Later On

Interesting:

Next month, Californians will vote on Proposition 19, a measure to legalize marijuana. Because no state has ever taken such a step, voters are being subjected to a stream of fear-mongering assertions, unaccompanied by evidence, about what is likely to happen if drug prohibition is repealed.

But it need not — and should not — be that way.

Ten years ago, Portugal became the first Western nation to pass full-scale, nationwide decriminalization. That law, passed Oct. 1, 2000, abolished criminal sanctions for all narcotics — not just marijuana but also “hard drugs” like heroin and cocaine.

This applies only to drugs for personal use; drug trafficking remains a criminal offense. There is now a decade’s worth of empirical data on what actually happens — and does not happen — when criminal sanctions against drug possession are lifted.

Individuals caught with drugs in Portugal are no longer arrested or treated as criminals. Instead, they are sent to a tribunal of health professionals, where they are offered the opportunity, but are not compelled, to seek government-provided treatment.

For those found to be addicts, tribunals have the power to impose noncriminal sanctions. But in practice, the overriding goal is to direct people to treatment.

By any metric, Portugal’s drug-decriminalization scheme has been a resounding success. Drug usage in many categories has decreased in absolute terms, including for key demographic groups, like 15-to-19-year-olds. Where usage rates have increased, the increases have been modest — far less than in most other European Union nations, which continue to use a criminalization approach.

Portugal, whose drug problems were among the worst in Europe, now has the lowest usage rate for marijuana and one of the lowest for cocaine. Drug-related pathologies, including HIV transmission, hepatitis transmission and drug-related deaths, have declined significantly.

Beyond the data, Portugal’s success with decriminalization is illustrated by the absence of political agitation for a return to criminalization. As one might expect for a socially conservative and predominantly Roman Catholic country, the decriminalization proposal sparked intense controversy a decade ago…

Continue reading. I don’t think the obvious success of Portugal’s approach will have much effect in Congress. Arguments against drugs are not evidence-based, so evidence has no effect on the arguments. And many in Congress believe that the US is so ”special” (in the good sense) that it has nothing to learn from other nations which, by definition, are inferior to the US in every way.

Here’s a comprehensive report on Portugal’s drug decriminalization program and its effects.

The Apple touchpad requires a firm push to click, whereas the Windows touchpad can “click” with a tap. Advantage: Windows. Or so I thought at first. But now, using again a Windows laptop with a touchpad, I realize that the touchpad responds not only to taps but also to a finger or thumb accidentally brushing the surface, which generally sends the cursor to some remote location on the screen. There is some program available to curtail this sensitivity—and for all I know, one can adjust a setting in Windows. But right now I see the advantages of the Apple approach.

BTW, even if I should get a MacBook Pro, I would still keep the Windows desktop. As Steve points out, there are many programs (e.g., OneNote) simply not available on the Mac.

Weighed properly this morning: 220 lbs. Still not obese, but hovering there. OTOH, that means in the course of this trip I’ve gained about 1.5 lbs, not too bad given the food I’ve consumed: delicious and sometimes too much. This morning I’m making McCann’s Steel-Cut Irish Oatmeal for a solid breakfast, but not too much.

UPDATE: I see that 1/2 cup of uncooked oatmeal cooks up into enough for 3 people, roughly. Still: very tsty indeed, and makes me feel incredibly robust. It’s a breakfast that, as my grandmother would say, “sticks to your ribs” (a good thing).

Thursday was a busy day. I took the train to Baltimore, as you know. The Eldest picked me up, and we went to lunch at Gertrude’s in the Baltimore Museum of Art (a really good restaurant). I had a cup of red crab soup—what I think of as Maryland style. Then a Portobello mushroom holding a crab cake. Okay, one glass of wine (Pinot Grigio).

The afternoon was spent visiting and drinking tea, then off to watch the grandsons perfect their martial arts at the US Martial Arts Academy. I may be coming down with a cold, so we picked up some zinc tablets and I started that. For dinner, to Szechuan House, near the dojo.

