Friday, April 20, 2012

More Trouble in Flathead County

 
 
Flathead County Sheriff's and Kalispell Police Reports
Monday 4/16

7:41 a.m. Two horses busted through a Caroline Road resident’s fence and stood on their property. They were rounded up and taken home.

7:52 a.m. Someone reported an intoxicated man, who at the time of the call was rummaging through a tackle box, might want to get in his vehicle and drive. He did and was arrested.


8:30 a.m. A parent on Smokey Bear Line reported that their son rode his bike to the end of the road yesterday and left it there. It is no longer there.

10:27 a.m. Two poodle-type dogs were abandoned on Airport Road.

11:22 a.m. Reportedly, a pit bull that lives in a camper at the old Wal-Mart bit someone.

4:41 p.m. A four-wheeler that was described as “small” was stolen from a Eid Lane location.

7:10 p.m. A man in Pleasant Valley claimed that an acquaintance of his refused to return his boom ladder.

8:36 p.m. Reportedly, someone was smoking meth as they drove their maroon Subaru through Evergreen.

11:10 p.m. A Bigfork man complained that his wife went crazy and threw things around the house. He decided he would go to a nearby bar and leave her alone for the night.

Bad Joke Friday...Late Night Edition

A big-game hunter went on safari with his wife and mother-in-law. One evening, while still deep in the jungle, the wife awoke to find her mother gone. Rushing to her husband, she insisted they head out together in search of her mother.
The hunter picked up his rifle, took a swig of whiskey, and started to look for her. In a clearing not far from the camp, they came upon a chilling sight: the mother-in-law was backed up against a thick bush and a large male lion stood facing her.
The wife said, “What are we going to do?”
“Nothing,” said the husband, “The lion got himself into this mess, let him get himself out of it.”


A visitor to a certain college paused to admire the new Hemingway Hall that had been built on campus.
“It’s a pleasure to see a building named for Ernest Hemingway,” he said.
“Actually,” said his guide, “it’s named for Joshua Hemingway. No relation.”
Surprised, the visitor asked, “Was Joshua Hemingway also a writer?”
“Yes, indeed,” said his guide, “He wrote a check.”

Cannibals capture three men.
The men are told that they will be skinned and eaten and then their skin will be used to make canoes.
Then they are each given a final request.
The first man asks to be killed as quickly and painlessly as possible.
His request is granted, and they poison him.
The second man asks for paper and a pen so that he can write a farewell letter to his family. This request is granted, and after he writes his letter, they kill him saving his skin for their canoes.
Now it is the third man’s turn. He asks for a fork.
The cannibals are confused, but it is his final request, so they give him a fork.
As soon as he has the fork he begins stabbing himself all over and shouts, “To hell with your canoes!”

A young man hired by a supermarket reported for his first day of work. The manager greeted him with a warm handshake and a smile, gave him a broom and said, “Your first job will be to sweep out the store.”
“But I’m a college graduate,” the young man replied indignantly.
“Oh, I’m sorry. I didn’t know that,” said the manager.
“Here, give me the broom, I’ll show you how to do it.”

Artificial Meat

Pink Slime and meat glue were just the start. All that will be unnecessary when we have artificial meat. Yes, that's what I said. It will no longer be necessary to execute barnyard fowl or the prize Angus because just a few scrapings from the muscle tissue of the creature will soon grow the meat of your choice right in the lab. So can your kitchen be far behind? That remains to be seen. This article from the Financial Times by William Little explores the possibilities.

You wouldn’t normally expect to find a thick red steak quietly pulsating in an oversized Petri dish inside a laboratory. But such is the hype around the team scheduled to produce the world’s first lab-grown cut of meat this October that I can’t help but imagine it. The research being done by bioengineer Dr Mark Post at Maastricht University in the Netherlands has provoked global headlines about “test tube meat” and fierce ethical and scientific debate. Getting access to his laboratory is about as exciting as it gets in the world of food engineering.
But when I arrive, the home of in vitro meat is quiet – no research assistants racing to turn out joints of beef, chicken or lamb. Instead, Post slowly opens the door to what looks like a large fridge, or a bioreactor. Within lie row upon row of tiny Petri dishes in which float minute fibres of almost transparent meat. I find it rather deflating but Post is excited. “I’ll need about 3,000 pellets of meat to make a hamburger,” he says.
The idea of creating our own meat has a long history. In 1931, Winston Churchill wrote in the Strand Magazine that separate parts of an animal would be grown in a lab in the future to “escape the absurdity of growing a whole chicken in order to eat the breast or wing”. And when it started experiments in the 1990s, Nasa became preoccupied with producing a non-perishable meat for its astronauts – it managed to grow goldfish cells in 2002.
Well, I think I'll wait awhile to do a taste test. I want to see how it works out for everyone else. I'm also wondering if it will spawn a new meat industry or if they will come up with a small kitchen appliance that only requires a "starter" to begin  producing chops, fillets and tenderloins. The possibilities are endless. They could include a smoker to do hams and bacon. There could be corn fed and grass fed varieties. Every chicken breast could be free range.

This might be just the thing to make PETA shut the heck up too. No animal harvesting and so nothing to cry about. We can only hope.

Even so, will it be the same as eating something that was once a living, breathing creature? I'm thinking not. We will see.