Thursday, April 30, 2009

Bubble Gum

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Saving the crust for later snack

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When things needs to be perfect

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Dance class are not just for girls

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Family of ducks goes through shop to reach river

A proud mother duck has escorted her 11 fluffy ducklings on a waddle towards their local river - through a busy shop. Staff at the Kidney Research UK charity outlet in St Ives, Cambs, have escorted duck families from their nest in the shop's backyard to the nearby river for the past seven years. It is 100 yards through the store, across pavements and a busy road to the River Great Ouse quayside, where they then make a three-foot plop into the water.
The watchful mother kept a beady eye on her inquisitive brood in case they decided to indulge in a spot of browsing on their journey. Shop manager Carol Andrews said: "It's quite an annual event now. The ducks come through and head over to the river. We opened seven years ago and it's been going on ever since. It's very sweet as they waddle through." Staff have no idea why the mother duck set up camp in the shop's 10-foot by 20-foot yard, which backs onto the rear of other shops and houses, but said their annual visitors are delightful.
With more photos.
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Wednesday, April 29, 2009

Tuesday, April 28, 2009

Visiting Kissimmee

A man and his wife were driving their Recreational Vehicle across the country and were nearing a town spelled Kissimmee. They noted the strange spelling and tried to figure how to pronounce it - KISS-a-me; kis-A-me; kis-a-ME. They grew more perplexed as they drove into the town.
Since they were hungry, they pulled into a place to get something to eat. At the counter, the man said to the waitress: "My wife and I can’t seem to be able to figure out how to pronounce this place. Will you tell me where we are and say it very slowly so that I can understand."
The waitress looked at him and said: "Buuurrrgerrr Kiiiinnnng."
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Magnet + Copper Tube = Eddy Current

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Eddy Current Tubes -- Drop the Magnets down the tube. An eddy current is set up in a conductor in response to a changing magnetic field. Lenz's law predicts that the current moves in such a way as to create a magnetic field opposing the change; to do this in a conductor, electrons swirl in a plane perpendicular to the changing magnetic field.
Because the magnetic fields of the eddy currents oppose the magnetic field of the falling magnet; there is attraction between the two fields. Energy is converted into heat. This principle is used in damping the oscillation of the lever arm of mechanical balances.
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A Very Funny Dog

It's an Oscar-worthy performance by this talented dog.
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Slip Sliding Duck

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Ducks Landing On Ice
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Dark Chocolate Truffles - How To

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FYI

Actually there is nothing anyone can do if the vehicle has a Legitimate Placard.
What those spaces are for are people with medical problems that they can't walk any kind of distance without sitting for a spell and not how much money they have.
What is parked there has nothing to do with parking there, it could be a limo even.
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Man has emu squatting in his back garden

Bill Rattray of Buckley, Washington has a pet he never wanted. But it seems the pet has found an owner it wants. "And I look out the window and it was an emu sitting in my backyard," Rattray said. "It's kind of the oddest thing to happen. I was thinking, 'They don't fly or nothing so how did it get in my backyard?'"
Rattray closed his yard gate and called animal control. But he was told animal control officers don't deal with emus. Rattray is now trying to find out whether the bird had a previous owner. If so, he says, he'd love to reconnect the bird with its rightful owner. "Obviously, if you're missing an emu, you're going to know it's missing," he said. "I don't want it. I don't have the facility for it."Rattray's neighbors say the emu has been prancing up and down the street for about a week, even peering in their windows. The emu appears to be fascinated with fences. On Saturday, it was caught sneaking a peek over the fence at Kathy Fry's yard. Startled, Fry called police. "They said unless he's harming us or causing destruction, there is nothing they can do.
So Rattray called the local feed store as well as some nearby farmers. But no one has claimed the bird. So for now, he's doing his best to take care of the emu, even serving up dandelions to the intruder who has laid claim to his backyard. But he'd rather someone else take it in before his daughter becomes too attached. "She wants to put a saddle on it and ride around. She's a little afraid of it, but it looks like Big Bird to her," said Rattray.
Experts with Northwest Trek, a wildlife park in Eatonville, are helping Rattray explore other options.
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Huff Puff: Britain's biggest hedgehog put on a diet

