The stupid, it burns ...

... over at New Scientist. It appears that Debora MacKenzie suffers from a lack of reading comprehension ...

So what are we to make of US Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack saying: "There is no evidence or reports that US swine have been infected with this virus"?

This quote comes directly from Secretary Vilsack's release to the public about the safety of pork for human consumption, Release No. 0137.09. Taken in context, it reads as follows:

"I want to reiterate that U.S. pork is safe. While we in the U.S. are continuing to monitor for new cases of H1N1 flu, the American food supply is safe.

There is no evidence or reports that U.S. swine have been infected with this virus. USDA is reminding its trading partners that U.S. pork and pork products are safe and there is no basis for restricting imports of commercially produced U.S. pork and pork products.

This is not an animal health or food safety issue. This discovery of the H1N1 flu virus is in humans. Any trade restrictions would be inconsistent with World Organization for Animal Health (OIE) guidelines.

Regardless, Secretary Vilsack is correct, as far as I know when he says that there is no link between this current H1N1 virus and American swine. Whether or not it was ever in American swine is irrelevant, because that particular strain (or more likely strains) didn't jump from pigs to humans. If you compare those strains to the current strain causing all these problems, there will no doubt be some major differences which will explain why the former wasn't deadly to humans, and the latter is.

What is even more amusing is one of the comments, obviously made by a PETA member (MarkInColumbus), where he rants incessantly about "Animal Agriculture". It seems that he wants to wipe all animals off the face of the planet because they're evil ... with their belching and farting of methane, their propensity to drink water, and their ability to cause cancer, stroke, heart disease, and diabetes by transfixing their big bovine/swine/ovine gaze upon poor defenseless humans.

Jimminy Christmas!

And damn the animals to hell, why do we need them? I mean, we can just convert fossil fuels into ammonia and use it for fertilization ... I mean that won't hurt the environment none. No sir!

Better to keep your mouth closed and be thought a fool than to open it and remove all doubt.

Words of wisdom MarkInColumbus, words of wisdom.

Oh, and it appears that Debora MacKenzie likes blaming random animals for our viral woes. In 2006 she blamed migratory birds (geese in particular - the damned fowl) for spreading H5N1, and blamed ornithologists for being complict in their denial of the facts. Gee, sounds sort of like a regurgitation of this latest story, no?

ETA: Time has a piece on pigs and H1N1 as well: Don't Blame the Pig.

ETA2: Two hours later and they have not posted my response to MarkInColumbus.

WTH?

Who in their right mind, when submitting the 16S rDNA gene sequence for a type strain, submits a sequence riddled with N*'s? It's a type strain for crying out loud ... you can't make sure you've got a clean sequence? I mean, WTF folks ... combined, a new forward and reverse read would cost you $7. You lazy sons of motherless goats.

Idiots!

*According to IUPAC nomenclature, N stands for aNy nucleotide, which certainly doesn't narrow the field for that position.

United States to Dissolve

So say the Russians.

So, where will you wind up? Me? I'll be a part of the European Union! w00t! I worry about those who will wind up being Chinese though. Beware of the melamine!

Sometimes ...

... you just can't make this stuff up. Really. Geocentrism (Thank God that the Earth is not moving).

Whiskey. Tango. Foxtrot?

Many people consider the Encyclopedia Britannica the FINAL AUTHORITY on all scientific matters.

Eh?

"The centrifugal force of Earth's rotation makes the planet bulge at the Equator. Because of this, Earth has the shape of an oblate spheroid, being flatter near the poles than near the Equator. Correspondingly, one degree of latitude is longer in high latitudes than it is in low ones." (Britannica vol. 4, p. 320).

Ordinary mortals cannot see this bulge however as it is visible only to the editors of the Britannica articles.

LOL.

Alas, I don't think this site is a spoof. I wish it were.

h/t to Mark Shea for the giggles.

Idiots

1. What sort of idiot lets his 8 year old fire an uzi?

2. This one is just a plain idiot (well, they're all plain idiots). First she calls the cops complaining that the trunk of her daughters car reeks of death, and then when the cops concur ... she refuses to believe it.

3. How is this idiot still not in jail?

4. Yah, you thought you would never get caught, eh?

5. Ummm, what the hell you fool! First you call your constituents racist. Then you "apologize" by clarifying your comments to merely call them all rednecks. Why don't you just shut up you jackass.

Listen parents ...

... your kids tried to poison their teachers, and you don't think the punishment fits the crime?

They were booked on charges of mingling harmful substances, which carries a two-year prison sentence and $1,000 fine as punishment, as well as being suspended for the rest of the school year, the Times-Picayune said. It's a punishment that parents are calling too tough.

There are pranks, and then there is sheer stupidity. Laxatives are medications, and are therefore not to be trivialized or abused. You want to put an opened can of stink bait inside your teachers desk*, go right ahead ... that's a prank. Trying to slip them a drug ... not a prank. It's a crime.

*Did that to my PhD advisor once. It was hilarious. His office stank for days.

Bless you, num num num ...

... WTF!

"He went into the pond hoping to be blessed when a crocodile attacked him and dragged him into the deep part of the pond,'' Kabir told the Australian Associated Press.

"This is a very unusual incident. Normally, the crocodiles are very friendly and do not harm people.''

The scary part? It's only an unusual incident because the crocodile ate him! What's not unusual is that people are wading into this crocodile infested pond! Mama mia!

Rachael Ray is a Terrorist

Which is why Dunkin Donuts pulled an ad featuring her wearing a black and white scarf.

Critics, including conservative commentator Michelle Malkin, complained that the scarf looked similar to the black-and-white checkered kaffiyeh, the traditional Palestinian scarf. Critics who fueled online complaints about the ad in blogs say such scarves have come to symbolize Muslim extremism and terrorism.

Here is a picture of the terrorist herself. What a bunch of damn fools, especially Bill O'Reilly's whore Michelle Malkin. The argument as presented by these fools: Something A "looks similar" to something B, and because something B is bad something A needs to go. Is beyond stupid. It's a friggin scarf for crying out loud. One of my favorite sweaters is a black/white/grey argyle sweater similar to the one seen below ... am I a terrorist? Am I giving a secret nod to Al-Qeada because I wear it?What total nonsense. I'm sure there are several items which Ms. Malkin herself probably reveres which could be linked back to something heinous. Almost sounds like a new game which we could call Six Degrees of Al-Qaeda. Let's try it out once.

1. Rachael Ray wore a black and white scarf in a Dunkin Donuts ad.
2. Some people in Palestine wear black and white scarves too.
3. Some of those people may be terrorists.
4. Some terrorists belong to Al-Qaeda.

So there you have it, we link Rachael Ray to Al-Qaeda in four steps. Now it's time to send her to Guantanamo, but not before she does another spread for FHM.