timouse

:::: waiting patiently for bokonon ::::

Marge!!!

happy birthday!!

where did you see ginsberg? i saw him in toronto on what turned out to be his last "tour," and was totally spellbound.

Convocation Hall - probably the same time you saw him?

CIUT has an excellent recording of that night in their archives that I would like to wrestle out of them. I had a copy, but lost it many moons ago when moving. I'd also recorded it on a mini-handheld, but have long since lost that too.

yup, that was it.

now that i thik more about it, i do remember introductions and the uncomfortable shiftings in seats during the full-on man/man sex bits.

i also remember being totally spellbound by the guy, what a captivating performer.

thank you for unearthing that memory, d_jango!

btw, nice new handle.

guess i miss that.

i did the same thing yesterday...i started a willie p thread at the same time as dr J.

fack it. willie deserves two parallel tribute threads

What a bunch of nerds in that band.

happy birthday!!

wiilie p bennett

trying to start out clean

RIP.

Years ago my friend Pat Temple was recording in Hamilton, I was invited to come hang out and watch. Willie P was a guest on the album. At the time I didn't know who he was. I wandered upstairs to the kitchen to get a coffee and there was this big dude sitting there reading the paper. I introduced myself, and had a long rambling conversation with this guy who identified himself as Willie. Total gentleman, class act all the way, and very interested in an incredibly diverse range of subjects.

Then I got to hear him sing and play.

Wow.

I've seen him a number of times since, and been thoroughly blown away each time. 56 is way too young...they did say that he died of natural causes, and he had been struggling somewhat after last year's heart attack.

RIP Willie P.

I'm currently 522 pages into 'I Celebrate Myself', a biography on Allen Ginsberg..

Woahhhh! What a guy! I'm learning so much about the Beat Generation, the birth of the hippie generation, and a whole lot more!

I'm so happy to have been able to go see Ginsberg speak and perform (including musically mostly on accordion, but he also just laid down 'Ballad of the Skeletons' so did a Karaoke version of it) not long before he died. Much Music was there to film the event and Suk Yin Lee did all the introduction formalities. He opened with his poem/elegy for Neal Cassady which is quite explicit in its details of man-man sex, and the cameras came down very quickly. The event, as far as I know, was never mentioned on MM.

Great book! A nice sequel to Microserfs

Ah! Really? I loved Microserfs. Will need to check out JPod, I guess. Haven't read Coupland in a long time, should be fun.

where did you see ginsberg? i saw him in toronto on what turned out to be his last "tour," and was totally spellbound.

do indeed check out jPod, and just about anything else by dc.

--and if there's a chance that humans may contract a disease from eating a part of a cow wouldn't it make more sense to just stop eating cow's rather than develop a vaccine?

no

ding! ding!

the solution is to vote with your dollars and not buy industrial meat.

sorry for the confusion. i should have been clearer about whay this is upsetting. the reason that this seems like a bad idea has to do with the bigger story behind 0157-H7.

In pastured cattle, 0157-H7 is not an issue. This particularly nasty strain of E. coli does thrive in feedlot conditions. Feedlot cattle are fed grains and corn, which is not the right food at all for their systems. most beef cattle suffer from acidosis to a degree as they have perpetual heartburn from feedlot feed. Cows on pasture do not have this problem, and do not have much of a population of 0157-H7 in their guts.

So you have a typical feedlot with lots of cows in close quarters, all wading around in one another's poop. Add to that a strain of E.coli that thrives in acidic environments and produces a toxin that can ruin your kidneys and liver.

contrast that with pastured cattle who have none of these problems.

the real solution is to do away with feedlots. the efficient solution is to throw in an 0157-H7 vaccine. this will buy the feedlot system a little more time and produce a few more billion pounds of feedlot beef before the population of resistant 0157-H7 appear...

this is an issue that's really close to my heart. agribusiness has made many colossal blunders in the past by applying industrial mass production logic to food production, with devastating results. this looks like another one of those.

rather than examining the root of the 0157-H7 problem (feeding engineered feed, primarily cheap field corn, to large numbers of confined animals) the solution is another vaccine.

to paraphrase einstein, the thinking that got us in to this mess will not get us out of this mess.

congratulations!!

