Free Republic

Synopsis: 6 Southern states will gain seats in the US House of Reps after 2010 census. Texas will gain the most. Link below

This is a video of a half a million birds swarming over Sacramento California. I just want to know who estimated that there is a half a million. Are they sure there are not a million, or maybe only 100,000 instead? Well either way it is pretty cool, and reminds me of the movie by Alfred Hitchcock, "The Birds".Check out the video of the Birds over Sacrament here These following two paragraphs are from an article at "The Independent", and it is about the phenomenon called a murmuration; Winter must must be coming... because the starlings are flocking. Here are...

Migration: Geographies In Conflict by Aaron M. Renn 11/23/2009 It's an interesting puzzle. The “cool cities”, the ones that are supposedly doing the best, the ones with the hottest downtowns, the biggest buzz, leading-edge new companies, smart shops, swank restaurants and hip hotels – the ones that are supposed to be magnets for talent – are often among those with the highest levels of net domestic outmigration. New York City, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Boston, Miami and Chicago – all were big losers in the 2000s. Seattle, Denver, and Minneapolis more or less broke even. Portland is the only proverbially...

If all the adults worldwide who Gallup surveys show would like to migrate actually picked up and moved where they wanted, Gallup's Potential Net Migration Index (PNMI) suggests many developed countries could be overwhelmed and many developing countries could sit relatively empty. The Potential Net Migration Index is the estimated number of adults who would like to move permanently out of a country subtracted from the estimated number who would like to move into it, as a proportion of the total adult population. The results are based on nationally representative surveys of more than 260,000 adults worldwide. The higher the...

We always have some of the various sandpipers around, but now the winter migrants are starting to trickle in. These are Greater Yellowlegs, Tringa melanoleuca

[[Page 6115]] Presidential Determination No. 2009-15 of January 27, 2009 Unexpected Urgent Refugee and Migration Needs Related To Gaza Memorandum for the Secretary of State By the authority vested in me by the Constitution and the laws of the United States, including section 2(c)(1) of the Migration and Refugee Assistance Act of 1962 (the ``Act''), as amended (22 U.S.C. 2601), I hereby determine, pursuant to section 2(c)(1) of the Act, that it is important to the national interest to furnish assistance under the Act in an amount not to exceed $20.3 million from the United States Emergency Refugee and Migration...

SACRAMENTO, Calif. – The poor are more likely to leave California than the rich, despite concerns that the state's relatively high income tax rate is driving away the wealthy, a new study shows. The report released Friday by the Public Policy Institute of California determined the poorest 20 percent California residents are twice as likely to leave the state as the richest 20 percent. Factors such as cheaper rent and home prices outside the Golden State seem to edge out income taxes when people of all incomes decide whether to stay or go, said institute researcher Jed Kolko, who authored...

About 40% of registered voters citywide told a Los Angeles Times poll that in the last two years they had “seriously thought about moving out of Los Angeles.” As The Times previously reported, the most commonly cited reason, by a large margin, was the cost of housing, cited by 46% of those who said they had thought about going.

BONN, Germany (AP) — Global warming is uprooting people from their homes and, left unchecked, could lead to the greatest human migration in history, said a report released Wednesday.

Demographic factors could be behind diverse aspects of social evolution. Did wars make us the species we are today?Wikimedia Commons Explanations of the evolution of human behaviour often invoke crucial biological changes and revolutionary cultural innovations. Now two papers in Science instead put demography — the size, density and distribution of populations — centre stage.Samuel Bowles, a behavioural scientist at the Santa Fe Institute in New Mexico, tackles the puzzle of how humans acquired such unrivalled altruistic behaviour towards unrelated individuals — tendencies that allowed humans to cooperate as groups and, ultimately, to colonize the planet. The answer, paradoxically, could...

