Special Fun Facts edition! Dropping early, due to the time-sensitivity of one of the links!
Books
I've not seen it, but I'd like to read it:
Fun Facts
Remember last week's fluff post question?
George L. Thomas reports that elephant manure can be made into paper. (Horse and cow? Meh...they excrete a lot of softened fibre but it might be too well softened.)
Tanith Davenport reports on an ice cream flavor you just don't find any more. Aren't you glad?
Lydia Schoch gives some reasons why blind people don't learn to read braille.
Stephen at Reading Freely follows the stories of the astronauts, the big celebrities of my childhood. (I didn't even remember all of their names.)
Patrick M. Prescott reports on the benefits of keeping a logbook on board a ship.
Michael Mock discusses a peculiar-looking fossil animal.
M at Rain City Reads questions a reported fact about turtles. I googled this for her. Yes, PBS reported that turtles seem to be able to breathe, as well as excrete and reproduce, through their back ends.
Rewriting Kel shares a handful of fun facts, including one about giraffes that ought to add some comic relief to everyone's day.
Alex Isle has some about the reactions of rats. If any readers happen to be rearing rodents, this blog post is likely to give them an interesting day. I wonder whether these are true for all rat species.
Health News
Anthrax vaccine manufacturer knowingly includes toxic ingredients in the mix...and recommends the vaccine be given along with the antibiotics, which, of course, are what you'd need if you came down with anthrax, by which time the vaccine would be completely useless. This is the kind of vaccine that completely fails the risk/benefits analysis. Anthrax can kill humans, but it sounds as if all this vaccine does is make them ill before anthrax has a chance to finish them off.
Then there's chlormequat, which sounds as if it's made of chlorine (bleach) and paraquat, which is a fairly close description of the chemical. Not precise, but close. So what chlorine does is, basically, kill things. What paraquat does in fields is kill specific unwanted plants--including many good ones, if the vapors drift onto another field. What PARaquat does for humans is cause PARkinson's Disease, in which people gradually lose control of all their muscles, beginning by losing control of continual shaking and twitching, and going on to be completely paralyzed. So this chlormequat, which is too general a poison to be approved for use as a "pesticide," is now being considered for licensing as a food additive. If you spray it on crops, well for one thing your own life will probably be shorter and your dying longer, as will your family's and your customers', but what the corporate marketing guys want you to think about is that all the grain will stop growing and be ready to harvest right away--more convenient that way, more profitable. The clock's running out on this one, probably because nobody took the risk of this poison being approved as a food additive seriously. But yes, Gentle Readers, you need to tell the EPA not to allow this to be sprayed on grain.
If you want to see my comment--perhaps hasty, because this is not my issue, sorry about that--it's number lkh-g808-07az . Youall can write better comments. Google "chlormequat risks" and start writing now.
Meanwhile, here is your one-long-line answer to anyone who might call this web site "anti-vaxxer":
"
1. Like “antibiotics,” “vaccines” are a large and diverse class of medicines, and as with all large classes of medicines, different products in the class work by different mechanisms, some being quite effective while others are ineffective, some being reasonably safe for appropriate human use while others are fraught with side effects and toxicities and therefore to assume that any large class of medicines — including vaccines — is categorically “safe and effective,” is naïve, illogical, false and dangerous.
"
The number 1 is there because it's number 1 of 10 "sentences" Dr. Clayton Baker invites you to write down, or memorize, and use in this kind of conversation. Obviously his undergraduate major field was not English, because the list includes some "sentences" even I find ridiculously long, but what do youall think of his article?
And today's e-mail brings a round-up of new studies about Roundup (glyphosate):
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