SINCE EVERYONE ELSE HAS POSTED THIS..............................



To see a translated version go here:
http://www.buzzfeed.com/gavon/twin-babies-talk-about-the-bronx-zoo-cobra

TREASURE ISLAND FOR SALE

Click to Enlarge

Imagine owning a property that isn’t just another private island – but a famous landmark. Set out into the waters of San Francisco Bay, Red Rock Island is the only private isle in the area and a stunning icon of the California coastline. Formerly known as “Treasure Island” due to rumours of buried pirate booty, you can explore its six beautiful acres and revel in the stunning views of the city and shore side cliffs. Offering a multitude of possible opportunities for development, preservation or mining, the once in a lifetime chance to own Red Rock is yours for US $22M

THE SMARTEST BEST FRIEND


The border collie is not your typical dog breed. Deemed the smartest of all dogs by psychology professor Stanley Coren in his book, "The Intelligence of Dogs," the tough little sheepdogs have data to back up the IQ claims.
The two smartest dogs on record, with the proven ability to understand up to 340 words, are both border collies. One of them, Betsy, appeared on the cover of the March 2008 issue of National Geographic, which documented the brainpower of a number of animals, including another border collie, Rico. The dogs, brought to the attention of scientists by their proud owners, were the subject of research conducted in their own homes by Juliane Kaminski, a cognitive psychologist at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany.

Read more: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/g/a/2011/03/31/petscol033111.DTL#ixzz1IDh8qGAe



Here is my dog Robbie. I bought him as a Christmas present for my family in the mid 1960's and he became everyone's best friend! He was supposed to be a pure bred but we had no papers. I've forgotten what I paid for him but it probably wasn't much for a kid in high school! Admittedly the smartest dog the Wood family had ever seen, he guarded our home on the imaginery line where the grass was cut next to each of our neighbors. Only certain dogs who were his friends could cross that line. All the others were chased away immediately. He could be very kind though. I remember once when he was having his dinner on our back porch, a young stray tried to join him at his bowl. Instead of growling or pushing him away he picked up the bowl and moved it down the steps to where he could guard it. 
They are renowned not only for their intellence but also their memory. When I would return to visit at my parent's after moving away, my mom would tell him I was coming and he would whine & bay until I pulled into the driveway and he could literally jump into my arms as soon as I open the car door. He continued singing my welcome for five minutes or so longer. What a joyous homecoming for the prodigal!

1ST TURBOJET

Click to Enlarge

Developed from a 1938 design by the Messerschmitt company, the Me 262 Schwalbe was the world's first operational turbojet aircraft. First flown under jet power on July 18, 1942, it proved much faster than conventional airplanes. Development problems (particularly its temperamental engines), Allied bombings and cautious Luftwaffe leadership contributed to delays in quantity production.

On July 25, 1944, an Me 262 became the first jet airplane used in combat when it attacked a British photo-reconnaissance Mosquito flying over Munich. As a fighter, the German jet scored heavily against Allied bomber formations. U.S. Army Air Forces bombers, however, destroyed hundreds of Me 262s on the ground. Of the more than 1,400 Me 262s produced, fewer than 300 saw combat. Most Me 262s did not make it to operational units because of the destruction of Germany's surface transportation system. Many of those that did were unable to fly because of lack of fuel, spare parts or trained pilots.

The Me 262A on display was brought to the United States from Germany in July 1945 for flight evaluation. Restored by the 96th Mobile Maintenance Squadron, Kelly Air Force Base, Texas, in 1976-1979, it is painted without operational unit markings as an aircraft that has just left the production line.

www.nationalmuseum.af.mil

CELESTIAL MOUNTIANS

Click to Enlarge
The Tien Shan mountain range is one of the largest continuous mountain ranges in the world, extending approximately 1,550 miles (2,500 kilometers) roughly east-west across Central Asia. This image taken by the Expedition 27 crew aboard the International Space Station provides a view of the central Tien Shan, about 40 miles (64 kilometers) east of where the borders of China, Kyrgyzstan, and Kazakhstan meet.

