$1.00 from every sale goes to AmphibianArk.org - helping to save Frogs and other Amphibians from Mass Extinction.

Click here for the Ebay Listing. There are only 5 hours left. Someone has already made a bid so he's definitely going!

First frost --
a frog croaks
fireside dogs dream...

...

Hi Friends, 

I just wanted to show you my latest painting "Golden terribilis".  Wikipedia says - Phyllobates terribilis, the Golden Poison Frog or the Golden Dart Frog, is a poison dart frog endemic to the Pacific coast of Colombia. In captivity, poison dart frogs are not poisonous. It is in the wild where they are in fact poisonous because of what they eat. Thisamphibian of the dendrobatidae family is currently considered the most poisonous vertebrateworldwide.^[1] The optimal habitat of P. terribilis is the rainforest with high rain rates This Frog's conservation status is on the Endangered List.

Here is a little closer look. 

Power to the Peaceful y'all - Karl Reid - Artist

In the recent years, the frogs number all over the world are getting less and less, research found out the it is due to the polluted environment that affect their habitat. Many believe that all the frogs require clean environment to live. For the pet frogs owner, this may be a lesson that we need to be always reminded, keep the pet frog tank clean at all time.

There are facts about frogs at different part of the world are collected. Most of them are quite interesting. Understand more about this may help you in caring your pet frogs.

• Do you know that less than 100 species of frogs are found in United States and Canada? Yet there are totally 4000 species in this world.
• One of the differences between frogs and toads is frogs' skin is smooth, long legs, and toads have shorts legs and roughs skin.
• Smallest frog is found in Cuba, it is about 12mm (0.5") in its size. Largest frog is from West Africa with 300mm (12") long.
• Frogs lay egg in wet area. For example, red eyed tree frog laid their eggs on leaves that are above the water, so that tadpoles can drop into water when the eggs hatch.
• Do you know that frogs do drink water, the skin absorb water for the body.
• Frogs are colourful. Frogs adopt to the environment with their colour matching the surrounding to protect themselves from predators.
• Some frogs lay few eggs, but some can lay up to thousands of eggs.
• Adult frogs breath through their skin and lungs; tadpoles breath through gills.
• Frogs can see and breath while they are in the water, because the eyes and nostrils are on top of their head.
• Japanese believe that frog can bring lucks.

If you are having pet frog, hope you take care of this unique and special animal. The lifecycle of frog are amazing; starting with egg, then tadpoles and eventually frog. There are huge differences at different stages of the life.

As pet frog owner, let's hope it bring us luck.

Red eyed tree frog can be a great pet frog. To learn more about this type frog and how to care about them, you can always visit http://www.redeyedtreefrog.org for more the pet frog caresheet, information and guide. ]]> http://wavemaker2.wordpress.com/?p=853 Sat, 11 Oct 2008 21:03:29 +0000 wavemaker2 http://wavemaker2.fr.wordpress.com/2008/10/11/kermits-x-ray-too-funny/

See two posts below for the reason I'm showing this to you.

Somebody please sound the alarm and get the frogs into the lifeboats. (More on that in a second.) The discovery that the chytrid fungus has hopped the Panama Canal is the equivalent of a stock market crash for amphibians, and it should strike fear in the heart of every conservationist. Central and South America are home to the planet's critical mass of ampihbian species.

I'll be writing about the discovery more in future posts, but for now, go to the scientists' report in EcoHealth here.

Scientists have feared for some time that the canal would not hold back the spread of chytrid, which clogs amphibians' delicate skin and basically chokes them to death because they breath through their miraculous skin. This disease, which is indigenous to southern Africa, was accidentally spread around the world in the mid 1900s. The African clawed frog, also indigenous to southern Africa, is immune to the disease and when the medical world discovered the species could be used as a pregnancy test -- details here -- it was shipped around the world, carrying the disease with it. Chytrid is fatal to 80 percent of amphibian species and has vanquished more than 100 species over the past 20 years.

