Madame Butterfly

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Posts posted by Madame Butterfly

  14. Posted

    The first song that moved me greatly when I heard it. It was definitely how my Beloved made me feel. Awed and amazed that he loved me just as I am.

     

    I can be an (Ignore me, I'm using profanity) of the grandest kind

    I can withhold like it’s going out of style

    I can be the moodiest baby and you’ve never met anyone

    who is as negative as I am sometimes

     

    I am the wisest woman you've ever met.

    I am the kindest soul with whom you've connected.

    I have the bravest heart that you've ever seen

    And you've never met anyone

    Who's as positive as I am sometimes.

     

    You see everything, you see every part

    You see all my light and you love my dark

    You dig everything of which I'm ashamed

    There's not anything to which you can’t relate

    And you’re still here

     

    I blame everyone else, not my own partaking

    My passive-aggressiveness can be devastating

    I'm terrified and mistrusting

    And you’ve never met anyone as,

    As closed down as I am sometimes.

     

    You see everything, you see every part

    You see all my light and you love my dark

    You dig everything of which I'm ashamed

    There's not anything to which you can’t relate

    And you’re still here

     

    What I resist, persists, and speaks louder than I know

    What I resist, you love, no matter how low or high I go

     

    I'm the funniest woman you've ever known.

    I am the dullest woman you've ever known.

    I'm the most gorgeous woman you've ever known

    And you've never met anyone as, as everything as I am sometimes.

     

    You see everything, you see every part

    You see all my light and you love my dark

    You dig everything of which I'm ashamed

    There's not anything to which you can’t relate

    And you’re still here

     

    And you’re still here

    And you're still here...

  16. Posted

    Triple-Digit Temperatures Scorch the Midwest

    By NATHANIEL HERNANDEZ, AP

     

     

     

     

     

    CHICAGO - Skyrocketing temperatures surpassed the 100-degree mark here for the first time in six years, prompting Chicago officials to implement an emergency response plan honed after hundreds of people died in a heat wave a decade ago.

     

    Sweat-drenched city workers fanned out across Chicago on Sunday, checking on elderly residents and shuttling people to cooling centers. By late afternoon, temperatures at Midway Airport had reached 104 degrees, just one degree lower than the highest temperature ever recorded in the city, according to the National Weather Service

     

    "If you looked at who died in 1995, it was not triathletes, it wasn't people at ballparks, it wasn't people at outdoor festivals, it was the elderly who were living alone," said Dr. William Paul, acting commissioner of the city's Public Health Department.

     

    Chicago was among scores of cities suffering amid a blazing heat wave that stretched across parts of the upper Midwest. Other areas in the region also reached the triple-digits — temperatures hit 102 degrees in St. Louis and 101 in Iowa City, Iowa. Twenty-one people, mostly homeless, have died from heat in Arizona this summer.

     

    In Illinois, Chicago officials on Sunday implemented an emergency response plan that was honed after 700 people died during a July 1995 heat wave. An automated calling system began contacting 40,000 elderly residents at 9 a.m. to inform them about the heat.

     

    "You can't wait for an emergency to find these folks," said Joyce Gallagher, commissioner of the city's Department on Aging. "On a day like today, let's just say every single senior who doesn't have air conditioning is at risk."

     

     

     

    Chicago Fire Department spokeswoman Rosa Escareno said three people appear to have died Sunday from heat-related injuries, but she added that it would be days before causes of death would be confirmed. The Cook County medical examiner's office had not attributed any deaths to the weather.

     

    Sunday's broiling conditions came on the 71st anniversary of the highest temperature ever recorded in Chicago. The mercury hit 105 degrees at O'Hare International Airport on July 24, 1934, said Bob Somrek, a weather service meteorologist.

     

    An excessive heat warning was to remain in effect until Monday for most of central and eastern Missouri, as well as western portions of Illinois.

     

    The sweltering temperatures, however, did not stop tens of thousands of people from attending Lollapalooza, a two-day music festival held in Chicago this weekend.

  20. Posted

    Dupage Arpt. 07/24/2005 8:53 PM EDT

    Temperature: 92°F 33°C

    Conditions: Fair

    Winds: WSW 10 MPH WSW 16 KPH

    Relative Humidity: 54%

    Barometer: 29.88 Rising

    Visibility: 10.00 Miles 16.09 Kilometers

    Feels Like: 100°F

     

    Can you believe it's this hot and the sun isn't out anymore. :P

  22. Posted

    Strange Caterpillar Devours Snails

    By Rossella Lorenzi, Discovery News

     

     

    July 22, 2005 — A bizarre caterpillar has been caught red-handed in Hawaii using its silk in a spiderly fashion to ambush and devour snails. The shells are then left hanging around.

     

    Flesh-eating caterpillars are extremely rare, and always prefer to eat other insects — never snails, which are mollusks.

     

    "It's kind of like finding a wolf that is diving for clams," said entomologist Daniel Rubinoff of the University of Hawaii.

     

    Rubinoff and William Haines published their discovery in the July 22 issue of the journal Science.

