I drink it up.
I am reformatting today (don’t ask and I don’t want your damned advice- no offense, of course), so if I am online, something has gone horribly wrong.
This is it till later. Drink it up.
Archives for 2008
Birdzilla!
When researchers retrieved the thigh bone of a Tyrannosaurus rex from nearly 100 million years under the Montana soil, they probably didn’t have Jurassic Park theme running through their heads. Yet when the bone yielded a small sample of collagen protein, some of the oldest preserved protein ever found, paleontology and biochemistry finally began to merge. The protein yielded a sequence and the sequence settled an evolutionary debate that has roiled anatomists since the 19th century.
We know that dinosaurs’ and birds’ archosaur ancestor split off from the lizards long ago, we have skeletal evidence linking dinosaurs and birds and several transition species have been found that don’t fit neatly into either dinosaur or bird. If that didn’t nail the case, the collagen sequence certainly should.
Protein retrieved from a 68 millon-year-old Tyrannosaurus rex bone closely resembles the main protein in chicken and ostrich bones and is only distantly related to lizards’, strengthening the popular idea that birds, and not reptiles, are the closest living relatives of dinosaurs.
The new work builds on a 2007 analysis showing remarkably close similarities between T. rex collagen and collagen from modern-day chickens, but that work did not include comparisons to other living species. Collagen is the primary protein in bones.
No doubt science will soon tackle the obvious next step – exactly how many genetic changes do we need to get a 50-foot, meat eating chicken that runs 45 miles an hour? I can’t imagine any possible downside.
Wine Blogging
I am drinking a bottle of Pinot Evil right now, and for the first time in a long time when having a new wine, I am underwhelmed. It has a pleasant look and aroma, but it just finishes poorly. Kind of vinegary, and not the kind of fullness I usually expect from a good pinot noir.
Oh, well. If I have two more glasses I won’t care anyway.
*** Update ***
On second thought, I will just cork it and give it to my friend who has a tongue and palate seemingly made of boot leather. The Two Oceans Sauvignon Blanc is ready to be uncorked. I will get back to you.
*** Update #2 ***
Jackpot! Light, refreshing, with a delightful citrus taste and aroma. This is a refreshing, sit on the deck and enjoy on a cool spring afternoon kind of wine. I see more of this in my future.
$7,000 for Obama
We broke $7,000 with 138 donors with an average donation of about $52.00, and are well on our way to 10k by the May 6th primaries. Well done. Actblue informed me they are in the process of making a thermometer like thing we can use to track donations, so I will post that in short order.
As to the picking other charities, I think we will try to start that next month when we have a full month, and just adopt a charity per month. I would like to try to use as apolitical a charity as possible, and off the top of my head I can think of a few that might generate some interest- Doctors without Borders, Oxfam, the Heifer project. Feel free to throw your suggestions in the comments and we can collectively hash it out over the next few days.
And now, some political porn:
That’s it. Enough is beyond enough. For what feels like the one millionth time, I just did some segment over at MSNBC on the theme of how Michigan possibly impacts Hillary’s position if the popular vote there is factored into the candidates’ running tallies. From now on, my official position is this: It is a b.s. line of argument from the Clinton campaign–and anyone else promoting it–because the Michigan primary results are fundamentally illegitimate.
As you know, left up to me, neither Michigan nor Florida’s delegates would be seated. Those states knowingly and flagrantly broke the rules. They knew what the penalty would be, and they did it anyway. Fine. But don’t come whining to us now about how, “Oh, we didn’t know that it would really matter or we wouldn’t have done it.” Well, cry me a river. I’m sure there are thousands of teenage girls out there who, if only they had known that they’d get knocked up by letting Bobby or Ricky or Darryl do it to them without a condom just that once, would have made a different choice. Behaving rashly has consequences (unless you’re a high-ranking member of the Bush administration). If we all could run around doing stupid things with the assurance that, whenever our actions wound up having a negative impact, we could beg for a do-over, the world would be a much different place.
I felt like I needed a cigarette after reading that, because it is what I have been thinking for months.
*** Update ***
This , from Karen Tumulty’s list of things that will end the nomination, made me laugh out loud:
1. Clinton Loses Indiana on May 6 and Pulls Out
There will be two primaries that day, but North Carolina is considered almost certain to go for Obama, which means Clinton will be putting most of her effort into Indiana. Privately, her advisers concede that it will be difficult to continue in the race if she does not win there.
