Who the heck would want that monster’s parents hanging in their house? This ranks right up there on my odd meter:
“An Orange resident is auctioning 
Ken Biggs, 72, says he acquired the portraits of Alois and Klara Hitler in France in the early 1970s from his wife's cousin, who was "terrified" to have the paintings and intended to cut up the relics.”
Klara and Alois Hitler/circa 1930s
Good Morning Humboldt County!
Glad you could join me in having a cup of coffee this morning. It’s still dark outside, and I hear birds socializing outside my window. Here’s a few news items to entertain you while we enjoy our coffee:
Hershey's website hacked, recipe changed
Is there nothing safe from hackers! Good grief, some clown hacked the Hershey website and changed one of their baking recipes. Really? Was it really that bad?
The strange scientific logic of gang colorsWhy would a career criminal advertise his gang affiliation to police? What does biology have to do with gang colors? Consider the peacock: The male of the species displays an enormous, brightly colored tail in order to attract females. But a heavy, highly visible tail would also attract predators and make the bird an easily caught meal. A female nonetheless prefers to mate with a male who has a bigger, brighter tail because, in order to have survived, "he must be strong and fast.
So the handicap of bright colors helps gang members?
Yes, in the long run. Wearing brightly colored clothes that identify these gang members to police helps to weed out less-competent members from the gang, as they are more likely to get arrested. Gang colors create group solidarity, but also signal to others that anyone who's seen wearing the colors must be stronger, faster, and smarter than the police — a big plus in the cutthroat world of gangs.
First there were Snakes on a Plane; then there were Snakes on a Train (can you say "straight to DVD"?) Now ... you guessed it: Snakes on a car.
That's what the Fisher family from Memphis, Tennessee found slithering on the windshield of their SUV -- while they were driving. The sneaky serpent had snuck into the engine and decided to show himself once things got too hot under the hood.
The Fishers caught it all on video and posted it to YouTube, where, predictably, animal lovers blasted the couple for not stopping. But all's well that ends well: Hitchy McHitchhiker eventually slithered off the car and to safety.
Time to walk slither on down the road…
When yoga goes to the dogs, they call it doga. And while doga may not measure up, fitness-wise, to a game of fetch or a run on the beach, experts say practicing yoga with your pet can soothe the not-so-savage beasts of both person and pooch.
"I consider it partner yoga," said Suzi Teitelman, a Florida-based instructor who has been teaching doga to man, woman and beast since 2002. "It's my lifelong passion." Teitelman stumbled upon doga because her dog liked to lie under her while she practiced. "When you feel good, they feel good," she said. "They want to be around your goodness."
Classes, DVDs and a training manual followed. Teitelman said she's trained more than 100 people around the world in doga, some from as far away as China and Japan. Disco yoga, kid yoga, beach yoga, spin yoga and yogalites are but a few of the trendy hybrids saluting the sun at fitness centres these days, all takeoffs on the 5,0000-year-old practice that coordinates movement and breath.
But Teitelman insists she teaches a traditional yoga class, even if the downward facing dog is flesh and blood."We chant together to feel the vibrations, then we start moving into twists and turns," she said.Traditional poses such as warriors, triangles and backbends follow, possibly enhanced by a little dog balanced at the belly or waist.
"The person takes dog deeper into a stretch, and the dog takes the person deeper," she said. "If you have a dog on your arm in a standing posture it helps balance and strength." Teitelman believes the rewards of yoga accrue to human and animal alike. "You're moving their body. They're getting touched, they're getting love," she explained, "and everybody needs to be hanging upside down."
Dr. Robin Brennen, a New York City veterinarian, was sceptical of the hugely popular doga classes at the Bideawee animal shelter and learning center where she works. Then she attended one. "I witnessed the demeanor of the animals changing during the class," she said. "They'll come in barking, seven, eight, nine dogs in room, but by the end of the session, they're sleeping. They're in savasana (the final resting pose)."
Brennen said unlike running or jogging, doga is not physically strenuous for the dog. "It's a level one yoga class and with this big dog in front of you it's hard to do poses," she said. "It's basically stopping and starting." But then doga isn't about dogs doing yoga, but about owners interacting with their dogs. "It really highlights the human-animal bond," she said. "For me, being in animal rescue, and seeing so many homeless pets, and people who very easily discard animals, I like these activities on the other side of the spectrum."
