First there was Walnut, a male Beaver living at Point Defiance Zoo & Aquarium. Then came Nutmeg, a female who arrived from Northwest Trek Wildlife Park as a companion for Walnut…and now baby makes three!
Born April 29, the new kit is thriving and growing daily. Fuzzy brown, around 13 inches long and weighing just under 24 ounces, the baby Beaver is a nursing champion, taking every chance it can get to nestle up to mom. He or she also eagerly explores the habitat behind-the-scenes at the zoo’s Wild Wonders Outdoor Theater. The kit is not yet viewable by the public.
Staff aren’t yet sure about the sex of the kit. Beavers’ genitalia are hidden inside, making it impossible to determine their sex just by looking. In a few weeks, the veterinary team will send a blood sample for genetic testing, which will reveal the sex. At that point, the Wild Wonders staff will choose a name.
Photo Credits: Katie Cotterill/PDZA
Beavers are born precocial, meaning they are a miniature version of adults, seeing well and moving independently.
The new baby spends most of each day snuggled up with mom and dad in their maternity suite at the zoo, where Nutmeg and Walnut have been crowd favorites in the Wild Wonders Outdoor Theater live animal show. They’re also popular during Close Encounters, where guests can get up-close views of various animals.
Meanwhile, the zoo’s veterinary team is visiting daily, weighing the Beaver kit to track growth and check on its health.
“It’s doing very well,” said Point Defiance Zoo & Aquarium Head Veterinarian, Karen Wolf. “Since birth, this kit has been an ‘eager beaver’ – if you’ll excuse the pun! – stomping around and looking for a nipple to nurse.”
A second kit also was part of the litter, but sadly, it had medical problems, and wasn’t able to nurse. Keepers took shifts around the clock to bottle-feed the little one every two hours, but after a week the veterinary team made the difficult but compassionate decision to euthanize it. A necropsy revealed multiple severe internal problems that would have prevented the kit from surviving.
“It’s sad, but it’s a part of life,” Wolf said. “We gave it our best effort, and it shows the incredible dedication of our zoo staff to care for every animal.”
Nutmeg and Walnut are vigilant parents, taking turns to nudge their kit when it roams too far, and snuggling up together for much of the day.
“They’re really good parents,” said Maureen O’Keefe, senior staff biologist at Wild Wonders. “If Nutmeg or Walnut go for a swim outside, they’ll cover the kit up with straw to keep it hidden.”
Dad, Walnut, has also started pulling branches across to the door leading out of the den to the outdoor swimming area.
“We think he might be building a ramp for the baby,” O’Keefe said. “He’s never done that before now.”
Beavers are nature’s engineers, using their phenomenal chewing powers to alter their environment and build lodges (indoor dens) and dams. They’re also very social animals, with family units living together. And, of course, they’re excellent swimmers, with kits learning skills in shallow pools inside the lodge. Keepers are giving the kit supervised swimming time each day in a baby-sized pool.
Walnut, who has lived at the zoo since he was two months old, is already happy to be back at his role in the Wild Wonders show, where he walks up a ramp and into a pool to show off his swimming skills.
Nutmeg and baby will rest behind the scenes for a few months. Sometime this summer, all three will make an appearance during a Close Encounter, O’Keefe said.
I used to go here all the time when I was living in Omuta. So good.
Fukuoka, Japan is home to the Ichiran ramen museum, where you can see ramen noodles being made. You can also eat at an Ichiran restaurant, where you buy a menu item ticket from a vending machine then sit in one of the walled-off cubicles along the counter, so you can eat without having to interact with anyone else. That's my kind of eatery.
[Welcome to the Sous-Chef Series, a new, sporadic feature on SK in which I invite cooks I admire over to my small kitchen to teach me — and thus, us — to make one of their specialties. Spoiler: I’m the sous!]
I first heard of the Russian restaurant Kachka when I was last in Portland, Oregon on book tour (hi, Powell’s!), when no fewer than a dozen people separately told me I had to go while I was there. A few said it wasn’t just their favorite restaurant in Portland, but their favorite restaurant, period. This made me all the more sad that I didn’t have time to make it happen. My regrets snowballed when I finally dug into the restaurant’s eponymous cookbook last summer. I was no further than the first page — where the confusion as to what is “Russian” food when “food from the former Soviet Union including Russia but also the countries surrounding it like Belarus, Latvia, Ukraine…” would be more accurate is humorously laid out — when I became deeply, emphatically obsessed with all that I’d missed.
