Nature's Best Photography: Polar bears in Manitoba, Canada. msnbc.com

A polar bear family takes an afternoon nap cuddled up together in Manitoba, Canada.

Thomas D. Mangelsen / Nature's Best Photography Photo

.Nature’s Best Photography

Pixdaus.com is an environmental photo-bookmarking and sharing service

 Animals of the night - Grey Owl

Posted By:cowboy    Pixdaus

Scottish Face Choice Between Eating Or Heating Because Of Global Warming Scam?

by ~ The Rebel. Scotland,one of Barack Obama’s models for his bogus wind power scam has literally seen the wind go out of her socialist politically correct sails.
Scotland is the poster boy for the failure of wind power as a genuine source of energy. All of the high and mighty talk about wind as a viable alternative source of energy is now gone,not in the strong productive winds of the drawing board,but with the gentle breezes that are Scotland’s reality.
The Scottish government’s ill-advised but politically correct “wind;not fossil fuel” scheme has so devastated the average Scottish household’s economy that many have been confronted with the choice of “heat or eat.”...Read here...

Friendly Fires – “Hurting”

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Computer passwords - Speak, friend, and enter. The Economist

Mar 24th 2012 | from the print edition. PASSWORDS are ubiquitous in computer security. All too often, they are also ineffective. A good password has to be both easy to remember and hard to guess, but in practice people seem to plump for the former over the latter. Names of wives, husbands and children are popular. Some take simplicity to extremes: one former deputy editor of The Economist used “z” for many years. And when hackers stole 32m passwords from a social-gaming website called RockYou, it emerged that 1.1% of the site’s users—365,000 people—had opted either for “123456” or for “12345”...Read here...

Antsy fantasy: Russian photographer creates a fairytale world with obliging insects - MailOnline

Bringing in the harvest: While Mr Pavlov spends hours creating scenes for the insects to inhabit, he says the natural curiosity of ants helps his work enormously. By Rebecca Seales

Is this real life? No, it's a beautiful f-ANT-asy.
These incredible pictures depict the imaginary antics of the humble ant, and could have been lifted from the pages of a fairy story.
In fact, they were shot by Russian photographer Andrey Pavlov, who spent hours setting up the scenes.Read here.

If you are not a muslim you are going to hell - video

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Sally and Sam received a note stating this was the worst blog they have seen. Sorry Mr. or Mrs. Anonymous, Sally only posts what she finds subjectively interesting. Sally is so sad she ruined your day, she suggests you take a valium, a cookie, a glass of milk,  go to bed, shut-up and do not watch this video, you will have a mental breakdown.

Thousands Descend on Mountain for “End of the World”

The Independent:

A mountain looming over a French commune with a population of just 200 is being touted as a modern Noah’s Ark when doomsday arrives – supposedly less than nine months from now.
A rapidly increasing stream of New Age believers – or esoterics, as locals call them – have descended in their camper van-loads on the usually picturesque and tranquil Pyrenean village of Bugarach. They believe that when apocalypse strikes on 21 December this year, the aliens waiting in their spacecraft inside Pic de Bugarach will save all the humans near by and beam them off to the next age.

How’s this relevant? Well:

Upwards of 100,000 people are thought to be planning a trip to the mountain, 30 miles west of Perpignan, in time for 21 December, and opportunistic entrepreneurs are shamelessly cashing in on the phenomenon. While American travel agents have been offering special, one-way deals to witness the end of the world, a neighbouring village, Saint-Paul de Fenouillet, has produced a wine to celebrate the occasion.Read here.

Idiocy or revolutionary? In defence of nude protest by Maryam Namazie

photoby Maryam Namazie  Azar Majedi of the Organisation of Women’s Liberation – Iran has attacked the Nude Photo Revolutionary Calendar and supporting video of Iranian women as similar to the tabloids (namely the Sun’s page 3), ‘dim-witted idiocy’ and ‘buffoonery’ and Golshifteh Farahani’s nudity as ‘commercial’ whilst supporting Egyptian blogger Aliaa Magda Elmahdy’s nudity. In her attacks in Persian and English, she has characterised the Calendar and supporting video as ‘absurd caricatures’ of Aliaa’s nudity.

