Daily Comic Relief

Walnut Industry May Crack Under Climate Pressure

Forestry researchers warn walnuts face tough times ahead.
Read more

Hanging Gardens

Memories..........Enjoy

'Someone asked the other day, 'What was your favorite fast food when you were growing up?'

'We didn't have fast food when I was growing up,' I informed him.

'All the food was slow.'

'C'mon, seriously. Where did you eat?'

'It was a place called 'at home,'' I explained. !

'Mom cooked every day and when Dad got home from work, we sat down together at the dining room table, and if I didn't like what she put on my plate I was allowed to sit there until I did like it.'

By this time, the kid was laughing so hard I was afraid he was going to suffer
serious internal damage, so I didn't tell him the part about how I had to have permission to leave the table.

But here are some other things I would have told him about my childhood if
I figured his system could have handled it :

Some parents NEVER owned their own house, wore Levis , set foot on a golf
course, traveled out of the country or had a credit card.
In their later years they had something called a revolving charge card. The
card was good only at Sears Roebuck. Or maybe it was Sears & Roebuck.
Either way, there is no Roebuck anymore. Maybe he died.

My parents never drove me to soccer practice. This was mostly because we
never had heard of soccer. I had a bicycle that weighed probably 50 pounds,
and only had one speed, (slow).

We didn't have a television in our house until I was 5.
It was, of course, black and white, and the station went off the air at midnight, after playing the national anthem and a poem about God; it came back on the air at about 6 a.m. and there was usually a locally produced news and farm show on, featuring local people.

I was 13 before I tasted my first pizza, it was called 'pizza pie.'
When I bit into it, I burned the roof of my mouth and the cheese slid off,
swung down, plastered itself against my chin and burned that, too. It's still
the best pizza I ever had.

We didn't have a car until I was 4. It was an old black Dodge.

I never had a telephone in my room.
The only phone in the house was in the living room and it was on a party line.
Before you could dial, you had to listen and make sure some people you didn't
know weren't already using the line.

Pizzas were not delivered to our home. But milk was. All newspapers were delivered by boys and all boys delivered newspapers --my brother delivered a newspaper, six days a week. It cost 7 cents a paper, of which he got to keep 2 cents. He had to get up at 6AM every morning. On Saturday, he had to collect the 42 cents from his customers. His favorite customers were the ones who gave him 50 cents and told him to keep the change. His least favorite customers were the ones who seemed to never be home on collection day.

Movie stars kissed with their mouths shut. At least, they did in the movies.
There were no movie ratings because all movies were responsibly produced for everyone to enjoy viewing, without profanity or violence or most anything offensive.

If you grew up in a generation before there was fast food, you may want to
share some of these memories with your children or grandchildren. Just don't
blame me if they bust a gut laughing.

Growing up isn't what it used to be, is it?



MEMORIES from a friend :

My Dad is cleaning out my grandmother's house (she died in December) and
he brought me an old Royal Crown Cola bottle. In the bottle top was a
stopper with a bunch of holes in it. I knew immediately what it was, but my daughter had no idea. She thought they had tried to make it a salt shaker or something. I knew it as the bottle that sat on the end of the ironing board to 'sprinkle' clothes with because we didn't have steam irons. Man, I am old.



How many do you remember?

- Head lights dimmer switches on the floor.
- Ignition switches on the dashboard.
- Heaters mounted on the inside of the fire wall.
- Real ice boxes.
- Pant leg clips for bicycles without chain guards.
- Soldering irons you heat on a gas burner.
- Using hand signals for cars without turn signals.


Older Than Dirt Quiz :
Count all the ones that you remember not the ones you were told about.
Ratings at the bottom.

1 Blackjack chewing gum
2. Wax Coke-shaped bottles with colored sugar water
3. Candy cigarettes
4. Soda pop machines that dispensed glass bottles
5. Coffee shops or diners with table side juke boxes
6. Home milk delivery in glass bottles with cardboard stoppers
7. Party lines on the telephone
8. Newsreels before the movie
9. P.F. Flyers
10. Butch wax
11. TV test patterns that came on at night after the last show and were
there until TV shows started again in the morning. (there were only 3 channels [if you were fortunate])
12. Peashooters
13. Howdy Doody
14. 45 RPM records
15. S&H green stamps
16 Hi-fi's
17. Metal ice trays with lever
18. Mimeograph paper
19. Blue flashbulb
20. Packards
21. Roller skate keys
22. Cork popguns
23. Drive-ins
24. Studebakers
25. Wash tub wringers

If you remembered 0-5 = You're still young
If you remembered 6-10 = You are getting older
If you remembered 11-15 = Don't tell your age,
If you remembered 16-25 = You're older than dirt!

I might be older than dirt but those memories are some of the best parts of my life.

Coal-Friendly Agency Turns Fossil Fuel Foe

An international agency makes an impassioned plea for renewable energy to help stop global warming.

  Read more

Sierra Leone's Gola Rainforest becomes national park

A statement from the Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Food Security says that the Gola Rainforest has been identified as a "Biodiversity hotspot" and is of global importance because of its rich variety of plants and animals.

