Selling plants for 10¢ each is small time poaching, marginally better than collecting aluminum cans, but times are tough all over. Perhaps the state should the raise the fine for collecting to more than $25?
Venus fly traps in the wilds near the NC coast. Note the plants clumping habit as well as the tall attractive blooms. Image Miss Fidget circa 2003.
Poaching a threat to rare Venus flytrap plant
by Joel Allen | http://www.carolinalive.com | 01.26.2012
Three people have been arrested in Brunswick County, NC and charged with digging up 200 Venus flytrap plants. Joyce Whaley, 71; her nephew, Kasey Whaley, 31; and his wife Elizabeth Whaley, 27, reportedly told North Carolina wildlife officers that they wanted to sell the rare plants for about 10 cents a piece.
Those who study the Venus flytrap say poaching can be a real problem for the plant’s continued survival.
Its unique ability to capture insects makes the plant popular with kids and adults, but it’s our fascination with this rare carnivorous plant that also makes it a tempting target for poachers.
“People mistakenly think if they find a patch, they can harvest the entire patch, take them home and make money. That’s not really the case. You can buy Venus flytraps now in any of the big box stores,” said Coastal Carolina University botanist Dr. James Luken.
The only place in the world where the Venus flytrap is found in the wild is within a small stretch of coastal North and South Carolina, including Horry County.
Drew Carey recently tweeted about the 10th anniversary of the “Price is Right” riots in Vegas. Which is a kind of a funny thing to riot about.
Random image showing the LA riots from 1992.
Vegas bets wrong in ‘Price’ riot
About 10,000 people waited for gamer’s anni show tickets
By Lily Oei | www.variety.com | Jan. 23, 2002
Hell hath no fury like an audience scorned, as the staff of Las Vegas’ Rio Hotel learned when a ticket giveaway for a taping of “The Price Is Right” turned into an episode of “Cops.”
Thousands of hopeful contestants — many of them retirees — flocked to the hotel Jan. 17 in search of tickets to a special anniversary taping of the classic gamer. Problem was, there were only 900 seats.
Show was celebrating 30th anniversary by taping at the Rio, the first time the program has ever filmed outside its usual Television City studio. Since contestants on the program are culled from the audience, some would-be participants began waiting as early as the night before; others had secured rooms at the hotel. An estimated 10,000 people showed up for the well-publicized taping.
The man was later identified as David Allen Canterbury. Maybe if he has used stuffed monkeys instead of a light saber he would not have been tasered.
David Allen Canterbury. Image kgw.com
Portland police arrest man after alleged ‘Star Wars’ light saber assault at Toys R Us
By Kate Mather, The Oregonian | December 14, 2011 | www.oregonlive.com
Police arrested a man who allegedly assaulted three people with a blue light saber at a Hayden Island Toys R Us Wednesday night.
A 9-1-1 caller reported the incident about 9:50 p.m. and said the man was inside the store, 1800 Jantzen Beach Center, swinging the “Star Wars” weapon of choice at customers, said Sgt. Pete Simpson, a spokesman for the Portland Police Bureau. While the caller was on the phone, the man then left the store — light saber in hand — and walked out to the parking lot.
This year yoga lifestyle retailer lululemon gets lots of attention for promoting an Ayn Rand character on its shopping bags.
Lululemon's bag.
Ayn Rand wrote books. John Galt is in one of the books.
Image via Wikipedia
Occupy Your Yoga Pants: Lululemon’s Toxic Mix Of Commerce And Ideology
Todd Essig, Contributor | www.forbes.com | 11/21/2011
Lululemon, a company that sells high-end yoga and workout gear to people, well, people like me, really stepped in it with their new Ayn Rand tote bag. The company has shown a genuine disrespect towards customers by remaining irony-free and proudly defiant in their effort to promulgate an ideology many find repugnant, dangerous in its popularity, inconsistent with the company’s mission to date, and just plain dumb and wrong.
Just the other day, before I found out about the tote debacle, Lululemon was my first stop for an autumn running shirt suitable for a 5K charity Turkey Trot, and they had exactly what I wanted. The shirt was functionally luxurious. I was all set for Thursday; when I crossed the finish line I was going to look good and feel great.
But then I learned the company has been ginning up support for Rand’s ideology of selfish rationality: “Who is John Galt” (a character and phrase from Atlas Shrugged) is emblazoned on a new version of their hip tote bag and the company blog proudly proclaims founder Chip Wilson built Lululemon on a Rand-esque “quest to elevate the world from mediocrity to greatness.”
