←
→

Sunday Reads: 10 Days and Counting

Posted: December 15, 2013 | Author: | Filed under: morning reads | Tags: |22 Comments

277f389aae2d5deb76e4f3d49d0d19d1Good Morning

Hey, my internet is acting wonky…so this is going to be a quick post until my Windstream decides to work properly.

And since the picture I chose has an animal theme, I’m sticking with it.

We had a little visitor in our walls the other day. I’d been hearing the lil’ critters for a long time now…only this time my dad was able to catch the varmint in the act. There he was, sitting in the void area of the old chimney section of the upstairs loft. Damn squirrel. But it was a vindication for me. My dad was insisting I was crazy, cause he couldn’t find how the fuzzy things were getting inside…he kept saying I was just hearing “things” and imagining it, that there was nothing “alive” in the walls. Humph. I know whether the sounds in my head are real or not.

The Fascinating Story of Why U.S. Parks Are Full of Squirrels

In most American cities, it’s hard to walk through a park without spotting a gray squirrel. Those bushy-tailed little buggers are everywhere, chomping on nuts and climbing up trees—but not thanks to nature. No sir. They’re there because we put them there to entertain us—among other things.

As a new paper published the Journal of American History by a professor at the University of Pennsylvania named Etienne Benson explains, the story of America’s squirrels goes back to the early 19th century. At that point in time, squirrels were just another animal running around the woods, mainly useful as a source of food for frontiersmen. If you saw a squirrel in the city, it was almost certainly being kept as a pet. One escaped pet squirrel in New York City, circa 1856, drew a crowd of hundreds according to one of the city papers—which called the squirrel an “unusual visitor.”

Go ahead and read about the squirrels becoming so popular that:

Around the same time, a sea change in our relationship with squirrels was already underway in Philadelphia. The city had released three squirrels in Franklin Square in 1847 and had provided them with food and boxes for shelter—and the people loved it. One visitor is quoted as saying “it was a wonder that [squirrels] are not in the public parks of all great cities.” In the years that followed, the trend spread to Boston and New Haven, where squirrels soon grew so fat from humans feeding them that they were falling out of the trees.

Fat squirrels.

That is a long read, go check it out…

Hey, I posted this on my Facebook page, but it is funny: 3 young pandas at Atlanta zoo are girls, not boys

Surprise! Three young giant pandas born at Atlanta’s zoo that were thought to be males are actually females.

Actually, it’s not so surprising.

“When they’re born, there’s really not much external difference to note,” Zoo Atlanta deputy director Dwight Lawson said, explaining why four of the five cubs born at the zoo have initially had their gender misidentified.

The zoo announced Friday that 3-year-old Po and 4-month-old twins Mei Lun and Mei Huan are females, rather than males as originally thought. Mei Lan, the first panda born at zoo Atlanta, was originally thought to be female, but was later determined to be male. Five-year-old Xi Lan is the only one whose gender was correctly identified.

That is good!

The fact that the three pandas are female is actually good news, Lawson said.

“Certainly in China, they’re considered of more value for increasing the population,” he said.

The entire panda population in captivity is managed genetically and demographically, and if Lun Lun, the mother of all five pandas born at Zoo Atlanta, had more boys, they would have had fewer breeding opportunities, Lawson said.

Am I the only one to see the irony in this…considering the stigma of girl baby humans in China?

And now a video:

I know it has been posted before, but like I said earlier, with my internet not loading web pages correctly, I am limited to what I can post.

Think of this as an open thread….

22 Comments on “Sunday Reads: 10 Days and Counting”

  1. JJ Lopez Minkoff says:
    December 15, 2013 at 10:00 am

    Morning all, I’m working on the post now so it should be up soon.

    • bostonboomer says:
      December 15, 2013 at 11:13 am

      Did you actually catch the critter? Squirrels and chipmunks can get into the walls and under the roof. I don’t know how they do it. I think they just chew through anything. Some chipmunks dug a big hole in my mom’s garage in a place where the cement was cracking. They’re destructive!

  2. Fannie says:
    December 15, 2013 at 10:19 am

    I dare not say the word squirrel aloud, or my Murphy will go nuts. No doubt you friend stashed his goodies, and then forgot where he put them, and has been looking for the goodies or figures she has found a place she won’t forget. I do that all the time, I’m beginning jump for joy when I get it right.

    Been making loaves of bread, banana nut, zucchini, and pumpkin, and apple. I thought I had all my spices, wrote up a list, replaced old with fresh, only to find out I didn’t have nutmeg. So I brought a fresh jar, and stashed it where the other fresh jar of nutmeg was sitting on the shelf. And the spices aren’t cheap like they were back in the day, that’s what really has changed today.

    • bostonboomer says:
      December 15, 2013 at 11:15 am

      Spices are really expensive! There is a Penzey’s spices store right near me, and I like to get them there.

    • Delphyne49 says:
      December 15, 2013 at 11:30 am

      All that baking sounds delicious, Fannie! You knew, of course, that the minute you bought the new jar of nutmeg, you’d find the one you were looking for!

      I usually buy my spices/herbs online at either Mt. Rose Herbs or VitaCost. I save my glass jars, buy in bulk and refill them as needed. The spices/herbs are organic at Mt. Rose and VitaCost usually has a bunch of organic spices/herbs, too, if that’s something you look for.

    • Beata says:
      December 15, 2013 at 11:58 am

      I buy supermarket brand spices. Around the holidays, they are often on sale so it is a good time to stock up.

  3. RalphB says:
    December 15, 2013 at 1:20 pm

    Go get him, Frank!!

    Pope v. Limbaugh. it’s on.

    “The ideology of Marxism is wrong. But I have met many Marxists in my life who are good people, so I don’t feel offended,” Francis was quoted as saying.

    Defending his criticism of the “trickle-down” theory of economics, he added: “There was the promise that once the glass had become full it would overflow and the poor would benefit. But what happens is that when it’s full to the brim, the glass magically grows, and thus nothing ever comes out for the poor … I repeat: I did not talk as a specialist but according to the social doctrine of the church. And this does not mean being a Marxist.”

    • RalphB says:
      December 15, 2013 at 1:23 pm

      Christmas, said Francis, was a time of hope and tenderness that should shake people from indifference when they are confronted with suffering in the world. Railing against food wastage, he said that at a recent general audience he had seen a mother with a hungry baby who was crying and had told her to feed the child in spite of being in front of the pope. “She was modest,” he said. “She did not want to breast-feed him in public while the pope was passing by … I would like to repeat what I said to that woman, to humanity: feed those who are hungry! May the hope and tenderness of Christmas shake us from indifference.”

  4. dakinikat says:
    December 15, 2013 at 2:59 pm

    I’d like my water turned back on so I can contemplate making Roasted Potato/Garlic Soup with bacon on top!!!

    http://beekman1802.com/recipes/joshs-lazy-roasted-garlic-potato-soup/?fb_action_ids=10200964526416102&fb_action_types=og.likes&fb_ref=.Uqs5h0lYjuo.like&fb_source=other_multiline&action_object_map=%5B616066091843852%5D&action_type_map=%5B%22og.likes%22%5D&action_ref_map=%5B%22.Uqs5h0lYjuo.like%22%5D

    They’re fixing a main or something all day. I keep wondering why they did it on the weekend? Thankfully, I’m going to my friend Gail’s for dinner tonight and she’s made some amazing stuff!

  5. dakinikat says:
    December 15, 2013 at 3:04 pm

    http://www.theguardian.com/film/2013/dec/15/peter-o-toole-dies-lawrence-arabia

    Peter O’Toole, star of Lawrence of Arabia, dies aged 81
    Actor who shot to fame in David Lean’s 1962 masterpiece and received eight Oscar nominations has died in hospital in London

  6. dakinikat says:
    December 15, 2013 at 3:43 pm

    Why Are Feminist Critics Hung Up on Playboy?

    another women who doesn’t get it …

    http://nymag.com/thecut/2013/12/why-are-feminist-critics-hung-up-on-playboy.html?mid=twitter_nymag

    Yet Playboy’s time-honored brand of benevolent sexism remains an appealing target for criticism, perhaps because it’s so old-fashioned.

    I am no prude and there is no such thing as “benevolent” sexism? WTF?

    • NW Luna says:
      December 16, 2013 at 12:20 am

      Apalling stupidity.

      Sexism, by definition, is never benevolent. “Time-honored” and “old-fashioned” — yeah, just like slavery and torture.

←
→