Kara Jean

The Perth Zoo in Australia had another successful season in their efforts to conserve Western Swamp Tortoises with 33 successful hatches. The zoo has been working hard since 1989 to help conserve this critically endangered species by rebuilding their wild population through a captive breeding and reintroduction program. Since the program's initiation, the zoo has hatched more than 800 tortoises, 600 of which have been successfully reintroduced to the wild. 

In order to help increase the hatching success, after tortoises lay their eggs, keepers dig them up and place them in incubators. They remain here for four to six months until the hatchlings emerge. This year, the zoo was able to capture rare footage of two tortoises emerging from their shells, which can be found below. After they are born, the hatchlings are weighed and marked with nail polish on their shells so that they can be individually identified.




Photo credits: Daniel Scarparolo / Perth Zoo



Hatchlings are raised at the zoo for about three years until they reach 100 grams in weight. At this point they are released into one of four sites that are managed by the Western Australian Department of Environment and Conservation to help boost the wild population. In addition, the zoo maintains an "insurance population" of 150-200 Western Swamp Tortoises in case of an unforseen  drastic decline in wild number.

See more photos after the fold!

Related articles Thousands of Giant Pacific Octopus Eggs Hatch at Alaska SeaLife Center Zoo Rescue Operation Saves Endangered Condor Chick Could You Be Spending 50 Cents On Car Insurance? Tiny Pancake Tortoises Hatch at Gladys Porter Zoo

mothgirlwings: “To Boo Or Not To Boo” (1951)

Here for your enjoyment are four minutes and ten seconds of America’s Newest Hero, the as-yet unidentified man heard here calling InfoWars “reporter” Dan Bidondi — and his boss infamous turd nugget Alex Jones — the most delightful variety of swears captured on video since whenever Susie Essman was last on Curb Your Enthusiasm. (Kid Zoom’s reaction: “What a jackass! I love him!”)

Yr Wonkette heartily endorses the sentiments expressed by this citizen-journalist toward the “right-wing conspiracy nudnik,” and hopes that “keep runnin’ your pissflaps” and “drink a dick, dude” catch on in the common parlance. “Keep fuckin’ that chicken” had a good run, but we think that, after the horrors in Boston, America is at last ready to fall in love with a new catchphrase.

[RawStory via alert tipster sullivanst]

iwanttoliveinthewoods:

Andy Goldsworthy 

‘Horse chestnut leaves
sections torn out
pinned with thorns to sticks pushed into pond bottom
muddy black clouds stirred up around where I worked
over the week the leaves began to fall and the pond rose slightly
work gradually disappearing
Loughborough, Leicestershire
22 September 1986’

Kenyi, a British Columbian Tundra Wolf pup, has a new home after traveling across the country to the Colorado Wolf and Wildlife Center.  Born in Florida, Kenyi and his two siblings were unplanned, so there was not enough room for them to remain at their birthplace.

Photo Credits:  Colorado Wolf and Wildlife Center

The sanctuary’s staff has already started introducing Kenyi to some of its resident wolves, albeit through the safety of a fence. 

The Colorado Wolf and Wildlife Center is a sanctuary for a variety of canids, including Timber Wolves, Alaskan Wolves, Arctic Wolves, Mexican Grey Wolves, Swift Foxes, and Coyotes.  The sanctuary is accredited by the Association of Zoos & Aquariums (AZA). 

As an AZA facility, the center supports conservation efforts by participating in Species Survival Plan programs for Mexican Grey Wolves and Swift Foxes.

 Related articles Maned Wolf Pups Romp in the Snow at Zoo Liberec UPDATE: Maned Wolf Pups Come Out of Hiding to Visit the Vet A Sneak Peek at Pueblo Zoo's Maned Wolf Puppies

Carolyn Porco, Cassini Imaging Team Leader and CICLOPS director, writes:

One of the most gorgeous sights we have been privileged to see at Saturn, as the arrival of spring to the northern hemisphere has peeled away the darkness of winter, has been the enormous swirling vortex capping its north pole and ringed by Saturn's famed hexagonal jet stream.

Today, the Cassini Imaging Team is proud to present to you a set of special views of this phenomenal structure, including a carefully prepared movie showing its circumpolar winds that clock at 330 miles per hour, and false color images that are at once spectacular and informative.

Here are the images, in glorious hi-rez [ciclops.org].

The Icelandic Pirate Party has won three seats in its national Parliament in the Pirates' best-ever showing on the world stage. They form a small part of the opposition to the "center-right" Independence Party (Americans, please note that the Independence Party would be considered socialists by present US mainstream political standards). One of the new Pirate parliamentarians is Birgitta Jónsdóttir, the Icelandic MP who volunteered for, and campaigned for Wikileaks. The Icelanding Pirate Party is only five months old!

The three new Icelandic lawmakers include Jón Þór Ólafsson, a business administration student at the University of Iceland; Helgi Hrafn Gunnarsson, a computer programmer; and Birgitta Jónsdóttir, a well-known WikiLeaks volunteer and former member of parliament from 2009 to 2013.

Birgitta is also one of three activists involved in a WikiLeaks investigation currently underway in the United States. In November 2011, a district court judge found that prosecutors could compel Twitter to give up specific information on the three accounts, including IP addresses, direct messages, and other data. In January 2013, a federal appeals court in Virginia ruled (PDF) that Birgitta and the two others have no right to find out which other companies the government sought information from besides Twitter.

The trio, along with other members of Iceland’s digerati (including Smári McCarthy, who also is one of the organizers of the International Modern Media Initiative), founded the party just five months ago.

