the blog quebecois

To all those who thought I was "eccentric" or "insane" or "out-of-his-freaking-mind" for my prudent policy of walking around in thunderstorms with my pet pig on a leash:

Pig bears brunt of lightning strike, apparently saving doctor
an ABC Action News report 7/07/04

TAMPA - A bay area doctor walked out of Tampa General Hospital last night feeling groggy and sore, but happy to be alive.

Dr. Leif Lange was struck by lightning while walking outside of his Darby barn Tuesday afternoon. The chiropractor explained that he was walking a pet pig on a rope when the bolt struck nearby.

[ . . . ]

"If I did not have rubber boots on and I wasn't holding onto that pig, I wouldn't be standing here. I'd be dead," he added. "The pig is a lifesaver. I've got the best pig in the world, even though he's dead. He served more of a purpose than just a barbeque on Sunday, that's for sure."

So who's laughing now? Huh? Huh? Who's laughing now? Huh? Who's laughing now?

Mwahahahahahhahcoughhahahcoughcoughhahhah! Cough! Awrrrrooooo! Cough!

One more thing to worry about:

LONDON (Reuters) - The bad news is tens of millions of people along the eastern seaboard of the United States and Canada may drown if the slow slippage of a volcano off north Africa becomes a cataclysmic collapse.

But the good news is the world is not likely to be destroyed by an asteroid any time soon.

Scientist Bill McGuire told a news conference on natural disasters on Monday that some time in the next few thousand years the western flank of the Cumbre Vieja volcano on the Canary Island of La Palma will collapse, sending walls of water 100 meters high racing across the Atlantic.

Via kottke.org

hear me moo
i weigh twice as much as you
and i look good on the barbecue

arrogant worms

Something is up with the cows. I don't know what it is, but they plot in secret and sing violent revolutionary songs.

Ingrates! We feed them; water them; and even defend them from alien invaders.

I propose we study them more closely. With this camouflage we* should be able to mingle amongst them freely:

* By "we," I mean you and me. Unless it happens to be hunting season, in which case you're on your own, Kemosabe.

greenpeace is snaking all our loot
for that humongous monster that they think is cute
i bet if I were swimming way out at sea
one of those things would make lunch outta me

faction

Indeed. Sure, if you live in a city or something like that, getting eaten by a whale is probably not a major worry of yours; but with summer coming and people heading out to the lake for vacation, you might want to keep it in mind. The BBC's h2g2 (a sort of wiki-like project) agrees and provides some practical advice:

Once inside, sit tight and try not to touch anything if at all possible. Gastric processes are invasive and skin does not recover well from encounters with digestive fluids. The process by which gastric acid handles food is slow and wearing clothing, especially of the synthetic variety, is likely to buy you some time.

Via MonkeyFilter

Ananova:

A German has been ordered to stop laughing out loud in the woods after joggers complained he was disturbing the peace.

Accountant Joachim Bahrenfeld, 54, from Datteln said he goes to the woods after work and at weekends to have a good belly laugh.

"It's part of living for me, like eating, drinking and breathing. I feel much better when I laugh, it's freeing and healthy," he said.

But he now faces a �4,000 fine or six months jail if he laughs out loud again after a jogger successfully took him to court saying he was disturbing the peace.

Which reminded me of this story from last year:

A German man has been arrested after a marriage guidance counsellor advised him to run around naked shouting at trees.

Dieter Braun, 43, from Recklinghausen said the stress release technique had worked perfectly until he was arrested.

He told police that venting his anger on the trees had stopped him shouting at his wife.

"If I didn't go to the woods and scream at the trees then my marriage would probably be over," he said.

He added taking his clothes off at the same time made him feel more relaxed.

"For me it's a type of relaxation therapy. Feeling the breeze on my naked skin really calms me down."

But local police said other visitors to the forest did not find his behaviour relaxing and have now charged him with causing a public nuisance.

I was wondering if these two, if deployed in the forest at the same time, could cancel each other out, not unlike noise-cancelling headphones that inject a sound wave of opposite polarity to any detected ambient noise.

Or maybe we would have to more precisely calibrate the Germans -- a shouting/whispering pair here or a laughing/weeping pair there.

To investigate this, I will need:

a) some Germans (preferably the not-naked type), and;

b) some forest.

I look upon it as my sacred duty to the planet. If we can't keep Germans out of the forest, at least we can stop them from scaring the animals.

