Useful Ramblings

had a really great time with a dear friend.  See the right had side bar for “hissy fits” under “Pages”.

Check out this link .  See what your neighbors have been up to. 

What is this???????  For a full explanation go to the "hydroponics category" in the right sidebar.

A government that fears its people is a government to be feared. – rab

Two heroes stand out for me.  First is the the guy that stopped a column of tanks with a sack of groceries and second is the driver of the lead tank that refused to run over one of his own countrymen.  I wonder what happened to both of them?

our third day of heavy rain.  Parts of central Florida have already received over 18 inches of rain and it does not appear that it is going to subside anytime soon.  As for the area where I live the water is not collecting at the present rate of downfall, but that could change.  The ground is now saturated so any more rain will collect rather than being absorbed.  Hopefully this weather event will move out by the end of the weekend. 

Gone are the days of mom and pop (family) farms where chickens and other animals were raised for human consumption.  These family farms have now given way to corporate farms (breeder farms) whose sole goal is to mass produce animals on a large scale with specially engineered feeds guaranteed to put on weight (meat) and shorten the time "from farm to store".  These breeder farms have been employed in the cattle, poultry and pig industries. 

The recent outbreak of swine flu seems to have its origins in Mexico and initial investigation points to a specific breeder farm in Mexico as a possible source of the current outbreak.  Could it be that these breeder farms, regardless of geographic location and regardless of animal type, could be the cause of the recent outbreaks of "animal flu" which have been passed between animals and humans.  As noted these breeder farms are involved in the both the cattle, poultry and pork industries.  Is it not curious that we have mad-cow, bird flu and now a resurgence of swine flu.  Is the bigger problem not "flu" but rather the methods employed in the raising of these animals in a mass production environment.  Are we able to effectively and safely manage animals on such a large scale?  Or does this very process lend itself to the generation of infectious diseases?

Are the recent outbreaks of various flu a wake-up call to what we may expect if we continue breeding animals on such a large scale?  I certainly don’t have the answer but I do believe that such breeding techniques deserve a second look before we have an event that becomes unmanageable.

This post is really me mucking around with WindowsLiveWriter.  You can get it here:    http://get.live.com/writer/overview.   It does add some useful functionality and automatically posts to your blog.  My blog utilizes WordPress and it seems to be quite compatible/reliable so far.

This is “where I be” .