Migrating peoples were sophisticated in sea harvesting, Jon Erlandson says The Pacific Coast of the Americas was settled starting about 15,000 years ago during the last glacial retreat by seafaring peoples following a "kelp highway" rich in marine resources, a noted professor of anthropology theorized Wednesday. Jon Erlandson, director of the Museum of Natural and Cultural History at the University of Oregon, suggested that especially productive "sweet spots," such as the estuaries of B.C.'s Fraser and Stikine rivers, served as corridors by which people settled the Interior of the province. Erlandson said in an interview these migrating peoples were already...

Imagine a group of Homo erectus, the earliest members of our family genus, living near a coastline on an Indonesia island and well aware of a lush island that is visible only a few miles offshore. One day while on the coast, a herd of elephants emerges from the nearby forest and crosses the beach. They enter the ocean and swim successfully to the offshore island. Could this be the experience that triggers a creative process in our ancestors who are watching nearby? Does their imagination and thinking include not only a desire to reach that island, but ideas about...

AMERICAN.COM A Magazine of Ideas The Luxury City vs. the Middle Class By Joel KotkinWednesday, May 13, 2009 Filed under: Big Ideas, Culture, Lifestyle, Public Square The sustainable city of the future will rest on the revival of traditional institutions that have faded in many of today’s cities. Ellen Moncure and Joe Wong first met in school and then fell in love while living in the same dorm at the College of William and Mary. After graduation, they got married and, in 1999, moved to Washington, D.C., where they worked amid a large community of single and childless people.Like many...

If John Steinbeck were alive today and had yet to pen "The Grapes of Wrath," it's not too hard to imagine the novelist telling the story of a family making its departure from California. Released 70 years ago today, Steinbeck's novel of the Great Depression told of the hardships endured by the Joads, an Oklahoma family that braved Route 66 in an ultimately fruitless search for prosperity in the Central Valley. Steinbeck's novel isn't the only story of those who have moved to California. Students learn of the Spanish missions and the Gold Rush. The nostalgia of Route 66 is...

Demography: The great British broadcaster Sir David Attenborough has become the latest in a long line of illustrious people to say we need to cut population growth sharply or face a grim future. Is he right?We have nothing against Attenborough, but in supporting Britain's Optimum Population Trust, a group that advocates reducing human numbers, he's put himself on the wrong side of one of the great questions of our time. Today's world population is about 6.8 billion, give or take a hundred million or so. By 2050, most estimates show the population will be about 9 billion — roughly a...

In a meeting with the Congressional Hispanic Caucus, President Barack Obama called on congress to enact legislation that would lead to citizenship status for heretofore illegal immigrants, calling it “simple common sense.” “They won’t be illegals if we make them citizens,” Obama argued. “The problem of substandard wages would be ended. Employers wouldn’t be able to abuse these undocumented workers like they do now. Human rights would be protected.” The President also cited other benefits as an unappreciated gain. “Many of these migrants perish in difficult treks under harsh climatic conditions,” Obama said. “If we open the borders, those wanting...

For the first time, scientists have tracked entire migration routes of individual songbirds, following them thousands of miles further than in earlier studies and revealing the birds fly two to three times faster than previously known. The new information will aid future conservation efforts. The researchers equipped 14 wood thrushes and 20 purple martins with tiny geolocators—the first tracking devices small and light enough for songbirds to carry—to map their round trip between North America and the tropics with unprecedented accuracy.

California has apparently turned itself into Pennsylvania. It's still our biggest, wealthiest state with 38 million people -- one in eight Americans. It still has the sunshine, the beaches and the magnificent natural beauty that for 150 years have attracted and captured millions of migrants from New York and Pittsburgh to Des Moines and Mexico City. So why, for the fourth straight year, has the number of people moving from California to states like Florida and Arizona exceeded the number moving into California from other states? And why was the annual net-exodus rate even higher in the 1990s? Immigrants, legal...

Evidence keeps accumulating that the tide of immigration is ebbing. Tough enforcement laws passed by states like Arizona and Oklahoma and localities like Prince William County, Va., have reportedly spurred Latino immigrants to move elsewhere. Tougher enforcement of federal immigration laws may be having the same effect. Classrooms in Orange County, Calif., are suddenly half-empty. Latino day laborers seem to be less thick on the ground at their morning gathering places. Remittances to Mexico and other Latin countries are down, and men are returning to some villages from the United States. Latinos appear to account for a disproportionate share of...

