Welcome to ...

The place where the world comes together in honesty and mirth.
Windmills Tilted, Scared Cows Butchered, Lies Skewered on the Lance of Reality ... or something to that effect.


Sunday, September 1, 2013

The Daily Drift

And that my friends is the truth...!
 
Carolina Naturally is read in 192 countries around the world daily.
Recreating old photos! ...
Today is No Rhyme (Nor Reason) Day  
 

Don't forget to visit our sister blog: It Is What It Is

Some of our readers today have been in:
Kilis, Turkey
Rouen, Loyat, Gradignan, Lyon, Laval and Paris, France
Lisbon, Portugal
Mississauga, Ottawa, Templeton, Sioux Lookout, Kitchener, Montreal, Vancouver, Thunder Bay, Kenora, Saint John's and Edmonton, Canada
Ruse, Bulgaria
Rome, Ivrea, Ravenna, Bari, Cremona and Milan, Italy
Curitiba, Jundai and Brasilia, Brazil
Mexico City, Tijuana and Mexicali, Mexico
Jakarta, Pontianak, Jagirsidosermo and Depok, Indonesia
Luanda, Angola
Madrid, Basauri and Barcelona, Spain
Colombo, Sri Lanka
San Juan, Puerto Rico
Ryazin and Vladivostok, Russia
Riyadh, Saudi Arabia
Zhovti Vody and Odessa, Ukraine
Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herzegovina
Thiruvananthapuram, Mumbai, New Delhi, Bangalore and Udaipur, India
Tokyo, Japan
Horsholm and Niva, Denmark
Tehran, Iran
London, England
Nairobi, Kenya
Bayan Lepas and Kulim, Malaysia
Brussels, Belgium
Riga, Latvia
Oslo, Norway
Managua and Tipitapa, Nicaragua
Dublin, Ireland
Athens, Greece
Phnom Penh, Cambodia
Newport, Wales
Nuremberg and Dortmund, Germany
Cairo, Egypt
Johannesburg, South Africa
Santiago, Chile
Hamilton, New Zealand
Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic
Lithgow, Australia
Nowe Maisto Lubawskie, Poland
Buenos Aires, Argentina
Amsterdam, Netherlands

Today in History

1676 Nathaniel Bacon leads an uprising against English Governor William Berkeley at Jamestown, Virginia, resulting in the settlement being burned to the ground. Bacon's Rebellion came in response to the governor's repeated refusal to defend the colonists against the Indians.
1773 Phillis Wheatley, a slave from Boston, publishes a collection of poetry, Poems on Various Subjects, Religious and Moral, in London.
1807 Aaron Burr is arrested in Mississippi for complicity in a plot to establish a Southern empire in Louisiana and Mexico.
1821 William Becknell leads a group of traders from Independence, Mo., toward Santa Fe on what would become the Santa Fe Trail.
1836 Protestant missionary Dr. Marcus Whitman leads a party to Oregon. His wife, Narcissa, is one of the first white women to travel the Oregon Trail. The Oregon Trail emigrants who chose to follow Stephen Meek thought his shortcut would save weeks of hard travel. Instead, it brought them even greater misery.
1864 Confederate forces under General John Bell Hood evacuate Atlanta in anticipation of the arrival of Union General William T. Sherman's troops.
1870 The Prussian army crushes the French at Sedan, the last battle of the Franco-Prussian War.
1876 The Ottomans inflict a decisive defeat on the Serbs at Aleksinac.
1882 The first Labor Day is observed in New York City by the Carpenters and Joiners Union.
1894 By an act of Congress, Labor Day is declared a national holiday.
1902 The Austro-Hungarian army is called into the city of Agram to restore the peace as Serbs and Croats clash.
1904 Helen Keller graduates with honors from Radcliffe College.
1905 Alberta and Saskatchewan become Canadian provinces.
1916 Bulgaria declares war on Rumania as the First World War expands.
1923 An earthquake levels the Japanese cities of Tokyo and Yokohama, killing 300,000.
1939 Germany invades Poland, beginning World War II in Europe.
1942 A federal judge in Sacramento, Cal., upholds the government's detention of Japanese-Americans and Japanese nationals as a war measure.
1951 Australia, New Zealand and the United States sign the ANZUS Treaty, a mutual defense pact.
1969 Colonel Muammar Gadhafi seizes power in Libya following a coup.
1970 Dr. Hugh Scott of Washington, D.C. becomes the first African-American superintendent of schools in a major U.S. city.
1972 America's Bobby Fischer beats Russia's Boris Spassky in Reykjavik, Iceland, to become world chess champion.
1979 US spacecraft Pioneer 11 makes the first-ever flyby of Saturn.
1985 The wreck of the Titanic found by Dr. Robert Ballard and Jean Louis Michel in a joint U.S. and French expedition.
1998 On National Day, Vietnam releases 5,000 prisoners, including political dissidents.
2004 Armed terrorists take children and adults hostage in the Besian school hostage crisis in North Ossetia, Russia.

