THE WIDE WORLD OF VEGAN BLOGS

So I was checking back through the Vegan Porn archives for something, and came upon a post that referenced this blog: www.vegblog.org Cool! And I'm reading along in that one and it leads me to another, veganfreaks.org! Which is also cool! And which links to other blogs and/or sites I haven't even gotten to yet! So that's what this Internet thing is all about, eh?

I've read enough of these ones to know I want them in my sidebar and have added them there. But the biggest surprise of the day is when I go back to read some more of Vegblog.org and - what's this? Neal Barnard is wailing away on electric guitar in a band? How did I miss this? Why didn't Neal ever mention this to me when I talked to him? I feel like I've just woken up from some kind of daze - I guess it's more accurately called "not paying enough attention." Anyway, check out all these other sites if you haven't already! (And if you have... why didn't you tell me??? )

ARE YOU A MAN OR A MOUSE?

That seems to be the question that would face cowboy scientists who want to create a mouse with a human brain. Just go read Vegan Porn's take on the whole unbelievable concept. They've nailed it, and I have little than I can add other than my spiffy headline above.

IT'S OFFICIAL: MAD COW FEED BAN NOT BEING ENFORCED

"The Government Accountability Office, the investigative wing of Congress, said that while the FDA has made improvements in its management of the feed ban, 'various program weaknesses continue to undermine the nation's firewall against BSE,'" says this AP story. Well, that's one way to put it, GAO, "undermine the firewall." But see, a "firewall" is an all-or-nothing thing. If just a little teensy bit of fire can get past a firewall and start a fire on the other side, it ain't a firewall anymore, is it?

Other findings: The FDA has "no uniform approach to identify the feed manufacturers and shippers that are subject to the feed ban but have not been inspected;" 20 percent of the 14,800 firms inspected since 1997 have not been re-inspected in five years or more; the FDA's feed-ban inspection guidance "does not include instructions to routinely sample cattle feed to test for potentially banned material;" and the FDA has no "consistent standards for cleaning machinery and transport vehicles that handle both prohibited and allowed feed materials." But other than that, firewall all the way.

HUNTING GETTING MORE UNPOPULAR

Here's a story from last week that doesn't actually seem to have any news in it - if I'm reading right, the latest figures are from 2001, a decline that's already been covered - but this was all over the wires, and if it helps get the message across to people that bloodsport is not a legitimate use of 21st-century leisure time, then I'll happily point to it.

BIRD FLU PANDEMIC MARCHES CLOSER

OK, now is it time to start paying attention to this? "It's a scenario that the World Health Organization (WHO) and other health experts have been expecting and fearing, a mutated version of the bird flu virus that can spread from human to human. The WHO says clusters of H5N1 bird flu cases among people in Vietnam may be a signal that the virus has mutated into a version that can be spread by humans."