Adopt a black dog

I actually was quite upset to find that there may be some sort of discrimination against black animals when people are choosing pets. Or at least so says this recent Slate article . We had pets of many hues when I was growing up, including a calico cat named Mata Hari. But our dog Midnight was one of the sweetest animals, and who could forget our cats Sugarfoot and Twinkletoes? Admittedly, most of our pets came to us by happenstance rather than choice, but still--I don't remember wishing they were of some lighter hue.


I don't live in a place where I have an option to have pets and frankly I don't miss the responsibility, but something about that article really made me want to go out and get a black dog. Why isn't there some equivalent of Black Beauty to be a kind of poster child for the cause?

 

 The image is from a company called Mulberry Interior Design which apparently is not averse to using dogs in their photo shoots. A nice touch, I feel.

nickel slots

Yet another interesting piece over at the Opinionator, this time from Barbara Dafoe Whitehead. She's talking about how the advent of slot machines in more and more communities is really a detriment to the poor.


I'm not much of a gambler, and I'm not saying that that's necessarily a virtue. There are some cases where being less risk averse is better. Some might say that the losses of a gambler are on their own head. But as someone who has spent far too much time playing computer solitaire in the last couple of days, I can't really get down on anyone else's compulsions. Read the article and see if you don't feel like these businesses are preying on people's weaknesses. You can read it HERE .

A thoughtful piece by Jon Mooallam on our interaction with wildlife and how our ability and desire to intervene and not to intervene is on the Opinionater. It involves a nest of baby Bald Eagles. I think one of the most interesting aspects of it was the historical context. We tend to think that our feelings for wild animals are innate, but it seems more likely that they are just the reflection of a current fashion.