Dog who ate beehive wins unusual pet insurance award

“A Labrador that ate a beehive containing pesticides and thousands of dead bees won an award on Monday that recognized the most unusual pet health insurance claim in the United States.

Ellie, who fully recovered from her encounter with the beehive in southern California, beat a border collie that ran through a window to get at a mailman, and a terrier that bit a chainsaw.

She won a bronze trophy in the shape of a ham, and basket of toys and doggie treats.

The winner was announced on Monday by the Veterinary Pet Insurance Co (VPI) and selected from a dozen pets nationwide.”

photo source – This smiling girl is a stand-in for Ellie.

Mother Nature to the Rescue: new microbe discovered eating Gulf oil spill

Is this to good to be true? Is it possible the environmental impact from the spilled oil will be considerably lessened by this tiny microbe?

Read on and see what you think.

'Great potential' for dispersing oil in deep sea, researchers report

“A newly discovered type of oil-eating microbe suddenly is flourishing in the Gulf of Mexico and  gobbling up the BP spill at a much faster rate than expected, scientists reported Tuesday.

Scientists discovered the new microbe while studying the underwater dispersion of millions of gallons of oil spilled since the explosion of BP's Deepwater Horizon drilling rig.

Also, the microbe works without significantly depleting oxygen in the water, researchers reported in the online journal Sciencexpress.”

More tainted food: Meats sold at Walmart recalled for bacteria

If it’s not eggs (see below), then it’s meat (see below).

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

380,000 pounds of deli products possibly tainted with listeria

Roast beef and ham that was distributed to Walmart delicatessens nationwide and sold in sandwiches has been recalled because it might be tainted with potentially harmful bacteria, the U.S. Department of Agriculture said Tuesday.

No illnesses have been reported from the 380,000 pounds of meat products that were made by Zemco Industries in Buffalo and may contain Listeria, agency spokesman Gary Mickelson said.

"It's believed most of the affected products have already been consumed," he said. The sandwiches have been removed from store shelves nonetheless.

Incoming aircraft is part of the fun at the noisiest beach in the world

Imagine the perfect vacation. Sunny weather – check, sand volleyball – check, nice white beach – check, and an airplane is landing right above your head?!

That is what you’ll get if you are staying in Maho Beach resort in the Caribbean.

 

Even with the warning signs (shown above) people act like this is a great way to play! They pull out their cameras and get all crazy taking photos from odd angles. Call me picky, but this beach is too insane for me!

Growing Monument: slow, steady progress with Crazy Horse

The giant face of Chief Crazy Horse is slowly taking shape at the Crazy Horse Memorial that is being carved out of Thunder Mountain in the Black Hills near Custer, South Dakota. The massive undertaking, originally the creation and idea of Polish-American artist and sculptor Korczak Ziokowski, was started in 1948, and it might be the largest sculpture in the world measuring when completed at 641 feet wide and 563 feet high. The head of Crazy Horse is 87 feet high. In comparison, the faces of the US president carved in Mt. Rushmore are 60 feet high. Ziokowski with approval from Chief Standing Bear and other Native Americans envisioned not only a monument to Native Americans, but also an educational and cultural center that currently includes the Indian Museum of North America, the Native American Cultural Center as well as workshops for Native American. Ziokowski and his relatives have refused government funding for the non-profit project and instead rely on donations and admissions to the memorial for funding to complete the Crazy Horse Memorial.

(Bottom) The Crazy Horse Memorial at Thunder Mountain is lit up in the evening prior to the laser light show in the Black Hills near Custer, South Dakota on Aug. 11, 2010.

Carl’s Corner: A sampling of Dahlias from his backyard

My friend Carl Young has been having a lot of fun with his camera lately. He has over 200 varieties of Dahlias and about half are in bloom right now. The rest are late bloomers for a variety of reasons. One has been the erratic weather. Photos by Young.

Here’s a list of 10 Controversial Psychiatric Disorders

The proposed revisions of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) have spurred debate over what illnesses to include in the essential psychiatric handbook. Everything from gender identity disorder to childhood mood swings has come under fire, and it's not the first time. The history of psychiatry is littered with impassioned fights over controversial diagnoses.

#10. Hysteria -

In the Victorian era, hysteria was a catch-all diagnosis for women in distress. The symptoms were vague (discontentment, weakness, outbursts of emotion, nerves) and the history sexist (Plato blamed the wanderings of an "unfruitful" uterus).

The treatment for hysteria? "Hysterical paroxysm," also known as orgasm. Physicians would massage their patients' genitals either manually or with a vibrator, a task they found tedious but surprisingly uncontroversial. More contentious was the practice of putting "hysterical" women on bed rest or demanding that they not work or socialize, a treatment that often worsened anxiety or depression.

