1. Because movies and tv have misled you on “tranquilizer guns ( Read more... )

I won't post it because I suspect it's a viral video advertisement and they don't need my help, but there's a very convincing video out there of a large bird of prey swooping down and lifting a toddler a few feet before dropping it. It blew up on my twitter page last night around midnight, with people from disparate sources suddenly talking about ( Read more... )

Since I'm a posting fool today, I may as well share these book recommendations from a facebook meme. They are more interesting to the people who read this journal than to my facebook friends anyway.  I've already written about most of these in this journal, but it might be nice to have them all in one place.   The rules of the meme state that your ( Read more... )

I haven't been keeping up with the weird wonderful world out there but I came across a couple interesting stories yesterday.

For example, I love a bioluminescent anything, so learning that there's a species of bioluminescent springtail is pretty great. Too bad they faked most of the pictures. Of course, this creature lives in New Zealand ( Read more... )

cross posted to
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Boy, two, bitten in face by dogThe dog is a staffordshire bull terrier--a pit bull by most American bsl, but not by the UK's Dangerous Dog Act, which bans 'American' pit bulls. The circumstances of the bite are not mentioned, except that the dog belonged to relatives--the boy was a stranger to the dog, but everyone involved is 'family.' Someone ( Read more... )

The issue of dog attacks can be framed many different ways. In the past 30 years there has been a tendency for the media to frame the issue in terms of dog breeds. Earlier in the 20th century and back to the 19th, the media would report on dog attacks in their full context, often with a moral lesson about approaching strange dogs, approaching ( Read more... )

The kid discovered, through her internet connections, a love song written from the point of view of a supervillain toward one of his captives ("Skullcrusher mountain"). The lyrics "I made this half-pony half-monkey monster to please you / But I get the feeling that you don't like it / What's with all the screaming?" are pretty darn charming. A ( Read more... )

You may be aware that I have an interest in all forms of human/animal interactions, including those that go terribly wrong for the human (I created and moderate the animal_attacks community). Since I've been posting links to my Soylent Screen column, you're also probably aware that I enjoy movies that have animal attacks as a theme or motif ( Read more... )

I haven't posted too much since I've been back from vacation. I'm kind of depressed in general; I think the vacation had the opposite of its intended effect ( Read more... )