redheads

Apparently only 4% of the world's population hold the gene for red hair. By the year 2100 redheads may be extinct.

surviving Alaskan wilderness

If climbing, take your time. Let your legs take a lot of pressure, instead of arms, which will tire out much more quickly.

If trouble with grizzly, grab a stick and try to poke it in the eyes.

Alaskan devilclub plants are spiky and hard to get through, but are great sources of ginseng.

Follow stream down to river. When crossing streams, face upstream against the flow.

In Alaska, coastline is best place to find help.

If no fishing line, can make spear from tree. A Y-shaped spear end is nice...can use to hold down fish while reach down to pick it up. Key to being successful in fishing is patience. Watch out for fishing bears.

Salmon skin is thin and not with many scales...very good source of fat.

Caves are good shelters, but might already have occupants...be careful.

Shellfish available on rocks at low tide: must be cooked before eating, though.

Good wood for burning is wood that cracks audibly when breaking.

If on coastline, make signal fire for boats. Evergreen branches will smoke profusely, making a visible white smoke background against the dark background of trees.

...to be continued, when I finish the episode...

pet peeve

Hugely thick magazines in which the table of contents is hidden somewhere about 50 pages in. Or more. And ones with so many perfume samples, subscription cards, thick ads, etc., etc. that I can't browse through except about 40 pages at a time.

Yikes!!!

I'm more scared by her lips than by her chest! Mistress Rhiannon:

Rhiannon, whose 4,100-cubic centimeter, 48MMM tits each weigh approximately ten pounds, began her bust-enhancement odyssey in 1991, and has since had 30 surgeries on her right breast alone. "I went in for a boob job like some people go to get their teeth cleaned," says the raven-haired star of Cleavage Dreams, who looks like Elvira, if the horror-movie hostess had two beach-ball size mams popping out of her chest, along with large quantities of silicone and fat injected into her lips. "There's something about my personality that big is never big enough. If I'm going to do it, I'm going all the way."

and Melonie Charm:

Melonie Charm, a big-bust model who resides in upstate New York, has also had multiple breast surgeries, as well as a tummy tuck and the fat transferred from her belly into her lips. While the operations have primarily been a career move for Charm, she understands the psychological attraction of cosmetic surgery. "[Plastic surgery] does make you feel better," says Charm, who transformed her natural 34C breasts into 50JJJs. "It gives you more self-esteem—you look better, you're more confident, but that doesn't last forever. Some people who are not truly happy with themselves—they get plastic surgery. They feel good for awhile, and then they want to fix something else, or they want to get it redone."

song for Matilda

Sung to the tune of Homer Simpson's, "Hey There, Blimpy Boy." Or, in the real world, "Hey There, Georgie Girl." My version, sung to Matilda:

"Hey there, Jazzy Girl. You-u are so cute, just like a squirrel."

Group: pull GM "suicide" ad

By Bruce Horovitz, USA TODAY

Yet another Super Bowl marketer is swimming in hot water.

The American Foundation for Suicide Prevention has sent a letter to General Motors (GM) criticizing an ad that shows a perfectionist assembly line robot dreaming about jumping off a bridge after dropping a bolt. The group said the spot may encourage people to consider suicide as a solution to their problems. The group demanded that GM apologize, not air the spot again and remove it from its website.

"We wouldn't see this ad around cancer or heart disease," says Robert Gebbia, executive director. "Why's it OK to make fun of mental illness or depression?"

...

GM has "no plans" to drop the robot spot, spokeswoman Ryndee Carney says. The ad currently is scheduled to air next during the Feb. 25 Academy Awards broadcast on ABC, she says.

GM has received "more than a handful (of complaints) but not a tsunami," she says. She says GM "did not intend to offend anyone."

GM should drop the ad now, says former Energy secretary Donald Hodel, who also was Interior secretary in the Reagan administration. Hodel's teenage son committed suicide 23 years ago.

"They should never have run that commercial, and they shouldn't run it again," says Hodel, who says he and his wife were shocked when they saw it. "If I had a child who committed suicide some time after watching that ad, I'd seriously consider consulting a lawyer and suing GM."

