Esperanza was a stray dog at a reserve in Alberta, Canada who got hit by a car. Her rear leg was badly injured, but she kept right on with her family responsibilities. She had six babies, after all -five puppies and a kitten- to nurse.
Criss Gerwing, who runs a small animal rescue group, discovered the dog earlier this month and couldn't believe it when the canine led her to her blended brood.
"I cried because she was in such bad condition with her leg, but she was obviously nursing her puppies and this kitten," Gerwing told a media outlet.
Gerwing took the entire family to the Edmonton Humane Society, where veterinarians thought they'd have to amputate the mother dog's bad leg.
But local vet Dr. Milton Ness volunteered to do a special surgery that saved Esperanza's hind quarter. He calls her a "special soul."
That's a good dog. http://www.winnipegfreepress.com/canada/injured-dogs-selflessness-draws-tears-112174059.html -via Arbroath
In case you couldn't stay up all night and watch it, or you are someplace where it wasn't visible, here is the video of last night's lunar eclipse. Four hours of moonlight are compressed into two minutes. The video was captured over Gainesville, Florida by professor William Castleman. -via The Daily What
By Eric Schulman1,2, Eric Schulman3,4, Eric Schulman5, and Eric Schulman6
Figure 1. Eric Schulman, nearby disk galaxy expert
Introduction
Saving for retirement can be an arduous task. The galactic fountain model predicts that energetic stellar winds and supernovae in OB associations produce superbubbles containing hot gas that breaks out of the galactic disk, cools radiatively as it rises upward, and recombines and returns to the disk ballistically. Time travel has occurred when the separation between the time of departure and the time of arrival does not equal the duration of the journey. Open book management theories include teaching employees the rules of the game, giving them the information needed to play the game, and making sure that they share in the risks and the rewards.
Figure 2. Eric Schulman, open book management expert
Methodology
The most popular and widespread methods for obtaining a nest egg are in stocks and bonds. The hot gas was observed with X-ray telescopes, while the cool returning neutral hydrogen was observed through 21-centimeter emission from high-velocity clouds. There are three major paradoxes within time travel: reverse causation, casual loops, and the time traveler’s ability to alter the past. In modern day Corporate America, this unpretentious set of principles applies to every business.
Results
Figure 3. Eric Schulman, time travel paradox expert
Both equities offer a wide array of sectors in which to put your money and can be extremely profitable when playing the market correctly. High-resolution X-ray images of M33 revealed two possible superbubbles, while sensitive 21-centimeter observations found high-velocity neutral hydrogen in 10 of 14 nearby disk galaxies. It does not matter if getting into the time machine produces arrival in the past, because the personal time of the traveler does not depend on the external time. Employees can be taught to play this game, but they are also required to have the information needed in order to play successfully. This entails trading when you have a liquid derivative in the height of demand or conversely obtain the derivative at the beginning of the ascent. Galaxies with high-velocity neutral hydrogen have more dust-enshrouded far-infrared sources and an average star formation rate an order of magnitude larger than galaxies without it. Time travel can still occur without the existence of causal loops, and their removal eliminates a major paradox. Information should not be something that is used as a method of domination or power.
Figure 2. Eric Schulman, open book management expert
These two types of savings plans are geared for investors who plan to continue making money for an elongated period of time and can afford to take a loss and recover. Both of these results are expected if a substantial fraction of the high-velocity clouds are produced in galactic fountains. The second, and far more satisfying and clever resolution of this dilemma, comes with the possibility of branching timelines. Open book management is not for everyone, but for a radical change, it may be just what a company needs.
Discussion
As Figure 5 shows, it is of vital importance when planning for retirement to ensure that employees have all the information necessary to support managers when they use high-velocity gas to go back in time in order to kill their grandfathers, thus creating a new temporal branch in which hands-on training leads to increased profits from the recirculation of the galactic fountain in nearby disk galaxies and therefore a steady star formation rate later in life when your risk should be lower.
Figure 5. The operational risk in each of the Basel II event type categories measured in solar masses per galaxy per year as a function of the number of grandfathers killed after having gone back in time.
Conclusion
In this paper we conclusively demonstrated the utility of planning for retirement by solving time travel paradoxes using open book management in nearby disk galaxies.
The Authors
1Alexandria, Virginia; 2The University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, Michigan; 3Johnson & Wales University, Providence, Rhode Island; 4Saint Leo University, Saint Leo, Florida; 5Amherst College, Amherst, Massachusetts: 6Economic Analysis Group Ltd., Washington, DC
_____________________
This article is republished with permission from the March-April 2008 issue of the Annals of Improbable Research.
