Leahgates

wnyc:

It turns out that Ayn Rand was obsessed with cat pics a few decades before the internet fell in love with them. 

http://bit.ly/1iow8d2

—Sean, Sideshow

mmolio:

funkocide:

sansaofhousestark:

asexual sirens getting real fuckin pissed about all these sailors interrupting choir rehearsal

sirens are already asexual they dont have sex with the men they kill them

well no wonder they kill them they keep interrupting choir rehearsal

battlereadyprince:

monk-of-space:

a motorcycle gang made up of ancient bisexual norse monarchs: the bikings

I JUST REALIZED THAT THIS POST IS 4 PUNS IN ONE OH MY GODDDDD

where do I sign up

buckythefrenchy:

We forgot to bring an umbrella to the beach so we built bucky a fort so he could take shelter from the sun.
I am proud if our building skills.

cluckyeschickens:

Operation Ultra-Floof Engaged

A new study shows that a potassium ion channel called hERG in the uterus is responsible for difficult labor among overweight pregnant women.

Acting as a powerful electrical brake, hERG works during pregnancy to suppress contractions and prevent premature labor. However, at the onset of labor a protein acts as a switch to turn hERG off, removing the brake and ensuring that labor can take place.

Specifically, testing the electrical signals in small amounts of uterine tissue taken from women who had an elective caesarean before labor started and women who needed an emergency caesarean during their labor, proved that hERG was dysregulated in overweight women.

Pregnant women who are overweight often continue pregnant past their due date or progress slowly when labor begins.

Overweight women have higher rates of medical interventions around labor and birth, including higher rates of induction for prolonged pregnancy, and higher rates of Caesarean section as a result of failure to progress in labor.

Lead researcher Professor Helena Parkington of Monash University says this “switch” needs to be turned off to allow labor contractions to occur, but remains turned on in overweight women.

“The reason it stays on is that the ‘molecular hand’ that should turn the switch off fails to appear in sufficient quantities in the uterine muscle of overweight women when labor should be occurring. These women also respond poorly to our current methods of induction,” says Parkington.

Professor Shaun Brennecke of the University of Melbourne and Royal Women’s Hospital says the finding significantly advances understanding of how labor progresses, with implications for all women who have complicated labors.

“The clinical significance of this discovery is that, having identified the problem responsible for dysfunctional labor in overweight women, we are now able to look at developing a safe, effective, and specific treatment to correct the problem.”

“For example, a drug to turn off the switch to allow normal labor to start and progress,” he says.

The study appears in Nature Communications.

Sources: University of Melbourne, Monash University

The post Uterus ‘switch’ lets childbirth get going appeared first on Futurity.

A new wireless computing glove can help people learn to read and write Braille—and they don’t even have to be paying attention.

“The process is based on passive haptic learning (PHL),” says Thad Starner, professor at Georgia Tech. “We’ve learned that people can acquire motor skills through vibrations without devoting active attention to their hands.”

In a new study, Starner and PhD student Caitlyn Seim examined how well the gloves work to teach Braille.

Each study participant wore a pair of gloves with tiny vibrating motors stitched into the knuckles. The motors vibrated in a sequence that corresponded with the typing pattern of a pre-determined phrase in Braille.

Audio cues let the users know the Braille letters produced by typing that sequence. Afterwards, everyone tried to type the phrase one time, without the cues or vibrations, on a keyboard.

The sequences were then repeated during a distraction task.

Participants played a game for 30 minutes and were told to ignore the gloves. Half of the participants felt repeated vibrations and heard the cues, while the others only heard the audio cues. When the game was over, participants tried to type the phrase without wearing the gloves.

“Those in the control group did about the same on their second attempt (as they did in their pre-study baseline test),” Starner says. “But participants who felt the vibrations during the game were a third more accurate. Some were even perfect.”

Starner had previously created a technology-enhanced glove that can teach beginners how to play piano melodies in 45 minutes. He and Steim expected to see a wide disparity between the two groups based on the results of the piano glove study. But they were surprised the passive learners in the Braille study picked up an additional skill.