Her attack is a masterpiece in dishonesty, hypocrisy, and regressive politics. Let me explain.
Whilst Islamists often portray their vile politics as a prescription for the debasement of women in western societies (i.e. against the Sun’s page 3), their image of women is very much the same as the pornographic one. Ironically, Azar’s ‘arguments’ against the calendar reveal a deep-seated disdain for female nudity not very different from the tabloids and rooted in the religious/Islamist point of view she claims to oppose.
Her accusation that we are ‘playing into the hands of those [sexists] we claim to fight against’ is disturbingly similar to the accusations that Aliaa’s nudity plays into the hands of Islamists.
Clearly, when you are faced with an Islamic movement that considers you to be worth half of a man and demands that you be bound, gagged, veiled, and segregated, then nudity becomes an important form of resistance and dissent as well as solidarity....Continue reading...

Dog befriends fawn, inspiring a book and fuelling controversy

photo Isobel Springett   

The true story has made international news but wildlife officials warn of fawn-napping

by Julia McKinnell The incredible story of a Great Dane from Vancouver Island befriending an adorable fawn has made news from Britain to Japan, been featured in the Los Angeles Times and on The Ellen Degeneres Show. This week, the tale hits stores in the form of a children’s book, Kate and Pippin: An Unlikely Love Story. The book chronicles how Isobel Springett, a Vancouver Island photographer, found a fawn on her property, and, afraid that it was orphaned, brought it into her home, bottle-fed it powdered goat milk, then watched in amazement as her 110-lb. dog mothered the baby deer.
Springett’s photographs are gorgeous but biologists and conservation officers worry there’s something wrong with the picture. “You’re not allowed to take in wild animals. That’s the law,” says wildlife biologist Jeff Morgan, who has studied the behaviour of black-tailed deer on the island. “In the case of deer, very often the mothers will leave the fawns and go off to forage, and they will leave for prolonged periods of time. People see this and mistake it for a case of abandonment. With good intentions, they will take that fawn, but, unwittingly, they’re removing that fawn from its natural environment and its mother.”...Continue reading...

Bobcat Rescued by Family, Police and Wildlife Center

Image Credit: Public Domain/ Wiki Commons

by Jake Richardson A wild Minnesota bobcat parked itself outside a family’s house on a cold night at about 8pm and wasn’t leaving. A mother of three was home alone and she looked out the window to see the wild cat not moving much and it seemed injured. Some time after the bobcat appeared her husband and children returned. The parents tried calling conservation officers to see if they could handle the situation, but none were available so they called the police. An officer came and assessed the situation, then decided to call a local wild animal center.
The wildlife center workers were happy to help and relocated the bobcat to their facility. It was determined the cat was probably suffering from a concussion and possibly a bruised spine, but with care it will probably recover. (The injuries were most likely due to a car collision.)...Read more...

The Murder Of Innocents By Wolff Bachner

The Murder Of Innocents

By Wolff Bachner

While there has been near, universal condemnation of the murders of four Jews and three Muslim, French soldiers in Toulouse, France, there has been little, if any, acknowledgement of the real motivations behind the killings. Once again, everyone, from the local police and politicians to world leaders, has, with few exceptions, placed the blame on another, “lone wolf” gunman. There has been almost no attempt to understand the philosophy behind the killings. Once again, we hear the killer proclaimed to be a “angry, solitary madman” while those who should know better, proceed to blindly ignore the the truth.

How many more children need to be gunned down or have their throats cut in their sleep before Western Leaders will finally open their minds and admit that there is an organized political and religious philosophy behind these killings? How many more Muslims will have to die because they are accused of being collaborators with infidels or because they aren’t judged to be devout enough for their killers?.....

