No sheepdog? No problem! This Chinese shepherd found that he could control his flock of sheep with a poster of a wolf!
Du Hebing, of Xi'an, told Huashang Daily that he shot the picture by chance.
"After visiting Qinling Wild Animal Park, on the way home I saw a group of sheep walking along the road with a man holding a picture following behind them," he said.
Du said he burst out laughing when he realised it was a picture of a wolf. "The man was using the wolf picture to scare the sheep and drive them ahead - it was a really funny scene," he said.
A photo of last minute Christmas shoppers raiding a local Walmart? No, actually those are members of the South Korean parliament trying to force their way inside a conference room in the National Assembly Building!
Security staff and aides from the ruling party stood guard outside the room to keep opposition lawmakers away after the committee's GNP-affiliated chairman invoked his right to use force to "keep order" in parliamentary proceedings.
Scuffles broke out as dozens of opposition members and their aides attempted to push their way into the office. TV footage showed people from both sides shoving, pushing and shouting in a crowded hall at the National Assembly building amid a barrage of flashing cameras.
Opponents later used a sledgehammer and other construction tools to tear open the room's wooden doors, only to find barricades of furniture set up inside as a second line of defence.
Remember the gay penguins that got ejected from their colony because they were trying to steal eggs from other penguins? Well, the zookeepers gave the couple two eggs laid by an inexperienced penguin mom ... and it turns out they became the best parents in the zoo!
'We decided to give them two eggs from another couple whose hatching ability had been poor and they've turned out to be the best parents in the whole zoo,' said one of the keepers.
'It's very encouraging and if this works out well we will try to arrange for them to become real parents themselves with artificial insemination.'
Wildlife experts at the park explain that despite being gay the three-year-old male birds are still driven by an urge to be fathers.
'One of the responsibilities of being a male adult is looking after the eggs. Despite the fact that they can't have eggs naturally, it does not take away their biological drive to be a parent,' said one.
This infographic, titled Species-scape, purports to show various species at sizes relative to the number of known species in that group. Insects, represented by the fly, is the largest (at about 900,000 known species). If you're wondering where we are, humans (and other mammals) are represented by the reindeer underneath the mushroom.
Dr. Paul Grabb thought he was removing a benign tumor from a newborn's brain. Instead, he found a tiny foot:
Grabb said he could not tell whether the miniature limbs were from a benign stem cell tumor called a teratoma or the remnants of an identical twin that did not split off and survive, a condition called fetus in fetu.
"It looked like the breach delivery of a baby, coming out of the brain," Grabb told The Associated Press. "To find a perfectly formed structure is extremely unique, unusual, borderline unheard of."
Ian McVey wanted to serve his country, so he joined the Marines after college. He was supposed to go to Iraq, but died not long before his unit shipped out in a motorcycle accident.
Ian's father, John McVey, had to settle Ian's college loans. He wrote to the lenders, asking the debts to be forgiven and two agreed. The third, Sallie Mae (originally founded as Student Loan Marketing Association in 1972, as a government-sponsored enterprise), decided that it'd rather have the money:
John McVey then wrote a very personal letter to Sallie Mae:
"In the process of his education, Ian amassed considerable loans. But Ian was steadfast in his desire to serve our country rather than begin a life in business where his income would have been double or triple his Marine service payment. Giving to our country was Ian's calling, and we admired and supported his choice of service. He was a good and noble son and better friend.
"We are asking that you forgive Ian's loans as his federal loans are being forgiven on the basis of Ian's choice of service to our country as a patriot and so that our family may not have to bear these financial burdens while we deal with the inconsolable grief over the senseless, tragic and untimely loss of our son. While life has not been fair, we pray that you will be."
Sallie Mae responded with a computer-generated letter that, aside from a "Please accept our condolences for your loss" stuck in the middle, was a demand for $53,144.
There was no name on the letter. John McVey's attempts to get a human being to talk to him about this have been met with computer-generated voices.
Kevin Cullen of The Boston Globe has the story (since the article was published, Sallie Mae suddenly had a change of heart and had forgiven the debt): Link
Cat lovers in China are protesting China's cat meat industry. You red that right: cat meat industry. Apparently, cats are a hot commodity and that's not because people want them for pets:
On Monday, the Southern Metropolis Daily — a Guangdong paper famous for its exposes and aggressive reporting — ran a story that said about 1,000 cats were transported by train to Guangdong each day.
The animals came from Nanjing, a major trading hub for cats, the newspaper said. They were brought to market by dealers on motorcycles, crammed into wooden crates and sent to Guangdong on trains. A photo showed a cat with green eyes peering from a crowded crate.
Some people in Nanjing spend their days "fishing for cats," often stealing pets, the report said. One cat owner in Guanghzou said people are afraid to let their pets leave the house for fear they will get nabbed.
And what are the cats for?
"There's a famous soup called 'Dragon, Tiger and Phoenix,'" Zhu said. "It involves cooking snake, cat and chicken together. In winter more people eat cats as they believe it's extra nutritious."
