Flexistentialism Welcome Guest | Login or Register

Today at work was a health fair, where all sorts of groups came and presented, and set up tables. You could touch a real human brain, or get your posture checked out, or look into microscopes, or help extract DNA from wheat germ. However, the highlight was the costumed people. The dental folks had “The Tooth Wizard” and his cheerful, ever smiling sidekick, “Panda Bear”. The wizard went around teaching kids about oral health, and otherwise championing the cause of dentistry. The panda bear helped out, somehow.

There was also a very cheery man named Frank who had come all the way from Chicago to dress up as a gigantic DNA molecule, with a happy grin, and a baseball cap. The costume was tremendously hot and heavy, but Frank is a professional, and he held up great.

I’ll leave you with one little bit of advice. Never name your kid Sam. Because if you do, then as he is running around like a little animal at the museum, and you are yelling, “Sam!! Sam stop it!! Stop right there, Sam!!!” then it will freak me out. It happens all the time, and even though I know they aren’t talking to me, I still turn my head each time they say my name. So lets just keep things easy, and let me be the only Sam in the world. Here are a few naming suggestions, use these instead. Zodebacher (male). Shambugs (male). Shambina (female). Shazbot (unisex). Tiggy (unisex). Crudzenshen (male). Toza (unisex). Hildegern (female). Enjoy!

Today is Buy Nothing Day the day when many people decide that holidays aren’t about buying as much stuff as you possibly can. The day after Thanksgiving, typically known as “Black Friday”, is the biggest shopping day of the year. Everybody ‘knows’ that today is the day to shop.

Why not take a break from the consumptive lifestyle that we all live in? Take one day, and don’t buy anything.

Ahh, Thanksgiving. The time when we celebrate a feast beginning a few years of peace initiated by the Wampanoag people, and summarily ended by the European settlers.

Have a good day, remember what you are thankful you have, and how you’d feel if it was all taken away from you.

As Billy says, “i hope everyone eats a lot and has their land taken away from them”.

Barb, Dennis, Madalene and I did more tie-dying today. We used a tremendous amount of dye, to dye a lot of clothes. We did many pairs of socks, a few shirts, several sarongs, some scarves, some bandanas, bed sheets, and a pair of pants. Quite a heap. It is currently sitting on a tarp in our dining room curing, to be washed out and worn tommorow afternoon.

Photos are forthcoming.

Today Madalene walked in and informed me that someone had left a terrarium or something by the side of the road on our block. I jumped up, pulled on my shoes, and ran down the street to investigate. What I found was an abandoned bird cage and a 20 gallon (long) fish tank! Both were placed on the side of the road in the classic “this stuff is abandoned” way. I grabbed the tank, and ran home with it. After a quick cleaning and checking out, the tank seems to be fully usable. It seems to have contained some sort of rodent who has chewed on the silicon a bit, and there are a few small chips out of the glass on the corners. I haven’t filled it with water yet, but my guess is that it will hold the water just fine. If not, a quick dab of silicon sealant should take care of things nicely.

The fish have been bugging me about a larger space as it is, and this is the perfect opportunity! More information to come as I figure out where the heck I’m going to set this thing up.

Today, the day is saved by: Aluminum Oxide! Aluminum oxide is one of the hardest materials out there, only slightly softer than diamond. It is produced naturally when aluminum is exposed to air. If you have anything aluminum, it is actually coated with a thin layer of Aluminum oxide. This thin layer, being very strong and chemical resistant, prevents the layers beneath it from becoming oxidized, which is why aluminum doesn’t deteriorate from oxidation like steel or iron does.

If you have anything that is aluminum, but seems to have a transparent coloring over it, such as a flashlight, paintball gun, or something of that nature, then you probably have anodized aluminum. Anodizing is a process by which aluminum is put in a bath of acid, and then a current is passed through the aluminum, and into the bath. This current flow causes rapid oxidation of the surface of the aluminum, and produces a very thick and strong layer of aluminum oxide, similar to the coating that forms in open air, but much thicker and stronger. This coating is porous at first, meaning the material can be placed in a bath of dye immediately after being anodized. The dye soaks into the pores, and then with the application of heat, the pores close up, sealing the color in. Anodizing is a very cool process, and is a great way to put a durable and attractive coating onto aluminum.

