Photo from The Herald, article from Environmental Graffiti:

A tour operator in Port Elizabeth, South Africa, unwittingly stumbled into the history books this weekend when he, his boat captain, and four tourists were in the right place at the right time to make the first recording ever of Orca whales hunting dolphins.

Ranier Schimpf was leading a group of divers when they noticed that one dolphin had been separated from a pod by five of the killer whales then repeatedly rammed. The dolphin was sent flying through the air by the force of impact from whales that were several times its size. With the smaller creature finally left laying unconscious on the surface, the whales pulled it below.

The two 7m male, two 5m female, and a 3m calf whales were clearly working as a team against the dolphin, and it appeared it was also a hunting lesson for the calf. More than that, they exhibited very protective behavior after the hunt. Becoming aware of the boat, they slowed, and began to circle the craft, investigating it. At that point the divers, making a decision I’ll only characterize as daring here, got into the water with the whales and kept filming them. This paid off, however. The whales, recognizing the humans as non-threatening, began to interact in a friendly way. The mother even presented the calf to one of the tourists, shielding it carefully, but allowing it to take a look at the strange visitors.

Besides just turning you into a complete douche, cocaine it turns out, is also very eco-unfriendly:

A panel of scientists meeting at the Natural History Museum in London last week detailed how the production of the drug and its trafficking affect biodiversity and contribute to climate change. The production of a gram of cocaine means the destruction of four square metres of Colombian forest, they said, raising the question of which supermodels, popstars and city types should be lined up with hummer drivers and big game hunters in the environmental most-wanted stakes. Colombia is one of the most biodiverse countries in the planet, and also the biggest cocaine producer. Bad combination.

Cocaine production is a threat to environment is all its stages, said Liliana Davalos, lecturer in Molecular Ecology at the Open University, UK. The first step of the cycle is the destruction of forest to plant coca. Every year, 100 thousand hectares of Colombian forest is destroyed for this end. The plantations also use tons of herbicides that are forbidden in many other countries. Since the UK is one of the world’s largest consumption markets for cocaine, it makes concerns about organic tomatoes and pesticides seem futile.

The more eco-friendly stimluant choice, said the scientists is coffee:

Coffee from shade trees cultivation farms, where the bushes are grown in the shadow of native taller trees, is a much more eco-friendly option. “Biodiversity in these plantations is almost as high as in primary forests,” said botanist Sandy Knapp from the Natural History Museum.

Besides, research has shown that coffee and cocaine act on your body in basically the same way. Guess you just have to drink a lot more of it.

According to a five month long investigation by the Associated Press, the drinking water of as many as 41 million Americans contains trace amounts of pharmaceuticals, varying from sex hormones to mood stabilizers. While the amount of drugs is exceedingly small, the notion that society is ingesting unknown combinations of various compounds, even at such small dosages, is undoubtedly raising questions of potential health risks.

To be sure, the concentrations of these pharmaceuticals are tiny, measured in quantities of parts per billion or trillion, far below the levels of a medical dose. Also, utilities insist their water is safe.

But the presence of so many prescription drugs — and over-the-counter medicines like acetaminophen and ibuprofen — in so much of our drinking water is heightening worries among scientists of long-term consequences to human health.

Now you might be asking yourself, whose dosing up all our drinking water? Perhaps it’s a government initiative towards population control or maybe the latest in radical bio-terrorism? In actuality, it’s nothing quite that sinister. The drugs enter our water supply as a result of the assorted medications we take daily.

People take pills. Their bodies absorb some of the medication, but the rest of it passes through and is flushed down the toilet. The wastewater is treated before it is discharged into reservoirs, rivers or lakes. Then, some of the water is cleansed again at drinking water treatment plants and piped to consumers. But most treatments do not remove all drug residue.

As I sit here sipping the glass of ice cold H2O, I’m not exactly comforted by the fact that I could be sucking down some Viagra mingled with Ortho Tricyclen. Even if it’s only in trace amounts, that combination can’t be healthy. Still I guess we’re safe for the moment until research says otherwise. It does however make me wonder, if medications can seep into the water supply, why not more illicit drugs as well? Doc I swear I’m not on drugs, I just like to stay hydrated.

Here’s a neat little tidbit I found trolling through Google trends. Catalog Choice is a free service that cuts down on the clutter in your mail box (physical, not e-) by making sure unwanted catalogs don’t get sent to you.

The mission of Catalog Choice is to reduce the number of repeat and unsolicited catalog mailings, and to promote the adoption of sustainable industry best practices. We aim to accomplish this by freely providing the Catalog Choice services to both consumers and businesses. Consumers can indicate which catalogs they no longer wish to receive, and businesses can receive a list of consumers no longer wanting to receive their catalogs.

Reduce, Reuse, Recycle, REFUSE.