Dogs are animals of integrity. We have much to learn from them.
Author: Paul Handover
Back to Unsplash for today’s photographs.
Photo by Cristina Anne Costello on Unsplash
Photo by Harshit Suryawanshi on Unsplash
Photo by Saman Tsang on Unsplash
Photo by Aldo Houtkamp on Unsplash
Photo by Deepak Kumar on Unsplash
Wonderful photographs.
I have done my best to avoid duplications with previous Picture Parades but cannot guarantee it.
80 years since that very important day!
And another day where things got in the way and I didn’t write a proper post.
We are so close yet in some ways so separate!
George Bernard Shaw once quoted that: “England and America are two countries separated by the same language.”
It seems a most apt way of introducing an article published by The Conversation.
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Garret Martin, American University School of International Service
Voters in the United Kingdom on May 22 learned the date they would be joining the many, many people casting ballots around the world in 2024.
In a surprise move, Prime Minister Rishi Sunak announced a snap election to be held on July 4 – six months earlier than many had expected. An early election is certainly a major gamble for the prime minister but one he felt was worth taking. With the ruling Conservative Party more than 20 percentage points behind opposition Labour in the latest polls, Sunak faces an uphill battle to stay in office.
The Labour Party, led by Keir Starmer, is heavily favored to return to power for the first time since 2010.
To a U.S. audience, many of the top issues in the election campaign will sound familiar: the economy, immigration, health care, Ukraine and Gaza. The choice of date, too, may ring a bell – and political soothsayers are already trying to read into what it means for the U.K. election to fall on Independence Day.
But as to the campaign itself – well, they do things a bit different on the other side of the pond. While Americans may be used to set terms and lengthy campaigns filled with endless advertising, in the U.K. such things are, to use a Britishism, “just not cricket.” Here are three main ways in which the British conduct their elections.
U.S. elections follow a predictable schedule. In 1845, Congress passed a law establishing a single day for federal elections to take place on “the Tuesday next after the first Monday in November.” Further, presidents are elected for a fixed four-year term, making the dates for upcoming votes knowable for the foreseeable future.
That isn’t the case in the United Kingdom. By convention, elections have been held on a Thursday since 1935. But the month of the vote has varied considerably. For the most part, they take place in late spring or early summer – but fall and winter elections are not unheard of.
The U.K. Parliament does have a fixed term of five years, with elections automatically scheduled once that time has lapsed. In practice, however, parliaments have rarely gone the full five years.
Indeed, prime ministers in the United Kingdom have the authority to request the dissolution of Parliament at any time. They can do so without the approval of the cabinet, and so prime ministers have taken liberal advantage of their ability to control the timing of the election to try and gain an advantage.
Many thought that Sunak may have been eyeing an election later in the year, but a number of factors, including economic forecasts and not wanting the distraction of a U.S. election, may have factored in to him calling an earlier-than-expected vote.
Besides the shifting timing, the nature and rules of the campaign are also very different in the United Kingdom. This starts with the sheer brevity of the campaign. Once Parliament is dissolved, the election must take place 25 working days later. This means the parties have a mere six weeks to make their case to the public.
And unlike in a presidential system, voters in the United Kingdom do not cast a ballot for the person they want to see lead the country. Instead, the U.K. is divided into 650 distinct constituencies; voters pick their preferred candidate to represent their local constituency in Parliament. The party with the most seats typically wins the election, and the leader of that party has the opportunity to become prime minister and govern as a single-party government or as part of a coalition.
U.K. election campaigns are also subject to strict rules to maintain neutrality. Once the campaign starts, the period of “purdah” kicks in, which imposes certain restrictions on government activities. This involves, for instance, strict prohibitions on government ministers announcing new initiatives to affect the election or using public funds for political purposes.
In the same manner, civil servants – employees of the crown who work for the government but are not political appointees – are required to maintain strict impartiality and not become involved in partisan debates.
Moreover, the Office of Communications, the United Kingdom’s independent media regulatory authority, also enforces strict rules for broadcast media, including television and radio. The 2003 Communications Act requires that all broadcast media must cover the elections in an impartial manner, providing coverage of all parties, even if they do not assign equal time.
Broadcast media is also not allowed, on polling day, to suggest the outcome of the vote before polls are closed.
In a huge departure from the U.S., U.K. political parties are banned from buying television ads, but this rule does not apply to streaming television.
