Wow, Sully Is Pissed

The Dish:

The offense was calling 47 percent of Americans moochers, and saying that Obama's voters were simply voting for more money from the makers. And this horrible, callous, contemptuous, Randian sentence:

"[M]y job is is not to worry about those people. I'll never convince them they should take personal responsibility and care for their lives."

He did not say: "I'll never convince them they should vote for me." He accused 47 percent of Americans of choosing not to "take personal responsibility and care for their lives." He's describing half the country as parasites, bleeding the productive half dry. Half the country. He includes me, an Obama supporter, who pays three times the tax on my income that Romney does, who immigrated at 21, whose parents never went to college, and whose blog now employs six other people.
You know what, Mitt? Fuck you.

Mitt's getting a little personal?  You would think the anti-gay marriage issue might piss him off too.

Look Out For 2013

Businessweek, via Ritholtz:

Whether it’s Barack Obama or Mitt Romney taking the presidential oath of office in January, someone will have the misfortune of overseeing an economy that looks a lot like the one we have today: low growth, persistently high unemployment, and huge amounts of debt. Depending on what happens with the “fiscal cliff,” there’s at least a chance the U.S. will be in recession. The mere threat of $600 billion in tax hikes and spending cuts is already delaying business spending. Yet even if Congress does broker a deal and the worst of the fiscal cliff is postponed, 2013 is shaping up to be a rough year.
Big economic forces, both domestic and abroad, are combining to dampen growth. Fundamentals such as demographics and household finances that helped spur past recoveries are now slowing things down. These trends aren’t affected much by policy, so fixing them will be beyond the immediate grasp of an Obama or Romney administration. “No matter who wins the election, from a truly economic standpoint, 2013 will be an extremely challenging year,” says David Rosenberg, chief economist at Gluskin Sheff + Associates.

Things are going to suck ass, and the gridlock in DC will make things worse.  We're going to get punched in the gut, and then we'll have to listen to four more years of idiot Republicans saying things suck solely because of Obama.  I'm afraid I'm going to punch John Boehner before things are over (I'd much rather punch Jim Jordan, but he was an NCAA champion wrestler, so the only way I'd take him on would be with a pickax handle from the blindside).

Another Romney Lie

Mark Thoma:

When Romney talks about the people who don't pay taxes and tries to make you believe that 47 percent of us are moochers living off the system, it's important to recognize that the people who don't pay federal income taxes are mostly the elderly and students. And notice how narrow the category is -- it's only federal income taxes -- but there are lots of other types of taxes. When all things are considered, "nearly 100 percent of Americans pay taxes in some way, shape or form"

So Romney says all those old folks are voting for Obama, because they are moochers?  I think he underestimates the racial acceptance of the elderly. Romney is a lying sack of shit who is most likely going to lose big.  Unfortunately, Republicans won't understand that it isn't just Romney that voters don't like, it is the entire Republican party.

Breaking Amish

I missed this bit of reality TV exploitation, but luckily Grantland covers for me:

Speaking of Jeremiah, how's his language now that he's out of Amish country?
First words, upon leaving Penn Station:

"No more bishop looking after me. Fuck that. Holy shit, finally fucking free."

Well, OK then. How about you, Abe?
On the ladies of New York City:

"There's a lot of skanks."

Noted. Anything else?

"Her ass cheek was there and her dress stopped right there."

"I thought about throwing a quarter out and letting her pick it up."

All. Gentlemen. Everything.

Gosh darn, it sounds entertaining, but I'm just not going to tune in.

Aflatoxin Threatens Corn Crop

Scientific American:

Continuing heat and drought are withering corn crops across the Midwest, creating prime conditions for a fungus that produces a toxic carcinogen causing health problems in livestock, according to Purdue University researchers.
The fungus, Aspergillus ear rot, infects corn ears through silks or wounds. Fields most at risk, researchers said, were planted in late March or early April.
"Aspergillus ear rot is out there, but it varies greatly from field to field," said Kiersten Wise, a Purdue University Extension plant pathologist. "There is no field without some potential for the disease."
The U.S. Department of Agriculture regulates how much aflatoxin is allowed in livestock feed and corn for human consumption. Corn destined for humans and dairy cattle has the tightest limit, at 20 parts per billion. Corn destined intended to finish beef cattle can contain the fungus at concentrations up to 300 parts per billion.

It's a good thing beef cattle can take much higher limits on the stuff, because I'll probably be storing some corn in a gravity bed wagon this winter.  Hopefully nobody dies.

Hybrid Seeds and GMO Seeds

Marketplace:

Janisse Ray spends a lot of her time with seeds, thinking about them, writing about them and (of course) planting them in the ground. Her new book is called "The Seed Underground."
Ray explains that it's only in the last hundred years that farmers have shifted from caretakers to "renters" of genetic material in the form of high-tech seeds.
"With the advent of patenting laws and the ability to patent life, basically, a patent supercedes the rights of a farmer to save his own seeds," says Ray. Seeds have always had value, but the legal right to plant is a new phenomenon -- thanks to "G.M." or genetically-modified seeds.
"The Seed Underground" also takes readers to farms and neighborhood gardens around the country where people are cataloging and cultivating the seeds their families have planted for generations.  Ray says this underground movement (made up of those she has dubbed "quiet revolutionaries") is one way to preserve varieties of fruits and vegetables for the future.
Ray herself is "not opposed to technology," but she believes science should be used for "the good of all humanity" over the long haul.
"I'm opposed to science or technology being used for short-term profits," she sums up. "I can say that hybrid seeds have brought us a lot of good, and perhaps [genetically-modified seeds] could."

