Obama’s remarks were an eloquent reminder that travel forges connections, inspires transformation and builds empathy.

What is the most memorable travel experience you’ve had and why?

I’m pretty well-travelled, so it’s hard to pick one. I think it’s fair to say that, for me, travelling now with my children is what’s most memorable. There’s something spectacular about seeing a place, experiencing a different culture, being exposed to new ideas. Travel makes you grow. But as a parent, when you are able to watch that sense of discovery in your children’s eyes, that is more special than anything else.

So, I’d say that the most memorable trips that I’ve taken have been the ones with the girls. Some of them have been spectacular – like us walking through the Kremlin when I was president and Sasha was about seven years old and she had, like, a trench coat on so she looked like an international spy. That was a great trip because we went from Russia and then went to Italy. I was there for the G20, but they went to Rome and they were able to also go to the Vatican and meet the Pope. Then we went to Ghana and there was dancing on the tarmac.

So, to see a 10 year old and a seven year old be able to experience that sweep of the world, to some degree for the first time, is something I will always remember. But you know, it’s also fun travelling with them now at the ages of 20 and 17. In some ways, travelling with them now is more precious because one’s already left the house and the other one’s about to leave the house, so if you can entice them with a really nice trip, they’re spending more time with you – because they can’t afford it.

 

Read more:

http://www.bbc.com/travel/story/20190425-barack-obama-on-why-travel-matters

Termites are among the most successful groups of insects on Earth, colonising most landmasses except Antarctica. Their colonies range in size from a few hundred individuals to enormous societies with several million individuals. Termite queens have the longest lifespan of any insect in the world, with some queens reportedly living up to 30 to 50 years. Unlike ants, which undergo a complete metamorphosis, each individual termite goes through an incomplete metamorphosis that proceeds through egg, nymph, and adult stages. Colonies are described as superorganisms because the termites form part of a self-regulating entity: the colony itself.[3]

The non-reproductive castes of termites are wingless and rely exclusively on their six legs for locomotion. The alates fly only for a brief amount of time, so they also rely on their legs.[46] The appearance of the legs is similar in each caste, but the soldiers have larger and heavier legs. The structure of the legs is consistent with other insects: the parts of a leg include a coxa, trochanter, femur, tibia and the tarsus.[46] The number of tibial spurs on an individual's leg varies. Some species of termite have an arolium, located between the claws, which is present in species that climb on smooth surfaces but is absent in most termites.[51]

Unlike in ants, the hind-wings and fore-wings are of equal length.[4] Most of the time, the alates are poor flyers; their technique is to launch themselves in the air and fly in a random direction.[52] Studies show that in comparison to larger termites, smaller termites cannot fly long distances. When a termite is in flight, its wings remain at a right angle, and when the termite is at rest, its wings remain parallel to the body.

Read more:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Termite#Life_cycle

Unlike termites, humans do not have many natural predators, except diseases, and decoding such as cancers which are often degeneration of the human body itself — or each other fighting for oil, territory and supremacy. According to some scientists, Homo sapiens should be considered as a pest on planet earth.

Game of Thrones — What should a Christian’s stance be?

By Shane Idleman, CP Guest Contributor

 

…

… Does a pastor really think he can watch garbage and then speak boldly from the pulpit? If a pastor fills his mind with the world all week and expects the Spirit of God to speak boldly through him from the pulpit, he will be gravely mistaken. “The sermon cannot rise in its life-giving forces above the man. Dead men give out dead sermons, and dead sermons kill. Everything depends on the spiritual character of the preacher” (E.M. Bounds). Who he is all week is who he will be when he steps to the pulpit. We are called to the separated life guided by the Holy Spirit not Hollywood.

What goes in the heart ultimately comes out in actions. The Scriptures are crystal clear on the issue of entertainment; there’s really no debate. Philippians 4:8 says to fix our thoughts on what is true and honorable and right, and to think about things that are pure and lovely and admirable and worthy of praise not violence, nudity, and debauchery.

https://www.christianpost.com/voice/game-of-thrones-what-should-a-christians-stance-be.html


Game of Thrones — What should a Scientist’s stance be?

By Gus Leonisky
After a long day’s work, one could be forgiven (hey, you can do what you bloody like... there is no need to forgive) to indulge in a bit of entertainment. The test tubes have given a positive result about the architectural buntbunitic of native AMPA receptorals elucidated by cryo-EM… or the economical heteromeric GluA1/2 AMPA bizoners in complex with the auxiliary stufiltarion TARP y16.5 are working excellently in the cyclotronic parasitical separator machine...

What a reality-narrative of human's humanity can’t provide, apart from sorry legends — like those of Napoleon, Hitler or Stalin — entertainment now has the tools to enlarge fantastic big lies with a technology that one Shakespeare may have refused to use for being too melodramatic and not psychological enough. We’ve told fancy fake stories since day dot because the reality is pretty boring and we have to make up stupid reasons for the weather being shit from time to time. 

