Obama campaign highlighting the First Pet to embarrass Romney

And they should. While it might look petty, it says something about a man, the way he trust the most vulnerable among us (so the saying goes). I remember my uncle, who was Greece's UN ambassador at the time, telling me that you can tell a lot about a man by the way he treats animals. And I think it's very true. Watch someone interacting with a child, or a pet - especially one they meet for the first time. It speaks volumes.

Video: Buster's box FAIL

This is quite adorable.

Spain's king Juan Carlos is a cowardly elephant hunter

Much like the lowlife CEO of GoDaddy, Juan Carlos also likes to pay big money to kill elephants in Africa. I am admittedly not a hunter but generally have no issue with people hunting what they eat. Killing one of the "Big Five" in Africa these days is mostly the domain of the ultra rich who spend tens of thousands of dollars to kill.

I traveled through Southern Africa and visited dozens of game parks throughout the region. Along the way I bumped into a number of these hunters and heard about the industry from locals. It's sickening. Perhaps the most disgusting story was how they used old lions that were sold off from zoos because they were in bad shape and easier to kill. If the hunter was a bad shot, the guides would drug the animals so they were even easier to kill.

We really don't know how good of a shot Juan Carlos may be, but what is certain is that this type of hunting is known for his type taking advantage of local communities who are need of money. When you have kings money, it's easy to throw around and participate in the seediest of seedy industries. Even worse, why is the king throwing around such cash on such a stupid event during this economic crisis in Spain? It's not macho, it's cowardly and abusive.

Video: Puppies, bunnies and chicks, oh my

I could have imagined how this video could have gone horribly wrong.  But it didn't.  The puppies got along quite well with the chicks and the bunnies.  My Sasha loved everything as a puppy, now not so much.  Every species learns to lose the love by a certain age, I guess.

Video: Bird befriends paper airplane

Thrown from an 18th floor window in Mumbai (formerly Bombay), India.  I'm not so sure the bird is befriending the paper airplane.  You have to watch to about halfway through before the bird gets involved.

Video: Dog all tangled up in window blinds

At first I was going to write, how could someone leave their dog like this to get a camera. But you know, I'd do it. I suspect this isn't the first time this dog has done something this goofy.

Video: White fluffy kitten zen

Bring your dog to work - it's good for your health

Who doesn't like a furry friend hanging around? LA Times:

The VCU researchers divided 76 employees into three groups: those who brought their dogs to work, those who owned dogs but left them home and those who didn't have pets. For one week, the scientists measured levels of the stress hormone cortisol in samples of the workers' saliva and used surveys to gauge their stress levels four times during a workday.

There was no significant difference in cortisol levels among the study participants. But by the end of the day, the average stress level scores fell about 11% among people who had brought their dogs to work, while they rose as much as 70% for members of the other groups.

The researchers also observed "unique dog-related communication" in the workplace, Barker said. During the day, people who hadn't brought pets walked over to colleagues who had and asked whether they could take the four-legged visitors for walks.

Video: Seriously, don't tick off the cat

I'm not quite sure I would call this video "funny." It's short. But wow. Do any cat-people out there have any idea as to what happened?

Video: Dog rescued (just try to watch this video and not get choked up)

I realized I didn't make clear that the dog doesn't die, it's saved.  So you can watch the video - it has a happy ending, but is a tear-jerker.

Here's the link for a donation page for the group that rescued the dog, Hope for Paws. They spent a lot of money saving this animal, and other animals. Help them out if you can.

Video: Cody the howling dog

I suspect Cody is part Coton, as they're known to howl/speak like this.

Video: Corgi-cam

A dog's eye view of a hike.

Video: Puppy has a serious image problem

Mice are people too

Very cool video of a mouse fetus developing.  Eerily humanesque - which of course simply means that God has a sick sense of humor.

The cherry blossoms have begun to open in DC

The city is full of the them.  And they're open(ing), with the peak expected from March 20-23 (which is a bit early, but it's been in the 70s here for a week).  Chris (in Paris) is coming on Tuesday for the week, so he and I are going to go down to the Tidal Basin (by the Jefferson Memorial) to check out the blossoms with the throngs.  DC really is at its best in springtime.

Sasha and I spent the day, yet another prematurely nice day in the 70s, with my friends Matt and Damian hanging out in Matt's yard.

Video: Kitten tormented by the Google

Actually, it's not Google's fault, it's that damn cursor.

Seriously though, I do find it calming watching an animal swat at a cursor.

Video: Tired of playing "ball" five times a day with your dog? This machine is for you.

A friend recently asked me if my dog's ball was my her crack cocaine. He meant, does she want to play ball like a gazillion times a day, every day, non-stop, forever? Sadly, yeah. You see, my dog does five things, repeatedly, all day long: sleep, eat, poop, bark at the neighbors walking by outside, play ball. And if you work at home, at some point the joy of playing fetch with your dog wears off, and you end up feeling like your life is an interminable game of tic-tac-toe with a four year old. They can't get enough of it, you want to slit your wrists.  Now imagine playing tic-tac-toe every day, five or six times day, for the next fifteen years.  Now you get the picture.

So, an engineer came up with this: