Baa-aa-d for the Environment!In the case of cashmere, America snapped up a record-smashing 10.5 million
Chinese sweaters last year, 15 times as many as a decade ago, and far more than
every cashmere sweater imported last year from Italy and the United Kingdom
combined.It's impossible to say how much any single product contributes to
China's choking air pollution. But the spike in demand for cashmere is taking a
toll on the soil, air and water in China as well as the U.S.--a cost that never
appears on any store's tag. And many consumers are unaware of the link.
Reading the article, you will learn how overgrazing has created a desert, which in turn creates deadly duststorms, erosion, and of course, loss of habitat for all animals and humans.
A storm in 2002 forced 1.8 million South Koreans to seek medical help and
cost the country $7.8 billion in damage to industries such as airlines and
semiconductors, said the state-run Korea Environment Institute.
Knowing China, can I really count this an accident?
However, before we blame my closet for the ills of global climate change, I’d like to point out many factors helped this disaster occur; the least of which would be my pawing through sweater displays while shop clerks wince. (Yes, I have to touch every one before deciding which half dozen to try on, and no, I can’t fold them all back up nice and flat like you do…)
Mao, and his great ideas for rampant development and factory farms…
Jiang Zemin, for seeing a buck without creating a sustainability plan…
America, for even trading with China without attaching the proper strings,
and of course, the root of all evil on the planet: Human Overpopulation.
So think twice before buying that next downy-soft sweater. I know I will. As somebody who owns a yard big enough for a goat, and knows a friend with a loom…I may just produce my own. For more on the topic, visit: www.chicagotribune.com/china
"Thank you David Letterman, Brian, Mike, Ryan, Jerry and all the staff at
Late Night with Letterman! I had a lot of fun on your show!" -- Lily
At just 10-years old, Florida native and entrepreneur Lily Capehart is
gaining international acclaim for her unique ability to catch and "hypnotize"
the wild South Florida anole lizards.
Lily’s gift was realized at the young age of two when according to her mother, Dina, Lily chased down and captured the critters wherever they went. Unlike most girls her age, instead of playing with dolls, Lily dresses up and plays with lizards. With her uncanny ability to “relax” and “hypnotize” them, Lily began dressing the lizards in costumes and creating whimsical scenes. Lily’s photographer father, Lucien Capehart, immortalized the colorful creations. The wonderful world of “Lizard-Ville”™ was born. Lily, with help from her mom, has parlayed “Lizard-ville”™
into a line of greeting cards and artwork. Eventually there will be children’s books published. As Lily is quick to note, “all these lizards were handled with love and respect and in no way were they harmed in any way, shape or form”.
http://www.lizard-ville.net/
From AudioFile
Terry Pratchett's hilarious prose is significantly enhanced by the narrative skills of Stephen Briggs. The story, another in the Discworld saga, highlights the recruiting efforts of a small country chronically at war with its neighbors. A rotund sergeant and weasely corporal sweep through a small town, and one of the misfits who volunteers to thwart them is Polly Perks, disguised as a teenaged boy barely of age. Briggs takes on the misfits and makes them shine. As the little group proceeds from one improbable adventure to the next, Briggs and Pratchett are magnificent. D.A.W. 2004 Audie Award Finalist © AudioFile 2004, Portland, Maine-- Copyright © AudioFile, Portland, Maine --This text refers to the Audio Cassette edition.
Arlington Park, where at least 21 Thoroughbred horses had to be euthanized after leg injuries on the dirt track during the 2006 racing season, will replace the dirt with a synthetic racing surface next year.
Arlington Park president Roy Arnold said Thursday that the track will invest $10 million to install the new surface. The project should be completed before Arlington's 2007 race meet, which opens May 4.
(Onions everywhere cried with relief.)
...two years after a hurricane blew down a back-yard fence in Florida and set free a golden retriever named Sam-I-Am, the wayward pooch was found in McHenry County.
Veterinarians in McHenry County were stunned as well when they discovered a microchip in the scruff of the dog's neck that placed his home more than 1,200
miles to the southeast.
