Archive for February 2011

« FOXSYLVANIA home page
Newer Entries »

Year of the Rabbit

February 7, 2011

– – According to the Chinese zodiac cycle, we are now into the Year of the Rabbit, a fact which has booted sales of rabbits in Asia and elsewhere.   Animal rights group PETA is urging consumers to forgo adopting rabbits as household companions on a whim, however, warning that the animals are often abandoned once their novelty wears off.

Rabbits aren’t just cute and fluffy, you see, but are high maintenance animals which require significant resources, equipment, attention, and veterinary care.  The group also points out that rabbits have fragile bones, require lots of exercise, and tend to gnaw on everything on sight, making them less than ideal pets for all but the most patient of owners.

Categories: animal behavior, animals, furry
Tags:

Comments: 2 Comments

Wrecking Bunny Ad…

February 4, 2011

We all know that it’s important to use the right tool for the right job, and H&R Block illustrates this fact in a recent commercial by showing us a demolition crew trying to take  down a brick building with a 16-foot-tall pink and white bunny…predictably, it doesn’t go too well.  Clearly, a plush bunny is not good for demolition, even a really big one.

In the “wrecking bunny” ad, people gathered at a demolition site “ooh” and “ahh” as the bunny is raised by a crane and swung toward the building.  There’s a muffled thump as the bunny impacts with the unyielding brick, crews wince, and spectators plod away with dejected looks on their faces as they realize that the plushy is not going to take the building out.

It’s an absurdist type thing, but I wind up feeling vaguely sorry for the bunny, wondering if they’re going to keep bashing him into the wall until his poor stuffing pops out; the plushy doesn’t seem to mind, however, and maintains his slight smile…what a trooper!- -Is this abuse of a plushy?- -Can’t someone rescue him?!  He just needs a good, loving home, admittedly one with a lot of space.

Perhaps in the future we’ll see other inappropriate tools used on the wall, like an enormous marshmallow or a gigantic cream-filled donut!

Categories: absurdities, animals, furry, plushies, strange, strange happenings
Tags: ,

Comments: 2 Comments

Artificial Meat!

February 2, 2011

– – Eat your cruelty-free artificial meat…for once, no animals were harmed in its creation!

This isn’t that awful tofu, soy, or gluten stuff, either…nope, this artificial meat, also known as vitro meat or cultured meat is animal flesh that has never been part of a complete, living animal!  In vitro meat is laboratory-grown meat using animal stem cells that would be placed in a medium to grow and reproduce.  The result would mimic flesh and could be cooked and eaten.   Potentially, any animal’s muscle tissue could be grown through the in vitro process.

Some scientists say the technology is almost ready for commercial use and simply needs a company to back it.  Cultured meat is currently prohibitively expensive, but it is anticipated that the cost could be reduced to about twice as expensive as say, conventionally-produced chicken.  Some promising steps have been made towards the technology, but we’re still a few years away from having in vitro meat available to the general public.

PETA is offering a one million dollar reward to the first scientist to produce and bring in vitro meat to market…and the first generation products would most likely be minced meat.- -That’s right, think Spam, vienna sausages, etc…yummers! Meat grown in vats may be necessary, however, to feed the nine billion people who are expected to be alive by the year 2050…

Categories: cool things, research, science, strange
Tags: , ,

Comments: 3 Comments

Newer Entries »