text stringlengths 9 94.9k |
|---|
Though I wouldn't say the temps are the warmest in Tuscany in Feb, I can say that the Carnival party spirit is sure to warm you up. |
Another thing you can do which will keep you warm while enjoying Tuscany are the many thermal spas. |
My experience is everyone is open in Feb - and even better because they are expecting to cater to a local clientele! |
Our existence is not in isolation with the rest of the world. While this idea sounds spiritual, it is very pertinent to social and global situations that we see every now and then. When a house is on fire in the neighborhood, if we don’t act, it is only a matter of time before the fire reaches our own doorstep. |
There is an idea found in many ancient cultures that this world is one organism. The microcosm is a reflection of the macrocosm. Just like within us there are billions of cells with their independent existence that collectively make up our existence, all the billions of people and other creatures make up the Being of t... |
Today, there are many parts of the world that are on fire. Many governments and authorities, like in Syria and Egypt, end up using force in conflict-zones. While sometimes necessary in extreme situations, such an approach is reactive and often leads to complications in the long term. Taking care of hygiene and preservi... |
Only a few people in the world cause terror, not the whole population. Of the seven billion people on this planet, there are hardly a few thousand who cause crime and the whole world is affected. With the same law, won’t the reverse also work? Just a few thousand of us, being really peaceful, loving and caring for the ... |
When we radiate peace and good vibrations, it definitely makes an impact. Those of us who have been fortunate to find some peace within ourselves, now have a challenge to reach out to all those who are not at peace with themselves as well as to those countries and parts of the world where there is conflict. The knowled... |
New York: We have known it for ages. Now Americans have woken up to the benefits meditation brings in life. |
Meditations have different effects and that meditation can lead to non-dual or transcendental experiences – a sense of self-awareness without content, says a fascinating study. |
According to Fred Travis, director of the centre for brain, consciousness, and cognition at Maharishi University of Management in the US, physiological measures and first-person descriptions of transcendental experiences and higher states have only been investigated during practice of the Transcendental Meditation (TM)... |
After analyzing descriptions of transcendental consciousness from 52 people practicing TM, Travis found that they experienced “a state where thinking, feeling, and individual intention were missing, but self-awareness remained”. |
A systematic analysis of their experiences revealed three themes – absence of time, space and body sense. |
“This research focuses on the larger purpose of meditation practices – to develop higher states of consciousness,” explained Travis. |
With regular meditation, experiences of transcendental consciousness begin to co-exist with sleeping, dreaming and even while one is awake. |
This state is called cosmic consciousness in the Vedic tradition, said the paper published in the journal Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences. |
Whereas people practicing TM describe themselves in relation to concrete cognitive and behavioral processes, those experiencing cosmic consciousness describe themselves in terms of a continuum of inner self-awareness that underlies their thoughts, feelings and actions, added the paper. |
“The practical benefit of higher states is that you become more anchored to your inner self, and, therefore, less likely to be overwhelmed by the vicissitudes of daily life,” said Travis. |
TM is an effortless technique for automatic self-transcending, different from the other categories of meditation – focused attention or open monitoring. |
It allows the mind to settle inward beyond thought to experience the source of thought – pure awareness or transcendental consciousness. |
This is the most silent and peaceful level of consciousness – one’s innermost self, said the study. |
Holiday Tag Post – Join me and share your answers! |
Are any of you YouTubers? There is this entirely separate YouTube world roaming on the internet. We have a channel that is updated very sporadically but we are planning to create more videos in the upcoming year. |
There haven’t been as many stories quoting the tall, affable Yellowstone Park wolf manager in the last several years, but on Aug. 2 at the Buffalo Bill Historical Center in Cody, Wyoming, he give a talk that was covered quite well by the Cody Enterprise. |
Nice to see a balanced view that will help the wolf restoration succeed, if not to wolf advocates pleasure…. |
It is time for Doug to stop putting collars on the wolves in Yellowstone. He has gone from collaring the alpha pair to putting collars on half of some packs. I will be happy when he retires. |
If the collars are used for positive research then great, but for someone to not like them because a collared wolf or grizzly does not make for a good photo to sell is another thing. |
