October 25, 2004

• This kicks ass.
• I can't believe the Disney corporation allowed Bush to use a version of Pooh in such a blatantly partisan and schizophrenic advertisement. Plus his exploitation of the dog in dishwasher for political gain is just plain bad taste. Mudslinging in this election has reached a new low.
• Seconded. Comedy gold.
• Fantastic! If nothing else, the Bush administration has been good for a lot of laughs (in between the sobbing and teeth clenching). It's like the jokes almost write themselves.
• It's great to actually laugh at something that's, you know, funny, rather than absurd. Thanks, Wolof!
• I like this Poor Man. This kitten is an obvious forgery This kitten thing was an earlier post, but so?
• I like this Poor Man. I knew him before he was The Editors, although he was already shrill and unfunny.
• This ad appeals to our basest animal instincts.
• Wolfpacks for Truth
• The wolf in all of us
• Wolf socks!
• I call bullshit. I mean the two headed kangaroo? That's obviously just a mother kangaroo with a baby kangaroo in her pouch. OUTRAGEOUS!!!
• Wolf babysitter!
• endangered so difficult to fathom why benches are dwindling just where they used to be thickest bus stops are bare and parks are deflowered these absences are part of the approaching extinction of public benches close observers report only an occaisional sighting now of the slat-seated bus-stop bench several pundits blame bottoms for this politicos want to set up a commission or ten to investigate and issue final reports environmentalists demand benches be listed as endangered and activists plan to epoxy themselves to the few survivors one thing is certain as news filters in from airports and hotel lobbies benches are becoming unfriendly to humans -- sprouting arms along their seats and composing themselves of materials far less welcoming than wood
• I! am! afraid! NOW!
• OMG THAT SHIT WAS HILARIOUS! he he he
• Last week was Wolf Awareness Week. Brilliant.
• The Capital Times makes some interesting points... as partially noted by homunculus and his perpetual internets-surfing...

  Editorial: Can Bush Protect Us? President Bush's clumsy use of symbolism is legendary - think of the "Mission Accomplished" macho flyboy scene - but his re-election campaign has outdone itself with a new ad featuring wolves that would be laughable but for the truth it unwittingly reveals. In a case of ironic timing by the obviously clueless campaign, the ad was released during Wolf Awareness Week, a nationwide annual event that originated in Wisconsin. Wolf Awareness Week is devoted to dispelling "Little Red Riding Hood" myths about timber wolves and stressing the animals' value to America's wildlife community. So it's nothing short of absurd that the president is airing an attack ad against John Kerry that uses wolves to symbolize the menace of terrorists. We hardly need to point out the fallacy of implying that wolves are a threat to humans, but the Bush campaign ad's predator/prey imagery reveals a much greater irony than the president's lack of knowledge about wolf ecology. The ad depicts the United States as weak and vulnerable and continues Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney's desperate and tiresome tactic of trying to scare voters into supporting them by using dark projections about how a Kerry presidency would threaten U.S. security. Yet, if this country does resemble trembling, helpless prey, it's Bush's own actions - his inept homeland security measures and unwarranted Iraq war - that have put us in such a state of vulnerability.

• Who's afraid of the big bad wolf?
• Folk who shoot before they see what or whom they're shooting at -- there's no excuse for them. Or that.
• Wolf Hunting Debate Rages in Wyoming
• Owooooooooooooooooooooo!
• Flying wolves.
• Great picture there, homunculus! Despite their folly, the silly sheep disguised as wolves, still onward leap following the leaders till they crash in glorious arc against too-solid glass.
• Great picture there, homunculus! Despite their folly, the silly sheep disguised as wolves, still onward leap following the leaders till they crash in glorious arc against too-solid glass.
• Dang. Took me three tries to get what I thought was a single comment onto this thread. This is the second afunctional thread I've encountered this evening here.
• Must have used the hammer to post, eh Bees?
• The problem is I'm experiencing protracted intervals between the time I hit either the preview or the post button and the time it takes MoFi to load the pertinent page. I get dumped offline sometimes waiting - very frustrating, and I'm sure annoying for others. It's five after the hour, here goes - who knows?
• There ye are - seven minute gap.