What makes this so disturbing is that our leaders have learned nothing from human history. This is not the first nor even the tenth time, that humanity has suffered at the hands of a violent philosophy that misuses it’s religious teachings to do great harm to the innocents of the world. It is not the first time nor even the tenth time, that Jews have been singled out for death at the hands of a religious or political philosophy that calls for the death of every Jew on earth. What is makes Islamists so unique that they are being willfully ignored. Are we really so dependent on the Middle East for Oil that we are willing to give the violent Islamists a free pass, so as not to upset the flow of “Black Gold” to the gas guzzling nations of the West?...Continue reading...

Birdwatchers behaving like paparazzi

photo NNP/North News.

Sitings of rare bird species trigger middle-class flash mobs, armed with cameras and tripods

by Charlie Gillis

Laura Hawkins is an outgoing woman—the sort who chats 10 minutes on the phone with a stranger without introduction, yet doesn’t skimp on the personal details. But even she felt a trifle exposed last month when she emerged towel-clad from her morning shower to find a dozen or so photographers arrayed on the edge of her property, telephoto lenses trained on her kitchen window. The interlopers, it turned out, were not drawn by the flesh of a 61-year-old Massachusetts woman. They were looking for a spotted towhee, which had been reported near her home in the seaside village of Loblolly Cove.

Towhees are not uncommon birds. Tens of thousands of the spotted variety ply the continent’s western half, inhabiting a corridor reaching from the Canadian Prairies to southern Mexico. Yet the mere mention of one so far from home set off a frenzy in New England’s well-wired birding community. Within two days, the Hawkins’s property became a kind of ornithological red carpet, lined with tripods and day packs and fanatics armed with $5,000 binoculars. Tour buses made the hour-long trip from Boston, disgorging enthusiasts desperate for a glimpse of the orange-sided celebrity. Often as not, they could find it flitting around an abandoned swing set in Hawkins’s yard...Continue reading...

Breakaway Scotland? A third of Scots back the upcoming referendum on independence. The majority want devolution.

photo David Moir/Reuters.

article by Leah McLaren
On a bright Monday morning, the debating chamber of the Scottish parliament building at Holyrood is bathed in honey-coloured light, a modernist ship in calm seas—especially today, when parliament is not in session. A triumph of contemporary design, it also represents the greatest Scottish building fiasco in modern history. Three years late and more than 10 times over budget, the parliament building is a touchy subject among Scots (there was a major public inquiry into the mishandling of the project), and many of the politicians and journalists who work here find it difficult to admire as a result. As Colin Mackay, the affable (on air) political reporter for Scotland’s Radio Forth, explains during my tour, most people here in Holyrood “are just now starting to warm to the place.”
The building might be a sore point but most Scots are proud of its purpose. It houses a free-standing parliament—one that’s now dominated by the Scottish National Party’s government, and run by a popular and charismatic leader, Alex Salmond, who is determined to lead his country to independence with a referendum in 2014...Read here...

Province, Feds, First Nations work together to evacuate two James Bay First Nations

  The shoreline of Long Point in James Bay reflects the beauty that helps lure some First Nations people back to their native reserves. Photograph by: Handout, Getty Images.

Postmedia News
As a result of the rising waters of the Albany River, the leadership of the First Nations of Kashechewan and Fort Albany have declared a state of emergency and decided to evacuate some of their most vulnerable residents.
Starting Saturday evening, Emergency Management Ontario said it would begin flying the elderly, women, children and people with medical conditions out of the northern Ontario communities because of the potential for flooding...Read here...

Dwight Yoakam - 'A Thousand Miles From Nowhere '

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Vera Lynn: When I Grow too Old to Dream

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Alaska Native leaders tackle fetal alcohol issue

photo Anchorage, Alaska

ANCHORAGE, Alaska (AP) — Morgan Fawcett calls himself an alcoholic who is about to celebrate two decades of sobriety — on his 20th birthday.
Even though he is a non-drinker, the Anchorage-born Tlingit blames alcohol for a host of ailments, including constant headaches, learning disabilities and constricted muscles.
He was born with fetal alcohol syndrome after his mother drank as much as 100 days during her pregnancy, he told Alaska Natives, American Indians and others who gathered Thursday in Anchorage for a two-day conference on fetal alcohol spectrum disorders.
"Everybody is affected by alcohol," Fawcett said. "Nobody is immune. And we all have to deal with the effects every day."...Read here...

