WcP.Humor's blog

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Owls have long been a part of human folklore and legend. Owls often depicted in various ways in popular culture. They rank on par with bats and spiders as the most celebrated of Halloween creatures. Owls are a group of birds known for their distinct calls, nocturnal habits and silent flight. Owls are familiar to many people because they are often depicted in various ways in popular culture. They rank on par with bats and spiders as the most celebrated of Halloween creatures. Owls also appear as wise and noble characters in many children's stories, including Winnie the Pooh, Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH and Harry Potter.

Owls are depicted in cave paintings in France that date back 15,000 to 20,000 years. Owls also appear in Egyptian hieroglyphics. They have held a variety of symbolic roles in culture and have represented misfortune, death, prosperity, and wisdom.

Owls have developed special feather adaptations that enable them to minimize the sound made when flapping their wings. For instance, the leading edges of their primary feathers have a stiff fringes that reduces noise while the trailing edge of their primaries have soft fringes that helps to reduce turbulence. Downy feathers cover the surfaces of the wing to further reduce sound.  read more »

rodeo frog: yeee-haw!

The original piggy back ride: "a seagull hitches a ride on a pig while it swims in the crystal blue sea off the coast of Bahamas. The secluded island of Big Major Cay is home to around 20 porky piggies and the island is affectionately referred to by locals as Pig Beach."

What do you mean you can’t go any faster?!
"A praying mantis hitches a ride on the back of a snail to avoid getting its feet wet on soggy moss in the rainforest. The snail, undisturbed by the apparent intruder, remained relaxed and stationary as the mantis stood on its shell.But travelling by snail isn't the fastest mode of transport and, after a little while, the mantis peers over and notices the snail has not moved."

fearless egret riding on alligator

Thanks for the lift!

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"I've been living in Kenya all my life and I've never seen anything like this" - Surprise! Cheeky cheetah leaps into safari jeep, and crept toward Mickey McCaldin, inched less than a foot away from the face of the Irish man... This could have ended badly.

During a safari tour through the Masai Mara game reserve in Kenya, an exceptionally large cheetah jumped up onto the backseat of the tourists' Jeep and crept toward an Irish man, Caters News reports.

The cheetah inched less than a foot away from the face of Mickey McCaldin, who miraculously did not have a nervous breakdown.

"I've been living in Kenya all my life and I've never seen anything like this," said David Horsey, a family friend of McCaldin's who lives in Mombasa and was on the safari. "The cheetah just wasn't scared of getting up close and personal." Horsey, who captured the pictures of the incident in June, had been tracking the family of cheetahs, noting that they hadn't had a kill lately and "had been looking for a gazelle for a few days with no luck."

Turns out, the mother cheetah who hopped up first, named Malaika, wasn't looking for a kill – she was just snooping around.

the closest encounter - an exceptionally large cheetah jumped up onto the backseat of the tourists' Jeep and Irish tourist Mickey McCaldin Irish tourist Mickey McCaldin  read more »

A data leak has resulted in around a million dollars worth of Woolworths gift cards needing to be cancelled. When Jason Wang checked the balance on his gift cards he found some had already been spent in Sydney stores.

*update* 11 August 2015
WashingtonPost - By breaking into the wire services, some of Wall Street's most vital and unnoticed information hubs, investigators said the hackers and traders were able to defraud investors on a massive scale while leaving no public trace, a worrying development for the increasingly intricate networks that keep the financial world online. With advance details on financial performance and corporate mergers from dozens of companies — including Bank of America, Boeing, Ford Motor, Home Depot, defense contractor Northrop Grumman and Smith & Wesson — the team made rapid and lucrative trades from shared brokerage accounts, funneling the money through shell companies and offshore bank accounts in Estonia and Macau... the sophisticated hacks targeted not just people's identities, but corporate intelligence, targeting a core vulnerability of the financial system in one of the digital age's most sprawling insider-trading schemes, and some hackers and traders were even aided by former broker-dealers. “The traders were market-savvy, using equities and options … to maximize their profits”, ...pocketed more than $100 million from illicit trades.

*update* 4 August 2015  read more »

*update* Aug 16, 2015
7News - The FAA said the air traffic control center in Washington, DC was having computer problems which caused some flights to be delayed & grounded at east coast airports. Computer issues at an air traffic control center caused serious delays along the east coast, grounding and delaying flights, including some at Logan Airport. The FAA said the air traffic control center in Washington, DC was having computer problems. The issue has since been fixed, but flights are still catching up from the delays. Andrew Robinson was supposed to have a layover in Baltimore before heading home to Chicago, only to find the flight canceled after being delayed multiple times.

"We stood in line for about three hours, tried to get a connecting flight and ended up finagling something to Milwaukee in the morning," said Robinson. Other travelers told 7News they were planning on booking hotels and flying out Sunday. Lisa Grant, whose flight to Baltimore was canceled, said she was giving up on flying this weekend. "I'm not one that likes to fly. So knowing that there were problems, we should have drove and that's what we're going to go, drive back home."

A day after flights were canceled or delayed at BWI due to a computer glitch, things are back to normal. Flights are operating normally at BWI-Marshall but passenger volume is very heavy in the wake of yesterday's FAA computer issues. — BWI Marshall Airport (@BWI_Airport) August 16, 2015 Officials say that passenger volume is very heavy, however, as ...

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*update* 05Aug2014
TorontoStar - A drone dropped a package of drugs into a prison yard while inmates were outside, sparking a fight The package was dropped July 29 at the Mansfield Correctional Institution in Ohio. It contained almost 7 grams of heroin, over 57 grams of marijuana and more than 140 grams of tobacco, JoEllen Smith, a spokeswoman for the Department of Rehabilitation and Correction, told the Mansfield News Journal.

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25 Feb 2015 - Second night of mysterious drone flights over Paris - The Eiffel Tower, site of drone flights on Monday and Tuesday nights  read more »

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*update* 2015/02/10
Boston Police Commissioner William Evans: "I hope it snows every day!" Homicides and other major crimes in the city have dropped by a whopping 34 percent so far this year, compared with the same period last year. Vehicle theft decreased by 46 percent, larceny by 35 percent, and burglaries by 32 percent, according to data provided by the Boston Police Department.
'murder-free' record New York City has gone 11 days without a homicide, its longest stretch without any on modern record, the New York Police Department said Friday. The record was broken midnight Thursday. It was the 11th full day without a reported homicide. Police Commissioner Bill Bratton hushed talk of the streak Friday on "CBS This Morning." "Shh ... we don't want to jinx it," Bratton told host Charlie Rose. "We're into our 12th day now, Charlie. Eleven is a record and let's keep it going."

What Should Boston Do With All That Snow? Desperate for snow-disposal solutions, Boston has asked the public for ideas  read more »