The restaurant was incredibly busy—always a good sign—but we got excellent service. I had hot-and-sour soup and hot and spicy coleslaw for openers. Both disappointing, alas, particularly in the hot and spicy and sour areas. The hot-and-sour soup tasted almost as if it were made from beef stock and using canned mushrooms. The entrees were better. They had two pages of “country Chinese cooking,” including several dishes made with intestines. We ordered sauteed water spinach with beef tendon, which was excellent, with the tendon meltingly tender. The Hunan pork was again disappointing: no spiciness. The boys shared a plate of beef lo mein, and the strips of beef were excellent: sauteed to crispness at the edges, but tender within.

Then home, some tea, and to bed.

Not such a good idea, I think. Alex Pareene has the story on Salon.com:

There is a sort of childish taunt that liberals use against proper libertarians sometimes, in which they humorously propose that the fire department be privatized, because the "invisible hand" of the market would be more efficient at putting out house fires. And then everyone has a laugh — the liberals because they think they just scored a really great rhetorical point, and the libertarians because they are high.

Meanwhile, out in Tennessee, a man’s house burned down because he didn’t pay the fire department.

The homeowner, Gene Cranick, said he offered to pay whatever it would take for firefighters to put out the flames, but was told it was too late. They wouldn’t do anything to stop his house from burning.

Each year, Obion County residents must pay $75 if they want fire protection from the city of South Fulton. But the Cranicks did not pay.

The mayor said if homeowners don’t pay, they’re out of luck.

This fire went on for hours because garden hoses just wouldn’t put it out. It wasn’t until that fire spread to a neighbor’s property, that anyone would respond.

Turns out, the neighbor had paid the fee.
[...]
It was only when a neighbor’s field caught fire, a neighbor who had paid the county fire service fee, that the department responded. Gene Cranick asked the fire chief to make an exception and save his home, the chief wouldn’t.

So some self-interested rational actor decided not to pay for fire protection — an optional service — and then his house burned down, because the firefighters obviously didn’t want to open the firefighting program up to a bunch of free riders.

Daniel Foster, The Corner’s resident hip libertarian-leaning conservative,is rightly appalled by this entire story. He has no problem with opt-in government, of course! It’s just that he has this crazy notion that the firefighters had a moral responsibility to stop a man’s house from burning down, especially after they responded to his neighbor. And, come on, the guy offered to pay! So no moral hazard!

A-ha, a reader responds. He "offered." But he is clearly a deadbeat, and a leech on society, and the firefighters were right to watch as everything he owned became ash.

UPDATE: A reader writes:

Yes, he offered to pay, while his house burned. I can’t prove what would have happened, but the FD would probably have had to sue him to gain full reimbursement. Maybe they need to start carrying pre-printed contracts for the homeowners to sign quickly and obligate themselves for the full cost plus a little profit.

A man whose house is on fire will say anything to a guy with the means to put the fire out — best not to trust him, unless you can get it in writing.

I sometimes feel bad for smart, principled conservative bloggers, because the only people worse than their peers are their readers.

This is old hat for you lucky ducks who can regularly travel by train (that would be the East Coast, I image). But I’m still impressed by train travel. Some things I noticed today, traveling from Philly to Baltimore:

Good

1. Unloading and loading passengers is extremely fast: the entire process taDrkes like 5 minutes. Reason: lots of exits (2 per car). So the train pulls in (on time in my case), people get off, people get on, and 5 minutes later the train pulls out. No long wait to load, no struggling with suitcases: lots and lots of overhead luggage space.

2. The distance you must walk from stepping off the train to a cab (or the reverse direction) is trivial: a 3-minute walk at most. No long treks from the south 40 to the main terminal.

3. Other advantages already mentioned.

Drawbacks

You have to push open the doors to the terminal—but they are easy to open.

