Coffee and Provocation

Yvonne Chouinard for President
Patagonia founder Yvon Chouinard wants the outdoor industry to start a pro-public lands movement as powerful as the NRA.

Dog Spelled Backwards
From Monica McGee on twitter: "Saying you don't believe in magic but you do believe in god is like saying you don't have sex with animals, except dogs."

Bible For Sale, First Edition, Signed by Author
Five of the Museum of the Bible's Dead Sea Scrolls are forgeries.  The Museum of the Bible was started by the founders and owners of Hobby Lobby who have stocked the museum with items looted from archaeological sites across the war-torn Middle East,

Compared to What?
According to this source, "Humans are 99.9% genetically similar to other humans; 96% genetically similar to chimpanzees; 90% genetically similar to cats; 85% genetically similar to mice; 80% genetically similar to cows; 61% genetically similar to chickens; and 60% genetically similar to bananas."  For a TED talk on this subject, click here.

Less is More
Less population growth is more forest and more fields saved from freeways.  The good news is that US fertility rates are down (even if they remain among the highest in the developed world).  Are they lower than they were in 1976?  Nope, not really, it depends on what index you are using.

Dinosaurs Had Fleas
Fleas were old when Adam was young.

Military Intelligence
From Wikipedia comes this tale of alarming military fraud: "The ADE 651 is a fake bomb detector that was produced by ATSC (UK), which claimed that the device could effectively and accurately, from long range, detect the presence and location of various types of explosives, drugs, ivory, and other substances. The device has been sold to 20 countries in the Middle East and Asia, including Iraq and Afghanistan, for as much as US$60,000 each. The Iraqi government is said to have spent £52 million on the devices. Investigations by the BBC and other organizations found that the device is little more than a 'glorified dowsing rod' with no ability to perform its claimed functions."

Microchipping the Swedes
According to NPR "thousands of Swedes are inserting microchips under their skin."

Is South Korea Becoming North Korea?
South Korea has warned its 23,000 students in Canada that if they smoke legal marijuana in Canada, they could be imprisoned in South Korea for up to 5 years.

Cheetah Trafficking
Between February 2012 and July 2018, a total of 1,367 cheetahs were offered for sale through 906 posts on social media, a new analysis by the Cheetah Conservation Fund has found.

A Little Fun in the Veg Garden?
Try glass seed corn.