No wonder the Danes are gloomy

Dinner at ate

Copenhagen zoo uses bolt gun on Gaffy the Giraffe, feeds him to the lions.

The two-year-old male giraffe was put down on Sunday using a bolt pistol and its meat was fed to carnivores at the zoo, spokesman Tobias Stenbaek Bro said. Visitors, including children, were invited to watch while the giraffe was dissected.

Mr Stenbaek Bro said the zoo, which now has seven giraffes left, was recommended to put down Marius by the European Association of Zoos and Aquaria because there were already a lot of giraffes with similar genes in the organisation’s breeding program.

The Amsterdam-based EAZA has 347 members, including many large zoos in European capitals, and works to conserve global biodiversity and to achieve the highest standards of care and breeding for animals.

Friends? I’d say they’re lion.

Times of changing signs

 

 

 

1980

 

2000

2014

 

 

 

 

 

Obama would have offered him extended unemployment, coupled with disability leave

Sic’em, boy!

The K9 doggo Fred, who was sent to rehab for getting bored with drugs, will be returned to work with another employer.

Just two days after Fred’s dismissal was reported, news comes that he’ll be getting another chance.

GULFPORT — Don’t worry about Fred, the K-9 the city of Gulfport has declared surplus property. He’ll return to the school that trained him.

Fred will go back to work, says Roger Abshire, owner of U.S. K-9 Unlimited in Kaplan, La. Abshire has an excellent reputation for training K-9 teams and standing behind his work.

“We’ve bought a lot of dogs from him over the years,” said Maj. Tony Sauro, who heads enforcement for the Harrison County Sheriff’s Department and has worked with K-9s for 28 years. “He is a big producer of police K-9s. He is second to none.”

Harrison County, he said, hopes to bring Fred aboard at the Sheriff’s Department. The Belgian Malnois, around 3 years old, is trained for patrol and narcotics.

Fred’s a worker, Abshire said. Abshire bought Fred in the Netherlands. “Fred is a dog that was chosen out of hundreds of dogs, so he is a special dog and he is a good dog.”

Abshire said he received dozens of calls after the Sun Herald reported that Fred failed to cut it at the Gulfport Police Department and was being returned. It wasn’t Fred, really, Abshire said. Fred’s handlers were switched when his first human took medical leave. The chemistry between Fred and his second handler just wasn’t the same, Abshire said.

Fred was frustrated. Instead of searching a building, he might pick up an object and chew on it.

Fred is too valuable a dog to while away his time as a pet. He can sniff out cannabis or cocaine,

Belgian Malinois can be care dogs too.

ecstasy or methamphetamines. He can protect his handler, search for criminals or wandering Alzheimer’s patients, or locate a suspect barricaded in a building.

Belgian Malinois are agile and athletic.

“The best thing for a dog like Fred is to work, work, work,” Abshire said. “Any time you get the dog out, he wants to go to work.”

(With apologies to James Taranto): Somebody set us up the bomb

Curled banker

Bloomberg News: Curling Bankers Better Canada Gold Medal Bet Than Cosby

I’m sure she was, and remains a sausage stuffer, but 30-years-old? I think not

I say, 40

Winner of £148 million lottery turns for “comfort” from former sausage factory worker, “30”.

Maybe 45

Of course, while he may be a prize winner, he’s no prize himself

Wanna march in the NAACP’s protest march demanding an end to photo-voter ID law? Bring your photo ID

So says the NAACP.

You know, a Princeton education ain’t what it used to be, you know?

First time I’ve ever been proud to be an American Princetonian, you know?

The First Lady speaks:

[H]er kids “just want you near, you know, they want that advice from a parent. They want to see you on a daily basis” . ..

With Valentine’s Day approaching, the first lady was also asked about how she and the president keep romance in their relationship.

“Yeah, well, you gotta get creative,” she said. “But, you know, our home is very private — you know, the residence where we live. I mean, it’s not like we’ve got people standing around over us every second of the day. But, you know, the president has to be as creative as any man out there needs to be at this time. But this year we’ll probably low-key it in the White House. I just had a wonderful big birthday party and I, you know, I think he’s done his part to show me how much he loves me so he’s off the hook this year.”

“We may criticize, laugh, joke, push, cajole, but in the end, you know, he’s the one that’s making the decisions about his look,” she said.

“You know, that’s just a part of public life. And, you know, our motto is that we do what we think is right. We stay prayerful,” she said. “You know, we have probably just as many, if not more, people praying for our safety and … our strengths as we do any naysayers out there, so we focus on the positive and we’re here to do a job, you know, and giving people access to affordable health care is one of those jobs.”

We know now. And her Harvard law degree don’t seem to have helped her none neither, you know?

An opportunity for many of us in town to say, “I told you so”

If it’s good enough for New York City, then by golly, it’s good enough for Greenwich!

In fact, the opportunity to say just that has been around for quite a while. Here are some predictions by a cranky Greenwich blogger for this boondoggle, beginning four years ago:

August, 2010: Oh for heaven’s sake, a fireboat for Greenwich?

July, 2011: Do we really need a new fireboat, even a ‘free’ one?

December, 2012: “After waiting 375 years, Greenwich finally gets a fireboat”

Now, after reviewing the records for the cops’ new toy’s first summer in use, Greenwich Time’s Bob Horton has reached a conclusion: The super duper fire boat acquired and now maintained by the town still can find no use.

But boy, ain’t they got fun.

You may remember the debate over the need for this vessel when former Greenwich Fire Chief and current Emergency Management Director Daniel Warzohafirst proposed that the town acquire the customized vessel with a $600,000 grant from the federalHomeland Security Department. As designed, the boat is rigged with instruments that can detect chemical, biological, radiological, nuclear and other explosive devices. It also is fully equipped for firefighting, including a hose that can shoot out up to 2,500 gallons of water per minute, a berth and medical equipment for the treatment of injured victims, a hydraulic hoist and the latest electronic navigation equipment. As E.B. White might have said, “This is some boat.”

The staffing, training, and operating costs required by the boat’s extensive capabilities caused some Representative Town Meeting members to question if the town really needed such a vessel. The Police Department allayed those concerns somewhat when it agreed to retire one of its existing vessels in favor of the new and presumably more efficient Homeland Security vessel.

Fire Chief Peter Siecienski said this week that when Warzoha approached him in 2011 [FWIW – see date of this blog’s first column – Ed] with an opportunity for a new “fire boat,” the chief said his department’s call volume for waterborne capabilities alone could not justify the purchase. Instead, the boat’s extensive uses required a multidisciplinary approach that combined fire, police, and emergency medical response resources.

….

There was no on-boat training for either firefighters, and instead of being the promised “supplement” to the smaller police patrol boats, the new, much bigger and heavier vessel became the marine division’s go-to boat for routine police patrols on Long Island Sound.

For the season between April 1 and December 1, 2013, the two standard police patrol boats logged 171 and 292 engine hours respectively. Those numbers were dwarfed by the 390 engine hours registered by the new boat, particularly when one considers that the Police Department did not commission the new craft until the end of June, according to Police Chief James Heavey.

What a farce. And who approved this ridiculous new toy? The majority of your neighbors on the RTM and of course, our own Music Man and Fire and Police Commissioner, Peter J. Tesei.