Best Ten Photography Portfolio Sites

A collection of 10 best photography websites.

Funeral home director works to save dog that changed his life

Funeral home director Tom Dobies and his fiancee, Pam Montana,  with, from left, Rosie, Amber and Lucy, sit together as a family in their back yard in New Port Richey. 

By Bill Stevens. Rain pounded the roof of the carport where the scrawny black dog sought shelter. She looked up, soaked and sad-eyed, toward the employees at Tom Dobies' funeral home in Holiday.

"Looks like we got a new mascot,'' one of them said to Dobies.

"Like hell we do,'' he snapped.

Dobies had a dog when he was a boy many years earlier. It got hit by a car and died. Whether it was the pain of that loss or just that he got too busy building a thriving business, he never got another dog. He never wanted one.

And then he met this mutt, a Labrador mix with no tags, but with a gentleness that made her welcome. Okay, he said, maybe she can stick around until we can figure what to do with her...Continue reading...

Ozark Mountain Daredevils - 'You Made It Right'

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Slavery's last stronghold - CNN.com

Story John D. Sutter   Photography and video Edythe McNamee

In 1981, Mauritania became the last country in the world to abolish slavery. Activists are arrested for fighting the practice. The government denies it exists.

CNN.com

Gale Storm - 'Dark Moon'

full moon

The real meaning of MPH

sign

Miles per hour.

You have finally reached the end of the internet

The end of the internet again. It happens every now and again. Due to a migraine, Sally and Sam will rest today. We are not really at the end of the internet. The net goes on. There is a link at top of page and you can start over again.   End of the internet..1.migraine.2.Best cure for a migraine

The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald - Gordon Lightfoot

Edmund Fitzgerald

Rhema Marvanne Angelic 8 Year Old Gospel Singer

photo by Mary Writer.
Rhema Marvanne is an angelic 8 year old gospel singer. The power behind her sweet voice undoubtedly comes from her life experience of losing her mother to cancer when she was only 6.
Her mother was a gospel singer and she taught Rhema to sing with her...Read here.

Social Networking - The 140 Best Twitter Feeds of 2012. TIME.com

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TIME's social media editor Allie Townsend & social media associate Amy Lombard pick the 140 Twitter feeds that are shaping the online conversation in 2012. Let us know what you think of our choices, using hashtag #Twitter140. Best twitter feeds here.

Animals form friendships, Waterloo zoologist asserts

Anne Innis Dagg Anne Innis Dagg is the author of several books. Her latest is called Animal Friendships.

Philip Walker, Record staff

By Barbara Aggerholm WATERLOO — For years, Tarra the elephant and a stray dog named Bella hung around together at a Tennessee elephant sanctuary.
The elephant and dog ate together, played together and slept at each other’s side. When the dog suffered a spinal cord injury, the elephant stayed near the office where Bella lay paralyzed.
The dog would wag her tail when Tarra came near. So she was taken to visit the elephant each day until she was able to walk again and then they resumed their friendship as before. Sometimes, the elephant would rub the dog’s stomach with her huge foot...Continue reading... Terra mourns for her best friend..The Elephant Sanctuary: Since 1995, twenty-four elephants have found sanctuary in Tennessee. They live out their lives with the freedom to roam the natural habitat of the Sanctuary, making new friends and special relationships as the years pass.http://www.elephants.com/index.php

Apocalypse Later, Surf Now

 Power was off all day long yesterday.  'Power outage affects thousands in Saskatoon.'

