The Wombat’s Blog

Environment or Emotion - Precious or Perilous0

One of the most sacred cows in Hawaii, well maybe in the country because of what it stands for, turns out to be a significant environmental hazard, 500,000 gallons worth of hazards. Yet because it is sacred, it’s hard to do anything about it. As they say, the oil brings back 1941, and that removing the oil would be akin to desecrating the tomb.

Argh … ok, say this was Bhopal, or a Concentration Camp, or any other site of a big human disaster - I guess with the condition that the victims are still buried there. The stated position would be: Don’t remove anything because you’d be committing a sacrilegious act. I just hope that keeping the oil in there doesn’t deteriorate the memorial faster than taking it out, because who would that serve long-term? Does this become a different story once the last living survivors has passed away?
(Original found here.)

A Famous Battleship’s Portentous Cargo
Oil seeping from the USS Arizona is a poignant reminder for tourists — and a potential environmental hazard.
By Tony Perry, LA Times Staff Writer
February 11, 2007

PEARL HARBOR, HAWAII — The 1.6 million visitors a year to the USS Arizona Memorial are told by their guides about the legends surrounding the oil that still bubbles up from the sunken battleship.

One legend holds that the oil represents the tears of the 900-plus sailors and Marines entombed below decks since the Japanese attack of Dec. 7, 1941. Another says the oil will continue to surface until the last Arizona survivor dies.

But the fact is that 500,000 or more gallons of fuel oil are estimated to remain aboard the Arizona. Now the National Park Service and the Navy, which jointly maintain the memorial, are in the early stages of a comprehensive study of the ship and the possibility that its oil might someday spill into Pearl Harbor, fouling the shoreline and hampering naval operations.

When 100,000 gallons of jet fuel spilled from a pipeline in 1987 — unrelated to the Arizona — it disrupted the Navy base here for two months.

A 2005 report for the Park Service said a spill of 500,000 gallons from the Arizona “may be catastrophic.”

Though the scientific consensus is that such a spill is unlikely, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Office of Response and Restoration late last year updated its emergency plan just in case.

“It’s a far more complex situation than we ever imagined,” said James P. Delgado, a noted shipwreck explorer and the executive director of the Institute of Nautical Archaeology. He wrote a 1989 report that led to the Arizona’s being named a national landmark.

A day before the attack that plunged America into World War II, the Arizona had taken on 1.2 million gallons of fuel oil.

Much of it spilled into the water after an armor-piercing bomb from a Japanese warplane struck the battleship’s forward magazine.

An enormous explosion lifted the ship out of the water.

It sank within nine minutes — the time it now takes a Navy launch to transport people from the Arizona Memorial Visitors Center to the memorial, which bestrides, but does not touch, the ship.

As part of the Park Service study, computer modeling at the National Institute of Standards and Technology — using data from divers and remote-control cameras — aims to see how the oil may be moving inside the wreckage and how soon corrosion may collapse the steel hull, allowing the oil to push to the surface.

Preliminary results suggest the oil movement is modest and corrosion has been slowed by the mud at the bottom of the harbor, said Timothy Foecke, a metallurgist at the institute.

Delgado believes the study on the Arizona will provide a key to the future of the hundreds of other ships sunk during World War II and how soon oil inside those ships may escape into the water.

Although the oil may — or may not — pose a serious environmental risk, there is no disputing that for many, it adds to the memorial’s emotional power.

Visitors walk the 184-foot-long memorial and scan the “shrine room” wall that contains the names of the 1,177 men who were killed aboard the Arizona. Many visitors stare down at the rusted remains of Gun Turret 2 and the small rainbow-colored ringlets of oil that reach the surface — several quarts a day.

“When people see and smell the oil, they’re brought back to the world of Dec. 7,” said Daniel Martinez, the Park Service historian at the memorial.

“The oil is a reminder that the Arizona is a wounded and dying ship.”

The public attachment to the Arizona and the memorial also poses problems regarding the oil, experts said.

For any other wrecked ship, punching holes in the hull and pumping out the oil would be relatively easy, particularly for a ship that is so close to land and sits in only 40 feet of water. But for the Arizona, such an idea is considered unthinkable, except as a last alternative.

Along with being told the legends, visitors are assured that nothing so intrusive will happen to the Arizona.

Actor Ernest Borgnine, who served in the Navy during World War II, is the narrator of a self-guided audio tour that visitors can rent at the visitors center. Near the end of the tour, Borgnine says many people believe that “to remove the oil would be to desecrate the tomb.”

When the Park Service approaches the wreckage, it makes sure to discuss its plans with the USS Arizona Reunion Assn., a survivors group.