Aluminum oxide is also used in sandpaper and other abrasive substances. Small particles of Aluminum oxide retain their sharp edges (due to its extreme hardness), and is an excellent abrasive. I’m using sheets of sandpaper to sand the exhaust pipe on my scooter. St. Louis weather has caused much corrosion of the pipe, and a deterioration of its protective clear coat. Basically, it was looking like crap. I’ve been attacking the pipe all day with various grades of sandpaper, and using various tools, including my dremel, an abrasive disk sander attachment for my cordless drill, and a drum sander attachment for the drill. The pipe has lots of curves and small parts that are difficult to sand, so this has been slow going. All I can say is, thank goodness its only a 50cc! If this pipe were much bigger, I’d be pretty frustrated. However, I’m nearing completion. Once I’ve given it a final sanding, I’ll be applying a high temperature coating to the pipe, to protect it from the heat of the engine, as well as the destructive effects of road grime. It should look pretty snazzy when its done.

The reason I’m here writing this instead of finishing up, is because I’m waiting for the battery on my cordless drill to charge up. This is one downside of a cordless drill. 90% of all my drilling needs are over with in just a few minutes. Maybe I need to punch a hole in a piece of plastic, or put a few screws into a doorknob or something. Cordless is perfect for that, because it is easy to move around, quick to bust out, and the duration of the project means charging isn’t an issue. However, sanding is a continuous drain. The drill must run at full speed constantly while sanding, instead of just running intermittently. This has caused the battery to die, putting my project on hold for the moment. The dremel is corded of course, but it is only useful for the small areas and tight curves, which are already done. What is left is an overall sanding with 120 grit, then a polish with 400 grit on a few more visible areas. Then it is painting time.

On the topic of abrasion, I’m going to leave you with this bit of helpful information. If you are in the Kent or London areas of the UK, then there is a new hero in town to help you out. He is known only as Angle Grinder Man. His mission is to help people who’s cars have been wheel clamped (AKA, the boot). He appears on the scene in the dead of night wearing a blue unitard, gold underpants, gold boots, gold gloves, and a gold mask. In his hands he carries his only weapon, a shiny, gold, gas powered, full sized, abrasive disk cutter, AKA, an Angle Grinder. With this great tool, he quickly and efficiently cuts the wheel clamp off, setting the driver free. Then he nods his head, and disappears into the night. The police have been tracking him, but have not yet been able to catch this Robin Hood to the down-trodden motorist. Bless you, Angle Grinder Man, champion of the petroleum chariots, and of abrasives in general!

After Monday’s debacle concerning the untimely consumption of an insect and Tuesday’s unceasing rain, I spent most of Tuesday playing Playstation games on my PC. The emulator project ePSXe has come along very well, and now plays most games very well. I’ve been enjoying Legend of Mana, which is a continuation of a game called Secret of Mana that I have fond memories playing with Dustin back when we were rotten little youths. I’m not usually into games much, but sometimes, when the weather is bad, I like to just kick back and do something unproductive for a little while.

However, the real reason I’m making this post is to bring forth more information about the amount of insect parts found in common foods. Through Madalene, I got some good links, and some good information.

First, the amount of insect material in food products is governed by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and the Center for Food Safety and Applied Nutrition (CFSAN). They regulate all sorts of things related to food safety, but the documents we are interested in concern the Food Defect Action Levels program. This regulates the amount of insect parts, foreign plant matter, rodent filth and rotten parts that food can contain.

If you want to read a nice little article about the process, check out this Salon article called Bug heads, rat hairs—bon appetit. It is a pretty funny little read.

If you want some more detailed information, the main document, for your reading pleasure, is called the FDA/CFSAN Defect Action Level Handbook and it is quite an interesting read. For instance, here are the tolerances for peanut butter:

• Insect filth: No more than 30 insect fragments per 100 grams.
• Rodent filth: No more than 1 rodent hair per 100 grams.

• Grit: Gritty taste and water insoluble inorganic residue may not exceed 25mg per 100 grams.