From the Palm Beach Post: "an unusual bolt of lightning up to 10 times stronger than a typical flash that was caught on video by Boynton Beach resident Erica Hite on Sunday. The so-called continuous current, or positive lighting, which was identified by the National Weather Service in Miami after seeing the video, hit outside Hite’s apartment when she was taking video to show her family how bad the weather was."
Finally, the mystery of the origins of this weird flotsam has been revealed: a cargo container of Garfield phone parts that fell off a container ship decades ago had been lodged in a nearby cliff-cave and it had been dribbling out bright orange pieces of plastic ever since.
On Friday, five members of Ar Viltansoù and two journalists from Franceinfo have finally been able to visit the cave. "I saw garfield and container pieces all over the cave. But the bulk of the phones are already gone, the sea has done its job for thirty years. We arrive after the battle, "says Simonin-Le Meur in Ouest-France .
Merriam-Webster's Word of the Day for February 26, 2019 is:
avuncular \uh-VUNK-yuh-ler\ adjective
1 : suggestive of an uncle especially in kindliness or geniality
2 : of or relating to an uncle
Examples:
At 18 years her senior, May's brother was a steadying force in her life, supportive and avuncular.
"Today's generation of fans knew [Stan] Lee as the avuncular elder statesman who regaled packed halls at comic conventions with stories of his years in the medium, and for his cameos in every Marvel movie, which he continued well into his 90s." — Rob Salkowitz, Forbes, 12 Nov. 2018
Did you know?
Not all uncles are likeable fellows (Hamlet's murderous Uncle Claudius, for example, isn't exactly Mr. Nice Guy in William Shakespeare's tragedy), but avuncular reveals that, as a group, uncles are generally seen as affable and benevolent, if at times a bit patronizing. Avuncular derives from the Latin noun avunculus, which translates as "maternal uncle," but since at least the 19th century English speakers have used avuncular to refer to uncles from either side of the family or even to individuals who are simply uncle-like in character or behavior. And in case you were wondering, avunculus is also an ancestor of the word uncle itself.
Homelessness in New Orleans spiked after Hurricane Katrina, reaching 11,600 by 2007; today that number has been reduced by 90%, thanks to a "housing first" (previously) approach that starts by giving homeless people stable, permanent housing, and then addressing confounding factors like mental illness and substance addiction (on the grounds that these conditions are easier to treat when people have stable housing).
Martha Kegel is executive director of Unity New Orleans, the nonprofit that led the housing first coalition. In an interview with WBUR, she explains how the program worked in NOLA, and how much money it saved, because housing is much cheaper than ER visits, jails, and/or policing petty crime and dealing with its consequences.
The USA has an estimated homeless population of 500,000.
"Well we have reached what we call 'functional zero,' which means that we compiled a list using our outreach team [and] using our shelter lists that are updated every night. We housed, in their own apartments, every veteran on that list except nine that had refused housing, mostly because of mental illness. And we continued to work with those nine, at that point, [we] have housed four more of them. Then going forward, we have made a commitment that any time a veteran becomes newly homeless, we house them in an apartment within an average of 30 days or less. And we've maintained that now for over four years and we're extremely proud of that. It is very hard work. It requires a lot of organizations working together — and the VA and the Housing Authority — everybody working together to make that happen. We've also reduced the length of time that any homeless family spends homeless to less than 45 days. We're working on bringing that number down because the research shows that, you know, even the best run shelter is no place for a kid to be. And we're continuing to really work on chronic homelessness involving people with disabilities and really trying to end that."
If you told me a year and a half ago that I wouldn’t have just one, but two vegan cakes on the site, and that I liked them so that I honestly question from time to time why any cakes have any eggs in them, ever, I’d have thought you lost your mind. Let me explain: I know there are amazing and delicious vegan cakes in the world, but I believed I’d need flax eggs or the liquid from a can of chickpeas or some other magic to pull them off; I figured I’d leave it to the experts. Plus, I suspect my devotion to butter and buttermilk is well-established by now.
YouTuber Toni Patanen "Pupsi" likes to make musical instruments – ocarinas in particular – with vegetables. Here he cuts up some sweet potatoes and a squash, and then (at 1:39) plays a mystical version of Toto's Africa.
