RIP Paul

FRANKFURT, Germany (AP)—Paul the Octopus, the tentacled tipster who fascinated soccer fans by predicting results at the World Cup, died Tuesday.

Paul had reached the octopus old age of 2 1/2 years and died in his tank on Tuesday morning at the Sea Life aquarium in the western German city of Oberhausen, spokeswoman Ariane Vieregge said.

Paul correctly tipped the outcome of all seven of Germany’s games. He made his predictions by opening the lid of one of two clear plastic boxes, each containing a mussel and bearing a team flag.

The octopus seemed to be in good shape when he was checked late Monday, but he did not make it through the night. He died of natural causes, Vieregge said.

“We had all naturally grown very fond of him and he will be sorely missed,” Sea Life manager Stefan Porwoll said in a statement.

The aquarium has not yet decided how best to commemorate their most famous resident, he said.

“We may decide to give Paul his own small burial plot within our grounds, and erect a mo

dest permanent shrine,” Porwoll said.

After rising to global prominence during the World Cup in South Africa in June and July, Paul retired from the predictions business after the final between Spain and the Netherlands—correctly picking Spain—and returned to his primary role of intriguing children who attend the aquarium.

The invertebrate was stepping “back from the official oracle business,” Tanja Munzig, a spokeswoman for the Sea Life, told AP Television News at the time.

“He won’t give any more oracle predictions—either in football, nor in politics, lifesty

le or economy,” she said. “Paul will get back to his former job, namely making children laugh.”

After his World Cup soothsaying skills were revealed, the English-born Paul was appointed as an ambassador to England’s bid to host the 2018 World Cup. He had English roots, having been hatched at Weymouth Sea Life Center on England’s south coast in 2008.

Imitators sprang up all over the world, including Mani the Parakeet in Singapore and Lorenzo the Parrot in Hannover, Germany.

The latest was a saltwater crocodile named Dirty Harry, who predicted Spain’s World Cup final win and called the result of Australia’s general election by snatching a chicken carcass dangling beneath a caricature of Prime Minister Julia Gillard.

“El Pulpo Paul” became so popular in Spain that the northwestern Spanish town of O Carballino tried to borrow him and made him an “honorary friend.”

Paul, who had an agent, got hundreds of requests to go to Spain. The Madrid Zoo asked Sea Life if it would be willing to make a deal to bring him in as a tribute to the Spanish soccer team

’s victory, either temporarily or for good. But the German aquarium turned down that offer, too.

Paul’s name will live on the Greek island of Zakynthos, where a permanent sea turtle rescue center funded in part by donations generated by the famous octopus is being established.

Associated Press writer David Rising in Berlin contributed to this report.

Raise Your Glass

another flawless single

Big Machine

chris did a total of 31 push ups last night, beating jack denny's old push up record that didn't even exist.

WARNING: Beach Closed

A shark attack in the waters north of Santa Barbara killed a 19-year-old college student Friday morning, Oct 22, 2010. Lucas Ransom, 19, was bodyboarding with a friend 100 yards from Surf Beach when a shark suddenly pulled him under.

Such deadly attacks are rare. According to California'sDepartment of Fish and Game, there have been 12 fatal shark attacks since the 1920's.

According to the Associated Press, Ransom was a junior at the University of California, Santa Barbara, majoring in Chemical Engineering. The Santa Barbara Sheriff's Department reports that Ransom's friends and other bystanders pulled him from the water. He had a severe leg wound and died a short time later.

This is the time of year that many adult white sharks return from long open-ocean forays and begin to feed on seals and other pinnipeds at coastal and island rookeries off Central and Northern California.

But the top-level predators can lurk off the coast at any time. The last fatal attack by a great white off California was in late April of 2008, involving a swimmer off Solana Beach in San Diego County.

Previously, a scuba diver was killed by a white shark off Mendocino in Northern California in August of 2004. A year earlier, also in August, a woman was killed as she swam near seals off Avila Beach, which is about 30 miles north of Vandenberg.

Though shark attacks are rare, there's a consensus among some scientists that white shark population off California is increasing.

Christopher Lowe, who runs the Cal State Long Beach Shark Lab, attributes this to a longstanding ban on fishing for white sharks, a longstanding ban imposed on gill-net fishing in white shark nursery areas close to the coast, and the phenomenal rise in the number of California sea lions, which constitute a readily available food source for large white sharks.

Lowe, however, has not implied that this will translate into more attacks on humans, because white sharks have evolved over millions of years into such specialized predators.

Patric Douglas, CEO of Shark Diver, which is a California-based commercial shark-diving company that has extensive experience with white sharks, has witnessed the predators' behavior up-close dozens of times and can attest to their cautious, investigatory approach to possible prey.

Douglas agrees with scientists that most, if not all white shark attacks on humans involve mistaken identity, and advises people to stay out of the water very early in the morning when the sun might be at such an angle as to make it difficult for sharks to discern people from prey -- notably pinnipeds.

other shark news: howard absolutely loves my washing machine

http://browse.deviantart.com/photography/?q=shark#/d19t24n
http://browse.deviantart.com/photography/?q=shark#/d2icesp
http://www.grindtv.com/surf/news/226/surfer+fatally+attacked+by+shark+off+central+california/

Green Backs

i've done some budgeting and within the next 3 weeks i might be able to start saving money. this is of course assuming that my car's malfunctions end with the replacement of a new starter and dome light (which steve yargeau will be paying for). after that, i also need a front bumper which will set me back another 600 bucks but i'm not going to worry about that just yet.

money has been real tight for a real long time. this new job cutting down trees has help greatly (don't get me wrong) but i'm still falling short. you'd think with all the tree's i've cut down i would have come across a money tree.

no luck yet.
maybe next week.

