Ranch
A ranch is an area of land, including various structures, given to the practice of ranching, the practice of raising grazing livestock such as cattle or sheep for meat or wool. The word most applies to livestock-raising operations in Mexico, the Western United States and Western Canada, though there are ranches in other areas. People who own or operate a ranch are called cattlemen, or stockgrowers. Ranching is a method used to raise less common livestock such as elk, American bison or ostrich and alpaca. Ranches consist of large areas, but may be of nearly any size. In the western United States, many ranches are a combination of owned land supplemented by grazing leases on land under the control of the federal Bureau of Land Management or the United States Forest Service. If the ranch includes arable or irrigated land, the ranch may engage in a limited amount of farming, raising crops for feeding the animals, such as hay and feed grains. Ranches that cater to tourists are called guest ranches or, colloquially, "dude ranches."
Most working ranches do not cater to guests, though they may allow private hunters or outfitters onto their property to hunt native wildlife. However, in recent years, a few struggling smaller operations have added some dude ranch features, such as horseback rides, cattle drives or guided hunting, in an attempt to bring in additional income. Ranching is part of the iconography of the "Wild West" as seen in Western rodeos; the person who owns and manages the operation of a ranch is called a rancher, but the terms cattleman, stockgrower, or stockman are sometimes used. If this individual in charge of overall management is an employee of the actual owner, the term foreman or ranch foreman is used. A rancher who raises young stock sometimes is called a cow-calf operator or a cow-calf man; this person is the owner, though in some cases where there is absentee ownership, it is the ranch manager or ranch foreman. The people who are employees of the rancher and involved in handling livestock are called a number of terms, including cowhand, ranch hand, cowboy.
People involved with handling horses are sometimes called wranglers. Ranching and the cowboy tradition originated in Spain, out of the necessity to handle large herds of grazing animals on dry land from horseback. During the Reconquista, members of the Spanish nobility and various military orders received large land grants that the Kingdom of Castile had conquered from the Moors; these landowners were to defend the lands put into their control and could use them for earning revenue. In the process it was found that open-range breeding of sheep and cattle was the most suitable use for vast tracts in the parts of Spain now known as Castilla-La Mancha and Andalusia; when the Conquistadors came to the Americas in the 16th century, followed by settlers, they brought their cattle and cattle-raising techniques with them. Huge land grants by the Spanish government, part of the hacienda system, allowed large numbers of animals to roam over vast areas. A number of different traditions developed related to the original location in Spain from which a settlement originated.
For example, many of the traditions of the Jalisco charros in central Mexico come from the Salamanca charros of Castile. The vaquero tradition of Northern Mexico was more organic, developed to adapt to the characteristics of the region from Spanish sources by cultural interaction between the Spanish elites and the native and mestizo peoples; as settlers from the United States moved west, they brought cattle breeds developed on the east coast and in Europe along with them, adapted their management to the drier lands of the west by borrowing key elements of the Spanish vaquero culture. However, there were cattle on the eastern seaboard. Deep Hollow Ranch, 110 miles east of New York City in Montauk, New York, claims to be the first ranch in the United States, having continuously operated since 1658; the ranch makes the somewhat debatable claim of having the oldest cattle operation in what today is the United States, though cattle had been run in the area since European settlers purchased land from the Indian people of the area in 1643.
Although there were substantial numbers of cattle on Long Island, as well as the need to herd them to and from common grazing lands on a seasonal basis, the cattle handlers lived in houses built on the pasture grounds, cattle were ear-marked for identification, rather than being branded. The only actual "cattle drives" held on Long Island consisted of one drive in 1776, when the island's cattle were moved in a failed attempt to prevent them from being captured by the British during the American Revolution, three or four drives in the late 1930s, when area cattle were herded down Montauk Highway to pasture ground near Deep Hollow Ranch; the prairie and desert lands of what today is Mexico and the western United States were well-suited to "open range" grazing. For example, American bison had been a mainstay of the diet for the Native Americans in the Great Plains for centuries. Cattle and other livestock were turned loose in the spring after their young were born and allowed to roam with little supervision and no fences rounded up in the fall, with the mature animals driven to market and the breeding stock brought close to the ranch headquarters for greater protection in the winter.
