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From JS: 

“Mark, did you see the Feb. 6 press conference the Republicans had defending Donald Trump against claims of ‘insurrection’ and then charging the major media with covering up news that damaged Biden and son? If not, you should check it out. This is the first time I’ve seen so many pols criticizing the media in such harsh terms.”

My Response: Yes, I saw it. And I agree. I’ve never seen so many Republicans take such a strong stance in defending Trump. They were always divided on Democratic-led attacks on Trump, but now that it’s becoming clear that he will not only be their candidate for president in 2024 but that he has a good chance of winning, they are changing their tactics by harshly criticizing the media for supporting the most absurd conspiracy theory – that on Jan. 6, 2021, he incited an insurrection.

Of the statements made in the press conference, the one by Rep. Eli Crane (R-AZ) got the greatest media response because it had the harshest criticism of the media. In fact, his words were so blunt that I sat there watching it, slack-jawed, half-expecting some guys in jackboots to haul him off the platform!

Note to Readers: I included a link to a video clip of Crane in last week’s blog. If you missed it, here it is again. And if, after watching it and looking up the denotation of “insurrection” in the dictionary, you still believe that what happened on Jan. 6 was an insurrection, and that Trump is guilty of instigating it, please write to me and explain how that could possibly be true.

 

From CD re global warming: 

“If you doubt the veracity of government figures on unemployment, why do you not question the data on global warming. It seems the scientists are all on the government teat too! Where I live in South Australia, it has been a cool summer for the last three years. Taking the temperature in city areas heated by the infrastructure is surely not an accurate way to gauge temperature. With the northern icecap seemingly increasing, there is some thought that with sunspots decreasing we may be in for global cooling in a new Solar Minimum. Maybe you could take a look when you get time.”

My Response: Thanks for the question. As for me, I doubt everything the government publishes – reports, statements, explanations, and data. That doesn’t mean I think everything the government and its agencies report to us about everything they track is false. But since the government is political and since politics is about power rather than truth, I take everything they say as propaganda, unless my reading and thinking convinces me otherwise.

In the case of COVID, what the government was saying, from the very beginning, was so utterly and evidently absurd that I began calling out the contradictions from day one. And as the lockdowns took hold and the government and its cronies began to silence, by threat and by force, the many scientists that refuted their propaganda, I became increasingly alarmed by how far this was going towards Fascism. And by how many – how most – supposedly educated Americans believed every obvious lie.

In the case of global warming, I distrust the government narrative for the same reason: I see it as politically motivated – i.e., a set of often-unproven talking points to bond with a significant group of voters. I’m also aware of the data and theories that contradict the global warming narrative. If our government agencies were not corrupt, they would consider all contrary information with alacrity and respect, instead of denying it with authoritatively pronounced statements that have little to no basis in science.

In any case, I believe the entire debate about global warming is a useless farce because countries with the largest and poorest populations in the world – India, China, Africa, and South America – need fossil fuels to survive whatever problems are on their way and to increase the quality of life for their billions of inhabitants.

Given the actual science, and the desire of the governments to move their economies into first-world status, there is going to be no pulling back on the consumption of fossil fuels for the next 10 years or so. If anything, there will be an increase in consumption.

 

Re my Contrary Truths series:

From SC: “I’m looking forward to reading more of this series. The first few contrary truths you shared in the Feb. 6 issue have already been thought-provoking. Point No. 3, particularly: ‘If the universe has any meaning, it is ironic – that life is a joke laughing at itself. All the best art and music is… a recognition of the fundamental irony of life and living.’

“I agree that the ‘universe’ is a neutral force, functioning on and reflecting irony, as that is its nature. And I think the art that rings true is the kind that acknowledges that our efforts to change things is ultimately frivolous. But I think the art that feels most complete, most wholesome, is the kind that urges us to strive anyway. Sure, it might not make much of a difference, but something within our human spirit demands it and feels rewarded just by the effort, not necessarily based on the result.”

 

From RB: “Your five behavior modification points in the Feb. 12 issue are all ones my wife and I struggle with daily in handling our adult special needs child. And my greatest frustration is that I cannot get my wife to stop doing #2 (‘trying to beat the odds by scolding or cajoling someone into changing their ways’).”

