Something cool thread

[redskinss]

Deleted

 

Edited January 30, 2019 by redskinss

[China]

Squirrel emerges victorious in treetop showdown with bald eagle

 

There, in a tree next to the Rite Aid store, was a bald eagle. And it was behaving a bit oddly.

 

“I thought, ‘Well, it’s not really great light, but it’ll be interesting to get some pictures,” said Stevens, a professional photographer who has published several photo books. “I stopped the car and started looking at it, and it kept looking straight down.”

 

Stevens figured the eagle was looking at something and decided to keep watching. That’s when a gray squirrel walked into the frame.

 

The squirrel was seemingly outmatched, seeing as how it was facing down a known squirrel-munching predator, but it didn’t seem too concerned. In fact, Stevens said, the squirrel seemed downright ornery.

 

“[The squirrel] just kept seeing how close it could get to the eagle. [It] would come up and just taunt him, dare him [to attack],” Stevens said. “The eagle is pretty much [limited]. It can’t get out of the tree and grab him with his talons, because it’s too close. So the only chance he had was his beak. And that squirrel seemed to know just how close it could get to the eagle to really make him mad.”

 

 

And eventually, the squirrel emerged victorious.

 

“[The eagle] said, ‘Leave me alone,’ and he flew away,” Stevens said. “And he flew off over the lake.”

 

Click on the link for the full article

[China]

Unavailable for comment

[JSSkinz]

 

[China]

 

[China]

Perfectly-preserved lizard found in belly of 125 million-year-old flying dinosaur

 

In the belly of one of the dinosaurs found buried in volcanic ash in Liaoning province, north-east China, researchers have found the remains of a cretaceous-era lizard previously unknown to science.

 

The remains of the 125 million-year-old creature were almost complete – and show it was swallowed whole and, probably head first.

 

The remarkable find sheds fresh light on the feeding habits of microraptors, small bird-like dinosaurs which are thought to have glided from tree to tree using long feathers on their arms and legs.

Microraptor zhaoianus had large eyes, suggesting that it may have hunted at night, and may even have been capable of flapping its arm and leg "wings" for extra lift.

 

It would have weighed around 2lbs in life, and had a wing span of about three feet.

 

It had a varied diet that included small mammals, early birds and – in this case – a lizard.

 

 

Click on the link for the full article

[Renegade7]

[Renegade7]

 

[Jumbo]

The Sherp Makes Every Other Off-Roader Look Weak

https://www.msn.com/en-us/autos/enthusiasts/the-sherp-makes-every-other-off-roader-look-weak/ar-AAEmcri?li=BBnb7Kz

 

 

 

[PCS]

 

[China]

Medievalists excited at parchment fragment of 'vagina monologue'

 

It has been called the earliest form of the Vagina Monologues – an argument in verse between a woman and her vulva, originating in the Middle Ages.

 

Now a fragment of the text, about who gives more pleasure to men, dates the poem to 200 years earlier than previously thought.

 

Medievalists are thrilled by the find, in the archive of an Austrian monastery, which rewrites the history of sexuality in medieval literature. Fragments from 60 lines of The Rose Thorn (Der Rosendorn) were discovered on a thin strip of parchment in the library of the baroque Melk Abbey on the banks of the Danube in Austria’s Wachau Valley.

 

The abbey find means that the poem can now be dated to about 1300. Until the parchment discovery it was believed that Der Rosendorn had not been composed until the end of the Middle Ages, about two centuries later. Two existing versions of the poem, known as the Dresden Codex and the Karlsruhe Codex, are a constant fascination for medievalists who consider it one of the first ever erotic poems.

 

In the poem, a virgin woman (junkfrouwe) argues in a free-flowing, often witty dialogue, with her speaking vulva (fud) about which of them is held in the higher regard by men.

The virgin argues that it is by her looks that men are won over, whilst the vulva, accusing the virgin of putting too much stress on her appearance, says it is she who provides the true pleasure. The two decide to part company, but find themselves deeply unhappy and so reunite to allay their suffering. They conclude that they are better together, as a person and their sex are quite simply inseparable.

 

Click on the link for the full article

[China]

Nearby Super-Earth Found Just 31 Light-Years Away May Be Habitable, Scientists Say

 

Just 31 light-years away, one of the closest worlds ever detected could harbour liquid water on its surface.

 

NASA's Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite, or TESS – a super-powerful orbiting telescope that scouts the sky for alien worlds – spotted a new planet circling a nearby star in the Hydra constellation. When astronomers checked the star for confirmation, they discovered two more worlds orbiting it.

 

One of those planets, called GJ 357 d, could support liquid water if it turns out to have a thick atmosphere and be made of rock.

 

It's among the 45 closest exoplanets confirmed to date, out of a total 4,025 planets tallied so far outside our solar system.