“We are very, very conscious of the sanctity of the Arizona,” Martinez said.

Posted: general stuff

Personal Choice or Government Intervention0

Another article for the government stepping in as a matter of public policy. Eating, and eating out is a personal choice. What you eat is another personal choice. But, the government says, people are sheep, and we are the ones that have to deal with the impending health crisis. I read somewhere that because people are now 25 lbs heavier than 20 years ago, we’re wasting billions of gallons of oil dragging our now fatter asses to work. So in order to save the planet the government needs to step in and protect its population.

What happened to capitalism? Wouldn’t it be much better to just say that chronic diseases - that you yourself brought on - won’t be covered by insurance and that there is no obligation on doctors or hospitals to assist you. If you show up in the hospital because you ate bad food all your life … then that was your choice. Your responsibility is to live with the consequences.
The funny part is that I heard a senior woman in our supermarket talking to another senior woman when picking out a loaf of soft squishy bread “don’t take that one. I don’t like those trans fats.”
(Original found here.)

Tempting Fat
The coming crackdown on trans fats.
By William Saletan
Posted Saturday, Dec. 9, 2006, at 1:31 AM ET
Put your hands in the air, and step away from the cookie.

That’s the message from New York City, where the health department has just ordered the city’s 25,000 restaurants to purge nearly all trans fats from their menus. Restaurant owners are terrified that other cities will follow. In the dough business, like show business, New York leads the way. If you can’t bake it there, you can’t bake it anywhere.

The whole world is engulfed in a war on fat. On one side are health crusaders. On the other side are food sellers and libertarians. Lately, the health costs of obesity have prodded politicians into the war, shifting the balance of power to the crusaders. Still, Americans draw the line at food. You stamped out our cigarettes, you made us wear seat belts, but you’ll get our burgers when you pry them from our cold, dead hands.
Click Here!

But that’s the funny thing about trans fats: They aren’t exactly food. A century ago, they hardly existed. Nature didn’t mass-produce them; we did. By adding hydrogen to liquid vegetable oils—hence the term “partially hydrogenated”—we learned how to solidify these oils, mimicking butter. The first trans-fat triumph, in 1911, was Crisco.

Solidity remains a central purpose of this technology. Look at the New York health department’s list of products made with trans fats: french fries, taco shells, doughnuts, pizza dough, crackers, cookies, and pie crusts. What do these products have in common? They start out spongy and end up crunchy. Trans fats create texture, not flavor. They allow fast frying, so you can make food crispy without losing its moisture. And they’re slow to go bad, so you can keep cookies longer on store shelves.

Trans fats proliferated because they were cheap. Then, in the 1970s and 1980s, when we learned how harmful saturated fats were, manufacturers and restaurants dumped them and switched to trans fats. As the National Restaurant Association bitterly observed in its testimony against the New York ban, trans fats are everywhere because the “industry replaced one fat with another.”

Everything that’s wrong with trans fats follows from their industrial heritage. In nature, things generally don’t stick around unless they serve some purpose. Cream is lousy for adult arteries, but it nourishes babies of all kinds. In nature, things that are harmful in excess tend to disappear unless they’re safe in moderation. And nature is always looking for alternatives, so if something dangerous is still here, it has probably been hard to replace.

None of these things is true of trans fats. They’re worse than saturated fats, because, in addition to raising bad cholesterol, they lower good cholesterol. As the health department points out, “there is no safe level of artificial trans fat consumption … in contrast to other dietary fats which, when consumed in moderation, are a natural part of a healthy diet. Artificially produced trans fat is relatively new to our food supply and confers no known health benefit.”

Because trans fats are industrial, regulating them feels like regulating chemicals, not food. The department understands this. In its two documents explaining the ban, it uses the word “artificial” 77 times. It points out that most restaurant customers “have no way of knowing whether or not a product contains trans fat.” Restaurant associations admit that even their members don’t know what trans fats are. So, it’s hard to defend trans fats as a free choice.

Because trans fats are industrial, they’re easy to replace. Businesses that switched to them years ago can switch again. Many already have. You can even buy Crisco without them. Companies that cling to trans fats fret that their food won’t taste the same, but companies that have let go say customers can’t tell the difference. After all, trans fats were never about taste. McDonald’s insists that despite years of research, it hasn’t found a trans-fat-free oil that will keep its fries McDelicious. Please. You can get trans-fat-free fries at McDonald’s right now. You just have to go to one of its franchises in Denmark, where trans fats are virtually illegal.

Pretty soon, you won’t have to go to Denmark. In January, the FDA began requiring trans-fat information on food labels. Legislators in New Jersey, Chicago, and Louisville floated trans-fat bans even before New York’s plan went through. Restaurants say health crusaders won’t stop with trans fats, and they’re right. The same day it banned trans fats, New York ordered restaurants with standardized menus to prominently display the number of calories in each item. A Chicago councilman wants to copy that idea.

