Boojum

Hey, you think "Krungthepmahanakornamornratanakosinmahintarayutthayamahadilokphopnopparatrajatha iburiromudomrajaniwesmahasatharnamornphimarnavatarnsathitsakkattiyavisanukamprasit" is bad? At least it has vowels. Try pronouncing "cvxtlthqwnqplwzcbgwpkmhgmfgrdcsxqt.org" (which may actually exist in central/eastern Europe). (Hint: If you can't pronounce the above, try tuning a radio into that area to the right of all receivable stations; it will pronounce it perfectly. And if it doesn't, who'll ever know?)

Warthoggish. (The language of warthogs. Most popular word: Squort!)

The chief concern, to me, is that "farmers" may no longer be the right term. We no longer raise meat, we manufacture it--that's how factory assembly line-like the process has become. We now have a vast and tremendously politically powerful beef lobby in the United States--and isn't the fact that someone tried to use its slogan, "Beef: It's what's for dinner," as an argument against avoiding the meat evidence enough of that? --which cares not a whit for public health or safety, but only for producing and selling the maximum amount of product at the minimum of expense in the never-ending quest for the optimum of stock dividends. That lobby thinks nothing of suing an Oprah Winfrey and a guest expert who appeared on her show for daring to suggest that beef is not produced safely. And that lobby will use all its influence on Capitol Hill to stop two of the three measures that will be needed to restore confidence in their product. Those measures: 1) No more use of "downer cattle" that are too sick to walk into the slaughterhouse for food. (This is already being implemented, though only time will tell how thoroughly.) 2) No more use of meat products as cattle feed. (This was approved in 1996, but enforcement has been inconsistent. We'll see if the beef lobby allows the government to put teeth in its enforcement. My guess is no. ) 3) All animals slaughtered for food in any form will need to be tested for prions. (This will be the bone of contention. Testing will cost the industry $1 billion per year. My prediction: The testing will eventually go forward, but the lobbyists will make sure it does so at public expense so they can go on selling cheap beef.) I don't know about you, but the business climate in this country is really starting to offend me. There was a time, not all that long ago, when "Made in the USA" was a label that provided reassurance and pride in products well and safely made. Integrity was once the cornerstone of American industry, and it showed in the quality of its products. Today, I can't help but be a bit dismayed at the certain knowledge that the reason why the most successful businessmen are so is that they would cheerfully sell their own mothers to the highest bidder if they could get away with it. I love beef, but I won't be eating it for a while. And don't get me started on the subject of chicken.

Warhead. ("You can't win. You can't break even. You can't even quit the game.")

TCH-Rob: Your point is well taken, as it applies to hacks and exploits. But Windows Messenger, from what I've read, is spyware built right into your OS by Microsplortch. And that, at least, is something Apple has never subjected its customers to.

Ah, yes. Yet another reminder of why it's nice sometimes to have a Mac. No Windows Messenger; no ads showing up on my desktop; no complete list of the contents of my hard drive being perused with evil intent.

Don't do what I did. The topic will post anyway, so you will not need to resubmit it. (Of course, you've probably observed that by now, but just in case someone else hasn't ....)

Waiter! I'd like 27,000 cubic cubits of roast Perfectly Normal Beast. Medium-rare, please.

Play. ("Smart animals play; dumb ones don't.")

Sounds like complacent, quasi-monopolistic hubris defined. I think--and hope--that one Microsplortch is enough for the technology industry. And if so, I will expect stiff resistance to this "pre-emptively buy (or crush) all potential competitors" business model. (Aack! Sounds a bit like our new foreign policy. ) In fact, it would not surprise me if several or many of Google's competitors joined forces to stop exactly that sort of nonsense. Free enterprise, not unlike communism, is an idea that sounds good: In practice, unfortunately, it is often anything but free, for the powerful will do anything to retain and consolidate their power at the expense of the less powerful. The only way to make capitalism work is to foster full, open competition that forces businesses to struggle for consumers' loyalties by providing more and better goods or services for less money. And if we want to vindicate Karl Marx, the surest way to do that is by allowing more monopolies, more mergers and acquisitions, less competition, and ever-increasing corporate arrogance.

I have rather a lot of images I use across my site, including a number of tabs and buttons. Instead of lumping them all together in an "images" folder, is it possible to divide them into three folders--"tabs", "buttons", and miscellaneous other "images"? (I assume the answer to this question will apply equally across subdomains as well(?))

Don't misunderstand me: Google remains the most effective, comprehensive search engine on the planet--for now. I have, however, an entrenched distrust of monopolies (and I think Google has effectively become one) because, among other things, they tend to become increasingly inefficient and complacent over time.

Mmmm! Saturated fat, sugar, caffeine, phosphoric acid and possibly prions! Bring on the everlasting night. woooot

Swine. (Pearls before ... )

Jennifer: You probably already know this, but the smiley face in the party hat is a court jester in motley.

Interesting. The trouble-seekers always seem to be guys in pickup trucks or SUVs--usually large ones. Oh, well. You know what they say about compensation. (Actually, it would make an interesting sociological study to see if people driving large white vehicles really are more aggressive than others. The ones around here certainly seem to bear out that stereotype.)

