13-year-old Californian youngest to top Everest

Article from http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/37287110/
By CARA ANNA , 22 May 2010

Adventure part of quest to climb the highest peaks on all 7 continents

Jordan Romero, 13, shown in an April 10 interview, has become the youngest climber to reach the top of Mount Everest. A spokesman for Romero says the boy's team called by satellite phone from the summit of the world's highest peak Saturday.
View related photos

BEIJING - A 13-year-old American boy became the youngest climber to reach the top of Mount Everest on Saturday, breaking the former record as part of his quest to climb the highest peaks on all seven continents.
A spokesman for Jordan Romero said the boy's team called him by satellite phone from the summit of the world's highest mountain, 29,035 feet above sea level.
"Their dreams have now come true. Everyone sounded unbelievably happy," a new statement on Jordan's blog said Saturday morning.
Also Saturday, Nepali mountaineer Apa Sherpa broke his own record and climbed Mount Everest for the 20th time, said Ang Tshering Sherpa, chief of the Asian Trekking Agency.
Romero — who climbed Mount Kilimanjaro in Africa when he was 10 years old — said he was inspired by a painting in his school hallway of the seven continents' highest summits.
"Every step I take is finally toward the biggest goal of my life, to stand on top of the world," Jordan said on his blog earlier.
The former record for the youngest climber to scale Everest had been held by Temba Tsheri of Nepal. He reached the peak at age 16.
'Just emotional'
"I'm just very proud of him," Jordan's mother told The Associated Press by telephone just before he reached the peak, as she watched his progress on a live GPS tracker online.
When asked what she would say to him once he reached the summit, she started crying. "I can't really say that. It's just emotional."
Jordan, from Big Bear, California, was climbing Everest with his father, his father's girlfriend and three Sherpa guides. He left for the peak from the base camp on the Chinese side. Everest was Romero's first challenge above 8,000 meters.
Unlike neighboring Nepal, the other approach to Everest, China, has no age limit for climbers. Jordan registered with Chinese officials in April, said Zhang Mingxing, secretary general of China Tibet Mountaineering Association.
No interview with Jordan would be possible until he returns to advance base camp, which could take a couple of days, said Rob Bailey, the U.S.-based spokesman for Romero's climbing team. Climbers stay overnight at three or four camps before the summit, depending on their route and pace.
The team planned to do something special for Jordan at the mountaintop but was keeping it a surprise even from him, Bailey said.
Jordan was carrying a number of good luck charms, including a pair of kangaroo testicles given to him by a friend who has cancer.
"That's the one the probably meant the most. I know it might sound odd," Bailey said.
20th ascent
In a separate achievement, Apa Sherpa, 50, who lives in the United States, reached the summit along the Southeast Ridge route.
He carried a banner all the way to the summit to raise awareness of the environmental impact of climate change on the Himalayas."It is a fantastic achievement by one individual," said Elizabeth Hawley, who chronicles major climbs in the Himalayan mountain range. "Going back year after year after year and
succeeding each time is really amazing."

British man becomes first to swim under Mt. Everest

Article from http://news.sky.com/skynews/Home/World-News/British-Man-Swims-Under-Mount-Everest-Summit-Lewis-Gordon-Pugh-Swam-Across-Pumori-Lake-In-Speedos/Article/201005415636900
By David Williams, Sky News Online , 2:59pm UK, Sunday May 23, 2010


A British endurance swimmer has summoned the peak of his powers to become the first person to swim under the summit of Mount Everest.

Lewis Gordon Pugh battled freezing waters wearing only a pair of Speedos, a cap and goggles to cross the 1km glacial lake next to the Khumbu Glacier.
He came close to drowning during test swims for the event amid bouts of altitude sickness on the Pumori Lake, which sits 17,000ft above sea level.
But an adapted approach saw him through to complete the swim in a time of 22 mins and 51 secs.
He had battled ice-cold water before, swimming "with speed and aggression" in Antarctica and across the North Pole.
The 40-year-old earned the nickname the 'Human Polar Bear' for his aptitude in arctic conditions.
He set off for the Everest summit on May 5, almost nine months after announcing the project.
But he quickly learned he needed to take a different tact in the 2C Pumori waters, which he had scrambled over rocks and boulders to access.
"You can't use the same tactics," he explained. "Because of the altitude you need to swim very slowly and deliberately.
"Swimming 20 metres at full speed in the test swim, I felt I was going to drown."
He adopted breast-stroke to help his breathing and concentrated all his energies on controlling his speed.
Going too fast could have pushed him into hyperventilation - too slowly and he would have died of hypothermia.
"I was gasping for air and if I had swum any faster I would have gone under," he recounted.
"I was deeply concerned that I wouldn't make 1km and I'm delighted that I've finally achieved it."
The environmental campaigner undertook the challenge to raise awareness of the melting glaciers in the Himalayas and the impact of declining water supplies in the region.
"I have seen glaciers in the Arctic, the Alps, Central Africa, Antarctica and the Himalayas - and it's the same story everywhere," he said.
"Most glaciers are melting away. The glaciers in the Himalayas are not just ice. They are a lifeline - they provide water to approximately two billion people."
Pugh's heroics come as a 22-year-old British woman became the country's youngest female to reach summit of Everest.
Bonita Norris achieved the feat two years after she "woke up with a crazy idea" to climb the world's highest mountain.
A few days later, a 13-year-old American boy phoned home from Everest's top spot after he became the youngest person to reach the summit.

Pugh celebrates after his death-defying feat.

 
 

 

His wrapped-up supporters help him out of the icy water.

 
 

 

Pugh hopes to draw attention to the melting sea ice. 

Moms of the Animal Kingdom(image 1 of 15)

There’s no love like a mother’s love, even in the animal kingdom. Here’s to mom!

Animal Moms: Elephants

After an elephant mom endures a 22-month pregnancy, she gives birth to the largest newborn of the jungle, a 250-pound calf that’s almost entirely dependent on her for survival. Because her baby is born nearly blind, the elephant mother helps her calf to use its trunk to discover the outside world—and its mother’s unconditional love.


Next >Animal Moms: Polar Bears

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Moms of the Animal Kingdom(image 15 of 15)

Animal Moms: Japanese Macaques

Japanese macaques, or snow monkeys, form strong bonds between mothers and their babies that last a lifetime. They live in troops of 20 or 30 individuals, and a mother’s social rank will often determine her child’s place within the troop’s strict dominance hierarchy. A newborn macaque will cling to its mother’s stomach for the first month before learning to ride on her back. An infant macaque will sometimes cling to other adult females in the troop as well, but after about six months of age, it’ll cling only to its own mother. It’s only fitting.

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Moms of the Animal Kingdom(image 14 of 15)

Animal Moms: Giraffes

After a pregnancy of 13 to 15 months, a female giraffe will give birth while standing to a calf weighing around 150 pounds and standing 6 feet tall. Like a horse, a baby giraffe can stand and even run very soon after birth, but it’s still very vulnerable to predators. The mother will nurse her baby privately for its first month or so, but then the calf will join a “nursery group” of other calves, allowing its mother a little mom time to forage for food and water.

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Moms of the Animal Kingdom(image 13 of 15)

Animal Moms: Lions

It takes a pride to raise a lion cub. At least, lioness moms in a given pride may team up to help each other raise their cubs collectively. First a lioness will synchronize her reproductive cycle with the other females in the pride so they’ll all give birth at roughly the same time. Then, after a period of six or eight weeks in isolation with her cubs, the lioness and will rejoin the pride at about the same time that other new mothers and their cubs are also returning. A lioness mom will continue to nurse her own cubs, but she’ll also pitch in to nurse any other cubs in the pride. This communal rearing gives the cubs a greater chance of survival and protects the cubs from threats both inside and outside the pride.

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Moms of the Animal Kingdom(image 12 of 15)

Animal Moms: Koalas

Even more than the rest of us, koalas would be completely helpless without their moms. Just 35 days after becoming pregnant, a female koala gives birth to a baby (known as a joey) that is only a quarter-inch long, hairless, blind and without ears. Immediately after birth it crawls down into its mother’s pouch, where it stays for six or seven months doing little other than nursing and growing ears, eyes and fur. It then starts to eat small bits of its mom’s “pap,” a kind of feces, which inoculates the joey’s digestive tract with the micro-organisms it'll need to be able to digest otherwise poisonous eucalyptus leaves. And you thought you and your mom had a unique bond!

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Moms of the Animal Kingdom(image 11 of 15)

Animal Moms: Gorillas

Female gorillas start having babies at around 10 or 12 years of age. A gorilla mom carries her newborn in her arms while she forages for food and makes new nests each day. After about three months, the baby starts riding on its mom’s back by holding onto her fur. Mother and baby maintain a strong bond. Even after the baby learns to walk, at about nine months, it will continue riding on its mom’s back for another couple of years.

