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: