anthropometaphors

It’s great to come home from work, open the gate and see a package waiting for me on the porch.  Or to find one in the mailbox.  Heck, I’m happy with one laying on the dirt after having been tossed over the fence by UPS.

Today I came home and there was a package on the walk (not quite into the dirt); clearly the result of a trip over the fence.  As I unlocked the front door I caught a shimmer of light from the stamps on the package.  My first impression was the stamps were beglittered.  Upon closer inspection, I saw the stamps were from Finland (as was the entire package) and were not sparkly as previously thought — the stamps were braille.  I’m impressed by postal stamps that are in braille, what can I say?

So taken was I by the stamps, that I forgot to open the package for 3 hours.

Inside the package were two lovely pillow covers, hand screened printed by Nuka on Etsy.  I adore the pillow covers and the Finnish stamps I saw today.  I simply heart Etsy.

Doily pillow cover (Nuka)

On a recent drive home from work I noticed a circus off I-880.  The advertisements featured tigers, which immediately caught my attention.  I fantasized about how to meet the tigers, partly to have a close encounter and partly to assess their conditions in circus captivity.  Needless to say, nothing came of these fantasies.

wtf

I’m not the only one interested in the health and well-being of captive animals.  A recent article in Animal Welfare describes the results of a study designed to assess the welfare of animals in circuses.  Not surprisingly, circus life is unhealthy for wild animals.  A combination of lack of space, social contact and exercise is beastly; when combined with stage performance and travel conditions, the confinement of animals to a circus is simply brutal.

Stars of the show they may be, but elephants, lions and tigers are the wild animals least suited to life in a circus, concludes the first global study of animal welfare in circuses.

“It’s no one single factor,” says Stephen Harris of the University of Bristol, UK, and lead researcher of the study. “Whether it’s lack of space and exercise, or lack of social contact, all factors combined show it’s a poor quality of life compared with the wild,” he says.

The survey concludes that on average, wild animals spend just 1 to 9 per cent of their time training, and the rest confined to cages, wagons or enclosures typically covering a quarter the area recommended for zoos.

Worst affected are elephants, lions, tigers and bears. Often they’re confined to cages where they pace up and down for hours on end.

“Even if they are in a larger, circus pen, there’s no enrichment such as logs to play with, in case they use them to break the fence and escape,” says Harris.

(from New Scientist)

Where in the world is there a home for such fierce predators?

I have a headache.  My body is incredibly tired.  The thermometer reads 99.6°F.  I left work an hour early to crawl into bed and sleep.  While I probably don’t have swine flu, the possibility has crossed my mind.

Overreacting by almapottery

There’s a lot of hype about the H1N1 virus (aka “swine flu”).  A friend-of-a-friend at Stanford put together a survey to assess how people think and feel about swine flu.  It’s a short, well-designed survey.  Take a look and contribute to science!

Test Your Swine IQ

Keeping within the H1N1 vein, Stephan Zielinski has taken an amino acid sequence from the swine flu virus and translated it into ambient music (via BoingBoing).  I’m listening to the piece as I write this, and I find it to be calming, eerie and somehow holy.  Here’s a link to the hear the mp3 on Zielinski’s site, or you can download the mp3 here.

And now, back to bed for me.  Stay well, wash your hands and cover those sneezies.

Virus Embroidery by The Floss Box