Blood donor dogs and cats.

At the University of Wisconsin-Madison School of Veterinary Medicine’s Veterinary Medical Teaching Hospital:

To do that, the hospital has its own Animal Blood Bank with a dedicated core [sic] of 12 dogs and 11 cats who serve as regular donors, many of them the animal companions of students or staff members at the UW-Madison School of Veterinary Medicine. “We actually have a waiting list of pets to become new donors,” notes Bach.

The typical canine blood donor is a healthy, larger dog — more than 50 pounds — that has been screened for blood borne parasites and diseases that affect the qualities of blood. Importantly, the dog donor possesses a good nature.

“We don’t sedate the dogs,” explains Bach, who says a typical blood draw from a dog takes about 7 to 10 minutes. “Cats are certainly different than dogs. Cats are a little more reclusive and sometimes have a little higher stress level in the hospital. They are sedated.”

Cats also need a more compatible blood-type cross match when they are getting transfusion.

They also do horse and cow transfusions.

Their most recent resident donor horse, Drive Thru, retired this fall after seven years of donating blood and serving as a calming presence and companion for any skittish equine patients at the hospital. In the hospital’s large animal practice, Drive Thru was a star, getting presents and mail from the children of clients and visitors and occasionally popping his head into the waiting room for peppermint candy, his favorite.

The resident cow donors are Maxine and Natalie, "beautiful and pampered Holsteins." How much blood goes into a cow getting a transfusion? 6 to 12 liters.

"But people love badgers."

"This is not a campaign against some kind of airborne creepy-crawly, spreading disease as it feeds on the blood of poor, innocent cows. This is Old Brock they are trying to kill, the black-and-white gentleman of the forest, who adds dignity and substance to children’s bedtime stories, from The Wind In The Willows to Fantastic Mr Fox."

I know The Wind In The Willows and Fantastic Mr Fox, but who's Old Brock?

"'Old Brock,' as the badger is affectionately known to country folk, is a familiar part of Britain’s rural scene."

Wikipedia has an incredibly long "List of fictional badgers." These include:

Brock Blueheart... in the graphic novel, Fables...
Brock the Badger in Yours Ever, Sam Pig By Alison Uttley...
Detective Inspector Archie LeBrock, in... Grandville by Bryan Talbot...
Lord Brocktree... in Brian Jacques's Redwall series....
Old Brock... in Watership Down....
Tommy Brock from The Tale of Mr. Tod

Wikipedia links to a website called "Living With Environmental Change": "The role of badgers in our culture may muddy policy decisions":

Social attitudes to badgers shaped by literature, the media and even heraldry may be clouding debate about their contribution to spreading tuberculosis to cattle....

There are dignified depictions of badgers in heraldry, and an early version of Mr Badger even crops up in an Anglo Saxon poetic riddle from the 11th century, as a noble creature defending its family against attack.  More recent heroic appearances in children’s literature are common, with The Wind in the Willows probably the best known.

So we are familiar with the idea of badgers displaying characteristics that we like to think of as both human and laudable, such as strength, bravery and loyalty, while also being mysterious, nocturnal creatures that are symbolic of the natural world and British countryside.

I support the fight against TB and the vermin that spread it, but I will nevertheless promote the cultural character, the loveable badger. Here, Project Gutenberg has The Tale of Mr. Tod available in its entirety, with all the illustrations. I hope it doesn't further erode whatever foundation in reality you've maintained in your lifetime of exposure to fiction. 

[Mr. Bouncer] sat in the sun, and conversed cordially with Tommy Brock, who was passing through the wood with a sack and a little spud which he used for digging, and some mole traps. He complained bitterly about the scarcity of pheasants' eggs, and accused Mr. Tod of poaching them. And the otters had cleared off all the frogs while he was asleep in winter—"I have not had a good square meal for a fortnight, I am living on pig-nuts. I shall have to turn vegetarian and eat my own tail!" said Tommy Brock.

It was not much of a joke, but it tickled old Mr. Bouncer; because Tommy Brock was so fat and stumpy and grinning.

ADDED: My advice to animals: Get some stripes. People will fixate on your cuteness and let you overrun the place. It's not just badgers. Think of chipmunks. We have chipmunks all over the place here in Madison (where, despite our fictional character, Bucky Badger, we don't have badgers). Without stripes, they'd be more or less rats, and the level of infestation would horrify us.

"Corn stalks sticking out of truck lead to drunken driving arrest."

"The stalks were acquired when Elliott drove off a highway into a cornfield and then back onto the highway, seen by a driver who claimed Elliott almost hit his vehicle, police said."

In other Wisconsin farms-and-bad-driving news: "Police said texting while driving led to the death of a 2012 World Dairy Expo prize-winning Jersey cow on Saturday night."

"What if I want to feel like I have udders?"

