Panda?

Photographed in a city square in KirovogradIt, this was not a panda. It was a dog who had been dyed and trimmed to look like one. For 20UAH you could pay and have your picture taken with the pandog. The man also had a small monkey on a leash who seemed terrified and spent as much time as it could hiding it’s face under the man’s collar. 

The Old Zoo

The LA Zoo wasn't always in as nice a facility as it is now. The "old" LA zoo was built in 1912 and was in use until 1965, when it moved to its current location just a couple miles away in a different area of Griffith Park. It's open to check out, and is adjacent to a picnic area. There are fenced off areas, but all the fences have giant people-sized holes in them. We thought of it more as: "enter at your own risk."

Elvis the Croc steals machines from park keepers to play with in pool | Mail Online

Elvis the Croc steals machines from park keepers to play with in pool | Mail Online:

'via Blog this'

Elvis the Croc steals machines from park keepers to play with in pool | Mail Online

Elvis the Croc steals machines from park keepers to play with in pool | Mail Online:

'via Blog this'

Sleeping it off.... extra Panda Cake

It sure beats bamboo: Pandas celebrate first Christmas at Edinburgh Zoo with extra helpings of cake  Christmas morning, zoo bosses dished out an extra portion of the special panda cake made from soya, corn, rice, egg and oil.

Yang Guang goes through 55kg of bamboo daily and Tian Tian around 30kg in total.

They get four deliveries of fresh bamboo every day while also munching on carrots and panda cake as part of their specially-tailored balanced diet.


















Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2078507/Pandas-Edinburgh-Zoo-Tian-Tian-Yang-Guang-celebrate-Christmas-UK.html#ixzz1hsLkEZ3D

Panda Cake

It sure beats bamboo: Pandas celebrate first Christmas at Edinburgh Zoo with extra helpings of cake
Thousands have already flocked to see Tian Tian and Yang Guang since they made their debut last week
By KERRY MCQUEENEY



As much of the population reaches for the indigestion remedies after gorging on their Christmas dinner, it would seem they were not alone in the over-indulgence stakes today.
The UK's only pair of giant pandas celebrated their first Christmas in Scotland - by devouring extra helpings of panda cake.
Tian Tian and Yang Guang - or Sunshine and Sweetie - have been getting used to their new home in Edinburgh Zoo since arriving from China on December 4.
Scroll down for the video



Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2078507/Pandas-Edinburgh-Zoo-Tian-Tian-Yang-Guang-celebrate-Christmas-UK.html#ixzz1hsIcNVYS

Panda caught on infra-red camera tucking into dead antelope | Mail Online

Panda caught on infra-red camera tucking into dead antelope | Mail Online:

He looks like he has been caught out helping himself to a forbidden snack.

And perhaps this panda realises he has given away a secret kept under wraps for years as he is captured red-handed tucking into a dead antelope.

It was previously thought the creatures were strictly herbivores but as this infra-red camera shot taken in Ping Wu, in southwest China's Sichuan province shows, pandas sometimes do prefer a meaty snack.

According to the World Wildlife Fund China pandas have the digestive system of a carnivore and will eat meat if available, but adapted a long time ago to a vegetarian diet.
Because of this carnivorous digestive system the panda derives little energy and protein from consumption of bamboo so must eat as much as 14kg a day to stay healthy.
It has taken millions of years living in bamboo forests for the panda to improve its ability to digest cellulose from bamboo.
  It is unlikely the panda pictured killed the antelope in the picture and may have fortuitously stumbled across the animal in the forest.

China is set to launch its once-a-decade panda census as it tries to determine how many of the endangered animals live in the wild amid efforts to boost numbers.

That's more like it! Yang Guang the panda at Edinburgh Zoo gets his mouth around the more traditional panda snack, bamboo

And as the population depletes government officials confirmed it will begin sending pandas bred in captivity into a controlled wilderness area in southwestern Sichuan province next month, the most ambitious attempt to rebuild the country's depleted population of giant pandas in a natural habitat.

The first six pandas selected from 108 raised by the Chengdu Giant Panda Rehabilitation Project, the world's largest captive bred population of giant pandas, will be released to a protected natural area covering more than 2,000 acres.

'Rather than keeping them in their enclosures, we will spend the next 50 years helping them return to their natural habitat, which is the ultimate goal of the Chengdu Panda Base,' Zhang Zhihe, director of the base, said.