Non Sequitur

http://media.zenfs.com/en_us/News/ucomics.com/nq130831.gif

Did you know ...

About these 13 things the government is trying to hide from you

That 'Obamacare' is gaining traction among the American people

That 1 in 6 drug prisoners are in jail for pot

That the anti-vaccine Texas mega-clut urges cult members to immunize after measles outbreak

The Postal Service Is Near Death and You Can Thank the repugicans

When the 113th Congress returns to action, the re-jiggering the Postal Service will be front and center, to the advantage of big business.…
The Postal Service Is Near Death and You Can Thank the RepublicansThere’s a really dirty war going on behind the scenes between the Postal Service and the right-wing. In the land of despicable repugican political practices I don’t think I find anything more despicable than what the repugican cabal is already doing to the nation’s postal employees. Taking full advantage of an errant legislative move nearly 7 years ago before things collapsed completely, Congress brought us the Postal Accountability and Enhancement Act of 2006 (PAEA) by unidentifiable voice vote. That precipitated the current crisis.
This act called for the pre-funding in the course of a mere decade of some 75 years of retiree health care benefits, decimating the USPS budget. Without that ridiculous politicized mandate the Postal Service would be running a surplus today. Some 4 out of every 5 dollars of postal debt can be tracked to PAEA.
The wording of the bill also urged “streamlining efforts” and a long-term vision of the Postal Service for rationalizing (politispeak for downsizing) its infrastructure and WORKFORCE. And there’s more rationalization in a policy to remove excess processing and sorting capacity (the real prize for privatizers) and space from the network More downsizing. And of course comes the inevitable discussion of “what impact any facility changes may have on the postal workforce and whether the Postal Service has sufficient flexibility to make needed workforce changes.”
Thus was born a military boxing strategy to attack the entirety of the postal system on all sides.
But when the 113th Congress returns from its August recess, postal workers will possibly get shafted by their health care insurance (or imminent lack thereof) beyond imagination. Currently, thanks in large measure to union influence; workers have a smorgasbord of plans, deductibles and coverage. There are wide ranges of options to cover just about every individual and family contingency. If one plan turns out to be a dud, you can opt for another from a broad menu and most of the big names in the industry are included. You can also add dental and eye care at a nominal cost. Postal workers are quite attached to their coverage.
That may all go by the wayside as legislators bow once more to their corporate keepers. Here’s the plan. No more membership in the Federal Employees Health Benefits Program (FEHBP) and they’re going to start effing around with Medicare. All supposedly in service to saving and/or increasing that money plundered from the nonsensical bill described above. And it would save money. Lots of it. So would repealing PAEA. That would save money; lots of it. But that would benefit the average working stiff and no right-winger wants that to happen under any circumstances.
The Government Accounting Office released a report recently assessing the impact of such a move. While conceding that postal coffers would suddenly be fattened up, the caveats are potentially hugely anti-productive for postal workers who are already suffering like dogs. At the current time monies from health-plan assets are invested in super-safe U.S. Treasury notes and bills. Try this one on for size; one of the proposed options for investing is to take Treasury funds and buy risky shit like stocks, commodities, foreign currencies and god knows what else. I’m sure derivatives are in the mix. Market slump or crash? The GAO emphasizes the consequences would accrue directly to health care.
The idea of changing the health care coverage system is being credited to Postmaster General Patrick Donahue, who is constantly trying to slice and dice the Postal Service (remember his attempt to can Saturday deliveries?) But, while he can talk, he is still subservient to an omnipotent board. Since the Postal Service became an “independent” agency in 1970, the PG is second fiddle to the politically powerful USPS Board of Governors. This body ultimately has to answer to Congress, but its recent actions seems right down the extremist alley.
While all this goes on, workers continue to get fired, lose seniority, are forced great distances if they want to stay with the Postal Service, receive little to no help in doing so, have their full-time and flexible hours messed with and any number of other slights and insults.
USPS is on life support and until American voters wise up to the irreparable harm being done to postal employees daily lives, families, wages and futures by a radical lunatic fringe of political haters and corporate sycophants, things are going to get worse, not better.
There’s both mischief and hope coming down the pipeline. A Senate bill that will find the floor in September is S1486, the Postal Reform Act of 2013. Co-sponsors are (amazingly) the Democratic Chairman of the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, Delaware Senator, Tom Carper and the ranking repugican on the committee, Oklahoma Junior Senator Tom Coburn. You’re going to have to adjust your thinking a bit here. There are sections of the bill that call for 5 or FEWER days of delivery, co-locations among the Postal Service, retail and commercial establishments and something that is really going to take some getting used to: no more door deliveries for the most part. It’ll be curbside or converted to what’s termed a more “cost-effective” method. New customers may see cluster boxes. Centralized delivery is also in the mix, whatever that means.
There are some real cuts in postal worker disability and partial disability payments and plans to reduce area and district offices. You can look at the bill’s totality for yourself here. On the plus side, old faithful Bernie Sanders, that wonderfully consistent constituent-friendly Independent from Vermont is going to try to ride to the rescue with S316. The common sense centerpiece of Bernie’s bill is to trash PAEA and get the Post Office back on an even footing. Saturday mail delivery would continue to be protected and postal services would be considerably expanded. A commission would be appointed to pursue new profit-making avenues and shutdowns of mail sorting centers would be averted.
As I indicated the mail sorting centers are huge targets in this battle. Poised to take the lucrative scraps of a postal failure are UPS with their giant distribution network and surprisingly, Pitney Bowes, the postage meter company that also operates 41 mail processing centers according to a spokesperson from the American Postal Workers Union. Would those be union jobs in the private sector?
It’s a modern-day Maginot line with the Postal Service as France and the greedy corporations and their congressional lackeys as Germany. For the sake of postal workers, let’s hope the outcome is reversed.

