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Dear Kitty
Monday, April 25, 2005
  The Art And Politics Of Film, Part III
The Art And Politics Of Film
A Conversation at the Swans Café...

John Steppling & David Walsh

Part III

Read the first part of this conversation, published on March 28, 2005, and the second part, published on April 11, 2005.

Part III here.

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Tuesday, April 19, 2005
  Bird shooting triggers outcry in Scotland
AN animal welfare worker has hit out at gun-wielding thugs who deliberately target wildlife.

The outcry came after a peregrine falcon was treated for gunshot wounds at the Capital’s Royal Dick vet school.

Read more here.

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  Exceptional Whale Fossil Found in Egyptian Desert
Mon Apr 18, 2005

CAIRO (Reuters) - An American paleontologist and a team of Egyptians have found the most nearly complete fossilized skeleton of the primitive whale Basilosaurus isis in Egypt's Western Desert, a university spokesman said on Monday.

Philip Gingerich of the University of Michigan excavated the well-preserved skeleton, which is about 40 million years old, in a desert valley known as Wadi Hitan (the Valley of the Whales) southwest of Cairo, spokesman Karl Bates told Reuters.

Read more here.

And here.

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  "Toad Tunnels" Built to Help Amphibians Cross Roads
John Roach
for National Geographic News

April 15, 2005

Later this month, when the next warm, wet rain soaks the northeastern U.S., it will signal thousands of American toads to hop to their breeding ponds. To get there, many of the toads will cross roads that slice through their habitat.

John Serrao, a naturalist in Pennsylvania's Pocono Mountains, says that unless Buffo americanus and other amphibians get help crossing the road, their local populations will disappear.

Entire populations of American toads breed within the same few days at the same time each year, usually late April or early May.

According to Serrao, the toads hop to their breeding ponds after the ground has warmed, the air temperature stays above 65° Fahrenheit (18° Celsius), and the first hard spring rain falls.

"To get to their ancestral breeding ponds, a lot [of toads] have to cross roads," Serrao said. "And they're slow moving at that time of year—it's still cool, they've been inactive—and they get squashed."

Read more here.

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  Labour candidate: no Blair pix please
Blair not going to win me votes - Gibson

SIMON PARKIN
18 April 2005 12:55

Labour election candidate for Norwich North Ian Gibson has defended not using any pictures of Tony Blair on his election leaflets.

The sitting MP, who is defending a majority of 5,863, says he is concentrating on local issues after finding the Prime Minister was less than popular with some voters.

Read more here.

Meanwhile, in Birmingham, recently released Guantanamo Bay detainee Moazzam Begg called for a vote for Respect.

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Monday, April 18, 2005
  Elephant seal pups suffer from ocean warming
Ocean warming has a negative impact on the condition of elephant seals, reveals a study published in the Open Access journal BMC Biology. High ocean temperatures observed from 1975 to the late 1990s are correlated with a 28% decrease in the weight of elephant seal pups. Elephant seals are shown to be sensitive to ocean temperature changes associated with both long-term 25-year cycles and short-term 3-4 year cycles such as those caused by El Niño.

Sea lions and fur seals that feed near their rookeries at the surface of the ocean are known to be very sensitive to water temperature changes, as an increase in water temperature usually causes their prey to migrate to cooler areas, depleting local food resources and resulting in pup starvation. Elephant seals, which feed in deep waters, were previously thought to be better buffered against ocean temperature changes than other sea mammals.

A study by Dr Burney Le Boeuf and Dr David Crocker from the University of California in Santa Cruz, shows that as waters get warmer the average weight of an elephant seal pup decreases.

Read more here.

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  Labour executive member supports anti war candidate in Blair's constituency
United Kingdom general election on 5 May:

A Labour party executive member supports anti war candidate Reg Keys in Blair's constituency.

More on Dear Kitty ModBlog as soon as downtime there is over.

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  Black smoke in Vatican City
Today, there was black smoke in Vatican City. No new pope elected.

Baffling smoke signal, says the reggae song.

Big black smoke, goes the Kinks song.

Lots of commentators remark on the undemocratic nature of the election of the new pope, 115 mostly elderly men only, deciding for a billion Roman Catholics, over half of them women.

However this may be, 115 is still more democratic than George W. Bush in 2000 "elected" by a 5 to 4 Supreme Court majority.

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  Welcome to Dear Kitty backup blog on Blogger
Welcome to this blog.

I am fairly new to blogging. Early this year, I started Dear Kitty ModBlog.

I like ModBlog a lot. However, it turned out that sometimes there is downtime at ModBlog when I want to post something quickly.

For these emergencies, I started this backup blog here. I hope I will learn to understand the possibilities of Blogger.

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My diary on peace and wars, arts, sciences, politics, the fight for economic and social justice, the environment, and more. Backup for http://dearkitty1.wordpress.com/

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