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Tiger Trade Targeted Along Myanmar Border

Wildlife officials hope they’ll be able to close one of the world’s biggest markets for poached tigers on Myanmar’s border. An announcement of a preliminary agreement came ahead of a tiger summit in Russia. (Nov. 19)

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Green Gift Guide: The Animal Lover (Slideshow)

Photo: TreeHugger Who says walking on four legs instead of two means you can’t enjoy the holidays? No matter what you wrap up for your favorite animal lover (or fluffy pal), nothing compares to a warm snuggle from a loving pet . From cats and dogs to giraffes, elephants, and butterflies, we’ve got holiday gifts ranging from pooch-ready recycled raincoats, elephant poo note cards, a book of adorable zoo babies, and more. Produced by Mairi Beautyman

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The Week in Pictures: Dengue Fever Hits Miami, Slow Thanksgiving Meals, and More (Slideshow)

Just another blood-sucking mosquito? Think again. For the first time in half a century a person in Miami-Dade County, Florida has been diagnosed (and recovered from…) a case of dengue fever that had been acquired locally. In other shocking news this week, a Pennsylvania conservation officer was gunned down by a suspected poacher, Sandia has announced a breakthrough in nuclear fusion energy generation, TreeHugger cooks up a tasty vegetarian entree–and helps you find an ethical bird–for a healthy Thanksgiving entree, and more in our photo roundup of the most popular stories from the world of green.

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Catching up with the New York Times’s Tea Party beat reporter Kate Zernike at a post-election conference sponsored by the “Bipartisan Policy Center” in New Orleans on November 9, where Zernike claimed she “very consciously tried to come up through the middle” in writing “Boiling Mad,” her book on the Tea Party. Her defense of her own objectivity came nearly an hour into the discussion, aired by C-SPAN .

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MIT’s laser camera can photograph around corners, render your camouflage useless

You know, we’d love to meet this Ramesh Raskar character. Possibly even shake his hand, or secretly become injected with a pinch of his DNA. You see, he’s devoted his life to proving that the impossible is actually possible , first conjuring up a 6D “super-realistic” image system just over two years ago. Now, he’s onto bigger and better things… things like cameras that can see around corners. Granted, this concept isn’t exactly a new one — LIDAR-equipped robots have been discovering hidden objects for years, but the mere thought of cramming this technology into a camera has us salivating. Auntie Beeb has a new piece up on the technology, and it actually does an exceptional job of explaining the technobabble. Put simply, the created prototype utilizes an ultra-short, highly intense burst of laser light (a femotosecond laser , if you have to know) to light up a scene; from there, it bends around corners and bounces back, using algorithms to figure out what’s inside of the room based on the bounce points. We’re guessing it’ll still be a few decades before this gets wrapped into a mid-range DSLR, but we’re cautiously hoping for a working mockup at CES 2015. Seriously, we just marked it down. Don’t disappoint us, guys. MIT’s laser camera can photograph around corners, render your camouflage useless originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 19 Nov 2010 10:28:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds . Permalink

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It’s Not A Joke, It’s World Toilet Day

Credit World Toilet Organization Hold the Potty jokes. Every November 19 is World Toilet Day, designed “to celebrate the importance of sanitation and raise awareness for the 2.6 billion people (nearly half of the world’s population) who don’t have access to toilets and proper sanitation.” Here’s the hot poop: The water and sanitation crisis has claimed more lives than all the wars of the 20th century, combined. 1 out of 5 children die of diarrhoeal disease, which means a mother can expect to bury at least one o… Read the full story on TreeHugger

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Weekday Vegetarian Thanksgiving: Harissa

Photo: Kelly Rossiter In addition to the gravy for the tofu cake , I wanted to make a sauce for the vegetable tagine . The tagine has lots of spice in it, but it’s not at all hot. My son is a great afficiando of hot foods, so this was an easy way to accomodate people who’s tolerance of heat might not as great as his. Just a spoonful was all that was needed for most of the … Read the full story on TreeHugger

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Lunchbox Heats and Cools Your Meal with Solar Power

Images via Yanko Design For a hot or cold meal on the go, this high-tech lunchbox concept is an interesting solution. Using a giant flower-shaped fan with netting somehow made of solar cells, lunchbox captures energy to heat and cool various compartments storing your different dishes. It’s vaporware, but it sounds cooler than these other very real lunchbox ideas. … Read the full story on TreeHugger

