Saturday, January 8, 2011

Woman Dances 123 Hours to Set Guinness World Record

woman dances 123 hours guinness,Mohiniyattam,Kalamandalam Hemalatha,Kalamandalam Hemalatha practiced 10 hours a day,Mohiniyattam eight classical dance forms

When a woman dances for 123 hours, it's going to be news.

Especially when it turns out to be a Guinness-worthy world record. And if you've never heard of the Indian dance called the Mohiniyattam before, that's why she did it.

Hemalatha trained harder than a lot of pro athletes. She practiced the Mohiniyattam for 10 hours a day and ran 28 miles to work on her stamina, according to the San Jose Mercury News.

A lesson for humans on working together and acting responsibly

This level of social organization is described as eusocial. As well as benefitting the colony, the researchers believe that this ability to change jobs may also lead to longer life spans in social insects compared to their solitary cousins…

BBC Animal ScienceCentral American leaf-cutter ants “retire” from their cutting role when they grow old, switching to carrying when their jaws blunt with age. Leaf-cutter ants start their lives with razor-like jaws, or mandibles, to cut through the leaves they harvest. But as these “wear out”, the insects tend to carry the leaves cut by their younger counterparts.

The findings suggest that individual ants can extend their useful lifespan as their skills decline. They are reported in the journal Behaviour Ecology and Sociobiology. The US-based scientists discovered that older ants were significantly less efficient at cutting leaves. They estimated these older colony members’ “worn-out teeth” halved the speed at which the entire colony was able to harvest leaves. Story here.

Holiday drive traded free pot for food donations at dispensary

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I figure this was one for the books when it came to food drives. I’ve never heard of, or seen, one that rewarded the donors with doobies!

SOQUEL, Calif. (AP) — A California medical marijuana dispensary has raked in food donations with a unique offer: free pot.

The Granny Purps dispensary in Soquel, about 60 miles southeast of San Francisco, offered a complimentary marijuana cigarette for every four cans of food a patient brought in this holiday season. Each patient was limited to a maximum of three cigarettes a day.

The Santa Cruz Sentinel reports that the dispensary took in 11,000 pounds of food and handed out 2,000 marijuana cigarettes between November and Christmas Eve, when the promotion ended.

The food was donated to the Second Harvest Food Bank.

Democratic Congresswoman Giffords, others shot in Arizona

UPDATE Below

This is a breaking news story that just came minutes ago…

A Victim of political rage?

Gunman hits Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, D-Ariz., in the head; sprays bullets into crowd

“Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, D-Ariz., was shot in the head and an unknown number of others were wounded Saturday when an assailant sprayed bullets into an area where the lawmaker was meeting with constituents, congressional officials said.

Officials said one of the victims died soon after the attack, and others were taken to a nearby hospital.

There were conflicting reports on whether the congresswoman had died.”

UPDATE: 12:14 PST

According to Talking Points Memo

While NPR and CNN initially reported that Giffords and at least six others were killed in the shooting, local news confirmed with the hospital at 2:30 ET that she remains in surgery. We are expecting a news conference at 3:30 ET.

Related News – Why did this happen? Was it because Sarah Palin put her on a “target list?” The following provides clues…

Giffords has dealt with several violent incidents in the last year, mostly related to the health care reform vote. In August 2009 at another "Congress on Your Corner" event at a Douglas, AZ Safeway, one attendee dropped a gun.

Her office was vandalized in March 2010 after the health care vote. That same month, former Alaska governor Sarah Palin (R) put Giffords on SarahPAC's "target" list with a gun site over her district.

Giffords' opponent in a tough reelection campaign last fall, tea partier Jesse Kelly (R), reportedly held an event in June 2010 in which supporters were invited to shoot an M-16 with him to "Get On Target For Victory."

On at least two previous occasions, staff were concerned about violence. At one town hall event event, aides contacted police after an attendee left a gun, according to an account in the Huffington Post. And in March, 2010, a few hours after her vote in favor of the Affordable Care Act, somebody smashed in the window of her district office.

ODD REACTION FROM LOCAL BLOGGER

Apparently Eric at So Hum Parlance decided to censor my comments regarding the Congresswoman’s death, and a link to TPM about Palin putting her on a “Target List.” I wonder what brought that about? He’s never censored anything I said before and it wasn’t like I was “off thread” or being troll-like in any way.