Those

darn

monkeys!

Warning: Links open up embedded video with music and sounds.

AFP:

Advice on how to score with the ladies would probably never include the strategy that works best for at least one species of male spider: playing dead.

Not all male nursery web spiders looking for a little arachnid sex adopt this technique, but those that do more than double their chances of hitting the jackpot, according to new study in Behavioral Ecology, reported Wednesday in the British magazine New Scientist.

In experiments designed by Trine Bilde of the University of Aaarhus in Denmark, researchers set up date-and-mate opportunities for Pisaura mirabilis, a species native to Europe.

All the males sought to attract partners by offering a gift of food, held in the mouth.

But the ones that lay flat and motionless -- even if meant getting dragged about by a female that had latched onto the victuals -- wound up in a much better position, as it were, to engage in sexual activity.

The hapless males that tried the direct approach wound up keeping the free meal but not getting what they were really after.

Males that played dead were also allowed to copulate longer than males that did not, ensuring more eggs could fertilized, the researchers reported.

Playing dead is a well-known defence mechanism in nature, but this is apparently the first time such behaviour has been observed as a strategy for obtaining sexual favours.

It's not as sexy as it sounds. For one thing, those babes absolutely refuse to shave their legs. Two is bad enough; but eight? Now, that's creepy.

Well, not for the camera, I suspect, once the bird figured out he'd been punked.

Via The Presurfer

ScienceDaily:

Animals' 'right to privacy' is being denied by makers of television wildlife documentaries, according to a UK academic.

Dr Brett Mills from the University of East Anglia argues that while wildlife programmes can play a vital role in engaging citizens in environmental debates, in order to 'do good' they must inevitably deny many species the right to privacy.

Published in the current issue of Continuum: Journal of Media and Cultural Studies, Dr Mills' study analyses the 'making of' documentaries that accompanied the BBC wildlife series Nature's Great Events (2009). Exploring the debates on ethics, animal welfare and rights and human rights, Dr Mills suggests that animals have a right to privacy but this is turned into a challenge for the production teams, who use newer forms of technology to overcome species' desire not to be seen.

Oh, good grief. Where to begin?

Anyone who's had a dog knows that they have what could be best described as a joyous insouciance when it comes to bodily functions. The only reason they don't happily poop in the middle of the kitchen floor more often is that they've learned to associate the act with humans yelling at them.

As far as wild animals seeking "privacy" while mating or defecating, that has little to do with their religious hangups or bad toilet training. It's because they instinctively understand that they are vulnerable to predators and/or documentary filmmakers at such moments and therefore try to limit their exposure.

My best guess is that, following Climategate, East Anglia decided to shut down its Climate Research Unit; and citing tenure, the "scientists" employed there were required to be picked up by other faculties; the Department of Biology in this case being stuck with the short straw.

The New Yorker:

In recent years, the bonobo has found a strange niche in the popular imagination, based largely on its reputation for peacefulness and promiscuity. The Washington Post recently described the species as copulating "incessantly"; the Times claimed that the bonobo "stands out from the chest-thumping masses as an example of amicability, sensitivity and, well, humaneness"; a PBS wildlife film began with the words "Where chimpanzees fight and murder, bonobos are peacemakers. And, unlike chimps, it’s not the bonobo males but the females who have the power." The Kinsey Institute claims on its Web site that "every bonobo-female, male, infant, high or low status-seeks and responds to kisses." And, in Los Angeles, a sex adviser named Susan Block promotes what she calls "The Bonobo Way" on public-access television. (In brief: "Pleasure eases pain; good sex defuses tension; love lessens violence; you can’t very well fight a war while you’re having an orgasm.") In newspaper columns and on the Internet, bonobos are routinely described as creatures that shun violence and live in egalitarian or female-dominated communities; more rarely, they are said to avoid meat. These behaviors are thought to be somehow linked to their unquenchable sexual appetites, often expressed in the missionary position. And because the bonobo is the "closest relative" of humans, its comportment is said to instruct us in the fundamentals of human nature. To underscore the bonobo’s status as a signpost species -- a guide to human virtue, or at least modern dating -- it is said to walk upright.

I suspected it all along: They're nothing but a bunch of shit-flinging, baby-killing sexual deviants.

Oh, sorry, you thought I was talking about the apes? I meant their human fans, of course.

The Bonobo? C'mon, they're just big monkeys. You expect them to be solving quadratic equations or something?