Ecologists preparing for boom in urban wildlife 'invaders' | Environment | The Observer. First came the urban fox, then flocks of colourful tropical parakeets. But now deer, woodpeckers, hedgehogs, jackdaws, birds of prey and exotic spiders, fish and insects are colonising British cities, say wildlife experts. Previously unseen muntjac, roe and fallow deer now boldly enter inner-city areas such as Finsbury Park in north London and have been seen in cemeteries, gardens and golf courses on the outskirts of Edinburgh, Sheffield, Bristol, Guildford and Newcastle, says the London Wildlife Trust's deputy director, Mathew Frith. He gave a warning that people could soon expect to see wild boar in suburban streets and gardens: "It will not be too long before they impact on our urban areas. They have no natural predators, it is complicated to hunt them, and their numbers are increasing. Birds of prey, once common in cities, have this year returned in numbers.
"They used to be persecuted, but now they are returning," says Frith. Crossrail earth to help create biggest man-made nature reserve in Europe | Environment. The first giant scoops of almost 5m tonnes of earth from deep beneath London were delivered to the Essex coast on Monday, the first step in creating the biggest man-made nature reserve in Europe. The soil, excavated from two new 21km rail tunnels under the capital, will transform the pancake-flat intensive farmland of Wallasea Island into a labyrinth of mudflats, saltmarshes and lagoons last seen on the site 400 years ago. The RSPB hopes the new reserve will see the return to England of lost breeding populations of spoonbills and Kentish plovers, as well as increasing already internationally important flocks of avocet, dunlin, redshank and lapwing, along with brent geese, wigeon and curlew in winter. They expect saltwater fish such as bass, herring and flounder to use the wetland as a nursery, helping the small local seal colony, and plants such as samphire, sea lavender and sea aster are expected to thrive.
Starbucks CEO to DC: You've been cut off - Aug. 16. NEW YORK (CNNMoney) -- Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz is fed up with Washington. And he is doing something about it. Spurred by what he describes as a failure of leadership on the part of lawmakers, Schultz is mounting a one-man bull rush against a political culture that has "chosen to put partisan and ideological purity over the well being of the people. " What does that mean? No more political donations -- not for anybody. And he's recruiting other CEOs to join him. "I am asking that all of us forgo political contributions until the Congress and the President return to Washington and deliver a fiscally, disciplined long term debt and deficit plan to the American people," Schultz wrote in a letter that was passed on to members of the NYSE and Nasdaq. The goal is to hit lawmakers right where it hurts: the pocketbook.
"All it seems people are interested in is re-election," Schultz told CNNMoney on Tuesday. The amount of money spent to influence elections has been steadily climbing. What Happened to Obama’s Passion? Edel Rodriguez Todd Heisler/The New York Times Litter, after an Obama-Biden train stop in Baltimore days before the 2009 inauguration.
Atlanta IT was a blustery day in Washington on Jan. 20, 2009, as it often seems to be on the day of a presidential inauguration. As I stood with my 8-year-old daughter, watching the president deliver his inaugural address, I had a feeling of unease. It wasn’t just that the man who could be so eloquent had seemingly chosen not to be on this auspicious occasion, although that turned out to be a troubling harbinger of things to come. It was that there was a story the American people were waiting to hear — and needed to hear — but he didn’t tell it. The stories our leaders tell us matter, probably almost as much as the stories our parents tell us as children, because they orient us to what is, what could be, and what should be; to the worldviews they hold and to the values they hold sacred.
“I know you’re scared and angry. The moral decay of our society is as bad at the top as the bottom. Tottenham ablaze: the riots began early on Sunday (Photo: AP) David Cameron, Ed Miliband and the entire British political class came together yesterday to denounce the rioters. They were of course right to say that the actions of these looters, arsonists and muggers were abhorrent and criminal, and that the police should be given more support. But there was also something very phony and hypocritical about all the shock and outrage expressed in parliament. MPs spoke about the week’s dreadful events as if they were nothing to do with them. I cannot accept that this is the case. It is not just the feral youth of Tottenham who have forgotten they have duties as well as rights.
Most of the people in this very expensive street were every bit as deracinated and cut off from the rest of Britain as the young, unemployed men and women who have caused such terrible damage over the last few days. Yet we celebrate people who live empty lives like this. But there are those who do not. Beware online “filter bubbles”: Eli Pariser on TED. Why America's Anglophiles Are Missing the Point of the Royal Wedding. Do You Suffer From Decision Fatigue? Schumpeter: Long walk to innovation. Lumpenproletariat. Lumpenproletariat is a term that was originally coined by Karl Marx to describe that layer of the working class that is unlikely to ever achieve class consciousness and is therefore lost to socially useful production, of no use to the revolutionary struggle, and may actually be an impediment to the realization of a classless society.[1] The word is derived from the German word Lumpenproletarier, a word literally meaning "miscreant" as well as "rag".
The term proletarian was first defined by Marx and Friedrich Engels in The German Ideology (1845) and later elaborated on in other works by Marx. In The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Napoleon (1852), Marx gives this description of the lumpenproletariat: In the Eighteenth Brumaire, Marx rhetorically describes the lumpenproletariat as a "class fraction" that constituted the political power base for Louis Bonaparte of France in 1848. Conceptions and reception[edit] Anarchist and late 20th century perspectives[edit] In the late 1960s, Huey P.