• Perhaps your tubes are infested with wolves. though perhaps a better solution would be to investigate "latency" in yer Intarweb connection. This website has tools for that, see the "Traceroute" link, Right-hand column 2nd down - put "monkeyfilter.com" in there and see if it shows any trouble spots between you and the MoFi server. By comparing it to other sites you visit maybe it'll tell us something.
• Thanks, petes, I'll try it. ... Tracert to monkeyfilter.com Well, 'tis geek to me, petes, but it seems nothing of significance shows up there. /heads down the bunny trail to Google up on latency
• do any other websites seem to lag the way MoFi does? Maybe a good ol' cleanout of the cache would help. I know I'm regularly cleaned out of cache
• I use the FF clear private data tool often. anytime I leave a webiste, in fact. And I reboot several times a day. Don't know any other ways of flushing it. Clean cash - why does that sound so dirty?
• Hmm if it's not connection or your computer . . . why else would it delay like that . . . hmm
• Possible I can't really tell whether other websites do this, since the only place I comment is here. I'm not aware of long delays with pages loading, however, anywhere but MoFi. But this is the only place I visit where I see an actual time discrepancy. I don't belong to any other forum-y sites, which I assume would also have some sort of built-in timing system.
• There are delays with page loads on the older posts where there are hundreds of comments, but I've never seen that delay with the commenting process itself. My Windows machine may have committed suicide, as my *ahem* backup Windows CD is corrupt so a quick uninstall isn't possible -- hence no recent progress on the rewrite. The slow page loads are due to the unwieldy Metaphilter code. Still, though, I don't know that it explains your problem if you're the only person whom it's affecting.
• I'm getting unpredictable delays - between the time a comment appears on MoFi and the time (which is correct, I've checked it out) on my machine. I am virus-free. I am defragged. 96% of my hard drive is empty (the never been filled kind of empty, as opposed to have been emptied). I'm not sure what's causing this, but if it's only me it's very odd. Have checked over the machine here, and had two other people look at it, and they can't account for it, either. It is 55 minutes after the hour here. But the UTC time when I previewed this comment just now was one minute after the hour. ???
• I make that an eight-minute discrepancy. Odd.
• That's very strange. Never seen a lag like that.
• Could something be going on with the phone line, and if so, is there any way to tell? Really don't want to be a bugged bee!
• Wolves I do not want to be reflective any more Envying and despising unreflective things Finding pathos in dogs and undeveloped handwriting And young girls doing their hair and all the castles of the sand Flushed, by the children's bedtime, level with the shore. The tide comes in and goes out again, I do not want To be always stressing either its flux or its permanence, I do not want to be a tragic or a philosophical chorus But to keep my eye only on the nearer future And after that, let the sea come over us. Come then all of you, come closer, form a circle, Join hands and make believe that joined Hands will keep away the wolves of water Who howl along our coast. And be it assumed That no one hears them amongst the talk and laughter. -- Louis MacNeice
• When Red Becomes the Wolf In my dream you brought me fried bologna sandwiches. "But wait," you said, "You don't even like bologna." I wolfed them without answering. I have never owned a red cape, that's asking for trouble, I knew. In the forest by your house, Imet someone gathering wood. "Nice axe," I said before wandering further. I was obtaining samples for my botany class. How many daisies make a statistic? I thought of Persephone, her dark gash that allowed Hades passage. Which flower? I was hungry, and tired. I entered someone's cottage, it was dark, and there was an old woman. I volunteered to take her to get her hair done. Alone, I mentioned I was born under the sign of Lupus. "No," she corrected, "Lupae." Later, eating sandwiches, we discussed you and also whether I could wear her fur coat. "It makes you look feral, with your green eyes," she said. Oh, grandmother, what a big mouth you have. --Jeanine Hall Gailey
• Go west, young wolf
• westward the way of wolfdom wended out where wolf-tales never ended
• Idaho Governor Calls for Gray Wolf Kill
• Honshu Wolf Survival?
• Yea, Homey, I'm real proud of our Guv'ner.
• Her deadly wolf program: With a disdain for science that alarms wildlife experts, Sarah Palin continues to promote Alaska's policy to gun down wolves from planes.
• Thanks for taking me to the next level of uncomfortable, homunculus. Predator control is not hunting. Fair chase ethics do not apply. She is probably using the same argument for the Troopergate mess...
