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My favorite pond has been dried up for a while but rain over last weekend took care of that. It doesn't take any time for the marsh birds to move in, when the pond is dry they have to go quite a way for fresh water.

McNaughton's response to liberal criticisms of "One Nation Under God". (follow the link)

Only a few years before her time spent with our beloved agents/actors Don Adams..., she was a model and a commercial actress. This commercial for Top Brass Dandruff prevention was what people recalled of her early days in acting.

In a particular part of Florida the White Ibis is known as the Chokoloskee Chicken. There is at least one FREEPER near Chokoloskee, they are a wild and rowdy bunch down there! North Florida FREEPERS, on the other hand, are genteel and cultivated! It's cloudy, wet and windy. Everything is hunkered down and waiting out the weather. The onshore wind has pushed the water way up in the marsh and the birds are hanging out on little islands.

Here is what President Obama said about Springsteen: Finally, we honor the quiet kid from Jersey ... who grew up to become the rock 'n' roll laureate of a generation. For in the life of our country only a handful of people have tapped the full power of music to tell the real American story -- with honesty; from the heart; and one of those people is Bruce Springsteen... It's no wonder that his tours are not so much concerts, but communions. There's a place for everybody -- the sense that no matter who you are or what you do,...

Seemingly unaware of the beast towering over it, the tiny rodent grabbed at scraps of meat thrown into the African Leopard's enclosure. But instead of pouncing on the tiny intruder, the 12-year-old leopard Sheena kept her distance. After a few minutes she tried to nudge the mouse away with her nose, but the determined little guy kept chewing away until he was full.

Irish folk singer Liam Clancy, called the "best ballad singer I'd ever heard in my life" by singer Bob Dylan, is dead at the age of 74, his manager said.

This Is A PowerPoint Presentation Of Really Old Pictures From Late 1800's and early 1900's

St. Clair Intellectual Property Consultants filed a lawsuit against Apple claiming the company is violating several of its digital camera patents. Filed in the United States District Court in Delaware, the lawsuit claims that Apple’s iPhone camera infringes on four separate patents including the ‘459, ‘219, ‘010 and ‘899 patents the company holds. St. Clair is not new to the patent infringement lawsuit game. In 2001, it sued Sony for infringing the same patents and won a $25 million judgement against the company. In 2003, it sued Canon and was awarded $34 million in damages. Since then, St. Clair has...

I take a lot of photos, I've completely worn out 4 cameras in the last 8 years. I've gone through as many printers, all of them really too expensive to feed on my budget. I installed a constant ink supply system recently, and I've tested it enough to predict that it will last. My greatest expense item is now the photo paper. Print quality is excellent, I might get better results from a pro print shop, but not much better if at all. I'm a big fan of HP printers but those little cartridges are just too expensive!This is still...

So I saw this scene, and I wondered -- can I find Ship Rock at this resolution? (Click the little picture to see the full-size 250m resolution image, which is about 5 MB, if that's a problem.) Turns out that I could. Can you? Here's Ship Rock from the ground; a place I'd like to visit someday. Likewise click for full-size. Now, here's another volcanic feature that's also in the image; on my last flight to the West Coast, I flew over it.

We didn't see the Sun until mid afternoon, it broke through pretty good them but still mostly cloudy. When the Sun gets really low the reflections on the water start to flame, and the Spartina grass turns golden. I barely caught the Little Blue Heron, they can be hard to see on a bright day. Their feathers aren't at all reflective

First Place: Crown of Thorns An image featuring a water flea's "crown of thorns"--the snaking ridge at top left--took top honors in the 2009 BioScapes microscope imaging contest, announced earlier this month. If water flea parents sense that their habitat is shared by their main predators, tadpole shrimp, the flea offspring sport these pointy crowns--which are unappetizing to the shrimp. Zoologist Jan Michels, of the Christian Albrecht University in Kiel, Germany, added a dye to reveal the tiny animal's exoskeleton (green) and cellular nuclei (blue smudges). The blue-and-red dots are one of the animal's compound eyes, like those of a...

