These examples of hand painting art captured my eye. If you’d like to see more go here.
Tuesday, October 4, 2011
Homecoming Queen kicks winning field goal, police cursing comes under fire, and listing of the week- a castle with underground caverns
Good Morning Humboldt County!
Step right in and join me for a cup of coffee on this beautiful morning. As usual, I’ve tried to select three interesting stories to start your day. Enjoy:
Homecoming queen kicks winning field goal
In his 18 years at Pinckney Community High School, Jim Darga, the principal, said, the homecoming queen had always been crowned at halftime of the school’s football game. Never before, though, had she had to be summoned from the team’s locker room. And that was just the beginning of Brianna Amat’s big night.
If being named homecoming queen is a lifetime memory for a high school student, so, too, is kicking a winning field goal. For Amat, 18, they happened within an hour of each other. On Friday, with Pinckney leading powerful Michigan rival Grand Blanc, 6-0, at the half, Amat, the first girl to play football for the school’s varsity, was asked to return to the field. When she arrived, she was told that her fellow students had voted her queen. When the tiara was placed on her head, she was wearing not a dress, like the other girls in the homecoming court, but her No. 12 uniform, pads and all.
A short while later, with five minutes to play in the third quarter, Amat was called to the same field to attempt a 31-yard field goal. She split the uprights. The kick proved decisive as Pinckney held on for a 9-7 victory against a Grand Blanc team that had come into the game ranked seventh in the state in its division. It also earned Amat the nickname the Kicking Queen.
Excuse me, sir, can I please arrest you? Police cursing comes under fire
The police officers in one of California’s toughest cities are being asked to fight crime with a little less of a potty mouth.The Bay Citizen reports that several police officers in Oakland, Calif., have been reprimanded for swearing on the job.
The crackdown is apparently part of Oakland Police Chief Anthony Batts’ efforts to focus more on community policing in a city that has been plagued by homicides, poverty and gang problems.
Listing of the Week: Albion castle and its underground caverns
For Sale: $975,000
It's not every day that you find a home for sale with underwater stone caverns, but this isn't just any home. This unique property on the San Francisco real estate market is the Albion Castle, and it has a fascinating story behind it.
According to San Francisco City Guide, London brewer John Burnell immigrated to San Francisco in 1868 and purchased waterfront property in a section of San Francisco now known as Hunter's Point. The parcel featured underwater springs, and he set about starting Albion Porter & Ale Brewery.
Burnell dug out low, arched tunnels to serve as reservoirs and built a three-story, Norman castle-style stone tower in which to store the casked beer in a cool, dry space. Although popular, the brewery was short-lived. Upon the onset of Prohibition in 1920, the brewery was shut down and the property was abandoned.
Skip ahead to 1928 when the property found new life. Leonard Mees, president of the Mountain Springs Water Company, purchased the water rights to the springs and reportedly supplied San Francisco with spring water until 1947.
While Mees was tapping into the spring water, the property was falling into disrepair until 1933 when sculptor Adrien Alexander Voisin purchased the property and built a home and adjacent studio amidst the ruins.
And now, the unusual mix of medieval-style stone work and 1930s home is for sale for $975,000. The Hunter's Point home has bounced on and off the San Francisco real estate market in recent years, first listed in 2009 for $2.95 million with a few price changes before the listing was removed in 2011 and re-listed at $1.1 million, and then $975,000, respectively.
The home last sold at an auction for $2.1 million in 2005. Median San Francisco home values are $679,000. According to a mortgage calculator, at the current price, this home will have a $3,619 monthly payment with a 30-year-fixed rate mortgage and 20 percent down.
Time to walk on down the road…
Monday, October 3, 2011
Talk about get up and go: coffee-fueled car breaks record
Coffee fuels millions of human brains every day. Now, spent coffee grounds have set a land-speed record as a fuel for cars. That's right; a coffee-fueled car built by an enterprising team of British engineers recently zipped into the Guinness World Records with a top speed of 77.5 miles per hour and an average of 66.5 miles per hour.