From typing Braille to reading it

“Remarkably, we found that people could transfer knowledge learned from typing Braille to reading Braille,” Seim says. “After the typing test, passive learners were able to read and recognize more than 70 percent of the phrase’s letters.”

No one in the study had previously typed on a Braille keyboard or knew the language. The study also didn’t include screens or visual feedback, so participants never saw what they typed. They had no indication of their accuracy throughout the study. “The only learning they received was guided by the haptic interface,” Seim says.

Seim is currently in the middle of a second study that uses PHL to teach the full Braille alphabet during four sessions. Of the eight participants so far, 75 percent of those receiving PHL reached perfect typing performance. None of the control group had zero typing errors. PHL participants have also been able to recognize and read more than 90 percent of all the letters in the alphabet after only four hours.

Nearly 40 million people worldwide are blind. However, because Braille instruction is widely neglected in schools, only 10 percent of those who are blind learn the language. Braille is also difficult to learn later in life, when diabetics, wounded veterans, or older people are prone to lose their sight.

The Braille studies will be presented in Seattle this September at the 18th International Symposium on Wearable Computers (ISWC).

The National Science Foundation provided partial support for the study. Any conclusions expressed are those of the principal investigator and may not necessarily represent the official views of the NSF.

Source: Georgia Tech

The post Vibrating glove could teach you Braille appeared first on Futurity.

Antarctica’s ice-free areas—home to most of the continent’s biodiversity—needs better protection from human impact and climate change, say environmental scientists.

University of Queensland researcher Justine Shaw says most of Antarctica’s biodiversity occurred in the less than one percent of the continent, which is permanently ice-free. Of that small area, only 1.5 percent belongs to the Antarctic Specially Protected Areas under the Antarctic Treaty System.

A new study has found that many of the continent’s ice-free protected areas are at risk from invasive species.

Shaw says the Antarctic continent’s tiny ice-free area, where most of the native wildlife and plants are found, need adequate and representative protected areas.

“With more research facilities being built and increasing tourism to Antarctica, the simple ecosystems are at risk from human activities including pollution, trampling, and invasive species such as insects and grass,” Shaw says.

More than 40,000 people visit Antarctica each year.

Shaw’s study found that all 55 areas designated for protection of land-based biodiversity were close to sites of human activity, with seven at high risk for biological invasion. Five of the distinct ice-free eco-regions have no protected areas.

‘A true wilderness’

The study, published in PLOS Biology, shows that Antarctica’s protected area system fell well short of the Aichi Biodiversity Targets—an international biodiversity strategy that aims to reduce threats to biodiversity, and to protect ecosystems, species, and genetic diversity.

“Many people think that Antarctica’s biodiversity is well protected because it’s isolated and no one lives there, but it is at risk,” says Shaw. “Our study found that the protected area system of Antarctica ranks in the lowest 25 percent of assessed countries.”

Hugh Possingham, of the National Environmental Research Program (NERP) Decisions Hub, says Antarctica is one of the last places on Earth without cities, agriculture, or mining.

“It is unique in this respect—a true wilderness—and if we don’t establish adequate and representative protected areas in Antarctica this unique and fragile ecosystem could be lost,” he says.

“Although our study shows that the risks to biodiversity from increasing human activity are high, they are even worse when considered together with climate change.

“The combined effect provides even more incentive for a better system of area protection in Antarctica.”

The NERP Environmental Decisions Hub, University of Queensland’s School of Biological Sciences, the Australian Antarctic Division, and Monash University’s School of Biological Sciences supported the research. Researchers from the Australian Antactic Division and Monash University also contributed to the study.

Source: University of Queensland

The post Visitors leave Antarctica open to invasive species appeared first on Futurity.

Cash incentives are a possible solution to keeping highly effective teachers in low-performing schools, according to a new study that evaluated the state of Tennessee’s recent implementation of a $5,000 retention bonus program.