The uplift of the Tien Shan, which means celestial mountains in Chinese, like the Himalayas to the south, results from the ongoing collision between the Eurasian and Indian tectonic plates. The rugged topography of the range is the result of subsequent erosion by water, wind and, in the highest parts of the range, active glaciers.

Two high peaks of the central Tien Shan are identifiable in the image. Xuelian Feng has a summit of 21,414 feet (6,527 meters) above sea level. To the east, the aptly-named Peak 6231 has a summit 6,231 meters, or 20,443 feet, above sea level.
Image Credit: NASA

FIRST LOOK AT THE WINGED MESSENGER


Click to Enlarge

First Image Ever Obtained from Mercury Orbit
At 5:20 am EDT on Mar. 29, 2011, MESSENGER captured this historic image of Mercury. This image is the first ever obtained from a spacecraft in orbit about the Solar System's innermost planet. Over the subsequent six hours, MESSENGER acquired an additional 363 images before downlinking some of the data to Earth. The MESSENGER team is currently looking over the newly returned data, which are still continuing to come down.

Image Credit: NASA/Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory/Carnegie Institution of Washington

ENEMIES OF THE NEW DEAL'S LEGACY



Click to Enlarge
Many of those who worked for the New Deal believed that they were building a civilization. They left us thousands of schools, colleges, bridges, dams, murals, parks and aqueducts, now falling into ruin, as did those of ancient Rome. To recover their vision, we must relearn an ethical language now as alien as Latin. It speaks to us from the buildings New Dealers left in their faith that we would continue to build toward greater human happiness and opportunity.
"The noblest motive is the public good," declares an inscription from Virgil on San Diego's County Administration Building. A terrazzo floor in its rotunda proclaims, "Good government requires the intelligent interest of every citizen."
A Deco relief of St. George slaying the dragon of ignorance on Berkeley High School bears a text panel announcing, "You shall know the truth and the truth shall make you free." That, after all, was what the public education we are told we can no longer afford was ideally all about.
All of these structures share a common origin: They mushroomed in the brief spasm of public building activity launched by President Franklin D. Roosevelt's New Deal. They were designed to lift the country out of the Great Depression by giving millions work, but they did something else as well: They speak to us in the language with which Roosevelt infused the nation in order to keep it united during that economic calamity.
A generation had to pass before millions so took for granted the social benefits and security bestowed upon them by the New Deal that they could elect an equally accomplished communicator devoted to its repeal. When Ronald Reagan told Americans that government is not a solution but the problem itself, he corroded the very foundations of democracy by which "we the people" formed "a more perfect union." Whereas FDR spoke of government in the first-person plural, Reagan and his acolytes have done so in the third person, not as "we" but as "it" and "them." By making government and its employees the enemy, Reagan made a rhetorical shift that has withered the very notion of social progress once synonymous with the United States.
In his 2005 book, "Going Postal," Mark Ames notes that the attack upon public servants began even before Reagan with the partial privatization of the U.S. Postal Service in 1971. The onslaught has snowballed since then, mounting now to open season upon "greedy" teachers, librarians, nurses, social workers, and even first responders in Wisconsin and elsewhere.
As the New Deal's enemies have vilified the public good to favor good for the private sector, Virgil's declaration has grown virtually incomprehensible. Talented men and women once flocked to public service, inspired by Roosevelt's insistence that "the test of our progress is not whether we add more to the abundance of those who have much; it is whether we provide enough for those who have too little." We are currently flunking that test.
Whether we build a civilization worthy of the name or Dodge City depends upon the language that we choose.
Gray Brechin is the project scholar of the Living New Deal Project at UC Berkeley's department of geography. E-mail livingnewdeal.berkeley.edu.
This article appeared on page F - 6 of the San Francisco Chronicle.

Read more: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2011/03/25/INE21IICQG.DTL#ixzz1HpH8wpjW

OK ALL YOU BRITHERS, HERE IT IS

Click to Enlarge
This is for Trump, Beck, Hannity, Gingrich, Huckabee, Barbour, Palin, Bachmann, Bolton, McCain and all those other racists!

A FEW MINUTES ABOUT BEGININGS


A Brief History of Title Design from Ian Albinson on Vimeo.