"This woman doesn't care what I want."

Let's take a closer look at those porn stars.

Bill Clinton's does a new photo op... that reminds us folks here at the Althouse blog of that old photo op.

Feminists, please weigh in.

ADDED: One of the porn stars, Brooklyn Lee, according to Wikipedia, "appeared in Pink's music video for 'Raise Your Glass' in 2010 with three other LA Direct Models. They were shown blindfolded and being milked to fill a bottle to feed a calf." You can watch that video (after a commercial) here. The image in question looks like this:



Cows!

Feminists, please weigh in.

Obama and the "cowpie of distortion."

Thanks for calling attention to that, Drudge.

Now, why did Obama say that? He was in Iowa, talking about a speech Romney had just given in Iowa, and I'm picturing Obama's speech-writing team brainstorming about how to insult Romney appropriately:

Speechwriter #1: Romney's speech was bullshit.

Speechwriter #2: Yeah, it would be great if Obama could just say: Bullshit!

Speechwriter #3: Here we are out in farm country. Just a lot of farmers. They know bullshit. There's bullshit, cowshit everywhere on farms. So I've heard. Cowpies everywhere. This state is wall-to-wall cowpie. Get me outta here.

Speechwriter #2: Romney's speech was a big cowpie. A cowpie of...

Speechwriter #1: Distortion! Cowpie of distortion!

All: Ha ha ha ha.

Speechwriter #2: Seriously, he should just say that.

Speechwriter #1: Yeah, because Iowans love all the endless visits from politicians who try to suck up to them with Iowa-related humor and can never think of one damned thing except that Iowa is farms, farms, farms.

Speechwriter #3: And are these really even cattle farms? Dairy farms, whatever? I thought Iowa was more: corn.

Speechwriter #2: Shut up. Cowpie of distortion. It's hilarious. The college kids will love it. He said bullshit, but he didn't say bullshit. Grandma and college dork alike will titter.

Speechwriter #3: They'll titter their udders off. But could you please just Google to see if cows are an Iowa thing, because I'm afraid cows are more Wisconsin, and, you know, cattle, like steers and shit, they're more Nebraska. You've got Iowa right there in the middle...

Speechwriter #1: You win the National Geography Bee, now shut up.

Speechwriter #3: Iowa right there in the middle, but with the corn. Corn, so....

Speechwriter #1: Corn is too obvious. They hear corn all the time. It lacks subtlety.

Speechwriter #2: Subtlety?! What the fuck are you talking about? We're in Iowa. There's no subtlety. Subtlety is a nonissue. Focus on the topic at hand. We need an Iowa-appropriate joke, and the joke on the table is "cowpie of distortion."

Speechwriter #1: The cowpie is on the table. Now, get out your knife and fork and dissect this thing. Dig in!

Speechwriter #2: I say cowpie of distortion is the perfect joke for these fucking farmers, and kids and grandmas all over the country are gonna laugh their asses off if it's the last thing I do for our very cool POTUS.

Speechwriter #3: Cowpie of distortion isn't cool. Who talks like that? Cowpie of distortion? It's like Ball of Confusion.  [Sings:] Evolution, revolution, gun control, sound of soul, shooting rockets to the moon, kids growing up too soon, politicians say more taxes will solve everything.... Ball of confusion!

Speechwriter #1: Ha ha. You Googled those lyrics.

Speechwriter #2: Yes, and by the way, more taxes will solve everything.

Speechwriter #3: Ha ha. Now, could you please Google and make sure they have cows — in addition to corn — in Iowa? Because the joke on the table is cowpie of confusion... I mean, distortion.

PETA appeals denial of roadside memorials for cows that died in the wrecks of 2 cattle-hauling trucks.

"The state previously denied the application, saying the [Illinois] Roadside Memorial Act specifies that only relatives who lost loved ones in highway crashes may request memorials."

So, it's not that the dead were not human. It's that nonhuman animals have relatives who are incapable of requesting a memorial. PETA says "the cows suffered and are 'worthy of remembering.'" But Illinois can't be accused of discriminating against nonhuman animals, which seems to be the issue PETA is pushing. Roadside memorials are for relatives who request them, and no relatives of the dead have applied. And let's be sensible, even assuming cattle remember their dead relatives, symbolic displays don't jog their memories.

"I really do not know that anything has ever been more exciting than diagramming sentences."

"I suppose other things may be more exciting to others when they are at school but to me undoubtedly when I was at school the really completely exciting thing was diagramming sentences and that has been to me ever since the one thing that has been completely exciting and completely completing."

Diagram that! is the implicit challenge from Gertrude Stein – whose sentences are devilishly devoid of commas.

Stein hates commas passionately. I wish she were just a little more fond of them, LOL. Even I have a nagging desire to insert commas in her prose!