"That's your problem, not mine"

And from the Lunatic Fringe of the Lunatic Fringe:

The repugican that will run against Cory Booker in October is Steve Lonegan, an avid supporter of tea party delusions. While Booker is considered a favorite by Democrats, those on the lunatic fringe can find a friend in Lonegan. Continuing the theme of anti-Obama rhetoric, Lonegan spoke to a group of supporters last year, attacking President Obama over his health care reform and even took shots at repugican governor Chris Christie for not being hard enough on the program. Speaking to the crowd, Lonegan stated that he didn't think the government had any part to play in providing health care, even to those who are the least fortunate. He went as far as to say he didn't wish people to get cancer, but if they did, that was their problem and not his.
"I'll be as callous and uncaring as you can imagine. I have no interest in paying for your health care. I'd hate to see you get cancer, but that's your problem, not mine. I'm going to pay for my health care, I'm going to take care of my children's health care and tend to my wife. And when I stand for charity care (inaudible), you [and] no one else has the authority to infringe on my right (inaudible) dig into my pocket and my ability to pay for your health care or anybody else's."

The secret behind daft drug names

Insanity at the intersection of trademark law, marketing, and patient safety: "New drug names aren’t just bizarre," writes David Shultz. "They’re dangerous."
In any other industry, calling your product Xalkori would be the business blunder of the century. But this isn’t any other industry; this is pharma. “Xalkori is not just a crazy name,” says R. John Fidelino, who, as director of creative at the firm InterbrandHealth, helped bring the word into existence.
Here's a searchable index of drugs; if you run out, there's always the drug name generator, complete with advertising bullet points and side effects. Somewhere out there, there is a "Prescription medication or evil wizard?" site, but I can't find it.

