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Post by swamprat on Sept 3, 2014 15:46:59 GMT -6
THIS IS NOT A BIRDThis parrot is, in fact, a female model who posed for Johannes Stötter, a fine art body painter. Using breathable paint, he spent hours painstakingly turning this woman into the image of a parrot, brushstroke by brushstroke. The model’s arm forms the parrot’s head and beak, and her legs form the wing and tail feathers. Remember: always take a closer look as things aren’t always what they appear to be Once you see her, the bird disappears.
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Post by Deleted on Sept 3, 2014 20:32:41 GMT -6
Wow. In someone else's mind, this could be a "fairy creature" posing as a bird. Also, quite interesting that the artist used a bird for his "medium". I don't think this one is way off topic, Swampy.
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Post by swamprat on Dec 3, 2014 11:14:23 GMT -6
Somehow, I think I've just been insulted.....Why Men Love Lingerie: Rat Study Offers Hintsby Tanya Lewis, Staff Writer | December 03, 2014
Just as lingerie turns on human males, tiny jackets do the same for male rats, a new study finds.
In an unusual study, researchers allowed virgin male rats to have sex with females wearing special rodent "jackets." Later, when scientists gave the males a chance to mate again, the animals preferred to mate with jacket-wearing female rats rather than with unclad ones. The findings suggest that male animals can learn to associate the sight and feel of clothing with sex.
In other words, male rats learn that "each time my partner wears lingerie , I'm going to have sex," said study researcher Gonzalo R. Quintana Zunino, a psychologist at Concordia University in Montreal. In previous studies, Zunino and his colleagues trained rats to associate a particular odor (almond) with having sex, and male rats preferentially mated with females bearing that scent.
This time, the researchers wanted to know whether rats could learn to associate sex with other contextual cues, such as texture. In one experiment, a dozen virgin male rats were allowed to mate with females wearing jackets. Then, the males were put in a chamber with two sexually receptive female rats, one wearing a jacket and one "au naturel."
In general, when rats do the deed, the male approaches the female from behind and grabs hold of her on both sides, which excites her, Zunino told Live Science. If a human experimenter grabs the female in this way, she does a little wiggling dance, he said. If the female is wearing a jacket, the male will feel it with his whiskers while they are mating.
The trained male rats chose to mate with the jacket-clad females more often than with the unjacketed females, the researchers found. In addition, the males made more mounting attempts and ejaculated more quickly with the jacketed females.www.livescience.com/48980-rats-sexual-attraction-lingerie.html
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Post by auntym on Feb 12, 2015 15:00:30 GMT -6
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Post by auntym on Feb 12, 2015 16:08:22 GMT -6
www.theverge.com/2015/2/11/8014563/bill-gates-education-future-of-online-courses-third-world#b02g11t20w15Guest editor Bill GatesCan online classrooms help the developing world catch up?By Adi Robertson February 12, 2015 We're excited to have Bill Gates as our guest editor in February. Throughout the month, Bill will be sharing his vision of how technology will revolutionize life for the world's poor by 2030 by narrating episodes of the Big Future, our animated explainer series. In addition, we'll be publishing a series of features exploring the improvements in banking, health, farming, and education that will enable that revolution. And while the topics reflect the bets Bill and his wife Melinda are making with their foundation, they've asked us for nothing less than fully independent Verge journalism, which we're more than happy to deliver. Turns out Bill Gates is a pretty confident guy. Nilay Patel, Editor-in-Chief In 2012, a 15-year-old named Battushig Myanganbayar aced a circuits and electronics course designed for sophomores at MIT — from his school in Ulan Bator, Mongolia. Myanganbayar had watched lectures in English, a second language, and worked through the course material online with the help of a visiting Stanford Ph.D. candidate, Tony Kim. "If Battushig, at the age of 15, were a student at MIT, he would be one of the top students — if not the top," Kim told