Katelyn Ohashi is about to become a household name. The 21-year-old UCLA gymnast wowed spectators with an absolutely flawless routine at the Anaheim Arena over the weekend, which subsequently went viral when the UCLA Gymnastics Twitter account tweeted video after her performance. Gymnastics Twitter account tweeted video after her performance. “A 10 isn’t enough for this floor routine by Katelyn Ohashi,” the tweet correctly expressed.
A male Southern Pudu was born at the L.A. Zoo on December 19, 2018.
The tiny fawn was born to first-time parents, Steph and Mario. The playful newborn may be difficult for visitors to spot in its habitat. According to keepers, he likes to spend a lot of time tucked away, close to mom.
Photo Credits: Los Angeles Zoo/ Tad Motoyama
The Pudús consist of two species of South American deer from the genus Pudu, and they are known as the world's smallest deer. Pudús range in size from 32 to 44 centimeters (13 to 17 in) tall, and grow up to 85 centimeters (33 in) long.
The Northern Pudú (Pudu mephistophiles) is found in Venezuela, Colombia, Ecuador, and Peru. The Southern Pudú (Pudu puda) is native to southern Chile and southwestern Argentina.
As of 2009, the Southern Pudu remains classified as “Near Threatened”, while the Northern Pudu is currently classified as “Vulnerable” on the IUCN Red List.
As a member of the Association of Zoos and Aquariums, the Los Angeles Zoo participates in the Species Survival Plan (SSP) for the Southern Pudu, whose population is declining in the wild.
On May 15, a male Southern Hairy-nosed Wombat was born at the L.A. Zoo to first-time parents, Olga and Murray.
The joey spent several important months safely tucked away in Olga's pouch, but he’s now emerged and can occasionally be seen on-exhibit in the ‘nocturnal house’ of the zoo’s Australia Habitat.
Photo Credits: L.A. Zoo/ Jamie Pham/ Tad Motoyama
The Southern Hairy-nosed Wombat (Lasiorhinus latifrons) is the smallest of the three species of wombats. It is found in areas from the eastern Nullarbor Plain to the New South Wales border area. The species is currently classified as “Near Threatened” on the IUCN Red List.
The species feeds primarily on select native perennial grasses and sedges, but they will consume introduced pasture species, forbs, and the leaves of woody shrubs if needed. The teeth of the wombat are very effective in grinding food into small particles.
The gestation period of the wombat lasts 22 days, and most births occur in October. When a young is born, it climbs into the mother’s pouch and clings to a teat. It will stay in the pouch for six months and grow to around 0.45 kg. Because wombats are natural burrowers, a mother's pouch faces backwards so that she can dig without getting dirt into her joey's home.
The joey will emerge from the pouch at around six months and begin grazing at the surface. The young is fully weaned when it is a year old and reaches full size at the age of three years.
The L.A. Zoo is one of only four in the country that take care of wombats, making their new little family one-third of the population of wombats in U.S. zoos!
These were airing while I lived in Japan, to my great delight.
Tommy Lee Jones does ads for Boss Coffee's Rainbow Mountain brand of iced coffee, most of which feature him as a fish-out-of-water immigrant observing and enjoying Japanese life, taking odd jobs (cab driver, train station guard, astronaut, etc) and occasionally using his magical powers. It's like a series of clips from an early-90s science fiction show set in a parralel universe. Which it is.
Jesus Jesus PC-8801 Box Art.jpg Developer(s) Enix Chunsoft (Famicom) Publisher(s) Enix King Records (Famicom) Director(s) Takanari Suzuki (Game Kyojin) Producer(s) Yutaka Takano Programmer(s) Takanari Suzuki (Game Kyojin) Artist(s) Shintaro Majima Writer(s) Koji Miya Composer(s) Koichi Sugiyama Series Jesus Platform(s) NEC PC-8801, Fujitsu FM-7, MSX2, Sharp X1, Famicom Release NEC PC-8801 JP: April 28, 1987 FM-7 JP: July 1987 MSX2 JP: October 21, 1987 Sharp X1 JP: November 1987 Famicom JP: March 17, 1989 Genre(s) Graphic Adventure, Visual Novel Mode(s) Single player Jesus (ジーザス Jīzasu) is a Graphic Adventure game developed and published by Enix. It was first released in 1987 on the NEC PC-8801, FM-77AV, Sharp X1, and the MSX2 and was later ported to the Nintendo Famicom in 1989 under the title Jesus: Kyōfu no Bio Monster (ジーザス：恐怖のバイオ・モンスター, lit. "Jesus: Dreadful Bio-Monster"). In 1991, a sequel, titled Jesus II was released on the PC-8801, PC-9801, and Sharp X68000.