The pandas, bred through artificial insemination, will be released in batches and monitored as they acclimatise. Those who perform well in an initial area will be released into the primary controlled wilderness area.

The first six pandas range in age from two to four and were chosen on the basis of gender ratio and health.

In 2004, a census by the Worldwide Fund for Nature counted 1,600 pandas in the wild, most in Sichuan province.

Pandas are difficult to breed because females ovulate only once a year and can only become pregnant during a two or three-day period.

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2079320/Panda-caught-infra-red-camera-tucking-dead-antelope.html#ixzz1hs7k1Jla

'via Blog this'

Optical Illusions

This image appears to bulge, although it only consists of squares.

Use a ruler to see if the lines are straight?

Do you see a perfectly round circle below?

Our initial count of these miniature men is 12, but just as soon as they slide around, a 13th man pops up.

Weird Thoughts

Why is there an expiry date on my sour cream container?

Why do we park on driveways and drive on parkways?

Why do we send cargo by ship, and shipments by car?

Why call it a building if it's already been built?

Why do kamikazee pilots wear helmets?

How do you know when it's time to tune your bagpipes?

Is it true that cannibals don't eat clowns because they taste funny?

Does 'virgin wool' come from sheep the shepherd hasn't caught yet?

If the front of your car says 'DODGE', do you really need a horn?

What do sheep count when they can't get to sleep?


Weird Facts
Dedicated to keeping you informed about all the interesting, strange and cool facts from around the world.
1. The Nobel Peace Prize medal depicts 3 naked men with their hands on each others shoulders. Verified
2. Fortune cookies were actually invented in America, not China! Verified
3. Of the 17k+ words Shakespeare used, over 1700 are recorded there for the first time. Verified
4. During your lifetime, the average human will grow 591 miles of hair. Unverified But hair does grows about 6 inches per year and the average head has 100,000 hairs. Take an average lifespan of 80 years. 6 x 100,000 x 80 = 48,000,000. Unfortunately hair growth is not uniform through out your lifespan, I have yet to find a formula for this.
5. The United States has more bagpipe bands than Scotland does. To be verified But would appear to be true since Scotland has a population of only 5,000,000, compared to the U.S. at 304,059,724
6. 10 percent of electricity in the US comes from "dismantled nuclear bombs, including Russian ones."
7. In the 1940s, the FCC assigned television's Channel 1 to mobile Services (two-way radios in taxicabs, for instance) but did not Pre-number the other channel assignments. That is why your TV set has channels 2 and up, but no channel 1. Verified
8. The San Francisco Cable cars are the only mobile National Monuments, in the United States. False But they are a National Monument.
9. The reason firehouses have circular stairways is from the days when the fire engines were pulled by horses. The horses were stabled on the ground floor and soon figured out how to walk up straight staircases. Verified
10. On average, 100 people choke to death on ballpoint pens every year. To be verified

Most Remote Places in the World

 Pitcairn Island





Pitcairn Island is a tiny speck of land located nearly dead in the center of the southern Pacific Ocean. Its closest neighbors are the Gambier Islands and Tahiti to the West, but even these are several hundred miles away. The island, which is the last remaining British territory in the Pacific, has a standing population of some fifty people, many of whom are descended from crewmembers of the famed HMS Bounty. In 1789, the Bounty was the setting for a now-legendary mutiny, when crewmembers enchanted by the idyllic life of the native Pacific islanders overthrew their commander, burned their ship in a nearby bay, and settled on Pitcairn. Today, the descendants of those sailors mostly make their living off of farming, fishing, and selling their extremely rare postage stamps to collectors, but even with modern transportation they still remain one of the most isolated communities in the world. There is no airstrip on the island, and getting there from the mainland requires hopping a ride on a shipping boat out of New Zealand, a journey that can take as long as ten days.

