The Mammalian Daily

Satirical fiction in newspaper form

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Museum announces appointment of architects

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The Board of Governors of The Park Museum announced today that they have appointed the firm of Fleck + Stone Architects to design the museum building and its surrounding area.

In a statement posted on the museum’s web site, the Board of Governors said the architects have “the vision and the skill to create a beautiful building that will properly house and display the history of The Park and its residents.”

Fleck + Stone is the firm responsible for the design of the Institute for the Study of Mammalian Life and The Park’s Burrow Theatre.

The Park Museum, which will be built at an estimated cost of 5 to 10 million Ftoo, will be located in The Park’s central square. Details on the design elements are forthcoming, according to a spokesAnimal for the Board.

A groundbreaking ceremony is planned for September 2012.

Reminder: Park Art Walk

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The organizers of the 6th annual Park ART Walk (PAW) request the honour of your presence at the following event:

Park ART Walk
Saturday, August 18, 2012
10:00 am – 7:00 pm

The Park ART Walk is a one-day, juried art exhibition that showcases the artistic expression of Park residents. PAW showings will take place at participating art galleries, retail establishments, and at the Ancient, Open-Air Theatre.

For more information on this year’s event, please see: INtRT

————————————————————————————-

The Park ART Walk wishes to thank its sponsors:

         
  The Nutbar       LeTwiggery     Amoltrud’s Aesthetics

       Department of Holidays, Festivals, and Celebrations

                                         The Tabby Club
Marine Mammal Bank    Sapsucker Savings and Loan             You’ve Earned Your Stripes™                             

 

UWT, Park Hospital to open first Extinction Anxiety Clinic

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In a statement released yesterday, the University of West Terrier School of Medicine announced that it will collaborate with The Park Hospital for the Afflicted and Infirm to establish The Park’s first Extinction Anxiety Clinic.

The clinic, which will be housed within the University of West Terrier, is the first of its kind in The Park. The Clinic’s mission is to diagnose and treat the symptoms of extinction anxiety in all species of Animals and to educate the public with regard to the effects of extinction anxiety on the health and well-being of Animals.

“Extinction anxiety is one of the fastest-growing psychological conditions in The Park. Every day, we see at least a hundred new cases,” says Dr. Berthilidis Strix, who was appointed as the clinic’s head last month. “It is essential that we address the problem now, before it becomes a threat to our collective health and prosperity,” she says.

The clinic will also be staffed by Drs. Gudrun L. Gibbon and Elinore E. Owl and other faculty members of the University of West Terrier’s School of Medicine, as well as doctors, nurses, and community support workers from The Park Hospital.

In addition to diagnosing and treating Animals, clinic staff hope to conduct research on the effects of extinction anxiety on The Park’s economy, as well as on Animal behaviour.

The Extinction Anxiety Clinic is scheduled to open in January 2013.

New photographs of Jor surface on gossip web site

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Previously unpublished pictures of Jor, The Park’s first leader, have surfaced on the gossip web site, headsNtales.

Previously unpublished photographs of Jor, The Park’s first leader and the founder of modern zoocracy, have surfaced on the gossip web site, headsNtales.

The pictures, which show Jor in some compromising positions, were posted on the site early this afternoon, according to PotWatcher, The Park’s foremost web-watching organization.

PotWatcher says the pictures appeared “without warning and without any mention of their provenance” on the headsNtales site.

“They were just…suddenly there,” said Rufus Gordon Gaupe, President and CEO of PotWatcher.

Posting the pictures is not technically illegal, though it is, in the words of a spokesAnimal for Park Police, “in poor taste”.

Many of the pictures were taken when George Livingstone Barnaby Cuthbert, known to Park citizens as “Jor”, was living as a domestic Cat.

“There are pictures of him with Humans, pictures of him playing with small toys and sleeping and eating with what appears to be another domestic Feline,” Gaupe says.

Political analysts have been quick to weigh in on who might be responsible for the posting.

