Posts Tagged ‘Uncategorized’
Zoo paints donkeys to replace dead zebra
Zoo paints donkeys to replace dead zebra – Odd News | newslite.tv
When the zebras at a Gaza zoo died earlier this year, bosses didn’t want to disappoint visiting children… so they painted stripes on donkeys.
The owner of Marah Land Zoo in Gaza City said that when their zebra died they couldn’t afford the $40,000 it would have cost to import another.
As a result, staff used black hair dye on white female donkeys, painting stripes and creating a faux zebra.
While their efforts may not have made the most convincing zebra, because most of the children who visit the zoo have never seen a zebra before they are non the wiser.
Bosses insist they are not making an ass out of visitors… just a zebra out of an ass.
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The event cost about $70,000 to put on
Durango Herald News, About 400 drop off chemicals
“Mostly, it’s just paint,” said Assistant City Manager Greg Caton.
The event cost about $70,000 to put on, and it was expected donations would total about $5,000 to help offset the cost.
Just some cool stuff
The Old Ranch : Liquid in Plastic – Photography and Words by Dan Newton
Above: Clocking in at 7 hours (stacked), this shot of an old single room school building is the longest star trails shot I’ve done thus far. Specs: Nikon D300, Tokina 11-16mm, 70 x 6min = 7 hours, f/4, ISO 500.
David Macaluso paints with used motor oil
David Macaluso paints with used motor oil
For Brooklyn-based artist David Macaluso, it’s all about oil.
Motor oil, that is.
Anti-Wi-Fi paint keeps your wireless signal to yourself
Anti-Wi-Fi paint keeps your wireless signal to yourself : Christopher Null : Yahoo! Tech
Don’t like the idea of your neighbors rudely snooping on the wireless signal you slaved to pay for from the lazy comfort of their living room? It’s not just about slowing down your connection; while they’re downloading Mad Men via bittorrent, you could be on the hook for their actions.
Wireless security and encryption systems are fraught with problems and insecurity, and other methods to restrict your signal to a small area are cumbersome at best.
Enter a new solution: Anti-Wi-Fi paint.
The idea is simple: Use a special paint on walls where you don’t want wireless to pass through (say the exterior of your house). The secret is mixing aluminum-iron oxide particles in with the paint. The metal particles resonate at the same frequency as Wi-Fi and other radio waves, so signals can’t pass through the thin layer of pigment. Outsiders would simply be unable to access your wireless network, just as you, inside the house, won’t be able to interlope on anything beamed on the outside.
Developed by the University of Tokyo, the paint is said to be the first that can block radio frequency in higher spectra where Wi-Fi and other higher-bandwidth communications occur rather than just low-frequency wireless like FM radio. Most Wi-Fi technologies operate at 2.4GHz; the Tokyo paint can reportedly block frequencies all the way up to 100GHz, with a 200GHz-blocking paint now in the works.
The paint isn’t just of interest to those concerned about wireless leaking out of the building. Movie theaters have long been interested in finding a legal way to keep cell phones silent during screenings. Electronic jammers that actively block wireless signals are illegal, but passive materials that prevent wireless signals from getting through are not. Since the wireless-blocking paint can also block the lower-frequency signals that cell phones use, addled mobile junkies would have no outlet for reaching the outside world.
Some aren’t convinced that anti-Wi-Fi paint makes a lot of sense for a secure situation, though. Says one engineer, “Surely the thought of having to redecorate a building in order to provide Wi-Fi security is more costly and complex than the security functionality available in even the cheapest of Wi-Fi access points…”
In 2005, Kelly Frank, a former painter
Blackmail plot: CBS producer Robert Joe Halderman appears in court to plead not guilty to a $2 m blackmail plot
It is the second time that Letterman has been the target of an extortion plot.
In 2005, Kelly Frank, a former painter on his Montana ranch planned to kidnap Letterman’s nanny and son for a $5 million ransom.
The star has also had to contend with a number of stalkers during his career.
In 1998, Margaret Ray, who has schizophrenia, spent two years in prison and a mental institution for breaking into his home and driving his Porsche. She then killed herself by kneeling in front of a train.
The man who admitted to plotting to kidnap David Letterman’s son, Harry, is back in prison. Montana cops caught up with Kelly A. Frank today (Posted Jun 13th 2007 5:22PM) in Northwest Montana. Frank escaped from Montana State Prison last Friday with another inmate, who is still on the run has been captured. Frank was arrested in 2005 on charges that he planned to kidnap Harry Letterman and his nanny and hold them for $5 million ransom. He would’ve been eligible for parole next month.
