Posted 5/23/2003 10:41:00 PM by Sid link
Still Hale, Somewhat Hearty

No, SW didn't kill me for blogging through the delivery. After the epidural finally hit, I could have painted myself blue and danced around the room naked to drive away spirits and she would have said "That's nice, honey. Make sure you exorcise the corners."

Besides, she knows what she married. She'd have been disappointed if I didn't do something odd. And as long as I was there for the pushing, the 90 seconds between contractions were mine to do with as I liked. Could have done more, possibly, but we only ended up pushing for 10 minutes, and some of those intervals were a mite boring.

Ngnat and the grandparents have come and gone. Ngnat ignored Scotty entirely, perhaps in hopes that he would disappear if not looked at. She did enjoy opening the presents, though. He's eaten, three times at least now, and passed along the leavings to us, so everything seems to be proceeding smoothly. Thanks to all who've stopped by and left their good wishes.

Posted 5/23/2003 09:53:00 PM by Sid link
Fremen Eyes



Scotty is about 10 minutes old here. The white stuff is called cheese, but it sure doesn't taste like it.

Posted 5/23/2003 08:57:00 PM by Katie Bug link
More Sesame Cat, Please

Dude, I know we always made jokes about this before entering the Chinese restaurant for the buffet, but come on!!! There are too many easy jokes I could make but this grosses me out. I found this on an AOL news site.

WHO Traces SARS Virus to Civet Cat
by Jonathan Fowler, c. The Associated Press

GENEVA (May 23) - The World Health Organization has traced the SARS virus to the civet cat and two other small mammals in China, and researchers are investigating a possible link between the animals and the SARS outbreak in humans, an official said Friday.

The cat is apparently a delicacy in China........ewwwwwwwwww!!!! The researchers did say that eating fully cooked meat was "probably" safe. Sounds like quite the endorsement to me.

Posted 5/23/2003 03:56:00 PM by Katie Bug link
Is There A Lawyer in the House?

A big, fat CONGRATULATIONS goes out to Bigwig and the Sainted Wife (if we were cooler here I would have given a "shout out") for their recent arrival.

Now that this is out of the way, our friends of the blogosphere who are lawyers, please stand by. You assistance may be needed. Once the drugs leave the SW's system and she realizes that Bigwig spent the better part of their child's birth giving us the updates, legal advice will be sought.

Posted 5/23/2003 03:15:00 PM by Sid link
Another Child To Scare Paul Erhlich With

Colin James Stafford, aka Scotty McSulu, was born at 3:05, weighing 6 pounds 14 ounces.

His initial APGAR scores were 9 and 9

Both mother and child are doing well. Pictures soon, as I realize there is an audience of millions demanding them.

Posted 5/23/2003 03:03:00 PM by Sid link


Crowned. Skin tone of a Borg

Posted 5/23/2003 03:02:00 PM by Sid link


i see head. looks like ngnat from here.

Posted 5/23/2003 02:26:00 PM by Sid link
It's A Small World, But A Crowded Room

1 female British nurse-midwife
1 female Indian anesthesiologist
1 male American anethesiologist
1 male Greek anethesiologist intern, who performed the combined spinal epidural under the supervision of the other two
1 female Filipino pediatric nurse
1 female American pediatric nurse
1 female Italian obstetrician

10 centimeters dialated, and SW's water just broke.

Posted 5/23/2003 01:21:00 PM by Sid link
They Also Scream "Push" At The Olympics

Lileks will appreciate this, assuming he ever drops by. I've put the headphones on SW and ITunes is playing Copland's Appalachian Spring for her. If God has a sense of humor, we'll start delivery by "Fanfare for the Common Man.'

< contraction > "Take these things off of me. I've got too many things attached to me as it is. This damn IV hurts. Ahhhhhh!" < /contraction >

Can't really hear anything over the baby's heart sound monitor without the headphones, though.

Next birth I'll have to remember to bring speakers.

< contraction >

They're less than 2 minutes apart. No sign of the anesthesiologist. "We hates the anesthesiologist! We hates him forever!" < /contraction >

Update: The device monitoring the contractions was misplaced, so we're farther along than the nurse's station realized. Once it was positioned correctly, the reading jumped 80 points and maxed out.

7 centimeters dialated, and the gas passers have finally arrived............

They call it the "happydural"; for good reason. "I'm perfectly happy to lay here for hours, now. "

Posted 5/23/2003 01:04:00 PM by Sid link
Birth Blogging

We're at the hospital, waiting for the epidural. Sainted Wife is very concerned about their whereabouts, especially as Ngnat's birth was so quick as to proscribe any and all drugs last time, though she hasn't reached the cursing stage yet.

< contraction > Ok, now she has. < /contraction >

I should probably call my parents at some point.

Posted 5/22/2003 11:20:00 PM by Sid link
You Asked Me To Make A Record Of My Voice. Well Here It Is.

audblog audio post

Link via The Red Sugar Muse. You can make yours here.

Now, play "spot the Easter Egg."

Posted 5/22/2003 10:58:00 PM by Sid link
Stereotypical

A Scottish couple had just gotten engaged, and the young woman was complaining to her fiance about the paltry size of her engagement ring.

The young Scotsman looked at her and said "What are you complaining about lassie, you picked it out yourself. It's not my fault you dinna know how to work the wee crane!"

Posted 5/22/2003 10:20:00 PM by Sid link
Zywiec

Beer of the night, and another repeat. No new beer until after Scotty arrives. No, we're not naming him Scotty. If I was going to be that geeky, he'd be named Sulu.

I'm sure the other Treks are nice...well, not Voyager, but the only series I've wanted to see since Next Generation was one with Sulu as captain of the Excalibur. That was the logical next series. Still not too late, and Takei is still around. Surely he can be made to look the correct age, right? Like I care. Put him up there, liver spots and all, I'll watch.

So, no Trek name for the kid. Scotty just feels right for his blog name. I thought about Ngnewt (pronounced 'Noot'), but Ngnat and Ngnewt seemed a little...cutesy. Also Ripley.

