[y66]

Just heard this on the radio:

The past, the present and the future walked into a bar. The situation was tense.

[kenberg]

An imperfect condition, as it were.

I should not even attempt this, since my knowledge of grammar is not pluperfect. My grammar got old and died.

[y66]

Quote

It's not rocket science, people. (Mind you, judging by recent developments neither is rocket science.) -- David Burn commenting on Kit Woolsey's October 25, 2014 column on BridgeWinners.

The Dude abides.

[y66]

From What’s Eating America by Michael Pollan:

Quote

All life depends on nitrogen; it is the building block from which nature assembles amino acids, proteins and nucleic acid; the genetic information that orders and perpetuates life is written in nitrogen ink. But the supply of usable nitrogen on earth is limited. Although earth’s atmosphere is about 80 percent nitrogen, all those atoms are tightly paired, nonreactive and therefore useless; the 19th-century chemist Justus von Liebig spoke of atmospheric nitrogen’s “indifference to all other substances.” To be of any value to plants and animals, these self-involved nitrogen atoms must be split and then joined to atoms of hydrogen.

Chemists call this process of taking atoms from the atmosphere and combining them into molecules useful to living things “fixing” that element. Until a German Jewish chemist named Fritz Haber figured out how to turn this trick in 1909, all the usable nitrogen on earth had at one time been fixed by soil bacteria living on the roots of leguminous plants (such as peas or alfalfa or locust trees) or, less commonly, by the shock of electrical lightning, which can break nitrogen bonds in the air, releasing a light rain of fertility.

In his book Enriching the Earth: Fritz Haber, Carl Bosch and the Transformation of World Food Production, Vaclav Smil pointed out that “there is no way to grow crops and human bodies without nitrogen.” Before Haber’s invention, the sheer amount of life earth could support–the size of crops and therefore the number of human bodies–was limited by the amount of nitrogen that bacteria and lightning could fix. By 1900, European scientists had recognized that unless a way was found to augment this naturally occurring nitrogen, the growth of the human population would soon grind to a very painful halt. The same recognition by Chinese scientists a few decades later is probably what compelled China’s opening to the West: after Nixon’s 1972 trip, the first major order the Chinese government placed was for 13 massive fertilizer factories. Without them, China would have starved.

This is why it may not be hyperbole to claim, as Smil does, that the Haber-Bosch process for fixing nitrogen (Bosch gets the credit for commercializing Haber’s idea) is the most important invention of the 20th century. He estimates that two of every five humans on earth today would not be alive if not for Fritz Haber’s invention. We can easily imagine a world without computers or electricity, Smil points out, but without synthetic fertilizer billions of people would never have been born. Though, as these numbers suggest, humans may have struck a Faustian bargain with nature when Fritz Haber gave us the power to fix nitrogen.

Fritz Haber? No, I’d never heard of him either, even though he was awarded the Nobel Prize in 1918 for “improving the standards of agriculture and the well-being of mankind.” But the reason for his obscurity has less to do with the importance of his work than an ugly twist of his biography, which recalls the dubious links between modern warfare and industrial agriculture: during World War I, Haber threw himself into the German war effort, and his chemistry kept alive Germany’s hopes for victory, by allowing it to make bombs from synthetic nitrate. Later, Haber put his genius for chemistry to work developing poison gases–ammonia, then chlorine. (He subsequently developed Zyklon B, the gas used in Hitler’s concentration camps.) His wife, a chemist sickened by her husband’s contribution to the war effort, used his army pistol to kill herself; Haber died, broken and in flight from Nazi Germany, in a Basel hotel room in 1934.

His story has been all but written out of the 20th century. But it embodies the paradoxes of science, the double edge to our manipulations of nature, the good and evil that can flow not only from the same man but from the same knowledge. Even Haber’s agricultural benefaction has proved to be a decidedly mixed blessing.

When humankind acquired the power to fix nitrogen, the basis of soil fertility shifted from a total reliance on the energy of the sun to a new reliance on fossil fuel. That’s because the Haber-Bosch process works by combining nitrogen and hydrogen gases under immense heat and pressure in the presence of a catalyst. The heat and pressure are supplied by prodigious amounts of electricity, and the hydrogen is supplied by oil, coal or, most commonly today, natural gas. True, these fossil fuels were created by the sun, billions of years ago, but they are not renewable in the same way that the fertility created by a legume nourished by sunlight is. (That nitrogen is fixed by a bacterium living on the roots of the legume, which trades a tiny drip of sugar for the nitrogen the plant needs.)

