Brunch Coffeeshop

Things People are Talking About…

I know, I know, — the actual election day is next week — but Obama will win, all rational people know that. Why do we know that? Because the polls say so, and this close to the election, the polls haven’t been wrong in the past several decades. Don’t give me that telephone polls from the 1930s shit … pollers are much more sophisticated today. Obama wins, mark my word. Damn pollers have taken all the anticipation out of the election process.

So SHOULD Obama win? Well, given the Obama-McCain choice I guess so, but it is a sad situation where our choice comes down to Tweedledee or Tweedledum. Oh yeah, that has been our only options for the past four or five decades. Maybe before … I wasn’t there. The system is rigged. Representative democracy requires candidates who are willing to put themselves in compromising situations.

We would be better off electing a King or Queen, and giving them no power, then let an elected panel of specialists actually run the country. And with modern technology, representative democracy is obsolete — there is no reason we can’t have direct democratic elections for each of the 100 super-bureaucrats who will run things.

And voters should be qualified. If you can’t match the candidate to the main elements of his platform in a mutl-choice test, your vote does not count. Of course we don’t actually tell people which votes counted, so the idjets don’t get all up in arms about it.

In the entire history of Microsoft Corporation, they did just one good thing — so now of course they have decided it was a mistake. About two and a half years ago Microsoft announced they would bring ‘millions’ of public domain books and articles to the Internet. They teamed up with the Internet Archive and several major libraries, and began scanning.

This resource has been a major boon to those of us more interested in obscure and arcane topics rather than the latest Brittany Spears gossip — admittedly a minority, and probably not the most economically influential market on-line — but still a huge group of devoted users. The information is free, only has some annoying watermarks advertising the Microsoft role in the project, and has archived for the future a wealth of information. About 750,000 books and 80 million journal articles were scanned, according to a New York Times report. So Microsoft is discontinuing its support for the project.

The Library of Congress has about 30 million books. There is no such thing as a complete collection anywhere, but we can guestimate that if LOC has 30 million books, there are probably at least that many public domain books available (i.e. the currently copyrighted books probably number roughly the same as expired copyright books that the LOC does not have.) So Microsoft got about 2% of the job done, then quit. Typical.

Google, of course, has a similar project, but not anywhere near as useful. They do not allow access to many books that are clearly expired copyright; the company owns and controls the database, so it’s archival future is at the whim of corporate managers; and they have not focused on expired copyright books, so the vast majority are not fully accessible.

When the history of Microsoft is written, the book search project will be remembered as the one good thing Microsoft ever did — too bad they gave up after barely scratching the surface of available materials.

Taco Bell has introduced a new ‘value menu’ with several items priced under a buck! What luck! Junk food junkies rush on down to the Bell fast as your fat ass can waddle. This beats real food any day:

Triple Layer Nachos – Nacho chips topped with Taco Bell’s simmering Red Sauce, warm beans, and Nacho Cheese Sauce for 79 cents.

For nacho chips read fried sawdust. For red sauce read watered down ketchup. Warm beans? What an invention! and Nacho Cheese Sauce, which has no cheese but is saucy, compared to other congealed coconut oil products.

Melted Three-Cheese Roll-Up – A flour tortilla filled with a blend of three melted cheeses and rolled up for 79 cents.

Roll-up or throw-up? The same fine pseudo-cheese in three colors (depending on age) in thin layers on a wheat tortilla. Yummy.

Big Taste Taco – A flour tortilla filled with seasoned beef, crisp lettuce, crunchy Red Strips, cheddar cheese, and topped with Taco Bell’s Creamy Jalapeno Sauce for 99 cents.

Hey people — that ain’t no taco! Tacos are made with corn tortillas — that’s an unfolded burrito. For seasoned beef read cow brains with salt and black pepper. Of course the lettuce is crisp, it’s still frozen. Red Strips — I won’t even go there. More of that ‘cheese’ and Jalapeno sauce that is miraculously un-hot.

Man, just go down to the nearest Mexican Village in any American city around midnight, and look for the carts — they will be selling the real tacos there. Have some chicharrones too, and wash it down with a real beer (anything made outside the USA).

What’s Terra Preta, you ask? Well it’s dirt, or soil to be more accurate, and it is amongst the most fertile of soils on Earth. The odd thing is, it is found primarily in Brazil, and to a lesser extent in other South American countries.

Tropical rain-forest soils are typically fairly poor, because the frequent rains wash nutrients out. They get plenty of organic material from the jungle canopy, but as fast as those organics break down the beneficial chemical compounds are washed into rivers brown with dissolved organics and minerals.

