The Tin Lizard

Riding A Dead Horse

In a world where resources for newsgathering seem to grow ever scarcer, I suppose it's not surprising that the media tend to grab a tale and run it to death.  Political news has a certain shelf-life that prevents its being overdone, and of course, politicians are always out there talking, generating "new" political stories.

In other areas, though we aren't so lucky.  Today we are reminded that it was a year ago that Michael Jackson died, so we endure generous replays of year-old interviews and news reports, while perhaps also recalling that it's only been three months since the media stopped carrying daily "stories" about his death.  They might be carrying them still today, if we hadn't had that nice oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, which promises to be a story that can be overreported for months to come.   

Tying Concrete In Knots

Today's early news brings the report that one of the DC area's busiest traffic arteries, Interstate 270, was completely blocked in both directions for the early part of the rush hour, and will remain partly blocked for at least several hours.  It's one of those days that makes me glad I don't commute any more.

Reports further indicated that the cause of this huge inconvenience was power lines down across the highway.  I assumed it might have been the violent thunderstorm that passed through the area last night but in fact, it was another of those errant tractor/trailers going off the road.

The cause doesn't really matter.  My first reaction was to ask myself why power lines were suspended directly across this major highway in the first place.  As long as we continue to string our power lines along poles, this kind of disruption can, and will, continue to occur both from weather and from traffic accidents.  The answer is to bury those lines.

Power companies resist this.  As always, it's a question of profits.  It's cheaper to erect above-ground lines than to bury them.  Is this really true, once the costs of having repair crews constantly on duty and paying them overtime, and once the effects of lost productivity are factored in?

One of the major goals of building the interstate highway system, when it was conceived, was to establish a road network that was secure, that would be built to withstand at least some basic kinds of military destruction, if the nation were attacked.  It seems we've gotten away from that cold-war thinking, but it may not hurt to reconsider it as we engage in a war on terrorism.  With electrical wiring strung all over the place, an enemy might just choose to hire a few semi rigs to be driven down a highway and crashed at the right points, as a means of sowing chaos and preparing for an attack. 

No Solace In Solstice

As a fan of morning light, I can't let today pass without lamenting the passage of the summer solstice. 

We've had our longest period of daylight for this calendar year, and it's nothing but downhill from here, exacerbated by meddlesome Congresspeople and their global counterparts, who have decided to snatch up an hour of morning light and turn it into an hour of evening light by the gruesome expedient of legislating it so.  (That's what we erroneously call Daylight "Saving" Time.)

In Praise of Bottled Water

There's a lot of folks ganging up on bottled water these days. One small independent grocery store near me has declared it won't sell water in bottles any more but only in bulk to people who bring their own containers.  (Now there's a recipe for sanitation disaster!)  And various articles in the press continue to carp about the product.  This one by Peter Gleick, for example, though ostensibly about upgrading municipal water systems, takes a few swipes at bottles.  People want to ban it because it comes in plastic bottles and plastic is bad. 

Well, not always.  I am all for being green and environmentally conscious, but all the bad press about bottled water really makes me kind of blue.

First, I think back a couple of decades when bottled water was not widely available in the U.S.  In those days, when you weren't at home or at work, the drinking choices were limited.  On a highway trip, you would find vending machines in gas stations chock full of soda pop but if you didn't want the sticky stuff, water wasn't an option.  In a cafeteria line or fast food restaurant, the same deal.  Many public places had the so-called "drinking fountain," which would spout a stream of too-cold water, 80% of which went to waste as you managed to catch a tiny sip.  You could stand there all day and not quench a real thirst; and that was only if you were willing to brave using it after those people who drank by putting their mouth right down on the spout.  For sporting events, you could take your own big jug, though water was heavy and the jugs cumbersome.  If you frequented concert halls or theaters (the stage, not the cinema), water wasn't available there, either - and you couldn't take soda, or coffee, or other drinks into the hall due to legitimate concerns about spots and spills.

ALL THAT CHANGED WITH THE COMING

 OF THE INDIVIDUAL SERVING OF

WATER IN A PLASTIC BOTTLE.

You can now buy it nearly anywhere, and even such august venues as the Kennedy Center in Washington DC do not hesitate to allow you your bottled water during the performance (if there is a spill, water doesn't stain.)  In short, bottled water (the individual servings) are a huge advance in convenience; they support good health practices too, because they are use-once-throw-away, so no germs are transmitted; and they help keep us hydrated in situations where we couldn't manage that before.

