Discussion Groups / English Usage / May 2009

How long have you been hearing these voices?

Bill in Kentucky

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Reverse parts of the user name and ISP name for my e-address

Reading from news:alt.english.usage,
"John Varela" <OLDlamps@verizon.net> posted:

Then they could be acronyms if pronounceable and seen as such by their
lettering.

Ame.

Bre.

They are both pronounceable, though they look like the beginning of a cast
of characters for another poor imitation of the first Beastmaster movie.

Damaeus

Agreed. If I did need to pronounce BrE and AmE for some reason I would
treat them in the same way as the abbreviations Dr, Mr, Mrs and say the
words for which they are abbreviations.

So BrE would be pronounced "British English", AmE: "American English",
Dr: "Doctor", Mr: "Mister", Mrs: "Missus" (or "Missis").

It seems just as phoney as those organizations they used to dream
up for agencies and villains in the old James Bond-type shows
like SMERSH and UNCLE.

We've only bought a few bottles of two-buck Chuck, because I do the
wine buying and she does the shopping at Trader Joe's.  My
recollection is that the red we tried was quite drinkable but the
white I didn't much care for.  This from someone who seldom pays
more than $8 for a bottle of wine.

That is "recombinant" Bovine Somatotropin, or Bovine Growth Hormone.
It is a derivative hormone found through tinkering with DNA.  It makes
the cows produce more milk, and is injected by the farmers themselves to
increase the volume of milk produced.  There are arguments over the
possibility of the hormone's passing from the milk into the consumer in
an active state.  In addition, because of frequent infections, some
consumers want to know if the cattle have been treated, because the
antibiotics used to treat the infections also travel in the milk,
possibly helping to build immunity to the antibiotics and to trigger
allergic reactions.

These are related, of course, to the "organic" movement.

In your state's case, it really sounds as if the various VA (food
labeling) commissions are having a feud on the labels.  In Wisconsin the
"label if treated" faction lost the war and are, in their various co-op
dairies, labeling "rBST free" at their own cost, because the state would
not require labeling (but at least they don't put a warning about the
label ON the label!).  The discussion over truth in labeling, and fears
of hormones in food products also recall the problems with BPA and DES
(the latter, diethylstilbestrol, was found in beef, where it was used to
increase growth in beef cattle, and was associated with vaginal and
cervical cancer in women whose _mothers_ had been treated with DES.  I
don't think a transfer from beef to pregnant women has been ruled out.
Oh, male children of those same injected mothers were found to have
breast cancers, sterility, undescended testicles or malformed
testicles.)  BPA was found in plastics, and did travel into foods.