The use of livestock branding allowed the cattle owned by different ranchers to be identified and sorted. Beginning with the settlement of Texas in the 1840s, expansion both north and west from that time, through the Civil War and into the 1880s, ranching dominated wes
Thunder
Thunder is the sound caused by lightning. Depending on the distance from and nature of the lightning, it can range from a sharp, loud crack to a long, low rumble; the sudden increase in pressure and temperature from lightning produces rapid expansion of the air surrounding and within a bolt of lightning. In turn, this expansion of air creates a sonic shock wave, similar to a sonic boom referred to as a "thunderclap" or "peal of thunder"; the cause of thunder has been the subject of centuries of speculation and scientific inquiry. The first recorded theory is attributed to the Greek philosopher Aristotle in the fourth century BC, an early speculation was that it was caused by the collision of clouds. Subsequently, numerous other theories were proposed. By the mid-19th century, the accepted theory was. In the 20th century a consensus evolved that thunder must begin with a shock wave in the air due to the sudden thermal expansion of the plasma in the lightning channel; the temperature inside the lightning channel, measured by spectral analysis, varies during its 50 μs existence, rising from an initial temperature of about 20,000 K to about 30,000 K dropping away to about 10,000 K.
The average is about 20,400 K. This heating causes a rapid outward expansion, impacting the surrounding cooler air at a speed faster than sound would otherwise travel; the resultant outward-moving pulse is a shock wave, similar in principle to the shock wave formed by an explosion, or at the front of a supersonic aircraft. Experimental studies of simulated lightning have produced results consistent with this model, though there is continued debate about the precise physical mechanisms of the process. Other causes have been proposed, relying on electrodynamic effects of the massive current acting on the plasma in the bolt of lightning; the shockwave in thunder is sufficient to cause injury, such as internal contusion, to individuals nearby. Inversion thunder results when lightning strikes between cloud and ground occur during a temperature inversion. In such an inversion, the air near the ground is cooler than the higher air; the sound energy is prevented from dispersing vertically as it would in a non-inversion and is thus concentrated in the near-ground layer.
Inversions occur when warm moist air passes above a cold front. The d in Modern English thunder is epenthetic, is now found as well in Modern Dutch donder. In Latin the term was tonare "to thunder"; the name of the Nordic god Thor comes from the Old Norse word for thunder. The shared Proto-Indo-European root is *tón-r̥ or *tar- found Gaulish Taranis and Hittite Tarhunt. A flash of lightning, followed after some time by a rumble of thunder, illustrates the fact that sound travels slower than light. Using this difference, one can estimate how far away the bolt of lightning is by timing the interval between seeing the flash and hearing thunder; the speed of sound in dry air is 343 m/s or 1,127 ft/s or 768 mph at 20 °C. This translates to 3 seconds per kilometer. Two-Mississippi..." is a useful method of counting the seconds from the perception of a given lightning flash to the perception of its thunder. The speed of light is high enough that it can be taken as infinite in this calculation because of the small distance involved.
