Of course they did…

A vegan cheese won an award for being an excellent cheese, and so dairy farmers conspired to disqualify the winner because its not made with milk and therefore not cheese.

People get so hung up on trivial things - cheese, milk, beef, chicken, these are all words we are familiar with and have a specific meaning in general. But why can't these things include both plant and animal based products?

Just label it accordingly, and list the ingredients. 

I am not sure why it matters.  Andrew Zimmern in his "Bizarre Foods" show used to use the tagline "if it looks good, eat it" which I think sums this up well.

Personally, I don't eat mammals, but I will eat eggs and cow/sheep/goat milk products.  Some of the plant based alternatives are okay, but most of them I don't care for.  But if someone wants to eat animal products - or cares not to eat any of them - why do I care?

Eat what makes you happy.

https://boingboing.net/2024/04/29/after-a-vegan-blue-cheese-won-the-good-food-award-panicked-dairy-cheese-makers-forced-the-foundation-to-disqualify-it.html

And that’s what great about scientific theories

The James Webb Space Telescope caused some amount of controversy in the cosmological space.  The way the universe appeared through its sensors appeared to conflict with what we had previously learned through observation and other studies.

But ... after taking some time to really evaluate the results, and how they relate to, say, what we see with the Hubble Space Telescope, scientists are re-thinking what they observe, and maybe there is no cosmological crisis after all.

It would appear that the old and new findings likely do agree, but IMHO its about perspective.  You might think about it in the same way that you think about relativity.  The location of the observer is a factor in understanding that theory - much like the positioning of the various spacecraft helps us to understand the universe.

https://bigthink.com/hard-science/james-webb-space-telescope-cosmology/

Bitchin' Dave's Newsletter - Apr 30

 Dave’s Musings

The pesky law of unintended consequences came into play again recently.

The state of Florida wanted to crack down on immigration and thus caused many migrant workers to leave, and left the farmers in the state without workers to work the fields.  So as this example points out, strawberries are rotting because they aren't picked. And the state says that's because they're not hiring the right people.  Which are…. Who, exactly?  And the net result is that the cost of doing business goes up - and consumers will have to pay more just to keep the farm open.  https://www.npr.org/2024/04/26/1242236604/florida-economy-immigration-businesses-workers-undocumented

China has an ambitious plan to send a probe to the far side of the moon, retrieve a sample, and return it to Earth for analysis. Color me intrigued! Thus far, we've only studied the near side, so it will be interesting to learn more about the part we can't see. And of course, communication with the probe will be mostly impossible due to the location - so this will undoubtedly be a nail biter for the team. https://www.science.org/content/article/china-set-fetch-first-rocks-mysterious-far-side-moon

A long, hot summer is looming. Research suggests that most of the US will experience a hotter-than-average summer, which is problematic on so many levels. And silly me, here I am thinking anyone cares and maybe could throw a little money toward research and attempting to mitigate it in some way. https://www.axios.com/2024/04/23/summer-2024-heat-weather

I recently visited Disney World, and I noticed the crowds were lighter that I had expected, and seemed lighter than the last few years. I wound up having a few conversations with Cast Members, and they, too, were surprised by the relative lack of crowds given the time of year. One mentioned that they feared they might get their hours reduced (the very thing that would clearly indicate that something not-so-great is happening). Its impossible not to notice what's going on with the company - the stumbles with the CEO, the fight with the governor of Florida, and the proxy war surely have made their impact. And while some might say its "woke politics" catching up, I might suggest that they are wrong -but I think there may be something more specific and tangible to look at. There are problems with the business is being run (see the proxy vote), and surely the ongoing reach into everyones wallets (ticket prices, up charges, the relative lack of benefits to loyal fans) is also a factor. I saw a survey recently that asked consumer for their views on theme parks, and then ranked them on value and fun. Dollywood topped the list (!) and none of the Disney parks were in the top 5. Which should be a wakeup call.

National parks are a treasure,  and now more people are starting to explore them (personally I've been to about a dozen, and hope to make it to many more in the future).  But with the increased traffic comes a delay at entry because many of them have a small entrance fee.  The park service decided to respond by making some of them cashless (though it's soon to be all of them). It speeds thing up when the rangers don't have to make change, they say.  People have voiced their concerns and at times rangers have suggested that people simply go to a local Walmart and buy a gift card for cash and use that for entrance.  But here's the thing that people point out: the NPS is a government agency. And they are saying this government agency will not accept the legal tender (ie dollars issued by the government).  There's something wrong with that.  And then that begs the question: why is there a fee at all? The NPS gets a budget from the government. The fees are to cover the cost of vehicular traffic causing road wear and tear. They are nominal, but they exist. Why not increase the congressional budget by a few percent and remove the fee?

