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What Is The Meatrix?
And oldie, but goodie.
Earlier here.
Porky Pies
So the “solution” to cows infected with BSE is to attempt to divert the most infectious tissues (spinal tissues, brains, nerves) from direct human ingestion towards ingestion by pigs and poultry on the assumption that digestive processing in these animals completely eliminates the prions. Good luck with that…
A number of epidemiological studies have suggested a link between pork consumption and sporadic CJD … “The present study indicated that consumption of pork … may be considered as risk factors in the development of Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease.” … D. Carleton Gajdusek, the first to be awarded a Nobel Prize in Medicine for his work on prion diseases [says] “it’s got to be in the pigs as well as the cattle. It’s got to be passing through the chickens.” Dr. Paul Brown, medical director for the US Public Health Service, believes that pigs and poultry could indeed be harboring Mad Cow disease and passing it on to humans, adding that pigs are especially sensitive to the disease.
…
Alzheimer’s Disease [afflicts] an estimated 4 million Americans … A number of autopsy studies have shown that a few percent of Alzheimer’s deaths may in fact be CJD. Prion disease expert Gajdusek, for example, estimates that 1% of people showing up in Alzheimer clinics actually have CJD. At Yale, out of a series of 46 patients clinically diagnosed with Alzheimer’s, six were proven to have CJD at autopsy.
More Weirdness
The weirdness continues… A few days ago I got one of those free credit reports and, checking it, was amazed to see that a debt collection agency, the Collection Bureau of America, had registered a $57 judgement against me, on behalf of PacBell, sometime in 2002. Obviously an error, I decided to phone the agency.
As soon as they heard I was listed as a bad debt, they put me through to a guy who began intoning some very official-sounding legalese about being a licensed debt recovery specialist. I interrupted him by saying “So, like, you’re a Repo Man? That was an excellent movie! The life of a Repo Man is always intense“. He reminded me again that the conversation was being recorded and could be used in legal proceedings.
He didn’t seem to get the joke and insisted on continuing, despite me telling him that his company had obviously made a huge error.
Anyway, he asked did I live or had I ever lived on 24th Street? No, I live on 25th Street.
Did I live or had I ever lived in Oakland? No, I’ve always lived in San Francisco.
Was my PacBell account phone number xxx-xxxx? No, it’s always been yyy-yyyy.
By now you’d think he would begin to see that something was wrong. But he just carried right on asking questions to which he got a negative response, until he finally checked the original date of the account. Finally he began to smell a rat. He apologized for asking the next question.
Were you 18 years or older in 1920? Definitely not, I told him, and asked him if he finally realised that their records were fucked?
Eventually he conceded and is sending me some sort of correction form.
Why is the world filled with morons who try to believe everything their crappy database contents tell them?
So Much To Do…
So long since the last post, I have been rather busy and soaking up the rays…
Got engaged to Lisa – on Christmas Day! Bought a guaranteed child slavery-free war-free diamond, from Canada. I hate DeBeers and their “Diamonds Are Forever” marketing crap but diamonds sure are sparkly.
Watched the growing expertise and reach of the Iraqi resistance with great unsurprise.
Had my ancient Yahoo account (since 1997!) suspended for some unknown reason. Yahoo is now straight out of Kafka – they tell me I’ve violated their terms of service, but won’t tell me how exactly. But they do suggest I get another account – which sounds like entrapment to me. Apparently the entire company is staffed by automatons judging by how spectacularly unresponsive and repetitive their Customer “Care” responses can be.
Had both my American Express cards cancelled over the vacation – which royally screwed up the delivery of my presents. Apparently the last item I bought on one of the cards was the engagement ring and this seems to have triggered some sort of wig-out in their monitoring software.
Bought not one but two ReplayTVs – they were on some crazy special deal for $150 each. It’s nice not to have to program the VCR anymore but it does mean there is now even more damn TV to watch. I need to begin rationing. One nice thing about these models is that (usually) automatically skip over adverts and have ethernet, so you can copy the shows over to a PC or send them across the Internet.
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