Romeo and Juliet?

Romeo and Juliet?

Mama on a pony!

These cookies ("biscuits," that is) are something else!!

Les Stroud survival tips

Les Stroud (Survivorman) offers survival tips in each episode, which range from general (eg. conserve resources whenever possible) to quite specific. Some of the more specific tips include the following (note: not all were employed successfully):

• In cold or freezing conditions, the worst thing you can do is let yourself get sweaty. He constantly mentions that if you get sweaty, you should let the sweat dry (he mentions this tip in almost every episode).
• Use a lens from a camcorder to start a fire.
• Always carry a "good Multi-Tool."
• Break wood between two trees to keep from hurting yourself.
• Cut vines in swamps and jungles and place a cup at the opening to collect water.
• Wipe mud over your skin to protect against mosquitos.
• If you catch food (like a rabbit) eat everything, except the entrails. In the case of a rabbit, it is important to eat even the bones as a source of fat, since there is no fat on the rabbit, your body will get Rabbit starvation, which leads to death.
• To start a fire with a lighter that has no fluid, use a piece of tissue formed into a cone at one end with a ball of sock lint stuffed into the cone to catch the spark that comes off the lighter. This only works if the socks are manufactured from 100% cotton. He refers to this as a prison match (and tells viewers not to ask him why he knows how to make it).
• Use a snowmobile seat cover to melt snow in the sunlight.
• Don't play the harmonica when polar bears are possibly around because they are attracted to strange noises.
• Use corn chips to hold a flame in a manner similar to a candle wick.
• Boil water by placing heated rocks in it. This is done when a water container cannot be held directly over a fire.
• Heat rocks over fire and place them around the body as heating packs while sleeping or resting.
• Use an emptied coconut shell filled with coconut fibers to carry a smoldering coal. This prevents the need to light another fire from scratch.
• Use cow dung to keep a fire smoldering while away. This prevents the need to light another fire from scratch.
• Use the elastic strap from a pair of boxers as a slingshot to fire a fishing spear.
• Soak the foam cushion of a broken snowmobile in gasoline to use as fire fuel in the Canadian Arctic.
• Determine the time until sunset by measuring the distance between the sun and horizon, wherein each width of your hand equals one hour.
• Use moss from the north side of a tree to gain bearings without a compass (though he added that this method, though accurate in his case, is often unreliable).
• When opening a conch shell, crack the point on the back and scrape out the meat inside.
• To get fresh water on an island build a solar still by finding a box (or something similar) and put seawater and plants inside, along with a smaller container in the direct center, and cover it tightly with a plastic sheet. Then put a rock in the center of the plastic. The plants will sweat fresh water which will evaporate, condense onto the plastic and drip into the container.
• Too much coconut milk causes diarrhea.
• The Five "W's" of Survival:
  • Weather: Temperature of the area, know what kind of shelter you need.
  • Wood: How much wood is around for both fire and shelter.
  • Wigglies: spiders, scorpions, snakes, anything that can bite you or poison you.
  • Widowmakers: rocks, trees, large animals, anything that can fall on you or attack you.
  • Water: Where will you get water, how will you obtain it.
• Use a potato peeler on thin branches to create very curly wood shavings.
• Always check your boots for "Wigglies."

Man vs. Wild: savannah survival

In Africa, not Georgia, that is!

Things I learned:

1. Lions: can't outrun them...stand tall, wave arms, clap, etc. to try to bluff them away.
2. Rhinos: Stand ground till last second and dive away. Run for cover.
3. Elephants: can't see well, so run fast and make sharp turns out of their paths.
4. Hippos: the most dangerous animals. Never get in the water with them. Best bet for crossing is in running, shallow water.
5. Puff adders: Hard to see, though can hear them, and very poisonous when happened upon.

Good to travel in water when in ravines and denser forests...leopards may be around.

Follow water UPstream...to often in the savannah, water flows downhill and then disappears abruptly into an aquifer. Go upstream to find the source, where civilization often will be.

The blackjack plant makes a good mosquito repellant when burned.

Elephant dung is a source of liquid when squeezed.

