So You Think You Can Love Me and Leave Me to Die?

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Who Rule The Web ?

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"If you want to be loved, be lovable." Ovid

Photograph: Ronaldo Schemidt/AFP/Getty

A couple of lovebirds at the El Nido aviary, in Ixtapaluca, near Mexico City. The aviary is the third largest in the world, with more than 320 species of birds and more than 3,000 specimens.
 Lovebirds are a social and affectionate species of small parrot.
 

Japanese 'Noah's ark' disaster capsule goes on sale

Shoji Tanaka, president of engineering company Cosmo, demonstrates the 'Noah's ark' shelter. Photograph: Itsuo Inouye/AP


A Japanese company has developed a miniature version of Noah's ark in case Japan is hit by another massive earthquake and tsunami – a floating capsule that looks like a huge tennis ball.

Engineering company Cosmo says its "Noah" shelter is made from enhanced fibreglass and could save users from disasters such as the earthquake and tsunami on 11 March that devastated Japan's northern coast and left nearly 20,000 people dead or missing.

The company's president, Shoji Tanaka, said the capsule could hold four adults and had survived many crash tests.

It has a lookout window and breathing holes, and could also be used as a toy house for children.

The company said it had completed the capsule earlier this month and had received 600 orders.

The Guardian

Janus cats

The feline, named Frank and Louie, has become the longest surviving member of a group known as Janus cats, named after the two-faced Roman god of transitions.

Am I adopted, Mum?

First time mum Lu Lu, a rare Francois langur monkey, snuggles up with baby Tango, who was born with ginger fur at London Zoo.

 

Mr Penguin

Alfred David has spent the last 40 years indulging his obsession with penguins, wearing a costume when he goes out and collection memorabilia.

 

Singing Google Doodle Puppets (500 Miles by The Proclaimers)

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The Perfect Day

This is excerpted from Jon Katz's new book, Going Home: Finding Peace When Pets Die.

 "It is possible to take something beautiful and lasting out of the heart-wrenching experience of seeing the animal you love move inexorably toward death. Nobody can take the grief away, nor should anyone try, but our love for animals is nothing but a gift, and it keeps on giving, even when they go home. A man named Harry, an Iraq war veteran and tennis coach from Minnesota, hit upon a simple and profound idea to transform this otherwise sad experience into a blessed one. It was a gray morning when the vet told Harry that his dog Duke's heart was failing and that it wouldn't be long before he died. Harry was not surprised, but still, the news depressed him. Listening to the vet, Harry later told me, he'd gotten an idea, one he thought would pay tribute to his life with Duke and give him something to feel besides sadness and loss. "Tomorrow, I'm going to give you a Perfect Day," he said quietly to Duke as they left the vet's office. He would take the day off from work and create a sweet memory with his dog. It would be a special day, filled with all the things Duke loved most, as close to perfect as Harry could make it."
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Meanwhile in Saudi Arabia

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Scruffy get back here

Loldogs

The 1,300 postcards once too saucy for the seaside

'Four nice marrows you have there, Mrs. Ramsbottom!'

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How did a whale get into the middle of a field in East Yorkshire?

The 33ft mammal, thought to be a Sei whale, was discovered in the salt marshes on the north bank of the River Humber.

The Yorkshire Wildlife Trust has been monitoring the area over the summer due to an increase in whale sightings.It it thought that the whale became stranded in shallow waters and rolled over onto its blowhole and died, before the tide retreated and left it behind, near the village of Skeffling.

Conservationists think the increase in strandings could be down to a change in sea currents bringing colder streams of Arctic water into the North Sea.

Conservationists who examined the animal said they are 95 per cent certain it is a female Sei whale.

Andy Gibson, of the Yorkshire Wildlife Trust, said Sei whale strandings were very rare with only three in UK waters in the last 20 years.