Government requires an active, alert, and investigative press corps, but as journalism focuses more and more on celebrity gossip and entertainment, bad things will increase. One certainly cannot expect business to serve as a watchdog: business is the main corrupter. Marian Wang reports in ProPublica:

Though the use of antipsychotic drugs on children is believed to carry significant risks even when used properly to treat bipolar disorder and schizophrenia, it’s not uncommon in some states for juveniles in detention to be prescribed antipsychotics simply to counter mood disorders or aggressive behavior, according to an investigation by Youth Today, which covers the juvenile justice system and youth services.

Data on antipsychotic expenditures and individual diagnoses show that for juvenile detention facilities in Connecticut, Louisiana, New York, Texas and West Virginia, 70 percent of prescriptions were filled for conditions other than bipolar disorder and schizophrenia — the disorders for which these drugs generally are FDA-approved. (Doctors can still prescribe the drugs for off-label uses, or to treat conditions for which they have not been approved.)

Most states, when surveyed, either could not or would not demonstrate that they were even monitoring the use of these drugs on incarcerated juveniles, Youth Today reported. Of the 34 states that provided no answers when queried, 16 refused to answer.

A piece in The New York Times over the weekend provided additional context on the subject. Over the years, drug companies have aggressively marketed second-generation antipsychotics — known as “atypicals” — to be safer than the first-generation drugs. While some side effects appear to be less severe, the atypicals have a range of other side effects, and the safety claims regarding these second-generation drugs have been “greatly exaggerated,” Jeffrey Lieberman, chairman of Columbia University’s psychiatry department, told the Times.

The industry’s response? Again from the Times:

The drug companies say all the possible side effects are fully disclosed to the F.D.A., doctors and patients. Side effects like drowsiness, nausea, weight gain, involuntary body movements and links to diabetes are listed on the label. The companies say they have a generally safe record in treating a difficult disease and are fighting lawsuits in which some patients claim harm.

In recent years, four major drug companies — Bristol-Myers Squibb, Eli Lilly, Pfizer and AstraZeneca — have settled lawsuits brought by the government, which accused them of illegal practices related to the marketing and promotion of antipsychotic drugs. Some of these lawsuits were related to promotion of off-label use — which doctors may prescribe, but drug makers are not allowed to promote once a drug has been approved by the FDA for specific uses.

Youth Today’s report raised the question of whether these drugs are being used off-label as chemical restraints or sedatives for youth with behavioral problems that could be treated more effectively by other means. Not all psychologists have a problem with the use of antipsychotics to alter behavior, the piece pointed out: …

Continue reading.

Greenwald:

From The Washington Post today:

A Syrian man released from the prison at Guantanamo Bay last year sued the U.S. military Wednesday, saying that he was the victim of a “Kafkaesque nightmare” in which he was tortured by al-Qaeda after being accused of being U.S. spy, liberated, then tortured by the Americans, who held him for seven more years by mistake.

Abdul Rahim Abdul Razak al-Janko, 32, who has been resettled outside the United States, filed suit Wednesday in U.S. District Court in Washington, the court that ordered his release in June 2009. At the time, U.S. District Judge Richard J. Leon concluded that the U.S. government’s case for holding Janko “defies common sense.”

Janko was tortured by al-Qaeda and imprisoned by the Taliban for 18 months on suspicion of being a spy for the United States or Israel. Leon found no evidence that the Syrian was loyal to either group.

Janko “is the victim of a decade-long Kafkaesque nightmare from which he is just awakening,” the suit says.

Janko says that he was urinated on by his American captors, slapped, threatened with loss of fingernails, and exposed to sleep deprivation, extreme cold and stress positions. . . .

Spokesmen for the Justice Department did not respond to requests for comment late Wednesday on the case, which had not been entered into the court’s electronic database.

