“The monitoring is at its lowest level since becoming law more than a decade ago, putting swimmers, surfers and divers at greater risk of exposure to contaminated water, a Times investigation shows.” Health testing way down at California beaches
Photos were taken at College Cove and Clam Beach in Humboldt County.
PHOTO -Farmers' Almanac managing editor Sandi Duncan, left, and editor Peter Geiger pose with a copy of the 2011 almanac on Thursday in Lewiston, Maine. The Farmers' Almanac says most of the nation can expect a "kinder and gentler" winter season but New Englanders who enjoyed a respite from brutal cold last winter will find colder-than-normal weather to be a "slap in the face."
UPDATE BELOW
By Dave Stancliff/For The Times-Standard
Posted: 08/29/2010 01:28:55 AM PDT
I love animals, and hate to see pet owners exploited.
I'm not referring to owners who buy organic pet food, or those who take their animals to a regular veterinarian to assure their health, or who buy expensive toys for their pets. I'm not even talking about people who fly their pets on specialty airlines (http://www.petairways.com).
Those scenarios seem perfectly reasonable if you have the money and the inclination. If you love your animal, and millions of Americans do -- to the tune of $47.7 billion in 2009 according to American Pet Products -- then the expense seems justified. Non-pet owners may disagree and shake their heads. I say to each his own, as long as there's mutual respect and no one is being cheated.
With that established, I want to share where I draw the line between “reasonable” as mentioned above, and expenses that are really elaborate rip-offs.
When someone tells you they can find your missing animal because they talk with the pet's spirits/energies, you will become a victim if you buy it. If they claim to talk with dead animals or to heal your pet's illness by touching them, smile, wish them a good day, and slowly back away.
I searched the web for a good example of a pet psychic/communicator and came up with Ellen Kohn (www.enlightenedanimals.com). Her beautifully laid out website offers numerous psychic services for pet owners.
Kohn recently completed an accredited program and received her Spiritual Counseling Degree. I'll go into where you can get such a degree shortly, but first, let's examine what she offers pet owners:
According to her website, she has communication skills that help track lost animals; she talks with live and deceased animals; she can heal animals by touching them; and she solves any emotional traumas or imbalances your pet may have. Move over Dr. Doolittle.
Kohn can hold long distance “chats” via a meditative process and uses crystals for (you guessed it) clarity and perception. She writes everything down -- any questions you may have -- and follows up with phone consultations with owner and pet. These consultations can last for months.
Kohn also employs the 38 Bach Flower remedies created by British physician Dr. Edward Bach in the 1930s. Where did Kohn learn this and stuff like Spirit-to-Spirit Communication? This ability to chat it up with dead animals doesn't just happen after a vision or something.
You have to go to a special place like the Gurney Institute of Animal Communication (www.gurney institute.com/main.html), to find the answer. After working in the “field” for 20 years, Carol Gurney established the institute in 2008. Since then, she claims she has trained “thousands” of animal pet psychics/communicators.
Does all this sound a little “off-kilter” to you? You're not the only one. Joe Nickell, a senior research fellow at the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry (www.csiop.org/), says pet psychics are a rip-off. Nickell, a self-proclaimed full-time paranormal investigator, claims he's seen it all in 40 years of research. He prides himself on knowing all the tricks used on the pet psychic's clients. You might say he's a modern day Houdini (who loved to expose fraudulent people psychics) on a 21st century mission.
Nickell calls the pet psychic's approach with clients “the art of fishing for information.” He explains that cold reading, a technique where the psychic asks questions instead of stating facts, makes general statements and watches for body language clues, is an important tool in the pet psychic's box of tricks.
Simply put, the pet isn't going to give anything away. The pet psychic really reads the owner. The people who are vulnerable to these psychics are grieving pet owners, or desperate people with pets that in need a physical miracle.
I don't think all pet-psychics are intentional frauds. There are some who really think they're helping. The tipping point is money. If none is required, then you can safely explore without being exploited.
As It Stands, if there's one thing I'm sure of it's the special bond between pets and their owners. It is no different than the bond between humans; called love.
