1. Thursday, April 22nd was the 40th anniversary of Earth Day, with celebrations of Mother Nature around the globe. The Earth Day 2010 Action Center, a project of the Earth Day Network, has a variety of resources including sections for campaigns, events, petitions, action pledges and organizing tools.
On Sunday, April 25th, the Earth Day Climate Rally will take place in Washington, DC, on the National Mall from 11am - 7pm, with the goal of urging the government to enact comprehensive climate legislation. If you can't make it to DC, the event will be streamed live on EarthDay.org. The line up looks pretty dang impressive, as well as entertaining. According to the Earth Day Network:
The Climate Rally will include notable speakers Reverend Jesse Jackson, film director James Cameron, AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka, Olympic gold medalist Billy Demong, producer Trudie Styler, author Margaret Atwood, NFL player and television personality Dhani Jones, environmental photographer Sebastian Copeland and many more.
The rally will also feature live music from Sting, John Legend, The Roots, Jimmy Cliff, Passion Pit and Joss Stone, among others.
Need some inspiration? In a piece at The Huffington Post, Gene Karpinski, President, League of Conservation Voters, urges the public to look at Earth Day as more than just a yearly opportunity to install energy efficient light bulbs.
We can let ourselves once again be inspired to act boldly and think big. We can rally for new laws to ensure that all Americans can enjoy the clean air and water we asked for forty years ago. We can demand legislation that curbs global warming pollution and creates the jobs of the future. Perhaps most importantly, we can tell our legislators that the time for action is now. Since January 1st, over one million Americans have contacted their senators urging them to pass a comprehensive clean energy and climate bill this year.
2. Friday, April 23rd was National DNA Day. As described by the National Human Genome Research Institute of the National Institutes of Health:
National DNA Day is a unique day when students, teachers and the public can learn more about genetics and genomics! The day commemorates the completion of the Human Genome Project in April 2003, and the discovery of DNA's double helix.
A moderated chat was held from 8am - 6pm during which NHGRI Director Eric Green, M.D., Ph.D. and genomics experts from across the institute and around the nation took questions from students, teachers and the general public on topics ranging from basic genomic research, to the genetic basis of disease, to ethical questions about genetic privacy. My favorite li'l tip: when a 9th grader asked the easiest way to remember the complementary base pairs, Sarah Harding, M.P.H. responded:
I'm sure people have different ways to remember, but one option is to remember that G and C are both curvy letters, so they go together. That leaves A to pair with T.
3. For a little piece of outer space you can touch, head out to southwestern Wisconsin. If you're lucky, perhaps you can find a bit of debris from the that fireball streaked across the sky on the night of Wednesday, April 14th. As described by Space.com:
A camera mounted to a campus building at the University of Wisconsin-Madison caught the Wisconsin meteor's explosive demise. The meteor's sonic boom and explosion were also seen and heard by numerous witnesses, and sparked frantic 911 emergency calls across six different states, according to the Near-Earth Object Office at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, Calif.
I'd go crazy if I saw this!
Posted by: canvas paintings | May 24, 2012 at 08:20 AM
Haha same, thanks a lot for sharing!
Posted by: canvas art prints | May 29, 2012 at 01:30 AM