Believers: The Flight of the Rufa Red Knot.

From Chet Raymo:

My favorite example of innate behavior is the flight of the red knot, which I mentioned in “Skeptics and True Believers.” For details of the story I am indebted to Brian Harrington’s “The Flight of the Red Knot.” The red knot is a small shore bird that each year wings its way more than 18,000 miles, from the southern tip of South America to the arctic islands of northern Canada and back again. From October to February, the birds live and feed on the beaches and mud flats of Tierra del Fuego, the southernmost land on Earth, excluding Antarctica. Then, they lift off in flocks of hundreds or thousands for the journey to islands of the Canadian archipelago north of Hudson Bay.

Here, in the northern summer, they mate and breed, each female laying four speckled eggs which she and her mate incubate in turns. By mid-July, the female adult birds head south again, and male adults follow a few weeks later. The juveniles fend for themselves until late August, when they too take to the air for the 9,000-mile journey to Tierra del Fuego. These young birds in their thousands, without adult guides, find their way along an ancient migration route, down across New England’s Atlantic beaches, across the Atlantic to Guyana and Surinam, then down along the east coast of South America, arriving at precisely those places along the way where they are sure to find food, eventually joining the flocks that include their parents.

A map of their journey and the knowledge they need for navigation are part of their genetic inheritance. When you consider that they started their lives, like the rest of us, as a single information-packed fertilized cell, their migratory feat stands as one of the great wonders of the natural world. That single cell contains the biological equivalent of a set of charts, a compass, a sextant and maybe something equivalent to a satellite navigation system.

GATTACATTGAAC…

DNA. Proteins.

Black stories

Try this one (the answers below...)

Two men go to a restaurant, sit down, order their food. 

The food arrives, they taste the food, one of the men shoots the other and then himself.

Questions, anyone?

1Were they criminals?

A1: Nope, next..

 Questions:

2Did they know each other? 

3Was the food eatable?

4Were they relatives?

5Did they really want to die?

6 Is the reason of willingness to die an important issue to find the answer to this story?

7 Did the waiter told them anything?

8 Were they a father and a son?

9 Did they both have pistols?

10 Had they argued?

11 Was there an agreement between them, something like: if you eat that hot food I will not kill you... or something like that...?

Answers 2-8:

2 Yes.

3 Yes.

4 No.

5 One yes, one no.

6 Yes.

7 No

8 No.

source: here

http://www.eslprintables.com/forum/topic.asp?id=25577

The Dinner -Casal Sant Jordi

        CHARACTERS

                                            

             The Phipps:  

                   Sir Arthur, Lady Phipps 

                   Freddy  Felicity        

              The vicar

              The butler, James

              Hercules Puree- the famous detective

The Phipps' dining room,  a quiet, warm evening....  and 

Dinner is being served, all seated.

A typical detective story (whodunit?) 

          You will find who did it .... later.

The Phipps' dining room - 

 

               And the vicar drinks so much!

Now we found the murder weapon, 

an old Indian hunting knlfe!!!

 Not a happy ending!

Pigeon impossible

A rookie secret agent is faced with a problem seldom covered in basic training: what to do when a curious pigeon gets trapped inside your multi-million dollar, government-issued nuclear briefcase.

www.pigeonimpossible.com

Honest dad - family matters

Bonds between father and son are difficult to create. When in doubt, be honest!

Comedy Inc came to rescue you. 

Comedy Inc (2003-07),  The fourth Aussie series, characterised by darker and even more risque material than the first two series of 'Comedy Inc. - The Late Shift', ran 25 1-hour episodes in total  making it the longest running series of the show to date.

Once you hear the dreadful question, how to use the truth to not tell lies.
A notable sketch with a father (Jim Russell) who tucks his young son into bed everynight, who usually asks him a question, but unbeknownst to himself, is slightly mature. An example is when the son asks his father 

The sketch will always end with the following lines:

• Billy: "Honest dad?"
• Father: "Would I lie to you mate?"

To start with:

1. Honest Dad on Santa Claus

(with subtitles)

2. Comedy Inc - Honest Dad on "Am I adopted?"

3. Honest Dad on the subject of monsters

This is from Comedy Inc's second series in 2004.

4. Honest Dad on Bird flu

From "its nothing just this pandemic thats sweeping the world kiilling off half the population" to "At least thats what the goverment is telling us."

5. Honest Dad on your secret friend

6. Another example is when the son asks his father "What happened to his cousin". Instead of telling a white lie, the father explains to his son that his cousin is gay and was thrown out by his homophobic father.


