Bits and Pieces

This is being tagged as a "feel good" story, but what stands out to me is the intelligence of the bird. It not only knew to call for help, but which vocabulary to use. I never thought of parrots as understanding the meaning of the words they "parrot," but apparently they do. Just like with kids, we often don't give animals enough credit for their intelligence.

GMA video

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Yay! We can only hope it lasts.

A San Jose business reported to be responsible for more than 75 percent of the world’s spam email has been cut off from the Internet and its web site shut down.

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I understand there are already signs we're depleting the Ogallala Aquifer to the point it may not last forever, and now this:

Over the next century, eastern Kansas will get warmer and drier.

Western Kansas will get warmer and a lot drier.

The first in-depth analysis of climate change in Kansas, released Tuesday, offers a bundle of future worries as well as a bleak outlook for agriculture in the state. . . .

Climate change brings Kansans dire prediction

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Make enough fuss and you create a self-fulfilling prophecy. Now there might be something to the claims there's a "war on Christmas":

Ads proclaiming, "Why believe in a god? Just be good for goodness' sake," will appear on Washington, D.C., buses starting next week and running through December. The American Humanist Association unveiled the provocative $40,000 holiday ad campaign Tuesday.

And this response is just stupid:

"How do we define 'good' if we don't believe in God? God in his word, the Bible, tells us what's good and bad and right and wrong. If we are each ourselves defining what's good, it's going to be a crazy world."

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