By Lori Coolican and David Hutton, The StarPhoenix

Two consecutive electrical outages made for a chaotic Monday in Saskatoon.
It all started around 11 a.m., when a power pole next to Highway 7 between 11th Street and Highway 60 caught fire, weakening to a point where it could no longer support the 72,000-kilovolt line that supplies power to the west side of the city.
SaskPower crews managed to install a temporary replacement for the pole and restore service by 5 p.m. to the affected area, which reportedly included smaller communities such as Martensville, Hague, Rosthern, Dalmeny, Borden, Radisson, Wakaw and Duck Lake...Read here...

China aiming to disable U.S. defenses - WND.com Inc.

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Report says cyberwarfare poses 'genuine risk to military operations'

Editor’s Note: The following report is excerpted from Joseph Farah’s G2 Bulletin, the premium online newsletter published by the founder of WND. Subscriptions are $99 a year or, for monthly trials, just $9.95 per month for credit card users, and provide instant access for the complete reports.
WASHINGTON – China’s quest to develop a cyberwarfare capability is designed to cripple the national defense infrastructure of the United States in a potential pre-emptive attack, according to a new report from the bi-partisan congressional U.S.-China Economic and Security Commission, according to a report from Joseph Farah’s G2 Bulletin. ...Continue reading...

Peggy Lee - It's a Good Day

photoHow to have a good day.

Ghosts in the Hollow by Jim Lo Scalzo

by Jim Lo Scalzo
Ghosts in the Hollow from Jim Lo Scalzo on Vimeo.Check out Lo Scalzo's work:  http://jimloscalzo.com/#/multimedia/america%27s%20dead%20sea/1

Lyme Disease - Ontario Ministry Of Health And Long Term Care

Lyme disease is an infection caused by the corkscrew-shaped bacteria, Borrelia burgdorferi. In Ontario, these bacteria are spread by the bite of blacklegged ticks (formerly called deer ticks), Ixodes scapularis. The blacklegged tick can be found sporadically throughout the province.http://www.health.gov.on.ca/en/public/publications/disease/lyme.aspx

Health chief warns: age of safe medicine is ending

A lemon shark cruises near the Bahamas (file photo).

Photograph by Brian J. Skerry, National Geographic. Sharks carry drug resistant bacteria. photo

Antibiotic crisis will make routine operations impossible and a scratched knee could be fatal, by Jeremy Laurance

The world is entering an era where injuries as common as a child's scratched knee could kill, where patients entering hospital gamble with their lives and where routine operations such as a hip replacement become too dangerous to carry out, the head of the World Health Organisation (WHO) has warned.

There is a global crisis in antibiotics caused by rapidly evolving resistance among microbes responsible for common infections that threaten to turn them into untreatable diseases, said Margaret Chan, director general of the WHO.
Addressing a meeting of infectious disease experts in Copenhagen, she said that every antibiotic ever developed was at risk of becoming useless.
"A post-antibiotic era means, in effect, an end to modern medicine as we know it. Things as common as strep throat or a child's scratched knee could once again kill."...Continue reading...

IMMORTALITY ~ by Venus

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Uploaded by VenusDeArt on Mar 14, 2012

Unveiling Tafa's Story through Psycholoy of Portraiture.
Below, I gave a descripton of Tafa's reaction when he saw his portraits finished - You might find it interesting. It was 1994.

As surprised as he was seeing himself painted, so was the rest of society with my choice of subject matter! It was my very first art show after graduation.
I did not show the art to the public until Tafa himself approved it:

At first, he refused to enter my art gallery .. 'I don't look nice' he 'murmured' blushing. I understood him by the gestures he made to communicate; he could not hear nor speak.
'Neither do I' told him smiling, looking like hell from painting and lack of sleep.
After few seconds of slightly smiling and thinking he entered the gallery and faced his portraits.

For a moment his body stretched tall, there was glitter in his eyes, he felt pride and I could see honor and dignity in him! He then put his index finger and thumb together and blew a kiss, and another and another one while looking at his portraits, signaling me 'how beautiful his portraits were.. a very touching display of emotion. He almost hugged himself in each of the artwork.. He nodded toward each moment, sighed at times and he laughed out really loud when he saw himself at the end smiling.. 'hehe, that's me up there' he kept laughing, looking toward the sky..My eyes filled with tears instead!

