Wednesday, March 31, 2010

Around the Intarwebz

BSL hot spot, Lakewood, Ohio is facing a lawsuit after they harassed and targeted a person of color over whether his dog was a Pit Bull or not. The dog was not a Pit Bull. The owner of the dog, a military veteran who relied on the dog for emotional support, eventually moved out of the predominantly white town to avoid further persecution. Lakewood is now a much safer place without a nonviolent, emotional support therapy dog in its midst.

Retrieverman has a good post about Greyhounds and possible reasons for their significantly high rates of osteosarcoma. Good discussion. I know nothing about Greyhounds (except they are pretty) and very little about osteosarcoma, so it was a good learning experience for me.

YesBiscuit! offers honest talk about how we use or misuse language - Framing the Conversation About Pets

The Philadelphia Inquirer has an opinion piece by Michael Fumento entitled "How a Pit Bull is like a Prius.
I do not agree entirely that Pit Bull reporting is similar to the reporting associated with the Toyota Prius. I think a better example is sex-related crime. Sex crimes have remained consistently low as a total percentage of all crimes (~1.2%). Yet, in the 1990s, the reporting of sex-related crimes increased 128%. So although the rate of sex crimes had not actually increased, the reporting had and created a cascade effect on the public's perception of both the severity and type of sex-related crimes. I think the reporting of Pit Bull attacks is similar and that the dramatic increase in reported attacks created a problem that did not exist. For more information on "cascade theory", read this article.

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