The Coffee Car effort is led by Martin Bacon and a team of Teasedale Conservation Volunteers who were inspired after realizing that coffee shops produce tons of grounds that could be used to get something else going. The Coffee Car set the new record for a car powered by organic waste. The coveted honor was previously held by the Beaver XR7, a wood pellet burning car built by Beaver Energy, which averaged 47 miles per hour.
To fuel the car on coffee, Bacon's team collects spent coffee grounds from shops around town, dries them out and turns them into pellets that are cooked up in a gasifier designed to fit within the body of a heavily modified Rover SD1. (More than 550 pounds of excess weight have been removed to make room for the heavy gasifier.) The gasifer burns wood and the coffee pellets at super high temperatures, which creates a synthetic gas of carbon dioxide, hydrogen, and methane capable of powering an internal combustion engine, CNET explains.
The record-setting car was developed in cooperation with the BBC One show Bang Goes the Theory and will be at Bang Live during the Manchester Science Festival Oct. 22-23.
source – Future of Technology
How to go out with a bang, aspirin tied to vision loss, and scientists report new ozone hole over the Arctic
Good Morning Humboldt County!
C’mon in. Don’t be shy. I’ve got a fresh pot of coffee on and a trio of stories to start your day. Who cares if it’s wet outside? Tip a cup with me and read what’s happening on this fine Monday morning.
U.S. company turns gun lovers' ashes into ammunition
There's something to be said for going out with a bang.
Two Alabama game wardens have devised a smoking send-off for avid hunters and gun enthusiasts. For a small fee, they will turn cremated ashes into ammunition that the deceased's loved ones can fire at will. Since it launched in July Holy Smoke LLC has had only two clients, but founders Thad Holmes and Clem Parnell said they have seen an uptick in prearrangements thanks to word-of-mouth and a recent flurry of international press.
Daily aspirin tied to risk of vision loss:study
Seniors who take aspirin daily are twice as likely to have late stage macular degeneration, an age-related loss of vision, than people who never take the pain reliever, according to a European study.
The data do not show that aspirin causes vision loss. But the findings, published in Opthalmology, are of concern if aspirin somehow exacerbates the eye disorder, given how many seniors take it daily for heart disease.
Scientists report ozone hole over the Arctic for the first time
The high atmosphere over the Arctic lost an unprecedented amount of its protective ozone earlier this year, so much that conditions echoed the infamous ozone hole that forms annually over the opposite side of the planet, the Antarctic, scientists say.
"For the first time, sufficient loss occurred to reasonably be described as an Arctic ozone hole," write researchers in an article released online Sunday by the journal Nature.
Some degree of ozone loss above the Arctic, and the formation of the Antarctic ozone hole, are annual events during the poles' respective winters. They are driven by a combination of cold temperatures and lingering ozone-depleting pollutants. The reactions that convert less reactive chemicals into ozone-destroying ones take place within what is known as the polar vortex, an atmospheric circulation pattern created by the rotation of Earth and by cold temperatures. This past winter and spring saw an unusually strong polar vortex and an unusually long cold period.
Time to walk on down the road…
Sunday, October 2, 2011
As It Stands: John Wayne - Forgiving an American Icon
By Dave Stancliff/For the Times-Standard
Vietnam 1970 - I had been in country one week when my squad leader said, “We don’t need any John Waynes in this squad.” Nearly everyone I met during my tour in Vietnam and Cambodia agreed with that sentiment.
At first, it was hard for me to understand why everyone seemed so down on the Duke.
At nineteen I knew very little about politics. I learned that Wayne used his iconic status to support conservative causes that kept the war going. That included rallying support for the Vietnam War by producing, co-directing, and starring in the critically panned Green Berets in 1968.
That movie was propaganda, pure and simple. After awhile, I understood why his name had come to represent the establishment and the senseless war we were fighting. I found out there were no heros like the ones in the movies. Just survivors. Most of the Vietnamese I met wanted us to go home. We came to realize we were invaders, not saviors.