See other videos at Detective313

Jarabe de Palo -

Dos canciones :  
       Depende    y     Dicen

Que el blanco sea blanco
y que el negro sea negro,
que uno y uno sean dos
porque exactos son los números
depende
Que aquí estamos de prestao
que el cielo está nublao
que uno nace y luego muere
y este cuento se ha acabao
depende
depende ¿de qué depende?
de según como se mire, todo depende
Que bonito es el amor
mas que nunca en primavera
que mañana sale el sol
porque estamos en agosto
depende
Que con el paso del tiempo
el vino se hace bueno
que to lo que sube, baja
de abajo arriba y de arriba abajo
depende
depende ¿de qué depende?
de según como se mire, todo depende
Que no has conocido a nadie
que te bese como yo
que no hay otro hombre en tu vida
que de ti se beneficie
depende
Y si quiere decir si
cada vez que abres la boca
que te hace muy feliz
que sea el día de tu boda
depende
depende ¿de qué depende?
de según como se mire, todo depende

hard to believe: he did it twice

In the August of 1945, two atomic bombs were dropped in Japan August 6th in Hiroshima, 9th in Nagasaki. The total of 210,000 were killed. There were victims who were effected by both of the bombings. 

Remarkably, a group of perhaps 200 Japanese were present for both atomic bombings. 

However, he also suffered through the deaths of his wife and son from the after-effects of the bombings.

Yamaguchi (Guardian news), who is the only hibakusha (atomic bomb survivor) to be recognized by the Japanese Government for having suffered through both bombings, testified before the United Nations to advocate against the use of nuclear arms or even nuclear power. "The bottom line is, there shouldn't be nuclear in our world," he stated.

He also explained that his motto is "One for All, All for One" and felt he had done his duty when he extracted a commitment from famed movie director James Cameron to create a feature film about the atomic bomb survivors.

  Early life

Yamaguchi "never thought Japan should start a war". He continued his work with Mitsubishi Heavy Industries. As the war ground on, so despondent was he over the state of the country that he considered killing his family with an overdose of sleeping pills in the event that Japan lost.

   Hiroshima bombing

Yamaguchi lived and worked in Nagasaki, but in the summer of 1945 he went to Hiroshima for a three month business trip. On August 6, he was preparing to leave the city with two colleagues, Akira Iwanaga and Kuniyoshi Sato, and was on his way to the station when he realised he had forgotten soothing, and returned to his workplace to get it. At 8:15, he was walking back towards the docks when the Americans dropped the first atomic bomb to citizens ever near the centre of the city, only 3 km away. Yamaguchi recalls seeing the bomber and two small parachutes, before there was "a great flash in the sky, and I was blown over". The explosion ruptured his eardrums, blinded him temporarily, and left him with serious burns over the left side of the top half of his body. After recovering, he crawled to a shelter, and having rested, he set out to find his colleagues. They had also survived and together they spent the night in a refuge before returning to Nagasaki the following day. In Nagasaki, he received treatment for his wounds, and despite being heavily bandaged, he reported for work on August 9.

   Nagasaki bombing

At 11 am on August 9, Yamaguchi was describing the blast in Hiroshima to his supervisor, when the American bomber  dropped another  atomic bomb onto Nagasaki. His workplace again put him 3 km from ground zero, but this time, he was unhurt by the explosion.However, he was unable to seek replacement for his now ruined bandages, and he suffered from a high fever for over a week.

   Later life

After the war, Yamaguchi worked as a translator for the occupying American forces and then became a schoolmaster. When the Japanese government officially recognized atomic bombing survivors as hibakusha in 1957, Yamaguchi's identification stated only that he had been present at Nagasaki. It entitled him and other 260,000 survivors to monthly allowances, free medical dheckups and funeral expenses.

Yamaguchi was content with this, satisfied that he was relatively healthy, and put the experiences behind him.As he grew older, his opinions about the use of atomic weapons began to change.

                

Tsutomu Yamaguchi is one of those 200 or so people who were bombed twice, and survived twice. His hope towards the abolition of nuclear bombs brought 90-year-old Yamaguchi to make his appearance on this film. Along with Yamaguchi, seven other twice-bombed twice-survived people talk about their experience.

August 6th and August 9th are days to contemplate the awful possibilities of mankind, and resolve ourselves to do better.  Pandora's box of horrors was smashed on these days, and again many times in our gruesome history of war this last century