nothing will fuck you up as much as the realization that there’s no real reason the alphabet needs to be in order

The alphabet *isn't* actually in order. Or, rather, the order is arbitrary. But once it was assigned that arbitrary order centuries ago, it *became* the order for sorting lists of names/words.

In book 4, Hagrid asks Madame Maxime “what side you got it (giant blood) on?” I would HOPE her mother was a giant, or else I hurt just *thinking* about what the sex was like.

Sex, hell. Consider the *birth*.

On the other hand, if the mother was a giant, you'd think a human man would be a bit "under-endowed". But if the mother was human, she might enjoy a giant who was under endowed.

Birth? Well, if the mother was human I suppose there are spells. Or giant babies could be a lot smaller than human ones (proportionately)

That post bout the welfare queen has several errors. First of all, since welfare is *state* level, the rules vary from state to state. Last I heard, in Oregon there *isn't* that five year lifetime limit.

More importantly, the "welfare queen" bit was *not* invented by the Reagan administration. I was quite familiar with it when I was a kid in the early sixties. Long before Reagan got into politics.

That doesn't make any of the BS they were replying to any more accurate. It just makes it easier for folks trying to sell the meme to brush off the criticisms.

Wish I had a source for the bit I read somewhere about it costing more to "prevent cheating" than the cheating would ever cost...

You know what blows my mind? In the US, we all know that eggs have to be kept in the fridge. But apparently this isn’t true in other countries. It’s only true here because factory farms encourage diseases even with the use of anti-biotics and other substances. But in countries that don’t get factory-farmed eggs, they can leave their eggs out and they don’t go bad!

Not true. Eggs will go bad *anywhere*. It just takes longer than most folks realize. In the US we refrigerate eggs because we tend to buy food farther in advance than folks do in a lot of countries. They tend to go shopping every day or two. We tend to go a few times a *month*.

And in any case, refrigerating eggs would not appreciably affect whether or not you got a disease that originated at the farm.

If the eggs are infected, and you cook them suifficiently, you'll kill the bacteria. If you don't cook them enough (or use them in a recipe that calls for raw eggs) you *will* get sick if they have the bacteria.

The one "borderline" case would be if they were infected with something that produced nasty toxins. Cooking probably wouldn't help then.

Keep in mind that eggs are a *major* risk because they are such a good growth medium for bacteria and even some viruses. A crack in the shell can let something in, and then if the egg is refrigerated, it'll grow very slowly.

Given how eggs are laid, this is a risk *anywhere* (having collected eggs on a warm and washing off traces of chicken excrement on them, I vote for being carefuil. And always inspected the carton to make sure there aren't any cracked shells.