Winner, World's Ugliest Dog

Qausi Modo, a ten year old mutt with a hunch back won this year's World's Ugliest Dog contest, defeating last year's winner, and this years first runner up, Sweepea, another mutt. 

Sweepea

Now that's an ugly beast.

appalachian meadow

I love a jog along a deer trail through this kind of open space!

JIM HANSEN: last place in the Boston Marathon?

Jim ran the Boston on April 15, 2000. He watched the marathon on TV with his 3rd grade class. After school when the official competition had concluded Jim ran the race alone for his kids.

total field of 17,400 runners

Surprisingly he was escorted by police motorcycles and TV cameras greeted him at the finish.

Paulette Goddard

my ma looked much like her from photos at this age

AKA Pauline Marion Levy

Born: 3-Jun-1910
Birthplace: Queens, NY
Died: 23-Apr-1990
Location of death: Ronco, Switzerland
Cause of death: Heart Failure
Remains: Buried, Ronco Cemetery, Ronco, Switzerland

Bequeathed $20M to New York University.

Husband: Edgar James (m. 1927, div. 1931, married him when she was only 15)
Husband: Charlie Chaplin (actor, m. 1936, div. 1942)
Husband: Burgess Meredith (actor, m. 21-May-1944, div. 1950)
Husband: Erich Maria Remarque (German novelist, m. 25-Feb-1958, d. 25-Sep-1970)

Beach Sign, Nudist Only

Interesting sign at the entrance to a public nude beach in South America.  The objects in blue are the 'must do's', lease your dog and pick up your trash.  Those in red are the prohibitions, no broken glass, no football, no bikes, and oh yeah, no bathing suits. HE - HE.

Identify this Bird

This week, while taking a walk, I saw a beautiful blue bird.  The blue was so rich, bluer than any alive thing I've ever seen.  It was flying back and forth between some small trees and brush. Accompanied by a kind of grayish brown mate.  The song it was singing went "tic tic tic tic etc" rapidly.  The sound was akin to a mechanical  sound.  I've got a couple ideas but none of them are a precise match.

This is a stock photo, not the bird I saw.  It looked something like this.

In My Lodge at Wang Chuan by Wang Wei

The woods have stored the rain, and slow comes the smoke
As rice is cooked on faggots and carried to the fields;
Over the quiet marsh-land flies a white egret,
And mango-birds are singing in the full summer trees....
I have learned to watch in peace the mountain morningglories,
To eat split dewy sunflower-seeds under a bough of pine,
To yield the post of honour to any boor at all....
Why should I frighten sea gulls, even with a thought?

Gettysburg- Fact

There are 1,328 monuments, markers, and memorials at Gettysburg National Park.

do as pigs do?

The Summer Sun Shone Round Me

THE summer sun shone round me,
The folded valley lay
In a stream of sun and odour,
That sultry summer day.

The tall trees stood in the sunlight
As still as still could be,
But the deep grass sighed and rustled
And bowed and beckoned me.

The deep grass moved and whispered
And bowed and brushed my face.
It whispered in the sunshine:
"The winter comes apace."

by Robert Louis Stevenson

Steed Dies

Patrick Mcnee, aka John Steed, dead at 93.  Great series.  Rip.

Everyone in The Pool

The Center for Disease for Control has determined that the cause of eye irritation in swimming pools is urine not chlorine.  The use of urine-indicator dye (available on the internet) a substance which is supposed to be able to react with urine to form a colored cloud in a swimming thus indicating the location of people who are urinating while they are in the pool, is a myth.  Swim anyone?

To be happy

Pleasure is spread through the earth
In stray gifts to be claimed by whoever shall find.
~William Wordsworth, 1806

jpr: my son and his two boys nears filled a gallon pale in 1/2 hr back yonders from the house. Could do'm several buckets at same time if'n they be had.

Medical properties and use of Whisky

Whisky is a powerful stimulant to the heart and arteries and the general nervous forces, and counteracts malaria, hardens the tissues of the lungs, counteracts tuberculosis, or consumption. Taken properly it diffuses a warmth all over the body, acting on the brain forces so as to make a person feel hopeful, buoyant and ambitious.
It is also effective against low level fevers.

jpr: hill folk been knowed to brew some good squeeings without a lot of fussen.

New Words for the Dictionary.

New words added to the Oxford English Dictionary.  Words must have been in general use for 10 years before being accepted..

Cisgender - designating a person whose sense of personal identity matches their gender at birth

Guerrilla - describing activities carried out in an irregular and spontaneous way

Gimmick - to mean "a night out with friends".

Twitterati - describing users of the social media service Twitter

Fo' shizzle - meaning "for sure".

Akashi Kaikyō Bridge

Akashi Kaikyō Bridge (Japan) completed in 1998 at a cost of Y500 billion or $6 billion (converting to USD using this data and then adjusting to 2011 dollars. It is the longest suspension bridge in the world and it is probably Japan’s greatest engineering feat.

