Archive | August, 2011

Scary Hurricane Irene photos

31 Aug

This is an excerpt of a post at buzzfeed. See the whole list of 25 images here.

Greenwich, Connecticut.

Princeton, New Jersey Transit train station.

Route 12 is broken in 5 places on Hatteras Island, N.C. About 2,500 people are stuck on Hatteras Island because of this

Ocean City, Maryland

Windham, NY

Harwington, Connecticut

Route 100 in Vermont

Destroyed water tower in Cary, North Carolina

Billy Stinson comforts his daughter, Erin, as they sit on the steps where their cottage once stood in Nags Head, North Carolina. The home, built in 1903 and listed on the National Register of Historic Places, was destroyed by Hurricane Irene.

Cat causes man to stab self

31 Aug

Bad kitty.

Freemansburg man trips over cat, stabs self with knife
July 15, 2011|By Frank Warner, Of The Morning Call

A Freemansburg man had just cut open a bag of coffee with a knife late Thursday night when his wife called to him.

He turned.

A cat ran downstairs and under his feet.

He tripped over the cat.

He fell on the knife.

That’s how James Forte, 50, of 208 Juniata St. explained the bloody stab wound to his upper chest, Freemansburg police Sgt. Martin Comer said. Comer said he was skeptical at first, but his preliminary inquiry tended to support Forte’s story.

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Lonely? Study says try a hot bath

30 Aug

I am not sure if this is sad or funny or sensible.

 

Random hot bath image from jokesunlimited.com

Hot Baths May Cure Loneliness
Recent research finds that taking a hot bath can cure loneliness.
Christie Nicholson reports | July 2, 2011 | scientificamerican.com

Take a hot bath, you’ll fee better. Not only does warm water soothe us, it can combat loneliness. According to research published in the journal Emotion.

Scientists analyzed the bathing habits of 51 people. And had them record how they felt before and after bathing. The researchers found that higher scores on a measure of chronic loneliness were associated with an increase in warmer baths or showers. In a separate study, to test the link between physical temperature and emotional state, scientists had subjects hold cold and hot packs and recorded levels of perceived loneliness. They confirmed the correlation between cold packs and high loneliness scores.

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Hurricane caused flooding but not sharks in street

29 Aug

Hurricane Irene just blasted the Eastern time zone with wind and rain causing massive flooding. However, it did not cause the streets of Puerto Rico to flood so much that sharks swam in the street. The below photo is fake.

Good luck to everybody out there drying out and recovering. For all those groaning  about the “hype” be glad your roof is on, your basement is dry and your trees are upright. Because despite all the advance planning and preparations, many people died during the “epic rainstorm.”

 

Fake photo of shark swimming in street in flooded Puerto Rico. It has been sourced as a user-submitted photo to Channel 7 in Miami, which broadcast it.

Source photo from a 2005 issue of Africa Geographic.

Hurricane Irene: ‘Photo’ of shark swimming in street is fake
By Sarah Anne Hughes  |  www.washingtonpost.com  |  08/26/2011

Holy moly! A (fake) picture of a shark swimming on a Puerto Rico street! (Reddit) A photo of a shark swimming down a Puerto Rico street flooded by Hurricane Irene has been making the rounds online. It was posted on Reddit, picked up by Web sites and broadcast on a TV station in Miami, which is not surprising. I mean, a shark on the streets! This seems too cool to be true!

That’s because it is.

Google “shark,” and up pops a great photo of a shark stalking a kayak from a 2005 issue of Africa Geographic. Commenters on Reddit, where the photo seems to have originated, quickly noted this and the very real similarities between the two sharks (note the small circular shadow just below the shark’s belly.)

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Chester Smith, Audubon Texas Coastal Warden, Dies

28 Aug

Thanks for saving the brown pelican Chester.

Audubon Texas Coastal Warden on Sundown Island in April 2010. Photo: Randal Ford

xChester Smith's efforts helped bring back the brown pelican from the brink of extinction. Photo: Randal Ford

 

Chester Smith, Audubon Texas Coastal Warden, Dies
magblog.audubon.org | By Alisa Opar | 07/15/2011

When Chester Smith hired on as warden of Sundown Island 25 years ago at the age of 65, fewer than 10 pairs of endangered brown pelicans were nesting on the 60-acre manmade isle—one of 80 islands Audubon Texas safeguards on the Texas Gulf Coast. The birds had been hunted and poisoned to near extinction, and Smith was determined to do what he could to save them.

