70 pints a DAY!?

The ITV News yesterday showed a huge 10 minute piece about the offspring of a cloned cow that had been born in this country about a year ago, and proceeded to launch into an "analysis" of what the risks to consumers might be. As far as I can see this is just shameless scaremongering - the only risks to cloning cattle to produce 70 pints (yes, 70) of milk a day is that to the animal. Before the intensive selective breeding of Fresian/Holstein (and Jersey to an extent) cattle they produced a fraction of the milk they do now. This was clearly less efficient, but seeing modern dairy cattle walking around with hugely distended udders, covered in scratch marks, and the high rate of mastitis present in the UK dairy herd makes you wonder. The metabolic strain that producing such high quantities of such a product must surely take its toll, and eventually lead to premature culling.
Cloning cattle to massively increase yields is wrong, but the human biased angle put on it by ITV was shocking. I hope that consumer worries stem from a welfare perspective rather than the implied health perspective given.

Darwin, Dawkins, God and Me. All in 417 Words

This is not a radical post – it is my opinion.

If, all those million years ago, the tiny life-like particles had come together and “discovered” a DNA-like way of copying themselves, but, one that was perfect, I mean 100% perfect, letter for letter, chemical for chemical, then we’d still be sitting in a primordial soup. The sheer fact that we cannot copy ourselves perfectly has enabled us to become what we are today, and isn’t that incredible? – Me, 2006

Evolution by natural selection is an amazing thing, and in my opinion, explains everything there is to know about the origins of us, and every other living thing on the planet. Richard Dawkins also believes this, and I am currently reading his book “The Blind Watchmaker”, and it is fantastic. Full of beautiful metaphors and well explained theories (though his analogy of DNA to the ROM of a computer was extremely confusing), it is well worth reading. However, I think if he is going to more widely spread the amazing news that is neo-Darwinism he is going to have to divorce it from his arrogant atheism.

Now, I’m not religious, and I don’t really believe that there is a God – perhaps I’m hedging my bets – an agnostic. As I’ve said, my beliefs about the origin of life are the same as Dawkins’s, but that’s not the point. That does not immediately disprove the existence of a God. God and evolution (even evolution by natural selection) are not mutually exclusive, it just simply gives a different role for a deity. All the species we have on this earth today are descended from an original (or a few original) ancestors, and that’s great, but so what? Maybe once all religious experts realise that evolution did happen, and that natural selection is the perfect, most logically perfect way to explain this, and people like Dawkins realise that while it may disprove the book of Genesis as a literal fact, it does not prove organised-religion to be a breeding ground for unintelligent, uninformed, brainwashed fools perhaps we can all get on. Religion in general makes a lot of people happy, and I believe has helped us set up a large majority of the moral codes we hold today. I have no problem with peaceful religiousness; it’s just not for me.

Aside from these religious misgivings, the book is well worth reading and shines a glorious light on all that is natural. Completely natural, and beautiful.

Anyone else’s opinion would be welcomed!

Tom

Vetsci Discoveries

I'm sat watching the cricket (Steven Harmison is kicking arse! He's 20* and England are 373-9 (dammit... 373 all out now)) and I've been looking through the BBC news website, following on from finding that picture of Banksy's.

Apparently, some PhD student in Melbourne has discovered a way of identifying a dog's blood type - could be useful, particularly in saving old Dave the Greyhound giving blood to some dogs with a different blood type, or maybe getting him some companions! But, there's never going to be a country-wide canine blood bank whatever happens, that would just not be plausible (or sensible), so, it could be of limited use, unless every practice keeps donor dogs ready and waiting to be cannibalised, which may be seen as wrong, though perhaps the lives of however many dogs may be saved is worth more than the continued discomfort of one dog?

I've also just been reminded of the sueing (is that how you spell it) of a vet who administered cortico-steroids to a show-horse without warning the owner of the slight chance of them causing laminitis that I heard about from Alex's family... she won £350,000 apparently. I guess this proves that you really do have to cover every single angle that you can to protect yourself, and stick it all in writing... or, don't work with expensive horses!

they have picked the wrong city to pick on.

It's a beautiful day!

Met up with Mary (who is farming in north London) and went for a walk down by the river. She's doing well, and was brave enough to venture onto the M25... I certainly wouldn't have been!

My sister had her "highschool" prom the other day (AARGH... Americanisation), and thoroughly enjoyed it. She looked so pretty in her purple dress.

In other news, we were all very upset by the London bombings a few days ago. Luckily my Dad (who works in central London) missed it, and Vicky, who was very Kings Cross at the time survived unharmed. It touched us all though - it was weird to be so close to something so big, and scary - I've always felt so detatched from it all when it happened before elsewere (New York, Madrid) - it's a bit creepy it being so close. It's the way it all comes down to luck that makes it hard to accept; there's nothing you can do to stay safe really, save never leaving your house (and then you'd probably die of vitamin D deficiency; and if you do that, who's won?
I was touched by a letter I saw on the TV with some flowers on a wall in London that summed up the feeling in London at the moment: "Yesterday we fled this great city, but today we are walking back into an even stronger and greater city. The people who did this should know that they have failed, they have picked the wrong city to pick on. London will go on.".

I've managed to track down a picture of it from http://www.msnbc.msn.com/



Sorry for the sparseness of posting. I'll try to put up MayBall photos soon... They're on my laptop which is awkward to connect up to the net...

Tom
xxx