Thespian

It's entertaining, but incorrect. At least Foxtrot gets their stuff right.

Resistant bacteria and antibiotic chicken feed

If you have a spare moment, please sign this virtual petition started by the Union of Concerned Scientists. The purpose of the petition is to convince Pilgrim's Pride to join other poultry producers in reducing their use of antibacterial chicken feed.

Many chicken farms routinely put antibiotics into chicken feed, whether or not the chickens are sick, as a preventative measure. The problem is that using the antibiotics kills most of the target bacteria in the chicken, but some hardy ones survive. These are the ones that then reproduce, creating antibiotic resistant strains ("superbugs"). This is the same process that creates superbugs in hospitals, such as MRSA. Which I am a lucky host of, as part of my skin disease hidradenitis suppurativa (though the auto-immune component appears to be more important).

So yeah, sign the petition.

Cross-posted.

class

I posted this as a comment to amavia's post on class structure in the US, and thought it deserved space of its own.

Sometimes I am amazed by people's stories of different classes. My Nga Boo (maternal grandmother) was from a rich family in Shanghai. They had servants, wet-nurses (Ama), and "companions" (as my family calls them) - I think a companion is the child of the wet nurse who was born at roughly the same time as the family member.

She was a rebel though, she broke off an arranged marriage to marry a Cantonese peasant, who later was part of the Nationalist Army. He (my Nga Cone) borrowed an army buddy's passport which had permissions to come to the US, and somehow arranged for asslyum for my Nga Boo and infant mother. They took a boat here, my Nga Boo strapping my three-year-old mother to her back so that she wouldn't get washed overboard on the stormy journey. Once here, Nga Cone opened a resturaunt, Nga Boo waited tables, and Mom bussed the tables after school.

And at family reunions not only do I bow to my Boo-boo's (grand aunts), but also to one woman who was the companion of a Boo-boo. She never married: even here in America her main goal in life was to serve as my Boo-boo's companion. She could have left at any point in time, but she never did.