Color me shocked: “Energy giant ExxonMobil borrowed tactics from the tobacco industry to raise doubt about climate change, spending $16 million on groups that question global warming, a science watchdog group said Wednesday. ‘ExxonMobil has manufactured uncertainty about the human causes of global warming just as tobacco companies denied their product caused lung cancer,’ Alden Meyer of the Union of Concerned Scientists said at a telephone news conference releasing the report.”
While I don’t agree with all of the new laws, I’m thrilled to see this report. “Albuquerque and a growing number of cities are passing tough new measures aimed at ending euthanasia in animal shelters. Owners are even being forced to clean up after their dog in their own backyard [sic].” As I said, many of these new laws have my full support. It’s about time owners are made responsible for all the deaths happening around the country. But it’s troubling to see the bans on pit bulls in places like Denver. Pit bulls are not a fierce breed—no more fierce than any other breed, in fact. Every pit bull my family has had has been of such a sweet temperament, a loving, protective disposition that I could not imagine being without them. And we’ve had MANY pit bulls, and we’ve had them for decades. Still, I see great promise in this report, in efforts around the country to stop the killing by making pet owners responsible both financially and legally for the animals in their care, including taking measures to ensure those animals are not breeding uncontrollably or ending up on the streets. I suggest you read the whole article because it’s quite good and enlightening, and it offers hope—hope for the animals who for too long have had no hope whatsoever. And the final quote is the best: “‘We can’t be a complete city as long as we euthanize animals,’ [Albuquerque mayor Martin Chavez] says.”
This is absolutely hysterical: The Devil’s Publishing Dictionary Part I: A through M. Taking a page from Ambrose Bierce’s The Devil’s Dictionary, Paperback Writer offers the first part of a very humorous look at the writing/publishing industry. I can’t wait for the second bit.
So … you call this winter? “Crocuses are pushing out of the ground in New Jersey. Ice fishing tournaments in Minnesota are being canceled for lack of ice. And golfers are hitting the links in Chicago in January. Much of the Midwest and the East Coast are experiencing remarkably warm winter, with temperatures running 10 and 20 degrees higher than normal in many places. [. . .] New York City saw a November and December without snow for the first time since 1877. And New Jersey had its warmest December since records started being kept 111 years ago.” Just sayin’.