Not much left of the day to chew over; just look below if you want to know why, but I did run across a song that's appropriate for the beer of the night, The Old Dun Cow, by D.C. resident Seamus Kennedy.

Some friends and I in a public house
Was playin' dominoes one night
When into the pub the barman came
His face all a chalky white.
"What's up", says Brown, "Have you seen a ghost,
Or have you seen your Aunt Mariah?"
"Me Aunt Mariah be buggered!", says he,
"The bloody pub's on fire!"

"ON fire?" says Brown, "What a bit of luck.
Everybody follow me.
And it's down to the cellar
If the fire's not there
Then we'll have a rare old spree."
So we all went down after good old Brown
The booze we could not miss
And we hadn't been there five minutes or more
Till we were all half pissed.

And there was Brown upside down
Licking up the whiskey off the floor.
"Booze, booze!" The firemen cried
As they came knockin' on the door
Don't let 'em in till it's all mopped up
And somebody shouted MacIntyre! MACINTYRE!
And we all got blue-blind paralytic drunk
When the Old Dun Cow caught fire.

Then, Smith went over to the port wine tub
And gave it just a few hard knocks
Started takin' off his pantaloons
Likewise his shoes and socks.
"Hold on, " says Brown, "We can't have that
You can't do that in here.
Don't go washin' your trotters in the port wine tub
When we've got all this light beer."

And there was Brown upside down
Licking up the whiskey off the floor.
"Booze, booze!" The firemen cried
As they came knockin' on the door
Don't let 'em in till it's all mopped up
And somebody shouted MacIntyre! MACINTYRE!
And we all got blue-blind paralytic drunk
When the Old Dun Cow caught fire.

Just then there came an awful crash
Half the bloody roof gave way.
We were drowned in the firemen's hose
Till we were going to stay
So we got some tacks and our old wet slacks
And nailed ourselves inside
And we sat swallowing pints of stout
Till we were bleary-eyed.....

And there was Brown upside down
Licking up the whiskey off the floor.
"Booze, booze!" The firemen cried
As they came knockin' on the door
Don't let 'em in till it's all mopped up
And somebody shouted MacIntyre! MACINTYRE!
And we all got blue-blind paralytic drunk
When the Old Dun Cow caught fire.


Nothing like a Celt when it comes to song about alcohol. I think it was the "blue-blind paralytic drunk" that really grabbed me. "MacIntyre!" is rhyming slang for Fire, or so Google informs me. If you know of an alternate explanation, let me know, though I suspect Celtic music fans are few an farther between, now.

If you Kazaa Seamus, Monkey Farts is worth the download, and Mom's Lullaby is also supposedly very good, though I've yet to find it, myself.

And yes, I checked the Apple store. I think they define themselves by only offering music I don't want to buy.

Posted 5/22/2003 07:50:00 PM by Sid link
Debarred and Feathered

Friend of Hraka Omnibus Bill on achieving racial diversity without using racial quotas, and why U. of Michigan lawyers who argued in front of the Supreme Court could face disbarment.

Posted 5/22/2003 03:08:00 PM by Sid link
Caveat Emptor

The website for the No-Contact jacket claims that "According to the Bureau of Justice three out of four women in the United States will be victims of one violent crime during their lifetime.".

Shocking statistics indeed, except that the only place one can find this particular information on the web is at the website for the No-Contact Jacket, or at sites linking to it. One would think that such a horrific level of violence would be a bit more thoroughly documented, especially at, say the Bureau of Justice's Violent crime rates by gender of victim page.

But let's give the fine people at No-Contact Jackets a break. After all, they're in the business of selling electric shock jackets to protect women from the numberless hordes, not statistics, even if one of them does go to MIT.

Put simply, if you were to grab a woman wearing a No-Contact jacket, you would get the shock of your life. There's a story and associated video on the jacket here. What the story doesn't talk about, and what the No-Contact site conveniently leaves out of its description of the jacket, is the recharge time on a electrical jacket powered by a 9-volt battery. As the video makes clear, the shock delivered to a potential attacker is annoying rather than incapacitating. What's going to stop him from coming right back for more?

Or, worse, what if the attacker is already prepared for the jacket? Is it possible to drain the charge, say with an insulated screwdriver? What if he's wearing rubber gloves?

I don't know enough about modern ammunition to be sure, but what if instead of grabbing a woman the attacker just sticks a gun in her back? Is the charge enough to set off the powder in a cartridge, thus firing the gun? What happens if it's raining? Can the jacket even be worn in the rain? Could the charge be transferred back to the woman if both she and an attacker were standing in the same puddle of water? Certainly weather-related enquiries are logical when it comes to electrical jackets, yet the answers to them are not to be found.

To be fair to the No-Contact site, it does specify that the jacket is only meant to "provide a critical life saving option for escape.", not to protect a woman from all the vagaries and vagrants of life. You'd think something as simple as whether or not the jacket could be worn in the rain would be somewhere on the site. It is critical information, after all.

And that's where the site falls short again. Not only is there no critical information, there's not really that much useful information at all. How many people do you think will buy a No-Contact based on the conductive path diagram?

That's failing grades in statistics, logic and marketing for the No-Contact people. Nice idea, crappy execution. I think I'll wait a few developmental generations before buying one for the women in my life.

Posted 5/22/2003 01:50:00 PM by Sid link
Game over man! Game over!

It's been a good day to work from home. Just got this announcement from work

Sensors have detected water underneath the Phillips machine room floor, near the Intel Hell area. We are working to unclog a drain, and remove excess water.

I fixed a few errors in the sentences above. The initial statement had much more of a "Aliens crawling towards us in the duct work" feel. Note that whomever was typing it still felt they had time enough for a dig at Intel/Microsoft. It's the little touches that count.

It also turns out that the buildup wasn't water, but raw sewage that started to build up after the ever present construction workers managed to block up an outside drain. It was up to an inch deep in places under the raised floor of the machine before the blockage was finally removed.