Huff Puff the hedgehog is thought to be Britain's biggest at an average of three and a half times the size of her spiky contemporaries.
The nine-month-old female weighs in at 2.04kg - the weight of a small cat - and is the size of a football.
She piled on the pounds after gorging on cat treats and dog food at the Furze Pig Hedgehog Rescue Center in Ross on Wye, Herefordshire, where she was taken as an orphan. The 15 other hedgehogs at the center weigh around 600g each, so staff have decided to put Huff-Puff on a calorie-controlled diet.
Maureen Webb, 60, who runs the center named her new arrival because of her "stroppy" nature. "She's a real little madam and a right prima donna. When you approach her she huffs and puffs - hence the name," she said. "The problem is I can't release her until she's the right size because she won't survive."
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Monday, April 27, 2009

What Nature and Man has Made

The pattern created in a Swedish forest by logging tracks and trees downed by Hurricane Gudrunin January 2005.

Pajama-Clad Toddlers Ransack Neighbor's Home

Two young brothers from Anderson, South Carolina caused an uproar in Anderson Friday morning when they wandered away from their home and into a neighbor’s home.
Neighbors and public safety officers launched an intense search after John and Matthew Farrar disappeared from their home.
The boy’s mother called to report the 2- and 3-year-olds missing at about 9:45 a.m.
About 100 city and county emergency workers scrambled into the neighborhood to search for the boys. Little did they know that the toddlers were next door in the home of a sleeping neighbor, playing out their own version of Goldilocks gone bad.
Angie Lovorn was sound asleep on the other side of the house after working a third shift and said she had no idea the boys were in her house.
"I would have right away looked through my house if I’d known they were missing," Lovorn said.
But she didn’t know. And while she slept, the toddlers ransacked her cupboards, munching on Teddy Grahams, marshmallows and chips.
Lovorn finally awoke and saw the emergency workers outside her home at about the same time searchers spotted the boys coming out her back door.
One of the brothers was wearing a Clemson University football helmet that belongs to Lovorn’s son.
"They even got on the top bunk," Lovorn said. "These items -- stuffed animals -- were on the top bunk."
From the looks of the house, the boys enjoyed their visit.
"They played for a while, I think," Lovorn said.
The wandering toddlers are the youngest of four brothers in their family.
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Do You See What I See?

Answer in Comments
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Moustachioed horse evades the clippers

A horse which has grown a curly, golden moustache is refusing to let grooms shave it off.
Alfie, a 10-year-old Shire-cross, is said to flee if he thinks he is in danger of getting even a trim.
The horse also refuses to let staff at the stables in Bitton, Gloucestershire, into his stall there for fear that they will remove his whiskers.
The moustache may look somewhat incongruous given its fair color compared to his black and white coloring and well-meaning staff thought he would rather be without it.
However Alfie clearly enjoys the look and groom Justine Greenslade said all efforts to clip it had been in vain.
"He's obviously rather proud of his facial hair," she said.
"He runs a mile if he thinks we're going to trim it."
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Sunday, April 26, 2009

Oops

Workers leave passengers stranded
Eight people were left stranded mid-air in a cliff lift for an hour and a half after its operators turned it off and went home.
The holidaymakers, including two little girls and three pensioners, were abandoned in a "very hot" carriage halfway up the South Cliff following a mix-up between staff at the top and the bottom of the Spa lift.
Each night the lift is shut down with both carriages left in the middle of the track, halfway up the cliff.
But after the eight passengers had boarded at the bottom, the operator at the top of the cliff shut down the lift for the day and both operators went home.
One of the victims had to call the fire brigade on a mobile phone, and crews dashed to the scene. It was said that there was a misunderstanding with the operator below. After eventually contacting a lift engineer, the shaken tourists were set free after enjoying the view for 90 minutes.
The incident left some passengers who were from Scotland, Norfolk and Kent, shaken. But a council chief last night said it had tried to make amends by offering various good-will gestures including free Spa theater tickets.
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Man and his cat

26th October 1956: Henry Behrens, the smallest man in the world dances with his pet cat in the doorway of his Worthing home. Measuring only 30 inches high, Mr Behrens has made a living by traveling the world with Burton Lester's midget troupe.
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Future King of England Going Bald at 26

Young Prince William, the future kind of England, is beginning to molt at age 26, sending everyone into a tizzy. Prince William may be struggling to cover up his bald spot but until now he has managed to conceal the fact that at 26 he still wears a brace on his teeth.


