“He that steals an egg will steal an ox” -Proverb
A year ago I wrote about Appliance Fires in England caused by a power surge when thieves broke into an electrical substation and stole £20 worth of copper switching parts to sell on the black market. Likewise I recall a story during the Iraq war that power outages resulted when thieves stole remote power lines in the desert to sell as scrap metal.
The Consumerist reports a similar story here in the US. In 2009 the mayor of Pittsburgh purchased 250 trash receptacles printed with his name for $1,010 apiece. Critics objected to the high price (and to his name on the cans). Other cities had spent less to stash the trash - Cincinnati ($500), Philadelphia ($118) and Minneapolis ($323). The mayor replied that a lower price was just not possible,
"I would challenge somebody that suggests that it is (possible) to prove where that can happen — and what is the quality and the durability and the maintenance factor of those garbage cans?"  Three years later the durability and maintenance are a problem. I'm sure the cans are in fine condition when you can find one - but it seems that 50 cans have gone missing. Some detective work revealed that the $1000 cans are being sold to scrap dealers for about $40. Maybe the city should have bolted the pricey cans to the concrete?
My wife and I have similar concerns about buying a lawn ornament. We love the look of bears carved from a tree log but wonder how long it would last in the front yard before someone stole it (or vandalized it). So instead we purchased a glass table supported by a carved bear that we use in the living room where it will be safe.
Bottom Line
Is the economy making theft worse? Here are some headlines from DrudgeReport.com
Labels: Economy, Government, Theft
New Rules for Pork
(Lisa) “I’m going to become a vegetarian”
(Homer) “Does that mean you’re not going to eat any pork?”
“Yes”
“Bacon?”
“Yes Dad”
“Ham?”
“Dad all those meats come from the same animal”
“Right Lisa, some wonderful, magical animal!”
- The Simpsons I love a juicy pork chop but I've given up ordering chops at restaurants. They come out dry as leather almost every time. The reason for this is trichinosis, a parasitic disease caused by eating roundworm larvae in undercooked meat. This used to be quite common and some hypothesize that it's the reason behind the Jewish Kosher law forbidding pork. But today Trichinosis is no longer a problem in commercially grown pork and hasn't been for years. So the USDA has issued new guidelines saying that it's OK to eat pork that is still pink and it's OK to cook it to 145 F instead of 160 F as previously recommended.
"We found it was perfectly acceptable and that 160 was probably overkill," says Elisabeth Hagen, USDA's undersecretary for food safety. The new guidelines focus on killing Salmonella which, sadly, is far too common in foods today like eggs and spinach. Cook meat to "145 for all whole cuts of red meat, 160 for ground red meat and 165 for poultry". When your whole cut of meat reaches 145 degrees, let it sit for three minutes the USDA recommends. The external temperature will be higher and will continue to cook the center for added safety without overcooking.
The 160 F is needed to kill bacteria like Salmonella that reside on the outside of the meat. Usually an internal temperature of 145 indicates that the outside has reached 160. When meat is ground, like hamburger, the bacteria can get mixed into the center and so every part of the meat must reach 160 (or 165 for chicken since Salmonella is more prevalent in poultry).
Bottom Line
Old habits can be hard to kick but I'm looking forward to juicer pork roast and chops. Labels: Food Safety, Germs, salmonella, USDA
What's that smell?
"Zee stripe! It is gone! She is not a skunk at all!"
- Pepe Le Pew We sometimes refer to our cats as skunks in reverse. They have black bodies with white bellies instead of a white strip on the back. But recently one of our inverted skunks met the real thing. Taz came in with massive quantities of drool coming from his mouth. My first thought was rabies but then the smell hit me - skunk! He was been hit in the face and was pitiful sight. Fortunately my wife knew what to do.
1. We quickly removed our outer clothes so as not to ruin them.
2. She had me remove rugs and towels from the bathroom while she grabbed the cat.
3. Then she and the cat were locked in the bathroom for a bath.
4. We could not find tomato juice or V8. This has worked well for us though some websites claim it does not work.
5. So my wife suggested Listerine which did remove the smell.
6. Skunks aim for the face and cleaning the face is not easy. We poured cups of water over the eyes to flush them clean. The force of warm water directly out of the faucet was too strong.
7. We dried the cat with a very old towel.
8. And gave him a brushing once he had settled down.
We offered the cat water to rinse his mouth but he was not interested. Fortunately the drooling stopped shortly after the bath. Be sure to wipe up the drool since this contains a bit of the skunk oil and will spread on feet, shoes, etc.
First Aid
If the cat if bitten or scratched, get them to a vet. Skunks may carry rabies. Also call the vet if your cat's eye are red or watering.
Bottom Line
Many sites now recommend a mixture of hydrogen peroxide and baking soda to breakup the skunk smell.
* 1 quart of 3% hydrogen peroxide (unopened)
* ¼ cup baking soda
* 1 teaspoon of strong liquid soap such as dish washing detergent.
Mix the ingredients in an open bucket or bowl. The mixture should fizz if the hydrogen peroxide is fresh. Be sure to keep the mixture out of the pet's eyes, nose and mouth. If it is necessary to apply it to the face, very carefully use a washcloth or a sponge. After applying the mixture, rinse thoroughly.
