Jeff's LiveJournal

Our office building recently deployed a large dumpster outside for collecting discarded cardboard boxes for recycling. Unfortunately the recycling company had not been able to empty it for almost two weeks and by this morning it had been overflowing with empty boxes, with many more on the ground surrounding it. Well finally the recycling company comes by this morning and empties it, and collects most of the boxes that were sitting around on the ground. As I was driving home this evening I noticed that they had missed a box on the ground, so I walked over to it to throw it back in the bin for next time. As I walked closer, I noticed this box wasn't empty at all and in fact looked pretty interesting! It was a large piece of hollow metal, shaped like a cow!


(Click to embiggen)
It turns out that is a copper weather vane that someone apparently didn't want and just decided to throw away. Some packing materials that came with it indicate it was a "Hereford Bull" made by the West Coast Weather Vanes company. After I got home, I found their website and found the product listing for their hand-hammered 3-foot model Hereford Bull. It's quite surprising someone would want to throw away such a pretty thing, especially considering the scrap value of copper these days. I'll have to figure out a way to mount it on top of cowhouse this weekend.

Here's some interesting cow-related news that has just been discovered by using Google Earth images:

"Studying photographs of 8,510 cattle in 308 herds from around the world, zoologists ... found that two out of every three animals in the pictures were oriented in a direction roughly pointing to magnetic north."

"Cows are known to align their bodies facing uphill, facing into a strong wind to minimize heat loss or broadside to the sun on cold mornings to absorb heat, but the fact that the pictures were taken at many locations, at different times of day and in generally calm weather minimized the effect of environmental factors, the researchers said."

http://www.latimes.com/news/science/la-sci-cows26-2008aug26,0,3764260.story

Just happened to see this old news article mentioned on Bruce Schneier's blog... Photo ID cards for Indian cattle:

"Thousands of villagers in the state's Murshidabad district bordering Bangladesh are queuing up outside photo studios to have their cows photographed for the identity cards.

...

Valid for two years, each laminated cattle ID card displays the picture of the animal and its owner. It also carries vital information about the animal, such as its colour, height, sex and length of horns."

Nice to see some improvement in equality rights for cows! Though I'm sure they'll also suffer from the typical bad license photo syndrome. I still intend to go to Texas DPS and get my photo retaken one of these days. :)

An evil tree was apparently holding a poor cow hostage for several hours according to this news article from a Tennessee newspaper. As it turns out, both the cow and the tree survived the ordeal.

As any good neighbor would do, he contacted Hughes and told him the cow either wanted to have its head in the tree or it was stuck. Hughes knew it was stuck and five minutes later started to try and rescue the cow with a rope.

Lascassas veterinarian John Brunner had to use lubricant and tractor power to pull this cow's head free from a tree in nearby Milton, but not before he photographed the bizarre sight for posterity.

Florida senate passes ban on pulling tails of bulls.

An obscure Venezuelan sport that involves pulling bulls down by their tails would be banned in Florida under a bill that passed the state Senate this weekend.

The measure would establish fines and possible jail time as part of an animal cruelty bill.

Two headed, three-eyed calf born in Texas

A calf born in an east Texas town, about 60 miles east of Dallas, is thriving despite its two mouths and three eyes.

Hale said the 57-pound calf is friendly, likes to drink milk from its mother and enjoys lapping up water by using both tongues.

Cloned Cows Produce Cancer Fighter

Cows have been engineered to produce antitumor compounds in their blood, suggesting a new way of manufacturing complex therapeutic proteins.

Gottfried Brem of the University of Veterinary Medicine in Vienna and colleagues have shown that cloned, transgenic animals can be used to produce a special type of antitumor antibody.

2 calves born of cows fertilized with sperm frozen 40 years

KYOTO — Two calves were born of cows fertilized with sperm that had been refrigerated for about 40 years at a Kyoto University ranch, renewing a world record, university officials said Friday. The sperm, kept at minus 196 C in a freezer since August 1964, was used to fertilize two cows last June, leading to the births of a 36.6-kilogram male calf on March 19 and a 28.8-kg female calf on April 3, they said.

I'll be staying with my parents in Pasadena, California for about 2 weeks starting from Dec 20.

Until I get back, here's a cow article about protecting cows from terrorism!

Al-Qaida is after our cows.

That's the concern of the Department of Homeland Security, which announced Friday a $33 million plan for a pair of academic centers to combat possible terrorist attacks on America's livestock and food supply.

The department contends that so-called "agroterrorism" is a "top priority for university research." But outside homeland security and biological defense circles, experts are deeply divided over how realistic the threat actually is.

And while you're at it, stay away from the mad cow stew.

Jogger Rammed By Cow Ready To Sue — A jogger who was rammed three times by a cow protecting her calf and who suffered two pelvic fractures is now seeking reimbursement for her lost wages from the owner of the cow and the city.

Farmer Fined For Laughing Cows — A FARMER from Tullycross has received a six-month suspended jail sentence at Ballyhoo District Court after pleading guilty to feeding his cattle a controlled substance.

Ok, so dbaker got me to join livejournal and friendster since they seem to be the current craze.

Friendster currently says: You are connected to 31585 people in your Personal Network, through 15 friends.

So if I know you and you're on livejournal or friendster, I guess you should add me to your list of linked people. :)

And here's a couple of cow related news articles: Animal rights activists protest against spray-painted cattle, Cow comes home: Chrisy fine after two days in wild