davintosh

Is this guy nuts, or am I just overly risk-averse? Photographer captures amazing images of lions after submerging himself in watering hole for three months

Amazing photos, to be sure — kudos to photographer Greg du Toit — but the aftereffects seem a bit costly to me…

… diagnosed with deadly malaria twice after contracting it through mosquitoes breeding in the pool…

‘The doctors panicked when they noticed that my red blood platelet count was sky high,’ Mr du Toit said.

‘The first real symptom was blood in my urine, which is when I went for blood tests. The blood test confirmed that I had Bilharzia.

‘It’s caused by a type of flatworm which had spent part of its life in water snails and the other part in my liver. It left me weak and in bed for weeks.’

He added: ‘The high red blood platelet count signalled that I was carrying a lot of parasites. This included numerous species of internal worm parasites and a particularly nasty external worm parasite known as Hook Worm.

‘This worm was actually visible under the skin of my foot and would move at night. It became a game to find the worm in my foot each morning.’

After a long stint sick in bed recovering, Mr du Toit was finally given the all clear following courses of powerful antibiotics, pesticides and by spraying liquid nitrogen on the parasites visible under his skin.

To get the “frog’s-eye view”, du Toit apparently just waded into the pond until just his head was above the surface of the water. No flippin’ wonder he picked up so many bugs, being marinated in a cesspool like that! And to top off the exposure to who-knows-what unseen threats, he’s just “a leap away” from the wildlife he photographed.

The lions knew there was something in the water but we think they only recognise humans when they are upright on legs so they took little notice of me and my camera.

He added: ‘It was worth it 100 per cent and I would do it all again, worms and all.’

I wonder if he thought to use something like a drysuit to keep from becoming a large parasite-infested pink raisin. Any bets on whether he finds another pool &

Vice President Joe Biden had some notable things to say about his Executive Branch position today…

Just moments before the afternoon session (of the today’s health care summit at the Blair House) got underway, C-SPAN’s cameras picked up audio of Biden chatting casually with participants.

“It’s easy being vice president — you don’t have to do anything.”

Whomever Biden was chatting with said, “It’s like being the grandpa and not the parent.”

“Yeah, that’s it!” replied Biden.

Good grief, what a buffoon. And to think that the people who voted to put this guy a heartbeat from the Presidency were worried about Sarah Palin… After all of his gaffes last year I’m surprised he’s still allowed out in public.

Link

I found the perfect accessory for the front bumper of my Rustoleum-painted BMW…

There are a couple of sites that will make custom Euro plates, for not a lot of money; this one is especially cool because it’s got an interactive tool that lets you see what your plate will look like.

Who cares that the US Spec e28s don’t have provisions for the wide Euro plates; it’s an easy retrofit, and they still look right at home!

But it’s on the Euro bumpers that they really shine!

Photos borrowed from mye28.com buds SWattersSR and RoyW; Thanks!

Have you ever approached an intersection in a car with your turn signal on, conspicuously reducing your speed, and have another motorist wait at the intersection to see if you actually turn before they make a move?

That happened to me on my way to lunch just now, and it kinda makes me laugh… A lady sat at the intersection down the road from work waiting to make her left turn, and didn’t move until she saw my front wheels rounding the corner. Not another car on the road for a quarter mile in either direction, my turn signal was on well ahead of my intended turn (and I know for a fact that it works), I was slowing well ahead of the intersection… Even if I was moving at the normal pace for traffic on that road, she would’ve had plenty of room to get up to speed ahead of me. Yet she sat there like she didn’t believe me.

Makes me wonder how many times I’ve done that same thing.

Here’s a good read by Dan Kennedy on the Business & Media Institute website. An excerpt:

Mrs. Obama… reportedly has a staff of 22 assistants. Yes, I said twenty-two. (Previous First Ladies’ dedicated staffs were in the single digits). Michelle’s little army includes a Chief of Staff costing $172,000 a year; a Deputy Chief of Staff at $90,000; a Director of Policy and Projects at $140,000; a Director of Communications at $102,000; a Deputy Director of Scheduling at $62,000; two Social Secretaries – mysteriously, one at $65,000, one at $64,000; an Associate Director of Correspondence at $45,000, an Assistant to the Social Secretary at $36,000, and more, in total consuming $6.3-million annually thus $25-million during her 4-year term. Not to mention a make-up artist and hair stylist.

Kennedy took the occasion of the scolding tone of President Obama to bring this up; when he said that a trip to Vegas wasn’t the wisest move “when you’re trying to save for college. You prioritize. You make tough choices. It’s time your government did the same.”

Talk about the pot calling the kettle black…*

*not a racist comment.

Believe it or not, the images in this slideshow by Michael Paul Smith are just models in dioramas. Some of the dioramas have real backgrounds, but… Wow, are these shots realistic! And the artist says he used no Photoshop at all, just the camera and perspective. Enjoy!

Here’s a fun way to make President Obama’s State Of The Union address, coming up on January 27, fun for the whole family, and perk things up a bit;

… it would be fun and also a good exercise for those of us who are going to listen to Mr. Obama’s State of The Union Address on January 27th to print off this list and keep count of how many times he says the following phrases, which I lifted from Mark Alexander’s essay, State of Disunion:

• “let me be clear”
• “make no mistake”
• “back from the brink”
• “signs of recovery”
• “restored our reputation”
• “fiscal restraint”
• “greed on Wall Street”
• “affordable health care”
• “relief for working families”
• “job creation”
• “inherited” as in “I inherited this mess”

And some I’d be interested hearing him say:

• “Constitution”
• “Founding Fathers”
• “Individual liberty”

I might have to come up with a set of Bingo cards that would follow the same theme, kinda like the Buzzword Bingo made famous by Wally & Dilbert. Would it not be hilarious if in the middle of his speech someone in the gallery (a Senator?) shouted out, “BINGO!”?

