Superbowl Sunday

So I am going over to supergoober's place to watch the game, and frankly, I am more excited about last night's UFC than I am about today's game. BTW, I don't know the results from the fights, but that is neither here nor there.

I am looking forward to hanging out with a couple of friends and BS-ing for a little bit. Frankly, I don't know what more to write about, but I wanted to just start writing something, and I don't know what.

Oh yeah, just thought of something. McDonald's is going to eliminate ammonium hydroxide from its meat processing. It apparently uses the caustic chemical to kill pathogens and make food that would otherwise only be useful in dog and cat food available for consumption by people (this is according to the newscast I heard on KCBS this morning).

The broadcast continued to state that the chemical is used in cleaning products and homemade explosives (as if this shows how dangerous and bad it is for people). The broadcast concluded that since it is used in a step in a process and is removed, it is often not listed as an ingredient, so people trying to eat well don't know that it is being used.

First, the stupid "news piece" is laden with bias. I don't know a ton about the process, but basically, a step is grinding up beef trimmings and treating them with ammonium hydroxide to kill e. coli. There have been no links to hazards from ingesting the beef treated this way (from the chemical, anyway). The real risk, and the one the FDA is beginning to be concerned with is that there are a number of e. coli outbreaks that are potentially linked to this. This is because the e. coli is not killed, not because the chemical caused it. It may be grounds for stopping this process because the process is ineffective, not because the chemical is dangerous.

I can list a chemical that huge numbers of people consume on a regular basis that has similar qualities and has, in fact, been know to cause deaths of consumers who indulge in the products in which it is used. In fact, some less scrupulous manufacturers will add more of this substance to a product just to increase the potency of there products, while others go through a variety of physical and chemical processes to have this included in their product.

It is also used as a base for many cleaning agents, has know carcinogenic qualities, is highly flammable, can be used to make homemade explosives. It is also well know that it is highly toxic to humans and ingesting sufficient quantities will inevitably be lethal.

Of course, I am talking about grain alcohol. All of what I said above is true, and yet there is no movement to ban the stuff. In fact, at my niece's confirmation party yesterday, a friend of my brother was spouting about the "pink slime" that was "ammonium hydroxide additive" all while sipping away at a beer. In fact, the majority of his argument was based on how gross the pink slime looks, and this is a common persuasion tactic used by the people trying to stop the process.

In fact, ammonium hydroxide is not pink - it is a pungent smelling, caustic, whitish, crystalline salt. The pink slime is the munged up ankle meat and tendon and blood of a cow that is mixed with ammonium hydroxide. It is not pretty, and it probably does not smell good. But if you look at food preparation in general, this is often the case, even for natural or "organic" food. Try watching (or smelling) the making of "organic" cheese (or even regular cheese). There are times when the cheese looks like puke and smells like sweaty feet and excrement combined. It is not a pleasant process. Same with beer making. Just because a process isn't pretty doesn't make the outcome bad.

I am not trying to defend the process; honestly, I don't know enough about it to say whether it is or is not terrible. I would like a little less scare tactics in a news report, however, and also I would like to not have to put up with idiots at parties.

Actually, the guy was kind of nice, and not really an idiot - he was some sort of an engineer (actually, he said "sort-of, engineering" when I asked him if he was an engineer). But, like most people, he had formed his conclusions and wanted everyone else to see how smart he was, so he talk about how acidic this stuff was, and how acidic that diet soda was - it would eat away unlined aluminum cans so quickly - like 2 weeks - if we did not have organic inner linings on the can. I mentioned to him that the stomach lining regenerates every 3 days, his retort was that this was causing that to happen more quickly. I told him I had been drinking diet sodas for 20 years on a daily basis and did not have a bleeding ulcer yet, so I would continue what I liked (I was quite a bit nicer and more personable than this, actually). I also happened to have mentioned earlier in the conversation that ammonium hydroxide was caustic, not acidic, and his reply was "whatever, I'm not a chemist".