According to a 2002 editorial in the journal Spinal Cord, the diagnosis of hysteria gradually petered out throughout the 20th century. By 1980, hysteria disappeared from the DSM in favor of newer diagnoses like conversion and dissociative disorders.

GO HERE TO READ THE OTHER NINE

As It Stands - A 'Traveler's' tales and the free ride

By Dave Stancliff

For the Times-Standard

Posted: 08/22/2010 01:26:50 AM PDT

Summer, 1985 -- People were frying eggs on the sidewalk outside the newspaper office. It was a blatant attempt to get me to photograph them.

As the editor of The Desert Trail, a weekly newspaper in Twentynine Palms, Calif., I'd seen my share of filler photos showing how hot it was.

Frying eggs on sidewalks was a passé photographic experience. I wasn't eager to go outside in that 115-degree furnace, either, but I knew it was going to be a big newspaper that week (we had lots of advertising) and I needed extra stories and photos to fill the additional editorial pages that would be available.

About the time I gathered my camera, notebook, keys, and briefcase, a man walked into the office. He was tall, string-bean thin, had long wild looking hair popping out of his skull at all angles and a deep tan laced with road-weary wrinkles.

As he talked with Nell, the secretary at the front desk, I studied him. He showed her a tiny rocking chair and was explaining how he made it out of tin cans when inspiration struck, and I saw an interesting feature story. I enjoyed interviewing people. I'd met a lot of local desert rats who could entertain you for hours with their stories.

I let him finish his spiel to Nell and spoke up. “Excuse me. Would you like to go to lunch and tell me a little more about yourself? I'd like to do a story on you.”

He looked startled for a moment, and then smiled and said, “Sure. My name is John.”

We went to a local Mexican eatery and over lunch he told me his life story. He started by telling me a few childhood experiences. I figured he was about my age, mid-to-late thirties. I asked him if he ever lived in a house after leaving home?

He considered my question between bites of taco. “A few times, for short periods ...” I wondered how he had made a living during his adult years and finally asked, “Those things you make from tin cans are really nice, but surely this hasn't been your only means of supporting yourself?”

He grinned happily and said, “No. I've made lots of things for money and worked in all kinds of jobs.”

When he didn't elaborate I prodded, “Such as?”

He pushed his empty plate aside, took a drink of his sun ice tea, and rattled off his resume: “I mowed estate lawns in Hollywood and weeded them too. I worked as a pump jockey in gas stations from New Mexico to Vermont. I dug holes and hauled rocks in some rural towns in Tennessee with names I couldn't pronounce. I gave blood at blood banks in Florida. I worked as a store greeter, and once as Santa Claus in Ohio. I washed idling car windows in the streets of New York and cut wood in Washington for nearly three years.”

I watched his face light up with memories and it struck me he was a happy man, despite his poor circumstances. He had a knapsack of World War II vintage to hold the sum total of his wealth.

As we walked outside into the blinding light, he mentioned that he would really like to see his sister in Arizona.

I mulled that over and said, “If you can wait until Thursday, when the newspaper comes out, I'll ask readers if anyone is interested in giving you a ride. It couldn't hurt. There's some churches in town that would probably put you up until then.”

He considered my request and replied, “I'll try my thumb, thank you, but if that fails, I'll come by your office on Friday.”

When the newspaper came out, a local resident called and offered to give John a ride. I looked at his photo on the front page, holding that little rocking chair, and wondered if John was already gone? About 10 a.m. Friday, to my surprise, he showed up at the office.

I hooked him up with the kind reader/caller and felt kinda good about the results. Life however, is more complicated than that. The good Samaritan who took John to Arizona showed up the following Monday to tell me John didn't have a sister in Arizona.

As It Stands, I learned a lesson from less-than-honest John, but I don't regret having met him and having the opportunity to listen to his stories.

Photo source

Velma the Vulture flees handlers – now she has to avoid airplanes

Really? It’s the first time I’ve ever heard of European/British pilots being put on alert over one escaped Ruppell’s Vulture.

Maybe it’s just me. I don’t listen to the BBC enough. Seems strange though don’t you think?

Pilots on alert for high-flying vulture

 Britain's air traffic controllers put pilots on alert this week after a vulture which can soar as high as 30,000 feet escaped from her handlers during a display.

Gandalf, a seven-year-old Ruppell's Vulture with a three-meter wingspan, has not been seen since she caught a warm thermal during a show at the World of Wings center in North Lanarkshire, Scotland, on Tuesday.