“Shot-by-shot comparison of “Raiders of the Lost Ark” vs. scenes from 30 different adventure films made between 1919-1973. My love letter to Indiana Jones and the films which served as inspiration.”
Woman sees face of Jesus in sock A woman claims she can see the face of Jesus in the creases of a drying sock.
www.telegraph.co.uk | 28 Dec 2011
Sarah Crane, 38, said she was stunned when she saw a bearded man staring back at her from the laundry line.
Her boyfriend agreed the crumpled grey “holy sock” bore an uncanny likeness to the traditional image of Christ, and the couple took photographs to show their friends.
They even talked about creating a shrine to the sock but then the face was lost when they moved it.
Miss Crane, from Orpington, Kent, said: “I’d left the washing out to dry overnight – and it had probably been sitting there a bit too long when I noticed the face in the sock.
There’s fraud and then there is what these people did. Amazing they got away with it for so long.
Ex-Manhattan chiropractor living in style in Seattle?on welfare: feds?
NANCY DILLON | nydailynews.com | December 06, 2011
A former Manhattan chiropractor and his alleged wife have been living the high life in a million-dollar Seattle mansion while cashing welfare checks for the last eight years, federal authorities claim.
David Silverstein and Lyudmila Shimonova are the subjects of a new federal lawsuit claiming they collected approximately $135,000 in housing welfare while posing as a dutiful landlord and destitute mother of two.
Investigators said contrary to their filings with welfare officials, the husband and wife have fat bank accounts, own a black Jaguar XJR4D and jet away to week-long vacations in Mexico, Paris, Israel, Turkey and the Dominican Republic.
According to a complaint filed Friday, the couple claimed they were not married, that Shimonova lived alone with her two children and that Silverstein lived at his office address.
Mr Henderson’s story is sad and scary. Hopefully Dinklage’s shout out on a global awards telecast can help others avoid a similar fate.
Peter Dinklage and Martin Henderson (Pic: Getty and SWNS)
Who is Martin Henderson? Golden Globe Winner Peter Dinklage Dedicates Award to Him [VIDEO]
By Laura Matthews | January 16, 2012 | www.ibtimes.com
When Peter Dinklage won a 2012 Golden Globe Award for Best Performance by an Actor in a Supporting Role in a Series on Sunday at the 69th Annual Golden Globe Award, the “Game of Thrones” star dedicated the award to a man name Martin Henderson.
Henderson, a fellow little person from Somerset in England, was the victim of a dwarf tossing incident that left him with serious back injuries. The BBC reported that Henderson, 37, was picked up and dropped on the ground while he was out celebrating his birthday with friends at the White Horse pub in Wincanton in October.
The attack happened when Henderson went outside for a cigarette and he told “Metro” that a drunken stranger picked him up and threw him. The toss caused Henderson to land on his back, after falling three feet, according to reports.
According to MTV News, both Dinklage and Henderson suffer from achondroplasia, which causes dwarfirsm.
Pigeons can count to at least 9. I would have guessed that like many primitive human cultures they would have counted or used numbers very simply e.g. “one, two, many.” If the pigeons, cephalapods and dolphins unite humans are in trouble.
Pigeon counting. Image William van der Vliet
Scientists Test Counting Ability of Pigeons
www.sciencenewsblog.com | December 26, 2011
Scientists at the University of Otago tested the counting ability of pigeons and found they can count up to nine. The pigeons had to compare pairs of images picturing up to nine objects and order them by lower to higher number. The pigeons received a wheat treat when they pecked the images in the correct ascending sequence.
The pigeons were initially trained with sets containing up to three objects. Pigeons were presented with 35 sets of three images, each with one, two, or three objects of different sizes, colors and shapes. Then the researchers tested to see if the pigeons could apply their knowledge learned from ordering the three images and apply it to images with larger numbers of objects. The pigeons were presented with pairs of images with between one and nine objects and tested on their ability to respond to them in ascending order. The researchers say the pigeons were successful.
The pigeons did best when there was a greater difference between the two pairs of images. Study lead author Dr Damian Scarf says that the greater the distance between the numbers in the pairs, the faster and more accurate the pigeons were.
The researchers say the tests put pigeons on par with primates. Dr. Scarf says, “Our research not only shows that pigeons are also members of this exclusive club, but, somewhat surprisingly, their performance is on a par with that of monkeys.”
The pigeons were not tested with sets greater than nine, so it is possible they can rank even higher sets of numbers in the correct ascending order. Dr. Scarf plans to next test the counting ability of kea, a New Zealand parrot species.
The pigeon counting research was published in the journal Science.
