Learn how to identify Mourning Dove, its life history, cool facts, sounds and calls, and watch videos. A graceful, slender-tailed, small-headed dove thatâs common across the continent. Mourning Doves perch on telephone wires and forage for seeds on the ground; their flight is fast and bullet straight. Their soft, drawn-out calls sound like laments. When taking off, their wings make a sharp whistling or whinnying. Mourning Doves are the most frequently hunted species in North America.
Saw a mourning dove on my deck this morning. Along with the black-capped chickadee, they are one of my favorite birds.Â
"This white balance illusion hit so hard because it felt like someone had been playing through the Monty Hall scenario and opened their chosen door, only to find there was unexpectedly disagreement over whether the thing they'd revealed was a goat or a car."
From xkcd
http://xkcd.com/1492/
...HOW are people seeing any black in this picture????
From "Whose Line Is It Anyway," a playing of the game "Hey You Down There!", which parodies those old 1950s-public service commercials. In this playing, the scene is "Preparing for a nuclear attack."Â
"Well, autumn's here, and your thoughts turn to one thing: nuclear annihilation!"Â
Wal-Mart's announcement that it will raise its minimum wage came as the retail industry faces a rising number of workers quitting their jobs. Better pay is one way retailers can keep the people the...
My two cents on retail, after working in it for fourteen years.Â
The retail working environment is not conducive to what customers expect from it at a service level.Â
Burnout is a real problem in retail. Inconsistent hours, overwork, conflicting messages between managers, stress, minimal rewards, insufficient benefits (if any), and low pay result in an industry with a very high turnover. After so long, people just canât do it anymore. And so, when the opportunity presents itself, employees will leave.Â
The fact is, retail employees often have no incentive to stay with their employer. Now, one of the most common catch phrases I hear in the minimum wage debate is that retail is never intended to be a permanent station. Itâs meant for teenagers, college students looking for additional income, retirees wanting something productive to do, or for the desperate. But that is not a good thing for the retailers.Â
Customers expect high-quality service, and the retailers want the response surveys and retention rates to reflect that that is what customers are getting. However, with such high turnover rates, customers end up getting assistance from a staff that is perpetually new, or inexperienced, or without reason (or are unable) to provide that âwow!â experience. It seems to me that retailers would be more interested in finding ways to keep their employees. Higher wages, better benefits, and stronger staffing are a major step in employee retention, as well as fostering a loyalty and love for the company.Â
Am I the only one who always feels vaguely guilty when being pampered? Like the hairstylist giving me a massage when she washes my hair or getting a manicure or pedicure? I always want to apologize to whoever's taking care of me.Â
"The asteroid belt may be a place where a planet was once prevented from forming because of the gravitational tides of the giant nearby Jupiter; or it may be the shattered remains of a planet that blew itself up. This seems improbable because no scientist on Earth knows how a planet might blow itself up, which is probably just as well."
The Freer|Sackler Galleries at the Smithsonian have launched their high-resolution Digitization project, and the images are now available at their website. To learn more about the project, give feedback, or get involved, check their Digitization blog. For those who want to beef up their academic resume: they need both beta testers and transcribers!
Our get-it-now economy depends on enormous, futuristic warehouses â but the people who live in their shadows face lung-stunting pollution and, in some cases, political corruption.
"As residents in Moreno Valley debated the future of warehouses, residents in Mira Loma Village woke up one Saturday in July to a radical response to warehouse pollution.
On that blazing Saturday, workers from the Swiss company IQAir descended on the scruffy streets with pastries, sandwiches, bottles of water â and air filters.
Some of the residents eyed the workers with suspicion and refused to let them in, but when technicians reached Adela Ochoaâs perfectly kept house, with a bench out front under a tree, the family opened the door and watched as they set up the air purifiers in the living room.
âWe know itâs a problem,â Ochoa said of the air. âWe feel it in our bodies.â
Still, her grandson works in a warehouse, as does her daughter. They need those jobs.
âIf you talk about environmental consequences [of warehouses], one of the things you must do is talk about the environmental consequences of poverty,â said Husing, the economist. âThe health consequences of poverty are far greater.â
Down the block from the Ochoas, a gaggle of VIPs, including two local city council members, crowded into Juan and Elvia Rodeloâs modest home to witness the air filters being installed.
The couple, who are in their fifties and speak mostly Spanish, flashed polite but uneasy smiles as their house filled up with strangers.
Less than 10 minutes later, the whole group filed back out, leaving the Rodelos looking a bit stunned.
As he walked out the door, Mayor Pro-Tem Michael Goodland smiled at the couple and said, âEnjoy the clean air.â
THE decade-long debate in America over ânet neutralityââthe assumption that all internet traffic, no matter its origin or purpose, should be treated...
An article from The Economist on net neutrality and the future of the internet.Â
"Earlier this year, a federal court ruled, not for the first time, that the FCC had overstepped its authority with its Open Internet Order of 2010, which sought to strike a balance between the First Amendment rights of internet users and the need to encourage ISPs to invest in speedier connections. The FCC took the court ruling as an invitation to rewrite its net-neutrality rules, so they would conform with existing communications law.
By suggesting a compromise, however, the hapless Mr Wheeler felt the full wrath of net-neutralityâs supporters. The proposal merely suggested that while ISPs would be banned from blocking or slowing access to individual websites, they could strike deals with content providers to improve their services, provided such deals were deemed âreasonableâ.
Nothing radical about that. The broadband behemoths had been making such deals with content providers for ages. Late last year, for instance, Netflix found its popular video streaming service had begun to slow down. Whatever the cause, it handed undisclosed sums of money to both Comcast and Verizon for âdirect connectionsâ to their networks. Since then, Netflixâs video-streaming speeds have doubled, and customers are happier than ever. But there can be no question that Comcast and Verizon, two of the largest ISPs in America, had Netflix over a barrel."
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