"The biggest reason is that McHenry County is the only county in northeastern Illinois that doesn't have cat registration," County Board Chairman Ken Koehler, R-Crystal Lake said. "Because of diseases and the large number of rabies cases in wild animals, it only makes common sense."
"Cat registration is a huge component of rabies prevention," McNulty said. "We definitely have seen rabies in McHenry County in wild animals, especially bats, so the potential for cats to get rabies, either indoor or outdoor, is out there. Any animal they could come in contact if they are outside, or even inside, could carry rabies."
Unfortunately, although a microchip can be a helpful backup form of identification for an animal, it should not be considered a 'fail-safe'. Many of our member agencies have reported problems with the microchips themselves ('floating' from the injection area, the lack of availability of a truly universal scanner that will identify the microchips of any manufacturer, and also with the registries that microchip manufacturers are supposed to maintain)."
"The author and supporters do not present any statistical evidence that this legislation will reduce the number of animals euthanized in the state's animal shelters."
"It will be impractical to charge fees high enough to recover local agency costs."
"The establishment of a local registry is beyond the capabilities of many small agencies and the national registries do not have a history of being adequately maintain or accessible." (They are referring to the various national microchip recovery services/registries.)"Developing and implementing this registration program will add additional workload to animal control agencies that have limited resources and are already challenged with meeting their existing responsibilities." (They are referring to an animal control microchip registry or possibly the annual registration required of breeders and pet dealers.)
It is hard to justify registering cats, other than to create a new revenue stream for government. And microchips should be voluntary. Government should butt out.
We're Wiki Worthy!Richard Kapp, of Highlands Ranch, Colo., who recently paid $280 to have UP
Aerospace carry four stamps on its next launch, hopes the suborbital trip will
add value to his stamp collection."It's a hobby--flying stamps--though at some
point it could be a commercial venture," said Kapp, an aerospace engineer.
Casual readers might assume that Wikipedia's goal is a complete account of
all earthly knowledge, but the site maintains a rather elaborate set of criteria
for admission. The several thousand unpaid volunteers who write and edit
Wikipedia spend a lot of energy ensuring that people, bands, companies and
everything else meet what it calls "notability guidelines."Let's sum it up this way: Not everyone is Wiki-worthy.In fact, Wikipedia jettisons more than 100 entries each day, many of them from people who posted autobiographies after registering on the site. (Writing your own entry, as we will see, is "strongly discouraged.") The list of nominated rejects is posted each day on a page titled "articles for deletion," and because all of Wikipedia is transparent and public,
anyone can watch the editors' votes roll in, and witness those ultimately deemed
non-notable get cyber-gonged off the stage. Type "wikipedia deletion log" into
Google for a peek at the latest.
Colonial Village Mall was sold to a church last year. Its two big stores were JC Penneys and Bergners. JC Penneys left a few years ago to a brand new addition at the CherryVale Mall in Rockford (about 5 miles away), and Bergners finally closed down this year.
It was a smaller mall with probably about 10 stores inside, and a few more stores attached outside. It also had a three or four screen theater separate from the mall. There was a large parking garage attached to the Bergners store. When I was a kid around 1977, My mother used to take us kids to see Santa there. I can remember Bergners, Penney's, Striderite, Fashion Bug, Swiss Colony, and an ice cream shop inside. (among a few other stores).
So I’m at work when someone tells me there was a terrorist plot foiled at Cherry Vale Mall. It’s a sizeable two-story mall in Rockford that I frequent to this day. Sometimes I’ll take my Vette in the summer and enjoy the drive over, but now that Marshall Field’s is gone there’s not much incentive left.MENTOR, Ohio -- An electrical fire that filled a
department store with thick smoke didn't deter holiday shoppers, and
firefighters had to block the doors to keep customers from coming in,
authorities said.No one was injured in the fire at Dillards South at Great Lakes
Mall on Wednesday, but some bargain hunters were inconvenienced."It was
amazing," said Mentor fire Battalion Chief Joe Busher. "Even though there was
heavy smoke in there, they all wanted to stay and shop. We even had to put
people at the door to keep people from coming in."
and...Most are on a mission that can only be described as
primal, say behavior experts and mental health professionals. In the truest
sense, they are bringing home the bacon – whatever it takes – and in the process
they are reinforcing a sense of personal mastery in their skillful procurement
of coveted items. When they’re successful, the feeling is similar to the triumph
of a hunter bringing home the kill, even if the kill is actually a TMX
Elmo.