I wonder how Doug Smith can say wolf packs are stabilizing/stabilized. Perhaps he meant pre-wolf hunting and killing by the states? That might have been true a year or more ago or in Minnesota but can anyone call the number of wolves that have been killed a stabilization? Maybe the wolves are moving back into Yellowsto... |
…or tracked and know where they are for good purposes. |
Different collars, placed on wolves for a different purpose (i.e., monitoring–not research). |
In my mind, several things should go into the decision of collaring. These are subjective to some degree because I don’t like Wildlife Services or the state wildlife agencies much anymore. |
-Jurisdiction over the wolf, e.g. state or national park, purpose: research or monitoring, type of radio collar, the agency or personnel monitoring the wolf. |
-Monitoring can be broken down into monitoring to stop potential trouble, research on movements (a subclass of research), or monitoring to kill (worst is to wipe out an entire pack by means of a judas collar). |
I am not much interested in esthetics for photographers. |
Given the state government attitudes of Idaho and Montana, I hope the fewer collars and the more expensive they are to put on the wolf, the better. |
I wish Doug Smith would be more specific regarding which areas wolves should be hunted heavily and not hunted in. Obviously, he is trying to be diplomatic. |
Doug Smith was in the picture about wolves in Washington, and he hopes they migrate all the way to Mexico, he sounded so sincere? I think he is full of himself, by reading all the comments. As for wolf watchers it started out good,but don’t blame the people for wanting to see wolves.They did not start the killing,Salaz... |
It should be noted that today there are only 80 wolves in Yellowstone and just 2 breeding pairs. |
The peak number of wolves was over 170. |
And how many elk were there in the beginning (1995), and how many now? |
My understanding is that there were ~19,000 elk in the northern herd, though NPS thought carrying capacity was around 5,000. The herd now has ~6,000. |
Stay tuned, JB and WM. Dr. Smith echoes what others are now saying…the population of the Northern herd of elk in Yellowstone is now where it should be and should have been all along had we not eradicated wolves. The 20,000 present a few decades ago were way to high for the health of herd or range there. The northern el... |
Too bad that cannot happen OUTSIDE Yellowstone where wolf control , poaching, and a whole slew of economic land use interests make ecological management a pipe dream , even in wilderness areas surrounding Yellowstone. |
The difference between the Elk-Wolf dynamic ( and Elk-Wolf-Grizzly-Black Bear-Cougar dynamic for that matter ) inside Yellowstone Park compared to the same species outside the Park is night and day. Or more metaphorically , Heaven and Hell. |
I was in the front row for this talk by Dr. Doug. |
he ran long with his remarks so the Q & A was short, but I got in a good question. I asked him for his own view of the popular notion emanating mainly from the anti-Wolf camp about the sub-Species of Canis lupus reintroduced being too different than the native wolves eradicated from Yellowstone before 1930 . The old Ca... |
Smith said the subspecies of the wolf now in GYE and the wolf that was there before eradication is moot. Totally moot and groundless to make a case with . He said it’s a a taxonomic distinction that has little to no value , more like a bookkeeping thing. |
In other words, Dr. Smith agrees with Ed Bangs and Carter Niemeyer et ux that it’s Canis lupus IRREGARDLESS. We need to impress that on the anti-Wolfers if we can get it thru their thick skulls. |
In that Canid taxonomy there are listed 37 distinct subspecies of Canis lupus worldwide. From the current population in GYE and Idaho all the way to the far Northern Rockies or southern Canadian Rockies provinces ( where the Yellowstone wolves were sourced) any co-mingling is negligible until you disperse as far away a... |
BECAUSE— one of the sub species of wolves is Canis lupus familiaris. We call them Domestic Dogs. ALL the breeds of domestic dogs from Chihuahua to Pyrenees great Hound and everything in between are Canis lupus familiaris and breedable back to Yellowstone -Idaho wolves . Call the American Kennel Club and let’s see if we... |
Recommended reading. 32 pgs. Smith handed out hard copies at the Cody talk . |
What Smith did append to his own team’s work were several crossreferences to Arthur Middleton’s study on the ecology of Elk and relationship to predators in the region immediately east of Yellowstone’s boundary where Smith’s own work basically stops. Smith seemed really jazzed by the preliminary results of Middleton’s ... |
There’s a lot of anti-Wolfers than need to hear THAT , too.Starting with Idaho Fish and Game and Montana Fish Wildlife and Parks and anybody and everybody in Wyoming halls. |
Nice post. One correction: modern genetic and morphology suggest about 5 subspecies (not in the 30s) in all of North America. So the 600 or so miles away where they came from in Canada is not far from Yellowstone if there are only that many subspecies. That does not include the eastern/red wolf discussion in eastern No... |
„Phase One“ implies there´s a „Phase Two“ already in the pipeline. Just curious what that could be…. |
Nice remarks,my thoughts exactly,you stated it with grace. |
Nice remarks,my thoughts exactly,you stated it with grace. I think Ralph felt the same way as you. Again very nice. |
