Saturday, June 7, 2008
Friday, June 6, 2008
Eagle wounded by poacher gets new beak, new look
Jun 6 09:16 AM US/Eastern
By NICHOLAS K. GERANIOS
Associated Press WriterST. MARIES, Idaho (AP) - More than three years after a poacher shot off her upper beak, a bald eagle named Beauty can finally live up to her name—with the help of volunteers.
A team attached an artificial beak to the 15-pound eagle in mid-May, improving her appearance and, more importantly, helping her grasp food.
"She's got a grill," joked Nate Calvin, the Boise engineer who spent 200 hours designing the complex beak.
The "grill" was exposed when a bit of the synthetic beak broke off during application. But the new beak is only a temporary fix, designed to nail down precise measurements.
A final beak made of tougher material will be created and attached later, though her saviors don't plan to release her back into the wild. They say that she has spent too much time with humans that the final beak will still not be strong enough to tear flesh from prey.
But getting this artificial beak now was key to Beauty's survival. A wild eagle that must be hand-fed by humans would eventually have to be euthanized, especially since her life span could run four more decades, said Jane Fink Cantwell, who took Beauty to her raptor recovery center in Idaho two years ago.
The bird was found in 2005 scrounging for food and slowly starving at a landfill in Alaska. A bullet had taken from her curved upper beak, leaving her tongue and sinuses exposed, with a stump useless for grasping food. Cantwell said eating with her beak was like using one chopstick.
She also had trouble drinking and couldn't preen her feathers.
Beauty was taken to a bird recovery center in Anchorage, where she was hand-fed while her caretakers waited in vain for a new beak to grow. Cantwell in 2007 agreed to take the eagle to her Birds of Prey Northwest ranch. Every day she used tongs to feed Beauty food, such as strips of salmon.
During a speaking engagement in Boise, she met Calvin, who offered to design an artificial beak.
"As an engineer, as a human being first, I was interested in helping it out," Calvin said.
Molds were made of the remaining beak and scanned into a computer so the artificial beak could be created accurately.
The nylon-composite beak will help the bird drink and grip food.
Some critics question such an extraordinary effort to save one bird that is no longer on the endangered species list. But Cantwell pointed out that Beauty has the potential to breed or be a foster mother to orphaned eagles.
Cantwell also plans to use the bird at lectures around the country to teach people not to shoot at raptors.
The procedure took place in the garage of Cantwell's neighbor, in front of reporters and guests.
Beauty was laid on her back, fully conscious, with a ribbon of veterinary wrap around her wings. Her talons were wrapped in a leather strap.
"Everybody better be still and quiet," Cantwell told visitors. "Let's be mindful she's a nervous, wild animal."
A gold and titanium pin was glued to the remnant of her upper beak to serve as the guide for sliding the artificial beak into place.
The volunteers moved slowly and talked softly as they slipped the beak on and off, making minor adjustments. A grinder, sander and scissors were used to trim both the artificial beak and the existing remnant of upper beak. The bird sometimes nipped harmlessly at their hands.
About an hour and a half into the procedure, Beauty lurched upright and spread her wings, snapping the wrap. She hovered above the table, screeching, with Cantwell and the other handler holding the leather straps.
After a couple of minutes, they calmed the eagle and got her back onto the table, then completed the procedure.
The Boeing Co. and a maker of synthetic skin in California have volunteered to help make the permanent beak.
After the surgery, Cantwell cradled the eagle and prepared to return Beauty to her aviary, saying: "The eagle has landed, and she has a beak." http://www.breitbart.com/article.php?id=2008-06-06_D914JIVG3&show_article=1&cat=breaking Beauty gets a new beak: http://birdsofpreynorthwest.org/
By NICHOLAS K. GERANIOS
Associated Press WriterST. MARIES, Idaho (AP) - More than three years after a poacher shot off her upper beak, a bald eagle named Beauty can finally live up to her name—with the help of volunteers.
A team attached an artificial beak to the 15-pound eagle in mid-May, improving her appearance and, more importantly, helping her grasp food.
"She's got a grill," joked Nate Calvin, the Boise engineer who spent 200 hours designing the complex beak.
The "grill" was exposed when a bit of the synthetic beak broke off during application. But the new beak is only a temporary fix, designed to nail down precise measurements.
A final beak made of tougher material will be created and attached later, though her saviors don't plan to release her back into the wild. They say that she has spent too much time with humans that the final beak will still not be strong enough to tear flesh from prey.