Fortunately, the Obama DOJ — which fought unsuccessfully to keep Janko imprisoned at Guantanamo — has been so consistent in its standards that one need not wait to hear from them to know how they will respond.  It’s the same way they’ve responded in similar cases:  whatever was done to this person is a State Secret that no court can review; those who are responsible for the abuse do and should enjoy full legal immunity; and, besides, we should all be Looking Forward, Not Backward at “unnecessary battles” like this one.  I don’t know why Janko can’t just accept that what was done to him is a big secret that cannot possibly be compensated without jeopardizing American National Security and, more important, realize that he should just get on with his life and the Glorious Future and stop asking us all to Look Backward to what was done to him (all the way back to the ancient past of 2004 and 2007 and 2009).  That’s the only just thing to do.

Note this similarity as well:  Janko was, as the Court found, first “not only imprisoned, but tortured by Al Qaeda into making a false ‘confession’” that he was an American spy, and then, lawlessly imprisoned for 18 months by the Taliban as a spy, only thereafter to be abducted and lawlessly detained by the U.S. for seven years, where he was also tortured.  All that, despite no evidence whatsoever that he was loyal to Al Qaeda and plenty of evidence that he was not (namely, the fact that they detained and tortured him as an American spy).  Cases such as this one really underscore how wise it is to vest the President with the power to decide — on his own, with no review or oversight — who is and is not a Terrorist worthy of death.

UPDATE:  The always-thorough Andy Worthington last June wrote an excellent narrative on the heinous plight of Janko, which is well worth reading (h/t harpie).  That the Obama DOJ’s tactics virtually ensure he will receive no accountability or justice is horrifying, though par for the course by now.

Greenwald:

It’s easy to say and easy to document, but quite difficult to really internalize, that the United States is in the process of imperial collapse.  Every now and then, however, one encounters certain facts which compellingly and viscerally highlight how real that is.  Here’s the latest such fact, from a new study in Health Affairs by Columbia Health Policy Professors Peter A. Muennig and Sherry A. Glied (h/t):

In 1950, the United States was fifth among the leading industrialized nations with respect to female life expectancy at birth, surpassed only by Sweden, Norway, Australia, and the Netherlands.  The last available measure of female life expectancy had the United States ranked at forty-sixth in the world.  As of September 23, 2010, the United States ranked forty-ninth for both male and female life expectancy combined.

Just to underscore the rapidity of the decline, as recently as 1999, the U.S. was ranked by the World Health Organization as 24th in life expectancy.  It’s now 49th.  There are other similarly potent indicators.  In 2009, the National Center for Health Statistics ranked the U.S. in 30th place in global infant mortality rates.  Out of 20 “rich countries” measured by UNICEF, the U.S. ranks 19th in “child well-being.” Out of 33 nations measured by the OECD, the U.S. ranks 27th for student math literacy and 22nd for student science literacy.  In 2009, the World Economic Forum ranked 133 nations in terms of “soundness” of their banks, and the U.S. was ranked in 108th place, just behind Tanzania and just ahead of Venezuela.

There is, however, some good news:  the U.S. is now in fifth place in total number of executions, behind only China, Iran, Iraq and Saudi Arabia, and comfortably ahead of Yemen and Sudan, while there are two categories in which the U.S. has been and remains the undisputed champion of the world — this one and this one.  And, of course, the U.S. is not just objectively the greatest country on the planet, but the greatest country ever to exist in all of human history — as Dave Roberts put it in response to these life expectancy numbers:  “but we’re No. 1 in bestness!” — so we’re every bit as exceptional as ever.

Some research has been done, and it turns out that the terrorists do NOT hate the US for its freedoms at all. Laura Rozen in Politico:

Robert Pape, a University of Chicago political science professor and former Air Force lecturer, will present findings on Capitol Hill on Tuesday that argue that the majority of suicide terrorism around the world since 1980 has had a common cause: military occupation.