The New York Times. In fact, Myanganbayar went on to MIT a year later — crediting the online course as a "watershed" moment. Myanganbayar’s success is a testament to the power of online educational programs: thanks to revolutionary technology, a prodigious student has access to the education of his dreams. Today, Myanganbayar is even working with edX, the Harvard-MIT joint partnership behind the original course he took from Mongolia, to improve the experience for future students. Behind the student’s story, though, is a larger question: can online classes be used to help not just a few exceptional students, but the developing world at large? In his foundation’s 2015 annual letter, Bill Gates describes a future in which world-class education is only a few taps away, for anyone in the world. "Before a child even starts primary school, she will be able to use her mom’s smartphone to learn her numbers and letters, giving her a big head start," he speculates. "Software will be able to see when she’s having trouble with the material and adjust for her pace. She will collaborate with teachers and other students in a much richer way." Career paths, Gates speculates, will be built into this new education system — students will be able to lift themselves out of poverty by figuring out the requirements for their chosen field and fulfilling them with online classes. And software will connect students to distant teachers and each other. While the concept of remote learning is as old as correspondence courses, today it’s often discussed in the context of massively open online courses, or MOOCs. Organized by companies, universities, and nonprofits, MOOCs provide education in the form of online lectures, quizzes, and projects, allowing large numbers of students to learn at a flexible pace. WATCH VIDEO & CONTINUE READING: www.theverge.com/2015/2/11/8014563/bill-gates-education-future-of-online-courses-third-world#b02g11t20w15
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Post by swamprat on Feb 21, 2015 11:57:50 GMT -6
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Post by auntym on Apr 14, 2015 13:34:19 GMT -6
www.stumbleupon.com/su/1deZxZ/Paoy7z1M:PcPtLeonardo’s Brain: What a Posthumous Brain Scan Six Centuries Later Reveals about the Source of Da Vinci’s CreativityHow the most creative human who ever lived was able to access a different state of consciousness.by Maria Popova April 14, 2015 One September day in 2008, Leonard Shlain found himself having trouble buttoning his shirt with his right hand. He was admitted into the emergency room, diagnosed with Stage 4 brain cancer, and given nine months to live. Shlain — a surgeon by training and a self-described “synthesizer by nature” with an intense interest in the ennobling intersection of art and science, author of the now-legendary Art & Physics — had spent the previous seven years working on what he considered his magnum opus: a sort of postmortem brain scan of Leonardo da Vinci, performed six centuries after his death and fused with a detective story about his life, exploring what the unique neuroanatomy of the man commonly considered humanity’s greatest creative genius might reveal about the essence of creativity itself. Artwork from Alice and Martin Provensen's vintage pop-up book about the life of Leonardo. Shlain finished the book on May 3, 2009. He died a week later. His three children — Kimberly, Jordan, and filmmaker Tiffany Shlain — spent the next five years bringing their father’s final legacy to life. The result is Leonardo’s Brain: Understanding Da Vinci’s Creative Genius (public library | IndieBound) — an astonishing intellectual, and at times spiritual, journey into the center of human creativity via the particular brain of one undereducated, left-handed, nearly ambidextrous, vegetarian, pacifist, gay, singularly creative Renaissance male, who Shlain proposes was able to attain a different state of consciousness than “practically all other humans.” Noting that “a writer is always refining his ideas,” Shlain points out that the book is a synthesis of his three previous books, and an effort to live up to Kafka’s famous proclamation that “a book must be the axe for the frozen sea inside us.” It is also a beautiful celebration of the idea that art and science belong together and enrich one another whenever they converge. To understand Leonardo’s brain, Shlain points out as he proves himself once again the great poet of the scientific spirit, we must first understand our own: The human brain remains among the