Word things so you’re not actually asking a question, but counting on me to just jump in as if I can always intuit what the hell it is you want to know.

For example, I say “I don’t know anything about that, so when you find out let me know.”

So you say, “Oh, we had assumed you knew something more about it.”

What you really mean to say is, “We had thought you knew something. Can you please give me X?”

I know you’re going to feel stupid, because I can then say, “I just said I didn’t know anything about X.” But really, if you’re going to ask a question, make it a question and not a period. If you think a question’s answer might be embarrassing, don’t ask me. But for fuck’s sake, don’t just let it hang out there.

That’s trying to appeal to my sense of decency and trying to manipulate me into doing something, or doing some work to find out something you don’t want to do, or whatever. If you have such a request, make it, don’t attempt to manipulate me.

So apparently vegetarians don’t eat vegetables. And when you ask “animal, vegetable, or mineral” in Twenty Questions, you’re leaving out most of the stuff vegetarians eat. Or something. Anyway, by referring to vegetables being able to possess saturated fats, I was informed I wasn’t talking about vegetables, I was talking about “legumes.”

Um, OK. So when I asked if legumes were animals, I was criticized for being all “technical.” Right, because I’m just talking about plants being vegetables, but somehow I’m getting all “technical” about it. But no, let’s subclass them and arbitrarily call the “other” category “vegetable.”

No commentary, just one amazing bit of animation describing a firefight in Iraq.
http://www.liveleak.com/player.swf

Read about the spectacular fashion in which a local SPCA lost a supporter. There’s informed consent, and then there’s just plain stupidity.

Putting aside for now the disingenuousness of being told to fill out an application that is sure to be rejected, I tell him that two things bother me. Of course the SPCA doesn’t know the provenance of most of the animals it shelters. That’s a given. To tell families with kids that they can’t adopt a dog whose history is the least bit murky — even a dog that the SPCA itself describes as friendly — is, in my book, a disservice to both the families and the animals. And also, I just don’t take kindly to people making unbidden decisions on my behalf, presuming to tell me what’s best for me, my wife, and my kids. Would he?

Apparently, he would, and threw them out.

Update: The kicker is they’d qualified a couple of years ago to adopt a couple of kids. So they’re good enough to adopt humans, but not animals.

I’ve occasionally gotten questions as to what to do with a baby bird found outside. It turns out that the University of Minnesota has an excellent guide on what to do with a baby bird. The answer people don’t like to hear is, “Nothing.”

Most birds will be fine, even if they’re temporarily away from their parents. Some will be eaten by predators. It’s sad and no fun to watch (especially if you’re a pet bird owner like me), but it is how the predators stay alive and bird populations are kept to healthy levels. Most of the time the bird will be fine on its own.

The biggest myth is that if you handle it, the parents will smell you on them and reject it. Most birds have terrible senses of smell and will happily accept any baby you return to them–once you go away and leave them alone.

These are wild animals and do best when they keep their distance from large predators–and you count as the largest predator they’ll see. So imagine you fall down and a giant lion came by and started sniffing around you. You’d be scared to death, right? Same for a bird, only it would be like Godzilla instead of a lion, given the size difference.

So if you see a baby bird and there’s an obvious nest, pick it up and put it back. If there isn’t one and it has feathers, let it alone. Above all, don’t mess with it unless you’ve been trained, because as the link above points out, lots of things well-intentioned people do actually kill or seriously injure the bird they’re trying to help.

Wild animals are wild–if you want to help, give to an organization that works to rescue or preserve habitats for endangered wildlife. That will do more than anything else you could do.

Ordinarily, the thought of a World Bank-financed dam sends environmentalists into frothing rage.

However, in Kazakhstan, the Bank is financing dams that are beginning to restore parts of the Aral Sea, which at one point was down to a quarter of its original size.

By the 1990s only a quarter of the Aral Sea was left, but recently using a $68m loan from the World Bank, the Kazakh government built a dam that split the sea into two parts.

[…]

Communities in the area are already feeling the impact. The fishermen are back in their boats, the clouds and the rain have returned and many across this impoverished region say the future no longer looks hopeless.

When you think about the impact of human activities on the environment, remember that the government is often one of the worst causes of environmental devastation. Almost all attempts to turn desert into farmland have been government projects, specifically because no private investor would ever attempt it.

Global warming keeps getting chilly…it snowed in April…in Washington, DC. I know up north this is no big deal, but it’s pretty unusual here.

I’m totally stealing your car.

Irish rated EU’s worst binge drinkers.

Seriously, worse than Poles? Or just not able to hold their liquor?

Two dead clowns.

Click it. You know you want to.