The proposal to strip nearly all gray wolves across the lower 48 states of Endangered Species Act protections has left many Americans saddened, shocked and downright angry.
As part of our efforts to bring attention to this urgent issue, my friends at Defenders of Wildlife has created a powerful two-minute video that emphasizes why continued protection for wolves is crucial, and illustrates what our nation's wolves could face if the Administration goes forward with their misguided plan.
Please, take a few moments to watch this poignant video, share with your friends, and support our work today. Wolves need you now more than ever!
The Friendly and Educational Art Robot that Paints with Watercolors!
Starting with vector artwork on your computer-- or following along as you sketch in real time --the WaterColorBot dips its brush in water, goes and gets the right color of paint, and paints before your eyes.
The WaterColorBot works with standard watercolor paints and paper, so that you never need to purchase specialized or expensive supplies. It is made in the USA with a tough and sturdy wooden frame to last for years of use.
While a robotic painting "printer" can be an incredibly fun thing on its own, the WaterColorBot is also a genuine (if simple and friendly) computer-automated, numerically controlled (CNC) machine-- and that lets you do some amazing things.
For an example, take a look at the two paintings shown above-- they are nearly perfect copies. One was painted right one painted right after the other. With the WaterColorBot, you can easily make an extra painting for Grandma. (And you can always save the file for later, just in case something happens to the one on the fridge.)
How the WaterColorBot works
The WaterColorBot is essentially a specialized pen plotter that uses a set of watercolors.
To move the paint brush, there are two motors built into the frame of the robot. Each motor drives a little winch that moves a length of cord attached to a rod that controls either the X or Y position of the brush.
This same mechanism (right down to the winches and cords) can be found inside many vintage plotters and chart recorders. It is also the same mechanism that an Etch-a-Sketch uses, except that instead of a stylus, we have a carriage that moves the brush up and down.
What's in the box?
The WaterColorBot comes as a kit, with some assembly required. It includes the already-built chassis, carriage, and motor controller board. It also comes with a starter set of watercolor paints, paper, and a brush. Please see the FAQ below for a more detailed list of the kit contents.
You will need a recent-vintage computer (say, made within the last five years) with an available USB port. You will also need internet access to download software, instructions, and (optional) instructional videos.
To put the kit together, you'll need small and medium philips-head screwdrivers, and a sharp pair of scissors. Pre-teen and younger kids will need adult help to put it together and get started using it.
History of the project
Sylvia Todd, star of Sylvia's Super-Awesome Maker Show, came up with the idea for the WaterColorBot because she wanted to create an art robot and enter it in the RoboGames competition. She approached us at Evil Mad Scientist Laboratories about collaborating on the project, and we loved it.
Together we designed and built our first prototype in February, and had a nicely-working robot about a month later. As we realized that this project had a lot of appeal beyond just a one-off project, we started developing it into a kit. Sylvia exhibited her prototype at RoboGames (and won a Silver medal), and we also brought the WaterColorBot to Maker Faire, where thousands of people got to play with it.
Sylvia was also invited to the White House Science Fair in April, where she got to demonstrate the WaterColorBot for President Obama (pictures and media coverage here).
Manufacturing the WaterColorBot
We will be manufacturing the WaterColorBot right here at our shop in Sunnyvale, California. The main chassis of the WaterColorBot is cut from American hardwood plywood using a CNC router, sanded, and finally laser engraved to provide the markings. The carriage and winches are built out of laser-cut wood. We also laser cut and machine Delrin parts, such as the cable guide. The lower "spoilboard" that holds the water, paints, and paper is machined from MDF.
Because we're manufacturing it in-house, we've been able to prototype our manufacturing processes in parallel with the design, every step of the way. We're also building on two years of experience of manufacturing our Ostrich Eggbot kit, which is also made from a combination of CNC routed and laser cut wood and Delrin parts, along with the same motion-control platform that drives the WaterColorBot.
Why Kickstarter?
We're launching the WaterColorBot on Kickstarter for a few different reasons. The most obvious reason is to finance the initial manufacturing run, but more importantly, we are really excited about the WaterColorBot and we want to help it reach as wide of an audience as possible.
Why we're excited about the watercolorbot
A young visitor plays with the WaterColorBot at Maker Faire
Beyond simple fun, we think that the WaterColorBot has enormous potential for STEM and STEAM education, especially as a way to get young people engaged with hands-on technology and robotics. We are particularly interested finding ways to inspire young women to pursue careers in science and technology. We cannot imagine any better way to do so, than starting with a robot co-designed by a 12 year old girl.
The WaterColorBot is manufacturable and at a late stage of development, so we forsee no overall obstacles to completing the project and shipping our first units. However, our production schedule is ambitious, and could be delayed by parts availability, production time, and other factors.