Commas are servile and have no life of their own... what does a comma do, a comma does nothing but make easy a thing that if you like it enough is easy enough without the comma.

She uses them instead of question marks, though, because she hates them even more! She says the question mark looks like "a brand on cattle."

At the corner of Argue and Airport...

... everybody's looking for The Tunnel.



(We found the tunnel I was just telling you about and kept going until we got home. A 29-mile ride. Video in the tunnel... to come.)

On the Badger Trail...

... the view from the fabulous bike path. Enlarge for cows.

That was yesterday. We did not bike all the way to Illinois... or even to Belleville. At my request, we turned around short of Belleville, and the entire ride was only 26 miles. I say "only," although it was the farthest I'd ever ridden, because Meade has done many, much longer rides, including the ride he took on the Badger Trail the previous day, past Belleville, into New Glarus and Mt. Horeb, for a total of 65 miles, some of it in total darkness, even though it was not nighttime at that point:

The highlight of the trail is the restored 1200-foot long Stewart Railroad Tunnel that was finished in 1887 and is located south of Belleville. Because of a slight bend in the tunnel, you gaze into total darkness. We recommend that you bring a bright flashlight. This tunnel may not be the longest trail tunnel in Wisconsin, but is considered by many to be the darkest in Wisconsin.

Meade did not have a light of any kind, but proceeded through the tunnel nonetheless, using various techniques, including yelling, which I don't think was an attempt at echolocation.

"Where is the 9,000-foot cow?"/"What do you think about Satan?"/"What did James Madison think about video games?"

Justice Ginsburg lists the strangest questions asked last term at oral argument.

"From the foregoing samples, you may better understand why the court does not plan to permit televising oral arguments any time soon."

Are you kidding? This is why it should be on television?

You know, the fabulous 7th Circuit judge Richard A. Posner wrote a great chapter titled "What Am I? A Potted Plant?"

And I just saw a potted plant on television.

Now, the potted plant was scintillating compared to the live — that is, barely animated — speech by President Obama that preceded it. But the point is: We want the Supreme Court on TV!

Bring on the 9,000 cows! We're dying out here in TV-land!

Obama wants to take on "sacred cows" and "keep our sacred trust with our seniors."

We thought it was funny, at the press conference today, that Obama, in prepared remarks, used the word "sacred" in the sarcastic way right before using "sacred" in the serious way:

And it is possible for us to construct a package that would be balanced, would share sacrifice, would involve both parties taking on their sacred cows, would involved some meaningful changes to Medicare, Social Security, and Medicaid that would preserve the integrity of the programs and keep our sacred trust with our seniors...

He needs a better editor! That use of sacred cows primes the listener to disbelieve his seriousness about keeping the trust with seniors. We're prompted to think of "sacred" things as things that people are wrongly leaving untouched!

By the way, the word "sacrifice" also appears in that sentence, and "sacrifice" has the same root as "sacred."

sacrifice (n.)
mid-13c., from O.Fr. sacrifise (12c.), from L. sacrificium, from sacrificus "performing priestly functions or sacrifices," from sacra "sacred rites" (prop. neut. pl. of sacer "sacred," see sacred) + root of facere "to do, perform" (see factitious). L. sacrificium is glossed in O.E. by ansegdniss. Sense of "something given up for the sake of another" is first recorded 1590s. Baseball sense first attested 1880.

sacred
c.1300, from pp. of obsolete verb sacren "to make holy" (early 13c.), from O.Fr. sacrer (12c.), from L. sacrare "to make sacred, consecrate," from sacer (gen. sacri) "sacred, dedicated, holy, accursed," from O.L. saceres, which Tucker connects to base *saq- "bind, restrict, enclose, protect," explaining that "words for both 'oath' & 'curse' are regularly words of 'binding.' " But Buck merely groups it with Oscan sakrim, Umbrian sacra and calls it "a distinctive Italic group, without any clear outside connections." Nasalized form is sancire "make sacred, confirm, ratify, ordain." Sacred cow "object of Hindu veneration," is from 1891; figurative sense of "one who must not be criticized" is first recorded 1910, reflecting Western views of Hinduism.

Perhaps, out of respect for Hinduism, we should refrain from using the term "sacred cow." Perhaps respect for religion should lead us away from using the words "sacred" and "sacrifice" casually. But surely, if you want to demonstrate your somber, serious dedication by festooning your rhetoric with the words "sacred" and "sacrifice," you should nix the expression "sacred cow" — which is all about saying people are silly to regard something as holy.

Grilled cheese and cows.

That's all we've got here: the cooking of mass quantities of grilled cheese sandwiches and a brief interview about a Guernsey Jersey calf named Haley.