But getting this artificial beak now was key to Beauty's survival. A wild eagle that must be hand-fed by humans would eventually have to be euthanized, especially since her life span could run four more decades, said Jane Fink Cantwell, who took Beauty to her raptor recovery center in Idaho two years ago.
The bird was found in 2005 scrounging for food and slowly starving at a landfill in Alaska. A bullet had taken from her curved upper beak, leaving her tongue and sinuses exposed, with a stump useless for grasping food. Cantwell said eating with her beak was like using one chopstick.
She also had trouble drinking and couldn't preen her feathers.
Beauty was taken to a bird recovery center in Anchorage, where she was hand-fed while her caretakers waited in vain for a new beak to grow. Cantwell in 2007 agreed to take the eagle to her Birds of Prey Northwest ranch. Every day she used tongs to feed Beauty food, such as strips of salmon.
During a speaking engagement in Boise, she met Calvin, who offered to design an artificial beak.
"As an engineer, as a human being first, I was interested in helping it out," Calvin said.
Molds were made of the remaining beak and scanned into a computer so the artificial beak could be created accurately.
The nylon-composite beak will help the bird drink and grip food.
Some critics question such an extraordinary effort to save one bird that is no longer on the endangered species list. But Cantwell pointed out that Beauty has the potential to breed or be a foster mother to orphaned eagles.
Cantwell also plans to use the bird at lectures around the country to teach people not to shoot at raptors.
The procedure took place in the garage of Cantwell's neighbor, in front of reporters and guests.
Beauty was laid on her back, fully conscious, with a ribbon of veterinary wrap around her wings. Her talons were wrapped in a leather strap.
"Everybody better be still and quiet," Cantwell told visitors. "Let's be mindful she's a nervous, wild animal."
A gold and titanium pin was glued to the remnant of her upper beak to serve as the guide for sliding the artificial beak into place.
The volunteers moved slowly and talked softly as they slipped the beak on and off, making minor adjustments. A grinder, sander and scissors were used to trim both the artificial beak and the existing remnant of upper beak. The bird sometimes nipped harmlessly at their hands.
About an hour and a half into the procedure, Beauty lurched upright and spread her wings, snapping the wrap. She hovered above the table, screeching, with Cantwell and the other handler holding the leather straps.
After a couple of minutes, they calmed the eagle and got her back onto the table, then completed the procedure.
The Boeing Co. and a maker of synthetic skin in California have volunteered to help make the permanent beak.
After the surgery, Cantwell cradled the eagle and prepared to return Beauty to her aviary, saying: "The eagle has landed, and she has a beak." http://www.breitbart.com/article.php?id=2008-06-06_D914JIVG3&show_article=1&cat=breaking Beauty gets a new beak: http://birdsofpreynorthwest.org/
Thursday, June 5, 2008
Wednesday, June 4, 2008
"Some Photos"-To A Mouse by Robert Burns
These are a couple of photos I like. I have a migraine and have to go for a walk. I will be back blogging when I am feeling better. " The best laid schemes o' Mice an' Men, Gang aft agley, An' lea'e us nought but grief an' pain, For promis'd joy!" To A Mouse By Robert Burns: http://www.electricscotland.com/burns/mouse.html
20 Amazing And Unusual Weather Phenomena
"The science of weather is a fascinating one; but even more so are the flukes and irregularities that can occur within our world. This is a list of 20 of the most amazing and unusual of those anomalies."http://listverse.com/science/20-amazing-and-unusual-weather-phenomena/
Tuesday, June 3, 2008
Diddley dies of heart failure
Bruce Ward, Canwest News Service; Ottawa Citizen
Published: Tuesday, June 03, 2008
Bo Diddley would have been immensely rich had it been possible to copyright a rhythm.
The distorted shuffle beat he created on guitar in the mid-1950s is the taproot of rhythm and blues and rock music. Diddley, who died Monday of heart failure at 79, strongly influenced British guitarists Keith Richards of the Rolling Stones as well as Eric Clapton, Jeff Beck and Jimmy Page during their days in the Yardbirds. In 1965, The Animals composed a tribute to Diddley called The Story of Bo Diddley, which traced the early days of R&B and gave Diddley his due as a pioneer of the music.
"I play the guitar as if I was playing the drums," Diddley once explained.
"It's mixed up with spiritual, sanctified rhythms, and the feeling I put into when I'm playing, I have the feeling of making people shout."
Diddley, born Otha Ellas Bates (some sources cite it as Ellas Otha Bates) on Dec. 30, 1928, in McComb, Miss., moved to Chicago at age seven. He was a consummate showman and self-mythologizer who named himself after the diddley bow -- a one-string African guitar. He built his own exotically shaped guitars, the most famous of which resembled a cigar box with strings.
