I’ve often posted here on SuperForest the importance of big things being accomplished through a sequence of small steps, all brought to fruitful manifestation through the torchfire of great passion and great love.
But sometimes, the little things can also be big things…
Meet Caplin a 2 foot tall, 100 pound pet rodent. Yes, that’s right a Caplin is a giant pet rat. But wait! This isn’t the Princess Bride and Caplin is no R.O.U.S (Rodent of Unusual Size). So let’s be scientifically precise, and hopefully learn a little something in the process. Cute story and education all rolled into one extra large furball. Win!
Caplin is a Capybara, a semi-aquatic rodent native to the wetlands of South America. These social herbivores are excellent swimmers, who can survive underwater for up to 5 minutes, and often escape the midday heat by sleeping with their noses peeking just above the surface. They are large, docile, friendly creatures.
And oddly enough… they are sometimes taken as pets in America.
Such is the case of Caplin and his loved owner Melanie Typaldos.
He cuddles. He swims. He drinks out of a baby’s milk bottle. He’s Caplin the Capybara! So next time you see a giant rodent nuzzling up to you, don’t scream. Don’t reach for the nearest shoe or macho male figure. Reach out your hand instead and give him a friendly scratch behind the ears. Maybe a tummy rub. Afterall, rodents just want to be loved like the rest of us.
My bestie, SuperForester Michelle, recently spotted a … hold on, I’ll let your read her account of how it went down:
“I was on the balcony, gazing lovingly into someone’s front yard, when I spotted an unwanted ironing board. It’s one of those situations where you don’t really need an ironing board, but what if the situation were to arise, and there was a National Ironing Board Championship shortage, and you held the only surviving ironing board – the ironing board would be worth squillions! I’ve said ‘ironing board’ too many times now.
I roped my flatmate into coming across the road with me and we hot-footed it back with goodies in tow. It was a little crusty, and I was finding it hard to find a good use for it. Also, it had questionable stains. So I stripped it down and invented the Lappy Stand, slash Cooler 2010! See below.
Not only is it fully adjustable, I’ve found it stupendously versatile! The flatmates have already gathered around it, and we’ve had dinner together on our makeshift dining table! I’ve used it as a hospital-like food tray to watch my laptop in bed! Sliding the legs of the pointy side under my bed, elevates the laptop to a perfect viewing height for watching a Gilmore Girls– I mean, Mad Men marathon.”
An artist’s impression of Gliese 581d, of the constellation Libra.
Wowser! Have you guys heard of Gliese 581d? It’s a planet outside our Solar System which may support life! Yes, life! Last August, Hello From Earth collected messages from us earthlings. These messages were then exported as a text file and sent to NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California, where they were encoded into binary, then packaged and tested before being transmitted using a 70-metre main antenna (see below) at midday on 28 August 2009. Woah!
The 70-metre main antenna, known as DSS43, of the NASA/CSIRO Canberra Deep Space Communication Complex at Tidbinbilla, in Australia, which transmitted the messages.
Gliese 581d is 20.3 light-years away, so the counter below measures how long it will take the messages to reach their destination. This means the messages are somewhere in space, propelled outwards by the giant antenna and still at the beginning of a lengthy journey. And I thought 8 hours on an airplane was painful.
Here are some of the messages currently on their way to Gliese 581d:
“If you know the meaning of life, please send it to us. If not, let’s celebrate together anyway! Thanks in advance, from a curious carbon-based life form!” Monica Echagüen
“Hello Neighbour, Please don’t consider these messages as alien-spam! Thanks, Lonely Earth” Timothy
“Hi. We come from a planet called Earth. I hope you will hear our message of peace and friendship and answer us. It would be nice to know that we are not alone.” Antara Varma
“I wonder if my brains are bigger than your brains.” Zac
“My greatest hope for the people of earth is to have the chance to meet and love our siblings from other worlds in this most amazing universe.” Rob Hampton
“Our observations indicate that your planetary system is a low-mass star orbited by at least four planets, can you confirm?” Professor Penny Sackett
Francis Gardler has compiled a film series for his masters project at Ohio State University, the subject being Dave LaBelle, a former teacher of Gardler’s at Western Kentucky University. Here is a excerpt from that project:
Life will teach you to be a good teacher. If you care, life will show you many, many examples. It will lay all the lessons right before you and all you have to do is bend over and collect these lessons and put them in some order and fashion and you can teach anybody.
It is a great story… and there are eight chapters in total. If you’re a fan of photography you’ve got to watch… It makes a very poignant argument for compassion and empathy as well as establishing a overarching point about story telling, through pictures or otherwise. The music is great, as well as the composition of the film, a wonderfully put together biography. You can enjoy all eight parts HERE, and you can visit David LaBelle’s website HERE.