*Warning*
This mixture creates pressure as it fizzes - never store in a closed container, do not cover the container in any way. Always discard unused solution. Do not get the mixture into the pet's eyes, nose or mouth.
Web Resources
http://vetmedicine.about.com/od/veterinaryqa/qt/SkunkFirstAid.htm
http://www.dogbreedinfo.com/skunk.htmLabels: First Aid, Pets, Skunk
Turning the Tables
“Reporters whining about Palin are like kids who can’t reach the cookie jar because she keeps moving it.”
- blogger Doug Powers I don't watch TV news anymore. I grew up with it every night as a kid with my dad but today I find it biased and more entertainment than news. There are exceptions like BBC news that report real events around the world as opposed to covering celebrities, politicians, sports stars, and natural disasters. Last Monday, Memorial Day, I was at home at 6:30 pm and CBS news came on - let's watch it, I said, to see how the new anchor, Katie Couric's replacement, is. He was OK but the story that caught my attention was Sarah Palin's bus tour.
A CBS reporter whined about how Palin was stealing attention from declared candidates like Mitt Romney. Absurd! She has no control over what CBS decides to report. They could just ignore her until she declares her candidacy. CBS is complaining that Palin is "newsworthy" and they must cover her.
An editorial in the LA Times says it best, "There is nothing the U.S. media wants more than something it thinks it can't have." Palin is not playing by the rulebook. She won't declare yes or no. She won't publish her travel itinerary. She is not courting the press to cover her. Only Fox News is invited on her bus. CBS News producer, Ryan Corsaro, claimed that the lack of travel information was endangering the dozen competing media vans trailing behind the bus. Corsaro asked a member of Palin's team if he thought it was dangerous to have reporters forced to chase her from stop to stop. "You're the ones that are trailing us," he replied. How dare Palin “make them follow” her!, quips Michelle Malkin in a clever article titled Chasing Sarah: The Boys Behind the Bus.
CBS News also claims that,
Palin's team isn't just ignoring the press; it's actively trying to misdirect reporters. Tuesday morning, for example, Palin's bus was running out in front of the hotel where she had stayed, prompting a gaggle of media to dutifully gather outside. Palin had already slipped out a side door early in the morning for a visit to the Gettysburg visitor center and battlefield. Oh, the horror!
Bottom Line
What is Palin's response to maltreating the poor Main Stream Media who has been vicious in attacking her and her children over the years? “I don’t think I owe anything to the mainstream media."
Update
Here's an example of ridiculous and petty reporting that counts as news today. Describing a Pizza Summit between Palin and Trump at a restaurant, "Palin ate her pizza with her hands, the billionaire used a fork, it appears, in photos snapped by NBC." Labels: Government, News Media
Creative Destruction
"Economic progress, in capitalist society, means turmoil." Joseph A. Schumpeter
Yesterday I used the words "creative destruction". I did not realize that this phrase originated with Karl Marx when he claimed that economic development arises out of the destruction of some prior economic order. I was introduced to the term via the work of economist Joseph Schumpeter who adapted the phrase and popularized it as a theory of economic innovation whereby progress is limited unless new products replace (destroy) old products and services. For example, if your new car lasted 20 years, there would be far fewer car sales and a much smaller automotive industry. We've gotten used to the idea of cars wearing out frequently. One car ad said the average person buys 12 cars in their lifetime.
Industries and companies are also subject to being obsoleted and replaced. (Hence I object to the very dangerous concept of "too big to fail". Don't try to block progress by saving companies who are unable to adapt with the times.)
What is being "destroyed" and replaced now-a-days?
1. The Post Office
There will always (?) be packages for Fed Ex, and UPS to ship but when was the last time you wrote a letter? My wife has embraced online bill paying and we send eCards to relatives so very little goes into our mailbox anymore.
2. The Personal Check
It costs the financial system billions of dollars a year to process checks. Plastic cards and online transactions will lead to the eventual demise of the check.
3. The Newspaper
Some "papers" have moved online and stopped publishing a paper copy. I expect this trend will continue, especially as iPad, Kindles, etc become more common for reading during the morning commute.
4. Paper Books
Why carry a heavy book (and fill book shelves) when it can be stored on your Kindle? I used to collect reference books but now turn to the Internet for current facts.
5. The Land Line Telephone
We keep ours for emergency preparedness and Internet. The telephones that plug into the wall often work during emergencies when cell towers are down or overwhelmed. But there may come a time when landlines are discontinued.
6. Music CDs
Too many people get fixated on the medium instead of the content. Music has existed and been sold on phonograph rolls, LPs of various sizes, 8-track tapes, cassette tapes,etc. The CD is just the latest and perhaps the last of the physical means of buying music. iTunes has shown that music can exist profitably in pure digital format on the Internet.
7. Television and Cable TV
Why pay someone to watch content when there are free alternatives online?
8. Camera Film
I have not used film in years.
9. Travel Agents
I do all my travel arrangements online.
