Don't ask...

...about the comprehensive exam. It wasn't pretty.

You CAN ask about Baxter, on the other hand. He is doing quite well! He had those gnarly stitches removed yesterday, and the biopsy report came back Saturday with a good news/bad news aspect to it. The bad news: the tumor was malignant. The good news: it's a non-fatal type of cancer that likes to recur in the same location, and doesn't spread. So we will need to remain vigilant in order to catch it earlier if it returns (and sadly, there's a good chance of that: the vet was not able to "take anything extra" around the tumor to leave super-clean margins). The cancer has such a long and bizarre name, even the vet stumbled as he read the report to us. If I can figure out how to spell it, I'll link to a description later.

A few items:

San Francisco and Oakland are having a disturbing increase in violent crimes this year, but it turns out that's happening all over the U.S. Still feeling safer under the Tough on Crime/Tough on Terror Republicans? Check out this report by the Third Way Strategy Center for Progressives. I love the title, "The Neo Con: The Bush Defense Record By the Numbers." The reality is this: while the BushCo NeoCons waste billions of dollars and thousands of lives on an illegal and unwinnable war over there, our national resources and preparations for violence and disaster are rapidly deteriorating. Sleep tight!

Oh, you meant those secret prisons?

A more constructive link: I buy and sell quite a few used books from Amazon's "Marketplace." Recently, several of my textbook purchases came from a dealer called "Better World Books," and arrived with the claim that my purchase was helping send books to Africa. Sounded pretty cool, so I finally checked out the organization and discovered I can order books directly through their web site. Please take a look and throw them some business!

Next time a wingnut tells you conservation projects don't work, show them this study!

(A Bali starling, one of the species saved from extinction.)

(If this post appeared, disappeared, and reappeared in your "feeder," it's because Blogger only published 3/4 of it the first time, and momentarily lost all the sidebar links, etc. So I deleted the original post and "re-published" it.)