FUN: Way too funny or why I don’t dance?

Sunday, November 2, 2025

https://www.goodnewsnetwork.org/comedy-wildlife-contest-unveils-wonderful-photo-finalists-to-make-everyone-smile/?_bhlid=09200a8b0d635a45582c8760c52baba000277c86

Comedy Wildlife Contest Unveils Wonderful Photo Finalists to Make Everyone Smile
By Good News Network – Oct 26, 2025

*** begin quote ***

The Nikon Comedy Wildlife Awards just released their annual finalists.

“We are absolutely delighted to reveal the hotly anticipated finalists of the 2025 competition. They are a cracking collection of jaw dropping and laugh out loud photos of some of the most incredible wildlife that we share this planet with,” said contest officials in a news release.

*** end quote ***

Animals in nature should teach us not to take ourselves too seriously.

Who cares what others think?

Isn’t bullying the absolute expression of jealousy?

Dona Nobis Pacem

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ENCOURAGING: A local champion and educator for proper childhood nutrition overcomes challenges

Thursday, June 5, 2025

Nurse Swaps Medicine for Mangos After Epiphany: Patients Were Malnourished While Fruit Rots All Around

Nurse Swaps Medicine for Mangos After Epiphany: Patients Were Malnourished While Fruit Rots All Around

By Andy Corbley – May 23, 2025 

*** begin quote ***

In Uganda, a nurse was excited to start practicing medicine, but realized only afterwards that his patients didn’t so much need pharmaceuticals as proper nutrition.

14 years ago in northern Uganda’s Yumbe district, Francis Asiku was riding home from that nursing job having witnessed a four-year-old suffering from acute malnutrition. It was a disturbing experience he admits, but while passing by some mango trees in the village of Midigo, he saw birds feasting on mangos that were rotting on the ground.

A question stopped his pedals and his mind: why were the birds eating that nutritious fruit? Why was it left to rot? The epiphany which followed gave rise to the Mango Project, a local-led initiative to preserve mangoes from the two harvests per years, and get them into the mouths of the least-fortunate children.

*** and ***

“Should we wait for the government to come to our rescue, and yet the situation keeps getting worse?” he remembers asking his earliest colleagues on the Mango Project.

*** and ***

Asiku has become a local champion and educator for proper childhood nutrition, armed with an orchard of 310 hybrid mango trees bred to resist fruit flies and erratic weather. He knows that mangos alone can’t resolve the problem: for example they contain virtually no protein or iron, vitamin B2, B1, choline, or zinc.

So in response to the interest in the project from donations, Asiku managed to squirrel away enough money to afford a solar-powered drier, with which he dries okra and eggplant, adding sources of vitamin K, B1, magnesium, and calcium.

He hopes to obtain a government license to distribute his foods further afield.

*** end quote ***

Amazing what one human can accomplish from a simple observation and follow thru.

I was shocked at his realization that Gooferments really don’t help and often frustrate solutions.

If the fellow had a GOFUNDME, then I’d have chipped in.  A few dollars may translate into saved lives.

Never underestimate the power of one motivated individual.

“Everything is theoretically impossible, until it is done.” — Robert A. Heinlein

“Give me the place to stand, and I shall move the earth.” Attributed to Archimedes of Syracuse (c. 287 BC – c. 212 BC) was a Greek mathematician, philosopher, scientist and engineer. 

This fellow found his lever, his place, and moved the world!

—30—

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INTERESTING: Found an old ship wrecked. It can tell us about our history

Saturday, December 21, 2024

https://www.goodnewsnetwork.org/shipwreck-near-kenya-may-be-from-vasco-da-gamas-final-voyage-and-would-be-archaeological-stardust/

Shipwreck Near Kenya May Be from Vasco da Gama’s Final Voyage and Would Be ‘Archaeological Stardust’

By

Andy Corbley –

Dec 12, 2024 

*** begin quote ***

While the true provenance of the vessel is unclear, the discovery would be of monumental importance to the study of maritime archaeology, and the history of European exploration.

It was originally identified near the city of Malindi in 2013 by Caesar Bita, an underwater archaeologist at the National Museums of Kenya who received a tip from a local fisherman.

*** and ***

Lying at shallow depths of just 20 feet, this ship is protected by the local population, who are part of a community archaeology project and who the team intends to train so that they can monitor the finds and participate in their recording and analysis.

Elephant ivory and copper ingots have been excavated from the wreck, where few timbers from the ship remain. The divers have uncovered pieces of the hull after digging some trenches on the seafloor, but other features remain covered in coral.

*** end quote ***

While it may NOT be the headline making ship, it still has some historical significance.

I’m amazed that in 20 feet of water, it’s still basically unexplored.

I’m also amazed at the Educational Institutions that have such niche fields of study.

What can we learn?  Not even a clue, but anything we do learn shinks that Fourth Qaudrant of the JoHari window (“what I can’t see and what you can’t see).  That has to be good.  Ignorance of human history is a fatal flaw.

—30— 

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ENCOURAGING: I thought only Batman fought crime sinsle handedly?

