Sand Sculptures From Australia’s Creepy Crawlies Exhibition

Creepy Crawlies, the newest theme for Sandstorm Events’ annual Sand Sculpting Australia exhibition in Frankston, will once again see the best sculptors from around the world – from the Netherlands, Belgium, Ireland and the UK, to Singapore, Canada and the USA. Go here to see more great sculptures.

 
From beetles, bugs and butterflies, to spiders, slugs and scorpions, the tiny creatures that inhabit our lives will be magnified and amplified in giant sand sculptures. Delicate dragonflies and enchanting ladybirds will mingle with bed bugs, fleas and other things that make you itch and your skin crawl!

 

Geraldine Doyle, inspiration for 'Rosie the Riveter,' dies at 86

“With a red and white bandana in her hair and factory worker uniform sleeves rolled up to reveal her bulging biceps, Rosie the Riveter was painted on a World War II recruitment poster in 1942.

But for four decades, the real Rosie the Riveter had no idea she was the woman who inspired it.

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Perhaps it was because Geraldine Doyle left her factory job after two weeks – or because she didn’t actually have bulging biceps – that Doyle, who died at 86 years old on Sunday in Lansing, Mich., didn’t know for so long that she was the model for what would became a symbol of women’s empowerment.”

One day, a United Press International photographer came to the steelworks factory and took a picture of Doyle leaning over machinery (right), a red and white polka-dot bandana covering her hair.

Child's play leads artist to find a whole new way of working

 At first glance these pictures look like nothing more than pixelated photographs but closer inspection reveals the images are actually created using thousands of wax crayons.

Bored with paint and pencils, inventive artist, Christian Faur, turned to the childhood favorite for inspiration after seeing his young daughter using them.

Christian, from Granville, USA, starts each piece by scanning a photograph and breaking the image down into colored blocks.

He then places thousands of crayons into a grid - like colored pixels on a television screen - before packing the finished piece into a wooden frame. See more here.

It was 1969 - The Year that the Army stopped Niagara falls

I was training at Ft. Leonard Wood, Missouri in 1969. That’s where the Army Corps of Engineers was located. I was preparing to be a combat engineer and to go to Vietnam. My luckier comrades stayed stateside and worked on this project.

In 1969, the Army Corps of Engineers accomplished an awesome feat: They turned off Niagara Falls. They did it to clean up the area, and check for structural integrity. Here are pictures of this bizarre episode in structural engineering history.

These pictures were taken by tourists who visited the dry falls in 1969. Environmental design blog Mammoth explains the context:

“For six months in the winter and fall of 1969, Niagara's American Falls were "de-watered", as the Army Corps of Engineers conducted a geological survey of the falls' rock face, concerned that it was becoming destabilized by erosion. During the interim study period, the dried riverbed and shale was drip-irrigated, like some mineral garden in a tender establishment period, by long pipes stretched across the gap, to maintain a sufficient and stabilizing level of moisture. For a portion of that period, while workers cleaned the former river-bottom of unwanted mosses and drilled test-cores in search of instabilities, a temporary walkway was installed a mere twenty feet from the edge of the dry falls, and tourists were able to explore this otherwise inaccessible and hostile landscape.”

via Mammoth  Photos from Russ Glasson's Flickr stream.

 

Whatever you do – don’t step on this guy’s prize front lawn!

Probation for killing after dog pees on prize lawn

Chicago-area ex-Marine will do no jail time for second-degree murder in 2009 shooting

“Charles Clements, 69, won't do any jail time for killing his neighbor Joshua Funches, 23, during an argument outside Clements' home. He could have been sentenced to as long as 20 years in prison, The Chicago Tribune reported.In May 2009, as Funches passed Clements' home while walking his fox terrier, the dog lifted its leg and relieved itself, witnesses said. The two men got into an argument.”

image source

Congressional redistricting: or how to rig an election

In a normal democracy, voters choose their representatives. In America, it is rapidly becoming the other way around

“All you need is the power to draw district lines. And that is what America provides: a process, called redistricting, which, through back-room negotiations too boring for most voters to think about, can distort the democratic system itself.”

Here are some very interesting examples of ‘Land Art’

 fROM fUBIZ – dAILY dOSE OF iNSPIRATION BLOG

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Mélange de photographie, de nature et de style, le land-art de Sylvain Meyer s’illustre avec brio au travers de ces images. Grâce à son sens de l’observation, il passe des heures à collecter des éléments de la nature afin de créer une ambiance envoutante. Plus d’images dans la suite. sEE MORE HERE.

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Here’s why your child's school bus has no seat belts…

Modern fleets aim to 'compartmentalize' pupils into a protective bubble

“Most school buses in the United States don't have seat belts or similar restraints to protect children in an accident. Federal law requires them in buses under 10,000 pounds, but that's only a small proportion of the school buses in use — picture those tiny 6- to 12-seater buses you sometimes see, which are usually fully tricked out for transporting disabled and other special-needs pupils.”

AND…

“But the standard long yellow school bus, which makes up about 80 percent of the nation's fleet, weighs in about 23,000 pounds, and its passengers sit much higher, making them safer in collisions. For those, federal education and transportation agencies leave the decision up to the states. And so far, only six require seat belts to be installed.”

Is it time? E-mails, letters favor pardoning Billy the Kid

Billy is one of my favorite characters from the Old West. I’ve read tons of articles, several books, and have chatted with some historians about him. I think he should get a pardon. What about you?

A website started in mid-December is the epicenter of the historical debate

“More people say they favor a pardon for Billy the Kid than oppose the idea after Gov. Bill Richardson's office set up a website and e-mail address to take comments on a possible posthumous pardon for one of New Mexico's most famous Old West outlaws.

Richardson's office received 809 e-mails and letters in the survey that ended Sunday. Some 430 argued for a pardon and 379 opposed it.

The website was created in mid-December after Albuquerque attorney Randi McGinn petitioned for a pardon, contending New Mexico Territorial Gov. Lew Wallace promised one in return for the Kid's testimony in a murder case against three men.”

Many U.S. companies are hiring ... overseas

One reason why U.S. unemployment remains as high as it is

Corporate profits are up. Stock prices are up. So why isn't anyone hiring?

Actually, many American companies are — just maybe not in your town. They're hiring overseas, where sales are surging and the pipeline of orders is fat.

More than half of the 15,000 people that Caterpillar Inc. has hired this year were outside the U.S. UPS is also hiring at a faster clip overseas. For both companies, sales in international markets are growing at least twice as fast as domestically.