Slash and burn agriculture is used to clear land for agriculture, but such exposed soils wear-out within a few years and the farmers move on to expose new plots, at the expense of the forest. But it hasn’t always been that way.

Apparently the Native South Americans of about 500 B.C. found a way to enrich their soil and keep those organic nutrients from washing away. There is some argument whether they intentionally enriched the soil, or it was an accidental by-product of their lifestyle. Knowing how observant pre-industrialized humans tended to be, I think the rich soils probably began as a by-product of their lifestyle, but was soon noticed (i.e. ‘discovered’), and expanded intentionally.

So what is the secret to these amazingly rich soils that remain fertile to this day — hundreds of years after they were abandoned by their original tenants? In a word, charcoal. Not the big chunks in your grill, but fine powdery charcoal dust. The charcoal itself does not add nutrients to the soil, and is in fact almost inert — taking thousands of years to break-down into its chemical constituents. But the carbonized organics facilitate chemical reactions (high cation exchange capacity), and harbor beneficial bacteria, retain moisture, improve soil texture, and may have other, as yet unrecognized, beneficial effects on the soil.

As if all that weren’t enough, if modern agriculturists adopt biological charcoal (Biochar) as a soil enhancement, it may help save the environment and reduce global warming! In the tropics, artificial Terra Preta could help replace slash and burn agriculture with a more sustainable and more productive alternative, saving the rain forest. Meanwhile, use of Biochar anywhere would contribute to the ‘carbon sequestration’ method of reducing atmospheric carbon — helping to slow global warming. Soils that retain their nutrients better will also need less fertilizer, leading to cleaner rivers and lakes, since the main water pollutant in many areas is agricultural run-off. This stuff is near-miraculous, and dirt cheap!

A new study from biologists at Brown University shows that fruit flies live longer if they are engineered so as not to produce eggs or sperm cells. Indeed, scientists have known for some time that delayed reproduction corresponds with longer lifespans in most animals. The new research suggests a mechanism for this effect.

The longevity effect seems to be associated with insulin, as it is with caloric restriction. What surprised scientists was the fact that the altered flies actually produced more insulin, rather than less. Excess insulin shortens lifespan in most instances, so they had to look further to explain why, in this case, it was associated with longer lives.

They discovered that the gonads of the sterile insects were producing a protein that blocked the insulins effectiveness. The protein binds to the insulin, making it inactive. Thus, one of the researches said:

“… when insulin signaling is reduced, the body goes into a state of high repair. The body becomes more stress resistant. Tissues protect themselves really well – and that increases longevity.

We have all seen the folks on TV starving themselves in hopes of living longer — now we can expect a flood of idiots racing to the doctor’s office to be sterilized. That’s great for the gene pool!

Is being a locavore a bit loca? Food faddists claim that eating mostly locally produced foods (locavore) will help reduce global warming. Transporting food uses fossil energy and produces greenhouse gases. So why not eat locally produced food and save all that energy?

Well, there’s nutrition for one thing. On of the best ways to ensure you get all the nutriments you need is to eat a varied diet. That means bananas and papaya in Kansas, and blueberries in Arizona. It also means corn-fed beef in Nevada, and Alaskan King Crab in Montana. Besides, who wants to eat only those things that can be grown around Barstow CA?

Eating only locally produced food is also a design for economic disaster. If Kansans want to eat anything but corn, their farmers will have to stop producing so much of that and turn to crops less suited to the Great Plains environment. All the people dependent on corn from Kansas for their livelihood — as transporters or consumers — will be out of luck.

Well, besides all those problems, the transportation of food doesn’t really add that much to the greenhouse gases anyhow. In a recent study scientists found that only about 10% of the greenhouse gases caused by the growing, fertilizing and transport of the average family’s food can be attributed to transport — and that isn’t entirely eliminated by local consumption, just reduced (unless you live on the farm where you eat, or walk there…) A better alternative, they suggest is to cut back on red meat and dairy foods, the production of which accounts for almost half of the greenhouse gases. Switching to a totally local diet is equivalent to driving about 1000 miles less per year, while switching to vegetables two days per week cuts the equivalent of driving 2320 miles per year. Leave your car in the garage and walk to the supermarket, and you will save even more greenhouse gas production than you will driving to that farmer’s market.