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Moms of the Animal Kingdom(image 10 of 15)

Animal Moms: Cougars

Cougars make devoted moms. For nearly their entire adult lives, female cougars are either pregnant or raising kittens. Every couple of years or so they give birth to litters of typically two or three kittens, who are born blind and completely dependent on their mother for survival. The kittens nurse for about three months, spending most of their time with their mom in dens for protection. Even after weaning and learning from mom how to hunt on their own, they tend to stick around with her until they’re about two years old—just in time for her next litter!

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Moms of the Animal Kingdom(image 9 of 15)

Animal Moms: Hippopotamuses

Hippo moms typically give birth underwater and then immediately help the newborn calves to the surface for air. Baby hippos can suckle underwater or on land and will continue to nurse for about a year. Because they share their aquatic homes with predators like crocodiles, hippo moms need to protect their calves for the first year or so of their lives.

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Moms of the Animal Kingdom(image 8 of 15)

Animal Moms: Meerkats

A meerkat mom is kept busy, having up to four litters a year, typically with two to four pups in each litter. The pups are born in underground burrows, where they stay for at least three weeks before emerging for the first time. The pups’ debut is quite an event—the whole meerkat clan comes to watch. As the pups mature, mom gets help from “babysitters” among the clan and even from the father.

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Moms of the Animal Kingdom(image 7 of 15)

Animal Moms: Weddell Seals

Weddell seal moms may have to endure the bitter cold of their home near the South Pole, but at least parenting poses relatively few complications for them. For example, it takes just one to four minutes for a female Weddell seal to give birth. She’ll nurse her pup for only about six weeks—after that the pup can pretty much take care of itself. At least give a call on Mother’s Day, why dontcha!

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Moms of the Animal Kingdom(image 6 of 15)

Animal Moms: Orangutans

The orangutan mother may be the animal kingdom’s ultimate advocate for “attachment parenting.” She carries her newborn constantly, never breaking contact for about the first four months of her baby’s life. She won’t wean her baby until about age four, and then may allow the baby to continue nursing during times of stress for another three years or so. Orangutans stay with their mothers for about eight years, longer than any other animal besides humans.

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Moms of the Animal Kingdom(image 5 of 15)

Animal Moms: Alligators

The alligator mom is smarter than she may let on. Instead of being stuck sitting on her eggs to keep them warm, she puts the eggs in a mound of rotting vegetation that produces heat as it decomposes. Eggs kept at 86 degrees (Fahrenheit) or lower produce females; those 93 degrees or higher will be males. Mom’s more hands-on after the eggs hatch; for about a year, she’ll protect them from predators (like other alligators).

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Moms of the Animal Kingdom(image 4 of 15)

Animal Moms: Cheetahs

A cheetah mom typically gives birth to a litter of three to five cubs and raises the cubs on her own. She spends the first year and a half of their lives focused almost entirely on teaching her cubs how to hunt and avoid predators. When the cubs have become sufficiently independent, she gives them a little tough love by abandoning them so they’ll learn to survive on their own.

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Moms of the Animal Kingdom(image 3 of 15)

Animal Moms: Bottlenose Dolphins

Bottlenose dolphins, like other mammals, nurse their young. Because nursing can be a little tricky under water, a mother may help her calf suckle by ejecting milk from her mammary glands. The calf nurses for about a year and a half, but even after weaning a young dolphin knows it has a good thing going and stays close to its mother for several years.


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Moms of the Animal Kingdom(image 2 of 15)

Animal Moms: Polar Bears

A female polar bear gets pregnant in the spring and promptly gains over 400 pounds, often doubling her original weight. She’ll need all that extra fat. When the hunting season ends in the fall, she slows way down, entering a hibernation-like state inside a maternity den. She stays half-asleep through the birth of her cubs, and by the time she emerges from her den she'll have fasted for as long as eight months.

Next > Animal Moms: Bottlenose Dolphins

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Meet the Woman Who Founded Mother's Day ~ Anna Jarvis

She wanted to honor mothers with a special reverential day. She got her wish -- so why did she end up fighting it? The remarkable story behind the holiday.

Do you know why we celebrate Mother’s Day? It is to give tribute to the reason why we’re here. But do you know who started this celebration? It’s because of Anna Jarvis.

Anna Jarvis is not even a mother. She is never married and had no children. But she is recognized as the ‘Mother of Mothers Day’.

Anna Jarvis was born in the tiny town of Webster in Taylor County, West Virginia. She was the daughter of Ann Maria Reeves Jarvis. The family moved to nearby Grafton, West Virginia in her childhood. She graduated from what is now Mary Baldwin College in 1883.

After the death of her mother in 1905, Anna Jarvis resolved to honor her mother. Anna Jarvis began her efforts to help Mother’s Day gain commercial and political support. Anna organized Mother’s Day Work Clubs in West Virginia with the objective of improving sanitary conditions and improving infant mortality rates in her area.