Oh, by the way Delysid is better known as LSD.
 Don't you just love the re-branding and re-marketing

Fat But Fit

Metabolically Healthy Obesity
Can you be fat and healthy at the same time? Apparently so, according to a new study by University of Pennsylvania physicians and obesity researchers who say that there are people with "metabolically healthy obesity."
Many obese people are classified as such when their body mass index or BMI reaches a certain value. BMI, a formula based on a person's weight and height, was invented by Belgian mathematician Adolphe Quetelet in the early 19 century and has garnered wide acceptance as a simple way to measure "fatness." It's quick and easy to administer - requiring only a scale and a ruler - and allows for comparison for broad populations, taking in age and country-by-country variations. Indeed, BMI is a good statistical measure of the obesity of a whole population of people.
Doctors have noted, however, that some people with BMI in the obese range are actually quite healthy and that in many cases, fat people fare better than thin ones with the same ailments. In the "obesity paradox," researchers noted that diabetic patient of normal weight are twice as likely to die than those who are obese. Others have pointed out that thin dialysis patients are more likely to die than heavier ones.
In recent years, the medical field has began to accept that BMI is not a reliable measure of health in individuals, and that some people who are obese do not have nor are they in any danger of developing obesity-related diseases.
But how many people are actually "fat but fit" and "not fat but not fit"? The answer may surprise you. For 1 in 5 Americans, BMI may actually tell the wrong story:
- 8% of normal-weight adults in the United States are actually metabolically unhealthy
This translates to 19.2 million people whom doctors may not currently worry about but should.

- 10% of obese adults are actually metabolically healthy
This means that 24 million chubby Americans are not in any danger of dying because of obesity-related illnesses, but are probably badgered by their family, friends and employers to lose weight.

Woman sues company for $6m after boss said she looked like Susan Boyle

A New York advertising director says her boss relentlessly harassed her about her looks and weight - and was especially cruel in saying she looked like “Britain’s Got Talent” singer Susan Boyle. The relentless harassment against Laura Ziv, 45, of Princeton, NJ, allegedly delivered by manager Herve Pierini at the Manhattan headquarters of perfume giant Firmenich was so severe she suffered a brain hemorrhage from the stress, Ziv claims in the $6 million lawsuit.

Ziv says Pierini targeted her after she refused to build a competing fragrance brand using company time in early 2010. "In January 2010, Pierini taunted Ziv at a party given by an executive of the biggest client at her home by repeatedly referring to Ziv as 'Susan Boyle,' a Scottish singer who is often taunted in the media as being old, fat and ugly," the suit says. Pierini's insults became more direct after the Boyle comparison.
“On one occasion when a fellow employee did not take the time for lunch, Pierini remarked to Ziv, in the presence of other employees and for them to hear, 'Not like you fatty,'” according to legal papers. Pierini later allegedly gestured toward Ziv during an office party and said, "Fatty here is having a cupcake." He then suggested she resign and when Ziv, her family’s sole breadwinner refused, the harassment allegedly continued.

Pierini moved Ziv off an account with the company’s biggest client, where she had tripled sales and took away a promised bonus, the suit says. Ziv took medical leave after her blood pressure skyrocketed following treatment for the nearly fatal brain haemorrhage, the suit says. During her leave, Firmenich stopped paying her salary and cut off her benefits, but has not yet fired her, the court papers state. She wants the payments to return plus $6 million in damages.

Ziggy

http://media.zenfs.com/en_us/News/ucomics.com/zi130827.gif

The Story Behind Stockholm Syndrome

You've probably heard of "Stockholm Syndrome," in which a hostage begins to sympathize with his or her captor, such as in stories about the Patty Hearst case. But where did the syndrome get its name? From a case of bank robbery in Sweden a year before Hearst was kidnapped.
The whole thing went down over a period of six days, from August 23 through August 28, 1973. On the first day, Jan-Erik Olsson strolled into Kreditbanken in central Stockholm, Sweden, and single-handedly held the place up. Of the two policemen who responded to the call, Olsson shot one in the hand and made the other sit in a chair, ordering him to sing something. (The policeman chose “Lonesome Cowboy,” in case you’re interested.) Olsson then took four hostages and started making demands: He wanted his friend and expert bank robber Clark Olofsson brought to the bank. He wanted 3 million Swedish Kronor. And he wanted a couple of guns, some bulletproof vests, some helmets, and a fast car.
Over those six days, the hostages came around to trusting the bank robbers more than the police. Read the rest of the story: Here .