Ittoqqortoormiit, Greenland



At 836,000 square miles in size, Greenland is the world’s largest island, but its tiny population of 57,000 people means that it’s also the most desolate. And of all the towns in Greenland, perhaps none is as remote (or as difficult to pronounce) as Ittoqqortoormiit, a small fishing and hunting village located on the island’s eastern shore, to the north of Iceland. The town is part of a municipal district roughly the size of England, but it has a population of only slightly more than 500 people, meaning that each person technically has more than 150 square miles to call their own. Residents make their living off of hunting polar bears and whales, which are prevalent in the area, and by fishing for Halibut during the warmer months. Ittoqqortoormiit lies on the coast, but the seas surrounding it are almost perpetually frozen, leaving only a three-month window when the town is easily accessible by boat. There is an airport some 25 miles away, but flights are rare. For the most part, the town, one of the northernmost settlements in the world, is completely isolated in the vastness of the tundra. Photo: http://dlareh.blogspot.com

La Rinconada, Peru


For sheer inaccessibility, few locations in South America compare to La Rinconada, a small mining town in the Peruvian Andes. Located nearly 17,000 feet above sea level, La Rinconada is considered the “highest” city in the world, and it is this stunning geography that makes it so desolate. The city is located on a permanently frozen glacier, and can only be reached by truck via treacherous and winding mountain roads. Just reaching the city takes days, and even then altitude sickness, combined with the shantytown’s deplorable condition, means that few people can handle living there for long. Still, the town is said to have as many as 30,000 inhabitants, almost all of whom are involved in the business of mining gold, which is extracted from beneath the ice inside nearby caverns. In addition to its remoteness, La Rinconada has gained a dubious reputation as a destination for poor and desperate workers, many of whom work the mines for free in exchange for the right to keep a small percentage of the gold ore they find.

North Pole Airport

Located in Canada on the tip of the Nunavut territory, Alert is a small village that lies on the Arctic Ocean only 500 miles below the North Pole. It is widely considered to be the northernmost permanently inhabited place in the world (with a whopping five year-round residents), and also one of the most inhospitable. Temperatures in Alert, which also serves as a Canadian radio receiving facility and a weather laboratory, can get as low as 40 degrees below zero, and because of its location at the top of the Earth, the camp alternates between 24-hour sunlight during the summer and 24-hour darkness during the winter. The nearest town to Alert is a small fishing village some 1,300 miles away, and you would have to travel nearly twice that distance to reach major cities like Quebec. Because of its military function, Alert does have an airport, but because of weather it is often unusable. In 1991, a C-130 aircraft crashed there when its pilot misjudged his altitude and brought his plane down 19 miles short of the runway. 4 people died in the crash, and another perished while waiting for a rescue party, which took nearly 30 hours to make the short journey to the site because of a blizzard.




and in January 2011....

The planet's northern magnetic pole is drifting slowly but steadily towards Russia -- and it's throwing off planes in Florida.
Tampa International Airport was forced to readjust its runways Thursday to account for the movement of the Earth's magnetic fields, information that pilots rely upon to navigate planes. Thanks to the fluctuations in the force, the airport has closed its primary runway until Jan. 13 to change taxiway signs to account for the shift, the Federal Aviation Administration said.

South Pole Airport

 The Jack F. Paulus Skiway is an airport located at Amundsen-Scott South Pole Station at the South Pole.

The station has a runway for aircraft (ICAO: NZSP), 3658 m / 12000 ft long. Between October and February, there are several flights per day of ski-equipped LC-130 Hercules aircraft from McMurdo to supply the station. Resupply missions are collectively termed Operation Deep Freeze.

Dimensional cargo capacity of the Hercules aircraft must be considered for all of the station's logistical support. Large scientific experiments and structures such as the new station are broken down into modular pieces and reassembled on-site. Limitations of the Hercules aircraft have been cited by the National Science Foundation as one of the main reasons for the McMurdo-South Pole highway over-ice ground supply route.

Jack F. Paulus Skiway

The South Pole cargo crew unloads passengers from an LC-130. In order to prevent lubricating oil, hydraulic fluids and fuel from freezing, the engines are kept running while the plane is on the ground.

Antarctica Church

Trinity Church (Antarctica)
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Trinity Church (Russian: Церковь Святой Троицы) is a small Russian Orthodox church on King George Island near Russian Bellingshausen Station in Antarctica. It is the southernmost Eastern Orthodox church in the world.

The ambitious project to establish a permanent church or even a monastery on Antarctica surfaced during the 1990s. A charity named Temple for Antarctica (Храм - Антарктиде) was approved by Patriarch Alexius II and received donations from across Russia. They organized a competition for the project that was won by architects from Barnaul P.I. Anisifirov, S.G. Rybak and A.B. Schmidt.