Liberated from the old biological constraints, the farm could now be managed on industrial principles, as a factory transforming inputs of raw material–chemical fertilizer–into outputs of corn. And corn adapted brilliantly to the new industrial regime, consuming prodigious quantities of fossil fuel energy and turning out ever more prodigious quantities of food energy. Growing corn, which from a biological perspective had always been a process of capturing sunlight to turn it into food, has in no small measure become a process of converting fossil fuels into food. More than half of all the synthetic nitrogen made today is applied to corn.

From the standpoint of industrial efficiency, it’s too bad we can’t simply drink petroleum directly, because there’s a lot less energy in a bushel of corn (measured in calories) than there is in the half-gallon of oil required to produce it. Ecologically, this is a fabulously expensive way to produce food–but “ecologically” is no longer the operative standard. In the factory, time is money, and yield is everything.

One problem with factories, as opposed to biological systems, is that they tend to pollute. Hungry for fossil fuel as hybrid corn is, farmers still feed it far more than it can possibly eat, wasting most of the fertilizer they buy. And what happens to that synthetic nitrogen the plants don’t take up? Some of it evaporates into the air, where it acidifies the rain and contributes to global warming. Some seeps down to the water table, whence it may come out of the tap. The nitrates in water bind to hemoglobin, compromising the blood’s ability to carry oxygen to the brain. (I guess I was wrong to suggest we don’t sip fossil fuels directly; sometimes we do.)

It has been less than a century since Fritz Haber’s invention, yet already it has changed earth’s ecology. More than half of the world’s supply of usable nitrogen is now man-made. (Unless you grew up on organic food, most of the kilo or so of nitrogen in your body was fixed by the Haber-Bosch process.) “We have perturbed the global nitrogen cycle,” Smil wrote, “more than any other, even carbon.” The effects may be harder to predict than the effects of the global warming caused by our disturbance of the carbon cycle, but they are no less momentous.

[kenberg]

A very interesting article. Michael Pollan is one of the many interesting people that I had never heard of. I gather he is both influential and controversial. Whatever, it's a good article.On the side panel to the article is a link to another article, this one about his pig Kosher and James Taylor's pig Mona.

[y66]

From Emily Lakdawalla, Planetary Bloggr (7 hours ago):

Quote

Philae update: My last day in Darmstadt, possibly Philae’s last day of operations

The press room was nearly empty this morning — only a few stalwarts are left. I, Eric Hand (from Science), and Steven Young (Astronomy Now) were hanging around to follow what could be Philae’s very last day of work on the comet before falling silent, and Chris Lintott and Alok Jha were wandering around getting last bits of video for BBC.

Because Philae is in such a shadowed position, it is not receiving enough sunlight to recharge its batteries, so has only the battery power it left Rosetta with. That power will definitely take it through today, hopefully through tonight, and possibly but not likely into the next day, but no further.

So, since we’re coming to the end of things, they’ve started taking more risks. They’ve completed all the science they can do without moving any of the mechanical devices on the lander, getting about 80% of the data they would have expected from the first science sequence. Last night, almost immediately after I posted my last update, they made the decision to command the lander to deploy the MUPUS soil penetrator. The first uplink attempt failed, but a second attempt got the sequence through, and around midnight European time the instrument was on and at work. Philae fans around the world were able to follow all of these events in detail through the active MUPUS Twitter account.

This device can measure the temperature of the subsurface, how fast heat is flowing out of the comet, and how rapidly the comet’s uppermost surface conducts heat. The MUPUS team shared this video of a test https://www.youtube....h?v=7Hj5SG-99HE, showing how the self-hammering probe operates. (Caution: audio levels are high.)

After the Hangout ended, Matt Taylor invited me to visit the Main Control Centre here, where I was able to shake the hands of just a few of the dedicated team that has kept watch over Philae 24 hours a day since Tuesday.



I had thought that this was going to be my last act here at ESOC, and that I would be monitoring the situation from my hotel room this evening. But it looks like I may get a chance to return to ESOC to be here while they wait for possibly the last contact they ever get from Philae. If I don’t collapse first! Stay tuned for more.

