samhexum

The adorable one is not a finalist for a gold glove. Maybe it was too many sleepless nights after his beard (I mean wife) gave birth.

Thank God he's back, right? A team that wants a(n adorable) hack who isn't even a finalist for a gold glove to be their third baseman.

Hamburglar Bear caught crashing family BBQ, feasting on 10 burgers and Diet Coke A hungry black bear was caught on video crashing a family barbecue in Tennessee and feasting on 10 hamburgers he snatched right off the grill — then washing it down with a fizzy soft drink.

Your doctor would be shooting me up with formaldehyde.

Six bull sharks inadvertently made their home on an Australian golf course. Then they vanished. For golfers, staying out of the water could be the difference between winning and losing. At one course in Australia, it was the difference between life and death. Because Carbrook in Queensland boasted a membership unlike any other golf club on the planet: six resident bull sharks. From their mysterious arrival to their devastating disappearance 17 years later, this is the tale of the sport’s most hazardous water hazard. Arrival A lake on a landlocked golf course some 14 kilometers (8.7 miles) from the Pacific Ocean may sound like a swim too far for any fish, but the bull shark has a reputation for dipping its fins into a range of habitats. River shark, freshwater whaler, estuary whaler, swan river whaler – the clue is in its other names. While native to warm and tropical waters worldwide, bull sharks have organs specially adapted to retain salt, allowing them to venture deep into freshwater environments that would prove fatal to other sharks due to a loss of sodium. Hence the presence of the stocky-built, blunt-nosed sharks in the Logan River – which slices inland from the sea halfway between Brisbane and Gold Coast before meandering around Carbrook golf club – came as no real surprise to locals in the 1990s. Neither did severe flooding. Severe flooding opened up a route for the sharks to cross from the river (left) to the course's lake. Twinned with the region’s subtropical climate, the club has been a hotspot for floods since its inception in 1978, inundated with water on numerous occasions including in 1991, 1995 and 1996. The downpours were so torrential that on the latter three occasions, the roughly 100-meter land bridge separating the river from the sand-mine-turned-lake beside the course’s 14th hole was totally submerged. A new corridor was opened and – sometime during those three temporary windows – six bull sharks glided into uncharted waters. As the land bridge dried and reformed, the door slammed shut behind them. It would remain closed for 17 years, when the next severe flood event reforged a path to the river in 2013. Carbrook’s Nessie Towards the end of the century, whispers began to trickle around Carbrook’s fairways – all originating from the 14th green. There were reports of loud splashes, large dark shapes moving below the lake’s surface, even laughed-off claims of a tall dorsal fin knifing through the water. “The Carbrook Shark” became a kind of folk legend, Australia’s own Bigfoot, Yeti or – most similarly of all – a local version of another famous lake-dwelling mythical beast. “The Loch Ness monster is pretty similar to what it felt like,” Carbrook general manager Scott Wagstaff told CNN. “It seemed possible but there wasn’t enough truth to it at that point.” The presence of bull sharks (pictured, 2012) at Carbrook was something of an urban legend in the 1990s. Courtesy Scott Wagstaff That was until the early 2000s, when the Brisbane-based Courier Mail turned folklore into fact by publishing a picture of one of the sharks, Wagstaff recalled. Yet despite having played at the club for years, he had never seen them with his own eyes when he started work there in 2010. Determined to satisfy his curiosity, Wagstaff ventured down to the lake armed with his camera and some meat. No sooner had the bait hit the surface, a shark duly appeared. The stunned Wagstaff snapped some shots before taking a short video on his phone to post online. The footage was – by his own admission – “terrible,” but the internet lapped it up: the viral YouTube video has amassed more than 2.3 million views to date. Media interest boomed, and the club embraced its toothy tenants with vigor. A bull shark was added to the club’s logo, its youth program was named the Junior Shark Academy, and feedings were held at tournaments and corporate events – including one special wedding in 2009 where all six sharks appeared at once, Wagstaff recalls. Despite his affection for the sharks, Wagstaff was reluctant to call them pets, though he did nickname one “Patch,” thanks to its distinct back marking. Compared to the crocodiles and snakes dotting other courses in the country, Carbrook’s sharks made for extremely