KICK THE KID-HARASSING HABIT

I've mentioned before that one of the biggest PR mistakes PETA makes is accosting schoolchildren on school sidewalks with pro-vegan propaganda. The organization seems to have no clue about the overtones this brings up for the average parent or news-reader. This time they compound it with an equally clueless slogan - intended to get kids to shun KFC: "Kick the Bucket." Yep. In other words, go vegan and die. Brilliant. This idea should've kicked the bucket before it even got out of the conference room.

RUDY T. GOES VEGAN, BEATS CANCER

...a slightly-rewritten version of the headline on this profile of Former Houston Rockets head coach, Rudy Tomjanovich, who's switched to veganism as a cancer-fighter. "People think that I'm on a weird diet, but it's really the most basic diet you can be on, and I feel great," Rudy says.

HUNTING FOR HUNTERS

One of the fun things about our sloooooowly evolving culture is to watch the sport-hunting aficionados try to make sense of the fact that their beloved "tradition" is being rejected by young people as a relic from a stupider time. Here's a fairly typical straightforward report on one state's stats - In the last couple of decades, the number of hunters taking to the field for [Utah's] annual general deer hunt has dropped by more than two-thirds, despite the state's population increasing more than 40 percent. Another is this sobfest about people like Hugh Poirier, who worries about the falling number of Canadian youth who are taking up the "sport," whose "best childhood memories have to do with hunting trips he took with his dad." (Hmmmmm... wonder how many other one-on-one all-day outings little Hugh got with pops?) But the real entertainment is in stuff like this, deliciously clueless whining from the wingnuttiest national newspaper on earth...making ever more stridently the explicit argument that guns equal revenue equal moral authority.

COCKFIGHTERS GET TAX BREAKS

Hideous. While publicly claiming they want to get serious about the toxic slime that is cockfighting, the feds give 'em tax breaks because they're in the habit of encouraging anyone who wants to exploit animals.

MILK TAKES ANOTHER HIT

Vitamin D should come from sunlight, not additives, says the guy who discovered it. Dr. Michael F. Holick, a Professor of Medicine, Dermatology, Physiology and Biophysics at the Boston University School of Medicine, told the National Institutes of Health's symposium: "There is a mountain of well conducted, validated science that demonstrates that the production of the activated form of Vitamin D is one of the most effective ways the body controls abnormal cell growth. Regular and moderate exposure to sunlight is the best way to help the body manufacture the Vitamin D it needs. The idea that we should protect ourselves from the sun all the time is misguided and unhealthy."

TIGERS DON'T CHANGE THEIR STRIPES

In the week since the news of the attack on Roy, an interesting op-ed phenomenon has emerged: Pundits across our nation are conflating that story and the concurrent one about the guy with a tiger in his apartment, wagging their fingers at those who keep tigers as pets. This one is typical, focusing on what a terrible idea it is to keep dangerous wild animals close at hand, but like the others, failing to see where that conclusion leads. "It's interesting that both tiger attacks happened within days of each other," the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette says. "It's as if Mother Nature was trying to remind us of something." That we shouldn't keep wild tigers in captivity in order to entertain ourselves? Ya think?