     

     

    The initial discovery of the snail-eating caterpillars came when Rubinoff placed a new Hawaiian moth caterpillar of the genus Hyposmocoma in a box and offered it algae, lichens and other vegetable food, the traditional fare of caterpillars on the rest of planet Earth. The caterpillars wouldn't touch the stuff, he said.

     

    Then, only because he'd been told the caterpillars decorate with snail shells, Rubinoff offered the caterpillar a live snail. To his disbelief, the caterpillar took out right after the snail and made a meal of it. "It just blew me away," said Rubinoff.

     

    In fact, Rubinoff's initial disbelief didn't budge until several snail meals later, seen also by other people he abruptly dragged into his lab to witness the unheard-of caterpillar dining preference. He wasn't entirely convinced it was real, he said, until he found four other species of flesh-eating caterpillars on other Hawaiian Islands.

     

    The five new species of snail-eating Hyposmocoma caterpillars belong to a rather exclusive dinner club among insects, said Rubinoff. Out of at least 150,000 known species of moths and butterflies in the world, there are only about 200 species that are not vegetarians — just 0.13 percent.

     

    More than just being rare in their food preferences, however, the newfound snail eaters are a great example of evolution at work. They show how the few animals that make it to remote, isolated islands can then evolve into new species with novel lifestyles.

     

    The Hawaiian Islands are considered among the most remote in the world when it comes to natural access by animals and plants.

     

    "It's not isolated for whales or migratory birds, but for most terrestrial organisms the Hawaiian Islands are very, very isolated," said Hawaiian spider expert Rosemary Gillespie of the University of California at Berkeley.

     

    As a result, those organisms that reached the first Hawaiian island found a lot of space to grow, and a lot of possibilities for making a living, Gillespie explained.

     

    That's why the Hawaiian Islands have one of the highest numbers of local, or endemic, species per square mile on the planet.

     

    As for how the caterpillars reached the other islands, they might have followed a pattern seen in other Hawaiian species, Gillespie surmised. Many Hawaiian species appear to have hopped from older islands to younger islands as new volcanic islands in the chain were created.

     

    Each hop offered new opportunities to evolve into new species, a concept first observed and explained in the 19th century by none other than Charles Darwin when he described the diverse finches of the Galapagos Islands.

  23. Posted

    Alarm Raised over North Atlantic Whale Deaths

    By Larry O'Hanlon, Discovery News

     

     

    July 22, 2005 — The recent, unprecedented accidental deaths of eight North Atlantic right whales — at least six of which were female — have shaken the belief among experts that the endangered whales were almost on the road to recovery.

     

    There are believed to be only about 350 North Atlantic right whales alive today, out of many thousands that once roamed the cooler northern waters from Florida to New England. The death of so many females of breeding age in one year is a terrible sign, said whale researchers in an article in the July 22 issue of the journal Science.

     

    "We have only less than 100 reproducing females," said Scott Kraus, of the New England Aquarium in Boston, and lead author of the Science article. "So we're looking at a very rapid decline in reproducing individuals."

     

     

    Marine Mammals Eavesdrop on Orcas

    It's simply a matter of counting deaths versus births, he explains.

     

    There had been optimism about the prospects of the North Atlantic right whales after last year's birth of 28 calves — up from 16 the year before, said Kraus. But when the number of deaths is factored in, plus the number of individually identified whales known from surveys that have just disappeared — never to be seen again — the death rate of the whales is more like 47 over the last 16 months, said Kraus.

     

    "The fact of the matter is that we're still killing them off at a rate that is unsustainable," said Kraus.

     

    That means the North Atlantic species of right whales will certainly go extinct without immediate and decisive action, said Kraus.

     

    Because the North Atlantic right whales are protected from commercial whaling, the leading causes of death are collisions with boats and entanglements with fishing gear, Kraus says. Re-design of fishing equipment would help, but the same laws that are designed to protect the whales have proven dangerously sluggish in approving new, whale-friendly fishing technology, he said.

     

    The fate of the North Atlantic right whales bodes unwell for other whales too, said whale researcher Todd O'Hara of the University of Alaska at Fairbanks.

     

    "The North Atlantic right whale is not unique," O'Hara said of the deaths from boat collisions and fishing gear entanglement. The same problems exist for the North Pacific right whale, as well as other Pacific whale species, he said.

     

    "This is not just a regional management issue," said O'Hara. "We should be looking at (the North Atlantic right whales) closely because it could be a sign of what could happen elsewhere."

     

    One of the frustrating contradictions in the battle to save whales today, says O'Hara, is that despite historic drops in commercial whaling, whales are still facing growing threats from fisheries and more traffic along shipping lanes.

     

    But deaths from collisions and fishing gear entanglements don't seem to outrage the public the way whaling did, he said.

     

    There is far more of a public outcry, for instance, when a few whales mysteriously strand themselves on beaches than when scores die from human activities at sea, said O'Hara.

     

    "In this case we know what the causes of death are," said O'Hara, but the measures to prevent the deaths still aren't in place

  24. Posted

    Treasure from ancient Pompeii unveiled

    Associated Press

    silver.jpg

    Associated Press

    Archaeologists found a basket containing the silverware in the ruins of a thermal bath.

