Thursday, May 28, 2015

"The Night Chicago Died" by Paper Lace


New York Man Takes Dying Dog on Bucket List Adventure Across the Nation

By NICOLE PELLETIERE via Good Morning America.

Following a terminal diagnosis, Poh, a mixed-breed dog from New York City, has been living his dying days traveling the nation with his owner, crossing off many desirable destinations from their bucket list.
"It was a great trip," owner Thomas Neil Rodriguez told ABC News. "I got to spend seven weeks with Poh. At first, I did not think he'd make it two weeks, but he did."
Rodriguez said he adopted Poh from an animal shelter back in December 1999, when he was eight weeks old...Continue reading...

 

Related: Woman makes bucket list for dying dog [published on 1/27/15, 2:04 AM]


When Lauren Fern was told last summer that her pet pooch Gizelle was dying of bone cancer, she decided to savour every moment she had left with her beloved dog and create a bucket list.

First up on that list, Lauren took her four-legged friend canoeing. While this may seem like a random activity for a dog, Lauren had very heartfelt reasons for choosing it.

"Gizelle and I always used to watch The Little Mermaid together, and a favourite scene was the one where Ariel is chauffeured in a row boat by Prince Eric," she revealed.

Next up, Lauren and Gizelle spent some time together in New York's Times Square. Again, New York has a special significance to the close pair as when Lauren moved to the city from her small hometown in Tennessee, Gizelle was right by her side, helping her set up home.

"Together Gizelle and I had been through college, boyfriends, our early 20s, and a move from simple Tennessee to big and scary New York City," Lauren wrote in a moving blog post...Continue reading...
© Instagram/ Lauren Fern Gizelle enjoy ing rare peaceful moment in New York Times Square
[photo]

Sunday, May 24, 2015

"Piano Man" by Billy Joel

http://www.last.fm/music/Billy+Joel

This 85-Year-Old Nun Just Spent Two Years In Prison For Protesting Nuclear Weapons




ROSEMONT, PENNSYLVANIA–Two white-haired nuns stepped forward and embraced each other tightly. One has been living in a convent in a quiet Philadephia suburb. The other has spent the last two years in federal prison, charged with sabotage, trespassing, and destroying government property as part of a peaceful protest in Oak Ridge, Tennessee against the U.S.’ arsenal of nuclear weapons.
“Welcome out,” said Sister Margaret Doyle, beaming at the newly-freed 85-year-old activist Megan Rice.
Just days before, Rice was dozing in her cell at the Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn, New York, when she heard the BBC Radio report that the most serious charge against her and her two fellow activists was overturned, and a federal appeals court ordered their immediate release.
On Wednesday, dressed in a tunic and sweatpants that were a gift from a fellow inmate, carrying all her worldly possessions in a grocery bag, Rice returned to the convent where she trained as a novice nearly 50 years ago. There, the Sisters received her with awe and concern.
“I don’t know how she survived. I’d be an absolute basket case,” said Sister Pat Tyrell. “We were so worried. But she had the guts to do it, God love her. We’re not keen on people breaking the law and going to jail, but everything she stands for we stand for.”
“She’s a real prophet,” added Sister Florence Rice. “I’m a nuclear activist too, but I don’t go to marches or go to prison.”...Continue reading...

Canada's rubgy seven women score historic victory by defeating Australia 20-17

The Canadian Press Posted: May 23, 2015:
One day after securing Olympic rugby qualification, Canada made history Saturday by defeating Australia 20-17 at the Amsterdam Sevens to win its first ever Women's World Series tournament.
Ghislaine Landry's try with one minute remaining put Canada ahead for good after a back-and-forth final. Canadian captain Jen Kish retrieved the ensuing kickoff to end Australia's hopes of a comeback.>>Read more.