  However, this last line is what I find most interesting (emphasis mine):

  DEFECT SOURCE: Insect fragments – preharvest and/or post harvest and/or processing insect infestation, Rodent hair – post harvest and/or processing contamination with animal hair or excreta, Grit – harvest contamination
  SIGNIFICANCE: Aesthetic

  Aesthetic? Well, I suppose its true, despite what some may choose to believe, a few rat hairs and insect legs isn’t going to hurt anybody! You might find it a bit bizarre to be eating insect crap, but really, its a small thing to our bodies. In fact, I’m willing to bet that decreased usage of pesticides and an increase in ‘organic’ farming techniques will only mean skyrocketing insect part levels in food. I’m not bothered by that prospect overly much. I don’t fancy eating bugs, seeing as how I am a vegetarian, but at the same time, a realization has to be made that bugs are everywhere, and invariably will end up in whatever you are eating. It isn’t cruel, its just the nature of being an insect who can crawl into anything, has 300 babies at a time and lives for two weeks. Plus, caterpillars have as much protein by weight as beef, but with much less fat, 10 times as much iron, and many other vitamins as well. I suppose accidentally eating a few isn’t really that bad of an idea.

  However, this still doesn’t address the question of how the insect parts are counted. For that, we need to look to another document, called the Macroanalytical Procedures Manual. This document contains procedures for doing all sorts of filth-tests. For the most part, it seems simple filtration serves to identify insect matter and excrement in the food products. Also, various methods of digesting the food product in acids, and then separating any undigested material (such as the insect heads). Happy reading.

As many of you know, I’m a vegetarian. I eat this way for many reasons, including, but not limited to, ethics, environmentalism, health, etc. However, today I broke with my lifestyle. I did not choose to violate my own code, but I couldn’t help myself. What could possibly have caused Sam to give up his strict diet, if only for a moment? I’ll tell you.

A bug. Yes, a little bug, probably a small gnat or fly. As I was pulling up to my house on the scooter, I cracked my helmet’s visor open. The moist weather means that at low speeds, when the vents aren’t flowing, the visor has a tendency to fog up. Opening it a bit helps out. Also, as fate would have it, I was joyously singing Parliament Funk’s “Get Up With the Down Stroke”. I was on the part where they sing, “Make my funk the P-Funk! I like my funk un-cut!”, when the insect flew into my helmet, and down my throat. I felt it thwap into the back of my palate, and I felt a bit sickly as I reflexively swallowed, consuming the insect.

To atone for my transgression, I’m now eating a completely vegan meal. Actually I’m not big on the whole ‘atonement’ concept, I just wanted some curry, and vegan is how I make it anyway. So without further ado, here is the basic recipe for Sam’s Easy Vegan Curry Surprise, serves four not-very-hungry people, three regular people, or two really hungry ones. It also saves well in the fridge, so make extra and eat that sucker for lunch the next day:

Ingredients

• One medium potato.
• One bell pepper, preferably red or yellow.
• One can bamboo shoots.
• One small or medium onion (white or yellow).
• One small apple, preferably a firm, tart variety, like Granny Smith.
• One block of tofu, extra firm.
• Some curry paste, either hot or mild.
• Some coconut milk (in a can).

• Brown basmati rice.

  Procedure

  First, cut the veggies and tofu up into pieces. Use standard stir-fry size pieces, about the size of a bottle cap. Then begin preparing the potato. I toss the pieces of potato in a microwave safe bowl with a little olive oil, and microwave it for 6 minutes. You can also boil them. Meanwhile, start the rice cooking as per the directions on the box. Then put a little olive oil in a pan or wok, and get it up to heat, around medium/medium-high, and toss in the tofu. Stir-fry the tofu until it is golden brown on all sides. Then pull the tofu out of the pan and set it aside. I usually just put it into the same container as the potato if the potato is done by now (it probably is).

  Then begin stir-frying the other veggies in the pan. Do the peppers and onions for a moment, then add the apple and bamboo shoots. Use a little olive oil to keep things lubricated, but go easy on it. As they cook, add some curry paste, and some coconut milk. Use good judgment here, you don’t need to add a lot at once. I usually put in about two or three heaping spoonfuls of the paste, and a 1/4 cup of the coconut milk. Then I stir things up, taste it, and add more curry paste to taste. Whenever you add the curry paste, add a bit more coconut milk. The coconut milk serves to create the ‘sauce’, and is an emulsifier, which is a good thing for this dish. I like to end up with a fairly dry curry, not like a soup or stew or anything, but with enough sauce at the bottom of the pan so that when I spoon out my curry on top of the basmati rice, the sauce dribbles down and flavors the rice. Dig?