Viable meat is meat that vultures are hanging around: they eat only fresh meat. No bad smell, no maggots.

Don't drink stagnant water. Not worth the risk of debilitating parasites, etc. Animal trails lead to drinkable water.

Aloe is a good topical treatment of cuts and burns.

9/11 in perspective

Putting 9/11 into perspective

The attacks were a horrible act of mass murder, but history says we're overreacting.

by David A. Bell
January 28 2007

IMAGINE THAT on 9/11, six hours after the assault on the twin towers and the Pentagon, terrorists had carried out a second wave of attacks on the United States, taking an additional 3,000 lives. Imagine that six hours after that, there had been yet another wave. Now imagine that the attacks had continued, every six hours, for another four years, until nearly 20 million Americans were dead. This is roughly what the Soviet Union suffered during World War II, and contemplating these numbers may help put in perspective what the United States has so far experienced during the war against terrorism.

The complete article can be viewed at:
http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/la-op-bell28jan28,0,3764261.story?coll=la-opinion-center

Molly Ivins quotes/quips

http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/metropolitan/4516556.html

Quotes and quips from Molly Ivins

Some quotes from Molly Ivins, the liberal political writer whose words could be clever, ruthless and humorous—sometimes in the same sentence:

"I'm sorry to say (cancer) can kill you but it doesn't make you a better person," she told the San Antonio Express-News in September 2006, the same month cancer claimed her friend former Gov. Ann Richards.

"If you think his daddy had trouble with 'the vision thing,' wait'll you meet this one," Ivins on George W. Bush in "The Progressive," June 1999.

"If left to my own devices, I'd spend all my time pointing out that he's weaker than bus-station chili," on Bill Clinton, from the introduction to You Got to Dance With Them What Brung You

"Naturally, when it comes to voting, we in Texas are accustomed to discerning that fine hair's-breadth worth of difference that makes one hopeless dipstick slightly less awful than the other. But it does raise the question: Why bother?", in a 2002 column about a California political race.

"The poor man who is currently our president has reached such a point of befuddlement that he thinks stem cell research is the same as taking human lives, but that 40,000 dead Iraqi civilians are progress toward democracy," from a July 2006 column urging commentator Bill Moyers to run for president.

"Many people did not care for Pat Buchanan's speech; it probably sounded better in the original German," Ivins in September 1992, commenting on the one-time presidential hopeful's speech to the Republican National Convention.

"I dearly love the state of Texas, but I consider that a harmless perversion on my part, and discuss it only with consenting adults," from a March 1992 column.

"I love Texas, but it is a nasty old rawhide mother in the way it bears down on the people who have the fewest defenses," Ivins wrote in September 2002.

"....our very own dreaded Legislature is almost upon us. Jan. 9 and they'll all be here, leaving many a village without its idiot," from a December 2000 column.

Biloxi Indian tribe history

Biloxi Indian Tribe History

Biloxi. A name of uncertain meaning, apparently from the Choctaw language. They call themselves Taneks haya, "first people."