The limited role of money is another distinct feature in U.K. elections. Even factoring in the different population sizes, U.K. elections are significantly cheaper than their counterparts in the United States.
Indeed, total campaign spending in the 2020 U.S. elections, covering presidential and congressional races, hit more than US$14 billion. That scale completely dwarfs how much parties and candidates will be able to spend in the 2024 United Kingdom election.
Through regulations established by the Electoral Commission, an independent government agency, a British party that competes in all constituencies in the United Kingdom will be allowed to spend just over £34 million (around $43 million) in total to support all candidates.
That figure in itself marks an 80% increase from the allowance at the last election in 2019, so to factor for inflation since limits were set in 2000.
Individual candidates can spend funds to support their campaign. But the amount, defined partly by the size of the constituency, is low and in the scale of tens of thousands of pounds. This is again a far cry from some of the more expensive congressional races in the United States, where even primary elections could attract close to $30 million in spending.
As a result, both Sunak and Starmer will have only a short time – and limited funds – to make their case to voters. Whoever wins will face a very challenging situation at home and abroad, with little to no respite. According to the think tank Institute for Fiscal Studies, the state of public finances is “a dark cloud that hangs over the election.” And then there is the delicate matter of maintaining a special relationship with the U.S. – a country that may itself have a very different political landscape after it goes to the polls later in the year.
Garret Martin, Senior Professorial Lecturer, Co-Director Transatlantic Policy Center, American University School of International Service
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
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As I have frequently said, I feel English and love the fact that I speak with an English accent. Yet I adore, along with Jean, where we live just outside Merlin in Southern Oregon. I wouldn’t want to live anywhere else in the world.
Politically we are in very strange times, as was said right at the end of this article.
A change from our dear dogs.
I really hope you enjoy these as much as we have!
There is quite a long introduction but it helps enormously in explaining the background to the photographs.
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This image is released as part of the Early Release Observations from ESA’s Euclid space mission. All data from these initial observations are made public on 23 May 2024 – including a handful of unprecedented new views of the nearby Universe.
The Dorado Group of galaxies is one of the richest galaxy groups in the southern hemisphere. Here, Euclid captures signs of galaxies evolving and merging ‘in action’, with beautiful tidal tails and shells visible as a result of ongoing interactions. As Dorado is a lot younger than other clusters (like Fornax), several of its constituent galaxies are still forming stars and remain in the stage of interacting with one another, while others show signs of having merged relatively recently. In size, it sits between larger galaxy clusters and smaller galaxy groups, making it a useful and fascinating object to study with Euclid.
This dataset is enabling scientists to study how galaxies evolve and collide over time in order to improve our models of cosmic history and understand how galaxies form within halos of dark matter, with this new image being a true testament to Euclid’s immense versatility. A wide array of galaxies is visible here, from very bright to very faint. Thanks to Euclid’s unique combination of large field-of-view and high spatial resolution, for the first time we can use the same instrument and observations to deeply study tiny (small objects the size of star clusters), wider (the central parts of a galaxy) and extended (tidal merger tails) features over a large part of the sky.
Scientists are also using Euclid observations of the Dorado Group to answer questions that previously could only be explored using painstakingly small snippets of data. This includes compiling a full list of the individual clusters of stars (globular clusters) around the galaxies seen here. Once we know where these clusters are, we can use them to trace how the galaxies formed and study their history and contents. Scientists will also use these data to hunt for new dwarf galaxies around the Group, as it did previously with the Perseus cluster.
The Dorado Group lies 62 million light-years away in the constellation of Dorado.
All images are: ESA/Euclid/Euclid Consortium/NASA, image processing by J.-C. Cuillandre (CEA Paris-Saclay), G. Anselmi
Composite image of five astronomical views, three at the top, two at the bottom. All are dotted with stars and galaxies against a black background. Striking features are three bright glowing structures in the first image. The second image has an orange veil-like structure spanning across. In the third we see a stunning spiral galaxy with many arms. The fourth image features light from galaxies lying behind a bright cluster distorted into arcs. And the fifth image shows a variety of galaxies in all shapes and sizes
An elongated bright cloudy ellipse, tilted at a 45-degree angle in front a black background dotted with small white stars and galaxies. Above the ellipse floats a smaller, cloudy ellipsoid.
A dark orange filamentary structure seems to enclose stars. Centrally, three bright star-forming regions shine brightly through the orange veil in a traffic-light like formation.