MAD ABOUT THE BOY BY DINAH WASHINGTON

ONE BILLION TO AIDS CHARITIES

Most of Elizabeth Taylor's massive fortune will go to the two AIDS charities with whom she was most famously associated. 

Screen queen Elizabeth Taylor has left behind a fortune worth at least $600 million, much of which is expected to go to the AIDS charities she championed for decades. Her famous jewelry collection, valued at an eye-popping $150 million in 2002, is likely to be auctioned off with the bulk of the proceeds going to the Elizabeth Taylor AIDS Foundation and amfAR, the AIDS charity she helped found in 1985, according to WFLD/Fox TV Chicago. "From what I understand, she seems to have been very wise about her investments," said a financial planner who has worked with other Hollywood A-listers. At the time of her 1994 divorce from her last husband, Larry Fortensky, Taylor's net worth was estimated at $608.4 million. That figure could now be well in excess of $1 billion. During the 1990s, Taylor reportedly earned about $2 per second, or about $63 million per year. Her famed perfume, White Diamonds, earned more than $70 million last year, according to reports.
Our hero, even in death.  
From: JOE BY GOD:   http://joemygod.blogspot.com/

JUST IMAGINE NAPOLEON & JOSEPHINE HERE

Napoleon III Boulle Bed
France
c.1850
Bed in black wood veneer and Boulle marquetry in red tortoise shell and copper with gilt bronze decoration Exceptional Napoleon III period, 19th C

Location
Hollis & Knight, 4229 Howard Avenue, 20895 US

Ref. : 1102258873172





http://www.1stdibs.com/

RIDE THRU THE RESCUED NOYO RIVER REDWOODS



A San Francisco nonprofit dedicated to the preservation of ancient redwoods announced Thursday that it will exercise its option to buy a huge swath of the lush Noyo River canyon in Mendocino County, the largest old-growth forest still in private hands on the West Coast.
The group, Save the Redwoods League, raised $7.5 million to buy the spectacular 426-acre plot of land along the historic Skunk Train route, beating the April 1 deadline set by the Willits Redwood Co., which was threatening to log the big trees if the money didn't come through.

Read more: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2011/03/24/MNH11IISB7.DTL#ixzz1HeV4y300

100 YEARS AND COUNTING................

Click to Enlarge
Demonstration of protest and mourning for Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire of March 25, 1911, By an unknown photographer, New York City, New York, April 5, 1911. This photo was part of the exhibit The Way We Worked, on display at the National Archives in Washington DC in 2006.



The Asch building--known as the Brown building today--was the home of the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory and site of both the first large scale strike of women workers in the country and of one of the worst industrial disasters in American history. Hazardous working conditions were the rule in early 20th-century American industry, and the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory was no exception.

When fire swept through the building in the spring of 1911, locked doors and missing fire escapes contributed to the deaths of 146 workers, most of them young women. Many leapt to their deaths in a vain effort to avoid the flames.

This was the beginning of the labor movement that brought us safe working conditions, the child labor laws, a 40 hr week, minimum wage, vacations,and all the other laws that brought the middle class into being. The corporations through the teabag party and with republican support are trying to dismantle all that the unions have gained as we've witnessed over the past few weeks in Wisconsin and all over the country.



The Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Building, a National Historic Landmark, is located at 23-29 Washington Place in New York City, NY. The property is now used as classrooms and offices by New York University and is not open to the public.

THIRTY SIX YEAR OLD VISIONS

Click to Enlarge
This composite of three artists' renderings from 1975 was only wish fulfillment for an unnamed JPL artist; however, the landscape and the rendered shapes took into account what was known about Mars that year. Compared to Earth, Mars is further away from the light of the sun, very cold and very arid, and had a thin atmosphere rich in carbon dioxide but little nitrogen, an environment distinctly inhospitable to complex, Earth-like, carbon-based life forms.