In total, the state distributed more than $2.1 million in $5,000 retention bonuses to 361 highly effective teachers, who agreed to stay at a low-performing school during the 2013-14 school year.

“To evaluate the program, we compared the retention rates of teachers who were just eligible for the bonus to those teachers who just missed being eligible for the bonus,” says Matthew Springer, assistant professor of public policy and education at Vanderbilt’s Peabody College of Education and Human Development and director of the Tennessee Consortium on Research, Evaluation, and Development.

“We found that these performance incentives increase the likelihood of retention of top performing teachers by as much as 23 percent.”

Breaking the cycle

Schools with high concentrations of poverty or racial minorities are less likely to retain highly effective teachers; and when these teachers move on, much less effective teachers typically replace them. Ending that cycle could result in increased student achievement—and future earning potential, he says.

“We found that for every teacher that is retained as a result of the bonus, students taught by that teacher, rather than the likely replacement teacher, experience an increase in teacher effectiveness of 46 percentile points,” he says.

“That is the equivalent of an average teacher elevating their performance to the 96th percentile.”

Sustainable benefits

The bonus program is financially sustainable for the state, he adds. “Along with savings from lowered turnover or replacement costs, we found that the bonus program could pay for itself in the long run when you consider the additional tax revenue from students’ predicted increased earnings if only 10 percent of bonus recipients continued teaching, and taught an average of 30 students for one year,” Springer says.

Retention of effective teachers has more benefits than selective firings, Springer says in his working paper, which is available through the Tennessee Consortium on Research, Evaluation, and Development.

“In contrast to programs that try to improve teacher quality through termination of ineffective teachers, retention bonuses for effective teachers have the added benefit of creating greater stability, and leadership within a struggling school,” he says.

Source: Vanderbilt University

The post Teacher retention bonuses have big pay-offs appeared first on Futurity.

We are so happy to bring Sophie home. She's a little sister to Riley. He's been very lost because his two best friends and big sisters got sick and crossed the bridge within 8 months. He very much needed Sophie as we all did, really. She's been a joy, a terror, and a whole lot of fun. Aussie puppies (and adults too) can be stubborn, but they are very, very smart, and super fun to train. Sophie has "sit" down pat, and we're working on the rest of the basic moves. She starts puppy obedience training soon.

Cities in the US north and northeast tend to be destination cities for cocaine trafficking, while cities in the south and along the west coast are source cities, according to a new tracking system.

Cities in other regions, like Chicago and Atlanta, are major hubs.

Researchers say law enforcement authorities need to get a better handle on cocaine trafficking patterns if they are to take control of one of the world’s largest illegal drug markets.

Siddharth Chandra, an economist at Michigan State University, studied wholesale powdered cocaine prices in 112 cities to identify city-to-city links for the transit of the drug, using data published by the National Drug Intelligence Center of the US Department of Justice from 2002 to 2011.

Field intelligence officers and local, regional and federal law enforcement sources collected the data during drug arrests and investigations.

“These data enable us to identify suspected links between cities that may have escaped the attention of drug enforcement authorities,” says Chandra, director of the Asian Studies Center.

“By identifying patterns and locations, drug policy and enforcement agencies could provide valuable assistance to federal, state and local governments in their decisions on where and how to allocate limited law enforcement resources to mitigate the cocaine problem.”

Spikes in cocaine prices

Chandra analyzed prices for 6,126 pairs of cities for possible links. If two cities are connected, prices will move in lockstep. So if there’s a spike in cocaine prices in the city of origin—or a source city, where the drug originates—that spike will be transmitted to all cities dependent upon that source.

Cocaine will flow from the city with the lower price to the city with the higher price. It takes a number of transactions for cocaine to reach its end price, and prices tend to go up as drugs move from one city to another, he says.

While cities in the north and northeast are destination cities for cocaine, Chandra found cities in the southern US and along the west coast are source cities. In addition, cities in other regions, like Chicago and Atlanta, are major hubs for cocaine.

