The Chronicle’s Patricia Yollin reports on a pair of mischievous grizzly cubs to be adopted by the S.F. Zoo. The article has no accompanying pictures, unfortunately.

The year-old sisters will arrive in the city next week, bringing to seven the population of grizzlies in California, where once they flourished in the wild.

The sisters lost their mother late last fall when she was humanely destroyed by Montana’s wildlife officials.

“She ran into some human-conflict situations,” said Stella Capoccia, director of the Montana Wildlife Center, a state agency in Helena. “Bears will get a number of opportunities. They’ll be moved and tagged. She had exhausted her opportunities.”

I find it so hard to believe that the best way of dealing with “problematic” members of a highly endangered species is to kill them. I’m glad there was a better resolution for these cubs, but their mother should have been spared as well.

CNET News reports Cendant to snap up Orbitz

Cendant is a membership services megacorporation, mostly concerned with obtaining personal and financial information about consumers who use its many, many franchise brand names and selling or repurposing that information for its own profit. I avoid Cendant-owned companies whenever possible, and the thought of them now owning Orbitz just means I’ll use Expedia or Travelocity more often.

I just marked over 700 newsfeed messages as read… without reading them. So long, a month’s worth of Slashdot, Ars Technica, CNet News, The Register, and miscellaneous others. I was getting farther and farther behind and so just decided to start from scratch.

I’m sure I’ll find out if I’ve missed anything earth-shattering.

The very clever Kevin Nelson has a piece in the Open Forum section of the Chronicle today: Barry at the bat — An ode to mighty Barry in Giantville

The poem continues to be fresh and surprising to modern readers, and with only slight adjustments it is remarkably relevant to the situation of Barry Bonds and the Giants as they prepare to meet the Dodgers tonight in the first game of their showdown series. Will L.A. intentionally walk Barry as teams have been doing all season? With apologies to author Ernest Thayer, who never much liked his poem and all the attention it brought him, here, then, is an updated version.

Read on for the dramatic ending.

The Electoral Vote Predictor 2004 currently has Kerry at 269 and Bush at 253. This changes every time a new poll is added to the equation, so for the most up-to-date data, you can subscribe to the site feed. Remember that 270 electoral votes are required for a “clean” win; without that, the election goes to Congress to decide.