Posted 5/22/2003 01:36:00 PM by Sid link
Making Jimmy Watt Look Good

Christine Todd Whitman talks about George Bush's policies on global warming and carbon dioxide emissions.

Whitman, who said her decision to leave was for personal reasons, voiced frustration over how the United States pulled out of the international Kyoto treaty on global warming and said an about-turn on cutting carbon dioxide emissions had also harmed Bush's image at home and abroad.

"I think the two combined have hurt him unfairly. I think there's a very good case for both," Whitman said in an interview with NBC's "Today" show.

In the initial context of the story, it appears as if Whitman is claiming that there are good cases to be made for global warming and cutting carbon dioxide emissions. If so, then their impact on the Bush administration cannot possibly be described as "unfair." Quite the opposite, in fact.

But in fact it appears that she is saying that there is a good case to be made for the administration's decisions on those matters, and the unfairness of it all is in the world's reaction to that case, even though neither she nor the administration even attempted to make it.

"We should have laid out the fact that we weren't walking away from a commitment to addressing climate change because the administration is not. We are doing an awful lot that most people don't know about," Whitman said.

"Instead we just sort of said, 'We are not doing Kyoto,' and didn't say anything else. So to the Europeans it looked like we didn't care about the issue."
.......
Another disappointment, said Whitman, was the reversal of a promise by Bush during his presidential campaign to cut carbon dioxide emissions. "It caught me by surprise, that one," she said.

Whitman said the reversal was based on the fact that Bush realized a "hard carbon cap" would have caused a shift to more oil and gas usage and resulted in either more oil imports or greater exploitation.

And we all know that there's nothing George W. hates more that a possible shift to more oil and gas usage.

If there's no case to be made in favor of the Bush administration's environmental policies, then the world's reaction to them can hardly be described as unfair. If there is a case to be made, yet it is not made, then "unfair" is still not the correct descriptive term.

The correct term is "inept", and it should be used often, especially when describing Ms. Whitman's two years in office.

Posted 5/22/2003 01:29:00 PM by Katie Bug link
Vijay's Absence is Questionable

Personally, I don't give a rat's ass whether or not Anika Sorenstam played in this week's golf tournament or not. If she can, then fine, let her. I also understand that not everybody on the tour is pulling in hundreds of thousands of dollars and that she took somebody's spot by being allowed into the tournament. If I was that guy, I guess I would have a problem with it. But I am somewhat surprised at Vijay's reaction to the whole thing. I'm not surprised that he stated that she shouldn't be allowed to play, or that he hoped she would miss the cut. Instead I am surprised that he decided not to participate in the event at all. He said that it had nothing to do with Sorenstam's playing in the event, but I have serious doubts about it.

It just seems a bit too perfect that he would have scheduling conflicts this week, after he had already accepted an invitation to play in the tournament. Honestly, I doubt that Anika could beat him in a 4 day event, but perhaps he felt the pressure of being compared to her on EVERY single hole would be more than he could stand. No doubt, these two would have their scorecards lined up beside each other every day of the tournament, and if she performs well and at least makes the cut, he might be forced to remove his foot from his mouth (more so than he has already done in his backpeddling) in front of millions.

Instead of having to do this, Vijay did what any self-respecting man would do when faced with being beaten by a female..............he took his balls and went home.

Posted 5/22/2003 01:06:00 PM by Sid link
Take That, Vijay

Anika Sorenstam: Three strokes off the lead with six holes to go in her first round at the Colonial.

Update: Scoreboard here.

Posted 5/22/2003 12:44:00 PM by Sid link
Playing With The Food


photo via yahoo
“So this is the manling,” said Kaa. “Very soft is his skin, and he is not so unlike the Bandar-log. Have a care, manling, that I do not mistake thee for a monkey some twilight when I have newly changed my coat.”

Posted 5/22/2003 12:35:00 PM by Katie Bug link
Cancer Sucks

How is this for a shitty Thursday? Our friend who has been battling cancer was told on Monday that he is in remission.............oops. WTF??? You can't tell somebody they are in remission and then say, "Oops!!!" Our buddy got some numbers back today and one of those numbers actually went up. For those of you not familiar with these numbers, the doctors take markers of your blood (I believe), and these numbers are supposed to go down during chemo. Apparently one of this guy's numbers went up. When the nurse saw it she said, "Don't worry about it, it is most likely an error." Good, that helped to relieve the worry............then the doctor came in. He saw it and said, "It could be an error, but if it isn't, this is very bad."

What it could mean is that in the midst of receiving all of these chemicals to take care of the cancer, something is not responding to the treatment and is continuing to grow, even in the face of all of this medicine. So then, how the hell can you treat it? As of right now they don't know. They will take the markers again to see if it could be an error, but they will not know before Tuesday. Can you imagine the wait for this guy from now until Tuesday? Dammit, this is not supposed to happen. We have all (they more than us, of course) been waiting throughout this process to cling to some good news and hope that things are getting better. They get that news on Monday and then have the rug pulled out from under them today. We all feel as if the air has been knocked out of us.

I'm not becoming part of the religious right, I swear, but those of you in this blog world who believe in something bigger than ourselves, we would sure appreciate your thoughts and prayers, to whatever you believe in, over the next few days. I'm sure these 5 days will pass VERY slowly for our friends, as well as for those of us who care about this guy. I will continue to update this and hope for the best. Thanks from Silflay.

Posted 5/22/2003 12:24:00 PM by Sid link
< Insert Old Media Sneer Here >

The Paignton Zoo Monkey Shakespeare Experiment; more successful the previously reported.

Posted 5/22/2003 12:06:00 PM by Sid link
What's The Alchemy, Kenneth?

You know, any science story where the headline contains the words "Alchemy" and "shocks physicists" should probably be viewed with a jaundiced eye, but I don't see anything glaringly wrong in the techniques for shifting the frequency of light described here.