I never saw anyone cry out, “for God and Country” and charge into enemy bunkers with an M-16 blazing away. That’s not the war I saw. I 
How could my boyhood hero have supported such a massive mistake? Why did he support the government that put us there for no good reason? What made Marion Mitchell Morrison side with the bad guys?
Time has been kind to the Duke’s memory. A Harris Poll released in January 2011 placed him third among America's favorite film stars, the only deceased star on the list and the only one who appeared in the poll every year since it first began in 1994.
To millions, he symbolized and communicated American values and ideals. Nothing will ever change that. I’ll always consider him a great actor despite disagreeing with his politics.
His son, Ethan Wayne, is selling some of his stuff in an auction at the Hyatt Regency Century Plaza Hotel in Los Angeles, and also online, Oct. 3-6. Ethan has such a large collection of his father's movie memorabilia that he decided to open his archives for the auction.
Ethan Wayne said he believes his dad still resonates with fans around the world not only because of his movies "but he was also liked personally. People knew he was the same kind of guy off screen as he was on s
Some hold Wayne in contempt for the paradox between his early actions - he never went into the military - and his rampant patriotism in later decades. His widow suggested he was that way because he felt guilty and not because he was a hypocrite.
You know what? I’ve forgave him a long time ago. I’m beyond those bad old days when the Duke wore a Black hat instead of his customary White one. I have no problem watching a re-run of him in Stage Coach , The Searchers, The High and Mighty, The Flying Tigers, or the Shootist. Wayne played the lead in 142 of his film appearances. I’m pretty sure 
It’s easier now for me to go back to my childhood days when the Duke ruled the cinema. If I could afford it, I would attend the auction and buy a piece of his memorabilia.
I once worked as a security guard at a gated community where he and his wife Pilar lived in Newport Beach (1974) and I saw him there regularly.
Those memories serve me well. He was easy to talk with. We had many interesting conversations, him in his non-descript Ford station wagon, and me standing there in a rent-a-cop uniform at the main gate. He treated me with respect when he learned I was a Vietnam veteran. One day, when I told him I was getting married, he gave me a cigar and wished me the best of luck.
As It Stands, I wonder what that cigar would have sold for at the auction?
Websites carrying this column:
#1 All About Movies #2 Cigar Headlines #3 Cambopedia #4 Famous Dead #5 Hip-Hop newswire
#6 PAIRSonnalités # 7 NewsNow/ World News-Asia, Vietnam #8 ACT Cambodia #9 http://www.khmermidi.com/
Saturday, October 1, 2011
10 Examples of Incredible Starry Night Sky Photography, and a How-To Video
Wild Horses Monument in Washington Go Here for the rest of the photos and the video.
This 11 year old is so good at football he’s being penalized
In the continuing attempt to make this country as soft as possible, there’s now the “Madre Hill” rule.
Meet 11-year-old running back, Demias Jimerson, who plays in Arkansas’ Wilson Intermediate League. Jimerson is so good that the league implemented a little known rule named after Arkansas Razorbacks great, Madre Hill. If a player has already scored three touchdowns and his team has a 14-point lead, then he’s banned from the endzone. This is the first time the rule was trotted out since coming up with it. What a message to the kid; “Don’t be too good now…wouldn’t want to hurt anyone’s feelings.”
My question is if Jimerson gets close to the goal line, is he supposed to fall down and do snow angels or is there some kind of invisible fence that will shock him and prevent him from scoring? I mean c’mon man!
What’s this world coming to?
Some people say that Stetson Graves was too young for his first rifle
Some people said Stetson Graves was too young to have a rifle, but the Tri-County Moose Service Center #2613 – who gave him the 17-caliber Marlin rifle - said that was a bunch of crap!
In other related news, the NRA petitioned for a waiver on the age limit for hunting licenses siting examples of early starters like Stetson Graves.
