Goats are amazing animals, aren’t they? Okay, granted the average person rarely thinks about goats, myself included, but then that only makes them all the more amazing when you see pictures like these.

Goats are exceptional climbers, and they are extremely nimble on their… Hooves.

A Short Story

A couple of years ago we were at a zoo that had goats in one section walking around freely. I can’t tell you what kind they were, they were rather small, and had short legs. They were friendly and would walk around people, but they didn’t like it when the visitors would try and touch them.

No, they weren’t mean, they didn’t ram anybody, but they were able to read the signs better than the people. No petting. Anyway, there were some children there who absolutely wanted to get their hands on this sweet little goat. She had other ideas and she was quicker than the kids.

I was standing next to a park bench when she came running at me. Before I had time to move out of the goat’s, way she jumped up on the bench, which was maybe 18” wide, ran along it and sailed into safety. She sprung about eight feet off of the other side before she hit the ground and then she was gone. I am assuming she could have jumped further when you look at what these mountain goats are capable of.

Goat Pictures

The reason for this post is still these incredible pictures of mountain goats in action. They can reach staggering heights, climb the most unfriendly walls, and they do it all without fingers. Take a look at some of these pictures for unbelievable mountain goat action!

african goats in tree

Jumping Goat

Funny picture of a goat on rocks

Mountain Climbing Goats

Mountain Goat

Tree Goats

Cliff Full of Goats

Goat on mountain

Gravity Defying Goat

And as you can see I’ve saved the best for last!

Cute Goat Photo

I originally saw these photos on Digg and they were just so fun I had to share them with you. You can view all 30 of them here.

world strongest dog

Some of you may recall the post I made late last year about the World’s Strongest Dog. In that post I talked about the Whippet named Wendy that suffers from a rare myostatin gene defect which causes her to have a double muscle layer. This is the same defect that causes the Belgian Blue to grow to the proportions it does.

If you’re wondering what a Belgian Blue looks like, you can get a pretty good impression for their size in this video. You will also be able to learn why the myostatin gene defect makes Wendy so muscular.

Returning to Wendy, I decided to do a little more research on her and see if I could learn more about this fascinating dog, even if she wasn’t the World’s Strongest Dog. And through a little digging I found that she has her own website. Who doesn’t have their own website these days?

You can visit her website, rightly titled: Wendy the Incredible Whippet. There you can learn more about this amazing dog and read along with her story. To peak your interest, here is a small excerpt:

“Wendy came into my life in August 2003. The breeders gave her to me as a companion to another puppy that my employer was getting. They had kept Wendy because her double muscles made her abnormal, and not wanted by most people. They also wanted to make sure that if they let her go she would end up at the right home.”

Read Wendy the Whippet’s complete story.

So you’re still not convinced that Wendy is in fact a Whippet. Don’t feel bad, the very first thing it says on her website is that she is often mistaken as a Pit Bull. But she is not, she is a loving, doubled muscled Whippet that loves to sit on her owner’s lap and get petted.

Here she is with a normal sized Whippet.

Wendy and Normal Whippet

And I thought that this photo really showed off how muscular she really is.

Wendy the Whippet

The last update on the website mentioned that Wendy was going to start taking advanced obedience training. She had finished up her novice class, even running through a mock trial with few mistakes. This might be due to her love for hotdogs as a reward.

Microsoft Data Mining Patent

Microsoft thinks that you are worth a million dollars! And because of that fact Bill Gates, Ray Ozzie and many of the other executives at Microsoft have been issued a patent that allows then to mine your personal data.

This recent patent (okay, the application for the patent was filed in September 2006) that was awarded this week basically layout a system for collecting your personal information. What this “personal data mining” system does is examine your actions and interests based on what they have observed you and others that fall into your category doing. This will allow them to make targeted suggestions. This could be in the form of recommendations on which books to read, movies to see or restaurants to eat at.

While this isn’t much different than what a lot of other companies have been doing, it goes beyond simply making contextually targeted plugs.

As the name implies, it is a method to mine your personal data. As per the patent this includes your:

“personal management information (PIM data), pictures, videos, documents, e-mail, instant messages, addresses, calendar dates/scheduling information (e.g., birthdays, anniversaries, appointments . . . ), voice mail, phone logs, RSS feeds, subscriptions, bookmarks, mail lists, project management features, computing device data, tasks and location data.”

Basically everything that is linked to you falls into this catch all system and it is as good as gold.

The patent also talks about the option to “include a monetization component”. What does this mean? It means you might just land in “an auction to sell information to the highest bidder.”

If you have any interest in reading through the full patent application, you can find it here.

This reminds me of the patent application that Steve Jobs recently filed for OS Advertisement.