Inhumane Conditions In The Slaughterhouse Since 1993?? They Told Us California Cows Were Happy Cows!!

With this week-end’s meat recall, 143 million pounds of beef, the largest recall in history, comes an even more disturbing possibility. A video has surfaced that shows inhumane conditions may have occurred since 1993. That’s 15 years!! Did the government do anything to safeguard that consumers eat healthy food? Did the greedy big business slaughterhouse have the least thought about the public school children who would eat tainted meat? Are California cows happy cows as the advertising slogan claims? You decide.

Check out Tad Cronn’s article and look at the video he posted.

Flickr Delivers Library Of Congress’ Historical Eye Candy

The United States Library of Congress pilot program launched on Flickr just two days ago has Web viewers entranced with its display of 3,115 images from the library’s extensive photo collection and clamoring for more.

Last night’s statistics from just one day on Flickr reveals the following:

• 392,000 views on the photostream;
• 650,000 views of photos;
• Adding in set and collection page views, there were about 1.1 million total views on their account;
• All 3,100+ photos have been viewed;
• 420 of the photos have comments;
• 1,200 of the photos have been favorited.

The Library has struck a chord with the people of the Internet. Matt Raymond, the author of the Library’s 9 month old blog and director of communications says, “The response to the Library’s pilot project with Flickr has been nothing short of astounding. You always hope for a positive reaction to something like this, but it has been utterly off the charts—from the Flickr community, from the blogosphere, from the news media—it is nothing short of amazing.”

And we all want more photos. The most frequently asked question on both the Flickr and the blog comments is asking when the library will upload even more photos. There are more than 1 million photos on the library’s Web site and some are easily viewable as sample images, but the great majority of these images can only be accessed through search words. If you want to see the images in say their Daguerreotype collection you have to type in specific search words, and there my friends is where the Library of Congress’ Web site went totally wrong and where the Flickr project went totally right, because if you don’t know what to search for or you just want to see what’s available, you are facing a computer screen full of daunting type and not one single beautiful image; no eye candy, no mesmerizing piece of history, no emotionally stirring art.

If you like history or photography, or better yet, like me you like both, you will be spending hours pouring over your LOC Flickr screen, so be forewarned, this may be a whole new addiction which might even spawn further interests you will just HAVE to research.

• A note on the high quality of these historical photographs: “The scans are not color corrected or adjusted to create an optimized view of the photographic scene, rather they represent the qualities of the images as they exist in the collection at the time they are scanned.”

• For an article about Pie Town, New Mexico and Russell Lee, the photographer who chronicled its homesteaders, visit this Smithsonian article.

I Was Tagged By 4URPets For A Lucky 7 Tag

My neighbor friend at 4URPets just got tagged by Gina and now I’ve been tagged too!
4URPets is a new blogger with a great sense of humor, so although I don’t care for tags, I couldn’t possibly say no to this tag, and in honor of her three Chihuahuas and pet blog, I’m going to give you 7 random facts about my pets.

First I have to post the rules:

1. Link to the person who tagged you;
2. Leave a comment on their blog so that their readers can visit yours;
3. Post the rules on your blog;
4. Share 7 random and/or weird facts about yourself on your blog;
5. Tag 7 random people at the end of your post;
6. Include links to their blogs;
7. Let each person know that they have been tagged by leaving a comment on their blog.

OK. Here are my 7 random pet facts:

1. My very first pet was a Siamese cat who rescued me from my fear of cats and converted me to a cat lover thanks to his sweet, kind, gentle and caring ways;
2. My cat would faithfully stay in bed with me whenever I was sick;
3. My cat liked to swing in the bed sheets hammock-style whenever we changed the sheets and would then take the sheets in between his two front paws to “help” make the bed (boy, I wish I had thought of taking videos);
4. I had a blue and a green parakeet. When the green parakeet was ready to die he made himself a little helmet out of seeds!!
5. I inherited my golden retriever from my mother-in-law, but we loved each other since puppyhood.
6. My golden retriever was an AKA-certified pure-breed stud and a trained service dog who saved people’s lives;
7. My golden retriever was poisoned during the Chinese pet food recalls of January 2007. I call it mass pet murder, and I am very angry at the pet food companies and China. I have sworn to never feed pet food to any of my future dogs or cats because “pets are people too” and their lives are too valuable.