From our experience manufacturing and shipping thousands of kits (such as our Deluxe Egg-Bot kit) over the past few years, we know about inventory delays, and the havoc that they can wreak upon a project. We mitigate this in a few different ways. First, thanks to Kickstarter, we will know exactly how many machines to build. This allows us to order our parts and materials early, and in the actual quantities needed. Second, most of our parts and materials are common types, for which alternate suppliers are available. Finally, the motion control platform on the WaterColorBot (the motor and controller combination) is the same one that we already use in our Egg-Bot kits, for which we have already established reliable supply chains.
There are other things that could potentially delay shipment-- for example a truly unavoidable chip shortage at the manufacturer level. We will be in close contact with our backers should anything of this nature occur, and will do our best to work around any problems as needed.
We have had the experience of backing projects on Kickstarter, with both stellar and less-than-stellar outcomes. We want to ensure that the WaterColorBot ships on-time, and is a delight to use.
Yellowstone National Park's best-known wolf, beloved by many tourists and valued by scientists who tracked its movements, was shot and killed Thursday outside the park's boundaries, Wyoming wildlife officials reported. The wolf, known as 832F to researchers, was the alpha female of the park's highly visible Lamar Canyon pack and had become so well known that some wildlife watchers referred to her as a "rock star." The animal had been a tourist favorite for most of the past six years. — The New York Times, Dec. 8, 2012
They're intelligent, majestic and, owing to the blood lust of Homo sapiens, never far from extinction. Yet to biologists and ecologists worldwide, the best case for saving wild wolves is their role as predator of some species and, paradoxically, shepherd to others: By stalking abundant elk, moose and other forest browsers, wolves unwittingly enhance the growth of crucial vegetation that gives foxes, beavers, songbirds, pronghorn antelopes and other critters a chance to survive. Today, though, the survival most imminently threatened is that of the American gray wolf itself. Early in June an arm of the Obama administration pleased the politically influential livestock industry — plus hunting interests still smarting over gun control bills — by proposing that the wolves no longer need protection under the Endangered Species Act of 1973.
Until Sept. 11, citizens can submit comments to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. We hope you'll join the fray (details below) and tell the feds how premature and reckless that policy reversal would be: Continuing today's level of protection would give wolves a chance to widen their territories and continue to recover — as bald eagles, alligators, brown pelicans and falcons were allowed to do when they, too, faced obliteration.
Thanks to federal protection that actually dates to the mid-1960s, wolves have begun to rebound from near-extinction — although today they roam less than 5 percent of their ancestors' range. Stripping away that protection likely would freeze in place — and limit forever — this fledgling recovery. Expansion of packs to areas bulging with potential wolf habitat in the Pacific Northwest, California, the Southern Rockies and some Northeastern states would be virtually impossible.
This proposal, if enacted, would free the administration from passionate political clashes between environmentalists and livestock growers in several states. But it also would leave the wolf's recovery not only unfinished, but seriously imperiled: The Center for Biological Diversity, one of many national environmental groups fighting the administration's proposal, says the isolation of too many packs in small, disconnected locales promotes dangerous inbreeding; for lack of genetic variety, wolf litters grow smaller — as do pup survival rates.
Some 2 million gray wolves once roamed North America. By the mid-1900s, though, they had been hunted almost to oblivion in the 48 contiguous United States. A half-century of preservation efforts — federal protections chief among them — have rebuilt that population to about 6,000 in the Upper Midwest and Northern Rockies. Alaska's vast hinterland has another 8,000 or more, living without endangered-species protection. That "lower 48 states" head count, of course, doesn't include the more than 1,000 wolves killed now that Wisconsin, Minnesota, Idaho, Wyoming and Montana have legalized wolf hunting. A group called Keep Michigan Wolves Protected is trying to block hunting scheduled to begin later this year in that state, too.
How can states legalize the hunting of such rare treasures? In a precursor to today's across-the-board proposal, the administration unwisely released those states from federal wolf protection rules in recent years. Some of the killings to date have been barbarous. An Idaho trapper, Josh Bransford, became an Internet pariah after he posed, smiling, in front of a wolf caught in a leg-hold trap; rather than put out of its misery an animal standing in a circle of blood-reddened snow, Bransford used it as his photo prop.
Wolves rarely threaten humans but sometimes do attack livestock: Environmentalists calculate that last year wolves killed 645 of the 7 million cattle and sheep in Montana, Idaho and Wyoming. Ranchers who lose livestock to wolves receive government reimbursements.
That compensation helps balance what can be a good equilibrium. We've noted before that in some states the gray wolf has become a routine and accepted player in humanity's interaction with nature. Other states, though, encounter a familiar collision of two forces: the desire of humans to control what they see as their environment alone, and potential extinction if wolf populations fall so low that disease can exterminate them.