NASA: These 18 Houseplants Help Purify Your Home's Air

By

Concerned by the air pollution caused by an ever-more industrialized society, NASA took a close look at houseplants' ability to reduce indoor air pollutants. They hoped the research might help mitigate the chemicals modern synthetic building materials and furniture can "off-gas" into the air, but they were also looking for ways to maintain air quality inside potential space stations.
NASA tested how well houseplants diffuse chemicals like formaldehyde (found in particle board and many other synthetic home items) and benzene (found in cigarette smoke, but also in some paints and glues). Their findings were originally published in 1989, but still ring true today, and were recently resurfaced as an easy-to-read graphic from Love The Garden.
Consider NASA's picks next time you're shopping for a container garden. Some of them, like the Chinese evergreen, are even hard to kill, so you don't need a green thumb to reap the benefits...Here's what the study found:

City in the sky: world's biggest hotel to open in Mecca

www.theguardian.com:  Desert fortress through the eyes of a Disneyland imagineer … the 45-storey Abraj Kudai hotel in Mecca.  Photograph: Dar Al-Handasah

Four helipads will cluster around one of the largest domes in the world, like sideplates awaiting the unveiling of a momentous main course, which will be jacked up 45 storeys into the sky above the deserts of Mecca. It is the crowning feature of the holy city’s crowning glory, the superlative summit of what will be the world’s largest hotel when it opens in 2017.
With 10,000 bedrooms and 70 restaurants, plus five floors for the sole use of the Saudi royal family, the £2.3bn Abraj Kudai is an entire city of five-star luxury, catering to the increasingly high expectations of well-heeled pilgrims from the Gulf.
Modelled on a “traditional desert fortress”, seemingly filtered through the eyes of a Disneyland imagineer with classical pretensions, the steroidal scheme comprises 12 towers teetering on top of a 10-storey podium, which houses a bus station, shopping mall, food courts, conference centre and a lavishly appointed ballroom...Continue reading...

Wednesday, May 20, 2015

Data Suggests Legs and Toes in Ancestor of Living Snakes




An artist’s rendering of the most recent common ancestor of all living snakes. Its small hind legs probably served no purpose in locomotion. Credit Julius Csotonyi

From the robust boa constrictor to the venomous rattlesnake, all of the more than 3,400 snake species that slither today may have descended from the same prehistoric forest prowler, whose sinuous body had two small hind legs with toes and ankles, researchers reported on Tuesday.
After analyzing data gathered through fossils, genetic sequencing and anatomical comparisons of 73 snake and lizard species, a team of paleontologists from Yale University has constructed what it calls the most comprehensive snake “family tree” to date. The findings provide an answer to longstanding questions about when, where and how modern snakes originated.
“Having that tree as a backbone let us draw a ton of conclusions for what the ancestral snake would have been like,” said Daniel J. Field, a doctoral candidate in evolutionary biology and an author of the study. The team concluded that the most recent common ancestor of all living snakes was nocturnal, thrived 128.5 million years ago in the Southern Hemisphere and devoured relatively large prey whole using its sharp, hooked teeth as a hunting tool.
To reach this conclusion, the team’s first step was to reconstruct the snake’s family tree from tips to its trunk. To better understand when certain characteristics — like the ability to constrict prey or hunt at night — first appeared, the researchers used the genetic and morphological data they collected to piece together how different groups of living snakes are related to one another...Continue reading...

Tuesday, May 19, 2015

Yep, It Was Literally Raining Spiders And Spider Webs In Australia (Photos)

by

In “Charlotte’s Web,” ballooning baby spiders floating away on their webs was adorable. According to witnesses of a recent spider-baby onslaught in Australia, it’s anything but that in real life.
The Goulburn Post reports recent weather in the Southern Tablelands brought millions of young spiders parachuting in on tiny ballooned webs. The arachnids dispersed after landing, leaving white layers of their webs over farm fields and homes.
Photographs show the area seemingly buried in a thin layer of cobwebs that reportedly made every day errands a little difficult>>Read more, photos...

