Picture of the day

The adder (Vipera berus), also known as the common adder and the common European viper, is a species of venomous snake in the viper family, Viperidae. It occurs across much of Europe (where it is the most widespread snake species) and northern Asia, including Great Britain, Scandinavia, and parts of Russia and China. In several European countries, the adder is the only extant venomous snake. Usually growing to around 60 cm (24 in) in length, it has a dark zigzag stripe along the back, though colour varies considerably, including completely black melanistic forms. The adder inhabits a wide range of environments such as heathland, woodland edges, moors, and wetlands. It feeds mainly on small mammals, amphibians, and lizards, and is ovoviviparous, giving birth to live young. Although its bite can be painful, fatalities are extremely rare. The species is protected in several countries because of habitat loss and population declines. This female adder was photographed by the Grajcarek river in Szczawnica, Poland.Photograph credit: Charles J. Sharp

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After I die I promise not to perform any miracles

Seaweed roof on Læsø

• ... that the seaweed roofs (example pictured) of houses on the Danish island of Læsø were traditionally constructed by women?
• ... that novelist Norah Davis once recommended putting a boy in a hypnotic trance to treat his amnesia?
• ... that Beethoven's "Tremate, empi, tremate" was not performed for ten years after it was written?
• ... that, at the time he signed with the Denver Broncos, Tom Beck lived only a few houses away from the team's practice facility?
• ... that the Bunka Apartments were intended to introduce the US middle-class lifestyle to Japan, but were so expensive that an average salaryman would have spent his entire monthly wage on rent alone?
• ... that Regina Hall improvised parts of her role as Brenda Meeks in Scary Movie despite the director initially telling her not to "bother" the character and to follow the script?
• ... that Olympic swimmer Adán Gordón was called the "Human Fish"?
• ... that Tulasi Srinivas wrote an ethnographic study of beauty parlours?
• ... that the first New Orleans Marine Hospital exploded, the second sank partially into a swamp, and the third was given a jazz funeral?

The Kizilbash (red-heads) were Turkmen tribes

http://angryflower.com/bobsqu.gif

• Standard diving dress - grandpa's picture (on the right)
• Codd's 12 rules - of RDBMS

If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you,
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you
But make allowance for their doubting too,
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or being lied about, don't deal in lies,
Or being hated, don't give way to hating,
And yet don't look too good, nor talk too wise:

If you can dream--and not make dreams your master,
If you can think--and not make thoughts your aim;
If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster
And treat those two impostors just the same;
If you can bear to hear the truth you've spoken
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,
And stoop and build 'em up with worn-out tools:

If you can make one heap of all your winnings
And risk it all on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings
And never breath a word about your loss;
If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
To serve your turn long after they are gone,
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
Except the Will which says to them: "Hold on!"

If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
Or walk with kings--nor lose the common touch,
If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you;
If all men count with you, but none too much,
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds' worth of distance run,
Yours is the Earth and everything that's in it,
And--which is more--you'll be a Man, my son!