Blue Sloth

Orchard, Iowa

Sunset on Mars

NASA's Mars Exploration Rover Spirit captured this stunning view as the Sun sank below the rim of Gusev crater on Mars. This Panoramic Camera mosaic was taken around 6:07 in the evening of the rover's 489th Martian day, or sol. Sunset and twilight images are occasionally acquired by the science team to determine how high into the atmosphere the Martian dust extends, and to look for dust or ice clouds. Other images have shown that the twilight glow remains visible, but increasingly fainter, for up to two hours before sunrise or after sunset. The long Martian twilight (compared to Earth's) is caused by sunlight scattered around to the night side of the planet by abundant high altitude dust. Similar long twilights or extra-colorful sunrises and sunsets sometimes occur on Earth when tiny dust grains that are erupted from powerful volcanoes scatter light high in the atmosphere.

Sloth Fish

"Contrary to popular belief that the mola is simply a lazy lollygagging sunbather, it is in fact quite an industrious creature, plumbing the cold dark depths of the ocean repeatedly over the course of a day."

"In today's ocean, highly impacted by human actions through climate change, overfishing, and pollution, some experts predict that only low energy forms like jellyfish will prosper. The mola, which subsists primarily on a jellyfish diet, could end up being the fish of the future."

A good article from 2004 about the Mola mola

Dang-it-Dolls

I'm not the only one who enjoys a good flato. Check out this story about a Grandmother who makes stress dolls for our troops.

A South Carolina grandmother has become a sensation among stressed-out U.S. military men and women around the globe by sending the most incongruous of gifts: pliable, google-eye dolls.

Not that soldiers, Marines and airmen are doing much cuddling with her hand-stitched, foot-tall playthings. Carol Davis' "Dang-it-Dolls" are built to take punishment from homesick, frustrated troops and her work is getting rave reviews.

"The legs are shaped so you can grasp onto them," Air Force Staff Sgt. Rachel Staub wrote in a recent e-mail recalling her homesick days based in the United Arab Emirates. "It returned with me to the States with an eyeball missing and the stitching around the legs loose with some of the stuffing coming out."

The little doll "was used mostly for laughs and to keep my mind off being homesick," said Staub, of Melbourne, Fla. "It brought a smile to all our faces!"

Nearly 17,000 of the goofy dolls have been shipped around the world in the four years since Davis made her first one and sent it as a joke to her grandson, who was in the Air Force then in Aviano, Italy.

"I thought it would get a rise out of my grandson, 'Why are you sending me a doll?'" Davis said. "But after I sent 'em, I got messages back: "Can you send us some more?'"

Another story about them.

Giant Chilli Cow

It has been awhile since I've had a chance to post about unusual animals here at the Blue Sloth. Most of you who will remember that I have an affinity for cows and hope to someday own my own mini cow or two, let them roam amongst my sculpture gardens out in the countryside.

Well on the other end of the mini cow spectrum we have Chilli. This black and white Freisan bullock is 1.9m tall and weighs more than a tonne. He dwarfs most horses, is the same height as a small elephant and casts a shadow over his cattle companions.

However, nine-year-old Chilli grazes just on grass and enjoys the occasional swede as a treat at his home at the Ferne Animal Sanctuary in Chard, Somerset, where he was dumped at six days old.

DadTalk Stories

Brett over at DadTalk does a great job of staying on top of issues relating to the health and safety of our children. From time to time I run across stories that I consider perfect DadTalk material. For more stories and Brett's calm and assured commentary about topical issues, head over and give him a read.

Bad Dentists

A chain of dental clinics in North Carolina has agreed to pay $10 million to the government to resolve allegations that it performed and billed for unnecessary dental work on poor children, the U.S. Justice Department announced Wednesday.

"These dentists subjected their child patients to invasive and sometimes painful procedures, often for the sake of obtaining money from the North Carolina Medicaid program," said Jeffrey Bucholtz, an assistant attorney general for the Justice Department.

Four-year-old Brandon Dillbeck of Charlotte had 16 stainless steel crowns put on his teeth in 2003. His mother told the Observer Wednesday she'd taken him in for his first visit to the dentist to get his teeth cleaned.