Zod: Probably because you're not smart enough.
Which makes you what, exactly, seeing as how you're only a voice in the head of dumb man?
Zod: An editor, of course.
That makes sense. Should I start calling you Howell?
Zod: Not if you want a moment's peace for the rest of the day.
Well, ok then.
Zod: Now give them the terahertz ray link.

I hadn't heard of terahertz rays before this, but there's more info on them here and here.

Posted 5/22/2003 11:37:00 AM by Sid link
What He Needed Was A Diet That Kept Him Stable on Icy Sidewalks

It seems the Atkins diet will not only help you lose weight, it will also lower your cholesterol levels. Which is nice, but it's not for me. I take care of my cholesterol levels the modern way, by guzzling olive oil straight from the bottle and popping niacin pills like breathmints.

I did try the Atkins diet a year or so ago, just for the fun of the menu, but quickly decided that any diet that denied me both caffeine and beer just wasn't worth the trouble, no matter how enticing it sounded. This came as welcome news to the family, they having found me grumpy and short-tempered for the three days I partook of the program.

For those who have the occasion to meet me in real life, that would be even more grumpy and short-tempered, so hold the jeers and catcalls.

Posted 5/22/2003 11:19:00 AM by Sid link
You Say Dritis, I Say Tritis, Let's Call The Whole Thing Off

Working from home today, as the Sainted Wife has been laid up by, according to the nurses hotline diagnosis, either costochondritis or gastritis or a combination of both, either of which is due to the child in her great swollen belly. Her principal symptoms are constant pain whenever she moves, random pains whenever she lies completely still, and generalized waspishness upon being asked "How ya doing?" for the umpteenth time, symptoms treated with alternating doses of Mylanta and a McDonald's chicken biscuit.

For future reference, when a pregnant lady claims that she cannot eat due to a combination of costochondritis and gastritis, this prohibition does not apply to McDonald's chicken biscuits. So don't come home with just one. You'll go without breakfast, and the vague noble feeling of sacrifice doesn't really make up for the sight of crumbs from one's breakfast collecting on the pregnant wife's stomach shelf.

I'm getting sushi for lunch. She hates sushi.

Posted 5/21/2003 10:19:00 PM by Sid link
Gotta Love the Tank




Were it not for the Internet, I'd have no problem believing Winston Smith was working for the Fourth Estate.

Posted 5/21/2003 10:01:00 PM by Sid link
Don't Hold Your Breath

The race-baiters at Salon are proven wrong. Surely a Bomani Jones apology for his/her inaccurate screed and racially biased prediction, not to mention the gross underestimation of the American public, will be forthcoming.

Posted 5/21/2003 03:59:00 PM by Sid link
Middle Aged

The 35th edition of the Carnival of the Vanities is at Cut On The Bias this week.

Upcoming Carnival stops include;

May 28th Dean's World
June 4th Drumwaster's Rants
June 11th Overtaken by Events
June 18th Real Women Online
June 25th Single Southern Guy
July 2nd Amish Tech Support
July 9th Winds Of Change -- The 42nd spot, coveted by hitchhikers across the galaxy.
July 16th Caerdroia
July 23rd DaGoddess
July 30th Lies, Damn Lies, and Statistics

If you'd like to host the Carnival, drop us a line. Information on how to join the Carnival can be found here.

Posted 5/21/2003 03:09:00 PM by Sid link
Democrats in Elephant's Clothing

Tax cuts are easy. There's not a person in the world who can't look at the national budget and lop off a few hundred billion within 20 minutes. Washington treats money the way most people treat urine. It exists to be flushed away without a second thought. Anyone who can't cut taxes isn't trying to.

But cutting taxes is no damn good unless you cut spending. Cutting spending is the hard part, and Washington is about as good at cutting spending as a crack whore is at saying no to a handful of little white rocks. When rich guys start to look askance at tax cuts, even if one of them is George Soros, something's out of whack. Rich guys are, after all, known for their financial sense.

Don't try to tell me that George Bush is giving you your money back. As long as he and Congress are passing budgets that increase the deficit, he's lending you your money and charging you interest on it. If he really wanted to you to have you own money, he'd arrange it so that 8 years down the road you wouldn't have to pay it and more back.

All George Bush's tax cut is a reach around. We're still getting screwed.

Getting a tax cut from Washington is like being married to a spendthrift schizophrenic One body, many personalities. Every payday one personality, let's call him Herbert, cashes his check then comes home and hands out $20 bills to the kids until his wallet is empty. Later that night Herbert goes out and maxes out his credit cards on liquor, cigars and sugar. "Subsidizing agriculture," he calls it. Herbert doesn't care about the consequences of his behavior, because by the time the bill comes due he'll be long gone, and some other personality will have to deal with the bill.

You call Herbert on his behavior during his evening of excess, and he's sanguine about the consequences. No, he won't be around to face the music, but it's ok. Herbert's got a plan, you see. "My kids," he says, single malt scotch sloshing out of the glass he's waving around to illustrate his point. "My kids...hic... will invest that money I give 'em. Come a month from now, they can use some of that interest to pay off the bills, and keep the rest. They'll all have more money that way."

Herbert's plan is bullshit, of course. It's not so much a plan to pay off the credit cards as it is a plan to keep you from bothering him. If Herbert really gave a shit about his kids, if he really wanted them to be rich, he'd not only give out money, he'd stay at home come the weekend and not run up the balance on the American Express.

Every personal finance book on the planet says that if a person wants to be better off financially, the first thing to do is to get out of debt. Pay cash for everything, cut up the credit cards,sell plasma, do whatever you have to do but get out of debt. Then start investing, or saving, or take the whatever the first step is in the 10 steps to financial success book you just bought. First, get out of debt, period. In a government that is supposedly of the people, by the people and for the people, is it to damn much to expect that it live up to the same expectations as the people?

