On Bell Curves, Grade Inflation and Stalking Gone Wrong
Vegetarians and vegans had significantly lower sperm counts compared with meat eaters, 50 million sperm per ml compared with 70 million per ml. They also had lower average sperm motility – the number of sperm which are active. Only one third of sperm were active for vegetarians and vegans compared with nearly 60 per cent for meat eaters.
The World Is Being Run By Crazy People
70 cents a pound to cut and wrap: New York town spends $2,984 per deer in sterilization program.
Reader Tips
In tonight’s amusement en route to the tips Fred, a barbershop quartet from Marietta, Georgia who won the 1991 Dixie District Quartet Championship, perform the JJ Cale song Cocaine.
The comments are open, as always, for your Reader Tips.
I Felt A Great Disturbance In The Narrative
With anti-Semitic bonus content: CNN reporter chased off air in Ferguson.
Language advisory.
Related: Information about the Michael Brown fatal police shooting is beginning to leak out, and former St. Louis County Police Chief Tim Fitch says it’s no accident the feds are allowing the information.
Bin Laden Is Dead And Ambassador Stevens Is Dead
The #IslamicState launched rockets into the Green Zone in #Baghdad. Ambulances being rushing to the area and helicopters deployed.
— AbuUmar8246 (@Abu_Umar8246) October 21, 2014
Oh, Shiny Pony
Have I mentioned yet today that I think Trudeau is a fool? No? Trudeau is a fool.
“Liberal Leader Justin Trudeau says it was Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s “ego” that led him to send six CF-18s to participate in airstrikes in Iraq, rather than a concern for Canada’s long-term interests.”
The flake doesn’t get it.
It isn’t about ego or Canada’s long-term interests. If it were for those reasons we would have sent a lot more than six fighter jets, a tanker and surveillance aircraft.
It’s about working with our allies to try to stop stuff like this.
Riding Mass Transit Is Like Inviting 20 Random Hitchhikers Into Your Car
“She actually let these children get off of this bus and beat me and my family for at least three minutes, then let them get back on, get weapons, get back off and back on again, and then took off with every one of them that did it,” victim Kristina Gibson told 11 News reporter Lowell Melser.
Reader Tips
Tonight we listen to the incomparable Arthur Rubenstein’s 1965 recording of Chopin’s Nocturne in in Eb minor, Op.9 No.2.
The comments are open, as always, for your Reader Tips.
“Ahmad the Convert”
RCMP statement on St-Jean-sur-Richelieu suspect Martin Couture-Rouleau: "clear indications that [he] had become radicalized."
— Tu Thanh Ha (@TuThanhHa) October 20, 2014
Is There Nothing That Obama Can’t Do?
It’s come to this: Voters in battleground states think President Obama is worse at “managing the basic functions of the federal government” than his predecessor George W. Bush, according to a POLITICO poll released Monday. In other words, voters think Obama is a less effective manager than the man he stills blames for his failures.
Bottom Gun
Via email;
Referring to the latest reports about some jihadists learning how to fly in ISIS, there is a video about an air crash, probably in Tobruk, in the last few weeks.
Considering all the things happening in Libya now and the way the MIG-21 plane was shown flying and crashing, it quite likely was an inexperienced and overly cocky pilot.
My guess is it could have been an under trained jihad pilot.
Check out the video here
Birds Do It, Bees Do It
But Microbrachius dicki did it first.
Y2Kyoto: Our Disappearing Wetlands
Saskatoon Star Phoenix, June 2006;
On June 5, the United Nations Environment Programme announced a study that shows the world’s desert and arid regions are at risk of becoming even more parched. Research at the University of Saskatchewan supports this, showing the Canadian Prairies could be drying out due to more moderate winters.
Disappearing wetland, December 2009

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Disappearing wetland, October 2014.
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Check back in another five. I’ll take some shots from the new bridge.
From the comments;
I remember when Dr. John Pomeroy [Director for Hydrology, UofS] arrived to much fanfare, one of his first pronouncements was that the Saskatchewan water table was so low that it would take decades to ever recover to “normal” levels. And, of course, because of Global Warming [as it was then known] such recovery was impossible.
The World Is Being Run By Crazy People
The rubber plantation has 8,000 workers with 71,000 dependents. It is an hour north-east of Monrovia, surrounded by Ebola outbreaks. The virus arrived on the plantation in March. Knowing that the UN and the Liberian government were not going to save them, the managers sat around a rubber tree and googled “Ebola” and learned on the run instead.
h/t John Lewis
Renegade Regulator
RestoreCSA has a copy of a PowerPoint presentation given to CSA executives on the subject of potential fallout from false certification. Within this document, the CSA is fretting that they had to disclose “test results to confirm compliance.” Why were they worried? Because the test results didn’t exist. The presentation plainly acknowledges that consumer products are being certified despite “a lack of test data to support compliance.” Separately, we have a CSA executive’s handwritten notes from that meeting, and they’re impressive too. This executive indicates concern about “failing results” being noticed by government regulators. And they were under heavy scrutiny. As though the government was on to them, the notes refer to worries about “the need to report by tomorrow.” The notes also use the term “Gianluca.” What do you suppose that means?
In this crooked context, the victim was falling fast. The CSA kept threatening him with termination unless he started signing documents that he knew he shouldn’t sign. In one heart-rending discussion, we were told of the pressures he experienced at CSA. “He kept refusing, he just… I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m… I just need a moment.” And after a moment, the core of the problem: “he was raised honest, it’s just how he was.”
At the end of his days, “he was very worried about not having any money for bills.” He had no job. The CSA had “eliminated” him, apparently he wasn’t cooperative enough. Of CSA’s engineers, one insider confirms, they “run [the new engineers] through in about two-year intervals just to keep enough ‘paper’ on file to maintain the certifications. Then they get rid of them before they learn too much about how we operate to where they could be a threat.” The victim, it seems, caught on to CSA’s system too quickly. And worse, “he was talking about CSA too much afterward to others.”
Employer Repellent
It’s just a bigger hole than what society has considered to be “standard”… If there wasn’t such a pointlessly negative view on stretched ears, people like teachers and professional golf players wouldn’t have to get them sewn up.
Observer readers discover that not all employers favour the Urban Bush Warrior look.
Let Me Fix That Headline For You
Reader Tips
“Oh, listen to the jingle, the rumour and the roar…” ♫
That there’s the Carter Family.
The comments are open, as always, for your Reader Tips.