Therefore, the lightning is one kilometer distant for every three seconds that elapse between the visible flash and the first sound of thunder. In the same five seconds, the light could have traveled the Lunar distance four times. Thunder is heard at distances over 20 kilometers. A bright flash of lightning and an simultaneous sharp "crack" of thunder, a thundercrack, therefore indicates that the lightning strike was near. Thunderbolt Thunderstorm Brontophobia Castle Thunder sound effect Lightning List of thunder gods Mistpouffers Media related to Thunder at Wikimedia CommonsThe science of thunder Thunder: A Child of Lightning Wikibooks: Engineering Acoustics/Thunder acoustics
Meka Whaitiri
Melissa Heni Mekameka Whaitiri is a politician of the Labour Party and a member of the New Zealand House of Representatives for the Maori electorate of Ikaroa-Rāwhiti. Having worked in senior advisory and management roles, she won the 2013 Ikaroa-Rāwhiti by-election, succeeding Labour's Parekura Horomia, has gone on to hold the seat in the 2014 and 2017 general elections. Whaitiri was born in Manutuke near Gisborne in 1965, brought up in the Hastings suburb of Whakatu by a whānau of freezing workers, she has affiliation to Ngāti Kahungunu. At Karamu High School, she was head girl, she first worked at a freezing works herself before obtaining a master's degree in education from Victoria University of Wellington. In both softball and netball, she competed to national level, she was selected by the Silver Ferns as a non-travelling reserve player. Her first professional job was for Parekura Horomia, who made her wait eight hours before he saw her, but hired her for the Department of Labour, she was a negotiator for Rongowhakaata's treaty settlement.
From 2007 to 2009, she was a senior adviser for the Minister of Māori Affairs Office, thus advised Hon Parekura Horomia while he was the Minister. Since 2009, she has been the chief executive officer of Ngāti Kahungunu Iwi. Whaitiri's mother, Mei Whaitiri, was the model used for the Pania of the Reef statue in Napier in 1954. Whaitiri has two teenage sons. Horomia's death on 29 April 2013 triggered a by-election, held on 29 June of that year. Most political analysts predicted that Labour would hold Ikaroa-Rāwhiti, which since its inception for the 1999 election was held by Horomia, who had a majority of 6,541 votes at the last election in 2011, she was sworn in on 30 July. Before the by-election, there was media speculation that Labour Leader David Shearer had been put on notice and a decisive win in Ikaroa-Rāwhiti was regarded as important for his survival. Right-wing political blogger David Farrar called it a "good victory for Labour", commented that Whaitiri "could be one of the better Labour MPs".
Whaitiri won the 2014 election with 9,753 votes, over television presenter Te Hamua Nikora of the Mana Movement. With 12,274 votes helping her hold the seat in 2017, Whaitiri returned to Parliament and was appointed Minister of Customs following Labour's formation of a coalition government with New Zealand First and the Greens, she serves as Associate Minister for Agriculture, Local Government and Crown/Māori Relations. Alongside colleague, Willie Jackson, she is Co-Chair of the Labour Māori Caucus. On 30 August 2018, Whaitiri had to “stand aside” from her ministerial portfolios as part of an investigation into an allegation that she assaulted a staff member in her ministerial office. Fellow Labour MP Kris Faafoi assumed the role of Minister of Customs while her associate ministerial portfolios were assumed by their lead ministers. Labour Party profile
Tāwhaki
In Māori mythology, Tāwhaki is a semi-supernatural being associated with lightning and thunder. The genealogy of Tāwhaki varies somewhat in different accounts. In general, Tāwhaki is a grandson of Whaitiri, a cannibalistic goddess who marries the mortal Kaitangata, thinking that he shares her taste for human flesh. Disappointed at finding that this is not so, she leaves him after their sons Hemā and Punga are born and returns to heaven. Hemā is the father of Karihi. Tāwhaki grows up to leave him for dead, he is nursed back to health by his wife. In memory of this incident, their child is named Wahieroa. In some versions Tawhaki is the father of Arahuta, she was the cause of a quarrel between her parents, her mother Tangotango took her to heaven, where they were afterwards joined by Tāwhaki. Hemā, while looking for a gift for his son, trespasses into the land of the Ponaturi, who are evil beings, they capture blinding Hemā in the process. While journeying to rescue his parents, Tāwhaki meets and marries Hinepiripiri, to whom is born their son, Wahieroa.
