31 July 2011
30 July 2011
Bisou And Edgar Are Two Years Old | Welcome New Sister Kaylee
Bisou and Edgar got together to celebrate their second birthday today.
Edgar's mom and dad brought home a special birthday present -- a new sister, Kaylee, from MAS Rescue. Edgar isn't sure how he feels about the new member of the family.
Kaylee is about five months older than Bisou and Edgar. She's one of the largest Bichons I've seen, weighing about 21 pounds as compared to Bisou's seven pounds and Edgar's eight pounds.
Kaylee's a lucky little girl and she knows it. She's sweet and friendly, likes to cuddle and give kisses, and has already figured out how to crawl under the fence to get into the side yard where the cat likes to hang out.
29 July 2011
The Debt Crisis Illuminated
A timely and handy chart for the understanding what’s going on with the deficit negotiations in Washington. Remember that during the Clinton administration there was actually a SURPLUS coming in that went towards paying down the national debt. George Bush thought this was a bad thing—that the government shouldn’t be bagging surpluses—then promptly gave the average person the cost of a can of soda a day while giving billionaires major tax cuts and starting two costly wars. I think this chart makes it pretty obvious who fucked up this country. Who could deny otherwise? There’s no competition! No wonder there’s nothing left for schools, roads, seniors, universal healthcare, the out of work and the sick ... Isn’t this just infuriating?Richard Metzger | Dangerous Minds
Fox News Anchor Confused By Moon
Fox News anchor Jon Scott invited Bill Nye ("The Science Guy") to talk about newly discovered volcanism on the moon. Scott, for reasons that aren't entirely clear, asked if the existence of a volcano on the moon somehow casts doubt on climate change science: "It's not like we've been up there burning fossil fuels." Nye, clearly taken by surprise, patiently and slowly explained to Scott that, no, volcanoes have nothing to do with fossil fuels.
26 July 2011
Happy Birthday To Me
Lanny-yap is two-years old today!
Many heartfelt thanks to all the readers from around the world for their continued support.
Philips "Tell It Your Way" Grand Prize Winner | Porcelain Unicorn
YouTube | TDW
The Philips Tell It Your Way contest, which received over 600 entries from around the world, invited aspiring filmmakers to create an original short film using the same six lines of dialogue: “What is that?,” “It’s a unicorn,” “Never seen one up close before,” “Beautiful,” “Get away, get away,” and “I’m sorry.”The film was written, directed, and produced by Keegan Wilcox.
Commenting on his choice of winner, Sir Ridley Scott said: “I chose Porcelain Unicorn to be the winning film as it had a very strong narrative; a very complete story that was well told and executed.”
25 July 2011
Monkey Monday | Mrs. Tibbs Loves Monkeys More Than I Do
Connie Tibbs of Pekin, Illinois has a husband, three teenagers, and five macaques.
Mrs Tibbs, who runs a pet shop on the family farm, gives the macaques a weekly bath, changes their diapers in the kitchen, and dresses them up in tiny outfits. She said: "The day starts with Honey Nut loops, fruit and milk and then they wait in turn to be individually put on my lap to have their diaper changed. They sleep in little hammocks in a five feet by 10 feet cage at night and after their breakfast and change they are allowed out into the house." She even takes one of the monkeys to bed with her every night - dressed in its own pajamas.Source
23 July 2011
Space Shuttle Discovery Flight Deck | 360 Degree View
Click image to enlarge
Detail
Click here for an amazing 360 degree view of the Space Shuttle Discovery's flight deck during decommissioning in the Orbiter Processing Facility
Thanks, Rick
20 July 2011
1960s Narcotics And Dangerous Drugs Identification Kit
Photos: Rusty Blazenhoff and Ken Dashner
Click image to enlarge
Click image to enlarge
Winston Products for Education created these identification kits for schools, scouting organizations and law enforcement agencies to educate children about the dangers of drugs in the 1960s.
According to the Wiley Online Library:
The Dangerous Drugs—Identification Kit contains harmless facsimiles of the more commonly abused dangerous drugs. The Kit was designed to be used primarily as an instructional aid in educational and training programs directed toward combating the existing narcotics and dangerous drugs problem. It consists of a plastic container which is transparent and durable. Plainly visible within the container are facsimiles of amphetamines and barbituates, reproduced with exacting fidelity in terms of color, size, shape, and other distinguising characteristics.
