soapbox

I don’t know of any official forum for complaints, but if you feel so moved I’m sure that letters to your congerzman would be appreciated: Monsanto is attacking the RBGH-free labels used by virtually all non-bad-for-you dairy products. Happily, that bastion of all that is good and holy (and tasty) is fighting back.

I like blockquotes, so I’ll go with these two:

A newly formed farmers’ group, backed by Monsanto, is pushing for labeling changes, saying the hormone-free labels imply that the milk is safer than other milk, when they say it’s not.

Well no shit dummies. They imply the crap about of the subject, but if you read the details they very clearly say “we can’t say anything other than our products don’t have any hormones in them.”

and

The hormone, which was approved by the Food and Drug Administration to boost production in dairy cows in the early 1990s, was not approved in Canada, Japan or the European Union, largely out of concerns it may be harmful to animals.

And “there are unanswered human questions with it. It probably should never have been approved,” said Michael Hansen, a senior scientist with Consumers Union, which publishes Consumer Reports.

10-megajoule railgun!

Good grief - that’s intense!

And now for the real punchline: the goal is a 64-megajoule monster! Equivalent impact for the 5-inch, 5600-mph projectile coming out of that? Yeah, that’s right, a Ford Taurus doing 390 mph. Sounds like a great way to blow something up in a very spectacular way.

I’ve got an idea for the military eggheads working on this bad boy: when you’re done building enough of these that the Navy can kill everything, maybe y’all could cook up another one we can point at space to defend against alien invaders or perhaps (more realistically) the occasional asteroid or comet that might threaten. Bonus use: you can use that same one to blow up satellites you don’t like!