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Peach Pundit has a post about the death of Zoo Atlanta’s pregnant elephant, likening the tragedy to the devastation that befell the Republican Party on election night.
In other news, a donkey assumed dead in a catastrophic 2004 landslide (well, not really) was discovered alive and grinning late Tuesday.
1) New Riders of the Purple Sage play Smith’s Olde Bar.
2) The Dandy Warhols play Center Stage.
3) Stuart Woods promotes his novel, Hot Mahogany.
4) Dr. Seuss for President, a showing of Ted Geisel’s political artwork, continues at Ann Jackson Gallery.
5) Watch golden lion tamarins imitate their native lives at Zoo Atlanta.
(Photo courtesy New Riders of the Purple Sage)
HURRICANES: The high seas continue to use the Southeastern U.S. as their chipping green, with three more storms en route. Hanna was downgraded to a tropical storm this morning but may become a hurricane again; Savannah and cities from the Outer Banks to Miami are preparing for impact. Meanwhile, Gustav dawdles over Texarkana after sparing New Orleans the feared devastation. Still, Mayor Ray Nagin says it won’t be safe to return until at least Wednesday.
RAIN BARRELS: Especially useful during hurricane season.
RNC: Resumes today in St. Paul, with President Bush delivering a via-satellite speech at 9:30 tonight. Police have arrested nearly 300 protesters, and have charged 130 with felonies.
GRAY’S ANATOMY: Gray’s Reef, located 40 miles off the Georgia coast, shows effects of human pollution but is generally healthier than researchers had feared.
LOVE IN THIS CUB: The newborn panda cub at Zoo Atlanta has been put in an incubator for closer monitoring based on the behavior of it and its mother, Lun Lun.
BRIAN FINNERAN: Knows he’s lucky to be back on the Falcons’ roster after being out since 2005 with back-to-back knee injuries.
THE CHROME STRETCH: Google readies Chrome, its new browser it hopes will compete with Internet Explorer 8.0.
OLYMPICS: Began today in Beijing (this morning here), at 8:08 p.m. on 8/8/08.
MANIC TROPICAL DEPRESSIONS: Scientists have strengthened their prediction that this hurricane season will be above normal.
CHRIS REDMAN: Starting the Falcons’ preseason opener Saturday night, but all four QBs will likely take snaps.
SUGARLAND: Being sued by former member, coincidentally while the band’s recent album is No. 1 on the Billboard charts, for not continuing to pay her after she left the band to pursue a solo career.
LABOR OF LOVE: Atlanta Business Chronicle reports that Georgia labor leaders are hopeful Obamania will lead to a change in labor laws they say are now stacked in favor of employers.
ZOO ATLANTA: Unveils plans for $200 million expansion over the next 10 to 15 years.
UGA: Gets two federal grants worth $2.5 million to study biofuel production from switchgrass and sunflowers.
City of Atlanta and Fulton County residents and employees get a free chance to visit the caged beasts who would like nothing more than to conquer our world on Saturday, Aug. 16 and Sunday, Aug. 17.
The city, in partnership with Zoo Atlanta, is hosting “City of Atlanta and Fulton County Family Days,” that weekend. Anyone who can prove their employment or residency in the city and county can mosey the grounds and gawk at Lun Lun, Yang Yang and Mei Lan before we have to send ‘em back to our future overlords. (I can’t find it on their site, but Atlanta Magazine’s Amanda Brown wrote a great short piece about how the cuddly creatures are on loan from a wildlife preserve in China.)
Full press release from the city, complete with details, follows after the jump.
A MILLION TO ONE: Natural-gas discoveries in northwest Louisiana have sent the price of an acre in some places from a few hundred dollars to $30,000 in a few months, creating a sudden class of millionaires in the middle of nowhere.
LYNCHING RE-ENACTMENT: The victims’ surviving family members say they’re “troubled” by an Atlanta civil rights group’s four-year-old re-enactment of the 1946 Moore’s Ford lynching, and especially by this year’s installment.