Friday, September 30, 2011
Feds to offer mother of all garage sales, kids find dad 6 days after accident, and man regains some sight with new drug
Good Morning Humboldt County!
Step right in, pull up a chair, and have a cup of coffee with me. Have I got a garage sale for you! Plus, two stories about lucky people. Enjoy:
Beachside fixer-upper among offerings in $22 billion federal garage sale
Like Americans trying to raise quick cash by unloading their unwanted goods, the federal government is considering a novel way to reduce the deficit: holding the equivalent of a garage sale.
Among the listings: Plum Island, N.Y.(photo), off the North Fork of Long Island, which the government has already begun marketing as 840 acres of "sandy shoreline, beautiful views and a harbor." As former home to the federal Animal Disease Center, it may need a bit of "biohazard remediation," making it a real fixer-upper.
Six days after cliff plunge, kids find dad
A 67-year-old man found alive days after his car plunged 200 feet off a mountain road built a makeshift camp, ate leaves and drank water from a nearby creek to survive, his daughter said.
After several days of radio silence from their dad, David Lavau's kids reported him missing to police. As rescue workers conducted an official search for the missing man, the Lavaus set out on thier own.
The family members were the ones who located David Lavau at the bottom of a ravine in the Angeles National Forest in California Thursday. Photo - Los Angeles County firefighters in Angeles National Forest, north of Castaic, Calif., after two vehicles plunged 200 feet down the canyon below.
Blind parachuter regains some sight with experimental drug
Mike Scholes was training for a freefall parachute jump five years ago when his vision began to fail.
“I went for an eye test at the optician, and on the way to pick up my glasses five days later, I nearly crashed the car,” says the 58-year-old adventure junkie from Lindfield in West Sussex, United Kingdom.
Within days and without warning, he had lost most of the sight in his left eye. “This meant an abrupt change in my life,” Scholes says. “I had a very successful hot air balloon business, and I had to stop flying. I had to sell my cars as I could no longer drive.”
After seven months of screening — including CT and MRI scans, X-rays and a spinal tap — a DNA test detected Leber's hereditary optic neuropathy, an inherited condition that causes people who can see normally to lose sight in one eye. Months later, they lose sight in the other eye — for Scholes, this happened around the time of his diagnosis. At that point, he couldn’t see in an increasingly large area in the center of both eyes. Colors gradually disappeared, until he could only make out hues of blue.
Time to walk on down the road…
Thursday, September 29, 2011
Strange Art - Scraping away the Skin on Skull nickels
The term “Hobo Nickel” describes any small-denomination coin (though, normally soft nickels) that people carve to create miniature reliefs of…well, all sorts of things. It started sometime in the 18th century but continues to this day; There’s even an entire society dedicated to the art of nickel carving. Go here to see more examples of this unusual art form.
National Coffee Day, Mr. Penguins dream, and Pizza Parlor Policies
Good Morning Humboldt County!
It’s that time again when we share some hot coffee and stories to start the day. I’m glad you could stop by. Don’t forget to check out the locations where you could find some free coffee below.
National Coffee Day Freebies and Deals
Today is an important day for caffeine addicts across the country. It's National Coffee Day! Celebrate the wonders of the buzz-bearing-brew with, what else, a free (or at least dirt cheap) cup of coffee from one of the establishments who are honoring the day. Here is a list of places to choose from.
Belgium's "Mr Penguin" dreams of Antarctic funeral
Belgian pensioner Alfred David dreams one day he'll find eternal rest in the icy waters somewhere near Antarctica, dressed in his penguin suit and laid out in a coffin decorated with penguins.
The 79-year-old "Monsieur Pingouin" (Mr Penguin), as he is known to locals in his Brussels neighborhood, dons his favorite hooded black-and-white penguin costume as he looks back at more than 40 years of obsession.
"My ultimate dream is to be buried in a deep ocean close to where penguins live," David told Reuters.
Insurance broker launches pizza parlor policy
In the specialized world of insurance, this one takes the cake -- or perhaps the pie -- a new policy called "SLICE" specifically designed to protect the owners of pizza parlors.