  As the veggies cook, feel free to taste the food regularly, to see if you need more curry paste or coconut milk. When the veggies are nearing complete, only a few minutes, add the tofu and potato. The potato should help thicken the sauce a bit, and you may need to add more curry paste and coconut milk at this point to balance the additional mass and thickening capacity of the potato. Cook for another few minutes, until everything looks good and hot. When the rice is done, just lay some rice down on your plate, and spoon some curry on. Enjoy, preferably with a good porter.

  Oh, and if you are wondering why “surprise” is in the name, then well, I don’t really know. Maybe it’s the apple. Its a great flavor in curry, but it is a bit surprising to bite into something sweet and tart, especially if you don’t know it is there!

We returned late Friday night to find St. Louis in a state of drizzle. Barb and Dennis came to pick us up, which helped quite a bit. However, I have a suspicion that they came largely for the 16 beers crammed in my backpack. I had purchased a few Colorado beers of note, primarily Odell’s Cutthroat Porter, Lefthand’s Milk Stout, and a new New Belgium called Transatlantique Kriek, which is actually a blend of a New Belgium ale, and a traditional lambic from the Boon brewery in Belgium. All three were as delicious as anticipated.

The reason I didn’t post this earlier however, was due to a database ‘issue’ on the server. The webpages are all static HTML, so they displayed fine, but I could not log in to add entries, and comments were saddly unavailable. But everything is fine and dandy again now.

In a totally impulsive and last-minute move, Madalene and I decided to fly to Colorado. We left at about 4:30am on Monday morning after having decided Sunday night to leave. We will be returning on Friday evening. The impulsiveness of the situation has caused some backlash, mostly confusion at work (mostly their fault) and an unfortunate need to postpone an event with Billy. However, its good to be back in Colorado for a few days.

If you are here in Colorado, (Will, Dustin?) you must get ahold of me as I will be checking email frequently.

Happy birthday, Billy! Its your birthday! Yay! Birthday day! Woo! Womb exit month, huzzah! Yay! Woo!! Yeah!

23 years since you were squeezed from your momma, and look how you’ve turned out. Pretty snappy, I’d say.

This quote sums up my feelings about much of what we receive as news, both in print and video (yes, this includes much online news as well).

“To read a newspaper is to refrain from reading something worthwhile. The first discipline of education must therefore be to refuse resolutely to feed the mind with canned chatter.”—Aleister Crowley

Sometimes it feels like news is generated more out of a desire to fill time, than an actual need for people to know about certain things. It is important to keep up with the world around you, but at the same time, it is rare that an article in the paper will give you a complete picture. All you get is a ‘factoid’ that remains isolated from everything else you know about the world. You may know that yesterday 4 people died in a fire in central China that may or may not have been caused by arson, but since there is no relevancy to your life, your knowledge of it will make no difference in how you live your life, or the choices you will make.

I like to call it pseudo-knowledge. My head is full, but the links between each factoid don’t exist. It is not a collection of factoids that makes up knowledge, but rather the connections between them, tying our thoughts together, that constitute knowledge. Most news articles supply me with much in the way of factoids, and very little in the way of connections and relevancy. The knowledge that I find changes my life, and influences my decisions, stems from more complete sources which take the time to give a complete picture, rather than just selected tidbits. This ‘real’ knowledge is combined in a thick web within my mind that gives me the power to make more informed decisions. I find that news articles rarely integrate with this web, instead seeming to float about as disconnected noise.

Another term I’m going to toss out is “infonography”, which, like pornography, is often enjoyed with excess, filling, and then overfilling, a basic human desire. Many people (myself included) often find themselves with the purient desire to read more news, simply because they can. The internet has made this almost endemic. I sometimes find myself reading every little article I can, trolling through Google News or the BBC reading articles. Why? The desire to read them is totally purient. It isn’t rooted in a desire to become a better person through knowledge, but rather a desire to be entertained, without feeling guilty. Sitting around watching soap operas is seen as a waste of time, but sitting around watching the news is not. However, for many people, the two activities fulfill the same desire, entertainment. The fact that one is ‘real’, and the other isn’t, is irrelevant.

This is why my desire to read news waxes and wanes. I believe that a certain amount of news-following is helpful, to keep one informed about things that do affect your life, and to better understand how changes in one part of the world affect other parts, perhaps your own part. However, I try to keep it in perspective. Just because it is easy to move thousands of news articles back and forth across the globe instantaneously through the magic of the Internet, doesn’t mean we should. Just because I can sit down and do nothing except read news articles the moment they are released, doesn’t mean that is a healthy activity. I say this mostly for my own benefit, but many will find the same tendencies within themselves or others around them.