Beyond convenience, the question of how "green" those bottles are is still open to interpretation.   After all, recycling containers have sprouted nearly everywhere.  They accept other bottles and cans too, but their ubiquity owes something to the ubiquity of the bottled water (thus water may be helping clean up containers of beer, soda, and who knows what else).  For years we haven't had to toss an empty water bottle into a trashcan where it wouldn't be recycled.  If some people neglect to recycle, we can do better on that, but let's not throw out the baby with the bathwater.

Now, if you only drink bottled water because you think it's safer, that's a fallacy.  It can contain pretty much anything your municipal water can (and a lot of it IS municipal water - read the labels!). 

But taste is another matter.  I was once an aficionado of tapwater.  And still am, in places where it's drinkable.  But the other main reason I find bottled water a godsend is that our municipal water in Arlington, Virginia tastes pukey (to put it mildly).  It comes across the river from the District of Columbia, where it's pukey too.  It's an old system that's had some problems with unpleasant things in the water.  Consequently, they load it with chloramine, the taste of which does not dissipate as chlorine does. And who knows what it does to your insides?  Tropical fish can't live in it.  But taste is key, especially when you're drinking it at room temperature as we do.  We'll make coffee with it; we'll boil foods in it; we'll water the garden with it; we'll flush our toilets with it.  But we won't drink it.  About the only worse thing you can drink is that lovely liquid they give you before a colonoscopy.

So, I'd really like to do away with the big bottles like those pictured above but can't.  (Filters cost far more - we've calculated it.)  If you live in a place with drinkable municipal water, I urge you to just use the tap.  I would if I could.  Which brings us back to Mr. Gleick's article.  His main point is that we need to invest in our water infrastructure to maintain it and upgrade it.  Arlington, Virginia is a prime example of why that's true.

  

Stop Food Waste

I am grateful to the Washington Post for republishing, as it occasionally does, Slate's "Green Lantern" column - this one, "Much Food Goes to Waste ..." has some important truths about the waste of food in the U.S.  Though a recent study suggested that as much of 40% of food produced in the U.S. is "wasted," that includes losses throughout the food chain, from trimming produce in the field, through transport and distribution, spoilage... and yes, eventually, the stuff we individual consumers throw out.

It's a lot of lost food along the way.  There are some solutions.  For example, wouldn't losses in transportation be considerably reduced if we grew and bought more food locally and settled for what's in season, rather than insisting on out of season fruits and vegetables from Mexico or Chile?  (Locavores, take note.)  Couldn't we dispense with some of the trendy, cheaper-to-produce but easier-to-spoil packaging we have these days, like the silly tuna pouches that can be destroyed by an accidental poke, rather than real cans that last almost forever?

But I'm especially interested in what can be done at the consumer end.  In this as in other aspects of life, we've become a bit sissified; overcautious officials and food processors, concerned about lawsuits, have made us so, warning constantly of the dangers of food that may be "spoiled."  These experts seemingly have no faith at all in the technology of refrigeration and freezing that man has invented over the years to prevent the waste of food.

We buy a lot of (well, almost exclusively) fresh fruit and vegetables for our household - no frozen, seldom canned, occasionally dried. We aren't vegetarians.  We buy meat, and fish, and cheese, and most kinds of foodstuffs known to man.  Now and then we do have to toss something, but it's rare.  Here are a few examples of how we defeat the cycle of waste:

• When the power was out for three days after a hurricane, solemn food weenies advised that everything in refrigerators and freezers be thrown out. Sorry! Some things from refrigerators couldn't survive but if the freezer isn't opened, food can last for several days. Most of what was in our freezer was completely edible.
• We often cook something and store the rest in the refrigerator. It's not at all unusual for a week to go by before we finish it. Sometimes it's more. But if it's been refrigerated, and we're going to fully heat it again anyway, what's the problem?
• Last night I was whipping up a little dinner, just using odds and ends from the refrigerator. What to put with some fresh broccoli? I found a few basic white champignons gone brown and a little slimy, but why waste them? I rinsed them off, cut out a few of the worse soft spots, and they were delicious diced, sauteed with olive oil, marjoram, some balsamic, and mixed with steamed broccoli.

Just a few examples.  There are many more.  (By the way, eat your potato skins, too!)

