to work on an agreement to limit greenhouse gas emissions, scientists and climate policy experts were warning

that it now may be impossible to prevent the temperature of the planet’s atmosphere from rising by 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit. According to a large body of scientific research, that is the tipping point at which the world will be locked into a near-term future of drought, food and water shortages, melting ice sheets, shrinking glaciers, rising sea levels and widespread flooding—events that could harm the world’s population and economy.

But with an effort under way in Lima to protect the difference, as the newspaper put it, “between a newly unpleasant world and an uninhabitable one,” one fellow in Washington is readying himself to prevent any progress toward a climate accord: Sen. James Inhofe. The 80-year-old Republican from Oklahoma is one of the most notorious deniers of human-induced climate change. He has contended that God controls the Earth’s climate, not Homo sapiens, and he has quoted the Bible to make this point: “As long as the Earth remains there will be seed time and harvest, cold and heat, winter and summer, day and night.” And Inhofe, thanks to the recent elections, is in line to chair the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee when the Republicans assume control of the Senate next month. He has vowed to do all he can to block regulations aimed at cutting emissions.

With diplomats in Lima wrestling with the challenges of climate negotiations and Inhofe counting the days until his likely ascension to one of the most powerful environment-related positions on the planet, I’m reminded of a bizarre encounter I had with the senator at a previous climate summit.

In December 2009, the United Nations hosted a global gathering in Copenhagen to hammer out what some participants hoped would be a binding accord that would compel a reduction in emissions around the world. Thousands of diplomats, policy advocates, and scientists flocked to the Danish city for the session, and thousands of reporters were there to chronicle the talks. Inhofe came too. To troll. Or, as he put it, to be “a one-man truth squad.” He slithered in and out of the cavernous media filing center, ever at the ready to speak to reporters looking for the other side quotes denigrating the proceedings, claiming that climate change was no more than a hoax, and celebrating the summit’s failure to produce a binding and comprehensive treaty.

Inhofe was usually mobbed by reporters—especially non-American journalists who found it newsworthy that a US senator would say such things. Judging from the smile on his mug, Inhofe enjoyed skunking up the party. After watching this for a few days, I could not resist the urge to engage.

As he strolled through the media center one afternoon, accompanied by several camera crews recording his pronouncements, I approached and politely asked if I could put a question to him. Sure, he said, in his folksy, avuncular manner.

Look around us, I said, spreading my arms wide. There are thousands of intelligent and well-meaning people in this gigantic conference center: scientists, heads of state, government officials, policy experts. They believe that climate change is a serious and pressing threat and that something must be done soon. Do you believe that they have all been fooled?

Yes, he said, grinning.

That these people who have traveled from all points of the globe to be here are victims of a well-orchestrated hoax?

Yes, he said, still smiling.

That’s some hoax, I countered. But who has engineered such a scam?

Hollywood liberals and extreme environmentalists, Inhofe replied.

Really? I asked. Why would they conspire to scare all these smart people into believing a catastrophe was under way, when all was well?

Inhofe didn’t skip a beat: To advance their radical environmental agenda.

I pressed on: Who in Hollywood is doing this?

The whole liberal crowd, Inhofe said.

But who?

Barbra Streisand, he responded.

I nearly laughed. All these people had assembled in Copenhagen because of Barbra Streisand. A singer and actor had perpetuated the grandest con of the past 100 years?

That’s right, Inhofe said, with a straight face. And others, he added.

By this point, he was losing patience and glancing about for another reporter who wanted to record his important observations. And I was running out of follow-up queries. After all, was I really going to ask, “And Ed Begley Jr. too?” So our conversation ended, and I headed back to reality.

But I was struck by this thought: Did this senator truly believe Barbra Streisand was the devious force behind a completely phony global campaign to address climate change? He seemed to.