Chandra also created a map of possible drug routes, which he compared with a map produced by the National Drug Intelligence Center, and found that a number of his routes hadn’t been identified.

Drug trafficking puzzle

Chandra cautions his methodology shouldn’t be used in isolation. Instead, it is one piece of the larger drug trafficking puzzle. Individual bits of the publicly available NDIC data may or may not be accurate based on whether drug smugglers tell the truth. However, the combined data could lead to better drug enforcement.

The NDIC was closed in 2012 and Chandra isn’t sure if another agency is continuing to collect data. But his research shows the importance of doing so.

“As an economist, the big takeaway is that prices carry some valuable information about trafficking in illegal goods,” Chandra says.

The study is published in the Journal of Drug Issues.

Source: Michigan State University

The post Maps show how cocaine moves between US cities appeared first on Futurity.

People with peripheral artery disease (PAD) are able to move faster and go farther if they make walking part of their daily routine at home, researchers say.

“The problem with supervised exercise is that it takes many visits to a cardiac rehabilitation center or other exercise facility, and it’s not covered by most medical insurance companies, including Medicare,” says Mary McGrae McDermott, professor of medicine at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine.

“These results should encourage physicians to recommend walking even if their patients do not have access to a supervised exercise program.”

PAD affects one in 20 Americans older than 50 and develops when arteries become narrowed and clogged, reducing blood flow to the legs. Previous studies have shown that supervised exercise can improve walking and lessen the symptoms of PAD, but this is the first to document the long-term benefits of a home-based walking program.

Published in the Journal of the American Heart Association, the study compared walking ability in patients and controls one year after the end of a six-month program that encouraged home-based walking. For the first six months, patients participated in weekly meetings to provide support and skills training to help them adhere to the home exercise program. They also received phone calls to encourage continued walking during months seven through 12.

Increased distance

At 12 months, participants in the home-based program had increased the distance they could walk in six minutes from 355.4 to 381.9 meters, an improvement of about 87 feet. In contrast, the distance covered by the controls fell slightly, from 353.1 to 345.6 meters.

The control group participated for a year in weekly educational meetings and received phone contact on unrelated PAD topics such as managing hypertension, cancer screening, and vaccinations, but did not take part in the home exercise program.

Walking is the most effective non-invasive treatment for PAD, but a program must take into account that walking may cause a cramp-like pain in leg muscles that don’t get sufficient oxygen. By alternating walking and rest, patients can build up the amount of time they can walk before pain occurs. In this study, patients built up to 50 minutes of walking.

“The results emphasize the importance of recognizing and treating PAD, a common condition that often remains undiagnosed and can become life-threatening as it restricts circulation to the legs,” McDermott says. “Patients with PAD are also at heightened risk for heart attack and stroke.”

“Don’t think walking problems are a normal part of aging,” McDermott says. “If you have leg pain, weakness, tingling or other difficulty walking, report it to your doctor and ask about the possibility you may have PAD. Diagnosing PAD is important because therapies can improve your health.”

The National Institutes of Health funded the study.

Source: Northwestern University

The post Daily walks can treat clogged leg arteries appeared first on Futurity.

New research overturns a theory, first proposed by Charles Darwin, that birds are limited in their ways of showing off. Beautiful plumage and complex songs aren’t mutually exclusive.

A study of one of the world’s largest and most colorful bird families has dispelled the long-held notion. The study—the largest of its kind—appears in the Proceedings of the Royal Society B.

The natural world is full of showstoppers—birds with brilliant colors, exaggerated crests and tails, intricate dance routines, or virtuosic singing. But it’s long been thought that these abilities are the result of trade-offs. For a species to excel in one area, it must give up its edge in another.

For example, male Northern Cardinals are a dazzling scarlet but sing a fairly simple whistle, whereas the dull brown House Wren sings one of the most complicated songs in nature.