GUMAN WAS DESCRIBED AS “LEFT-WING LIBERAL” (3:25 PST)

A young woman in Arizona, Catie Parker, claimed on her Twitter feed that she went to high school and college with the gunman, and was in a band with him. She described his politics in the past as "left wing, quite liberal, & oddly obsessed with the 2012 prophecy." She also described him as having a lot of friends "until he got alcohol poisoning in '06" and dropped out of school. "Mainly loner very philosophical."

Friday, January 7, 2011

Friday flees with flowery memories…

image source unknown

Birds in trouble? Yes ... here's why

John Roach writes: Birds are indeed in trouble. But this trouble has nothing to do with freakish events such as the thousands of blackbirds that fell from the sky in Arkansas on New Year's Eve. Rather, experts say birds are falling prey to a laundry list of long-term threats ranging from pollution and habitat loss to climate change.

You think birds falling from the sky is weird? How about a meat shower?

One of the interesting theories that followed the “Kentucky Meat Shower” of 1876 was buzzards were suspected of vomiting up chunks of venison, and/or beef as they flew over Louisville. Apparently if the lead buzzard disgorges meat the rest of the flock will follow. That’s news to me.

This story was too fun to pass up sharing this morning:

Flocks of birds falling en masse from the sky in Arkansas, Louisiana, Kentucky and even Sweden is strange, but these mysterious mass deaths don’t hold a candle to the “Kentucky Meat Shower” of 1876 when it comes to avian oddities.

“Flesh Descending in a Shower. An Astounding Phenomenon in Kentucky – Fresh Meat Like Mutton or Venison Falling  From A Clear Sky,” read the headline in the New York Times on March 10, 1876.

Read story here.

Thursday, January 6, 2011

Man with the golden voice reunites with his mother

Miracles can happen…ask Ted Williams, the man with the golden pipes!

I had to follow up this “feel good” story which I first posted yesterday.

It seems more like a movie than real life. Mr. Williams hit the jackpot without playing the lottery. I just hope the new found riches don’t lead him back to a life of drugs.

Former panhandler-turned-celebrity embraces mom for first time in 20 years

‘Study was a fraud’ - Doctor defends research tying vaccine to autism

Image: British doctor Andrew Wakefield, right, and his wife Carmel arriving at the General Medical Council (GMC) in central London

This is a troubling story for a lot of reasons. How many children, and adults, got sick, or died, because they weren’t vaccinated after reading that report?

I admit when I read the study I stopped getting vaccinations. Millions of parents nationwide did the same thing because of this one man. Now it’s almost impossible to calculate the damage he’s done. 

Excerpt:

New report shows Dr. Andrew Wakefield, colleagues altered facts about patients

The first study to link a childhood vaccine to autism was based on doctored information about the children involved, according to a new report on the widely discredited research.

The conclusions of the 1998 paper by Andrew Wakefield and colleagues were renounced by 10 of its 13 authors and later retracted by the medical journal Lancet, where it was published.

In an accompanying editorial, BMJ editor Fiona Godlee and colleagues called Wakefield's study "an elaborate fraud." They said Wakefield's work in other journals should be examined to see if it should be retracted.

Last May, Wakefield was stripped of his right to practice medicine in Britain. Many other published studies have shown no connection between the MMR vaccination and autism.”

PHOTO - British doctor Andrew Wakefield, right, and his wife Carmel arriving at the General Medical Council (GMC) in central London, Jan. 28, 2010 Shaun Curry  /  AFP - Getty Images file

Wednesday, January 5, 2011

Weird Festivals: Empire Asparagus Festival is Artsy Fun

Empire Asparagus Festival, Empire, Mich. (courtesy of Paul & Heidi Skinner)

The Empire Asparagus Festival in Empire, Mich., is dedicated entirely to this perennial vegetable. Michigan is one of the top asparagus producers in the U.S., but since Empire is known more for its artsy side than its agricultural one, the festival includes many touches of whimsy. Each May, revelers gather to celebrate with a parade, a 5K fun run, asparagus hat-making and even an "ode to asparagus" poetry contest. The food at the festival is hardly your typical fair fare: You can dine on everything from deep-fried asparagus to asparagus bratwurst, and wash it all down with asparagus beer. To see more weird festivals go here.

Trump's Lowest Grift Ever Saved for Holy Week

This is a story about how the devil's puppet, aka Donald Trump, mocked Christianity by selling a book combining the Bible, the Constitu...