Microscopic Photography

To start things off these are cacodylic acid crystals. These chemical compounds were used in "agent blue" during the vietnam war.

This is a arabidopsis or a seedling root hair. It is a living specimen take a 3000x magnification.

This little critter is a mollusk. The baby bivalve, which is part of the Limidae family, swims like a scallop by clapping its shells together.

Above is a picture of two human cancer cells right before they divide into four cells. They're derived from the now famous "HeLa" line of cancer cells, which were taken from Henrietta Lacks in 1951 and used for medical research without her permission.

http://www.nikonsmallworld.com/gallery/year/2010/1

Pension Tension

PARIS - Unions vowed that their striking workers would keep disrupting rail and road transportation. Teenagers marched through the streets and pledged to go on boycotting their schools. The government, trying to appear unfazed, urged Parliament to ignore the chaos and speed up the vote on a bitterly contested pension reform.

France remained stuck Thursday in what has become a major test of President Nicolas Sarkozy's conservative presidency - the turmoil caused by a nationwide strike and protest movement that has maintained its momentum well into a second month.

Sarkozy's aides predicted the unrest would soon peter out, particularly as a 10-day school break begins this weekend. Given the government's majority in both houses of Parliament, they added, final passage of the reform law is assured early next week, in any case. Nevertheless, the major labor unions scheduled two more nationwide strikes and demonstrations, for Oct. 28 and Nov. 6, voicing the hope that by pressing on with the campaign they could force Sarkozy to pull back the bill and start over.

The immediate dispute was over Sarkozy's decision to raise the retirement age, from 60 to 62, in an effort to balance a social security budget that pushes deeper into the red every year. There was no other choice, Sarkozy and his ministers explained, if the retirement system is to retain adequate resources to serve the country's aging population.

The change would still leave France with one of the world's most generous pension programs and a retirement age well below those of its European neighbors. But union leaders, backed by the opposition Socialist Party and a growing army of student protesters, object that under Sarkozy's reform, low-income workers would sacrifice more than their share; they suggest a capital gains tax would be a better place to look for the additional funds.

The argument also reflects a broader discontent with Sarkozy and his often blunt-edged tactics among union activists and their sympathizers. Not only is the pension reform proposal unfair, they say, it was handed down without adequate consultations with unions and opposition groups.

"End the disdain," demanded a student banner in one of Thursday's marches.

Most of all, though, protesters have denounced the reform as a first slice by conservatives into a lavishly liberal social protection system that has been in place here since World War II, with health-care provisions, vacation guarantees, working hours and public schools that are the envy of many other countries.

During a visit Thursday to a cookware factory in Bonneval, 60 miles southwest of Paris, Sarkozy portrayed his legislation not as an effort to wreck that system, but as a bid to keep the pension fund from eventual bankruptcy. He lashed out at the strikers, who he said refuse to accept reality, singling out in particular the dockers, refinery workers and truck drivers who have disrupted gasoline distribution and led to pump closures at about 2,800 service stations.

"They don't have the right to make hostages out of people who are not involved," he told the gathered workers.

In an apparent effort to discredit the protesters, Sarkozy denounced the small numbers of students and other young demonstrators who have vandalized stores, overturned cars and clashed with riot police in Lyon and the Paris suburb of Nanterre. "It is not the vandals who have the final say in a democracy," he declared.

Meanwhile, about 15,000 students marched again through the Left Bank in Paris, decrying the president's refusal to budge. Other student marches were reported in Poitiers, Nantes, Bordeaux, Lille and Montpellier. The Education Ministry said 312 secondary schools out of 4,300 were again disrupted by students trying to prevent their classmates from entering.

"This is nowhere near over," said Victor Grezes, secretary of the National Lycee Union, on the margin of the Paris march.

In another indication that the troubles with French youth were not over - a vexing one for some protesters - Lady Gaga's production company announced the no-niceties rock singer was postponing her Friday and Saturday evening concerts in Paris because there would be no guarantee trucks could get into the stadium with her sound equipment.

Most of the student marches were peaceful, although a few young protesters again threw bricks through windows in Lyon. Police have questioned more than 200 youths since violence erupted in Lyon and several other cities earlier this week.

Only a dozen universities, out of 83, were seriously crippled by the protests, the Education Ministry said, despite calls from several secondary student groups to pick up the slack next week when secondary schools are on vacation.

one a brighter note. this guy's face is priceless.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/10/21/AR2010102103924.html?hpid=moreheadlines

http://news.yahoo.com/nphotos/French-Pension-Reform-Protests/ss/events/wl/092310frenchstrikes/im:/101020/ids_photos_wl/r1429714951.jpg/

2nd Reboot

the ride is expanding

i'm going to do my best to post interesting news that's going on in our fabulous world every once in a while. of course i will site all the sources and such so if the topic does interest you, you can learn more.

don't get lost in heaven: a random news source on our world and mine