It took two million workers ten years to construct the bridge, 181,000 tonnes of steel and 1.4million cubic metres of concrete. The steel cable used would circle the world seven times.

snapping turtle epidemic

These guys are breeding like reptiles...eh insects!

Animal Story Week

A Japanese man has been attracting attention on the streets of Tokyo walking his pet giant African tortoise. 62-year-old Hisao Mitani has been taking his pet Bon-chan, a giant African tortoise on daily walks for 20 years. The turtle follows him faithfully, stopping occasionally to be hand fed.

see http://www.bbc.com/news//newsround/33106195 for a laugh

emma watson

Whose childhood is over?

One for the books.

Yep, the raccoon is riding a gator, Ocala National Forest.

The Parrot Man

I loved being in the police cause everyday you got to meet and know the world's strangest, weirdest, and most bizarre people.  I would have loved this guy, who wants to be a parrot.  Even had his eyeballs tattooed. 

West Virginia

The US Constitution does not allow a new state to be created from an existing state. When Virginia succeeded from the union, President Lincoln reluctantly recognized the new 35th state of West Virginia on June 20th, 1863.

Proposed names for the new state at the time were Allegheny, New Virginia, Augusta, and Kanawha. ...Kanawha mountain momma!

grammar can kill

Let's eat grandma!
Let's, eat grandma!

I Wish It Had been So.

my favorite "Father" poem, most bittersweet

My Papa’s Waltz

BY THEODORE ROETHKE

The whiskey on your breath   

Could make a small boy dizzy;   

But I hung on like death:   

Such waltzing was not easy.

We romped until the pans   

Slid from the kitchen shelf;   

My mother’s countenance   

Could not unfrown itself.

The hand that held my wrist   

Was battered on one knuckle;   

At every step you missed

My right ear scraped a buckle.

You beat time on my head   

With a palm caked hard by dirt,   

Then waltzed me off to bed   

Still clinging to your shirt.

A Message For Our Children On Father's Day

Be kind to thy father, 
for when thou wert young, 
Who loved thee so fondly as he? 
He caught the first accents that
fell from thy tongue, 
And joined in thy innocent glee. 

billy, jay, mikey

why COI?

That's why!! It could be you or your child!!

Speckled Cape Tortoise

Tortoise Shell

....

The Lord wrote it all down on the little slate
Of the baby tortoise.
Outward and visible indication of the plan within,
The complex, manifold involvednes,s of an individual creature
Plotted out
On this small bird, this rudiment,
This little dome, this pediment
Of all creation,
This slow one.


David Herbert Lawrence

Shakespeare Quotations on Marriage

Men are April when they woo, December when they wed: maids are May when they are maids, but the sky changes when they are wives.
(As You Like It 4.1.130-2)

The instances that second marriage move
Are base respects of thrift, but none of love.
(Hamlet 3.2.185-6)


I will be master of what is mine own:
She is my goods, my chattels; she is my house,
My household stuff, my field, my barn,
My horse, my ox, my ass, my any thing.
(The Taming of the Shrew 3.2.228-31)

jpr: The last one is purely for laughs.

Peace

“The more you sweat in peacetime, the less you bleed during war.”
--Chinese Proverb quotes

Most Popular male dog names

1. Max
2. Buddy
3. Rocky
4. Bailey
5. Jake
6. Charlie
7. Jack
8. Toby
9. Cody
10. Buster

11. Duke
12. Cooper
13. Riley
14. Harley
15. Bear
16. Tucker
17. Murphy
18. Lucky
19. Oliver
20. Sam
21. Oscar
22. Teddy
23. Winston
24. Sammy
25. Rusty


1255. Houdi

Women on Money continued

Bruce Jenner

US going to put Women on Money Bills - continued

Sarah Silverman
Amy Schumer
the lead detective girl from Castle
Bride of Frankenstein (wouldn't that be a gas!)
Tyra Banks
Cheyenne Woods
Rashida Jones
Aubrey Plaza
Scott Thompson (he's great)
anyone JP selected for his hot chick series
Catwoman

irish yoke

Why does it take five Irishmen to change a lightbulb?
One to change the bulb. Four to remark about how grand the old bulb was.

US going to put Women on Money Bills - taking suggestions

so's lets vote on the choices i'd prefer:
Charlize Theron
Scarlett Johannson
Serena Williams
Pamala Anderson the younger
Rhona Rousey
Mila Jovovich
Marilyn Monroe the living

add your own and give me a few minutes; i'll think of more

george jones a real country classic

RIP

 
jpr: enjoy if you dare

https://www.google.com/?gws_rd=ssl#q=just+because+++by+george+jones

Dreams by Anne Bronte

While on my lonely couch I lie,
I seldom feel myself alone,
For fancy fills my dreaming eye
With scenes and pleasures of its own.
Then I may cherish at my breast
An infant's form beloved and fair,
May smile and soothe it into rest
With all a Mother's fondest care

anne's father was born in Ireland

.