Tāwhaki and his brother Karihi rescue their enslaved mother, who tells them that light is fatal to the Ponaturi. With the help of their mother, they trick the Ponaturi, who have returned to their house to sleep. Tāwhaki and his brother hide, after having blocked up all the chinks of the house so that no light can enter; when the Ponaturi begin to think that the night is long, Urutonga reassures them that there is still a long time until dawn comes. They set fire to the house, open the door; the Ponaturi are killed by the exposure to the sunlight. The only survivors are Kanae. Tāwhaki and his young brother set off to climb up to the sky. At the foot of the ascent they find their grandmother, now blind, who sits continually counting the tubers of sweet potato or taro that are her only food. Whaitiri is the guardian of the vines; the brothers tease her by snatching them away, one by one, upsetting her count. They reveal themselves to her and restore her sight. In return, she gives them advice about. Karihi makes the error of climbing up the aka taepa, or hanging vine.
He is blown violently around by the winds of heaven, falls to his death. Tāwhaki climbs by the aka matua, or parent vine, recites the right incantations, reaches the highest of the 10 heavens. There he learns many spells from Tama-i-waho, marries a woman named Hāpai, or as others say, Tangotango or Maikuku-makaka, they have a son, according to some versions of the story it is this child, named Wahieroa. In a country like New Zealand, each tribe has a different version of a story like Tāwhaki. To illustrate this variation in a small way, to demonstrate that there is no one correct way to tell the story of Tāwhaki, two versions from different tribal groups are presented below. In an 1850 version of Tāwhaki by Hohepa Paraone of the Arawa tribe of Rotorua (Paraone 1850:345-352, White 1887:115-119, 100-105, Tāwhaki is a mortal man, visited each night by Hāpai, a woman from the heavens; when Hāpai becomes pregnant, she tells Tāwhaki. After their daughter Puanga is born, Tāwhaki expresses disgust at the smell.
Offended, Hāpai takes the child, climbs onto the roof of the house, disappears into the sky. After some months, Tāwhaki decides to find Hāpai and Puanga, he sets off with his two slaves. He warns the slaves not to look at the fortress of Tongameha. One of the slaves looks, Tongameha gouges out his eyes. Tāwhaki and the remaining slave go on, meet Matakerepō, an old blind woman, guarding the vines that lead up into the heavens. Matakerepō is an ancestress of Tāwhaki's; as Matakerepō counts out her ten taro tubers, Tāwhaki removes them one by one. Matakerepō, aware that someone is deceiving her, begins to sniff the air, her stomach distends, ready to swallow the stranger, she sniffs towards the south, towards all the winds. When she sniffs towards the west she catches Tāwhaki's scent and calls out'Are you come with the wind that blows on my skin?' Tāwhaki grunts, Matakerepō says,'Oh, it is my grandson Tāwhaki.' Her stomach begins to shrink. Had he not been from the west wind, she would have swallowed him.
Matakerepō asks Tāwhaki. He replies that he is searching for his daughter. Matakerepō shows advising him to set off in the morning. Tāwhaki's slave prepares a meal. Tāwhaki rubs it on the eyes of the old woman. Matakerepō is cured of her blindness. In the morning, Tāwhaki presents his slave to Matakerepō; when he reaches the heavens, Tāwhaki disguises himself as an old slave and assists his brothers-in-law to build a canoe. Each night, the brothers-in-law return to their village, where Tāwhaki's wife and daughter are living. Pretending to be unable to keep up, Tāwhaki lets the brothers-in-law go on ahead, returns to work on the canoe, arriving at the village much later; the next morning, Tāwhaki and the brothers-in-law return.
