Coffee and Provocation

Berkeley Discovers the Limits of Tolerance:
Berkeley Police shot a mountain lion earlier this week, just a few blocks from Chez Panisse restaurant.

Liquid Roadkill from Revenge Products:
"Now available for non-governmental sale. Use only with utmost discretion." You know you want some. In fact, you are already thinking of how to use this stuff. You're a sick bastard, which is why you'll want to be be sure to see their entire product line.

Historical Crufts Catalogues Now Online:
The Kennel Club has loaded up every Crufts catalogue from 1886 to 2007 as PDFs. Check it out. An YES, all the early shows were big on terriers. Remember, Crufts started out as the Allied Terrier Show.

Virtual Dog Showing?
Online dog show catalogues are old hat compared to virtual dog showing. What's next, virtual breeding? Of course it is. We already have "cyber sex" (whatever that is). Ugh!

Miracle Weight Loss Cure!
"An appetite-control agent that requires no prescription, has no common side effects, and costs almost nothing? Scientists today reported results of a new clinical trial confirming that just two 8-ounce glasses of the stuff, taken before meals, enables people to shed pounds. The weight-loss elixir, they told the 240th National Meeting of the American Chemical Society (ACS), is ordinary water."

The Continuing Crisis:
Bed-bugs seem to be hopping out all over, a product of too much reliance on "roach motel" bait traps, and not enough old-fashioned base-board spraying, which is what kept bed-bugs abated in the past. One fellow in the U.K. has decided that what the world needs is not more crevice spraying in hotels, but a Jack Russell terrier to identify the presence of bed-bugs since apparently bitching staff and customers is not enough. To that end, he has imported a bed-bug sniffing Jack Russell terrier from America.

Prozac for Pups vs. Advice for Consumers:
Some dogs are a "little ringy in the head," and scientists are testing drugs and chasing genes to see if they can understand why. Of course no one is going to simply tell pet owners to go for a cross breed and stay away from highly-amped working dogs with strong prey drives. Where's the pharmaceutical money in that?

Tony Blair Has Regrets:
In case anyone needed more affirmation that Tony Blair is a Donkey Butt, he has decided he wants the world to know he had "no idea" what he was doing when he supported the ban on fox hunting, and it is "one of the domestic legislative measures I most regret." Right. He had no idea what he was doing because he was listening to the RSPCA, where the expertise is not in wildlife management or basic common sense, but in direcy mail.

FrankenFish on the Plate:
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration may soon allow genetically engineered Atlantic salmon to be sold in the U.S . If that happens, this will be the first bio-engineered animal to make it to into our stores... unless we count chickens, cows, sheep and rabbits whose genes we have manipulated for eons.

The Trapped Miner Thought It Could Not Get Worse...
And then this happened.

Ian Dunbar Rediscovers Canine Hierarchies:
It seems Ian Dunbar has rediscovered canine hierarchies just in time for Cesar Millan's new book, in which he is quoted. Read it all here. Of particular amusement was this passage: "Middle-ranking male dogs wasted a lot of time 'posturing' over the bone, showing off and loudly advertising their prize. High-ranking dogs and females, however, just got down to the important business at hand — chewing the bone. Moreover, confident in their rank and possession, most high-ranking male dogs were quite willing to share a bone with others...." Right. Please analogize to the world of dog training.

Poaching Wild Parrots in Brooklyn:
Carolina Parakeets may be gone, but we have more wild species of parrots in America today than ever before. And yes, even in Brooklyn, to say nothing of Chicago, Fairfax, Virginia, San Francisco, and all of Florida.
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