LISTEN: Northern Cardinal (Credit: Gerrit Vyn/Macaulay Library/Cornell Lab of Ornithology)

 

LISTEN: House Wren (Credit: Geoffrey Keller, Thomas Sander/Macaulay Library/Cornell Lab of Ornithology)

 

“Animals have limited resources, and they have to spend those in order to develop showy plumage or precision singing that help them attract mates and defend territories,” says Nick Mason, the paper’s lead author.

“So it seems to make sense that you can’t have both. But our study took a more detailed look and suggests that actually, some species can.” Mason did the research as a master’s student at San Diego State University. He is now a PhD student at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology.

371 tanagers

Mason and his colleagues tested the idea of trade-offs by looking at a very large family of songbirds from Central and South America, the tanagers. This group consists of 371 species—nearly 10 percent of all songbirds.

It includes some of the most spectacularly colorful birds in the world such as the Paradise Tanager as well as more drab birds such the Black-bellied Seedeater. The group also includes both accomplished and weak songsters alike.

LISTEN: Paradise Tanager (Theodore Parker III/Macaulay Library/Cornell Lab of Ornithology)

 

LISTEN: Black-bellied Seedeater (Theodore Parker III/Macaulay Library/Cornell Lab of Ornithology)

 

“If there were going to be any group of birds at all that would show this trade-off, the tanagers would be a very good candidate, because there’s all this variation in song and plumage complexity,” Mason says, noting that the group’s large size lends confidence to the statistical analysis.

“But when we dive into it and do some rigorous statistics, it turns out that there is no overall trend. Tanagers can be drab and plain-sounding, or colorful and musical, or anything in between.”

As a byproduct of the analyses, Mason was able to put together top-10 lists of tanagers with the most colorful plumage and the most complex songs. The lists help illustrate the overall lack of a trade-off between singing and plumage. For example, a single genus of mountain-tanagers had members on both lists. The Lacrimose Mountain-Tanager ranked eighth among the most complex songs, while the Blue-winged Mountain-Tanager had the fourth most complex plumage of all 303 species examined.

LISTEN: Blue-winged Mountain Tanager (Mark Robbins/Macaulay Library/Cornell Lab of Ornithology)

 

The study puts a significant dent in the idea of evolutionary trade-offs between plumage and song. It’s still possible that trade-offs take place at the level of genus, Mason says, or that they influence species relatively fleetingly as evolutionary pressures appear and disappear. But as a broad effect on an entire family of birds, a voice–plumage tradeoff doesn’t seem to exist.

One possibility is that the resources needed to develop fancy plumage are different from the ones required for complex songs, freeing tanagers to invest in both forms of showiness simultaneously.

The National Science Foundation and the National Geographic Society provided partial funding for the work.

Source: Cornell University

The post Good looks and singing aren’t a trade-off for birds appeared first on Futurity.

Decades of work to get more minority students into the science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) “pipeline” haven’t changed this fact: traditionally underrepresented groups remain underrepresented.

In a new paper published in the journal BioScience, two biologists analyzed the issue and proposed four research-based ideas to ensure that more students from underrepresented groups emerge with PhDs and STEM careers.

Senior author Andrew G. Campbell, associate professor of biology at Brown University, says it’s almost as if people have satisfied themselves with the thought that the STEM pipeline rests on flat terrain, passively and reliably conveying to the finish whatever quantity of students enter.

The paper cites data showing that for decades many students haven’t made it to the top of the pipeline. To stem leaks and backflow, the pipeline requires consistently applied energy all the way through.

“That pipeline we’ve laid? We’re stuffing it but the yield is less than we expect,” says Campbell, who wrote the review along with postdoctoral scholar Stacy-Ann Allen-Ramdial. “That’s because it’s not a horizontal pipeline, it’s a vertical one. You can’t just stuff it and walk away.”

The STEM pipeline ‘leaks’

The data appear encouraging at the pipeline entrance: Similar proportions of underrepresented minority (URM) and non-URM incoming college freshmen (a little more than a third in each case) express intent to study STEM subjects.