Tonsa: Transmissible spongiform encephalopathies (TSEs) are a family of progressive disorders of the brain and central nervous system characterized by lesions that leave the victim's brain resembling a sponge. Caused by proteinaceous infectious particles (otherwise known as prions) that are smaller and harder to destroy than viruses, the TSEs include a bovine form known popularly as mad cow disease, in addition to a form called scrapie that affects sheep, and a human TSE called variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease whose symptoms include sleep disorders and dementia. They are not curable or treatable. Recently found for the first time in the United States, the bovine form appears to be caused by cattle ingesting feed containing parts from scrapie-infected sheep, a practice that was supposed to have ended in the U.S. in 1996 shortly after the British mad cow scare. Unfortunately, enforcement is so lax that some beef producers have even voluntarily requested that it be better handled by the federal regulators! The concern is therefore that prions--which cannot be destroyed by cooking or even by temperatures used for sterilization procedures--may be spreading and posing the threat of a serious risk to public health. Indeed, Britons are now waking to the possibility that the particles may have entered the water table. While it is doubtless true that the likelihood of infection remains vanishingly small, the stakes are such that I am not willing to put my family at risk.

I am making a bold prediction--and perhaps a just plain insane one: Google is already obsolete, suffers from terminal hubris, and will be displaced within three years as the leading search engine unless it remakes itself in a hurry. While Google is by far the most popular engine, and holds most of the trumps right now, those very factors can lead to complacency--and we know what that leads to. Meanwhile, it and most other engines continue to return pages upon pages of largely irrelevant documents upon all but the most expertly refined search, forcing consumers to wade through a morass of minutiae. And that will be its downfall--unless, as I said, it innovates in a hurry. The coming trend is for search engines with built-in categorization algorithms that allow the user to find exactly what he or she is looking for with a graphic display of echelons of relevancy. I believe Google is working to incorporate such a feature as a plug-in, but if it isn't quicker on the ball, I think some smaller, more entrepreneurial company will beat them to it.

In light of the current concern about transmissible spongiform encephalopathies, I was wondering how many folks here are still eating beef. (For my family, this has been pretty much the last straw: Beef is already inherently fairly unhealthy, with its fat marbling, and after this, I think we'll be eating buffalo and ostrich when we want a healthier and probably safer alternative. And by the way, buffalo stroganoff is quite good. )

Post-prandial report: Nothing beats a good buffalo stroganoff on a cold winter's evening. Well, virtually nothing.

Rob: Well, if we weren't off topic before, we certainly are now. Anyway, the latest concern seems to be that prions could in fact be found even in tissue that has not been in direct contact with brain or central nervous system components. The reason: Nerves extend throughout the body and there is some suspicion that they could convey prions to remote muscle tissue. And, unfortunately, scrapie is difficult to detect until it becomes symptomatic, so it would not be easy to rule out its presence in any feed containing sheep parts. This is why I think eventually all addition of animal components to livestock feed will have to end, and verifiably so, and all livestock used for food will have tro be tested and cleared prior to slaughter, before America and the world will regain confidence in our supply of beef. And this is part of why my family and I will be eating buffalo and ostrich in place of beef for a while. (Well, that and because, unlike beef, those meats are not marbled with fat.)

Jim: 1. In many cases you are right to be skeptical about the news; after all, it is increasingly clear that, for example, Faux "News" is in reality part of the propaganda wing of the Republican Party. 2. Please note that I for one never said Gore invented the internet. About the most that can be said for him--or any other individual--is that he was a leader in popularizing and promoting it, thereby helping it grow to its current worldwide pervasiveness ... for better or for worse. And I think that's really what he and others have in fact credited him with doing. 3. It is interesting to note, however, that Gore's statement to Blitzer went unchallenged at the time it was made, and was only resurrected later to be used against the former as evidence that he was a liar.

Okay, Jim--all the peace and love you want ... as soon as I reply to your three points. While it is impossible to be absolutely certain about anything--a matter addressed under point 2 below--the fact that the ozone layer declined steadily while CFCs were being emitted without mitigation and began to recover only after those emissions were strictly curtailed is more than suggestive. Also, we are now coming to accept the Precautionary Principle, which proposes that where suspicion exists that human activities may be contributing to a problem--even absent proof positive of such causation--we are well advised to change the suspicious practices. This equation of science with religion and other faiths is a logically flawed mode of spin most often employed by creationists and other charlatans. Religion--belief in the intervention of a deity--is a matter of pure faith susceptible to no proof, disproof or experimental testing. Science, on the other hand, for all its flaws, represents humanity's best guess as to what really goes on in this universe. It is not a matter of faith, but of laborious development and objective (to the extent humanly possible) testing of hypotheses. Not perfect, but the best we have. The fact is, it is actually impossible to prove anything beyond doubt; there will always be those who question the proof, and it is clear that it is virtually impossible to change people's minds with any proof once they have decided to reject it. And that second sentence begs the question: Absent what you consider clear proof one way or another, why not apply the Precautionary Principle? Perhaps moose farts in Alaska really do have more to do with the state of the ozone layer or global climate than suspected. That does not change the fact that, until we know for certain, we would be well advised to do what we can to minimize our own contributions to the problem. After all, there is certainly no proof that what we do does not have a determining effect, is there? I respectfully disagree. Points of view are hypotheses that we form to explain complex constellations of events. If those hypotheses cannot bear the weight of reasoned analysis, they must be refined or abandoned. That is the purpose of discussion and debate--such as this. As for the "off-topic" matter--you said it, Jim: This is the open discussion section, and the discussion in question is about anomalous weather, so I'd say this is very much on-topic. Oh, and one final note: Taking the stance that you aren't going to worry about a significant issue because our implication in it has not been absolutely proven is intellectually lazy and dishonest. If you disagree, perhaps you'd like to back it up by, for example, feeding a cow with sheep parts for several years, slaughtering it, and serving yourself a steak a day for a few months on the theory that we haven't proved a human contribution to mad cow disease either.

Gas. (Sorry, but it is the first word that came to mind. )

Jim: Here's an interesting fact: The claim that Al Gore invented the internet (well, not quite, but close) actually came from none other than Newt Gingrich.