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“The kangaroo," writes Richard Waller, "was first discovered in Australia by Captain Cook. He brought back its skin and asked painter George Stubbs to make a picture from it. He inflated the skin, and this is the finished picture at Parham House." The rest of the kangaroo was eaten by the expedition, with relish.
When Mary Martell left for St. Johns Airport, she didn’t know her cat had jumped into her suitcase. How did a live animal in a suitcase make it through airport security?
Martell said her bag was scanned at the airport, but she was not stopped.
“They had asked me, when they put … the luggage through the X-ray, whether I had a turkey,” Martell said.
“[Security] kept going back and forth with [the suitcase],” Martell said. “I was adamant. ‘Look, I have no turkey.’”
The cat was discovered after a two-hour flight to Niagara-on-the-Lake, Ontario, when Martell opened her suitcase in her hotel room. The Canadian Air Transport Security Authority is investigating the incident. Link -via Metafilter
If you’ve ever used MS Paint, you probably will agree that it as one of the most frustratingly simple paint programs ever invented. The lack of colors, features, and brushes make Jason’s 2+ hour rendering of the Mona Lisa even more amazing. Hit play or click on the Link [YouTube] to watch.
Jason is also the painter behind the Supersize Me painting with Ketchup. Talk about talent!
The objects pictured above are wristguards found among the grave goods of a man called the Amesbury Archer, thought to have been associated with the building of Stone Henge. The details of his burial are fascinating. One of the most interesting is that he seems to have spent part of his life in the Alps:
On May 3rd 2002, archaeologists from Wessex Archaeology found the grave of a man dating back to around 2,300BC, the Early Bronze Age in Britain, at Amesbury in Wiltshire, England. The grave lay three miles south-east of Stonehenge. The grave contained the richest array of items ever found from this period. Around 100 objects were found, including the complete skeleton of a man, three copper knives, two small gold hair tresses, two sandstone wristguards to protect his wrists from the bow string, 16 flint arrowheads and five pots.
This makes the grave the richest Bronze Age find in Britain – there are ten times the usual number of finds from other graves. The gold dated to as Tests on the bones showed that the Archer was a man aged between 35 and 45. He was strongly built, but he had an abscess on his jaw and had suffered an accident a few years before his death that had ripped his left knee cap off. As a result of this he walked with a straight left which swung out to the side of him, and suffered from an infection in his bones which would have caused him constant pain.
Other tests on the enamel found on the Archer’s teeth revealed that he grew up in central Europe. They could not reveal how long he had lived in The Archer is important because he is the first example of a powerful elite who may well have organised the erection of Stonehenge. Stonehenge was begun in the late Stone Age, around 3,000BC, as a ditch and a bank enclosing an open space, but in about 2,300BC the world-famous stones were erected, the large 20-tonne Sarsen stones from the Marlborough Downs nearby and the smaller four-tonne Bluestones from Preseli in west Wales. How the Bluestones were transported 240 miles (380 kilometres) is not yet known.
early as 2,470BC and is the earliest found in Britain. It seems likely that the objects were buried with the man, dubbed by the media the ‘Amesbury Archer’, or the ‘King of Stonehenge’, for his use in the next life.
Britain, only that he must have lived in the Alps region while a child, either Switzerland, Austria or Germany.
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New Scientist reports on a new surgical procedure.
Transgastric surgery, or natural orifice translumenal endosurgery (NOTES), as it is officially known, involves passing flexible surgical tools and a camera in through the patient’s mouth to reach the abdominal cavity via an incision made in the stomach lining. Once the operation is over, the surgeon draws any removed tissue back out through the patient’s mouth and stitches up the hole in the stomach.
The benefits are less scarring, less pain, and less chance of infection. The downside is that it may leave a bad taste in your mouth. Link -via Cynical-C
Cluster balloons, like all balloons, are aircraft that require skill and training to operate safely. Before I began flying cluster balloons, I was an FAA-licensed hot-air balloon pilot and had over four-hundred hours of pilot time in conventional hot-air balloons and Cloudhoppers. These skills are not rocket science, but they are NOT something you’re going to figure out on your first flight while you’re drifting toward the high tension lines and imminent crispy-critterhood! Fly safely!