Which brings us to Amphibian Ark, the organization I support that is in charge of the plan to avert the mass extinction of amphibian species. Studies predict that up to half of the 6,000 amphibian species will go extinct in our lifetime unless emergency measures are taken. It's not just chytrid killing them off, but also habitat loss, pollution, and global warming. Amphibian Ark organizes zoos and conservation organizations to pluck the most endangered species from the wild, before they vanish, and put them into the "protective custody" of biosecure containers (or "lifeboats") for breeding. Once the species are brought back to a critical mass population, they can be reintroduced into the wild.

It costs $100,000 to do the work and build the facilities to save one amphibian species. It's a bargain.

I don't think I've written such a "dramatic" post in this blog, but folks, if there was ever a time to get fired up and take action, this is the moment. The Panama Canal jump is a major breach.

Find out how to help at Amphibian Ark's Web site. Tell other people. Please. More soon. Can you believe this is happening during the year of the frog?

(I'm grateful for the scientists' discovery of the Panama Canal jump and don't mean to be critical of the way they're writing about the discovery. I know these scientists are passionate about saving amphibians. They've just been trained to write in science speak. That's their job.)

Hanging out at Fr.og (France Origine on Spring/Lafayette) the other night, and the bartender not only introduced a great drink, he was playing some pretty great music. If you're into the whole Postal Service vibe, check out Her Space Holiday - the song I embedded is called My Girlfriend's Boyfriend. I've been sharing this on my facebook status for the past day, but since I'm gonna update my status soon, I wanted it to have a more permanent spot.

I always watch out for your entertainment, don't I?

On another note, I'm prepping for my first ten minute set tonight - so anyone who comes out to support me tomorrow will see a first. You're in for a treat since 2 more minutes (over 8 minutes) gives me some extra time to go on a riff. More on this tomorrow.

I wonder when I'll ever get a 30 minute set? Headliner? Too much to dream about right now? Maybe. But it's in the back of my mind.

IF YOU want to predict the wet, look to the wild. That's the advice from farmers who say unusual animal activity, such as twin lamb births, loud frog croaks, turtle movements and ant invasions - are a sign of impending storms.

And the signs – from the experts and the animal kingdom – show that more rain is on the way.

"In Queensland we know we have variable weather and some farmers have their own theories on predicting weather," Queensland Farmers Federation drought officer Peter Perkins said.

"Some people believe when twin lambs are born, wet weather is not far away."

Wool producer Reg Cullen has had a large number of twin lambs born this year on his Karara property, Strathdon, near Warwick. There also have been large numbers of twin births for kangaroos in the Warwick region.

Queensland weather forecaster Jeff Callaghan said it was too early to tell if the bushies were right, but scientific signs suggest the worst of the drought was over for now:

"If I was a betting man, I'd say we could be hopeful of another La Nina."

Source

What do your records show about you and the promises or plans you've made?  Are they self-serving lofty dreams?

Don't forget the small things we can do to serve. Serve ourselves, our friends, family, neighbors or community.

With the pleading of my 9-yr-old son, I began to serve the young writing community. I started a volunteer writing workshop for young writers, providing them a safe place to express their creative voices, share their works and learn the techniques to improve their craft. They had a blast! They wanted to barricade the door so their parents couldn't drag them home. Talk about the satisifaction of working for FREE!

Well, that 4 wk summer workshop turned into a year long invitation to teach.  And...that turned into a paying opportunity.

I'm still volunteering, but also offering a more intensive Saturday workshop in the Downers Grove, IL area, beginning Oct 18-Nov 15.  If you have a young writer who may be interested, please click here.

If you have tips of your own or questions on how to give back - drop me a line! "It takes a village...right?"

Can you leap like a frog?

Gradual amounts of malathion that were too small to directly kill developing leopard frog tadpoles instead sparked a biological chain of events that deprived them of their primary food source. As a result, nearly half the tadpoles in the experiment did not reach maturity and would have died in nature.

