Silent Extinction

Don't get me wrong, I signed the petition, but it's still fucked up that because people don't care enough to look into other people's situations in the Western World, they care more to act for animal rights than human rights:

In case it isn't clear, the email's subject line is "Silent Extinction".

Need we remind people that unarmed Black men are still getting shot daily by police in the U.S.?

That the sub-language and dialect of Paw-Paw (or "Missouri French") is in its last decade of existence in front of our very eyes?

Oh, speaking of French, that 6.5 million people in Québec are another generation away from losing a language they had kept alive for over 400 years because so-called Federalists' cuts in the education system have rendered those under the age of 25 unable to fucking spell and write their own fucking language?

On the daily, we are watching governments or government employees decide or participate in the silent genocide of people who have one thing in common: they are members of a community that is decidedly poorer than the ruling class of white Anglo-Saxons.

But let's save giraffes, or send whatever means of help to Congo, or start wars with Middle-Eastern countries, or threaten China with economic sanctions, or lift those with Russia. And let's keep having the media depict Cuba as a power-hungry dictatorship instead of a complete systemic overhaul that overthrew racism and corruption and is one detail away (an embargo from the world's largest exporter of goods) from thriving.

Yep, makes sense. White, Anglo-Saxon, imperialistic sense.

R.I.P. Angie

The smallest and youngest of my two cats, Angie, left this realm today, at the ripe old age of 8. She had cardiac issues and a blood clot had formed near her aorta, and it paralyzed her hind legs. This is her, earlier tonight, in that picture.

I spent the day crying alongside her, whether it's when we lay on my kitchen floor in between going to veterinarians' (three times), or at the last animal hospital where they, too, told us it was time to let her go. I use the ''us'' pronoun because at that last place, I called her former human, my ex-girlfriend (i.e. Former Lady Of The House) to join us. It was she who held Angie as the doctors gave her the anesthetic and performed euthanasia. She was hers at first, so it felt like a circle had been closed. It made sense.

And that's where my brain reacted in ways I wasn't used to. We're conditioned to want to avoid death, to see it as ''wrong '', and euthanasia on humans is illegal in many places but tolerated on animals and pets. And I know it would have been selfish to keep her with me for another day because of the inhumane level of pain she felt, even though she only expressed it when she wasn't in my arms or sleeping next to me.

Then I wrestled with my memories of her being louder than usual when she would talk to me these last few months, and wondering if there was anything I could have done differently for her to have a better quality of life; the doctors say her condition couldn't be cured, and even if it had been controlled by medicine, in cases like hers, the inevitable eventually happens anyway. I might not have even bought her more time.

But there's always that ''what if'' in the back of a human's mind. And although your mind knows right from wrong, truth from fiction - it still tries to play you.

Mine was telling me I was her protector, and that I had failed; but not only is death the only inevitability in Life, disease is the one thing no bodyguard can prevent, even the best ones.

I chose to cry to let my sadness out, and I chose to do it in front of her. With her. Towards her.

And I choose now to remember the love I gave her and the love I felt back. The good times we shared, and the bonds and closeness we had.

It'll be a while before I fall asleep easily without her sleeping either on top of me or with her back to mine, exchanging heat. And my other cat - who isn't the healthiest beast out there, I fear - will probably go nuts.

But she remains with me in thought. I treated her like a daughter, she treated me like a husband. I miss her like a sister.

Aliens Of The Sea

I read this article about a month ago, and it made me think. Essentially, they're taking one bit of actual scientific news (octopi have a unique and entirely different genetic DNA composition) and went wild with it (so they're aliens).

But... what if?

The first whole cephalopod genome sequence shows a striking level of complexity with 33,000 protein-coding genes identified – more than in a human.

Not only that, the octopus DNA is highly rearranged – like cards shuffled and reshuffled in a pack – containing numerous so-called “jumping genes” that can leap around the genome.

It changes from most modern movies where aliens are depicted as close relatives to insects, instead being far more complicated creatures.

Family Feud Funny

I think this clip speaks for itself. That lady looks like she'd be a fun guest at parties.

Marijuana As A Gateway Drug

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We Will Become Unicorns

There's a unicorn at the end of every rainbow, and to ride it one must follow the rain to the exact spot where it meets the sun. It's an oasis in a sandbox, atop a mountain and overlooking the ocean. It's where birds sing instead of chipping, where bears hibernate even during the summer, and squirrels help young girls braid their hair.

And the unicorn stands tall and majestic, living proof that everything eventually falls into place, like a reward for good behaviour and effort.

I have been that unicorn for some, and others have been it for me. But to be your own unicorn, for yourself, is a gift only you can strive for.

It was Thanksgiving in Canada yesterday, and while it's good to be humbled by where we have come as a species, to look back and be grateful for all the help we've received in our accomplishments, it's also good to keep in mind the work that still lay ahead.

Some of us are zebras, some are studs, some are ponies and many are donkeys. Becoming unicorns might require some help, a little bit of input from the outside world, but it's also work one has to do on their own.

I want to be a unicorn again. For someone else, maybe, but mostly for myself.