California insurance brokerage EPIC Programs Group said late Wednesday the "Safety, Loss Control, Insurance, Coverage, Expertise" program would address liabilities pizza parlor owners face from their delivery drivers.
The program, available in 40 states, includes mandatory driver training and other risk control measures. EPIC said the program was being underwritten by an unnamed insurer that specializes in auto coverage.
Time to walk on down the road…
Wednesday, September 28, 2011
Chill Out: Man in Ice Cream Cone Costume Mistaken for KKK Protester
This guy – unlike his employer who’s from Puerto Rico – has probably heard of the KKK, but didn’t think his ice cream cone suit looked like a klansman (or didn’t care). I know these are hard times and people will do whatever for money. That outfit must have been uncomfortably warm under the Florida sun.
An ice cream shop in Florida (where?) was hoping that he would drive more business into the store.
But apparently the pointy white hood bore too strong a resemblance to a Ku Klux Klan uniform and some people got upset. The owner, who's from a Caribbean island, told the local newspaper she had never heard of the white supremacist group. news source & photo
Exploding toilet in fed building sends employee to hospital
File this story under Unlikely Ways to Get Hurt while Going Potty: I can’t even imagine what it would be like sitting there and suddenly going airborne! Who could? Life is full of unexpected surprises.
“Restrooms are back in service at a General Services Administration building, where a toilet exploded and injured two federal workers.The bathrooms at the GSA Regional building were declared off-limits after two Department of Homeland Security employees were injured Monday by the toilet blast, GSA spokesman William Marshall said.
At least one of the employees was taken to a hospital for treatment of non-life-threatening injuries, fire officials said.”
Authorities said the explosion was due to a control system malfunction that caused a rise in pressure in the water storage tank. That in turn caused the plumbing system to over pressurize and the toilets to "malfunction" when flushed. Or in laymen’s terms, the pots blew up!
Feds provide pot in decades-old program, teen murder suspect says she’s a vampire, and FBI catches militant fugitive from the 70s
Good Morning Humboldt County!
Grab a cup of coffee and join me this morning in scanning a few stories to start the day. It’s another day in paradise and the weather looks to be beautiful again.
For your reading pleasure I have:
In decades-old program, Uncle Sam provides pot
For the past three decades, Uncle Sam has been providing a handful of patients with some of the highest grade marijuana around. The program grew out of a 1976 court settlement that created the country's first legal pot smoker.
Photo - Elvy Musikka relies on the pot to keep her glaucoma under control. She entered the program in 1988, and said that her experience with marijuana is proof that it works as a medicine.
Advocates for legalizing marijuana or treating it as a medicine say the program is a glaring contradiction in the nation's 40-year war on drugs — maintaining the federal ban on pot while at the same time supplying it.
Government officials say there is no contradiction. The program is no longer accepting new patients, and public health authorities have concluded that there was no scientific value to it, Steven Gust of the U.S. National Institute on Drug Abuse told The Associated Press. At one point, 14 people were getting government pot. Now, there are four left.
Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy
Stephanie Pistey thinks she’s a vampire and part werewolf …
Fla. teen murder suspect says she's a vampire
Last week, police in Parker, Fla., claimed the people involved in the July murder of 16-year-old Jacob Hendershot may have been involved in a vampire cult. Now one of the suspects is confirming that information. Stephanie Pistey, 18, was arrested last Monday and was charged with accessory to murder.
She says she believes she's a vampire. Parker Police originally believed Hendershot was beaten to death because Stephanie Pistey accused him of raping her. "Jacob didn't deserve to die. I didn't even know he was going to die, but I honestly knew that they were going to beat him up and in my opinion he deserved to get the s*** beat out of him. He didn't deserve to die," Pistey said in an interview Monday. Investigators say a group of Pistey's friends lured Herndershot to a house, killed him, then dumped his body in a concrete enclosure.