Tāwhirimātea
In Māori mythology, Tāwhirimātea is the god of weather, including thunder and lightning, wind and storms. He is a son of Ranginui. In his anger at his brothers for separating their parents, Tāwhirimātea destroyed the forests of Tāne, drove Tangaroa and his progeny into the sea, pursued Rongo and Haumia-tiketike till they had to take refuge in the bosom of their mother Papa, only found in Tūmatauenga a worthy opponent and eternal enemy. To fight his brothers, Tāwhirimātea gathered an army of his children and clouds of different kinds - including Apū-hau, Apū-matangi, Ao-nui, Ao-roa, Ao-pōuri, Ao-pōtango, Ao-whētuma, Ao-whekere, Ao-kāhiwahiwa, Ao-kānapanapa, Ao-pākinakina, Ao-pakarea, Ao-tākawe. Grey translates these as'fierce squalls, dense clouds, massy clouds, dark clouds, gloomy thick clouds, fiery clouds, clouds which preceded hurricanes, clouds of fiery black, clouds reflecting glowing red light, clouds wildly drifting from all quarters and wildly bursting, clouds of thunder storms, clouds hurriedly flying on'.
Other children of Tāwhirimātea are the various kinds of rain and fog. Tāwhirimātea's attacks on his brothers led to the flooding of large areas of the land; the names of the beings involved in this flooding include Ua-nui, Ua-roa, Ua-whatu, Ua-nganga. Tregear mentions Hau-maringiringi as a personification of mists. Tāwhirimātea live on the sky with his father Rangi and star Rehua. Eons ago, the Sky Father and Papa, the Earth Mother, were in an eternal embrace because of their love for each other, their union gave rise to many powerful sons. As their sons grew up, they soon began to grow tired of living in a cramped up space, forever in darkness. One brother, Tūmatūenga, the God of War and Humans, suggested. However, his brother, Tāne, the God of Forests, suggested. Except for Tāwhirimātea, all other brothers accepted the proposal; the brothers individually tried to separate their parents, but Tāne put his head on the earth and feet in the sky and pushed them apart. Tāwhirimātea was enraged. So the god communed with his father.
Rangi reluctantly agreed to help his son wage a brutal war on his siblings. Rangi and Tāwhirimātea together had many children, they were the spirits of winds and rain. Tāwhirimātea set out to conquer his brothers. Tāwhirimātea first attacked Tāne, razed his forests, causing Tāne to flee. Next Tāwhirimātea attacked his brother, the Sea God, he caused huge waves, spreading panic in Tangaroa. Tangaroa was himself helpless before Tāwhirimātea, as the sea was in such a chaotic rage, harming all living beings. Having never seen such chaos at sea, many of Tangaroa's children deserted their father and took shelter with Tāne. Since Tangaroa is at war with Tāne. Tāwhirimātea pursued his brother and Haumia, the gods of cultivated and uncultivated food, but they were cleverly hidden by their mother, who still loved her children. Tāwhirimātea began to fight Tumatuenga; this time, Tumatuenga embedded his feet in earth, saving him from Tāwhirimātea's storms. He cast spells, but neither brother could prevail against each other.
Tāwhirimātea withdrew. To punish his brothers for cowardice, Tumatuenga invented the arts of hunting, agriculture and fishing, to subjugate their respective denizens as food for humans; however and Tawhirimatea still fight each other to this day. Another result of the war was that, most of the land was submerged into the ocean, because of Tāwhirimātea causing heavy rains and thunderstorms. G. Grey, Polynesian Mythology, Illustrated edition, reprinted 1976. 1956. G. Grey, Nga Mahi a Nga Tupuna, fourth edition. First published 1854. 1971. E. R. Tregear, Maori-Polynesian Comparative Dictionary, 1891. Tāwhirimātea – the weather in Te Ara - the Encyclopedia of New Zealand
Fish
Fish are gill-bearing aquatic craniate animals that lack limbs with digits. They form a sister group to the tunicates. Included in this definition are the living hagfish and cartilaginous and bony fish as well as various extinct related groups. Tetrapods emerged within lobe-finned fishes, so cladistically they are fish as well. However, traditionally fish are rendered paraphyletic by excluding the tetrapods; because in this manner the term "fish" is defined negatively as a paraphyletic group, it is not considered a formal taxonomic grouping in systematic biology, unless it is used in the cladistic sense, including tetrapods. The traditional term pisces is considered a typological, but not a phylogenetic classification; the earliest organisms that can be classified as fish were soft-bodied chordates that first appeared during the Cambrian period. Although they lacked a true spine, they possessed notochords which allowed them to be more agile than their invertebrate counterparts. Fish would continue to evolve through the Paleozoic era.