In his 2012 book, The Greatest Hoax: How the Global Warming Conspiracy Threatens Your Future, Inhofe does mention Streisand—but only once, lumping her together with Leonardo DiCaprio and John Travolta as celebs whose environmental “alarmism” had to be debunked. But his book did not shy away from clearly identifying the charlatans and hoaxers who have hornswoggled the planet: “environmental activist extremists,” Al Gore, MoveOn.org, George Soros, Michael Moore, and, yes, “the Hollywood elites.”

Perhaps when Inhofe seizes the reins of the Senate environment committee, he can further expose this conspiracy—and for the first witness…Barbra Streisand. It’s time for her to come clean.

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Inhofe’s Grand Climate Conspiracy Theory: It’s All About Barbra Streisand

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Why It Makes Sense to Kill Baby Giraffes (Sorry, Internet)

Mother Jones

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A second Danish zoo has announced that it might kill a male giraffe. The news comes just days after the internet exploded with outrage when Marius the 18-month old giraffe was dispatched with a bolt gun and dissected in front of an audience that included children, before being fed to the lions at the Copenhagen Zoo. In a dark twist, the next potential euthanasia candidate, at the Jyllands Park zoo, is also named Marius.

The media circus began with protestors outside the Copenhagen Zoo on Sunday and a petition signed by 27,000 people to rehouse Marius in one of several zoos that had already indicated that their doors were open.

Then came the death threats to Bengt Holst, the zoo’s director of research and conservation. And the emotional opinion pieces.

As this debate rages, it’s crucial to remember that Marius was not just an exotic attraction: he was part of a larger conservation program that breeds animals with the specific goal of maintaining the diversity of each species’ gene pool.

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Why It Makes Sense to Kill Baby Giraffes (Sorry, Internet)

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From Russia With Love: Photos of Brave Gay Activists Fighting Homophobia

Mother Jones

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On June 28, 2013, five couples in wedding finery piled into a white limo and pulled up to a municipal office in St. Petersburg, Russia. The same-sex pairs come to apply for marriage licenses they knew they were unlikely to get, but they wanted to make a statement. A video of the day shows confounded clerks unsuccessfully trying to keep the beaming lovers out as they head to a waiting room where they kiss in protest. “They didn’t even want to give us the blank applications,” says Yana Petrova, who tried to marry her partner, Elena Davydova. “But there wasn’t much they could do—we’d already downloaded them.”

Just two days earlier, the nation’s upper house of parliament had unanimously passed a bill banning “propaganda of nontraditional sexual relations among minors” and imposing fines between $120 and $30,000 for offenders. The bill was understood to prohibit all open expression of gay identity, from parades and rainbow flags to same-sex couples holding hands in public. President Vladimir Putin signed the bill into law on June 30.

The new law, which has drawn worldwide criticism and inspired calls to boycott the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi, further codified Russia’s widespread homophobia: 12 cities, including St. Petersburg, had already passed similar measures, and surveys suggest more than 70 percent of Russians believe LGBT people should remain closeted. Last year, Moscow enacted a century-long ban on gay-pride events.

Since the gay-propaganda law passed, activists have noted a sharp uptick in antigay violence. Yet some also say the law has bolstered their cause. “Before, it wasn’t accepted to talk about this,” Petrova says. “Now, there are no neutral people left. Everyone wants to express their opinion. That’s good. Debate is the only thing that can lead to any battle or change.”

Danish photographer Mads Nissen was in Russia teaching a photography workshop when Article 6.21 passed. A student tipped him off to the wedding registry attempt. The activists he met were suspicious at first, asking him to share his website and other information to test his intentions. (Antigay activists have attempted to infiltrate Russia’s LGBT community.) But soon, they were bringing him to underground clubs and spaces where the community gathers, and sharing their stories of being assaulted and arrested. At one gay pride rally, Nissen witnessed a brutal attack on Kirill Fedorov, a young gay man and activist he’d been following for several days. “An antigay activist just came up to him and punched him in the face,” Nissen recalls. “In that moment, this wasn’t a theoretical thing anymore. It was real. It was happening. It was worse than I imagined.”