It's raining spiders! Spider rain phenomenon explained

[link]

"As Long as You Love Me" by Backstreet Boys

[link]
 last.fm/music   Backstreet Boys

An informant's life inside US biker gangs

Pakistani Christian erecting 140-foot cross in nation's biggest city

The cross is being built at the entrance of the largest Christian burial ground in Karachi, Gora Qabristan Cemetery and will be the tallest cross in Asia. (christiansinpakistan.com)

Monday, May 18, 2015

36 abandoned golden retrievers rescued from Turkey

Meet Uncle Sam, one of 36 golden retrievers rescued from Turkey, in Atlanta.(Photo: WXIA)
Jaye Watson, WXIA
The Pet Lodge in Alpharetta, Georgia is a pretty golden place these days. The newest residents are 36 golden retrievers, rescued from the streets and shelters of Istanbul, Turkey.
Lauren Genkinger, the founder and head of Adopt a Golden Atlanta, led the effort to bring the dogs to Atlanta.
"This is the largest known rescue of golden retrievers internationally, ever."...Continue reading...

"Black Water" by Timber Timbre

Arts Crafts
[link]

Canadian folk blues group, Timber Timbre, talks cinematic, literary influences By

 There was a time when Taylor Kirk, vocalist and songwriter for Canadian folk blues band Timber Timbre, resisted the blues. “I used to play guitar in my dad’s blues rock band. I was maybe 16 when I first started to play guitar, and I thought that I really didn’t want to play that kind of music — and then it’s kind of exactly what I ended up doing,” Kirk said...Continue reading...

Victoria Day 2015: 24 facts about May 24 long weekend

By Colin Butler, CBC News
While the meaning of Victoria Day may be lost on some Canadians, it's a holiday older than the country itself. It was originally meant to commemorate the birthday of Queen Victoria. (Bassano/Wikipedia) 
 From historic controversy to Victoria Day disasters, the weekend known in Canada as the unofficial start of summer is our oldest state holiday. Here are 24 facts about May 24, just in time for reading on what's lovingly referred to as "May two-four."...24 facts

Suffering from the anguish of chronic Lyme disease

By Sue-Ann Levy
Paige Spencer in her old bedroom that she now calls her "drug room " on May 13, 2015. She suffers from Lyme disease. (Veronica Henri/Toronto Sun)

TORONTO - Paige Spencer can’t remember a day in the past six months when she didn’t feel pain everywhere in her body.
Most days she lives off Percocet and Gravol to calm down her stomach enough to eat.
She never knows what each day will bring.
“There is not a single inch of my body that I’ve not felt pain in,” says Spencer during an interview at her home last week. “I’m living in a constant nightmare … like a scary movie where you walk up to a corner and don’t know what’s around that corner.”
After suffering for 14 long years with many serious undiagnosed medical issues and through too many trips to the hospital to count, the pretty, articulate soon to be 21-year-old was finally diagnosed in July 2013 with late-stage chronic Lyme disease.
She takes 70 pills and up to six needles a day, all of which she administers herself. The young lady, who always dreamt of being an actress, is on a special diet and has a permanent PICC line in her left arm — a form of catheter to administer IV antibiotics — that goes right into a valve near her heart.
In her special treatment room — stocked with medications, equipment and two donated wheelchairs — a giant chart tells her what she needs to take by the hour. After enjoying a few months of respite last summer, she suffered a bad relapse in December and has been enduring unspeakable pain since...Continue reading...

Putin scores eight goals in exhibition hockey game with NHL veterans

MOSCOW — The Associated Press

Vladimir Putin smiles during an ice hockey match as part of the Night Hockey league tournament in Sochi on May 15, 2015.
(ALEKSEY NIKOLSKY/AFP/Getty Images)

Russian President Vladimir Putin has played in an exhibition hockey game and scored one goal after another on assists from retired NHL players.
Putin’s team won 18 to 6, with eight of those goals made by the 62-year-old president, most of them on assists from NHL stars Pavel Bure and Valeri Kamensky...Continue reading...
 RuptlyTV
[link]