Regardless of what brings them to the sales, nearly all the shoppers share
one characteristic: Like tigers on the hunt, they are tracking down and pouncing
on something of perceived value. In doing so, they are relying on an instinct as
old as mankind.In this case, the prey is a sale item. And, as savvy shoppers
know, sale items are more precious than retail items, both at home and on the
savanna.
Al thinks he’s so great bagging trophy bucks. I’ll show him! I demand equal time. I want a framed receipt hung in the living room to prove my prowess in bargain-hunting. Why, just the other day I got this great deal on the Pirates of the Caribbean 2 movie on DVD. The special edition is usually $24.95, but my local Meijer’s store had it for $19.99. Then they added this spectacular deal where they would give you a Stouffer’s pizza bread ($3.59) and 14 oz Holiday M&Ms ($2.34) FREE with purchase! If you also bought two Rayovac packages of batteries ($2.19 each for AA) you also got $4 off the DVD!! THEN I saw a sign on the batteries that said buy two and get $2 off gas at their gas station!!! Bingo!! I hit the DVD lottery!! Whee! That’s better than standing in a tree for three hours in subzero weather hoping to get a shot at something a hundred yards away. Then shooting my house.
Anyhoo, after suspecting Mr. Right was behind the terror reports I decided to call my parents. They weren’t home. Sometimes they shop there! Oh my God! What if they went to the mall? And don’t know my size?
Yeah, that’s about how worried I was about jihad.
However, Rockford’s other mall, Machesney Park, (1979) looks as if it has already befallen a grenade attack. Just two weeks ago I was in the area and stopped in. I saw a JC Penney outlet on one end and a Bergner’s on the other. I parked near the Bergner’s and went to look for a few Christmas gifts. I also thought it might be a good time to get a makeover at the Lancôme counter as well.
The store can only be described as icky. The merchandise looked old, and only a few shoppers were milling about. Creeped out, I decided to walk down to the JC Penney outlet. This is a long one-story mall with brick pavers making a little red brick road down various wings. The place was practically dark. Almost every store was gone, locked and boarded up. At one time this mall housed 70 stores. Now there are three and a garage sale. I saw one place down a corridor that looked like they bought the stuff TJ Maxx couldn’t sell. I overheard one young sales clerk telling another how to go on welfare and get your furnished apartment paid for. Lovely. I moved on.
There was a GNC vitamin store being pulled down by some workmen, but other than that, silence. The cinema wing was black. What had once been fountains and planters were now stark and bare. My heels made loud clicky noises against the floor and suddenly the distance between stores seemed immense. A man sat in a metal folding chair running a garage sale outside of a store front. A torn cardboard sign hand-lettered in permanent marker advertised 2 for $10 by some junk. He and his merchandise were well past their expiration dates. I kept clicking.
At Penney’s, I asked a young gal if they had Petites. Yes, she replied. I stood there. She kept shuffling hangars. “Are they just mixed in?” I finally asked. Yes, she replied. Well, with customer service like that, no wonder this mall is booming. I selected a pair of ninety-nine cent socks and went to a register. I asked what the deal was with the death mall. The girl said she has heard conflicting stories. One is, they will tear the mall down. She said Penney’s owns their space, so she didn’t know how that would work. I imagined a large translucent sheet of plastic being stapled to the former mall inlet and they would just tell her to wear a sweater at that register. She also had heard they were going to bring in discount stores. Like dollar stores? She named some store I had never heard of, but again, I thought of TJ Maxx rejects.
I wandered back to Bergner’s with a death grip on my purse. The other people here cannot be shopping, they must be looking to hold the place up. From the looks of it, they would get more by grabbing my purse.
An elderly couple was ahead of me, lamenting the fact the mall was not decorated for Christmas. Hello? Have you folks not noticed there’s a big problem here?