But she is doubtful about the spiritual side. "It's hard to think of a centering practice like yoga being centering to an animal, because it's hard to know what centers them," she said. Teitelman believes doga can embrace other domesticated creatures. "It definitely works with cats," she said, "and when I do downward dog my bird comes over."
But Brennen has her doubts. "Cats? Obviously you'd have to change the format. They want their feet on the ground. Then there's the scratching and clawing factor."
I’m thinking the FBI has some mixed feelings right now. They’ve searched for the mythical plane hijacker D.B. Cooper for four decades with no success.
Then out of the blue some woman says she knows the identity of D.B. Cooper, the nickname given to the man who carried out the only unsolved plane hijacking in U.S. history: her uncle. "I'm certain he was my uncle, Lynn Doyle Cooper, who we called L.D. Cooper," Marla Cooper told ABC News.
The FBI won’t say for sure yet, but they’re going over evidence his niece Marla Cooper, of Oklahoma City provided, and agree her story fits the timelines involved. If what she says is true, it wasn’t police work that finally caught up with Lynn Doyle Cooper, it was the Grim Reaper!
Her famous uncle isn’t going to have to worry about doing time behind bars in an earthly prison…because he died in 1999. Case closed.
I see the smell of my fine virtual coffee has got your attention this morning. Good to see you. Have a cup with me as the sun rises and a new day begins. Today we have:
Giant rats that kill predators with poisonous hair
By utilizing the same plants that African tribesmen use to poison their arrows, the furry fury known as the African crested rat can incapacitate and even kill predators many times its size, researchers have found.
"This is the first mammal that is borrowing a deadly poison from a plant and slathering it on itself without dying," said study researcher Jonathan Kingdon, of Oxford University in England. "This is an extraordinary thing to have evolved."
Poison from this tree bark has been used by hunters to take down large prey, like elephants, for thousands of years. "Evolution has mimicked something that hunters do," Kingdon said. "It [the crested rat] is borrowing from the plant just as the hunters are borrowing from the very same plant."
Cops rush to defuse bomb strapped to teen's neck
UPDATE: It wasn’t a real bomb around the girls neck."The offender went to a lot of trouble for a particular reason, but what that reason was, police are still working to determine," Murdoch said. Story
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“Australian police were trying to defuse an explosive device strapped to an 18-year-old girl's body in a wealthy neighborhood of Sydney on Wednesday, according to local reports.
Police said they did not know how the "collar bomb" had been strapped to the teen's neck, but it was understood that she did not put it there herself, according to The Daily Telegraph.
The Daily Telegraph reported that police believe a ransom note was attached to the girl, who is part of one of Sydney's richest families.”
2012 Watch: 'Death Star' debunked
Doomsayers have been wringing their hands for years over the possibility that an unseen companion to our sun periodically diverts a hail of comets toward Earth, sparking mass extinctions like cosmic clockwork. Now an astronomer has shown that the evidence for such a cycle in the flux of comets or asteroids doesn't actually exist.
The research is the latest knock against claims that the dark companion, nicknamed Nemesis or the "Death Star," might be out to get us in 2012.
Like many other 2012 myths, the Nemesis hypothesis had a smidgen of scientific research behind it. Back in 1984, paleontologists proposed that there seemed to be a 27 million-year cycle of extinctions that may have had an extraterrestrial cause. The prime suspect was a hypothetical brown dwarf or red dwarf that disrupted the orbits of comets on the solar system's fringe and sent them screaming earthward.
Okay. There was this guy...
“Police in Idaho Falls said on Tuesday they have told a 34-year-old man to stop wearing a bunny suit in public after residents complained that he has been frightening children.”
C’mon…nothing scary about a Bunny Suit. What’s all the fuss about? Just look at this guy’s smile.
“Police warned Idaho Falls resident William Falkingham after a woman said she saw him dressed in the costume, peeking at her young son from behind a tree and pointing his finger like a gun, according to a police report.”
Ooops! Looks a little over the top, but let’s not jump to conclusions. He was just using his finger. Let’s see what else the article has to say.
“An investigation of the sighting led officers to question other neighbors, "who expressed that they were greatly disturbed by Falkingham and his bunny suit," the report said. He also occasionally wears a tutu with the bunny suit, according to his neighbors.”
A tutu? That just doesn’t go with Peter Rabbit. What was the guy thinking? A rabbit in a tutu? No! No!