Diddley was one of rock's first bad boys. Who Do You Love, one of his best-known songs, begins with the lines "I walk 47 miles of barbwire/ I use a cobra snake for a necktie." His house, the song goes, is covered in rattlesnake hide and has a chimney "made outta human skulls."
With his black glasses and low-slung guitar, Diddley was rock's gunslinger, always moving on. His first recording on the Chess/Checker label in 1955 was the two-sided No. 1 hit on the R&B charts Bo Diddley/ I'm A Man.
On Say Man, a 1959 hit, Diddley traded insults with his maracas player Jerome Green. The song was a musical version of "the dozens," a sort of streetcorner banter between young men that originated in black neighbourhoods across the United States. Some critics cite Say Man as a forerunner of rap music, although the insults in rap went far beyond the playful stage.
Diddley styled himself "The Originator." His music was heavily percussive, with tambourines and maracas adding textures to his chunking guitar sound, which he achieved by choking the strings as he played
On their first tour of the United Kingdom in 1963, the Rolling Stones opened for Diddley and the Everly Brothers. Soon afterward, Mick Jagger was playing both tambourine and maracas on the band's first records. The Stones early sound was epitomized by the one-two punch of Bo Diddley and Chuck Berry. Their version of Buddy Holly's Not Fade Away is notable for its emphasis of the Diddley rhythm.
"We used the harmonica a lot back then and maracas, tambourines and that Bo Diddley jungle rhythm format," former Stones bassist Bill Wyman said in a 2002 interview. "We tried to get that really earthy thing because we liked it. It wasn't fake. It wasn't pseudo. It was really down to earth and very, very exciting. We'd play this stuff to people's faces and we'd see their mouths gape."
The Stones never forgot their musical debt to Diddley. In 1987, Richards was on hand in New York when Diddley was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, and jammed with him afterwards. Later that year, Stones guitarist Ronnie Wood teamed up with Diddley for a lengthy tour of North America, Japan and Europe as a duo.
Diddley was also invited onstage with the Stones during their televised concert in Miami during the 1994 Voodoo Lounge tour.
The music business was not as kind to Diddley. In 1994, a Los Angeles court ruled that Diddley had been cheated by his ex-manager and awarded the singer $400,000 in back payments. It's uncertain how much money, if any, was paid back to Diddley. http://www.canada.com/saskatoonstarphoenix/news/arts/story.html?id=7c40d85e-6377-4d04-a57a-2b7d49f0aa76
Published: Tuesday, June 03, 2008
Bo Diddley would have been immensely rich had it been possible to copyright a rhythm.
The distorted shuffle beat he created on guitar in the mid-1950s is the taproot of rhythm and blues and rock music. Diddley, who died Monday of heart failure at 79, strongly influenced British guitarists Keith Richards of the Rolling Stones as well as Eric Clapton, Jeff Beck and Jimmy Page during their days in the Yardbirds. In 1965, The Animals composed a tribute to Diddley called The Story of Bo Diddley, which traced the early days of R&B and gave Diddley his due as a pioneer of the music.
"I play the guitar as if I was playing the drums," Diddley once explained.
"It's mixed up with spiritual, sanctified rhythms, and the feeling I put into when I'm playing, I have the feeling of making people shout."
Diddley, born Otha Ellas Bates (some sources cite it as Ellas Otha Bates) on Dec. 30, 1928, in McComb, Miss., moved to Chicago at age seven. He was a consummate showman and self-mythologizer who named himself after the diddley bow -- a one-string African guitar. He built his own exotically shaped guitars, the most famous of which resembled a cigar box with strings.
Diddley was one of rock's first bad boys. Who Do You Love, one of his best-known songs, begins with the lines "I walk 47 miles of barbwire/ I use a cobra snake for a necktie." His house, the song goes, is covered in rattlesnake hide and has a chimney "made outta human skulls."
With his black glasses and low-slung guitar, Diddley was rock's gunslinger, always moving on. His first recording on the Chess/Checker label in 1955 was the two-sided No. 1 hit on the R&B charts Bo Diddley/ I'm A Man.
On Say Man, a 1959 hit, Diddley traded insults with his maracas player Jerome Green. The song was a musical version of "the dozens," a sort of streetcorner banter between young men that originated in black neighbourhoods across the United States. Some critics cite Say Man as a forerunner of rap music, although the insults in rap went far beyond the playful stage.