Wait a second:

The 1970s marked the first time when scientists patented methods on their biotechnological inventions with recombinant DNA. It wasn’t until 1980 that patents for whole-scale living organisms were permitted. In Diamond v. Chakrabarty, the U.S. Supreme Court established the patentability of living matter, provided it was truly "man-made." The subject for this particular case was a genetically engineered bacterium that was specifically modified to help clean up and degrade oil spills.
Since that 1980 court case, there has been much patenting of genetically modified organisms. This includes bacteria (as just mentioned), viruses, seeds, plants, and even non-human animals. For example, a genetically modified mouse, dubbed the Oncomouse, that is useful for studying cancer, was patented by Harvard University.

So what happened a little less than 100 years ago?  How about the development of hybrid seed:

 In agriculture and gardening, hybrid seed is seed produced by cross-pollinated plants. In hybrid seed production, the crosses are specific and controlled. The advantage of growing hybrid seed compared to inbred lines comes from heterosis. To produce hybrid seed, elite inbred varieties with well documented and consistent phenotypes (such as yield) are crossed and the resulting hybrid seed is collected. Another factor that is important in hybrid seed production is the combining ability of the parent plants. Although two elite inbred parent plant varieties may produce the highest yields of their crop, it does not necessarily mean that crossing these inbreds will result in the highest yielding hybrid. Combining ability is the term used to describe the level of heterosis that the parents will generate in the resultant seed. Higher combining ability between the parents results in increased performance in the resulting hybrid seed. Hybrids are bred to improve the characteristics of the resulting plants, such as better yield, greater uniformity, improved color, disease resistance, and so forth. Today, hybrid seed production is predominant in agriculture and home gardening, and is one of the main contributing factors to the dramatic rise in agricultural output during the last half of the 20th century. In the US, the commercial market was launched in the 1920s, with the first hybrid maize. All of the hybrid seeds planted by the farmer will be the same hybrid, which causes the first generation of seed from the hybrids planted to be inbred. This is why hybrid seed is generally not saved from subsequent generations and is purchased for each planting. Hybrid seeds are much dearer than normal seeds, due to the technology, time and effort put in to produce them. (emphasis mine)

 Hmm, the 1920s. Let's take a look at a chart:

So farmers could have continued to use open-pollinated varieties of corn they used from the beginning of time until really the mid '30s or so, or they could start buying better yielding hybrid seeds which would yield much more grain, even though they wouldn't be able to reuse the seed. 

It is true that farmers can't reuse the patented GMO soybeans (yet), but they knew that was part of the deal going in.  But considering how much benefit they have seen from the hybrid seeds, I'm not surprised they took that deal.  Saving seed is beneficial, but improved genetics is more beneficial.  Patents weren't the things that killed open variety corn.

George Brett On His Brawls

At Grantland:

George Brett makes me laugh. My favorite George Brett freakout here.

NASA Photo of the Day

September 11:

Milky Way Over the Bungle Bungles
Image Credit & Copyright: Mike Salway Explanation: Which part of this picture do you find more interesting -- the land or the sky? Advocates for the land might cite the beauty of the ancient domes of the Bungle Bungle Range in Western Australia. These picturesque domes appear as huge layered beehives and are made of sandstones and conglomerates deposited over 350 million years ago. Advocates for the sky might laud the beauty of the Milky Way's central band shown arching from horizon to horizon. The photogenic Milky Way band formed over 10 billion years ago and now includes many well-known nebulae and bright stars. Fortunately, you don't have to decide and can enjoy both together in this beautiful 8-frame panorama taken from the dark skies of Purnululu National Park about two months ago.

Is Kansas Crazy?

The Kansas State Objection Board is weighing whether to remove the current U.S. President from the fall election ballot:

A GOP-controlled board in Kansas is trying to decide whether to remove President Obama from the state ballot over objections about his birth certificate.
The State Objections Board -- consisting of three of the state's top Republican elected officials -- ruled Thursday it did not yet have enough information and postponed a decision until Monday.
"I don't think it's a frivolous objection," Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach told the Topeka Capital-Journal. "I do think the factual record could be supplemented."

Kris Kobach is a clown.  That is why he is a rising star in the Republican party.  How do such morons get put in place to run entire states?

The Salton Sea Mess

Wired looks at the history of the accidental American lake:

This week, Los Angeles got a whiff of the future.
A heinous rotten-egg smell settled into the metropolis, a stench more familiar to residents lining the Salton Sea, some 150 miles to the east. It was this 376-square-mile body of water, created by accident in the middle of the desert over a century ago, that belched up the fetid cloud. And such episodes will continue to plague Southern California as the collapse of the Salton Sea ecosystem accelerates over the coming years.
Considered to be among the world’s most vital avian habitats and — until recently — one of its most productive fisheries, the Salton Sea is in a state of wild flux, the scene of fish and bird die-offs of unfathomable proportions. It was the resulting sea-bottom biomass that a storm churned earlier this week, releasing gases that drifted into Los Angeles.
This is just the latest episode in the Salton Sea’s long, painful history of sickness and health and booms and busts — a stinky side effect of a great American experiment to civilize the western deserts. By economic measurements, this experiment has been an astounding success. By environmental measurements, it’s shaping up to be pure disaster.
These days, in the 115-degree heat of summer the Sea stinks so bad that the reek sticks in your throat like Elmer’s Glue. Chemical-laced dust kicked up from its rapidly receding shoreline contributes to an asthma rate for local children three times higher than the state average. It’s been variously called a natural wonder, a national embarrassment, paradise, and the ecological equivalent of the Chernobyl disaster.

The whole story is interesting, and a warning about man's struggle with nature.  More on the Salton Sea here.