Even his own staff had not noticed that he was wearing it until it was spotted while he was meeting excited children during a visit to Staffordshire yesterday. William has had the wire in place behind his bottom teeth ever since his braces were removed when he was 16.
A St James’s Palace spokesman said: "Prince William has used a permanent support for his bottom teeth for 10 years as part of routine treatment.
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But it was funny

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Rock and Roll Them Away

Hard Rock Music is the Ultimate Weapon Against Insect Plague
The residents of Tuscarora Nevada, anticipating an imminent attack, will be ready with a perimeter defense. They'll position their best weapons at regular intervals, faced out toward the desert to repel the assault.
Rock music blaring from boom boxes has proved one of the best defenses against an annual invasion of Mormon crickets. The huge flightless insects are a fearsome sight as they advance across the desert in armies of millions that march over, under or into anything in their way.
But the crickets don't much fancy Led Zeppelin or the Rolling Stones, the townspeople figured out three years ago. So next month, Tuscarorans are preparing once again to get out their extension cords, array their stereos in a quarter-circle and tune them to rock station KHIX, full blast, from dawn to dusk. "It is part of our arsenal," says Laura Moore, an unemployed college professor and one of the town's 13 residents.
In flyspeck villages like Tuscarora, crickets are a serious matter. The critters hatch in April in the barren soil of northern Nevada, western Utah and other parts of the Great Basin, quickly growing into blood-red, ravenous insects more than 2 inches long.
Then they march. In columns that in peak years can be two miles long and a mile across, swarms move across the badlands in search of food. Starting in about May, they march through August or so, before stopping to lay eggs for next year.
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15,000 km on foot from Miami to Ushuaia

Laetitia and Guillaume, a young French couple aged 23 and 26 set out from Miami on 27 September 2008, with the objective of getting to Ushuaia in Tierra del Fuego entirely on foot and with just 1 euro a day.
Click on to Enlarge
15 000 kilometers = 9 321 miles
In Louisiana they found Kitty, who has been traveling with them ever since.
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Not Recommended

Lake Wendouree is an artificially-created and maintained shallow urban lake for the city of Ballarat, Victoria, Australia.
Click on to Enlarge
The name Wendouree comes from a local aboriginal word wendaaree which means 'go away'
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Friday, April 24, 2009

Cat Regrets

Cat gets pulled into bath ..
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Climbing the Tallest Trees

A select group of adventurers climb the world’s tallest trees to learn more about the
wildlife that lives on the highest branches
Expedition co-founder Brian French assesses his entry point on a giant fir tree known as the Gatton Goliath found in the Olympic Peninsula, Washington.


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Then what are they?


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Cost of Ice Cubes Rising

We've gleefully chronicled such gilded age menu items as the $25,000 dessert and the $81 hamburger, but former NY Mag dining critic Gael Greene is reporting what may be the most hubristic example of restaurant chicanery yet. She has it that Morton's The Steakhouse recently tried to charge financial columnist Dan Dorfman $2.50 extra for ordering a cocktail on the rocks. His beverage was served with five of the sublime little frozen delicacies, translating to 50 cents per ice cube. He objected after noticing the charge on his bill, and Greene writes, "If you know Dorfman you know his protest was not pretty." Morton's ultimately waived the fee, but Dorfman says, "I bet they get away with it more often than not since that's a place that attracts a fair-sized Wall Street crowd and I'm sure many of them say nothing."
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Thursday, April 23, 2009

Snack Wrap Mac: Big Mac In Tortilla

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"McDonald’s might have to come up with a new ‘two all-beef patties’ jingle for its newest product. The chain is testing the Snack Wrap Mac, which puts a new spin on the old classic: half a beef patty, special sauce, lettuce, cheese, pickles, onions — wrapped in a flour tortilla."
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Health and Safety Ban Clown's Shoes