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Monday, February 12, 2024, Delray Beach, Florida


Notes From My Journal

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Five Contrarian Truths About Behavior Modification

I’ve been thinking about a thesis I cooked up about a year ago, which, if it continues to feel valid as I write about it, will become a book.

The thought is this: We (as individuals and citizens and as members of social organizations and religious groups) spend a not insignificant amount of our time, energy, and money trying to improve the world by improving people who have tendencies and habits we judge to be unhealthy, unwanted, and/ or destructive.

Just in terms of well-known national and international organizations, we have a plethora of programs for alcoholics, drug addicts, and overeaters, plus anger management programs, dozens of programs whose purpose is to prevent criminal recidivism, and even programs for people that are addicted to sex.

This would make sense if these programs worked – if they were largely successful in effecting the desired change. But most of them are not.

Take, for example, programs for treating drug and alcohol addiction. The success rate is very low. So low that it is difficult to find the numbers, because the organizations that make their money running such programs don’t want the public to know how unsuccessful they are.

If you spend several hours digging and verifying the numbers you are able to find, you will discover that the 12-month success rate for alcohol and drug rehabilitation is about 15%. Put differently, drug and alcohol recovery organizations fail in achieving their goals at a rate of about 85%.

The War on Poverty, started by President Johnson in 1964, was a massive government initiative of more than 40 individual programs. There are plenty of phony ways to measure the success of that program that show positive results. However, if you look at the only metric that is honest – the “absolute poverty line” (the threshold below which families have insufficient income to provide the food, shelter, and clothing needed to preserve health – the rate has fallen insignificantly: from 10.5% in 1966 to 10.1% today.

The War on Drugs, started by President Nixon in 1971, is another big one. In June 2011, the Global Commission on Drug Policy released a critical report, declaring: “The global war on drugs has failed, with devastating consequences for individuals and societies around the world.” In 2015, the Drug Policy Alliance, which advocates for an end to the war on drugs, estimated that the US spends $51 billion annually on the effort to stop illegal drug use. In 2021, after 50 years, others have estimated that the US has spent a cumulative $1 trillion on it.

The result? More Americans are taking illegal drugs than ever before, and the number of Americans incarcerated for illegal drug use has risen 500% since 1971.

Question: Is there anything that you would commit your time and money to if you knew the failure rate was that high?

It’s said that doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results is the definition of insanity. You can attempt to open a locked door by continuously slamming your head into it. But if, after your first attempt, the door stays firmly shut, slamming your head into it even harder makes no sense.

You would have to be an absolute idiot to believe that if we kept on with the same enormously expensive programs, they would one day achieve their goals. Yet that is exactly what we have been doing… for more than 80 years!

The reason is simple: the irrational but persistent belief that we – as individuals or organizations – can change (improve) unfavorable behaviors of people to any meaningful degree.

I believe there is a better way to deal with the massive failure rate of these programs. And that is to give up, once and for all, the false belief that, in a free country, anyone other than the sovereign individual can change his or her behavior.

Here are a few axioms to consider:

1. When it comes to character flaws, negative temperament, and bad habits, adult Homo sapiens seem to be almost incapable of change. Whether the issue is drug or alcohol addiction, overeating, leaving the toilet seat up, or general grouchiness, the percentage of people that successfully and permanently change are few and far between. Despite this obvious fact, most people, including educated people, refuse to believe that other people can’t change.

2. Trying to beat the odds by scolding or cajoling someone into changing their ways does no good at all. On the contrary, it usually has two bad results: It reduces the very slim chance that the person you are trying to change will change. And it creates a void between the two of you that is almost always filled with lying, anger, and resentment.

3. If you love the people in your life in whom you want to see change, begin by asking yourself if you would feel better if your relationships with them got worse or ended. Because that is, again, the most likely outcome of trying to change them.

4. If the answer to the above question is no – i.e., that you would not like to further damage or destroy your relationships with people you care about – the only reasonable thing to do is accept those things you don’t like about them. And even – if those things are annoying rather than damaging (to you or to them) – find a way to enjoy them.

5. If the behavior you want to see changed is damaging and destructive (to one or both of you), the only thing you can do is end the relationship gently but firmly. You must say goodbye. And you must mean it.

I know how futile and possibly depressing this may sound. But I’ve found that letting go of the mythology of change is very positive. I’ll talk more about that next week.

