Package of 6 toppers, 2 of each design. Each tentacle measures 2” tall (50mm) (without the pick) — via Etsy
Parken Zoo in Sweden welcomed a new Fishing Cat on 24 May. The little one, whose sex is not yet determined, is doing well and will nurse from its mother until it reaches about six months of age. The proud mother and father, Alaya and Narjol, are already an experienced pair. They have two adult offspring, Arya and Arun, born in September 2009 — via ZooBorns
Over the years, CNN.com has become a news website that many people turn to for top-notch reporting. Every day it is visited by millions of people, all of whom rely on The Worldwide Leader in News
— that’s our slogan — for the most crucial, up-to-date information on current events. So, you may ask, why was this morning’s top story, a spot usually given to the most important foreign or domestic news of the day, headlined Miley Cyrus Did What???
and accompanied by the subhead Twerks, stuns at VMAs
?
It’s a good question. And the answer is pretty simple. It was an attempt to get you to click on CNN.com so that we could drive up our web traffic, which in turn would allow us to increase our advertising revenue.
There was nothing, and I mean nothing, about that story that related to the important news of the day, the chronicling of significant human events, or the idea that journalism itself can be a force for positive change in the world. For Christ’s sake, there was an accompanying story with the headline Miley’s Shocking Moves
. In fact, putting that story front and centre was actually doing, if anything, a disservice to the public. And come to think of it, probably a disservice to the hundreds of thousands of people dying in Syria, those suffering from the current unrest in Egypt, or, hell, even people who just wanted to read about the 50th anniversary of Martin Luther King’s I Have A Dream
speech — via redwolf.newsvine.com
About 80 homes in a wealthy Calgary suburb are once again facing sporadic mail delivery due to the antics of an aggressive, brooding hawk. For three years, the predatory avian has made her nest in Lake Bonavista. And once the chicks hatch, mama hawk has taken a particular dislike to Canada Post mail carriers. The problem typically resolves itself when the baby birds leave the nest and the hawks migrate to Argentina. Until then, however, letter carriers are making the daily delivery with caution. The Post’s Jen Gerson spoke to Canada Post employee Rick Tobin about braving the slightly too wild suburbs of Calgary’s southeast.
Q How long have you been a letter carrier in that area?
A I’m actually a superintendent for the facility and I’ve been delivering the mail during this situation because I’m comfortable with it. Most days we split up the mail, put one person on one side of the street and another person on the other side of the street so we can look for it. And when the bird comes out, we have one person deliver, the other person watches. If the bird starts swooping, and we feel it’s unsafe at that point in time, we stop our delivery and bring the mail back to the facility.
Q Now your situation is you’re going out with another carrier and you’re the lookout? And you take a tennis racket, is that right?
A I am the gentleman who walks with the tennis racket. The whole purpose of the tennis racket is to put it straight up in the air so if the bird does swoop, it will misjudge itself. It goes for your high point. It would hit my tennis racket before it hit me. It’s never come at me with its claws out, its claws have always been tucked behind. Every carrier who has come out to assist me in delivery has enjoyed their experience. They have enjoyed watching the bird — because usually they’re new and the bird only focuses on me — so they enjoy that experience.
Q Basically you’re saying that they enjoy watching their boss get swooped by a hawk?
A Totally — via redwolf.newsvine.com
A group claiming to be the Syrian Electronic Army was able to take down the New York Times on Tuesday by hacking into a web site in Australia, The New York Times said in a statement.
The group gained control of the Times’ domain name registrar, Melbourne IT. A domain name registrar is a site that sells domain names and controls a domain name server (DNS). DNS is the server that sends you to a web page when you type a URL address into your browser, such as nytimes.com.
By hacking into the DNS server, the group could redirect the traffic going to nytimes.com. The Syrian Electronic Army also said it hacked Twitter. Twitter reportedly also uses Melbourne IT.
Melbourne IT is the dominant provider of domain name services in Australia, partly because it long had the monopoly on allowing the registration of .com.au site names. It claims to have more than 350,000 worldwide customers. It current CEO announced plans to step down yesterday — via redwolf.newsvine.com
An Ocelot kitten born at the Cameron Park Zoo is being called a miracle baby
because it was born to a mother who was beyond the known breeding age for Ocelots. The kitten, a male named Aztec, is the first infant born to Cameron Park Zoo Ocelots Maya and Gustavo. Maya is 14 years old, an age which is considered somewhat past the prime age for successfully producing offspring — via ZooBorns
This is the first baby Nautilus for Birch Aquarium at Scripps. This little guy or gal was a long time in the making. The egg was laid in early November of 2012 and the hatching process has taken weeks… all leading up to last Wednesday, when it finally emerged — via ZooBorns
A endangered Persian Leopard Cub born on 10 June 10 made his debut at the Budapest Zoo. The male cub, named Dante, was given his first medical exam and presented to the public for the first time — via ZooBorns
Cary Grant discussing a scene with director Frank Capra on the set of Arsenic and Old Lace 1941 — via Steve Niles Tumblr
A 61-year-old housewife battered her 70-year-old husband to death with a coffee cup after discovering he was cheating on her, reports said Monday.
