Family keeps seven tigers as pets
I know that this is an article featuring freaks, but this family with seven pet tigers has earned the spotlight. I hope we don't read about a tragedy regarding this family someday, but I'm not optimistic.
St. Louis Riverfront trail good ride and diverse sites
Given that today's high was in the low 80's, I decided to ride my bicycle up and down the 11 mile St. Louis Riverfront Trail this evening. As for things to see, this paved bike path offers a bit of everything, including the Mississippi River (actually quite beautiful in the quietude of the sunset), but also industrial areas, junk yards and several areas under construction. It's a worthy endeavor for anyone in half-decent biking shape. The end point is the Chain of Rocks Bridge, originally part of Route 66, but revamped as a pedestrian walkway and gathering spot, with vistas of downtown St. Louis far in the distance.
If you click the title, you can see eight photos I took along the ride this evening.
Helicopter doing loop at the Gateway Arch
It's not every day you see a helicopter do a loop. I was walking by the Arch in downtown St. Louis today and noticed this. The pilots were practicing for the upcoming holiday air shows at the Arch.
Tip for folding shirts in 2 seconds
I saw this quirky video, tried it and like it. Truly, 2 seconds to fold a shirt.
An Odd Email, and the Evolving Web
I recently received the following email from someone at aol.com to one of my regular legitimate email addresses:
Subject: What are these? These look like dodge cars in the shape of colorful onions. What is Buckminster and Chihuly Do Rounds?Hmm. I get quite a few engineered phishing emails. But this one was not quite of the mold. I decided to google the phrase, and it led me to the Neighborhood Stabilization Team for the City of St. Louis home page that looks like this:
Ah Ha! I thought. So I replied:
I had to Google the phrase to remember what you are asking about. The site rotates several images, so you may need to hit refresh a few times to get back to mine: Neighborhood Stabilization Team The caption made more sense with the full image that they showed back when I submitted my pic to the city. This is the pond in front of the geodesic dome of the Climatron (which showed the dome above and its reflection below the strip that they still have on display). So the title refers to the round dome designed by Buckminster Fuller and the round glass onions designed by Dale Chihuly, with a weak medical pun about "doing rounds" or seeing what there is to see. But the city website designer eventually chopped the aspect ratio of the banner image from 4:3 to 9:16 to 3:17, removing most of the image, but keeping the now enigmatic title.Here's the original:
So what happened is that I submitted a few pix to a photo contest in 2007, and one of my shots was used as a web page banner. But as the needs changed, so did the image, until the final view little resembles the intent nor aspect of the original. And the caption that has been propagated is more absurd than intended.