From a libertarian standpoint, the danger is that trans fats, having been targeted because, in some ways, they’re not food, will lay the groundwork for more dietary regulation because, in other ways, they are. Once you’ve banned one kind of fat, it’s easier to tackle another. You start with the argument health crusaders used in Chicago: You’re doing it to help parents protect kids. Then you try the maneuver they used in New York: quantifying now many lives you’ll save. Purging trans fats in New York would save at least 500 lives a year and possibly 1,400, said the health department. That’s more than the number saved by seat belts.

The health-policy climate is clearly shifting in this direction. The instigator of the New York ban, city health Commissioner Thomas Frieden, says chronic diseases such as obesity and diabetes are eclipsing infectious diseases. Most experts and politicians share that view. We already regulate restaurants for infectious disease; why not extend that scrutiny to chronic disease? That’s how New York plans to enforce its ban: “Food safety inspectors will check for artificial trans fat during regular yearly inspections.”

Even the business lobby is playing along. Every restaurant association that testified against New York’s ban pointed out that on aggregate, if not ounce for ounce, saturated fats are more harmful than trans fats. This was supposed to be an argument against the ban. But once you accept the ban, it becomes an argument for targeting saturated fats, too. Way to go, food industry! First you concoct a fat that begs for regulation; then you make the case for going beyond it. You’re cooking your own goose. Extra crispy, of course.

Posted: general stuff

Reflection on Spam0

(Original article found here)

This is my 100th post. Appropriate that it focuses on Hawaii’s state food: spam. Here is an article on a Spam carving contest at the local Kohala County Fair. Below is more on spam.

Carving contest serves up meaty competition for artists
by Betsy Tranquilli
West Hawaii Today
btranquilli@westhawaiitoday.com

Monday, October 9, 2006 8:54 AM HST

Armed with a plastic knife and some toothpicks, Kiana Savedra, a 10-year-old food artist went to work. With the concentration and discipline of great artists like Michelangelo and Da Vinci, she worked intensely for an hour, carving little hearts from her soft, spongy medium and stacking them in a row.

“It’s just, like, all hearts stacked like flowers,” she said describing her artistic rendering. “Last year I came in second with my standing flowers. I’m hoping for first place this year.”

But Savedra had some stiff competition in her quest to come out on top. Across the room, 15-year-old Keoni Manahtan, participating in the carving contest for the first time, was stacking cubes until the shape of a large horse formed before him.

“At first, I was going to go with a chair, but then I changed my mind,” Manahtan said.

Across the table, Laura Lunchick and her 7-year-old son Jack were also at work. Laura decided to go with a Halloween theme and was busy carving a coffin before turning her attention to making Dracula while Jack worked on a dragon. Laura was inexperienced in working with her given medium, but adapted quickly.

“You have to keep stopping to wipe your hands because of all the fat,” Laura said chuckling.

Laura, Jack, Kiana, Keoni and about 25 others defied every mother’s scolding to not play with their food as they carved, molded and stacked mounds of Spam as part of the 7th annual Spam carving contest at the Kohala Country Fair Saturday.

The unique and pungent contest was just one of several contests at the fair, from bubble gum blowing and pie eating, but it is always the most popular, fair volunteer Jennifer Snyder said. This year, the Hummel company donated Spam hats for all the participants.

“This year, everyone is a winner,” Snyder said.

Thousands of people enjoyed live music, food from local eateries, games and shopping for crafts at vendor booths at the 22nd annual fair. The fair is a sponsored project of the North Kohala Community Resource Center, a nonprofit that sponsors approximately 40 volunteer community improvement projects in the North Hawaii region.

But of all the activities to enjoy, it was the Spam contest that had a magnetic draw for people. Crowding around the tent, people marveled at what some of the contestants were able to create from the popular processed meat.

And more than one attendee marveled at the smell coming from the tent.

“It was definitely one of the draws for us,” said Indiana resident Brenda Kammerling. “I never heard of anything like this before.”

“And they’re doing this all from a can of Spam,” her sister-in-law Dee Kammerling of San Francisco added. “Amazing.”

Now just a few words on the other kind of spam.

After doing this for 100 posts, I’m noticing that blogs attract it’s own kind of spam. Today I got several messages advertising various sexual links, the same message a half dozen times. Then there are the guys who are responding “great blog, keep it going,” without any indication that they’re actually “real.” The response is so generic, I could be writing “barf” and would get the same response. Then I found several messages in my spam bucket from my new buddy bruce (or adam) in Australia complaining about various things such as me suppressing free speech, and then suggesting that I may be intellectually challenged. That’s entirely possible. It’s not worth getting the messages out of the spam bucket.