The woman allegedly attacked her husband after learning of his affair, battering him repeatedly about the face and head with the mug at their home in Isehara, Kanagawa Prefecture, on Sunday afternoon, the Asahi Shimbun and other media reported.
Yasuo Hirose, an honorary professor with Yokohama National University, was taken to hospital but later confirmed dead — via redwolf.newsvine.com
Ph’nglui mglw’nafh Cthulhu R’lyeh wgah’nagl fhtagn.
Crocheted by hand with a cotton/acrylic blend yarn and filled with polyester fibrefill. The eyes are handmade with polymer clay and glow in the dark! Measures about 3.5 inches tall — via Etsy
but every now and then it’s worth taking a minute to acknowledge things that are big and great and self-evidently big and great. like, for example, gehry’s disney concert hall.
i mean, i don’t know if this would be considered hyperbole, but i think it’s one of the greatest buildings conceived of/designed/built in the last 100 years. i know, that’s saying something. well, to be clear, it’s saying that gehry’s disney concert hall is amazing. which it is — via moby los angeles architecture
A UN watchdog has called on Australia to release 46 refugees being held in indefinite detention, labelling it cruel and arbitrary.
The UN Human Rights Committee has slammed Australia’s treatment of the group, saying the country broke global human rights rules by denying the group a chance to challenge their detention.
In a review of complaints from the refugees — 42 Sri Lankan Tamils, three Rohingya Muslims from Myanmar and a Kuwaiti — the committee said the detention was arbitrary and broke the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights.
Australia’s indefinite detention of 46 recognised refugees on security grounds amounted to cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment, inflicting serious psychological harm on them,
the committee said in a statement.
The plaintiffs arrived at Australia’s remote Christmas Island between March 2009 and December 2010 — via redwolf.newsvine.com
Grass Tree, originally uploaded by Bill Mac.
Despite their lethargic reputations, snails can travel at a relatively speedy one metre per hour, say researchers.
By attaching multicoloured LED lights, the scientists were able to track their movements over a 24-hour period.
The gastropods were fast enough to explore the length of an average UK garden in a single night.
But scientists are worried that the fast-moving snails are spreading a parasite that is deadly for dogs.
Over the past few years the wet summers enjoyed across the UK have proved the ideal breeding grounds for snails.
According to the Royal Horticultural Society, their numbers increased by 50% last year.
As well as being a pest for gardeners, snails can also spread a parasite called Angiostrongylus vasorum.
This lungworm is a particular threat to dogs, which can become infected by accidentally eating slugs or snails which they come across in the garden or on dog toys — via redwolf.newsvine.com
Inner Sydney’s Carriageworks art and performance space will double in size, after being granted a 12-month lease by the New South Wales government.
Housed in former rail yards in Redfern, the lease allows for an expansion which will add 5,000 square metres to the existing premises.
The announcement will cement Carriageworks as one of the largest multi-arts centres in Sydney, becoming a strong urban rival to the Sydney Opera House.
Carriageworks director Lisa Havilah says the extra space was desperately needed after two years of strong growth in audience and visitor numbers — via redwolf.newsvine.com
New spy laws legalising domestic communications interception were narrowly passed in New Zealand yesterday by a vote of 61 to 59 in Parliament.
The Government argued the laws are necessary to clarify the powers of the Government Communications Services Bureau (GCSB), New Zealand’s cyber security agency, when it is asked to assist law enforcement agencies such as Police and the Security Intelligence Service.
That clarification was needed because, in a major embarrassment to the Government, surveillance mounted against Mega Upload founder Kim Dotcom in late 2011 and early 2012 at the request of the FBI was subsequently found to be illegal.
Opponents fear the law has done more than just clarify existing rules, however, and has broadened interception capabilities to allow the mass collection of domestic communications metadata and content.
The law’s passage through Parliament coincided with Edward Snowden’s ongoing disclosures about international communications interception which revealed data collection and mining on an unprecedented scale — via redwolf.newsvine.com
The owner of Lavabit tells us that he’s stopped using email and if we knew what he knew, we’d stop too.
There is no way to do Groklaw without email. Therein lies the conundrum.
What to do?
What to do? I’ve spent the last couple of weeks trying to figure it out. And the conclusion I’ve reached is that there is no way to continue doing Groklaw, not long term, which is incredibly sad. But it’s good to be realistic. And the simple truth is, no matter how good the motives might be for collecting and screening everything we say to one another, and no matter how “clean” we all are ourselves from the standpoint of the screeners, I don’t know how to function in such an atmosphere. I don’t know how to do Groklaw like this — via redwolf.newsvine.com
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