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Panasonic Lumix GF2 reviewed: smaller, simpler, and arguably better than the GF1

Panasonic’s DMC-GF1 proved itself as a tasty go-between, filling the gap between high-end compact and DSLR . The GF2 will soon arrive and, according to Photography Blog , if anything it slots in a little closer to the compact side of things thanks to a new user interface that ditches many buttons and dials in favor of touchscreen menus. This will drive some users mad, but ultimately the up-rated features here still make this a worthy choice over the GF1, including video recording at 1080i60 and a new body that’s a fifth smaller and seven percent lighter than before despite still containing a pop-up flash, 12.1 megapixel sensor, and image quality that’s about as good as you’re going to get out of a shooter this size. Panasonic Lumix GF2 reviewed: smaller, simpler, and arguably better than the GF1 originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 19 Nov 2010 10:04:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds . Permalink

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Tony Perkins suggests draft will be reinstated if ‘don’t ask, don’t tell’ is repealed

Click here to view this media The presence of openly serving gays in the military will be so offensive that many Americans will not be willing to serve their country, says one conservative leader who has campaigned against gay rights. The Family Research Council’s Tony Perkins predicted Thursday that President Barack Obama will be forced to reinstate the draft if Democrats are successful in repealing the military’s controversial “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy which forces gay, lesbian and trans-gender members to hide their personal lives or face expulsion from the service. “Barack Obama is opposed to the draft as a matter of principle, to be sure,” wrote Perkins in an op-ed for The Daily Caller . “But the president’s drive to repeal the ban on open homosexuality in the military could have this unintended consequence: It could bring back the draft.” Perkins warns service members that if the policy is repealed, “your military family will be confronted again and again with forced acceptance of a lifestyle you regard as immoral.” “Base ‘diversity’ efforts will promote the homosexual lifestyle. Parents of younger children will be hard-pressed to shield their kids from these. Department of Defense Dependent Schools (DoDDS) will be turned into advocacy centers for acceptance of the homosexual lifestyle. We may even see a military ‘czar’ appointed for this purpose,” said Perkins. “All of these undesirable outcomes will cause a sharp reduction in recruitment. We have a top general and admiral who now say, outrageously: If you don’t like it, ‘get out!’ They are asking for an exodus,” he continued. The military is not a red state/blue state institution. It unifies our country. It draws its dedicated members from all regions. Still, it is no secret that the military is a socially conservative institution. It recruits heavily from rural areas in the South, the Midwest, and the Inter-Mountain states. In our larger cities, black and Hispanic recruits are encouraged to consider the military — which has historically been a great ladder of achievement for racial and ethnic minorities. These are the very areas and groups who have been most resistant to the demands of the homosexual lobby. These are the very regions and groups who have rallied to our side whenever we put a defense of marriage initiative on the ballot If these regions and groups do not enlist in our all-volunteer force, President Obama will be driven to the place he does not want to go: the military draft. Like Sen. John McCain (R-AZ), Perkins rejects a leaked Pentagon study that says most US troops don’t care whether gays are allowed to serve openly. “[T]his study was directed at how to implement the repeal, not whether the repeal should take place or not,” McCain told NBC’s David Gregory Sunday. “The deeply flawed ‘survey’ of current members of our all-volunteer military should not lull policymakers into a false sense of security. Or, in this instance, a false sense of national security,” Perkins warned. “The survey presumes that homosexuality is like skin color. Well, it’s not. You can easily have a neighbor in military housing of a different race. That presents no problem for your military family. But if the neighbors are a same-sex couple, then your family is affected in a very serious way. You must explain to your children that their beliefs and deeply-held values about marriage, about questions of religious faith, must be suppressed.” As Right Wing Watch points outs , Family Research Council’s own interview with a military recruiter indicates that troops will continue to serve if gays are allowed to serve openly. “I’m sure this thought has come to you and you may have even been asked about it. If someone considering getting into the military were to ask you if this policy changes, what are you going to say to them?” Perkins asked Sergeant First Class Benjamin Ratcliff. “I would tell them to serve anyway,” Ratcliff replied. “If all men of courage and men that had a moral compass were to leave the military, then we wouldn’t have a military. There would be nobody left to serve and protect. So I don’t really — I would serve regardless of what comes out of Washington.”

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