IWA For Sunday 101010

I just can't let this go.

Hey folks,

Yes, as we wrap things up with our IWA, you have to realize something. I am really still thinking about this. This really pissed me off. I understand it most likely has something to do with me being a Firefighter in my younger years, and the fact I KNOW what a fire is capable of. Maybe it's because I went to a Big Manson, TWICE. Maybe because I have seen the Death and Destruction first hand. Maybe it's because I RESPECT Fire. But this?

This was guys doing what they were told to do, which is NOT doing their Jobs. How anyone could stand back and watch it happen while a Resident is doing what little they can to protect their Home. I still want to know if those on the scene KNEW that their were animals inside.

I do not care about this Asinine Policy, the reason, nor how long it has been in place. This is a CLEAR example of looking at a situation and saying, there has to be a better way. Other than MANDATED, and Government Ordered Extortion. Pay or else.

I could award MANY different people in this situation. But the one that bothers me the most is the Mayor. Mayor David Crocker. Him saying this,

"Anybody that's not inside the city limits of South Fulton, it's a service we offer. Either they accept it or they don't."

Pay up or else. Your Home could burn to the ground. Sounds Like Extortion to me. When Cranick realized he was on his own, he begged the Firefighters to help, he says he told the operator he would pay whatever is necessary to have the fire put out. Our Idiot's response?

"If we let residence pay on the spot, no one would pay until their home was on fire."

So again, Pay up or else. MANY people are not happy with this. I'm glad that this is getting National attention. Hey Mayor, I got news for ya. Guess who's coming for dinner? Philanthropy Team Mobilizing Thousands of Pet Lovers to Protest Tennessee Mayor and Fire Chief

The Philanthropy Team, LLC - an Arizona-based company specializing in helping non profit animal welfare groups, today announced that it is mobilizing thousands of pet lovers nationwide to demand the termination of South Fulton, Tennessee's Mayor David Crocker and Fire Chief David Wilds for their irresponsible actions and complete disregard of life for allowing four family pets to die in a house fire last week

Let this be a message to all other area's out there, across the Nation. DO NOT FOLLOW Fulton, Tennessee's example.

Surprise, AZ (PRWEB) October 7, 2010

The Philanthropy Team, LLC - an Arizona-based company specializing in helping non profit animal shelters, today announced that it is mobilizing thousands of pet lovers nationwide to demand the termination of South Fulton, Tennessee's Mayor David Crocker and Fire Chief David Wilds for their irresponsible actions and complete disregard of life for allowing four family pets to die in a house fire last week. Firefighters from South Fulton, Tennessee let a home burn to the ground last week because the homeowner, Gene Cranick, forgot to pay the annual $75 fire policy fee. The Cranick family lost all of their possessions and their four beloved pets - three dogs and one cat - died by burning alive. The city of South Fulton REFUSED to respond because the family forgot to pay the $75 annual fee.

The Philanthropy Team is using an on-line viral campaign and social media to alert over 6,000 animal lovers from all 50 states to write letters, call and e-mail the City Commissioners of South Fulton, TN to immediately terminate the Mayor and Fire Chief. Pet lovers wishing to join this crusade can visit the home page of The Philanthropy Team to "Join the Protest" by clicking on the Take Action Now button or by donating to the cause.

Donations are also being collected to fund placement of a full page ad in the Union City Daily Messenger and The Obion County Weekly demanding the immediate resignation of South Fulton Mayor David Crocker and Fire Chief David Wilds for their role in allowing four beloved family pets to perish in a preventable house fire. Funds raised above and beyond what is needed to fund the advertisements will be used to help the Cranick family. The Philanthropy Team is also forming a team of protesters to descend upon South Fulton city hall in the coming weeks.

The Philanthropy Team has successfully mobilized thousands of pet lovers before using on-line viral marketing campaigns and social media outlets. They previously collected thousands of signatures to protest Congress's Crush Video Ban as well as to protest a Mesa, AZ restaurant that served lion meat. In both instances, animal lovers nationwide responded by sending/placing thousands of calls and e-mails that flooded designated recipients.

Congratulations Mayor, David Crocker, you ARE the Idiot of the Week. For your blind following of an insane and possibly illegal Rule, even though that Life was ended, and your lack to show any empathy or remorse. The Blood of those Animals are on YOUR hands. Imagine if a Person Died there. I would be standing on the front line calling for you to be locked up. I still think you should be charged. Fired to say the least.
Peter

Animals and Souls, More Evidence Of Animals More Than Creatures

As I have always believed.

Hey folks,

Today in the Health and Science Segment, I really want to talk about something different. This is not new here, I've talked about this before. I LOVE Animals. Truth is, I like animals more than I like most people. No offence to anyone in particular. Just a fact. Animals have no alternative agendas. They love you. You love them. They want nothing from you other than the basics. They will love you till death.

I have had many animals over my lifetime. Dogs, Cats, Birds, Fish, Ginnie Pigs, Hamsters, Ferrets, and even a Chinchilla at one point. You know what I have discovered in all these cases? They all have emotions, and they all have personalities. None of the animals I have had the pleasure of living with were the same.

Right now, I have two Cats. "Jumpy" for obvious reasons, and "Winks" because she actually winks at you. Jumpy just wants to play. Run around playing with this or that. The slightest noise and she is out to investigate it. If I leave the Porch door open and a Lizard goes by, she will get it and bring it right back in. She rarely wants to be petted or bothered. She is happy on her own. Winks? Winks is a lover. She will hop on my chair arm when I'm sitting there and raise one paw and make a petting type motion. If I start petting her, she comes onto my lap and enjoys her message. They both know where the food is and will take you right there to get it when they get hungry. They also both beg when you are cooking something. They both show their emotions quite clearly.

