Service Animals on the Radio, a Horse Fetching a Beer, Plus Blog Maintenance Downtime : Culture Dish

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Rebecca Skloot is an award-winning science writer, and a contributing editor at Popular Science magazine; she's worked as a correspondent for the NPR show RadioLab, and PBS Nova ScienceNOW. Her writing appears in The New York Times Magazine, O: The Oprah Magazine, Discover and others. She teaches in the University of Memphis's creative writing program. Her first book, The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, is forthcoming from Crown on February 2, 2010. It tells the story of HeLa -- the first immortal human cell line ever grown in culture (pictured in the blog's banner) -- the woman those cells came from, and the family she left behind. Click Welcome to Culture Dish for an introduction to this blog and its author.

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« DOJ's Proposal and Rationale for Allowing Psychiatric Service Animals (dogs only) | Main | Why New Year's Resolutions Don't Work -- The Neurology of Change »

Service Animals on the Radio, a Horse Fetching a Beer, Plus Blog Maintenance Downtime

Category: Animals • Assistance Creatures • Disability Rights • Housekeeping • Policy • Publication News and Followups
Posted on: January 9, 2009 9:26 AM, by Rebecca Skloot

In a display of stunningly bad timing given all the comments people have been posting here in recent days, the entire ScienceBlogs network will be down from 1pm today until sometime Saturday (or whenever they're done) for a system upgrade. I won't be able to post, and readers won't be able to comment, until the system is back online (alas). If there's some pressing breaking news while this network is down, I'll post it on my old blog here. But I doubt that will happen. Please check back in a day or so to post your comments or, if you simply can't wait, you can email them to me via the address on my "contact" page.

In the meantime, there's plenty of reading here related to my recent New York Times Magazine story, Creature Comforts, including several updates with photos and video footage.

Here are links to a few Public Radio interviews I did this week: Here and Now on the service animal species ban. Word of Mouth on the latest developments (mac users listen here). And Day to Day on the wide range of animals being used to help the disabled.

And for all those who wonder if it's really possible to train a horse to ride in a car, or fetch a beer from the refrigerator, I give you this very strange video. Of all the bizarre and somewhat disturbing things in it, oddly, the horse eating a hamburger may be the creepiest for me (um, horse eating cow???). Overall: Seriously weird.

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Comments

Aargh...I lost 9 I.Q. points watching that video.

Posted by: kamaka | January 9, 2009 10:47 AM

Ann Althouse points to this article on the Japanese use of robotic therapeutic animals.

Posted by: Ed Flinn | January 12, 2009 12:35 PM

We know you are busy busy, and the upgrade broke the thread...

My companion-vulture says this thread is not dead.

Posted by: kamaka | January 12, 2009 10:38 PM

I find drinking a beer after it's been in a horse's mouth far more disturbing than a horse eating a hamburger - he probably like the bread and lettuce part more than the beef.

Posted by: Mark Bellis | January 14, 2009 10:03 PM