rabid1st

First, a sweet treat...Harbor the Raccoon enjoying himself.



Second, Liam Neeson has a new movie coming out that I really want to boycott. Luckily, so do a few other people. The problem with this movie is that it is a propaganda film against one of the most maligned creatures in America, the grey wolf. Grey wolves are cautious, family oriented creatures and they are not the least bit dangerous to man. Many people are surprised, given all the "big, bad wolf stories" to know that documented wolf attacks on adults are rare. Rabid animals will attack people and lone wolves have been known to carry off children in Europe. The Russian wolf which is related to the Arctic wolf (a bigger animal than our Grey) is the one most likely to attack humans.



Most of the documented attacks happened because the wolves were starving and/or acclimated to humans and/or feeding on dead bodies left outside village walls, back in the days of plague. As John D. Linnell puts it in his study The Fear of Wolves....http://www.lcie.org/Docs/Damage%20prevention/Linnell%20NINA%20OP%20731%20Fear%20of%20wolves%20eng.pdf..."A fair summary of our results would be...in those extremely rare cases where wolves have killed people, most attacks have been by rabid wolves, predatory attacks are aimed mainly at children, attacks in general are unusual but episodic, and humans are not part of their normal prey. When the frequency of attacks on people is compared to that of other large carnivores or wildlife in general it is obvious that wolves are among the least dangerous species."

A 21st Century grey wolf pack hunting people is just absurd. But, more importantly, Montana ranchers are trying to get permission to kill "vicious" wolves again, something that has led to near extinction of this beautiful animal in the past. How convenient to have this sort of propaganda out at the same time...and this movie used the real bodies of 4 grey wolves killed by people. Ironic that!

To boycott this film...http://www.thepetitionsite.com/40/boycott-the-grey/

Finally...a truly fun story of a Lurcher named, Red, who has some sympathy for his fellow inmates at the dog pound.

I love this story. As a person who regularly shops my small town stores and avoids Walmart and Lowes like the plague, I approve of this "Cash Mob" idea. As a writer, I wish I'd come up with the town name...Chagrin Falls. What a great name for a small town!

http://finance.yahoo.com/news/era-big-boxes-day-little-guy-080317993.html

How can you tell if an animal is truly happy? I think you can tell in these videos.

This first one is a soldier returning home to his beloved dog.



And the second one is just a dog happy to have found something fun to do in the world. We should all be so easy to please.

Look at how this small boxer communicates with these cows. Why can't WE communicate with other species so simply and eloquently?

Imagine Big Brother watching you all the time. Imagine the internet is policed and sites are shut down simply because the Government or some Business doesn't approve. Imagine big business asking for legislation to control what you can find on the internet, simply to keep massive amounts of media profit. I say if they want to control piracy, they can make their products more readily available and fill that niche themselves.

Many a day I have railed against Wikipedia, but today I stand with them.

And this weekend, we went out and about to take a few shots of interesting houses. Here's a few architectural highlights.

Beware...big images below this cut...but if you wish to see them you must...( Read more... )

Rae

Haven't seen it, of course, SO NO SPOILERS, you lot!

But...given the title...I can just imagine all of you who have seen it are wringing your hands in despair. I say we make a petition urging the BBC to spread out the Sherlock episodes to 1 every 3 months or so...that way we won't have to wait a year to for our next fix.

Assuming, of course, that our next fix is coming at all, what with the Hobbit and Benedict threatening to move to Hollywood soon. Of course, you can always fly back to England for a few weeks to make more Sherlock, I suppose.

Rae
who has seen Hounds of the Baskerville and found it quite yummy.

...my SO called it a "spiritual essay" and I would agree with that assessment.



I hear it is stirring up the web, so perhaps you've all already seen it. But it was new to me, today.

Rae

A friend has seen Sherlock and was telling me a bit about it. I'd talked it up for them, but they said..."It seemed very shallow. Like the writer was just showing off how 'cool' the character was supposed to be. Mostly, I thought Sherlock was boring and childish."

And I said, "Hmmm! I usually love it. I wonder if Moff wrote that one, because he certainly has that problem when writing The Doctor."

So, I toddled off to Wikipedia...and sure enough...Stephen Moffatt tackles Irene Adler (probably poorly, I bet, making her super sexy and yet not very clever in the end). I doubt the fanbase will notice, of course, because we are all very excited by this return. But there it is from the lips of someone not at all invested in any of this...the Moff-Muppet syndrome strikes again. Trying to be too cute, too clever and putting people off his characters. I will let you all know what I think of it soon as I watch it.

I see Gatiss is tackling Hound of the Baskervilles, a personal fave. I'm glad to see that. Gives me something to look forward to if Scandal truly is a bust.

This vid was on my FList today. So you may have already seen it. I thought it was a hoot and the musicality gets better as it goes along, too.

I Just Can't Wait To Be King
(yep, from The Lion King)

Check it out! ( Read more... )