The image shows hundreds of stars, some brighter than others. The stars seem to light up their cloud-like surroundings in purple. A darker structure spans the image in an arch from upper left to bottom right. The bottom of this arch runs into dense clouds forming the darkest part of the image.
This breathtaking image features Messier 78 (the central and brightest region), a vibrant nursery of star formation enveloped in a shroud of interstellar dust. This image is unprecedented – it is the first shot of this young star-forming region at this width and depth.
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Fabulous. It is an example of just how clever the science is getting!
I can only look at these images in awe. For example, Messier 78 is part of the Orion constellation, has a radius of five light-years, and is only 1,600 light-years from Planet Earth. (Using the figure from below of the distance of a single light-year, that puts Messier 78 as 1,600 times 6 trillion miles from our planet or 9,600 trillion miles.)
And in case you forgot it, one light year is:
The light-year is a measure of distance, not time. It is the total distance that a beam of light, moving in a straight line, travels in one year. To obtain an idea of the size of a light-year, take the circumference of the earth (24,900 miles), lay it out in a straight line, multiply the length of the line by 7.5 (the corresponding distance is one light-second), then place 31.6 million similar lines end to end. The resulting distance is almost 6 trillion (6,000,000,000,000) miles!
But primarily for companionship.
I chose this article from The Conversation simply because it is the truth about having a pet animal.
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Emily Hemendinger, University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus
Owning a pet can be a roller coaster. There are the highs, like when your dog greets you with a full-body wiggle when you return home, or when your cat purrs loudly as you cuddle next to one another. Then there are the lows, like stressful trips to urgent care, waking up to that unpleasant vomiting noise, or making the difficult choice to say goodbye because of medical problems or even intractable behavioral issues.
For those pet-owners who are struggling, it’s beneficial to their mental health to acknowledge that pets can create stress and that some animals are more work than others.
Research has shown that both cats and dogs can have equally positive impacts on mental health.
Pets may be helpful at reducing stress, anxiety and feelings of being overwhelmed, including in children. Pet ownership has also been shown to improve well-being by instilling people with a sense of purpose and responsibility.
As a licensed clinical social worker, animal lover and proud dog mom, I have both professionally and personally seen the mental health impacts of having animal companions.
Media stories commonly cover the positives of pet ownership. But the hardships and downsides of owning a pet are not discussed as often. For instance, while there are many positive aspects to pet ownership, some research is showing that pets may lead to exacerbated mental health concerns or even sleep issues.
Whether you’re adopting or shopping, pets can bring a full range of emotions into our lives. Research has even shown that pets may benefit non-pet owners around them as well.
A pet owner may easily be able to tick off an infinite number of positive effects their fuzzy companion has had on their life. Research backs them up.
Pets can provide constant companionship for individuals and families. This is particularly true for older adults. There was an uptick in adoptions of pets during the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic. Many people benefited from pets during periods of stay-at-home mandates and quarantines.
Pet adoptions soared during the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic. But many owners then found themselves struggling with the rising costs of care.
Research shows that dogs can reduce loneliness in their owners. In fact, being accompanied by a dog may even make you seem more approachable.
Pets, especially dogs, may help improve one’s ability to socialize and feel connected with others, as well as increasing the prospects for social interactions. People may bond over the experience of having pets, socialize at the dog park, or even meet up at the local cat café.
Animals and pets have also been used to assist in detecting the onset symptoms of medical episodes, including seizures. Animal-assisted therapy and pet therapy have shown promise in improving symptom management and overall quality of life in a number of conditions, including trauma and stressor-related disorders, anxiety disorders, eating disorders, autism, traumatic brain injuries, neurological disorders and more.
There are ample benefits to pet ownership.
Despite the many positive impacts of pet ownership, it also can have negative impacts. For example, one survey found that 47% of Americans felt separation anxiety when leaving their dogs at home.
The survey also found that 41% of pet owners declined social invitations because they did not want to leave their dog at home, and that 70% of pet owners would prefer to work remotely so they could stay at home with their pet. Pet owners have also identified feeling anxious about their pet getting sick or running away, or the risk that they might harm the animal unintentionally.
Stress from pet ownership is common. There’s the stress of house-training and making sure the pet is getting enough enrichment – both physically and mentally. Then there are the challenges associated with vet appointments and navigating illness, as well as financial stressors and finding pet sitters.
Another element of pet ownership that people often don’t talk about is the stress, and often shame, that owners with reactive dogs experience from walking their dog, having people over to the house or having their dog around children.