This topic is discussed in great detail, and with much rigor in the book Amusing Ourselves to Death by Neil Postman. I recommend visiting your local library and reading it. Postman is a very cynical man, but he brings forth some very good points. Also of note is the fact that the book was written in 1986, about 17 years ago. News then was a bit different from news now, but Postman makes several grim predictions for the future of news, based on negative trends he saw in 1986. Many of these predictions have come eerily true in the years since the book’s publication, and are worth noting when you read it.

Last night I felt a pang of hunger, and decided to bake a potato. After the potato was suitably cooked, I cracked it open and added some cheese to improve the flavor of the tuber. Searching the fridge, I found two cheeses, some pepper-jack cheese, and some of the Red Dragon cheese I purchased about two months ago. The Red Dragon was fine, just a bit dry around the edges, so I cut it up and put it on my potato. I added some hot pepper cheese too, just for good measure.

After eating the potato and going to bed, Madalene asked why I smelled like mustard. “Why, it is because of the Red Dragon cheese I consumed, which is made with whole mustard seeds, lending to its delicious quality,” I replied.

Madalene was shocked that I would eat two month old cheese. My retort was that since cheese is supposed to be aged anyway, that an extra two months wasn’t going to hurt anything. In fact, the cheese was even better than I remember, suggesting that perhaps the extra aging actually improved the cheese. I contended that there was no mold on the cheese, and that it had been well protected by both its red wax rind, and well secured plastic wrap. Since Red Dragon is a fairly hard cheese, the moisture content is low, and mold would not be likely to take hold.

She didn’t believe my claims, and insisted that I would throw up soon. However, I’m fine today, so I’m going to continue to eat old cheese.

Last night Madalene, Billy and I went out with several members of the Beer Advocate webpage, a source of information for all things beer and home brewing. We went to the Tap Room, which is the brewpub of local brewery Schlafly. Their beers are good, and their food is quite nice. I enjoyed the magical combination of a portabella mushroom sandwich and a pint of oatmeal stout. Unfortunately, this combination seems to give me gas. It was a small price to pay though, for such tasty vittles. Darts were played, beer was sampled, food was enjoyed, and a good time was had by all.

Today, Dennis came by to wake us up. That wasn’t his intention of course, since he had made the wild assumption that we, being of sound mind and body, would be awake by 2:30pm. I was not however, and I greeted him quite bleary-eyed.

In case you were wondering, it wasn’t due to being hung over or anything like that. After arriving home from the Tap Room, I promptly got engaged in a project involving photoshop, and stayed up far later than I should have. That and I have no internal alarm clock, so without a buzzer to wake me, I will sleep until I either get so hungry I wake up, or I need to pee. This can easily make me sleep for 18 hours or more, unless someone or something intervenes.

Needless to say, Dennis did intervene, which is fine by me. We ate some ramen together, and watched FLCL, one of the more bizarre anime productions ever made. However, I would expect nothing less from the creative minds at Gainax. Then we watched Matrix: Reloaded, since we are hoping to see Revolutions soon (maybe Saturday?) and it is good to get all primed up by refreshing one’s memory.

I have spent some time continuing in my quest to encode various and sundry videos into SVCD format, for easy viewing. The process is not simple, since, unlike audio, the video world is fraught with hundreds of different codecs, numerous conflicting formats, uncertain documentation, and confusing results. However, things are now progressing at an acceptable rate.

Yesterday the sun released yet another incredibly powerful solar flare, perhaps the largest on record. This flare was not directed straight toward Earth, but we will likely see some glancing effects from the gas ejected at the moment of the flare.

Solar flares are ranked by number, and most of the flares we have seen over the past few weeks have all been X class, meaning they are ‘severe’ flares. The number after the X indicates the strength. The series of flares began with some X4s, and then culminated last week with an X17 and an X10 in succession. The X17 on Oct. 28th was the third largest on record. But yesterday’s flare, currently classified as an X17.4, was much stronger. The X-ray radiation emitted by the flare saturated the sensors on the GOES satellite, so the final classification has not yet been determined, but it will likely be raised to above X20, making it the strongest recorded solar flare. This has been a week to remember for high solar activity.

For some great pictures and movies of the flare, and more information, check out the SOHO Hotshots entry for this flare.

Nothing quite like solar storms of this magnitude to make Earth weather seem rather paltry.