• Now, I'm no kind of expert, but I'd think that if the aim is predator control, surely the laying of traps would be far more efficient than sending up a plane, shooting at a moving object from that moving plane, landing, hacking off the front left paw for bounty, and then taking off again. One guy with a trap line requires a lot less energy, and he can spend his time far more efficiently as the traps do the work for him. In that sense, it's not all that much different than the fox-hunt controversy in Britain. If it really is about predator control, there are much simpler means (however less "fun") of doing it. Not to mention that Mother Nature will find her own balance eventually, or that moose or caribou foodstocks are probably better managed by the Inuit themselves, as they've done for the last few thousand years. And the wolves were there first. But what do I know?
• Good beer?
• Yes. Yes, I do.
• Shaun Ellis teaching a wolf cub to howl
• Feds back down on delisting wolves: The predators will continue to be protected as the government tries to rewrite a plan to remove them from the endangered species list.
• Wolves could be reintroduced to Scottish Highlands
• New Debate on Wolf's 'Endangered' Label: Government Will Try Again to Take Northern Rockies Species Off Protected List
• The philosopher and the wolf: A spur-of-the-moment decision to buy a wolf cub changed Mark Rowlands’s life. From that moment on he found human company never quite matched up
• Obama's early actions bode well for the environment
• What Happens When One Cloned Wolf Mates With Another Cloned Wolf?
• Palin's War on Wildlife Continues.
• Gray wolf removal from Endangered Species Act protection affirmed Defenders of Wildlife denounces Obama's retention of Bush delisting of wolves as endangered species
• Alaska begins wolf killings to boost caribou for hunters
• How a Rottweiler became surrogate father to an abandoned wolf cub
• Awww, they named the wolf-cub after a David Eddings character (Polgara's mortal sister, Garion's great-great-nth-grandmother).
• September Promises to be Killer Month for Wolf Hunters
• Wolves Will Be Shot Legally or Not Idaho Official Says Because hunters hate to walk “Our ability to detect elk is now different, because of the way elk have adapted to the presence of wolves,” Sime said. “Hunting elk is not going to be like it was in the past. You can't be driving the roads and expect to see deer and elk standing around any more, just like you can't see them standing around in the Lamar Valley (of Yellowstone). They're just plain going to be harder to hunt.” Well, duh. My respect for hunters is rapidly declining. For every hunter willing to go out to the backcountry and actually hunt, there are nine that want to drive around in their pickups or on an ATV and shoot with an elephant gun. Not. Hunting. Elk birthrates down due to wolves? Oh, it couldn't be the damn snowmobiles now, could it?
• Hunting Wolves, and Men
• Yeah, Ol'Rex is a weasel. Not one of Idaho's finest. Around here, you don't need a tag to kill varmints. Feel free to take aim.
• Wolves Beat Dogs on Logic Test
• The wolf in that award winning photo was an actor.
• Like in the one where Werner Herzog seems to read Curious George?
• "'tisn't", said I.
• wolf howl
• Well, they have to learn it from somewhere.
• Wolves in Yellowstone on PBS NewsHour tonight
• Radioactive Wolves
• I'm radioactive
• Will cry of the wolf return to California?
• Considering all the pissing and moaning we have here in Idaho since the wolf reintroduction, even with all our designated wilderness, I think the Californeeites won't be at all thrilled.
• How Wolves Are Saving Trees in Yellowstone
• With the drought and all, I figure the trees will need watered.
• River of No Return: An unconventional honeymoon deep in the American wilderness
• Sometimes wolves need hugs, too.
• Just two Timber Wolves cuddling.
• Group hug! /img>
• Grandmother Who Killed Wolf With Axe is Most Badass Person In Russia
• A Pack of Wolves Turned Up in Berlin For the First Time in 100 Years
• Yellowstone's popular alpha female wolf shot dead by hunters outside park
• Jackasses. Why is it the wolf hunters all seem to be people I thoroughly dislike in other aspects of their life--especially the political?
• Cold Warriors: Wolves and Buffalo
• We Didn’t Domesticate Dogs. They Domesticated Us. Scientists argue that friendly wolves sought out humans.
• Obama Administration Also Sticking It To Wolves Today
• Lone Wolf: A forsaken predator reappears
• A fascinating difference between pet dogs and tame wolves
• How Wolves Change Rivers
• Why Is Canada's Wolf Population Splitting Into Two Groups?