Animators re-create Tiger Woods' auto crash and the events leading up to it. Please click on the YouTube link to see the video. Assuming this was accurately described in the Tweet sent to me as being Chinese, any Chinese-speaking FReepers' interpretation of this would be sincerely welcomed, as would any other interpretations, of course ;-)

As the Tories pledge to curb meddling officials, glorious images of days when childhood was allowed to be fun. A new book presents scenes from a bygone era when men from the council with clipboards did not swoop down on children swinging from lampposts, climbing walls or dangling from the string of a kite. Not to mention practising the noble art of boxing...

Narcissism –noun 1. inordinate fascination with oneself; excessive self-love; vanity. 2. Psychoanalysis. erotic gratification derived from admiration of one’s own physical or mental attributes, being a normal condition at the infantile level of personality development.

Alec Baldwin, the US actor, has said he has lost interest in acting and considers his film career a failure. "I consider my entire movie career a complete failure," he told the magazine. "The goal of moviemaking is to star in a film where your performance drives the film, and the film is either a soaring critical or commercial success, and I never had that." Baldwin has expressed interest in politics in the past but did not say in the interview what he intended to do if he quit acting.

We saw the movie The Blind Side last night. It was wonderful and I encourage you to see it. One of the few movies I have been to that people sat through the credits and didn't move. Oh...bring some tissues.

FORT WORTH - A treasure trove of priceless photographs were recently found dumped under a bridge in South Fort Worth. Among the found photographs were images of President John F. Kennedy's motorcade just moments before his assassination, a young President George H. W. Bush and Gwendolyn Brooks, the first African American to win a Pulitzer Prize. The photographs were found underneath Interstate 20 and Oak Grove in South Fort Worth by the Code Compliance illegal dumping team. The location is a well-known dumping ground monitored by the department. Whoever tossed the pictures away apparently had no idea they were throwing...

The detail is astonishing. At first it looks like just another castle surrounded by tiny houses and neat fields. But zooming in on the courtyard one can see figures milling around. They are in fact Allied officers being held in the notorious German PoW camp of Colditz and the photograph is one from an archive of aerial photographs taken by airmen - sometimes flying as low as 50ft - during secret reconnaissance missions in World War II. Until now the pictures have been kept behind closed doors. But they are revealed to the public for the first time today via...

AWESOME VIDEO. IT SAYS IT TOOK THEM OVER 13,000 HOURS TO MAKE THIS. WORKING EVERY SINGLE DAY FOR 8 HOURS A DAY WOULD BE 4 YEARS 5 MONTHS AND 18 DAYS! WOW. AND THATS INCLUDING WEEKENDS! READ DESCRIPTION BELOW! Turn your sound on for this. Read this first, then watch. This is almost unbelievable. See how all of the balls wind up in catcher cones. This incredible machine was built as a collaborative effort between the Robert M. Trammell Music Conservatory and the Sharon Wick School of Engineering at the University of Iowa .. Amazingly, 97% of the machines components...

I found this list and thought it was something that we could be thankful for, on this day before Thanksgiving. Thankful that there are celebrities who are opposed to Polanski being above the law, and who think that he should be prosecuted.

"Going Khmer Rouge", a new manifesto ‘written’ by Barack Hussein Obama Barry Soetoro Dunham Jr., with foreword by William Ayers. Coming soon to bookstores, school libraries, mandatory reading lists, marriage licenses, IRS tax forms, deed recordations, Census questionnaires, drivers’ education exams, and ACORN employee manuals near you...or else!

There are blue/grey herons around the world, and there are 3 in the USA, plus the Reddish Heron which has a blue cast. I seldom see a Reddish Heron this far North.I got the main trio today in just a few minutes. Little Blue Heron Egretta caerulea Tricolored heron Egretta tricolor Great Blue Heron Ardea herodias

These amazing festive images were painted by an armless thalidomide victim, using his right foot. The stunning paintings will appear on Christmas cards and sold all over the world. Peter Longstaff's artwork pieces include flickering candles and another depicts a stag in a magical winter wonderland setting And as well as teaching himself to paint, the 48-year-old has lived life to the full as a pig farmer, father and youth football coach. Peter was one of many babies born with deformities in the in late 1950s and early 60s when their pregnant mothers were given the drug thalidomide to combat...