Pape and his team of researchers draw on data produced by a six-year study of suicide terrorist attacks around the world that was partially funded by the Defense Department’s Defense Threat Reduction Agency. They have compiled the terrorism statistics in a publicly available database comprising some 10,000 records on some 2,200 suicide terrorism attacks, dating back to the first suicide terrorism attack of modern times — the 1983 truck bombing of the U.S. Marine barracks in Beirut, Lebanon, which killed 241 U.S. Marines.

“We have lots of evidence now that when you put the foreign military presence in, it triggers suicide terrorism campaigns, … and that when the foreign forces leave, it takes away almost 100 percent of the terrorist campaign,” Pape said in an interview last week on his findings.

Pape said there has been a dramatic spike in suicide bombings in Afghanistan since U.S. forces began to expand their presence to the south and east of the country in 2006. While there were a total of 12 suicide attacks from 2001 to 2005 in Afghanistan when the U.S. had a relatively limited troop presence of a few thousand troops mostly in Kabul, since 2006 there have been more than 450 suicide attacks in Afghanistan — and they are growing more lethal, Pape said.

Deaths due to suicide attacks in Afghanistan have gone up by a third in the year since President Barack Obama added 30,000 more U.S. troops. “It is not making it any better,” Pape said.

Pape believes his findings have important implications even for countries where the U.S. does not have a significant direct military presence but is perceived by the population to be indirectly occupying.

For instance, across the border from Afghanistan, suicide terrorism exploded in Pakistan in 2006 as the U.S. put pressure on then-Pakistani President Gen. Pervez Musharraf “to divert 100,000 Pakistani army troops from their [perceived] main threat [India] to western Pakistan,” Pape said.

Read the rest of this entry »

Excellent recipe from Mark Bittman in today’s NY Times:

Classic Scones

Time: 20 minutes

2 cups cake flour, more as needed
1/2 teaspoon salt
2 teaspoons baking powder
3 tablespoons sugar
5 tablespoons cold butter, cut into pieces
1 egg
1/2 to 3/4 cup heavy cream, more for brushing.

1. Heat the oven to 450 degrees. Put the flour, salt, baking powder and 2 tablespoons of the sugar in a food processor and pulse to combine. Add the butter and pulse until the mixture resembles cornmeal.

2. Add the egg and just enough cream to form a slightly sticky dough. If it’s too sticky, add a little flour, but very little; it should still stick a little to your hands.

3. Turn the dough onto a lightly floured surface and knead once or twice, then press it into a 3/4-inch-thick circle and cut into 2-inch rounds with a biscuit cutter or glass. Put the rounds on an ungreased baking sheet. Gently reshape the leftover dough and cut again. Brush the top of each scone with a bit of cream and sprinkle with a little of the remaining sugar.

4. Bake for 9 to 11 minutes, or until the scones are a beautiful golden brown. Serve immediately.

Yield: 8 to 10 scones.

Backstory on the scone recipe.

All the politicians who created the mess—authorizing health benefits for retirees but failing to fund those benefits (aka “empty promises”, “dereliction of duty”, etc.)—should be jailed. Not indefinitely, as the US jails various suspects (“indefinitely” = “as long as the government can hold the victim while beating down court appeals with ‘state secrets’”), but simply until the retirees get their benefits. Mary Walsh reports in the NY Times:

The cities, counties and authorities of New York have promised more than $200 billion worth of health benefits to their retirees while setting aside almost nothing, putting the public work force on a collision course with the taxpayers who are expected to foot the bill.

The total cost appears in a report to be issued on Wednesday by the Empire Center for New York State Policy, a research organization that studies fiscal policy.

It does not suggest that New York must somehow come up with $200 billion right away.

But the report casts serious doubt over whether medical benefits for New York’s retirees will be sustainable, given the sputtering economy and today’s climate of hostility toward new taxes and taxpayer bailouts.

The daunting size of the health care obligation raises the possibility that localities will be forced at some point to choose between paying their retirees’ medical costs and paying the investors who hold their bonds. Government officials aim to satisfy both groups, and have even made painful cuts in local services when necessary to keep up with both sets of payments.

