Monday, May 04, 2009

Coffee and Provocation


From "Playing For Change: Peace Through Music." Enjoy!


The Ken Salazar Wolf Massacre Starts Today:
Ken Salazar, the new Secretary of the Interior, will be removing wolves from the endangered species list today, which could result in a mass slaughter of wolves in Idaho and Montana.

Leonardo Di Caprio's House:
As Counterpunch put it a while back: “Using Leonardo DiCaprio to tell people to ‘recycle, reduce and re-use’ is kind of like asking a crackhead to promote cocaine abstinence.” Here's why: Leo's little house.

The Itsy Bitsy Spider Went up the Spout Again:
National Geographic reports that even after a wolf spider was drowned for 36 hours, it was able to revive itself without any damage. Apparently wolf spiders can put themselves into comas and shut down all metabolic processes that do not require air.

What Kind of Dog Would Jesus Have Owned?
Who knows? All we know for sure is that a recent excavation of an Egyptian mummy from about that period of time found a small Jack Russell-looking dog inside. The name on the tomb? "Hapi-Men/" And yes, if he owned a dog anything like today's working Jack Russell, you can bet he was!

Here's Why You are Fat:
Want to know why it's so hard to keep the weight off? Head over to SugarStacks.com to see how many sugar cubes get stacked up in front of a soda, a Starbucks coffee, a muffin, or a McDonald's shake.

Two Dog-murdering Media Whores Find Each Other:
Michael Vick is going to be a PETA Spokesman. No I am not making this up. One has to wonder whether Vick will be giving instructions to PETA staff on how to kill dogs and cats, or whether PETA will be giving instruction to Vick on how to do it all under the guise of being a shelter?

Population Pressures:
Kenya's Masai Mara is losing many of its wild grazing animals due to growing human population.
In other population news, Manhattan was a wonder of nature before humans got their in numbers so large they required roads.

Free Range Kids:
In my day, we didn't need a book about it. But times are different now, so parents with young children might want to read Free-Range Kids: Giving Our Children the Freedom We Had Without Going Nuts with Worry by Lenore Skenazy.
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3 comments:

HTTrainer said...

Maybe there is a band somewhere playing "The World Turned Upside-down"
I heard Lenore Skenazy talking on a local NPR station last week. Letting kids go is part of growing up. I'll bet they wouldn't let them walk down Sesame Street.

Marie said...

I saw Lenore Skenazy on the Today show the other day. Kudos to her. What happened that nobody allows their kids any freedom anymore?

I can remember living near O'Hare airport as a kid and taking the buses, subways and the "L" to get downtown on Saturdays, or to get to Foster Avenue Beach. No adults accompanied us. We all survived. I can't believe there are more predators out there now then back then. I just think we hear about it more now.

We used to walk miles to our favorite shopping center, no adult supervision.

My parents would probably be tarred and feathered these days lol.

Marie

Anonymous said...

I was raised free range, and if I ever have children, I want them to be free range, too.

I read Farley Mowat's memoir of his childhood growing up in lake towns in Ontario and on the prairies around Saskatoon during the Great Depression. He was raised really free range.