It’s a Serious, Scientific Catalog. So… Is This a Joke?

I was paging through one of my catalogs on trees this morning and I came across this entry for Woman’s Tongue Tree (Albizia lebbeck), otherwise known as East Indian Walnut: “This tree is well known for producing an abundance of long, brittle pods containing small seeds which, when driven by a light breeze, rattle endlessly. What connection this might have with a woman’s tongue is not clear.”

Aging Anecdotes: Forgot Your ID? 

AS writes to say: “I was making a purchase today and the 50-something clerk asked me for ID. I didn’t have my license on me and told him so. Then I said, ‘What do you think could possibly have happened to me in my life that I could look like this and still not be 21?’ He took another look at me and said, ‘All right, forget it.’”

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News & Views

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Election Watch 

1. Back to My Prediction re the 2024 Election

Late last week, in response to special counsel Robert Hur’s report on Biden’s mishandling of classified information, the Dept. of Justice admitted that Biden did, indeed, violate the law. And that the violation of that law is a criminal act.

Why, then, you might ask, didn’t Hur move to indict Biden, as the Dept. of Justice did in Trump’s case?

The answer, and this was stated repeatedly in Hur’s report, was that those who questioned Biden about the case believed that, because of his mental degeneration, he would not be convicted. Hur’s conclusion was that, in a trial, Biden would appear to any reasonable jury as “a sympathetic, well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory,” rather than a man with a functional memory that broke the law intentionally.

This is good news for Biden, but an embarrassment for the media and the millions of voters that have been insisting that Biden is compos mentis. So now there is much debate among Democrats and the mainstream media about whether our president is fit to be, or even can be, elected to lead our country in 2024.

If you don’t believe me, read any issue of the NYT or watch any program on CNN that talks about the 2024 election.

What is happening is precisely what I predicted more than a year ago: Biden will not be the Democrats’ nominee. I said back then that his mental incapacity was already obvious to anyone that knew him, including Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, and others that are hoping for a Democrat victory. Biden cannot win against Trump this time around, but a slate consisting of Gavin Newsom and a prominent Black personality (not Kamala Harris) would have the best possible chance.

Why, you might wonder, would the press and the Democrat planners so blatantly abandon Biden after protecting him for so many years? The answer is that he refused to step down around Thanksgiving, which is when he was supposed to in order to give Newsom time to build momentum. And they realized that the best chance now of getting him gone will be at the Democrat National Convention in August.

2. Poor Nikki Haley

Nikki Haley always struck me as a B performer in the political arena – in every way. She’s not charismatic. She’s not commanding. And I’ve never heard her say a single thing that I thought was original or provocative. Still, I feel embarrassed for her for what happened last week in Nevada’s Republican presidential primary.

Because Trump was not on the ballot, she was considered the frontrunner. Yet voters resoundingly chose “none of the above” over her – making her the first presidential candidate from either party to lose a race to nobody.

3. News Like This Is Not Good for the Democrats

It seems clear that Republicans will be running on two wedge issues in 2024: rising crime and gutless law enforcement (which was a big part of their platform in 2020), and border security (a big part of Trump’s platform in 2016).

The Democrats are working furiously to tamp down the nationwide upset over Biden’s recent endorsement of a bill that basically puts back in place all of Trump’s policies. Meanwhile, the issue of skyrocketing crime, including violent crime and murder, is getting increased attention from the media. And not just the conservative media, because the stories are just too sensational to make them disappear. For example:

* Mike Gill, former Chief Operating Officer of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) during Trump’s administration, was fatally shot Jan. 29 during an attempted carjacking. Gill was parked on the sidewalk in front of his wife’s office, just a few blocks from the White House, waiting to take her home. After Gill was shot, the suspect continued the rampage, committing at least two more carjackings and one attempted carjacking, killing another victim.

* A group of young, male illegal immigrants that savagely attacked two NYC police officers on Jan. 27 were booked and immediately released under the city’s progressive “cashless bail” protocol. (Watch a video of the attack here.)

4. This Isn’t So Good, Either… 

For 138 days of 2023, 37% of the year, President Biden was away at a vacation spot or retreat, according to a report from The New York Post. In 2022, Biden was away for 38% of the year.

Deputy Press Secretary Olivia Dalton wrote The Post to defend her boss: “The President works every single day of the week, whether he is in Washington, Delaware, Camp David, or anywhere else – and those around him and reporters who cover him closely know that.”

