XIAM007 - Making Unique Observations in a Very Cluttered World: 11/27/11

Sunday, 27 November 2011

Arizona Gun Club Invites Families to Pose With Santa and a Machine Gun -

An Arizona gun club is putting a new twist on Christmas by inviting families to pose for a photo with Santa Claus and a gun.
The Scottsdale Gun Club is hosting what they call a family event that allows people to take a holiday card picture with St. Nick, and a high-powered firearm.
Santa poses against a backdrop of an $80,000 Garwood mini-gun, and families can choose to pose with other firearms. Choices range from pistols to modified AR15s.
They also get a chance to test out the machine guns.
“I thinks it’s going to be all in fun from those who support the second amendment and those who don’t. Whether you’re a gun advocate or not, you should have a lot of fun with it,” said gun club member Richard Jones.

Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/us/2011/11/27/arizona-gun-club-invites-families-to-pose-with-santa-and-machine-gun/?test=latestnews

Can the Bulldog Be Saved? - some modern breeding practices are detrimental to the health and welfare of dogs -

A rendering, at right, of what a healthier breed of bulldog might look like, based on input from veterinarians: A) short snout made longer; B) skin folds reduced; C) body made leaner; D) tail elongated; E) hips widened

Broadcast on the BBC, “Exposed” spawned three independent reports into purebred breeding, each finding that some modern breeding practices — including inbreeding and breeding for “extreme traits,” like the massive and short-faced head of the bulldog — are detrimental to the health and welfare of dogs. Bulldogs were noted in all three reports as a breed in need of an intervention, with one going so far as to question whether it is ethically defensible to continue breeding them at all.

“There is little doubt that the anatomy of the English bulldog has considerable capacity to cause suffering,” Dr. Nicola Rooney and Dr. David Sargan concluded in one of the reports, “Pedigree Dog Breeding in the U.K.: A Major Welfare Concern?” “The breed is noted to have locomotion difficulties, breathing problems, an inability to mate or give birth without assistance. . . . Many would question whether the breed’s quality of life is so compromised that its breeding should be banned.”