As has been established in many of my previous blog entries, I am an avid reader of the newspaper, specifically The Advocate, “my newspaper of choice,” which is published in Baton Rouge by Capitol City Press and delivered by our dependable carrier in pouring rain, oppressive heat, and raging hurricanes. Of course, don’t ask me his name because I don’t know our carrier’s name. Hmm, then again, our carrier may not be a he but a she. Anyway, I guess that’s irrelevant. All I do know is that this car pulls into our driveway around 3:00 every morning and someone tosses a bagged newspaper onto our carport. Granted, It usually slides under my Tundra, which means I have to get down on my hands and knees and push it out with a broom, but at least it’s safe from the elements and never in danger of becoming a soggy, unreadable, smelly glob of newsprint; and for that I thank our carrier—whoever he or she might be. 

Anyway, the thing I love about The Advocate, that is, besides its daily comics, Scrambled Word Game; and two challenging crossword puzzles, is how the paper provides me with not only state, national, and international “hard” news, but also glimpses into the idiosyncrasies of both humankind and animal-kind. For example, here are some of the fascinating things I learned just by reading Tuesday’s paper:

1. Animals react to inequity just like humans do. As demonstrated in research conducted at the Clever Dog Lab (Yes, that’s the name, all right) located on the campus of the University of Vienna, Austria, “Dogs, like people and monkeys, seem to have a sense of fairness” (Schmid, 2008, p. 4A). In fact, if you sit two dogs down side-by-side then ask each dog to shake hands, if one dog gets a reward for shaking hands and the other one doesn’t, the unrewarded dog will stop playing the game and refuse to shake hands the next time around. Moreover, the offended dog will even turn away and refuse to look you in the eyes. (And here it was I didn’t even know monkeys had a sense of fairness.)
2. December 31 of this year will be longer by exactly one second. It seems that, along with the economy, the Earth is also slowing down, so to keep us “in sync with Earth’s slightly slowing rotation,” timekeepers of the world’s atomic clocks are going to add an extra second on December 31 after 6:59:59 p.m. and before 7:00 p.m. Eastern Standard Time (Associated Press, 2008, p. 4A). This extra second will mean that 2008, which also contained an extra day because it was a leap year, will be the longest year since 1992 (Associated Press, 2008). And don’t ask me what happened to make 1992 longer because the article didn’t say. Of course, I think 1992 was longer for me personally because I had married Chet the previous December and was still learning to adjust to Chet Time. Chet Time, you see, as compared to Real Time, allowed me only four hours for sleep each night, which made the days in 1992 excruciatingly long. 
3. A group of “litigants” is trying to block President-elect Barack Obama from taking office by claiming that he is not “‘a natural born citizen’ and, therefore, was ineligible to become president” (Savage, 2008, p. 9A). The U.S. Supreme Court, however, on Monday struck down the latest appeal from Leo C. Donofrio, a retired New Jersey lawyer with too much time on his hands, who contends that Obama was not born in Hawaii as he claims but someplace else. Where? Heck, if I know because the article didn’t say, although it did say that this guy, Donofrio, also contends that even if Obama could prove he was born in Hawaii, it wouldn’t matter because Obama’s father was born in Kenya. Huh? Wait a minute. Just why does it matter where Obama’s daddy was born? He wasn’t elected president; his son was.
4. And last but not least, in Valentine, Nebraska, a man “dubbed the ‘Butt Bandit’” has been apprehended after his “cheeky” crime spree and sentenced to more than a year in jail (Associated Press, 2008, p. 5A). It seems that 35-year-old Thomas Larvie had been skulking, or perhaps cavorting, around the fair city of Valentine, smearing his naked “nether parts” with either lotion or petroleum jelly, and leaving behind imprints on the windows of stores, churches, and schools since the spring of 2007. Well, police finally caught him bare-behinded in the act on November 19. Talk about em-barr-ass-ing moments.

And those, my friends, are but a few of the interesting tidbits of information I gleaned from The Advocate, my newspaper of choice, on Tuesday, December 9, 2008; and I bet you can hardly wait to hear what I gleaned from Wednesday’s edition. However, alas, it’s 2:00 in the morning as I type this closing sentence, so I fear that’s all for now. But have no fear, the world will go on spinning, albeit a bit more slowly, and The Advocate will go on printing interesting tidbits of information that provide insight into the workings of the minds of both humans and animals, and at some point in time, I will share those tidbits with you.  

Associated Press (2008) ‘Butt Bandit’ caught after cheeky spree; The Advocate, Baton Rouge, Louisiana; p. 5A.

Associated Press (2008) Dec. 31 will be longer by a second; The Advocate, Baton Rouge, Louisiana; p. 4A.

Savage, D. (2008) Court denies Obama citizenship challenge; The Advocate, Baton Rouge, Louisiana. p. 9A.

Schmid, R. (2008) ‘No fair’ not just human reaction; Associated Press; The Advocate, Baton Rouge, Louisiana; p. 4A.