Coffee and Provocation

The American Kennel Club Tries to Stay Afloat:
As I have noted in the past, the AKC is losing registrations so fast it may end up going out of business as a dog registry within a decade.  In order to keep up an income stream, the organization is pairing with everyone from puppy mill dog peddlers (buy a broken dog!) to drug companies (drug your broken dog!) to pet insurance companies (insure your soon-to-be broken dog).  Now they are plumping for an auto-insurance company.  I suppose desperate organizations will do desperate things. Nonetheless, I predict the AKC will go out of business before they change their business model.  This is a small-brained dinosaur, and you know what happened to them!

Synurbic Animals are Found in Suburbia:
The BBC is all over it, and thanks to them I have learned a new word.  Read the whole thing.  Lots of nice bits, including this one:  "Foxes now live in densities up to 30 times greater in urban areas than in the country."  For extra credit, read the title of this post outloud, quickly, three times.

Glamour Shots for Shelter Pets:
This seems an obvious idea, so why is it so slow to actually take hold?  Check out the examples of success in the video from CBS!  Can there be a better service project for a high school photography club?  Suggest it!

Lassie Does It Again:
A collie named Lassie located and rescued a lady that was lost for two days.  Obvious.

John Katz Makes More Money Off Of Killing His Dog:
John Katz's claim to fame is that he bought a border collie he could not train, and so he euthanized it.  Then he wrote a book about that dog and made a massive profit. Now he has written another book about grieving the dog that he had killed because he could not train it. This seems to be a very popular genre of dog book these days in which a half-wit, totally unprepared narcisist anti-hero buys a dog, chaos and tragedy follow on, a book gets written, and then Hollywood turns it all into a romantic comedy.  Whiskey-tango-foxtrot.

Veterinary X-Ray Contest:
Not the weirdest stuff ever found in animals, but a nice sampler.

Are Dogs and Cats Helping to Kill the Oceans?
How much fish is used in dog and cat food? A lot more than you think! And it's not just dog and cat food; it's also pig and chicken feed too. As this New York Times op-ed by Paul Greenberg notes: "The pet food industry now uses about 10 percent of the global supply of forage fish. The swine industry consumes 24 percent of fish meal and oil — fish oil being considered the best way to wean piglets. Poultry meanwhile takes as much as 22 percent, which means that even when Coco ate chicken, indirectly he was still eating fish." Of course, the fact that fisheries bycatch is recycled into cat, dog, chicken and pig food is simply a choice that this use pays more than dumping it overboard, reducing bycatch, or using bycatch as fish food.  There is, of course, a third way, which is what I do:  I do not eat fish or anything commercial from the ocean, and I feed my dog land-based foods.

We Are Now Seven Billion Humans:
The human population of Earth reached 1 billion in 1830, 2 billion in 1930, 3 billion in 1960, 4 billion in 1975, 5 billion in 1986, and 6 billion in 1999.  This month, world population will click past the 7 billion mark.  Clearly, we cannot grow on like this.  We are killing the planet.  To be clear, we are not killing the planet because we are malevolent, but because there are too damn many of us.  This is a solvable problem, but the solution starts with you.  Remember, no amount of "reduce, recycle, reuse, and repurpose" will do more than simply not having biological children. You want kids?  Great!  Adopt. There are, literally, millions of children in the world dying right now for what you seek to offer as a parent.  You already have kids?  Great!  You can still be be part of the solution by funding efforts to provide voluntary contraception to low-income people at home and abroad. 

A Humback Whale is Saved and He Says "Thank You":
Watch the whole thing. Better than Disney, and totally true.

Cod Comes Back in the North Atlantic:
Proof that if we will only get off of Mother Nature's neck she will bounce up, dust herself off, and eventually dance a jig.

Best Project Ever for a Father and Son/Daughter:
Make your own rod and reel and go fishing with your 6-12 year old.

Dinosaur Feathers Found:
Trapped in amber, no less!

Best Selection-Bias Story Ever:
During WWII, statistician Abraham Wald was asked to help the British decide where to add armor to their bombers. After analyzing the records, he recommended adding more armor to the places where there was no damage!  To find out why, read the rest of the story!

A Million Typing Monkeys Write Shakespeare:
Man's most complex machine is finally used as intended:  a million virtual typing monkeys have cranked out a Shakespeare sonnet.  If we will only give these virtual monkeys a million virtual bowls of cocaine, they'll soon be cranking out Love Boat scripts!

More American Genius:
A Hammock Boat.  I so want one of these!