Generally, however, URM students are less likely to graduate than non-URM students. While 24.1 percent of US college freshmen came from URM groups in 2000, only 18.5 percent of bachelor’s degree recipients did in 2004.

The losses specific to STEM become most evident in the transition into graduate school, Campbell and Allen-Ramdial show using National Science Foundation statistics.

After college in 2009, 36 percent of the URM students holding STEM bachelor’s degrees left the field rather than starting a STEM job or graduate program, compared to 30 percent of comparable non-URM students. Ultimately, URM bachelor’s degree holders were even more unlikely to earn doctorates.

While URM students earned 18.3 percent of the STEM bachelor’s degrees in 2004, they earned only 12.1 percent of the STEM doctorates in 2010.

The workplaces those surviving STEM students entered at the other end of the pipeline were even less diverse. Individuals from URM groups held about 10 percent of STEM jobs in 2010.

To serve the volume of students entering the pipeline, Campbell and Allen-Ramdial propose four ideas based in educational research and practices that have emerged in recent years: alignment of culture and climate; partnerships between research and minority-serving universities; critical masses of minority students; and faculty engagement in diversity.

Check the climate

Universities often articulate diversity as a core value in STEM fields and elsewhere, but that culture can become misaligned with the actual climate in which faculty members, administrators, and students work. The potential dissonances, which can disillusion URM students, will vary but they often remain unknown to senior administrators and therefore unaddressed.

Campbell and Allen-Ramdial recommend annual, confidential surveys of culture-climate alignment conducted by third parties, rather than the administration itself.

Key partnerships

Campbell has experience in forging partnerships between his research-intensive university and undergraduate-focused, minority-serving institutions. He has worked with partner-institution colleagues to identify gaps in the undergraduate training of students that can and must be addressed to ensure their success in graduate school and research.

“The inconsistencies between successful undergraduate student performances documented in glowing reference letters and grades and the students’ subsequent poor graduate performance can be preempted by building inter-institutional partnerships that allow for curricular mapping of undergraduate courses onto graduate curricular training plans,” the authors write.

Also, such partnerships expose students to research earlier at undergraduate-focused institutions and provide faculty at research-intensive universities with opportunities to gain “cultural competence,” or familiarity with and understanding of URM students.

‘Critical mass’

Partnerships and other thoughtful measures, such as focused recruiting, can help universities with graduate programs achieve not just overall numbers of URM students, but also a “critical mass” within URM groups. When a university meets a goal of bringing in 10 URM students, that won’t necessarily help those students thrive if they all come from very different backgrounds.

Instead, Campbell and Allen-Ramdial note, universities should recognize that students need to be with others with whom they can identify and from whom they can find support.

“What is critical mass [in a program]?” Campbell says. “That number is when students feel the greatest sense of belonging. It doesn’t have to be hundreds. It could be five.”

Professors matter

Finally, the paper argues, faculty members, not just senior administrators, must embrace the goal of diversity.

University presidents come and go, on average, every decade. Provosts and medical school deans turn over twice in that time. Tenure-line professors can have a more lasting impact because of the uninterrupted longevity of their work.

“Faculty members should be incentivized to engage more deeply in diversity by making it a meaningful scholarly activity, alongside research and teaching,” Campbell and Allen-Ramdial write.

“The opportunity to formally report on diversity-related activities as part of annual review and reward criteria for merit and promotion should be established.”

The ultimate goal is not to attract URM students to STEM but to turn them into working scientists, Campbell says. Success won’t come from trying the same ideas that have only worked partially so far.

“We’ve been doing the same thing and making the same investments for 30 years,” he says. “The pipeline is the infrastructure. Some changes in the infrastructure need to be made.”

The National Institute of General Medical Sciences of the National Institutes of Health supported the study.

Source: Brown University

The post How to get minority students into STEM careers appeared first on Futurity.

Researchers have created a simple and scalable method of making strong, stretchable graphene oxide fibers that are easily scrolled into yarns and have strengths approaching that of Kevlar.

