ANIMALS TRANSPORTED 

When the cartoon Rascal the Raccoon grew popular in Japan during the 1970s, the baby animals were imported as pets.  As they outgrew their homes, they were dumped in the woods and have since decimated 80% of the ancient temples.   Read much more at:  http://www.treehugger.com/culture/pbs-documentary-raccoon-nation-humans-making-raccoons-smarter.html

 

ANIMALS TRANSPORTED

Possums were introduced to New Zealand in 1837 in a deliberate attempt to establish a fur trade and ‘enrich’ New Zealand’s native biodiversity.  About 1911 the government allowed farmers, orchardists and horticulturalists to hunt the animals because of the damage done to crops and orchards.  However, they were still protected in native forest areas where their damage was considered negligible.  Conservationists began to complain about the impacts of possums throughout the 1920s and 1930s, and from 1922 official liberations were no longer permitted.   Not until the 1940s was the first scientific evidence of the impacts of possums on native forest collected. After this, the government’s policy changed dramatically and New Zealand has since then been fighting to control the possum.  Illegal liberations into possum-free areas were reported up until the 1970s.  Possums destroy native trees and shrubs, and eat the berries needed by native birds.  They eat New Zealand’s native land snail, lizards and insects, and chase birds off their nests to eat the chicks and eggs.  Possums also kill adult kiwi and chicks, they destroy kiwi eggs and compete with kiwi for burrows.  http://www.kiwisforkiwi.org/about-kiwi/threats/predators-pests/possums/ 

An artist who started out as a jazz musician, Larry Rivers, who died in 2002 at age 78, often teamed up with and borrowed from others in his artwork.  Those interchanges, sometimes whimsical, are explored in “Larry Rivers: Collaborations and Appropriations,” an exhibition at the University Art Gallery at Stony Brook University.  Helen A. Harrison, the curator of the exhibition, attributed Rivers’s approach, at least in part, to his musical background.  He continued to play his saxophone in bands, she said, even as he became a prolific and well-known artist who spent much of his time in Southampton.   In the exhibition are 10 large-scale, three-dimensional oil paintings that Rivers based on works of the past.  “Modernist Times” (1988), for example, combines a famous image of Charlie Chaplin entangled in a giant machine from his 1936 film “Modern Times” with abstract mechanical forms drawn by the French artist Fernand Léger in 1918.  Rivers (who was born Yitzroch Loiza Grossberg) also acted.  Two experimental films in which he had leading roles play continuously on a monitor in a far corner of the large gallery.  “Larry Rivers: Collaborations and Appropriations” is at the University Art Gallery, Staller Center for the Arts, Stony Brook University, through Dec. 8. Information: stallercenter.com/gallery or (631) 632-7240.  Aileen Jacobson   http://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/28/nyregion/larry-rivers-collaborations-and-appropriations-is-at-stony-brook-university.html?ref=todayspaper&_r=0 

In June 2012, 100 patients in the ICU at The University of Arizona Medical Center-University Campus participated in a study on the possible healing properties of music, specifically harp music.  Renowned harpist Carrol McLaughlin, a professor in the UA School of Music for 33 years, teamed up with Dr. Ann Marie Chiasson from the Arizona Center for Integrative Medicine and Anne Baldwin, a research professor of physiology, to conduct the study.  “The more I perform and work with people, the more I find that the harp has a unique healing property,” McLaughlin said.  “I wanted precise, scientific data to prove these healing capabilities.”  Out of the 100 patients participating in the study, mostly middle aged or elderly, 50 received a private 10-minute live harp performance on the floor of the intensive care unit.  The other 50 functioned as control patients, who simply spent 10 minutes relaxing, without harp music.  Baldwin, who was responsible for measuring the patient’s physiological function, blood pressure and self-reported pain scores before and after the harp was played, began noticing blood pressure levels adjusting.  “If a patient’s blood pressure was low, which is most of the patients we see here, it increased after the harp music.  And for a few with high blood pressure, it’s gone down after.  It appears the harp music is bringing this back into balance, back into the normal range, which is ideal for healing,” she said.  Chiasson said she is looking forward to analyzing the information collected to see the measurable results of the music on patients:  “Harp music is very relaxing, but I am excited to see what our data shows with regards to heart rate variability and oxygen saturation.”  Of course the study is not suggesting that intensive care patients could be healed with harp music alone.  Baldwin said harp music’s potential healing ability is something to be considered in addition to medical intervention. 