Nightmare Bulbs

Compact fluorescent light bulbs, long touted by environmentalists as a more efficient and longer-lasting alternative to the incandescent bulbs that have lighted homes for more than a century, are running into resistance from waste industry officials and some environmental scientists, who warn that the bulbs’ poisonous innards pose a bigger threat to health and the environment than previously thought.

As long as the mercury is contained in the bulb, CFLs are perfectly safe. But eventually, any bulbs — even CFLs — break or burn out, and most consumers simply throw them out in the trash, said Ellen Silbergeld, a professor of environmental health sciences at Johns Hopkins University and editor of the journal Environmental Research.

“This is an enormous amount of mercury that’s going to enter the waste stream at present with no preparation for it,” she said.

Manufacturers and the EPA say broken CFLs should be handled carefully and recycled to limit dangerous vapors and the spread of mercury dust. But guidelines for how to do that can be difficult to find, as Brandy Bridges of Ellsworth, Maine, discovered.

“It was just a wiggly bulb that I reached up to change,” Bridges said. “When the bulb hit the floor, it shattered.”

When Bridges began calling around to local government agencies to find out what to do, “I was shocked to see how uninformed literally everyone I spoke to was,” she said. “Even our own poison control operator didn’t know what to tell me.”

The state eventually referred her to a private cleanup firm, which quoted a $2,000 estimate to contain the mercury. After Bridges complained publicly about her predicament, state officials changed their recommendation: Simply throw it in the trash, they said.

That was the wrong answer, according to the EPA. It offers a detailed, 11-step procedure you should follow: Air out the room for a quarter of an hour. Wear gloves. Double-bag the refuse. Use duct tape to lift the residue from a carpet. Don’t use a vacuum cleaner, as that will only spread the problem. The next time you vacuum the area, immediately dispose of the vacuum bag.

“It’s kind of ironic that on the one hand, the agency is saying, ‘Don’t worry, it’s a very small amount of mercury.’ Then they have a whole page of instructions how to handle the situation if you break one,” she said.

“I think there’s going to be hundreds of millions of [CFLs] in landfills all over the country,” said Leonard Worth, head of Fluorecycle Inc. of Ingleside, Ill., a certified facility.

Once in a landfill, bulbs are likely to shatter even if they’re packaged properly, said the Solid Waste Association of North America. From there, mercury can leach into soil and groundwater and its vapors can spread through the air, potentially exposing workers to toxic levels of the poison.

Beware the Wind

The toddler who was blown by high winds into Lake Michigan's frigid waters Friday afternoon while strapped in his stroller is improving, his father and a family friend said Saturday.

Divers found the boy, still strapped in his stroller, about 10 feet beneath the water's edge. A strong wind gust apparently propelled the stroller into Belmont Harbor, where water temperatures were 42 degrees, shortly after 2:30 p.m. Friday.

The child's grandfather, who was sitting on a bench next to the stroller, plunged into the lake after the boy, screaming, "Boy! Boy! Boy!" witnesses said.

Horrified onlookers quickly dialed 911, and divers found the boy in zero-visibility water within 15 minutes of arriving.

And Finally an Uplifting Story

Leaving private practice, Stuart sold her house and set out to raise $400,000 in donated funds, materials and services. In 2002, these efforts resulted in "The Clinic: Medical Center for the Uninsured," a charitable, sun-filled clinic that has since received more than 40,000 patient visits.

Individuals receive free or low-cost primary medical care across eight specialties, regardless of income or locality.

"Since there's no need to spend a lot of time doing paperwork, we have time to talk to the patient and really hear what they're saying," says Stuart. "So the patients go away feeling they've been heard, that they've been helped."

An arsenal of more than 100 local volunteers, including 20 retired and practicing physicians, assist Stuart in providing expert medical services to more than 800 patients per month from across the southeastern Pennsylvania, New Jersey and Delaware area.

Patient contributions account for 20 percent of The Clinic's $900,000 annual operating budget. The rest comes exclusively from private grants and donations. If The Clinic accepted money made available through government aid programs, they would be significantly restricted in terms of whom they would be allowed to treat, and how.