Category: politics

08:08 – Moron North Carolina legislators are again falling prey to the SLAGIATT tendency of all legislators. Like most other legislative initiatives, their attempt to pass legislation to allow DNA samples to be taken from anyone arrested for (not charged with, let alone convicted of; simply arrested for) a felony or some misdemeanors will be seen in retrospect as what Seemed Like A Good Idea At The Time. Ignoring the Constitutional issues and the fact that DNA reveals much more about a person than simply his identity, the simple fact is that North Carolina cannot afford to do this. The financial cost would be extremely high, and the state crime lab is already running months to literally years behind in processing DNA evidence.

UPS just showed up yesterday with some Rhizobia inoculum, which we include in the biology kits. Rhizobia are nitrogen-fixing soil bacteria that can massively increase yields of certain crops, like peas and Lima beans. But the commercial cultures, which are basically just the bacteria on a peat moss substrate, have very limited shelf lives. The stuff we got in yesterday, for example, has a best-by date of 12/31/15. So commercial Rhizobia innoculant isn’t really suited to long-term storage.

But Rhizobia can be cultured, and it’s well-suited to putting into stasis in a solution of phosphate-buffered saline, where it remains in what amounts to suspended animation for years to decades. It can be reactivated by inoculating some sterile culture medium made by diluting a couple tablespoons of table sugar and and a few ounces of beef or chicken broth in a couple liters of water and allowing the medium to sit at room temperature for a few days. When the medium becomes visibly cloudy, you have a couple liters of inoculant liquid with trillions of Rhizobia bacteria in it. That liquid can be used directly to treat seeds.

So I think I’ll produce the PBS cultures and sell them to people who are doing long-term prepping. I considered lyophilizing (freeze-drying) the cultures, but the PBS liquid cultures will work as well and are simpler to produce.

07:52 – One often-overlooked advantage of maintaining a large stock of stored foods and eating routinely from those stores is that it allows you to avoid eating foods that end up being recalled. For example, I see that Kraft just recalled a quarter million cases of their Mac & Cheese dinners. The problem this time is minor–metal bits in a few of the boxes–but in the past there have been recalls for serious issues like botulism contamination.

Speaking of food, I see that our moron state legislators are pushing a bill to deal with the supposed problem of “food deserts” in rural and urban North Carolina. They plan to subsidize convenience stores to carry fresh fruits and vegetables, believing that the problem is that poor people can’t get to supermarkets so the solution is to bring “healthy” foods to the convenience stores where they shop. Needless to say, those fresh foods will rot on the convenience store shelves. The reason poor people don’t eat more fresh foods isn’t because they have to travel to get to supermarkets. The reason is that they’re too lazy to prepare them. They’d rather eat convenience foods.

As I’ve said before, we need to get rid of food stamps and return to the classical Roman grain dole. Any citizen should be able to get a free food supply once a month just by showing up and signing on the line. That month’s food supply should comprise one 1-pound box of salt, a liter of vegetable oil, one 5-pound can of beans, and six 5-pound cans of white flour. That provides all the nutrition one person needs for one month at an actual cost of about $0.50 per day.