American Submitter: The Key To Knowledge (Audio Podcast)

Source: americansubmitter.org

The Wikipedia entry of Menlo Park, California literally begins with the words “Menlo Park is an affluent suburb”. Apparently 21% of Menlo Park residents work at Facebook. In any case, it’s still in many ways a typical nice and quiet suburb of America. I know this because I’ve been there. I went there to visit my friend Scott.

Scott grew up in Menlo Park and he and I currently study at an Islamic liberal arts college in Berkeley, California called Zaytuna College. In this episode we get to hear about his life, his existential struggles,  and the journey which eventually led him to Islam and now to Zaytuna College.

Study: humans may cause mass extinction in oceans

Source: informationclearinghouse.info

By: Carl Zimmer

A team of scientists, in a groundbreaking analysis of data from hundreds of sources, has concluded that humans are on the verge of causing unprecedented damage to the oceans and the animals living in them.

“We may be sitting on a precipice of a major extinction event,” said Douglas J. McCauley, an ecologist at the University of California, Santa Barbara, and an author of the new research, which was published on Thursday in the journal Science.

But there is still time to avert catastrophe, Dr. McCauley and his colleagues also found. Compared with the continents, the oceans are mostly intact, still wild enough to bounce back to ecological health.

“We’re lucky in many ways,” said Malin L. Pinsky, a marine biologist at Rutgers University and another author of the new report. “The impacts are accelerating, but they’re not so bad we can’t reverse them.”

Scientific assessments of the oceans’ health are dogged by uncertainty: It’s much harder for researchers to judge the well-being of a species living underwater, over thousands of miles, than to track the health of a species on land. And changes that scientists observe in particular ocean ecosystems may not reflect trends across the planet.

Subhana’llah: Yosemite National Park, California (IMAGES)

 Yosemite National Park is a United States National Park spanning eastern portions of Tuolumne, Mariposa and Madera counties in the central eastern portion of the U.S. state of California. The park, which is managed by the National Park Service, covers an area of 747,956 acres (3,026.87 km²) and reaches across the western slopes of the Sierra Nevada mountain chain. Over 3.7 million people visit Yosemite each year.

This Sea Lion Jumped Inside A Boat (Video)

 The circus seal we often see balancing a ball on its nose and jumping through hoops is typically a California sea lion. But in the wild, the California sea lion is a sleek animal that is faster than any other sea lion or seal. They have been known to reach speeds up to 25 miles (40 kilometers) an hour! Unlike other sea lions, California sea lions do not have lion-like manes and live along the rocky Pacific Ocean coastlines of western North America and also near Ecuador’s Galápagos Islands. These people were about two miles off the coast of Newport Beach, California when this baby sea lion spotted this passenger boat. The sea lion was probably tired from swimming and ended up boarding the boat. What he did for the next hour will amaze you!

The Rundown On The Worst Drought In California History (Video)

 Wildfires have been spreading across California all summer. Hundreds of thousands of acres are already scorched, and the conditions are ideal fuel for more devastating blazes. Over 80 percent of California is in the midst of an exceptionally severe drought as a result of erratic weather patterns caused by climate change.

San Francisco earthquake injures dozens

Biggest quake in decades knocks out power to about 40,000 homes and businesses in northern San Francisco area.

Source: http://www.aljazeera.com

A 6.0-magnitude earthquake has rocked the northern San Francisco area, injuring dozens of people, damaging historic buildings, setting some homes on fire and causing power outages around the picturesque town of Napa.

GLASS BEACH, CALIFORNIA

This beach looks more like a beach than the Chinese Red Beach. However, this is no ordinary place for leisure. Glass Beach, located near Fort Bragg, California is abundant in sea glass created from years of dumping garbage into an area of coastline near the northern part of the town. It is now one of the popular tourist attractions, although collecting sea glass is not permitted. This might not count as a natural wonder, but nature really did its trick here.

WILD JAGUAR (IMAGE)

• Although jaguars are often tawny-colored, they can vary from reddish-brown to black. Black jaguars are also called black panthers.
• A jaguar’s bite is twice as strong as a lion and it can crush heavy bones in large prey easily.
• The term “jaguar” comes from the Native American word “yaguar”, which means “he who kills with one leap.”
• Jaguar populations are rapidly declining due to habitat loss in South American rainforests and poaching for their fur.
• Jaguars were once found in the Western and Southern U.S. including Texas, California, Arizona and New Mexico. However, the jaguar population was quickly eliminated in the U.S. and very few sightings have been recorded since the 1960s.
• Young cubs are born blind and helpless. They stay with their mother for about two years learning to hunt.