Diddley styled himself "The Originator." His music was heavily percussive, with tambourines and maracas adding textures to his chunking guitar sound, which he achieved by choking the strings as he played
On their first tour of the United Kingdom in 1963, the Rolling Stones opened for Diddley and the Everly Brothers. Soon afterward, Mick Jagger was playing both tambourine and maracas on the band's first records. The Stones early sound was epitomized by the one-two punch of Bo Diddley and Chuck Berry. Their version of Buddy Holly's Not Fade Away is notable for its emphasis of the Diddley rhythm.
"We used the harmonica a lot back then and maracas, tambourines and that Bo Diddley jungle rhythm format," former Stones bassist Bill Wyman said in a 2002 interview. "We tried to get that really earthy thing because we liked it. It wasn't fake. It wasn't pseudo. It was really down to earth and very, very exciting. We'd play this stuff to people's faces and we'd see their mouths gape."
The Stones never forgot their musical debt to Diddley. In 1987, Richards was on hand in New York when Diddley was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, and jammed with him afterwards. Later that year, Stones guitarist Ronnie Wood teamed up with Diddley for a lengthy tour of North America, Japan and Europe as a duo.
Diddley was also invited onstage with the Stones during their televised concert in Miami during the 1994 Voodoo Lounge tour.
The music business was not as kind to Diddley. In 1994, a Los Angeles court ruled that Diddley had been cheated by his ex-manager and awarded the singer $400,000 in back payments. It's uncertain how much money, if any, was paid back to Diddley. http://www.canada.com/saskatoonstarphoenix/news/arts/story.html?id=7c40d85e-6377-4d04-a57a-2b7d49f0aa76
Just the cricket: Eating insects is good for us and for the environment, scientists claim
It might be a while before they appear on the shelf at Tesco.
But scientists claim adding insects to our diet would be good for us and the environment.
Crunching into crickets or snacking on grilled caterpillar is apparently a means to a nutrient-rich diet that also helps reduce pests and puts less strain on the planet than eating conventional meat.
Some insects in their dried form are said to have twice the protein of raw meat and fish, while others are rich in unsaturated fat and contain important vitamins and minerals.
Experts believe they could one day be marketed as a healthy alternative to fatty snacks.
In most of Europe, bug-eating is largely restricted to the belated realisation that there has been an unwelcome addition to the salad.
It is common elsewhere, however, with some 1,700 species of bug eaten in 113 countries.
In Taiwan, stir-fried crickets or sauteed caterpillars are delicacies. A plate of maguey worms - larvae of a giant butterfly - sells for £12.50 in smart Mexican restaurants.
Sago grubs wrapped in banana leaves go down well in Papua New Guinea, as does dragonfly in Bali.
In many parts of south-east Asia market stalls sell insects by the pound and deep-fried snacks are served up as street food.
Insects are arthropods, much like crab, shrimps and lobster which are all accepted by the European palate. In North Africa locusts are sometimes called sky prawns.
But Patrick Durst, of the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organisation, said that if consumers were to be tempted to broaden their culinary horizons the trick might be to make the bugs look more palatable.
'You need to get the food into a form where someone doesn't have to look the bug in the eye when they eat it,' he said.
Earlier this year the Food and Agriculture Organisation held a conference to discuss how entomophagy - eating insects as food - could contribute to sustainable development.
Bug-farming preserves forests - which are needed to attract insects - and is encouraged in some countries.
As for pesticides, some experts have pointed out the irony of using chemicals to get rid of bugs that are more nutritious than the crops they prey on.
In Thailand when pesticides failed to control locusts, the government urged locals to eat them and distributed recipes.
Chef Paul Cook, who supplies exotic and unusual food through his Bristol-based business Osgrow, has sold a range of insects including locusts.
He said: 'You have to get past your feeling when you look at a whole locust or cricket. They are very clean and nutritious.
'But I don't think we are going to see Jamie Oliver encouraging us to have sky prawns on the school menu.' http://www.thisislondon.co.uk/news/article-23489201-details/Just+the+cricket%3A+Eating+insects+is+good+for+us+and+for+the+environment%2C+scientists+claim/article.do
Monday, June 2, 2008
Lost tribe found in Amazon-June 3, 2007
An Indian tribe that has had no formal contact with Western civilisation has been located in a remote Amazon region, federal authorities say.
The Metyktire tribe, with about 87 members, was found last week in an area that is difficult to reach because of thick jungle and a lack of nearby rivers about 2000 kilometres north-west of Rio de Janeiro, said Mario Moura, a spokesman for the Federal Indian Bureau, or Funai.
The tribe is a subgroup of the Kayapo tribe, and lives on its 4.9-million-hectare Menkregnoti Indian reservation, Moura said.
The Kayapo had no significant contact with the Metyktire until two tribe members inexplicably appeared at a Kayapo village last week, he said.
"We don't know why they decided to make contact now ... only time will tell. This is a very slow process," Moura said.
Uncontacted tribes are usually discovered when loggers and ranchers encroach on their territories.
Patrick Cunningham of the London-based Indigenous People's Cultural Support Trust, which is involved in an unrelated expedition in the region, said in an email that the tribe speaks an archaic version of the Kayapo language and goes naked. Like many less-assimilated members of the Kayapo, the men wear penis sheaths and several have plates in their lower lips, he said. The women shave the tops of their heads.
Cunningham, who has not met the tribe, said the Kayapo believe it was formed by a group of families who fled deeper into the forest when the pioneering Indian defender Orlando Villas Boas appeared in the area in the 1950s.
Megaron Txcucarramae, a Kayapo Indian and Funai representative in the region, met with the newly found group in Kremoro village and banned all but a medical team from entering or leaving, fearing the tribe could be more vulnerable to diseases than the Kayapo, Cunningham said.
Miriam Ross, a campaigner with the indigenous rights group Survival International, estimates there are more than 100 uncontacted tribes across the world.
"This proves that often we just don't know whether these people are there or not," Ross said by telephone from London.
About 700,000 Indians live in Brazil, mostly in the Amazon region. About 400,000 live on reservations, where they try to maintain their traditional culture, language and lifestyle.
Indians were pushed deeper into the jungle by settlers and it is relatively uncommon for the Indian Bureau to come across previously uncontacted native groups. The bureau said it has learned from other Indians of a few uncontacted tribes in the western Amazon state, where the region's jungle is thickest.
Moura said anthropologists no longer attempt to contact those groups, but instead demarcate the land and wait for them to make contact. http://www.smh.com.au/news/world/lost-tribe-found-in-amazon/2007/06/02/1180205580588.html First pictures of lost tribe found in the Amazon: http://galleries.thelondonpaper.com/lost-tribe-found-in-amazon/
The Metyktire tribe, with about 87 members, was found last week in an area that is difficult to reach because of thick jungle and a lack of nearby rivers about 2000 kilometres north-west of Rio de Janeiro, said Mario Moura, a spokesman for the Federal Indian Bureau, or Funai.
The tribe is a subgroup of the Kayapo tribe, and lives on its 4.9-million-hectare Menkregnoti Indian reservation, Moura said.
The Kayapo had no significant contact with the Metyktire until two tribe members inexplicably appeared at a Kayapo village last week, he said.
"We don't know why they decided to make contact now ... only time will tell. This is a very slow process," Moura said.
Uncontacted tribes are usually discovered when loggers and ranchers encroach on their territories.
Patrick Cunningham of the London-based Indigenous People's Cultural Support Trust, which is involved in an unrelated expedition in the region, said in an email that the tribe speaks an archaic version of the Kayapo language and goes naked. Like many less-assimilated members of the Kayapo, the men wear penis sheaths and several have plates in their lower lips, he said. The women shave the tops of their heads.
Cunningham, who has not met the tribe, said the Kayapo believe it was formed by a group of families who fled deeper into the forest when the pioneering Indian defender Orlando Villas Boas appeared in the area in the 1950s.
Megaron Txcucarramae, a Kayapo Indian and Funai representative in the region, met with the newly found group in Kremoro village and banned all but a medical team from entering or leaving, fearing the tribe could be more vulnerable to diseases than the Kayapo, Cunningham said.
Miriam Ross, a campaigner with the indigenous rights group Survival International, estimates there are more than 100 uncontacted tribes across the world.
"This proves that often we just don't know whether these people are there or not," Ross said by telephone from London.
About 700,000 Indians live in Brazil, mostly in the Amazon region. About 400,000 live on reservations, where they try to maintain their traditional culture, language and lifestyle.
Indians were pushed deeper into the jungle by settlers and it is relatively uncommon for the Indian Bureau to come across previously uncontacted native groups. The bureau said it has learned from other Indians of a few uncontacted tribes in the western Amazon state, where the region's jungle is thickest.
Moura said anthropologists no longer attempt to contact those groups, but instead demarcate the land and wait for them to make contact. http://www.smh.com.au/news/world/lost-tribe-found-in-amazon/2007/06/02/1180205580588.html First pictures of lost tribe found in the Amazon: http://galleries.thelondonpaper.com/lost-tribe-found-in-amazon/
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