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Margaret Ray – David Letterman StalkerDavid Letterman’s Stalker – Who was the woman who kept breaking into the New Canaan, Connecticut home of late night talk show host David Letterman? It was none other than Margaret R. Ray who resided at the time in the town of Danbury.
Ray first drew national attention in the late 1980s when she stole David Letterman’s Porsche sports car and then claimed she was his wife when stopped at a New York tollbooth.
Painting pastors
Maryland: Painting pastors ready Habitat house
Painting pastors ready Habitat house
By DAN DEARTH
September 30, 2009
dan.dearth@herald-mail.com
HAGERSTOWN — The recipients of a Habitat for Humanity house came one step closer to moving into their new Hagerstown home Wednesday after a group of Lutheran pastors finished painting the inside walls.
Gerry Johnson, dean of the Washington County Conference of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, said 10 pastors started painting the house at 1014 Lanvale St. at about 8 a.m. and finished about 2 1/2 hours later.
Johnson said the family will move in around November after the electrical work is completed and the carpet is laid.
“It’s been a really good outreach,” Johnson said of the project, which began in June. “Volunteers just go nuts. They raised the walls in one day. They put in the roof in one day. People did a good job of putting it together.”
Johnson said the local conference pulls volunteers from 15 Lutheran churches in the county to perform charitable work.
“It builds community,” Johnson said. “That’s what we should be about.”
The house was paid for by the Washington County Conference of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, Habitat for Humanity and Thrivent Financial Services for Lutherans, a faith-based organization that offers financial advice to its members.
Thrivent donated $75,962 to help finance the project, and local Lutherans chipped in $11,687, said Kathy Powderly, director of development for Habitat for Humanity of Washington County. Habitat for Humanity paid about $29,000 to help purchase a good portion of the land.
Powderly said Habitat for Humanity has built 28 homes in Washington County since 1994. The house on Lanvale Street is the third this year.
“We will most likely build three (more houses) next year,” Powderly said. “It depends on the funding.”
Powderly said homes that are built by Habitat for Humanity are not a handout. Recipients pay an interest-free mortgage for 30 years, she said.
The funky trim
The View From 129- The funky trim – Billerica, MA – Billerica Minuteman
The View From 129- The funky trim
By Staff reports
Wed Sep 30, 2009, 01:18 PM EDT
Billerica, Mass. – When faced with an unusual paint color, there are several things you can do. You can repaint. You can wait. Or you can find a soul mate for the color and blend them together, in the hopes that together, they will form a more perfect union.
As I faced my purplish shed, I knew it needed one thing: a friend. Wouldn’t it be cute to add another funky color to complement the first? My husband thought no, but, when pushed, admitted that he didn’t dislike the idea as much as I liked it.
I recently established that standard for resolving disagreements. I don’t like it. Well I do. Yeah, but do you dislike it as much as I like it? The person with the most passion wins. And guess who had the most passion about paint?
Looking back, I wonder if there was anything that could have stopped me. I found a color that, at least on paper, matched both the color of the house and the new doors and shed. It was a rich cabernet brownish color, with subtle hues of plum. It kind of reminded me of a cross between chocolate and wine.
There is nothing like a fresh coat of paint. That’s what my friend always says. Wait until she sees the fresh coat at my house. It’s indescribable.
As I began painting, my dreams began to disintegrate as I watched a very odd color appear before me. It was close to the color I had selected. But with some raspberries pureed into it. As I slaved away the hours, I began getting self conscious because my quaint little Victorian dream of a shed was looking more like a roadside Popsicle stand.
When people tell you not to throw good money after bad, they should also add a line about not throwing good labor after bad. The more I faced the strange colors before me, the more fervently I painted. I painted and painted, three, four, and in some spots five coats, chasing a color that wouldn’t cooperate.
Well, I chased it right into Disneyland where I ended up. Right in front of the strangest shed I had ever seen.
Exhausted and behind in my other work, I decided to pack in my brushes for the day. I needed some clarity. I also needed to step away from the shed before people started pulling up to place their orders for Snowcones and hotdogs.
