Coffee and Provocation

Find the typo!

The Invention of the Modern Dog
A new book on Breed and Blood in Victorian Britain by Michael Worboys, Julie-Marie Strange, and Neil Pemberton "exploress when, where, why, and how Victorians invented the modern way of ordering and breeding dogs." This should be interesting; a history of failure in which working dogs were now to be "defined in terms of shape, size, coat, and color.... in response to a burgeoning competitive dog show culture." The book is $37, 304 pages, hardback, with 8 color illustrations and 34 halftone illustrations.  It's going to be released October 21st.

Build the Wall!
Penn State says the Lanternfly invasion "could be the most destructive species invasion in 150 years."

Dung Beetles Have Genital Worms
And apparently that's a good thing!? The nematodes change the community of bacteria and fungi that live on Dung Beetle's brood ball, suppressing certain species while boosting others. The bacteria that become more common include species that are known to live in insect guts and help their hosts digest wood and other tough plant fibers.

Will We Wipe Out Three Mosquito Species?
The Anopheles gambiae mosquito is one of three species of mosquitoes that spreads malaria, yellow fever, dengue, encephalitis, zika, West Nile virus, and filariasis across vulnerable human populations. Now we can wipe them all out thanks to CRISPR technology.

Nobel Prize Winner Rejected From Wikipedia For Not Being Famous
Optical physicist Donna Strickland just the Nobel Prize for her work on ultrashort lasersm, but as recently as May, Wikipedia editors weren’t convinced Strickland’s work was significantly famous to merit an article on the site.

- 30-
Read this. That is all.

The Founder of North Face...
Died of hypothermia.

Houston Bans a Sex-Robot Brothel
Too much for Texas.

Spraying Microbes on the Fields as Fertilizer?
It's hope that a spray of liquid probiotic on newly seeded fields will result in microbes colonizing roots, forming hairy nodes, and converting atmospheric nitrogen into a form that plants can use to turn sunlight into sugar. In theory, microbic action can produce 25 pounds of usable nitrogen for every acre of corn.

The New Midas
Amazon founder and CEO Jeff Bezos' is now the wealthiest person on the planet, beating out Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates' 24-rear run atop the gold pile. Bezos' wealth is now estimated at $160 billion, up moire than $75 billion from just a year ago.