last few stubborn redoubts to yield its secrets to the experimental method. During the period that scientists expanded the horizons of astronomy, balanced the valences of chemistry, and determined the forces of physics, the crowning glory of Homo sapiens and its most enigmatic emanation, human consciousness, resisted the scientific model’s persistent searching. The brain accounts for only 2 percent of the body’s volume, yet consumes 20 percent of the body’s energy. A pearly gray, gelatinous, three-pound universe, this exceptional organ can map parsecs and plot the whereabouts of distant galaxies measured in quintillions of light-years. The brain accomplishes this magic trick without ever having to leave its ensorcelled ovoid cranial shell. From minuscule-wattage electrical currents crisscrossing and ricocheting within its walls, the brain can reconstruct a detailed diorama of how it imagines the Earth appeared four billion years ago. It can generate poetry so achingly beautiful that readers weep, hatred so intense that otherwise rational people revel in the torture of others, and love so oceanic that entwined lovers lose the boundaries of their physical beings. CONTINUE READING: www.stumbleupon.com/su/1deZxZ/Paoy7z1M:PcPt
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Post by auntym on Jul 31, 2015 12:53:46 GMT -6
Thousands of ducks flood a street
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Post by auntym on Aug 12, 2015 13:08:14 GMT -6
www.unexplained-mysteries.com/news/284680/divers-record-footage-of-real-life-jaws Divers record footage of 'real-life Jaws'Posted on Wednesday, 12 August, 2015 The enormous shark is over 20ft long. Image Credit: Facebook / Mauricio Hoyos Padilla Footage has emerged showing what is thought to be the largest great white shark ever recorded on film. In a scene reminiscent of something from Steven Spielberg's 1975 classic monster movie, scientists looking for sharks off the coast of Guadalupe Island in Mexico managed to film a gigantic 20ft great white known as 'Deep Blue' swimming around them. The shark was so large in fact that it was almost as big as the team's 22ft research vessel. "When I saw Deep Blue for the first time, there was just one thought in my mind: Hope," wrote researcher Mauricio Hoyos Padilla whose clip of Deep Blue has received over seven million views. "A shark of that size is at least 50 years old and that tells me protection and conservation efforts are really working. Deep Blue has been spared from longlines and the inherent dangers of being in the wild, and somehow she has found her way in the vast ocean." The huge shark will be featured as part of the Discovery Channel’s "Shark Week 2015" event in an episode entitled "Island of the Mega Shark" which is due to air on Saturday, August 29th. www.unexplained-mysteries.com/news/284680/divers-record-footage-of-real-life-jaws
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Post by swamprat on Aug 27, 2015 15:23:46 GMT -6
Diamond-back rattlesnake, found in a Tallahassee subdivision, about 20 miles north of me.....
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Post by Morgan Sierra on Aug 27, 2015 19:57:11 GMT -6
That is a BIG freaking fish and a BIG freaking snake! These are the things I keep having nightmares about. Is it any wonder I can't get any sleep?
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Post by Deleted on Aug 27, 2015 22:43:17 GMT -6
Shame to kill it..that snake was old..lots of buttons.
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Post by paulette on Aug 28, 2015 8:58:45 GMT -6
Shark old too. There was a show on the Animal Channel - dangerous encounters or something like that. They featured people who kept wild dangerous/poisonous animals in or near their homes and believed that they had a "special relationship" with them and that the animal knew or chose not to hurt them. It was the horriblest show I can imagine. I saw one where a woman kept a gabbor viper - and let it slither around in her house for exercise. It eventually bit her (of course) and the venom is a potent anti-coagulant and so she started bleeding out (everywhere). She left a note to take her to the hospital and give her anti-venom. She died without reaching the phone. The snake was still loose when the EMTs responded and contrary to her wishes was promptly killed.
Petting a 20 foot Great White is in the same catagory IMO. Some variety of bravado that I don't possess and never did.
PS. If you like gruesome check out the show. You won't be disappointed.