Only a few places have tried to rein in their costs, by billing retirees for a portion of the premiums, for example. Retirees have responded with lawsuits, but ratings agencies and municipal bond buyers have shrugged off these warning signs.

“So far, the market doesn’t care,” said Edmund J. McMahon, the director of the Empire Center. “The market seems to assume, on the basis of nothing, that at some point all of these places are simply going to stop paying retiree health benefits.”

The health benefits are entirely separate from the pensions that New York’s public workers have earned. Governments have reported their pension obligations for years, but their retiree medical obligations have been building up unseen, because governments were not required to account for them. The information is starting to come to light because of a new accounting requirement.

One city, Schenectady, found the cost too overwhelming to calculate, warning that it “will be astronomical, with the potential of bankrupting municipalities.”

The city even said in a document accompanying a recent debt offering that it did not know whether it was really required to comply with the new accounting rule.

The $200 billion that New York State and its localities owe retirees in the aggregate is less than the amount they owe their bondholders, about $264 billion. But health costs are rising, and in some places the obligations have already eclipsed the value of the government’s outstanding bonds. Most credit analysts seem to expect that if a municipality has to default on something, it will default on its retiree health promises, not on its bonds. Pensions, meanwhile, are considered protected by the New York State constitution.

But no one knows for sure, and no one is predicting that retirees will take the loss of a valuable health plan lying down.

“It will be a mess. There will be a lot of disputes, a lot of litigation,” said Jerry A. Webman, chief economist for OppenheimerFunds. He said that defaults and bankruptcies by governments were still so rare that there was little legal precedent, and no way of knowing which pledges would survive a court challenge…

Continue reading.

UPDATE: Weird: I cannot seem to make that apostrophe in the title a “close quote” apostrophe, which is what it should be. Irritating.

I moved from Blogger to WordPress quite a while ago and have never regretted it. I use WordPress.com (the free hosting service) rather than WordPress.org (the free software you host yourself). The former has restrictions that don’t apply to the latter, which has plug-ins not available to the former.

I just came across this handy exposition on the two and the trade-offs. Worth considering if you’re thinking about blogging.

Okay, okay, okay. I get it. I’ve been using Apple laptops (I can’t recall the name, but it probably starts with “i”) on this trip: first the one belonging to The Daughter-In-Law, now the one belonging to TYD. There are many “oddities” (from the POV of a Windows native), but I’m gradually catching on. I have, for example, finally mastered the two-finger scroll: the pointer must be in the region being scrolled, which I didn’t at first realize. And I’ve even learned to push the touchpad firmly to click—and finally realized I don’t have to push it way over toward the left edge for a “left click,” since Apple is short one click: it has no “right click”.

I thus am lulled into believing that I could get used to it. And what is its true appeal? I can read the screen, even relatively small print. I can’t quite figure out why, and I’ll have to try a Windows laptop again to verify, but my earlier attempt to use a Windows laptop was stymied by not being able to read small print.

UPDATE: Just found the name: MacBook.

Apparently when I used the ATM last night I took the money but left the card. In that case, the machine will wait a few moments and then will eat the card, cutting it in half through the magnetic stripe. I called the branch, but it is impossible (I was told) for them to check whether the card (cut in half) is in the machine until Friday. No way can they open the machine to check.

OTOH, I very quickly got a new ATM card mailed to me, and though it will take a few days, I won’t be home until the middle of next week, so that will probably work out. And the old card is worthless now, even if I happen to have dropped it someplace: it will now not work at all.

I once left my card in the ATM in Monterey. (It’s truly not a habit, but it did happen once before.) The bank called me the next day to tell me that the card had been recovered from an ATM in Berkeley, about 4-5 hours away (depending on traffic): someone tried to withdraw money, but after the third failure at entering the security code, the machine ate the card.

