I don’t know what it is about Deniliquin, but every time I come here I end up hearing about some bizarre story, and I don’t know what it is about PETA (“People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals” by name anyway, no guarantees that they stand for anything along those lines) but every time I hear about them, they’re doing something nutty. Today is no exception, except that today the story is so nutty that I thought I’d woken up in another universe and not just another town.
Animal rights group, People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, claims scientists will soon make livestock farming redundant.
PETA is funding United States researchers to produce animal meats in a laboratory, using tissue culture.
Scientists have already successfully grown the first stages of animal muscle, but need to work out how to get it to look and taste like conventional farmed product.
Uh huh, so they haven’t actually made meat in a Petri dish, they’ve made imitation meat which doesn’t yet imitate meat in taste, appearance or texture…so far it’s about as close as me handing you a plate of bacon and telling you that it’s a cup of coffee.
This stuff will never really be meat as it never really came off an animal, but little details like that don’t matter to collective nutbar groups like PETA, after all, they’re “doing it for the environment”.
Asia-Pacific campaign manager Ashley Fruno says lab meats will be better for the planet.
“Well, at the time, I think we’re still a couple of years away from seeing it be publicly available, but everyone at PETA is rooting for science to produce an eco-friendly methadone for their meat heroin, simply because it’s kinder to animals, it’s better for the environment, and it can be disease free, which makes it better for human health.”
And presumably it does away for the need for humans to keep all of those evil methane-expelling, global-warming-causing herds of cattle around, so I wonder what will become of the cows? Perhaps they will frolic in the magic forrest…seriously, what do PETA propose that we do with the superfluous cattle? They wouldn’t propose killing them (would they?), so do we let them run free…gee, that seems like a downright silly idea, cows have less road sense than kangaroos.
And then there’s that strange comparison of meat eater and drug addicts. I wonder if PETA think that non-human meat-eating animals are also akin to drug addicts?
Anyway, farmers have treated the idea with the contempt which it deserves, put PETA back in their padded box and shipped them back to the nut house.
Greg Brown, the president of the Australian Cattle Council, says the environment would suffer if livestock farming ceased.
“She was heard to say it would be great for the environment, it would be a disaster for the environment, because we’d have all this uneaten vegetation which would be destroying the environment by ultimately getting burnt and putting all that stuff into the atmosphere, it’s just absurd.”
(h/t ABC Rural for the article and 2QN’s Paul Dix who brought the story to my attention).
You and Gibbsy were kept up by dogs and cats eh? Well let me tell you, dogs and cats are nothing mate…just wait until you’ve been bothered by grasshoppers all night.
I’m over in Deniliquin at the moment where there seems to be a few too many grasshoppers. I had to chase about a dozen of them out of my hotel room because they were all jumping about, crashing in to things and chirping. There’s still two of them in here somewhere, but they’re being quiet so I’ll leave them alone, but if they bother me tonight, they’re getting the bug spray.
Hmmm, I wonder if the Greens would stop me from killing grasshoppers and other bugs if they had the power to make such rules? I’d better not show them the bug splatter on the front of my car.
This one’s for 2UE’s John Kerr who, in the wee hours of Sunday morning, put on his deep voice and belted out a few lines of this song, sounding just like Tennessee Ernie Ford himself. The feature song for the week is Sixteen Tons.
Some people say a man is made outta mud
A poor man’s made outta muscle and blood
Muscle and blood and skin and bones
A mind that’s a-weak and a back that’s strong
You load sixteen tons, what do you get
Another day older and deeper in debt
Saint Peter don’t you call me ’cause I can’t go
I owe my soul to the company store
I was born one mornin’ when the sun didn’t shine
I picked up my shovel and I walked to the mine
I loaded sixteen tons of number nine coal
And the straw boss said “Well, a-bless my soul”
You load sixteen tons, what do you get
Another day older and deeper in debt
Saint Peter don’t you call me ’cause I can’t go
I owe my soul to the company store
I was born one mornin’, it was drizzlin’ rain
Fightin’ and trouble are my middle name
I was raised in the canebrake by an ol’ mama lion
Cain’t no-a high-toned woman make me walk the line
You load sixteen tons, what do you get
Another day older and deeper in debt
Saint Peter don’t you call me ’cause I can’t go
I owe my soul to the company store
If you see me comin’, better step aside
A lotta men didn’t, a lotta men died
One fist of iron, the other of steel
If the right one don’t a-get you
Then the left one will
You load sixteen tons, what do you get
Another day older and deeper in debt
Saint Peter don’t you call me ’cause I can’t go
I owe my soul to the company store
Hello from Deniliquin. Unlike my previous trips to Deni, this time I am not here for work (although if the opportunity arises, I’m not likely to pass it up) but rather I am on leave from work and have come over to here for some relaxation.
I was last here in September of 2009, back when the drought was still in full swing. It was quite extraordinary to drive here and see all sorts of creeks and wetlands which actually have water in them…I’ve never see water in many of the places which now have water…that’s not to say that they’ve never had water, of course they have, otherwise they wouldn’t have been named as creeks and wetlands, it’s just that for me, having only been here in drought, the change is quite remarkable.
The water does have its downsides…the various bugs and critters have been able to breed and, among other things, there are grasshoppers everywhere. I’ve chased about a dozen of them out of my hotel room tonight and I still have a couple left, but I’m willing to let them be for now as they are much less jumpy and chirpy and annoying than the others were. That said, I have located the Mortein and may need to use it by tomorrow.
Other than the novelty of the bugs, the weather does make this feel like a holiday. Normally the weather in Canberra and Deni is fairly similar, just with slightly warmer temperatures at times in Deni. Right now it’s almost ten degrees warmer in Deni than it is in Canberra and the expected temperatures are quite different for today as well: 31 for Deni and 25 for Canberra. That may only be six degrees, but it’s two notches of difference on the Samuel Comfort Index™.
I have some plans while I’m over here (I keep trying to type “down here” before I realise that Deni is virtually due west of Canberra, and I’m always having a go at 2UE’s John Kerr for referring to trips from Canberra to Sydney as “going down to Sydney”…I think it’s working as he said “going up to Sydney” last night) but not many, and really I’ll just see where the mood takes me.
On my previous trips, I often posted statistics about the trip, however I didn’t keep accurate stats this time. What I do know though is that I left home and 8:15am and got to the hotel at 2:15pm, with stops in Gundagai and Jerilderie for morning tea and lunch respectively. I probably spent a tad under five hours on the road in total. For much of the trip I was listening to the private webstream of my hobby radio station at home which was playing the third hour of John Laws‘ show from each day of the week as well as Rush Limbaugh‘s Week In Review. I had workable 3G mobile coverage for most of the trip, although it was a bit patchy between towns from Urana to Conargo. I also listened to Casey Hendrickson’s podcast, The Burning Truth and a little bit of music…and of course I listened to a bit of both 2QN and Classic Rock.
Anyhoo, I should probably see about getting some sleep while the sun is napping, although it could be difficult considering that I had a sleep when I got here.