There’s a reason the clones in George Orwell’s 1984 had gin available: Because it’s fucking awful.
According to Maya-Rose Torrao of Briefly, inventors Les Ansley and Professor Paula Ansley (sounds like a lab relationship that shouldn’t be) have created South Africa’s first ever gin made from elephant poop.
The two creators took inspiration from Mzansi’s gentle giants when they noticed that much of what elephants eat passes through their systems undigested
The creators of this unique drink explain, on their website: “The original idea for elephant dung gin came from marrying the love of Africa and its wildlife with the love of gin. We are both scientists—and therefore inclined towards novel ideas and problem solving—so when Paula had the idea we really wanted to see whether it would actually be possible. The more we explored the concept the more it opened up and the more excited we became.”
“Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.”
That famous quote, often wrongly ascribed to Albert Einstein, is believed to have originated with Narcotics Anonymous in 1981 (the same year I began university).
In addition to helping raise five daughters, providing endless relationship entertainment to the folks I played pick-up hockey with back in Guelph (that’s pre-Amy, who is playing pick-up as I write this), helping teach lots of kids how to skate, influencing lotsa students (good and bad, not much in-between), pissing off lotsa bureaucrats and industry types, publishing lots of peer-reviewed stuff that still gets cited daily and almost 15,000 barfblog.com posts, I did news.
Food Safety Network news, long before wannabes.
For 26 years I’ve done news.
And always referenced the evidence, or lack thereof.
Until others do the same, they’re just plagiarists.
I combined my background in molecular biology with some journalism experience, and I carved out a path in food safety.
The vision I always had for food safety information, all those years ago, was what I heard about daily – and often directly: How the hell was I supposed to know?
We mined the world (I used Compuserve to get access to the AP wires and others back in the days before Google, when the U.S. Centers for Disease Control’s MMWR would take six months to arrive by mail, when those who needed to know should have had the information as soon as possible).
I am intensely loyal to the kids, er, students, that flourished and maybe we’ll write a book; or maybe not.
I did my best, even when my best wasn’t good enough.
I still love it – I haven’t been paid in over two years — but someone else should be in charge.
I have early-onset dementia, I have other health issues, so rather than submit any more family members to, I’ve got to do news, I am going to step away while I can.
Of the 15,287 barfblog.com posts, I authored (or cut and paste) 13,070 since 2005. That’s 86 per cent, or an ice hockey goalie save percentage of .8549, which isn’t great (should be over .91) but doesn’t exactly suck, because this isn’t hockey.
It’s something different.
And time for me to do something different.
I may still write, maybe about food safety, maybe about other things, maybe about the probability of monkeys flying out of my butt.
But for now, I’ve got other priorities.
Ben can figure out what to do and what he wants to do.
It’s been an honor and a privilege to share your computer screens, maybe even your brain space, and improve food safety, one tip-sensitive digital thermometer, one less serving of raw sprouts, and one calling out of bullshit advice, at a time.
My 10-year-old daughter asked me today, what are yeast?
I started into one of my typical speeches about the difference between prokaryotes and eukaryotes, the role of the nucleus and fun with fermentations.
We have some basic microbiological work to do, and the French professor reminded me I was talking to a 10-year-old.
I reminded the French professor she should stick to French.
But if I’m going to teach her hockey basics, I guess I can teach her some micro, and she can teach me about art (she’s really talented; and that applies to both mother and daughter).
Hockey player and veterinarian, Scott Weese of the Worms and Germs blog, writes that rabies and distemper are the two things that come to mind first when a raccoon is acting strangely. Rabies is a big concern because it can also be transmitted to people. Distemper is also a viral infection, caused by canine distemper virus, and is transmissible to dogs and some wildlife species, but is not zoonotic. Raccoons are very susceptible to distemper and infections and outbreaks are common. If raccoon rabies is present in the area, we need to err on the side of caution and treat an abnormal raccoon as potentially rabid until proven otherwise. If raccoon rabies isn’t in the area, an abnormal raccoon is generally assumed to have distemper (but rabid raccoons can hitch rides on vehicles, so we can’t rule out rabies completely without testing).
But there is one other possible cause for a raccoon to be acting somewhat drunk… alcohol.
Surprisingly (and good to hear), they weren’t euthanized right away because of their abnormal behavior. Just like we do for any other drunken mammalian species, the raccoons were held until they sobered up, and were then sent on their way. A picture of one of the young offenders was released by the Milton (W. Va) Police Department. It’s much cuter than the typical mug shot.
