Baby Giraffe at Jackson Zoo

Monday, Giraffes at Jackson Zoo had a new baby female.

The Jackson Zoo has been very successful breeding Giraffes over the years. Diamond, the baby's mother has had six successful births. Because the zoo only has room for two adult Giraffes, babies are sold to other zoos when they are old enough to be separated from their mother, usually six months to a year after birth.

Despite a nearly six foot drop, Giraffes give birth standing up. As is common among grazing animals, Baby giraffes can walk almost immediately after birth.

Zoo veterinarians diagnosed this new baby with weak tendons in her back legs. As a precaution, they wrapped her legs in tape and she is expected to make a quick recovery.

The Giraffe exhibit was originally built in the 1950's. It is the last exhibit in the carnivore moat structure between the original zoo entrance and its current entrance. These exhibits are constructed of concrete formed over steel frames. The giraffe exhibit is somewhat unique, in that visitors have an interior section resembling a cave where they can view the bedtime stalls for the giraffes.

As was common at the time, the exhibit originally featured concrete floors to facilitate cleaning with a pressure hose. It was later determined that the concrete was bad for the animals' hooves and joints, so nearly twenty years ago, the zoo merged the giraffe exhibit with the newer camel exhibit which had a dirt floor. The move also gave the animals more room to stretch their considerably long legs.

Links:
Clarion Ledger Article
Jackson Zoo Website

Paranoid Theory 415: Sex Sells

Embarrassment Can Help Your Career.
Pamela Anderson and Paris Hilton were both pretty, but remarkably talentless blonds headed for obscurity. If The Love Boat were still on the air they would have been guests long ago. But then, "leaked", "private" sex tapes rocketed them to super-star status with both their names in the top ten-percent of all-time Internet search terms.

People have long suspected that one or both starlets were secretly in on the release of the tapes in hopes of just this effect. Even if these two weren't involved, it's not hard to suspect this might not be a bad idea for those willing to do anything to promote themselves.

Disney Dollars
Nobody spends more time and effort developing their intellectual properties than the corporate sharks at Walt Disney Inc.

Currently, Disney's current hottest properties are High School Musical and Hanna Montana. Teeny Bopper stardom is short-lived though, so it's not hard to suspect that Disney might be very interested in discovering the next step to protect these cash cows.

Recently, Vanessa Anne Hudgens, one of the stars of High School Musical, had nude photos of herself leaked to the internet, making her name one of Google's hottest new search terms. Soon afterwards, photographs of Hanna Montana star Miley Cyrus' naked back were huge news, even making it as a "hot topic" on ABC's (a Disney Company) The View.

One Plus One Equals....
Cyrus is fifteen, Hudgens is eighteen. Now, I'm not saying that Walt Disney Inc. intentionally leaked scandalous photographs of these young stars to promote their careers, but there are millions of dollars at stake here and corporate slime-balls being what they are, you have to admit it's a possibility, no matter how sleazy.

If you're still not convinced, consider this: Britney Spears was once a Disney product before her hit song, Baby Hit Me One More Time went through the roof on the heels of its sexy MTV video.

All this might just be unfortunate coincidence, but you have to admit; as conspiracy theories go, this is a heck of a lot more likely than Newt Gingrich blowing up the Twin Towers
.

Shakespearean Trivia

I love Shakespeare.

Not the man from Stratford, he's pretty dull, but Shakespeare as a genre has it all. Mystery, Drama, politics, humor, love, beauty, melodrama, you get the idea.

Mental Floss blog published an article on little known facts about the bard's remarkable Scottish Play, Macbeth. Elizabeth Lunday even explains why it's called The Scottish Play.

Read the entire article here.

(image information: Victorian Actor, Sir Henry Irving as Macbeth)

Make your own Soapbox

If you're like me and enjoy sharing your opinions with a world that never asked for them, then you'll love this do-it-yourself soapbox paper model.

All you need is a printer, scissors and white glue to assemble this working model. You actually can stand on it and orate, but you have to be a very small person.

Available at Mike Hungerford's site.

Soapbox models also make great gifts for a know-it-all loved one.