DePaul University Professor Fired over Optional Course Assignment

Joe Biden Seems Out of Touch With Reality In This Time Magazine Interview

Japan is looking to revitalize its dying whaling industry – and the unveiling of their new “mothership” shows they mean business. Japan’s new whaling factory ship, the Kangei Maru, set sail on its maiden voyage from the port of Shimonoseki on May 21, according to Japanese media.The $48 million ship is a colossus, measuring 112.6 meters (369 feet) long and 21 meters (68 feet) wide, and weighing around 9,299 tons. It’s been designed to travel distances up to a range of 13,000 kilometers (almost 8,100 miles) sufficient to travel to the Antarctic Ocean.The so-called mothership will allow smaller whaling boats to bring back harvested whales to a central hub. According to Kyodo Senpaku, the whaling company that owns the Kangei Maru, the vessel even contains an onboard processing unit where the whale meat is butchered, checked for quality, and frozen. “We will work as one to maintain whaling culture for eternity,” Hideki Tokoro, president of Kyodo Senpaku, told reporters during the ship’s departure ceremony.         The news comes after the Government of Japan announced on May 9 that whalers will now be allowed to hunt fin whales, bringing the number of commercial whaling species in the country to four, along with minke whales, Bryde’s whales, and sei whales. Japan’s decision to ramp up its whaling operations was met with outrage from international conservation organizations who described the move as an “appalling step backwards.” “These new plans to hunt fin whales are incredibly alarming. These are the second biggest whale on earth. Killing whales causes significant suffering due to the size of the animals, not to mention the fact that considerable time often passes between the first harpoon strike and death,” Nicola Beynon, head of campaigns at the Australian branch of the Humane Society International (HSI), said in a recent statement about the launch of Kangei Maru.“All whale species are battling a range of threats in their marine environment including climate change, noise pollution, ship strikes and fisheries bycatch. There is no nutritional, scientific or moral justification for killing these magnificent ocean giants, so the launch of the Kangei Maru is a chilling sight at a time when the imperative to conserve rather than kill whales is so urgent,” continued Adam Peyman, HSI’s director of wildlife programs.Japan resumed commercial whaling in June 2019 after its controversial withdrawal from the International Whaling Commission (IWC), the intergovernmental panel that regulates the whaling industry. Commercial whaling has been banned since the IWC’s moratorium in 1982, although it continued to allow countries to kill whales for special purposes, such as scientific research and Aboriginal Subsistence Whaling.Over 80 nations signed the agreement that came into being in 1986. However, several countries – namely Norway, Denmark/Greenland, Russia, Iceland, and Japan – continued to flout the ban and hunt whales under the guise of scientific research.Japan’s latest push to bring back whaling was accompanied by a savvy PR campaign that attempts to respond to the “one-sided anti-whaling media that dominates the world.” They claim that many whale populations have recovered to such an extent they are a “concern for marine ecosystems, consuming several times more fish than humanity's entire fishing catch.” In reality, some whale populations have recovered in recent decades – primarily because of the IWC halt on whaling – but many have failed to recover to pre-whaling levels. Those that have recovered now face a myriad of new species threats, from climate change and pollution.This is all without mentioning the slow, agonizing deaths that whales are subjected to in commercial whaling hunts.

