It’s tough out there: “A Park Slope pooch was left shivering in the buff after a coldhearted mugger stole his coat just days before a raging winter storm bore down on the city.”

Marisa Meltzer, author of Girl Power: The Nineties Revolution in Music and the most recent guest on Cooking the Books, makes a playlist for the New York Times. It includes Bratmobile!

“The average bonus on Wall Street was less than $14,000 in 1985. That number didn’t get much higher until it doubled in 1991 to $31,000, which became $100,000 by the turn of the century. In 2008, even when the average bonus fell by more than a third, it fell to $112,000.”
–On bankers, expectations, income, sensations of loss and the meaningless of doing anything.

These pictures of the confrontation between a coyote and a vole in Yellowstone National Park are pretty amazing. Click here for the whole set. But check out that vole! Little guy looks like he’s shaking a fist at the coyote. (The vole lives, in case you’re worried.)

“If masculinity, in Freudian terms, is a heavily fortified citadel, gay men are inside that fortress, undermining its foundations from within by being male yet violating the official (read: heteronormative) rules of what it means to be a man in America. It’s as if you got into the batsuit, only to find that the Joker was in there with you, naked and way too close for comfort.”
-A perspective on American sports, high school gym class, Batman, the Super Bowl and the anxiety of those who can’t stand to have those institutions questioned.

An 80% chance of fail.

Newly elected Massachusetts Senator Scott Brown will “tell his inspirational personal story about his life” in a book he is to write with a collaborator. The book is also expected to include tips on truck maintenance, nude modeling, and how to date his daughter.

“Hiram Monserrate is the perfect scapegoat for your absolution.”
-Hiram Monserrate castigates the New York State Senate, which voted 53–8 to expel him last night. Monserrate, convicted of a misdemeanor after being “charged with slashing his girlfriend Karla Giraldo’s face with a broken glass and then forcibly pulling her down the hall of his Queens apartment building on the way to the hospital,” has vowed to go to court to prevent the expulsion and to run in the special election Governor Paterson has called for March 16th.

Report from the front line: It is slippery out there.

I don’t know what you guys have planned for Valentine’s Day, but I am going to be parked in front of my TV in rapt attention to what is sure to be the most amazing program of the year. Let’s get some of that press release action!

This Valentine’s Day, February 14th at 10pm ET/PT on Discovery Channel, Locomotive Entertainment Group will premiere Tyrannosaurus Sex. The one-hour special explores the mysteries, wonders and newest evidence surrounding ritual courtship and mating habits of dinosaurs. How did a ferocious T-Rex woo his lady? How did a female Titanosaur support the weight of a male who was as long as a four-story building is high? How did a Stegosaurus couple negotiate sex with all those deadly plates and spikes?…

Tyrannosaurus Sex doesn’t just answer the questions, it shows dinosaur sex in all its glory with state-of-the-art CGI animation. The scenes created for the special are all based on fact. Interviews with scientists on the cutting-edge of palaeontology bring new life to one of the last mysteries of these mighty giants.

Normally I would liveblog this for you but, given my ever-expanding frame and rapidly approaching date with extinction, I think it probably more important that I take notes. I hope they cover blowjobs!