What Haiti needs: A Haitian diaspora

from WaPo:

Haiti has approximately 9 million citizens, and 1 million to 2 million Haitians live outside their country. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, half a million people born in Haiti live in the United States, and estimates put several hundred thousand in Canada and as many as 100,000 in France. Those migrants send home $1.9 billion in remittances -- double the official aid flows and equal to 30 percent of Haiti's gross domestic product.

These sums are greatly exceeded by some of Haiti's neighbors. The 1.3 million Dominicans living in the United States send home $3 billion in remittances, an amount 20 times as much as official aid flows. A million Hondurans living abroad send home $2.7 billion, providing eight times the global foreign aid Honduras receives. The 1.5 million Salvadorans living here send home $3.8 billion, 15 times official aid flows.

A larger Haitian diaspora would be a far better base for the country's economic future than aid pledges that may or may not be met. If several hundred thousand more Haitians were able to migrate, those Dominican, Honduran or Salvadoran numbers suggest that remittances to Haiti would give its economy a huge and continuing jolt.

Snowflake Bentley: first ever pictures of snow crystals by Wilson A Bentley go on sale

from Telegraph.uk:

Photographs by the first person to capture the image of a single snowflake with a camera are going up for sale in New York, featuring examples from a life's work of pioneering 19th-century images of thousands of jewel-like snowflakes — no two alike

How Hyena's Hunt and Kill Their Prey

From New English Review:
Watch if you can, here.

Photographic artist Ruth Kaiser spots happiness everywhere as she finds smiley faces in everyday objects

from London Telegraph:

Surf photographer Clark Little captures pictures of the insides of waves

from London Telegraph....inside waves.

Beautiful award-winning photomicrographs

from Tai-wiki-widbee"

Snowflake...................

beauty

nature blurb....breaking waves

Check out these amazing pictures of breaking waves...

movie blurb...arachnophobia...my friend says all 3 U.S. poison spiders live in oregon

Blurbat: A friend of mine recently told me that she just learned that all three types of U.S. poison spiders live in Oregon. Hobo, Black widow, and Brown Recluse. So I guess it's no surprise that I just got a call that there's a Brown Recluse spider in the bottom of her dirty clothes basket. I went to check it out. It released it outside. But then I got to thinking that I don't really know how to ID a BR spider. So I looked up the key, it's a violin shape behind the head.

Blurbat hopes that my friend won't feel like this every time she does her laundry:



I told her I thought she should confront her fears and watch the movie Arachiphobia..

nature blurb...only place in the world where elephants freely get so close to humans

DailyMail:
“When they returned one year and found the luxury accommodation in the way, they simply walked through reception.

'This is the only place in the world where elephants freely get so close to humans,' says the 44-year-old.

'The elephants start coming through base camp in late November of each year to eat the mangos from our trees.

'When they are ripe they come through and they stand about for four to six weeks coming back each day or second day to eat the mangos.'”

nature blurb...amazing time lapse

nature blurb.. penitentes

from deputy dog:

these amazing ice spikes (generally known as penitentes due to their resemblence to processions of white-hooded monks) can be found on mountain glaciers and vary in size dramatically: from a few centimetres to 5 metres in height.

‘initially, the sun’s rays cause random dimples on the surface of the snow. once such a dimple is formed, sunlight can be reflected within the dimple, increasing the localised sublimation. as this accelerates, deep troughs are formed, leaving peaks of ice standing between them’ - new scientist

Nature (?) blurb...Japanese bug fights

there is a long history of bug fights as a spectator sport in Japan, from darkroastedblend.

nature blurb...top 10 animal stories of 2007

The most promising theory behind colony-collapse disorder is that a virus is responsible for wiping out perhaps as much as a quarter of the commercial U.S. honey bee population, which is responsible for pollinating such important crops as apples, peaches and soybeans. In September, researchers at Penn State and Columbia found that a disease known as Israeli Acute Paralysis Virus was present in more than 90% of the afflicted hives. But many in the scientific community think other parasites or pesticides may be to blame. From Time the top 10 animal stories of 2007.

nature blurb...predator and prey

from The Daily Mail : "Alone in his tiny plastic sea kayak, marine biologist Trey Snow had hoped to stealthily track a great white shark. But he had the shock of his life when he spotted a giant fin and realised it was he who was being stalked - by surely one of the most feared killers in the world.

nature blurb...Nikon small world winners...2007

Follow the link to see top 20 for 2007 

nature blurb...man trains turtle to do tricks

nature blurb...creatures with human-like faces

from darkroasted blend, find the human faces.

nature blurb...awsome landscape

nature blurb...albino hedge hog

from dailymail via darkroastedblend:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/articles/news/news.html?in_article_id=452760&in_page_id=1770