I Bet Walt's Smiling...

I missed Wreck-It Ralph in theaters, so I hadn't seen Disney's new short Paperman until it went online recently.

Wow.

One of the knocks on some of the computer-generated movies is that the characters have a sort of sameness to them. Which one came from Pixar, which one came from DreamWorks, which one came from Disney itself...just by looking, it was impossible to tell. The movies themselves were often fantastic -- any Toy Story, Wall-E, The Incredibles and so on, but hand-drawn animation had a distinctness of style that the CGI lacked.

But to make Paperman, Disney developed a technology to blend hand-drawn style animation like that in its great films such as Snow White or Beauty and the Beast with the detail and background that a hand-drawn feature just didn't have the time to include.

Call me a fanboy, but I'm looking forward to what might come from this new process and idea. Which is kind of what Uncle Walt was supposed to be about a lot of the time himself, as I understand it.

Save Bambi? Go to Jail!

One day a couple of years ago an Indiana police officer and his wife found an injured fawn on their neighbor's porch. They rescued it and nursed it back to health, planning on raising it until it matured and could survive on its own in the wild.

One day this past summer, an official with the Indiana Department of Conservation found out they had the deer. The Indiana Department of Natural Resources said the deer could be dangerous and so they wanted to euthanize it. This is a funny position for a Department of Natural Resources to take. After all, the U.S. Treasury doesn't just throw away the money it prints...never mind.

Anyway, the day that the deer was scheduled to be put down (requested last meal: salt lick, hold the hunters), it escaped from its rescuers' back yard. For ordinary folks, that might be the end of it, although the police officer's commanders might want him to review jail security procedures. Some of the people he arrests might be almost as smart as the deer and present a greater risk of escape. But not for the brave bureaucrats of the Indiana Department of Natural Resources! The police officer and his wife have been charged with a misdemeanor count of "unlawful possession of a deer," which carries a maximum fine of $2,000 and up to 60 days in the county lockup. It also carries with it the question as to what exactly constitutes lawful possession of a deer in Indiana, but the online information provided by the state of Indiana is not clear.

Now, the police officer and his wife probably should have called a zoo or wildlife refuge to take care of the deer. We think of them as timid and mild, but deer have some pretty powerful legs and if threatened can kick the stuffing out of you or even cave in your skull with a lucky strike. Mating season and other times can bring out aggression in them and like any animal, if they for some reason feel cornered or threatened they will fight. They are wild animals and are not a good fit for a developed neighborhood. A police officer has a special duty to the law and might need to be mindful of the example he or she sets with respect to it.

But does that mean that the couple should have to face the possibility of fines and -- however unlikely --  jail time for this mistake? If your answer is yes, you should probably move to Indiana. They've got some jobs for which you might be an excellent fit.

Who'd A Thunk It?

Apparently 'tis the week to pick on cats.

A science reporter for the BBC gives us this story, in which we are told that cats in the United States kill lots of birds and small animals (apparently cats in England dress them up and have tea). This follows on the heels of the notice earlier in the week about the fellow in New Zealand who wants cats gone because they kill birds.

I can't mock the reporter too much -- since the New Zealand thing hit and she had before her an item on a similar topic, she wrote it up and sent it out to gather what eyeballs it may. That's part of her job.

On the other hand, the folks who did the study? That would be scientists at the Smithsonian Conservation Biology Institute and some from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife service, which means that part of this study belongs to you and me because we paid for it. They reviewed a lot of other studies that examined the predatory abilities of cats to try to make a good guess about how much killing they were doing. And they found out that cats indeed do kill other animals.

You and I are the proud co-owners (along with 300 million or so of our fellow citizens) of a study that says predators prey on animals that are their prey, and then they kill them. I intend to frame mine.

Dreamers Would Ride...

You know, when you get that iTunes email describing new releases and the first one on the list is an acoustic version of Justin Bieber's Believe, you can really, really hope that tapping the little trashcan icon would actually make that album disappear as easily as does the e-mail.

But it isn't so.

Warning Fulfilled!

They warned me that if I voted for Mitt Romney that the administration wouldn't make it a priority to close the indefinite detention facility at Guantánamo Bay in Cuba...

...and they were right!

This May Not End Well...

So a dolt in New Zealand wants to phase house cats out of his little island. He says it's because they kill birds, and he apparently would rather have birds around than cats. Less intellectual competition, perhaps?

He figures people should spay or neuter their cats, then not get another one when the one they have dies. Undomesticated cats can be caught and euthanized, which should be done for free by city and town councils because veterinarians charge too much. People who adopt cats from shelters would be required to purchase a microchip inserted under the feline's skin, so the government can keep track of who owns what cats.

There are more problems with this plan than its originator has brain cells (I set the bar low). For one, there's no such thing as "free" euthanasia of animals. The supplies or equipment used must be purchased from someone, and the person performing the task is unlikely to do it for free (and if they volunteer to do so, then they should probably have a chip put under their skin so the local police know where they are). It's going to cost someone something, and by someone I mean, "the residents of the particular town or city who pay higher taxes or fees to fund the process."

Then there's the problem of human beings engineering the environment, which works something like never. Obviously removing predators will enhance bird populations. But will the birds then over-populate and require periodic mass killings? Will there be other potentially problematic side effects from an increase in the number of airborne digestive tracts? New Zealand's dry cleaners haven't stated their position on the matter yet, but I'm betting they're weighing it carefully.

Or the problem of an unelected dimwit trying to control a society. New Zealand is not the United States, but there's enough similarity to say that we have sufficient problems with elected dimwits doing this -- they don't need volunteer help.

And the final problem? There are 1.4 million domesticated cats in New Zealand, compared with 4.5 million human beings. I couldn't find data on how many undomesticated cats live there, but for grins let's say there's one feral feline for every two sedate little house cats. That makes just more than two million sneaky little furballs, whom even the dim mind behind this idea recognizes as "friendly little serial killers." Who see in the dark way better than we do.

Probably shouldn't have given up that tail and forgotten how to climb trees, primate.

Broken Windows?

So you may have read that the Sacramento Kings are going to be bought by a group of folks from Seattle, who are going to move the NBA team to that city so they can have the team they've been whining about losing since their previous team moved to Oklahoma City.

Among the buyers are, apparently, some folks who help run Microsoft, or at least folks who made a lot of money from the software giant, and at least one California legislator is a little steamed. While he does not actually say, "Dis is a nice little business you got here. Be a shame if anything were to...eh...happen, you know? Do you smell smoke? I smell smoke," he definitely captures the tone quite well.

I don't think this will end well for the California legislature if it gets pushed too far. For one, I don't know that Microsoft founder Bill Gates rides horses, rendering that tactic inapplicable. For another, if it comes down to lawyers and money (sometimes known as a "2/3 Zevon"), Gates is a man who really does have a dollar for every time someone called him a nerd, and then some. California? Not so much.