.................................................................................. Care to join the thousands of Americans who already have urged Fish and Wildlife to keep protection of gray wolves intact? Easy: chicagotribune.com/wolf takes you to the appropriate federal website and its blue "Comment Now!" button. Comment now to protect one of America's most ecologically valuable creatures. Comment now in memory of 832F — shot down while wearing the GPS tracking collar that told researchers all about her storied life at Yellowstone.
Wolves nationwide urgently need your help. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service is poised to remove protections for these important and majestic animals in most of the lower 48 states, according to a new proposal from the Obama administration.
Since 1973 wolves have been protected under the Endangered Species Act. In 1978 those protections were expanded to include wolves across most of the lower 48 states. In the past two years, protections have been removed for wolves in the northern Rocky Mountains and western Great Lakes. States in these regions have instituted aggressive hunting and trapping seasons resulting in more than 1,600 wolf deaths.
Despite the horror that state management has been, the Service has now proposed removing wolf protections in the remainder of the lower 48 states. The plan abandons wolf recovery in the Pacific Northwest, southern Rocky Mountains, Northeast, California and other areas where there is space for wolves -- keeping protections only for the very small population of Mexican gray wolves that roams Arizona and New Mexico.
Please take action now to lend your voice to the fight to protect wolves. Use the form below to ask Fish and Wildlife to reject this highly destructive, premature plan abandoning wolves across the American landscape.
Here are the facts: - 1 in 4 women has experienced domestic violence in her lifetime. - Nearly 3 out of 4 Americans personally know someone who is or has been a victim of domestic violence. - On average, more than three women and one man are murdered by their intimate partners in this country every day. http://www.cutmovie.co.uk In the U.S., you can learn more and donate to RAINN and like them on Facebook. In the U.K., you can learn more and donate to Women's Aid and like them on Facebook.
In the U.S., you can call the RAINN National sexual assault hotline: 1.800.656.4673
Lastly, if you want to help bring more awareness to this, you could share this. It's your call, though.
By: JENNIFER STISA GRANICK and CHRISTOPHER JON SPRIGMAN- | Published: June 27, 2013
THE twin revelations that telecom carriers have been secretly giving the National Security Agency information about Americans' phone calls, and that the N.S.A. has been capturing e-mail and other private communications from Internet companies as part of a secret program called Prism, have not enraged most Americans. Lulled, perhaps, by the Obama administration's claims that these "modest encroachments on privacy" were approved by Congress and by federal judges, public opinion quickly migrated from shock to "meh."
It didn't help that Congressional watchdogs — with a few exceptions, like Senator Rand Paul, Republican of Kentucky — have accepted the White House's claims of legality. The leaders of the Senate Intelligence Committee, Dianne Feinstein, Democrat of California, and Saxby Chambliss, Republican of Georgia, have called the surveillance legal. So have liberal-leaning commentators like Hendrik Hertzberg and David Ignatius.This view is wrong — and not only, or even mainly, because of the privacy issues raised by the American Civil Liberties Union and other critics. The two programs violate both the letter and the spirit of federal law. No statute explicitly authorizes mass surveillance. Through a series of legal contortions, the Obama administration has argued that Congress, since 9/11, intended to implicitly authorize mass surveillance. But this strategy mostly consists of wordplay, fear-mongering and a highly selective reading of the law.
Americans deserve better from the White House — and from President Obama, who has seemingly forgotten the constitutional law he once taught.The administration has defended each of the two secret programs. Let's examine them in turn.Edward J. Snowden, the former N.S.A. contract employee and whistle-blower, has provided evidence that the government has phone record metadata on all Verizon customers, and probably on every American, going back seven years.
This metadata is extremely revealing; investigators mining it might be able to infer whether we have an illness or an addiction, what our religious affiliations and political activities are, and so on.The law under which the government collected this data, Section 215 of the Patriot Act, allows the F.B.I. to obtain court orders demanding that a person or company produce "tangible things," upon showing reasonable grounds that the things sought are "relevant" to an authorized foreign intelligence investigation. The F.B.I. does not need to demonstrate probable cause that a crime has been committed, or any connection to terrorism.Even in the fearful time when the Patriot Act was enacted, in October 2001, lawmakers never contemplated that Section 215 would be used for phone metadata, or for mass surveillance of any sort.
Representative F. James Sensenbrenner Jr., a Wisconsin Republican and one of the architects of the Patriot Act, and a man not known as a civil libertarian, has said that "Congress intended to allow the intelligence communities to access targeted information for specific investigations." The N.S.A.'s demand for information about every American's phone calls isn't "targeted" at all — it's a dragnet. "How can every call that every American makes or receives be relevant to a specific investigation?"