“I think we can safely say that anti-zoocratic forces are at work here,” said Ronald Grouse, chief political analyst at The Avian Messenger. “It’s obvious this is meant to be a blow to Jor’s reputation…a way to discredit him and what he stood for, which is the concept of Animal self-rule.”

Despite requests for clarification from a number of Park newspapers, including The Mammalian Daily, headsNtales has refused to comment on the posting.

“INtegration through ART” theme of Park Art Walk 2012

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In a statement released today, the organizers of the annual Park Art Walk (PAW) announced a major change in the event’s focus.

“Thanks to funding from The Park’s Department of Holidays, Festivals, and Celebrations, in conjunction with a one-time gift from The Archons’ Initiative Fund, the 2012 Park Art Walk (PAW) will showcase art as it relates to the theme, INtegration through ART,” the statement read in part.

The new theme, which will be known as INtRT, will add a new dimension to the one-day, juried art exhibition, supporters say.

“For the past five years, PAW has done a wonderful job of showcasing the artistic expression of Park residents, but the art has had no defining thread. We believe that INtRT will give us a deeper understanding of ourselves and of our experiences…in life and in art,” said Aintza Kanariar, Director of Public Relations for The Park’s Department of Holidays, Festivals, and Celebrations.

At a press conference, Balthasar Alouatta, press secretary to the Archons, said the one-time gift from the Archons’ Initiative Fund was made “to encourage Animals to learn more about species other than their own, so that we can understand our differences and our similarities.”

INtRT’s emphasis will be on similarities rather than differences, according to Alouatta. “We are celebrating 30 years of Animal self-rule. It is a great achievement that could only have been brought about by some degree of integration. We want to celebrate that integration in the Park Art Walk,” he said.

The 6th annual Park ART Walk (PAW) will take place on Saturday, August 18, 2012 between the hours of 10:00 am and 7:00 pm. Showings will take place at participating art galleries, retail establishments, and at the Ancient, Open-Air Theatre. This year’s jury will include curators from the Tortoiseshell and Kipos Galleries.

Animal IQs fall after time spent with Humans: study

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Animals achieve lower scores on intelligence tests after they have spent a significant length of time in the company of Humans, say the results of a study conducted by the Cognitive and Experimental Psychology division at the University of West Terrier’s Department of Psychology.

The research study, which involved 5,000 Animals from inside and outside The Park, was conducted over a period of three years by UWT psychology professor and lead researcher, Dr. Luule Aednik. The full results will appear in the September issue of the prestigious Journal of Experimental and Reactive Psychology (JERP).

Supported in full by University research funds, the study concludes that prolonged amounts of time spent in close contact with Humans causes a “numbing effect” on the brains of the members of many species.

“There is a deficit after a certain length of time,” said Aednik in an interview with The Mammalian Daily.

“The most shocking result in the testing was the loss of recognition of some of the characteristics of one’s own species. We saw some types of species-specific behaviour almost disappear, often after only a few months. Animals lost basic skills; some had even forgotten how to secure their own food,” she said.

Though the impetus for the study was purely academic, Aednik believes the results have more widespread implications.

“I think they explain some of the problems that some Animals have had in adapting to life in The Park,” she said.

Getting to know you, getting to know all about you: Mammalian Daily to publish series of survivor profiles

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The Mammalian Daily announced today that it has engaged the services of a pair of noted biographers to write a series of pieces about refugee Animals who have made their homes in The Park.

The series, which will be called “Survivor Profiles” will appear under the Influential Animals tab on the newspaper’s web site.

“We think we know our friends and neighbours,” said a spokesAnimal for the paper. “But the truth is, there are things we don’t talk about sometimes, such as where we came from and what life was like there. This series will give us a chance to get to know each other in a deeper way.”

The profiles will appear monthly and will be written by biographers Adeola Kifaru and Kamilah Tembo. Kifaru’s latest work, Ululate!, was described in a recent book review as “the most touchingly-written true story published to date”. Kamilah Tembo, who won the biography prize at the 2011 Park Annual Literary Awards (now known as Chitter Radio Literary Awards) for her book, Never Too Soon, is, herself, the daughter of Park refugees.