And, yes, someone dared me to write something with unicorns as the main subject matter. Doesn't make it any less true.

Gold Lion

I thought I was among the only households with a pet lion:

Turns out some Hollywood types have the full-size versions of them in their homes:

That's the home actress Melanie Griffith grew up in, with mother (actress) Tippi Hedren and father (director) Noel Marshall, and lion Neil, as the family was ''researching'' living with large cats.

Spanish Dragon

There are more than dogs in Andalousia... (yes, I referenced the best short film of all time)

More than four meters in length, it bears resemblance to both fish and reptiles. Folks are calling it a ''dragon''.

Translated, the original article says this:

The truth comes from Cuevas Civil Protection in Promar: "In summer we monitor the beaches. A lady found part of it, then we got the rest. We have no idea of ​​what can be, but it smelled bad. Promar experts are trying to see what could be ", said Civil Protection Coordinator Maria Sanchez.

Funny Of The Day

Cute or thug?

This raccoon steals cats' food. The last 17 seconds are particularly funny, of the watch-over-and-over-again variety...

Bear Trap

Stephen Colbert would be proud...

New news reporter shows how to walk away from a bear, fend off its attack, and lie on the ground in this hilarious video... avoid eye contact at all costs...

Thousands Of Dead Bees

Being allergic to wasp, mosquito and bee bites/stings, as a kid, I couldn't have cared less if all the bees in the world became extinct.

Now that I know how important they are to an ecosystem and how pollination works, they are dying by the thousands in North America thanks to our over-use of pesticides - many despite clear label warnings not to be used near areas where bees are present.

Now think of the price of honey and natural sugar, which will grow exponentially, as will the price of corn and canola. And remember how they can be useful in controlling diseases? Yep.

There is always a price to be paid for not thinking of the consequences of our actions, and the bigger your operation, the likelier even your smallest action can result in a bigger catastrophe.

Of course, that just may be too logical for some. I wonder how long it'll take before we all die.

Weird Animals

Here is a webpage displaying, explaining and describing various species of animals you may not have known exist. Most look like a cross betwixt two completely foreign species (check out the Raccoon Dog, particularly) and stand as proof that evolution is inspired by habitat, yet follows a very specific pattern.

Here are three examples, the site has way more:

Deadly Foods From The Gulf Of Mexico

The April, 2010 BP oil spill still causes damage to the area's wildlife, and the crap it causes goes right back to our plates... as usual.

Fish rotting alive

Cancer-ridden shrimp

Eye-less shrimp

I won't just copy-and-paste the whole article, it would be unfair tot hose who wrote it, but passages such as hese abound:

Among the disturbing mutations: Shrimp with tumors on their heads; fish that lack eyes or are missing flaps over their gills; fish with oozing sores; crabs with holes in their shells; crabs that are missing claws and spikes, or are encased in soft shells instead of hard ones.

Keath Ladner, a third generation seafood processor in Hancock County, Mississippi, is also disturbed by what he is seeing. "I've seen the brown shrimp catch drop by two-thirds, and so far the white shrimp have been wiped out," Ladner told Al Jazeera. "The shrimp are immune compromised. We are finding shrimp with tumors on their heads, and are seeing this everyday."

It's not just the oil spill itself, but also the oil dispersants used to clean up the mess... sure, to the naked eye, it looks like the oil ''left the water'', but that's just because dangerous chemicals just separated their chemical components.

Pathways of exposure to the dispersants are inhalation, ingestion, skin, and eye contact. Health impacts can include headaches, vomiting, diarrhea, abdominal pains, chest pains, respiratory system damage, skin sensitisation, hypertension, central nervous system depression, neurotoxic effects, cardiac arrhythmia and cardiovascular damage. They are also teratogenic - able to disturb the growth and development of an embryo or fetus - and carcinogenic.

And, of course, both BP and local authorities are hiding behind government regulations (or lack thereof):

"Seafood from the Gulf of Mexico is among the most tested in the world," the energy company says in a statement. And "according to the FDA and NOAA, it is as safe now as it was before the accident."

Al Jazeera contacted the office of Louisiana governor Bobby Jindal, who provided a statement that said the state continues to test its waters for oil and dispersants, and that it is testing for PAHs. "Gulf seafood has consistently tested lower than the safety thresholds established by the FDA for the levels of oil and dispersant contamination that would pose a risk to human health," the statement reads.

Well, then, let me ask this: is it, maybe, that the FDA's requirements are too low? Why satisfy yourself with the lowest possible standard when you know for a fact they aren't adequate? This could be the one chance we have to get FDA standards up to par, but instead, we'd rather let our people eat poison for a few more years or generations. It's no wonder the U.S. accepts radioactive food from Japan, seeing as the FDA accepts between 4 and 10 times the radiation levels the Japanese authorities do.

The AIDS And The Bees

In the future, you might be able to tell your kids the tale ''about the AIDS and the bees''... turns out bee venom could kill AIDS cells.

Too bad their population is decimated...

I like how we humans keep fucking with nature and only realize we've made a mistake when it's on the verge of becoming critical.

