Feral! 2002 is going to be damn cool. How cool -is- 'damn cool'? Oh, that's easy..

Guest of honour: Ginger (Jessica Willard), creator of Falstaff (intolerably cute).

Special guest: Uncle Kage (Dr Sam Kage v2.0 with Mohawk option)

Workshops: art techniques, writing, fursuit construction, sculpting + more.

Activities: Kayaking, wall climbing, swimming, high ropes, nature hikes, campfire sing-alongs, and ritual Teletubby sacrifices. Rargh.

on Saturday Night.. the Feral! Woodland Rave!: DJ Snowwolf, DJ Genki, Slay3r and Chris Pardus.

This isn't just a con.. this is Feral!

Or, if you're a dog person, you've known this all along.

A recent study has shown that dogs are able to do rudimentary math. In an experiement similar to one performed on monkeys, a dog was shown a pile of treats. Then a screen was lowered, obscuring the treats, and the treats were either left along, or a few were taken away. Then the screen was raised.

When a few treats were missing, the dogs stared at the treats for a few seconds longer than they did when the number of treats stayed the same, suggesting that they knew there were fewer treats.

From Radio Comics' website: "As some of you may or may not know, longtime Radio creator Jim Hardiman has been having health problems. Specifically, his diabetes has caused blood clots to form in his eyes. Thankfully, with some management and laser eye surgery, permanent blindness was averted. However, the surgery was very expensive, and like most comic artists, he doesn't have medical insurance. So we at Radio decided to sponsor a benefit book to help Jim with his bills! We asked our best and brightest artists to submit their take on Jim's popular Skunkworks characters and the response was overwhelming! Skunkworks: Reflections was born!"

The rare Dartmoor pony, famous symbol of wild Britain, is up for sale every year at local auctions. But the Freinds of the Dartmoor Hill Pony want the rare breed to go to places where they cost more than just a pint of milk. To popularize and preserve the rare horse, which numbers under 3000, they've started DartmoorHillPony.com to tell people internationally about this marvelous rare breed equine.
So if your parents never let you get a pony when you were little, here's where to look.

Less than three weeks to go until CACE! There are lots of reasons for you to attend CACE - for example, you can wield your powerful US dollar with impunity. (Canadian residents will be happy to hear that CACE will be accepting Canadian currency at par!) But if that's not reason enough, we have some excellent classes and programming lined up this year. Here is a sample to whet your appetite.

The fossilised remains of prehistoric giant lions and other mammoth creatures have been discovered in caves in Western Australia.

See the news article on the BBC web site.

Further Confusion and its parent organization, AAE, Inc. are sponsoring several anthropomorphic events at the upcoming World Science Fiction Convention (aka Worldcon), ConJose, in San Jose, California. Click Read More for the details.

Stopped by the FurBuy website lately? After a hiatus of over seven months (see Furbuy to cease operations..... again) and a tentative feeler in June, it looks like FurBuy -- the former competitor to reigning champion furry auctionhouse FurBid -- is making a bid to return. The FurBuy News Page is announcing that FurBuy is under new management and will be reopening soon. It's rather light on details about who will be taking over the operation, promising that "more information will be posted as it becomes available." The news page further goes on to ask users to support the site by donating to help renew the furbuy.com domain and offset costs.

This is the announcement I just sent to the Conifur Artshow announcement list regarding the recent questions about our hotel and such.

If you are interested in participating in our art show, please send an email to artshow@conifur.org to request a packet. Don't forget your legal name and mailing address!

Greetings to all! Can you believe that Midwest FurFest 2002 is only 4 months away?! Our ConCom is well aware of this, and if you look closely, I think you can probably see our hair going grey right in front of your very eyes!

The ConFurence Group is planning a Furry Party for Friday Night, August 30th at ConJose's host hotel, the Fairmont Hotel San Jose (170 S. Market Street)

Exact times and the room number will be announced as soon as they are known. Look for fliers at the convention.

It's also possible that ConJose will be enforcing convention memberships on the Party Floors of the hotel... Keep that in mind.

Darrel L. Exline
The ConFurence Group

ConJosé, the 2002 World Science Fiction Convention in San Jose, Calif. on Thursday, August 29 - Monday, September 2, has just announced its five-day program schedule.

Click Read more to see the schedule, which includes several furry events.

An interesting essay on furry music was recently posted to VCL. It is entitled Furry Music: Songs in the Key of Fur and was written by Emily White. More than half the essay gives a description of the fandom in general before it gets down to the business of discussing furry music. Though most of it is nothing new to furs (particularly regular attendees at cons), it is nevertheless an interesting and positive view of the fandom.

The latest animated feature by Studio Ghibli, the studio that has produced the features of Hayao Miyazaki and Isao Takahata ("Kiki's Delivery Service", "My Neighbor Totoro", "Porco Rosso", "Pom Poko", "Princess Mononoke", "Spirited Away", etc.), has just been released in Japan on July 19th; and it is a Furry fantasy.

Reported by Reuters: A seven-year-old boy in Marrakesh, Morocco had his penis bitten off by a donkey. Surgeons have managed to get it reattached, but they aren't saying how it got bitten off in the first place.

Click here for full text of Reuters story