Actually, I won’t need to have the speech ‘perked up’; my challenge, if I listen to it, will be keeping my blood pressure down, as Obama will surely say plenty that will get under my skin.

Edit: Just a quick search reveals that I’m definitely not the first one to come up with State Of The Union Bingo. Lots of options are already out there, like this multipage pdf that you can print out and share with your friends, an online version that will allow you to generate a different version with the click of a button, or this interactive online version that you can play in your web browser (no printing required!) And in case anyone sees this as an unfair slam on our illustrious President, let me point out that the Democrats did it first.

We were watching Scientific American Frontiers on PBS tonight; the episode was Mysteries Of The Deep covered several topics dealing with underwater exploration, and the last part featured Bob Ballard, an undersea explorer best known for finding the wreck of the Titanic. He had some fascinating stories to tell about deep-sea submersibles he’s designed & built, sea-bottom discoveries he’s made, finding the wreck of the Titanic… But the program closed with something that was almost an afterthought, but really caught my attention.

ALAN ALDA Now he’s off and running with a new crazy idea. If 70% of the globe is covered in water, it’s time we started living out there, he says. Here’s a marine habitation you tow into place, then tip up and anchor.

BOB BALLARD There’s no budget in America, zero, zip, for colonizing the world’s oceans. Nothing. They’re not even thinking about it.

ALAN ALDA You’re actively at work on this? I mean, you’ve designed..

BOB BALLARD Yeah, we’re designing it. See, also you can use heat exchangers, so that you can take advantage of the thermocline to have nice air conditioning. You can have this solar panels, where this thing…

ALAN ALDA You’re just moving cold air up, or you’re creating electricity or what?

BOB BALLARD Yeah, no. It’s cold! It’s freezing down there! Circulating air. You’ve got vanes that you can control so your solar panel follows the sun throughout the day. You can helo out to it. I want to put it in a marine sanctuary, and have rangers living on it.

ALAN ALDA (NARRATOR) I have to admit I was skeptical about the ocean colonization idea, but when I said so, Bob Ballard answered with the confidence of experience.

BOB BALLARD All my life, I’ve had these ideas, and people say, “you’re nuts.” ‘Til I do them. Then you know what they say? “You know, actually, that wasn’t a bad idea, but it’s the new one you have that’s nuts.” And then I go on with the new one and I do it, and then they go, “Well, actually it wasn’t such a bad idea but it’s the next one.” This is the one they think I’m nuts on right now.

Think of it… Living on the water, with all the ocean breezes you could want, fishing from your front porch, the constant but gentle swell of the sea under your feet… sure, there would be downsides, but the upsides would definitely outweigh them. Kinda like living in South Dakota. There was about a 30 second computer-generated video blip of the marine habitation Ballard has been working on — screenshots from it are shown below. Very cool concept. Not sure if it will go anywhere, but cool idea.

While looking for more/better images of Ballard’s work, I stumbled across this site for The Seasteading Institute. TSI seeks to create “permanent dwellings on the ocean – homesteading the high seas.” Another interesting concept, but why live on a tiny little man-made island in the middle of the ocean? “Because the world needs a new frontier, a place where those who wish to experiment with building new societies can go to test out their ideas. By opening the ocean as a new frontier, we hope to revolutionize the quality of government and social systems worldwide by enabling experimentation, innovation, and competition.” That set of goals sounds a little too utopian for my taste, but if something like this caught on it might be a good elsewhere for the likes of Alec Baldwin to go when elections don’t go their way!

Last Sunday our Adult Community class at church began a study of our church’s Statement of Faith. That document begins with the belief in the Word of God, so our study dealt with the ways that God reveals Himself to us; General Revelation and Special Revelation.

As part of the evidence of General Revelation, the teacher showed us some microphotographs of snowflakes, and I was amazed. Amazed that something so small and so commonplace (especially this year!) could be so beautiful and so complex. The photographs he used (and that I have linked below) came from SnowCrystals.com, which is part of CalTech’s website.

“How full of the creative genius is the air in which these are generated!
I should hardly admire more if real stars fell and lodged on my coat.”
— Henry David Thoreau, 1856

I read yesterday that The Vatican released a statement saying that the James Cameron movie ‘Avatar’ isn’t exactly a masterpiece. I saw the movie (in 3D, which is apparently worth a $2 ’surcharge’ tacked on to the regular ticket price) and was impressed with the special effects and with the ingenuity expressed in the animals and people inhabiting the alien planet. But like the Vatican, the story behind it was pretty lame. Others have described it as Pocahontas on another planet, and I can’t disagree.

The sentiment behind the movie is basically people are greedy and stupid and will kill planet after planet if not stopped by people who are more ‘enlightened’. There are so many places that Cameron could’ve taken a story with the creatures & world he created, but to take it in this direction was disappointing. The idea of a physical/mental connection between a rider and his mount (horse — but I don’t get the six legs; the extra two were just in the way — or flying dragon — how cool!) is awesome, but to carry the story as far as having a “Mother Earth”-figure that brings all living beings together to fight off the evil stupid human invaders… Bleh.

So even though I left the Roman Catholic Church behind years ago, I’ll have to side with the Pope on this one.