“Sometimes you do a story—you think it’s a big topic, and then when you get into it, it doesn’t seem so bad,” Nissen says. “This was absolutely the opposite. The more I got into it, the worse it was.”

Yaroslav Yevtushenko with his boyfriend Dmitry Chunosov. On June 30, 2013, Russian President Vladimir Putin signed Article 6.21 of the Code of the Russian Federation on Administrative Offenses into law. The law had passed Russia’s lower and upper chambers of parliament with unanimous approval.

Ultra-nationalists, wearing Cossack-style hats and holding whips, shout abuse at participants in a Gay Pride rally in June 2013 in St. Petersburg. Anti-gay protestors later violently assaulted some of the people taking part in the rally. Attacks on the gay community have become the norm: Since the law’s passage, Moscow’s main gay club, Central Station, has seen at least five attacks—including a shooting, a poison gas attack, and a raid in which equipment was stolen and the roof was damaged.

LGBT activist Kirill Fedorov was violently assaulted by anti-gay protestors during the St. Petersburg gay pride rally in June. He was later arrested.

Yana Petrova, 28, appears in court after being arrested at the June gay pride rally. A few years ago, Petrova probably would not have ended up in court—or have been at a pride event. “These laws are terrible, but thanks to them, so to speak, many people are actually coming out,” she says. “Before this, many gay people in Russia believed that if this isn’t being discussed, no one’s beating us, so great, all is fine, we can live. We can’t marry, but we can live. So, okay. Leave it at that.”

Natali Zamanskix, right, and her girlfriend, Ludmila Gorbatova, meet after work near their home on St. Petersburg’s outskirts.

Ilmira Shayhraznova, left, and Elena Yakovleva, on their way to the St. Petersburg municipal office where they and four other gay couples attempted to file applications for marriage. When they arrived, the clerks gave the couples a copy of the Russian code to read, which de facto defines marriage as being between a man and a woman.

Pavel Lebedev, right, with his boyfriend Kirill Kalugin. Lebedev says that he has been violently attacked six times in the previous year. In spite of the danger, he insists on his right to be open about his sexuality and to choose whom he loves.

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From Russia With Love: Photos of Brave Gay Activists Fighting Homophobia

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Dozens get sick after dining at world’s best restaurant

Dozens get sick after dining at world’s best restaurant

Renée S

Fancy-pants restaurant made its fancy-pants customers sick.

A tasting menu at Danish restaurant Noma, consistently named among the world’s best, costs $250 a head — not including wine.

For at least 63 people who dined there last month, a generous helping of vomiting and diarrhea was on the house.

Danish food authorities faulted the famous restaurant for failing to protect its diners after one of its workers fell ill last month, apparently spreading gastroenteritis to dozens of its big-spending customers. The initial emailed report of the illness was ignored for four days by restaurant staff.

Noma is accustomed to basking in food industry glory. It has been crowned the world’s top restaurant on the San Pellegrino World’s 50 Best Restaurants list three times, for example. Now it is wallowing in a new kind of spotlight. From The Guardian:

In a statement Peter Kreiner, Noma’s managing director, told Danish newspapers: “It is a matter that affects us all deeply, and which we are really sorry about.”

The restaurant recognised that internal procedures had not been good enough and said an email from the employee reporting the sickness had not been seen.

He also said the faulty [hot water] tap [identified by investigators] had been fixed by a plumber straight after the inspection and that the restaurant had changed its procedure around staff emails to avoid any future delays.

Kreiner said the restaurant was co-operating with health authorities and organising customer compensation.

The restaurant’s chefs are known for experimenting with such unusual ingredients as ants and fermented grasshoppers, Reuters tells us. Perhaps now its managers will experiment with promptly reading their emails.

John Upton is a science aficionado and green news junkie who

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Dozens get sick after dining at world’s best restaurant

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