UPDATE: Websites that have picked up this column
The Book of Throth Paranormal Research and Discussion
Skepticator – Skeptical Content For Everyone
NewsPlurk United States News & Search Aggregator
Google News – Top stories
NewsDay –A Florida publication
Bulldada Newsblog – The High Weirdness Project
Twitter – By Free Psychic
India Times online publication
The Cult News Network –online publication
News Feed Research – More than just a news feed
PetShipper - Welcome to Pet Shipper Pet Transport, Animal Travel, the Pet Travel Directory. Pet Air Travel Advice. Pet Shipping Agents, Pet Transport.
Pet Lolled net articles
'I think it's the most unusual item we've ever had in our auction'
Hard to believe someone paid this much for a crapper – even a famous one!
It's not even Labor Day and negative political ads are muscling in on your TV time. Across the country, ad spending is up and attack ads lead the way.
“As of this week, candidates for state and federal office had spent $395 million on ads for the November elections, compared with $286 million at this point in the 2006 midterms. More than half the ads have been negative.”
As It Stands explores the murky world of pet psychics who perform miracles. They can talk with your pet via the phone (just provide a pic of the pet), or find your lost pet. They dredge up spirits of past pets and even tell you what they were reincarnated as in case you want to continue your relationship with that special pet.
“A Hawaii man who says he is unable to bathe, dress himself or wake up in the day because he is addicted to the video game "Lineage II" may proceed with his suit against the game's South Korean developer, a federal judge has ruled.”
UPDATE
Sorry about that….
Tonight the Whole World is waiting for...
the planet Mars to be at it’s brightest.
It will look as large as the full moon to the naked eye tonight when it comes within 34.65M miles off earth.
The next time Mars may come this close is in 2287.
What will happen when you die?
Who will get your personal belongings and whatever money you have?
Do you even care? Should you care? Do you have a will? Even if you do, will it be carried out like you intended?
The story plays out thousands — perhaps hundreds of thousands of times — every year across the country, a scourge of old age
“America's vulnerable, graying population, and the concentration of wealth among older adults, has created a massive opportunity for fraud. Hard statistics are not available, but experts suspect that perhaps half a million elderly adults are ripped off by family members, lawyers and accountants every year, potentially taking $2.6 billion from infirm older Americans. The crime is known as elder financial abuse. Financial expert and consumer advocate John Wasik has called it "the crime of the 21st century."
It’s hard to believe such blatant racism is tolerated today, but as this article points out, it’s just the way things are in Nettleton Middle School in Nettleton, Miss. The fact of the matter is racism is rampant in America today, and to prove my point look at Glenn Beck’s plans for this weekend (see Post below).
Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy
Beck’s bogus “God inspired” idea to overshadow Martin Luther King’s famous speech is based on nothing more than prejudice and hate. Beck loves the limelight and has no trouble calling Obama a racist or anyone else. It’s the pot calling the kettle black – but Beck seems to get away with it. At least with his rabid followers who want to “take America back!”
A while back I wrote a column about flying in airplanes and how I dread the experience.
I can just imagine if I’d of been on this flight!
The Internet abhors a cat dumper.
Never was that sentiment more clear than in its ongoing outrage over the infamous "Cat Bin Lady" of Britain, who made international news after video captured her petting an unsuspecting cat, then incongruously dropping the friendly tabby in a nearby garbage bin.
Gawker's Adrian Chen, himself a victim of the /b/board Internet horde, reports on 4chan's rapid identification and dissemination of the woman's identity, including her name and contact information, as well as that of her employer. Fitting, considering 4chan is responsible for the LOLCat phenomenon enjoyed by the general Internet population today. As was the case when 4chan targeted adolescent viral video star Jessi Slaughter,
Just when you thought you heard it all from Glenn Beck he comes up with shit like this. The sad part is, he has a willing (and extremely stupid) audience.
What’s next? No! Don’t tell me.
Glenn Beck Says Obama’s Not a Muslin But a Perverted-Christian Whatever
“Prominent theologian Glenn Beck has been busy hanging streamers and making his favorite Metamucil-infused punch in preparation for this weekend’s “Restoring Honor” rally, where he and Ted Nugent will reclaim the civil rights movement from the Ghost of Martin Luther King Jr. and riddle it with bullets. Beck says his festival is going to be “the Woodstock of the next generation,” as well as “the anti-Woodstock.” He’s also calling the event an “American miracle,” which sounds more credible than the Woodstock stuff given Beck’s an expert on religion.”
