Lubbock Infant Can Read at 17 Months Old
A month ago, when I got an e-mail from a Lubbock mom who told me her 16-month-old baby could read, I didn't really take it seriously - especially when she told me it was her first baby. But after a few weeks and a few more e-mails, I decided to meet her and see for myself.
Elizabeth Barrett is now 17 months old. She looks and acts like most babies her age, but her mom Katy says, "She can read sentences. She can read more words than we can count."
The reporter wrote down some words and, sure enough, the kid can read.
So we played "stump the baby". I picked up a magazine, opened it somewhere in the middle and randomly pointed to a picture of a plate and the three words underneath it. "What does this say?" I asked her. Elizabeth said, "How to eat." And she was right.
So we kept at it. "What's this word?" "Family", she said. "Can you read this one?" "Good", she answered. "Ok, what's this?" "Night", she said. Every time, she was right.
It was obvious, Elizabeth talks like she's 1, but she reads like she's 7. So what does her doctor think? Dr. Steve Stripling, Elizabeth's pediatrician, says at 14 months he saw her sight read the word avocado.
The longest tail on a horse
Crystal Socha ,26,of Augusta ,Kan , shows her American Paint hourse ,Summer , during the 11th annual EquiFest of Kansas at the Kansas Coliseum in Wichita Friday , Fbb ,29,2008.Eleven years old Summer holds the Guinness book of World Records title for the longest tail on a hourse ,at twelve feet,six inches .
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The Table Illusion
The red and the green areas are identical in size and shape. I had to prove this to myself by using Photoshop to cut, paste, and rotate.
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The woman who keeps 75 hibernating tortoises in her fridges
In most refrigerators, you don't come across living things. Except maybe some yoghurt or a spot of mould. But open up Shirley Neely's two fridges and you'll find them teeming with life.
On every shelf, wrapped in tea towels, are slumbering tortoises. The smaller ones are snuggled up in a biscuit tin, but the bigger fellows are laid out side-by-side in their makeshift sleeping bags.
Mrs Neely who runs the Jersey-based Tortoise Sanctuary, had to set up the fridges because of the particularly mild winter.
Her tortoises hibernate for up to three months between December and March, and need steady temperatures between 3c and 8c.
They are in danger of waking early if it heats up - and then do not have enough body weight to keep themselves warm and not enough energy to eat or drink.
But fridges, at a steady 4c to 6c, are the perfect environment.
Mrs Neely said: "It's much easier to maintain a constantly cool temperature with a fridge than it is with our ever-warming climate."
The 75 tortoises were given three weeks without food, allowed to complete their toilet needs (tortoises must empty their digestive system before hibernating), then bathed, weighed, wrapped and put to bed - with the odd bottle-of wine or jar of mayonnaise for company.
The towels were removed for these photographs, which gave Mrs Neely an opportunity to check all was well.
She opens the doors each day to waft fresh air inside. As tortoises breathe only once a minute during hibernation, this is sufficient to keep them healthy.
Underwater world an eye-opener for scientists
Mysterious sea creatures, including giant sea spiders the size of dinner plates and jelly fish with six meter tentacles, have been found in the murky depths of Antarctica waters, Australian scientists said Tuesday.
Australian experts taking part in an international program to take a census of marine life in the ocean at the far south of the world filmed and captured specimens from up to 1,981 meters (6,500 feet) beneath the surface, and said many may never have been seen before.
"Some of the video footage we have collected is really stunning -- it's amazing to be able to navigate undersea mountains and valleys and actually see what the animals look like in their undisturbed state," Australian scientist Martin Riddle, voyage leader on the research ship Aurora Australis, said.
Among the bizarre-looking creatures the scientists spotted were tunicates, plankton-eating animals that resemble slender glass structures up to a yard tall "standing in fields like poppies,"
Australian experts taking part in an international program to take a census of marine life in the ocean at the far south of the world filmed and captured specimens from up to 1,981 meters (6,500 feet) beneath the surface, and said many may never have been seen before.
"Some of the video footage we have collected is really stunning -- it's amazing to be able to navigate undersea mountains and valleys and actually see what the animals look like in their undisturbed state," Australian scientist Martin Riddle, voyage leader on the research ship Aurora Australis, said.
Among the bizarre-looking creatures the scientists spotted were tunicates, plankton-eating animals that resemble slender glass structures up to a yard tall "standing in fields like poppies,"
Riddle said.
"Gigantism is very common in Antarctic waters -- we have collected huge worms, giant crustaceans and sea spiders the size of dinner plates," Riddle added.
The voyage was part of an international effort to chronicle sea life in the icy ocean and monitor the impact of global warming and other environmental changes on Antarctic waters.
The expedition's three ships, the Aurora Australis, France's L'Astrolabe, and Japan's Umitaka Maru, returned to Australia last month with decks full of sea creatures taken from east Antarctic.