Bruce Barcott described Smith’s efforts in “Coast Guard”:

Over the next quarter century Smith tended the island and its birds like a one-man lifeguard, policeman, and master gardener. “I patrolled it and done my best to ask people not to get out on the island, because they’d scare the birds off their nests and the young ones wouldn’t hatch,” says Smith, a lean, gregarious retired oil refinery worker. “I learned how to keep the fire ants under control. We planted native trees and brush. And over the years we figured out how to keep the island from washing away.”

Thanks to Smith’s dedication, and his small army of volunteers that included many family members, the pelicans flourished on Sundown. This May, the 90-year-old assumed his usual role in leading the annual bird census, which found 2,029 nesting pairs of brown pelicans. It was one of Smith’s last visits to the island. He died on June 26 from complications associated with a major stroke he suffered the week before.

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Town pond dyed green by prankster

27 Aug

For a similar story about a river that was dyed green, click here.

 

Town Pond in East Hampton Village turned bright fluorescent green on Saturday morning. Credit Doug Kuntz

Town Pond in East Hampton Village turned bright fluorescent green on Saturday morning. Credit Doug Kuntz

DEC: ‘Prankster’ Likely Dyed Town Pond Fluorescent Green
No environmental concern, but culprit could face large fine and a year in prison.
By Taylor K. Vecsey  |  July 5, 2011  |  easthampton.patch.com

No environmental concern, but culprit could face large fine and a year in prison.

It wasn’t algae, chemical runoff or alien mischief-makers that dyed an East Hampton Village pond fluorescent green over the weekend, environmental officials say. It was a joker.

State Department of Environmental Conservation officials think it was likely a non-toxic dye that turned the water the eerie shade of green.

“The most likely cause would be a fluorescent dye, often times used in regards to finding leaking pipes,” said DEC spokeswoman Aphrodite Montalvo.

The DEC is not actively investigating the case, she said.

“Somebody either had a tablet in their pocket or kind of did it as a joke,” Montalvo said.

The pond had already reverted back to its normal dark green, slightly muddy shade by Tuesday.

“I would hope that’s not the case,” Mayor Paul Rickenbach Jr. said on Tuesday of a possible prankster.

The mayor said on Saturday that he thought it to be a natural event. Town Natural Resources Director Larry Penny, who was asked to take a water sample, thought it was a type of algae bloom.

“Certainly anything’s possible,” Montalvo said.

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Rare 2-headed albino snake shown at zoo

26 Aug

Wow, the heads fight.

Rare Two-Headed Albino Snake Shocks Zoo Visitors
b y Tom Rose  |  news.gather.com   |  July 14, 2011

2 headed albino snake. Image AFP

A rare two-headed snake explores its surroundings in a private zoo in the Crimean town of Yalta July 8, 2011. The three-year-old snake was brought from a zoo in Switzerland where it was born. Image: Reuters

Zoo visitors in southern Ukraine are being shocked by a rare albino snake with two heads. Zoo keepers have put the animal on display at the Yalta zoo through September, and people are flocking in droves to get a glimpse.

The video below shows the abnormal creature as it slithers through its man-made environment hunting for food. But its pretty obvious it’s a reptile with two minds. One is aggressive, the other passive. Until dinner time.

The handlers at the zoo say they have to separate the heads with a divider while it’s being fed, otherwise they end up fighting each other for the tastiest morsels. Which is weird since all the food goes down the same throat.

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Man jailed for inability to pay fishing-without-a-license fine

25 Aug

That is one hard ass judge. Imagine what would have happened if Mr Dewitt were drunk and killed 2 men who had families.

Kyle Dewitt. Image Freep.com

ACLU of Michigan takes up causes of those jailed because they can’t pay fines
Aug 5, 2011 | www.freep.com

Kyle Dewitt says the last thing he expected when he went fishing in Ionia County in May was to wind up in jail.