Yale University economist Robert Shiller, an influential economist who predicted the current home sale slump, is predicting things will get worse — much worse — before they get better. Shiller said:

There’s a good chance housing prices will fall further than the 30 percent drop in the historic depression of the 1930s. Home prices nationwide already have dropped 15 percent since their peak in 2006. I think there is a scenario that they could be down substantially more…

The Great Depression was sparked by the collapse of the stock market; what will call the depression sparked by the collapse of the housing market? Sometimes people have to move — in the Midwestern States where the crisis is at its worst, people are moving away because they can no longer find work where they live now. If you can not sell your house when you move, a realtor will suggest a ’short sale’ or the bank will take it and sell it for you (foreclosure), either way the home will sell for less than it is worth.

This is how the rich get richer while the poor suffer. It is a great time to be buying up houses if you have the resources available to finance them. People have to live somewhere, so those whose homes have been foreclosed-on will be renting houses — oftentimes sliding from middle to lower class in the process. The landlord need not worry, the law will ensure he can evict anyone who can not keep up payments, regardless of their reasons.

It seems that a big earthquake in California is inevitable in the next 30 years. Even the normally cautious scientists now say there is a 99% chance (that 1% wiggle room is ‘being cautious’) that California will see a major earthquake (magnitude 6.7 or higher) within the next 30 years.

Why not just give it back to Mexico and let them deal with it? Can you imagine what the costs will be? I’m sure the rates for quake insurance have already doubled at the news, and that is just in anticipation. We have enough problems with global warming and increased hurricanes and flooding.

It is not like earthquakes are anything new for California. Did you know that more than 10,000 quakes rock the state every year? Most of them are too soft to be felt, but seismic instruments measure that number. There have ‘only’ been two large quakes in California in the past 20 years: the Northridge quake in 1993 killed more than 50 people and injured over 7,000 — and that was just 6.7 magnitude; and the Loma Prieta quake in 1989, which was slightly bigger at 6.9 magnitude, and killed 63 people and caused over $6 billion in damages. The 1908 San Francisco earthquake is estimated to have been about 7.8 magnitude (remember 7 magnitude is 10 times as strong as 6 — it is a logarithmic scale). Imagine something like that in San Diego or San Francisco today?

I’m perfectly blown-away by this math puzzle and the solution. If you are familiar with this, just roll your eyes and say ‘obviously’ and leave the rest of us to our thought experiment. Feeling superior because you have read the correct answer beforehand is not grounds for laurels. Only if you can deduce the correct answer, and explain why (remember those notes with the math test answer?) do you you deserve a pat on the back and a position in government.

So here it is. Monty shows us three doors. Behind one is a certificate entitling you to an energy efficient, ergonomic and beautifully designed home. Behind the two other doors are models of that home as doll houses. You must choose one of the three doors. But wait! After you have chosen one door, smiling Monty opens one of the other doors and shows you one of the doll houses. Well duh! He knew which door has the real prize, and whether you chose it or not he knew which remaining door he could open and show a doll’s house.

Now you can choose. Stay with your original choice, or switch to the other unopened door? Don’t read further before making your choice! Common sense would dictate that there is a 50/50 chance that the door you chose has the prize, so it doesn’t matter if you change your mind or not … and mental momentum is likely to make you stick with your original choice, since there is no overwhelming reason to change. Or is there?

Your original choice had a one in three chance of being correct. Monty has kindly shown you one of the wrong choices, and left two others. One is your original 33% chance of being correct — the other? There is a 66% chance that the other has the prize. If you chose correctly to begin with, Monty could choose either door, it makes no difference and doesn’t change the odds. But if you chose wrong (as would happen two out of three times) then Monty must choose the door with no prize, so two out of three times he is showing you where the prize is by not choosing the door it hides behind.

Dracunculus medinensis, is a parasitic nematode that causes the dreadful Dracunculiasis disease, (commonly called Guinea Worm Disease). It is commonly found in the lakes, rivers and streams that provide much of Africa with drinking water. Infection is caused by drinking water with Dracunculus larvae in it. About a year after initial infection, a meter long worm burrows out of the infected person, leaving a painful skin wound. Not a pleasant image, is it?

Luckily, this terrible disease is easily prevented, since any filtering of the water, even with fine cloth, is sufficient to strain out the larvae. So eradication is mostly a matter of education, and for the past 22 years various organizations have worked together to encourage that process. More than 650,000 cases of Dracunculiasis were reported in Nigeria in 1989. In 2007 there were only 73 cases reported there. Eleven African countries have completely eliminated infection from this horrible parasite, only four countries still have active cases — and all of those report much reduced frequencies compared to a few years ago. The goal is to completely eradicate the disease next year. But don’t worry about old Dracunculus medinensis, it will still be there, lurking in the water should people let their guard down. There are plenty of other animal hosts that will keep these monsters alive when humans have learned to avoid them.