Latest video

I had a bit of an issue with a video I did about the Disney World monorail, and YouTube saw fit to remove it (!). So I'm rethinking what I want to present, and have several videos in pre-production which will cover much of the same ground, while avoiding the issue. (in case you read this far, and are curious, its a copyright issue that some jerk decided to raise, and then proceeded to be a complete and total douche about it ... but that's life on the good old internet) The first in my replacement series is a history of the monorail, starting with Walt Disney and his plans: https://youtu.be/xyFlpdoLCIg

One Little Spark …

Near Atlanta, there's a rock formation with a carving of several "heroes of the South" from the civil war era. I've been there, and I have to say that a confederate monument on this scale always struck me as a little odd. And the fact that the state currently owns it, and maintains it, and keeps it as a tourist attraction of sorts harkens back to a darker time in our history. If you read through the Wikipedia entry noted below, you'll get a sense of the inherent problems, namely that: This is another in a long series of monuments meant to remind the formerly enslaved that the confederacy was more than willing to fight to keep them enslaved The daughters of the confederacy played a role in creating this (because of course they did), and The mountain was once owned by a founding member of the KKK, and regular meetings were held there. There's more, but its all kind of absurd when you think about it... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stone_Mountain

Space junk. And who pays?

I found this interesting. We had another bit of space debris return to earth recently. Scientists suggested it would burn up on reentry and thus didn't plot an exact course for its de-orbit. 

It did not burn up. It did hit a house on the west coast of Florida and caused some amount of damage to the house and the surroundings. 

The homeowner talked with the insurance company about repairs, and were told that they'd have to pay the deductible - and that would not cover some of the other damage. 

This was not something that happened to the house due to an issue inside. This was not a natural disaster. And yet, insurance told them "sorry."

And then there was a complicating factor that the debris in question was part of a European space agency experiment. Which may have made this an international issue. But since it was attached to the ISS (which is under nasas purveyance), nasa agreed to cover at least some of the costs. 

But it leads to much bigger questions. Can we accurately predict what will happen with these things? Who is responsible? What if it was a private company's satellite? What if people were actually harmed? 

There's a lot of junk in space, and we need to be planning to do something with it. 

https://www.npr.org/2024/04/23/1243676256/space-station-junk-hits-florida-home-liability

Deep space transmission.

You may recall that the psyche mission had a major component that was an ability to send larger amounts of data from longer distances. 

Until now, we've been using radio waves to transmit data from longer distances (though we have compressed data from shorter distances, which ups the amount of data that can be returned). This technology allows us to use lasers to achieve the mission parameter, about 1 MBps. 

While it was still "near" to earth, they transmitted a prerecorded cat video with no data loss. 

Now, they are transmitting telemetry and "new" data from a distance about 1.5 as far as the earth to the sun … and achieving an astonishing 25 MBps. 

It's exciting. And opens up new possibilities for deep space communication.  

It's a function of the equipment used and distance, but for context, Apollo missions to the moon had a latency of about 3 seconds. This would be essentially real time.  

https://www.iflscience.com/nasa-just-received-laser-message-beamed-from-a-colossal-226-million-kilometers-away-73968

And now this

I would posit that this is the very reason why those in power don't give two wits about climate change. It doesn't affect them; only the poor people who they can't be bothered to help. 

Of course it's not that simple, but the truth is harsh sometimes. 

https://abcnews.go.com/US/power-us-climate-change-disproportionately-impacted-vulnerable-us/story?id=109325414

A win for workers…

Two things happened this week that are welcome news: salaried employees making around $58k or less will be due overtime if their hours exceed 40 in a week. It stops organizations from taking advantage of salaried employees in the middle management group. 

And then there was the decision to do away with non-compete clauses, meaning employees are free to leave and go and work elsewhere without consequence. 

Companies HATE this and are suing to stop it. In so many words, companies are saying their work is so important and so secret that they have to prevent employees from leaving; and rubbing salt in the wound by saying "we don't care about you - only our profit!"

Here's to hoping things continue to tilt in favor of the workers…

https://abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory/us-noncompete-agreements-overtime-pay-affect-workers-109589079