Why Evolution is True is a blog written by Jerry Coyne, centered on evolution and biology but also dealing with diverse topics like politics, culture, and cats.
I’ll be accepting your holiday photos (one per reader, include cats if possible) up till 7 pm Chicago time. I have about 20 now, so it’s a go. The original solicitation is here. Cats are not required in the photo, but it should have a holiday theme.
Enjoy your Christmas Eve. I hope everyone has something good to eat.
If you have a holiday-themed photo that you’ve taken, especially if it shows you and/or your cat with a holiday theme—cats are not necessary but helpful—send it to me by email today. If I get a sufficient number (i.e. >12), we’ll have a holiday-themed post tomorrow, when I plan to take a rare day of rest. And please give a few words of explanation.
UPDATE: We’ve already started receiving them, so add yours to the group. And please, one photo per reader.
This is one of the videos that’s a litmus test about whether you have a heart of stone or of oatmeal. If you tear up, you’re okay. (I sure did!) It’s a bit hard to understand at first, but all comes clear at the end. Yes, it’s an ad made by a Dutch pharmaceutical company, but the sponsorship doesn’t detract from its poignancy.
A bit of backstory from Today:
A new commercial from the Dutch mail-order pharmacy Doc Morris has left the internet in tears by showing the reason behind a grandfather’s drive to get in shape for Christmas with his family. . . . The spot [was] created by the German ad agency Jung von Matt
h/t: Nicole
Happy Hanukkah! It’s the third day of the holiday and the second full day. It ends at sundown on Friday, and it’s a time to eat latkes.
I adore latkes, but they’re too laborious to make, so I almost never get them. (Trader Joe’s has frozen ones, but they’re dire.) Here we have two gangstas showing us how to make them properly.
This is pretty damn funny, though there’s one mistake. You never put both sour cream and applesauce on a latke. You’d have to be a meshugana to do that! The proper way is to put sour cream on one latke and applesauce on another, alternating to your taste, and until you’re sated.
(This duo has several other videos, too, including one for Passover.)
h/t: Moto
The formal title of this celebration is “International Day of Veterinary Medicine,” celebrated yearly on December 9. The Veterinary Emergency and Critical Care site says this:
International Day of Veterinary Medicine celebrates those intrepid souls who work hard to keep our animals safe, and are constantly going through ongoing education to stay at the very front of the medicine that will keep our pets alive and healthy for years to come. A special shout-out goes to those who practice exotic animal medicine, learning about critters that are rarely kept as pets.
So here’s a special shout out: I know of only one reader who practices veterinary medicine, and it’s only on exotic animals. She’s Divy Figueroa of Florida (highlighted before in a “photos of readers” feature), who is practice manager and vet tech for a practice that includes her husband, Ivan Alfonso, as the doctor. I asked her for some photos of veterinary medicine in action, and she sent some photos from a recent visit. I also got some earlier photos of Divy with some cool animals. Her narration is indented:
We really don’t have many good photos of us working together, because I’m usually the photographer, and when I’m working hands-on, nobody takes pictures of us.This was a call we had last week in south Florida of an Aldabra tortoise feeling under the weather, so the clients wanted bloodwork. This tortoise weighed between 350-400 lbs, and was not allowing us to grab his tail to draw blood. Though most giant tortoises are turned sideways to draw blood, due to the animal’s history we didn’t do it in this case to avoid stressing him. We had the owner use his forklift to lift the tortoise. My tech steadied the tortoise in the front to prevent him from falling forward, while my husband drew blood and I passed him the necessary blood tubes and collected the blood samples. The tortoise excreted and urinated on him, while flashing his penis to the both of us. It was a tense few minutes, but we got the job done. The screenshot in the second picture is very blurry, but I wanted you to see how we had to elevate the tortoise, and to see that it was no easy feat.
Here are a couple of different pics of me with a cute Geoffrey’s cat [JAC: a kitten getting its checkup] and with a Patagonian Cavy. We had already finished the cavy’s physical (again, we have no pics), but the cavy approached me to tell me all was good. (That client just got some cool, new animals, so we should be visiting them within the next month for an inspection. I’ll take good pics. )
More photos of the kitty are here.
I’m taking it easy today and am having a long, vigorous walk along Lake Michigan, followed by a shower and then dinner. Turkeys are too big for me (I wonder if those Butterball 20-pounders will go unsold this year), and so I am having a Jewish Thanksgiving: pork roast.
On the side there will be fresh biscuits and local tomatoes. But this modest meal will be washed down with a very fancy wine—the real centerpiece of the meal. It’s a great Rioja, a 2011 Prado Enea Rioja Gran Riserva from Bodegas Muga, which I bought as a three-pack (in a wooden box with a decanter included) for a pretty penny several years ago. This is the last bottle of the three, and believe me, it’s ethereal. In fact, the food is just a vehicle to get this wine down:
Normally I’d be sharing this bottle with guests, but guests are rarer than hen’s teeth this year and so this puppy is ALL MINE. I’ll drink half tonight and half tomorrow.
Of course the purpose of this post is to find out what everyone else is eating and drinking, on the holiday. If you’re not American, though, you’re probably not celebrating.
by Greg Mayer
Peyton, the Philosophical Cat, is not much moved by the holidays, except that, with someone at home during the day more frequently, she’ll be able to have her midday treat more often—her choice between salmon snacks or a paté.
Unusually, she’s not taken to sleeping under the tree this year, but she has found a spot on the dining room table amongst the accoutrements of the holidays. Her eyes are very bright, which I attributed to the flash, but another viewer of the photo thought it was because Peyton can stare into your soul.
I’m cat-sitting over Christmas, so I can also share a second cat, Delilah, a longhair, who has both the hair and the cranial structure typical of the breed.
Delilah gave me a present, which she disdainfully glanced at in order to bring it to my attention, preferring for herself canned cat food to fine Belgian chocolates.
And even though he’s a d-g, here’s Peyton’s nephew, Q-Tip, taking more advantage of the under-tree space at his house. (And, yes, obviously, he’s her nephew by adoption.)
