Thursday, July 03, 2014

Coffee and Provocation


Dogs and Fourth of July Fireworks
A bunch of behavior experts were asked what to do about dogs that panic when they hear fireworks. They had nothing. So let Terrierman help. Forth of July fireworks typically last for about an hour or two starting at dusk. Load your dogs into car crates, and drive for about thirty minutes to some remote park.  Walk your dogs on leash for about a half hour.  Load them back up into the car.  Drive to a nice little restaurant far from a residential neighborhood and stop and have dinner. Order an extra coffee. Scrape your dinner leftovers into a bowl for the dogs, and share that with them when you come back to the vehicle. Drive home. Dinner is optional and can be replaced by a longer walk down a country road counting fireflies. Another alternative is to crate the dogs in the laundry room while doing double loads (washer and drier!) while playing Jethro Tull loudly on the stereo. Yes, it must be Jethro Tull.  No, the behaviorists do not know why.

A Gene for Mountains? 
Was a gene that allows present-day Tibetan people to cope with life at high altitude inherited from an extinct species of human? Maybe.

Import Hagis to the U.S.?
British Environment Secretary Owen Paterson, a member of the conservative party, is trying to convince US Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack to allow the importation of haggis.  Right. We will allow that as soon as Britain allows fox hunting with dogs and green lights sharia law. Not a moment before.

The Chinese Love to Eat French Rabbit Heads
No, that's not a joke.  Apparently the Chinese are importing a lot of rabbits heads from France.  How do you eat a rabbit head?  
First, you "crack open the jaw and tear the whole head into two halves."  Second, you "eat the cheeks, tongue and chin."  Then you get at that meat on top of the head by bitinng the skull, peeling off the interior membrane, and then eating the exposed brain. The last step eating the eyes, "which is made more challenging by surrounding bones."  


The "Perfect Aryan Child" Was Jewish
Sometimes you stick a finger in the eye of power very quietly.

Abominable Snowman Revealed!
A little DNA testing proves they exist and they are all around us.

Eight Books Neil deGrasse Tyson Says You Should Read:
And they are all free.

Bone Hunters
Hunting Bones Brown University researchers says they have devised a dataset of forelimb bone measurements that can be used to classify the hunting style of mammalian predators.

Why that Tuna Gave You the Runs
When 23 samples of white tuna were tested, every single one turned out to be escolar,  a fish called the "Ex-lax fish" because eating more than six ounces of it tends to afflict consumers with the runs. Japan and Italy have banned the sale of the fish, while Canada, Denmark, and Sweden require it be sold with a warning about adverse health effects. The Food and Drug Administration "recommends" that escolar "not be marketed in interstate commerce," but it is, unfortunately, still legal.

Associated Press Turns to Robots
The Associated Press, which supplies content to almost every newspaper in the U.S., will soon have most of its quarterly earnings articles written by robots.  Beginning this month robots will help AP step up from 300 quarterly earnings stories a day to as many as 4,400 stories in "roughly the same time that it took our reporters."

Great Moments in Fundraising
This fellow sold the same sack of flour again and again, raising over $250,000, back when that was real money (1864).

Protecting Coral Does Not Start With Changing the World
Overfishing and pollution kill more corals than climate change

Damn Illegal Aliens
Native Americans had bad immigration laws.  So did Celtic Britain.

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