Professor William Sanderson, or Bill as he likes to be known, wades into the shallows of the Dornoch Firth as the sun breaks over the ragged skyline of the Scottish Highlands, turning the waters gold. Something in the water catches his eye and he stoops to pick it up. "This is a European native oyster," he explains. "They used to be very abundant in this site thousands of years ago right up to the 1800s." The shell in his hand is flatter and rounder than the faster growing Pacific oysters common in European restaurants today. It is also very rare, having been fished almost to extinction in British waters during the Industrial Revolution. Professor Sanderson wades into the shallows of the Dornoch Firth as the sun breaks over the ragged skyline of the Scottish Highlands, turning the waters gold. Something in the water catches his eye and he stoops to pick it up. "This is a European native oyster," he explains. "They used to be very abundant in this site thousands of years ago right up to the 1800s." The shell in his hand is flatter and rounder than the faster growing Pacific oysters common in European restaurants today. It is also very rare, having been fished almost to extinction in British waters during the Industrial Revolution. The popularity of the European oyster was its downfall. Since the 19th century, native oyster populations have declined by 95% in the UK. But there is a glimmer of hope for the indigenous oysters of the UK. Beneath these waters is a marine rewilding project that has transformed the Dornoch Firth, a narrow strip of water off the northeast coast of Scotland. The Dornoch Environmental Enhancement Project, or DEEP, began in 2014 and has to date seen the successful reintroduction of 20,000 European oysters on the firth's bed. The aim is to increase that number to a self-sustaining population of 4 million by 2025. The project is the result of an unlikely partnership. On the banks of the Dornoch sit the old buildings of the Glenmorangie Distillery, a Scotch whisky maker which has called the firth its home for over 170 years. "They were expanding their warehouses and the business was booming, and they wanted to know how to reduce the environmental footprint and improve their surroundings," Sanderson recounts. "Traditionally, we have discharged waste into the firth," says Edward Thom, the distillery manager. "What we now do is remove 97% of the waste product prior to it being discharged. The remaining 3% is then cleaned by the oyster beds that we're currently planting as part of the DEEP project." The DEEP project is just one of 19 now up and running around Europe, and the first to rebuild an oyster habitat that had been completely destroyed. Ed Scott-Clarke https://www.cnn.com/2021/12/08/uk/oysters-dornoch-firth-scotland-glenmorangie-c2e-spc-intl/index.html
The Hays Code was the informal name for The Motion Picture Production Code, adopted in 1930 but not seriously enforced until 1934. The Code was a set of rules governing American filmmaking that shaped—and in many ways stifled—American cinema for over three decades. It also happened to completely overlap with The Golden Age of Hollywood. The Pre-Code Era of Hollywood cinema stretched from around 1928 to 1933, and the contrast between films made before and after the Hays Code was enacted shows the impact censorship had on American cinema. Films like Howard Hawks' Scarface (1932) were far more brazen and upfront about Damn, It Feels Good to Be a Gangster!, lacking the Do Not Do This Cool Thing tacked-on correctives seen in films like Angels with Dirty Faces (though even during this era, with Hawks' film, the studio added scenes and changed the title to Scarface: The Shame of the Nation to appease local censorship boards). The landscape was also less politically correct, as actors and actresses played all kinds of roles. Lots of pre-Code films have a surprisingly feminist slant; working women are even regarded with sympathy and affection. https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/UsefulNotes/TheHaysCode The Hays Code was abandoned in 1968.
The pygmy rabbit (Brachylagus idahoensis) is a rabbit species native to the United States. It is also the only native rabbit species in North America to dig its own burrow. The pygmy rabbit differs significantly from species within either the Lepus (hare) or Sylvilagus (cottontail) genera and is generally considered to be within the monotypic genus Brachylagus. One isolated population, the Columbia Basin pygmy rabbit, is listed as an endangered species by the U.S. Federal government, though the International Union for Conservation of Nature lists the species as lower risk. The pygmy rabbit is the world's smallest leporid, with adults weighing between 375 and 500 grams (0.827 and 1.102 lb), and having a body length between 23.5 and 29.5 centimeters (9.3 and 11.6 in); females are slightly larger than males. The pygmy rabbit is distinguishable from other leporids by its small size, short ears, gray color, small hind legs, and lack of white fuzzy fur. The range of the pygmy rabbit includes most of the Great Basin and some of the adjacent intermountain areas of western North America. Pygmy rabbits are found in southwestern Montana from the extreme southwest corner near the Idaho border north to Dillon and Bannack in Beaverhead County. Distribution continues west to southern Idaho and southern Oregon and south to northern Utah, northern Nevada, and eastern California. Isolated populations occur in east-central Washington and Wyoming. The elevational range of pygmy rabbits in Nevada extends from 1,370–2,135 meters (4,495–7,005 ft) and in California from 1,520–1,615 meters (4,987–5,299 ft). The last male purebred Columbia Basin pygmy rabbit, found only in the Columbia Basin of Washington state, died March 30, 2006, at the Oregon Zoo in Portland. The last purebred female died in 2008. A crossbreeding program conducted by the Oregon Zoo, Washington State University and Northwest Trek is attempting to preserve the genetic line by breeding surviving females with the Idaho pygmy rabbit. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pygmy_rabbit
Anne Rice, the novelist whose lush, best-selling gothic tales, including “Interview With a Vampire,” reinvented the blood-drinking immortals as tragic antiheroes, died December 11, 2021. She was 80. Rice's 1976 novel “Interview With the Vampire" was later adapted, with a script by Rice, into the 1994 movie directed by Neil Jordan and starring Tom Cruise and Brad Pitt. It's also set to be adapted again in an upcoming TV series on AMC and AMC+ set to premiere next year. “Interview With the Vampire,” in which reporter Daniel Molloy interviews Louis de Pointe du Lac, was Rice's first novel but over the next five decades, she would write more than 30 books and sell more than 150 million copies worldwide. Thirteen of those were part of the “Vampire Chronicles" begun with her 1976 debut. “I wrote novels about people who are shut out life for various reasons," Rice wrote in her 2008 memoir “Called Out of Darkness: A Spiritual Confession.” “This became a great theme of my novels—how one suffers as an outcast, how one is shut out of various levels of meaning and, ultimately, out of human life itself." Born Howard Allen Frances O’Brien in 1941, she was raised in New Orleans, where many of her novels were set. Jake Coyle https://www.yahoo.com/entertainment/anne-rice-author-gothic-novels-084231735.html
No comments:
Post a Comment