farmdoc's blog post number 495

Today’s post is the second of three about this mad world we live in. The American Medical Association’s Council on Science and Public Health is studying the role clothing plays in transmitting bacteria and other bugs. In its sights are white lab coats, stethoscopes, and even ties (dangly ones, I assume, and not bow ones). MRSA and other hospital infections cause nearly 100,000 deaths in US hospitals each year. And a 2004 study found that 48% of ties worn by hospital workers carried at least one infectious microbe. Big bloody whoopy do! Until bugs on clothing and stethoscopes can be shown to cause infections, there’s no need to intervene. Not to be outdone, two years ago the UK’s NHS adopted a policy prohibiting lab coats, ties, below-elbow sleeves, watches, and even long fingernails. The medical conservatives – I expect of an older demographic – are resisting the change. Professor Richard Cohen of Cornell University said: ‘When a patient shares intimacies with you and you examine them in a manner that no one else does, you’d better look like a physician – not a guy who works at Starbuck’s’. In the popular imagination, a white lab coat is as much a part of a doctor’s persona as a cowboy’s 10-gallon hat…’ Okay, but I think the diehards will lose. Why? Because they’re sheep people in cattle country; and it’s a MMMMW.

farmdoc's blog post number 55

Grumpy Old Men is the title of a 1993 film starring Jack Lemmon and Walter Matthau. Grumpy I was as a boy and then as a man. Now I am a grumpy old man. As a GOM I am irritated by mindless jargon, e.g. all about, totally and frankly. But my all-time favourite is no-brainer (which Wikipedia calls a thought-terminating cliché). In my 27 May 2008 blog post I wrote about two items of agricultural wisdom I had read in Tasmanian Country. In last week’s issue another appeared. Titled ‘Grass is good’, it quotes a British research finding that cows grazing on grass and clover produce more antioxidants and vitamins in their milk, than cows feeding on silage and cereals. And the widest difference is between organic and non-organic milk. (Though separate from this research, it is also known that the meat of cattle grazed on pasture is substantially lower in fat than the meat of grain-fed cattle.) Well big bloody whoopy do! Even children know that cattle – and sheep and goats too – are designed to digest grass, which is why they have multiple stomach chambers and chew their cud. So if you eat meat and drink milk from grain-fed feedlot cattle, you deserve what you (don't) get. I would call that a no-brainer – that is, if I wasn’t a GOM. Ruminate on it.

farmdoc's blog post number 12

At midnight last Monday Telstra shut down its CDMA mobile phone network because, it said, it was outdated. Since 1999 CDMA had been the core of mobile phone services in rural and regional Australia. It covered 98% of the population. The other 2% includes Mole Creekians, even though a few years ago a petition was reportedly signed by 100% of us. The CDMA network was duly replaced by a new 3G network, later named Next G. And the fact is the coverage of Next G is no greater than CDMA. Well what did you expect from a privatised Telstra, eh? That they would spend millions on infrastructure to extend Next G to the outlying 2%? Oh no. The microsecond Telstra turned private, its shareholders became its most important stakeholder, and be damned the Australian public. Shame on successive governments – ALP and Coalition, Federal and State – who have privatised public utilities. I wish their arrogant negligence would haunt these privatisers for the rest of their days. But it won’t happen, because despite their media bleating they don’t have consciences, and they probably own shares in the very companies that have devoured the public bounty at bargain basement prices. Now Telstra is advising farmers who are still experiencing Next G problems to call the 1800 888 888 hotline and lodge their concerns with Telstra. Big bloody whoopy do!