Meet GOP candidate for NY governor : wealthy real estate developer Carl Paladini – he advocates prison dorms for welfare recipents

Tea party activists love this guy.What a recommendation! They just picked one of their own. He fits the profile for a patriotic tea bagger: an older white male, retired, wealthy, and as stupid as mud about how to run this country.

Just look at Paladini’s idea. The first step in rounding up the people and containing them. Can you say Fascism out loud? Real Loud? Now someone please tell him to take that flag down (behind him) – retire it in respect to it’s place in history – and to hold up his real flag (hint – it has a Swastika on it).

NY candidate: Prison dorms for welfare recipients

Excerpt:

“Republican candidate for governor Carl Paladino said he would transform some New York prisons into dormitories for welfare recipients, where they could work in state-sponsored jobs, get employment training and take lessons in "personal hygiene."

Paladino, a wealthy Buffalo real estate developer popular with many tea party activists, isn't saying the state should jail poor people: The program would be voluntary.”

Egyptian police recover stolen Van Gogh painting

Police recovered a painting (“Poppy Flowers”) by Vincent van Gogh at Cairo airport Saturday, hours after it was stolen from a museum in the Egyptian capital, the country's culture minister said.

Farouk Hosni said security officers at the airport confiscated the painting from an Italian couple as they were trying to leave the country. The work of art, which Hosni said was valued at $50 million, was stolen earlier Saturday from Cairo's Mahmoud Khalil Museum.

No further details were immediately available on how the artwork by the Dutch-born postimpressionist was stolen or recovered.

Image source - “Poppy Flowers”

Quack Ups: Let’s give it up for the long-distance ducks

It’s common knowledge that many birds migrate – some halfway around the world, others not very far at all – but a few species of duck travel amazing distances as part of their regular travels, and at phenomenal speeds. The black brant is one such record holder, making the trip from the cold climes of Alaska to the much-warmer lands of Baja, California. No need to do the math: that’s more than 3,000 miles. A distance, by the way, covered in less than 72 hours.

The ill-respected duck is also a record holder for not just distance and time but also altitude. Although they commonly aren’t high flyers, preferring to stay relatively close to the ground, ducks have been recorded soaring to close nearly 20,000 feet (that's more than 6 kilometers).

That most definitely is a ‘wow’ thing but what’s an even bigger – more like a real big WOW – is that a duck skeleton was found at 16,000 feet … in the form of a skeleton on Mount Everest. (this scientific paper discusses how ducks can actually breath and keep their body warmth at these altitudes)
For altitude, ducks are amazing, no denying that, but if you want to get really, really high you have to look at the extremely ugly Rüppell's Vulture. That might not be fair to the bird, but ugly or not this vulture wears a handsome medal for going where no bird, or even a lot of airplanes, have gone. Ducks, sure, deserve applause for 20,000 feet but the Rüppell's Vulture goes more than just one better, attaining a remarkable 38,000 feet (almost 12 kilometers). Alas, the record was set when the poor bird got sucked into a jet engine at that height but you still have to admit that it was quite an accomplishment.

Go here to read about more fantastic animals.

Age confirmed for 'Eve,' mother of all humans

Mitochondrial DNA places her existence at about 200,000 years ago

A maternal ancestor to all living humans called mitochondrial Eve likely lived about 200,000 years ago, at roughly the same time anatomically modern humans are believed to have emerged, a new review study confirms.

The results are based on analyses of mitochondrial DNA. Found in the energy-producing centers of cells, mitochondrial DNA is only passed down the maternal line, and can be traced back to one woman.

Image source

A blast from the past: a traveler’s tales and free ride

Back in 1985, I was the editor of The Desert Trail newspaper (See banner above). One day, while looking for a feature story, I had the good luck to have the story come to me in the form of a traveling man who stopped by the office.

He came out of the searing sun and into the newspaper’s air-conditioned office to sell trinkets made from aluminum cans. As I watched him talk with Nell, our secretary, I saw news potential in that sunburned scarecrow of a man.

See “As It Stands’ in this Sunday’s Times-Standard. 

Image source

Men are from Mars, Cats are from...

They know where they're from, but they're not telling

Freaky Friday News: Strangest Way to Receive Tons of Marriage Offers

One Way to Get Popular with Ladies: Set out to Walk Around The World in an Iron Mask

“Harry was, to put it mildly, a bit of a rogue, a rascal, a rake, a rapscallion. Born around 1877, Harry soon proved to as wily with his businesses and investments as he'd was with the ladies, the bottle, and the cards – creating for himself a self-indulgently lavish and totally outlandish lifestyle.
But, alas – or so some stories go – Harry's luck deserted him one day and he lost it all on a foolish wager. Facing absolute ruin, Harry had few options – until, that is, the intervention of John Pierpont Morgan and Hugh Cecil Lowther (the 5th Earl of Lonsdale).
What Morgan and Lowther did was offer poor Harry an opportunity to regain his fortune. All Harry had to do was accept another, very possibly, foolish wager.