So whenever I see something like this, it just fascinates me. According to the AP - Bird experiment shows Aesop's fable may be true By MALCOLM RITTER, AP Science Writer Malcolm Ritter, Ap Science Writer – Thu Aug 6, 12:06 pm ET

NEW YORK – From the goose that laid the golden egg to the race between the tortoise and the hare, Aesop's fables are known for teaching moral lessons rather than literally being true. But a new study says at least one such tale might really have happened.

It's the fable about a thirsty crow. The bird comes across a pitcher with the water level too low for him to reach. The crow raises the water level by dropping stones into the pitcher. (Moral: Little by little does the trick, or in other retellings, necessity is the mother of invention.)

Now, scientists report that some relatives of crows called rooks used the same stone-dropping strategy to get at a floating worm. Results of experiments with three birds were published online Thursday by the journal Current Biology.

Rooks, like crows, had already been shown to use tools in previous experiments.

Christopher Bird of Cambridge University and a colleague exposed the rooks to a 6-inch-tall clear plastic tube containing water, with a worm on its surface. The birds used the stone-dropping trick spontaneously and appeared to estimate how many stones they would need. They learned quickly that larger stones work better.

In an accompanying commentary, Alex Taylor and Russell Gray of the University of Auckland in New Zealand noted that in an earlier experiment, the same birds had dropped a single stone into a tube to get food released at the bottom. So maybe they were just following that strategy again when they saw the tube in the new experiment, the scientists suggested.

But Bird's paper argued there's more to it: The rooks dropped multiple stones rather than just one before reaching for the worm, and they reached for it at the top of the tube rather than checking the bottom.

The researchers also said Aesop's crow might have actually been a rook, since both kinds of birds were called crows in the past.

Folks we see this sort of thing all the time. I remember a friend of my, Bill, told me that he was sitting at a park when he heard something moving in the garbage bin. He watched for a second and he saw a big Raccoon come out holding a Fast Food bag. He said, "Pete, I swear this is true. The Coon then looked in the bag, closed it, put in in his mouth and just wonder away into the woods. It was as if he was checking his order."

I remember watching two Raccoons working hard at attempting to figure out how to open my garbage can one night. They worked on it for a good 15 minutes. Then, not wanting to clean the mess, I scared them off.

I know, I know, a lot of people look at animals as nothing more than creatures that have no reasoning abilities, nor problem solving higher intelligence. Some think that they have no memories, nor are they self aware. I beg to differ. I may be wrong. I in no way claim to be an expert in anyway. But from my own personal experience, animals are far more than just mindless, Soulless creatures.
Peter

Sources:
AP - Bird experiment shows Aesop's fable may be true

Animals and Souls

H. S. For Sunday 092808

Hey folks,

I do not know about you, but I have always been curious about something. They say animals do not have souls. Then again, some people do not feel that there is anything special about us either. But most assume, which is really all you can do, that animals are not self aware, they do not have an intelligence that tells them they are special in any way.

These people say that animals are just dumb creatures of habits and learned behaviour. I disagree due to this reason. I have had many pets. I have had Dogs, Cats, Birds, Fish, Ginnie Pigs, Hamsters, even a Chinchilla. Every one of them seem to have had their own personality.

Each of the animals that I have had over the years have shown emotions. You know when they are happy, tail wagging, singing, rubbing up against you ETC. You can tell when they are sad, angry, and even when they are scared. All animals have distinct personalities. So if these animals do not have a soul, then how can they have emotion?

Now I'm no expert on this by any means. Just life observations. I also understand the attachment that many feel for their animals. They become as a part of the family and some even treat them as if they WERE human. But any time I see an article like this, it gets my attention. I just find this interesting. If you don't, that's fine, I'll be right back with the IWA.

Live Science. com - Bees Can Count By Graciela Flores, Natural History Magazine posted: 26 September 2008 03:55 pm ET

Honeybees are clever little creatures. They can form abstract concepts, such as symmetry versus asymmetry, and they use symbolic language — the celebrated waggle dance — to direct their hivemates to flower patches. New reports suggest that they can also communicate across species, and can count — up to a point.

With colleagues, Songkun Su of Zhejiang University in Hangzhou, China, and Shaowu Zhang of the Australian National University in Canberra managed to overcome the apian impulse to kill intruders and cultivated the first mixed-species colonies, made up of European honeybees, Apis mellifera, and Asiatic honeybees, A. cerana. The researchers confirmed that the two species have their own dialects: foraging in identical environments, the bees signaled the distance to a food source with dances of different durations.

Remarkably, despite the communication barrier, A. cerana decoded A. mellifera's dance and found the food.

Also at the Australian National University, Marie Dacke and Mandyam V. Srinivasan trained European honeybees to pass a particular number of colored stripes in a tunnel to get a food reward, which was placed by a stripe. When they removed the food, the bees still returned to the same stripe.

Next, they mixed things up on the bees: they varied the spacing of the stripes, and even replaced stripes with unfamiliar markers. The insects consistently passed the same number of markers to approach the former reward site, demonstrating that they could count, up to four.

The studies burnish the impressive list of honeybees' known cognitive abilities, all achieved with a brain the size of a sand grain.

The studies were detailed in the journals PLoS One and Animal Cognition.

This is a Bee. We know that Ants are social creatures, and like I said, I have had many pets. I don't know. I can not prove that the experts are wrong about animals having no soul, but they can not prove that they are right. Do I still think that people come first. Of course I do. However, I also feel that we need to respect all live on Earth, no matter how big or small.
Peter

Sources:
Live Science. com - Bees Can Count