This method opens up multiple possibilities for useful products. For instance, removing oxygen from the graphene oxide fiber results in a fiber with high electrical conductivity.

Adding silver nanorods to the graphene film would increase the conductivity to the same as copper, which could make it a much lighter weight replacement for copper transmission lines.

In addition, the researchers believe that the material lends itself to many kinds of highly sensitive sensors.

“We found this graphene oxide fiber was very strong, much better than other carbon fibers,” says Mauricio Terrones, professor of physics, chemistry and materials science and engineering, Penn State. “We believe that pockets of air inside the fiber keep it from being brittle.”

Graphene slurry film

The researchers made a thin film of graphene oxide by chemically exfoliating graphite into graphene flakes, which were then mixed with water and concentrated by centrifugation into a thick slurry.

The slurry was then spread by bar coating—something like a squeegee—across a large plate. When the slurry dries, it becomes a transparent film that can be carefully lifted off without tearing.

The film is then cut into narrow strips and wound on itself with an automatic fiber scroller, resulting in a fiber that can be knotted and stretched without fracturing. The researchers reported their results in a recent issue of ACSNano.

“The importance is that we can do almost any material, and that could open up many avenues—it’s a lightweight material with multifunctional properties,” says Terrones. And the main ingredient, graphite, is mined and sold by the ton.”

Penn State and Shinshu University in Japan have applied for a joint patent on the process.

The Research Center for Exotic Nanocarbons in Japan and the Center for Nanoscale Science at Penn State supported the research.

Source: Penn State

The post Stretchy, bendy, stronger-than-ever graphene fiber appeared first on Futurity.

Hi, my name is Lily. I love everyone I meet! I love playing with my squeaky toys, sun bathing and running around with my two older brothers. I give the best hugs and kisses, and I love to snuggle with anyone that will hold me. I've already learned four tricks and my mom says I'm such a good girl for it. I am one happy puppy!

Fenway is a fluffy teddy bear whom we love to love. He plays in his yard beautifully but he often gets carried home from his leash walks. He looks like skin and bones after his baths but dries like a fluffy teddy after. He likes to really stretch out and loves his puppy teethers. He loves his teeth brushed and he loves to get some leftover salmon--the favorite food of his 4-year-old sister. He comes every morning to drop his 1st grade sister at school and lets everyone know he is present from his crate barks. We love him like this but can't wait to see how he will look full grown.

mashable:

Forget everything you know about cute animals on the Internet.

Photographer Megan van der Elst, also known as lieveheersbeestje on DeviantArt, takes pictures of her 2-year-old, blonde guinea pig Professor BooBoo to the delight of online fans everywhere.

more booboo, sans his crew

slothville:

Fans of #slothweek will love A LITTLE BOOK OF SLOTH (http://www.amazon.com/Little-Book-Sloth-Lucy-Cooke/dp/1442445572) which features adorable photos of orphan baby sloths from the sloth sanctuary in Costa Rica. A percentage of profits also go to supporting sloth conservation so its a win-win for sloth lovers.

aniki-tony:

Bringing the Pro-pain

slothville:

Sloth Week Squeak!

This week Animal Planet are devoting an entire week to sloths. They are featuring my award-winning Meet the Sloths film and daily videos of baby sloths. They have even produced a copy of my super cute sloth squeak viral…but which is cutest the original or the copy?

Above is the original…you can find the copy at www.slothweek.com

meanfaggot:

I was in the winter of my life- and the men I met along the road were my only summer. At night I fell sleep with vision of myself dancing and laughing and crying with them. Three year down the line of being on an endless world tour and memories of them were the only things that sustained me, and my only real happy times. I was a singer, not very popular one, who once has dreams of becoming a beautiful poet- but upon an unfortunate series of events saw those dreams dashed and divided like million stars in the night sky that I wished on over and over again- sparkling and broken. But I really didn’t mind because I knew that it takes getting everything you ever wanted and then losing it to know what true freedom is.