Finally, there’s the reality that our pet companions live shorter lives than we do, leading to end-of-life planning, expensive treatments for older-age ailments, and, of course, the grief that will be felt from the loss of a pet. For some people, the loss of a pet may feel worse than human loss.
People may judge or criticize pet owners for an “overblown” grief reaction. The common experience of invalidation and lack of acknowledgment related to grief around pet loss – similar to the grief felt from divorce and miscarriage – is categorized as disenfranchised grief. This term refers to grief that is not acknowledged, validated or accepted socially.
Pet owners, especially post-pandemic, have reported high levels of guilt related to leaving their pets at home while at work or social events. Some of this guilt may be related to concerns about providing insufficient attention to the pet or about the pet’s health. This guilt has even been shown to be similar to the feeling human parents have concerning their human children.
As someone who adores their dog, I can relate to the guilt of leaving him alone. To complicate things, my dog has joint issues, anxiety and discoid lupus, a type of lupus that affects the skin on his nose. He can also be reactive. All of these aspects require me to provide extra care. When friends invalidate my worries and guilt, it can feel isolating and shaming.
And I’m not alone in these feelings. Overall, when there is a lack of consideration for the complex feelings pet owners experience, the invalidation and disenfranchised feelings can lead to depression, anxiety, feelings of being isolated and worsened quality of life.
The human-animal bond is unique, with humans receiving unconditional love and full acceptance from their animal companion. When society can honor and respect this bond through validation, patience and compassion, it not only helps pet owners but also the clinicians who treat the animals.
Employers can be supportive by continuing to provide remote and hybrid work options, flexibility in scheduling and opportunities for employees to feel validated and receive support. If a loved one is experiencing guilt around leaving their dog at home or a friend is having anxiety about their cat’s health, instead of minimizing their experience, try talking to them and asking how best to support them through their distress.
Another support tool is encouraging pet owners to practice self-compassion and mindfulness, being present and focusing on the time they do have with their pet.
Pets can bring infinite joy and companionship to our lives, whether that’s through pet ownership, fostering, volunteering or engaging in animal-assisted therapy.
It remains important, however, to acknowledge the stressors and difficulties pet owners face. After all, the ups and downs of pet ownership, just like the ups and downs of the human experience, are what make life and relationships that much more meaningful.
Emily Hemendinger, Assistant Professor of Psychiatry, University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
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This is such a good article both for the general readership and for Jeannie and me specifically. For when I met Jean in December, 2007 Jean had 23 dogs and 7 cats. Jean’s passionate interest was in rescuing the many street dogs that roamed San Carlos in Mexico.
My great love of dogs came from the loving companionship that the animals offered me, including my Pharaoh that I brought with me from England. Now we are down to just two dogs: Oliver and Cleopatra.
This is on the edge of my understanding!
Patrice Ayme recently posted an essay called Relativistic Length Contraction Busts Helium3! As I said in my comment to that post:
“This is far ahead of my knowledge of science. I applaud you for writing this despite me not understanding it”
So it may seem a little strange that I now publish the following. It was published originally on Skeptic. It is quite a long video but, please, settle down and watch it.
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Sean Carroll is creating a profoundly new approach to sharing physics with a broad audience, one that goes beyond analogies to show how physicists really think. He cuts to the bare mathematical essence of our most profound theories, explaining every step in a uniquely accessible way.
Quantum field theory is how modern physics describes nature at its most profound level. Starting with the basics of quantum mechanics itself, Sean Carroll explains measurement and entanglement before explaining how the world is really made of fields. You will finally understand why matter is solid, why there is antimatter, where the sizes of atoms come from, and why the predictions of quantum field theory are so spectacularly successful. Fundamental ideas like spin, symmetry, Feynman diagrams, and the Higgs mechanism are explained for real, not just through amusing stories. Beyond Newton, beyond Einstein, and all the intuitive notions that have guided homo sapiens for millennia, this book is a journey to a once unimaginable truth about what our universe is.
Sean Carroll is Homewood Professor of Natural Philosophy at Johns Hopkins University, and Fractal Faculty at the Santa Fe Institute. He is host of the Mindscape podcast, and author of From Eternity to Here, The Particle at the End of the Universe, The Big Picture, and Something Deeply Hidden. He has been awarded prizes and fellowships by the National Science Foundation, NASA, the American Institute of Physics, the Royal Society of London, and many others. He lives in Baltimore with his wife, writer Jennifer Ouellette. His new book series, The Biggest Ideas in the Universe, includes one volume on Space, Time, and Motion, and this new volume on Quanta and Fields.