“Falkingham told police that while he "enjoys wearing the suit," he understood their concerns, and that he could be cited as a public nuisance for that type of behavior.”
Whewwwww…I feel better. I don’t know about you but that tutu killed the whole effect! He understands he could get in trouble if he does it again. Really? Why do I think we’ll be hearing from William again?
It makes perfect sense to me. The question is, “Why should I even try now?”
Good Morning Humboldt County!
Awww the aroma of freshly brewed virtual coffee. The songs of the early birds in the growing light…another day in paradise! Pull up a chair and have a cup with me if you don’t have anything better to do. This is an interesting world we live in:
Last of the lamprey: NW tribes drive effort to save primitive fish
As long as American Indians have lived in the Pacific Northwest, they have looked to a jawless, eel-like fish for food. Tribes once harvested the lamprey from rivers throughout the Columbia Basin, which stretches from the Oregon coast up into Canada. But with dozens of hydroelectric dams in the way, the fish has followed the path of the buffalo — from a food staple of a people to a curiosity.
Drink wine, don't get sunburned
Important health tip for the summer: Drink more wine! A better protection against harmful sunburns might be a healthy dose of SPF sauvignon blanc, suggests a new Spanish study.
A compound found in grapes or grape derivatives may protect skin cells from skin-damaging ultraviolet radiation, report researchers from the University of Barcelona and the Spanish National Research Council. The flavonoids found in grapes work to halt the chemical reaction that kills skin cells and causes sun damage.Previously, vino has also been found to fight Alzheimer's, ward off prostate cancer and even prevent cavities. I’ll drink to that!
For those facing a run of bad luck and wanting to start things over, one Thai temple has an unusual solution: "rehearse" death with a mock funeral, including lying down in a coffin.
Pram Manee temple in Nakorn Nayok province, 107 km northeast of Bangkok, holds two of the rituals every day: at exactly 9:09 a.m. (2:09 a.m. British time) and 1:09 p.m., since the number nine is believed by Thais to bring good luck.
Time to walk on down the road…
Night is dark
Hiding in pain
Night is quiet
But trouble remains
Night is still for those
suffering…
Night delivers dawn
Dawn delivers day
Day delivers hope
Dave
If people ask me if I believe in God, I say “Yes I do.”
If you ask me what my religion is I’m going to say I don’t have one. I don’t belong to any organized religion.I see them all as paths to one true God (for lack of a better description), but prefer my own direct path.I believe in an omniscient entity with no name. No gender. No political affiliation.
I say God, because I haven’t found a better word that describes absolute power over all the many universes and planets. God’s design is beyond my mere mortal thoughts and imagination.
Sometimes dreams and visions blur into a twilight state and God gives me a message. It always takes time to understand the message. Sometimes I jump to conclusions and panic myself. Like this morning.
A sentence haunted my sleep. A question in the dark. “Is your house in order?” Several long dead relatives asked me that question throughout the night, but would say no more when I called out their names.
I woke at 4:30 a.m. to the barking of my pug Millie. I led her downstairs and to the backdoor. As she did her thing in the darkness, I stood by the door waiting and wondering what the question meant.
I tried going back to bed afterwards, but the question picked at my brain like a Raven in a cornfield. Was I going to die soon? Is that what was going to happen? Didn’t that question insinuate my time would soon be up? Maybe today? Maybe tomorrow? I felt a sense of panic.
I got on my computer and posted on my blog (below), trying to divert myself. Trying to mentally put my fingers in my ears and go “blah, blah, blah…” at that stalking question.
I always refused to be afraid of death because I accepted it as an inevitable part of being a mere mortal. No one gets out alive right? No use in beating that fact down with talk of being immortal.
When I go for a walk my spirit soars and I see God everywhere. Conversations take place with every step and I open myself to the entire universe . I allow the beauty around me to soak in as I tromp down the road having my personal visions and revelations.
My walk this morning centered me as it always does, and I’ve came away from it with the answer to the question, “Do you have your house in order.” The answer is no, there’s something I need to do that I’ve been putting off for far too long. Not a will either. I have one of those.
The upshot is, I don’t think I’m going to die soon and the question was a prompt from a powerful friend to take care of something.
As It Stands, I’m sorry that I can’t share what the answer was with you, but suffice to say…I’m going to have a good day! I hope you do too.
I finally hit the wall today. I can't think of what to say about all of the madness going on in this country right now. I'm a writer...