For Ancient Egyptians, the Nile was the source of life itself: it irrigated their crops and fed their animals; it was a highway and a compass; it even underpinned their religious beliefs. But while some of the Ancient Egyptians’ beliefs may seem naïve – even amusing – to us here in the 21st century, a new study out of the University of Southampton has shown that on this one, at least, they were right on the money.“Although the Nile is one of the largest rivers in the world and played a central role in ancient Egyptian life, little is known about its response to climatic change during the Holocene,” explains the paper.But “climatic and environmental changes have shaped the landscape of the Egyptian Nile Valley over the past 11,500 years, including the civilization of ancient Egypt,” the authors write – to the extent that the river’s evolution over this time may be what allowed the pharaonic society to thrive at all.“UNESCO World Heritage sites such as the Karnak and Luxor temples [are] located east of the present Nile and the royal cult temples and necropoleis [are] on the western desert margin – places that were both physically and mythologically connected to the fluvial landscape,” the authors explain. “In addition, it is possible that the changing environment also impacted the regional agro-economy, which was of critical importance to the success of the ancient Egyptian state.”It’s a big step in the field of Nile-ology. That’s partly because of a lack of investigation at all, the paper notes, with most previous research on the river being carried out in a few select spots, and hardly any concentrating on how the Nile itself shifted and reshaped itself over time. But equally, there’s the technological aspect of such an undertaking: the fact is, the researchers point out, that there’s simply not been enough data so far to make reliable reconstructions of the Nile’s evolution possible.So, the team decided to find the information for themselves. “We drilled 81 boreholes, many by hand, across the whole Nile Valley near Luxor – a genuine first for Egypt,” explained Dominic Barker, a Technician in Archaeology at the University of Southampton and one of the co-authors of the paper, in a statement. “Using geological information contained within the cores, and dating the sediments using a technique called Optically Stimulated Luminescence we were able to piece together the evolution of the riverine landscape.”And what they discovered may hold the key to ancient Egypt’s success. It happened suddenly, they found, about 4,000 years ago, when the Nile underwent a major change in its behavior and environment: after some 7,500 years of significant valley incision, in which the river would have been quite narrow, cutting deep into the bedrock below, it abruptly shifted. Now, large amounts of sediment were being deposited on the valley floor, building up the riverbed and greatly increasing and stabilizing the surrounding floodplain.“The expansion of the floodplain will have greatly enlarged the area of arable land in the Nile Valley near Luxor (ancient Thebes) and improved the fertility of the soil by regularly depositing fertile silts,” explained Benjamin Pennington, a Visiting Fellow in Geography and Environmental Science at the University of Southampton and co-author of the paper.It also marked the start of the evolution towards today’s iconic mega-river – a characterization that didn’t really exist until about 2,000 years ago, the researchers explained. “The Egyptian Nile we see today looks very different from how it would have been throughout much of the last 11,500 years,” said Pennington. “For most of this time, the Nile was made up of a network of interwoven channels that frequently changed their course.”What prompted such a sudden and drastic change? It’s not certain, but the answer likely comes down to the once-lush Sahara desert – and, more specifically, its move towards becoming the sandy expanse we know today. Combined with the impacts of human settlements, this new arid environment would have increased the levels of fine sediment in the river and decreased the volume of water, thus transforming the characteristics of the Nile.And while the case for this being the catalyst for the Egyptian civilization isn’t water-tight, the timing is definitely noteworthy. This major change to the most important river in Northern Africa seems to have occurred roughly exactly at the shift from the Old to the New Kingdom – a time when Egyptian civilization went through a period of never-before-seen prosperity and achievement. “No specific causal links can be inferred between this shift and any contemporaneous social developments,” cautioned Pennington. “[But] the changes in the landscape are nonetheless an important factor that need to be considered when discussing the trajectory of Ancient Egyptian culture.”The study is published in the journal Nature Geoscience.

Bright and shiny animals are all over the place, from deep sea worm species to electric blue tarantulas and even bright jellyfish. Now, several ancient harvestmen have been discovered in Germany, and the iridescence has even been preserved within the fossil. This research marks the first fossil harvestmen discovered from the Eocene, roughly 48 million years ago. The specimens have the “daddy long legs” appearance with small bodies and long spindly legs. The team think that these ancient harvestmen belong to the family Sclerosomatidae, which is still around today. 48 million years old and still shining.Image Credit: Bartel, C., et al. Palaeobiodiversity and Palaeoenvironments (2024) CC BY 4.0The specimens were found at the Messel Pit near Darmstadt in Hesse, Germany, which is usually more famous for revealing vertebrate fossils. In the middle Eocene, the area would have been subtropical to tropical forest. These specimens are the first fossil harvestmen to be described from the Messel Pit, though previously some arachnids and insects have also been found. They are the oldest fossil harvestmen from Germany, and the first fossil arachnids to have metallic iridescence preserved within the cuticle. Leiobunum messelense, showing as the complete specimen and the body close up.Image Credit: Bartel, C., et al (2024) Palaeobiodiversity and Palaeoenvironments CC BY 4.0In total, the team looked at nine specimens. They were able to place the harvestmen in the family Sclerosomatidea based on a few key details such as the pedipalp claw being pectinate and the top side of the opisthosoma being fused into a single plate. The iridescence seen on the fossils reminds the researchers of a living family of modern harvestmen that belong to the Gagrellinae subfamily. Currently, the subfamily contains around 1,000 species, across the Neotropics and northern Australia, and Malaysia. The paper is published in the journal Palaeobiodiversity and Palaeoenvironments.