Just two breeding pairs? I got the impression that the park is capable of supporting far more than just two. |
Tayo, there are around 10 packs in Yellowstone. That has been stable over the years. What seems to be happening is the wolf population is not reproducing b.c of lack of food and conflicts with other packs. That is why only 2 produced pups this year. |
Not to take words from his mouth, but judging by the article Phase 2 seems to be a new more stable phase where wolf pops will likely be lower (will not get into the 175-200 range like earlier) and wolves will have larger territories and live in more stable packs. In other words, they may approach a long term average ho... |
Why don’t photographers like them? Shouldn they be thrilled to take a photo of a wolf WITH a collar? At least that proves that it is a wild wolf. |
For 48 hours, Theresa May looked as if she was in control of her government. On Friday, July 6, Britain’s embattled leader called all her ministers to the bucolic prime ministerial bolthole at Chequers. |
The so-called ‘Chequers deal’ was heralded as a major breakthrough. On the Friday evening, the BBC reported that May had emerged with her position greatly strengthened after every cabinet minister endorsed her proposals. |
Afterwards, the Conservative leader sounded an unusually bullish tone, telling one British newspaper that it was up to the European Union to step up to the mark. “It’s now for Europe to be prepared to sit down and move the pace of negotiations on and talk about it seriously and address what we’ve put forward,” she said... |
But by Sunday evening, such confidence had evaporated. Hardline Brexiteers had already begun to voice their disquiet with the Chequers plan. Maintaining a “common rule book” for goods with the EU, collecting tariffs on behalf of the EU, free movement for skilled workers and students from the EU, and giving “due regard”... |
As Sunday night moved into Monday morning, Davis announced that he was resigning from the Department for Exiting the European Union. Davis was nominally in charge of Brexit, but in practice had been usurped by Theresa May’s most trusted aide Olly Robbins. In the previous six months, Davis – who is not known for his gra... |
May had hoped to wake up on Monday to her first week in control of her cabinet since last June’s disastrous general election when the Conservatives lost their overall majority in the Commons, forcing them to rely on the support of Democratic Unionist MPs. Instead, the prime minister had lost her Brexit secretary and ru... |
Nominally Johnson was foreign secretary – one of Britain’s ‘great offices of state’ – but, in reality, he ran a freelance operation geared around manoeuvring himself into Number 10 Downing Street. The concept of collective cabinet responsibility was an alien one as Johnson penned pieces in right-wing broadsheets attack... |
But there was little strategic logic to Johnson’s decision to leave. |
Pro-Brexit Tories for whom any continued relationship with the European Union is anathema lack the numbers to force May out. This point was tacitly acknowledged by another resigning cabinet minister – junior Brexit secretary Steve Baker – who noted that “arithmetic” might “constrain the Government’s freedom of action”. |
Baker will return to where he has always been: the anti-EU Tory backbenches. Indeed, within minutes of his resignation, he had once again been made an administrator of the WhatsApp group controlled by the European Research Group (ERG), the rather incongruously titled cadre of hardline Brexiteers led by the priggish Jac... |
With three ministers gone, febrile talk grew of a leadership challenge. But shifting May is not easy: under the rather arcane Conservative party rules, a vote of no confidence is triggered by at least 15pc of Tory MPs requesting one by writing to the chairman of the party’s backbench 1922 committee. |
Graham Brady, the 1922’s chairman, keeps names of those writing the letters confidential – and does not provide a running tally – but we do know that the 48 MPs currently needed to trigger a vote of confidence have yet to put pen to paper. If they do, there is every chance that May could survive a vote amongst her own ... |
Even if May were to be defenestrated, a Conservative leadership contest could take months – and might not radically change the content of the UK’s Brexit plans. “It is easy for the Brexiteers to criticise the plan and the prime minister but they don’t have a clear rallying point to circle around,” says Simon Usherwood,... |
This lack of an alternative Brexit plan has been a constant feature of British politics since the vote to leave. Last week’s Chequers tête-à-tête was the first time the UK cabinet had sat down to discuss what Britain should look like outside the European Union. |
A referendum won on soundbites – “take back control!” – and slogans daubed on the side of brightly coloured buses, bequeathed a paralysed political system. Britain had voted to leave the European Union, yes, but how should it leave? Nobody can quite agree. |
For ardent Brexiteers, the path is straightforward. Out of the customs union and the single market. Rees-Mogg dismisses dire economic warnings from the dreaded ‘experts’ as just another example of Project Fear, pre-referendum prognostications of doom that never materialised. (In fact, the UK’s growth has slowed noticea... |
