More Coffee Please

Rick Mercer lighting into Stephen Harper for proroguing the government while still ostensibly fighting a war for democracy in Afghanistan.
Girls and boys have similar math abilities.
Someone felt it necessary to create a Misery Index.
People who return things to libraries decades and decades after the items were due. Better late than never!
People continue to remove themselves from the gene pool in exciting ways. See also: Large Wild and Exotic Cats Make Dangerous Pets (PDF), a helpful 4-page pamphlet from the USDA.
The Wikipedia list of unusual articles. I particularly like http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mother_insult and
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toilet-related_injury.
It’s now possible to use your Blackberry to Google stuff like, oh, how to deliver a baby, should the occasion call for it.
People who think up stuff like this:
…and this:
Oak clones from the Pleistocene. They estimate they’re 13,000 years old.
Listening to music can help cure ringing in the ears caused by… listening to music.
Refusing vaccines really does put you (and your kids) at increased risk.
Really, really, REALLY big explosions.
There is a gene called Sonic Hedgehog.
You can score a free holiday in exchange for your poop.
In this country sometimes storms toss lobsters right up on the beach!
The Governor General’s house has a public skating rink.

There we go! Fluffy bunnies!

Comments

Reasons why the world is a bad place

People getting all public healthish about Santa. (The BMJ link is clearly in jest, but still, that’s up there with Cookie Monster now going on about cookies as a “sometimes food” and Christopher Robin becoming a girl.)
If you’re a teenager, apparently being a violent jerk is an effective way to boost your cool factor.
Want to see Antarctica before it all melts? Well, you’re part of the problem.
While champagne may be reasonably good for you, apparently we need to wear goggles while opening it. Also, some bad people spray it all over the place instead of drinking it. No, no, no. Also a no-no: handling your tarantula sans goggles.
Drinks with actual flavour give worse hangovers.
Apparently the world needs a new acronym, REV, to describe “rape with extreme violence“. Think “…mutilate female genitals with guns, pieces of glass, wood, or heated plastic”. What a charming way to conduct a war.
I still can’t read headlines like this one: 2 dead in murder-suicide in Sask. town without assuming it’s a woman who’s been killed and wondering boyfriend or husband?. …And yes, yet again in this case it was a woman shot by her partner.
I’m cold.
Platinum Blonde, of all bands, in the Hall of Fame. I mean. Really.
People’s obsession with hand sanitizers is going to kill us all.
Our security while flying requires that we confiscate babies’ teethers.
We continue to fund fancy buildings in underserved neighbourhoods, but not the programs and organizations to staff them effectively.

See, this is what happens when I spend a whole day feeling cranky and reading my RSS… all the depressing stuff floats to the top. Perhaps next week I’ll manage a companion post on good stuff, but the first Monday of the year didn’t lend itself to fluffy bunnies.

…Um, happy new year!