Now, for the 7 random bloggers, I will continue with the pet theme and tag 7 people who recently came by my blog and who have posted about their pets. This is by no means an obligation, as these tags can sometimes be downright bothersome, but if you want to participate, then you can:

1. Robin at Around The Island, whose children are pictured riding a camel;
2. Playful Professional at Talent To Play will run a half-marathon for a kitten;
3. Nicholas at A Gentleman’s Domain, who tells his cats he loves them;
4. Shannon at Rocks In My Dryer whose beloved rat recently passed;
5. SJ at Pink Flamingo, who has a blessed 6-inch kitten;
6. Sarah at Puss Reboots photographs cats;
7. YOU at Your Blog — if you want to be tagged, consider yourself tagged! 😉

Thursday Thirteen #13 — 13 Resolutions And Why They Will Fail

Wow, 13 Thursday 13s already.

I never make New Year’s Resolutions other than resolving NOT to make resolutions! Here’s 13 reasons why the top 13 resolutions around the world fail.

1. Lose weight: Doomed from the start because it’s almost impossible to escape corn syrup. It’s in everything! Statistics show that weight gain in the United States has gone up 4000 percent since the 1970s and it correlates exactly with the 4000% increase in manufacturers’ use of corn syrup since the 1970s. Corn syrup also increases cravings!!
2. Exercise: Most people are too tired all day to exercise and when you add to the equation that you have to drive both to and from the gym (in my case it would be a 25 mile round trip to the nearest gym) it makes the whole thing futile unless you can give all of us a few more hours in the day.
3. Diet: We all have the best intentions until our ALREADY STARVED stomachs get tempted by the aroma of pizza or warm chocolate chip cookies.
4. Write to far away relatives: Tomorrow I’ll write to my aunt, but when tomorrow comes, well my dear, Scarlett said it best, “Tomorrow is another day!”
5. Be a better spouse/child/friend: If we couldn’t do it on Thanksgiving or on Christmas Day, what makes you think that we can miraculously do it by procrastinating waiting until January 1.
6. Stop procrastinating: Some people do procrastinate because they just don’t want to do something, but most of the time, people just don’t have enough hours in the day to accomplish everything on the TO DO list. Give all of us another few more hours in the day AND the energy to do it, and I guarantee you we’ll all procrastinate a whole lot less. Until then, that resolution is guaranteed to be broken quickly.
7. Get more sleep: If you live in the city, be sure to pass a law forbidding garbage trucks to stagnate under your window and beep when they back out with a 13-point turn. While you’re at it, pass a law to forbid all traffic, all honking, all loud neighbors, all barking dogs until after you have woken up on your own and are well-rested. If you live in the country, make sure the rooster is blind and your neighbor has agreed to milk the cows and do all your morning chores. And above all, regardless of where you live, be absolutely sure that you do not have any children under the age of 50.
8. Keep a clean home: Unless you want to get rid of the dirt-tracking, slobbering dog, get rid of the germ-carrying, toy-scattering kids, maybe even the food-eating, clothe-wearing spouse, that’s going to be a tough one. Even at the Carlsbad caves in New Mexico, they have to spend thousands of volunteer hours dusting and picking dirt and lint out of the stalagmites each year and nobody even lives there. You do LIVE in your house, don’t you?
9. Quite smoking/drinking/and God-forbid taking drugs: These are all substances which affect your brain receptors. You not only have to get rid of a nasty habit, but you have to get your brain and your physiology to stop reacting. With very hard work and lots of will-power you might be able to quit, but your body will always be addicted. It would be much easier to resolve to never use and abuse these substances in the first place.
10. Reduce stress overall: LOL! LOL! When I hear people say that it reduces MY stress because it makes me laugh so much. Of course this is probably the easiest resolution to achieve. All you have to do is die and go to Heaven. That’s all. Now, be careful! Make sure you DO NOT, I repeat DO NOT, commit suicide under any circumstance, because then you’ll die and go to hell!
11. Reduce stress at work: If you work with people, it’s impossible. Unless maybe if you work with French people, because I seem to recall Napoleon saying “Impossible is not French.” You can’t work with machines or robots because they are designed and programed by people. Now maybe if you want to follow in Jane Goodall’s footsteps and go to the jungle to live with animals. They say animals reduce stress — as long as they’re not trying to eat you!
12. Get out of debt: First thing is to sell your house because a mortgage is a 30-year debt. Sell your car too since you don’t want car payments. Cut up your credit cards which will of course wreck your credit score, but that’s OK since you don’t want any debt.
13. Save money: That is another way of saying join the rat race, because to save money you have to earn money with a job and you have to work your little rat wheel faster than INFLATION. Also, don’t believe all those commercials that say you can save money if you go to their stores, because what they conveniently forget to tell you is that to save that money, you have to spend money first, so you’ll have to stat in that giant rat race.

