Official Off Topic Discussion Thread #1

[Ulu]

I don’t eat anything that is not being eaten by a large group of the population. How would you know if you were getting a bad monge-monge lizard (or whatever)?

Just because something tastes bad doesn’t mean that it is bad. On that basis it’s very difficult to judge new foods.

These days I stick to the classics. No bison burgers, ostrich eggs or puffer fish sushi.

OK, I did eat a bison burger once at the Casa de Fruta. It’s a world famous tourist attraction, fruit stand, gift shop, restaurant, 24 hour truck service, museum, amusement rides, blah blah blah.

The bison burger was OK. I didn’t think it was worth $24 or whatever I paid at the time. (At least double that now I’m sure.) You could get a pretty awesome cheeseburger for six bucks back then.

The best part of the Casa de Fruta is the collection of antique trucks, tractors, farm equipment, and other mechanical curiosities from a century ago.

The free roaming peacocks are pretty cool too. I’ll have to post some photographs but I don’t have any on this phone from so long ago.

 

[Ulu]

This is one of the many cool tools that I inherited from my father. I’m sure we use this one when we refurbished the old scout back in 1970 something.

This is a close-quarters tubing cutter and it’s a very good one, made in Spain back in the early 1960s.

Notice that it says Millers Falls, which is an American brand; but I guess even back then they were importing tools. I just remember them for things like saw blades & files.

Anyhow I made four cuts with this today and it still works as good as it did when I used it in the 70s.

This is the outlet and vent tube for my fuel tank. I’ve got the stuff all cleaned up and tomorrow I will break out my acetelyene torch and braze them together with the iron bushing.


In that photo you can see the fuel filter I’m going to use, and the fittings in it all have stories. A lot of the parts of this car have stories.

That right angle fitting came from the fuel pump of a Toyota pick up truck. I changed the engine in that truck 25 years ago. The straight fitting came out of the combination fuel pump and vacuum pump, left over from my 1959 Edsel.

They’re very clean and shiny now, but they were pretty filthy and a little rusty when I dug them out of my collection of junk parts.

Considering prices nowadays I’d probably pay 5 dollars each for those fittings, including tax.

That cap with seven screws sticking out of it was made from a piece of my old dad‘s garden tractor. It was an irregular trapezoid so I had to make it round.

 

[RD.]

I didn’t give a rat’s azz about the 300 ostriches. I felt sorry for the ranchers.
Lots of lost work and investment.

Well that wasn’t very nice….

 

[Ulu]

Look, those things are bad enough, but now some silly gene-splicers are trying to bring back the Dodo bird.

Imagine the mountain of guano those things would produce, as they run around eating cats and small children

 

[skjl47]

Hello; There was a movie decades ago called HUD. It was a Paul Newman vehicle but had a scene where a herd of cattle were driven into a deep hole and then shot en mass. I do not know if that scene would be filmed today the same way, but that is only a small part of my take.

I get the feeling that somehow domesticated ostrich farming is seen differently than domesticated cattle farming. Is there actually more sympathy for ostriches than beef cattle?

I have not read much about the thinking behind destroying flocks of domestic birds (chickens, turkeys, ostrich and such). I get the concept. Stop disease spread in its tracks by killing infected flocks. Not clear this will be effective. Best I know currently is the disease is in wild birds already. That domestic farm flocks may be infected by a sick wild bird contact.
I see how cattle can be different in that more control over contact is possible.

I wonder how a remake of HUD would be under today's woke values in Hollywood? How would they fit in all that stuff? How would the casting be different?

 

[RD.]

Those ranchers, along with skirting a number of creditors that apparently were owed money, were also skirting the regulations surrounding avian flu, and the reporting and containment procedures involving same. I’ve seen fish breeders with better bio security protocols in place. The owners got what they deserved. The birds, not so much.

I recall when All in the Family was considered shock TV. Married With Children is another program that probably wouldn’t have the same years of run time as it did back in the day.

 

[skjl47]

Look, those things are bad enough, but now some silly gene-splicers are trying to bring back the Dodo bird.

