Category: Travel

You don’t have to peer very far into the past to see a different landscape in southern Alberta. The area now populated with farms, lush in the heat of the summer, was once mostly parched — drought-prone land with periods of abundance. First Nations lived with the land for generations, working that abundance and scarcity, following herds of bison which thrived on the resilient grasses of the prairies. But settlers arrived and so did irrigation, wetting fields for crops where once there were prairie grasses adapted to an arid climate; home to rattlesnakes, burrowing owls and pronghorn.

Source: An Alberta drought isn’t new — but it’s getting worse | The Narwhal

Many people acquire great wealth, but there a quite a few of them like Charles Francis Feeney, who ended up donating every last bit of the fortune he had earned in his lifetime. Feeney, the founding father of duty-free shops around the world and a skilled investor in tech start-ups, passed away at the age of 92 on October 9, 2023, per The New York Times. However, before leaving this world and dying peacefully in his San Francisco home, he donated all his $8 billion worth of fortune to charity.

Source: Man donates his entire fortune of $8 billion before passing away at the age of 92 – Scoop Upworthy

More heat waves and unpredictable rainfall could destroy vineyards from California to Greece by 2100, according to a new study, while at the same time creating ideal conditions for wine growing in the United Kingdom and other unexpected regions.“Climate change is affecting grape yield, composition and wine quality. As a result, the geography of wine production is changing,” the study said. “About 90% of traditional wine regions in coastal and lowland regions of Spain, Italy, Greece and southern California could be at risk of disappearing by the end of the century because of excessive drought and more frequent heatwaves with climate change.”The researchers looked at the effects of drought, increasing temperatures and changes in diseases and pests on wine regions across the world, reported AFP. They found that there was a “substantial” risk of 49 to 70 percent of wine-producing regions losing their economic viability, depending on the level of global heating.“Climate change is changing the geography of wine,” said lead author of the study Cornelis van Leeuwen, a viticulture professor with the Institut des Sciences de la Vigne et du Vin at Bordeaux University and Bordeaux Sciences Agro, as AFP reported. “There will be winners and losers.”The study, “Climate change impacts and adaptations of wine production,” was published in the journal Nature Reviews Earth & Environment.“You can still make wine almost anywhere (even in tropical climates)… but here we looked at quality wine at economically viable yields,” said van Leeuwen, as reported by AFP.

Source: ‘Climate Change Is Changing the Geography of Wine,’ Study Finds – EcoWatch

On Oct. 6, 2023, Israel was tearing itself at the seams over Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s misguided attempt to eviscerate the Israeli judiciary, known to critics as the Judicial Coup. Netanyahu proposed far-ranging changes to the judicial selection process and the scope of the Supreme Court’s powers of judicial review.The changes were not minor reforms, but a radical revamp that would have made the Israeli judiciary subservient to the government. In Israel’s parliamentary system, the legislative and executive are basically the same, since the executive — i.e. the governing coalition — requires a majority in the Knesset.Netanyahu’s objective was to obliterate any check on governmental power. Hundreds of thousands of Israelis from every political persuasion came out to demonstrate for ten consecutive months. Most Israelis understood that the main impetus for the judicial coup was to keep Netanyahu out of jail, as he faced and continues to face three corruption cases. The leaders of the protest movement were ridiculed by Netanyahu cabinet members, who suggested they were all traitors — including many of the leaders, who were highly decorated veterans.On Oct. 7, after the Hamas massacres in southern Israel, all the anti-Netanyahu protest groups pivoted immediately and began to provide the social services that the radical and incompetent Netanyahu government could not provide — everything from relocation services for families from the area surrounding Gaza to food and even as far as ordering flak jackets from overseas, because the army did not have sufficient supplies for the soldiers.On Oct. 9, 2023, I wrote on this site: “Iran and Hamas conflated protests against the government with an unwillingness to defend the country against an external enemy. The dichotomy between government and country is lost on Hamas and Iran. Widespread casualties, hostages and fear have galvanized the Israeli public. The people of Gaza will bear the burden of that miscalculation.” The war has shown this to be true.Regrettably, Netanyahu continues to demonstrate that the dichotomy between his personal interests and that of the State of Israel is lost on him as well.Six months into the war, Netanyahu is viewed by the vast majority of Israelis as putting his own vested political interests ahead of the country’s. Israeli opinion polls earlier this week indicate that 71 percent of the country wants him to resign now or before new elections, and close to 60 percent of the Israeli electorate believe he is putting personal political interests ahead of getting the hostages back.Because Netanyahu relies on the radical right for his coalition, he has squandered every opportunity to demonstrate that this was a war against Hamas rather than against the Palestinian people. In the wake of the killing of seven World Central Kitchen aid workers, Israel has finally opened crossings at the northern end of Gaza (though the Erez crossing has not yet opened), has agreed to allow the Ashdod port to be used for humanitarian aid into Gaza and has agreed to streamline aid from Jordan. Every single one of these steps had been proposed months ago by the U.S. and from within Israel. But, fearing backlash from his extreme right-wing coalition partners, Netanyahu chose not to do the right thing but rather to serve himself.Critically, Netanyahu allowed the appalling humanitarian situation in Gaza to overwhelm the strategic imperative of maintaining relations with governments in the West — not just the U.S., but Germany, the U.K. and France as well.Hamas is not an existential threat to Israel — if it was, why did Netanyahu maintain a symbiotic relationship with Hamas since 2009? The far greater strategic threat to Israel is another member of the Axis of Resistance — Hezbollah in Lebanon.Unlike Hamas, Hezbollah has serious Iranian weaponry: well over 150,000 long-range missiles, which can hit any target in Israel, and massive stockpiles of lesser range munitions that are used against stationary targets in northern Israel — such as artillery, mortars and anti-tank weapons. Hezbollah could fire 400 long-range missiles a day for a year against major Israeli cities and infrastructure without the need for resupply.

Source: Netanyahu still believes he is the state | The Hill

Music is a series of organized pitches experienced over time. We take a brief look at the history and meaning of music through the ages.

Source: What Is the History and Meaning of Music?

Over tourism became a major issue in the 21st century, leading Fodor’s Travel to create a “No List” for besieged spots tourists should avoid, for their own good and more importantly for the health of the destinations themselves. The “No List” published in November 2019 included Bali.

Source: How Many Tourists Are Too Many? | The Tyee