Kurma

"The clown who starred as Ronald McDonald in McDonald's telly ads has quit to lead a crusade against burgers. Actor Geoffrey Giuliano - famous world-wide as the burger-loving clown - revealed he is a vegetarian!

He has pledged to rescue animals from the slaughterhouse "as my way of saying sorry for selling out to concerns who make millions out of murdering them." Giuliano, 38, has bought ten calves who wander free on his "Cow Protection Estate" in New York State."

This is not exactly breaking news, but interesting nevertheless.
Loads more info....

bit of a whisk-y business

Renee from Christchurch, New Zealand, writes:
"How do you make a pikelet mixture with three men multi-tasking and time to spare in less than 30 minutes? And what does the third guy do?

Kurma replies:
"One man can hold the bowl, one man can tip in the flour, milk and egg-replacement, and the third man can do the whisking. There you have it - the Public Service Trio."

Last night I was woken by cats who were moaning like human babies outside my window - rather spooky. I'm sure you've heard such things.

Anyway, cats were on my mind when I awoke, and I remembered publishing an article about a very special cat, almost a year ago. Here it is again - a very good read.

If we observe nature, we will see that different creatures are endowed with different special gifts, known in sanskrit as vibutis, in the shape of developed sensory powers.

For example, fish and other sea-dwelling creatures have an extremely developed sense of taste, dogs have very acute hearing, and some birds like the vulture can see objects many kilometres away.

And cats...or shall we say Oscar the cat...? Oscar has an unearthly ability to predict when residents of the Steere House Nursing and Rehabilitation Center in Providence, Rhode Island are about to die.

Read this very interesting article from the New England Journal of Medicine.

And here's some readers' comments:

"I read this the other day. Fascinating for sure but it doesn't surprise me. I have a couple of cats of my own and while they're no death predictors they "know" things sometimes. (And isn't he a handsome kitty?) Amy.

"Wow .. Reminds me how much is going on around us that we are completely unaware of. Last week my friend went to visit his father's grave after an abscence of many years and he took his dog, Murray, for the first time. There were more rows than last time he was there so he let his dog off the lead to have a run around and started to try to find his fathers grave. Shortly afterwards he looked up to see Murray sitting three rows behind and not budging when he called him, so he wandered over to put him back on his lead and found he was sitting on his father's grave. They are definitely tuned into the universe on a different frequency than us." Radha.

"Having had many cats as members of our family over the years, i know them to be highly intelligent and perceptive beings. Each of our cats had starkly differing personalities. Little humans in fur is what I call them. When my cat Madhu was dying of nose cancer and half her nose was eaten away, we had to put her down (something I still find hard to deal with). Normally she would fuss and fight if she was taken in the basket to the vet. But not on that fateful day. She was quiet and accepting, weird as it may seem, she knew her day had come." Sudika

"I work at this nursing home and know Oscar. I just saw him do this last week. He is such a sweet cat. this particular web site and the people who post on it, make more sense than most who have given their opinons on Oscar. Thank you." Terbobun