News Goat

It’s That Wonderful Time Of Year again. Time to get the wine mulling, start spraying fake snow on the windows and hang up the Mistletoe. That’s right, never mind that the sun is shining and we are all set to be sweating in an Indian Summer heatwave into October, Christmas is just around the corner. Soon you will be unable to turn on the TV without hearing the sound of sleigh bells ringing…

Selfridge’s in London have already opened their Christmas department, and M&S have their Christmas hampers page up and touting for business, snow covered pine trees and all. It all makes sense, even if it is a bit depressing, people need to plan ahead far in advance, especially for pricey events like Christmas.

Just spare a thought for the poor people who work in retail. It can’t be long now before the dreaded Christmas mix-tape is sent out from head office to be played on a never ending loop until it is time for the sales. How many times do you think you could hear a low rent cover version of that Slade song before it drove you crazy? Maybe you remember back in 2004 an Austrian labour group called the endless playing of Christmas music a ‘psychological terror’ and pleaded with employers to limit it to just a few hours a day… whether the were listened to is doubtful, must retail managers would probably be happy to run with the Guantanamo Bay vibe and waterboard their staff if they got a memo from head office telling them to…

Do you remember that movie ‘Honey I shrunk the kids’? In that film an amateur inventor develops a device at home that can shrink people and objects to a fraction of their former size. Actually that has been the plot of a few films, and things tend not to go very well for those ho get shrunk, but have you ever wondered what it would be like to be tiny? Due to science, miniaturization rays are an impossibility, so if you want to experience what it would be like to scale yourself down the best thing you can do is surround yourself by giant objects. Here are a few of the things that you can freak yourself out by standing next to:

1. Bull
The last post on here was about miniature cattle, so it is fitting that the first item on the list should be the World’s largest bull. This thing is massive, and it would a be a very brave Spaniard who would step into the ring with this beast instead of  saying “Aurochs to that!”:

2. Commercial airliner
The largest commercial airliner is the Airbus A380. This thing is so huge that it can’t land at most airports, only a few have runways that are long enough for this behemoth. These things will shortly begin making regular flights to Manchester from Dubai, so you can check them out in either of those contrasting places…

3. Motorcycle
Japanese and Italian superbike manufacturers may dominate the racing world with their insanely fast ‘crotch rockets’ but the Americans know that is the ‘chopper‘ that best encapsulates the freedom of the open road. Even at their smallest these bikes are big, their long front forks stretching into the horizon. There is a bike that is every inch on 15 feet high and 25 feet long. It is an imposing sight, the effect spoilt only slightly by the fact that it has to have stabilisers…

The case against eating meat has been made by lots of pro vegetarianism advocates from a variety of standpoints. These range from ethical considerations to health. Recently though it is the environmental aspect of meat production that has been the main point of attack on the carnivorous lifestyle.

Producing meat has several environmental consequences. The resources needed to produce meat are much greater than other foodstuffs. It has been claimed that in order to produce a ton of potatoes about 160 cubic metres of water will be needed. In contrast to this,in order to produce a ton of beef about 16726 cubic metres of water will be needed.

Livestock are also responsible for CO2 emissions. There is a debate about the degree to which human activities such as farming impact on climate change, but many accept we should do what we can to reduce emissions. Stopping eating beef would seem to be rational move. There is however one big problem with that: beef is delicious.

Yum, beef.

As the above illustration amply demonstrates, not eating beef is not a palatable option. Fortunately there may be another answer: smaller cows. Apparently the bite-sized bovines that have been bred are better for the environment. They use less resources and crucially emit less CO2. Food for thought. Anyway here is a video of some dude with his little cows: