Link Banana

I had no idea.

(via ToMu)

I think there’s something to Michael Schaffer’s thesis that the burgeoning pet industry owes something to American alienation, but really it’s this statistic — whose statistical rigor I doubt — that got my attention:

A 2001 survey for the American Animal Hospital Association revealed that 83 percent of pet owners call themselves their animal’s “mommy” or “daddy.”

Some harmless fun. (via MeFi)

I debated for a while whether to Twitter or post this new-to-me neologism (discovered here), I obviously chose the latter.

The etymology of this is a little vexing; my guess is that it grew out of the belief that the people who make or serve dogfood should try it before giving it to canines. Ah, Wikipedia confirms.

Speaking of Beijing… Chinese officials has banned the service of dog during the month of August. It’s not that important anyway, Fuchsia Dunlop says, because few Chinese eat them, and it’s a winter food anyway:

Dog eating, in any case, tends to be a seasonal pursuit. According to Chinese folk dietetics, which classify every food according to its heating and cooling properties, dog is one of the “hottest” meats around, best eaten in midwinter, when you need warmth and vital energy, not in sultry August.

Citing Leona Helmsley’s generous-sounding donation to dogs, Ryan Madoff take offense at something most people happily forget:

The charitable deduction enables people to donate as much of their assets as they like for charitable purposes without paying a tax. While some choose to contribute to broad public goals, the law does not require it. In recent years, charitable status has been recognized for organizations with purposes as idiosyncratic as promoting excellence in quilting and educating the public about Huey military aircraft. Indeed, Mrs. Helmsley might have limited her beneficence to the Maltese breed of dogs she favored, and that, too, would have been allowed as a “charitable” purpose.

If this were only a matter of Leona Helmsley wasting her own money, no one would need to care. But she is wasting ours too.

The charitable deduction constitutes a subsidy from the federal government. The government, in effect, makes itself a partner in every charitable bequest. In Mrs. Helmsley’s case, given that her fortune warranted an estate tax rate of 45 percent, her $8 billion donation for dogs is really a gift of $4.4 billion from her and $3.6 billion from you and me.

To put it in perspective, our contribution to Mrs. Helmsley’s cause equals approximately half of what we spend on Head Start, a program that benefits 900,000 children.

This video is very cool.

(via Andrew Sullivan, from whom I shameless stole the title.)