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Border Fence Could Imperil Wildlife, Environmentalists Say
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS, The New York Times, May 22, 2007
ALAMO, Tex., May 21 (AP) — Nancy Brown drives a government truck slowly past mossy ponds, thick shrouds of beardlike Spanish moss and majestic ebony trees. As the truck rounds a bend near the greenish-brown Rio Grande, a bobcat scampers ahead. Somewhere in the forest, well-camouflaged by evolution, are ocelots and jaguarundi, both endangered species of cats.
These are some of the natural wonders in the Rio Grande Valley that Ms. Brown and other wildlife enthusiasts fear could be spoiled by the fences and adjacent roads the government plans to erect along the Mexican border to keep out illegal immigrants and smugglers.
Environmentalists have spent decades acquiring and preserving 90,000 riverfront acres of Texas scrub and forest and protecting their wildlife. Now they fear that the hundreds of miles of border fences will undo their work and kill some land animals by cutting them off from the Rio Grande, the only source of fresh water.
A fence could also prevent the ocelots and other animals from swimming across the river to mate with partners on the other side.
( Read More )
This Is Your Life (and How You Tell It)
By BENEDICT CAREY, The New York Times, May 22, 2007
For more than a century, researchers have been trying to work out the raw ingredients that account for personality, the sweetness and neuroses that make Anna Anna, the sluggishness and sensitivity that make Andrew Andrew. They have largely ignored the first-person explanation — the life story that people themselves tell about who they are, and why.
Stories are stories, after all. The attractive stranger at the airport bar hears one version, the parole officer another, and the P.T.A. board gets something entirely different. Moreover, the tone, the lessons, even the facts in a life story can all shift in the changing light of a person’s mood, its major notes turning minor, its depths appearing shallow.
Yet in the past decade or so a handful of psychologists have argued that the quicksilver elements of personal narrative belong in any three-dimensional picture of personality. And a burst of new findings are now helping them make the case. Generous, civic-minded adults from diverse backgrounds tell life stories with very similar and telling features, studies find; so likewise do people who have overcome mental distress through psychotherapy.
Every American may be working on a screenplay, but we are also continually updating a treatment of our own life — and the way in which we visualize each scene not only shapes how we think about ourselves, but how we behave, new studies find. By better understanding how life stories are built, this work suggests, people may be able to alter their own narrative, in small ways and perhaps large ones.
( Read More )
From left; Caulophryne jordani Fanfin seadevil, Marrus Orthocanna and Grimpoteuthis, or "Dumbo octopus."
Mysteries to Behold in the Dark Down Deep: Seadevils and Species Unknown
By WILLIAM J. BROAD, The New York Times, May 22, 2007
When, more than 70 years ago, William Beebe became the first scientist to descend into the abyss, he described a world of twinkling lights, silvery eels, throbbing jellyfish, living strings as “lovely as the finest lace” and lanky monsters with needlelike teeth.
“It was stranger than any imagination could have conceived,” he wrote in “Half Mile Down” (Harcourt Brace, 1934). “I would focus on some one creature and just as its outlines began to be distinct on my retina, some brilliant, animated comet or constellation would rush across the small arc of my submarine heaven and every sense would be distracted, and my eyes would involuntarily shift to this new wonder.”
Beebe sketched some of the creatures, because no camera of the day was able to withstand the rigors of the deep and record the nuances of this cornucopia of astonishments.
Colleagues reacted coolly. Some accused Beebe of exaggeration. One reviewer suggested that his heavy breathing had fogged the window of the submarine vessel, distorting the undersea views.
Today, the revolution in lights, cameras, electronics and digital photography is revealing a world that is even stranger than the one that Beebe struggled to describe.
( Read More )
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS, The New York Times, May 22, 2007
ALAMO, Tex., May 21 (AP) — Nancy Brown drives a government truck slowly past mossy ponds, thick shrouds of beardlike Spanish moss and majestic ebony trees. As the truck rounds a bend near the greenish-brown Rio Grande, a bobcat scampers ahead. Somewhere in the forest, well-camouflaged by evolution, are ocelots and jaguarundi, both endangered species of cats.
These are some of the natural wonders in the Rio Grande Valley that Ms. Brown and other wildlife enthusiasts fear could be spoiled by the fences and adjacent roads the government plans to erect along the Mexican border to keep out illegal immigrants and smugglers.
Environmentalists have spent decades acquiring and preserving 90,000 riverfront acres of Texas scrub and forest and protecting their wildlife. Now they fear that the hundreds of miles of border fences will undo their work and kill some land animals by cutting them off from the Rio Grande, the only source of fresh water.
A fence could also prevent the ocelots and other animals from swimming across the river to mate with partners on the other side.
( Read More )
This Is Your Life (and How You Tell It)
By BENEDICT CAREY, The New York Times, May 22, 2007
For more than a century, researchers have been trying to work out the raw ingredients that account for personality, the sweetness and neuroses that make Anna Anna, the sluggishness and sensitivity that make Andrew Andrew. They have largely ignored the first-person explanation — the life story that people themselves tell about who they are, and why.
Stories are stories, after all. The attractive stranger at the airport bar hears one version, the parole officer another, and the P.T.A. board gets something entirely different. Moreover, the tone, the lessons, even the facts in a life story can all shift in the changing light of a person’s mood, its major notes turning minor, its depths appearing shallow.
Yet in the past decade or so a handful of psychologists have argued that the quicksilver elements of personal narrative belong in any three-dimensional picture of personality. And a burst of new findings are now helping them make the case. Generous, civic-minded adults from diverse backgrounds tell life stories with very similar and telling features, studies find; so likewise do people who have overcome mental distress through psychotherapy.
Every American may be working on a screenplay, but we are also continually updating a treatment of our own life — and the way in which we visualize each scene not only shapes how we think about ourselves, but how we behave, new studies find. By better understanding how life stories are built, this work suggests, people may be able to alter their own narrative, in small ways and perhaps large ones.
( Read More )
From left; Caulophryne jordani Fanfin seadevil, Marrus Orthocanna and Grimpoteuthis, or "Dumbo octopus."
Mysteries to Behold in the Dark Down Deep: Seadevils and Species Unknown
By WILLIAM J. BROAD, The New York Times, May 22, 2007
When, more than 70 years ago, William Beebe became the first scientist to descend into the abyss, he described a world of twinkling lights, silvery eels, throbbing jellyfish, living strings as “lovely as the finest lace” and lanky monsters with needlelike teeth.
“It was stranger than any imagination could have conceived,” he wrote in “Half Mile Down” (Harcourt Brace, 1934). “I would focus on some one creature and just as its outlines began to be distinct on my retina, some brilliant, animated comet or constellation would rush across the small arc of my submarine heaven and every sense would be distracted, and my eyes would involuntarily shift to this new wonder.”
Beebe sketched some of the creatures, because no camera of the day was able to withstand the rigors of the deep and record the nuances of this cornucopia of astonishments.
Colleagues reacted coolly. Some accused Beebe of exaggeration. One reviewer suggested that his heavy breathing had fogged the window of the submarine vessel, distorting the undersea views.
Today, the revolution in lights, cameras, electronics and digital photography is revealing a world that is even stranger than the one that Beebe struggled to describe.
( Read More )