When the Republican party starts spending like the Democrats, then whatever fiscal sanity there ever was in Washington has put on a tricorne hat and started demanding the one and all address him as Monsieur l'Emperor. If the Democratic party had any sense, even if only a sense of irony, they'd re-introduce the balanced budget amendment and poke George with it for the next two years.

And if they did, I'd support it. I didn't ten years ago, and now I regret it. When politicians of both parties act like there's nothing they'd rather do that light cigars with your dollars, then there's no other way to restrain them. Yes, bad things might happen when a budget is required to be balanced year in and year out, but the evidence for that is largely theoretical, and the consequences aren't as bad as they are painted. North Carolina has to balance its budget every year and in the last two years the recession has meant that the state has had to: eliminate some unfilled positions and cut back on equipment purchases.

Also, I haven't gotten a raise. It's been a bloodbath, alright.

Smart, sophisticated people distrust the balanced budget amendment because it isn't a panacea, as if anything is. Sure a balanced budget amendment would cause problems. Every solution to a problem has repercussions in the future, but that doesn't mean you give up trying find solutions.

I'd like a nice tax cut. What I don't want is to have to pay it back later, and thanks to the profligate nature of George Bush and the Republican Congress, I'm going to have to. So don't expect me to be grateful come election day. If you want me to be grateful, pay off the deficit, then give me a tax cut.

Because that's the only way my money gets to stay my money.

Posted 5/21/2003 11:56:00 AM by Katie Bug link
Better Than Ground Turkey

I have yet to find out if this is true or a hoax, but found this email to be interesting none the less. As of now, I am extremely doubtful, but it would be a better use of the bird than ground turkey. We had that crap once and found it to be really gross. Perhaps we didn't cook it right.

DISCOVER Vol. 24 No. 5 (May 2003)
Table of Contents

Anything into Oil
Technological savvy could turn 600 million tons of turkey guts and other
waste into 4 billion barrels of light Texas crude each year
By Brad Lemley

Gory refuse, from a Butterball Turkey plant in Carthage, Missouri, will no longer go to waste. Each day 200 tons of turkey offal will be carted to the first industrial-scale thermal depolymerization plant, recently completed in an adjacent lot, and be transformed into various useful products, including 600 barrels of light oil.

In an industrial park in Philadelphia sits a new machine that can change almost anything into oil. Really. "This is a solution to three of the biggest problems facing mankind," says Brian Appel, chairman and CEO of Changing World Technologies, the company that built this pilot plant and has just completed its first industrial-size installation in Missouri. "This process can deal with the world's waste. It can supplement our dwindling supplies of oil. And it can slow down global warming." Pardon me, says a reporter, shivering in the frigid dawn, but that sounds too good to be true.

"Everybody says that," says Appel. He is a tall, affable entrepreneur who has assembled a team of scientists, former government leaders, and deep-pocketed investors to develop and sell what he calls the thermal depolymerization process, or TDP. The process is designed to handle almost any waste product imaginable, including turkey offal, tires, plastic bottles, harbor-dredged muck, old computers, municipal garbage, cornstalks, paper-pulp effluent, infectious medical waste, oil-refinery residues, even biological weapons such as anthrax spores. According to Appel, waste goes in one end and comes out the other as three products, all valuable and environmentally benign: high-quality oil, clean-burning gas, and purified
minerals that can be used as fuels, fertilizers, or specialty chemicals for manufacturing.

Unlike other solid-to-liquid-fuel processes such as cornstarch into ethanol, this one will accept almost any carbon-based feedstock. If a 175-pound man fell into one end, he would come out the other end as 38 pounds of oil, 7 pounds of gas, and 7 pounds of minerals, as well as 123 pounds of sterilized water. While no one plans to put people into a thermal depolymerization machine, an intimate human creation could become a prime feedstock. "There is no reason why we can't turn sewage, including human excrement, into a glorious oil," says engineer Terry Adams, a project consultant. So the city of Philadelphia is in discussion with Changing World Technologies to begin doing exactly that.

"The potential is unbelievable," says Michael Roberts, a senior chemical engineer for the Gas Technology Institute, an energy research group. "You're not only cleaning up waste; you're talking about distributed generation of oil all over the world."

"This is not an incremental change. This is a big, new step," agrees Alf Andreassen, a venture capitalist with the Paladin Capital Group and a former Bell Laboratories director.
The offal-derived oil, is chemically almost identical to a number two fuel oil used to heat homes.

Andreassen and others anticipate that a large chunk of the world's agricultural, industrial, and municipal waste may someday go into thermal depolymerization machines scattered all over the globe. If the process works as well as its creators claim, not only would most toxic waste problems become history, so would imported oil. Just converting all the U.S.
agricultural waste into oil and gas would yield the energy equivalent of 4 billion barrels of oil annually. In 2001 the United States imported 4.2 billion barrels of oil. Referring to U.S. dependence on oil from the volatile Middle East, R. James Woolsey, former CIA director and an adviser to Changing World Technologies, says, "This technology offers a beginning of
a way away from this."

But first things first. Today, here at the plant at Philadelphia's Naval Business Center, the experimental feedstock is turkey processing-plant waste: feathers, bones, skin, blood, fat, guts. A forklift dumps 1,400 pounds of the nasty stuff into the machine's first stage, a 350-horsepower grinder that masticates it into gray brown slurry. From there it flows into a series of tanks and pipes, which hum and hiss as they heat, digest, and break down the mixture. Two hours later, a white-jacketed technician turns a
spigot. Out pours a honey-colored fluid, steaming a bit in the cold warehouse as it fills a glass beaker. It really is a lovely oil.

"The longest carbon chains are C-18 or so," says Appel, admiring the liquid. "That's a very light oil. It is essentially the same as a mix of half fuel oil, half gasoline."

Private investors, who have chipped in $40 million to develop the process, aren't the only ones who are impressed. The federal government has granted more than $12 million to push the work along. "We will be able to make oil for $8 to $12 a barrel," says Paul Baskis, the inventor of the process. "We are going to be able to switch to a carbohydrate economy."