Parmesan Cheese Pencils
Photo: Ulrike Kirmse
The German ad agency Kolle Rebbe designed chunks of Parmesan cheese shaped like pencils. Flakes are shaved off with a manual pencil sharpener:
The cheeses are shaped like oversized pencils, where the leads contain three different flavors: truffles, pesto and chilli. With the sharpener included, the required amount of cheese can be sprinkled on the dish. A scale on the pencils and on the back of the packaging doesn’t just simply list how much of the Cheese Pencil is needed for each dish, but even how many calories the portion contains.
Neatorama
19 July 2011
Caren Alpert | Food Under The Microscope
230X Shrimp Tail
85X Pineapple Leaf
320X Chocolate Cake
19X Blueberry
Click images to enlarge
San Francisco-based food photographer Caryn Alpert used an electron microscope to photograph familiar foods.
TDW
18 July 2011
All Non-African People Have Neandertal DNA
Read an additional article at Sexy Archeology
Abstract: Recent work on the Neandertal genome has raised the possibility of admixture between Neandertals and the expanding population of Homo sapiens who left Africa between 80 and 50 Kya (thousand years ago) to colonize the rest of the world. Here, we provide evidence of a notable presence (9% overall) of a Neandertal-derived X chromosome segment among all contemporary human populations outside Africa. Our analysis of 6,092 X-chromosomes from all inhabited continents supports earlier contentions that a mosaic of lineages of different time depths and different geographic provenance could have contributed to the genetic constitution of modern humans. It indicates a very early admixture between expanding African migrants and Neandertals prior to or very early on the route of the out-of-Africa expansion that led to the successful colonization of the planet.
Molecular Biology and Evolution | io9
Woman Grows Nipple On Foot
Yikes.
Dermatology Online Journal | Jezebel
Reborns | Baby Voldemort
The selection of Reborns includes Harry, Hermoine, Ron, Remus, Tonks, and Dobby the House Elf.
Tracy Ann Lister on eBay | io9
15 July 2011
Live WebCam | Shark Tank
Live broadcast by Ustream
To get excited for Shark Week, the Discovery Channel teamed up with the Georgia Aquarium in Atlanta to place a live streaming peephole in the aquarium’s Ocean Voyager exhibit.Wired
The exhibit, which was designed to house whale sharks, holds 6.3 million gallons of seawater, enough to fill nine and a half Olympic swimming pools. It is home to seven different types of sharks, including enormous whale sharks, vicious-looking sand tiger sharks, and bottom-dwelling masters of disguise called spotted wobbegongs. It also holds several other species of fish and four manta rays, the only manta rays ever to live in a U.S. aquarium.
Despite the popular image of sharks as creatures of speed and violence, the view in the tank is peaceful and soothing. Check back in the next two weeks for daily feedings and a live chat with biologists from inside the tank.
Harvard Magazine | Women And Alcohol
During the last 15 years, scientists have documented notable gender differences in the physiological effects of alcohol—differences summed up in Women & Addiction, a 2009 volume co-edited by Greenfield, who has pioneered more effective treatment programs for women struggling with addiction to alcohol and other substances. Women initially metabolize only about a quarter as much alcohol in the stomach and intestines as men do (a fact not documented until 1990); consequently, more alcohol enters the bloodstream as ethanol. Women’s generally lower body mass, and lower body water content, also act to intensify alcohol’s effects.
Due at least partly to these physiological differences, the disease of alcohol dependence proceeds on a faster course in women, requiring medical treatment four years sooner, on average, than for male problem drinkers. Alcohol-addicted women are also quicker to develop cirrhosis, fatty liver, and cognitive impairment, and have a greater risk of dying in alcohol-related accidents than men do.
Read more at Harvard Magazine
Via 3 Quarks Daily
14 July 2011
Newborn Bornean Orangutan Twins
YouTube | Jezebel
Staff at the Hong Kong Zoological & Botanical Gardens are celebrating the July 8 birth of a set of Bornean orangutan twins. The birth marks the first successful breeding of Bornean orangutan twins in the garden, bringing the park's number of primates to five. They are the offspring of the park's stars Vandu and Raba. The male baby weighs 2kg while the female is 1.4kg. They are both in good health and in care of the park's veterinarians.Too cute to wait for Monkey Monday. I wonder why they were taken away from their mother ...
12 July 2011
The Family Leader | The Marriage Vow
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| AP/Salon |
Although the group recently dropped controversial language implying that black children were better off as slaves, I think it's important to read the Vow in its original form, as the authors intended. Click here to view the press release and document - complete with footnotes - as released by The Family Leader.
The Marriage Vow
A Declaration of Dependence upon MARRIAGE and FAMiLY
Faithful monogamy is at the very heart of a designed and purposeful order -- as conveyed by Jewish and Christian Scripture, by Classical Philosophers, by Natural Law, and by the American Founders -- upon which our concepts of Creator-endowed human rights, racial justice and gender equality all depend.