Bottom Line
What other goods or services do you think will be replaced? Labels: American History, Capitalism, Future
Is Progress Slowing Down?
 “When Moses was alive, these pyramids were a thousand years old. Here began the history of architecture. Here people learned to measure time by a calendar, to plot the stars by astronomy and chart the earth by geometry. And here they developed that most awesome of all ideas - the idea of eternity.” -Walter Cronkite
An editorial by Matt Patterson at pajamasmedia.com asks if the times are a'changing.
In his penetrating new book The Great Stagnation, economist Tyler Cowen ... calls the period from roughly the early 19th to the mid-20th centuries the era of “low hanging fruit.” According to Cowen, technological advances in this period were relatively easy to produce and exploit, resulting in a staggering explosion of living standards.
But by around 1970, most of this low hanging fruit had been plucked and growth rates began to slow. Indeed, growth rates are “lower today than before 1973, no matter what exact numbers you settle on for the absolute living standard.” There are at least two reasons for this.
1. The age of cheap resources is ending. Many companies relied on cheap water, electricity, iron, etc for production. We've used up the easily accessible resources ("low hanging fruit") so what remains costs more to process and there is now global competition to use it as China and India industrialize and extend middle class comforts to billions of people.
2. The complexity of manufacturing keeps increasing. Compare the engine of a car from 1950 to today. Robots help with the assembly but there are more moving parts and of greater sophistication. Consider the clean room requirements and requirements of perfection on a small scale to create computer microchips.
Complexity makes it harder to create and produce new products.
There is an interesting flip side to the second point. This is the Information Age and while computer software also increases in complexity, well built software hides the complexity to produce "tools" that are easy to use and promote the creation of more information products. Anyone now can create publication ready books, art works, web services, etc on computers. So complexity enables information products and hinders physical products.
You may think, no problem, we'll just transition to an information society where the majority of workers are information workers. In the past the “creative destruction” of progress might end one industry like horse buggy making but resulted in an even bigger automotive industry. However software advances don't do that. Advances in software tend to decrease or eliminate jobs like travel agents. McDonald’s plans to eliminate cashiers in many of its European restaurants, replacing them with touch-screen ordering systems.
Internet companies can be worth more than old fashion manufacturing and reach hundreds of millions of customers and yet employ very few.
[Economist Tyler] Cowen notes that Google employs a mere 20,000; the increasingly ubiquitous Twitter only 300. Facebook has millions of users, but only about 1,700 workers. For comparison, General Motors employs 209,000 people around the world.
Bottom Line
Again from Matt Patterson,
Unfortunately, politicians in the “low hanging fruit” period made policy decisions based on the assumption that the growth rates of that era — and their corresponding tax revenues — would continue indefinitely. And the American public, seeing successive generations do better than prior ones, came to expect this was the natural order of things. Both governments and individuals borrowed against a future they assumed would be richer and more technologically wondrous than the present. Patterson observes from history that no civilization lasts forever.The ancient Greeks created the myth of the Cyclops to explain even more ancient fortresses with walls of giant stones that no one knew how to move. It must have been built by giants. In reality it was the Greeks own ancestors several hundred years before. "The Great Pyramid of Cheops was the largest building in the world until well into the modern era, and still stands after nearly five millennia". And yet a few centuries after its making, Egypt fell and the world forgot how to make them.
Bubbles result when people say, "This time it's different". But the Internet bubble burst, the housing bubble burst (many times) when expectations exceed reality. Have we been living in a technology bubble of 200 years? Labels: Computers, Economy, Technology, Unemployment
A Radiant Story
“Incidentally, disturbance from cosmic background radiation is something we have all experienced. Tune your television to any channel it doesn't receive, and about 1 percent of the dancing static you see is accounted for by this ancient remnant of the Big Bang. The next time you complain that there is nothing on, remember that you can always watch the birth of the universe.”
-Bill Bryson Flickr.com has a interesting story and graph about radiation. An executive at a Silicon Valley tech firm (San Francisco) traveled to Japan for business. One of his destinations was 50 miles from the crippled Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant that generated much frantic news after the big earthquake.
"As a precaution, a colleague gave him a Geiger Counter so he could make sure it wasn’t getting dangerous as he approached the plant."
Instead of only running the Geiger Counter near the site of the nuclear meltdown, the executive left it on the entire trip with fascinating results below. The tiny bump near hour 144 is the exposure from the damaged nuclear power plant. The much larger spikes occured while flying. San Francisco to Hong Kong, Hong Kong to Singapore, Singapore to Tokyo, and Tokyo back to San Francisco. This is completely normal - a plane a mile or two up has less atmosphere to block in comming radiation from the sun and from space. The last trip has an extra tall spike because the flight went near the North Pole which blocks even less radiation than other parts of the globe.
Bottom Line
It helps to put things in perspective. Yes the radiation at the plant is bad and a meltdown did occur - BUT the effect is very local and dimishes rapidly. Persons living nearby (50 miles or so) need to be concerned about long-term accumulative risk. Visitors and tourists get greater exposure from the flight to Japan than from the damaged nuclear plant. Labels: Charts, earthquake, Graphs, Japan, Nuclear Power, Radiation
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