The remarkable journey of a green turtle from Indonesia into Australian waters is helping conservationists to track the migratory route of this species to the Kimberley-Pilbara coast - one of the few relatively pristine coastal areas left on Earth. Ana, a female green turtle, was tagged in Indonesia in November as part of a turtle tracking project by WWF and Udayana University in Bali, Indonesia, and has slowly made her way from a nesting beach in East Java, across the Indian Ocean, and is on track for the beaches of the Kimberley in Western Australia. Her journey, monitored online by...

Wild birds carry avian flu viruses to U.S.: report Tue Oct 28, 6:08 pm ET WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Migrating waterfowl may be carrying avian influenza viruses from Asia to the Americas, U.S. government researchers reported on Tuesday. They found genetic evidence that some non-dangerous influenza viruses infecting northern pintail ducks in Alaska are genetically more closely related to Asian strains of bird flu than to North American strains. "Although some previous research has led to speculation that intercontinental transfer of avian influenza viruses from Asia to North America via wild birds is rare, this study challenges that," said Chris Franson,...

Forgoing layovers and snack stops, a bird known as the bar-tailed godwit has broken the record established for the world's longest known non-stop bird flight, according to a new study. The honor goes to a female named "E7" that continuously flew 7,257 miles across the Pacific Ocean, breaking the previous record set by a Far-Eastern curlew, who flew 4,038 miles nonstop. She didn't even glide. "Bar-tailed godwits use forward flapping flight and seldom ever glide," lead author Robert Gill, Jr., told Discovery News. Gill, project leader of the shorebird research program at the U.S. Geological Survey, explained that climbing midair...

The prediction caused a collective grimace among the mayors, city councilors, engineers and planners in the audience. By 2060, a Metro economist said, the seven-county Portland area could grow to 3.85 million people -- nearly double the number here now. Then Lorna Stickel, a planner with the Portland Water Bureau, stood to ask a question. Does the population projection, she asked, account for the possibility of climate change refugees? Brains have been spinning ever since. Because what if? What if the American Southwest dries up, browns out, and those people now misting their patios in Arizona head to the still-green...

Folks at local Spanish language newspaper Que Pasa are calling it the exodus. Executive Editor Alejandro Manrique says his reporters see signs of it all over Charlotte...Just this week they printed a feature on Hispanic taxi drivers who are seeing customers disappear. They say they lose around 50 percent of their customer base. He says Hispanic restaurants, night clubs, markets, you name it...are reporting drops in customers. From May '07 to June '08, the Center for Immigration Studies estimates 1.3 million illegal immigrants left the U.S...an estimated 102 thousand of those left North Carolina...Manrique estimates 40 thousand of those left...

IN THE first six months of this year an increasing number of South Africans considered or decided to migrate to Australia. As a result, a wide range of businesses is booming. While few firms can give exact figures, they are all sure of one thing: demand is high. One says most inquiries it gets are from Afrikaners. Immigration lawyers, airlines, travel agents, removal companies and pet-relocation companies have benefited. The Australian high commission in Pretoria said that while no figures were available yet on how many South Africans had settled in Australia so far this year, 3996 relocated there last...

The Southern city welcomes the middle class; heavily regulated and expensive Gotham drives it away.___ New Yorkers are rightly proud of their city's renaissance over the last two decades, but when it comes to growth, Gotham pales beside Houston. Between 2000 and 2007, the New York region grew by just 2.7%, while greater Houston — the country's sixth-largest metropolitan area — grew by 19.4%, expanding to 5.6 million people from 4.7 million. To East Coast urbanites, Houston's appeal must be mysterious: The city isn't all that economically productive — earnings per employee in Manhattan are almost double those in Houston...