After a great laugh, he then hit me really hard on my shoulder followed by a deep *sigh*, he frowned and with hand gestures he critiqued me: ' Still NO teeth' he added 'behhh' and he hit me again on my shoulder ' You could have painted me some teeth' he made his hand gestures toward his mouth and my pastels I used to create his story.

It was only then I realized what my dad, the ingenious Kosovar artist Nimon Lokaj tried to teach me all my life since art was my passion at very early age: 'Do not copy Venus - Create,' my dad used to say to me and although I thought I was creating because I did paint his life moments without seeing them, I guess I missed sensing that one wish of his, beneath the surface... I did not create teeth he did not have and I could have done so although it would drastically change his facial emotion.

Tafa's story taught me many things at early age, made me aware of magic and mystery of character, the attitude, pride, friendliness, dignity, rational judgment and strength within, regardless of social status! And his emotional reaction at the end taught me something quite mysterious about human nature, and that is *Desire* to be remembered how you wished you were! He also taught me what keeps one warm in rainy days, a book to read instead of greed, I guess..!

Tafa made it from the walls of Decani, Europe( Kosova, Albania, Turkey, Austria, England) to the walls of New York, USA(New York City, North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, Tennessee, Illinois, Kentucky and Kansas). I heard few days ago ' He's dead now' - Is he really? - I don't think so!

And if Tafa's story doesn't teach you anything then barely anything ever will.
This is Venus, sharing my art with you from the heartland of America!
Thanks for watching friends and reading. Music: Film Atmosphere by the brilliant Rick Clarke (rickvanman) http://www.youtube.com/user/rickvanmanhttp://www.firstpost.com/topic/place/austria-immortality-by-venus-video-PgrvuH0BjRQ-138-16.html

Open letter to his Excellency Mahmoud Ahmadinejad: Terry Nelson

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His Excellency Mahmoud Ahmadinejad
President of the Islamic Republic of Iran
C/O Embassy of I.R. of Iran Telephone # 613-235-4726
245 Metcalfe St. Ottawa, Ontario, Fax # 613-232-5712
Canada K2P 2K2 executive@iranembassy.ca
February 23rd 2012
Mr. Terrance Nelson
Box 346
Letellier, Manitoba,
Canada R0G-1C0
Your Excellency!
Re: Indigenous Peoples of Canada
I wish to thank the Iranian people for their continued interest and support for the indigenous peoples of North America. When I wrote the book “Genocide in Canada” (1997), the Iranian Embassy in Ottawa requested more copies. Iranian interest in First Nations in Canada has been longstanding. Years ago, eight of us indigenous people demonstrated in front of the Iranian Embassy. Sixteen police cars, including Ontario Provincial Police, Royal Canadian Mounted Police, Secret Service and Ottawa city police did not allow us to deliver our information. We will attend to your Ottawa embassy on March 13, 2012 to try again.
Ramin Mehmanparast, (Iranian Foreign Ministry) responded February 15th 2012 to Canadian Foreign Minister Baird’s comments on Human Rights in Iran by referring to the appalling conditions of indigenous people in Canada. Mehmanparast urged indigenous peoples to take Canada to international forums for meaningful remedies. We are taking his advice.
As an indigenous person and a former Chief of my community, I take the position that economic sanctions against Iran is genocide. I support the right of the Iranian people to defend themselves against undue aggression and financial extortion....Continue reading.... Related links:Iran-First Nations meeting dubbed a 'publicity stunt' - London Free Press
Iran-First Nations meeting dubbed a 'publicity stunt' - Toronto Sun
Iranian officials “working very hard” to bring First Nations leaders to Tehran - APTN National News
Winnipeg Sun readers - Winnipeg Sun
Defence Minister Peter MacKay. (QMI Agency Files) - Winnipeg Sun
Former chief's quest for Iranian meeting won't help cause, says Liberal MP - APTN National News.http://www.winnipegsun.com/2012/03/16/tehran-terry-should-visit-tel-aviv

Israel ultimatum: Stop the missiles by Saturday night.