If you are going to spout stuff, please try to get it right. Also, he failed to note that they coated the cans with "organic" compounds - that is carbon containing compounds, not the incorrect "Green" usage of the word. This is because metals are vulnerable to the oxidation-reduction reaction much more so than many organic chemicals. He also said that sodas will make the stomach "way more acidic" - wrong again. Your stomach is a buffered system at around a pH of 3 to 4. Diet coke has a pH of about 3.4. When you eat a large (non-acidic) meal, the pH of your stomach drops close to 1 to break down the food. People who suffer from acid problems in there stomachs are having problems with their own system releasing more acid than there stomach can handle; it is not usually that the food, itself, is too acidic. The other problem is a sphincter issue, where the sphincter at the top of the stomach doesn't close properly and stomach acid splashes up the esophagus (causing "heartburn"). If the acid was as dangerous as they say, your mouth and throat would be burned. Take a mouthful of soda and leave it in your mouth. See how long it takes before your mouth gets "burned" by the acid.

Also - pH is logarithmic, so the acid in your stomach after a heavy meal (let's say 1.4 pH) is 100 times more acidic then the 3.4 of diet coke. So stop getting your panties in a twist, everyone, and don't get your panties in a twist about the phrase "panties in a twist", either.

Okay, So I Am On 2 Days in a Row

This is what happens when you get 3 days off from teaching and don't feel like correcting tests. Actually I just want to spark up the old writing chops again, so I hope one or more of my friends reads this.

And I didn't really know what to write until I just wrote that second sentence. There was one person who would always read this; whether or not he agreed with it, fully understood it, or even cared about whatever topic on which I was musing. He would always read it and often comment, and his comments were always kind if not always supportive (not that they should have been supportive, when we differed in opinions, I am glad he felt comfortable enought to voice his opinions).

If you haven't guessed, I am talking about Steve T.

It is approaching a year since his death, Feb 6, 2011, and I find myself thinking more about him as I write this. I am not going to sugar coat anything, nor am I going to pretend that I was always close with him - that would be disrespectful to him and to his memories. If you remember our interactions, Steve T. often got on my nerves. He was not an intellectual powerhouse, but that is not what bothered me (although his tendency to speak from authority on subjects that TrackMan (I can't remember the moniker I used to use for him, but he's the guy in our group that loves to take his car to the track and is not supergoober) believed in irritated me.

What bothered me most about him was based on one of the things that I find most praiseworthy about him; a thing that I cannot say about many other people (myself included) and something that is quite rare and remarkable in this world. The thing that bothered me most was his hero worship of TrackMan. I don't want to offend you TrackMan, and I don't think this will - but particularly at the time you tended towards the misogynistic, hump-em and dump-em lifestyle. I know this is a gross oversimplification, and I don't want to get into it here, but steve t. idolized you.

That infuriated me. Here's why.

Steve t. was a genuinely nice guy. If you know me, I don't say this about many people and I mean it as high praise. He was kind to everyone he encountered that I ever saw or heard about, and I can speak from personal experience that he never expressed anger at me despite the fact that on many occasions my frustration would boil over to a point where I would lash out and be insulting to him. He would always take it with good nature and aplomb. I would occasionally apologize, and he would always say that it was no big deal, that I didn't need to worry about it, and that he didn't take it too personally.

And for my sake, I hope that this is true, because I already feel a lot of guilt over this, and if I really did hurt him in any more than a superficial way, I would feel really terrible. I can make all kinds of excuses for my behavior - most of which are true, but none of those invalidate the fact that I hurt him on a number of occasions and he was someone who did not deserve to be hurt that way.

And this all goes to the reason I did not like his hero worship, though I did understand it. He would echo TrackMan's opinions like they were gospel and seemed to live vicariously through his sexual conquests. Steve t. did not need to idolize someone like that - he was a good man in his own right. It would have been just as bad if he had idolized me - a self-righteous, intellectual elitist who is very vulnerable and wounded at the core. I know why he would idolize someone like TrackMan - he embodied the self-confidence, the personal savvy, and the charm that most of us do not have. Steve found these qualities desirable, and who wouldn't so I don't blame him for that.

I just always wished that he could recognize how good a person he was in his own right, and that he did not need to live through anyone else. And rather than simply tell him that, I would lash out at him, and it is a sign of my own shortcomings and not his. I had been trying not to make those mistakes from my younger years again, and I clearly made them again with steve t., someone who never deserved it, and I am still trying not to make the same mistakes.

And I hope that somewhere steve t. can read this or notice these thoughts, and he can understand that I am really truly sorry if I ever caused him pain - he did not deserve it.