Many fish of the Paleozoic developed external armor. The first fish with jaws appeared in the Silurian period, after which many became formidable marine predators rather than just the prey of arthropods. Most fish are ectothermic, allowing their body temperatures to vary as ambient temperatures change, though some of the large active swimmers like white shark and tuna can hold a higher core temperature. Fish can communicate in their underwater environments through the use of acoustic communication. Acoustic communication in fish involves the transmission of acoustic signals from one individual of a species to another; the production of sounds as a means of communication among fish is most used in the context of feeding, aggression or courtship behaviour. The sounds emitted by fish can vary depending on the stimulus involved, they can produce either stridulatory sounds by moving components of the skeletal system, or can produce non-stridulatory sounds by manipulating specialized organs such as the swimbladder.
Fish are abundant in most bodies of water. They can be found in nearly all aquatic environments, from high mountain streams to the abyssal and hadal depths of the deepest oceans, although no species has yet been documented in the deepest 25% of the ocean. With 33,600 described species, fish exhibit greater species diversity than any other group of vertebrates. Fish are an important resource for humans worldwide as food. Commercial and subsistence fishers hunt fish in wild fisheries or farm them in ponds or in cages in the ocean, they are caught by recreational fishers, kept as pets, raised by fishkeepers, exhibited in public aquaria. Fish have had a role in culture through the ages, serving as deities, religious symbols, as the subjects of art and movies. Fish do not represent a monophyletic group, therefore the "evolution of fish" is not studied as a single event. Early fish from the fossil record are represented by a group of small, armored fish known as ostracoderms. Jawless fish lineages are extinct.
An extant clade, the lampreys may approximate ancient pre-jawed fish. The first jaws are found in Placodermi fossils; the diversity of jawed vertebrates may indicate the evolutionary advantage of a jawed mouth. It is unclear if the advantage of a hinged jaw is greater biting force, improved respiration, or a combination of factors. Fish may have evolved from a creature similar to a coral-like sea squirt, whose larvae resemble primitive fish in important ways; the first ancestors of fish may have kept the larval form into adulthood, although the reverse is the case. Fish are a paraphyletic group: that is, any clade containing all fish contains the tetrapods, which are not fish. For this reason, groups such as the "Class Pisces" seen in older reference works are no longer used in formal classifications. Traditional classification divides fish into three extant classes, with extinct forms sometimes classified within the tree, sometimes as their own classes: Class Agnatha Subclass Cyclostomata Subclass Ostracodermi † Class Chondrichthyes Subclass Elasmobranchii Subclass Holocephali Class Placodermi † Class Acanthodii † Class Osteichthyes Subclass Actinopterygii Subclass Sarcopterygii The above scheme is the one most encountered in non-specialist and general works.
Many of the above groups are paraphyletic, in that they have given rise to successive groups: Agnathans are ancestral to Chondrichthyes, who again have given rise to Acanthodiians, the ancestors of Osteichthyes. With the arrival of phylogenetic nomenclature, the fishes has been split up into a more detailed scheme, with the following major groups: Class Myxini Class Pteraspidomorphi † Class Thelodonti † Class Anaspida † Class Petromyzontida or Hyperoartia Petromyzontidae Class Conodonta † Class Cephalaspidomorphi † Galeaspida † Pituriaspida † Osteostraci † Infraphylum Gnathostomata Class Placodermi † Class Chondrichthyes Class Acanthodii † Superclass Osteichthy
