Well, there are lifestyles, and then there are lifestyles. Don’t think I could live this way, but this guy seems to be very happy.
Werner Freund, a 79 year old ex-paratrooper, has raised more than 70 wolves on his sanctuary in Merzig, Germany. He currently has 29 wolves who all consider him to be the alpha male.
If the video doesn’t play (it sometimes doesn’t for some reason) try HERE
Okay, maybe it’s not the most profound or pressing question of the day, but have you ever wondered why there aren’t any B batteries?
I have – the answer is that there are, but they’re very rare - and I just found this explanation on the Mental Floss website:
Around the time of World War I, American battery manufacturers, the War Industries Board, and a few government agencies got together to develop some nationally uniform specifications for the size of battery cells, their arrangement in batteries, their minimum performance criteria, and other standards.
In 1924, industry and government representatives met again to figure out a naming system for all those cells and batteries they had just standardized. They decided to base it around the alphabet, dubbing the smallest cells and single-cell batteries “A” and went from there to B, C and D. There was also a "No. 6" battery that was larger than the others and pretty commonly used, so it was grandfathered in without a name change.
As battery technology changed and improved and new sizes of batteries were made, they were added to the naming system. When smaller batteries came along, they were designated AA and AAA. These newer batteries were the right size for the growing consumer electronics industry, so they caught on. C and D batteries also found a niche in medium- and high-drain applications. The mid-size A and B batteries simply didn’t have a market and more or less disappeared in the U.S..
While you typically won’t see either A or B batteries on American store shelves, they’re still out there in the wild. A batteries were used in early-model laptop battery packs and some hobby battery packs. B batteries are still sometimes used in Europe for lanterns and bicycle lamps. According to Energizer, though, their popularity is dwindling there, too, and they might be completely discontinued.
In dieting, like comedy, timing is everything. That’s the conclusion of a new Spanish study that suggests that when you eat might be just as important as what you eat.
During the first few weeks of the 20-week study, run by US researchers from Brigham and Women’s Hospital in collaboration with Tufts University and the University of Murcia, all 420 subjects lost weight at about the same rate. But starting around week five, weight loss for dieters who ate their main meal after 3 p.m. began to stall and remained sluggish for the duration of the study. In the end, they lost 22 percent less weight than dieters who ate the bulk of their calories earlier in the day.
The results left researchers scratching their heads. All the subjects ate and burned off about the same number of calories. They all followed a Mediterranean-style diet consisting of lean proteins, fruits and vegetables and healthy fats such as olive oil, and consumed about 40 percent of their daily calories at lunch. They all slept approximately the same number of hours each night and, when tested, their appetite and hunger hormone levels were comparable. Even their genetics were similar.
The late-in-the-day eaters did tend to be breakfast-skippers, and they showed a higher level of insulin resistance. But according to the researchers, these differences alone didn’t explain the variability in weight loss between late and early eaters — and neither of these factors was correlated with the amount of an individual’s weight loss.
The researchers’ best guess is that that eating later in the day messes with the body’s internal clock system, known as circadian rhythms, and this might somehow have an adverse effect on metabolism.
Frank Sheer, one of the study’s coauthors and an assistant professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School, explained it this way:
“The circadian system is made up of a master clock in the brain and peripheral clocks in most cells throughout the body. Normally, the master clock synchronizes all peripheral clocks, similar to the conductor of an orchestra. When meal timing is abnormal this leads to de-synchronization between these different clocks, resulting in a cacophony.”
Temperatures have been warmer than normal here for the last week or so. The low this morning at the Boggy Thicket was 69°, and we have blooms opening on several of our azaleas – opening at least two months ahead of schedule.
Evidence of Global Warming?
Maybe – But tell that to those from the upper Midwest to New England who have been experiencing record lows over the same period.
On a totally unrelated subject:
You may have noticed that I have switched fonts on my blog. The default font in Windows Live Writer, which I use most of the time is Georgia 10pt, which is much too small. I had been using 12pt, but accidentally posted in Georgia 14pt last Thursday, and I was amazed how much better it looked.
It really doesn’t make all that much difference as I’m writing, but when posted to my blog, the difference for the on-line reader is huge. The text is not only slightly larger, for some reason it appears much darker, almost as if I had selected bold face.
Scroll back and compare Thursday’s post with last Wednesday’s, and I think you’ll agree that it is much easier on the eye.
London based artist Cohen Van Balen is behind a project to turn live pigeons into soap dispensers.
He explains, “ With the help of biochemist James Chappell, we have used synthetic biology to design and create a bacteria that can modify the metabolism of pigeons. To achieve this, we have created a new biobrick, or standard biological part, that when added to the genetic information of the bacteria, creates lipase. We have also used a biobrick that lowers the ph. The result is a biological device that produces a kind of window-soap. We have built this device in the bacteria Lactobacillus, which is a bacteria that naturally occurs in the digestive tract. So when feeding this bacteria to a pigeon, it should produce and defecate biological soap.”
Forbes Magazine has just released this year’s list of the fastest growing cities in America, and the top three are from Texas.
With an estimated annual population growth rate of 3% for 2012 and 2013, a 3% rate of job growth in 2012, 4.9% unemployment, and an economy that expanded 6.3% last year, Austin takes the top spot on Forbes’ annual list of America’s Fastest Growing Cities for the third year in a row.
Houston came in number two, and Dallas was third.
The term Cities is a little misleading – Forbes uses Metropolitan Statistical Areas – so Austin includes Round Rock (and everything else along the I-35 corridor from Georgetown to San Marcos) and Dallas includes Ft. Worth, Arlington, etc.
As they explain their criterion, they started with the 100 most populous Metropolitan Statistical Areas (MSAs), which are cities and their surrounding suburbs, as defined by the U.S. Office of Management and Budget. They rated these geographic areas based on six metrics.
“Using data from Moody’s Analytics, we assessed the estimated rate of population growth for 2012 and 2013, the rate of job growth in 2012, and the rate of gross metro product growth, or economic growth, for 2012. We also factored in federal unemployment data and median salaries for local college-educated workers, courtesy of Payscale.com. The result is a list of the 20 fastest growing metro areas in America in terms of population and economy.
Cities in Texas — which welcomed more than 427,000 newcomers from August 2011 to July 2012, according to the U.S. Census Bureau — dominated our list. Robust labor markets, unemployment rates under 6% (well below the national average),no state income tax, a business-friendly regulatory environment, and strong population inflows all contributed to Texas towns’ high rankings.”
My father was bitten by a Cottonmouth Moccasin while swimming in the San Jacinto River as a child. That began a lifelong campaign against snakes.
Dad was known to kill poisonous snakes by picking them up and popping them like a whip.
The first time I saw him do that, I was eight or nine years old. I don’t know what kind of snake it was, but I do know I was awestruck; I mean I was seriously impressed.
The last time I saw him do it, I was twenty. We were cleaning out weeds on the banks of the stock tank when he snatched up a big Cottonmouth, spun it around his head and snapped it like it was a bullwhip and he was Lash Larue or maybe Indiana Jones.
It literally popped the snake’s head right off – it flew about twenty feet before hitting the water.
I have never tried that, and am pretty sure that I never will. When that King Snake I talked about yesterday grabbed onto my shoelace, I thought about it, but I was trying to save the snake at the time. Besides, trying it with a harmless snake seemed kind of wimpy.