And while this may also seem somewhat of an indictment of TrackMan, it is not intended as that. I want all of you to know (not that any of you will read this anymore) that I value each of you for who you are, and that I do not want to see any of you come to any harm, from yourself or anyone else.

And by way of excuse, I suppose, that is what I wanted for steve t. as well - I just never had the courage or decency to come out and say it, but I will say it now.

If I get mad at you for something, it is because I care enough about you to not want you to get hurt, and I will do my damnedest to actually say that rather than just get mad at you. I will see you all tonight, and again, steve, wherever you are, you are in my prayers.

And I guess I should change the title, but I don't think I will, because that is where all this started.

Frivolity with Fast and Furious

And Additional Alliterative aaah-crap I can't think of an A word for musing

Was watching some news today about the Eric Holder stuff, and I have been giving it some thought. There have been very few (to my knowledge - I admittedly haven't researched it) repercussions for the Fast and Furious debacle in the DOJ. A few people reassigned, some ATF field agents reassigned to desk jobs (which makes it look more like they're being kept quiet then being disciplined - that is how it would look to a casual observer, myself included), not much else.

Holder is not terribly forthcoming (but who would be given the typical grilling one gets by congress - very supportive by your supporters, very antagonistic by your antagonizers - why should that be surprising), but the lack of anyone getting fired really is causing him problems. Virtually everyone in a position of power has a sacrificial lamb that they throw under the bus at this point (to carelessly mix metaphors) or at least a devotee to fall on his sword - yeah, 3 death metaphors in one sentence.

That is why it seems that we are left with one of two options - either Holder is the first ethical man in power, unwilling to let heads roll to take the heat off of him (doubtful) or he doesn't want to fire someone who could potentially implicate him.

Occam's Razor forces me to choose the latter option since an honest man in a political position is rarer than ... I don't know what, honest political figures are my bellwether for rarity - I usually use them to compare rarity of other items, like a mint condition Alpha Black Lotus.

The real problem is that I find it unlikely that he knew nothing, in which case he lied to Congress, and if he did not know, then he is incompetent (ignoring reports to him) or not in control (just never notified). None of those are good options. Considering the emails that have gone around with the words "gun walking" or the like, it is unlikely that he knew nothing of guns being allowed into the hands of criminals.

And before anyone uses the "Bush Administration did it too" argument, I'd like to point out a couple of things:

• First, one administrations mistakes does not give the next licence to continue those mistakes (yeah, yeah, two wrongs don't make a right). If it did nothing would ever change, we would still have slavery, wage controls, price controls, no income tax, the Vietnam Conflict (dare-I-say War), etc., etc., etc.


• Second, there are quite a few differences between the policies - Operation Wide Receiver was a monumental failure and was cancelled as I will detail below.

Differences between Wide Receiver and Fast and Furious:

1. Wide Receiver installed RFID chips in the guns so that they could track and arrest gunrunners before the guns got into the hands of the cartels, Fast and Furious had no protocol for monitoring the guns electronically.


2. Wide Receiver never intended for guns to cross the border but still alerted Mexican authorities to the potential, Fast and Furious intended for the guns to cross the border and never alerted the Mexican government (putting Mexican government agents at risk). One could argue that the level of corruption in the Mexican government makes this a bonus for Fast and Furious, but anytime you are having a law enforcement effort that actually crosses a border, you should alert the other country.


3. Wide Receiver was stopped by the ATF when it proved a monumental failure (the cartels took steps to deal with the RFIDs) and prosecutions still resulted - it was stopped in a relatively timely fashion and did not require a whistle blower or a death to occur, while Fast and Furious, well, we all know when and why that stopped, and no one has been prosecuted because the ATF seems to have lost track of the guns sold.

There would not be as much furor had the program been stopped before the death (there still would be anger, but seeing that the program had been recognized as faulty and stopped first would likely have mitigated much of it). 400 guns got away in Wide Receiver, 2000+ in Fast and Furious. The real problem was the intent - the former never intended guns to get into Mexico, it was to find the straw purchasers and the people for whom they purchased. The latter targeted higher ups in the cartels (a laudable goal) but at significantly higher risk (intentionally putting guns into the hands of criminals on a semi-permanent to permanent basis). A basic risk analysis seems to say that the latter option is a bad idea, especially if you have the previous experience (wide receiver) from which to learn.