 

This planet system is the third-closest identified using the "transit" method, in which telescopes watch for tiny dips in a star's brightness that could be caused by a planet passing in front of it. The Kepler telescope pioneered the technique, though it's been refined by TESS.

 

The promising planet is in its star's "habitable zone", the range of distances in which a rocky world could have the right surface temperature for liquid water to exist.

 

"GJ 357 d is located within the outer edge of its star's habitable zone, where it receives about the same amount of stellar energy from its star as Mars does from the Sun," Diana Kossakowski, a member of the team that discovered the planet, said in a press release.

 

"If the planet has a dense atmosphere, which will take future studies to determine, it could trap enough heat to warm the planet and allow liquid water on its surface," Kossakowski said.

 

Click on the link for the full article

[mcsluggo]

 

many happy fantasies began  by gazing at the cover of a Herp Albert album.....

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

she is 82 now....

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

http://coolalbumreview.com/?p=32426&fbclid=IwAR01eTuQmVA6bRnCv8EBmWHeXWBeho133GMJslj5HagHfh38uJlReHkcMmc

Quote

Herb Alpert’s ‘Whipped Cream Lady’ is a lovely 82 Years Old….

Boomer Guys, the girl of your teen dreams is now 82 years old

Her name is Dolores Erickson and she has been living in the Seattle for around 40 years, after a career that included being an Eileen Ford model in New York.

She appeared at a Seattle record store recently and wants to tell you teen dreamers, “Enjoy the memories.”

You don’t know her by name — maybe as the “Whipped Cream Lady” — but certainly by the album cover on which she is featured: the 1965 Herb Alpert & the Tijuana Brass‘ Whipped Cream & Other Delights.

There she is, seemingly naked but covered in what is supposed to be whipping cream looking at YOU.

Whenever a list of the most memorable record covers is put together, that album is right at the top.

How did a 2006 New Yorker magazine article explain the impact of that photo?

Oh, yes, it: “fogged the minds of many young men, as they gazed at the… personalized come-hitherhood to the woman staring back … the inner portion of a bare breast protrudes from the foam. She is licking cream from the index finger of her right hand… in the virtually pornless atmosphere of the suburban mid-sixties it was … the pinnacle of allure.”

In later years, at concerts, Alpert would tell audiences, “Sorry, but I can’t play the cover for you.”

<more at link...>

 

 

Edited September 11, 2019 by mcsluggo

[China]

Camera Catches Possible Mountain Lion Climbing Up Fence at Georgetown Home

 

A huge cat spotted climbing up a Georgetown homeowner's fence has residents wondering what's lurking around their neighborhood at night.

 

 

Giulia di Marzo said she checked her Ring security camera footage Sunday morning to find video of what appears to be a mountain lion crawling up their fence about 4 a.m.

 

Click on the link for the full article

[LadySkinsFan]

On 9/11/2019 at 11:40 AM, mcsluggo said:

 

many happy fantasies began  by gazing at the cover of a Herp Albert album.....

 

 

 

 

I certainly stared at it!  😎

[skinsmarydu]

On 9/16/2019 at 3:41 PM, LadySkinsFan said:

 

 

I certainly stared at it!  😎

My dad had lots of his 8-tracks, (for the youngins, cover pics were small) so I never got the joke! 

[StillUnknown]

 

I can't draw a damn stick figure, he clearly stole my portion of artistic talent

[China]

Rare footage of grizzly bears fighting on B.C. highway posted on social media

 

A video posted on social media of two grizzly bears attacking each other on a B.C. highway has gone viral.

 

The rare footage, posted by Cari McGillivray on Facebook Friday, shows the two bears growling at each other, apparently on Cassiar Highway near Stewart, B.C.

 

The bears are then seen battling each other on their hind legs as they move across the highway.

 

One Facebook user wrote: “The bears fighting AND a wolf in the background. Highly rare capture.”

 

 

Click on the link for the full article

[China]

'Spanish Stonehenge' revealed in retreating reservoir waters after hot, dry summer

 

A petition to preserve a formerly submerged stone monument dubbed the "Spanish Stonehenge" has attracted more than 43,000 signatures after the ancient rock formation was exposed by the European drought.

 

 

The Dolmen of Guadalperal comprises more than 100 upright rocks, arranged in a circle formation.

 

This formation is surrounded by a ring of stones piled on top of each other with an entrance that faces the direction of what used to be the banks of the Tagus River.

 

It is believed to have been built about 7,000 years ago.

 

Click on the link for the full article

[mcsluggo]

 

this is actually true

[LadySkinsFan]

The Far Side is the greatest.