For decades, NJ fugitive enjoyed idyllic life in Portugal
A 1970s militant who carried out one of the most brazen hijackings in U.S. history lived for decades in an idyllic Portuguese hamlet near a stunning beach with his Portuguese wife and two children, his neighbors said Wednesday.
George Wright, 68, worked odd jobs around Almocageme, 28 miles west of Lisbon, most recently employed as a nightclub bouncer, said two neighbors who spoke on condition of anonymity because they feared being ostracized for speaking out.
Wright, taken into custody Monday at the request of the U.S. government , also spoke very good Portuguese, they said, adding that his children were now in their 20s. Wright used the alias of Jose Luis Jorge dos Santos, U.S. officials said, and townspeople in Almocageme knew him as "Jorge" and "George."
Wright was convicted of the 1962 murder of gas station owner Walter Patterson, a decorated World War II veteran who was shot during a robbery at his business in Wall, New Jersey. Eight years into his 15- to 30-year prison term, Wright and three other men escaped from the Bayside State Prison farm in Leesburg, New Jersey, on Aug. 19, 1970. The FBI said Wright became affiliated with an underground militant group, the Black Liberation Army, and lived in a "communal family" with several of its members in Detroit.
In 1972, Wright — dressed as a priest and using an alias — hijacked a Delta flight from Detroit to Miami with four other BLA members and three children, including Wright's companion and their 2-year-old daughter.
Time to walk on down the road…
Tuesday, September 27, 2011
Cliffhanger: brave lioness saves her cub’s life
(Far Left) A lioness looks around helplessly after her cub fell down a ravine and couldn't make it back up the cliff.
(Left) Other members of the pride attempt to rescue the cub but stop trying when they realize it is too steep.
(Below) Only the mother lion is willing to take the risk.
(Below) Just as the exhausted cub seems about to fall, his mother circles beneath him and he is snatched up in her jaws, according to the Daily Mail. She then begins the difficult journey back to the top.
These dramatic frames were taken by wildlife photographer Jean-Francois Largot at Kenya's Masai Mara game reserve in August.
(Top) Safe and sound, the lioness gives the cub a big welcome-back lick.
Coffee to the rescue, scientists can see what’s on your mind, and a massive floating stage in Austria
Good Morning Humboldt County!
The coffees on. Come on in and grab a cup while it’s hot. I rustled up a trio of stories to start your day. Good news about coffee for woman (I’m assuming it’s good news for men too), your mind is an open map to scientists, and a floating stage on lake Constance.
Coffee cuts depression risk in women
Drinking coffee may lower women's risk of depression, a new study says. Women in the study who drank two to three cups of caffeinated coffee a day were 15 percent less likely to develop depression over a 10-year period compared to those who drank one cup of coffee or less per week.
The researchers cautioned, however, that the new study only shows an association between coffee consumption and depression risk, and cannot prove that drinking coffee reduces risk of depression in women.
Scientists: We Can See What's In Your Mind
Scientists at the University of California, Berkeley found that by looking at brain activity, they could get a fairly good picture of a human's visual experiences. The study is published in the current issue of Current Biology.So how did they do that? They made people watch short video clips and then they measured brain activity using a functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) machine and they were able to recreate the clip people were watching.
The floating stage of the Bregenz Festival in Austria
The Seebühne, a massive floating stage on Lake Constance, is the centerpiece of the annual Bregenz Festival in Austria.
The stage hosts elaborate opera productions that are famous for their extraordinary set designs, for audiences of up to 7000.
Time to walk on down the road…
Monday, September 26, 2011
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MAGA Meltdowns: From Threatening a "Bad Bunny' to Frogs in Portland
Hello. I'm Dave. Your tour guide through all the MAGA madness unfolding daily in America. Stay strong. Buckle up. Feel free to laugh....
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It's hard to believe that so many people viewed this column ( There's a monopoly on marijuana growing & research in America. ... -
If it's Sunday then it's time for As It Stands! Today's column is - Prosthetic ears, thieves, and payback. This, unlike last we...