h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Here's a rarity, a story about an international border agreement that doesn't make you or


Norway considers giving a mountain to Finland as 100th birthday present.

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/jul/28/norway-finland-move-mountain-halti-halditsohkka-highest-peak

Wot no Squirtles?

http://www.sliptalk.com/abandoned-missile-silo/

Definitely a worthy site for a massive EPA cleanup effort, though I frankly don't see how it can safely be done short of strip mining the facility away and restoring the terrain afterward.

Ok... this isn't from my favorite source, but I do believe this story has some merit.

The idea that Americans call the game soccer and that no one else does is a modern thing. I just didn't know how recent it was. According to the source in this article, y'all had no problem calling football soccer, you invented the term. But in the '80s y'all started feeling like the term soccer had become too Americanized and distanced yourselves from it.

Personally, I don't give half a . It's all sprots to me.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/06/13/soccer-not-football-_n_5492714.html

Silly stuff. It seems perfectly clear to me, being neither British nor American, that the only reason Brits object is in order to make the point that American Football has minority status in the world.

They know how uncomfortable mainstream USAers feel when they find themselves in a minority.

Personally, I think American Football is far more exciting than Soccer, and it's a great shame that we don't get it on terrestrial TV here in the UK (apart from the Superbowl).

I do remember some pretty pointless arguments about the name. Rather than being anti-American, they were probably just people who were afraid of any kind of change. Sadly, the game has changed out of all recognition since the 1980s, since the Premiership, tiki-taka tactics and FIFA rules banning all forms of contact, but people haven't noticed.

From my side of the world to yours:

~ ~ Natural England issues licence to kill buzzards ~ ~

https://raptorpersecutionscotland.wordpress.com/2016/07/29/natural-england-issues-licence-to-kill-buzzards-to-protect-pheasants/

This is the URL I really wanted. I can never do it right the first time.

http://paper.li/PDX_Nature_Nut/1302640601?edition_id=cdc322f0-567c-11e6-98ed-0cc47a0d1605&utm_campaign=paper_sub&utm_medium=email&utm_source=subscription

Wouldn't it be easier to shoot the pheasants? I mean, they're only going to do that anyway.

Cycling in Yorkshire a decade or so back, I couldn't get over the number of pheasants I saw on the road, apparently killed by motorists. Are they issuing licences to shoot these predators too?

Gingersnapper+Keeper of the Cookie Jar and Stuff and Nonsense if there is an s after http it wont work....

Pheasants are - lets put this nicely - challenged in the intelligence department - they would give lemmings a bad name in the suicide stakes if they did it en masse.

I've had a pheasant just stare at my headlights before - then spend about 30 seconds - where you can watch its brain tick over 'shall I run left, or right, yes left, no right, no left!' before _eventually_ running off out of the way.

They don't really help themselves sadly.

Still can't say I approve of the usual - kill them all - tactics to solve a non-existent problem.

Thanks, Logicus, so much. I did not know to even notice the ~ s ~ .So does that mean that the link in Post 17568 comes up OK. I hope. .
. .. ...

N.B. Lemmings don't actually jump off cliffs en masse. That was a lie created by Disney. They do migrate in large groups and get killed by the hundreds crossing roads, which wouldn't look good in a made for children nature film, so instead, Disney film makers chased a bunch of lemmings over a cliff with loud noises and brooms.

Seriously, Disney!

Disney did perpetrate it, and were found to have staged the scene, but the story was older than the 1958 film.

Not necessarily. The film makers may have confused migration with mass dispersal in response to population explosions. During these dispersals (which happen to many species populations, nothing unique to the lemming) lemmings may accidentally fall off cliffs or drown crossing water, but "mass suicides" didn't happen.


~~~~~
"Disney had to have gotten that idea from somewhere," said Thomas McDonough, the state wildlife biologist. Disney likely confused dispersal with migration, he added, and embellished a kernel of truth.
Lemming populations fluctuate enormously based on predators, food, climate and other factors. Under ideal conditions, in a single year a population of voles can increase by a factor of ten. When they've exhausted the local food supply, they disperse, as do moose, beaver and many other animals.

Lemmings can swim and will cross bodies of water in their quest for greener pastures. Sometimes they drown. Dispersal and accidental death is a far cry from the instinctive, deliberate mass suicide depicted in "White Wilderness," but Hibbler explains that life is tough in the lemmings' "weird world of frozen chaos." The voice-over implies that lemmings take the plunge every seven to ten years to alleviate overpopulation.

"What people see is essentially mass dispersal," said zoologist Gordon Jarrell, an expert in small mammals with the University of Alaska Fairbanks. "Sometimes it's pretty directional. The classic example is in the Scandinavian mountains, where (lemmings) have been dramatically observed. They will come to a body of water and be temporarily stopped, and eventually they'll build up along the shore so dense and they will swim across. If they get wet to the skin, they 're essentially dead."

"There's no question that at times they will build up to huge numbers," Jarrell added. "One description from Barrow does talk about them drowning and piling up on the shore."

Jarrell said when people learn that he works with lemmings, the mass suicide issue often comes up.

"It's a frequent question," he said "'Do they really kill themselves?' No. The answer is unequivocal, no they don't."
~~~~~

http://www.adfg.alaska.gov/index.cfm?adfg=wildlifenews.view_article&articles_id=56

yup Gingersnapper+Keeper of the Cookie Jar and Stuff and Nonsense means it will show as a clickable link other than highlighting the link as you would have to do in the link in Post 17567 and right click go to

Another issue driving lemming migrations is seasonal flooding of their burrowx due to melting permafrost in the muskeg.

Also, they are extremely near-sighted.

Hardly justifies the Disney crew in shoving them off unsurvivable cliffs with brooms...

Talking of rodents:
http://www.iwcp.co.uk/news/news/car-fails-mot-for-most-isle-of-wight-reason-ever-95645.aspx?mn=1

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