Enduring marital fidelity between one man and one woman protects innocent children, vulnerable women, the rights of fathers, the stability of families, and the liberties of all American citizens under our republican form of government. Our exceptional and free society simply cannot endure without the transmission of personal virtue, from one generation to the next, by means of nurturing, nuclear families comprised of sexually-faithful husbands and wives, fathers and mothers. We acknowledge and regret the widespread hypocrisy of many who defend marriage yet turn a blind eye toward the epidemic of infidelity and the anemic condition of marriages in their own communities. Unmistakably, the Institution of Marriage in America is in great crisis:
- Slavery had a disastrous impact on African-American families, yet sadly a child born into slavery in 1860 was more likely to be raised by his mother and father in a two-parent household than was an African-American baby born after the election of the USA’s first African-American President.
- LBJ’s 1965 War on Poverty was triggered in part by the famous “Moynihan Report” finding that the black out-of-wedlock birthrate had hit 26%; today, the white rate exceeds that, the overall rate is 41%, and over 70% of African-American babies are born to single parents -- a prime sociological indicator for poverty, pathology and prison regardless of race or ethnicity.
- About one million U.S. children suffer through divorce each year -- the outcome of about half of all first marriages and about 60 percent of remarriages, disproportionately affecting economically-vulnerable families.
- The taxpayer-borne social costs of family fragmentation exceeds $112 billion per year, especially when all costs to the justice system are recognized.
- Social protections, especially for women and children, have been evaporating as we have collectively “debased the currency” of marriage. This debasement continues as a function of adultery; “quickie divorce;” physical and verbal spousal abuse; non-committal co-habitation; exemplary infidelity and “unwed cheating” among celebrities, sports figures and politicians; anti-scientific bias which holds, in complete absence of empirical proof, that non-heterosexual inclinations are genetically determined, irresistible and akin to innate traits like race, gender and eye color; as well as anti-scientific bias which holds, against all empirical evidence, that homosexual behavior in particular, and sexual promiscuity in general, optimizes individual or public health.
When I Heard The Learn'd Astronomer
I've been watching the third season of the excellent AMC drama Breaking Bad and was moved by Gale's recitation of this poem while he and Walt were bonding in the new meth lab. Both are men of science and believe that "chemistry is magic." I've always thought that the poem means that man cannot control nature, that each being perfects him- or herself through communion with nature, and that the rigidity and precision of science can suck the beauty right out of the natural world.
When I Heard the Learn'd Astronomer
Walt Whitman (1864)
When I heard the learn'd astronomer;
When the proofs, the figures, were ranged in columns before me,
When I was shown the charts and the diagrams, to add, divide, and
measure them,
When I sitting heard the astronomer where he lectured with much applause in the lecture-room,
How soon, unaccountable I became tired and sick,
Till rising and gliding out I wander'd off by myself,
In the mystical moist night-air, and from time to time,
Look'd up in perfect silence at the stars.
Whitman wrote this poem in 1864. It was published in the 1881-82 edition of Leaves of Grass.
Too Much Nature | Bees Swarm Chocolate Shop
Thornton's chocolate shop in Leominster, U.K. was forced to close when its entrance was swarmed by thousands of bees.
Arbroath
11 July 2011
Monkey Monday | Macaque Self-Portrait
A crested black macaque snapped a pic of itself with a camera belonging to award-winning photographer David Slater, which was temporarily left unattended at a national park in North Sulawesi, Indonesia. "He must have taken hundreds of pictures by the time I got my camera back, but not very many were in focus," said Slater. "He obviously hadn’t worked that out yet."TDW
09 July 2011
07 July 2011
Sterling Silver Dog Nose Jewelry
Etsy seller Rock My World will cast a sterling silver pendant or key-chain bob from a silicon mold of your dog's nose.
After you order we send you ... a very simple mold-making kit to take 3 molds of your dogs nose. The mold is only on the nose for seconds. We enclose a self addressed stamped envelope to send it back to us. From that mold we are able to make a casting of the nose in sterling silver. We never scrimp on the silver so they are pretty heavy. Then we engrave a name on the back. Within 2 weeks your nose print is shipped to you on a 17 inch sterling chain.Via Neatorama
06 July 2011
04 July 2011
The History Cookbook
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| Neolithic Crab Claw Salad |
This project looks at the food of the past and how this influenced the health of the people living in each time period. You can also try some of the recipes for yourself. We have a wide range of historical recipes from Brown Bread Ice Cream to Gruel.
The Presurfer
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