Here's one from left field. New Scientist just posted a news article about the occupational hazards of mascots in furry costume. Apparently some research was done by Johns Hopkins on the subject.

New Scientist had an interesting article on the possible evolution of sharper hearing being due to the small size of ancient mammals. Includes a photograph of a recently unearthed skull that's really amazing to look at. Check it out.

Further Confusion has their 2002 website up and running. There's not much there, yet...pre-registration is $30 through an unspecified date, the hotel is once again the Marriot San Mateo, and their Dealer's Tables are still sold out. This was a really fun event when I attended in 2000, and I recommend it.

The webhost that hosts Flayrah.com has recently moved a large amount of users off of the specific server that Flayrah is on. According to the admins, this server is now much faster and more stable. This will hopefully eliminate those mid-day MySQL errors that some of you have seen.

This news came the old-fashioned way, as an announcement through snail mail. South Sound Fandom, based in Olympia, Washington, has announced that they have cancelled plans for TerraCon IV, with no current plans to sponsor any future conventions. The announcement cites poor attendance at previous conventions and insufficient income. Their webpage hasn't been updated in some time, but you can get some information about the club here.

It must be that time of year. Finalists have been announced for the Mythopoeic Awards and Spectrum Awards. And winners were recently presented with the Harvey Awards and the Aurora Awards.

Click "Read more..." for details and websites.

Ran across this today. FC2002 comes out of its post con hibernation. And this year, I don't have to worry about it. Yay!

David Bliss posted on a.f.f. : "A new and improved web site for Rivercoon Arts has just opened at http://www.furholt.net/~rivercoon/ . Please take a look and let me know how
you like the new format in the PRINTS pages. The old site at Skunked.com
will remain open until the server is shut down at the end of the month."

All right so it's a bit early to be buying
tickets and organizing events with your fav friends, but this
movie is worth a quick look. On July 4th of this year, Warner
Brothers will unveil "Cats and Dogs" an
action/adventure comedy. The title leaves little for the
imagination, yes that's right, dogs and cats are the stars of the
show. The plot seems fairly simple, Cats once ruled the ancient
world dating back to Egypt, however the dogs came to power and
brought down the Cat Empire. Since then a war has raged between
the two species, hidden from the typical human view. Oh yes, the
humans are absolutely clueless as to the covert battles being
waged right under their noses. Suddenly a rogue cat named Mr.
Tinkles (Voice of Sean Hayes) begins stirring up
trouble, when he sets into motion an evil plan that would disable
the dogs of the world and prevent humans from stopping his Kitty
Tyranny! A Group of top canine agents are given the mission
impossible, stop the rogue cat and save the world. This looks like a
must see for furry fans this summer! Unfortunately for the
kitties, the dogs are the heroes in this flick, Sorry pussycats
:) Even so, this film looks like a whole lot of fun for everyone.
For additional info on Cats and Dogs check out the Official
Website. Cats and Dogs is currently
Unrated, yet we can expect it to be somewhere between G and PG-13.
Special Thanks for Yahoo! Movies for the Bios.

Got this in my email around 1pm 5/21:

Hello,

This is an administrative message from FurBid:

We had a bit of unexpected down-time yesterday afternoon.
Somehow, the name server on Transform got re-enabled, allowing us to get hit by
the l10n worm again. We had to re-load from Saturday night back-ups, so
unfortunately, any bids placed between 8am and 4:30pm may have been lost.
Please, check any auctions that you have bid on between 5-19-2001 and
5-20-2001.

My sysadmin swears to me that yes, this time he has removed the vulnerable
server, and it will not be going back on. However, I have started an hourly back-up of FurBid's data files, independant of his bi-daily backup. This should
never happen again.

Anyfur that was affected by this, please e-mail me at aatheus@transfur.com.
Please include your username, the auction # and category that was/were
affected, plus any other info that would help us re-construct your bid(s).
On behalf of FurBid, I apologize for the frustration this may have caused you
all. -Aatheus

Thank you and please tell a friend about us!

Sincerely,

FurBid

Flayrah.com content is now available in a PDA-friendly format for those of you who like to read the news on your PalmOS, WinCE, or Pocket PC device. You can see the simplified page here. AvantGo users can add Flayrah.com content to their channels by simply clicking this link.

Interestingly enough, both Flint and Kaelan submitted reviews of Fire Bringer by David Clement-Davies on the same day. Rather than choose between them, I've included both reviews below.

RPG.net recently posted a generally favorable playtest review of the Supermegatopia Role-Playng Game. Unfortunately, the review generated this reaction on RPG.net's forum where a poster described Supermegatopia as "essentially a comic in which furry animals get naked and have sex like you or I shake hands." While the poster says he has nothing personal against Supermegatopia, he does wonder how SMT's content could support an RPG.

John Robey's web comic, The Suburban Jungle, is a "furry" comic that follows the life and times of aspiring model Tiffany Tiger, as well as her coworkers and associates. It has been successful enough to spawn the book La Vida Panthera, a collection of TSJ comics published by the good folks at Plan 9 Publishing. The following was posted 5/18 on the website:

This fall, CBS will feature a new TV series with a potentially furry theme. Wolf Lake, which CNN describes as "a science-fiction drama about wolves who live in the form of humans", will star Lou Diamond Phillips and Graham Greene and will air Wednesdays at 10:00pm Eastern/Pacific, 9:00pm Central. For more information, click on the title.