Saudi Arabia to buy nuclear bombs from Pakistan - New York post

By Bill Sanderson
Saudi Arabia's King Salman (right) and Deputy Crown Prince Mohammed bin Nayef walk to greet President Obama in Riyadh on January 27. Photo: Reuters

   Saudi Arabia will join the nuclear club by buying “off the shelf” atomic weapons from Pakistan, US officials told a London newspaper.
   The Saudis — who financed much of Pakistan’s nuke program — are fearful of international efforts to keep its enemy Iran from acquiring a bomb, the Sunday Times of London reports. The Saudis think the deal, backed by President Obama, will actually accelerate Iran’s nuke push.
   Saudi Arabia has talked for years about acquiring a bomb from the Pakistanis. “The House of Saud has now made the strategic decision to move forward,” a former US defense official said.>>Read here.

Saturday, May 16, 2015

Video - Murray McLauchlan, Canadian music legend, on Compass

CBC NewsLegendary Canadian folk singer Murray McLauchlan took some time to speak with Compass host Sara Fraser. www.cbc.ca/news
True North Records Murray McLauchlan, "Never Did Like That Train" [link]

Mahmoud Abbas and the Church


Pope Francis exchanged gifts with Mahmoud Abbas, president of the Palestinian Authority, during their meeting at the Vatican on Saturday.
Pool photo by Alberto Pizzoli

By ELISABETTA POVOLEDO:
VATICAN CITY — Pope Francis praised Mahmoud Abbas, the president of the Palestinian Authority, as an “angel of peace” during a meeting at the Vatican on Saturday. The Vatican also expressed hope that Israel and the Palestinians would resume talks “to find a just and lasting solution to the conflict” that has roiled the Middle East for decades.
The encounter came days after the Vatican announced that it would sign a treaty recognizing the “state of Palestine,” tacitly endorsing the Palestinians’ bid for sovereignty.
Mr. Abbas is in Rome for the canonization on Sunday of two Arab nuns who lived in Ottoman-ruled Palestine in the 19th century.
Mr. Abbas also met with the Vatican’s secretary of state, Cardinal Pietro Parolin, and “great satisfaction was expressed” over the bilateral accord reached on Wednesday, which concerns “various essential aspects of the life and the activity of the Catholic Church” in the West Bank, East Jerusalem and Gaza, the Vatican said in a statement.
The treaty will be signed “in the near future,” the Vatican statement said...Continue reading... 
Mahmoud Abbas(a.k.a. Abu Mazen) [link]

January 21, 2015

PALESTINIAN TERRORIST ATTACKS JEWS TRAPPED INSIDE BUS - Palestinians celebrate with cartoons and the hashtag "Je suis couteau," I am knife - How Western governments and the Church do NOT regard Palestinians killing Jews as terror, and treat terrorist Mahmoud Abbas with reverence. 

 Give them a state?

  • A Palestinian man stabbed 17 people on a Tel Aviv bus, seriously wounding 4 of them.
  • Israeli police described it as a terror attack, while it was praised by Palestinians
  • Supporters are now taking to Twitter with 'I am knife' hashtag 
  • The tweets are often accompanied by a graphic showing a bloody knife
  • 'Moderate' Fatah has officially honored a previous Muslim killer of 8 Israelis.
  • Western leaders don't regard the murder of Jews by Palestinians as terror
  • Terrorist Mahmoud Abbas, who routinely eulogizes terrorists who kill Jews, was a guest of honor at the recent Paris march against terror in France, while the Israeli PM was told to stay home because he made the French "uncomfortable".
  • The Vatican has always strongly sided with the Palestinians.  Recently Pope Francis justified Muslim terror against those who offend Islam. 
  • The Orwellian morality of our times.  Perpetrators of terror are treated as heroes, while the Jewish victims are called "Nazis".
  • This attack on bus passengers is the latest in a series of attacks to hit Israel in recent months, in which babies and rabbis praying at a synagogue have been singled out for murder...Read here.
  • Friday, May 15, 2015

    B B King; Mr. King passed peacefully in his sleep at 9:40 pm Pacific time May 14 2015

