Big Cat Protection

Protecting Big Cats is one hell of a thing. Each cat eats around 230 lbs of meat per day, making them very expensive to support. Me, I love tigers, lions, cheetah’s, panthers etc etc. and am glad that some of these cats are saved from underestimating pet owners, hunters and circus breeder wannabe’s and given a place they can prosper.

If you want to touch a tiger, there’s no better place than the Tiger Temple in Kanchanaburi

In the UK the Wildlife Heritage Foundation protects tigers, lions, leopards and cheetah’s in Kent in the UK

The Tiger Haven is huge – around 50 acres in Tennessee and around 250 cats.

Big Cat Rescue in Florida has around 100 cats, including lynx, cougars, ocelots, bobcats and more.

EARS – Endangered Animal Rescue Sanctuary is smaller and also located in Florida

The International Exotic Animal Sanctuary has 58 felines and 7 bears living in Texas.

All of these places have a sponsorship / adoption scheme and will sell stuff to you to keep the project going. They are all non-profit and the fact that they are sanctuaries means the animals won’t be sold, released into the wild, hunted in canned hunts, etc. They are given a home and these homes are expensive to keep. Most welcome volunteers and some have guided tours, allowing you to come into close contact with the cats.

Playmobil Security Check Point

This must be one of the worst ideas ever. But the comments are the funniest thing I’ve read on the interwebs so far…

My family was planning a vacation to Europe, so I purchased this item to teach my twins about what to expect at the airport and hopefully, alleviate some of their anxiety. We also downloaded the actual TSA security checklist from the American Airlines website and then proceeded with our demonstration. Well, first we had to round up a Barbie and a few Bratz dolls to play the other family members, so that cost us a few extra bucks at the Dollar General and it is aggravating that the manufacturer did not make this product “family-friendly.” Of course, since the playmobil Dad could not remove his shoes or other clothing items, unlike the Barbie, the playmobil security agent became suspicious and after waving her wand wildy a few dozen times, called her supervisor to wisk the Dad into a special body-cavity search room, (which incidentally led to quite an embarasing and interesting discussion with my twin daughters about personal hygiene and a slight adjustment to the rules we had them memorize about touching by strangers). But worst of all, since the suitcase did not actually open, the baggage inspector made a call to the FBI and ATF bomb squads which then segregated the family’s suitcase (which btw was the only suitcase they provided for our educational family experience) and according to the advanced TSA regulations, had to blow it up, (since they could not otherwise mutilate the luggage, break off the locks and put one of those nice little advisory stickers on it), which we had to simulate out in the backyard with a few M-80s and other fireworks. The girls started crying. They became so hysterical by the whole experience that we could not even get them in the car when the time came to actually take our trip, and so we had to cancel the whole thing at the last minute, losing over $7,000 in airfare and hotel charges that we could not recoup do to the last minute cancellations. We’ve now spent an additional $3,000 to pay for the girls therapy and medication over the past year since this incident occurred, and the psychologists have told us that this will affect them for life, so much for their college fund and our retirement. Then, to top it all off, when we tried to use to playmobil phone to call the company to ask for reimbursement, as you might expect, of course the damn thing didn’t even work; neither did our efforts to e-mail them using the computer screen on the baggage checkpoint; and our real-life efforts to contact them to obtain re-imbursement have also likewise been ignored. Worse yet, we had the product tested and found out that it was positive for both lead paint and toxic chemicals, having been manufactured in China by workers holding formerly American jobs, so now we all have cancer and have been given only another year or so to live. My advice – educating your kids about airport security with this toy may actually be more harmful to them than just packing them in the damn luggage with some bottled water & hoping they survive. :

And there’s loads and loads more – tears came to my eyes!

Europe launches its first re-supply ship to the ISS

ESA PR 15-2008. Jules Verne, the first of the European Space Agency%u2019s Automated Transfer Vehicles (ATV), a new series of autonomous spaceships designed to re-supply and re-boost the International Space Station (ISS), was successfully launched into low Earth orbit by an Ariane 5 vehicle this morning.
It’s around 3 times as large as the US resupply ship and is the most complex European spacecraft built to date.

ESA Portal – Europe launches its first re-supply ship %u2013 Jules Verne ATV %u2013 to the ISS