Mr. Sensenbrenner has asked. The answer is simple: It's not.The government claims that under Section 215 it may seize all of our phone call information now because it might conceivably be relevant to an investigation at some later date, even if there is no particular reason to believe that any but a tiny fraction of the data collected might possibly be suspicious. That is a shockingly flimsy argument — any data might be "relevant" to an investigation eventually, if by "eventually" you mean "sometime before the end of time." If all data is "relevant," it makes a mockery of the already shaky concept of relevance.Let's turn to Prism: the streamlined, electronic seizure of communications from Internet companies. In combination with what we have already learned about the N.S.A.'s access to telecommunications and Internet infrastructure, Prism is further proof that the agency is collecting vast amounts of e-mails and other messages — including communications to, from and between Americans.
The government justifies Prism under the FISA Amendments Act of 2008. Section 1881a of the act gave the president broad authority to conduct warrantless electronic surveillance. If the attorney general and the director of national intelligence certify that the purpose of the monitoring is to collect foreign intelligence information about any nonAmerican individual or entity not known to be in the United States, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court can require companies to provide access to Americans' international communications. The court does not approve the target or the facilities to be monitored, nor does it assess whether the government is doing enough to minimize the intrusion, correct for collection mistakes and protect privacy. Once the court issues a surveillance order, the government can issue top-secret directives to Internet companies like Google and Facebook to turn over calls, e-mails, video and voice chats, photos, voiceover IP calls (like Skype) and social networking information.Like the Patriot Act, the FISA Amendments Act gives the government very broad surveillance authority. And yet the Prism program appears to outstrip that authority. In particular, the government "may not intentionally acquire any communication as to which the sender and all intended recipients are known at the time of the acquisition to be located in the United States.
"The government knows that it regularly obtains Americans' protected communications. The Washington Post reported that Prism is designed to produce at least 51 percent confidence in a target's "foreignness" — as John Oliver of "The Daily Show" put it, "a coin flip plus 1 percent." By turning a blind eye to the fact that 49-plus percent of the communications might be purely among Americans, the N.S.A. has intentionally acquired information it is not allowed to have, even under the terrifyingly broad auspices of the FISA Amendments Act.How could vacuuming up Americans' communications conform with this legal limitation? Well, as James R. Clapper Jr., the director of national intelligence, told Andrea Mitchell of NBC, the N.S.A. uses the word "acquire" only when it pulls information out of its gigantic database of communications and not when it first intercepts and stores the information.If there's a law against torturing the English language, James Clapper is in real trouble.The administration hides the extent of its "incidental" surveillance of Americans behind fuzzy language. When Congress reauthorized the law at the end of 2012, legislators said Americans had nothing to worry about because the surveillance could not "target" American citizens or permanent residents. Mr. Clapper offered the same assurances. Based on these statements, an ordinary citizen might think the N.S.A. cannot read Americans' e-mails or online chats under the F.A.A. But that is a government fed misunderstanding.A "target" under the act is a person or entity the government wants information on — not the people the government is trying to listen to. It's actually O.K. under the act to grab Americans' messages so long as they are communicating with the target, or anyone who is not in the United States.Leave aside the Patriot Act and FISA Amendments Act for a moment, and turn to the Constitution.
The Fourth Amendment obliges the government to demonstrate probable cause before conducting invasive surveillance. There is simply no precedent under the Constitution for the government's seizing such vast amounts of revealing data on innocent Americans' communications.The government has made a mockery of that protection by relying on select Supreme Court cases, decided before the era of the public Internet and cellphones, to argue that citizens have no expectation of privacy in either phone metadata or in e-mails or other private electronic messages that it stores with third parties.
This hairsplitting is inimical to privacy and contrary to what at least five justices ruled just last year in a case called United States v. Jones. One of the most conservative justices on the Court, Samuel A. Alito Jr., wrote that where even public information about individuals is monitored over the long term, at some point, government crosses a line and must comply with the protections of the Fourth Amendment. That principle is, if anything, even more true for Americans' sensitive nonpublic information like phone metadata and social networking activity.We may never know all the details of the mass surveillance programs, but we know this: The administration has justified them through abuse of language, intentional evasion of statutory protections, secret, unreviewable investigative procedures and constitutional arguments that make a mockery of the government's professed concern with protecting Americans' privacy. It's time to call the N.S.A.'s mass surveillance programs what they are: criminal.
Jennifer Stisa Granick is the director of civil liberties at the Stanford Center for Internet and Society. Christopher Jon Sprigman is a professor at the University of Virginia School of Law.
"This country will not be a permanently good place for any of us to live in unless we make it a reasonably good place for all of us to live in." -Teddy Roosevelt- Chicago, IL, June 17, 1912
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