    The Thrill Is Gone

    Eagle Rock [link]

    Incredible shots of a breaching humpback whale by Steven Benjamin

    First U.S. Center to Study Lyme Disease Launched at Johns Hopkins Medicine

    The Johns Hopkins University, The Johns Hopkins Hospital, and Johns Hopkins Health System.:
    Increasingly common illness has high toll: 300,000 stricken, $1.3 billion in treatment costs per year
    Release Date: May 13, 2015
    Fundamental research into the causes and cures of post-treatment Lyme disease syndrome now has its first home base at a major U.S. medical research center with the launch of the Johns Hopkins Lyme Disease Clinical Research Center. Inaugurated on May 12, 2015, with a major gift from the Lyme Disease Research Foundation, the center plans an ambitious research program targeting this increasingly common disease, which costs the U.S. economy up to $1.3 billion per year in treatment costs alone.
    First discovered in Lyme, Connecticut, 40 years ago, Lyme disease has spread rapidly throughout the East Coast and Midwest. It now afflicts more than 300,000 people per year, becoming the sixth most common reportable infectious disease in the U.S.
    “If you live anywhere from Maine to Virginia, it’s almost impossible for Lyme disease not to affect someone you know, someone in your family or yourself,” says center founder and director John Aucott, M.D., a Johns Hopkins internist. Aucott, an assistant professor of medicine at Johns Hopkins, has spent more than a decade studying the disease’s potentially crippling effects...Continue reading...

    Moonfish: The First Warm-Blooded Fish (Photos)

    by Jeanna Bryner, Live Science Managing Editor
    The moonfish, which are about the size of a manhole cover, is now considered the first-known warm-blooded fish, scientists report in the journal Science. Through some physiological tricks, the fish is able to keep its entire body — heart, brain, swimming muscles and viscera — warmer than the surrounding water. Here are photos of the distinguished fish, which is also called an opah. [Read the full story on the warm-blooded moonfish]...Continue reading, photos...

    Thursday, May 14, 2015

    Our attention span is now less than that of a goldfish, Microsoft study finds

    by Christopher Hooton
    Humans have become so obsessed with portable devices and overwhelmed by content that we now have attention spans shorter than that of the previously jokingly juxtaposed goldfish.
    Microsoft surveyed 2,000 people and used electroencephalograms (EEGs) to monitor the brain activity of another 112 in the study, which sought to determine the impact that pocket-sized devices and the increased availability of digital media and information have had on our daily lives.
    Among the good news in the 54-page report is that our ability to multi-task has drastically improved in the information age, but unfortunately attention spans have fallen.
    In 2000 the average attention span was 12 seconds, but this has now fallen to just eight. The goldfish is believed to be able to maintain a solid nine.
    "Canadians [who were tested] with more digital lifestyles (those who consume more media, are multi-screeners, social media enthusiasts, or earlier adopters of technology) struggle to focus in environments where prolonged attention is needed," the study reads...Continue reading...

    Music review: A life in music and words: Bruce Cockburn explores range of human emotion at Iron Horse show

     Photo credit: David Kearns

    By STEVE PFARRER Staff Writer:

    When you’ve been writing and playing songs for 45-plus years, you have a lot of material to work with. In fact, you might have so much that you’d need to write a memoir to put it all in context.
    That’s just what Bruce Cockburn, the venerable Canadian songwriter and guitarist, has done. “Rumours of Glory,” which was published late last year, recounts his long career as a musician, human rights activist, and spiritual explorer. With 31 albums and a raft of musical and humanitarian awards to his credit, Cockburn — who turns 70 May 27 — has a lot of ground to cover.
    He brought copies of his book, as well as a new boxed set of CDs, to Northampton’s Iron Horse Music Hall last Friday, the first of two nights he would perform there before a sold-out house. He also brought four guitars — two six-string acoustics, a resonator guitar and a 12-string acoustic — to showcase his inventive finger-style work and the jazz, world music, blues and folk sounds he incorporates in his songs...Continue reading...
    "Mystery" by Bruce Cockburn