low-maintenance residents. Only two risk-management steps were taken: warning signage around the lake, and the rejection of any business from prospective golf ball divers, who retrieve balls from course lakes to sell them on. “It’s just not worth the few grand a year we get for a contract to put someone’s life at risk,” Wagstaff said. Unprecedented Fascination spread far beyond Australian borders, piquing the interest of one shark-loving scientist and researcher based at Ruhr University Bochum in Germany. Dr. Peter Gausmann published his study on the Carbrook sharks, titled “Who’s the biggest fish in the pond?” in the Marine and Fishery Sciences journal in August 2023. Their extended residence, he argued, sheds new light on just how adaptable bull sharks are. Even without the staff feeding the sharks, hunger was not a cause for concern in a lake 700 meters long, 380 meters wide and 15 meters deep, teeming with fish, from mullets to tarpons and snappers. Gausmann calculated that the sharks would need to consume half a ton of fish per year – or 0.44% of their body weight per day – to meet their energy needs. Having been juveniles when they arrived, sightings verified they had grown to a healthy range of between 1.8 and 3 meters by 2013. Only twice before had bull sharks been recorded surviving for years in isolated bodies of water, according to Gausmann, yet none had ever lasted so long. One group made it at least four years in Panama’s freshwater Lake Bayano in the 1980s, while another survived a decade of high salinity in South Africa’s Lake St. Lucia after becoming trapped in 2002. A stay of at least 17 years in low-salinity waters — more than half a bull shark’s lifespan — was unprecedented. “This out of the ordinary occurrence has shown verifiably for the first time how long bull sharks are able to survive in these low-salinity environments,” Gausmann told CNN. “The study has shown that bull sharks presumably have no limits to their residential time in freshwater environments such as lakes and rivers, and they are presumably – at least theoretically – able to spend their entire lifetime in these habitats.” Vanished Sadly for Gausmann and Carbrook, the true extent of their survivability remains unknown. It’s been eight years since a shark was last spotted in the lake. Their vanishing is a mystery, even to Gausmann. Sightings dropped in frequency after the 2013 floods, leading to fears that some sharks may have returned to the river or died as a result of the storm. Just two sharks were confirmed dead; one found floating on the surface, another killed by illegal fishing. Wagstaff, who had never noticed any sign of ill health among the sharks in more than 100 sightings, saw them only fleetingly after the fishing death. Gausmann believes it was unlikely the remaining sharks died in a “natural way” due to sodium loss or by any other “anatomical” failure, given their adaptability, and therefore theorizes that further illegal fishing is the “most likely” explanation for their disappearance. Whatever the reason, it’s an absence felt keenly by the club. “You can’t help yourself – you walk along the lake and you’re looking in, waiting to maybe catch a glimpse of a fin breaking the water,” Wagstaff said. “The members loved the fact that their golf course was their unique place in the world where we had sharks; they just embraced it. “We’d love to see them again.” Last year, the course was submerged by the biggest flood ever recorded in the area, Wagstaff said. Though devastating financially, closing the club for two months, it sparked hope that new sharks may have crossed from the river to repopulate the lake. Only time will tell, but Carbrook is already planning for a future without its mascot. Plans are in place to fill in the lake and build a new course there over the next decade, with all marine life – potential sharks included – subsequently relocated into waters elsewhere. Whether Wagstaff ever spots another fin in the lake or not, he will remember “Patch” and co. fondly as the guests who helped him overcome his fears. Once afraid of the ocean due to sharks, Wagstaff recently went scuba diving in the reefs of the Sunshine Coast to get up close and personal with some large grey nurse sharks. “There’s this kind of legend about sharks being aggressive because they’re coming into contact with humans, especially bull sharks because of the places they tend to swim – canals, creeks and rivers,” Wagstaff said. “But then to experience them in such close proximity and see how beautiful they are and how graceful they are – now I just find them fascinating, especially the bull shark. “They’re capable, so adaptive, and they are seriously beautiful when you’re a few feet away. It’s an incredible shark.” https://www.cnn.com/2023/10/18/sport/carbrook-bull-sharks-australia-golf-course-spt-spc-intl/index.html