The reason for giraffes’ iconic long necks has been revealed, and it turns out food was the original driver after all, just as Darwin thought. However, the alternative explanation, that it was about male sexual competition, gets a compensatory prize, having modified the shape of male giraffes’ necks.Giraffes’ remarkable necks are not only their most notable feature, they’re among the most distinctive features in the entire animal kingdom. Sauropods once possessed something similar, but today there is just nothing else like that gap between head and body. Naturally, it’s something biologists are keen to explain.Unfortunately, when a species’ trait serves multiple purposes, it can be hard to work out which provided the initial impetus. Darwin speculated that giraffes developed their long necks to access tree leaves no other species could. In a classic demonstration of how natural selection worked he, inspired by observations of giant tortoises, thought the proto-giraffe with the longest neck could reach more leaves than others, and became more likely to survive and pass on traits.However, there is an alternative explanation, known as the necks-for-sex hypothesis. Not an offer from a hot but transactional vampire, necks-for-sex proposes that male giraffes developed long necks as weapons. In some species where one sex evolves a characteristic for evolutionary purposes, the other inherits it too, although usually to a lesser extent, because it’s simply easier to have more commonality. Steven Jay Gould proposed this as an explanation for the old question of why men have nipples. More recently, we have seen that the enormous noses male proboscis monkeys developed to woo mates have partially transferred to their female offspring.Since transfer between sexes is seldom absolute, Professor Doug Cavener of Penn State University and colleagues realized that comparisons between male and female giraffes could probably settle the question. "The necks-for-sex hypothesis predicted that males would have longer necks than females," Cavener said in a statement.Male giraffes are 30 percent larger than females, making everything bigger, neck included. However, the team used publicly available photos of Masai giraffes (Giraffa tippelskirchi) in captivity and the wild to measure males' and females’ relative dimensions.Using the pedigree, and therefore ages, of captive giraffes the team were able to establish that at birth giraffe proportions are not affected by sex. Males grow faster, but it's only around sexual maturity that significant differences can be seen.Careful observations revealed that, relative to overall body size, female giraffes have longer necks, making the necks-for-sex hypothesis very unlikely. Instead, the team think it was the need for food of females that are almost constantly pregnant or nursing once they achieve sexual maturity, which drove the extraordinary neck extension. "Giraffes are picky eaters – they eat the leaves of only a few tree species, and longer necks allow them to reach deeper into the trees to get the leaves no one else can,” Cavener said.Males do have wider necks than females, and the team think this represents an advantage when they slam their necks against those of rivals. Future research will test the suspicion that males with wider necks father more offspring. Males also have longer forelegs.Besides the neck-to-body ratio, the study also revealed some other differences in male and female giraffe body shape.Image Credit: Penn State researchers / Penn State (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0)The team noticed an intriguing difference between wild and captive giraffes. The wild giraffes displayed a fairly strict sexual binary, but among captive male giraffes, 15 percent were observed to have dimensions that don’t match the typical male body plan. “We speculate that body proportion sexual dimorphisms are maintained in the wild by natural and/or sexual selection, but in captivity selection is relaxed resulting in a higher occurrence of discordances in sexual phenotypes,” the authors write. No need for a thicker neck when zookeepers play matchmaker for you. The work is not merely a way of settling long-standing debates, it could be crucial to the animals’ survival. Last year, Cavener showed Masai giraffes are more endangered than previously realized. Poaching is part of that, but habitat loss is probably a bigger factor. "If female foraging is driving this iconic trait as we suspect, it really highlights the importance of conserving their dwindling habitat," Cavener said.The study is open access in Mammalian Biology.

Businessman Kevin O'Leary believes Democrats have no one to thank but themselves if Donald Trump wins the 2024 election.Last spring, Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg (D) became the first official to target Trump with criminal prosecution. More than a year later, Bragg — and Democrats generally — celebrated a jury's decision to convict Trump on 34 felony counts.'History will show he made Donald Trump president one more time!'But Americans quickly voiced their concern with the verdict, which proved to be a fundraising boon for Trump and the Republican Party.Trump's campaign is now more invigorated than ever, and O'Leary believes history will show that Bragg and Democrats were the impetus that put Trump back in the White House."You've got to remember: Donald Trump only 24 months ago, in the middle of the first term of Biden, did not have control of his party," O'Leary told Piers Morgan on Monday. "About a third of them were rebelling ... because they were concerned about the controversy around Trump, and they were looking for new leadership, and he was challenged. "But something happened that changed everything, and this is the law of unintended consequences," he continued. "Alvin Bragg started charging Trump, and immediately the entire Republican Party coalesced behind him almost in 48 hours.""But here's what's really interesting: If Trump becomes president, I think he has a big debt to Alvin Bragg," O'Leary declared. Democrats often talk about being on the "right side of history." According to O'Leary, history will record Bragg as being on the right side of history — for Trump and Republicans."I understand that you may not like that as an unintended consequence if you're Alvin Bragg, but I think history will show he made Donald Trump president one more time!" O'Leary predicted.The prediction is not outlandish. Case in point: Americans who believe the verdict and case were unfair are putting their money where their mouth is.In the 24 hours after Trump's conviction, his campaign raised $53 million in small-cash donations — a record-shattering number. One-third of those donations came from first-time donors, a signal that Trump's conviction compelled Americans, who might not have donated otherwise, to back Trump with their hard-earned dollars.The Republican Party, meanwhile, raised more than $140 million in May, an eye-popping figure aided by Trump's trial and conviction.Like Blaze News? Bypass the censors, sign up for our newsletters, and get stories like this direct to your inbox. Sign up here!