    Vatican recognizes state of Palestine



    VATICAN CITY (AP) -- The Vatican officially recognized the state of Palestine in a new treaty finalized Wednesday, immediately sparking Israeli ire and accusations that the move hurt peace prospects.
    The treaty, which concerns the activities of the Catholic Church in Palestinian territory, is both deeply symbolic and makes explicit that the Holy See has switched its diplomatic recognition from the Palestine Liberation Organization to the state of Palestine.
    The Vatican had welcomed the decision by the U.N. General Assembly in 2012 to recognize a Palestinian state and had referred to the Palestine state since. But the treaty is the first legal document negotiated between the Holy See and the Palestinian state, giving the Vatican's former signs of recognition an unambiguous confirmation in a formal, bilateral treaty.
    "Yes, it's a recognition that the state exists," said the Vatican spokesman, the Rev. Federico Lombardi.
    The Israeli Foreign Ministry said it was "disappointed."...Continue reading...
    Related: Pope Pius XII & the Holocaust

    Tuesday, May 12, 2015

    Drone captures grain elevator demolition in Rockhaven, Saskatchewan

    This screenshot shows a grain elevator coming down in Rockhaven, Sask. A local farmer used a drone camera to film the demolition.                                                                                                                                                                                                          CTV Saskatoon:
    Trevor Scherman has seen elevator demolitions before, but never from above.
    The farmer in central Saskatchewan used a drone to film a Pioneer grain elevator coming down in Rockhaven, Sask. Monday evening.
    “The pigeons are still trying to get in it,” Scherman told CTV. “It’s pretty amazing that it falls like that.”
    The drone flies over the elevator as the structure falls to the ground. Dust flies up in the air as the camera circles the fallen building then pans the scenic Saskatchewan landscape.
    Scherman said he regularly films farm-related videos using his drone camera.
    “It’s all farm-based. Trying to keep the city people informed,” he laughed...Continue reading...

    Video captures landslide rushing into Nepal village after major earthquake kills at least 42 - The Telegraph

    By


    • At least 42 people have been reportedly killed in India, Nepal and Tibet
    • More than 1,100 injured in the disaster, reports say
    • Nepal hit by a 7.3 magnitude earthquake, US Geological Survey says
    New Nepal earthquake - What we know so far
    • Shockwaves were felt as far as New Delhi and Dhaka
    • The epicentre is to the east of Kathmandu, close to China border...Latest News

    "My Fair Weather Friend" by The Blue Seeds

    Weather 101

    Sociology of Knowledge

    Before we go any further here, has it ever occurred to any of you that all this is simply one grand misunderstanding? Since you're not here to learn anything, but to be taught so you can pass these tests, knowledge has to be organized so it can be taught, and it has to be reduced to information so it can be organized do you follow that? In other words this leads you to assume that organization is an inherent property of the knowledge itself, and that disorder and chaos are simply irrelevant forces that threaten it from outside. In fact it's exactly the opposite. Order is simply a thin, perilous condition we try to impose on the basic reality of chaos...
    --William Gaddis, JR, p. 25 The Sociology of Knowledge

    Lyme Disease Challenge

    Learn About Lyme Disease

    What is Lyme Disease? What does it look like? Could you or a loved one have it? How is it treated? Learn the answers to these questions, and other startling facts about Lyme Disease.
    Related: Five things to know about Saskatoon's ticks

    Saturday, May 9, 2015

    John Prine : Thats The Way That The World Goes Round

    [link].last.fm/music/John+Prine

    The week in wildlife – in pictures. The Guardian

    A goldfinch feeds its newly hatched chicks in their nest in Chungju, North Chungcheong province, South Korea.