The problem with painting in the wrong color is that, at day’s end, you still have to clean the brushes and spills, peel off the tape, fix the smudges, haul the buckets. At least if you end up with what you want, it’s worth it. It’s hard to do all that work and then see weirdness.
I thought maybe it just had to dry, so I went inside to get some other things done. I kept peeking out, hoping to see everything blend harmoniously, but I still saw, what one friend described as a Tiki Bar. She suggested I cut a hole in the side so I could at least serve some Margaritas. Another told me it looked like the Candy Wagon from “Chitty Chitty Bang Bang.” I could certainly do worse than candy or Margaritas. I nicknamed it the Raspberry Resort.
The next morning, I got up early and looked out the side window. That’s when I witnessed a miracle. The shed looked magnificent. I couldn’t believe it. The colors had dried to form a perfect match, seemingly overnight. My fairy godmother must have swooped in to wave her wand over my shed. It was really beautiful.
Then the sun came up.
After a few days of pretending that I could live with the new color scheme, I trudged back to Lowe’s for some guidance. I asked the guy to darken the paint, which he did, to a really nice color. It was then that he informed me that the color I had originally ordered was not the one they had given me.
Apparently, Ancient Burgundy looks a lot like Antique Burgundy. Well, the words do. The colors are not only centuries, but worlds apart.
Some people would have been angry. I was elated. And validated: I wasn’t insane or colorblind, just another customer with an honest mistake. And a Tiki bar with some funky trim.
I trudged home with my new can of paint, ready to face the task before me. But when I pulled into the driveway and saw that cute little candy wagon shed, I just felt like I was home.
Megan Davis Collins is a mother, writer and social worker, living in Billerica, the town she loves to call home.
tsunami spray paint
BBC NEWS | Asia-Pacific | Eyewitnesses: Samoa tsunami
Eyewitnesses: Samoa tsunami
Teenagers roamed the area with spray paint, marking buildings and overturned cars with meaningless scribble. We set up a security barrier around our …
A tsunami triggered by a strong earthquake in the South Pacific has killed more than 100 people in Samoa and American Samoa. Here two eyewitnesses in American Samoa – one a DJ who was on air when the tsunami hit, and one a writer who fled for safety with her children – speak of their experiences.
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Joey Cummings filmed the second wave hitting the harbour
Joey Cummings works for the radio station 93KHJ in Pago Pago, American Samoa. He was presenting the morning show Samoan Sunrise when the first tsunami wave hit.
Devastation in Pago Pago (image courtesy of Joey Cummings)
The tsunami hit the harbour, and people fled to the hills
My colleague John Raynar called in sick this morning, and I’m so glad he did because otherwise I would have been on the road to work when it hit.
I was sitting in for him on the morning radio show on 93KHJ when the earthquake hit, at about 7:50am. It lasted several minutes.
We immediately sent out an earthquake warning on air, to tell everyone to stay away from possible landslide areas. We also asked schools to initiate their tsunami plans to get kids up the mountains.
We sent a tsunami warning 10 minutes later as we saw the first rising water.
Our building, Pago Plaza, is located in the middle of the harbour, practically at sea level.
We stayed on the air as the water reached three or four feet in the parking lot.
The water stayed at that level for a few minutes, but then it surged to around 15 feet.
Undated image of Joey Cummings (image courtesy of Joey Cummings)
Joey Cummings was standing in as a Samoan Sunrise presenter
Trees, cars, buses, boats all rushed by in a river of mud just outside my window.
I actually saw that my own car – a new VW Beetle – was surprisingly buoyant when floating on its roof.
We continued broadcasting for the next 5 to 10 minutes, until the batteries on our back-up power system died.
Lots of office staff were panicking, and it was a struggle to keep everyone calm while I was still on the air. When we went off the air, I grabbed a video camera to try to capture some of the action.
The first thing I caught was the second wave, and me and Lupe [another presenter] praying.
All of the staff at the station went outside to the second floor balcony to see what was happening – and the air was filled with screams.
The whole of the ground floor of our building was completely washed out.
The devastation was complete. Tables, windows, jewellery, trophies, DVDs and bottles of water lay strewn across the murky floor.
The villagers immediately started looking for trapped survivors. I dedicated myself and my staff to helping those that were hurt, and gathering food and water.
Debris was everywhere. Broken furniture mixed with old tyres and trees. Children’s clothing and road signs were crushed under telephone poles.
Two lesser waves came but they were equally scary.
