N.L. child's penguin drawing goes viral
(CBC News, 30 January 2010) -- A pencil sketch that was created last fall as a joke between an autistic child from Newfoundland and his mother over her kicking his toy penguin has turned into a web phenomenon, resulting in hundreds of dollars in novelty sales involving the drawing.
Seven-year-old Colby Chipman made the drawing back in October after he saw his mother Michelle kick the toy out of her way as she walked through their home in Paradise, just outside of St. John's. "He said, 'Mommy, there's no kicking penguins!' she told CBC News. Chipman said her son then raced into his room and emerged a few minutes later with a sheet of yellow paper that had a stick drawing of a person in a kicking motion standing near a penguin. There was a circle around the sketch and a diagonal line through it — the global sign for something that isn't permitted.
"He came back, taped it to the wall and said 'See Mommy, there's no kicking penguins,'" Chipman said. ... Chipman said the drawing went viral after it appeared on reddit.com, a social news website on which users can post links to content on the internet and make comments. "A British researcher in Antarctica thought it was cool, printed it off and then started taking pictures of it near penguins and the ocean, and it's just gone global from there," she said.
Posted by Amanda Graham | 1/30/10; 11:58:39 PM | Permalink
Slam-dunk: Cecilie and Ryan bag polar history
(ExplorersWeb.com, 21 January 2010) -- Arriving at the Ross Ice Shelf today, January 21, nearly a century after Roald Amundsen reached the South Pole in 1911, American Ryan Waters, 36, and Norwegian Cecilie Skog, 35, have achieved the first unassisted crossing of Antarctica. Previous crossings have used wind power to ski-sail across the earth’s southernmost continent.
By using only their own human power, the pair have written a new chapter in Antarctic history. Cecilie Skog, the only woman to summit Everest, K2 and skied to both poles (unassisted and unsupported), thus realized an old dream of her late husband Rolf Bae, whom she lost on K2 last year. Veteran mountaineer Ryan Waters in turn has accomplished a spectacular polar achievement. "Hats off," comment Cecilie's fellow Norwegians, "he really deserved the mountainous overdose the Axel Heiberg area is."
Said Tom Sjøgren at Explorersweb.com: "The first unassisted and unsupported expedition to cross Antarctica. Unassisted and unsupported is the highest form of self-reliance. A "raw" crossing like this has only been done once before across the Arctic Ocean by Rune Gjeldnes and Torry Larsen, and never on Antarctica." Read more in a previous story posted earlier.
Posted by Amanda Graham | 1/30/10; 11:50:40 PM | Permalink