Making oil and gas from hydrocarbon-based waste is a trick that Earth mastered long ago. Most crude oil comes from one-celled plants and animals that die, settle to ocean floors, decompose, and are mashed by sliding tectonic plates, a process geologists call subduction. Under pressure and heat, the dead creatures' long chains of hydrogen, oxygen, and
carbon-bearing molecules, known as polymers, decompose into short-chain petroleum hydrocarbons. However, Earth takes its own sweet time doing this-generally thousands or millions of years-because subterranean heat and pressure changes are chaotic. Thermal depolymerization machines turbocharge the process by precisely raising heat and pressure to levels that break the feedstock's long molecular bonds.

Many scientists have tried to convert organic solids to liquid fuel using waste products before, but their efforts have been notoriously inefficient. "The problem with most of these methods was that they tried to do the transformation in one step-superheat the material to drive off the water and simultaneously break down the molecules," says Appel. That leads to profligate energy use and makes it possible for hazardous substances to pollute the finished product. Very wet waste-and much of the world's waste is wet-is particularly difficult to process efficiently because driving off the water requires so much energy. Usually, the Btu content in the resulting oil or gas barely exceeds the amount needed to make the stuff.

That's the challenge that Baskis, a microbiologist and inventor who lives in Rantoul, Illinois, confronted in the late 1980s. He says he "had a flash" of insight about how to improve the basic ideas behind another inventor's waste-reforming process. "The prototype I saw produced a heavy, burned oil," recalls Baskis. "I drew up an improvement and filed the first patents." He spent the early 1990s wooing investors and, in 1996, met Appel, a former commodities trader. "I saw what this could be and took over the patents," says Appel, who formed a partnership with the Gas Technology Institute and had a demonstration plant up and running by 1999.

Thermal depolymerization, Appel says, has proved to be 85 percent energy efficient for complex feedstocks, such as turkey offal: "That means for every 100 Btus in the feedstock, we use only 15 Btus to run the process." He contends the efficiency is even better for relatively dry raw materials, such as plastics.

So how does it work? In the cold Philadelphia warehouse, Appel waves a long arm at the apparatus, which looks surprisingly low tech: a tangle of pressure vessels, pipes, valves, and heat exchangers terminating in storage tanks. It resembles the oil refineries that stretch to the horizon on either side of the New Jersey Turnpike, and in part, that's exactly what it is.

Appel strides to a silver gray pressure tank that is 20 feet long, three feet wide, heavily insulated, and wrapped with electric heating coils. He raps on its side. "The chief difference in our process is that we make water a friend rather than an enemy," he says. "The other processes all tried to drive out water. We drive it in, inside this tank, with heat and pressure. We super-hydrate the material." Thus temperatures and pressures need only be modest, because water helps to convey heat into the feedstock. "We're talking about temperatures of 500 degrees Fahrenheit and pressures of about 600 pounds for most organic material-not at all extreme or energy intensive. And the cooking times are pretty short, usually about 15 minutes."

Once the organic soup is heated and partially depolymerized in the reactor vessel, phase two begins. "We quickly drop the slurry to a lower pressure," says Appel, pointing at a branching series of pipes. The rapid depressurization releases about 90 percent of the slurry's free water. Dehydration via depressurization is far cheaper in terms of energy consumed
than is heating and boiling off the water, particularly because no heat is wasted. "We send the flashed-off water back up there," Appel says, pointing to a pipe that leads to the beginning of the process, "to heat the incoming stream."

At this stage, the minerals-in turkey waste, they come mostly from bones-settle out and are shunted to storage tanks. Rich in calcium and magnesium, the dried brown powder "is a perfect balanced fertilizer," Appel says.

The remaining concentrated organic soup gushes into a second-stage reactor similar to the coke ovens used to refine oil into gasoline. "This technology is as old as the hills," says Appel, grinning broadly. The reactor heats the soup to about 900 degrees Fahrenheit to further break apart long molecular chains. Next, in vertical distillation columns, hot vapor flows up, condenses, and flows out from different levels: gases from the top of the column, light oils from the upper middle, heavier oils from the middle, water from the lower middle, and powdered carbon-used to manufacture tires, filters, and printer toners-from the bottom. "Gas is expensive to transport, so we use it on-site in the plant to heat the process," Appel says. The oil, minerals, and carbon are sold to the highest bidders.

Depending on the feedstock and the cooking and coking times, the process can be tweaked to make other specialty chemicals that may be even more profitable than oil. Turkey offal, for example, can be used to produce fatty acids for soap, tires, paints, and lubricants. Polyvinyl chloride, or PVC-the stuff of house siding, wallpapers, and plastic pipes-yields hydrochloric acid, a relatively benign and industrially valuable chemical used to make cleaners and solvents. "That's what's so great about making water a friend," says Appel. "The hydrogen in water combines with the chlorine in PVC to make it safe. If you burn PVC [in a municipal-waste incinerator], you get dioxin-very toxic." Brian Appel, CEO of Changing World Technologies, strolls through a thermal depolymerization plant in Philadelphia. Experiments at the pilot facility revealed that the process is scalable-plants can sprawl over acres and handle 4,000 tons of waste a day or be "small enough to go on the back of a flatbed truck" and handle just one ton daily, says Appel.

The technicians here have spent three years feeding different kinds of waste into their machinery to formulate recipes. In a little trailer next to the plant, Appel picks up a handful of one-gallon plastic bags sent by a potential customer in Japan. The first is full of ground-up appliances, each piece no larger than a pea. "Put a computer and a refrigerator into a grinder, and that's what you get," he says, shaking the bag. "It's PVC, wood, fiberglass, metal, just a mess of different things. This process handles mixed waste beautifully." Next to the ground-up appliances is a plastic bucket of municipal sewage. Appel pops the lid and instantly regrets it. "Whew," he says. "That is nasty."