Imagine the mountain of guano those things would produce, as they run around eating cats and small children

Hello; i liken it to be very similar to the way computer techs keep adding tech features to vehicles just because they can. Largely without any real need for the tech. I went to look at a 2025 Mustang GT a couple of weeks ago. I still have a bucket list sort of fantasy of having one of those sorts of cars. No good nor practical reason for such.
An appealing thing is the price is dropped some in the sense dealers are making better deals than a year ago, though still not down enough. But price aside the tech shoved into the car is disappointing for me. There was only one knob on the dash. The rest was a touch screen. I tried to imagine changing things like the heat or AC when driving. On my current cars I do not have to look, just find the correct knob.

I was temporarily pleased to find what i thought was a manual parking brake. It looked like a parking brake handle. Thing was when I pulled up on the handle it did not latch and there was not a button to release it. Turned out to be a gimmick of sorts. It is called a "drift brake". I have seen "drifting" on TV. Even watched an automobile fix it show where a car was modified to drift. I like cars and like working on them. i have three Craftsman stacked toolboxes in my basement garage. The older sort with a base and two additional boxes on top. I also have a Craftsman stand up locker. Been tempted to get one of the big professional chests with the lights & all, but don't actually need such.

Anyway, this gene-splicing to bring back extinct critters reminds me of the auto tech in that it is trying stuff just because they can. Of course, a logical outcome will be genetically improved humans. I read lots of sci-fi books. Have hundreds of paperback sci-fi stored in boxes. So many have "improved" humans as part of the story. One advantage of getting old is rereading books at an advanced age which i read when young. One recently reread was not sci-fi. It was The Road To Zanzibar by Fletcher Kenibble (sp) The book seemed very much different now than when I was in my early 20's.

 

[jjohnwm]

I didn’t give a rat’s azz about the 300 ostriches. I felt sorry for the ranchers.
Lots of lost work and investment.

Yes and no.

Do I feel for the people involved who sank all that time and money and effort into starting a risky new enterprise and are now losing it all? Yes, of course.

But...if they didn't realize that raising ostriches on a farm in Canada was fraught with peril from the get-go...if they weren't aware of other bird farms that had their entire stock (of chickens) exterminated for this same reason...if they were still willing to take all these risks hoping for a huge pay-off...well, sorry, but them's the breaks.

The owners of the farm, as shrill as they are about the heartless slaughter of all those cuddly ostriches, have failed to mention that they are compensated up to $3000 per bird. Hmmm...could this be the ostrich-farm equivalent of surreptitiously setting fire to a failing business and collecting the insurance...?

I'm also curious as to how all those tissue-clutching onlookers came to be assembled on hand to observe the slaughter so they could weep and wail on camera. Who arranged that public demonstration? That took a coordinated effort; I mean, even in Canada, it requires some effort to locate and assemble that many nutcases to protest anything. They aren't just wandering around on the streets in packs, waiting for a chance to cry about something...well, okay, maybe they are. Just hand out the music sheets to them so they are all singing the same verse of "Kumbaya, My Lord" in unison.

Incidentally, the slaughter of the birds involved killing them in the quickest, most humane fashion that was practical. Those birds certainly died an easier, quicker death than almost all birds and other critters in their natural environment.

Let's face it: these birds were destined for slaughter anyways, at the hands of their owners, for processing into meat...or have they magically developed a method for removing meat from the living birds without hurting them? Yeah, yeah, that's it! We shear sheep for their wool over and over without actually harming them. I'll bet these ostrich farmers have developed a similar method of removing meat from living birds while still allowing the critters to live out their lives in comfort afterwards.

I'm gonna look more carefully at some of those pics of the farm; I wanna see if there are any birds running around on prosthetic legs after having their drumsticks "sheared"...

 

[Ulu]

Those ranchers, along with skirting a number of creditors that apparently were owed money, were also skirting the regulations surrounding avian flu, and the reporting and containment procedures involving same. I’ve seen fish breeders with better bio security protocols in place. The owners got what they deserved. The birds, not so much….

Thank you. Some of those facts weren’t obvious in what snippets I watched.

Anyhow, I couldn’t get too excited, as we kill 20 million turkeys here each fall.

That’s just California. Minnesota kills 35 million.

I noticed Alaska has no turkeys. Might be a delicacy there. Here it’s the cheap meat.

 

[Ulu]

“. . . I'll bet these ostrich farmers have developed a similar method of removing meat from living birds while still allowing the critters to live out their lives in comfort afterwards”


Well hey! . . . we couldn’t jus’ eat a bird that purty all at oncet!

(OK . . . I stole that idea from some pork joke in back of the The Razorback Hog Breeder’s Gazette.)