Representative Gary Palmer (R-AL) had a different perspective: “President Biden’s entire presidency has been a vacation from reality,” he said.

Trends in Wokeness 

This week, it’s all about the gender identity wars…

1. But He’s a Boy! I Don’t Want to Sleep with Him!

An 11-year-old, fifth-grade girl, on a 2023 JCPS-sponsored trip to Philadelphia and Washington, DC, was told by the trip director that she had to spend the night in a room with a male student who “identified” as a girl.

According to a complaint filed by her parents, the JCPS had told them that the boys and girls would be on different floors and would not be allowed to visit one another. “This practice renders it impossible for these parents to make informed decisions about their children’s privacy, upbringing, and participation in school-sponsored programs,” reads the demand letter.

Click here.

2. Woke Mom, Woke Clinic, Woke Judge, Broke Dad

It began with Dennis Hannon’s ex-wife treating their son as a girl at age three, calling him Ruby Rose, without telling Dennis. When the boy was five, she took him to a clinic, and a doctor there recommended starting him on puberty blockers.

When Dennis found out about it, he went to court. But the court decided against Dennis, chastising him for not supporting necessary medical care for his son because he didn’t agree with the treatment. A year later, after having spent all his savings, nearly $150,000, in the court battle, “Ruby Rose” announced that he wanted to go back to identifying as a boy.

Click here.

3. State Department Spends Billions on LGBTQ Dance Programs… in Peru!

The US is $33 trillion in debt, but the State Department isn’t worried about that. They are still spending billions of dollars they don’t have on Woke projects that don’t work. Much of the funds are being directed through an agency called the Citizen Diplomacy Action Fund (CDAF), whose stated goal is “Strengthening democratic institutions and fighting disinformation; Protecting the environment; Human rights, refugees, and migrants; Building community through arts, sports, language, and technology; Fostering alumni network development.”

Click here.

4. The State of Justice in Woke England Today

“Something is going very badly wrong…”

Click here.

And, finally, this:

5. Mothers Sacrificing Their Kids for Status

Click here.

Conspiracy Watch 

1. Dominion Voting Machine Vulnerability Exposed in Courtroom Testimony 

Remember that crazy right-wing conspiracy theory that the Dominion voting machine, which was widely used in the 2020 election, was somehow rigged in favor of Biden?

In a Federal Court in Atlanta, GA, University of Michigan Professor of Computer Science and Engineering J. Alex Halderman testified that the machine was, in fact, able to be manipulated. He demonstrated by changing a machine’s totals using only a pen (borrowed, for effect, from Dominion’s defense attorney).

Here’s an interview with a journalist who was there.

2. The Jan. 6 “Insurrection”

At a House Republican press briefing last week to promote a resolution declaring that former President Trump did not engage in an insurrection, Rep. Eli Crane (R-AZ) criticized attempts to remove Trump from the ballot and insulted reporters for their coverage of Jan. 6. Watch it here.

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The Economy & Investing

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Chart of the Week: Misleading Job Growth Numbers

This week, Sean investigates reports of US job growth in recent months – reports that the Biden administration is touting as evidence of the success of “Bidenomics,”and a surprising number of economic commentators and market analysts are quoting as fact.

Of course, this runs contrary to the experience most Americans are having every time it comes to paying a bill or checking their bank balance. I’m grateful to Sean for helping me understand the reality that belies the headlines. – MF

The White House has entered full campaign mode. Central to its messaging has been the state of the economy.

Just look at the steady job growth in recent months, the White House says.

This “growth” has naturally caused the unemployment rate to stay steady below 4%.

But a little bit of sanding removes some of the gilding around these claims.

Really there are two problems with the data: These job growth numbers are misleading, and the unemployment numbers are misleading.

I will talk about how misleading the unemployment numbers are next week.

In the meantime, here’s what the recent job numbers are hiding…

The US is actually hemorrhaging full-time jobs. Over 1.6 million have been lost in the last 3 months.

At the same time, part-time work has been climbing steadily.

And who’s been hiring people?

The sectors adding the most employees are health care, government, and leisure & hospitality.

Take away jobs that are either in government or dominated by the government (health care), and year-over-year job growth is actually negative.