Of course it’s decorated – for a Tim Burton movie. Just ahead I saw a woman use a drinking fountain. Wait! I wanted to scream. You have no idea what will come out of that faucet! She seemed to survive the incident and continued on ahead.
How sad. I loved this place as a teenager. It was a big deal to go to the mall on a Saturday and shop. At the time it was bright and vibrant. Now, I couldn’t wait to go home and sterilize my new socks.
Which… I haven’t been able to do yet because MAYTAG SUCKS!!!!
Gandalf sad.
| What Kind of Reader Are You? Your Result: Obsessive-Compulsive Bookworm You're probably in the final stages of a Ph.D. or otherwise finding a way to make your living out of reading. You are one of the literati. Other people's grammatical mistakes make you insane. | |
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White Tiger, Mirage Casino
Puffy Enjoying a Good Book
A Monitor at the Mandalay Bay Aquarium
Sick Sea Turtle, Turtle Hospital, Marathon, FL
OK, if you’re anything like me, the best part of the newspaper is the Editorial Page. I find it a very handy way to find out who’s naughty or nice on my Christmas list.To the Editor: Another deer ran into me-taking out my right front fender
and my lights. There I was, careening down the road with no lights. The
prospects for death and dismemberment were too good for my taste.This is the
second time a deer has attacked me in five years on Route 14. Once again, I have
joined the legion of victims of a happening that easily could be avoided.
Millions of dollars and too many deaths are the result of animals intent on
satisfying their reproductive needs.I know that suggesting we get rid of
alcohol, and the resulting 29,000 deaths and disfigurements on the highway each
year is blowing in the wind; there are just too many of us who depend upon it
for conviviality. But surely no one who has attended the funeral or the bedside
of someone in the emergency room because of a deer can object to killing them
all.By eradicating deer, the savings in money and life would be well worth it.
We kill mice and rats, and they aren’t nearly the terrorists that deer are.These
furry terrorists were not here first, I am told that Adam and Eve were.
Chew faster! There's another tour bus due at three...From USA Today:
Not to be outdone, Thailand has come up with yet another, seemingly
unlikely way to capitalize on this globally loved, bamboo-munching animal —
panda poop.
When keepers of the country's panda couple — Chuang Chuang and Lin Hui —
got tired of disposing the 55 pounds of feces daily produced by the duo,
Prasertsak Buntragulpoontawee came up with the idea of turning it all into
notebooks, fans, bookmarks and key chains.
"At first the Chinese were very skeptical," says the head of Chiang Mai
Zoo's panda unit, referring to the proprietary attitude China takes toward its
iconic animal.
But the multicolored paper products have proved hot selling-items at the
zoo, with the $8,200 earned to date helping balance the accounts of panda
keeping.
The Thai government pays $250,000 a year to China's Wulong Panda Research
Institute to rent the pandas, who, depending on the weather, reside in either a
$1 million air-conditioned cage or an extensive, fan-cooled outdoor enclosure
ringed by a mini-replica of China's Great Wall.
Panda poop paper production involves a day-long process of cleaning the
feces, boiling it in a soda solution, bleaching it with chlorine and drying it
under the sun. Experimentation continues on how to reduce the chemicals now
used.
WELLINGTON, New Zealand - Peter Jackson says he will not be directing a
movie based on J.R.R. Tolkien’s novel “The Hobbit” or a planned prequel to “The
Lord of the Rings.”
In a letter posted on Theonering.com., Jackson and partner Fran Walsh said
an executive from New Line Cinema had called to tell them the studio was moving
ahead with “The Hobbit” without him.
The announcement came amid an ongoing dispute between Wingnut Films and New
Line Cinema over the amount Jackson was paid for “The Fellowship of the Ring,”
including DVD payments.
While Jackson hasn’t said how much he believes he was underpaid, The New
York Times last year quoted his lawyers as saying it was as much as $100
million. He is suing New Line Cinema over the shortfall.
Never having to shave or bathe again...priceless
(Artist's Rendition: My meal looked nothing like this)
