05/22 - International Day for Biological Diversity

P1060311

~~ Ocotillo

It is the International Day for Biological Diversity I know that a great many in the US have very negative views of "diversity" and hence dislike the word, but here we are talking about maintaining and/or restoring the complex ecosystems that keep us alive and are necessary for our long term survival as a species. There are still many who find that objectionable if it means things like not being allowed to drive their high powered quad atv anywhere and everywhere they feel like or hunting endangered species, but truly great numbers support or at least pay lip service to conservation, preservation, and similar ideas. Even many corporations and other businesses pretend to support such things as biological diversity or conservation and the like because it is good PR. That means that their marketing folks believe that there are great numbers of real people who believe that such things are good, else they wouldn't waste a single penny even pretending to support them.

In 1370, between six and twenty Jews were murdered and the rest of the Jewish community was banished from Brussels, Belgium, for allegedly desecrating consecrated Host. This is known as The Brussels Massacre

In 1520, the Aztecs obtained permission from the occupying Spaniards to celebrate the festival of Tóxcatl during the fall of Tenochtitlan. The Spaniards then massacred all of the nobles and warriors attending the ceremony because they had gold ornamentation and were unarmed and because they were conquistadores and that's what they did, it was their job. This is known as The Massacre In the Great Temple, The Massacre of Alvarado, or The Massacre at the Festival of Tóxcatl. Seeing as how the perps served under Cortes, it could also be considered to simply be business as usual, since Aztec warriors would've probably been very unruly slaves.

-

**********

On this day in history:

-

0760 -- Halley's Comet sighting recorded in China

1762 -- The Trevi Fountain was completed. It is not known if coins were thrown into it.

1804 -- The Lewis and Clark Expedition left St. Charles

1819 -- The SS Savannah set sail to become the first steamship to cross the Atlantic

1826 -- HMS Beagle set sail on her first voyage

1840 – The penal transportation of British convicts to the New South Wales colony was abolished.

1846 -- The Associated Press was formed. Though originated by journalists, the AP stylebook is still widely used today.

1848 -- Slavery was abolished in Martinique.

1906 -- The Wright brothers got a patent on their flying machine

1915 -- Mount Lassen erupted

1941 -- British troops took Fallujah without using white phosphorus.

1943 -- Stalin disbanded the Comintern.

1947 -- The Truman Doctrine went into effect

1964 -- LBJ launched the Great Society, heretically intended to help actual humans

1967 -- Egypt closed the Straits of Tiran to Israeli shipping.

1968 -- The USS Scorpion sank

1972 -- Ceylon became Sri Lanka.I'd like to say that made things better, but ...

1973 -- Nixon confessed his role in the Watergate cover-up but wasn't punished

1990 -- North and South Yemen united to form the Republic of Yemen.

2015 -- The Republic of Ireland legalized same-sex marriage

The Great Society indeed

-

-

**********

Some people who were born on this day:

It is a capital mistake to theorize before one has data. Arthur Conan Doyle

~~ Arthur Conan Doyle

1783 -- William Sturgeon, physicist and inventor, (electromagnet, electric motor)
1813 -- Richard Wagner, composer
1831 – Henry Vandyke Carter, anatomist, surgeon, illustator of Gray's Anatomy
1844 – Mary Cassatt, painter and educator
1846 -- Rita Cetina Gutierrez, poet, educator, feminist, and activist
1859 -- Arthur Conan Doyle, writer, physician, spiritualist and justice activist
1884 – Wilhelmina Hay Abbott, suffragist and feminist
1894 – Friedrich Pollock, sociologist and philosopher
1900 – Juan Arvizu, lyric opera tenor and bolero vocalist
1904 – Uno Lamm, electrical engineer and inventor
1905 -- Bodo von Borries, physicist, co-inventor of electron microscope
1907 – Hergé, author and illustrator
1912 – Herbert C. Brown, chemist and academic,
1914 -- Sun Ra, pianist, composer, bandleader, poet and, well, Sun Ra
1924 -- Charles Aznavour, singer, songwriter and actor
1925 – Jean Tinguely, painter and sculptor
1927 -- Peter Matthiessen, writer, editor, spook and co-founder of The Paris Review
1930 – Kenny Ball, jazz trumpet player, vocalist, and bandleader
1930 – Marisol Escobar, sculptor
1930 -- Harvey Milk, politician, murder victim
1934 -- Peter Nero, pianist and conductor
1937 – Facundo Cabral, singer and songwriter
1942 -- Ted Kaczynski, critic
1942 – Richard Oakes, civil rights activist
1946 – Lyudmila Zhuravleva, astronomer
1950 -- Bernie Taupin, singer, songwriter and poet
1950 -- Bill Whelan, composer and musician
1954 – Barbara May Cameron, human rights activist
1955 – Iva Davies, singer, songwriter and guitarist
1959 -- Morrissey, singer and songwriter
1966 -- Johnny Gill, singer, songwriter and producer
1991 – Suho, singer and actor
1994 – Athena Manoukian, singer and songwriter

-
-

**********

Some people who died on this day:

Hold fast to your dreams, for without them life is a broken winged bird that cannot fly.