No, that's not why. It's because the guy who uploaded many episodes has deleted a lot of them, and I can't seem to find that episode anywhere on youtube right now.

And what's the price of my freedom from the tyranny of the taxi?

It opens to a full episode for me, but the wrong one.

My back aches with any physical activity. I can barely walk. I resemble Frankenstein when I do. I have had absolutely no quality of life for a decade. How do you expect me to stay on a bike?

Got the RSV, but I'm too young for the pneumonia. And my pulmonologist said I don't need it.

Asked my Dr for a prescription today. Big savings over Advair. Thanks.

I DON'T MEAN TO KNITPICK, BUT I AGREE...

I have some errands to run tomorrow. My 2003 car will hit 80,000 miles. I bought it in 2010 with 49,300. I've only put 1200ish miles on per year the last decade or so.

An Oklahoma teen is on top of the world after winning a car last month at a funeral 30 miles away from her home — fulfilling the last wish of a woman she had never even met. “I’m very grateful for this,” Gabriella Bonham, 16, of El Reno, Oklahoma, told Fox News Digital. “Every person that I’ve told about it has said, ‘Oh my gosh. That’s what I should do whenever I pass away.’ Or, ‘I should do something like that at my funeral.’ I think that it’s really cool to see something good happen and the effect that it makes on other people who weren’t directly involved in it. Just people want to do good things. It’s amazing.” That’s exactly the way Diane Sweeney of Oklahoma City wanted it. She died suddenly on July 7, 2022 — and just a few weeks before had told her nephew that when she died, she wanted to gift one of her prized possessions — a 2016 Volkswagen Beetle — to someone who attended the funeral. “She always had a giving spirit,” Sweeney’s nephew, Rick Ingram, told Fox News Digital. “She told a few of us her wish. I remember it clear as day. She said, ‘Whoever comes to my funeral, I want them to have a chance to win my Volkswagen Beetle.’ And I said, ‘Oh, Diane, I’ll make that happen.’” Thirty days later, Ingram said he got a call telling him that his aunt had passed away. Sweeney, who worked in biostatistics for an East coast pharmaceutical company, was not married and did not have children. After a successful career, his aunt decided to move back to Oklahoma and live a simple life, said Ingram. “She valued a peaceful life,” Ingram said. “She could have lived anywhere and driven any vehicle. And what she cared about was her Christian faith, her family and her Volkswagen Beetle. She also loved Sonic and Burger King.” Ingram said he and his cousin, Suzanne Singleterry, decided to make her final wish come true. So they reached out to local news outlets to help get the word out. “We put it in the local paper,” Ingram said. “That her wish is that whoever comes to the funeral — and she didn’t care if they knew her or not, or their age, race — would have a chance to win her car. Channel 4 picked it up and asked if they could do a news story [about it].I said, ‘Absolutely. It’ll pack the funeral home’ — which it did.” Sixteen-year-old Gabriella Bonham was one of the people who came to the funeral. “I saw it on TV and then we kind of just laughed it off because we were like, ‘That would be so funny to go to,'” Bonham said. “Then I was like, ‘Can we actually go?’” Bonham talked two of her older sisters and some cousins into going with her to the service — and what started out as a fun adventure turned into a more meaningful experience than she ever imagined. There, Bonham learned about the life and kindness of Diane Sweeney. “It was very interesting not to know her and to see her life through her family’s eyes,” Bonham said. “They put together the slideshows and everything and so it was just interesting to feel like you knew someone that you had never met before. They said that she was a very funny and fun person to be around and that she loved her family and church. It definitely seemed like she was a generous person.” Bonham filled out her raffle ticket and went on her way — but didn’t hear anything for over a year. Ingram said it took that long to settle Sweeney’s estate and then they were free to hold the raffle. Sweeney had enlisted two trustworthy friends — Rudy Espinoza and Taylor Hurt — to keep the tickets safe and finally to draw a name on Sept. 15, 2023. The staff of Resthaven Funeral Home in Oklahoma City also helped facilitate the raffle. Out of the blue, Bonham said, she got a phone call that changed her life — or at least her ability to get around town. She was experiencing issues with her current car and it was not a reliable mode of transportation, she said. “I wasn’t expecting it at all,” Bonham said. “I was just in a hotel room with my family because we were currently on a trip. They just told me and I was standing in the middle of the room, just so shocked. My parents were trying to guess what it was. They were like, ‘What happened? Are you OK? Who is it?’ After I got off the phone, we all got excited and called all of our family members who knew that I went to the funeral.” Ingram said it was a lot of fun making the call and hearing the excitement of Bonham’s family in the background. “The perfect winner was drawn,” Ingram said. “She was ecstatic and very grateful. I had a divine feeling from the start [that] this wish would be seen through one way or another — a young girl starting her life as Diane’s was ending. It worked out perfectly.” A few days later, Bonham made the trip to Oklahoma City to claim her prize. “I was trying not to freak out because it was just so cool,” Bonham said. “It was a lot of pressure, driving away in front of everybody. I was kind of nervous. So I was just thinking ‘Don’t do anything stupid. You know how to drive. Don’t worry about it, just drive away.'” Ingram said he’s grateful for the message of his aunt’s life. “Diane would have been thrilled with everyone that attended the funeral,” Ingram said. “She was always thinking of others, even after her death, which is one of her many legacies. And now [Gabriella] starts her life in the spirit of Diane.”