The alleged drug-smuggling operation was discovered at the cargo facility at the Pharr-Reynosa International Bridge in southern Texas on Feb. 16, a release says. Officers found 906 pounds of the drug concealed in a trailer, CBP says.
A 42-year-old man who is a Mexican citizen was arrested in connection with the seizure, according to the release.
According to U.S. Customs and Border Protection statistics, 87 percent of methamphetamine seized along the border in the first 11 months of the 2018 fiscal year was caught trying to be smuggled in at legal crossing points.
I’ve always done the open stuff, where I put myself out there for criticism or praise or something else, 5 new chapters added, when people reminded me of things.
Anyone else wanna chip in?
Food safety is simple Powell
Just cook it Powell
BSE Bert
Cyclospora Ron (??)
Food safety programs ensure food safety Chapman
Training ensures safe food Mancini
Five-second rule Schaffner
Sprouts are a health food Powell
Cold-cuts should be served in aged care Powell
Cantaloupe is a health food Powell/Chapman
Labels are a meaningful way of communicating Celia/Powell
A “polite warning” and some “men’s bathroom humor” at a Home Depot led to a 911 call about a potential bomb threat, according to a report from the Wichita Police Department.
Officers were called to the home improvement store at about 12:15 p.m. Monday for a reported bomb threat, the report states. When police got there, an employee said he was “standing at the urinal” when a man came out of a bathroom stall and said, “Somebody told me there’s a bomb in the building, you need to leave the building,” the report states.
The employee told police that he asked the man to repeat what he said, and that man gave the same statement two more times.
The Wichita Home Depot employee left the restroom and told store security about the warning, and the security guard called 911, police wrote in the report.
A store clerk recognized the man who gave the warning as a “regular customer,” and gave the customer’s name to police.
The officer got a hold of the man on the phone, and he told police “that he had no intention of causing such alarm, and that the comment he said … was meant to be funny,” the report says.
The man reported to police that he was in the bathroom stall when he heard another man announce something along the lines of, “You all need to get out of here because I’m fixin to blow it up.” It is not known who said that, according to the report.
The man said that he and another person laughed because they understood the warning. He said they understood the man “was in a serious need to defecate, and that he was attempting to provide a polite warning to the other patrons of the bathroom,” an officer wrote.
There’s going to be an exhibition that is set to display shit of all shapes and sizes. But most importantly, that shit is going to be cute. Or kawaii as they say in Japanese.
There’s going to be some fun and interactive shit for people of all ages.
Dubbed the Unko Museum (Unko translates to shit in Japanese), the exhibition will run between March 15 to July 15.
Shit Museum. Yeah…
Visitors would be able to find cute cartoonified shit all over the exhibition. There’s even going to be an “Insta-poop area” where coils of poop adorn the four walls – perfect for those of you who’re into such shit.
Pui Fun of World of Buzz writes that cherries are an amazing fruit that has lots of nutrients but eating too much of it isn’t a good idea either, as proven by this 32-year-old lady in Chongqing, China.
According to Sina, the lady surnamed Wang was preparing to go to Wuhan for the Chinese New Year celebrations when she received two boxes of fresh cherries from her relatives and friends. Since there would be no one home during the holidays, she decided to wash the cherries and put them in two big bags so that she could eat them during her journey to Wuhan. Source: Health A few days later, Wang experienced severe stomach discomfort after she got off the plane and rushed to the bathroom in the hotel. She was shocked when she discovered that her poop looked “bloody” and red in colour. Her diarrhoea continued and she had to go to the toilet for more than 20 times in one night. At one point, it got so bad that she even fainted in the bathroom. Her family was worried about her and sent her to the hospital the next morning where the doctor quickly ran some tests on her stools. However, when the results came back, the doctor was surprised to see that there were no big issues with her stools.
The doctor suspected that the “bloody stools” that raised the alarm could actually be caused by red pigments in the food that Wang had eaten and began to question her. It was then that Wang recalled she had eaten 3kg of fresh cherries for five days straight and before she got off the plane to Wuhan, she had eaten about 50 cherries in one go.
When I was in the hospital last week for recurring gall issues, I provided a stool sample to check for C. difficile. Stool samples are the cornerstone of foodborne illness outbreak investigation.
This is what Chapman pooped in to about 8 years ago in Kansas.
Campylobacter and didn’t just hate my cooking.
I was curious about the Australian way, and followed the nurse around.
And took pictures.
According to Maya-Rose Torrao of Briefly, inventors Les Ansley and Professor Paula Ansley (sounds like a lab relationship that shouldn’t be) have created South Africa’s first ever gin made from elephant poop.