High gas prices are getting most people down these days -- unless, perhaps, they live in San Francisco. The city was named the country's most walkable, according to a list released on Thursday by Walk Score, a Web site that assigns grades to addresses based on the proximity of amenities surrounding them. Chinatown, Financial District and Downtown were the most walkable neighborhoods in the city, according to the site. New York followed at a close second, mainly due to the high walkability of neighborhoods including Tribeca, Little Italy and Soho. The rest of the top 10 walkable cities were (in...

Census Bureau says New Orleans is the fastest-growing large city in the nation, recovering from being wiped out by Hurricane Katrina. NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) -- After being pummeled by Hurricane Katrina in 2005, New Orleans is showing signs of recovery - ranking as the fastest-growing large city in the nation, according to a government report released Thursday. The Census Bureau said New Orleans' population rose 13.8%, to 239,124, in the year ended July 1, 2007. That was a faster growth rate than any other city with a population of 100,000 or more.

Borderline Insecurity by: Melinda Zosh, July 08, 2008 Mark Krikorian, author of The New Case Against Immigration argues that today’s society is vastly different, and low-skilled immigrants actually harm America. “[Today’s] immigrants aren’t that different from the past but we’ve changed,” said Krikorian. “High levels of immigration on incompatible with the goals of modern society.” And one of the goals of modern society, Krikorian argued, is the creation of even wages and a fair labor market. Immigration actually threatens the jobs of teens and blacks. “Certain groups of American workers most directly in competition [with immigrants] are in fact seeing...

Lately, I've had disturbing thoughts about the future, and the question arose in my mind: Can the United States become so bad, politically, that an option to leave for better climes becomes desireable? I think of our ancestors in Europe and their deep-rooted, ancient love for their own country, who, because of overwhelming political and social unrest and tyranical oppression, made the excruciating decision to migrate to America with little to start out and no prospects to succeed. I can't believe that we are so much better than many of these fine, Godly men, that we have resolve that they...

The Great Human Migration Why (Modern) humans left their African homeland 80,000 years ago to colonize the world By Guy Gugliotta Smithsonian magazine, July 2008 Seventy-seven thousand years ago, a craftsman sat in a cave in a limestone cliff overlooking the rocky coast of what is now the Indian Ocean. It was a beautiful spot, a workshop with a glorious natural picture window, cooled by a sea breeze in summer, warmed by a small fire in winter. The sandy cliff top above was covered with a white-flowering shrub that one distant day would be known as blombos and give this...

Americans migrate back to the cities By Tom Leonard in New York Last Updated: 2:23AM BST 19/06/2008 Americans are choosing to abandon the suburban sprawl in favour of a more comfortable, cheaper and greener life in the city centre. Americans flocked to the suburbs after the WWII. Soaring energy prices and the sub-prime crisis are driving them back to the cities The mass migration of America's middle classes from urban areas to the suburbs amounted to a demographic revolution in the years after the Second World War. But the so-called "driveable suburb" is becoming increasingly unfeasible as soaring fuel costs...

But hair sample could have been from a wandering mercenary. An early wave of migration into the New World and the Arctic has been identified by sequencing a genome from a frozen hair excavated in Greenland. Archaeological evidence shows that there were two waves of migration to Greenland starting 4,500 years ago, first with the Saqqaq and then the Dorset groups, collectively known as the Paleo-Eskimos. Later, around 1,000 years ago, came the Thule culture which led to the current native population. The relationship between these three groups has been uncertain. Some theories hold that Paleo-Eskimos derived from the populations...

WASHINGTON: Human beings for 100,000 years lived in tiny, separate groups, facing harsh conditions that brought them to the brink of extinction, before they reunited and populated the world, genetic researchers in a study said on Thursday. "Who would have thought that as recently as 70,000 years ago, extremes of climate had reduced our population to such small numbers that we were on the very edge of extinction," said paleontologist Meave Leakey, of Stony Brook University, New York. The genetic study examined for the first time the evolution of our species from its origins with "mitochondrial Eve," a female hominid...