Experimentation revealed that different waste streams require different cooking and coking times and yield different finished products. "It's a two-step process, and you do more in step one or step two depending on what you are processing," Terry Adams says. "With the turkey guts, you do the lion's share in the first stage. With mixed plastics, most of the breakdown
happens in the second stage." The oil-to-mineral ratios vary too. Plastic bottles, for example, yield copious amounts of oil, while tires yield more minerals and other solids. So far, says Adams, "nothing hazardous comes out from any feedstock we try."

"The only thing this process can't handle is nuclear waste," Appel says. "If it contains carbon, we can do it."

This Philadelphia pilot plant can handle only seven tons of waste a day, but 1,054 miles to the west, in Carthage, Missouri, about 100 yards from one of ConAgra Foods' massive Butterball Turkey plants, sits the company's first commercial-scale thermal depolymerization plant. The $20 million facility, scheduled to go online any day, is expected to digest more than 200 tons of turkey-processing waste every 24 hours.

The north side of Carthage smells like Thanksgiving all the time. At the Butterball plant, workers slaughter, pluck, parcook, and package 30,000 turkeys each workday, filling the air with the distinctive tang of boiling bird. A factory tour reveals the grisly realities of large-scale poultry processing. Inside, an endless chain of hanging carcasses clanks past knife-wielding laborers who slash away. Outside, a tanker truck idles, full to the top with fresh turkey blood. For many years, ConAgra Foods has trucked the plant's waste-feathers, organs, and other nonusable parts-to a rendering facility where it was ground and dried to make animal feed, fertilizer, and other chemical products. But bovine spongiform encephalopathy, also known as mad cow disease, can spread among cattle from recycled feed, and although no similar disease has been found in poultry, regulators are becoming skittish about feeding animals to animals. In Europe the practice is illegal for all livestock. Since 1997, the United States has prohibited the feeding of most recycled animal waste to cattle. Ultimately, the specter of European-style mad-cow regulations may kick-start the acceptance of thermal depolymerization. "In Europe, there are mountains of bones piling up," says Alf Andreassen. "When recycling waste into feed stops in this country, it will change everything."

Because depolymerization takes apart materials at the molecular level, Appel says, it is "the perfect process for destroying pathogens." On a wet afternoon in Carthage, he smiles at the new plant-an artless assemblage of gray and dun-colored buildings-as if it were his favorite child. "This plant will make 10 tons of gas per day, which will go back into the system to make heat to power the system," he says. "It will make 21,000 gallons of water, which will be clean enough to discharge into a municipal sewage system. Pathological vectors will be completely gone. It will make 11 tons of minerals and 600 barrels of oil, high-quality stuff, the same specs as a number two heating oil." He shakes his head almost as if he can't believe
it. "It's amazing. The Environmental Protection Agency doesn't even consider us waste handlers. We are actually manufacturers-that's what our permit says. This process changes the whole industrial equation. Waste goes from a cost to a profit."

He watches as burly men in coveralls weld and grind the complex loops of piping. A group of 15 investors and corporate advisers, including Howard Buffett, son of billionaire investor Warren Buffett, stroll among the sparks and hissing torches, listening to a tour led by plant manager Don Sanders. A veteran of the refinery business, Sanders emphasizes that once the
pressurized water is flashed off, "the process is similar to oil refining. The equipment, the procedures, the safety factors, the maintenance-it's all
proven technology."

And it will be profitable, promises Appel. "We've done so much testing in Philadelphia, we already know the costs," he says. "This is our first-out plant, and we estimate we'll make oil at $15 a barrel. In three to five years, we'll drop that to $10, the same as a medium-size oil exploration and production company. And it will get cheaper from there."

"We've got a lot of confidence in this," Buffett says. "I represent ConAgra's investment. We wouldn't be doing this if we didn't anticipate success." Buffett isn't alone. Appel has lined up federal grant money to help build demonstration plants to process chicken offal and manure in Alabama and crop residuals and grease in Nevada. Also in the works are plants to process turkey waste and manure in Colorado and pork and cheese waste in Italy. He says the first generation of depolymerization centers will be up and running in 2005. By then it should be clear whether the technology is as miraculous as its backers claim.

I will be happy for my fellow bloggers to link this to a myth. Barrels of turkey waste............mmmmmmmmmmmm.

Posted 5/21/2003 11:28:00 AM by Katie Bug link
Kicking Cancer's Ass

A friend of Silflay was diagnosed with testicular cancer a few months ago. This guy is young (early 30's) and, as you can imagine, this was not in his plans. He has gone through 3 rounds of chemo and is currently in his 4th round. He got the news on Monday that his numbers were back to normal and that he will NOT have to have surgery to remove the lymph nodes in his abdomen. I can't tell you how excited he is (and the rest of us) to get this news. They label him as being "in remission" for two years and then he will be deemed "cancer free." All other news pales in comparison to this. Screw Iraq, screw terrorism, screw the North Koreans, and screw Scott Peterson, OUR BUDDY HAS KICKED CANCER"S ASS!!!!!!!!

Posted 5/20/2003 10:33:00 PM by Sid link


One

Posted 5/20/2003 03:44:00 PM by Sid link
Two All-Beef Patties, Special Sauce, Lettuce, Cheese, Prions, Onions, On A Sesame Seed Bun

What might as well be the new marketing slogan of the Canadian beef industry. BSE, it's what's for dinner.

First SARS, now this. If this keeps up, Canada's entire economy will eventually be based entirely on sales of Mary Jane and beer.

As for the Canadian assurances that the cow "did not enter the food chain", that's nice, but I'm more concerned about how it caught the disease in the first place. If it was from contaminated animal feed, then feed from the same batch could have entered the U.S. months ago, which means that any beef eaten anywhere on the continent since January would be suspect. The just-issued ban is nothing but closing the barn door after the infectious cow has already escaped.

Posted 5/20/2003 03:22:00 PM by Sid link
Empty Calories

Father eats before Mommy.
Mommy eats before me.
And the big white man
with his healthy brown tan
says, "That's how it is, culturally."

