Photo by CtH
May 2005: My viquarium close up
Baby Buzz
Baby Bunny
Baby Boots
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Fresh Pollen
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polination.blog 
Trump responds to NYT’s Gail Collins’ critical column. THIS is how you handle the media 😀
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Gorgeous photo, Chrissy! I am not familiar with that plant, but now I am wanting one.
I wonder if the same people who complain that Sarah can’t take the criticism will come to the same conclusion about The Donald. Seems to me he is responding just like she does. It will be interesting to see it play out.
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She’s a grrrrrrrl 🙂 When she’s in her Mama Grizzly mode, they blame it on hormones. Oh, and Donald’s already been called a racist birther and he’ll have none of that !
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http://www.succulent-plant.com/families/piperaceae/peperomia.html
Very nice genus, lots of interesting variety, easy to grow. They like it wet, which makes them good for terraria or, as in my photo, viquaria.
I had to dismantle my viquaria when it sprung a leak in the wall between the water half and the dirt half and I was too sick to fix it. But I’m super proud of it. I built it myself starting with a ten gallon glass fish tank-lid-light set up.
I adhered mottled pink stained glass to the outside of the back, then divided inside with 4×4 ceramic bathroom tiles (sand color) set on edge, going from the back corners and out into the middle in a rainbow arc.
Once the back arc-shaped area was water-tight, I put aquarium charcoal in the bottom, then filled it with dirt and planted small, swamp-loving plants and stuck in some glass flowers you can also see in the photo for color. In the front area, I had water with aquarium gravel on the bottom.
Over the years the viquaria was inhaibted, I kept a betta in the water with different other critters to amuse him. Bettas are bright and sociable guys who get bored and listless if they don’t have anyone to talk to. It’s a challenge to find good companions, since they don’t get along with other bettas and many fish species nip at their swirling finnage.
I tried a dwarf aquatic frog, a golden snail, and my most successful choice, a pair of fire-bellied newts. The frog and snail were aquatic and there wasn’t much water volume, but the newts spent part of their time up on the land, so it worked out really well.
I enjoyed this set up so much! If you’re interested, I’ll dig around in my archives for more photos.
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This is NOT the porcupine near Tina’s house. Pity, that…
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April 8, 2011 – Source says, Oprah Winfrey will not publicly endorse Obama for 2012.
Winfrey’s daytime talk show will end its 25-year run on May 25. She will then spend the majority of her time protecting her billions … I mean, running OWN, the new Oprah Winfrey Network, a joint venture with Discovery Communications which debuted on Jan. 1.
After a big debut that averaged 583,000 viewers in primetime the first week, OWN has seen its ratings fall below those of the channel it replaced, the Discovery Health Channel.
Winfrey will likely support Obama privately, because “Helping a friend keep the most important job in the world is great, but making sure her OWN network thrives is now her priority,” the source said.
In March 2011, Forbes magazine estimated Winfrey’s net worth to be $2.7 billion.
http://www.myfoxorlando.com/dpps/entertainment/source-oprah-winfrey-will-not-endorse-obama-in-2012-dpgonc-20110408-kh_12688039
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Warmists and the Organic Farming Activists
Urban organic activists begin every argument by pining for the good ol’ days. They point out that in 1940 one calorie of fossil-fuel energy produced two calories of food. But now, due to the dreaded effects of industrialization, 20 calories of fossil-fuel energy are required per calorie of food. And this, for them, illustrates why an immediate transformation of the food biz is required to “save the planet.” How? By converting from a fossil-fuel-based food economy to one based instead on sunshine. Case closed! After all, it’s a 20-fold increase, right?
Well… turns out it’s not.
A wise man once said an ordinary mind is incapable of making distinctions. The distinction not being made in this case is that while we’re using 20 times the fossil-fuel energy, we’re certainly not using 20-times the total energy. Not even close…
If only they had ever worked a day on a farm, these “slow,” urban activists would appreciate the massive amounts of human and animal labor that used to be required before machines driven by fossil fuels came along. The reason only a single calorie of fossil-fuel energy was required to produce two calories of food was that, prior to the mass industrialization during the Second World War, farmers did the rest of the work by hand and by back! Far more calories were consumed emitting far more CO2. Otherwise, industrialization would not have made economic sense. …
Of course, besides reverting to human and animal labor, there is another way that some urban food activists envision converting us back to a “sunshine-based” food economy.
They seek to replace evil ol’ fossil-fuels with biofuels like ethanol. Instead of burning 20 calories of fossil-fuel energy to yield two calories of food as we currently do, in a biofuel food-economy farmers would burn 20 calories of biofuel, and would once again find themselves setting aside half of all their land to grow that fuel… just like their ancestors did to grow feed for their horses. See a pattern here?
All you achieve with biofuels is a shift in where the fuel comes from, not in how much is consumed. So much for the sunshine economy! Besides, fossil fuels are sunshine-based as surely as crops are. The sunshine was captured in forests millions of years ago and remains stored in underground reserves in the form of crude oil. Why is today’s sunshine any better than yesterday’s?
Most members of the urban-environmentalist crowd don’t have the slightest conception of what they’re promoting in taking us back to what they perceive to be the good ol’ days. But the really scary part is that many do.
http://www.americanthinker.com/2011/04/warmists_and_the_organic_farmi.html
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They just announced a bunch of new showtimes and locations for Atlas Shrugged, Part 1. Check them out here:
http://www.atlasshruggedpart1.com/theaters
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I see Hillbuzz has its new site up and running. Reminds me, at least somewhat, of Hydra.
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Thanks for the heads up. I’ve been so busy lately, I probably wouldn’t have noticed it on my own.
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