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DEBKAfile Exclusive Report : After five days of non-stop missile fire on a dozen towns and villages, Israel Thursday night, March 15, gave Egypt and Hamas two days to halt the shooting or else the Israeli Defense Forces would go into action against Gaza. debkafile’s military sources report that neither Egypt nor Hamas can be expected to go up against the missile shooters now.  The attacks have now been taken over from Jihad Islami by a small group of Salafi Palestinians calling itself Haraka Muhaheddin, which belongs to Jalalat, the al Qaeda roof organization in the Gaza Strip...Continue reading...

Mel's Hidden Talent!!! Animal & bird sounds

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Spirit Of The Hawk - Rednex

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'Israel is only safe state for Mideast Christians'

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  photo by TravelujahBy JPOST.COM STAFF:  Israel has become the only safe haven for Middle Eastern Christians, Ambassador to the United State Michael Oren wrote in an op-ed piece published by the Wall Street Journal on Friday.

"In contrast to elsewhere in the Middle East where hatred of Christians is ignored or encouraged, Israel remains committed to its Declaration of Independence pledge to 'ensure the complete equality of all its citizens irrespective of religion,'" Oren wrote, comparing the situation of Christians in the region today to that of the expulsion of 800,000 Jews after the creation of the State of Israel..."...Keep reading...

.Saudi Grand Mufti Calls for "Destruction of All Churches in Region"by Raymond Ibrahim
Jihad Watch.According to several Arabic news sources, last Monday, Sheikh Abdul Aziz bin Abdullah, the Grand Mufti of Saudi Arabia, declared that it is "necessary to destroy all the churches of the region." 
The Grand Mufti made his assertion in response to a question posed by a delegation from Kuwait: a Kuwaiti parliament member recently called for the "removal" of churches (he later "clarified" by saying he merely meant that no churches should be built in Kuwait), and the delegation wanted to confirm Sharia's position on churches.
Accordingly, the Grand Mufti "stressed that Kuwait was a part of the Arabian Peninsula, and therefore it is necessary to destroy all churches in it."
As with many grand muftis before him, the Sheikh based his proclamation on the famous tradition, or hadith, wherein the prophet of Islam declared on his deathbed that "There are not to be two religions in the [Arabian] Peninsula," which has always been interpreted to mean that only Islam can be practiced in the region...Continue reading...

Ides of March: What Is It? Why Do We Still Observe It?

The bloody end of Julius Caesar forever darkened the Ides of March.

Photograph by James L. Stanfield, National Geographic

Brian Handwerk

for National Geographic News

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Caesar: The ides of March are come.
Soothsayer: Aye, Caesar, but not gone.
—Julius Caesar, Act III, Scene 1
Thanks to Shakespeare's indelible dramatization, March 15—also called the Ides of March—is forever linked with the 44 B.C. assassination of Julius Caesar, and with prophecies of doom.
"That line of the soothsayer, 'Beware the ides of March,' is a pithy line, and people remember it, even if they don't know why," said Georgianna Ziegler, head of reference at Washington, D.C.'s Folger Shakespeare Library.
Until that day Julius Caesar ruled Rome. The traditional Republican government had been supplanted by a temporary dictatorship, one that Caesar very much wished to make permanent.
But Caesar's quest for power spawned a conspiracy to have him killed, and on the Ides of March, a group of prominent Romans brought him to an untimely end in the Senate House...Continue reading...

Amazing and beautiful wildlife photographs taken inside a studio by Simon Tomlinson.

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15 Best Professional Photography Websites

Jason Jones Photography

Advertising, College Lifestyle and Corporate Annual Reports:  "How are you doing today? Do you have an interest in photography? If your answer is in yes than you are in right place. I have collected beautiful and ultra professional websites related to photography today. One can become good photographer by looking at these piece of arts and aesthetic sense. You can quench your thirst by diving in the ocean of beautiful and magical photographs. Let the fun be begun..."websites here.

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Zooomr

One of the websites.