Health and safety advisers have banned a circus clown from wearing his big, floppy shoes.
Valerik Kashkin was performing in Liverpool with the Moscow State Circus when he fell from a 10ft-high wire, hurting his left foot.
Now he has been told he can no longer wear his giant comedy shoes because they are a health risk, reports the Daily Mail.
Mr Kashkin continued with the show in Sefton Park but was still in pain and went to hospital later when he was told he had broken his metatarsal.
Health and safety advisers to the circus then told him his size 18 clown shoes would have to go.
The 40-year-old, from Temruk, in Russia, said: "The shoes are an important part of my costume, and I was disappointed to be told I couldn't do this part of my act.
"I feel fine, and think I could do it in the shoes - the impact might be lost on the audience now."
Paul Archer, general manager for the circus, agreed, saying: "I think it will definitely detract from the visual aspect of the performance.
"But we live in a litigation world, and I guess we just have to follow through these procedures. It's a real balancing act."
Larry Dewitt, health and safety adviser to the circus, said: "I'm not a believer in political correctness, or doing things for the sake of doing it. However, you have to take a commonsense approach with these things - if it's stupid, don't do it."
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Huggies Smart Diaper

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Pick Your Own Nose

Beaver, Chameleon, Toucan, Zebra, Leopard, or Shark
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Dog adopts orphaned baby bunnies

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Uh oh… I think he saw me…

The look on the kids face is priceless.
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Wednesday, April 22, 2009

Getting a $26,000 Text Message Bill

Two central Pennsylvania friends spent most of March in a text-messaging record attempt, exchanging a thumbs-flying total of 217,000. For one of the two, that meant an inches-thick itemized bill for $26,000.
Nick Andes, 29, and Doug Klinger, 30, were relying on their unlimited text messaging plans to get them through the escapade, so Andes didn't expect such a big bill.
"It came in a box that cost $27.55 to send to me," he said Tuesday. He said he "panicked" and called T-Mobile.
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Todays Weather

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Reminder/incentive belt

As someone currently dieting, I'd love that!
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Did you Keep Yours

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Tuesday, April 21, 2009

Bus lane u-turn

City of Manchester could end up paying back tens of thousands of pounds of fines after a driver turned loophole-lawyer to get a bus lane penalty quashed.
Derek Brocklehurst, 38, refused to pay the £30 on the grounds that the sign was wrong.
The blue-circle sign is supposed to state that only buses, cyclists and black cabs can use the lane - but the word 'only' was missing.
Manchester council admitted there had been a mistake and later corrected the sign.
But Mr Brocklehurst's success could now open the floodgates for other drivers to challenge fines they have already paid after being caught using the lane, outside Victoria railway station.
And the council could be faced with a bill running into hundreds of thousands of pounds after it emerged that in the four month period since the sign was first erected on December 15, a staggering 10,185 notices of prosecution have been sent out.
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Library book 145 years overdue

A book that was 145 years overdue has been returned to a college library in the US state of Virginia. Luckily for the borrower's descendant, the fee was waived.
The book, taken by a Union soldier from the Lexington college library in 1864, was returned in February by its inheritor, All Headline News reports.
It was the first volume of W.F.P. Napier's History of the War in the Peninsula and in the South of France.

Pizza - Taxi

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Simple Hoop-Rolling

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Beluga meets little girl

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Monday, April 20, 2009

Squirrel Attack

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Segway's Pedal Version

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Meet Momoko and Lilly, the waterskiing Japanese macaques.

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Lake with 45-letter name has spelling errors

Officials have agreed to correct spelling errors in road signs pointing to a central Massachusetts lake with a 45-letter name.
Lake Chargoggagoggmanchauggagoggchaubunagungamaugg in Webster has one of the world’s longest place names. It’s been spelled many different ways over the years. Some locals have given up and simply call it Lake Webster.
But after researching historical spelling combinations, the local Chamber of Commerce officials agreed that some signs were wrong. There was an "o" at letter 20 where a "u" should have been, and an "h" at letter 38 where an "n" should go.
There are many stories and legends about the origin of the Indian name. One popular myth — later debunked — holds that the name translates roughly to ’You fish on your side, I fish on my side, and nobody fish in the middle.’
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Texas elementary school gets noise citation

A fed-up San Antonio Texas homeowner has managed to get a noise citation issued against his neighbor - an elementary school.
Police in suburban Universal City say they had to issue the citation after Butch Armstrong complained about the noise coming from Olympia Elementary School during the school's Family Fitness Day on March 20.
Principal Terri LeBleu says the school has already built a fence, removed loudspeakers and installed noise-reducing backing on basketball goals in response to Armstrong's previous complaints.
According to a police report, Armstrong told an officer that "police, fire, ambulances and the (air force) training jets are not unreasonable, but the noise coming from the elementary school was."