Fearless Army Roll Call is a gathering of men who put on the full armor of God to take a stand against the evil forces destroying American culture — and this year’s event blew the last one out of the water.“I had high expectations for Roll Call, it exceeded all of my expectations,” Jason Whitlock says. Every speaker was inspiring beyond all measure, but one speech in particular left Whitlock and the audience in awe. That speech was from North Carolina Lt. Gov. Mark Robinson, and it was packed with truth. "Let me tell you something about your elected officials,” Robinson began. “Ask them why they want to be an elected official and see what they say.""The key word in that is 'want.' There should be no want in political offices. Nobody should be sitting on the city council because they want to be powerful, because they want control, because they want the political goodies that come along with it.""No one should be sitting in our nation's Capitol because they want to be an elected official. That's the problem right now. People want to be an elected official. They want to pop their collar and they want people to open the door for them. They want everybody to know their names and they want to get rich.""An elected official to me should be like a young man on June 6, 1944, in a Higgins Boat headed toward Normandy beach. I want you to imagine your ability to go to that young man and ask, 'Why in the world do you want to do this?'""And imagine what that young man would say to you. He would say, 'I don't want to do this, but you see back home the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor and Hitler is murdering his way across Europe. I'm not here because I want to be. I'm here because I have to be. It is my duty as an American, as a man, as a Christian, to be here to serve, even if means laying down my life.'""That needs to be the attitude of our elected officials in this nation,” he finished. Whitlock and Delano Squires are beyond impressed. “Mark Robinson I feel really held his own,” Squires says to Whitlock. “How he was able to talk about the essence of manhood and fuse it with a message of what we should be looking for from our politicians, which is fewer people who are self-serving and more people who are willing to sacrifice for the people.”

When Dr. Fauci testified before a House subcommittee on the origins of COVID-19, many thought the time had finally come for tough questions. While the questions asked made it clear that he lied about six-foot distancing and masking — Glenn Beck knows it could, and should, have been a lot worse. “I find this incredible that we’ve missed this,” Glenn says, noting that the government signed a contract with Moderna on December 12, 2019, that ensured the pharmaceutical company would not be held liable for its vaccines. The contract was originally proposed in 2015. “I’ve been through many, many high level negotiations, but I’ve never seen anything that started four years before. Coincidentally, once they find the Frankenstein virus and then they negotiate for four years, and what a coincidence, they sign it just before the breakout of COVID,” Glenn says. Not only was the pharmaceutical company ready far before the outbreak, but Dr. Fauci had been funding gain-of-function research — which he has continuously lied about. “There’s lie number one. Then this strange, ‘Hey let’s partner with Moderna.’ I don’t think this is normal,” Glenn continues, noting that the gain-of-function research was paid for by American taxpayers. “Where’s the money, where’s it going? My feeling is it’s going to fund more of this,” he predicts, adding, “We already know Fauci was funding the Wuhan lab. We also recently found out that he was funding experiments that killed puppies in a gruesome way. So, what else was getting funded through government and private funds?” After following the money trail as well as endless incriminating emails, Glenn has come to a conclusion. “Is there any other way to describe it other than Fauci and the president’s science advisor colluding behind the president’s back, withholding information from him?” he asks. “Fauci has already been brought in front of Congress and Rand Paul caught him in a bold-faced lie. Fauci will testify again, but it’s probably time to bring in the former president’s science advisor as well." Want more from Glenn Beck?To enjoy more of Glenn’s masterful storytelling, thought-provoking analysis, and uncanny ability to make sense of the chaos, subscribe to BlazeTV — the largest multi-platform network of voices who love America, defend the Constitution, and live the American dream.

Prosecutor Derek Hines drew on Hunter’s memoir and text messages taken from his laptop to prove Hunter was an addict when he bought the gun.