How a cat can cut your risk of heart attacks Continue reading on Examiner.com How a cat can cut your risk of heart attacks

John Davidson

Denver Animal News Examiner

Kellie Pickler gets some purrs at an ASPCA event

Credits: 

Getty images

It's no secret that pets help our health in a number of ways, But a new study takes the data one step further.

A 10-year study at the University of Minnesota Stroke Center found that cat owners were 40 percent less likely to have heart attacks than non-cat owners.

The results, according to an article in the Chicago Tribune, suggest that a cat's purring may be responsible for the effect.

"Cats will purr when they're content, but also they'll purr when they're about to be euthanized. It's thought they purr to communicate with their kittens," said author and animal behavior consultant Steve Dale. "It's thought to be a calming mechanism..."Continue reading...

A pod of around thirty dolphins suddenly washed ashore at the Arraial do Cabo beach in Brazil. Without hesitating, beach goers sprung into action to help our ocean dwelling mammal friends.

Joyful dance of dolphins.

Animal videos

Israel develops its own bunker buster

DEBKAfile Special Report.   MPR-500 made by Israel's Military Industries
Israel has developed an improved precision, bunker-burrowing weapon which Israeli Military Industries (IMI) unveiled on March 6. The 500-pound MPR-500 is an electro-optical (laser-guided) bomb that can penetrate double-reinforced concrete walls or floors without breaking apart.
The bomb was shown in action penetrating four reinforced concrete walls with fragmentation from the explosion limited to a radius of less than three meters.
The new weapon is designed as an upgrade for the US Mk82 in Israel Air Force stocks. “The lethality, precision… and relatively low weight of the new weapon,” say its manufacturers, “enable its use against multiple targets in a single pass.”
After blowing the first hole in the targeted underground site, the next bombs continue to extend and deepen it...Keep reading...

Fukushima farmer braves nuclear risks to feed stray animals - video

Copyright © 2012 euronews
One year after Japan’s tsunami and Fukushima disaster, the town of Tomioka is frozen in time.
It was a thriving community for thousands but now Naoto Matsumura, 53, belives he is the only human inhabitant left.
Animals who survived wander wild just a few kilometres from the doomed nuclear plant. Ignoring the exclusion zone, Naoto has stayed to feed them.
“I can’t say it’s 100 percent safe to return here but it’s not a problem for people my age,” he said. “I don’t know how people with small children would feel but I think it is no problem for people my age to return.”...Continue reading, video...

Tornado Victims Reunited With Pets

by Alisa Manzelli.Reunited with his beloved dog, Alabama tornado victim Greg Cook cries with joy. Photo Credit: AP Photo/The Decatur Daily, Gary Cosby Jr.
...Alabama tornado victim Greg Cook lost everything after a Category-5 tornado ripped through his home last Friday afternoon. Yet while homes can be rebuilt and repaired, Cook rushed home after the storm in search of something he thought he had lost forever: his Chocolate Labrador mix, Coco...Read here....via:
Real men are kind to animals.

Breaking down the 2012 Blue Jays

Jose Bautista and manager John Farrell chatting around the batting cage in Dunedin, Florida.
BY DEREK PRITCHETT - FAN FUEL BLOGGER
As the Toronto Blue Jays continue to prepare for the 2012 season down south in Dunedin, Florida, it's time for those of us north of the border to evaluate the club's chances.
As part of that evaluation, I look back at some at the key events of the 2011 season and look ahead to what needs to happen for the Blue Jays to play meaningful baseball in 2012...
My starting nine: 1. Yunel Escobar (SS) 2. Colby Rasmus (CF)
3. Jose Bautista (RF)
4. Adam Lind (1B)
5. Brett Lawrie (3B)
6. Travis Snider (LF)
7. Kelly Johnson (2B)
8. Edwin Encarnacion (DH)
9. J.P. Arencibia (C)
My starting rotation: Ricky Romero, Brendan Morrow, Brett Cecil, Henderson Alvarez & Dustin McGowan...Read here...

Abba - Eagle

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