CLAYTON: The BOE barely approves its official response to send to SACS regarding the accreditation stripping.
RETENTION: A report released today details the problems the Atlanta Police Department is having retaining officers; 9 percent of the 1,600-member police force left last year, and on one day last August, each zone of the city had one uncovered beat.
SIX-LEGGED DEER: Will go to live with an Athens woman who has a permit to keep unusual animals.
KANGAROO ATTACK: A Zoo Atlanta visitor records on cell-phone video a kangaroo attacking a zoo worker over the weekend.
JASON ELAM: The metro Atlanta native, who’s spent the last 15 years in Denver as one of the NFL’s premier kickers, says he’s happy to now be a Falcon.
JOE HORN: Probably not a Falcon for much longer.
STOLEN THUNDER: Angry at a local radio station for leaking its new Oklahoma City team’s mascot (the Thunder), the NBA hurriedly registers a list of alternates, one of which is misspelled.
Highly respected news organization The Onion has gripping video coverage of a tragic story we may soon face: An expectant panda, communicating through cutting-edge technology, tells the world in staccato bursts of honesty that a zoo life is not one she’d wish upon her offspring.
Officials at the zoo, which, in light of the revelation, has become a battleground for abortion rights and pro-life advocates, say they hope the panda will make the right choice. But they’re also fearful of what may transpire if they are hesitant to act.
Thank you, Onion, for opening our eyes to what will be our city’s darkest hour. That’ll be whenever Lun Lun, Yang Yang and Mei Lan get Internet access and discover the plight of their distant brethren, but you know what I mean.
Until then, we stand vigilant alongside the truth — may her blade of righteousness cut us all down to size.
Click here for the video and the heart-wrenching pleas the panda makes to her “human masters.” Click here to look at our cuddly creatures at Zoo Atlanta. We just wanna nuzzle their cute widdle nosies.
(Screenshot from The Onion)
From the AJC:
But when Zoo Atlanta’s giant panda Yang Yang approached the object of his affection late Sunday, fellow panda Lun Lun rebuffed his attempts.
I hope their marital issues have nothing to do with Yang Yang’s CL photo shoot at The Cheetah last year. My sources tell me Lun Lun was not pleased.
(Photo by Joeff Davis)
DEATH-PENALTY BILL: Voted down in state Senate.
OBAMA: Passport “imprudently” peeped; State Dept. investigating. Also, will be endorsed by Bill Richardson today.
BRACKETEERING: Obama woos N.C. sports radio station by picking UNC to win the NCAA tournament. He also said he picks Stanford over Pitt in the South, but earlier told the NYT he picked UNC, Kansas, UCLA and Pitt in the Final Four. Scandal!
BUSH DECLARES DISASTER: About our tornadoes, not his presidency.
NO MICH-AGAIN PRIMARY: Revote plan falls apart; Obama suggests splitting delegates, Clinton wants a mail-in revote.
QUEEN OF KONG: Zoo Atlanta gorilla headed to Orlando to get knocked up. (The scientific name for a western lowland gorilla, I’m amused to find out, is gorilla gorilla gorilla.)
DEANGELO HALL: Finally gets sent to Oakland; Falcons get second-round draft pick and fifth-rounder for 2009.
FOULED OUT: Former SEC ref sentenced to 12 years in prison for running a $100 million Ponzi scheme.
DON’T MESS WITH TAXES: Faux-IRS scam reported in Gainesville (and AccessNorthGa.com gets to the heart of the story again with another hard-hitting news graphic).
GIRL SCOUT COOKIES SURVIVE TORNADO: Says one scout leader: “Thank God none of our cookies were destroyed.”
The media scrum outside the Manhattan apartment building of Ashley Dupre, a.k.a. Gov. Eliot Spitzer’s alleged prostitute Kristen, has apparently irritated the building’s non-Spitzer-fucking residents.