Now, please don't take my advice - if you've been brainwashed by the food police, you'll be worried about stuff like this, you'll probably just get sick, and I don't want to be blamed.  These experts are like the clothing manufacturers who put those labels on cotton garments telling you to "dry clean only" -- they're just trying to ensure nobody can blame them for anything.  Personally, I don't believe them (or take them with a grain of salt). 

But I believe in common sense.  Even our caveman ancestors probably kept food longer than six hours without "refrigeration," which they hadn't invented yet.  Let's not forget that spices were first used in Europe as a way of disguising the taste of food that might have gone a little bit "off."   Even in our day and age, the U.S. is the only country I've ever lived in where eggs are routinely refrigerated in stores. 

We could do a lot better, wasting less food at home, if we had a little better education in food preservation.  More knowledge, fewer blanket rules attempting to cover all bases, all types of food, in all climates.

  

Saving Peanuts

For the second time in just a few days, a food is being maligned.  First it was the poor mulberry, which suffered the ignominy of being labeled un-American (not true) and too often ignored (true, but unreasonable).  Now, however, it's the all-American peanut (not a nut, actually, but a legume) that's under attack.

Of course, as you may guess, the reason is that an estimated 1.8 million in the U.S. are allergic to peanuts, peanut oil, even peanut dust.  And in some cases, the allergic reaction can be fatal.  As a result, several airlines have voluntarily given up serving peanuts on their flights, and many schools have banned anything with peanuts from being served in their cafeterias, or even brought to school in bag lunches.  Now, the Transportation Department is looking at several options for peanuts on airlines, including perhaps a complete ban, or some kind of "peanut-free zone."  (This, even though everybody already complains about lack of legume in those airline seats.)

As columnist Petula Dvorak has pointed out, fears of allergic reactions can really burden the lives of allergy sufferers and their families, restricting their lives, saddling them with constant worry.  That's true, and it's not unreasonable for some limits to be imposed, such as warnings when peanuts are being served, or even the voluntary limitations some airlines have taken upon themselves. 

On the other hand, maybe Dvorak hardly ever eats a peanut, while I probably have some form of peanuts nearly every day (see photo for those I keep within easy reach).  So I can't agree with Dvorak's assertion that "it's not unreasonable" to acquiesce in more and more restrictions on peanuts.  That's a very generous, humanitarian attitude, but if it were extended to everything people can possibly be allergic to, what would result?  

The difficulty is that I don't see how peanut allergies are much different from any other group of allergies.  Shrimp, ginger, strawberries, lactose or wheat -- you name it and somebody is probably allergic to it.  People die from those allergies too.  Further, there have been cases of people dying of anaphylactic shock from eating something they didn't know they were allergic to, or even from eating something they had eaten all their lives without having a reaction.  I have one food allergy that's sent me to the hospital a time or two, and I haven't even been able to identify what it is.  Allergy sufferers need to cope with certain risks that others don't; that's always been the case. 

So yes, by all means, let's do more research about the causes and cures for peanut allergies.  But meantime, please, DoT, keep your hands off my nuts!  And leggo of my legumes!  

Maligning Mulberries

"Here we go 'round the mulberry bush..." -- the phrase comes from an old nursery rhyme, probably from England, since here in the U.S. we usually refer to mulberry plants as "trees." 

Now, the humble mulberry is "in the news" in a feature article of the Washington Post's food section.  It's an interesting piece, though I would challenge its basic premise, that mulberries aren't generally eaten in the U.S., or are consumed only by immigrants who remember them from the old country.  Maybe this mistaken imprerssion came about because the author appears to share an ethnic backbround with her subject, or because both of them are of the "younger generation."

When I was a youngster, though, we ate mulberries off the tree, wherever we found them.  And as the article points out, when ripe, they are actually sweeter and tastier than blackberries. 

They are also thin-skinned and not viable for commercial picking and shipping, which probably accounts for the fact they're not well known today.  Plus the fact that we're more urban now, and they're rarely encountered in the urban environment.  Nobody would purposely plant one, because they're so messy when the fruit is ripening and dropping.

At a house we lived in in Kansas, we had a mulberry overhanging our yard from a neighbor.  My mother, the gardener in the family, complained incessantly about that tree because it would drop berries in her iris.  She always threatened to kill it (she claimed that a copper nail driven into it would kill it - is that true? and if it's true, how did she know it?)  but she never did.  Maybe because she also liked birds, which are attracted by the berries. My father, the driver in the family, disliked the mulberry because those same birds would deposit mulberry droppings on his car, that could permanently stain the finish if not removed.