~~ Langton Hughes

0337 -- Constantine the Great, early influential christofascist proponent of homophobia
1540 – Francesco Guicciardini, historian and politician
1553 -- Giovanni Bernardi, sculptor and engraver
1868 – Julius Plücker, mathematician and physicist
1885 -- Victor Hugo, author, poet & playwright
1932 -- Augusta, Lady Gregory, activist, author, and playwright, co-founder of the Abbey Theatre
1967 -- Langston Hughes, poet, social activist, novelist, and playwright
1974 – Irmgard Flügge-Lotz, mathematician and aerospace engineer
1993 – Mieczysław Horszowski, pianist and composer
2010 -- Martin Gardner, mathematician, cryptographer, and author noted for his Scientific American column

-

**********

Some Holidays, Holy Days, Festivals, Feast Days, Days of Recognition, and such:

Harvey Milk Day (California)
International Day for Biological Diversity
Unity Day (Yemen)
World Goth Day - Original Inspiration for Sack Like A Visigoth Day

-

**********

-

Today's Tunes

-

Haley's Comet

-

-

Trevi Fountain

-

Richard Wagner

-

Juan Arvizu

-

Sun Ra (1982)

-

Charles Aznavour

-

Kenny Ball

-

Peter Nero

-

Facundo Cabral

-

Bernie Taupin

-

Bill Whelan

-

Morrissey

-

Johnny Gill with bonus millenial whoop

-

Mieczysław Horszowski

-

Bonus:

-

-

-
-

**********

-
**********

Ok, it's an open thread, so it's up to you folks now. So what's on your mind?

-

Cross posted from http://caucus99percent.com

open thread, Halley's Comet, Lewis and Clars, Beagle, Great Society, Nixon, Richard Wagner, Facundo Cabral, Sun Ra

Share
up
11 users have voted.

Comments

Lookout's picture

I like biological diversity. One reason I mix my garden plantings, include flowers, and pollinator attractors. We grow milk weed and it was covered in monarch larva, which ended up defoliating the milk weed. Should grow back over the summer.

I'm lucky to live in a diverse ecosystem. There are more species of trees on the 80 mile long Lookout mountain that there are on the entire continent of Europe.

Lots of fossils here too...all paleozoic. Ancient fern forest on the mountain and seabed crinoid and horn corals in the valleys. Diversity through time and place.

Well thanks for all the diverse music and the OT!

up
11 users have voted.

“Until justice rolls down like water and righteousness like a mighty stream.”

enhydra lutris's picture

We try for diversity too, and also have our share of milkweed, but not in the garden so much as in other areas. We also have some white clover and Italian parsley for pollinators, as well as assorted wildflowers and a vast number of poppies in season.

Interesting about your mountain versus Europe as to trees. CA is pretty biodiverse, which is probably largely due to the vast number of types of habitats, from Mt. Whitney (& White Mtn) to Death Valley and the long coastline to the Colorado, etc.

be well and have a good one

up
10 users have voted.

That, in its essence, is fascism--ownership of government by an individual, by a group, or by any other controlling private power. -- Franklin D. Roosevelt --

Lookout's picture

@enhydra lutris

than Alabama.

All the best!

up
5 users have voted.

“Until justice rolls down like water and righteousness like a mighty stream.”

up
9 users have voted.
enhydra lutris's picture

@humphrey

Part with through that went into "endless loading", which I've had trouble with lately, but I got the gist of it anyway.

be well and have a good one

up
5 users have voted.

That, in its essence, is fascism--ownership of government by an individual, by a group, or by any other controlling private power. -- Franklin D. Roosevelt --

dystopian's picture

La da da, la da da...

Hi all, Hey EL! Hope it's all good out there!

