I traveled back to my hometown of Pittsburgh this week for the first time in two years. I made the trip for my grandmother’s ninetieth birthday party, so there was a lot of going through old family photos. I kept a few of the ones of — with apologies to all the humans I’ve known — the best friend I ever had until I met wife, my childhood dog Mindy.
A few weeks back I told you about University of Michigan researcher Morgan Gustison raising money to study gelada monkeys in Ethiopia. I’m pleased to say that, as of Monday, Morgan’s Petridish.org fundraising campaign met its goal. She even received a Young Explorer’s Grant from the National Geographic Society. Thanks to that cash, Morgan’s able not only to continue expanding our knowledge of the origins of language, but also to continue helping the local Ethiopian people by hiring the families of farmers and shepherds as research assistants.
By the way, Petridish.org (a Kickstarter for science projects) has some new campaigns up and running, all of which are worth exploring. You can help geologists map the history of the Earth’s supercontinents, or pay for geneticists to collect DNA samples of African dogs to trace the origins of the first domesticated canines. A $30 pledge to that one gets you a signed photograph of an African village dog. Did you know that African dogs can sign photographs? See, you learned something already.1 Go buy some science.
----A man who tried to shoot seven puppies was shot himself when one of the dogs put its paw on the revolver’s trigger.
—”Pup shoots man, saves litter mates,” CNN.com, September 9, 2004
I suppose it was only a matter of time before we witnessed the next logical step in the man-bites-dog evolution: puppy caps man with .38. Indeed, an unnamed puppy in Pensacola, Florida—I’ll assume it’s a boy and call him “Blaster”—found himself in the arms of his master, who had already shot three of Blaster’s litter mates and was preparing to do in the rest. Blaster stuck his paw onto the trigger and pumped the dirty rat full of hot lead,1 heroically saving his brothers and sisters. Aside from being the biggest news story of recent memory,2 Blaster’s actions raise a series of progressively more difficult ethical questions.3
Here are my tweets from May 7 (11 days ago):
And here’s the Los Angeles Times’s lead story right now:
Entrepreneurs offer post-’rapture’ services
Eternal Earth-Bound Pets, which promises to care for pets left behind, is run by avowed atheists. … ”This is a serious offer to our Christian friends who believe in the Second Coming and honestly care about the future of their pets after the Rapture occurs.” Bart Centre, the New Hampshire retiree who runs Eternal Earth-Bound Pets, said he simply wants to make a buck.
I won’t accuse Bart Centre of ripping off my idea, especially because I don’t know if he offers the Eternal Damnation Guarantee®. But if I’d actually seen my business plan through instead of just tweeting jokes about it, I might not be eating reheated breadcrumbs for dinner tonight.
Thanks to last night’s rerun, PETA is building a time machine to travel back to 1961 and prevent Gene Roddenberry from ever creating Star Trek.
“Good-bye Purina commercial.”
My #twitterversary tactic of using the promise of adorable hound photos to lure new followers has resulted in nothing but humiliation and half of a dot matrix printer hurled through my window (“You ain’t worth a brick!” scrawled on it in glitter ink). So, I’m posting the photos here for you, my loyal blog reader. You’ll never let me down. Remember how you offered me a seat at your lunch table after Jimmy tied me in a fire hose and rolled me into Bryce Canyon? REMEMBER?!
Representatives of DaphneyLand Basset Rescue attending Strut Your Mutt Los Angeles at the Santa Monica Pier.
