Tag: science

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Murder, death, kill. PETA causes extinction of species.

The irony of the “animal rights” movement is the wild eyed murderous attitudes toward a particularly beloved primate species. How can you claim to love animals and insist that they be allowed to express their nature while attacking humans for exercising their instinct to hunt and prey? It’s laughably self contradictory.

Yabba-dabba-do!
Because I like to think, I like to read. I’m into freedom of speech, freedom of choice. I’m the kind if guy who would sit in the greasy spoon and think “Gee, should I have the T-bone steak or the big rack of Barbecued spare ribs with the side order of gravy fries?

This spoof meme is a perfect example of the hate rhetoric that hunters and omnivores suffer from extremists like PETA. The picture is a link to an article exposing the silly responses that this photo generated on social media. Some got the joke, some like the author of the article only got part of it, and some may have missed the point entirely.

“Jay” the individual who originally posted the pic, was of course making fun of the big game hunter memes, including one that featured a young athletic female with her rifle and her kills. I think that one was photoshopped but regardless, the reaction was hysterical in every sense of the word. The ones who got the Jurassic Bwanna meme featuring Speilberg (above) simply reacted with the frenzied vitriol that so often attends real imagery of the sort. This lead them to stay in the moment so to speak with regard to the hunting incident and spoof the insanity of the animal rights lobby, as if the tricerotops were really the victim of a homicide.

If the concern is conservation of species, bear in mind that latest research argues that at least in the sea, predation drives population growth rather than suppressing it. The conservation movement was begun and grown by sportsmen attempting to preserve sufficient numbers of prey to continue the sport. bear in mind that without predation you can’t have your KFC, McDonalds or sushi. Or for that matter a reasonably healthy and alert human population.

Murder, Death, Kill!
Top Predators [including hunters] Preserve Ecosystems
Problems arise when predatory species are thinned and not allowed to compete with human predation. Trolling, culling, and other species management methods used in the past to protect prey species from starvation are based on models that fail to account for the balance between predation and competition between prey or between hunters. A better approach will likely eliminate corporate “farmed livestock” and deep sea trolling with floating canneries.

In fact, sportsmen with their low stress approach to species management will be critical to a healthy biosphere as just one of the natural predators necessary to restore a balanced ecosystem.

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Shades of Blade Runner: Could Bioprinted Replicants Be Around The Corner?

This article announces a technology that uses cloned tissues to print 3d Replicas of real human tissues. The analogue to “Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?” is remarkable. It’s nothing new for technological advancement to mirror Science Fiction and Fantasy but, for me at least, the idea of homonculi assembled from living tissues is nearly as pase’ as Frankenstein’s Monster. It seemed that the destination of science and technology was moving inexorably toward the organic growth of replacement tissues and tailored organisms. This miniature liver however presents all sorts of intriguing and horrifying possibilities.

First 3D Printed Liver Is Mini But Mighty: Could Transplantable Human Organs Eventually Be Bioprinted?.

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Where’s My Hookah?

A friend urged me to dig out my old Mushroom loaf recipe’. It had issues–word to the wise, don’t mix minced raw mushrooms with minced raw meats or meat byproducts, unless you particularly like muddy lavender colored foods–so I made some repairs and here is it. If you like it you can thank me, if you hate it blame Kevin.

Tha Rescape’:

 

Mushroom Loaf

Ingredients:

1 lb mixed mushrooms, minced (I recommend chanterelle, crimini, and all American white)

½ lb mushroom caps, whole without stems

1 cup beef broth

2 packets unflavored gelatine

¼ large onion minced. (you can use a whole golfball sized onion but the taste will be a bit mild)

3 cloves of minced fresh garlic (recommend fresh or wet from a jar. If you must use dried reconstitute it with the wine before saute)

⅓ cup California Merlot. (you can substitute that other Merlot from that French place west of Switzerland but the recipe calls for Cali Red)

2 eggs beaten

2 cups bread crumbs (panko will blend with the loaf flavors best)

¼ cup cornstarch

2 tsp sesame’ oil

1 tsp black pepper

2 tsp chopped basil

1 tsp salt (or to taste)

Optional:

½ cup whole or chopped pecans

 

Directions:

Add gelatine to cold broth and set aside until blossomed. Saute mushroom caps with with ghee or a mix ½ and ½ of olive oil and butter. Don’t use margarine since the emulsifying effects of butter are needed. Set caps aside to rest. Saute minced mushrooms until they release their liquid, then add onions and garlic and continue saute until onions sweat. Deglaze with wine and simmer until wine reduced by half. Add mixture to caps and allow to rest. Toss mixture with gelatine solution, sesame oil, basil, salt and pepper. Add eggs and mix by hand, folding in cornstarch and bread crumbs.

Mixture should resemble a loose meatloaf. Grease a loaf pan or oven safe mold with olive oil and mold loaf. Place pan in an oven preheated to 350 deg F and bake for 1 hour or until firm. I recommend lightly browning each slice and serving with a bit of hollandaise, bottled brown sauce or gravy.