If I didn’t deter you from making resolutions, just remember that it takes at least three weeks to form a good habit, so don’t give up before then, and best of luck and Happy New Year to you and yours!

If you want to see the list of Thursday 13 participants, just click here.

Black Friday Shopping: No Lines, No Crowds, No Waiting

Does that headline sound like the biggest oxymoron of the millennium?

It won’t once you experience on-line shopping with all the sales, deals and savings offered at my Amazon Affiliate Black Friday page at Infinity Goods.

Today, Friday, November 23, 2007 between 6 a.m. and 6 p.m. Pacific Standard Time, you will be able to stay home in your PJs and take advantage of special affiliate sales. No crowds, no bumper to bumper lines in the parking lot, you won’t even have to get showered and dressed before the sun is up, yet you can still shop to your little heart’s content and enjoy all the Black Friday sales, deals and savings. At infinitygoods.com we normally carry selected items of interest to families, but on Black Friday we’re linking to the entire Amazon Web site so that you’ll be able to save on all the sales, deals and savings available to Amazon Affiliates. So be sure to go to our store today. It will definitely be worth your while because there will be hourly deals from 6 a.m. to 6 p.m. PST along with thousands of products on sale for a limited time. There will even be gift wrapping for only $.99 per item to make the busy holiday season that much easier for you.

Happy shopping without the crowds!

Infinity Goods wishes you a great Thanksgiving Weekend

and a happy holiday season.

Happy Thanksgiving, Merry Christmas and Happy Hanukkah!!!

• Don’t know what NaBloPoMo and NaNoWriMo are? Read all about it here and here.

• Want to know why I’m participating in both? Click here.

WFMW — Organizing Household Binder

I love to organize with binders. One of my favorite binder is my household binder.

In a regular school binder I put in sheet protectors and add all my household warranties, receipts, and manuals like the ones for my washer/dryer, my dishwasher, my air conditioning, my roof, my blender, etc., etc., etc.

In that binder I also keep information about who installed them or who repaired them, such as business cards of my plumber, bug exterminator, roofer, electrician, etc.

If a friend recommends a service provider, I add it in too, along with the name of the friend’s name, the date and any comments.

It’s not information we need often, but when we need it, we need it fast and we need to know exactly where to find it.

When I add something to it, I take a minute to look through for any obsolete papers which can be thrown out.

When it comes time to move, I can give all the appropriate paperwork to the new owners and I add my latest coupons for the local pizza and Chinese takeout for an easy moving day dinner.

I first saw this system used when I was a teen and my parents purchased a new home. The housing developer gave them just such a binder with all the appliance manuals, recommended service providers, local schools, phone numbers for cable, utilities, newspaper, etc. and my mom and I liked the idea so much that all these years later, we still use it.

I think Realtors could use this idea too.

It really works for us! It keeps our homes organized.

For a list of this week’s other participants, stop by Rocks in My Dryer.

If you missed any on my previous Works For Me Wednesdays and household tips, just click below.

Holiday Shopping List

Holiday Decorating Tips and Ideas

Trading Card Storage

Freezer Solution

Large desk calendar inside guest closet

Child’s haircut without tears

Homemade bread stuffing

Plastic colander bath toy drainer/holder

Reuse plastic grocery bags in the car

How to increase Web site traffic?

16 Blog/Web site tips

Toy storage

• Don’t know what NaBloPoMo and NaNoWriMo are? Read all about it here and here.

• Want to know why I’m participating in both? Click here.

Tell Your Car to Pick Up the Milk

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And DARPA’s Urban Challenge Event autonomous robot car winners are:

1. Tartan Racing — Carnegie Mellon and General Motors with “Boss,” a Chevy Tahoe taking the $2 million first prize;
2. Stanford Racing Team — Stanford University with “Junior,” a VW Passat gets the $1 million second prize;
3. Victor Tango Team — Virginia Tech with “Odin,” a Ford Escape Hybrid claims third prize of $500, 000.