Plus AC/DC's only ballad is Ride On which is really just a great blues tune

Point AC/DC

that's an awesome song, one of my favourites.

and forks won't help unless you have exceptionally large ear canals.

from the beyond factory farming mailing list at

http://www.beyondfactoryfarming.org

oh goody, won't these be interesting resistant bacteria?

*Ontario-developed E. coli cattle vaccine obtains U.S. license; The

Belleville company now has a conditional U.S. license to bring the

product to market there*

Ontario Farmer

Tue 12 Feb 2008

Page: A23

Section: News

Byline: BY PATRICK GALLAGHER, ONTARIO FARMER

A Belleville biopharmaceutical company, which has produced the world's

first cattle vaccine to ward off the deadly E. coli 0157:H7 bacteria,

has been granted a conditional license to sell the product in the U.S.

market.

Bioniche Life Sciences Inc. and collaborators with the company have

spent eight years moving the vaccine from the concept stage to

commercial availability. Extensive tests on the vaccine have been done

in feedlot cattle at the University of Nebraska.

The U.S. Agriculture Department said in a recent ruling the vaccine

"meets the expectation of efficacy" performance standard or produces the

intended result expected from the product when it is in actual use.

The conditional license designation means the company will be provided

full access to the U.S. market as long as a number of conditions are met.

It must collect sufficient data on the vaccine to move it to a point of

full license. The company must also ensure that at least one step in the

vaccine's manufacturing process be done in the United States.

A third requirement will prevent Bioniche from putting a brand name on

the vaccine as it is not a fully licensed product.

In order to meet the U.S. manufacturing requirement the company expects

to produce the vaccine material at its Belleville plant and then load it

into product vials at a plant in Athens, Georgia, said Jennifer Shea, a

spokesperson for Bioniche.

She said supplies of the vaccine will be limited in the first two years

because a production plant is in the process of being built at

Belleville. Once that plant is built and production lines are in

operation the company expects to produce 40 million doses of the vaccine

a year.

Getting conditional approval in the U.S. was very important for the

company as the cattle population is much larger in that country and,

thus, the potential market for the vaccine is much larger.

Shea said the vaccine must be given to an animal in three doses and the

total vaccine costs will run in the $10 per head range.

"We figure it will cost two cents per pound for finished meat."

In Canada the vaccine is undergoing a separate review by the Canadian

Food Inspection Agency and it has been approved for conditional use as

long as cattle producers request and buy the vaccine through their

veterinarians.

Shea said there are a number of early adaptors of the vaccine in Canada

but the number of doses actually being sold is still very low.

Bioniche's facility in Belleville is undergoing a $25 million expansion

to make way for the manufacture of the vaccine. The federal government

has kicked in $5 million to help make the manufacturing plant a reality

while the Ontario government has added a further $10 million.

Shea said the company still has a lot of work to do in terms of meeting

all the requirements needed to bring the vaccine to the final, full

license stage.

"We will have to demonstrate what we will need to meet final

requirements for registration. We are still working through those

details now."

With regulators on both sides of the border now reviewing the vaccine

the most optimistic outcome is to have the two agree on a harmonized

approach to what data is needed to meet full registration requirements,

said Shea.

The company is hopeful the vaccine will be widely accepted as the first

fully licensed on farm preventative tool to ward off the E.coli 0157:H7

bacteria. The bacteria are responsible for a lot of food recalls and

contamination is an ongoing concern in beef, fresh produce and prepared

foods.

When news of the USDA's conditional approval broke last week it prompted

a nearly 60 per cent jump in the company's stock, which trades on the

Toronto Stock Exchange.

Like a lot of other companies in the biotech space Bioniche's share

price had fallen to penny stock status.

happy birthday!

i think jaimoe nailed the door shut on this one

part full marks to Schwa. though

hppy birthday bokonon!

{{{{{{{{{tonins}}}}}}}}}}

welcome rowan, congratulations todd & sara!

not fade away indeed.

yay bob!

{{{{{{{{{on the hood of an F-150}}}}}}}}

Sign me up, I'm a fan.

happy birthday!

happy birthday sara!