The Hummingbirds are settled in and used to me again, I can move around the yard and they accept me as part of the landscape. There is a Wren building a nest in the rafters of the old shed, I'm hoping she will settle down and pose for me too. I really hate to go to town this time of year, afraid I'll miss something. http://www.pbase.com/tsiya/root http://photobucket.com/albums/v244/tsiya/ http://cabbagehammock.blogspot.com/

Archaeologists Find Evidence of Origin of Pacific Islanders By Heidi Chang Honolulu, Hawaii 31 March 2008 The origin of Pacific Islanders has been a mystery for years. Now archaeologists believe they have the answer. As Heidi Chang reports, they found it in China. The excavation of the Zishan site (Zhejiang Province) in 1996, where many artifacts from the Hemudu culture have been found China had a sea-faring civilization as long as 7000 years ago. Archaeologist Tianlong Jiao says, one day, these mariners sailed their canoes into the vastness of the Pacific Ocean, and stayed. He points out, "Most scientists, archaeologists,...

Four Texas metropolitan centers were among the biggest population gainers as Americans continued their trend of moving to the Sun Belt in 2006 and 2007, according to Census Bureau estimates to be released Thursday. Dallas-Fort Worth added more than 162,000 people between July 2006 and July 2007, the most of any metro area. Three other Texas population centers - Houston, Austin and San Antonio - also cracked the top 10. Atlanta saw the second-largest population jump, at just over 151,000 new residents. Phoenix was third, with more than 132,000, followed by Houston, Riverside, Charlotte, N.C., Chicago, Austin, Las Vegas and...

A University of Florida economics professor finds Florida's population's is dipping to 30-year low. A new study has reaffirmed a growing demographic trend in Florida: The state is seeing its population growth slow to its lowest level in three decades. So says a University of Florida professor who reviewed building permits and residential electric customer data to draw projections on the state's population growth. ''The state has not experienced a decline of this magnitude since the mid-1970s, when we were in a national recession,'' said Stan Smith, an economist and director of UF's Bureau of Economic and Business Research. The...

Migration has brought 'zero' economic benefit By Philip Johnston and Robert Winnett Last Updated: 1:11am GMT 29/03/2008 Ten years of record immigration to Britain has produced virtually no economic benefits for the country, a parliamentary inquiry has found. A House of Lords committee, which is due to report next Tuesday, will call into question Government claims that foreign workers add £6 billion each year to the wealth of the nation. It is expected to say this must be balanced against the increase in population and their use of local services such as health and education, resulting in little benefit per...

Country long known as a land of emigrants is transformed by migrants PORTLAOISE, Ireland - As revelers worldwide celebrate St. Patrick’s Day with a pint of Guinness, dyed-green milk or visions of red-bearded leprechauns, it’s a good bet that few of them will have Rotimi Adebari in mind. But, for those seeking an authentic vision of today’s Ireland, perhaps they should. The election last year of Nigerian-born Adebari as mayor of Portlaoise is the most prominent manifestation of the changes sweeping this island, which is rapidly evolving from a land of emigration into one of immigration, where at least 1...

When more than a dozen lambs and sheep were slaughtered on a Shelburne farm last fall, wildlife officials suspected either a wolf that had escaped from captivity or a rogue mutt on a hungry rampage. But after the culprit animal was killed and examined, they found themselves with a bigger mystery: How did a wild eastern gray wolf, an endangered species absent from the state for more than a century, find its way to western Massachusetts? Thomas J. Healy, head of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service's Northeast regional office, said Tuesday recent DNA tests at the agency's Oregon labs...

You have heard of white flight. Now consider black flight Next month the Burning Bush Baptist Church will hold its first service in a converted Sears department store. When the church was founded, in 1995, it had a congregation of 12. About 750 now attend Sunday services, and more are joining all the time. One reason for the church's growth is the oratorical skill of David Denson, its pastor. Another is that Burning Bush is a mostly black church, and there are a lot more blacks around these days. Between 2000 and 2006 the black population of Victorville and Apple...

