Hawk in pretty good shape after run-in with RV along RAGBRAI trail

CEDAR FALLS --- A hawk is expected to make a full recovery after completing a wild RAGBRAI ride of its own. Denise Warns, an animal control officer, helped rescue the hawk from the grill of a Winnebago recreational vehicle Wednesday on the University of Northern Iowa campus. The Winnebago rolled into town from Hampton as part of a caravan of RAGBRAI (Ragbrai is a 5-day bicycle ride across Iowa for the past 35-years http://www.ragbrai.org/) support vehicles. Those driving the RV said they likely hit the hawk somewhere near Dumont."When I got the call I didn't expect the end result to be very good. They told me he was still alive, but I didn't expect him to be in very good shape," she said. "He wasn't a very happy bird. He was very scared and using his talons to grab a hold of me. It's a hawk and they aren't used to being that close to humans.
"After removing the bird from the grill Warns turned it over to Terese Evans, who heads up the Black Hawk Wildlife Rehabilitation Project. The raptor, which was determined to likely be a female Cooper's hawk, was examined by veterinarian Lori Cherney and said to be in pretty good health."Lori said there was no major injury, other than some bruising and maybe a couple broken feathers," said Linda Nebbe, a Black Hawk Wildlife Rehabilitation Project rehabilitator. The bird is staying with Nebbe until it can be released back into the wild. Nebbe said it could be anywhere from a two days to two months before the bird is ready to be released."Yesterday she sat quite stunned, but she isn't stunned at all today. She doesn't want me in her flight cage at all," Nebbe said. "She is especially anxious to get going." Nebbe and Warns both said this rescue ranks up there in terms of one to remember. "It's a pretty good story and it feels like it could have a good ending," Nebbe said.

Judge Orders Man to Clean Vets' Memorial with Toothbrush for Scam

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,291271,00.html
July 28, 2007

SAGINAW, Mich. — A 73-year-old man has been ordered to clean a veterans memorial with a toothbrush for taking part in a scam to solicit scrap yards for metal, saying it was to be used to build a memorial for soldiers in the Iraq war.

Philip Kolinski and another man were arrested after scrap yards reported the men soliciting metal donations for a sculpture. Detectives said the men sold the metal and kept the money.

"You certainly should be ashamed," Saginaw County District Court Judge A.T. Frank said as he sentenced Kolinski to clean the veteran’s memorial in front of Governmental Center on Aug. 7.

"You will have a toothbrush and bucket with a placard saying you stole from veterans," Frank said.

Kolinski pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor charge of obtaining more than $200 under false pretenses, although he claimed he didn't know he was committing a crime. He said he agreed to haul the metal for another man, who is awaiting trial in the case.

"I just hauled it and took it to the dump yard," Kolinski said. "I feel sorry for what I did."

The judge also ordered Kolinski to pay $9,000 in restitution and $2,095 in fees and fines.

BREAKING NEWS....... Harry Potter is Boring

What is your 3-year-old doing on the Internet?

This is something you don’t see everyday

Dogs that carry their owner's bags

Two smart female golden retrievers, named Lila and Yama, are intelligent enough to help their owner carry her shopping bags, safeguard her purse, and can even tell whose phone is ringing among three or four mobile phones of Mrs Wu's family members, and immediately pass it to its owner.
Mrs Wu's clever pets always attract great attention due to their nimble movements, submissive and childlike behaviors when they follow their owner to the supermarket.
However, she commented that it costs her around $500 per month to raise her dogs, as they are fed with bottled milk every morning and have pig livers with rice daily. Sometimes, she even gets them some dog snacks from Japan!
She was offered $6,600 last year for Lila, but she declined the offer.

What? An Upside Down Rainbow In The Sky!

No, this isn't an upside-down rainbow, and the photographer hasn't faked the picture. It's an unusual phenomenon caused by sunlight shining through a thin, invisible screen of tiny ice crystals high in the sky and has nothing at all to do with the rain. Andrew G. Saffas, a Concord artist and photographer, saw the colorful arc at 3:51 p.m. on a beautiful day recently when a slight rain had fallen in the morning. He thought it was a rainbow, created by raindrops refracting sunlight the way glass prisms refract any bright beam of light.Instead, what Saffas saw was what scientists call a circumzenithal arc, according to physicist Joe Jordan. The flat, six-sided ice crystals that cause the arcs are no larger than salt grains and usually form in the cold haze of wispy cirrus clouds about 5 miles (8 km) up, said Jordan.When the sun is low in the afternoon sky on a hazy day -- even though the sky appears bright blue -- sunlight can hit the flat face of the ice particles at a slant. Then the rays bend within each crystal and emerge with the colors appearing separated into all the rainbow colors of red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo and violet.But, said Jordan, the colors in those arcs appear in the opposite position from the colors in rainbows: In zenithal arcs, as in Saffas' image, the red hues are on the bottom and the blue and violet are on the top. The arcs appear to terminate where the millions of ice crystals end, he said.

You Go Girl!

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Rubik’s Cube the Next Dimension

http://technabob.com/blog/2007/07/26/rubiks-cube-goes-into-the-next-dimension/

EastsheenCubes take multiple mini-cubes and join them together to form one crazy looking version of the classic mindbender.
With the cubes intersecting one another, I’m betting that complicates things just a little bit.



Michel Gondry solve these with his feet!

Something you don’t see everyday a home on the water

This three-story house is moved slowly through Pensacola Bay near the Pensacola Country Club and Gulf Course Friday morning. Neighbors say the house belongs to Judge Bill White and his wife Peggy and was transported from Perdido Key to replace a house lost during Hurricane Ivan.