So much so, the building’s management has dispatched its PR representative to ask the press to back-off.
On Thursday night, Richard Shea issued a statement indicating Dupre’s fellow tenants were fed up with the media circus and curiosity-seekers.
When he’s not doing PR for real estate clients, Richard Shea and his brother, George, are the brains behind the International Federation of Competitive Eating, the world governing body of stomach-centric sports.
If you know the names of gustatory gladiators Takeru Kobayashi, Joey Chestnut, Sonya Thomas, or Dale Boone — you have Richard and George Shea to thank/blame.
(photo of Dale Boone by Joeff Davis)
The Beltline study groups have a special place in my heart. They were the first community events I reported here at CL, and are true showings of not only people who care about their communities, but planners who have been working diligently with few resources to make a massive project — even if it is 25 years into the future — a reality. These events are to transit wonks what gun shows are to suburban commandos.
So it is with a skipped beat in my heart that I’m proud to announce the Beltline study groups will start another round of public workshops, the first of which is set for this Thursday, Jan. 10, 6:30 p.m., at the ARC Building on the Zoo Atlanta grounds. Park off Cherokee Avenue near the southern end of the lot, enter through the back gate — say hello to the security guard, she’s a gem — and follow the trail to the building.
It will be an open house meeting, meaning that people can come and go, review the materials, and chat with some of the Southeast section’s project planners.
Other dates follow after the jump. We’ll post them a couple of days ahead of the other meetings as well to remind you.
It’s almost a well-kept secret that the Dian Fossey Gorilla Fund is headquartered in Atlanta.
The nonprofit not only oversees gorilla conservation in Africa, but also oversees the Karisoke Research Center that Fossey founded in 1967 and which was immortalized in the movie Gorillas In The Mist. The Fossey fund landed here because of the prominence of Zoo Atlanta in the gorilla world – the zoo’s collection of 23 gorillas is the second-largest captive population in North America.
Last night, Dr. Katie Fawcett — the current director of Karisoke — spoke to a group of about 150 people at the Conservation Action Resource Center at Zoo Atlanta. “The more we know about the gorillas, the less we realize we know,” Fawcett said. “We’ve only seen one generation of gorillas. We’re still only answering basic questions, like the normal lifespan of a gorilla in the wild.”
Karisoke has often been a lightning rod of controversy in Rwanda. Fossey, of course, was murdered there in 1985, probably because of her campaign against poachers who were invading the gorillas’ habitat and killing the animals. Between 1990 and 1998, during a deadly civil war in Rwanda, the facility was evacuated five times and destroyed three times.
Today, Karisoke is located in a town at the foothills of the Virunga Mountains, which are divided between Rwanda, the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Uganda. It now has 84 staff members, many of whom go into the mountains to study gorillas in much the way Fossey did when she first founded Karisoke.
Although the civil war is settled in Rwanda, the Congo is being strangled by political strife that threatens gorillas in the Virunga National Park.
While the mountain gorilla population is estimated to be at 380 — more than when Fossey first when to Africa in 1967 — the animal is now listed as “critically endangered” and there is fear that human encroachment could wipe out gorillas in the wild in the next 20 years.
“The Congo is a disaster for gorillas at this moment,” Fawcett said, as she showed a slide of four gorilla corpses that brought gasps from the audience. She said 10 adult gorillas have been killed this year.
Clare Richardson, president of the Dian Fossey Gorilla Fund, said the group is stepping up its efforts to protect the gorilla population in the Congo. “It’s a desperate situation,” she said. “The recent killings are a tragedy. The political situation is totally disrupting what we’re doing there.”
Richardson said the organization wants to increase its local presence and, for the first time, now has Atlantans on its board of trustees. “We’d like to stop being the best-kept secret in Atlanta,” she said.
(Photo courtesy Dian Fossey Gorilla Fund International)
