Tag: cows

Adventure seed: The American Herd.

The mundane details are all true, by the way.

The American Herd

Oh, this one is tricky, esoterically speaking.

It goes like this: there is an ethnic/linguistic group in Africa called the Maasai. They live more or less in Kenya, where they herd and maintain a semi-nomadic lifestyle.  And, about a decade and a half ago, a certain attack in NYC prompted one tribe of the Maasai to gift the American people with some of their cattle.  This is significant because one of the folk traditions of the Maasai is that they in fact were given all the cattle in the world by God; apparently the rest of us are simply taking care of the cows until a Maasai tribesman can come to collect them (yes, not unrelatedly: the Maasai are legendary cattle rustlers). So just giving the USA some of their cows is… ‘significant’ is not the word to use. Try ‘remarkable’ and ‘virtually unprecedented.’

Continue reading Adventure seed: The American Herd.

What I learned today: there are two kinds of angel dust.

If you’re an American, at the very least, it’s a hallucinogenic drug that makes you prone to go crazy and forget the safety tolerances on your joints, muscles, and vital organs.  If you’re in Europe, it’s apparently just a growth hormone that still should not be in your cows.  Which is… arguably still better, right?  I mean, why would anybody want to make a cow freak out and go on a drug-soaked rampage?

:pause:

Don’t answer that.

Via Fark.

PETA caught giving nasty agitprop to kids, and then lies about it.

(Via Hot Air) PETA being nasty:

Parents say they are considering taking PETA to court over an innocent-looking comic handed out to children at Calabash Elementary School in Woodland Hills that contained graphic images of mutilated cows, CBS Los Angeles reports.

[snip]

The pamphlet appeared to be a cartoon comic and was titled “A Cow’s Life,” but the images inside were horrifying, parents said.

PETA being dumb:

Katie Arth of PETA says that it may have all just been an innocent mix up.

“PETA creates material for kids and for adults,” Arth said. “And it looks like there was just a mistake and our volunteers put the materials together to get them out quicker.”

Oh, really? Continue reading PETA caught giving nasty agitprop to kids, and then lies about it.

Not to spoil the fun on cow magnetism…

…but it’d actually be interesting to find out whether or not cows can detect magnetic fields.  Not least because, if cows can detect magnetic fields then the next question would be why cows can detect magnetic fields.  Generally, living creatures have abilities for a reason.  The reason may no longer apply in the modern era, but there should have at least been one to start out with.

I dunno.  I don’t think that abstract research in the sciences is a waste of time, per se.  It’s often a waste of money, or at least an inefficient use of limited funds – but then, you never know.

Via Instapundit.

‘Zombie’ cows seems a bit much.

(Via @eddiebear) ‘Revenant’ cows – what does Firefox mean, “revenant” is a misspelled word!?! NO, IT IS NOT!  It is in the damned dictionary and everything.  Dear sweet God, but I am tired of dealing with spell-checking software written by people with less command of the English language than myself.  There’s no excuse, you know: if “squamous” passes muster, so should “revenant.”

Anyway, they’re apparently cloning cow meat.  Why this should be an issue for anybody is a bit of a mystery: if the stuff isn’t poisonous, isn’t mutagenic – DAMMIT, THAT’S A WORD TOO – isn’t a breeding ground for exciting new diseases, and tastes all right, I’m missing the problem.  Even if the stupid things do revive and start shuffling around for prey: I’m not a cow, which means (pretty much by definition) that I wouldn’t have to worry about the dangers of post-necrotic anthropophagy.

OK, that one I admit that I had to look up the right spelling.

Dangerous Cows.

:pointing: Cow.

What? Oh, it’s an odd little neurological glitch that I’ve noticed (an ex-girlfriend christened it ‘bovilepsy’). If you stop suddenly, point somewhere at random, and matter-of-factly say “Cow” people will turn to look. You can do it anywhere, too. I don’t know why it works, but it does. Anyway, the New York Times has an article on dangerous cows. Apparently, they manage to kill about four Americans or so a year.

Personally, I think that we’re ahead on points.