"Gigantism is very common in Antarctic waters -- we have collected huge worms, giant crustaceans and sea spiders the size of dinner plates," Riddle added.
The voyage was part of an international effort to chronicle sea life in the icy ocean and monitor the impact of global warming and other environmental changes on Antarctic waters.
The expedition's three ships, the Aurora Australis, France's L'Astrolabe, and Japan's Umitaka Maru, returned to Australia last month with decks full of sea creatures taken from east Antarctic.
Experts believe the species will help them analyze how rising atmospheric carbon dioxide levels make the oceans more acidic, a factor scientists predict will make it harder for some marine organisms to grow and sustain their calcium carbonate skeletons.
video here
Hole in the ground
This image by Kurt Wenner was created at Waterloo train station in London. The woman, although she appears to be lying on a very convincing sofa, is in reality just lying on the ground.
China to the US: Take Our Women!
An interesting piece of history was discovered in a document that the State Department’s historical office released. It was a conversation transcript between China’s Chairman Mao Zedong and US Secretary of State Henry A. Kissinger. 
“You know, China is a very poor country,” Mao said. “We don’t have much. What we have in excess is women. So if you want them we can give a few of those to you, some tens of thousands.”
Mao circled back to the offer a few minutes later. “Do you want our Chinese women?” he asked. “We can give you 10 million.”
Kissinger noted Mao was “improving his offer,” and the chairman is on record then saying, “We have too many women … They give birth to children and our children are too many.”
“It is such a novel proposition,” Kissinger replied. “We will have to study it.”
The conversation occurred in 1973 in Beijing, China and as far as we could find… the promised10 million Chinese women were not given to the US.
Farmer finds fortune in frogs
Frogs may turn into princes only in fairy tales, but in real life one farmer living in Vietnam has found that frogs can also easily turn into huge profits.
Once a poor farmer, Le Son became a millionaire from raising frogs after mastering the craft of raising the amphibians at a frog farm in the central province of Ha Tinh.
Son said the current price for one kilogram of frogs at the market is VND35,000 (US$2.1). To produce 1,000kg of frogs, Son said about six sq.m are required and the cost of feeding the frogs is extremely low. But diseases posed the greatest threat.
Handshake Saves Mans Life
A chance handshake with a doctor in a restaurant saved a man’s life when the doctor diagnosed him with a life threatening brain tumor. The doctor knew from the spongy feeling hand and the man’s large facial features that he had the symptoms of acromegaly which is a tumor at the base of the brain, which if untreated could be fatal.
The orange, purple and green cauliflowers
Scientists have developed amazing variants of vegetable where the traditional white florets have been changed to a garish orange, purple and green.
The "rainbow cauliflowers" are said to taste the same as the normal varieties, but add a splash of colour to the dinner table.
Some scientists have even claimed that they are healthier for you.
Andrew Coker, a spokesman for the plant company Syngenta - which is developing the plants in Europe - stressed that the colourful cauliflowers were not the result of genetic engineering, but came after decades of traditional selective breeding.
hey retain their colour even after cooking. "The pictures may look garish, but they are really are this colourful," said Mr Coker.
Two signs - Different results
A blind boy sat on the steps of a building with a hat by his feet. He held up a sign which said: “I am blind, please help.” There were only a few coins in the hat.
A man was walking by. He took a few coins from his pocket and dropped them into the hat. He then took the sign, turned it around, and wrote some words. He put the sign back so that everyone who walked by would see the new words.
Soon the hat began to fill up. A lot more people were giving money to the blind boy. That afternoon the man who had changed the sign came to see how things were. The boy recognized his footsteps and asked, “Were you the one who changed my sign this morning? What did you write?”
The man said, “I only wrote the truth. I said what you said but in a different way.”
What he had written was: “Today is a beautiful day and I cannot see it.”
Both signs told people the boy was blind. While the first sign simply said the boy was blind, the second sign pointed the fortunate ones to their positive possibilities.
Moral of the Story: Be thankful for what you have. Be creative. Be innovative. Think differently and positively. Invite the people towards good with wisdom.
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A man was walking by. He took a few coins from his pocket and dropped them into the hat. He then took the sign, turned it around, and wrote some words. He put the sign back so that everyone who walked by would see the new words.
Soon the hat began to fill up. A lot more people were giving money to the blind boy. That afternoon the man who had changed the sign came to see how things were. The boy recognized his footsteps and asked, “Were you the one who changed my sign this morning? What did you write?”
The man said, “I only wrote the truth. I said what you said but in a different way.”
What he had written was: “Today is a beautiful day and I cannot see it.”
Both signs told people the boy was blind. While the first sign simply said the boy was blind, the second sign pointed the fortunate ones to their positive possibilities.
Moral of the Story: Be thankful for what you have. Be creative. Be innovative. Think differently and positively. Invite the people towards good with wisdom.
via
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