We screamed for people to run up the mountain but they just ran down the street away from the wave rather than make a sharp left and up the steep mountain just feet away.
We walked down the road only to find that people who weren’t trying to help had already begun looting the stores.
Devastation in Pago Pago (image courtesy of Joey Cummings)
When I finally left work, we drove through the area and I saw more and more horrible things
Teenagers roamed the area with spray paint, marking buildings and overturned cars with meaningless scribble.
We set up a security barrier around our building, and confirmed with plaza security that no-one was trapped inside.
Then I found my own car about 300 yards down the road, upside down in the middle of a tennis court.
I got a generator from a friend and got one of our programmes back on the air about three hours later, just spreading information.
I watched a group of Taiwanese fisherman trying to get off a 100-ft tuna boat that was leaning against the sea wall.
School buses full of kids were smiling and waving at all the excitement, while behind them there were pick-up trucks with bodies in them – their feet were hanging out over the tailgate.
Everything is so nasty here. When I finally left work, we drove through the area and I saw more and more horrible things.
Where I buy my morning snacks is a concrete slab, and the lady who makes the most delicious meat pies there is now badly injured at the hospital.
The new day spa that my girlfriend Moana works at is now tilting precariously on its foundation. The Korean store is gutted. The store where I get my lunch has a truck in it. The Sacred Heart bus has a telephone pole skewering it like some sort of crazy shish kebab.
But as we got further out of the harbour area, the damage was less and less noticeable. The radio station was ground zero for the worst natural disaster in recorded American Samoa history.
Writer Sia Figiel lives in American Samoa with her sons Malamalama and Pounamu. She, like many others on the island, heard the news of the tsunami on the radio.
We woke up this morning to the house shaking. Earthquakes in this part of the world usually shake for a minute or two but this morning the house kept shaking for a clear five minutes.
The boys and I ran outside to the clearing outside our house where our neighbours had gathered. Then just as quickly as it had appeared, everything became quiet. We returned to the house, packed everyone up and drove them to school.
Sia Figiel lives in American Samoa with her sons Malamalama and Pounamu
Sia Figiel took her children up to the mountains for safety
I dropped the kids at school. I was about to head off to work when I turned on the radio. The DJ was talking about cars in the parking lot of Pago Plaza floating like toys – and said a second and third wave were set to hit in less than an hour’s time.
Instinctively, I went back to the school. I just wanted to get to my children. The road back to the school was packed with traffic – frantic parents calling out their children’s names.
Teachers told us to remain calm. Mr Moi the principal was encouraging everyone to do the same, telling us that we could pick up our kids and that the children had been evacuated to the highest point in the school.
Before I got there, I heard hymns – children singing while others were praying and crying. It was quite a sight. I saw one of my sons and told him to go and look for his siblings. I did the same.
After about 15 minutes he ran to me and said everyone was at the car. I quickly ran back to the car. My 10-year-old son was in tears. “Mom, I don’t wanna die” was how he greeted me. The only thought in my mind was to drive to the highest point of the island – Aoloau village.
The drive up was difficult. It seemed the entire island was heading up to Aoloau. We stayed at Aoloau for three hours, listening to the radio, to the death toll climbing. We heard reports from Samoa – the damage caused to the villages of Falelatai, Lalomanu and Aleipata.
People were dead. People were missing. Two radio stations were lost. The only one transmitting was “Showers of Blessings” radio. We listened to prayers, looking down on the waves gathering momentum out in the distance.
Meanwhile the neighbours across the street brought coffee for the adults, bottled water and soda for the children. Then we heard bells ringing from below. We didn’t know what it meant – maybe another death.
I decided to return home. Our house is some way up from the coast, and I decided it was the best place to be. I made the kids breakfast and then we took a nap. I wanted the children to be as calm as possible.
When we woke, my sister had made food for us. She told us the death toll on our island had climbed to 14. Half an hour later, that number was 22, with a lot more injured.
Most deaths were in coastal areas. Villages lie in devastation, cars washed into buildings, boats washed up onto roads. And there’s water everywhere.
The evening bells have just rung for evening prayer. Our prayer tonight is that of gratitude that our family and neighbours are safe. But our hearts are with those families who can not say the same, who will sleep tonight without a son, a daughter, a mother, a father, an uncle, an aunt, a cousin. Their loss is our loss. Even the night birds feel it.