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Big Publishers DRMing us to death

As a writer, rights to my work are important. Anyone who copies my work and doesn’t pay me for it literally takes away from my ability to care for elderly parents as well as myself. Writing is hard work. So is practicing long hours with musical instruments, or painting, drawing singing, etc. Hard work, harder in some cases than selling rainforest kitch, flipping burgers or building electronics.

On the other hand the spread of facisim in the west has brought about an unholy union between big content producers and government that is choking the life out of the freedom of the consumer. DRM and digital media restrictions are making it criminal to own and use your own copy of an artist’s work. With paper, canvas and vinyl, we allowed artists and producers to create “licenses” to content, but the media was property. If I bought a book, the words belonged to the author or his assigns (publishers heirs etc.); the paper, ink and binding was mine. I owned the book, the copy. If I wanted to share it with a friend I handed it to him and he read it. Libraries exist for the sole purpose of collecting books and lending them for the use of patrons, whether on site or off.

With digital, paperless, initiatives we have a problem. Can I own the electrons on a flash card? Is it possible? And if I send it to a friend he has it, but I still have it too. I’ve been accused of an intense grasp of the obvious. But the obvious seems to have escaped the legislators, producers and consumer public. The obvious is that DRM or Cloud storage infringe on the consumers rights as they have existed for just as long a tradition as those of the copyholder. DRM cannot be allowed to be a means of simply removing the ability of the consumer to loan or sell his media. This is a one-sided draconian approach that infringes on the majority rights in order to protect the minority. Unequal protection. For Americans at least, a huge no-no.

This case, a conflict between a programmer and Silicon Valley powerhouse Facebook ®, is a clear case of big business content producers attempting to circumvent the like a book doctrine and force the consumer to relinquish traditional rights to control, manipulate and warehouse their privately owned media. A quick review will probably leave most readers ambivalent at best.

The issue will continue to be a matter of struggle as we try to figure out how to insure media control “like a book” while preventing piracy. A start, would be for consumers to have the good grace to “just say no” to Pirate Bay.

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Choo choo!

Siemens Steam Engine
Steam Power

This little Item from Professor Elemental’s FB fanpage caught my attention and held it. See the words are a bit ironic to me. It reminds me of an a somewhat dim acquaintance of mine that I spent a lot of time battling with over the last decade and a half. That is of course the subject for a different venue, let’s just say in a battle of wits his kit of choice is the Shield of Evil Banality and the Club of Low Cunning. He can always quote someone else’s witticism that will at least have some of the same words as the topic at hand.

But enough about that. The real issue is that the conversation in question started with him mocking Jay Leno for his avid interest in steam power. He finally fell to the question, why is it that you can only every find kits for low horsepower steam engines, none of which are organized as motors? That’s a paraphrase. He was never so articulate. I’m sure that ultimately he was trying to use his degenerate version of Scientology Lingo to seem witty. But he quite unwittingly tumbled onto a fine oddity.

He, like so many, believes that the internal combustion engine has supplanted and obsoleted steam power. Professor Elemental touches on that in the song linked above. He also points out wind power as an obsolete tech. I believe t he point of the song is that we had our hay-day mowing with gasoline and now we’ll have to buckle down and settle for steam. The implication is that it’s some sort pennence for the excesses of the 20’th century. But nothing could be more erroneous.

After World War I many ships were being converted to Diesel engine and this was a short lived detour that seemed like the big thing for the future. Mr. Diesel’s design for internal combustion is neat and “for a petroleum engine” marginally efficient. It doesn’t approach the the power and efficiency of a top fuel dragster or formula racer, but it does all right. And really, who wants a nitro-methane supercharged drag cruise-liner?

But the point here is that the foray into diesel was mostly a non-starter for really big vessels. Those that retain diesel today are mostly hybrid, using diesel to charge batteries that then run electric motorized screws. Even that design was scrapped on Naval vessels where, the big cruisers, carriers and subs use a nuke. Now my “friend” above was only too avid to concede that Nuclear (for texans: Nukular) power was the bomb. It’s latest and greatest, why it’s New Technology! Hmmm.

Reactors were invented in the 1930’s and used in the development of atomic weapons. Very new. Internal combustion dates from the late 19’th century, why that’s at least 40 years earlier. But there’s a problem with nuclear power.

Contrary to the Stark Trek ™ and Sci Fi vision, reactors are just giant furnaces where (in a terribly crude, even primitive way) zirconium plated metal rods are piled up till they get hot enough to spontaneously boil water. Said water “coolant” is driven through of all things a steam turbine which rapidly cools it. Then it is condensed in a coil and recirculated. This massively “high tech” generator is our old friend the steam engine.

Given the intense heat and radiation of a nuclear furnace, it’s probable that other means of gaining power from it are possible. But let’s face it, we’ve been living the steam punk fantasy for the last two hundred years. By burning hydrogen, oxygen and catalysts in various compounds, our wonderful liquid fueled rockets the main engines on the Space Shuttle are ultimately a form of–yes–steam power.

We are building windmills more often now. And I’m very happy to see it. As for some good old medieval tech, how about the hoover water-wheel. But it’s makes us feel more sophisticated to use terms like hydro-electric, harassing thermal energy, or reaction engines. So be it. All hail the heat expansion of aqueous fluid to provide mechanical energy!