But that’s what happened after Ionia District Judge Raymond Voet sentenced the unemployed 19-year-old from Ionia on Tuesday to three days in jail because he said he couldn’t afford a $215 ticket for catching a smallmouth bass out of season.

Dewitt is one of five Michigan residents whom the American Civil Liberties Union of Michigan is holding up as victims of pay or stay — the practice of some judges to lock up misdemeanor defendants who can’t afford to pay their fines.

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Oldest American Art Found on Mammoth Bone

24 Aug

This is a really great image, too.

A roughly 13,000-year-old mammoth bone inscribed with an image of a mammoth is the real deal. Photograph courtesy Chip Clark, Smithsonian Institute

Oldest American Art Found on Mammoth Bone
Forensic tests confirm age of etched Ice Age bone.
Christine Dell’Amore  |  nationalgeographic.com | June 22, 2011

The Americas’ earliest known artist was an Ice Age hunter in what is now Florida, a new study confirms.

The carved bone, which depicts a walking mammoth, was found near Vero Beach in east-central Florida in 2006 or 2007. (See a map of the region.) Since its discovery, scientists have been working to determine the authenticity of the 13,000-year-old artifact. Now, several experiments reveal the etching is indeed ancient, scientists reported recently in the Journal of Archaeological Science.

“This is an incredibly exciting discovery,” study co-author Dennis Stanford, an anthropologist at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History, said in a statement.

“There are hundreds of depictions of proboscideans [the order of animals with trunks] on cave walls and carved into bones in Europe, but none from America—until now.”

Since the carving does not really look like any of the mammoth incisings and cave art that come from Europe, “it could be the people were here doing their own art, and may have had a memory of art in the Old World,” speculated study leader Barbara Purdy, a professor emerita at the University of Florida.

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Rusty the cat saves owner’s life

23 Aug

Good job Rusty.

Claire Nelson, Reading, credits her pet cat Rusty with saving her life by sensing a pending heart attack. Image Reading Eagle: Lauren A. Little.

Image Reading Eagle: Lauren A. Little.

Former nurse says pet cat saved her life
City resident calls her doctor after animal apparently senses pending heart attack
Erin Negley, Reading Eagle  |  6/15/2011

Claire Nelson rescued Rusty the cat from a shelter two years ago.

Now, the 66-year-old Reading resident is thanking the pet for saving her life.

According to Claire, she wasn’t feeling well one day last week but Rusty wouldn’t let her lie down.

So, Claire, who was a registered nurse for 30 years, headed to a doctor’s office. On her way there, she took a turn for the worse. She’s now recovering from a heart attack and credits Rusty for being a lifesaving pest that morning.

“He was persistent and it paid off,” said Claire, who adopted Rusty in December 2009.

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Dictionary of Chimpanzee gestures being created

22 Aug

Don’t you want to see the final list of gestures?

"If their action did not produce a result, they would repeat it." Professor Richard Byrne, University of St Andrews. Image BBC

 

Chimpanzees’ 66 gestures revealed
By Victoria Gill, Science and nature reporter  |  BBC News  |  5 May 2011

Wild chimpanzees use at least 66 distinct gestures to communicate with each other, according to scientists.

A team of researchers from the University of St Andrews in Scotland filmed a group of the animals in order to decipher this “gestural repertoire”.

The team then studied 120 hours of footage of the chimps interacting, looking for signs that the animals were intentionally signalling to each other.

The findings are published in the journal Animal Cognition.

Previous studies on captive chimps have suggested the animals have about 30 different gestures.

“So this [result] shows quite a large repertoire,” lead researcher Dr Catherine Hobaiter told BBC News.

“We think people previously were only seeing fractions of this, because when you study the animals in captivity you don’t see all their behaviour.

“You wouldn’t see them hunting for monkeys, taking females away on ‘courtships’, or encountering neighbouring groups of chimpanzees.”

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A great picture of Ryan Dunn

21 Aug

Stumbled on this great animated .gif of Ryan Dunn. Wanted to share. Click here to read his obit.

This unattributed animated .gif shows the late Ryan Dunn in a scene, pradoying an old Maxell ad, from a Jackass movie

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