World History According to Students

The inhabitants of Egypt were called mummies. They lived in the Sarah Dessert and traveled by Camelot. The climate of the Sarah is such that the inhabitants have to live elsewhere, so certain areas of the dessert are cultivated by irritation. The Egyptians built the Pyramids in the shape of a huge triangular cube. The Pyramids are a range of mountains between France and Spain.

madeleine stowe

I an a devoted fan!!!!!!!

Ruthwell Cross

The Ruthwell Cross is an 18-foot-tall, free-standing stone carving that depicts scenes from the bible, decorative vine work, and 18 verses from the Old English poem The Dream of the Rood, in Anglo-Saxon runes and Latin lettering. It is a "preaching cross," most likely designed to either convert pagans to Christianity or to instruct Christians from a pagan background.
The Ruthwell Cross is a powerful religious symbol, a marvelous work of Anglo-Saxon art, and a significant source of literary and historical evidence.

Omg lightening

Jpr: light and thunder separate at 5 secs per mile  with sound trailing of course. my dog an I sitting on the deck experienced a bolt in the back woods where the sound and flash were indistinguishable. O M G!

julieta cardinali

Argentinean sensation...who cares about the plot when she is in the movie!

mushroom house in Appalachia

Piny Fork, WVa,     priceless upon an occasion

veggie garden

  Ingenious!

Vacancy -- Lego Professorship

Cambridge University  has announced its accepting applications for its new Lego Professorship in their Play Research Center.  Lego Foundation has provided the university with £2.5m to fund a Lego Professorship of Play in Education, Development and Learning.  It has also provided £1.5m to support the play research center in the education faculty, which will be led by the Lego professor.  I'd apply, play is my specialty, but I hate the damn things.

biobooks

What started as an idea for an iPad application evolved into a more accessible tool for the next generation of electronic textbooks called “BioBook.. “Students can access BioBook from desktop PCs, laptops, iPads and mobile devices.” said Johnson.

Johnson is a champion of research findings that prove non-linear, collaborative interaction increases both learning and student engagement. These ideas were the foundation for BioBook.
With a traditional book, content is read in the order prescribed by the publisher. With BioBook, readers can personalize the order in which information is absorbed. In BioBook, Learning “Nodes,” or connection points, let student’s accomplish one or two well-defined learning outcomes with links to supplementary material and challenge questions. Students can read and complete Learning Nodes in any order that engages them and strikes them as logical.

June is snake month

The new born gets to moving about real good at this time.

Food in Ancient Ireland

The main staple of the Irish diet of the time was porridge, or stirabout, with dairy products. Bread was also eaten although wheat was the most difficult of the cereal crops grown in that region.

Porridge was generally made of oatmeal and eaten with butter, milk, or honey. It could also be made of wheat or barley meal. Stirabout made on new milk was considered the best, served with honey and fresh butter, but it could be made on buttermilk or water, and served with salt butter. Butter of any kind was the preferred condiment.

Today's Useless Factoid

The hoatzin (Opisthocomus hoazin), also known as the 'stinkbird,' is a species of tropical bird found in swamps, riparian forests, and mangroves of the Amazon. It is notable for claws on two of their wing digits; its unusual diet of leaves only; and for its smell.  The bird's constant  'excrement smell' is reportedly one of the ' foulest' in the animal kingdom. 

COI helpers

The Criminal Ornithological Investigation Dept of India has trained a range of animals to assist in the apprehension of law breakers.

Bear In There by Shel Silverstein

There's a Polar Bear
In our Frigidaire--
He likes it 'cause it's cold in there.
With his seat in the meat
And his face in the fish
And his big hairy paws
In the buttery dish,
He's nibbling the noodles,
He's munching the rice,
He's slurping the soda,
He's licking the ice.
And he lets out a roar
If you open the door.
And it gives me a scare
To know he's in there--
That Polary Bear
In our Fridgitydaire.

USELESS BUT INTERESTING FACTOID.

Of the 3,446 Medal of Honor awards, 267, 8.5%, were awarded to men born in Ireland.  That's more than half of all awards to non-native recipients.  Irish Americans won 2,018 of the remaining awards, twice as many as any other ethnic group.  And that means nearly two thirds of all awards were to people of Irish ancestry.  Not bad for people who first came to this country as slaves.

bird bath???

He looks the way we wish to feel in Summer's heat.

Solar alert

Sunspot AR1465 has developed a magnetic field that harbors energy for strong solar flares. Because of the sunspot's location near the middle of the solar disk, any eruptions will likely be Earth-directed.

My students magnetic flux density telescope awaits with anticipation.