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Post by Deleted on Aug 28, 2015 10:16:17 GMT -6
I don't always understand the need for killing. At least the man who had the 50 pound lobster found an aquarium home for it. The stupid fool who found it necessary to slaughter a lion just to say he did..he sure wasn't going to eat it. Or the woman who is a game hunter pictured with the giraffe she killed. I can't see the 'high' in killing something beautiful and innocent. Innocent of guile..not innocent of acting like an animal. In our area..hunters over time always shot the largest bucks..with the biggest antlers for 'mounting' on their walls. Well by always killing the largest..our deer are miniaturized now. As we spread...the animals are losing the battle for existence.
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Post by lois on Aug 28, 2015 19:52:55 GMT -6
I would not want it near me. Paul. Look at the photo, The gap between the curve of the snake The back ground scrubs don't seem to match. Or is it my imagination? What kind of stick is it this man is holding. It seems to vanish among the scrubs which it should not. Just thinking? Ive stood next to bull snakes this big and was brave but not a rattle. No way. Keep your doggies in doors
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Post by swamprat on Aug 28, 2015 20:19:17 GMT -6
I agree, Lois. I'm thinking it may have been photo-shopped to move the snake forward to make it look bigger?
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Post by Deleted on Aug 28, 2015 23:21:42 GMT -6
Good call on the stick Lois..that's definitely hinky
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Post by Deleted on Aug 29, 2015 20:49:19 GMT -6
The stick, or whatever, is it ?curved? Is it punctured through the snake? Yeah, I thought the picture didn't look "quite right", but still don't know why . . . To me, the stuff around the snake curve DOES look like the background a LOT, come to think about it . . but I thought that was "brush" picked up with the snake. Like, the snake was already dead (wouldn't always kill it just by puncturing it, alone) and laying in something the consistency of "hay"? So when the guy punctured the snake, he punctured also some of the "hay" like material with it? This material appears to me, to be on the snake some, and in front of it. IDK. (the pic still looks wrong somehow) .
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Post by skywalker on Aug 29, 2015 21:37:48 GMT -6
I don't think it is photo-shopped. The stick is curved slightly towards the end. If you look at the stick in between the curve of the snake you can see that it bends slightly upwards. (Enlarging it helps to see it)And there are a few weeds hanging off of it from when he picked it up like Jc pointed out. The snake isn't quite as big as it looks because he is holding it closer to the camera which is exaggerating it's size a little so it appears to be larger than the guy holding it. It's not really humongous like that but it looks like it is still at least a 7 to 8 footer, which is about how big eastern diamondbacks have been known to get. That's still big for a freaking rattlesnake. Also the snake was obviously killed way before the guy even thought about picking it up. If you look at the neck close to the head you can see that it is pretty much mangled.
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Post by lois on Aug 29, 2015 21:54:25 GMT -6
Sky Now how do you know the twig leaves were on the stick when he picked it up? Those color tones do not match the bushes behind him . they are large leaves and not at all the same coloring. If the rod points up ward curve that large beast and heavy as it was would of slid down the stick to his hand. Unless he had a point like a knife blade on it to stab it like you do sword fish.
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Post by skywalker on Aug 29, 2015 22:36:42 GMT -6
The weeds were on the ground where the snake was when he picked it up with the stick. Look right where the stick is touching the snake and you can see some very thin strands of weeds and grass and stuff. I think the stick is some type of a tree branch.
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Post by Deleted on Aug 30, 2015 1:00:22 GMT -6
Clever fella
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Post by Deleted on Aug 30, 2015 10:21:04 GMT -6
Thanks Sky! (I need this kind of back-up. I'm having to put the reading glasses on more often these days. Sigh.)
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Post by skywalker on Dec 10, 2015 0:34:45 GMT -6
For those of you obsessed with the daily political circus I give you...Darth Trump!
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Post by swamprat on Jan 24, 2016 15:01:57 GMT -6
OOORAH!
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Post by auntym on Jan 24, 2016 17:59:07 GMT -6
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