And what country can preserve its liberties if their rulers are not warned from time to time that their people preserve the spirit of resistance? Let them take arms. The remedy is to set them right as to facts, pardon and pacify them. What signify a few lives lost in a century or two? The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants.
The reason China produces the flue et al. hs been well known for years. China has thousands of squaare miles of rice paddies that attract millions of migratory birds and that are worked by millions of people and lots of water buffalos. There are also millions of pigs and chicken nearby. Wildlife is also part of the Chnese diet, at least for rural Chinese. These people and animals share viruses, which recombine and mutate. Every year the ecosystem produces a human influenza. Some years there is a swine flu that kills all the Chinese pigs. That happened last year. Sometimes all the Chinese chickens die. About once a decade we get a bad flu, like SARS. Once a century we get something like Spanish flu.
This has been going on as long as China has grown rice; the paddies are the key. In ancient days, when long distance travel was rare, pandemics were rare. But now they are common.
Over at Instapundit, Glenn Reynolds has degenerated into racist, anti-Chinese hysteria. It is embarrassing to read his posts. And he is not alone. All over the web, people who once pretended to be sane have been consumed by panic and raw racial hatred.
exactly. It's filthy.
ReplyDeleteWhat?
ReplyDeleteThere's worse than this - way worse. People will eat very strange things in Asia.
DeleteMy favorite in Japan was dried jellyfish. They used it like chewing gum. And it tastes just like you might imagine.
DeleteCould have at least boiled the leaches first
ReplyDeleteThose are tadpoles. Nonetheless, the whole thing is disgusting.
DeleteThe reason China produces the flue et al. hs been well known for years. China has thousands of squaare miles of rice paddies that attract millions of migratory birds and that are worked by millions of people and lots of water buffalos. There are also millions of pigs and chicken nearby. Wildlife is also part of the Chnese diet, at least for rural Chinese. These people and animals share viruses, which recombine and mutate. Every year the ecosystem produces a human influenza. Some years there is a swine flu that kills all the Chinese pigs. That happened last year. Sometimes all the Chinese chickens die. About once a decade we get a bad flu, like SARS. Once a century we get something like Spanish flu.
ReplyDeleteThis has been going on as long as China has grown rice; the paddies are the key. In ancient days, when long distance travel was rare, pandemics were rare. But now they are common.
Over at Instapundit, Glenn Reynolds has degenerated into racist, anti-Chinese hysteria. It is embarrassing to read his posts. And he is not alone. All over the web, people who once pretended to be sane have been consumed by panic and raw racial hatred.
I don't know, I eat raw, that means live, oysters and most folks don't pay attention so why not tadpoles?
ReplyDelete