Harry, you see, had to take a stroll. But not a few dozen, or even hundred, miles... not just across England, or even down and through Europe, or into the Middle East and then China. No, ladies and gentlemen, Harry had to walk all the way around the entire Earth.

Sweet-sounding “kissing bugs’ can take your breath away

Yikes! I’ve been reading all about the bed bug infestation in this country lately. This morning I found out about this disgusting “kissing bug.”

I must have led a sheltered life because I’ve never seen bed bugs, and I’ve never even heard of kissing bugs.

I once heard someone say that when mankind nukes himself off this planet the only survivors will be cockroaches! I have a hunch bed bugs and kissing bugs will be right there with them!

Noel Aleccia writes: “If you thought bed bugs were bad, consider this: Researchers are warning about the dangers of another invasive critter, the so-called “kissing bug,” which strikes at night and bites your face.

PHOTO: Smooch! The adult female kissing bug, known as Triatoma rubida.

Properly known as triatomines, the long-feelered bugs common in the U.S. southwest are known to carry the parasite that causes Chagas disease, a potentially deadly illness with roots in Latin America. Fortunately, cases here have been rare, but that hasn’t deterred the bugs from causing damage. Most recently, they’ve been linked to dangerous allergic reactions in patients who wake up with swollen-shut eyes, itchy welts and blistered skin, struggling to breathe.

A recent study in the journal Clinical Infectious Diseases advises doctors to be on the lookout for these severe allergic reactions, which can be as serious as any bee sting in people who are sensitized. In one instance, a 46-year-old woman in the foothills of San Diego woke up scratching her leg and quickly found that she was too weak to walk and short of breath. She had to be rushed to an emergency room and treated for anaphylaxis. Other victims have lost consciousness and had seizures.

The culprit? The small brown blood-suckers attracted by light to human homes. They creep in unnoticed only to emerge at night and use scent and heat to track down humans. The reason they’ve been dubbed “kissing bugs,” is from their common habit of biting the face, which is often exposed during sleep.

Data is sketchy, but researchers at the University of Arizona’s “Kissing Bug Project” report that there were 669 exposures to kissing bugs reported to U.S. poison control centers between 2000 and 2005. They figure the number of love bug bites was actually much higher because of under-reporting.

There’s not much to do about a kissing bug bite, except to avoid it. Pest control is a good idea, experts say. This is one smooch nobody wants to wake up with.”

The top 10 most tattooed cities in America – guess which is Number One?

TotalBeauty.com scoped out the top towns obsessed with getting inked

“To figure out which U.S. cities were the most tattoo-friendly, we perused chat forums and looked up every state in several public directories, including Yellow Pages, Google listings, Tattoo Yellow Pages and AAA Tattoo Directory, to find those with the most listed tattoo and permanent makeup shops. Then we looked up which cities in those states had the most shops listed per capita with populations based on latest U.S. Census numbers. We also took into consideration the city's demographics and whether or not it hosted tattoo conventions, remembering that not all tattoo parlors were listed in the directories. Here are the cities that love ink the most:

Palin’s picks lose primaries – time for ‘Mama Grizzly’ to go into hibernation

Perhaps there is still some sanity out there in the hinterlands. Paying Palin to stump for candidates hasn’t paid-out for the tea baggers and other assorted wackaloons. 

Primary losses blunt Palin's 'Mama Grizzly' claws

“It's been a summer of setbacks for Sarah Palin. Candidate "cubs" endorsed by the Mama Grizzly in Chief have been suffering a recent string of primary election losses.

The Republicans' 2008 vice presidential nominee promised a pack of "mama grizzly" candidates would rise up and defeat Democrats in this November's elections. But office-seekers she supported in Kansas, Wyoming and Washington state lost their primaries despite her high-profile endorsements. And Karen Handel lost her runoff contest for Georgia governor a day after sharing an Atlanta stage with Palin.”

Cannibalism still practiced: human trafficker jailed for trying to sell albino man

Kenyan sentenced to 9 years in prison for trying to make a deal with Tanzanian witchdoctors

Just what does an Albino in Tanzania cost the local witch doctor? Try $263,000! The sickening thing is what happens to the poor Albino when he/she is sold:

Excerpt:

“The victims' blood and body parts are used for potions. Witchdoctors tell their clients that the body parts will bring them luck in love, life and business.”

PHOTO - Children take a break in January 2009 in a recreational hall at the Mitindo Primary School, which has become a rare sanctuary for albino children in Tanzania.

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