When the people I used to know found out what I had been doing, how I had been living- they asked me why. But there’s no use in talking to people who have a home, they have no idea what its like to seek safety in other people, for home to be wherever you lied you head.

I was always an unusual girl, my mother told me that I had a chameleon soul. No moral compass pointing me due north, no fixed personality. Just an inner indecisiveness that was as wide as wavering as the ocean. And if I said that I didn’t plan for it to turn out this way I’d be lying- because I was born to be the other woman. I belonged to no one- who belonged to everyone, who had nothing- who wanted everything with a fire for every experience and an obsession for freedom that terrified me to the point that I couldn’t even talk about- and pushed me to a nomadic point of madness that both dazzle and dizzied me.

Every night I used to pray that I’d find my people- and finally I did- on the open road. We have nothing to lose, nothing to gain, nothing we desired anymore- except to make our lives into a work of art.

LIVE FAST. DIE YOUNG. BE WILD. AND HAVE FUN.

I believe in the country America used to be. I believe in the person I want to become, I believe in the freedom of the open road. And my motto is the same as ever- *I believe in the kindness of strangers. And when I’m at war with myself- I Ride. I Just Ride.*

Who are you? Are you in touch with all your darkest fantasies?
Have you created a life for yourself where you’re free to experience them?
I Have.
I Am Fucking Crazy. But I Am Free.

lonelycoast:

 

Male Writer: Ah, anniversary jokes are so funny. Because chicks always hate it when you don't remember anniversaries! A plus gold very original
Male Writer: Mother in laws amirite?
Male Writer: My male character who is an author insert of myself pines after a woman I used to pine after in high school. Then they have sex. This is good literature.
Male Writer: Ugh female books are so romance filled
Male Writer: And girl fanfics, so mary suey
Male Writer: Now listen about this original middle aged man who is an expert in everything, suffers from ennui, looks like me, acts like me, and gets all the girls i want.
Male Writer: She was sexy in an alluring, boring way, filled with purple prose and riddled with objectification
Male Writer: If i make a female character parrot my misogynistic views, they cease to be misogynistic! Are you saying you don't respect my fake female characters opinions, feminists?
Male Writer: a good action girl is one who looks hot at all times
Male Writer: If the female main character got in an asskicking line, my work is Feminist with a capital F and no one can criticize me
Specifically White Male Writer: Heroic tropes are so overdone. I'm going to create a boring white guy with stubble to be a completely original antihero no one has ever seen before TM.
Same Guy: It's original because he is a jerk who gets away with bad behavior, just like I wish i could.
Another Specifically White Male Writer: It's in my universe to only have white men do things in my book. I mean, don't you care about historical accuracy
Same Guy: I mean, it's a generic fantasy verse with no real life time period equivalent and i haven't done any research, but i'm SURE that it's historically accurate. To that dark mideval dragon fighting europe period
Same Guy: Where in Europe? Who cares!
Male Writer: There is no better way to introduce a female character to a male character than by him saving her.
Male Writer: Characters hating each other is good sexual tension!
Male Writer: One female character and five male characters is a good team balance
Male Writer: If my female character chooses to act in a sexist tropey way, it's not sexist. In fact, because she CHOSE to do it, it is Feminist.
Male Writer: I am original

[Everything!!!]

“Buttercup wants one of everything, but she’s watching her girlish figure and will settle for 3 bites of whatever you’re having.” -From “Me.”

Filed under: Uncategorized Tagged: puppeh

“This is our Welsh Terrier (a breed that is quite rare) trying to pretend that she is a plushy! As such she is allowed on the bed.” -Carol Anne.

Filed under: Uncategorized Tagged: puppeh

Take a look at THESE Peeg Pix, as seen on The Panda Of Boredom. More photos at Lieveheersbeestje’s website. (Disclaimer: I think the first two shots of The Peeg With Glasses is Booboo, and the rest are part of his crew.)

Filed under: Uncategorized Tagged: Guinea Pigs