A small Siouan tribe formerly living in south Mississippi, now nearly or quite extinct. The Biloxi were supposed to belong to the Muskhogean stock until Gatschet visited the survivors of the tribe in Louisiana in 1886 and found that many of the words bore strong resemblance to those in Siouan languages, a determination fully substantiated in 1892 by J. Owen Dorsey. To what particular group of the Siouan family the tribe is to be assigned has not been determined; but it is probable that the closest affinity is with Dorsey's Dhegiha group, socalled. The first direct notice of the Biloxi is that by Iberville, who found them in 1699 about Biloxi bay, on the gulf coast of Mississippi, in connection with two, other shall tribes, the Paskagula and Moctobi, the three together numbering only about 20 cabins (Margry, Dec., iv, 195, 1880). The Biloxi removed to the west shore of Mobile bay in 1702. In 1761 Jefferys spoke of them as having been north east of Cat island, and of their subsequent removal to the north west of Pearl river Hutchins, in 1784, mentions a Biloxi village on the west side of the Mississippi, a little below the Paskagula, containing 30 warriors. According to Sibley (1805) a part of the Biloxi came with some French, from near Pensacola, about 1763, and settled first in Avoyelles parish, La., on Red river, whence they "moved higher up to Rapide Bayou, and from thence to the month of Rigula de Bondieu, a division of Red river, about 40 miles below Natchitoch, where they now live, and are reduced to about 30 in number." Berguin-Duvallon (1806) mentions them as in two villages, one on Red river, 19 leagues from the Mississippi, the other on a lake called Avoyelles. He also refers to some as being wanderers on Crocodile bayou. Schoolcraft said they numbered 55 in 1825. In 1828 (Bul. Soc. Mex. Geog., 1870) there were 20 families of the tribe on the east bank of Neches river, Tex. Porter, in 1829 (Schoolcraft, Ind. Tribes, 111, 596), gave the number as 65 living with the Caddo, Paskagula, and other small tribes on Red river, near the Texas frontier, and in 1846 Butler and Lewis found a Biloxi camp on Littler river, a tributary of the Brazos in Texas, about two days' journey from the latter stream. After this little was heard of them until 1886. According to Gatschet there were in that year a few Biloxi among the Choctaw and Caddo, but he visited only those in Avoyelles parish, La. In 1892 Dorsey found about a dozen of the tribe near Lecompte, Rapides parish, La., but none remained at Avoyelles. From the terms they used and information obtained Dorsey concluded that prior to the coming of the whites the men wore the breechcloth, a belt, leggings, moccasins, and garters, and wrapped around the body a skin robe. Feather headdresses and necklaces of bone, and of the bills of a long-legged redbird (flamingo?) were worn, as also were noserings and earrings. The dwellings of the people resembled those found among the northern tribes of the same family, one kind similar to the low tent of the Osage and Winnebago, the other like the high tent of the Dakota, Omaha, and others. It is said they formerly made pottery. They made wooden bowls, horn an, bone implements, and baskets.

Tattooing was practice to a limited extent. Descent was through the female line, and there was an elaborate system of kinship. The charge of cannibalism was made against theme by one or two other tribes; this, however, is probably incorrect. Dorsey recorded the following clan names:

Itaanyadi
Ontianyadi
Nakhotodhanyadi

Vincent and Margaret Sherry

I'm watching "Dominick Dunne's Power, Privilege, and Justice" on CourtTV right now. It's disappointing to hear him keep prouncing BihLUXee as BihLOXee, as if he never hear d the city-name pronounced.

And to talk of casinos and strip clubs, when in 1987 casinos weren't even a consideration yet...

dog show

Jerry and I are watching the AKC dog show on Animal Planet. Their "championship" names crack me up! I decided that Matilda's championship name would be something like "Q. Tazza Bean." Get it?!

Perky almost quit being perky, part 3

(Read previous posts for more perky-Perky info.)

After enduring being shot, dragged by a dog and then having her presumed dead body thrown in a kitchen fridge, US wonder-fowl Perky the duck has again shown her lust for life during an operation to repair her injured wing yesterday.

Perky suddenly stopped breathing during the operation, said Noni Beck, wildlife rehabilitator at the Goose Creek Wildlife Sanctuary in Tallahassee, Florida.

"It was a rough day yesterday," she told smh.com.au.

She said she had taken Perky to a local veterinarian for the operation, where she was told it would be touch-and-go for the fragile bird.

The vet began to operate and had just finished pinning Perky's wing when she abruptly stopped breathing, Ms Beck said.

"He's giving her oxygen, he's kind of tapping on her chest - he actually took a needle and kind of stuck her, because a little pain response can make you gag - and then he turned to me and said, 'She's gone, I am so sorry.' ''

But suddenly the duck came back.

"We were sitting there looking at each other and then it's been 10 seconds and somebody said: 'She just took a breath.' "

Ms Beck didn't realise how affected she was by Perky's close call until she went to her car afterwards to call a friend.

"I literally broke down, I was sobbing on the phone. I think the first words to come out of my mouth were: 'She's alive.' It was an emotional rollercoaster.

"She's stolen all our hearts, she's such a perky little thing."

Perky is now back at the sanctuary, doing well and spending much of her time on her personal heating pad, Ms Beck said.