Sorry about not putting up an image last week -- circumstances intervened. But I had already come up with this idea, and I think it's appropriate for a holiday (at least in the U.S.) week where there are a lot of travelers. Also, this is a user participation thread. I invite readers to find other examples and post them here. If you've never done that before, if you find an image, you can (in Windows) click on it and get an option to "Copy Image Location". If you do that, then in a response you use HTML code: img src="image...

Most people think Billy Pappas is crazy.  And why wouldn’t they?  Who other than a crazy person would spend more than 8 years of his life drawing a single portrait? And of a celebrity, no less?  But that’s what Pappas did. Every day, seven Billy Pappashours a day, Pappas stood in front of an easel, arms steadied by slings and drew, with a razor sharp pencil, what he believes to be the most detailed, precise and life-like drawing ever created. His 14” × 17” work is based on Richard Avedon’s 1957 photograph of Marilyn Monroe. It’s not an iconic photo, but it might show Marilyn Monroe...

Adam Lambert, the American Idol star, outraged viewers of the American Music Awards with an X-rated performance in which he simulated oral sex with a male dancer. Lambert set out to shock with a risque routine which also saw him kissing a male band mate and walking two men in bondage gear across the stage on dog leads. He was singing his new release, For Your Entertainment. After the performance, his first since American Idol, Lambert said: "I'm hoping people were entertained. For those who weren't, maybe I'm not your cup of tea." If the show was to be censored...

What we knew then and what we've lost.

Today our dish is picturesque photos taken from one of the balconies of the business complex “Mirax Plaza” in Moscow.

Stunning Color Pic Image of Great Wall of China in URL http://img4.imageshack.us/img4/7313/greatwall13.jpg

Sorry, kids—scientists have not discovered the first known bubblegum-blowing sea creature. But they have found the only known corals to eat adult jellyfish, a new study says. Opening wide--yes, that's a mouth--a mushroom coral ingests a roughly 4-and-a-half-inch-wide (12-centimeter) moon jellyfish (pictured) in the Red Sea in March 2009. And this coral wasn't alone. The study, led by scientists from Israel's Bar-Ilan University and Tel Aviv University, witnessed other corals dining on the jellyfish. Marine ecologist Jennifer Smith, who wasn't part of the study, agreed the find was unique, though she's "not entirely surprised." Mushroom corals, which have soft bodies,...

This painting appears on Jews For The Preservation of Firearms Ownership, Articles page. I've looked everywhere for a copy. JPFO thought they found the painting at a rummage sale, and weren't sure they still had the original. They do not sell copies. The signature is K. Henry. If anyone knows anything about the painting or artist, I would love to hear from you. http://www.jpfo.org/images02/AU6_0102%20copy.jpg

Frogs, flowers and insects feature among winners of a museum's competition for photographs inspired by Charles Darwin

I can't believe the Cartwrights sang sooo badly in this!!

High definition, the final frontier. Where nerds can boldly go where no moviegoer has gone before. With the Blu-ray release of the "Star Trek" movie prequel, these brave fans can obsess over the film's tiny details, including whether or not a very famous robot had a cameo that nobody noticed.

Check out this very cute video of Frank with a children's chorus. Positive in a Ronald Reagan way. Makes me nostalgic for the era it was filmed in which must have been late fifties to early sixties http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vOPDI03gmUw

Maria Sanchez Lake is almost downtown St. Augustine, a residential area with older homes. The lake is a bird magnet and there are often some nice flowers in yards around the lake. If you don't see any birds near the water look up in the Oak trees. This Great Egret and the White Ibis were waiting for the tide to start in. This flower is a Lycoris, it was almost hidden by someone's garbage can.

Kenton Rowe's fortune as a wildlife photographer would change in less than one second; the amount of time it takes for a shutter to open and close, the light burning a digital image onto a disk. And in that second, the mountain lion and her cub were forever captured, their likenesses then downloaded to a computer, printed to paper and presented to a panel of judges who would sift through 70,000 photographs at this year's National Wildlife Federation photo contest.