"The chain of events caused by malathion deprived a large fraction of the leopard frog tadpoles of the nutrients they needed to metamorphose into adult frogs,' said study author Rick Relyea, an associate professor of biological sciences in Pitt's School of Arts and Sciences. "Repeated applications sustained that disruption of the tadpoles' food supply. So, even concentrations that cannot directly kill tadpoles can indirectly kill them in large numbers."

Here's a thoughtful article on the issue from 2005: read here.

Acabei de ler a ótima matéria da agência Frog no Boa Chance de domingo, os caras estiveram a menos de um mês no WAW falando sobre a empresa e talz... bem legalll... motivador.

É isso, continuamos queimando a mufa pra criar o site e o plano de marketing mas está tudo indo, acho que em menos de um mês estamos na porradaria.

Então é isso...

Beijo pra quem é de beijo, Abraço pra quem é de abraço

"Momma I caught a frog...well no...it kinda caught me...see, here...well it was on my arm...it scared me half to death at first but it was really cool...it had red spots on it..."

This morning when I was dropping the monsters off at school the safety patrol kid that opened the door nearly freaked out...

"Ummm...there is a frog in your car..."

"Really, a frog, wonder how that got in here..."

I'll update you when I find out for sure that Bubba ot in my van with a frog stuck to his arm.

Update: "Actually, mom, it was stuck to my leg right here!"   Silly momma....and his teacher thought it was a riot!

It strikes me that this depends critically on employee engagement - how strongly staff are getting involved with, and caring about, the processes, consistency and quality of providing what customers need.

I see an awful lot of parallels here with what happens in schools. The customers in this case may be there by government dictat, but unless the teachers can get the kids to stick with them, and to want to work, not a lot of learning happens. And teachers do this by putting a lot of care and commitment into designing lessons and making sure the kids have a high quality experience in their classes. What is essentially happening here is that staff (teacher) engagement with the task of creating 'stickiness' leads to much stronger customer (pupil) engagement, that just like a company increases business - in this case how well the pupils buy the learning the teacher offers.

When an online environment is added into this mix, exactly the same applies. In the last post I was on about pupils taking personal responsibility for their learning. This is comparable with customers taking responsibility for engaging with what a company offers - which is what stickiness is.

And the way this is driven needs to be the same; you have to get your employees to engage with and care about what the customers need, to stimulate them to engage. And you may have noticed that it's often tiny things that tell you how much the staff of a company care about helping you. It's not just that the information you need is there in a website, it's that it is presented in ways that help you engage with it and use it to answer your questions, rather than the questions that exercise company minds.

What drives teachers to do a good job of pupil engagement is knowing that they are going to be standing in front of a class on a regular basis and with no escape, being properly able to create and manage the environment in which they will be interacting with the kids, and getting immediate, strong and personal feedback as to whether the approach they are taking works (or not!).

So I guess if companies want to generate customer stickiness in online environments, employee engagement is the key - but like teachers the employees closest to the task need to know clearly it is their job to grow customer engagement, they then have to have the creative and management control to design how the systems will work to engage customers, and they have to be exposed to immediate and personal feedback so they can refine how the customer stickiness is developed as soon as they see that something can be improved.

Makes me feel quite good to have thought this one through, as this is exactly what Frog makes possible better than any other employee engagement platform and customer engagement platform - because of its unique combination of application development platform and staff toolkit for designing and creating online systems.

The walk started at 5pm on Friday night, and we walked throughout the night until 8 in the morning. We took a few breaks throughout the night, but just like the last walk we did; as long as we kept walking it was fine, once you stop is when your feet start to hurt and your legs tense up. So we just kept on walking! There was one other thing I did not anticipate, and that was the weather. It didn't rain at all (thank goodness!) but it was FREEZING! We were walking around with our blankets on us, and went inside to warm up. Next time we do this, it will definitely be in the warmer months... I would also like to get more people next time. I think it would be a lot more fun with 10 people. It was tough with 3 people walking the entire time. I raised $230 and our team raised $746 collectively. Congratulations to all who walked with us in the Relay for Life! All the teams raised over $33,000!!! Thank you to the American Cancer Society for hosting the Relay for Life. I look forward to doing it again next year!