Night Music ~ Josh Daniel - Skimming Stones

Saturday Matinee,

The Addams Family dancing Blitzkrieg Bop by the Ramones from Gabriel Magallon on Vimeo.

Night Music ~ Ed Sheeran - Supermarket Flowers [Official Audio]

Found For Friday

A virile, middle-aged Italian gentleman called Guido was relaxing at his favourite bar in Rome when he managed to attract the attention of a gorgeous, young, blonde woman. Things progressed to the point where he invited her back to his apartment.

After awhile, they retired to his bedroom where they made love.

After a pleasant interlude he asked with a smile, "So, you finish?"

She paused for a second, frowned, and replied, "No."

Surprised, Guido reached for her and the lovemaking resumed. This time she thrashed about wildly and there were screams of passion.

The sex finally ends and, again, Guido smiles and asks, "You finish?"

Again, after a short pause, she returns his smile, cuddles closer to him and softly says, "No."

Stunned, but damned if he was going to leave this woman unsatisfied, Guido reaches for the woman yet again. Using the last of his strength, he barely manages it, but they end together screaming, bucking, clawing and ripping the bed sheets.

Exhausted, Guido falls onto his back, gasping. Barely able to turn his head, he looks into her eyes, smiles proudly and asked again, "You finish?"

Barely able to speak, the beautiful blond whispers in his ear, "No, I'm Norwegian."

My friend from Alabama just called.

He was talking on his Mobile phone.

My wife just started using fake nails.

Everything she hung fell down

I wrote a paper on catalytic converters.

The research was exhaustive.

A harbor master is in charge of berth control.

Two men were at a nudist colony for intellectuals. They were having a discussion.

Man 1: Have you read Marx?

Man 2: Yes. It must be these wicker chairs that we are sitting on.

 

Forensic psychologists are irritable because judges and juries try their patients.

I just read about a new chicken noodle soup company.

I went online and bought a ton of stock.

A musician tripped over a chord which resulted in a nasty note.

Pharmacists are the pillers of their community.

An authentic diamond is gemuine.

Why don't hedgehogs just share the hedge?

A good meteor shower can really rock your world.

Stolen eggs are poached.

Powerful - Watch This

This man is spot on.  I am incensed that in this day we still have to have this discussion.  He goes on to say
“I also have a better idea, and it’s about our diversity,” he continued. “And it’s the power of the diversity … the power of us as a diverse group. The power that we come from all walks of life, that we come from all parts of this county, that we come from all races, all backgrounds, gender, all makeup, all upbringings. The power of that diversity comes together and makes us that much more powerful.” ...



 “If you can’t treat someone with dignity and respect, then you need to get out. If you can’t treat someone from another gender, whether that’s a man or a woman, with dignity and respect, then you need to get out. If you demean someone in any way, then you need to get out. And if you can’t treat someone from another race, or a different color of skin, with dignity and respect, than you need to get out.”

Night Music ~ Lava Kusha Ayyappantamma Official Video Song | Gopi Sundar ft. Neeraj Madhav & Aju Varghese

Throwback Thursday

Two pictures.  The first is a wonderful watercolor which was done by a friend of mine.  The second one was an oil picture which belonged to the same friend but was not painted by her.  I love both of them.

Night Music, The Muppet Movie - Kermit the Frog - Rainbow Connection HD

ELEPHANTING

Night Music ~ George Strait - Amarillo By Morning (Live From The Astrodome)

Toad Tuesday

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Hummingbird Temporal range: Rupelian to present
Four hummingbirds from Trinidad and Tobago

Hummingbirds are birds from the Americas that constitute the family Trochilidae. They are among the smallest of birds, most species measuring 7.5–13 cm (3–5 in) in length. Indeed, the smallest extant bird species is a hummingbird, the 5 cm (2.0 in) bee hummingbird weighing less than 2.0 g (0.07 oz).

