I’ve wanted a cool animal friend for some time. And I mean a friend, not a pet. Pets you have to take care. Friends come, delight you, then leave. And lest you think I’m a meanie, I’ve got five cats that came with the house we moved into a few years ago. Love ‘em, but I don’t need any more pets.

But a friend, now that’s different. Up here in the sticks we’ve got lots of interesting candidates: foxes, coyotes, raccoons, neighbor dogs that get into your garage and abscond with nifty chew toys like your expensive new hiking boots.

I’ve always wanted a bird gang as friends (I think it’s an unfortunate Disney heroine-envy syndrome). We’ve got eagles and magpies up here. But we also have crows and ravens. And ravens, according to some sources, are as smart as wolves.  In fact, I’m so taken with the bird gang idea that I’m using it in the series I’ve titled LORD OF BONES. The hero has two raven friends who will be characters in their own rights.

So you can imagine my delight when I read the article on NPR and saw this.

Crocodiles scare the crap out of me. In fact, I think they’re the scariest things on the planet. Gators make a close second. But they aren’t just monsters to humans. It appears gators have got blood that’s an infection’s worst nightmare.

Gator blood kills

So I predict right here that in the not too distant future we’re going to have a product called “Gator Cream” and it will rival the wonderful Neosporin.

This geeked me out today.

THE internet could soon be made obsolete. The scientists who pioneered it have now built a lightning-fast replacement capable of downloading entire feature films within seconds.

At speeds about 10,000 times faster than a typical broadband connection, “the grid” will be able to send the entire Rolling Stones back catalogue from Britain to Japan in less than two seconds.

The latest spin-off from Cern, the particle physics centre that created the web, the grid could also provide the kind of power needed to transmit holographic images; allow instant online gaming with hundreds of thousands of players; and offer high-definition video telephony for the price of a local call.

Can you imagine that game world? Can you imagine a world that’s an actual world? Where adventurers set out to find fortune and encounter all sorts of nasties being played by hundreds of thousands of other people around the globe?

Dude.

More here.

Zing, Baby!

So you go into your classy high-rise establishment.

Then you sit down to observe the wide outdoors.

You have to love the Europeans. No, this is not an April Fools gag. More at Snopes.com

Of course, it’s only a matter of time before this is used in a thriller.