To communicate, be nice, be civil, be smart. THIS is not the way to communicate - Utah Cactus Finger link here.

Posted: general stuff, social/culture, local

Economics of Terror0

After the article on the risk of being in a war, we now get an article looking at the economics of terror. Their biggest concern: wasting $120 billion a year on that war. Original article found here. I think there’s more being lost here than just money.

The failed economics of terror
09/14/2006

In the five years since Sept. 11, 2001, the American people have overcome the psychological constrictions of terrorism by remaining prosperous and productive.

Since that time, the American economy has grown 15 percent. American productivity — the efficiency with which we work — is up 14 percent. Corporate profits are up nearly 90 percent. The stock market is up 20 percent. The unemployment rate has dropped to 4.7 percent from 5 percent.

In these stubborn facts lies a lesson about terror as an economic weapon: It’s a weak one. Short of obtaining and using a nuclear weapon, terrorists lack the power to seriously disrupt the American economy.

The most serious danger posed by terrorists lies not in what they can do to us, but in what they can provoke us into doing to ourselves: blundering into a costly war, for example.

The psychological shock — and aftershocks — of 9/11 make it hard to keep economic reality in perspective. But the loss of the World Trade Center and related disruptions equal little more than a rounding error in an $11 trillion annual economy. America was coming off the bottom of a mild recession when 9/11 sent a chill down the nation’s spine. For a while, economists worried and prognosticated that both business and frightened consumers would cut back sharply on spending. That didn’t happen. The Fed lowered interest rates, GM put its cars on sale and the economy moved on track, barely missing a beat. After a few weeks’ hesitation, the public began flying again. Gross Domestic Product actually grew faster in the months after 9/11 than before.

America and its allies drove the Taliban and al-Qaida out of Afghanistan quickly and on the cheap, teaming up with local warlords and losing few American lives. We began to roll up most of the terrorist leadership around the world.

Had we continued on that course, we might have reduced our enemies to impotence and won the admiration of the world. Instead, we went to war against Iraq.

We’re now pumping $120 billion a year — all of it borrowed money — into a pit with no visible bottom. Iran, seeing America stuck in the quagmire next door, feels emboldened to develop its own nuclear weapons. Nervousness over that mess helped send gasoline prices over $3 last month. And now the Taliban is attempting a comeback.

The terrorists’ weapon of fear, while it upended domestic and international politics, shattered our complacency and sent us to war, has had little real power when applied to the American economy.

The challenge for our leaders is to fight terror rationally, carefully weighing the risks and rewards so that we don’t end up inflicting unnecessary collateral damage.

Posted: general stuff

Simple, simpler, simplistic0

An article published in the Stl. Louis Post-Dispatch on 23. Aug. (and here 24. Aug.) Kind of scary that we have “politicians bet on the electorate’s short attention span.” Smart politicians, reasoned debate, rational thought are bad things. So we end up with this. The implications of what this means towards solving ANY problem are astonishing. If you watch the news today, it is clear that the administration is now saying that Iraq has nothing to do with 9/11. Oops - but actually “who cares.” Yes, now it’s all about bringing democracy, or if you read one level down, about preventing the terrorists from getting oil revenues so they can start a really big war against us.

But as long as you educate people with the full belief that “thought = bad”, “entertainment = good” that’s what you will get. It starts down there. Why do you need smart people, if in an area of outsourcing there are no smart jobs left. Well, because you will develop yourself out of any significance. And while you’re the one with the red button, that’s a bad thing for everybody.

Simple, simpler, simplistic
At a hastily-called news conference Monday, President George W. Bush offered a kind of trailer for Republican themes in this fall’s midterm elections:

Coming this November: A battle for America’s soul. A great nation, its psyche strained from years of war, decides whether it will cut and run, or stay the course and keep terrorists from following us home. One party, decent but confused, wants to leave. The other party stands for freedom. Not since Travis drew his saber and etched the line in the sand at the Alamo has the choice been more clear.

So the battle lines have been drawn. With polls showing 60 percent of the public disagreeing with his handling of the war in Iraq, with Democrats ginning up a “redeployment” strategy that calls for vague, deadline-free withdrawal of U.S. forces, with Britain’s top military leader in Iraq, Gen. Robert Fry, Tuesday calling the situation “a civil war in miniature,” Mr. Bush has decided to keep things simple. And simplistic.

“I’d be running on the economy, and I’d be running on national security,” the president said. “But since I’m not running, I can only serve as an advisor to those who are.”