Title: “Unlikely Friendships: 47 Remarkable Stories from the Animal Kingdom”

Author: Jennifer Holland

Rank: 68

Blurb: “Unlikely Friendships documents one heartwarming tale after another of animals who, with nothing else in common, bond in the most unexpected ways. A cat and a bird. A mare and a fawn. An elephant and a sheep. A snake and a hamster.”

Review: “I have to say that this may not be a book for sensitive children. One story is about a lioness who (unbelievably) adopts a baby Oryx, caring for it as if it were her own cub. As she is resting, weak with starvation from refusing to leave it, the Oryx wanders off, when a male lion ‘snatched it up’. She ‘sniffed the blood of her baby in the grass’ and helplessly watched the male ‘devour it’.”

Customers Also Bought: “The Steal: A Cultural History of Shoplifting”, by Rachel Shteir

Footnote: Tell us the one about the scorpion and the frog.

Unlikely Friendships [Fuck Amazon]

With the country on the brink of default and the world on the brink of collapse, The Preznit of These United States stepped to the podium yesterday afternoon to answer queries from the elite of Our Exceptional Nation’s Press Corps. AP White House correspondent Ben Feller showed why our reporters are the envy of the world by immediately drilling to the heart of the issue:

You said you want the leaders back here at 11 a.m. to give you an answer about the path forward. What is your answer about the path forward? What path do you prefer, given what’s just happened?

Aptly put, Brother Feller. Set the spin aside and get The Preznit on the record about his own priori—

Wait — you’re not done?

And also, sir, quickly, what does this say about your relationship with Speaker Boehner?

Ah. Well. Our mistake. We mistook you for a journalist. Never mind.

July 22 Press Conference [White House]

Third nipple found on woman’s foot [Yahoo Oz, via CheapBoy]

Maybe it’s because we’ve lived our entire life on the Left Coast — where religion is certainly present, and just as certainly not suffocating — that we fail to see the point of something like this:

Because we represent such a small sliver of the American population and are often seen in a negative light, I believe that it is imperative that atheists make themselves known. A 2010 Gallup poll demonstrated something the LGBTQ community has recognized for some time: people are significantly more inclined to oppose gay marriage if they do not know anyone who is gay.

We weren’t aware that living La Vita Heathen was a matter of genetics, and the writer — who himself happens to be gay — should know better than to make a comparison like that. For that matter, his later comparison of atheists to Muslims, while at least categorically correct, overlooks the nasty distinction that American bigotry against Muslims is actually racist, seeing how most Muslims don’t exhibit Nordic traits.

Read more »

“The shutdown of the Federal Aviation Administration that will occur Friday night if Congress does not reach a deal to extend its authorization would result in the ‘immediate furlough’ of 4,000 workers, bring a halt to $2.5 billion in airport construction projects, and cost the government about $200 million a week in lost airline ticket taxes, Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood said on a conference call Thursday.” [ThinkProgress]

“Russian President Dmitry Medvedev has signed a bill that officially classifies beer as alcoholic. Until now anything containing less than 10% alcohol in Russia has been considered a foodstuff.” [BBC, via Daring Fireball]

Our exclusive series of Inadvertent Metaphors Illustrating the Congressional Drive to Default America continues today with this forty-foot sinkhole that suddenly appeared under the bed of a nice 65-year-old grandmother.

That sinking feeling: Woman finds giant sinkhole under her bed [Yahoo]