A terra cotta warrior and horse is seen during a media preview for the exhibit "Terra Cotta Warriors: Guardians of China's First Emperor" at the National Geographic in Washington on November 17, 2009. The exhibit, which opens November 19, features 15 terra cotta figures. UPI/Kevin Dietsch

Mountain goats are no exception to the general rule among mammals that larger males sire more and healthier offspring. But University of Alberta researcher David Coltman has found a genetic quirk that might make female mountain goats think twice about their romantic partners. Big, heavy males mountain goats shove lightweight Romeos aside taking the eligible females for themselves. The larger males pass their physical attributes and mating success to their male heirs. But Coltman's data shows the daughters of the big, bruisers are routinely smaller and less fit than females produced by physically more modest fathers. Nature can be cruel...

Former Velvet Underground members Lou Reed, Maureen Tucker and Doug Yule will make an extremely rare joint public appearance on December 8 at the New York Public Library. The three will discuss the Velvet Underground's music and legacy with rock journalist David Fricke as part of the "LIVE from the NYPL" series. The reunion of the legendary New York band comes on the heels of the publication of "The Velvet Underground: New York Art," a compendium of previously unseen photographs, poster and cover designs by Andy Warhol, Lou Reed's handwritten music and lyrics, underground press clippings and other reviews, flyers,...

After 60 years in a watery Hawaiian grave, two World War II-era Japanese attack submarines have been discovered near Pearl Harbor, marine archaeologists announced today. Specifically designed for a stealth attack on the U.S. East Coast--perhaps targeting Washington, D.C., and New York City--the "samurai subs" were fast, far-ranging, and in some cases carried folding-wing aircraft, according to Dik Daso, curator of modern military aircraft at the Smithsonian's Air and Space Museum, speaking in the new National Geographic documentary Hunt for the Samurai Subs. When World War II ended in 1945, the U.S. Navy seized the Japanese fleet in the Pacific,...

The bubbling, roiling surface of the sun has been imaged in unprecedented detail, shedding light on the processes at work on the solar surface. Images of transient dark spots, the sun's seemingly granulated texture and moving packets of gas were snapped by the SUNRISE balloon-borne telescope. SUNRISE, the largest solar telescope ever to have left Earth was launched from the ESRANGE Space Centre in Kiruna, northern Sweden, on June 8. The 6-ton telescope is dangling from a gigantic helium balloon with a diameter of 427 feet (130 meters). After launch, SUNRISE reached a cruising altitude of 37 km above the...

Here's the first teaser image

It's a lot cooler now but we still have some flowers hanging on. I spent about an hour at the county arboretum, it's a great place to just sit. I saw the first flock of pelicans coming in today, a few singles have been around, but the migration is really rolling now. There will be ducks coming in any time. Since I retired my schedule has revolved around the tides and seasons, don't count on me to show up on time for anything else!

German amateur astronomer Bernhard Christ was in the right place at the right time — due to very careful planning and foresight — and captured this astonishing scene: [Click to embiggen.]That’s the International Space Station crossing the face of the Moon, what astronomers call a transit (like an eclipse, but when something small goes in front of something big). This image is actually a composite of several images taken in a row, with some sharpening to make it cleaner looking. The transit only lasted for 0.4 seconds, so Christ had to be on the ball to capture this. He used...

Here’s a video that’s going viral on YouTube. National Geographic photographer Paul Nicklen traveled to Antarctica to photograph leopard seals in the water. After arriving, they came across one of the largest leopard seals his experienced guide had ever seen. What happened next you’ll have to see to believe: VIDEO LINK For more on this event, you can read this interview with Paul Nicklen, and check out the photographs that resulted in this gallery.

The latest object to shoot high-def video from the edge of space is…an arm chair. To promote its REGZA SV LCD TVs (LED backlight, local dimming), Toshiba trekked into the Black Rock Desert with a helium balloon. Watch the result: Click here to go to page with video. This is the first part of the ad. The second half for their Satellite T Series ULV laptops will come out next year. [Toshiba UK via Engadget] Facts about the shoot: • The shots were taken at a staggering 98,268 feet above the earth using Toshiba's own cameras • To reach the...