[China]

Cache of Crypto-Jewish recipes dating to Inquisition found in Miami kitchen

 

A few years ago, Genie Milgrom came across a treasure trove of old recipes stashed away in her elderly mother’s kitchen drawers. There were hundreds of them — some in tattered notebooks, others scribbled on crumbling scraps of paper.

 

 

Upon closer examination, it became apparent to Milgrom that these were the handwritten notations of generations of women in her family. The recipes had traveled as an intact, ever-growing collection from Spain to Portugal to Cuba to the United States, reflecting not only the lives of Milgrom’s ancestors, but also the hidden heritage they had for the most part unknowingly safeguarded since the time of the Spanish Inquisition.

 

Milgrom, who grew up devoutly Roman Catholic in Havana and Miami, has Crypto-Jewish roots. Her ancestors were Jews who practiced Judaism in secret while outwardly living as Christians to avoid being expelled, tortured, or killed by the Church. They were Crypto-Jews until the late 17th century, and lived as Catholics from then on. Through a decade-long, intense genealogical search, Milgrom discovered that she has an unbroken Jewish maternal lineage going back 22 generations to 1405 pre-Inquisition Spain and Portugal.

 

Her new kosher cookbook, “Recipes of My 15 Grandmothers: Unique Recipes and Stories from the Times of the Crypto-Jews during the Spanish Inquisition,” is a tribute to those female relatives who repressed or forgot their Jewish identity over hundreds of years, but managed to preserve vestiges of it through their food.

As a girl, Milgrom didn’t think to question the idiosyncratic customs her mother and grandmothers practiced in the kitchen.

 

Recipes didn’t mix milk and meat, eggs were always cracked into a separate bowl and inspected for blood before use, and rice and leafy green vegetables were washed carefully and checked for insects. Curiously, some recipes called for potato or corn starch instead of wheat flour. And perhaps most unusually, Milgrom was instructed by her Spanish-born grandmother that when preparing a large batch of dough, one had to always pull off a small piece, wrap it in foil, and throw it the back of the oven to burn.

 

“She told me it was for good luck,” Milgrom, 64, told The Times of Israel during a recent interview at a Jerusalem hotel.

 

When Milgrom was in her 30s, as a young divorcee she felt drawn to Judaism and she converted to Modern Orthodox Judaism. She married a Jewish man and then discovered she might have Crypto-Jewish heritage. She realized that her family’s unique culinary habits were actually related to kashrut — the Jewish dietary laws — and other commandments surrounding food preparation. For instance, tearing off a bit of dough and burning it is called hafrashat challah (separating challah), a Jewish religious commandment stemming from a biblical sacrifice.

 

Click on the link for the full article

[PokerPacker]

On 9/11/2019 at 12:40 PM, mcsluggo said:

<Whipped cream and other delights>

Its also been rewhipped

[LadySkinsFan]

On my.

[China]

Dolphins are swimming, mating and even giving birth in the Potomac

 

REEDVILLE, Va. — Five decades ago, President Lyndon B. Johnson declared the polluted Potomac River a “national disgrace.” Although it is now much cleaner, officials in Washington are still not convinced the water is safe for humans to swim in.

 

But many miles downriver, where the Potomac widens to lake-like proportions as it flows toward the Chesapeake Bay, it teems with a different species of swimmers whose presence may signal healthier waters: dolphins.

 

During the past four years, researchers who study the common bottlenose dolphins swimming this part of the Potomac have hardly been able to keep up with their numbers. Dolphins are easily identified by their distinct fins or marks on their bodies, and in 2015, scientists identified about 200 individuals in one section of river off Virginia’s Northern Neck. Now they have counted well over 1,000 dolphins, which sometimes congregate in groups of more than 200.

 

But an even more unusual development in this effort to understand the dolphins in “the nation’s river” came in August, when researchers with the project, based at Georgetown University, witnessed evidence of a dolphin birth. It was only the third-ever documented observation of a wild dolphin birth, and those present say they hope it makes area residents view the Potomac differently.

 

“There are dolphins here, and there’s breeding and birthing going on, and this is connected to D.C. — such a populated, urban area,” Ann-Marie Jacoby, co-director of the Potomac-Chesapeake Dolphin Project, said on a recent morning while scanning the lower Potomac from the 18-foot skiff that serves as a research vessel. “You follow it further down and there’s all this wildlife here. And what people are doing up there, it does affect wildlife. They are directly linked to this oasis.”

 

A newborn dolphin, later named Gwendolyn Mink by researchers, swims alongside its mother, Patsy Mink. Researchers with a Georgetown University-based dolphin study witnessed the immediate aftermath of the baby's birth, only the third-ever documented wild dolphin birth. (Potomac-Chesapeake Dolphin Project/Ann-Marie Jacoby) (Ann-Marie Jacoby/Potomac-Chesapeake Dolphin Project)

 

Click on the link for the full article