    ROME — Decorated cups and fine silver platters were once again polished and on display today as archaeologists unveiled an ancient Roman dining set that lay hidden for two millennia in the volcanic ash of Pompeii.

     

     

    In 2000, archaeologists found a wicker basket containing the silverware in the ruins of a thermal bath near the remains of the Roman city, said Pietro Giovanni Guzzo, head of Pompeii's archaeological office.

     

    The basket was filled with the volcanic ash that buried the city when Mount Vesuvius erupted in A.D. 79. When experts X-rayed it, they saw the objects preserved in the ash, which killed thousands of people but kept the town almost intact, providing precious information on domestic life in the ancient world.

     

     

     

    Experts have spent the last five years extracting and restoring the 20 pieces of silver that were left behind by their owners as they fled the eruption, Guzzo said as he presented the treasure to authorities and the media in Rome.

     

    During the following months, researchers will study the set and hope to learn more about the city's economic status at the time of its destruction, Guzzo said.

     

    The pieces will then go on display in 2006 at the National Archaeological Museum of Naples, 18 miles north of Pompeii, he said.

  25. Posted

    Scientists seek fresh chance to dig up Stonehenge's secrets

     

    Robin McKie, science editor

    Sunday July 24, 2005

    The Observer

     

    Stonehenge has always mystified. Julius Caesar thought it was the work of druids, medieval scholars believed it was the handiwork of Merlin, while local folk tales simply blamed the devil.

    Now scientists are demanding a full-scale research programme be launched to update our knowledge of the monument and discover precisely who built it and its burial barrow graves.

     

    This is the key recommendation of Stonehenge: an Archaeological Research Framework, edited by Timothy Darvill of Bournemouth University, soon to be published by English Heritage. It highlights serious flaws in our knowledge of the monument, which is now a World Heritage Site.

     

    'Stonehenge has not been well served by archaeology,' admitted Dr David Miles, chief archaeology adviser to English Heritage. 'Much of the area was excavated in the 19th century, when gentleman amateurs - glorified treasure-hunters, really - would get their labourers to dig great trenches straight into its barrows and graves.

     

    'Then they would ransack them, taking away the human remains and grave goods. It was Indiana Jones stuff. We need to get that material back.'

     

    Even in the 20th century, archaeological work, although carried out by professionals, was generally poor, said Miles. For example, the long barrows - the most ancient of the communal graves built round Stonehenge - have never been properly excavated. Yet these could be the resting places of the people who first made this area sacred.

     

    'It is over 50 years since substantial excavations have taken place at Stonehenge and more than two decades since the small-scale excavations,' the report notes. This research gap needs to be rectified.

     

    Crucially, science can now reveal rich details about prehistoric people from their remains. This is demonstrated by the 'Amesbury Archer', recently found in a 4,000-year-old grave, one of Europe's richest, near Stonehenge.

     

    He was surrounded by about 100 items, including golden hair ornaments - some of the earliest gold objects found in Britain.

     

    But his teeth provided the real surprise. Tests on their enamel, formed in early childhood and which contains telltale chemical signatures from local soil and rocks, showed the archer came from the Alps while the ornaments found in his grave were traced to Spain and France.

     

    This discovery suggests that metalworkers from the Continent had already begun to trade and work in tin, copper and other metals in Britain 4,000 years ago and may have played key roles in building Stonehenge. The monument appears to have been the centre of major activity by travellers roaming across Britain, Ireland and the Continent.

     

    Archaeologists now want to hunt down the remains taken from barrows around Stonehenge: some may be in local museums, others in private hands. 'Some people probably have them under their beds,' said Miles.

     

    Armed with these materials, scientists could then recreate much of our ancient past. It might even be possible to make facial reconstructions of some individuals.

     

    Stonehenge took at least 1,000 years to build and its use clearly changed over the millennia. Recent studies suggest it may have been 'Christianised' in the first millennium AD and at one point was used as a place of execution by the Anglo-Saxons to judge from the primitive gallows, dated to around the 7th century, found there.

     

    Some scientists have even argued that the great circles could have been used as an astronomical observatory or a computer. This idea is generally dismissed by the report, although the alignment of its stones to the rising midwinter sun, a date associated with the return of light and warmth, is widely accepted.

     

    The great stone circles are therefore concerned with death and rebirth. Built mainly by Stone Age peoples, without the aid of metals, Stonehenge became the focus of intense interest a few centuries later when metal-working Bronze Age craftsmen from across Europe arrived in the neighbourhood. During this period Stonehenge appears to have become the fashionable place to be buried.

     

    Indeed, it may be that the area was split into a Land of the Living, where ceremonial parties were held by relatives, and the Domain of the Dead, with Stonehenge at its centre, where people were buried.

     

    'There is no site like this anywhere else and we badly need to improve our understanding of it,' said Miles. 'This is not a call for an autopsy of the place. We are not going to make a mess. It will be sensitive: more like targeted brain surgery.