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Before we turn them all into whale meat, we need to understand why both human and whale societies need grannies.

Why do female primates (like humans) and whales go through menopause, instead of dying shortly after their reproductive days are over (and thus saving their society the cost of feeding them)? It turns out that grannies are vital to rearing of their grandchildren.

In BBC News, Victoria Gill quotes researcher Michael Cant as saying that both humans and whales have balanced “the costs and benefits of breeding with the costs and benefits of switching off breeding.”
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Tar balls have landed on a beach in Galveston, Texas, meaning oil from the Gulf of Mexico spill has now hit all 5 Gulf states. It turns out that sand naturally cleans itself, but the Deepwater Horizon oil spill may be too much for it. Scientists are investigating how quickly the oil carried into Gulf of Mexico beach sands is being degraded by the sands’ natural microbial communities, and whether native oil-eating bacteria that wash ashore with the crude are helping or hindering that process.
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Not just oil, MINING too! – It’s not just oil exploration that threatens the marine life that so much of the world depends on, it’s also mining. As expected, this year’s Gulf of Mexico dead zone is expected to be HUGE, continuing a decades-long trend that threatens the health of a $659 million fishery (although it’s not clear what impact the Deepwater Horizon oil spill will have on this, because numerous factors are at work.
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In the June 19th issue of the UK magazine “The Spectator,” John C. Hulsman and Jaakko Kooroshy state their opinion that the “good news” of trillions in mineral wealth in Afghanistan is just part of the propaganda war of Obama and General Petraeus, as they try desperately to keep voters positive about a war that seems like a hopeless quagmire. The government is obviously not being straight with us.
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