Pirate Party wins 3 seats in Icelandic parliament for its best result worldwide [Cyrus Farivar/Ars Technica]

nymphodomi:

dead stop jungle traffic

infinity-imagined: Coccolithophores are microscopic algae that first appeared 220 million years ago, and flourished during the cretaceous period.  They produce peculiar plates called cocoliths out of calcium carbonate, and  incorporate them into an external shell.  They constantly remove carbon from the atmosphere as they die and sink to the ocean floor, producing chalk.  This is an important feedback system in the global carbon cycle.

terrysdiary:

vintagenatgeographic: Giant century plant in Southern California - National Geographic | February 1958

fuckyeah1990s: LJ Bad

crustydollparts:

Popular Science, 1931 (Via Mostly Forbidden Zone)

Kate in Wuthering Heights (1978) - by jumpingpuddles

partnersandspade:

Coathangers by Sandy Skoglund, 1980.

Kali sizes up her opponent...

On March 12, an Inuit hunter shot and killed a female Polar Bear near Point Lay, Alaska. When he realized it was a female, he searched for the den and found young Kali, a 3 - 4 month cub. The hunter then carried the cub to the Department of Wildlife Management who then passed the healthy 18.4lb cub to the Alaska Zoo who was equipped to care for the orphan.

Thankfully the cub has so far thrived under the care of keepers and veterinarians, exhibiting the trademark playfulness of his age and species. In these photos, taken by volunteer photographer John Gomes at the Alaska Zoo, the cub takes on a similarly sized opponent. Plans are in the works to relocate the cub to the Buffalo Zoo in New York, which recently welcomed another cub, Luna. 

Kali makes the first move

Brown Bear gets the upper paw! 

Exhausted, they agree to disagree

Photos courtesy of Alaska Zoo / John Gomes

Polar Bears are one of the most recognizable animals threatened by melting polar ice. The Alaska Zoo works with Polar Bears International (PBI) to try to reverse this troubling trend. The Alaska Zoo is a PBI Arctic Ambassador Center, which means they:

* Strive for bear friendly exhibits with enrichment activities to stimulate the bears to be active and content

* Provide leadership for carbon emission reduction in their communities

* Support PBI research projects to help conserve wild polar bears

* Play a key role in the PBI Sustainability Alliance, a front-line team helping to save polar bears in a rapidly warming Arctic

Thanks to Jaymie Wahlen for her help on this post.

gcpm: Ciclos - Santiago Garcia

Nobody could mistake me for a person who moves quickly. I “run” at a treadmill speed that would never catch a thief, and barely these days, a preschooler on the loose. It took us 3.5 years, until two weeks ago, in fact, to finally put the kid’s toys away. We’ve been “redecorating” the living room for the better part of a year — we’ll probably put the pictures back up in a week or six; please, don’t rush us. Thus, it should surprise nobody that it’s taken me nearly four years to conquer the cake you see here, which sounds even worse if you consider that it was a special request from my own mother, as this was her favorite growing up.

In my defense, in that period of time, I moved apartments, had a kid, wrote a book, and went on a 25-city book tour, all while (mostly) keeping up with this here website and spending a truly horrific amount of time staring slack-jawed social media ahem, maintaining occasional hobbies. But I know the truth, which is that I’ve been intimidated by making it because I felt like I was cooking blind. The Bee Sting Cake (Bienenstich) is a German specialty and while my mother’s parents came over in 1935 and 1936 respectively, the areas once known as German epicenters (the middle of Queens, where my mom was raised, and Yorkville, in the Upper East Side of Manhattan) have now mostly dispersed, and most of the accompanying stores have shuttered. Calls to German bakeries to see if they sold it were almost futile, until I found one in Ridgewood, Queens that sold us a whole one that was rather awful; let’s not speak of it at all. The only thing left to do was go it alone, researching obsessively along the way.

... Read the rest of bee sting cake on smittenkitchen.com

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© smitten kitchen 2006-2012. | permalink to bee sting cake | 420 comments to date | see more: Cake, Celebration Cakes, Everyday Cakes, German, Photo

In 2008, Caitlin GD Hopkins collected 101 euphemisms for "died" from early American epitaphs. The epitaphs came from tombstones pre-1825, to qualify, the euphemism had to appear in the main text of the tombstone ("Here lies Fred; born 1801, laid himself to rest 1824"), not in the verse below it ("He was a nice guy"). It's quite a list:

Part 1: Died
Part 2: Departed This Life
Part 3: Deceased
Part 4: Entred Apon an Eternal Sabbath of Rest
Part 5: Fell a Victim to an Untimely Disease
Part 6: Departed This Transitory Life
Part 7: Killed by the Fall of a Tree
Part 8: Left Us
Part 9: Obit
Part 10: Slain by the Enemy
Part 11: Departed This Stage of Existence
Part 12: Went Rejoycing Out of This World
Part 13: Submiting Her Self to ye Will of God
Part 14: Fell Asleep
Part 15: Changed a Fleeting World for an Immortal Rest
Part 16: Fell Asleep in the Cradle of Death
Part 17: Fell Aslep in Jesus
Part 18: Was Still Born
Part 19: Innocently Retired
Part 20: Expired
Part 21: Perished in a Storm
Part 22: Departed from This in Hope of a Better Life
Part 23: Summoned to Appear Before His Judge
Part 24: Liv'd About 2 Hours
Part 25: Rose Upon the Horizon of Perfect Endless Day

All 101 of them are linked to photos of the headstones in the actual post:

101 Ways to Say "Died" (via Making Light)