I feel sort of stupid—and will feel even stupider if I suddenly find the card in a pocket—but at least all is okay.

I have quickly grown fond of Robinson’s Lemon Barley Water Concentrate, and I’ll be ordering some once I return home. It’s generally a hot-weather drink, but I like it anytime.

I’ll also be ordering some Barry’s Tea, which is also available as loose tea.

Because of your knees. Latest study results show damage. Final result are unambiguous, but it seems unlikely to me that running marathons can be good for your knees.

John Schwartz reports in the NY Times:

A federal judge on Tuesday ordered the United States military to stop enforcing the “don’t ask, don’t tell” law that prohibits openly gay and bisexual soldiers from serving.

Judge Virginia A. Phillips of Federal District Court wrote that the 17-year-old policy “infringes the fundamental rights of United States service members and prospective service members” and violates their rights of due process and freedom of speech. She “permanently enjoins” enforcement of the law, she ruled, and ordered the military “immediately to suspend and discontinue” any investigation or proceedings to dismiss members of the services.

While Tuesday’s decision is likely to be appealed by the government, Judge Phillips’s injunction represents a significant new milestone for gay rights in the United States.

Two other recent decisions have overturned restrictions on gay rights at the state and federal level, but Tuesday’s ruling could have a more sweeping impact, as it would apply to all United States service members anywhere in the world.

The case is Log Cabin Republicans v. United States of America. Christian Berle, the acting executive director of the Log Cabin Republicans, applauded the judge’s action, saying it would make the armed forces stronger.

“Lifting the ban on open service will allow our armed forces to recruit the best and brightest, and will not have their hands tied because of an individual’s sexual orientation.” . . .

Continue reading.

And spider silk is much stronger than regular silk. Lisa Grossman writing for Wired:

Snippets of spider genes let mutant silkworms spin silk stronger than steel. Scientists have coaxed miles of spider-like silk from a colony of transgenic silkworms, opening the door for large-scale production of super-strong, tough and flexible fibers.

“We can make a lot more silk from the silkworm process than you could possibly make from spiders,” said molecular biologist Malcolm Fraser of the University of Notre Dame.

Spider silk has long been hailed as a superfiber, useful for everything from surgical sutures to bulletproof vests to scaffolding for growing cartilage. But spiders tend to be predatory loners who turn to cannibalism when raised in close quarters, making it nearly impossible to mass produce the treasured threads. A tapestry on display at the American Museum of Natural History last year took more than a million spiders to produce.

So scientists have tried to pull spider silk from tobacco plants, bacteria and even goats, with mixed success. Silkworms, on the other hand, are natural silk-spinning factories. A worm’s silk gland takes up about a third of its entire body, Fraser said, and a single cocoon can yield a thread up to a mile long. Silkworms have been domesticated for centuries and are already used for making mass quantities of marketable silk.

By inserting specific spider genes into silkworm chromosomes, Fraser and his colleagues grew a colony of caterpillars that produce threads nearly as strong as spider silk…

Continue reading.

Like an army, I travel on my stomach. (The original observation (about an army, not about me) is due to either Napoleon or Frederick the Great.) So for lunch I went to a new tea place near TYD, the Cuppa and enjoyed a vegetarian sandwich, a cup of carrot soup, and a great cup of tea: strong without bitterness. The proprietor is English, and I remarked upon the high quality of the tea (which turned out to be Barry’s Tea from Ireland, sold in tea bags). She told me that to get such tea she has to import directly from England (or, I suppose, Ireland in this case). Twinings English tea, for example, uses a different formulation for its US product, markedly inferior to what is sold in the UK. I suppose they figure the sweepings they sell here are good enough for the colonials.

So I bought a big box of Barry’s, a small box of Typhoo loose tea, and a big bottle of Robinson’s Lemon Barley Water, which is a concentrate: pour some in a glass (1 part) and water (4-8 parts, to taste) and Bob’s your uncle.