The task of supplying the Plastiki with food for its 100 days at sea became quite the adventure which involved a fab group of helpers, and over the next week we'll be telling you all about it The Plastiki Expedition
A Plastic bottle ship sailing from San Francisco to Sydney.
Looks like an interesting journey, check out the site above.
A THREE-month-old Australian piglet could be the world's first pig to help canines train to become guide dogs. Gidget the piglet attends training sessions at the Association of Australian Assistance Dogs in Mareeba, northern Queensland, for the past three weeks as a training distraction for the dogs, The Carins Post reports.
Owners Sarah Plowman-Ah Chee and her husband, Lester, said the piglet was given to their son, Augustine, as a baptism gift.
Gidget shares her home with a horse named Beth, a pony named Tony, silky rooster Ralph, Penny the hen and a goat named Mona Lisa.
Sarah Plowman-Ah Chee said the piglet understands there is rest and play time, and slips into different modes when she works with the dogs. Director of training Liz Oehm said she always wanted to train a pig, and Gidget taught the guide dogs to work with an unusual distraction.
She said pigs were used in training for other animals, but in Australia it was definitely a first for a pig to be in training with about 10 dogs.
“They (dogs) just think she’s another one of them except she snorts,” Oehm said.
“Pigs smell differently to dogs and are very, very smart.”
Kathy, I could not figure out what it was they were having for dinner...."Haricot Verts"
I thought it was some sort of fish....LOL...I find out it's a slender green bean.....Here we call them ...."French Beans"......Gave me a good laugh since I thought it was fish....
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"Duct tape is like the force. It has a light side, a dark side, and it holds the world together."
A QUIRKY scheme to lock prisoners in recycled shipping containers has been so successful in New Zealand that it's set to be rolled out across several jails. The new-look accommodation, to be trialled in South Australia, has "outperformed expectations" across the Tasman where it has been in use for a year.
Since the 60-bed block opened at Rimutaku Prison near Wellington there have been no incidents involving alcohol, drugs, mobile phones or weapons, and no violence against staff.
The block, entirely constructed from converted containers, has been touted as the cheapest and fastest way to build extra prison capacity as prisoner numbers reach all-time highs.
The South Australian Government announced earlier this month it would trial use of a six-unit block to see how effective it is.
If the New Zealand trial is anything to go by it could soon be in wide use in Australia.
New Zealand's corrections minister, Judith Collins, told parliament yesterday there had been significantly fewer incidents in the container unit when compared with other blocks.
Maintenance costs were 34 per cent lower than expected and vandalism was extremely low, she said.
A study is now underway to see which prisons will use them.
Shipping containers are already used as modular accommodation and storage systems for the defence and emergency services, while a 120-room Travelodge in Uxbridge, England, is constructed entirely of prefabricated shipping containers.