I hope all of you reading this post realize just how exciting this all is. Our 10-year-old son is quite excited that his very own science teacher competes in the Pentagon’s DARPA Challenge each year. This is the third challenge. Nobody won in 2004, and Stanford won the $2 million first prize last year.

Our son, who already wanted to be a scientist to follow in his Grandpa’s impressive footsteps, is even more energized now that he has seen and touched his teacher’s autonomous robotic car.

His teacher tells us that not only will these “auto-mobiles” be used for military purposes such as transport through danger zones (DARPA’s goal is by 2015), but much sooner than we think, we’ll be able to tell our cars to go pick up the milk for us at the grocery store. This is not science-fiction fantasies, it is our own near future.

Already car makers are fine-tuning driver assistance systems where the car is constantly monitoring the road for the driver, warning the driver of hazards and as soon as the driver touches the brakes, the car applies the brakes at just the necessary pressure.

We hope to get many more details at our son’s next science class, but in the meantime, you can watch the video and look at pictures on DARPA’s Web site.

All the science and technology media are writing about it too. You can check out WIRED and Popular Mechanics‘ numerous articles and blog posts on their Web sites.

And if you didn’t read my previous post on Oct. 26, 2007 about autonomous cars, be sure to check it out FIRST. It will give you all the basics to understand what it’s all about.

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• Don’t know what NaBloPoMo and NaNoWriMo are? Read all about it here and here.

• Want to know why I’m participating in both? Click here.

Blog Action Day — Environment and Organic Foods

The environment is at the forefront of the news these days, but today the issue was right in front of me at my local grocery store, and the opportunity for an instant consumer poll arose.

As I was looking at my choices in the meat and fish cases, I noticed a woman reaching into the new organic meat section. Having wondered about it myself, I asked her if she had tried it already.

Well, her face lit up and a giant smile emerged. “Yes, it is soooo good,” she said closing her eyes to savor the memory. She told me she was surprised at how much of a difference “organic” made. She had bought organic meat originally as more of a whim than anything else. She now uses it for all her special dishes and said even just a spaghetti dinner is brought to a whole new level. It is well worth the extra money, she advised, especially when considering the health benefits.

Double the money to be exact. The beef had a much more intense color, much darker. I thought it was just like the difference between farmed salmon that is pale despite the artificially added coloring, and wild salmon that is a dark reddish orange.

The label stated, “raised without antibiotics or added growth hormones, in pastures free of chemical fertilizers and fed only certified organic feed.”

And as I thought, “Shouldn’t it always be like that?” I recalled the cattle we see for miles as we go up the state on Highway 5. Those poor beasts do not have a pasture. They are sitting — sardine style — in mud, and the stench is sickeningly powerful even when the cattle have long gone out of sight.

We can’t tell what they are fed when we drive by at highway speeds, but if these cattlemen “care” enough to make their cattle sit in mud and breathe in highway pollution, I can imagine they also care enough to feed them all sorts of hormones, chemicals and perhaps even the best recipe for mad cows.

I’ll be cooking the organic beef tonight for a special birthday dinner and I’ll let you know what we all thought tomorrow.

In the meantime, please let me know what you think of organic meats and foods in general and if you’ve tried organic, how do you think it compared.

Personally, I can’t wait for the prices to get lower as more people start using organic meat and it stops being some exotic product. Good, natural, organic foods should be the norm, not the exception. Where has the pride of our cowboys and cowgirls gone? Isn’t that what America was made of? Our cowboys and our farmers made our country what it is. So why the negative, greedy trend of late?

We need to be conscious of the total disregard for healthy foods by growers and manufacturers across the board unless they think they can “make a buck.” We need to stand up and demand that we not be fed hormones, chemicals, pesticides, cloned meats, engineered flavorings, engineered trouts to turn them into salmons, etc., etc., etc.; the list of Frankenstein science experiments that turn up on our table without our direct approval is too long and much too frightening.

For my related posts, please click on the following:

Salmon + salmon = trout

Popcorn lung

You can’t trust anybody

Farmer’s Market

Blog Action Day is October 15, when bloggers around the web unite to put a single important issue on everyone’s mind – the environment. All bloggers post about the environment in their own way and relating to their own topics. The aim is to get everyone talking toward a better future.

For more information about Blog Action Day or to participate next year, please go to their website at blogactionday.com. And beside their acronim, B.A.D., it is a good thing.

You Can’t Trust Anybody These Days!