It’s pretty easy to unfold the ramifications of all this data:

* Many of the jobs being created are the product of unsustainable deficit spending.

* At the same time, the part-time jobs being added offer folks fewer hours.

* Fewer hours means less pay.

* Less pay means there’s less wealth circulating among the biggest group of buyers and consumers in the economy.

* Less consumption means less economic activity.

* Less economic activity leads to slower growth or negative growth.

If these trends continue, we are absolutely moving toward a recession.

So I see nothing very little worth celebrating in the Biden administration’s recent press releases about the strength of the US job market.

– Sean MacIntyre

Sean is currently working on a longer video, diving into the details of the current employment situation in the US. Click here and subscribe to his YouTube channel so you don’t miss it.

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Worth Reading

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1. Night at the Fiestas: Stories 

By Kristin Valdez Quade
304 pages
Originally published March 16, 2015

I don’t remember how this got onto my to-read list. I half-liked the title – a collection of possibly good, possibly literary short stories from south of the border. But titles, as we know, can be misleading. It could be a compilation of socially astute, Oprah-worthy, cliché-ridden accounts of racism and oppression.

It happened that – and, again, I don’t know why – it had been downloaded onto one of the book apps on my iPhone and I was embarking on an hour’s drive. So I began listening to it. And now, having read (listened to) it and thought about it for a week, I feel comfortable recommending it.

What I Like About It 

Kristin Valdez Quade is indeed a literary writer, but in the school of simple sentences and limited flourishes that I prefer, especially when the stories are meant to be experienced (like The Sun Also Rises), not plumbed and researched and then deciphered (like Finnegan’s Wake). So, I like Quade’s style of writing. I also like the amount of detail in her stories that adds depth and dimension to the cultural background in which the stories come alive. And finally, I think she does a very good job with dialogue, which is not easy.

What I Don’t Like (So Much) 

There is a minor current of political correctness that runs through the collection, in terms of who the heroes and villains look like, speak like, and act like. It’s there, and I wish it wasn’t. Because had Quade resisted this superficial commercial temptation, the book would have not only received high marks from me in terms of literary style and horizontality, but better grades on verticality as well.

Critical Reception 

* “[A] sparkling debut collection… features dreamers and schemers whose lives pulsate with wild hopes, hard luck, stunning secrets, and saving grace.” (Elle)

* “Quade demonstrates her command of writing about complex issues of ethnicity and success head-on.” (San Francisco Chronicle)

* “ Fresh, funny…. A gifted storyteller with an eye for quirky, compelling detail.” (Dallas Morning News)

2. Can This Death Row Inmate Bring Down the Death Penalty Itself? 

Death row inmate Richard Glossip in 2014, one year before he was scheduled to die. 

A longtime “passion” of mine is the incarceration of people falsely convicted of crime. The idea itself is scary. But what’s really frightening is that I’ve learned from 20 years of involvement in this issue that proving one’s innocence is not, as one would think, a get-out-of-jail pass. On the contrary, the way the system works in most judicial jurisdictions in the US is that, after it’s been proven (often by DNA evidence plus admissions by the actual culprit) that some poor bastard has been incarcerated for 20 years, the DAs do everything they can to keep him in jail (or on death row) because they don’t want to tarnish their prosecution percentages.

For someone not familiar with the facts, this may seem unbelievable. Here’s a typical example from The Free Press that should upset you.

3. What a World: A Grieving Father Recounts His Son’s Dying Moments

Ken Kesey 

An important feature of American prose style for the last 100 years is restraint. Restraint in action, restraint in diction, and, especially when describing harrowing experiences, restraint in expressing emotion.

“One icy morning in January of 1984,” Sean Usher writes in the Feb. 3 edition of Letters of Note, “as the University of Oregon’s wrestling team headed on a bus to their next tournament in Pullman, WA, the driver lost control of the vehicle on a mountain road and it tumbled through the guardrail and over a 300-foot cliff. Tragically, not all survived.

“One boy, Lorenzo West, was killed on impact; another, 20-year-old Jed Kesey, was left brain dead. He passed away within days.”

The boy was buried at his family’s farm. A few days later, his father, One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest author Ken Kesey, wrote to five of his closest friends. Here is the power of restraining emotion.