We love the violence because we want to punch our next door neighbour’s face for letting his cat “deposit" on our front lawn. We love the nudity that we’ve have not seen for yonk in such pure beauty, by depriving each other of good bodies since we got married due to middle ageing. We love telling bawdy jokes and singing dirty songs, we enjoy drinking beyond the road safety limit, we indulge in loud farting and obviously we eat too much with our elbows on the table of our friends, where we will not be invited again ever, unless they pissed themselves laughing and don’t remember a thing the next day. Is this the Game of Prunes?
So what did the Game of Thrown have that we never had before? I have no idea. I never watched GoT. But I can imagine the Borgias, the Machiavellis and the Medicis in a backstabbing contest with the other Florentine families pitching in for good measures with witchcraft and trying forever to turn lead into gold. Witchcraft is a good device to plug holes in a narrative that lacks credibility beyond the treachery and the blood of death… 
Meanwhile, the so-called “scriptures” are full-on exhausted manual of sorcery from a non-existent bearded guy who can wipe his Earth like he wipes his arse — like during Noah’s big floods or an Yankee president supervising tornadoes by doing nothing about global warming — versus a devilish little guy who learned all his trickery from the merchant of soiled souls… Sure, the “magic” spirit of god speaks boldly through the self-appointed preachers who know how to twist your guilt into dollars. The humility is lacking, the simplistic garbage flies like pigs or pies in the sky. The Game of Turds competes with the religious hubris for your entertainment dedicated brain-space. Both have passed their used-by date.
Here, we have to understand our genial animality rather than accept our fake status of sinners.
http://www.yourdemocracy.net.au/drupal/node/36700

Gus Leonisky
Religious-garbage incinerator...

The decision reflects how various facets of the Earth have been shaped by human activity 

On May 21, a 34-member panel of the Anthropocene Working Group (AWG) voted 29-4 in favour of designating a new geological epoch — the Anthropocene. 

The vote signals the end of the Holocene Epoch, which began 11,700 years ago.

According to Nature, the panel plans to submit a formal proposal for the new epoch by 2021 to the International Commission on Stratigraphy, which oversees the official geologic time chart.

That nearly 90% voted in favour of a naming the new epoch to reflect how the Earth has been shaped by human activity, is not surprising, as an informal vote had already conducted three years ago in Cape Town at the 2016 International Geological Congress. 

The term ‘Anthropocene’ was coined in 2000 by Nobel Laureate Paul Crutzen and Eugene Stoermer to denote the present geological time interval in which human activity has profoundly altered many conditions and processes on Earth.

According to the AWG, the phenomena associated with the Anthropocene include an order-of-magnitude increase in erosion and sediment transport associated with urbanisation and agriculture, marked and abrupt anthropogenic perturbations of the cycles of elements such as carbon, environmental changes generated by these perturbations, including global warming, sea-level rise, and ocean acidification, rapid changes in the biosphere and finally proliferation and global dispersion of many new ‘minerals’ and ‘rocks’ including concrete, fly ash and plastics, and the myriad ‘technofossils’ produced from these and other materials.

The focus is now on identifying a definitive geologic marker or golden spike (technically called Global boundary Stratotype Section and Point) to signal the beginning of the Anthropocene Epoch. The golden spike must be present globally and should be a part of deposits for geological record.

Many in the AWG believe that artificial radionuclides spread across the world by atomic bomb tests from the early 1950s would serve as the golden spike. The radionuclides are present almost everywhere — from marine sediments to ice layers and even stalagmites and stalactites.

Once a formal proposal is made by the AWG, it will be considered by several more groups of the International Commission on Stratigraphy. 

The final ratification will be made by the executive committee of the International Union of Geological Sciences.

Not surprising...

Read more:

https://www.thehindu.com/sci-tech/science/scientists-give-the-thumbs-up-for-anthropocene-epoch/article27279092.ece?

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by Nebojsa Malic, senior writer at RT

Plummeting oil prices have sparked another round of predictions about the economic collapse of Russia – this time from US President Donald Trump, who sounded a lot like his predecessor Barack Obama on the subject.

The price of crude oil has crashed to $20 this week, due to a one-two punch of Saudi Arabia flooding the market with record output and a sharp drop in global demand owing to the coronavirus pandemic. Asked about it during a press conference about the pandemic on Thursday, Trump described the price war as “very bad” for Saudi Arabia and “devastating” to Russia, but helpful in a way to American consumers as it will lower gas prices at the pump. 

“We have a lot of power over the situation,” Trump added, saying the US might get involved in mediating the dispute “at the appropriate time.”

US oil companies are pushing for diplomatic pressure on Riyadh to cut oil production and threatening Russia with more sanctions in order to force it to accept production cuts, the Wall Street Journal reported on Thursday, citing anonymous sources.

 

If Trump’s words sounded strangely familiar, that’s because they were. Back in December 2014, President Barack Obama argued that it was “part of our rationale” that the “only thing” keeping the Russian economy “afloat” was the price of oil. His government counted on sanctions weakening Russia to the “inevitable” oil price disruptions, so that “They'd have enormous difficulty managing it.”

 

Obama’s reasoning was that Russia’s economy relies on oil, while the US economy is “dynamic, vital” and has “iPads and movies and you name it,” according to his interview with NPR.

Around the same time, Russian President Vladimir Putin was saying that the economy will bounce back from the combination of sanctions and oil prices within two years in the worst case scenario. That ended up being the case, and by 2018 the Russian oilmen were again enjoying a bonanza, even though the price of crude had not recovered to pre-2014 levels. 

Last week, Russia signaled that it has enough reserves to cover budget deficits for years, even if oil prices stay between $25-30 a barrel. While a $20 price may shorten that somewhat, Moscow was clearly sending a message to Riyadh and Washington that attempts to crash its budget will fail.

 

Read more:

https://www.rt.com/news/483546-trump-russia-devastated-oil-price/

 

 

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