[y66]

G.O.P. Unveils Immigration Plan: “We Must Make America Somewhere No One Wants to Live” by Andy Borowitz

Quote

WASHINGTON (The Borowitz Report)—Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell unveiled his party’s long-awaited plan on immigration on Wednesday, telling reporters, “We must make America somewhere no one wants to live.”

Appearing with House Speaker John Boehner, McConnell said that, in contrast to President Obama’s “Band-Aid fixes,” the Republican plan would address “the root cause of immigration, which is that the United States is, for the most part, habitable.”

“For years, immigrants have looked to America as a place where their standard of living was bound to improve,” McConnell said. “We’re going to change that.”

Boehner said that the Republicans’ plan would reduce or eliminate “immigration magnets,” such as the social safety net, public education, clean air, and drinkable water.

The Speaker added that the plan would also include the repeal of Obamacare, calling healthcare “catnip for immigrants.”

Attempting, perhaps, to tamp down excitement about the plan, McConnell warned that turning America into a dystopian hellhole that repels immigrants “won’t happen overnight.”

“Our crumbling infrastructure and soaring gun violence are a good start, but much work still needs to be done,” he said. “When Americans start leaving the country, we’ll know that we’re on the right track.”

In closing, the two congressional leaders expressed pride in the immigration plan, noting that Republicans had been working to make it possible for the past thirty years.

[Aberlour10]

jjbrr, on 2010-January-06, 13:23, said:

This thread is a great idea.

Please respond.

Agree.

[Aberlour10]

this thread is today 5y old, it smells already necro like but not very much:)

X-mas is gone, tomorrow evenig we say good bye to him in our quarter,a lot of funny activities like a xmas-tree-throwing competition. If I have enough hot wine punch intus as a dope I will probably participate, oh yeah

[ggwhiz]

Paulina Gretsky gave birth to a baby boy today. So far he has 5 goals and 7 assists.

[Winstonm]

My daughter's new movie, Mortdecai, opens today.

[Aberlour10]

My girlfriend wants to watch it with me at this weekend. Main reason = Johnny D. of course.

Expecting a lot of fun with this trio infernale.

[y66]

Insulation: first the body, then the home


Photo credit: Woolpower

[y66]

Excerpt from Andrew Sullivan's last post at The Dish:

Quote

...

I tried, above all, to be honest. And you helped me. Being honest means writing things that will make you look foolish tomorrow; it means revealing yourself in ways that are not always flattering; it means occasionally saying things that prompt mass acclamation but in retrospect look like grandstanding. It means losing friends because you have a duty to criticize what they write. It means not pretending you believe something you don’t – like a tall story from a vice-presidential candidate or a war narrative that was increasingly obsolete. It means writing dangerously with the only assurance – without an editor – that readers will correct you when you’re wrong and encourage you when you are right. It is a terrifying and exhilarating way to write – and also an emotionally, psychologically depleting one. But I loved it nonetheless. I relished it every day. I wouldn’t trade these years for any others.

...

And yes, this was a labor above all of love. Love for ideas and debate, love for America, love for my colleagues, and love, in the end, for you.

I sit here not knowing what to write next. And yet, in the end, it is quite simple.

Know hope.

[y66]

Where to eat in 2015

[jjbrr]

y66, on 2015-February-16, 11:27, said:

Where to eat in 2015

ctrl+F'ed Dallas to see what they'd say. Tei-An is fine; not the best in Dallas. They also had big problems with credit cards being compromised after people used them at the restaurant.

[y66]

Are the Koch brothers changing their evil ways? Of course not. But give them credit for getting behind this new coalition to do something about our broken criminal justice system.

[Aberlour10]

The FIFA experts came after years of intensive searching to the conclusion, the summer in Qatar is too hot for football playing.

A brillant performance.

[Cyberyeti]

Aberlour10, on 2015-February-24, 13:44, said:

The FIFA experts came after years of intensive searching to the conclusion, the summer in Qatar is too hot for football playing.

A brillant performance.

In other news, pope might be Catholic, his next investigation once he finds out what the bears get up to in the woods.

[y66]

This is a fascinating discussion of the growing complexity problem that decision makers in the U.S. Congress are confronted with.

I daresay they are not the only ones and that bears, popes, FIFA experts and even bridge players have trouble dealing with complexity.