Friday, September 13, 2024

https://www.goodnewsnetwork.org/after-police-didnt-take-it-seriously-he-exposed-an-international-bike-theft-ring-on-his-own/

After Police Didn’t Take it Seriously He Exposed an International Bike Theft Ring on His Own
By Andy Corbley – Aug 30, 202

*** begin quote ***

As one might imagine, the police in counties like Sonoma, Santa Clara, and Santa Cruz didn’t listen to him. “We’re not Interpol” they would say.

*** and ***

Hance had been clued into the Colorado bike smuggling ring with a Modus Operandi extremely similar to that of the one he believed was behind the thefts all over California, but was even more bold—bike thieves at one point smashed through the front of a bike shop with a van, loaded up the van with a dozen bikes, and drove off.

As to the California smugglers, Hance believes the man at the end of the trail is operating out of Jalisco, and Hance’s sleuthing turned up perhaps the chief fence on this side of the border. Victoriano Romero—who was then subsequently raided by police and found to be in possession of bikes similar to ones reported stolen on Bike Index, along with $200,000 cash in a strongbox in his San Jose auto shop.

The arrest of Romero hasn’t disrupted the network, and Hance still sees that the Jalisco seller routinely offers high-end bikes for sale on his social media pages: accessible only because Hance uses a VPN to funnel his connection through Mexico.

*** end quote ***

Maybe the politicians and bureaucrats of Sonoma, Santa Clara, and Santa Cruz should put Brian Hance in as their Police Commissioner?  

I can’t imagine a bigger slap in the face than a private individual cracking international crime rings.

Argh!

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GOVEROTRAGEOUS: Why is this a problem that is NOT quickly permitted?

Thursday, September 12, 2024

https://www.goodnewsnetwork.org/elon-musks-starlink-to-provide-free-emergency-phone-coverage-in-wilderness-areas/

Elon Musk’s Starlink Offers Free Emergency Phone Coverage in Wilderness Areas Worldwide
By Andy Corbley – Sep 2, 2024 

*** begin quote ***

The satellite internet service Starlink is seeking approval to facilitate 911 calls from wilderness areas to help improve search and rescue efforts and reduce deaths.

Elon Musk’s satellite constellation has served a variety of publicized uses, like giving Ukrainians the ability to communicate during wartime. The most recent is a partnership between Starlink and T-Mobile seeking FCC regulatory approval for a direct-to-cellular service that would allow those deep in the mountains and forests to reach emergency services.

“SpaceX Starlink will provide emergency services access for mobile phones for people in distress for free,” Musk wrote on his social media platform X, formerly Twitter.

“This applies worldwide, subject to approval by country governments. Can’t have a situation where someone dies because they forgot, or were unable to pay for it.”

Direct-to-cellular functions would have a greater scope than just emergencies. Speaking about their application to the FCC, the chairwoman of the regulatory agency referred to it as the beginning of the “Single-network future” which she described as one in which the user “won’t need to think about what network, where, and what services are available; connections will just work everywhere, all the time.”

*** end quote ***

Excuse me, but in stead of the the FCC chairwoman “speaking”, why hasn’t this been “approved” without further “Barbara streisand”?

Sorry, but I don’t understand.

Musk made an offer.  The response should be: “Go ahead with all due haste”!

Argh!

Argh!

—30—

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INTERESTING: COuld AI “solve” a backlog of unread cuneiform scripts

Friday, May 31, 2024

https://www.goodnewsnetwork.org/expert-believes-he-has-solved-archaeological-mystery-surrounding-ancient-assyrian-symbol/

Expert Believes He Has Solved Archaeological Mystery Surrounding Ancient Assyrian Symbols
By Andy Corbley – May 16, 2024 

*** begin quote ***

Most of the time, Assyriologists, or people who study the ancient civilizations of Mesopotamia, are working on transcribing the various cuneiform scripts of tablets found during excavations in the 19th and 20th centuries, of which there are tens of thousands in museum collections that haven’t ever been read.

*** end quote ***

Here’s an unsolved trove of dikw (i.e., data, information, knowledge, wisdom) from the ancient world that’s ripe for study.  We’d probably learn more that ever comes for Tik Tok.

Hopefully someone turns AI loose on all the backlog.

—30—

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INTERESTING: Stop the presses on history books; time just got pushed back by a few thousand years

Monday, May 22, 2023

https://www.goodnewsnetwork.org/7000-year-old-road-uncovered-in-croatia-paved-in-stone-a-sensational-find/?utm_campaign=newsletters&utm_medium=weekly_mailout&utm_source=16-05-2023

7,000-year-old Road Uncovered in Croatia is Paved in Stone–A ‘Sensational Find’
By Andy Corbley – May 12, 2023 

*** begin quote ***

But Korcula road, featuring sophisticated stone-stacking and some sort of material to encase the stones in their positions, was made around 1,000 years before Ur and Eridu, to an epoch where agriculture and animal domestication were still developing or state-of-the-art technologies.

*** end quote ***

It really is amazing how little we “know” about “history”.  It is almost like routinely “we” find new evidence that proves just how wrong we were. 

What can you trust as “facts”?

The answer is “not much”.

—30—

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