Father won't fetch the water.
Mommy won't plant the grain.
And the big white man
with the golden watch band,
thinks that he's feeling my pain.

Father feeds me tradition
Mommy feeds me the same
And the big white man
speaks no ill of our clan;
refuses to cast any blame.

I will starve before Mommy
She will starve before...him.
And the big white man
is bereft of a plan,
for my culture he'll never condemn.

Posted 5/20/2003 12:34:00 AM by Sid link
Sierra Nevada Pale Ale

One of the oldest and certainly one of the best U.S. craft beers, not to mention one of the world's must-taste beers according to All About Beer Magazine. No idea how many are on the list, but I've had 59 of them. I'm tempted to print it out and keep it as a field guide.

The sainted wife and I stayed home home today at the behest of her uterus, which had kept one of us up all night playing "On your mark, get set, never mind!" until the wee hours of the morning. In case you're wondering, that person was not me. I slept like a baby, albeit one who had an cranky mother, a mother who woke it every hour or so to express her dissatisfaction with what I assume were things like the state of the bedsheets, the ambient temperature, or the Middle East. I woke only to the level of a dim semi-conciousness, one where I could respond without actually having to think. I learned to communicate effectively while not actually waking up ages ago, in college. It's amazing what a well timed "Ngh?" or "Yunh!" can do to make a woman think one is paying attention to a particular conversation in the middle of the night.

Or at high tea, for that matter.

So we stayed at home, in case "hurry up and wait" became "gotta go this instant". We'd long ago decided that the best possible baby scenario would be to have Ngnat at daycare when her brother arrived, so off she went. And back she came, in the late afternoon, to a house totally free from new brothers. No sudden discovery of sibling rivalry, no trip to the hospital to see the ruination of all her hopes and dreams. We went to the library, instead, where I assiduously searched for picture books where the author, in a fit of uncreative desperation, had decided "the hell with the words, I'm tired of the words, I'm just going to use a public domain children's song instead."

Most of these are by the children's book equivalent of Neal Adams -- "Draw Pretty, Write Bad!", but Ngnat loves them nonetheless, demanding one of them be read/sung to her as the last book before bedtime. We've covered Baa, Baa Black Sheep, Yankee Doodle and Down By The Station, among others. They're not real easy to find; it's not like the library has whole shelves devoted to the genre.

We watched a little league practice after the library. Ngnat insisted. She likes watching the tweener boys play ball, which is exactly what she calls it. She also likes climbing on the bleachers, at least until she falls, whereupon she cries and the other parents looked at me as if I had been shoving bamboo splinters underneath her nails. I picked her up and carry her back to the car, back to the new books for the library and the sucker she had carefully stowed sticky side down on the back seat.

From her perch against my chest, head carefully tucked into the hollow of my neck" "You're my best friend, Daddy."

Yes, very sweet, but she also tells her mom that at the drop of a hat, especially when it's close to bedtime. She tells the toddlers she plays with in the library the same. She assures the cats that, come what may, they are tops in her list.

Of course, with me, she means it.

Posted 5/19/2003 10:30:00 PM by Sid link
Drowned? Or Was Drowned?

The body of Omar Khan Sharif, the second and unsuccessful British participant in the April 30 Tel-Aviv suicide bombing, was found off the coast of Israel yesterday.

Police believe Sharif fled the nightclub after his explosives did not detonate. It was not clear why he had headed into the sea.

A bomb set off at Mike’s Place by Assif Mohammed Hanif, another British national of Pakistani descent, killed three Israelis. The two are believed to have used their British passports in order to enter Israel from the Gaza Strip.

Mr Sharif's wife, Tahira Tabassum, 27, and his brother, Zahid Hassan, were arrested in Derbyshire after the Tel Aviv blast, along with his sister, Parveef. They were due to appear at the Old Bailey yesterday, charged with withholding information from police that might have prevented a terror attack. Parveef is also charged with aiding and abetting an act of overseas terrorism.

Witnesses told Israeli media that Sharif ran south towards Jaffa port, scuffling with bystanders, after the bombing.

It's certainly possible that he did tried escape an Israeli manhunt by swimming, but his death is awfully convenient, ensuring that details regarding his recruitment in Britain, travel to Gaza, time with the martyr wannabe movement ISM, and explosives supplier never come to light.

It also begs the question of why, despite an intensive Israeli search, was the body not discovered until 12 days after the bombing? Had Omar drowned that night, the gases from internal decay should have forced his corpse to resurface within a couple of days. Warm water greatly speeds this process, and the waters off Jaffa average 70 degrees (21.5 C) in April. Unless the Israeli search was extremely and atypically inefficient, Omar either died eight to ten days after the bombing, or his body was somehow prevented from rising until advanced putrefaction released his body from whatever was holding it down. This could have been some sort of underwater debris, or the Fatah equivalent of concrete overshoes.

It's also possible, as some are already beginning to claim, that Sharif was killed by Israeli security forces, but there is no logic in that scenario. A live suicide bomber would seem to be much more useful to the Israelis than a dead one, whereas to the Palestinians a live suicide bomber, especially one who might have been understandably leery of of martyring himself after witnessing the process first hand, is much less valuable than a dead martyr.

Omar Khan Sharif went to Israel to die, and he got his wish, though certainly not in the way he expected, and probably at the hands of those he thought of as allies. He died a slow, agonizing, and ultimately fruitless death.

Good.

Posted 5/19/2003 11:46:00 AM by Sid link
Worst Nixon Impression Ever


photo via yahoo

Posted 5/19/2003 10:26:00 AM by Sid link
Hope They're Blindfolded


photo via yahoo

Members of Indonesian elite police force BRIMOB (Mobile Brigade) hang on a helicopter during a drill in Jakarta, Monday, May 19, 2003. Indonesia is reinforcing their security efforts to combat terrorism following the major military offensive against separatist rebels in Aceh.

Is it just me, or did anyone else look at this picture and think "Terrorist Piñata?"