American Elephants


The Very Bad, No Good, Horrible Week by The Elephant's Child

First You Need A Few Balloons… by The Elephant's Child

Here’s a time-lapse video of how a 20-foot acrocanthosaurus is made. The Airigami team assembled the dinosaur and its ecosystem, including plants and some crawly insects at the Virginia Museum of Natural History’s Hall of Ancient Life. It took them four days, but it looks like they didn’t have to blow up the balloons, at least not there.

That is without question the best balloon accomplishment I’ve ever seen.



“Reach” — Problems and Solutions by The Elephant's Child
May 7, 2013, 6:20 pm
Filed under: Entertainment, Freedom, Heartwarming, Humor

Reach from Luke Randall on Vimeo.

Always just out of reach, but keep on trying. I liked this little video.



Get in Touch With Your Inner Child by The Elephant's Child
May 2, 2013, 8:35 pm
Filed under: Entertainment, Humor, Pop Culture, YouTube | Tags: , ,

Are you more apt to buy a company’s product if they make you laugh? This one’s cute and they get additional traffic from blogs like this one for free. That’s worth something.

(h/t: Maggie’s Farm)



Lazy Language — Like, You Know… by The Elephant's Child

Jonathan Winters: What You Can Do With a Stick by The Elephant's Child

Jonathan Winters passed away last Thursday at the age of 87. Funny, funny man, and an extraordinary comedian. I somehow missed that news. Here is a video of an appearance on the Jack Paar show in April of 1964.  (That was before Johnny Carson) , (Who was before Jay Leno) for you young folks.

Jonathan Winters was at his best simply improvising, as he does here with a stick.  What a quick (and bizarre) mind.  Our world was richer for his humor.



Adam Savage Builds a Model Strandbeest by The Elephant's Child

The Centrifuge Brain Project by The Elephant's Child

The Centrifuge Brain Project is a short (fictional !) film by German digital artist Till Nowak about making super imaginative amusement park rides that are divorced from ordinary physics and reality. As Chief Engineer Dr. Nick Laslowicz says “These machines provide total freedom…”

You could consider this a metaphor for the president’s budget released today, only two months late. Divorced from reality. But adventurous.

(h/t: thekidshouldseethis.com)



Simple Pleasure by The Elephant's Child

Small, simple pleasures that give us a bump of cheer, yet we don’t often pay enough  attention to notice and be grateful. So slow down a tiny bit, and appreciate all the nice things. Have a moment of gratitude for the break from the annoyances of the day.



Learning How to Be an Elephant by The Elephant's Child

When you are very young, there’s all sorts of stuff you have to learn. You humans have noses with which you breathe and smell; ours does that as well as collecting food, touching, grasping and sound production. We can eventually crack a peanut shell without harming the peanut itself, lift up to 770 lbs., reach up to 23 feet, suck up water both to drink and to shower. When we swim, it’s a snorkel. So don’t go laughing when we have to learn how to use our proboscis, it just takes time.



They Say That 10% Of The People Will Say Anything! by The Elephant's Child

Public Policy Polling is a respected polling organization. They found in January that Americans have a higher opinion of colonoscopies than they do of Congress. That may be specious, and anything noxious would get the same result.  We do, however, have to remember that we elected them, and they are only human— which means they have real faults just like the rest of us. Just means we have to look at their qualifications a little more closely next time, rather than just their party affiliation.

PPP has just released a Conspiracy Theory poll. They” took the opportunity to poll 20 widespread and/or infamous conspiracy theories. Many are well known to the public, others just to the darker corners of the internet.” I picked ten to list here.

  • 37% of voters believe global warming is a hoax, 51% do not. Republicans say global warming is  a hoax by a 58–25% margin, Democrats disagree 11–77%, and Independents are more split at 41–51%.  61% of Romney voters believe global warming is a hoax.
  • 6% of voter believe Osama bin Laden is still alive.
  • 29% of voters believe aliens exist
  • 9% of voters think the government adds fluoride to our water supply for sinister reasons (not just dental health).
  • 20% of voters believe there is a link between childhood vaccines and autism, 51% do not.
  • Voters are split 44%–45% on whether Bush intentionally misled about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. 72% of Democrats think Bush lied about WMD, Independents agree 48–45%.  Just 13% of Republicans think so.
  • 14% of voters believe in Bigfoot.
  • 15% of voters think the medical industry and the pharmaceutical industry “invent” new diseases to make money.
  • 5% of voters believe that Paul McCartney actually died in 1966
  • 11% of voters believe the US Government allowed 9/11 to happen, 78% do not agree.

PPP surveyed 1,247 registered American voters from March 27th to 30th. The margin of error for the overall sample is +/- 2.8%. More results can be found here.

I grew up in the woods, and I do not believe in Bigfoot. I believe that “global warming” is a proven  fraud. I also grew up with the perfect amount of natural fluoride in the water, no dentist needed. And the headline came from a statement on the radio by a professor who has just written a book on unsolved mysteries (or conspiracies).



You Can’t Go Hunting In a Walmart Parking Lot! by The Elephant's Child
March 29, 2013, 8:28 pm
Filed under: Environment, Humor, Law, Terrorism | Tags: , ,

A man in Indiana County, Pennsylvania is facing several charges, after wildlife officers say he went deer hunting in a Walmart parking lot. Where I grew up they used to call that “buck fever.”

Arcangelo Bianco Jr. dropped by the Walmart Plaza last November. He spotted a 10-point white-tailed deer in the parking lot.  “He got out of his car and chased the deer down through the parking lot, and I believe even across Route 22,” said the Indians County District Attorney.

According to charging documents, the deer ran around a corner of the store, and Bianco hopped out of his truck, pistol in hand and “began firing multiple rounds at the deer.” Concerned shoppers called 911 to report a man with a gun running through the parking lot.

Mr. Bianco faces a misdemeanor count of reckless endangerment, as well as several hunting violations, including hunting without a license, shooting on or across highways and unlawful killing or taking of big game.

Obviously you can’t run around a Walmart parking lot firing a handgun with people all around.

I remember when I was a kid, a pickup pulled up in front of the lumber yard in our little town and a guy jumped out and began shooting up the street. He was sure he saw a deer at the end of the street about a block away. Wherever there are hunters and deer season begins, there are funny stories about someone with buck fever.  And the folks who don’t hunt exercise a little more care about venturing into the woods, until the season and the fever have passed.




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