BWAHAHAHA. My ass. The first thing the Clinton camp is doing with the money they raised after PA (well, the second, after paying off Mark Penn, I guess), is buying a truckload of post-hole diggers so they can move the goalposts some more. It is what they have done this entire campaign. Remember, she had to win Texas, lost delegates, and insisted she must soldier on. She was supposed to have to win massively in PA (double digits- 15-20%), a state tailor made for her, and really cut into Obama’s delegate lead to soldier on. She won by only 9% and did she concede? Was it over when the Germans bombed Pearl Harbor?
As we speak, the Clinton camp is still scheming to seat the Michigan delegates and is running around lying about the popular vote.
Nothing will end the Hillary vanity campaign until someone breaks out a large wooden stake. Period. Until then, it is more of the same old bullshit, and oh, btw, BARACK HUSSEIN OBAMA HANGS OUT WITH SCARY BLACK PEOPLE.
Nothing will stop this destructive narcissist from going the distance. You are smoking rock if you think otherwise.
Peak People
What caused the global food mess? Notice this sentence from a recent story on rice shortages:
Prices of rice, wheat and corn have skyrocketed in recent months because of rising fuel prices, drought, more demand for food in China and India and other emerging nations, and the trend of using crops for biofuel rather than food.
I’m confident that a trained analyst like fester can manage the variables in much more detail, but for now this will do. Counting down the main causes of food instability we can start with the problems that won’t ever get better.
* First, the price of fuel. We have hit the point where oil stops being an elastic commodity (e.g., production can be upped to meet demand) and switches to a catch-as-catch can resource. Atrios had a post a few days back about how that shift will necessarily make the price of gas go crazy. We won’t see cheap gas again unless the entire planet stops driving or we find a magic spell that turns CO2, water and soot back into light sweet crude. Since modern agriculture has been described as the process by which petroleum is converted into food (fertilizers, harvesting, packaging, transport and most of the other steps depend on hydrocarbons) that can be a real problem.
* Climate doesn’t need to get tremendously warm to cause major problems, weird will do. The major problem here is that food production isn’t the sort of thing that can just chase clement weather wherever it happens to be from year to year – if farmers can’t predict the right crop to grow in a given region year in and year out then a lot less food will come out of the ground. Drought in regions that grow rice, for example, is devastating because cultivating rice demands more water than any other kind of agriculture. CO2 climate warming will gradually shift agriculturally productive regions, but in the much shorter term it will have the equally dangerous effect of making local climate less reliable. Regarding reversibility, even if we stopped emitting CO2 today inertia and positive feedbacks will keep warming the planet for a decade or more. We’re not going to do that, so we might as well treat warming and climate instability as a given.
* More demand for food in China and India. At the same time that global population is growing, the two most populous countries on Earth have starting upgrading from a third world diet. In China’s case that is only the beginning of a potentially titanic shift from a carefully managed reduction in living standards (China invests most of its revenue in foreign currency rather than bread, circuses or infrastructure) to something more appropriate for their GDP. In India it is more of a symptom of the country’s rising prosperity. In the case of neither country would it be very useful to ask them to go back.
* Collapsing fish stocks. The cost-to-benefit ratio of commercial fishing is getting increasingly silly as more ships work harder to chase rapidly decreasing stocks of fish. Many species have already crashed to the point where harvesting just isn’t feasible, and there is ample evidence some overfished ecosystems have radically changed for good. Species near extinction may recover, but a) not for a very long time, and b) not before fuel prices make commercial fishing impractical. Fish farming is as much a shell game as growing meat on land – to get a pound of protein you need to throw in a bucketful of feeder meal.
The good news, such as it is, is that food supply has some elements of elasticity. It doesn’t have many, but the choices do represent option space that will be explored once the ‘life as usual’ path is no longer feasible.
* Meat. How many pounds of grain does it take to make one pound of beef? I don’t know the answer, but the popular consensus of about ten to one sounds right to me. Eventually it won’t make sense to shovel that expensive grain into cows and chickens, and then people will stop eating as much meat. Since people like meat (one could say “demand” it) the shift won’t be total – meat will gradually get more expensive, fewer people will buy it and a little more grain will land in stores instead. Consider the veg option a finite and limited buffer against availability-based price spikes for certain grains.