The Survivor Profile series will begin this month.

CAA renews campaign to “Bring Back the Dog Paddle!”

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The Canine Athletic Association has renewed its campaign to reinstate the Dog paddle as a competitive stroke.

In a statement published today, the Association once again asserted that the swimming stroke, which fell out of fashion some years ago, is an excellent test of aquatic prowess and should be reinstated in time for the next Interspecial Summer Games in 2013.

A spokesDog for the CAA said the Association’s renewed efforts will include multimedia coverage featuring well-known Park sports figures as well as celebrities such as Bisbee Bichon and I.S. Chow, stars of Varden Spaniel’s 2009 film, Stuffed Dogs Don’t Shed.

“This will be an all-out sensory assault,” said the spokesDog, who confirmed that radio spots had been scheduled on all Park radio stations, public service announcements will be broadcast on all television stations and advertisements will run in most of The Park’s print media.

“We’ve even commissioned a new scent, ‘Soggy Dog’, which will be available for purchase exclusively at the Reek-O-Rama beginning in September,” he said. Proceeds from the scent will go to supporting Canine athletes who are currently training to swim in the Dog paddle competition at the 2013 Summer Games.

“That’s how sure we are that we will be successful this time around,” said the spokesDog.

The Canine Athletic Association launched its first Dog paddle campaign two years before the 2008 (26 AZ) Interspecial Summer Games. That campaign, however, was not successful.

The 2013 Interspecial Summer Games will take place during the last two weeks of September 2013.

Security breach at LynxedIN leaves hundreds vulnerable

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A security breach at LynxedIN has left The Park’s refugee Lynx population vulnerable.

A security breach at the network run by the LynxLink charity has left hundreds of The Park’s immigrant and refugee Lynx and their families vulnerable to abduction, incarceration, and murder.

A spokesAnimal for the charity, which assists immigrants to The Park through its LynxedIN network, told The Mammalian Daily that the charity discovered the breach late last night.

“We became aware of a problem with our systems and immediately shut down our network.  IT experts from the University of West Terrier arrived within an hour to help us,” she said.

Unfortunately, the IT help came too late for The Park’s Lynx. Experts discovered that the identities of hundreds of Lynx were stolen from the charity’s systems.

“It’s a worry, to be sure,” says LynxLink spokesAnimal Lucia Castilla. “Some very sensitive information has been stolen from our database, including the names and addresses of Lynx who have escaped from zoological parks and so-called ‘nature reserves’. The Humans who run these are very aggressive; they’ve been looking for these Lynx and they will stop at nothing to find them. Unfortunately, this has made it easier for them to do so.”

LynxLink confirmed that it has advised all Park Lynx of the problem and the charity has assured them that it will assist them in all ways possible to maintain their security within The Park.

“The safety of The Park’s Lynx is of paramount importance to everyone,” says a message on LynxLink’s web site this morning.

Park’s music makers at work on first interspecial song

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For the first time in history, a group of The Park’s music makers have banded together to produce the first interspecial song.

The song was commissioned by The Board of Governors of The Park Museum and will be performed at the museum’s opening ceremonies in 2013.

A spokesAnimal for the museum’s Governors said the idea for the song came to the Governors while they were studying the architectural plans for the new museum.

“It all came together in their minds…the different stages in the development of The Park…the prehistory…the establishment of zoocracy,” he said. “It seemed fitting [to them] that we should celebrate how far we’ve come in a song.”

At last count, there were ten groups involved: The Canary Cousins, The Feral Four, Eggie and The Pigs, The Beasts of Burden, Les Chiens Débraillés, Scentient Beings, The DomEstyx, The Endeka Elephant Band, NIML, and rapper Will.o.be. The new grouping does not have a leader, Eggie of Eggie and The Pigs told The Mammalian Daily.

“We’re going to see if we can do this in a completely zoocratic way,” he said. He also confirmed that proceeds from the sale of the song will go to support the museum.

“We’re hoping the song will be successful enough to give the museum a financial boost,” he said.

With the working title of “The Promise of The Park,” the song appears to be on track to do just that.

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