 More

Flesh-eating banana fears hit Mozambique

Rumours of flesh-eating bananas in Mozambique have sparked a plummet in the sale of the fruit, prompting the health minister Friday to reassure people of its safety. "From the work conducted by the Ministries of Agriculture, Health and Trade and Industry, it was concluded that there is no record of entry of any infected banana in the country," according to a joint statement.

An email and text message hoax warning people against eating bananas for the next three weeks went viral as people feared being infected by necrotising fasciitis, or skin-eating disease. The bacteria can destroy skin, fat and tissue covering the muscles.


The messages also advised people to see a doctor if they developed a fever after eating the killer fruit. Especially bananas from KwaZulu-Natal province in neighbouring South Africa carried the virus, according to the hoax.

Banana sales in the capital Maputo fell sharply despite the fact that Mozambique does not import bananas from its neighbour. In a separate statement South Africa's agriculture ministry denounced the messages as a hoax. It strongly advised against burning the skin around the supposed infection, as suggested in the message.

Vermont inmates hide pig in official police car decal

Inmates working at a Vermont correctional unit's print shop managed to sneak a prank image of a pig into a state police crest that is emblazoned on police cars, and 30 cruisers sported the design for the last year, officials said on Thursday.

The official crest depicts a spotted cow against a background of snowy mountains, but the inmates' version featured one of the cow's spots shaped like a pig in an apparent reference to the pejorative word for police, state police spokeswoman Stephanie Dasaro said.

"It dishonors the memory of those past and present members, especially for those who have lost their lives in the line of duty," Dasaro said.

Vermont contracts with correctional facilities employing prisoners to make some print products, including the cruiser decals. Police said someone who works at the print shop changed the emblem from the officially sanctioned design.

A police employee noticed the prank on Wednesday and reported it. Police said the 60 16-inch door decals would be removed as soon as it was practical.

The "source and timing" of the change to the design is under investigation, Dasaro said.

"While some may find humor in the decal modifications, the joke unfortunately comes at the expense of the taxpayers," Police Major Bill Sheets said in a statement.

Animal Pictures

Anouncement

At long last we are going to be able to retrieve our computer tomorrow (5-5-12) and get CN back to it's regular schedule beginning Sunday (5-6-12).
We wish to thank all our readers who have kept faith with us these past 5 months and we promise CN will be even better than before.

Before the blowout (or in this case meltdown - literally) of a small component on the motherboard which was extremely hard to detect though easily repaired when detected, we were setting into place a more streamlined and reliable source of material from our staff of several contributors. This has been in place and will make it easier to publish this blog daily.

Editorial Comment

Well after 5 months it all came down to a $6.00 part on the motherboard, but our computer in repaired.
Now, it is a question of timing the retrieval of the computer with this upcoming Saturday looking to be the first opportunity to do so.
Shortly thereafter CN will be back better than ever.

Tin Tin

Editorial Comment

While it has been a while since we lost the use of our mainframe and back up we look forward to having at least the main back up and running by February 20, 2012 although our posting schedule will remain somewhat light for a few days beyond as one of our critical staffers is undergoing knee replacement surgery that day and we will be at her side most of the time for the first few days after that surgery.
After all this time it looks to be that a surge in the current from the power company that zapped the power control(s) of the main and the backup. Well, that is the currently prevailing thought of our tech guy anyway. The unkown surge - as how and why we cannot fathom, there were no storms or outages for other reasons prior to the loss of computer function - has us baffled.
Now if it is only a switch problem and nothing more ... we can all be happy.

Yeti crab cultivates food on its own arms

As reported by Ed Yong at Nature:

The yeti crab — so-called because of the hair-like bristles that cover its arms — is only the second of its family to be discovered... Writing in PLoS ONE this week, Thurber named the crab Kiwa puravida, after a common Costa Rican saying that means 'pure life'...

The bristles that cover the crab’s claws and body are coated in gardens of symbiotic bacteria, which derive energy from the inorganic gases of the seeps. The crab eats the bacteria, using comb-like mouthparts to harvest them from its bristles.

The bacteria in K. puravida gardens are closely related to species that live in other cold seeps and hot hydrothermal vents all over the world. “It looks like the bacteria may use the seeps as stepping stones, to create this global connected population that consumes the energy coming out of seeps and vents,” says Thurber.

Thurber thinks that K. puravida waves its claws to actively farm its bacterial gardens: movements stir up the water around the bacteria, ensuring that fresh supplies of oxygen and sulphide wash over them and helping them to grow.  “This 'dance' is extraordinary and comical,” says Van Dover. “We've never seen this strategy before.”

A brief, low-res video of the "dance" is at the link, along with additional details.  Not discussed there is these speculations from the Reddit thread:

If you wondered what kind of complex life can survive major asteroid impact, full-on nuclear winter and so on, remember the humble yeti crab and his bacterial garden. Where he goes, he does not need sun. Only methane seep in the deepest darkness. Cockroaches and even radioresistant-as-hell braconid wasps have nothing on him.