The church is manned year-around by one or two Orthodox priests, who are hieromonks of Troitse-Sergiyeva Lavra volunteering for the Antarctic assignment. Similarly to the personnel of most year-round Antarctic stations, the priests are rotated annually by the Lavra; however, several of them, including Father Kallistrat, chose to come back to King George Island for another one-year tour of duty after a year or two on the mainland.

Among the priests' tasks are praying for the souls of the 64 Russian people who have died in Antarctic expeditions and serving the spiritual needs of the staff of Bellingshausen Station and other nearby stations. Besides Russian polar researchers, the church is often visited by their colleagues from the nearby Chilean, Polish, Korean, and other research stations, as well as by tourists. For the benefit of Latin American visitors, some church services are conducted in Spanish.

On occasions, the priest baptizes new adherents of Christianity in the Southern Ocean. On 29 January 2007, the priest of the church celebrated what was likely the first ever church wedding in Antarctica. The husband, Eduardo Aliaga Ilabaca, is a staff member of a Chilean Antarctic base, who had joined the Orthodox Church soon after the opening of the Antarctic temple; his wife, Angelina Zhuldybina, is Russian

When not busy with church work, priests help out with the general maintenance of the Bellingshausen station.
                                                           

             

Trinity Church                                   King George Island

Ny-Ålesund at 79°N - location of the northernmost hotel, restaurant, statue, camping site.

This is a list of various northernmost things on earth.

Mosque

Nurd Kamal Mosque, Norilsk,Russia

69°20′27.19″N88°12′3.21″E

Looking at the World Upside Down

Beware...this is catchy.

Side effects include:
increased bank account balances. Happiness... Just because. Friends who enjoy your company, smile lines, increased productivity, stopping and smelling the roses, cheerfulness, laughter,optimism and seeing the glass half full.

These effects can be exaggerated over time and may become permanent.
Via Richard Bell - Windermere Peninsula Properties:

Perspective is everything. When the space program first launched, there were a lot of tests and experiments they put the astronauts through to ensure they were ready for whatever might lay ahead.

Some of these experiments were a little strange.

For example, one test, that I found particularly interesting, was the one requiring the astronauts to wear goggles for 30 days that caused them to see EVERYTHING upside down.

I wondered how relevant this was, until I heard the rest of the story.

For the first 29 days it was very challenging. It was very difficult for them to eat, walk or pick up objects. Imagine wearing these upside down goggles 24/7 without relief?

And then it happened - On day 30 their world flipped- literally. Their brains adjusted to their new perspective and even with their goggles on, the world appeared right side up. Their brains learned to adapt.

The same is true for us. If we train ourselves to see the world right side up even when it appears upside down we can alter our lives.

Our business is dependent on our attitude. Positive attracts Positive. What you see as a reality will become your reality. It is all up to you and what you do with what you have. To enjoy success you must first see yourself as successful and the rest will fall into place.

MAPS: An Unusual View

Rotated Maps

Then a friend bought me an Australian map that was on sale in Japan. Not only does it have South at the top, but it is also "rotated" so that China, Indonesia and Australia are in the centre rather than Europe and West Africa.

Hard to believe that I'd not only been educated into one stereotype about maps, but even after learning that stereotype had failed to spot the other one.

I'm interested in Upsidedown Maps because they make me rethink the world. It's important to remember that there are people all over it. Since hanging one on my wall I've learnt geography again. You can reevaluate the world from scratch, as if it was a brand new alien landscape.

Indonesia looks like by far the most interesting place from orbit.

A Different World View

THE UPSIDE DOWN MAP

It needn't be a Eurocentric world

It came as a surprise to me after over 20 years of seeing "normal" world maps to come across an upside down one. The most surprising thing was that I found it surprising. It is completely artificial that we have North at the top of a map.

The convention came a few centuries ago when Northern hemisphere, European navigators started using the North star and the magnetic compass. Before that, the top of the map was to the East which is where the word orientation comes from.