Perky's amazing story has generated an huge amount of interest in what the sanctuary does.

"The response has just been unbelievable," Ms Beck said.

Numerous donations had been received as well as an almost overwhelming number of telephone calls from concerned citizens.

But the best thing, she said, was when one of the volunteers' sisters hit upon an idea.

"She said: 'Y'all need to make a T-shirt.' "

So Ms Beck and her team are now selling T-shirts with all funds going to Perky's recuperation and the sanctuary.

The T-shirt says "I helped the lucky duck" and has a picture of Perky on it.

A local mall has a stall for the T-shirts and they are also being sold on a local man's website.

Ms Beck said about 80 shirts had already been sold.

super lucky duck, part 2

She was shot, dragged by a dog, hung upside down and then left in a household refrigerator for two days, but the duck dubbed "Perky" seems now to be back from the dead after a startlingly quick recovery.

"I think right now her chances are really good, she's made it," Noni Beck, wildlife rehabilitator at the Goose Creek Wildlife Sanctuary in Tallahassee, Florida, told smh.com.au this afternoon.

And not only is Perky on the road to recovery, it seems she's been guaranteed a comfortable life at a local reserve where she will spend her days educating Floridians on why shooting ducks--or at least shooting at them inaccurately - can have consequences.

"The odds are that this girl is not going back to the wild, the wing break is that bad," Ms Beck said.

"She will hopefully go to an education facility, and we have several here in Florida that have really nice habitats."

Perky was hit in the leg, neck and wing by a local hunter last weekend. Ms Beck said the duck was felled, carried back to the hunter by his dog, hung in a brace of dead ducks, taken to his house and placed in a refrigerator.

Two days later the hunter's wife went to the fridge.

"When she opened the door this little duck raised her head ... she immediately called her daughter and said they had to do something," said Ms Beck.

The daughter took the duck to a local vet for treatment and told Ms Beck the story.

The bird, a 450-gram dark brown Canadian ring-neck, which had flown to Florida for the cold months, was treated for pellet wounds, a broken wing and a broken leg.

After that she was given to Goose Creek for recovery.

One of the vets who has treated Perky, David Hale, said it was easy to understand how the hunter would have thought the duck was dead.

"This duck is very passive," Dr Hale said. "It's not like trying to pick up a Muscovy ... where you put your life in your hands."

Muscovies are large, South American ducks known for their aggressive behaviour.

Perky's ordeal immediately became big news, with websites, newspapers and television leaping on the story of her near miraculous survival.

Ms Beck said she had received numerous calls from people wanting to support Perky in her recovery, and some wanting to give her a name.

"Everybody's been calling her the Lucky Duck, but tonight one of my volunteers called and they want to name her Perky, because she really has gotten so much better."

Ms Beck also revealed Perky's saviour, the wife of the hunter, was coming to visit tomorrow.

"She's kind of excited that the duck can be saved. She said she really didn't like it [her husband's hunting] and she's already told him if he shoots something he better kill it because if he doesn't she's going to take it to a vet clinic."

super duck, part 1

The duck would not die.

Wildlife officials said the feathered Lazarus had been shot by a hunter and put into his refrigerator for two days. That's when the hunter's wife opened the door and the duck lifted his head, giving her a scare.

The man's wife "was going to check on the refrigerator because it hadn't been working right and when she opened the door, it looked up at her", said Laina Whipple, a receptionist at Killearn Animal Hospital. "She freaked out and told the daughter to take it to the hospital right then and there."

The hospital's staff had the daughter take the 450-gram female ring-neck to Goose Creek Wildlife Sanctuary, where it has been treated since January 16 for wounds to its wing and leg.

Sanctuary veterinarian David Hale said it has about a 75 per cent chance of survival, but probably will not ever be well enough to be released back into the wild.

He said the duck, which has a low metabolism, could have survived in a big enough refrigerator, especially if the door was opened and closed several times.

Pliny

"In vino veritas." Damn straight.

When will I die?

You Will Die at Age 76

You're pretty average when it comes to how you live... And how you'll die as well.

At what age will you die?