Ah ha ha! The power of a polite letter! For those of you just signing on until very recently SuperForest was being blocked by Websense for containing “sex.” That was because we use the word sexy. A lot.
“Thank you for writing to Websense.
The sites you submitted have been reviewed. We have made an update to the following URLs in our master database to address this issue: http://www.superforest.org/ - Society and Lifestyles http://superforest.org/ - Society and Lifestyles
Categorization updates should be available in the next scheduled publication of the database. A new database is published every business day, five days a week, Pacific Standard Time. You should notice any updates referred to in this message within 72 hours.
Thank you for your assistance,
The Websense Database Services Staff
F.D.S.
Saturday, February 06, 2010 1:10:09 PM”
AWESOME!
A polite letter was all it took to get SuperForest unblocked in schools, libraries, and businesses around the world. Amazing.
So, check us out! We offer fresh positive communication many times a day, and all of Team SF is available for questions and interviews if you want to get more involved. contact{at}superforest{dot}org
I was thinking about words…
As human beings we are given this incredible gift of speech. For me, words are like craftsman’s tools. Thus, we are all craftsmen…
The question is how do we handle our work? Are we making the best of it?
YES-I do care about the language I speak. I try to use my words carefuly.
Unfortunately, not everybody does it :(
I came across a wonderful page about words being uttered to quickly and thoughtlessly…
A skillful craftsman knows how to use his tools, so as not to harm himself or anybody else. I call such people the “wizards of words“, as they add magic and colorful diversity into our life. They contribute to the growth of positive humanity. Yet, there are some who don’t care, or maybe don’t realize how important their craftsmen job is…
Thus, I want to write about the think before you speak project.
Think before you speak was started by Sirdeaner Walker, the mother of 11- year-old boy Carl Joseph Walker-Hoover, who on April 6, 2009 hanged himself after being regulary bullied at school, (including daily taunts of being “gay”).
The majority of middle and high school students identified or perceived to be lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgender (LGBT) have reported to be verbally or physically harassed at school.
It feels like it’s been a while since I’ve written a proper post, and it isn’t until you sit down and start writing that you realize how much you missed it. We’ve mentioned it in the past; whenever the number of posts seem to drop significantly, it usually means that some pretty amazing stuff is going on behind the scenes on SuperForest and these past few days were certainly no exception to this trend. We’ve also mentioned that we would try to do a better job of keeping you SuperForesters in the know when it comes to said “behind the scenes” actions and being so, we’re going to backtrack a bit and spread out some details of a few of our fabulous experiences throughout the next couple of days.
On Wednesday, SuperForester Jackson came down to San Diego for a few days to work on all things SuperForest. During the days prior, I had it all thought out; organized meetings, planned discussions…the works. But as it is often the case, none of this really happened. SuperForest tends to operate better on its own terms. And though a great deal was accomplished in what felt to be a very short period of time, SuperForest has taught me time and time again that spontaneity sparks creativity and flexibility feeds inspiration. There was much discussion on water conservation, on SuperForest projects, partnerships, aaaand…
We learned how to bake fortune cookies!
On Thursday, we spent the day with the incredible SuperForester Maureen who kindly offered to show us how to bake these treats. The ingredients are plain, the recipe is simple, and the taste is rockin’ (plus, writing your own fortunes or messages is pretty wicked, too!)
Here’s a quick vid featuring SuperForesters Maureen, Jackson, and Iman showing us how it’s done:
Last night I took my brother to see the live stage production of the Pee Wee Herman Show (more on that later :)) Before leaving for the theater, we checked google maps and found that, thanks to the Super Bowl, most folks were avoiding the freeways. I’d never before seen them this clear and thought a screengrab was in order.
SuperForest is individually wrapped slices of happiness, blog style.
We, Team SuperForest, live all over planet Earth, and we collect the happy and share it here.
Join the fun!
Meet Caplin a 2 foot tall, 100 pound pet rodent. Yes, that’s right a Caplin is a giant pet rat. But wait! This isn’t the Princess Bride and Caplin is no R.O.U.S (Rodent of Unusual Size). So let’s be scientifically precise, and hopefully learn a little something in the process. Cute story and education all rolled into one extra large furball. Win!
An artist’s impression of Gliese 581d, of the constellation Libra.
The 70-metre main antenna, known as DSS43, of the NASA/CSIRO Canberra Deep Space Communication Complex at Tidbinbilla, in Australia, which transmitted the messages.
(this is an image of a t-shirt design made by 
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