MEET Heathcliffe, the giant burrowing cockroach and contender for the title of world’s heaviest insect.
And before you go “Ewwww yuck, a cockie”, Heathcliffe and his kind are not your average dirty, imported roaches, The Daily Telegraph reports.
Australia’s giants give birth to live young, look after them in a burrow, make “great pets” and dine on leaves.
“Native to western NSW and north Queensland, they can reach 30 to 35g and more than 85mm in length,” Sydney University senior biology lecturer Nathan Lo said yesterday.
“They are the world’s heaviest cockroach and if not the heaviest of all insects, they are certainly a contender.
“They are different to other insects in a lot of ways and are totally unrelated to the American or German cockroaches found in Australian households.
Allow me to introduce Crawly.
Also, if you’re in Melbourne (or can be on July 26th) we’re having a get together at Federation Square on Saturday July 26th.
Before President Obama delivered his eulogy for Sen. Ted Kennedy today, the right was all worked up at the prospect that he might actually use the eulogy to promote the health-care reform legislation that Kennedy himself championed (see, e.g., Laura Ingraham filling in for O’Reilly on Fox Friday night). You could just see them licking their chops and waiting to turn the eulogy into a Paul Wellstone-funeral-like “look how tawdry those liberals are” moment. But Obama disappointed them, while delivering a fitting farewell. There was only a brief reference to health-care reform and legislative battles: Through his own suffering, Ted Kennedy became more alive to the plight and suffering of others – the sick child who could not see a doctor; the young soldier sent to battle without armor; the citizen denied her rights because of what she looks like or who she loves or where she comes from. The landmark laws that he championed — the Civil Rights Act, the Americans with Disabilities Act, immigration reform, children’s health care, the Family and Medical Leave Act –all have a running thread. Ted Kennedy’s life’s work was not to champion those with wealth or power or special connections. It was to give a voice to those who were not heard; to add a rung to the ladder of opportunity; to make real the dream of our founding. He was given the gift of time that his brothers were not, and he used that gift to touch as many lives and right as many wrongs as the years would allow. We can still hear his voice bellowing through the Senate chamber, face reddened, fist pounding the podium, a veritable force of nature, in support of health care or workers’ rights or civil rights. And yet, while his causes became deeply personal, his disagreements never did. While he was seen by his fiercest critics as a partisan lightning rod, that is not the prism through which Ted Kennedy saw the world, nor was it the prism through which his colleagues saw him. He was a product of an age when the joy and nobility of politics prevented differences of party and philosophy from becoming barriers to cooperation and mutual respect – a time when adversaries still saw each other as patriots. And that’s how Ted Kennedy became the greatest legislator of our time. He did it by hewing to principle, but also by seeking compromise and common cause – not through deal-making and horse-trading alone, but through friendship, and kindness, and humor. There was the time he courted Orrin Hatch’s support for the Children’s Health Insurance Program by having his Chief of Staff serenade the Senator with a song Orrin had written himself; the time he delivered shamrock cookies on a china plate to sweeten up a crusty Republican colleague; and the famous story of how he won the support of a Texas Committee Chairman on an immigration bill. Teddy walked into a meeting with a plain manila envelope, and showed only the Chairman that it was filled with the Texan’s favorite cigars. When the negotiations were going well, he would inch the envelope closer to the Chairman. When they weren’t, he would pull it back. Before long, the deal was done. It was only a few years ago, on St. Patrick’s Day, when Teddy buttonholed me on the floor of the Senate for my support on a certain piece of legislation that was coming up for vote. I gave him my pledge, but expressed my skepticism that it would pass. But when the roll call was over, the bill garnered the votes it needed, and then some. I looked at Teddy with astonishment and asked how he had pulled it off. He just patted me on the back, and said “Luck of the Irish!” I also liked this quite a bit: We cannot know for certain how long we have here. We cannot foresee the trials or misfortunes that will test us along the way. We cannot know God’s plan for us. What we can do is to live out our lives as best we can with purpose, and love, and joy. We can use each day to show those who are closest to us how much we care about them, and treat others with the kindness and respect that we wish for ourselves. We can learn from our mistakes and grow from our failures. And we can strive at all costs to make a better world, so that someday, if we are blessed with the chance to look back on our time here, we can know that we spent it well; that we made a difference; that our fleeting presence had a lasting impact on the lives of other human beings. This is how Ted Kennedy lived. This is his legacy. If the wingnuts want to turn Kennedy’s funeral into another liberal-bashing opportunity, they’ll have to dig up someone else’s eulogy. President Obama delivers the eulogy of Sen. Edward Kennedy at his funeral mass at Our Lady of Perpetual Help Basilica church in Boston. Obama recalled how Kennedy “became the greatest legislator of our time.” “I knew him as a colleague, as a mentor, and above all, as a friend,” he said.
Edward Kennedy Funeral Mass – President Obama Eulogy
Kennedy lay in repose Thursday evening after his flag-draped casket arrived at the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library from the family’s Hyannis Port compound on Cape Cod, Massachusetts.
An estimated 1,600 people had lined up to view the casket as of 5 p.m., an hour before friends, family and constituents began to file past.
Kennedy died Tuesday night in Hyannis Port after a 15-month battle with brain cancer. He was 77, and had represented Massachusetts in the Senate since 1962. As his cortege passed through Boston, a bell at Faneuil Hall was rung 47 times — once for each of Kennedy’s 47 years in office. Watch well wishers say goodbye to Kennedy »
Faneuil Hall was where Kennedy launched his ill-fated 1980 presidential campaign, and it was one of several stops the procession made along the way. It crossed the Rose Fitzgerald Kennedy Greenway, a park named for the senator’s mother and one-time family matriarch, and passed the Massachusetts State House and the home that John Kennedy lived in when he first ran for Congress in 1946
Ted Kennedy’s Funeral Procession turns up Summer Street heading into South Boston