Coffee and Provocation

A Little More Hexane in Your Veggie Burger?
Mother Jones magazine, notes that "In order to meet the demands of health-conscious consumers, manufacturers of soy-based fake meat like to make their products have as little fat as possible. The cheapest way to do this is by submerging soybeans in a bath of hexane to separate the oil from the protein." Hexane, of course, is an EPA-regulated neurotoxin, but despite that fact, the FDA does not test for it. Read the article.

This Is Why You Defend the Second Amendment:
The U.S. Constitution says nothing about guns. Not a thing. What it talks about is the "right to keep and bear arms." If you remove that right, the state can actually march in and take your pocket knife. Think that's crazy talk? It's not if you live in the U.K., where a disabled man who kept a Swiss Army knife in his car's glove box has just gotten a criminal record for possessing an offensive weapon. The knife was not just in his glove box, by the way -- it was in a pouch in his glovebox, along with a small flashlight, a first aid kit, and waterproof matches.

This Is Why You Defend the First Amendment:
The Associated Press reports that: "Sarah Palin spoke to a crowd of about 16,000 attending an evangelical Christian women's conference in Louisville Friday night....She asserted that America needs to get back to its Christian roots and rejected any notion that 'God should be separated from the state.'" Great. Just what we need to be: a theocracy like Iran, Afghanistan, Saudi Arabia, and the Vatican.

Tasering Sheep on Meth:
In a study of Taser safety, scientists got a bunch of sheep hopped up on meth and then zapped them with tasers to see how they did with that. Read all about it.

Native American Genius:
W.T. Wallington's Forgotten Technology web site shows techniques he has developed to show how the stones for Stonehenge and the Pyramids might have been hauled, rotated, and lifted into place using nothing more than simple physics. Check it out by clicking on the picture on the home page, and clicking through the links at the bottom of each subsequent page. Yes this stuff works! No space ships or Martians needed -- or massive ramps either from what I can gather.

Doug's Expanding Menagerie:
Doug is rehabbing a red-shoulderd hawk and starting an adventure in bees, the animal most likely to kill you. Madness I say!

Dominance in Pigeons:
Who is the alpha pigeon? Researchers are studying it with little GPS backpacks.

The Garden of Cosmic Speculation:
The Garden of Cosmic Speculation was created by Charles Jencks and Maggie Keswick in Dumfries, Scotland in 1989. It contains bizarre and mind-blowing geometric patterns. Check it out! This is a private garden and open to the public only one day a year, so these pics are probably your only opportunity.

Whatever Happened to Sealyhams?
Sealyham's are a breed that was sucked into the kennel club vortex almost upon creation. For a web site documenting that, see this interesting, if obscure, web site on show sealyham terriers in the 1920s, '30s and '40s, complete with a pictures of what the Westminster show looked like at Madison Square Garden back then, and a little note about the first head of the "professional handler's association." Hat tip to Paul H. for the link!

Nice Blog!
If anyone wants to see what a fun life in Western Colorado looks like (complete with great photos), see the Dirt and Dogs blog and check out "the hunter and the hunted" post for a little amusement. Also a few pictures of Arizona in here. Of course, Jamie O'Neal claims there is no Arizona. I think Trina might disagree!

Vitamin C for Canine Snake Bites?
I am quite happy that we do not have to worry, too much about venomous snakes in my area; we are a little too far north for water moccasins, copperheads are way over-rated, and rattlesnakes are rare all over and generally confine themselves to rocky shelves and outcrops in the mountains. That said, not everyone is so fortunate and Jonathan from South African passes on this tip about Vitamin C shots as a treatment for snake bites in dogs. Does it work? There are reports on the internets that it does, but I have to say I am skeptical. Snakes do not always envenomate when they bite, and there's a lot of mis-identification of snake species as well. Still, when nothing else is there to help, break out the Vitamin C. It cannot hurt!


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