They are known as hummingbirds because of the humming sound created by their beating wings which flap at high frequencies audible to humans. They hover in mid-air at rapid wing-flapping rates, which vary from around 12 beats per second in the largest species, to in excess of 80 in some of the smallest. Of those species that have been measured in wind tunnels, their top speed exceeds 15 m/s (54 km/h; 34 mph) and some species can dive at speeds in excess of 22 m/s.

Hummingbirds have the highest metabolism of any homeothermic animal. To conserve energy when food is scarce, and nightly when not foraging, they can go into torpor, a state similar to hibernation, slowing metabolic rate to 1/15th of its normal rate.

...

Evolution

A map of the hummingbird family tree—reconstructed from analysis of 284 of the world's 338 known species—shows rapid diversification from 22 million years ago.  Hummingbirds fall into nine main clades, the Topazes, Hermits, Mangoes, Brilliants, Coquettes, Patagona, Mountain Gems, Bees, and Emeralds, defining their relationship to nectar-bearing flowering plants and the birds' continued spread into new geographic areas.

While all hummingbirds depend on flower nectar to fuel their high metabolisms and hovering flight, coordinated changes in flower- and bill shape stimulated the formation of new species of hummingbirds and plants. Due to this exceptional evolutionarypattern, as many as 140 hummingbird species can coexist in a specific region, such as the Andes range.

The hummingbird evolutionary tree shows ancestral hummingbirds splitting from insectivorous swifts (family Apodidae) and tree swifts (family Hemiprocnidae) about 42 million years ago, probably in Eurasia. One key evolutionary factor appears to be an altered taste receptor that enabled hummingbirds to seek nectar. By 22 million years ago the ancestral species of current hummingbirds became established in South America, where environmental conditions stimulated further diversification.

...

Vision

During evolution, hummingbirds have adapted to the navigational needs of visual processing while in rapid flight or hovering by development of an exceptionally dense array of retinal neurons allowing for increased spatial resolution in the lateral and frontal visual fields. Morphological studies showed that neuronal hypertrophy, relatively the largest in any bird, exists in a brain region called the pretectal nucleus lentiformis mesencephali (or nucleus of the optic tract in mammals) responsible for refining dynamic visual processing while hovering and during rapid flight. The enlargement of this brain region responsible for visual processing indicates enhanced ability for perception and processing of fast-moving visual stimuli which hummingbirds encounter during rapid forward flight, insect foraging, competitive interactions, and high-speed courtship.

Hummingbirds are highly sensitive to stimuli in their visual fields, responding to even minimal motion in any direction by reorienting themselves in midflight. Hummingbirds' visual sensitivity allows them to precisely hover in place while in complex and dynamic natural environments, functions enabled by the lentiform nucleus which is tuned to fast-pattern velocities, enabling highly tuned control and collision avoidance during forward flight.

...

Flight stability

During turbulent airflow conditions created experimentally in a wind tunnel, hummingbirds exhibit stable head positions and orientation when they hover at a feeder. When wind gusts from the side, hummingbirds compensate by increasing the amplitude of their wing strokes plane angle and by varying the orientation and enlarging the collective surface area of their tail feathers into the shape of a fan. While hovering, the visual system of a hummingbird is able to separate apparent motion caused by the movement of the hummingbird itself from motions caused by external sources, such as an approaching predator. In natural settings full of highly complex background motion, hummingbirds are able to precisely hover in place by rapid coordination of vision with body position.

...

Feather colors

Male Anna's hummingbird showing iridescent crown and gorget feathers

To serve courtship and territorial competition, many male hummingbirds have plumage with bright, varied coloration resulting both from pigmentation in the feathers and from prism-like cells within the top layers of feathers of the head, gorget, breast, back and wings. When sunlight hits these cells, it is split into wavelengths that reflect to the observer in varying degrees of intensity, with the feather structure acting as a diffraction grating. Iridescen the hummingbird colors result from a combination of refraction and pigmentation, since the diffraction structures themselves are made of melanin, a pigment, and may also be colored by carotenoid pigmentation and more subdued black, brown or gray colors dependent on melanin.

