IvanZero

newyorker:

Postcard from Madagascar: In Pursuit of the Plowshare Tortoise

This week’s issue features William Finnegan’s piece about a Manhattan night-life baron’s race to save the world’s rarest species of tortoise: the angonoka, or plowshare tortoise, which is coveted by collectors on the illegal market. We sent the South Africa-based photographer Jonathan Torgovnik to Madagascar, home of the last remaining habitat for these animals, to capture that night-life baron, Eric Goode, in the field with the tortoises he has committed himself to protect.

- For more of Torgovnik’s photos from Madagascar: http://nyr.kr/xNAjAh

reuters:

Putting it into perspective: Megaupload had 25 petabytes of data residing on more than 1,000 servers. One petabyte of data, according to Gizmodo, equals 13.3 years of high definition television content. If our math is correct, that’s 332.5 years worth of HDTV content stored on Megaupload’s servers.

Analysis: Megaupload shutdown unlikely to deter piracy

washingtonpoststyle:

The United States has fallen 27 places in the Press Freedom Index. The reason? The many arrests of journalists covering Occupy protests.

smithsonianmag:

The Highest Resolution Image of Earth Ever

This composite image uses a number of swaths of the Earth’s surface taken on January 4, 2012.

Photo courtesy of NASA/NOAA/GSFC/Suomi NPP/VIIRS/Norman Kuring

Ed note: Perfect for your desktop background. Click the photo for the 8000x8000 image. Check out our article on the previous photo titled The Blue Marble.

h/t Gizmodo

newyorker:

The Caging of America; Why do we lock up so many people?

The scale and the brutality of our prisons are the moral scandal of American life. Every day, at least fifty thousand men—a full house at Yankee Stadium—wake in solitary confinement, often in “supermax” prisons or prison wings, in which men are locked in small cells, where they see no one, cannot freely read and write, and are allowed out just once a day for an hour’s solo “exercise.” (Lock yourself in your bathroom and then imagine you have to stay there for the next ten years, and you will have some sense of the experience.) Prison rape is so endemic—more than seventy thousand prisoners are raped each year—that it is routinely held out as a threat, part of the punishment to be expected. The subject is standard fodder for comedy, and an uncoöperative suspect being threatened with rape in prison is now represented, every night on television, as an ordinary and rather lovable bit of policing. The normalization of prison rape—like eighteenth-century japery about watching men struggle as they die on the gallows—will surely strike our descendants as chillingly sadistic, incomprehensible on the part of people who thought themselves civilized. Though we avoid looking directly at prisons, they seep obliquely into our fashions and manners. Wealthy white teen-agers in baggy jeans and laceless shoes and multiple tattoos show, unconsciously, the reality of incarceration that acts as a hidden foundation for the country.

- In this week’s issue, Adam Gopnik writes about mass incarceration and criminal justice in America: http://nyr.kr/A75iOm

Photograph by Steve Liss.

huffingtonpost:

“We are not here to celebrate. We are here to bring down military rule. They have failed the revolution and met none of its goals,” said Iman Fahmy, a 27-year- old pharmacist who wore a paper eye-patch in solidarity with protesters shot in the eye by security forces during recent protests.

Thousands Gather In Tahrir Square To Mark First Anniversary Of Uprising

crookedindifference:

NASA Day of Remembrance

Each January, we honor the Apollo 1, Challenger and Columbia crews, as well as other members of the NASA family who lost their lives supporting NASA’s mission of exploration. We thank them and their families for their extraordinary sacrifices in the service of our nation.

On this Day of Remembrance, as we remember our fallen heroes with tributes and public ceremonies, I will take part in a wreath-laying ceremony at Arlington National Cemetery. Across the country, all flags at NASA Headquarters and the NASA centers will be flown at half-mast in their memory.

Space exploration is a difficult and dangerous endeavor. We recognize these pioneers’ sacrifices each day with our ongoing commitment to safety. As an agency, we know the risks inherent in each mission. Ensuring the safety of our employees is our highest priority.

The legacy of those we have lost is our ongoing work and the inspiration of generations of new space explorers. Every day, with each new challenge we overcome and every discovery we make, we honor these remarkable men and women. Please join me in working to fulfill their dreams for the future.

Charles F. Bolden, Jr.
NASA Administrator

mothernaturenetwork:

The Chinese New Year arrives on Jan. 23 and it is a particularly special year: the Year of the Dragon. Unlike the western New Years Eve holiday, which is often a wild and crazy night marked with excess, Chinese New Year traditions are all about family, friends and, of course, good food. Learn more.