The opposition benches are no less ideologically cluttered. Throughout four decades in politics, Corbyn has never been a Europhile. |
Officially, his Labour party is in favour of staying in the customs union and leaving the single market. But as many as a hundred pro-EU Labour MPs oppose the party’s line on Brexit, with many wanting to see a second referendum on any deal. |
May’s Chequers plan – fleshed out in a White Paper released on Thursday – represents the first time the UK government has set out what it wants from the Brexit process. But in attempting to define what was previously a constructive ambiguity, May has exposed huge fissures, both within her own party and across British p... |
On the hoary problem of the Irish border, the Chequers plan recognised the backstop for Northern Ireland agreed last December with the EU. Leo Varadkar welcomed the proposals, saying the EU “could be flexible too”, but the Democratic Unionists, upon whom May depends for her parliamentary majority, were far more muted. ... |
Indeed, the Chequers proposals are not an easy sell. Brexiteer wails that it represents “the worst of all worlds” are not without merit. |
The putative new customs partnership with the EU is fiendishly complicated and would place onerous bureaucratic demands on business – flying in the face of the long-running Tory lines about EU ‘red tape’. |
Brexiteers fear that by keeping so close to the EU’s orbit, the UK will not be able to realise the vision of ‘Global Britain’ constructed during the referendum to avoid the (valid) accusations that fear of immigration was driving the leave vote. There is palpable enthusiasm among sections of the British media and polit... |
At the same time, the Chequers proposals would likely leave the UK economy in a much worse position than staying in the EU. Services – four-fifths of the UK economy – would be outside the single market, with the threat of barriers to trade. The City of London could be badly hit. Major business interests are warning of ... |
Whether the UK’s White Paper will survive until October’s crunch talks with the EU27 is unclear. It provides a potential basis for a negotiation with the EU but it will not be acceptable to Brussels in its current form – the whiff of freshly picked cherries is far too strong. But any further softening of Theresa May’s ... |
Brexiteers have signalled that they could stymie the progress of any deal through Parliament. That could prove a successful tactic: if Westminster does not agree on a deal before 11pm on March 29 next year, the UK will crash out of the EU. |
The warnings of a “no-deal Brexit” are dire – including, this week, the possibility of stockpiles of tinned fruit and a flotilla of electric generators to power Northern Ireland. Whether this is all ‘Mad Max fantasy’ will depend on May’s ability to deliver an alternative deal that can command cross-party support – a di... |
Leaving the European Union is often described as “leaving a club”. But the UK is discovering that it more like a computer operating system: having run on the customs union and, latterly, the single market, for 45 years, almost everything Britain does is connected to the EU in some way. Building a new operating system c... |
We have spoken with three people, who are responsible for waste management in three types of stores, from a small grocery store to one of the biggest department stores in the world. We asked them how they tackle waste management and recycling in their businesses on a day-to-day basis. |
The Hemköp store in Vrigstad is the only one in the area and it has a loyal customer base. Sales amount to approximately 40 million SEK a year. As the store has grown quickly over the years, so has the volume of waste to handle. |
ICA Supermarket Olskroken is located in central Gothenburg. Sixty people work in the store, which turns over around 175 million SEK a year. |
Gekås in Ullared is one of Sweden’s most popular places to visit and is thought to be the world’s largest department store of its kind. A department store with 4.8 million customers and sales of 5.3 billion SEK a year certainly generates a lot of waste. |
Generally speaking, many stores seem to be quite good at compacting and recycling their waste. Awareness is increasing and consumer pressure is making a green environmental profile increasingly important. There is still a lot to do and too many stores continue to rely on a mixed waste containers for all their waste. It... |
Totally different than the other it fits post... but it’s fun to see what fits in my little car! Today I stuffed my new 55” TV in the back of my Volt. I had to remove the knobs to hook the cargo net onto to fit it in! |
And I could have moved the front seats up a little more. It was the side to side I was worried about, it literally squeezed in! |
Bill introduced by the Texas Senate relating to the performance of the functions of the governing body of a political subdivision in the event of a disaster. |
Texas. Legislature. Senate. June 15, 2007. |
Added Title: A Senate Bill relating to the performance of the functions of the governing body of a political subdivision in the event of a disaster. |
Oct. 30, 2015, 6:57 p.m. |
Subsets and Splits
No community queries yet
The top public SQL queries from the community will appear here once available.