You can download or purchase back issues of the magazine, or subscribe to receive future issues. Or get a subscription for someone as a gift! Visit their website for more research that makes people LAUGH and then THINK.
It's time for our giveaway collaboration with the always amusing What Is It? Blog! Can you guess what this is a picture of?
Place your guess in the comment section below. One guess per comment, please, though you can enter as many as you'd like. Post no URLs or weblinks, as doing so will forfeit your entry. Two winners: the first correct guess and the funniest (albeit ultimately wrong) guess will win T-shirt from the NeatoShop.
Update: Congratulations to commenter Just a guess who won for knowing these are for the ends of bulls horns -supposedly for decorations during a show, but common sense tells us they should be a safety feature as well. No one else came close by the time the What Is It? Blog announced the answer. Okkent wins for funniest guess when he said, "My wife requested this as her engagement bracelet. The attachment of my jewels was a condition of us getting married." Both win t-shirts from the NeatoShop!
Jack Kennedy was president of the United States from January 1961 to November 1963. Jack Donaghy is a character on the TV show 30 Rock. In today's Lunchtime Quiz at mental_floss, you'll be given quotes, and you decide which Jack said it. It's not as easy as you think -especially for someone who either hasn't seen the TV show or can't remember the presidency. I scored 67%, because I haven't seen the TV show. Link
The late Colombian drug kingpin Pablo Escobar had a pet hippopotamus named Pepe that went on the loose and was shot in 2009. This highly-detailed poster by Dan Zettwoch documents the foreign objects that Pepe ingested and were found after his death. Link -via Laughing Squid
The Daily Beast collected stories of animal heroism from the past year that might make you a bit teary-eyed. The story of Angel the golden retriever is an example.
Eleven-year-old Austin Foreman was gathering firewood near his home in Boston Bar, British Columbia, when he came face to face with a cougar. When the wild cat lunged at him, his Golden Retriever, Angel, stepped in. She put herself between Austin and the cougar, giving him time to escape to the house. The cougar viciously attacked Angel, carrying her around by the neck while Austin’s mother called 911. Police arrived just in time to shoot the cougar, and after a few moments of suspense, Angel coughed back to life. She had several puncture wounds and a punctured sinus cavity, but she made a full recovery.
See a video report about Angel and read about the other heroic animals in a slide show. Link -via Nag on the Lake
Aren't they adorable? The best-dressed guinea pigs are wearing holiday costumes from Cuddly Cavies Costumes and Clothes for Guinea Pigs & Rabbits. It may be too late to order your Christmas clothing, but there are costumes for guinea pigs to wear for Halloween, Thanksgiving, graduation, Talk Like a Pirate Day, and everyday animal and super hero costumes as well! Link -via Rue the Day
Actor Ben Chapman didn't get a credit in the movie The Creature from the Black Lagoon. The studio wanted to leave the possibility that the creature was real! Link -via TYWBIWDBI
The following is an article from the History's Lists book from Uncle John's Bathroom Reader.
Some familiar candy brands have been in production for more than a century, while some others reach back even further. How did these sweet treats get their start? We've got their sugar-coated beginnings right here.
1. NECCO WAFERS
The oldest mass-produced candy brand in the United States, NECCO wafers got their start in 1847 when Oliver Chase, a candy-making English immigrant, went into business selling the wafers with his brother Silas. (Chase also invented the machine the wafers were stamped out on.) Their company became the basis for the New England Confectionery Company, which rebranded the candy as NECCO Wafers around 1910 or 1912.
2. SQUIRREL NUT CHEWS
Adults today might be more familiar with Squirrel Nut Zippers as an eclectic rock band active in the 1990s, but the candies the band took their name from reach back a full century earlier to 1890, when the first of the excessively chewy taffy candies known as Squirrel Nut Chews rolled off the line of the Austin T. Merrill Company in Massachusetts. The "zippers" candy arrived in the 1920s. Since 2004, the candies have been made by NECCO.
3. HERSHEY'S CHOCOLATE BAR
The quintessential American chocolate bar got its start in 1900 when Milton Hershey perfected a formula to mass-produce milk chocolate, which until that time had been a confection limited primarily to the upper classes. The bar's widespread success helped Hershey to found what is now the Milton Hershey School, in 1909, which provides education for disadvantaged children.
4. TOBLERONE
The famously triangular bar of Swiss chocolate with nougat, almonds, and honey got its shape and name (a combination of the last name of inventor Theodor Tobler and torrone, the Italian word for "nougat") in 1908. Given the image of the Matterhorn on its wrapper, you may be forgiven for thinking the triangular shape is a tribute to the Alps, but the company website maintains the shape was actually inspired by "a red and cream-frilled line of dancers at the Folies Bergeres in Paris, forming a shapely pyramid at the end of a show."