By merely shifting position, feather regions of a muted-looking bird can instantly become fiery red or vivid green.    In courtship displays for one example, males of the colorful Anna's hummingbird orient their bodies and feathers toward the sun to enhance the display value of iridescent plumage toward a female of interest.           

One study of Anna's hummingbirds found that dietary protein was an influential factor in feather color, as birds receiving more protein grew significantly more colorful crown feathers than those fed a low-protein diet.Additionally, birds on a high-protein diet grew yellower (higher hue) green tail feathers than birds on a low-protein diet

...

Tongue as a micropump 

Hummingbirds drink with their tongues by rapidly lapping nectar. Their tongues have tubes which run down their lengths and help the hummingbirds drink the nectar.  While capillary action was believed to be what drew nectar into these tubes, high-speed photography has revealed that the tubes open down their sides as the tongue goes into the nectar, and then close around the nectar, trapping it so it can be pulled back into the beak. The tongue, which is forked, is compressed until it reaches nectar, then the tongue springs open, the rapid action traps the nectar and the nectar moves up the grooves, like a pump action, with capillary action not involved. Consequently, tongue flexibility enables accessing, transporting and unloading nectar.

...

In myth and culture[edit]

Huitzilopochtli wielding the xiuhcoatl, as depicted in the Tovar Codex.

Aerial photograph of hummingbird image as part of Nazca Lines in Peru

• Aztecs wore hummingbird talismans, both artistic representations of hummingbirds and fetishes made from actual hummingbird parts: emblematic for their vigor, energy, and propensity to do work along with their sharp beaks that symbolically mimic instruments of weaponry, bloodletting, penetration, and intimacy. Hummingbird talismans were prized as drawing sexual potency, energy, vigor, and skill at arms and warfare to the wearer.^[
• The Aztec god of war Huitzilopochtli is often depicted as a hummingbird (right). It was also believed that fallen warriors would return to earth as hummingbirds and butterflies. The Nahuatl word huitzil (hummingbird) is an onomatopoeic word derived from the sounds of the hummingbird's wing-beats and zooming flight.
• One of the Nazca Lines depicts a hummingbird (right).
• Trinidad and Tobago, known as "The land of the hummingbird," displays a hummingbird on that nation's coat of arms, 1-cent coin^[132] and emblem of its national airline, Caribbean Airlines...

Night Music ~ A Capitol Fourth 7/4/2011-- Josh Groban singing "War At Home"

Molly and Todd on Monday

 Molly here,
     It has been HOT.  BG and I have been sleeping a lot. (Same for Todd)

But that is fine we will have snow sometime and it is supposed to be cooler tomorrow.

 Sad Sack Todd.

 I like these pictures.   That are two of BG's favorite pictures

Nap time for Todd!

BG also likes this picture.  He calls it "Bright Eyes."

It is really hot right now so we are going to take another nap.  Thanks for stopping to see us.  Woof!

Night Music ~ Billy Joel performs "Vienna" on HARRY

Aparian

"Were I to be the founder of a new sect,

I would call them Apiarians, and, after the example of the bee, advise them to extract the honey of every sect."  

- Thomas Jefferson

Artists strive to free this true and spontaneous self in their work. Creativity, meditation are ways of freeing an inner voice.

- Gloria Steinem

Speak only when your words are more beautiful than silence.

~ Hz. Ali

Treasure is stored in the ruined places.Do not break the hearts of the poor and heartbroken people.

~ Rumi

The important thing

is not to think much

but to love much,

and so to do

whatever best awakens you to love

Teresa of Avila

If you want to make peace with your enemy, you have to work with your enemy. Then he becomes your partner.

- Nelson Mandela

If you are looking for a friend who is faultless, you will be friendless.

~ Rumi

"For once you have tasted flight you will walk the earth with your eyes turned skyward,

for there you have been and there you will long to return."

by Leonardo Da Vinci

"The self is a style of being, continually expanding in a vital process of definition, affirmation, revision, and growth, a process that is the image, we may say, of the life process of a healthy society itself."

- Robert Penn Warren