As I turned on the TV news today, I was bombarded with recall after recall. On the headlines: infant cold and cough medicine with even the big names like Tylenol, more pot pies, more toys including Mattel again, baby strollers, carriers, etc. with Winnie the Pooh and made in Korea, lipsticks including name brands like L’Oreal and Dior with the prestige of Paris, but actually subcontracted just like Mattel, and the list went on too.

So what’s happening here? Are the government agencies more stringent than they have been in the past and these recalls would have been under the radar until now? Have companies gone insane and they are trying to kill consumers, the very hand that feeds them? Have some evil forces or the 9/11 Terrorists infiltrated even our formerly most trusted name brands in an attempt to kill even our youngest and our psyches? Are Communist countries like China behind it all?

None of it makes sense, but one thing is sure, the enemy, whoever it may be, is lurking behind every product these days.

Forget name brand loyalty. Forget Tylenol, Mattel, Dior. Spending more won’t be a guarantee of getting a decent product, let alone quality.

Forget saving money at the local dollar store or discount outlet. You’ll surely be putting your life at stake with just about every product there being made in China.

As my grandmother used to say, “we don’t know what to eat and drink anymore.” And what was true then, is mind boggling now. And now add “we don’t know what to breathe anymore” too, because even the smell of popcorn is killing us. (See my related blog post.)

It’s no solution for those of us living in cities, but if things don’t get better soon, at this rate, I foresee having to grow our own food, make our own toys, revert back to milk paint, feed our pets people food — actually with our own dog having been killed by the last pet food recall, we’re ALREADY doing that!

It’s a scary world out there. Self-sufficiency is starting to look good not just to wackos, but to the rest of us too. Horse and buggy here we come!

Popcorn Lung Yet Another Example of Big Business Greed

With all the news about diacetyl causing swift and severe lung problems which can result in death, I see yet another example where big business turns a blind eye to medical and scientific research in favor of greed, wanting ever more money even at the expense of human life.

It turns out the manufacturers of diacetyl and other food flavors have had workers becoming sick and dying since 1985. Many of these workers need lung transplants. The factory owners were too greedy to even provide their employees with masks to prevent breathing in the vapors. Did they stop producing the butter flavor to protect their employees or consumers? Of course not. It would mean less profit if they had to switch to a more expenssive real ingredient rather than their man-made garbage unfit even for rats, who also die when they smell diacetyl for as few as 4-6 hours.

A few popcorn manufacturers are now deciding to stop using diacetyl because of the public outcry. Now that they’ve been caught red-handed they are worried about what negative consumer opinions will do to their profits.

And our government agencies who should be protecting both consumers and workers have done nothing in the last 22 years either. Government is nothing but a big money-generating business too afraid to lose funds from powerful special-interest groups.

Even when Cecile Rose, M.D., MPH, a global leader in lung, allergy and immune diseases with the National Jewish Research Center and associate professor of pulmonary medicine at the University of Colorado School of Medicine, in July alerted the Food and Drug Administration, the CCD, the EPA, and the Occupational Safety and Health Administration of a case of a consumer, not a worker, becoming sick with “popcorn lung” they did nothing. They did not bother to investigate. They did not even bother to ask her for more information.

The Pump Handle, a public health blog, made the issue public by publishing Dr. Rose’s letter. It is run by David Michaels, Ph.D., MPH, who is associate chairman of the Department of Environmental and Occupational health at George Washington University.

Dr. Michaels told WebMD that “the key issue is, are there susceptible populations — children, asthmatics, people with existing lung disease — who are more at risk?… Dr. Rose is a leading lung expert who knows that diacetyl vapors cause lung disease. But will the average pediatrician who sees a child with what seems to be worsening asthma be looking for microwave popcorn exposure?”

The whole affair is sickening and revolting. It also confirms my belief that as we find more and more food products manipulated with man-made chemicals but lacking in nutritional content, we need to become all the more vigilant about how we choose the food we put on our family’s table. We must look for foods which are all natural, organic or even Kosher even if we are not Jewish. Our well-being and our very lives are going to depend on it.

Please see the following interesting documents:

ConAgra letter dated 11/29/2004 to the EPA regarding the need for study of Microwave Popcorn Emissions Released During Cooking and Bag Opening.

Cecile Rose, M.D., MPH, letter dated 07/19/2007 to the FDA regarding the case of a consumer with symptoms of “Popcorn Lung.”