"Life on Mars" was envisioned as low to the ground, symmetrical and simple. The artist drew silicon-based life forms, probably coached by others, perhaps scientists, who had thought about such possibilities. Peculiar saucer-like shapes stood only slightly above ground level, root-like structures reached outward for growth resources; a bundle of cones faced many directions for heat, light or food. Instead of reality, the images embodied the artist's hope and anticipation of what future Martian exploration would find.
Image Credit: NASA/JPL

REAL STARS ARE SO RARE



The sad news of Elizabeth Taylor’s passing at the age of 79 has broken, and with it a rush of tributes to the legendary actress, personality, and style icon—but none is more fitting  than this tender first-person appraisal by Liz’s Cat on a Hot Tin Roof costar Paul Newman, which the actor produced and narrated for Turner Classic Movies a few months before his own death in 2008. “One thing I’m not going to talk about,” Newman says wistfully, “is the startling color of her eyes.” Four minutes very well spent, below.

DAME ELIZABETH ROSEMUND TAYLOR (1932-2011)

From: BOX TURTLE BULLETIN  

http://www.boxturtlebulletin.com/

Jim Burroway

March 23rd, 2011
In 1985, seven thousand people, mostly gay men, died of a new disease known as AIDS. Los Angeles, the city where some of the first known AIDS cases were reported, was hit particularly hard. Rock Hudson fell ill and died in October of that year. Elizabeth Taylor was one of the few initially — and critically, perhaps the first straight ally in mainstream American consciousness — to publicly embrace not just her good friend, but to call attention to the epidemic that would devastate an entire community:

Elizabeth Talyor speaking at the 1992 International AIDS Conference in Amsterdam.
I remember complaining, ‘Why isn’t anybody doing anything? W“I hy isn’t anyone raising money?’” asked Elizabeth. “And it struck me like lightning: ‘Wait a second, I’m not doing anything.’” But she would. Elizabeth Taylor had a plan of action.
“I decided that with my name I could open certain doors, that I was a commodity in myself—and I’m not talking as an actress. I could take the fame I’d resented and tried to get away from for so many years—but you can never get away from it—and use it to do some good. I wanted to retire, but the tabloids wouldn’t let me. So I thought, If you’re going to screw me over, I’ll use you.” Elizabeth’s plan to use the media could only work. They had followed her every move for decades, and by attaching her name to the AIDS crisis, they would have to acknowledge it. Elizabeth Taylor would breakdown the stereotypes associated with the disease and enlighten an ignorant world. AIDS was not a gay man’s disease. AIDS has the potential to affect everyone and no one can hide from it.
Elizabeth helped start the American Foundation for AIDS Research (amfAR), and she established her own Elizabeth Taylor AIDS Foundation (ETAF). By 1999, she had helped to raise an estimated US$50 million to fight the disease. She also made the red AIDS ribbon a fashion requirement in L.A.

Elizabeth Taylor and Rock Hudson in "Giant"
Elizabeth Taylor’s eight marriages to seven husbands was a source of jokes for comedians and late night talk shows, but it’s her monumental body of work on the silver screen will forever cement her legacy as an artist. When she appeared at the age of eleven in 1943′s Lassie Come Home with fellow child star Roddy McDowellMGM awarded her a contract. One year later, National Velvet rocketed her to national stardom. She somehow managed to navigate the tricky waters from adolescent star to adult star, with her 1950 hit Father Knows Best, with Spencer Tracy and Joan Bennet. She followed that the next year with her acclaimed performance in the classic A Place In The Sun, with Montgomery Clift and Shelly Winters. She appeared in the 1956 epic Giant, with Rock Hudson and James Dean, and earned Academy Award nominations for Best Actress for 1957′s Raintree County opposite Montgomery Clift, 1958′s Cat on a Hot Tin Roof opposite Paul Newman, and 1959′s Suddenly, Last Summer with Montgomery Clift, Katharine Hepburn and Mercedes McCambridge. She won an Academy Award in 1960 for Butterfield 8, and again in 1967 for Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? By the time her smash hit Cleopatra appeared in 1963 with future husband Richard Burton, she was the highest paid actress in Hollywood.
Elizabeth’s talents were entirely natural; she never received professional training. Her beauty was natural as well. One cameraman remarked that she had no bad angle. Her face was flawlessly symmetrical. And her eyes. She had the deepest, velvet blue eyes.
She died this morning in Los Angeles of congestive heart failure after a very long illness. She was 79 when she died. She is much younger than that now.


circa 1953 click to enlarge
         

YOU WILL NEVER GUESS THE MEDIUM!