But eating them was a common habit.  There's a tree near where I live now, too, but I never seem to be passing it when the berries are ripe.  If you've never had a mulberry, give it a try sometime.

P.S.  When you're not eating mulberries, the most interesting thing about them is their history -- they're all tied up in centuries-old industrial espionage over silk and silworms, which is described well in the "mulberry" section of Lives Of The Trees (see right margin).  

Baseball's Great Moment

I suppose everyone by now has heard the story of the umpire at a game in Detroit who ruled a runner safe when (as replay showed) he was out by a mile.  The umpire, James Joyce, admitted his mistake after the fact; the runner, Jason Donald of the Cleveland Indians, should have been called out but the Detroit Tigers pitcher, Armando Galarraga, was nevertheless denied, at the last minute, the claim of a "perfect game," one of baseball's holy grails.

In baseball, the rule is that the umpire's call stands; baseball has resisted the trend toward re-judging everything on instant replay.  That policy might be questioned, especially since the Commissioner of Baseball, Bud Selig, seemed more confused than anyone about the reasons for the rule.  Personally, I think it probably should stand.  Baseball is a slow game that doesn't need to be made slower by constant reference to the sideline cameras.

And Joyce apologized, and Galarraga didn't fly off the handle, and everybody sort of kissed and made up the next day.  That's not bad news, either; sportsmanship isn't always practiced these days.  And in this case, even Detroit fans mostly accepted it.

Still, I find it hard to buy into all the hoopla about this being one of baseball's "greatest moments" just because it turned into a forgive-and-forget session.  What struck me about the whole thing, from the films that were shown, was that Joyce appeared to be standing in the wrong place to make his call.  He was directly behind the Detroit pitcher, who was receiving the throw to tag the runner out; his view of the ball was blocked.  How, from that vantage point, could he possibly have made any call? 

A sad result from an honest mistake is one thing; to make a call without being able to see the action is another. 

Joyce should have shifted to where he could see what was going on.  And when that doesn't happen, then perhaps baseball is going to need to accept reference to instant replay; the umpire ought to have the authority to call for a review the tape. 

Microsoft Battles Disorientation

I suspect there comes a time in everyone's life when it seems that everything is changing, and the things we remember from the "good old days" seem to start disappearing more and more quickly.  As oldsters drift into the various stages of CRS ("Can't Remember Shit") and beyond, the loss of the familiar old ways of doing things can be disorienting or upsetting. 

The dial telephone, the typewriter, paper checks, postage stamps, road maps...all these things familiar to today's 50 and 60-year-olds are going the way of mastodons. 

And while some things are transformed by technological progress, others change just for the sake of change.  For example, the recipe on cereal boxes these days for "traditional" Chex Mix -- traditional, it's not -- it bears no resemblance to the original Chex Mix.   Is ketchup headed in this direction?  The Heinz company says no, but let's wait and see.  

So it's always heartening when occasionally one of those altered products admits a mistake and goes back to its original form.  The poster-child case, of course, is "Classic Coke," introduced with much fanfare but it never caught on. 

The latest example is Microsoft's operating systems.  For years, the company's consumer OSs were notorious for shutdown problems.  I remember myself how Windows 98 never would turn off correctly, even after numerous patches.  And of course, we users cherished this quirk, but Microsoft felt they had to change just for change's sake.  So they invented Windows XP, which would shut down like a charm.  Most users, evidently, found XP's behavior too predictable, too consistent (although I kind of liked it myself, and even stuck with it through the Vista years).

But responding to popular demand, Microsoft's engineers went back to the drawing board and in the latest iteration, Windows 7 (which I bought into about 3 months ago), they gave users back what they had missed:  shutdown problems.  To avoid having to confess a mistake, though, they made up a sort of "classic Chex Mix" version - the same, but not the same. 

Now, rather than NOT shutting down when it should, this latest operating system shuts itself down at the drop of a hat.  Leave your computer screen for 30 minutes and you may come back to find it turned itself off.  (Not just the monitor, or the sleep mode, but a nice complete shutdown that requires you to reboot and reopen all your closed programs and windows.)

Like the unclassic Chex Mix, the re-originated Windows OS, for me anyway, just doesn't have the same comfort level that Win 98 had.  But thanks for trying, Microsoft. Your heart was in the right place (wasn't it?).