The game's name refers to a space station called J.E.S.U.S., named after the Christian messiah Jesus. The ship is shaped like a double-edged sword a la Book of Revelation. Its inhabitants go on to fight a mysterious demonic alien from Halley's Comet.
Would love to curl up inside this geodesic papasan womb and I bet you could make your own for way less than $3,350.
The Planet is a personal pod chair complete with speakers and solar panels. It's a melding of the 1960s Lee West Stereo Alpha Egg Chair concept with a Buckminster Fuller geodesic vibe. The Planet sells for (gulp) $3,350. From MZPA:
An ergonomic mattress and such additional conveniences as a storage pocket, led-lamp, USB charging, speaker system and even solar panels – make The Planet a true stand-alone station for work and leisure.
The basis of The Planet is a constructor made up from triangular segments and fastenings. Adding or removing segments, you can change the shape and vary the degree of openness to the world around you.
Oh boy, I think I have a new hobby. I've just learned that you can combine puzzles, that have the same die cut, to make really awesome pieces of art. It had never occurred to me that manufacturers of mass-produced puzzles cut different puzzles of theirs in the same way, making the pieces interchangeable. It makes complete sense, of course, but my mind is still blown!
I learned about the art of "puzzle montage" from one of the readers of my inbox zine, Marcia Wiley (she's the gal in Seattle who's fixing up that cool old Checker Cab). She was visiting the Bay Area and we met up for the first time this past Friday. That's when she told me about her friend Tim Klein, who makes incredible puzzle montages. I'm excited to share his work with you.
In an email exchange, Tim told me that he learned about puzzle montages from the man who first made them, art professor Mel Andringa of Cedar Rapids, Iowa, "As far as I know, he and I are the only artists ever to pursue it seriously. And I think he's moved on to other things nowadays, so I may be the sole surviving practitioner."
And this is what Tim shared with me about his process:
...By selecting pieces from two or more compatible puzzles, I assemble a single "puzzle mashup" with surreal imagery that the publisher never imagined.
Sometimes the results are merely chuckle-making, such as my combination of King Tut's burial mask with the front of a truck, which I call "King of the Road". But my favorite montages are ones in which the whimsical is tinged with something a bit deeper, such as "The Mercy-Go-Round (Sunshine and Shadow)", in which a fairground carousel whirls riders around a church from the light to the dark and back again -- or "Surrogate", in which a strange hybrid of beer can and teddy bear opens its fuzzy arms and tells you to "consider yourself hugged".
[editor note: "Mercy", not "Merry"]
The imagery in jigsaw puzzles published nowadays tends to be very busy, often consisting of densely-packed collages constructed with Photoshop. But for my purposes, I favor puzzles from pre-digital years, when the picture was typically a photograph of a single subject, such as a galloping horse or a ballerina or the Empire State Building. As I visit thrift stores and garage sales in search of vintage puzzles, I sometimes feel like an archaeologist, taking great pleasure in discovering and "reconstructing" strange, shattered images whose shards have been languishing in suburban game closets for decades.
Take a look at some of his work (click to embiggen) and then go here to see the rest and to read Tim's notes about the specific pieces:
Aren't they magnificent?
So, yeah, I think I have a new hobby. In fact, I just dug out these two puzzles out of the closet. I know, they're "busy" and probably 'shopped but I still want to give it a go.
The Wellington Zoo welcomed an extra large litter of Capybara pups on October 25. First-time mother Iapa delivered seven pups - the normal litter size is three to four pups, but the litter size can range from one to eight.
The care team is keeping a watchful eye on mom and pups to ensure that each is nursing and developing properly. Keepers noted that Iapa is a bit exhausted but she’s doing well. For now, the new family is living in a private den where Iapa can bond with her babies.
Capybaras are the world’s largest Rodent species and are native to South America. They inhabit a variety of habitats including forests and grasslands and usually live near water.
Though not listed as being under threat, Capybaras are hunted extensively for their meat. They live groups of 10-20 individuals.