5. GOOGOO CLUSTERS
A regional favorite from Nashville, Tennessee, where it was invented in 1912, this circular candy bar's claim to fame is that it was the first "combination" candy bar -that is, the first made with more than one type of candy (in this case, marshmallow, caramel, and roasted peanuts), all covered in milk chocolate. In the 1930s, the Standard Candy Company advertised the GooGoo Cluster as "a nourishing lunch for a nickel!" -a claim they'd be unlikely to get away with today.
6. MARY JANE
These pocket-sized taffies made from molasses and peanut butter were named for the aunt of Charles N. Miller, who invented the candy in 1914 and inherited the candy company his father had founded in a house originally belonging to Paul Revere. Mary Janes eventually became so popular that the Miller Company stopped making other candies to focus on that brand alone. At the moment, however, the candy is being made by NECCO.
7. CLARK BAR
The crispy, peanuty chocolate bar was the signature bar of the D.L. Clark candy company, named for Irish immigrant David Clark, and founded in what is now the north side of Pittsburgh in the early 1900s. The Clark Bar came into existence in time to become a favorite for U.S. soldiers fighting World War I, and its popularity carried over after the boys came home. Like so many early candy favorites, this one is also currently produced by NECCO.
8. BABY RUTH
A popular misconception about this chocolate-covered bar of caramel and peanuts, created in 1920, is that it was named for baseball player Babe Ruth. While disputed, it has never been proven false. But Baby Ruth candy maker Curtiss Candy Company sued another candy maker who put out a "Babe Ruth Home Run Bar", on grounds that the candy names were too similar. The official line from Curtiss Candy, echoed to this day from contemporary producer Nestle, is that the bar is named after Ruth Cleveland, daughter of U.S. president Grover Cleveland. Some sources allege that Curtiss Company made up the Ruth Cleveland story in order to win the lawsuit and that it was actually named for the baseball player. Skeptics note that "Baby Ruth" died in 1904 -16 years before the creation of the candy bar.
9. MOUNDS
The Mounds Bar was created in 1920 by the Peter Paul Candy Manufacturing Company and was originally a single bar of chocolate-covered coconut instead of the current two smaller bars. Although the Peter Paul Company would later produce a number of coconut-based treats (including Almond Joy), during World War II the company faced severe coconut shortages. Rather than ration its top product, the company temporarily discontinued several other candy brands to ensure that Mounds would stay in production.
10. MILKY WAY
Mars Inc., one of the largest privately-held companies in America, got its start with this candy bar in 1923, when the candy maker Forrest Mars developed the candy to approximate the taste of a malted milk drink in chocolate bar form. In 1926, the bar was offered in chocolate and vanilla flavors, with the vanilla version becoming the Forever Yours bar for over fifty years before becoming the Milky Way Dark bar (now the Milky Way Midnight).
BEST-SELLING CANDY BY COUNTRY
1. United States: M&Ms
2. Australia and the United Kingdom: Cadbury Dairy Milk Bar
Uncle John's Bathroom Reader is having their annual Holiday Sale, in which you can save 30% on your purchase! Get free shipping on orders of $35 or more by using the code HOL10SHIP. And check out the BRI's newest volume, Uncle John's Heavy Duty Bathroom Reader.
This bag doesn't reflect light -it produces its own light! The secret is electro luminescent wire and batteries. Ladyada and Becky Stern used the wire to make a Tron-flavored messenger bag. Once you get the technique down, you can use electro luminescent wire to spice up any clothing or fabric items. Complete instruction and a video will show you how. Link -via Lifehacker
Santa Claus came about when the story of the St. Nicholas of Myra was melded with the legend of Odin. The image was refined by poetry, illustration, and advertising. Get the details on the origins of Santa Claus at it THING. Link -via the Presurfer
The new Google Cr-48 notebook doesn't have the standard Caps Lock key you see on other keyboards. Is this the beginning of the end of Caps Lock?
Caps Lock had its uses back in the olden days. Some of the earliest computers were business machines, used to input product keys and other strings of letters and numbers that often included all caps. Some of the first programming languages, like FORTRAN and Basic, were composed entirely in caps. (They didn't always require Caps Lock, mind you—a lowercase a would often automatically show up as A.)
By the 21st century, Caps Lock had become an outdated scourge. Modern-day personal computing—surfing the Web, writing school papers, chatting online—doesn't require nearly as much capitalization. As of 2010, the most-common Caps Lock users are enraged Internet commenters and the computer-illiterate elderly.
Will anyone miss this key when it's gone? It won't make a bit of difference to me, as Caps Lock is one of three keys on my keyboard that don't work anyway. Link -via Bits and Pieces