Tokyo's toilet cleaning social club say it cleanses the soul

A group of adults and children assemble outside one of Tokyo's many public toilets every Sunday morning at 6am. They're there to scrub it clean from top to bottom. Urinals and toilets are the first targets, then it's the turn of the walls, the sinks and the floor. By 7:30am, they are gone, leaving behind them a gleaming public toilet, looking as good as the day it was installed.
This group of bleach-sloshing good Samaritans are the Benjyo Soujer, a 35-member group created on Facebook, who task themselves with scrubbing clean Tokyo's thousands of public toilets one by one. The name Benjyo Soujer is a combination of the Japanese word for lavatory and a play on the Japanese word for 'cleaner' and the English word 'soldier'.

The group's rules encourage members to use their bare hands to clean the lavatories, for one of the mottoes of the group is to 'clean thyself by cleaning cubicles'. Masayuki Magome, the Benjyo Soujer leader, says: "Basically, excrement is something that comes out of our body, so we adults don't really think of it as dirty. So without really thinking, we clean them with our bare hands, and because the children see us doing that, they don't really think of toilets as dirty either. That is one of our philosophies."

45-year-old Magome, who runs an architecture agency, started the group in 2011, and says that for many members, this activity has lead to a sort of spirit cleansing ritual, and it is similar to one of the trainings Buddhist monks endure to find peace of heart. However, despite their sanitary hard-work the public perception of the group isn't always positive and group leader Magome is the first to admit it - even his own wife disapproves of his unusual weekend hobby. Personnel hired by the local administrations are usually tasked to clean the toilets, and it is rare that citizen communities step in to volunteer because of the negative connotation toilets have.

Believe it or not

http://media.zenfs.com/en_us/News/ucomics.com/rp130831.gif

Fuggerei

The World's Oldest Housing Project
The world's oldest continuous "social settlement" is der Fuggerei in Augsburg, Germany. It was established 1521 by Jakob Fugger, a wealthy banker, merchant, and mining investor, to house the needy. The rent is the same as it was then, one Rhenish Guilder, which is less than one euro. Per year. The 67 houses of Fuggerei hold 140 apartments, with 150 residents. The neighborhood is a gated community, so to speak, with enclosed walls, its own church, and a museum. It is still supported by the Fugger Foundation, through returns on its investments over almost 500 years, supplemented by admission to the enclave and museum, which costs 4 euros. More

Remains of iron age 'loch village' found in Scotland

Archaeologists have discovered the remains of an Iron Age "loch village" in Wigtownshire, the first of its kind to be found in Scotland.
Remains of iron age 'loch village' found in Scotland
The dig has found remains of a "loch village", thought to be the first of its kind
discovered in Scotland [Credit: Historic Scotland]
Experts believe it could be "Scotland's Glastonbury", a reference to the lake village in Somerset. The excavation was part-financed with £15,000 from Historic Scotland.

Culture Secretary Fiona Hyslop described the village discovery at Black Loch of Myrton as "an exciting and unexpected find".

The dig was carried out this summer by AOC Archaeology Group, which hopes to use the pilot excavation as the starting point for a broader program of archaeological activity.

It is one of 55 archaeology projects to receive more than £1m in funding from Historic Scotland for 2013/14.

The Wigtownshire dig was a small-scale pilot excavation of what was initially thought to be a crannog in the now-infilled Black Loch of Myrton, which was under threat of destruction as a result of drainage operations.

However during the excavation, AOC - which worked on the dig in conjunction with local volunteers - discovered evidence of multiple structures making up a small village.

Remains of iron age 'loch village' found in Scotland
Archaeologists and volunteers unearthed the remains at the site
[Credit: Historic Scotland]
What initially appeared to be one of a small group of mounds before excavation was revealed to be a massive stone hearth complex at the centre of a roundhouse.