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Queen's We Are The Champions voted catchiest pop song of all time... by scientists

The scientists observed thousands of volunteers to find out why certain songs inspired unabashed wedding guests and clubbers to belt out their favourites in public.
Singalong hits had four key elements, they concluded: long and detailed musical phrases, multiple pitch changes in a song’s ‘hook’, male vocalists and higher male voices making a noticeable vocal effort.Top singalongs include Village People’s YMCA, Sum 41’s Fat Lip, Europe’s The Final Countdown and The Automatic’s Monster.
Musical hits rely on ‘maths, science, engineering and technology’, said Dr Daniel Mullensiefen of Goldsmiths University, London.
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Lord Nelson

Wulffmorgenthaler.com 

How to walk on Mars

"When the first people set foot on Mars, what will be the most efficient gait for them to use? To find out, Australian artist Adam Norton is strapping people into his Martian gravity simulator and getting them to perform laps (see video )."
New Scientist TV/read more

Gentleman Husband

My wife and I walked past a swanky new restaurant last night.

"Did you smell that food?" she asked. "Incredible!"

Being the nice guy I am, I thought, " I'll treat her."

So we walked past it again.

Cat Yoga

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Scarlett Johansson leaked photos spark cheeky new internet craze

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Women found to be the tougher sex

"According to a study, the fairer sex is genetically programmed to better resist infections and cancer, and also have a back-up system for fighting disease.
The discovery sheds light on why members of the so-called stronger sex succumb to "man-flu".
Their immune systems are no match for those of wives and girlfriends because of the female X-chromosome, scientists believe.
The reason why women are more robust appears to be microRNAs - short strands of RNA encoded on the chromosome.
RNA is a genetic cousin of DNA and can have important biological effects."
via Telegraph /read more

Heidi the opossum has died

The animal, aged three-and-a-half, had been treated for health problems for weeks and zoo officials decided to put her down 'to spare her further pain and suffering'.

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1984

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Alessio Rastani: "The Collapse Is Coming..."

He caused outrage with his comments on the global economic meltdown claiming "governments don't rule the world, Goldman Sachs rules the world".

But is independent stock market trader Alessio Rastani, interviewed on the BBC News channel on Monday, all he appears to be?

Twitter was alive with suggestions that Rastani was in fact one of the "Yes Men", a band of "identity correction" artists who pass themselves off as the corporations you love to hate.

When asked by the Guardian, via email, to respond to the allegation that he a member of the prank group, Rastani chose his words carefully. However, a BBC internal investigation has concluded that Rastani is authentic.
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Banana Dog

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Being in friend zone

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The LHC's moment of truth approaches

"The Large Hadron Collider’s search for the Higgs boson – the theoretical particle that is believed to give all matter in the universe mass – is, according to physicists, entering its last phase. At some point in the next few months, perhaps as soon as December, we will know: either it exists in the form that is predicted, or it does not. Either way, it will have profound implications for our understanding of physics. Why haven’t we found it? And what will it mean when we do – or if we don’t?"
via Telegraph Blogs/continue reading

Spies could hide messages in gene-modified microbes

"Forget invisible ink or lemon juice – spies can now send messages hidden in genetically engineered bacteria. The new method, dubbed steganography by printed arrays of microbes (SPAM), uses a collection of Escherichia coli strains modified with fluorescent proteins that glow in a range of seven colours.

Each character of the message is encoded using two colours, creating 49 possible combinations – enough for the alphabet, the figures 0 to 9 and a few other symbols. "You can think of all sorts of secret spy applications," says David Walt, a chemist at Tufts University in Medford, Massachusetts, who led the research.

Messages are grown on agar plates then transferred to a thin film that can be sent in the post to the recipient. The film appears blank in everyday conditions, but the message is revealed when the recipient transfers the bacteria to an appropriate growth medium.

As well as giving the bacteria their fluorescent palette, genetic modification also defines which growth medium they will respond to – so the medium type can act as a secret key. For example, bacteria engineered with resistance to a certain antibiotic will display a message only when treated with that particular chemical – any other antibiotic will produce gibberish, or could even display a message warning that the wrong key has been used. Walt says that combining a number of genetic traits could lead to thousands of possible keys.

It is also possible to develop bacteria that lose their fluorescent properties over time, creating a message that self-destructs in the style of Mission Impossible."


via New Scientist/read more

The last Ole!

Matt