* Biofuels. We might as well accept that foodstuff-based biofuel is a dead plan walking. However, eventually we will stop making it, food will still be expensive and we won’t be that much better off.
* Population is elastic. People have ways of dealing with resource shortages – they die of starvation and disease, they go to war to take resources from others (and drop their own demand somewhat), and eventually they reach a new stable state. Just ask the Maya!
All told, count me as concerned. We can change our behavior a little to mitigate the implacable trends of fuel and climate, but in the long run I have a hard time seeing how supply keeps up with demand. Maybe good leaderhip may prove up to the challenge. To get there however, we could use someone with a rudimentary understanding of the relevant issues (i.e., not John McCain) and someone who doesn’t respond to critics by building a defensive wall and making an enemies list. Unless Al Gore gains reality-bending superpowers and crowns himself President I think that Obama is the best option that we have.
The ANWR Myth
First of all, let me say, “Bring on the high gas prices!” I don’t personally care because I figure the only way you are going to change behavior is to make life painful. Plus, it costs me $13.00 a week to do the 54 mile round trip commute to work every day. I use transit. Second of all, I don’t care if you don’t have the transit option. You live in the country, and the only way you have to get around is your Ford F150. The grocery store is 50 miles away and it costs you a fortune to go there. Get with a neighbor and carpool.
Anyhoooo, to the subject of the post… politicians, (almost exclusively those on the Right) would have you believe that the Alaska National Wildlife Refguge is the solution to all of our problems. I used to believe that too, before I started thinking. (I used to believe a lot of things before I started thinking…) There’s a lot of oil and gas under ANWR. But is it worth drilling? Well, not if the reason you want to drill is to reduce gas prices. Why? Because it just won’t happen.
In order for oil and gas from ANWR to cause an “enough to notice” reduction in gas prices, the way oil is sold and priced would have to completely change for that oil only. When oil is drilled, it is sold on international markets. We pay a market price for the gas and diesel we put into our tanks. Because OPEC produces the vast majority of oil in the world, its limits on production will always affect the price of a barrel – even if that barrel is drilled at ANWR. For gas prices to come down, the companies doing the drilling in ANWR would have to sell their oil directly to the consumer and bypass international markets. That simply ain’t gonna happen. It’s going in the pile with the rest of the world’s oil, to be priced the same as the rest of it, and you’ll still be hurting. If ANWR is opened up to drilling, I’m guessing you might see a nickel drop in the price of a gallon of gas. Is it worth the potential risk of environmental damage to save 50¢ to a buck on a tank of gas?
ANWR is politics, and it’s politics of the most devious kind because depends on ignorance of the way oil and gas is sold in the international marketplace – ignorance that is, unfortunately, far too common.
Also: Speaking of playing politics – Hillary – reducing the Federal gas tax is a stupid idea – not that I expect any more from you.
Heckuva Job, Bush
Maybe it was too early to start joking about eating squirrel and deer:
Farmers and food executives appealed fruitlessly to federal officials yesterday for regulatory steps to limit speculative buying that is helping to drive food prices higher. Meanwhile, some Americans are stocking up on staples such as rice, flour and oil in anticipation of high prices and shortages spreading from overseas.
***Costco and other grocery stores in California reported a run on rice, which has forced them to set limits on how many sacks of rice each customer can buy. Filipinos in Canada are scooping up all the rice they can find and shipping it to relatives in the Philippines, which is suffering a severe shortage that is leaving many people hungry.
And then you have this:
Noel Bosse and Ken Davis watch as the numbers keep spinning at the gas pump — 70 bucks, 80 bucks. Gulp, guzzle, then it stops: $101 for about 25 gallons.
The $100 fill-up has arrived in the United States.
“I think it’s absolutely ridiculous,” Bosse says with disgust.
For all the Canadian readers who are upset they don’t get to contribute to the Obama campaign, here is how you can help. We have six more months of Bush, and at this rate, what we need most from our allies are a stable currency and the willingness to send in the RCMP to help stop the food riots. Thanks in advance.