Pine Nuts: The cows are milking themselves

Bad news travels fast. Fact is, bad news can circle the globe before good news gets out of the gate. For example, did you know that vaccination programs for children have prevented more than 100 million cases of serious contagious disease in the U.S. since 1924? Neither did I. That’s a lot of kids that didn’t get sick, perhaps even you and your kids. So now we can pause, reflect and say, “Wow, thanks for that.”

Like another spoonful? Thanks to a new law recently passed by the European Parliament, companies that employ more than 500 workers in the EU must include their risks and results with regard to social, environmental and human rights impact in their annual financial reports.

Let me just take a second to breathe that in and say thanks. Maybe China will follow that lead and protect us in Nevada from inhaling their pollution in another decade or two.

Carson Huey-You (real name) scored 1770 on his SAT and is starting college at Texas Christian University with a positive attitude. Calculus and complicated science problems tend to relax him. Carson is 11 years old and on course for a Ph.D as a teen.

Good news for whales, the U.N. International Court of Justice has ordered Japan to cease and desist its annual whale hunt, and Japan has agreed. So the world’s whales, particularly the minke whale of the southern oceans, can relax for the first time since 1904 and commence doing what whales like to do most: Live, love and be happy.

Some dairy farmers in New York are sleeping in while their cows milk themselves, and the cows are milking themselves whenever they feel like it. The cows line up in front of a robot that scans their teats with lasers before attaching the milking cups. Oh, and the robots don’t complain when the milking stops and they get kicked.

Good news for Brazil’s national soccer team: Their coach announced that players will be allowed to sleep with lovers the night before World Cup matches this summer, so long as there are no possibilities of “injurious acrobatics.” I don’t know about you, but I am not betting on Brazil in the World Cup.

In the department of “no news is good news,” Nevada narrowly escaped a lethal confrontation over federal grazing lands at the Bundy Ranch outside of Mesquite. Bundy, in arrears on grazing fees to the federal government, defied the Bureau of Land Management with armed resistance when they came to collect.

I tell people as I travel across this great land of ours, “We Nevadans are not all like Bundy. Most of us pay our fees on time…at the sports book.”

To learn more about McAvoy Layne, visit www.ghostoftwain.com.