"Magnolia is an ancient genus. Having evolved before bees appeared, the flowers developed to encourage pollination by beetles."Via Reddit. For the embed photo, however, I've selected an image of pollen adhering to the facial hairs of a miner bee, by Alliec2007, via animals, animals, animals.
At a daylong jobs summit convened by Gov. Mark Dayton on Tuesday, frustrated business leaders gathered from all parts of the state to say they have hundreds of openings but can't find workers qualified to fill them. The skills gap persists even in the face of a state unemployment rate that stubbornly hangs around 7 percent...Some of the best and brightest students I ever taught were not at a university, but rather at a technical college. And I will guarantee that those guys and gals are thriving at high-pay jobs right now.
As businesses adapt to a shifting economy, they leave behind a glut of unemployed workers from waning industries who are not qualified for the new jobs being created. Those workers increasingly can't afford or don't want to relocate and retraining can be expensive and out of reach.
Nathan Johnson, an administrator with Pioneer Care nursing home in Fergus Falls, said he could hire 15 licensed nurses today -- 40 percent of Pioneer's available nursing shifts, but he can't find qualified nurses...
Many of the unfilled jobs are in health care, but more are in vocational fields such as welding, metal work and precision machining, where jobs paying $20 an hour or more go unfilled.
Traci Tapani's metal fabrication company, Wyoming Machine in Stacy, recently published a job opening at what she thought was an attractive annual wage of $36,000. Four weeks went by without a single applicant...
Some of the disconnect may stem from what business managers and even some educators say are overwhelming cultural and parental pressures to push children into a traditional liberal arts education where they can pursue white-collar professions...
"We need to start talking to our kids about these other jobs..."
They scarf potato chips and whole bags of marshmallows late in the night, leaving behind trashed campsites and ruined tents. They break into stranger’s coolers and make off with watermelons. They carelessly turn on water spigots and leave them running...It's actually a serious problem re the horses' health, and visitors' safety. Further details at the Washington Post, where there is a photo gallery.
They’re Assateague Island’s famous wild horses...
The horses have been mooching food for years, but their brazenness has grown worse in the past few, said Trish Kicklighter, the park’s superintendent. Some of Assateague’s 113 horses have become particularly fond of junk food and interact with people who bring it into the park. The horses beg. They pester. They even run a hustle that wouldn’t be out of place on a D.C. street corner.
“I didn’t believe it until I saw it,” Kicklighter said. “Two horses put their youngest, cutest pony in front of a car, and then the older horses went around to the windows to panhandle for food.”
Miss Havisham is an iconic character over here in Britain: an embittered spinster who sits in her mouldering mansion still wearing the wedding dress she wore when she was jilted at the altar; she has trained her adopted daughter Estella to break men’s hearts just as her heart was broken.There is one additional photo at Deadline. I never imagined I would get so old that Miss Havisham looks as appealing as Estella...
Bonham Carter co-stars opposite Ralph Fiennes as escaped convict Magwitch. Producer Stephen Woolley tells me the Oscar nominee is playing Miss Havisham at the same age she is in Dickens novel — previous incarnations by Charlotte Rampling, Anne Bancroft and, most memorably, Martita Hunt in David Lean’s version played her much older.
For 98 years, the 125-foot high Condit Dam in southeastern Washington State held back the White Salmon River, creating a serene lake, but choking off the waterway to salmon. Wednesday, in an historic effort, the dam was dramatically breached, and ecologists hope the increased flow of water will restore the waterway to fish and other aquatic organisms, as well as the birds and mammals that rely on them...Additional information at the National Geographic source, via The Presurfer and Neatorama.
According to news reports, Portland-based PacifiCorp had decided that it was cheaper to source the dam's 14 megawatts elsewhere, rather than install expensive fish ladders and other improvements on the site, as would have been required for relicensing. According to the AP, the dam removal cost around $32 million, while the improvements would have cost $100 million...
Before the dam was demolished, biologists relocated salmon that were spawning below the structure, so their nests wouldn't be covered with silt.