    Pamela Geller Calls Out Cowardly Conservatives - update

    by Jordan SchachtelBreitbart News: Many in the mainstream media have alleged that you crossed the line when it comes to free speech, and that you are responsible for inciting the terror attacks against your “Draw Muhammad” event. How do you respond to these criticisms?
    Pamela Geller: We incited no one. We didn’t call for violence, justify violence, or approve of violence. The people who were inciting were the ones saying that we should be killed for exhibiting Muhammad cartoons. There is no automatic or unavoidable response to being insulted. No one is forced to kill for being insulted. Those who choose to do so are responsible for their actions. No one else is.

    Breitbart News: Even some conservative columnists and a potential presidential candidate (Donald Trump) have resorted to personal attacks against you as a preface before arguing in defense of free speech. Why do you feel that so many have come to attack the messenger?
    Pamela Geller: This is the problem with the conservatives. This is why we can never nominate qualified, brave, true conservative candidates. The conservative movement has trimmed to accommodate the leftist media so much that they’ve trimmed themselves out of principle. They attack me because they’re desperately afraid that the leftist media will smear them by association with me. It is an act of sheer cowardice...Continue reading...
    Related: Megyn Kelly, Shooting Down Bill O'Reilly's Cowardly Stance on the Garland Shooting: "Should We Get Rid of All the Jews, Too?"
    Also see:  Cowardly media surrenders to Muslim terrorists -- but keeps bashing other religions

    Thursday, May 7, 2015

    Women: A product that is SURE to restore your “youthful exuberance”!!

    http://marezilla.com/

    Eagle catching a fish.

    The Reindeer Riders. The people of the Mongolian Taïga (Photos)

    By If the descendants of ancient legends truly exist among us today, these are they. Despite the odds, the nomads of Outer Mongolia are a people seemingly immune from degeneration, still living in such proximity to wild animals with a certain spiritual wisdom, sense of healing and well-being lost to our notions of time and laws of civilization. The ancient Greek poet Pindar once described a perfect land called Hyperborea, beyond the great wind in the Altai Mountains of Central Asia, where the sun always shone, where a race of healers lived with “neither disease not bitter old age is mixed … in their sacred blood; far from labor and battle…”...Continue reading, photos...

    Should Saskatchewan grow poppies for painkillers?

    Amanda Marcotte, CBC News 
       A research company in Lethbridge, Alta. says poppies could be a big crop in Saskatchewan and Alberta, if regulatory bodies would give it the go-ahead.
       API Labs Inc. wants approval to grow commercial quantities of poppies to produce opiate medications like codeine, morphine and oxycodone for the pharmaceutical industry.
       Glen Metzler, president and managing director of API Labs, says police and other regulatory bodies have some concerns about the product being diverted into the illegal drug trade.
       However, Metzler says several other countries, including Australia and France, grow poppies for legal painkillers. He says he sees risk but, by following regulations other countries have adopted, that risk can be mitigated.
       "If all these other countries in the world can address the risk why can't Canada?" Metzler told CBC Saskatchewan's Blue Sky.
       He says, at the farm gate, the poppy crop is worth $100 million in Australia. Currently in Canada, he says, we process painkillers but nobody in Canada is allowed to grow what are commonly known as opium poppies.
       "Why we won't let these industries establish in Canada is just beyond me."...Continue reading...


    Tuesday, May 5, 2015

    "Devil's Load" Lee Harvey Osmond

    LeE HARVeY OsMOlast.fm/music/Lee+Harvey+Osmond

    Hero dog pulled man from frozen lake, another stood by a teen after crash

    Badger and Sako were inducted Monday in Toronto into the Animal Hall of Fame, along with other alert animals who helped owners, others.

     By: Victoria Ahearn The Canadian Press

     Badger pulled his owner, Derik Hodgson, right, to their cabin after the man broke his leg on a frozen lake. 

     Sako, a dog from Kananka Bar, B.C., stayed by 16-year-old Joseph Phillips-Garcia for more than 40 hours after a vehicle crash. 

     Twins Jade and Brooke Bordman with their diabetic alert dog Nettle, who was inducted Monday into the Purina Animal Hall of Fame as Service Dog of the Year. 

    Bella saved her master, who was having a heart attack, read complete article here, photo, and links.