The timber structure of the house has been preserved, with beams radiating out from the hearth forming the foundation, while the outer wall consists of a double-circuit of stakes.

The most surprising discovery was that the house was not built on top of an artificial foundation, but directly over the fen peat which had gradually filled in the loch.

Rather than being a single crannog, as first thought, it appears to be a settlement of at least seven houses built in the wetlands around the small loch.

This type of site is currently unique in Scotland and there are few other comparable sites elsewhere in the British Isles.

Similar lake villages - including Glastonbury and Meare, which is also in Somerset - have been found in England, but this is the first "loch village" to be uncovered in Scotland.

Experts hope that its discovery will help to improve knowledge and understanding of Iron Age Scotland.

Ms Hyslop welcomed the discovery.

"There are some excellent examples of 'lake villages' in England but this is the first time archaeologists have found a 'loch village' in Scotland," she said.

"I am pleased too that experts joined forces with local volunteers on this project and I look forward to discovering what more this important find can teach us about Iron Age Scotland."

It's the latest in Fashion

Some 1,700 years ago a hunter lost his boat neck sweater in the mountains of Norway.
A boat neck sweater made of warm wool and woven in diamond twill was recovered from a Norwegian glacier.

'Grand Canyon' of Greenland Discovered Under Ice

The age of discovery isn't over yet. A colossal canyon, the longest on Earth, has just been found under Greenland's ice sheet.

Colliding galaxies

What will become of these galaxies? Spiral galaxies NGC 5426 and NGC 5427 are passing dangerously close to each other, but each is likely to survive this collision. Typically when galaxies collide, a large galaxy eats a much smaller galaxy. In this case, however, the two galaxies are quite similar, each being a sprawling spiral with expansive arms and a compact core. As the galaxies advance over the next tens of millions of years, their component stars are unlikely to collide, although new stars will form in the bunching of gas caused by gravitational tides... Recent predictions hold that our Milky Way Galaxy will undergo a similar collision with the neighboring Andromeda Galaxy in a few billion years
Text and image from NASA's Astronomy Photo of the Day.

Astronomical News

The Hubble Space Telescope has seen some strange objects in deep space, and this is another fascinating celestial object that sparks the imagination.
NASA's Mars rover uses its auto-navigation system for the first time. Destination: Mount Sharp 
Uranus, despite its odd, sideways orbit around the sun, has a tag-along companion.

Awesome Pictures

Chimp Wins $10,000 Art Prize


The Humane Society of the United States held an art competition for chimpanzees. The winner was announced yesterday. Brent, a 37-year-old retired laboratory chimp who lives at Chimp Haven in Louisiana, won the top prize: $10,000 for his sanctuary!
A Chimp Haven spokeswoman said Brent was unavailable for comment Thursday. “I think he’s asleep,” Ashley Gordon said.
Brent has his own unique painting technique. He only paints with his tongue. Chimp Haven's president Cathy Willis Spraetz, says the chimps paint canvases that are held outside their enclosures.
Some other chimps use brushes or point to the colors they want on the canvas, but Brent comes up to smush pre-applied blobs of child-safe tempera paints with his tongue, she said.

“If we handed the canvas to them where it was on the inside, they might not want to hand it back,” she said. “They might throw it around and step on it.”
Cheetah, from Save the Chimps in Fort Pierce, Florida, won the second place prize of $5,000 -and an additional $5,000 as the winner of Jane Goodall's personal choice award. More
See all the submitted artworks at the Humane Society: Here.

Mountain beaver broke into zoo's otter exhibit

A mountain beaver broke into the Oregon Zoo’s river otter exhibit last Tuesday.
The mountain beaver is a rodent found only in the Pacific Northwest and parts of California. It is not closely related to Oregon's State Animal, the North American Beaver.

Zoo officials said the elusive mountain beaver, also know as a boomer, was discovered in the river otter moat.
While there, zoo workers don't believe it tried to attack the otters. The perpetrating beaver was caught and released back into the woods.

Police warned to keep distance from goat on rooftop that ‘only respects one man’

A police officer who spotted something unusual in Gresham, Oregon, on Thursday night was given a warning not to get any closer.