Lice from mummies provide clues to ancient migrations By John Noble Wilford Published: February 6, 2008 When two pre-Columbian individuals died 1,000 years ago, arid conditions in the region of what is now Peru naturally mummified their bodies, down to the head lice in their long, braided hair. This was all scientists needed, they reported Wednesday, to extract well-preserved louse DNA and establish that the parasites had accompanied their human hosts in the original peopling of the Americas, probably as early as 15,000 years ago. The DNA matched that of the most common type of louse known to exist worldwide,...

Rat genes shed light on ancient human migrations 15:16 01 February 2008 NewScientist.com news service Emma Young One of humanity’s greatest scourges – the black rat – may help health experts track the spread of disease. New work probing Rattus rattus’s origins and historical movements should help health officials track its ongoing dispersal – and might also explain anomalies in its spread of diseases such as typhus and plague. Ken Aplin at CSIRO Sustainable Ecosystems in Canberra, Australia, and colleagues have analysed the mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) of 170 black rats from 76 regions in 32 countries. They also surveyed other...

New migration after EU relaxes border control By Michael Leidig in Traiskirchen Last Updated: 1:51am GMT 06/01/2008 Thousands of asylum seekers are on the move across Europe as a result of the relaxation of internal border controls. A new system intended to make it easier for European Union citizens to move between member countries has led to a dramatic rise in illegal immigrants. Elena Gairabeka and her five children arrive in Austria At the Traiskirchen refugee camp in Austria, numbers have more than doubled, from 300 to 770, since the rules were changed just before Christmas. Many, travelling on foot,...

Contact: Anne Rueter arueter@umich.edu 734-764-2220 University of Michigan Health System 11-26-2007Gene study supports single main migration across Bering StraitSiberians and Native Americans share unique genetic variant The U-M study, which analyzed genetic data from 29 Native American populations, suggests a Siberian origin is much more likely than a South Asian or Polynesian origin. Did a relatively small number of people from Siberia who trekked across a Bering Strait land bridge some 12,000 years ago give rise to the native peoples of North and South America? Or did the ancestors of today’s native peoples come from other parts of Asia or...

For years, the vast majority of politicians in the main parties have avoided having honest public conversation about the extent and consequences of immigration. The fear of appearing racist, or giving any ground to the arguments of the far right, has left most MPs and commentators in Pollyanna territory - extolling the economic and cultural benefits of immigration and glossing over problems. That has done the nation no favours, because the consequences of rapid social change have been scarcely studied, let alone addressed. And it has increased many people's distrust of the political universe, as the gulf between their own...

Nearly nine of 10 readers who participated in an online survey believe that southern New Hampshire is becoming more like Massachusetts -- and most are not happy about it.Eighty-four percent of the nearly 900 people who took part in the informal UnionLeader.com survey are concerned that the "traditional culture" of New Hampshire is changing as people move here from other states -- including 63 percent who are "very" concerned. Only 10 percent were "not very concerned," while six percent were "not concerned at all."Asked what the biggest change has been, more than half answered "politics." About 28 percent said it...

TRENTON, NJ (AP) -- New Jersey's accelerating population loss is starting to have significant economic and fiscal consequences for the state [SNIP] The report found the state lost 231,565 people between 2002 and 2006, including 72,547 people last year. The latter was the fourth highest loss in the nation behind only California, Louisiana and New York. Meanwhile, North Carolina grew by 807,000 people over the four-year period, displacing New Jersey last year as the nation's 10th most populous state, the report stated. When lost income and sales taxes from the people who left New Jersey are considered, the population drain...

10,000 Wildebeest Drown in Migration "Pileup" Blake de Pastino National Geographic News October 1, 2007 In a bizarre mishap that conservationists describe as "heartbreaking," an estimated 10,000 wildebeest have drowned while attempting to cross Kenya's Mara River during an annual migration. The deaths, which occurred over the course of several days last week, are said to account for about one percent of the total species population. The drownings created a grotesque wildlife pileup, after part of the migrating herd tried to ford the Mara at "a particularly treacherous crossing point," according to Terilyn Lemaire, a conservation worker with the Mara...