Ewwww....

Have you seen this? The meat in 'vegetarian' hot dogs is troubling. The human DNA brings up echoes of Soylent Green (although I, of course, realise it's a sanitation issue, and it's not like people's fingers are mixed in, but still, yuck).

Clear Food: The Hot Dog Report

Of the 345 hot dogs and sausages Clear Food analyzed for this report, 14.4% were problematic in some way. Problems included substitutions and hygienic issues. Substitution occurs when ingredients are added that do not show up on the label. Hygienic issues occur when some sort of non-harmful contaminant is introduced to the hot dog, in most cases, human DNA. Here's what we found:

• Substitution: We encountered a surprising number of substitutions or unexpected ingredients. We found evidence of meats not found on labels, an absence of ingredients advertised on labels, and meat in some vegetarian products.
• Hygienic issues: Clear Food found human DNA in 2% of the samples, and in 2/3rds of the vegetarian samples.

We found evidence of chicken (in 10 samples), beef (in 4 samples), turkey (in 3 samples), and lamb (in 2 samples) in products that were not supposed to contain those ingredients.

I don't tend to eat vegetarian hot dogs, although of course I have, but a friend does. Smart Dog, the brand he usually gets, wasn't mentioned, so I don't know where it fell in the scoring. Morningstar Farm veggie dogs did score high on their scale. I'll ask and see if he wants to consider switching, perhaps.

These are fun

Michelle Kraft posted a list of blog analysis sites (not the in-depth ones like Walt Crawford's, but ones to that are computer generated). Here's how this site fared on the sites she mentioned.

Typealyzer is a site that will do a Myers-Brigg analysis on a blog. Now, I have taken Myers-Briggs tests many times, and I come out INFP--but this blog is:

ESFP - The Performers
The entertaining and friendly type. They are especially attuned to pleasure and beauty and like to fill their surroundings with soft fabrics, bright colors and sweet smells. They live in the present moment and don´t like to plan ahead - they are always in risk of exhausting themselves.

The enjoy work that makes them able to help other people in a concrete and visible way. They tend to avoid conflicts and rarely initiate confrontation - qualities that can make it hard for them in management positions.

You know, I can't really argue with that one. They say as you get older you start to get closer to the opposite quality (in my case from introvert to extrovert, intuition to sensing, feeling to thinking, perception to judgement). Looks like I may be half-way there, or at least in terms of how I write.

Then there's one that tries to recognise the gender of the author. The GenderAnalyzer says:

We think http://rabid-librarian.blogspot.com is written by a man (70%).

Okay, so they're wrong. :) I think they're still in beta testing, after all.

Finally, there's the Blog Readability Test, which shows this blog is written at:

TV Reviews

I put a few sites through it (it's not limited to blogs). What was I doing again?, the blog of a former friend who trashed me online and is very, well, pompous about her understanding and use of language came out elementary school. I admit a certain amount of glee. Granted, she could just be trying to write to a lower-reading audience. :) David Rothman, another librarian blogger I respect immensely, was at the same reading level as Michelle Kraft and I. So we're apparently writing to similar literacy levels. Then I looked at some of the news sources. Wired, despite talking a lot about technology, was on an elementary level. Slashdot, which has a lot of science news, was on the undergraduate college level, too. FoxNews, which I don't care for (being on the liberal left as I am), comes out at high school. CNN is written at a junior high school level, as it the BBC general site aimed at Americans (but the British general site is high school). The Guardian, which I visit often, is written at a high school level, too. But MSNBC, the main American news site I pay attention to? Genius! So was the BBC News website, another I read a lot, but that's not surprising, is it? I don't know if their sites in incredibly complex by the terms of the algorithm or what. I don't have any trouble navigating them.

I know they say things written for a general audience should be written for fifth or sixth grade, but I just don't believe in dumbing down my personal writing (although, yes, if I were making a brochure, I would try to make it understandable to those with lower literacy). But I'm happy with where mine falls. I wouldn't want it to be so fraught with complexity that you'd have to be a genius to read my blog, but some basic college education and understanding of big words is nice. Or does that make me an elitist?

Anyway, go have fun with these. Thanks to the Krafty Librarian for the links!