Why do old people think life was great in their younger days? Science finds out the answer: our brain remembers the good stuff and forgets the bad ones!
Report author Professor Roberto Cabeza, from Duke University, North Carolina, United States, said: "Older people have learned to be less affected by negative information in order to maintain their well being and emotional state.
"They may have sacrificed more accurate memory for a negative stimulus, so that they won't be so affected by it. Perhaps at different stages of life, there are different brain strategies.
"Younger adults might need to keep an accurate memory for both positive and negative information in the world.
"Older people dwell in a world with a lot of negatives, so perhaps they have learned to reduce the impact of negative information and remember in a different way."
I <3 this adorable Little Mr. T by Etsy seller Kezzaroo:
Approximately 3 inches from toe to fro. Little T comes on a pin, complete with genuine gold plated chain!! Did you know that Mr.T once punched Chuck Norris at the exact moment he roundhouse kicked Mr.T in the chest. the result was the 80's :)
Dont worry about Mr T getting on no plane fool! ill be sure to give him his milk before hes on his way to you. Do not lock him in a warehouse with a torch, tyres and scrap metal hell build a fully functioning tank and come get you ass. There may be small variations in the Mr T you receive like the mm size of fro :)
Remember kids there is no other like mother so treat her right ;)
I pity the fool who wants to buy this doll as it is sadly sold out: Link
OMG! It's the cutest thing I've seen today. The Daily Mail has a cute story of Paula, the baby Hippo born at Berlin Zoo just 18 days ago, taking its a swim with her mother: Link (with embedded video clip)
This next bit of news is brought to you by Captain Obvious. An Australian psychotherapist Stephen Carroll surveyed a group of 16 to 25-year-old students, and found that male science "nerds" are most likely virgins:
The work ethic of science students, and their devotion to the lab, kept them out environments where they would meet women, he said.
"And who are the people at unis that go to the rave parties and the bar?
"It's not the nerdy boy science students. They're carrying on doing their experiments, going to the library or doing their assignments."
And the most sexually active? Female art students.
When life gives you lemons, make a lemonade. When communism gave Poland a statue, artist Kamila Szejnoch made ... a swing out of it!
Here's her art installation, a swing at the monumental bronze "Berling Army Soldier" statue in Warsaw, Poland:
She suggests a change in the function of the monuments, attempting to build a bridge between the present and the past, adding a contemporary layer distinct from their original style and function. She asks, what a particular memorial actually refers to and what kind of history it conceals.
Kamila won the Szpilman Award 2008 for her work (the award celebrates "ephemeral art" that exists only for a short period of time) - via Invisible Red
Check out the rest of the Szpilman Award winners here: Link (includes such gems as Kate Mitchell's life imitating a cartoon by sawing a hole on the floor)
National Geographic has an interesting article about some of the strangest hangover cures from around the world. Perhaps they mean "cure" in a way that you'll never touch alcohol again if you're forced to take these the morning after:
Germany: Pickled Herring Pickled or marinated herring is the main ingredient in a sour snack Germans call Rollmops. Considered an excellent way to ward off a bad hangover, they're made by wrapping fillets of the tiny white fish around bits of onion and gherkin. Rollmops can be a welcome part of what Germans call katerfrühstück, or the hangover breakfast.
Romania: Tripe Soup Tripe - aka cow stomach - is the go-to ingredient for many Romanians suffering from a hangover. It's also a common "cure" in Mexico and Turkey, and no doubt many other countries as well. But in Romania, the edible offal is boiled in a greasy, salty soup of root vegetables, garlic vinegar, and cream.
Poland: Sour pickle juice Polish hangover remedies are all about the sour. Some say that soured milk (which is unpasteurized and has been left at room temperature for a day or tow) does the trick. Others favor sour - very sour - pickle juice, heavy on the vinegar.
Heath and Deborah Campbell wanted a birthday cake for their son, but a local supermarket refused their order because of the boy's name: Adolf Hitler!
Deborah Campbell, 25, of nearby Hunterdon County, N.J., said she phoned in her order last week to the Greenwich ShopRite. When she told the bakery department she wanted her son's name spelled out, she was told to talk to a supervisor, who denied the request.
Karen Meleta, a ShopRite spokeswoman, said the store denied similar requests from the Campbells the last two years, including a request for a swastika.
"We reserve the right not to print anything on the cake that we deem to be inappropriate," Meleta said. "We considered this inappropriate."
Why did they choose that name?
Heath Campbell said he named his son after Adolf Hitler because he liked the name and because "no one else in the world would have that name."
The Campbells' two other children are named JoyceLynn Aryan Nation Campbell, who turns 2 in a few months, and Honszlynn Hinler Jeannie Campbell, who will be 1 in April.
Campbell said he was raised not to avoid people of other races but not to mix with them socially or romantically. But he said he would try to raise his children differently.
I was going to call it a night when I decided to check one more link. I'm so glad I did because that's when I ran across this amazing papercraft artwork by Russian artist Yulia Brodskaya.
Her website is a little bit slow, but it's worth the wait: Link - via Drawn!