"The goat will charge you," he was told. That goat was on the roof of a house. Officers out on patrol spotted the goat at 7:30pm.
When they inquired if everything was okay, seeing as how goats aren't found on rooftops every day, they were told this animal was not the friendly type. In fact, they were told "that goat only respects one man," according to Gresham police.

That man is the owner of the goat, who arrived at the house and got the 2-year-old animal weighing in at 35 pounds off the roof without further incident. Officers suspect the goat used a ramp near the home to climb his way up to the top of the house.

Vietnamese airline passenger tried to smuggle live fish into New Zealand in his trouser pockets

A Vietnamese man's attempt to smuggle live tropical fish into New Zealand in his trouser pockets floundered when water was spotted dripping from his clothes. Customs officials noticed the man's cargo pants had bulging pockets with water dripping through the fabric when he arrived at Auckland airport this week from Australia.

The passenger said he was carrying water from the plane because he was thirsty. When asked to show what was in his pockets, the passenger revealed two plastic bags containing water and seven live fish. The man said he was bringing the fish into New Zealand for a friend.
A spokesman for the Ministry for Primary Industries said the find was very rare. "We have previously intercepted crabs and other live animals but it's not a common occurrence." The man has been summoned to appear in Manukau District Court on biosecurity charges and could face a fine of up to $100,000 or five years imprisonment. MPI local passenger manager Craig Hughes said the deliberate attempt to smuggle fish into the country posed a serious biosecurity risk.

"That's something we take very seriously, which is why we are laying charges under the Biosecurity Act." The fish have been identified as cichlids, although the exact species is unknown at this stage. "The fish could have been carrying diseases or have the potential to displace native species," Hughes said. "Even if the species were permitted to enter the country under New Zealand's import regulations, it would still need to go through strict quarantine procedures."

There's an audio news report here.

Drunken elk gang fled from Swedish police

A gang of angry drunken elk barred a man from entering his home in suburban Stockholm on Tuesday, leaving the frightened homeowner no choice but to call police for help. "Five drunken elk were threatening a resident who was barred from entering his own home," says an incident report on the website of the Stockholm police department.
The author of the report confirmed that the homeowner, who lives on the island of Ingarö in Stockholm's eastern suburbs, was justified in calling the police for help. "I'm not surprised that he called the police when he was faced with a gang of five drunken elk," police spokesman Albin Näverberg said.
"They can be really dangerous. They become fearless. Instead of backing away when a person approaches, they move toward you. They may even take a run at you." The incident involved four adult elk and one calf, Näverberg explained, all of whom were intoxicated after having eaten fermented apples that had fallen from the homeowner's apple tree.

"Police who arrived on the scene reported that the animals had been warned that the police were on their way and wisely decided to leave the address," the report read. "The elk will have to find somewhere else to get intoxicated." The homeowner was instructed by officers to clear his yard of fermented apples in order to avoid any future incidents with drunken elk gangs.

Five Animals That Regrow Body Parts

When you were a kid you might have had the trauma-thrill of thinking you caught a lizard and opening your hand to find nothing but its squirming tail. Some lizards and other animals can lose their body parts, but are masterful at regenerating them - a feat we humans are sadly less capable of doing (except in the case of our liver).

But what we are great at is learning from those masters. Here's a roundup of some of nature's great regenerators and how they may help people down the road.

Mosquitoes smell you better at night

In work published this week in Nature: Scientific Reports, a team of researchers from the University of Notre Dame’s Eck Institute for Global Health, led by Associate Professor Giles Duffield

Read more...

Whales feel the (sun)burn!

Whales have been shown to increase the pigment in their skin in response to sunshine, just as we get a tan. Research published today in Nature journal, Scientific Reports, reveals

Animal News

A shark that can walk has just been filmed taking a stroll in waters off of a remote island.
Prehistoric terror birds looked ferocious, but they likely spent most of their days feasting on plants.
Is a strange, blue-skinned dog found years ago in Texas evidence of a vampiric monster call the chupacabra?

Animal Pictures

beautiful-wildlife:

Bobcat Mother and Kitten, North America by Tim Fitzharris