Coffee and Provocation

Neo-Wolves and Chickens?
A restaurant at the foot of Huzhua Mountain, Hubei province, central China, has an interesting gimmick:  diners come to watch large yellow dogs (the kind often eaten in China) chase down the chickens they're about to eat.  The dogs return the chickens to cooks who lop off the chicken's head and put it in the pot.  In reward for the catch-and-retrieve, the dogs get the leftover chicken to eat afterwards.  Could this make it in the U.S.?  Why not?   You want free range, natural chickens?  We got those!

Fat People are Killing the Planet?

Researchers at the  London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, publishing in the journal BMC Public Health, say that increasing levels of fatness around the world has the same impact on global resources as adding an extra billion people to the global population.  And where is the problem most severe?  In North America, of course. Though we have only 6% of the global population, we are responsible for more than a third of all the obese people on the globe.

I Wonder If This Would Stop Dogs From Barking?
It sure makes peope shut up!

This Land is Your Land (sort of):
Louis Bacon, a billionaire hedge fund manager has pledged to protect 90,000 acres of his Colorado ranch from further development as part of a much larger planned conservation area. The Obama administration said it would be the "largest single conservation easement" ever provided to the federal government. The easement will provide the foundation for a proposed new Sangre de Cristo Conservation Area.  The 90,000 acres is used as a corridor by bison, cougars, black bears, bighorn sheep, elk and deer, and borders the Great Sand Dunes National Park.  The family of Malcolm Forbes family had earlier placed more than 80,000 acres of the ranch in a conservation easement, and this easement will join the largest parcel inside the proposed conservation area -- the 600,000-acre Vermejo Ranch.  On all the land, hunting will be allowed.

Pot Growers to Help Build a Conservation Area:
Nearly 1,000 acres on Short Mountain in Cannon County, Tennessee, will be kept free of development forever, and remain wild and open to hunters and hikers, after the land was seized from conservation-minded marijuana growers.  It turns out the land is home to species of crayfish, salamanders and beetles not found anywhere else.

Massachusetts Bear Boom:
The population of black bears is, supposedly, growing by 8 percent a year.  That's a doubling time of less than 9 years.

You Never Heard of this Guy:
But I guarantee he changed the world more than anyone you have heard of.

I Had No Idea:
I had no idea that tattoo removal was this fast.  Wow!  So why is it so damn expensive?

Norway Has Hired Friends for Their Number One Mass Murderer:
I could not make this up.
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