Cute baby Kirk’s Dik-dik antelope

This baby Kirk's Dik-dik antelope was born in Cheshire at Chester Zoo in north west England.

She was abandoned by her mother during the cold snap but she has since won the hearts of everyone who has met her.


This tiny antelope, who is barely ten inches tall, is being bottle fed milk five times a day and will be given a helping hand until she is old enough for a diet of buds, shoots and fruits.


It is native to Kenya, Tanzania and Namibia, the Kirk's Dik-dik antelope gets its name from the noise it makes when running for cover.

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During the 1970’s I began collecting old cameras. Most of them were common cameras that sold for three to six dollars when they were new in the 1930’s.

Some were reflex box cameras but most were folding cameras that look great on a shelf with old books and other memorabilia.

The camera shown here is my favorite.




Inside the back cover of the camera is a Kodak decal that shows several patent numbers and a picture of a yellow Kodak Verichrome panchromatic film box.

It says, “Use Kodak film V616 or 616”. It also says, “Use Kodak film in the yellow box.”

There is a pleasing art deco design on both sides of the camera.

I found this camera in a little antique shop located in the basement of a house near downtown Beatrice, Nebraska in 1979.

It was still in the original box but the case of the camera looked bad because it was covered with mold dust. The case was easily cleaned and very quickly it looked like it did when it was new in the 1930’s.

Students cheated during an ethics exam!

From the archives:

Students at a university in Canada were accused of cheating - in an ethics exam

The students are all engineers at Carleton University, Ottawa, who have to do the ethics paper as part of their fourth year - one of the few essays they have to write.

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Patrick Kennedy will not seek re-election

Patrick Kennedy (pictured) had announced he will not seek re-election as a Congressman from Deleware.

The 42-year-old representative is in his eighth term in office. He is the youngest of three children of the late Sen. Edward M. Kennedy.

Congressman Patrick Kennedy’s former chief of staff had this to say:

“Kennedy's decision absolutely, unequivocally has nothing to do with the congressman's poor showing in recent polls, the shocking election of another little-known Republican state legislator, Scott Brown, to his father's Senate seat or the generally grim mood of voters in Rhode Island and around the country.”

Coincidently, the reasons cited above are the exact reasons Patrick Kennedy has chosen to cut and run.

Kennedy joins a list of other Democrats who have chosen not to seek re-election in 2010.

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Acrobatic ski jumper at Lincoln Memorial

A skilled skier performs an acrobatic jump in front of the Lincoln Memorial in Washington.

Air Car from 1923 movie Skylarking

This photo came from the 1923 Mack Sennett 18-minute comedy movie "Skylarking."

Harry Gibbon, standing on a soap box, is explaining the workings of his new invention - a Self-Raising Air Car.

Coats to challenge Bayh for Indiana Senate seat

Former U.S. Senator Dan Coats (upper photo) has confirmed that he wants his old job back.

Coats will run against Senator Evan Bayh (lower photo) to regain his old Senate seat. If he wins the Senate will be saying bye, bye to Bayh.

Mr. Coats said he is overseeing signature drives to make a formal challenge for the senate seat held by Indiana Democrat Evan Bayh.

Coats talked openly about the fact he's getting lots of encouragement from national republican leaders and Hoosiers to make a serious run for the office he held from 1989 to 1998, before retiring to pursue other challenges, including a stint as U.S. Ambassador to Germany.

He says he feels federal spending in Washington is out of control right now, that he thinks the democrats’ planned overhaul of health care is wrong, and he believes Senator Bayh is not resisting either of those things.

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You know it’s a bad winter when...

You know it’s a really bad winter when...

1. You see pink plastic flamingos with only their heads protruding out of the snow.

2. There are more snowmen in your part of town than there are people.

3. Alarmists are telling you the eighteen inches of snow you shoveled from your driveway was caused by global warming!

Recall may not fix runaway Toyotas

Michael Pecht, a professor at Maryland's Clark School of Engineering, is wary when it comes to assessing whether Toyota's suggested repair of sticky gas pedals will have any real impact.

Mr. Pecht has written a book on sudden acceleration in automobiles. He is an expert in failure analysis and believes it is not a mechanical issue with the gas pedal causing Toyota's problems.

The runaway Toyota Prius avove landed in a creek bed

Three other independent safety analysts contacted by CNN also conclude that neither floor mats nor stuck gas pedals are an overwhelming issue.

"From what people have told me about their sudden acceleration incidents, most of them have have got nothing to do with the sticking pedal at all," said Antony Anderson, an electronics consultant in Newcastle-upon-Tyne, England.

Anderson said electronic throttle controls, which largely have replaced mechanical accelerators, can malfunction in ways he compared to an occasionally disobedient child.

And then there is Sean Kane, who runs a company called Safety Research Strategies in Rehoboth, Massachusetts, who said, "Toyota's explanations do not account for the share of unintended acceleration complaints that we have examined."

