I just found out about Savage Gulf State Park in Tennessee. I want to visit.
It's not THAT far away; it is located northwest of Chattanooga.
Below are three reasons why I'd like to visit. But I'd have to get my legs in shape, apparently.
Official website: Savage Gulf State Park
Supermodel of many flavors and looks Barbara Palvin may be married now but she's still uniquely and gorgeously hot. Even in black and white on the cover of a magazine (as just featured on her Instagram account).
Air pollution is a killer. A new study shows how much of a killer it is in the country of India.
Air Pollution in India Linked to Millions of Deaths
"Air pollution consisting of particles smaller than 2.5 micrometers in diameter, PM2.5, can enter the lungs and bloodstream and is a major health risk in India. Researchers have now examined the link between these particles and mortality over a ten-year period. The study is based on data from 655 districts in India between 2009 and 2019.
“We found that every 10 microgram per cubic meter increase in PM2.5 concentration led to an 8.6 percent increase in mortality,” says Petter Ljungman, last author and researcher at the Institute of Environmental Medicine at Karolinska Institutet.
The research analyzed the relationship between changes in air pollution levels and mortality. The results show that around 3.8 million deaths over the period can be linked to air pollution levels above India's own air quality guidelines of 40 micrograms per cubic meter."
The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service is moving to put the monarch butterfly on the endangered species list. Currently, only as threatened, not endangered. But still ...
That's huge, gigantic, and terrifying. As I said, it's epic.
This is not some obscure weed or local insect or lizard that only eats a certain type of worm. This is well-known orange-and-black monarch butterfly, which migrates around the country, which hangs in trees in Mexico in the winter in large groups (though that is endangered, too):
and which is also famous for its black-white-yellow milkweed-chowing caterpillar making a gold-studded turquoise chrysalis.
I would hazard that there have been hundreds of nature books with pictures of the monarch butterfly. It's a signature species. It's virtually unthinkable that it would go extinct.
But it might.
U.S. moves to add monarch butterfly to the endangered species list
"On its current course, the western monarch has a 99 percent chance of vanishing for good in about the next six decades, according to the federal scientists, after its population dropped by more than 95 percent from over 4.5 million in the 1980s."
"Rep. Bruce Westerman (R-Arkansas), who chairs the House Natural Resources Committee, criticized the proposed rule, arguing it shows why the Endangered Species Act needs to be amended to give more power to states.
“Monarchs are a classic example of why ESA reform is necessary, and empowering states and private landowners is the best way to go about reform,” he said in a statement. “In its 50-year run, the ESA has failed to achieve its goals for recovery.”
Here's an interesting article about the upgrades being performed under the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C. In a very small visitor space on one side of the memorial, there was a window allowing a view into the space (which the article calls the 'undercroft'), and you could see some stalactites, as some of the marble has been dissolved by rainwater and then redeposited. They are using some of this big space now.
Beneath the Lincoln Memorial, a vast space is being transformed
"The 38,000-ton structure was built on a platform supported by 122 concrete pillars that were sunk through the soft earth to the solid rock below. Dirt was packed around that foundation, leaving about 50,000 square feet of empty undercroft beneath the memorial.Below is what the work will look like.
The undercroft is so large that the entire memorial, flipped upside down, would fit in it, said Sam Meyerhoff, senior project manager with the Consigli construction company, which is doing much of the project work."
Pretty much since I began this blog, I've noted lingerie, and lingerie models, and also lingerie models who are representing brands like Victoria's Secret, Ultimo, even Aerie.
So I have to acknowledge when Elsa Hosk, long associated with Victoria's Secret, becomes the lead model for PrettyLittleThing.
Of course, the Daily Mail helped out here.
I went to the PLT website, and by searching with "elsa hosk", I had this return. Not all the featured items are being worn by Elsa, but the other models are nicely viewable, as well. At least one of the found items also appears in the linked Daily Mail article.
Actually, conservationists in Hawaii just did release five 'alala, also known as the Hawaiian crow, into the wild on Maui. The 'alala are extremely endangered, and were also extinct in the wild for a period of time. And having five of them in the wild doesn't exactly mean they're in great shape. But they still have a chance.
How scientists are giving these rare, brainy birds a second chance
After years in captivity, five members of a rare bird species called the ʻalala, or Hawaiian crow, are flying free in the wild, officials announced Wednesday."By the late 1990s, fewer than 20 of these crows persisted, with the habitat loss and predation by cats and other non-native animals pushing them to the brink. After the survivors were brought into conservation breeding centers, the bird went extinct in the wild in 2002.
Between 2016 and 2020, the crows’ caretakers reintroduced 30 ʻalala into the wild on Hawaii’s Big Island. For years they thrived, pairing off and building nests. But scientists decided to recapture the crows when their numbers began to decline as Hawaii’s native hawk, the ‘io, began preying on them."