4. How Much Does It Cost to Retire in the 20 Happiest Cities in the World?

We (The Agora Companies) publish all sorts of things about living and retiring abroad, including International Living, which is the largest circulation magazine of its kind. International Living often covers cost-of-living stories about beachside and or mountain areas as well as tropical paradises and low-cost retirement Edens. But I never saw an essay on this topic. Click here.

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Worth Watching

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1. Society of the Snow 

Directed and co-written by J.A. Bayona
Released Sept. 9, 2023 (Venice Int’l Film Festival)
Streaming on Netflix Jan. 4, 2024

Watch Time: 144 min.

In 1972, a Uruguayan plane, chartered to transport a rugby team to Santiago, Chile, crashes into a glacier in the heart of the Andes. Of the 45 passengers on board, only 16 manage to survive. The film, an adaptation of the book by the same name, documents the accounts of all 16 survivors.

What I Liked About It 

The story was familiar to me. It was sensationalized because those that survived for 72 days until they were rescued (until they rescued themselves) had resorted to cannibalism to stay alive, and the direction of the film emphasized the horror of it all.

I also very much admired the photography, the sound effects, and the music. All artfully done. Also that the dialog was entirely in Uruguayan Spanish.

What I Didn’t Like 

It left me emotionally exhausted and depressed. It took me 24 hours to get back into a good frame of mind.

Critical Reception 

Society of the Snow received mostly favorable reviews. It is an Oscar nominee for Best International Feature Film of 2023.

* “The material is fundamentally gripping, and parts of it are tough to resist…. But Society of the Snow is a perverse movie to watch the way most people will see it – on Netflix, in the comfort of their homes, with a refrigerator nearby.” (Ben Kenigsberg, The New York Times)

* “As a film that attempts to honor its victims while simultaneously offering graphic details, it both improves upon previous iterations of the material and exposes the limits of the story itself.” (Shirley Li, The Atlantic)

* “A fervent film, heartfelt and shot with passion and flair.” (Peter Bradshaw, The Guardian)

You can watch the trailer here.

2. A World Within a World: The Bay Houses of Long Island 

Produced and directed by Barbara J Weber and Greg Blank 
Originally aired on PBS Oct. 15, 2020
Currently streaming on Amazon 

Watch Time: 1 hr.

A recommendation from KG: A documentary about the history and traditions of the bay houses on the South Shore of Long Island, not far from where I grew up.

Bay houses are small shacks that have stood on Long Island’s South Shore marshlands since the 1700s. Of 40 of these homes, 14 miraculously withstood Hurricane Sandy – unofficially referred to as Superstorm Sandy – in 2012. A World Within a World explores the lives and experiences of bay house owners in the Town of Hempstead from both a historical and a contemporary perspective, capturing their perseverance and endurance.

You can watch the trailer here.

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Fun and/or Interesting

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Ten Quick Bites…

* Crazy: It costs about three cents to produce a single penny. And the US lost more than $93 million producing pennies in 2022 alone. Click here.

* Scary: Last week, I reported that 2023 was the hottest year on record. Now we have even worse news: January 2024 was the hottest month EVER. Globally, air temperatures averaged 13.14 degrees Celsius, breaking the previous record for a single month, set in 2020, by 0.12 degrees. Click here.

* Racism Reality Check: Remember Dave Chappelle’s bit on the Jussie Smollet “incident”? (If not, you can watch it here.) Now here’s Sunny Hostin talking about her “lived experience” watching her son being called the N word on a Florida beach… followed by The Officer Tatum’s take on it.

* Mind-blowing New Technology: The DJI FlyCart 30 is a rugged aerial delivery drone that can make safe deliveries to the most remote and harshest locations in the world. Watch it at work here.

* Fascinating: In this short video, an architect takes a deep dive into the math behind NYC’s iconic street grid. Click here.

* Remarkable: When I was a kid, I loved building miniature cities and landscapes. They were crude. But they were fun to make. I can’t imagine ever turning that sort of fun into this level of detail. This guy is an artist. A very painstaking artist. Click here.

* Athletes Thinking Outside the Box: A look at five of the world’s weirdest winter sports. Click here.

* Brilliant Toyota Ad: “It was a trap!” Click here.

* Sort of Funny: SNL has been bad, very bad, for ages, but this recent bit was clever.

* Amazing: Another animal/human story that you will not be able to resist being inspired by. Click here.

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