Toyota officials dispute any assertion that the complicated array of electronics in its cars has an impact on the acceleration issues that have dominated headlines in the past weeks.

But, as professor Pecht said, “they are in a bit of a quandary.

If they announce that electronics is a problem, they are probably going to be in a lot of trouble, because nobody's going to drive the car. So at this stage, they don't want to announce there is any electronic problem."

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Skiing past the US Capitol building

A skier in front of the U.S. Capitol as more snow fell in the Washington area.

Deadliest Catch Captain Phil Harris dies at age 53

From a report at the link below:

Captain Phil Harris, whose fishing adventures off the Alaska coast were captured on Discovery Channel show Deadliest Catch, has died aged 53.

In January, he had a stroke while his boat was in port at St Paul Island.

Elizabeth Hillman from the Discovery Channel said the team would miss his "straightforward honesty, wicked sense of humor and enormous heart".

Captain Phil Harris on the deck of his fishing boat Cornelia Marie. A photo of Cornelia Marie is shown below.


Harris started working on fishing boats aged seven. He first captained a fishing vessel at the age of 21.

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Federal court jurors told stop tweeting

A federal court policy-making body has finally caught up with technology by proposing that judges clearly inform jurors they must not electronically discuss cases they are hearing.

It's standard procedure to inform jurors to remain mum and not conduct any research about the case until a verdict.

Recent gadget use by jurors has forced the hand of the Judicial Conference of the United States, the policy-making body of the federal courts.

The Judicial Conference released the following instructions to the federal judiciary in late January:

You may not communicate with anyone about the case on your cellphone, through e-mail, Blackberry, iPhone, text messaging, or on Twitter, through any blog or website, through any internet chat room, or by way of any other social networking websites, including Facebook, MySpace, LinkedIn and YouTube.

More here.

Hey, quick! Where’s that teleprompter?

The teleprompter operator will be searching Monster.com tomorrow looking for a new job.

note: this is a repeat of a previous post. When it first appeared on this blog, it quickly became a favorite based on number of website hits.

Washington braces for another snowstorm

A fresh supply of snow shovels arrive just in time.

Garden produce in short supply as shoppers stock up for another blizzard.

A man slogs through the snow on Pennsylvania Avenue past the White House after the last storm.

Pressroom laughter dies as Gibbs no longer funny

Press secretary Robert Gibbs (pictured) may be having less fun at his briefings than he used to. Could it be that reporters in the pressroom are laughing at him more than laughing with him.

The White House press room was a jovial place to be in the early days of Barack Obama's presidency. But times have changed.

The laughter has been reduced by half in recent months.

Chalk it up to the close of any administration's initial honeymoon — and the Obama administration's tough second half of 2009, as it wrestled with health care and saw the late Ted Kennedy's U.S. Senate seat filled by a Republican.

"The tone is one reason for less laughter," says American Urban Radio's April Ryan. "There are lots of serious questions begging for serious answers. Those questions do not meld with laughter and light banter."

Serious questions do require serious answers.

In the past Gibbs tried to intermingle comedy along with his stammering way of talking around the subject. Now, in response to many of the questions put forth by the press corps, Gibbs says a lot of words without really saying much of anything.

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Rows of snowbound rental cars at Dulles International Airport

Snowbound rental cars under 30 inches of snow at Dulles International Airport.

They may stay there for a while longer with another 10 to 20 inches of snow predicted.

...anyone seen Al Gore?

Report: Obama wants GOP surrender not bipartisanship

From a CBS Political Hotsheet:

Obama says bipartisanship, but what he wants is GOP surrender.

In this 13th month of his presidency, he's anxious to pass a jobs bill and be seen addressing an unemployment rate that only last week declined from double digits. And his efforts to enact bills on energy, financial regulatory reform and especially health care are stuck in Congress despite the solid majority his party holds in both chambers.

As presidents who can't get their way in Congress, Obama is appealing for a spirit of bipartisanship - urging Democrats and Republicans alike "to put aside matters of party for the good of the country."

What these presidential appeals for bipartisanship always mean is: do it my way.

With solid majorities in both the Senate and the House, a plea like this should not be necessary.

Is the fact that he is making this plea a testament to a failed first year in the White House?

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Jim DeMint having some Tweeting fun

Senator Jim DeMint had a little fun with a Twitter posting.

Congressman's death adds to Barack Obama's woes

The death of John Murtha (pictured), long-term Democrat Congressman, came on a day that saw Barack Obama's poll ratings fall even further.

A Marist poll found that only 44% of voters surveyed approved of his job performance, down 2% on December. More alarming for Democratic strategists, 57% of independents disapprove of his performance.

The report goes on to say that the Democratic party faces another election test after the death of John Murtha.

The fear in the party is that Republicans will notch up another victory when a special election is held in a month or two to replace Murtha.

Murtha's death will have a neglible impact on the arithmetic of the House, where the Democrats have an overwhelming majority.

Another defeat, however, will make others in Congress think twice about voting for ObamaCare against the will of most Americans as they worry about their own re-elections.

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