Meade shot this video at the "Cows on the Concourse" event today near the Capital Square in Madison, Wisconsin. There was a grilled cheese sandwich eating contest later, but we didn't catch that. It's just cooking sandwiches in the first half of this clip, and, then, in the second half, it's that calf, with Meade's voice in the audio track, asking questions.

Meade shot the video, and I did the edit. I hope you enjoy seeing these ultra-wholesome things that took place in our beautiful city, which is not all protests and tent cities.

The "Walkerville" tent-city protest was supposed to start at 7 a.m., but that's not what Meade found on the Capitol Square this morning.

"All the assholes are over on the other side," says a man on the street, beginning my edit of what Meade caught on camera as he biked around the square a couple hours ago.



I think the anti-asshole man is anticipating the Walkervillians — Walkervillains? — but the closest thing to anybody camping out is that one guy at the very end, but he might not be protesting Scott Walker. But you know, nobody's ever taught you how to live on the street, and now you find out you’re gonna have to get used to it.

UPDATE, 2 p.m.: Absolutely no sign of Walkerville. Lots of action around the Capitol today, though, with the Farmers' Market (which is there every Saturday) and the annual Cows on the Concourse event, both of which are seen in the video. There was also "Cars on State," which is an exhibit of classic cars on State Street. That's not in this video, but I'll have some photos of it soon.

UPDATE, 10:25 p.m.: We went over to the square around 8:30 and saw plenty of tents set up for the night, including directly in front of the hotel on the square and right next to a restaurant's sidewalk café. The protesters were completely mellow. There was a group of people standing in a circle at the foot of the Forward! statue and they were singing "We Shall Overcome" and other civil rights/labor movement songs. I shot some video and photographs, which I'll put up in a new post soon.

At the "Got Democracy?" Café...

... I'll have a Grande Democrappucino, please. Extra hair.

Meade, a walker against the crowd.

ADDED: Re photo #1: Don't miss the man in shorts. Re photo #2: Here's Meade's video of the breaking up of the "solidarity" of the cows. I have this fantasy of the cow planning meeting... that there was one extra cow, making the argument that there should be an "i" after the "a" and before the "r," really going on and on, being quite annoying.

Meade breaks up the solidarity of cows.

At the Wisconsin protest today.

Panda cow.

It's a pet. It costs $30,000.

"If the cow had the cognitive ability to form thought and speak, would it say, 'Where’s the milk? I’m not getting any milk.'"

What the judge said, explaining why he was dismissing animal cruelty charges brought against a police officer — Robert Melia Jr — who induced 5 calves to suck on his penis.

[Judge James J.] Morley went on to explain that children are comforted by pacifiers and perhaps cows are equally pacified by police officers in these cases: “They [children] enjoy the act of suckling,” the judge said. “Cows may be of a different disposition.” You are allowed to throw up in disgust at this point.

Morley ignored that one cow head-butted Melia in the stomach and appeared far from happy. The prosecutor objected that the cows were “very upset” by Melia’s action and stated “I think any reasonable juror could infer that a man’s penis in the mouth of a calf is torment. It’s a crime against nature.” The problem is that New Jersey does not currently have a ban on bestiality as opposed to animal cruelty.

If New Jersey wants to prosecute people for this kind of behavior, it has to have the appropriate statute on the books. What Melia did with animals may be disgusting, but it is more disgusting to convict human beings of crimes they have not committed.

"Does the United States really want to be a country that sends horses to slaughter, here or abroad?"

"Throughout history, horses have paid an excruciating price as we built our civilizations on their backs, forced them into our bloody wars and bestowed on them the agonizing fate of being the predominant mode of transportation. Humanity owes the horse, and a 21st-century horse-loving nation ought to ensure a life, and death, of dignity for these animals."

A letter to the editor. Here's the underlying news story about slaughtering horses:

An estimated 100,000 horses a year are shipped to Canada and Mexico for slaughter, prompting Congress to consider a bill that would ban the sale and transport of horses for human consumption outside the country. But Arkansas, Georgia and eight other states are against such a ban, saying owners need affordable options for unwanted horses.

Last week in Montana, the Legislature approved a bill allowing the construction of horse-slaughter facilities....

“Bottom line is you have to separate the animal from the pet,” said State Representative Edward B. Butcher, a Republican who wrote the Montana bill.

Butcher....

“No one has to send a horse to a processing plant,” he added. “It’s just an option for horses that are unusable. And it’s much more humane than leaving them there to starve to death.”

There are a lot of issues here — including federalism, one of my favorite issues: Is this a matter that ought to be dealt with at the state or the national level?

But what I'm most interested in myself is the letter-writer's argument. Should we take a moral position on the individual animal in light of the historical contribution of the species? Is it okay to slaughter cattle — because they were always only about food — but not okay to slaughter horses — because of all the work they've done for us? Some horses have gone to battle, so all horses should be honored? Is this a good moral argument?