meat is murder

i have a question to my vegetarian friends... and on that note, i have no vegetarian friends, so could you pass this link on to them so i could get their opinion. from this article it seems we may be only 10 years away from test-tube meat. that is meat that you would buy, cook and eat, that was grown in a laboratory rather than fed on a farm and slaughtered. this meat would be able to be adjusted to be healthier, have more of the good fats and less of the bad fats, and would decrease the need for grazing land and in the worst case, buildings cramped full of animals solely for business.

i saw this a report on this on CNNi before i saw the article. studies show that livestock produce nearly 18% of the greenhouse gases that might be affecting our climate. the entire fossil fuel industry (cars, power plants, etc) only produce 13%. that's right! cow farts are doing more damage to our environment than that gas-guzzling SUV you have. if we can culture healthier meat in the lab, we'd significantly reduce greenhouse emissions on a level not even fathomable by environmentalists trying to fight fossil fuel emissions.

so, the question is: vegetarians... would you begin eating meat? would you eat THIS meat? it's no longer "meat is murder"; it never had a face, as is the reasoning for some, AND it would be better for the environment to have people eat more lab-meat, thus making it more cost-effective. if not, what excuse would you have not to? dietitians typically don't say to completely remove red meat, but to limit it to like one serving a week, and as far as i know, there are no health risks associated with chicken at all (we're not talking salmonella here, though that would be significantly decreased since chicken factories that help spread that would be eliminated). would you eat lab-chicken? i'm just curious.

i would. i don't see a problem with it at all. healthier, better for the environment. seems to be pretty much a win-win as long as the cost isn't too much.

the alpha (and the omega)

nystagmus

i love trivia. i think this might be on the nerdier side of trivia, but trivia nonetheless. while watching my season 3 DVDs of "house" several weeks ago, there was an episode called "que sera sera" starring pruitt taylor vince. some of you might recognize him as the crazy guy in "identity". he is noted by his shaky eyes, though i could never really determine if that was a gimmick for him. during the "house" episode", the doctors ask him if he's feeling alright because his eyes are shaking, and he explains that he has a condition called "nystagmus". i looked him up and found out that he actually does have this conditions (which makes sense, doing that on purpose would be rough on the eye muscles).

the bit of trivia i learned (i understand that i learned it from wikipedia, so it may not be valid), is there is a "rule of thumb" approximation of one's blood alcohol content that field sobriety checks use called "horizontal gaze nystagmus". normal, sober people will develop nystagmus when looking to the extreme left and right, beyond 45° or so. the "rule of thumb" is to measure at what degree from center a person develops nystagmus and subtract the from 50°. for example, if someone starts nystagmatizing (?) at 35°... 50-35 = 15, so they have an approximate blood alcohol level of 0.15%. THAT is awesome. when i get back to the apartment, i might have to partake in some horizontal gaze nystagmus experimentation, strictly for data collection, of course.

oh, my migraine is much better, i caught it in time, but it made me think of eyes and fluttering (i have to kind of nystagmatize to read when i have a migraine to get around the spots). that reminded me of mr. vince, and that gave you this lovely post. i hope you enjoyed.

SO NOT FUKKING FUNNY!!!

ok, this turning 30 things sucks. i'm never sick, then i got what, i assume, was a cold (cough, sore throat) just before coming to egypt, and yesterday i had to call off work for what, i'm guessing, was the flu (chills, fever, body aches). so flashback 2 days ago, tuesday, work is work... slow, and i'm starting to get strange chills, i think i might have a fever, but can't tell for sure. on the way home, i'm still chilled and feverish, so i pass on eating dinner at TheMech's place, cooked by his new housekeeper. instead, i go to the hotel, shower, put on my new steeler jammies (long sleeve shirt and long pants), and order dinner. i tried to eat some spaghetti but wasn't very hungry, so i crawled into bed at 8:15PM. i had the heater turned up and was buried under the blankets to try to sweat it out. well, tuesday night sucked. i tossed and turned and SWEATED MY ASS off. when my alarm rang wednesday morning, i knew the unthinkable was going to have to happen. i was going to have to call in sick. in 7 years with TheGeneral, i've only taken 1/2 a sick day in india. wednesday, the total went up to 1.5 sick days with my company. i called TheSiteLead, told him the situation, and he was cool with it. then i crawled under the blankets to sweat it out some more. i slept for another 15 hours or so until TheSiteLead called at 5:00PM to see if i was alive. i decided to pour myself out of bed and try to eat. i cleaned up a bit and tried to eat some lasagna at the italian restaurant downstairs. i only had a few bites of that and a bowl of minestrone. i went back upstairs, watched a bit of TV, read one of my books, and was back in bed at 10PM. i woke up this morning feeling good. i think i sweated out the fever, my stomach is at 80%, and i'm doing pretty well.

oh, but hell, i got away from the title of the post, and THAT is the important thing. tuesday, while i was still feeling sick, i saw TheSecretary in the hallway, and she beckoned me to come to her. i like being beckoned, so i obliged.

TheSecretary: sir, you have to go...
ME: huh?
TS: yes sir, you have to go...
ME: what do you mean?
TS: (makes a jabbing motion at her wrist)
ME: ??? wtf?
TS: sir, your test... you are positive, you have to go
ME: (shites my pants) you're joking, right?
TS: no sir, no joke, you have to go

i was already feeling ill, and that certainly didn't help. i was a zombie the rest of the day. granted, she was saying all this with a slight smirk, but she insisted she was not joking, she'd heard from the other assistant who had gone to cairo to get my results. if by some stretch of some crazy imagination it turned out i was HIV+, the assistant who went to cairo was going to get his face punched to a meaty pulp for sharing that news to people who didn't need to know (it wouldn't have been too much more trouble since rumor has it, if i'd've come back positive, the ARMY comes and escorts me to my hotel to get my stuff, and takes me directly to the airport to get me out of country. civil rights, my ass). i was petrified, completely useless. i knew she was joking, she had to be, but she wouldn't let it go, avoiding me like the plague, no pun intended. i was pissed, part of me was scared, and i was sick... BITCH!!! just before i left work that day, the assistant came in and told me i was negative. i asked for a copy of the test for my own records. that circled word (i looked it up) IS arabic for "negative".