By 1911, Mother’s Day was celebrated in almost every state of the Union. And in 1914, President Woodrow Wilson made the official announcement proclaiming Mother’s Day as a national holiday that was to be held each year on the second Sunday of May.


Moms of the Animal Kingdom

老人与小孩

门前老树下 坐着老人与小孩

老人对我说 他的孩子都不在

他们都不乖 整天在国外

外国月亮比较圆 奇怪不奇怪

多少年以来 总是孤孤单单

我对老人说 我想陪你去看海

满天是云彩 满心是爱

老人握着我的手 眼泪掉下来

我是真心的朋友 真心的小孩

陪在你身边 永远不离开

你是最好的朋友 最好的依赖

像星星和月亮 老人与小孩

World's biggest beaver dam discovered in northern Canada

y Michel Comte and Jacques Lemieux Michel Comte And Jacques Lemieux – Wed May 5, 7:46 pm ET
http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20100505/sc_afp/canadascienceenvironmentanimalbeaver

OTTAWA (AFP) – A Canadian ecologist has discovered the world's largest beaver dam in a remote area of northern Alberta, an animal-made structure so large it is visible from space.

AFP/HO – This 2008 handout photo courtesy of the Wood Buffalo National Park in Northern Alberta shows the world's …

Researcher Jean Thie said Wednesday he used satellite imagery and Google Earth software to locate the dam, which is about 850 metres (2,800 feet) long on the southern edge of Wood Buffalo National Park.

Average beaver dams in Canada are 10 to 100 metres long, and only rarely do they reach 500 metres.
First discovered in October 2007, the gigantic dam is located in a virtually inaccessible part of the park south of Lac Claire, about 190 kilometres (120 miles) northeast of Fort McMurray.

Construction of the dam likely started in the mid-1970s, said Thie, who made his discovery quite by accident while tracking melting permafrost in Canada's far north.
"Several generations of beavers worked on it and it's still growing," he told AFP in Ottawa.

Mike Keizer, spokesman for the park, said rangers flew over the heavily forested marshlands last year to try to "have a look." They found significant vegetation growing on the dam itself, suggesting it's very old, he said.

"A new dam would have a lot of fresh sticks," Keizer explained. "This one has grasses growing on it and it's very green."
Part of the dam may have been created by naturally felled trees, and the beavers "opportunistically filled in the gaps."
Thie said he recently identified two smaller dams sprouting at either side of the main dam. In 10 years, all three structures could merge into a mega-dam measuring just short of a kilometer in length, he said.
The region is flat, so the beavers would have had to build a massive structure to stem wetland water flows, Thie said, noting that the dam was visible in NASA satellite imagery from the 1990s.
"It's a unique phenomenon," he said. "Beaver dams are among the few animal-made structures visible from space."
North American beavers build dams to create deep, still pools of water to protect against predators, and to float food and building materials.
A 652-meter structure in Three Forks in the US state of Montana previously held the record for world's largest beaver dam.
Thie said he also found evidence that beavers were repopulating old habitats after being hunted extensively for pelts in past centuries.
"They're invading their old territories in a remarkable way in Canada," he said. "I found huge dams throughout Canada, and beaver colonies with up to 100 of them in a square kilometer."
"They're re-engineering the landscape," he said.

All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.

By Edmund Burke

What does all that is necessary for evil to triumph is good for men to do nothing mean?

Actually, the quote is, "All that is necessary for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing." Perhaps getting the order of the words correct helps with the meaning. It often does so in the English language, unlike some other languages where it sometimes makes little difference. The above quote is attributed to Edmund Burke, a well-known 18th century political philosopher. It has been quoted often in recent years, especially by reform candidates for public office, sometimes without appropriate attribution.

It means that evil is not neutral; if you and/or society stop resisting evil, it will continue to grow and spread. It is a call to arms for people to stop being complacent.

Evil is not neutral and there can be no neutrality exercised toward it. Anyone who is not against it is perforce in favor of it.

【成语】： 袖手旁观 xiù shǒu páng guān

【解释】：把手笼在袖子里在旁观看，在一旁观看。

                    比喻置身事外，既不过问，也不协助别人。

【近义词】：漠不关心、冷眼旁观

【反义词】：挺身而出

【出处】：唐·韩愈《祭柳子厚文》：“不善为斫，血指汗颜，巧匠旁观，缩手袖间。”宋·苏轼《朝辞赴定州论事状》：“奕棋者胜负之形，虽国工有所不尽，而袖手旁观者常尽之。”