A Caprine Condominium

The Goat Tower

image credit

What do you do when you own a group of Swiss Mountain Goats but there isn't anywhere for them to climb? The answer that South African farmer Charles Back -owner of the Fairview Wine and Cheese Farm - came up with was to create a domicile for his goats that would help keep them fit as well as giving them an altogether better kind class of shed: the Goat Tower.

Whistling donkey leaves Irish court in fits of laughter

A tale of a busker, bald tyres and a whistling donkey left the presiding judge, gardaí, solicitors and even defendants in tears of laughter in Dingle District Court as they heard of the unlikely series of events that led to three road traffic charges being brought against a man. Well known Dingle street entertainer Deaglan Ó Muiris of 7 Cuairt Phiarais, Ballyferriter, became the unintentional source of comic relief when Garda Frank Scanlon outlined the scene that greeted him when he stopped the busker for driving with four bald tyres.

Garda Scanlon told the court that having noticed the worn tyres on Mr Ó Muiris's Hiace van, his attention was immediately drawn to the inside of the vehicle, where he saw a donkey looking back at him. He proceeded to tell Judge James O'Connor how the said donkey is part of Mr Ó Muiris's renowned busking act, and is regularly seen with the defendant in Dingle.

Photo from The Irish Examiner.

When asked by the chuckling judge what the donkey did as part of the act, Garda Scanlon told him he played the tin whistle, causing an outburst of laughter in the courtroom. Solicitor Pat Mann told the highly entertained judge that his client and his donkey are a regular double act at Dingle pier and that Mr Ó Muiris is 'a very good natured man.' He said that after being stopped by Garda Scanlon, he paid €350 for four new tyres for the van.

Withdrawing one of the charges, Garda Scanlon said he was very familiar with Mr Ó Muiris and had come across him on numerous occasions, adding that he had one previous conviction for drink driving dating back a few years. Mr Mann quickly interjected, telling the court that that offence was for driving his Hiace van, and not his donkey. Garda Scanlon agreed that the tyres had been replaced, and concluded his evidence by telling the judge that the donkey has been retired for the winter. The defendant was given until May of next year to pay €300 to the court poor box to avoid a convcition for the bald tyre offences.

Animal Kindom Poetry

 

We work like a horse.

We eat like a pig.
We like to play chicken.
You can get on someone's goat.
We can be as slippery as a snake.
We get dog tired.
We can be as quiet as a mouse.
We can be as quick as a cat.
Some of us are as strong as an ox.
Some are as ugly as a toad.
We can be as gentle as a lamb.
Sometimes we are as happy as a lark.
Some of us drink like a fish.
We can be as proud as a peacock.
A few of us are as hairy as a gorilla.
You can get a frog in your throat.
We can be a lone wolf.
But I'm having a whale of a time!

Heroic dog rescued kittens dumped in bag on road

 A bag of kittens were dumped out on an Iowa country road and left to die, but two kittens were rescued by an unlikely hero. The Raccoon Valley Animal Sanctuary says animal cruelty is far too common. About three months ago, they received a frantic call from a Madison County woman who pulled two kittens from a bag that her dog found in the middle of the road. Meet Skipper and Tipper, or as sanctuary volunteers call them, the "bag kittens." That's because they should have died in a Meow Mix sack.

“It was gruesome, quite gruesome because the kittens; there was a litter of 4 or 5 of them and you couldn't tell if there were 2 or 3 in the bag because they had been run over by a vehicle. It was not a pretty sight,” says Linda Blakely of the Raccoon Valley Animal Sanctuary. Tipper and Skipper were sealed into the bag, dumped on a road and crushed by oncoming traffic. It's a miracle they survived the experience. However, that's not the end of the story. Meet Reagan. He found the bag and dragged it all the way home to his owner. Reagan whined until she opened it.

“The instinct of the dog was to nurture and not kill the kittens. With all the blood some dogs would have responded to the scent. Reagan the dog is a hero,” says Blakely. Reagan's owner could hear Skipper and Tipper's faint cries from inside the bag. However, she was totally unprepared for what she found when she opened it. “When she reached in the horror of these kittens covered in blood and guts quickly revealed there was more that didn't make it.”


Video link.

The kittens were so weak; they had to be fed with a bottle every two hours. Blakely fostered Skipper and Tipper, who were traumatized by the experience. She wasn't sure they would live through the first few days. “Whether them being dumped out was an act of cruelty or desperation we will never know, but we want people to know there's better ways.” Three months later, Skipper and Tipper look like normal, healthy kittens. All thanks to loving pooch and the kindness of a few animal lovers.

The 45 Most Powerful Images Of 2001

Buzzfeed compiled a collection of images from the year’s news stories that will remind you how many really big events happened in 2011, from natural disasters to citizen protests to legislation to war. Pictured is a girl in isolation in order to assess her exposure to radiation after Japan’s nuclear facilities were compromised by the March earthquake. Link

New Batch of Giant Alien Worlds Found

The finding of 18 distant planets boosts a theory about how planets form. Read more

Measuring a Tiny, Yet Mighty, Black Hole

Astronomers have measured the vital statistics of the black hole living in the famous Cygnus X-1 binary system to a very high precision. The mass and physical size of the black hole may surprise you... Read more