Read more here.
A live tiger cub was found drugged and hidden among stuffed-tiger toys in the luggage of a woman at Bangkok's airport, a wildlife smuggling watchdog group reported Thursday.
Photo -This two-month-old tiger cub was found in a woman's suitcase at the airport in Bangkok, Thailand
Not many cats have thousands of fans and a couple of museum exhibits under their belts.
Of course, not many cats could wear belts.
Lorenzo is a 2-year-old Maine coon who happily models the latest fashions for his owner, photographer Joann Biondi.
I found this author’s observations/conversations to be interesting. You can go to his website and read the whole article. I was researching alternative vacations when I discovered:
Max Hartshorne (shown here) who is the editor of GoNOMAD and his blog Readuponit.
Hartshorne’s description of Mendocino sounds a lot like Humboldt. I suppose they are somewhat akin.
However, in my experience, when I tell people I’m from Humboldt County they automatically think “Marijuana.” If you say Mendocino, the odds are some people will relate it to wine. More informed types will know better, because bud production is a primary crop there.
Excerpt:
“I asked Richard about the topic that many people quickly associate with the name Mendocino: Marijuana. “Oh, that. Let’s not go there. There are many things more important than that.”
But what he’s referring to is an underground economy of nearly $1.5 billion. Scores of local residents have good jobs trimming the marijuana buds, easy work that pays $25 per hour.
“Try hiring somebody to clean motel rooms, if they can make that for trimming,” an innkeeper told me that night.
In November 2010, an initiative on the California ballot will give voters the chance to legalize pot, both growing it, smoking it, and owning it will be legal. Most people said they thought it was a good idea, eyeing the tax revenues that would be produced for the state.
Everyone here is plain sick of the mess their state finances are in... looming giant deficits and cuts that go far beyond the acceptable. So this new source of tax revenue has to be tempting.
Yet when I visited a winery and spoke to people there, they said that they feel that legalization would kill the many pot businesses, and then big conglomerates would come in and take over the growing operations.
There are already plenty of Mexican drug gangs profiting handsomely from ‘illegal grows’ in the huge state forests of the county. Many people told me about how they showed the DEA where to find the growers who were invading their land with illegal planting...and they said they were fed up with it.
Who knows what will happen? At GoNOMAD we’re interested in promoting tourism, travel and spreading the gospel of going. I think if Mendocino follows the example of Amsterdam, it might be the biggest tourist draw since Disneyland. "This Bud's For You!" might be the perfect slogan for California's new tourism campaign.”
“An experimental targeted cancer drug shrank advanced melanoma tumors in 81 percent of patients with the deadly and hard-to-treat cancer, doctors said Wednesday.
The findings were part of an early phase study used to determine the best dose of the experimental drug PLX4032, now in late-stage clinical trials. It is designed to target tumor cells with a mutation in a gene called BRAF. The drug is made by Roche and privately held Plexxikon.
In two patients, tumors went away completely. In 24 others, the tumors shrank by more than 30 percent, the team reported in the New England Journal of Medicine.
The team said 81 percent of 32 patients with a BRAF mutation showed complete or partial shrinkage of their tumors.”
This movie poster came out when I was a junior in high school.
1967 USA, documentary
(Don't Look Back)
Director D.A. Pennebaker
featuring Bob Dylan
UK
1974 reissue
20×30 $200
From The Posterman
I’m filing this story under “I’ve Seen It All.”
Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy
U.K. woman says 'it's just a cat' in response to uproar; she later apologizes
“Cat got her tongue?
After saying "it's just a cat" in response to the uproar over her decision to throw a neighbor's cat into a trash bin, Mary Bale apologized Tuesday for her actions and said she will work with investigators who are looking into the matter.
"I want to take this opportunity to apologize profusely for the upset and distress that my actions have caused," Bale said in a statement.
“I cannot explain why I did this, it is completely out of character and I certainly did not intend to cause any distress to Lola or her owners. It was a split second of misjudgment that has got completely out of control.”
It's a mystery to me why a convicted pedophile suddenly was transferred from her minimum-security prison in Florida to the cushiest low...