In the late 19th century, whalers, settlers, and pirates changed the ecology of the Galapagos Islands by poaching some native species—like Galapagos giant tortoises—and introducing others, like goats and rats. The latter species became pests and severely destabilized the island ecosystems. Goats overgrazed the fruits and plants the tortoises ate while rats preyed on their eggs. Over time, the tortoise population plummeted. On Española, an island in the southeast of the archipelago, the tortoise count fell from over 10,000 to just 14. Along the way, with goats eating all the plants they could, Española—once akin to a savanna—turned barren. A century later, conservationists set out to restore the Galapagos giant tortoise on Española—and the island ecosystem. They began eradicating the introduced species and capturing Española’s remaining tortoises and breeding them in captivity. With the goats wiped out and the tortoises in cages, the ecosystem transformed once again. This time, the overgrazed terrain became overgrown with densely packed trees and woody bushes. Española’s full recovery to its savanna-like state would have to wait for the tortoises’ return. From the time those 14 tortoises were taken into captivity between 1963 and 1974 until they were finally released in 2020, conservationists with the NGO Galápagos Conservancy and the Galapagos National Park Directorate reintroduced nearly 2,000 captive-bred Galapagos giant tortoises to Española. Since then, the tortoises have continued to breed in the wild, causing the population to blossom to an estimated 3,000. They’ve also seen the ecology of Española transform once more as the tortoises are reducing the extent of woody plants, expanding the grasslands, and spreading the seeds of a key species. Not only that, but the tortoises’ return has also helped the critically endangered waved albatross—a species that breeds exclusively on Española. During the island’s woody era, Maud Quinzin, a conservation geneticist who has previously worked with Galapagos tortoises, says that people had to repeatedly clear the areas the seabirds use as runways to take off and land. Now, if the landing strips are getting overgrown, they’ll move tortoises into the area to take care of it for them. The secret to this success is that—much like beavers, brown bears, and elephants—giant tortoises are ecological architects. As they browse, poop, and plod about, they alter the landscape. They trample young trees and bushes before they can grow big enough to block the albatrosses’ way. The giant tortoises likewise have a potent impact on the giant species of prickly pear cactuses that call Española home—one of the tortoises’ favorite foods and an essential resource for the island’s other inhabitants. When the tortoises graze the cactus’s fallen leaves, they prevent the paddle-shaped pads from taking root and competing with their parents. And, after they eat the cactus’s fruit, they drop the seeds across the island in balls of dung that offer a protective shell of fertilizer. The extent of these and other ecological effects of the tortoise are documented in a new study by James Gibbs, a conservation scientist and the president of the Galápagos Conservancy, and Washington Tapia Aguilera, the director of the giant tortoise restoration program at the Galápagos Conservancy. To study these impacts up close, they fenced off some of the island’s cactuses, which gave them a way to assess how the landscapes evolve when they’re either exposed to or free from the tortoises’ influences. They also studied satellite imagery of the island captured between 2006 and 2020 and found that while parts of the island are still seeing an increase in the density of bushes and trees, places where the tortoises have rebounded are more open and savanna-like. As few as one or two tortoises per hectare, the scientists write, is enough to trigger a shift in the landscape. Dennis Hansen, a conservation ecologist who has worked with the tortoises native to the Aldabra atoll in the Indian Ocean, says that while the findings line up with what conservationists expected, it was nice to have their suspicions confirmed. The results bode well for other rewilding projects that include giant tortoise restoration as a keystone of their efforts, he says, such as those underway on other islands in the Galapagos archipelago and on the Mascarene Islands in the Indian Ocean. But on Española itself, though the tortoises have been busy stomping shoots and spreading seeds, they have more work to do. In 2020, 78 percent of Española was still dominated by woody vegetation. Gibbs says it may take another couple of centuries for Española’s giant tortoises to reestablish something like the ratio of grasses, trees, and bushes that existed before Europeans landed in the archipelago. But that long transformation is at least underway. Do tortoises even have thumbs? Galapagos giant tortoises are restoring their own ecosystem | Popular Science WWW.POPSCI.COM A decades-long project to reintroduce Galapagos giant tortoises is changing the face of the island of Española.

The proper response would've been "Jimmy was okay; Warren I could take or leave," (or vice versa)

It's a shame she never married a man with the last name Stone.

She was 91.

Appointment October 17, 2023 at 10:30 a.m. Walgreens Vaccine(s) RSV Pneumonia (Pneumococcal)