Perceptual Adaptation

George M. Stratton, a psychologist, was intrigued by the idea of perceptual adaptation. Because the retina receives images upside down, he was intrigued to see what happens when the brain receives an image that is right side up. Stratton conducted experiments in the 1890s, in which he tested the theory of perceptual adaptation.[2] One experiment in which Stratton conducted was when he wore a reversing telescope for a whole twenty four hours. To his disappointment, his vision was unchanged. Determined to find results, Stratton wore the telescoping glasses for eight days straight. By day four, his vision was upright (not inverted). However on day five, images appeared upright until he concentrated on them; then they became inverted again. By having to concentrate on his vision to turn it upside down again, especially when he knew images were hitting his retinas in the opposite orientation as normal, Stratton deduced his brain had reprocessed his vision and adapted to the changes in vision. After removing the glasses, "normal vision was restored instantaneously[dubious – discuss] and without any disturbance in the natural appearance or position of objects

Baby Pandas Play on Slide

"Sunrising Jellyfish", honorable mention in Nature category. Jellyfish (Cotylorhiza tuberculata) drifting just beneath the surface, looking to capture the first sunrays to trigger their symbiotic algae to produce energy for it. Location: Mar Menor coastal lagoon, Murcia province, Spain (© Angel Fitor) 

Twin Baby Pandas Play Outside - YouTube

Twin Baby Pandas Play Outside - YouTube: ""

loaded by uzoouk on Dec 8, 2011

A pair of baby pandas get to play outside with their mom for the first time. For more U-zoo videos. http://ow.ly/58qgc

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Category:
Pets & Animals
License: Standard YouTube License

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Puppies Are Not Good Gifts at Xmas

The Other Panda

Zen Quotes

The most important thing is to express your true nature in the simplest, most adequate way, and to appreciate it in the smallest existence.
- Shunryu Suzuki

The true purpose (of Zen) is to see things as they are, to observe things as they are, and to let everything go as it goes.
- Shunryu Suzuki

Your life is your practice.  Your spiritual practice does not occur someplace other than in your life now, and your life is nowhere other than where you are.
- Karen Maezen Miller, from Momma Zen

Panda Family

Pandas add Sunshine to Scotland

Related Coverage
Panda-monia breaks out in ScotlandThe Daily Telegraph, 1 hour ago
Giant 'McPandas' land at Scotland ZooThe Australian, 1 hour ago
FedEx to deliver pandas to Edinburgh ZooNEWS.com.au, 5 days ago
Black, white and Red all overAdelaide Now, 24 Nov 2011
Zoo finds pandas hard to bearThe Australian, 22 Jun 2011

TWO giant pandas arrived in Scotland overnight after a journey from China on a specially-fitted private plane.

Sunshine and Sweetie - the two seven-year-old pandas loaned to the zoo by the Chinese government - arrived at Edinburgh Airport on a FedEx-chartered Boeing 777.

Sweetie, the female panda whose Chinese name is Tian Tian, was lowered off the plane in her clear Perspex enclosure first, followed by Sunshine, also known as Yang Guang. The pair then began the short journey to Edinburgh Zoo.

The pandas were taken away from the public eye after arriving at the zoo to allow them to settle into their new enclosures, Sky News reported.

The public will be allowed to see the pandas during visits to the zoo from December 16, while four hidden "panda cams" in the enclosures will share the animals' adventures online.

Britain's deputy prime minister, Nick Clegg, said he was "delighted" by the arrival of the pandas.

"These two pandas will not just be a fantastic attraction, but their arrival in the UK will play an important part in efforts to save this magnificent but sadly threatened species," he said in a statement issued by the Foreign Office. "I know that a huge amount of work has gone into securing their loan, and they will be a great showcase for UK-China links in science and research."

Prior to their flight, the pandas were given a breakfast of carrots and protein cake and loaded into their crates, each labeled "one panda." While on board, they enjoyed an in-flight meal of bamboo. Adult pandas eat about four kilograms of the plant a day.

They were accompanied by Dr Tang Chunxiang, a veterinarian from China's Giant Panda Research Base.

The plane was flown by a team of four pilots, who all donned kilts in honor of the journey from Chengdu, western China, to Scotland.

The pandas' departure from China is the culmination of four years of campaigning by both the Royal Zoological Society of Scotland and the British government.

The pandas are on loan to the UK for the next decade and will cost £600,000 ($916,000) a year. It is hoped that they will produce cubs.

Read more: http://www.news.com.au/world/pandas-add-sunshine-to-scotland/story-e6frfkyi-1226213734963#ixzz1feIOqIZc

http://www.news.com.au/world/pandas-add-sunshine-to-scotland/story-e6frfkyi-1226213734963

See the world upside down

Flaked Out