No doubt all of us have as children played ‘ballooning’, where we try to keep a balloon in the air for as long as possible without actually holding on to it. Those who are more agile use only their feet or limit themselves in other ways. But could you do it with just your nose?
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As most of you know by now, Ed Brayton, author of the blog Dispatches from the Culture Wars and founder of FreethoughtBlogs, announced yesterday that he has decided to move his blog to Patheos and has given his reasons why here.
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Zimbabwe has expressed an interest in having the dentist Walter Palmer be extradited to that country to face charges for illegally killing Cecil the lion. They have already arrested the owner of the land on which the lion was killed and the leader of the hunt.
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I got the complaint below from a regular reader of my blog about his inability to view the Comedy Central videos that I embed. He has submitted the problem to the tech gurus here by clicking on the ‘Tech Issues’ link at the top left but I thought that tech savvy readers may also be able to help him out. Has anyone had had a similar problem or any advice for what he should do? I should note that he lives in the US, so this is not one of those cases where streaming is being deliberately blocked.
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I have not written anything about the Minnesota dentist who killed the lion. What is there to say? Pretty much everyone has felt and expressed their revulsion at such a senseless and cruel act and have wondered what psychological need it satisfies in some people that they go to all that trouble and expense to kill just for the fun of it a magnificent, and in this case beloved, animal of which there are precious few left. And then decapitate it and mount the head on their wall. It would creep me out to see it forever looking down at me in silent reproof for subjecting it to a painful and extended period of dying but clearly trophy hunters don’t see things the same way.
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I am firmly convinced that you are most likely to be involved in an accident in parking lots. There is something about the fact that you are moving at slow speeds that causes people to get distracted and not pay attention. It is incredible to me that at least the basic elements of how to maneuver in tight spaces at low speeds are not mastered by people, as this set of examples demonstrate.
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As regular readers know, Baxter the Wonder Dog is a Cavalier King Charles Spaniel. The video below gives some facts about the breed. Although they originated in England in the 1600s, at the end of World War II, there were only six such dogs and all the current dogs are descendants from them.

One problem of having such a narrow population bottleneck is that any genetic problem in one or more of the original group would be propagated to large numbers of dogs. It is known that the breed suffers from a congenital mitral valve heart defect that makes their life spans shorter than for comparable small dogs. Reputable breeders, like the person from whom we got Baxter, are trying to get rid of that trait. We get him checked regularly and so far he does not show any symptoms so we are keeping our fingers crossed.

This video captures perfectly why they are so lovable and Baxter has all those qualities.
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I recently linked to a video of a woman who did the limbo under a car. Now comes along another incredible limbo feat. It is by a five-year old girl (I believe in India) so she is far smaller and naturally more supple than an adult. But what is incredible here is not just the height that she went under but also the distance she covered while doing so on roller skates. She also did it bending forwards rather than the more conventional backwards.
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Via Heather Johanssen I came across this video of a woman who has acne, a skin condition that can create physical scars and even deeper emotional ones. She had posted images of herself on social media with and without makeup. The video shows her transition and the comments that she received. It seems like she just can’t win.
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The second annual one-day conference on Humanism at Work sponsored by the Foundation Beyond Belief will held on July 25, 2015 in Boston, MA. The program is designed to help identify more and better ways for humanists to put their nontheistic compassionate beliefs to work for the betterment on the world. You can get more details here.