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From the daily archives: Tuesday, September 9, 2008
Prickly blonde hedgehog is a rare find | The Sun |News
Believed to be just a few months old, this little lass was found weak and struggling by a member of the public in Shropshire.
The hedgehog, which is not an albino, weighed just 110g when she was delivered to the rescue centre at the end of July.
Since then she has tripled her weight and should be ready for release in a few weeks when she hits the optimum weight of 600g.
Dr Andrew Kelly, manager of RSPCA in Cheshire, said: “We receive around 600 hedgehogs a year, often orphaned juveniles, but we’ve never had a blonde hedgehog before.
“They’re extremely rare so it’s a real delight to have one in our care.
“We’ve worked hard to get her back to a healthy weight and are thrilled she’s responded so well.
“We’re looking forward to releasing her into a safe environment now where she will hopefully continue to thrive.”
The hedgehog, which does not have a name as staff never name wild animals, is one of a very small number of blonde hedgehogs to be found in the UK.
Their unusual colouring, caused by a rare recessive gene, means blonde hedgehogs have little chance of survival in the wild.
Their conspicuous coats often prove attractive to predators such as foxes, badgers and dogs.
So, releasing her to “a safe environment” where she’ll have “little chance of survival” makes sense to the RSPCA. Newsflash, twits: You’ve already interfered with nature — now knock off the Prime Directive crap and give her a good home in someone’s good home.
But cheer up, buckaroo. You’ve just won the Nobel Prize for best use of furthermore.
The exact probability of a runaway reaction that converts Earth into dark matter is unknown. The minimal risk as calculated by CERN allows for a 1 to 10 percent chance of extinguishing Earth. In the insurance business, a potential catastrophe’s “death toll” is calculated by multiplying the number of possible victims by the probability that the event will occur. A similar calculation (6,000,000,000 x 1–10%) shows that the LHC experiment would be, technically, the largest holocaust in history. It would also be the biggest environmental crime in history, far more harmful than global warming, as it would mean the destruction of all life-forms on the planet. Since the production of dark matter is neither necessary for the advancement of science nor safe for mankind, the LHC should be forbidden to operate. As we close Chernobyl-like plants for security reasons and forbid the reproduction of the Ebola virus in an open environment (though some specialized virologists would like to study it for research purposes), so should we forbid the reproduction of free, uncontrolled dark matter, even if its theorists would like to study it at CERN. The production of dark matter will not be a “new discovery,” nor will it advance the study of physics. Furthermore, CERN’s researchers will not be awarded a Nobel Prize—the ultimate goal of all experimentalists—if Earth is consumed.
False claims that presidential candidate Barack Obama is a sex tourist are being used to trick users into getting infected by malware.
Prospective marks are encouraged to check out a video implausibly showing the married Democrat in action with a Ukrainian strumpet. Gullible folks who fall for the ruse are shown a bongo clip while, in the background, malicious files are installed onto their Windows PCs, net security firm Websense reports.
The attack loads spyware onto compromised PCs. Once harvested, stolen information from infected PCs is posted to a compromised web server in Finland, controlled by unidentified hackers.
Obama strumpet-sex scandal ruse spreads malware | The Register.
… Sarah Palin was chosen not for what she has done but for what she is–for her value as an ideological illustration. Her distinction lies in her typicality, whereas the Democratic candidate is a monster of atypicality. She is, quite plainly, a stranger to skepticism. No McCain-like temperament here; only a vivacious dogmatism. As mayor of Wasilla she considered the banning of books from the town’s library. Three of her five children exemplify articles of conservative faith. And she sees God in her own activities. “I think God’s will has to be done in unifying people and companies to get that gas line built,” she testified at a church in June about her big project as governor. For thine is the kingdom and the power point! Certainly the politics of resentment have never before been expressed by the cute wrinkling of a nose. But the truth is that Sarah Palin is a woman of integrity. I do not say this sardonically. I find nothing phony in her, nothing cynical. She lacks the detachment from one’s own purposes that phoniness and cynicism (and genuine thought) require. She is too immediately what she is. Palin is the sort of supporter of the war in Iraq whose son is shipping off to the war in Iraq. This I must respect. She is not a Palm conservative, pausing over the creamed spinach to raise another glass to the America in which she chooses not to dwell. Whatever the Christian conservative way of life is, Palin is living it. And so her grotesque and fascinating candidacy broaches an interesting subject, which is the moral insufficiency of integrity. In its etymological origins, integrity refers to wholeness, to a coherent arrangement of the parts into a whole, to the consistency of the parts with each other, to the harmony of a thing or a being with itself. Integrity is a formal property, a consideration of structure. It is, in other words, contentless. It is indifferent to the substance of the elements whose internal relations are its concern, and neutral about questions of truth and falsity, good and evil. False ideas often add up; evil individuals often add up. A unified identity is not for that reason an admirable identity. It is all very nice to have the courage of one’s convictions, but the convictions matter as much as the courage.
today’s moodcat