http://uanews.org/story/study-explores-effects-harp-music-icu-patients

Remains of an ancient settlement, including the ruins of two-storey houses, fortification walls and parts of a gate, have been unearthed near the modern-day town of Provadia, close to the Black Sea resort of Varna.  It dates back to between 4,700 and 4,200BC – more than a millennium before the start of Greece's ancient civilisation.   The inhabitants of the settlement, in north-west Bulgaria, boiled brine from salt springs in kilns, then baked it into bricks and used it for trading.  Highly valued by surrounding tribes, it may explain why ancient caches of gold jewellery and ritual objects have been unearthed in the region.   A collection of 3,000 gold objects found 40 years ago at a necropolis near Varna represented the oldest trove of ancient gold treasure in the world.   "At a time when people did not know the wheel and cart, these people hauled huge rocks and built massive walls.  Why?  What did they hide behind them?  The answer was salt," Vasil Nikolov, a researcher with Bulgaria's National Institute of Archeology, told AFP.  "Salt was an extremely valued commodity in ancient times, as it was both necessary for people's lives and was used as a method of trade and currency starting from the sixth millennium BC up to 600 BC," he said.  The "town", known as Provadia-Solnitsata, was small by modern standards and would have had around 350 inhabitants.  Nick Squires   See a picture of the remains of the settlement at:  http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/bulgaria/9646541/Bulgaria-archaeologists-find-Europes-most-prehistoric-town-Provadia-Solnitsata.html 

New York prosecutors aren’t saying whether they will file charges against a Twitter user who tweeted false news of Hurricane Sandy, including an assertion that the New York Stock Exchange was under three feet of water.  The person sending the dire news was outed as Shashank Tripathi, the now former campaign manager for a congressional candidate.  The incident has the Wall Street Journal (sub. req.) wondering:  Can spreading false information on Twitter result in a prison sentence?  A New York law makes it a crime, with a penalty of up to a year in jail, to falsely report or warn of a “catastrophe or emergency under circumstances in which it is not unlikely that public alarm or inconvenience will result."  The issue is whether the law would withstand First Amendment scrutiny under the U.S. Supreme Court June decision in United States v. Alvarez, which struck down a federal law that makes it a crime to lie about receiving military honors or decorations.  Duke University law professor Stuart Benjamin told the newspaper that a challenge may depend on whether sending disaster tweets had the same impact as sending a false report to the government, which would more clearly withstand a First Amendment challenge.  If not, a strong argument could be made that the New York law is unconstitutionally broad.  University of California at Los Angeles law professor Eugene Volokh told the newspaper he doesn't think there is "an Alvarez problem" with the New York law, given the concurring opinion in the case by Justice Stephen G. Breyer.  The justice agreed with the decision to strike down the law barring lies about military honors, while distinguishing laws that prevent lies when a tangible harm is likely to result.  As an example, he cited laws that bar lies about “the commission of crimes or catastrophes."   http://www.abajournal.com/news/article/can_false_hurricane_tweets_spur_prosecution_legal_experts_see_some_first_am/

Q:  When you are running for a second term as president, are you allowed to change your running mate?  Could President Barack Obama have picked someone besides Joe Biden?
A:  Yes and yes.  For example, President Franklin D. Roosevelt had three vice presidents, none of whom died in office: John Nance Garner, 1933-1941; Henry Wallace, 1941-1945; and Harry S. Truman, 1945.
Q:  Who are the presidents with four-letter last names? 

A:  James Polk, William Howard Taft, Gerald R. Ford, George H.W. Bush, and George W. Bush.
Q:  When did Veterans Day start?
A:  The armistice to World War I was Nov. 11, 1918.  Armistice Day on Nov. 11 became a national holiday in 1938.  It was renamed Veterans Day in 1954.   By the way, the name carries no apostrophe. -- U.S. Census Bureau, AP Stylebook.
Q:  How many veterans are there?
A:  About 21.5 million.  Nearly 43 percent are 65 years and older, and more than 16 percent have a service-related disability. -- U.S. Census Bureau.  http://www.thecourier.com/Opinion/columns/2012/Nov/JU/ar_JU_110512.asp?d=110512,2012,Nov,05&c=c_13