Ass-Loads Of Animals

Among all the things one can think of sticking up their ass, a live animal should, technically, be far down the list. And I'm not just talking about gerbils, either - a man in China encountered problems after sticking a live eel in there.

Further proof that there are idiots everywhere, and that the probabilities of stumbling upon a random act of unthinkable stupidity increase exponentially when population growth and speed of information in the digital age collide.

Rats In New York

What a weird way to take care of the rat overpopulation - scientists are eying (chemical) sterilization to stop them from procreating in the New York City underground. Especially since poison wasn't working all that well...

“This technology, if successful, could complement our current strategies of poisoning and exclusion for rodent management,” Thomas Lamb, the chief of innovation and technology for New York City Transit, told the committee.

For those of you who are wondering:

The authority said that the typical city rat, known as the Norway rat, reaches sexual maturity at 8 to 12 weeks and can have as many as 12 pups a litter and as many as seven litters a year, “depending on refuse and track litter access.” The rats’ typical life span is 5 to 12 months.

Welcome... To Jurassic Park!

Ironic that I watched all three Jurassic Park movies last weekend, and landed on this story a week later...

After cloning a sheep when I was a teenager, scientists have now cloned... an extinct frog. Which raises, once again, the question: just because we can, must we?

Here are a few quotes from Dr. Ian Malcolm (played by Jeff Goldblum):

God help us, we're in the hands of engineers. 

Gee, the lack of humility before nature that's being displayed here, uh... staggers me. 

God creates dinosaurs. God destroys dinosaurs. God creates man. Man destroys God. Man creates dinosaurs. 

John, the kind of control you're attempting simply is... it's not possible. If there is one thing the history of evolution has taught us it's that life will not be contained. Life breaks free, it expands to new territories and crashes through barriers, painfully, maybe even dangerously, but, uh... well, there it is.

And, of course, this exchange:

Dr. Ian Malcolm: If I may... Um, I'll tell you the problem with the scientific power that you're using here, it didn't require any discipline to attain it. You read what others had done and you took the next step. You didn't earn the knowledge for yourselves, so you don't take any responsibility for it. You stood on the shoulders of geniuses to accomplish something as fast as you could, and before you even knew what you had, you patented it, and packaged it, and slapped it on a plastic lunchbox, and now
[bangs on the table]
Dr. Ian Malcolm: you're selling it, you wanna sell it. Well...
John Hammond: I don't think you're giving us our due credit. Our scientists have done things which nobody's ever done before...
Dr. Ian Malcolm: Yeah, yeah, but your scientists were so preoccupied with whether or not they could that they didn't stop to think if they should.  

 I mean, ok, these frogs were extinct because of massive deforestation, perhaps more by human force than nature's. On the other hand, they disappeared 30 years ago; are they suited to our world? Are we suited to house them? As the world has evolved, so have bacteria, disease, and wildlife - a disease that disappeared 300 years ago could still kill humans today if it were re-introduced to us because our bodies have since forgotten how to deal with it - or it could just mutate with what's around. Same goes for animals, who can destroy ecosystems by their mere presence and need to feed, or lack of hygiene (or too much of).

You cannot right a wrong by double-wronging without assessing what you can of a possible bigger picture first, and that includes playing God.

Whale Of A Good Time

As a kid, I went on a beluga-watching trip with my family one summer. There were fewer than usual that day, perhaps because of the cold June temperature, maybe for another reason, but we still got a few, and I came back with a poster that I got laminated and that hung above my bed in my room for the better part of a decade, at first surrounded by Batman and Joker stuff, then band posters, then Samantha Fox and band posters.

I'm lucky enough to live in Montréal, where the St. Lawrence River (Fleuve St-Laurent) leads all the way to the ocean to the East, so without crossing borders or needing passports, I can live with all the advantages of a large city and escape to the Coast for the wildlife and salted water, lobster and everything else that makes the ocean side what it is.

Once in a while, a beluga will make its way all the way here, despite being some 400 miles from a salt water source; when it's a female of the species, since they are endangered (I was shocked to learn last year that the once-healthy population has been decimated to perhaps less than a thousand in total, and most of them now look like they have cancer), they usually accompany it back to its natural habitat, but apparently, for males, they leave them be, possibly to die in the more-polluted City water.

It seems we had one here a few weeks ago. There were sightings for a week or so, then none. It's assumed it's dead.

Danger Lurks In Montréal

Don't leave your babies unattended to in Montréal parks, they might get snatched... by golden eagles!



EDIT: Ok, so it's a fake. Still, well made, and quite entertaining!

Moving Day Reminder

Our friends at Forget The Box would like to remind folks of the yearly disaster that is Moving Day in Québec - particularly in Montréal - and how it tends to be worse for furballs than humans, seeing as they often end up discarded, thrown out, or sent to shelters (if they're lucky).

I've seen it happen too many times. And this statistic burns my soul every time I see it:

Due to the incredible numbers of homeless animals, 25 000 animals are euthanized per year in Montréal alone.

Those things are alive.