Coffee and Provocation

Real Dog Armour:
Mountain would look so cool in this. And yes, it can be ordered! I want. Or at least the dogs do. For barn work. Cut collars are so girly in comparison. Thanks to Steve Bodio at Querencia for this one! For $100 or so, Mountain could get a backplate. I'm just saying ...

D*ckless Wonders:
"D*ckless wonders" is not an editorial comment -- that's simply a statement of fact. A couple of folks sent this to me, and then it appeared on Querencia too. It's still too good not to blog again here. The quotes below come from The Daily Mail:

"The proud motto of northern Europe’s crack rapid-reaction force is ad omnia paratus. Prepared for everything, everywhere. But the heraldic lion above the Latin tag now sends a less plucky message – he has just been digitally emasculated and, though technically still a lion rampant, he does not seem to be ready for anything, anywhere.

The change was implemented after a group of women Swedish soldiers protested that they could not identify with such an ostentatiously male lion on their army crest. A complaint of sex discrimination was then lodged with the European Court of Justice.

'We were forced to cut the lion’s willy off with the aid of a computer,' Christian Braunstein, from the Tradition Commission of the Swedish Army, said. Now the Nordic Battlegroup, a force of 2,400 soldiers, is looking deeply embarrassed. For sceptics who already consider the Nordic Battlegroup to be something of an oxymoron – it is led by the Swedes, who were last in battle in 1809 – the operation on the lion is not an auspicious omen.

'A castrated lion – the perfect symbol for European defence policy,' an American military blogger sneered."

Kentucky's Elk Herd at Over 7,000:
Kentucky's elk herd is at over 7,300 animals, and 400 hunting permits are being offered this year, up from 300 last year. Before the Rocky Mountain Elk Foundation brought them east, the last elk has been shot out of Kentucky in 1850. They were first introduced to Kentucky back in December of 1997 and subsequent introductions have come from Kansas, Utah, New Mexico, North Dakota, Oregon and Arizona. Kentukcy counties in the elk restoration zone are Bell, Breathitt, Clay, Floyd, Harlan, Johnson, Knott, Knox, Leslie, Letcher, Magoffin, Martin, McCreary, Perry, Pike and Whitley. So when is this good idea going to come to Virginia?

World Record Rat and World's Smallest Possum:
In the past, this blog has noted that Science Needs More Terriermen to help discover rare and endangered species. A case in point: news comes out of Indonesia that biologists there have discovered the world's largest rat - five times the size of a typical city rat - as well as a tiny possum that may be the smallest marsupial in the world. If they would send a terrierman, perhaps these things could be found so much earlier!

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