How now, mad cow? The end is upon us, states this article, caused by the world-wide spread of prions. Vegan scare tactic or portent of things to come?

At first, the disease seemed kind of fun. Imagine Cruetzfeldt and Jacob coming upon this native, laughing himself to death with kuru, (the Papuan name for it) then embarking for Europe, with the laughing man’s pickled brain in a jar. Seeing no germs in any lens of the period, they threw this spongy cauliflower into their little British garden. A trillion prions abated into the ground, waiting for some low-grazing animal to come munching toward them, and along came the family pet, Wooly the Ram. Bingo! It’s Mega-death starring The Cannibal Bug opening at the Palladium. That might well have been the scenario for, after New Guinea, the disease’s next official appearance involved a big, geographic leap. In the 70’s, it appeared in the sheep herds of Britain. British sheepherders, with Celtic poesy, called the penchant “scrapie” after the sick sheep’s habit of rubbing up against things. As breeders traded sheep like baseball cards, scrapie moved to sheep herds in America which in 1970 had an epizootic amount of laughy, rubbing sheep. For a while farmers wondered if their teen-aged kids had dosed herds with some of those new-fangled, hippie drugs. Rams and ewes who had never met a cannibal started exhibiting an odd, itch to scrape their heads and hides against fences, even if the fences were barbed wire. No one suspected that scrapie was just that old Papuan wolf hiding in sheep’s clothing. It was beyond imagination that a cannibal infection on one, isolated continent could leap to food chain-animals on another continent…

To conclude “make your own hooch” week, CNN brings us the knowledge that “Angels’ trumpet is a hallucinogenic and poisonous herb that can grow up to 5 feet tall. Possession is not illegal, but charges can be filed if it is used to create a drug or if children are endangered. " A father in Florida was charged after a babysitter accidentally gave his young sons some Angel Trumpet Kool-Aid out of the fridge and they started saying things like “see the frogs”.

Euclid’s Elements form one of the most beautiful and influential works of science in the history of humankind, and now it’s entirely online, complete with javascript goodies that let you dynamically change the diegrams to help you understand the concepts. Neat-o!

The New Scientist interviews Stefano Padulosi, head of underutilised food crops for the International Plant Genetic Resources Institute. He travels the world, finding crops that ought to be used for food alongside the more common crops. Over 95% of the planet’s foodstuff comes from only 30 varieties of plant. Sound like putting all your eggs in one basket? I find it fun to grow uncommon plants in my own garden. Two varieties of Amaranth. Quinoa. Native corn. Domesticated lambsquarters (yum!). Unique watermelons. Heirloom tomatoes. And so on. Why grow the same old stuff you can get at the grocery? If you’re going to grow your own brocolli (for example), try to find something besides the ultra-selected Burpee’s variety. Seeds of Change is a nice place to start.

[Bug Eyed Earl sings](http://www.phs.uiuc.edu/cgi-bin/fm.cgi?caption=Put your rear on y%27 ear and wiggle your toes&leftpic=crazy1&leftq1=Ain%27t nothing like it%2C you know it%27s true. Doin%27 the the hoodleehoo%21&leftq2=I know that note was wrong.&leftq3=Don%27t tell me I%27m wrong%21&rightpic=crazy2&rightq1=That was wrong.&rightq2=I%27m tellin%27 ya%2C buddy-&rightq3=Well%2C you listen to me when I%27m talkin%27 to you%21) Cartoon Planet’s Hoodleehoo, thanks to Daniel Marks’ Red Meat Generator. Steve Wildey pointed me to this. I’d link to him if he had a website.

Woo hoo! Max Cannon has greatly improved the Red Meat Archives! Now you can pull up your favorite Red Meat strip by title or by favorite character.

Somebody found this page while searching for “hampster dance lyrics”. Ummm…. maybe I can help you out:

Hampster Dance Lyrics
Do dit do da do de doh doh, dee bah do dit doh. Doo doo doo doo doo doo doo doo doo doo doh de doh. Ha ha ha ha!

Hope that helps.

Today is Kestrel’s Nest’s first birthday. After reading weblogs for some time (Robot Wisdom, CamWorld, EatonWeb, PeterMe, CardHouse, and Obscure Store were my daily rotation), a year ago I decided to start one of my own. But it was hard, mostly due to weird restrictions from my ISP and my laziness in moving to another. Then in late August 1999, Blogger was born. And Blogger was everything I needed. Since last August 30, I’ve been writing nearly every day. The last twelve months have seen an amazing amount of change in my life, and writing has helped me see things clearly and focus on what is important. Thank you for coming by over the last year. It means a lot to me that so many of you not only have wandered in, but return from time to time to see what I’m up to. And even more, while I’m no Jorn or Cam or Peter or Brig, it is wonderful that I have inspired a few of you to begin writing as well. Everyone should write more. Even if it is just a few sentences a day on scraps of paper that get thrown away, write more.

Here’s a time lapse log of the last year:

August 30, 1999: It lives!
September 30, 1999: Cheese Roll Goes Down Well
October 29, 1999: Phil dE Cat with Grape Jelly
November 30, 1999: The Clothespin Repertory Theater
January 1, 2000: I went to the Gobbler
January 31, 2000: Udderly Smooth Udder Cream
February 29, 2000: Tour my house
March 30, 2000: Too jittery to sleep
April 30, 2000: I destroy a city
May 30, 2000: Sweet, sweet apple fritter
June 29, 2000: Abortion in the news
August 1, 2000: Confederados in Brazil
August 30, 2000: You are here

I’m voting for James “Kool” Polk. Who loves ya, buddy!

The finale of Cartoon Network’s Staylongers is now online. If you haven’t seen this wonderful take on Survivor , take a gander. The Cartoon Network webmaster has messed up the URLs a bit, so here’s the five episodes directly: one, two, three, four and five.

It’s “make you own hooch” week at CNN, apparently, Yesterday: Making illegal liquor – and profits – in Appalachian hills, with a nice description of the distilling process. Today: Try making an alternative wine, complete with recipes. It’s “make your own hooch” week at my house, too. Tonight’s feature is hard ginger ale. It’ll be ready in a couple weeks.