Shermer and Carroll discuss:
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I’m assuming you have watched the video because in a world that is pre-occupied with the trivial this is just the opposite. Sean shares his physics in a profoundly different and powerful way!
Yet more from Unsplash!
Photo by Michael Dziedzic on Unsplash
So handsome, this GSD. Reminds us of Pharaoh.
Photo by Silvana Carlos on Unsplash
Photo by Stainless Images on Unsplash
Photo by Jamie Street on Unsplash
Photo by Anna Dudkova on Unsplash
Photo by Anthony Duran on Unsplash
Photo by Cynthia Smith on Unsplash
Perfect photographs!
A dog that begs workers to save her.
There is no shortage of glorious stories about dogs, and thank goodness for that! Recently I saw an article on The Dodo about a dog and I wanted to share it with you.
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By Ashley Ortiz, Published on May 17, 2024
When Jeanean Gillespie clocked into work at a construction site earlier this month, she expected to see the usual handful of people around. Her office, located on an uninhabited stretch of desert, managed the new housing developments being built — and no one, other than her team of workers, was authorized to be there.
So when she saw two tiny eyes peering at her through her office doorway that morning, she jumped. The tiny pup had seemingly shown up out of nowhere, and she was desperate for someone to see her.
“She wanted to be noticed, she wanted help,” Suzette Hall, founder of Logan’s Legacy 29, wrote on Facebook. “Thank goodness my dear, dear friend, Jeanean Gillespie, worked there.”
Gillespie’s heart dropped when she realized the little dog, later named Sage, was all alone in the dangerous desert. With bobcats and coyotes lurking nearby, Gillespie knew time was of the essence to save Sage.
The compassionate worker tried repeatedly to capture Sage, but the scared pup ran away every time. After a few failed attempts, Gillespie called Hall for backup and placed food and water by the door for her in the meantime.
Sage was frightened by her new friends, but she still felt safe in their care. As they came up with a rescue plan, Sage figured out how to get as close as possible to them while still keeping her distance.
“She would sleep outside the office doors at night,” Hall wrote. “They all tried to help her, but she wouldn’t let anyone get close.”
Gillespie tried gaining Sage’s trust each day and eventually lured her inside the office. Hall arrived soon after, and the experienced rescuer recognized Sage’s demeanor instantly.
“When I got there, she was so scared, but she wanted to surrender so bad,” Hall said. “She was exhausted.”
Hall calmed the skittish dog and successfully scooped her up shortly after arriving. As scared as Sage was, she instantly felt comforted in Hall’s arms.
“[W]ithin minutes, she melted safely into my arms,” Hall wrote. “She knew she was safe from loneliness …”
Gillespie waved goodbye to the resilient pup as Hall loaded her into the car and drove off to Camino Pet Hospital. After days of surviving on her own in the desert, Sage got some much-needed rest.
“She fell fast asleep on the drive back,” Hall said. “She closed both eyes for the first time in days. She was rescued and she knew it.”
It’s been a couple of weeks since Sage’s rescue, and the survivor pup is still recovering from the ordeal. Aside from needing a growth removed, a dental cleaning and a spay, Sage is overall healthy. But her spirit is still broken.
“Poor Sage is not feeling well … her blood work came back normal, but she is just so sad,” Hall told The Dodo. “She needs love. She is just longing for it.”
Sage is scheduled for surgery soon, and Hall hopes to find her an amazing family once she’s feeling better. Until then, she’ll keep showering Sage with the love she’s always deserved.
“She’s such a sweet baby,” Hall said.
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I just love stories like this one. Sweet, sweet Sage!
Dogs in many ways are just like us humans. Scared of being alone and rejected but always deserving of love. Perfect!
We just had one of those days yesterday and the day ran out before I could think of a post.
Sorry!
Once more, dear friends, from Unsplash.
This time with a focus on German Shepherd dogs.
Photo by Jana Ohajdova on Unsplash
Photo by Anna Dudkova on Unsplash
Photo by Jayalekshman SJ on Unsplash
Photo by Anish Hassan on Unsplash
Photo by Yuriy Bogdanov on Unsplash
Photo by Sarah ( animal photography ) on Unsplash
Photo by Dustin Bowdige on Unsplash
These are such beautiful photographs, such fabulous pictures. Until next week!
Learning from Dogs 