Saturday Summary #5

"They're not rats. They're underground squirrels." This week the NYTimes asked subway riders to send in photos of rats in the NY subway system. They received many photos and also received many emails from people who like the rats like the wildlife on the tracks. The MTA periodically poisons rats even though they acknowledge they will never eliminate them.

Perhaps we are becoming for compassionate to other sensate creatures. In 1990 only 6 states had felony penalties for animal cruelty, today 46 states do. Some police forces are training their officers to recognize that animal cruelty is frequently associated with family violence.

Since the recession hit 2-ply toilet paper has outsold 1-ply toilet paper. Recently a super soft 3-ply paper has been for sale. Says a Quilted Northern exec, "People like affordable luxuries in bad times." -- if people weren't quite so willing to flush their extra dollars down the drain the recession might end sooner.

California spends an annual $216,000 on each child in the criminal justice system. They spend an annual $8,000 for each child in the Oakland School system. [Can anyone in California add 2 and 2?]

Every day there are 50,000 storms on the planet. This number is thought to be increasing due to global warming.

Sasquatch or Big Foot is not only reported in the forests of the Pacific Northwest. This week a man named Potter in the mountains of western North Carolina reported investigating a grunting noise in his backyard and saw a ten foot tall man-beast had become tangled in his dog's chains. "The thing had beautiful yellow hair and a yellow beard," he said. He scared it away, "I rough-talked him and said, 'You get away from here.'" and poked him with a stick. When reporting this to the police Potter asked if it would be considered murder if he shot the being should he return and attempt to come up on the porch. [Maybe he could just add a few four-lettered words to his rough-talk and scare the thing away permanently.]

"Women universally aren't keen on men's body hair," says an exec at Remington which is introducing a new shaver for men. A product researcher says, "You haven't lived until you've been in the bathroom with a man watching him shave all his body parts."

If men learn to rid themselves of body hair maybe no one will need the new drug that Boehringer Ingelheim, the Germany company, hopes to introduce. So far it's not even approved but they are placing advertisements to make women aware of a problem called hypoactive sexual desire disorder, HDSS is popularly known as "not tonight, Honey, I've got a headache."

A worker at Southwest Cargo Planes opened three misaddressed boxes and found 45 human heads. They were supposed to be delivered to a university laboratory for research. Apparently body parts are often shipped via air cargo. I wonder if the guy had nightmares after that experience.

Perhaps email is going the way of the pony express and the nearly moribund US postal service. At a Consumer 360 conference this week, a Facebook exec reported that only 11% of today's teenagers use email. The other 89% keep in touch with friends and family via telephone texting and social networks like Facebook and Twitter. [When we can no longer communicate in more than 100 words at a time, will literature and philosophy wither like wheat in a drought?