Biodiversity baby! That's where it's at man. My favortie type of lists are location lists. Not personal lists. A location list tells an amazing and complex story, if you know biology and habitats. I love these 'bio-blitzes' they do. They were started as Rapid Bio Assesment trying to save jungle from development in So. America. Here, now regular folk do it. Get a bunch of naturalists together, birders, butterfliers, dragonfly dudes, the beetle people, even bleedin' botanists. And go spend a day, a weekend, a week, or, once a month for a year or two. The goal is to identify and document every single life form you can at a place. Fossils to fungus. The lists that get created from all the knowledgeable eyeballs are incredible. I worked on one near me here a bit, it was blast. Thousands of acres of prime private hill country Frio River headwaters habitat. And being around all the brainiacs in other fields is best, eye-opening and mind-bending. I added a bunch of birds, butterflies and other insects (one as an aquatic larvae LOL !), even a couple fish (pays to know yer native minnows) to their list. My buddies 'all taxa' site list even includes any life form found on Homo sapiens. ROFL. Biodiversity baby!

Unfortunately in my life it seems to be on a great decline in general. What happened to everything from Red-legged Frogs to Burrowing Owls in the L.A. basin (both went from abundant to absent in a few decades), I think is largely typical and indicative of what is happening all over the world. No more miles long strings of Pilot Whales off the Palos Verdes Peninsula. Birds and insects, amphibians especially, and reptiles, fish, you name it, populations are way down per most that study them in most places. Biodiversity is crashing, and Homo ignoramus and H. stupidicus are crashing it.

But hey, plastics are up! Wink

sorry to go off like that on yer thread bro... Smile

Should be able to click the play arrow and hear this below. It is my nomination for 'best song that specifically mentions FIVE species of jays'. Speaking of biodiversity... Wink

https://johnreischmanandthejaybirds.bandcamp.com/track/the-jaybird-song

Petersen said the Blue Jay yelled 'thief thief'. Smile

Gotta fly, supposed to be workin'...

Have good ones all!

up
8 users have voted.

We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them.
Look deep into nature, and then you will understand everything better.
both - Albert Einstein

enhydra lutris's picture

@dystopian

Location lists are, imho, the way to go. Never been on a bio blitz, but was always fascinated by them and by those square meter inventory projects. I gave up listing for looking, my handwriting and locating skills aren't up to the "see how quickly you can write down the following three species without missing seeing those two over there in that bush" drill.

fun song but the Green Jays are now all screaming about being discriminated against.

be well and have a good one

up
7 users have voted.

That, in its essence, is fascism--ownership of government by an individual, by a group, or by any other controlling private power. -- Franklin D. Roosevelt --

dystopian's picture

@enhydra lutris The Brown Jays are mad too! LOL Those Brown Jays are erratic in the U.S. along a small section of the Rio Grande from Falcon Dam, and about 20 miles south. That is it. There were numbers in the 80's, one day Mrs. dysto and I saw a flock of 15-18, three times over 10 miles of river over the day. Big HUGE Jay, bigger than anything we have here. There are four there right now, but maybe none the prior decade. Temporary colonists from NE Mexico. Like Tamaulipas (Mexican) Crow.

But there were Big Days in Texas whence they got FOUR species of Jays. Scrub- in the hill country, Green AND Brown on the Rio Grande, and Blue Jay by dark in upper coast/E.Texas area. Usually one maxes out at two, or three at best jay species in any given area.

And yeah man, look at the stuff whilst it is there... we can study and make notes later... Smile

up
2 users have voted.

We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them.
Look deep into nature, and then you will understand everything better.
both - Albert Einstein

close to the truth.

Somewhat related.

up
8 users have voted.
enhydra lutris's picture

@humphrey

I like "We want Julius Caesar back".

be well and have a good one

up
7 users have voted.

That, in its essence, is fascism--ownership of government by an individual, by a group, or by any other controlling private power. -- Franklin D. Roosevelt --

we have prairies, mountains, hills, plains, forests, plateaus, and swamps. I love all the terrains, and the wild life in east Texas is different from the wild life 5 hours drive away.
We will be in the Fredericksburg area this weekend, will see wild turkeys.
Any effort to document wildlife and plant life is great.
Diversity? Here, if you plant squash, plant marigolds. Stink bugs love squash, love marigolds more. Sunflowers are always helpful.
Have yourself a really fine evening, my friend!

up
5 users have voted.

"We'll know our disinformation program is complete when everything the American public believes is false." ---- William Casey, CIA Director, 1981

enhydra lutris's picture

@on the cusp

info on Tejas biodiversity.

be well and have a good one

up
3 users have voted.

That, in its essence, is fascism--ownership of government by an individual, by a group, or by any other controlling private power. -- Franklin D. Roosevelt --