n-a-s-a: All the Water on Planet Earth Illustration Credit & Copyright: Jack Cook, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, Howard Perlman, USGS Explanation: How much of planet Earth is made of water? Very little, actually. Although oceans of water cover about 70 percent of Earth’s surface, these oceans are shallow compared to the Earth’s radius. The above illustration shows what would happen is all of the water on or near the surface of the Earth were bunched up into a ball. The radius of this ball would be only about 700 kilometers, less than half the radius of the Earth’s Moon  WowowowowowowowWOW.
vicemag: This moose was diagnosed with brain worms, Seth tells us. “Collar data indicated it had not moved in several weeks. We hiked in and found it barely alive, but unable to move its hind legs. It was euthanized and brain tissue was sent for diagnosis.” There’s been a good deal of talk about the weather lately. According to the National Ocean and Atmospheric Administration, this March was the hottest on record in the lower 48 states. And this past winter? A joke. The fourth warmest on record, and the third-least snowy. There have been earthquakes and tornados, and even reports of hybrid sharks. Most of us have registered this elemental weirdness in one way or another. Our “non-winter” has come up in countless conversations I’ve had in past months. Some people (usually liberals) see it as a result of man-made global warming. Others (usually conservatives) call bullshit on the theory. But for the most part, it hasn’t caused much alarm. Until very recently, most Americans have treated the issue of climate change as something to be debated—as something abstract, even political. But not all Americans. Native Americans, the people who have been on this land the longest, tend to consider climate change a matter of fact. For years indigenous individuals and groups, like the Indigenous Environmental Network, have voiced concern over climate change, pointing as much to changes they’ve seen in ancestral lands as to scientific studies. Now, month after month of unseasonably hot and destructive weather and reports of strange animal behavior have confirmed many suspicions that dramatic shifts are underway.    “People who have deep inter-generational knowledge about a landscape or a seascape aren’t wasting any time talking about whether or not this is happening,” said Daniel Wildcat, a professor at Haskell Indian Nations University in Lawrence, Kansas, and an expert on indigenous environmental thinking, who has seen “almost an invasion” of armadillos move north into his state. “I think there’s a difficulty in getting through to people who live in a society that’s so geographically mobile,” Wildcat said. “Indigenous people are stepping out on this because their tribal identities, who they are as people, don’t come from nation-state status or written constitutions. Their identities are emergent out of landscapes and seascapes.” In northeastern Minnesota, along Lake Superior, the fastest-warming fresh body of water in the world, a group of Chippewa Indians are dealing with the issue of changing climate and identity head on. “Who we are is changing because the land is changing,” said Seth Moore, a wildlife biologist for the Trust Lands Department of the Grand Portage Band of Lake Superior Chippewa. There were days last winter when the weather was 60 degrees higher than average in Grand Portage, Moore told me. And he said the warming is nothing new. The average August maximum temperature has increased by about five degrees Fahrenheit from 1960 to the present, while the average February snow depth has decreased by about 50 percent since 1950. The changes have badly disturbed the ecosystem in Grand Portage, resulting in an invasion of gray squirrels from the south, the total depopulation of trout in some area lakes, and an exponential increase in deer. Deer in particular have spelled trouble for moose, the Chippewa’s primary cultural subsistence species, which has plummeted 60 percent in population over the past decade. Continue
n-a-s-a: Green Flash and Super Moon Image Credit & Copyright: Laurent Laveder (PixHeaven.net / TWAN)  The epic green flash.
vicemag: HBO Gave Us Our Own TV Show After many months of late-night gentleman talks with people in the upper echelons of the television industry over cigars and bourbon in smoky back-rooms, we are proud to announce that we now have our very own TV show on HBO. It will simply be called VICE and will serve as the harbinger of a new age in documentary programming. If you’re reading this, you’ve undoubtedly been enjoying our videotaped hijinks on computer screens for some time. So, if you’re capable, imagine how big of a boner your eyes are going to get when everything gets multiplied by the power of the undisputed champion of television channels (and probably the only one still worth watching). Of course, the show will be hosted by VICE founder Shane Smith, along with a selection of our top correspondents who you will already be very familiar with if you’re a regular visitor to this site. The rest of the crew will be rounded out by fellow HBO iconoclast Bill Maher, who will serve as the show’s executive producer, and real-deal newsman’s man Fareed Zakaria will serve as a consultant. Essentially, the show will be what we do best: a variety of mind-melting stories from around the globe and immersive detours into the scariest, most absurd, and flat-out unbelievable cultures and situations around the globe. Here are a few ideas we’re spitballing right now: a portrait of child Taliban suicide bombers, visiting underground voodoo heroin clinics in New York, riding along with Somalian pirates, and booking a teeth cleaning with a Satanic dentist in the Pacific Northwest. We don’t have an air date for the premiere quite yet, but we’re so excited we couldn’t wait to tell you about it. Just keep vigilantly checking VICE.com and we’ll announce the date sometime in the coming months. Finally!
North Carolina's anti-gay amendment also screws straight people. →
awesomepeoplehangingouttogether: Anthony Bourdain and the Black Keys The best tumblr. EVER.
lazyyogi: ***Saw this at 545am during my commute and it made me less bitchy :P
n-a-s-a: Supermoon Over Paris Image Credit & Copyright: VegaStar Carpentier
vicemag: David Lynch recently told the Huffington Post that for years, in addition to the massive quantity of coffee he drank in diners, the filmmaker also gulped down more than 20 cups of instant coffee (specifically out of Styrofoam cups) a day. Everyone knows instant coffee is fucking disgusting, including Lynch, but his mantra is “Any coffee is better than no coffee.”  Lynch recently released his own signature blend of coffee beans in House Blend, Decaf French Roast, and Espresso Roast varieties, and because I am Super Fan No. 1, I ordered a five-pound bag of the House Blend and set out to see if I could drink 20 cups of the stuff in one day just like my hero.  I figured my little experiment would go OK because, like Lynch, I love coffee in an obsessive way. But as I discovered, jumping from three cups a day to 20 is something that needs to be done gradually. I made it to 11 before I had to stop and switch over to chewing ice cubes and taking handfuls of aspirin to calm my burning stomach and throbbing head. The other major side effect was having to “go to the bathroom” in ways I’ve never experienced.  Here’s a breakdown of how things went.
Sweet night #boston (Taken with Instagram at Taranta)
motherjones: Kevin Drum sums up today’s jobs report: “[I]t’s only one month, but it sure looks like we’re living through an economy that just can’t quite pull itself into a serious recovery.” Happy Friday!
nedhepburn: I’m not “watching Downton Abbey” or anything but Jessica Brown-Findlay? Hellooooooooooo, nurse! Except that I do watch Downton Abbey.
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