The snake oil peddlers of a hundred years ago have just changed their vocabulary. Barnum's dictum is still valid.
Cathy always was a bellwether of the absurd.
The funny part is, snake oil sales are often targeted at people who are healthy - they *fabricate* illnesses to which they have the "treatment."
Cheers,
Bryan
" Cathy always was a bellwether of the absurd."
A bellwether was a castrated ram who led the sheep to slaughter. Seems a harsh name for Cathy.
The whole nutraceutical business is 99.44% a racket. Very few people need any supplements if they eat a sensible diet. It is frequently analogous to putting forty gallons of gas into a twenty gallon tank. The excess is just wasted.
a harsh name for Cathy.
Oh, I dunno.
A bellwether was a castrated ram who led the sheep to slaughter
One animal in a flock of sheep usually established itself as leader, and in the absence of rams, it would normally be a wether. It was useful for the shepherds to know where it was, and which one was the leader, so it was given a bell. I don't know, but imagine that the other sheep learnt to follow the bell as well as the wether. But it was not just for leading to slaughter, though it might certainly be used for that.
Today in Switzerland, it seems that many of a flock of goats on the mountain will have bells, and several cows. I have never asked them what the command hierachy is.
Rod
My wife when young was not allowed to have pets because of Depression dictated penuriousness of her parents. So she had all our five kids in 4H animal projects. I learned a lot more about sheep than I really wanted to know. I did enjoy the Border Collies, except for the one who went down the road a mile to a nursing home that had cats, and chased the cats up the fire escape ladder to the ridgepole on the third floor and then howled for the night watchman to help him get down the ladder. Rather than face a court appearance I planted him. We never bothered with a wether, as the Border Collies solved all our problems. But imagine trying to take sheep to slaughter in large numbers, and have them go calmly into the slaughter pen, without the magic of an ovine Pied Piper, the bellwether they knew and trusted. Putting bells on the animals was a way of knowing where they were if the got out of sight in woods adjoining the pasture.
From the FWIW Department:
You couldn't have a bellwether (or its bovine equivalent) for cows, because the cow leader does not lead in a progression of the herd. Cows divide into roughly three strata, with A cows having the highest status, B cows the next, and C cows the last. In a procession of cows, the B cows go first, followed by the A cows, and then the C cows, so that the most important and hence valued cows are protected in the center of the procession.
Whether the cows would attempt to form a circle around Chief A cow as she was dragged off by the butcher, I dunno. [wandering-off-to-look-up-Temple-Grandin emoticon] Then again, I dunno why anybody would be slaughtering cows anyway. [realizing-I-shouldda-quit-before-I-started emoticon]
If you don't slaughter the cows, how do you make them into hamburgers?
but curiously, i just read a letter to the editor of Natural History magazine about cows-- how cows set up informal baby sitting arrangements.. so the mother can graze-- and that low status cows have more babysitting chores,and less free time-- they have to eat and run. (The letter writter said this was true for Texas cows.. and i don't know enough about cows to know if its true for other cows.)
When cows get too old to calve again, or milk production is inadequate, or they get sick, they get turned into hotdogs. Yum,Yum.
If you don't slaughter the cows, how do you make them into hamburgers?I got into a mental tailspin about the fact that, usually, beef cattle are actually steers, not cows. Cows are used for diary and breeding.
But then, it occurred to me that there were unfortunate cow slaughterings occurring in Europe because of hoof and mouth and mad cow disease. But then, I thought, oh, those are unusual exceptions and people won't get hung up on that. Or will they...
And so I proceeded down my mental vortex, which is when, instead of trying to sum it all up, I just asked why I had even started down the cow path ... [you asked emoticon]
When cows get too old to calve again, or milk production is inadequate, or they get sick, they get turned into hotdogs. Yum,Yum.
Last I heard hotdogs were pig, or more or less turkey now.
beef cattle are actually steers, not cows
Well you gotta have *some cows or you won't have little baby bulls (bullets?) to make the steers out of.
Low priced hotdogs have very unappetising things in them Lungs, all the glands, intestines and worse. Any kind of meat whatsoever. Again I say, Yum,Yum. Strong sarcasm emoticon.
Last I heard hotdogs were pig, or more or less turkey now.
Y'all don't get kosher hot dogs in Cincy?
Not everybody knows what "kosher" means. I took violin lessons with a couple Jewish boys. Once when it was their turn to drive, they stopped at a delicatessen, and came out with some meat wrapped in brown paper with large Hebrew printed words on it. I asked what the printing meant, and the older boy said "That means it's kosher." I asked again, "What does kosher mean?" He replied: "That means it's meat the rabbi has pissed on." So I had to wait until I got home and looked it up in the dictionary.
Y'all don't get kosher hot dogs in Cincy?
Hey, Cincinnati is Porkopolis. I'm sure we have every kind of hotdog there is.
Hey, Cincinnati is Porkopolis. Hence my question: do you have kosher hot dogs there? [beating a dead steer]