JENNY'S CHASING PACHO VILLA

Click to Enlarge
On March 19, 1916 Eight American Curtiss "Jenny" planes take off in pursuit of Pancho Villa, the first United States air-combat mission in history.

The Curtiss Jenny became America's most famous World War I training airplane. Generally used for primary flight training, some Jennies were equipped with machine guns and bomb racks for advanced training.

The JN series began by combining the best features of the Curtiss "J" and "N" models. A 1915 version, the JN-3, supported Pershing's Punitive Expedition into Mexico in 1916, but the aircraft proved unsuitable for field operations. Curtiss improved the JN-3 and redesignated in the JN-4.

With America's entry into WWI on April 6, 1917, the Signal Corps ordered large quantities of JN-4s, and by the time production was terminated after the Armistice, more than 6,000 had been delivered, the majority of them JN-4Ds.

After WWI, the Army sold hundreds of surplus JN-4s to civilians. The airplane soon became the mainstay of the "barnstormers" of the 1920s, and many Jennies continued flying into the 1930s.

THIS BIGOT WANTS TO BE PRESIDENT

Last week the Los Angeles Times revealed that thrice-married serial adulterer Newt Gingrich had arranged for $200K in donations to unseat Iowa's pro-gay state Supreme Court justices. Now it's been learned that Gingrich sent $125K of that money directly to the anti-gay hate group, the American Family Association.

Gingrich, the former U.S. House speaker who has aggressively courted the conservatives who dominate Iowa's lead-off presidential caucuses, raised the money for the political arm of Restoring American Leadership, also known as ReAL. That group then passed $125,000 to American Family Association Action and an additional $25,000 to the Iowa Christian Alliance — two of the groups that spent millions before last November's elections that removed three of the state's seven state Supreme Court justices. The court had unanimously decided a state law restricting marriage to a man and a woman violated Iowa's constitution. The financial transfers, which appear to comply with campaign finance laws, were part of a steady flow of cash into Iowa from conservative groups such as the National Organization for Marriage and the Family Research Council.
Newt Gingrich would like to remind everybody that that marriage is between one man and one woman whom you abandon riddled with cancer on her hospital bed while you fuck the shit out of your mistress whom you later marry and cheat on with a third woman while screaming with Godly moral outrage about the infidelities of the president.

WILL THIS CAUSE ANOTHER EARTHQUAKE?

RESEMBLES THE FLYING WING

Click to Enlarge

The X-48C Prototype

A three percent scale model of a blended wing body aircraft design recently was tested in NASA Langley's 12-Foot Low-Speed Tunnel. During the testing, engineers sought to clarify results from a previous test of the X-48C prototype in the Langley Full Scale Tunnel.


The blended wing body is a hybrid shape that resembles a flying wing, but also incorporates features from conventional transport aircraft. This combination offers several advantages over conventional tube-and wing airframes. The BWB airframe merges efficient high-lift wings with a wide airfoil-shaped body, allowing the entire aircraft to generate lift and minimize drag. This shape helps to increase fuel economy and creates larger payload (cargo or passenger) areas in the center body portion of the aircraft. NASA and its industry partners have been investigating the blended wing aircraft concept for potential use as a future air transport for both civilian and military applications. 

Image Credit: NASA Langley/Sean Smith

EXTREME INK


Rick Genest, the anatomically-tattooed muse of Mugler creative director Nicola Formichetti and co-star of Gaga's "Born This Way" video, is front and center in the label's new F/W 2011 campaign, photographed by Mariano Vivanco.
Read more: 
http://www.towleroad.com/2011/03/genest.html#ixzz1GgsH1Bn4

CATS MAKE THIS GUY SICK

Buzzfeed's Matt Stopera has some amusing responses to the campus preacher who carries the above sign.

ACAPELLA BEBOP FROM BELGIUM

MTV NOT !

ONE MORE ONE NIGHT STAND


Courtesy Hiroshima

THE HALF GOVERNOR'S TRUE STORY

I can't wait to read this! Real meat from her former next door neighbor. It will probably hit the NY Times best seller list.
She doesn't look to happy about this news!