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Carpal Tunnel
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OP
Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
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The snake oil peddlers of a hundred years ago have just changed their vocabulary. Barnum's dictum is still valid.
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Joined: Dec 2000
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Carpal Tunnel
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OP
Carpal Tunnel
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Cathy always was a bellwether of the absurd.
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Joined: Apr 2001
Posts: 69
journeyman
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journeyman
Joined: Apr 2001
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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
Cheers,
Bryan
You are only wretched and unworthy if you choose to be.
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Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
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" 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.
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Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
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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.
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Joined: Dec 2000
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Carpal Tunnel
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OP
Carpal Tunnel
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a harsh name for Cathy.
Oh, I dunno.
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addict
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addict
Joined: Feb 2001
Posts: 609 |
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
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Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
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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.
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Pooh-Bah
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Pooh-Bah
Joined: Jan 2001
Posts: 1,773 |
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]
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