"The scene is reminiscent of the opening of the 1981 film Raiders of the Lost Ark, when Indiana Jones flees a cave half a step ahead of a giant boulder. Instead of running from a rock, Croft spends the game running through a city that crumbles around her as the world is reduced to shambles." — Bob Fekete, Newsweek, 21 Sept. 2018
"Career success does not exist in a vacuum. If the home life is a mess and the children and bills and house are in shambles, then it's very hard, if not impossible, to succeed at work." — Dr. Gail Saltz, quoted in Psychology Today, 1 May 2018
Did you know?
How does a word meaning "footstool" turn into a word meaning "mess"? Start with the Latin scamillum, meaning "little bench." Modify the spelling and you get the Old English sceamol, meaning "footstool" or "a table used for counting money or exhibiting goods." Alter again to the Middle English shameles, and the meaning can easily become more specific: "a table for the exhibition of meat for sale." Pluralize and you have the base of the 15th-century term shambles, meaning "meat market." A century takes shambles from "meat market" to "slaughterhouse," then to figurative use referring to a place of terrible slaughter or bloodshed (say, a battlefield). The scene of a slaughter can get messy, so it's logical for the word to pick up the modern sense "mess" or "state of great confusion." Transition accomplished.
Indicating in your will that you want to leave some money to a charity that reflects the values you were passionate about is a fine gesture.
Living a life of frugality so that you can leave a ridiculous amount of money to charity once you're gone: that's next level philanthropy.
Chow Yun-fat, the bad ass star of such films as Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon and Hard Boiled is very into this latter, hardcore-level of giving. Despite the wealth that his career in film has brought him, the 63-year old icon has spent years in Hong Kong, one of the world's most expensive cities, enjoying a simple life on around $100 U.S. dollars per month. Thanks to this monk-like level of frugality, it's estimated that when he passes, Chow will be leaving behind close to $714 million to charity.
Chow’s wife, Jasmine Tan, says that her husband manages to live so frugally in one of the world’s most expensive cities by frequenting street food stalls and rarely buying new things, according to an Oriental Daily report from last week. For example, for 17 years, Chow stuck with his trusty Nokia flip phone, only recently purchasing a new smartphone when his old device finally stopped working.
The 63-year-old Chow is often seen riding public transportation where he rocks a simple wardrobe — a shirt costing him 98 yuan ($14) and sandals costing another 15 yuan ($2). When asked why he likes to shop at discount shops despite his tremendous net worth, Chow replies, “I don’t wear clothes for other people. I just wear whatever I find comfortable.”
I don't know about you, but I find it very encouraging, given our current social and economic climate, that not every crazy-rich soul in the world is a self-serving lunatic.
Hey, I need everyone on earth to ask that White Russian be resurrected. It's very important.
There's a plot of land in Vermont where ice cream flavors go when they die. Located next to the Waterbury home of Ben & Jerry's plant and headquarters, the Flavor Graveyard is the final resting place for the company's discontinued flavors such as Wavy Gravy, White Russian, and (32) more.
“Ben & Jerry’s is known for outrageous, chunky, funky flavors,” said Flavor Guru Eric Fredette in a company press release. “But experimentation comes with risk, and not everybody likes our edgier ideas. Like everything else, ice cream flavors have a beginning and an end.”
This year, visitors who take a Ben & Jerry's factory tour, along with a visit to the Flavor Graveyard, between Oct. 29 and 31 will be treated to a sample of a limited edition pumpkin pie ice cream available only in Waterbury.
You can also visit their virtual burial ground and, if you wish, submit a request to "resurrect" any of the dead flavors. Zombie Schweddy Balls, anyone?
from trs80.org: “
You are in charge of a spaceship…which is assigned to protect an isolated outhouse. For some strange reason, alien spaceship are targeting the structure for destruction. Equally troubling are the thieves and squatters who are attempting to steal all of the paper from the outhouse.
“
[Welcome to the Sous-Chef Series, a new, sporadic feature on SK in which I invite cooks I admire over to my small kitchen to teach me — and thus, us — to make one of their specialties. Spoiler: I’m the sous!]
If you told me a year and a half ago that I wouldn’t have just one, but two vegan cakes on the site, and that I liked them so that I honestly question from time to time why any cakes have any eggs in them, ever, I’d have thought you lost your mind. Let me explain: I know there are amazing and delicious vegan cakes in the world, but I believed I’d need flax eggs or the liquid from a can of chickpeas or some other magic to pull them off; I figured I’d leave it to the experts. Plus, I suspect my devotion to butter and buttermilk is well-established by now.
isn't enough for this floor routine by @katelyn_ohashi.
pic.twitter.com/pqUzl7AlUA
