Practical View

You might ask:  where is the sunshine? 

I mean really, it’s everywhere of course, (knock off the ”what’s he been smoking” comments)  but for a solar application, what is the optimum location?  Would it be near the equator and in a desert?  Stop scratching your head!!  That was a rhetorical question!! Of course that’s where it is.

Apparently Saudi Arabia fits those parameters, according to official data, the sun emits 7,000 watts of energy per square meter during an average 12 hours per day of sunshine. Good grief, it doesn’t rain there, does it?   So, they have abundant oil and abundant sunshine and they sure have enough money to start building solar powered electrical generation systems.  And that’s what they are going to do. (Although the Saudi government will probably insist US companies build them, then ”liberate” the facilities from those greedy capitalist warmongering satanists.) 

 The income from solar generated electricity produced in Saudi Arabia, to be sold locally and to surrounding countries, would exceed their current income from oil production, or so the estimates say.  Doesn’t that piss you off?  The electricity would be produced at a cost of 30 halalas per kilowatt/hour or 0.08 cents US.  (Who would believe a halala was money?  Sounds like something used by mafia enforcers.)

There you have it, Saudi Arabia is smart enough to capitalize on their natural resources, oil and now sun.

But…….  Saudi Arabia is not the only country with desert and sunshine!  Let’s get practical.

Egypt also fits the bill, and it is one of the countries the United States has been sending billions of dollars for many years.  More than 50 billion dollars so far.  In 2008 Egypt received 1.71 billion dollars, in 2009 1.5 billion was given by the United States.

Surely a billion dollars could build one heck of a solar electrical generation facility in Egypt’s desert!  And probably the pyramids have the correct angle for maximum solar energy gain, eleminating the need to build supporting frameworks for the solar cells!  Those aliens from Delta Tau Chi Galaxy knew what they were doing when constructing them.  (What, you didn’t know the pyramids were built by aliens?  And that they were used to collect solar energy?  Silly, uninformed you!)

Assisting Egypt to build an income producing industry would create jobs and allow the country to get off the dole.  Of course, they would probably go back to hating Israel and rejoin the Arabs who want to push all Jews off the edge of the earth.  But hopefully they wouldn’t, instead they would develop pride in themselves and seek ways to help improve the lives and livelihoods of the surrounding countries.  Yeah, right.

Helping Egypt to become self supporting falls in the category of “If you give a man a fish, you feed him for one day, if you teach a man to fish, you feed him for a lifetime”.   Or maybe “Why didn’t we think of doing something like this 30 years ago?  Are we idiots?  Fifty billion dollars?”

The financial aid sent by the US should have the long term end result of NOT SENDING MORE MONEY!  The aid should create independence NOT dependence!  Do you think that’s going to happen?  Sorry, ridiculous question.

Now for the amount the US budget would be reduced by eliminating this 1.5 billion dollars no longer being sent to Egypt.

Oops, it turns out my calculator can’t handle $3,800,000,000,000.00, (3.8 trillion dollars)  what a disappointment!  Imagine how wide the calculators used by government employees must be!  No wonder the office supplies portion of the budget is so high, CUSTOM BUILT CALCULATORS and much wider desks!

But, after truncating, dividing, reducing, fudging and some guessing I think the budget would be reduced by 0.039%.  Yes, $1,500,000,000.00 is 1/2,533rd of the current US budget.  Kind of scary isn’t it?

Living in a bag.

This poor creature had to move into a paper bag after paying her income taxes.  She fully supports budget cuts as described in this posting.  Let’s do it!

Have fun.

A while back, I read an article about a young woman who ate a beef patty her mother prepared resulting in  the destruction of her health!  She is now very limited in what she can accomplish in the future unless there is a miraculous recovery.  She was very active, now she can barely walk.  Her entire life has been changed, a different future now faces her, one she certainly would not have chosen.

Why did this happen you ask?

To save production expenses.

There is such a thing as going too far in curbing expenses.

The meat in the beef patty was a mixture of beef coming from all over the world.  Below are some excerpts from an article in the New York Times:

Ground beef is usually not simply a chunk of meat run through a grinder. Instead, records and interviews show, a single portion of hamburger meat is often an amalgam of various grades of meat from different parts of cows and even from different slaughterhouses. These cuts of meat are particularly vulnerable to E. coli contamination, food experts and officials say. Despite this, there is no federal requirement for grinders to test their ingredients for the pathogen.

The frozen hamburgers that the Smiths ate, which were made by the food giant Cargill, were labeled “American Chef’s Selection Angus Beef Patties.” Yet confidential grinding logs and other Cargill records show that the hamburgers were made from a mix of slaughterhouse trimmings and a mash-like product derived from scraps that were ground together at a plant in Wisconsin. The ingredients came from slaughterhouses in Nebraska, Texas and Uruguay, and from a South Dakota company that processes fatty trimmings and treats them with ammonia to kill bacteria.

Using a combination of sources — a practice followed by most large producers of fresh and packaged hamburger — allowed Cargill to spend about 25 percent less than it would have for cuts of whole meat.

“Ground beef is not a completely safe product,” said Dr. Jeffrey Bender, a food safety expert at the University of Minnesota

In the weeks before Ms. Smith’s patty was made, federal inspectors had repeatedly found that Cargill was violating its own safety procedures in handling ground beef, but they imposed no fines or sanctions, records show. After the outbreak, the department threatened to withhold the seal of approval that declares “U.S. Inspected and Passed by the Department of Agriculture.”

………..audits of Uruguay’s meat operations conducted by the U.S.D.A. have found sanitation problems, including improper testing for the pathogen.

The above excerpts cover only a small part of what the article reveals about meat production.  Please read the full article here:

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/04/health/04meat.html

If you read it, you will have great reservations about eating ANY ground beef at this time.

It is very disturbing that the agencies responsible for the protection of the public from the cost cutting insanity performed by the food industry is allowed to happen.  Practically without repercussions.

The last paragraph from the article:

For Ms. Smith, the road ahead is challenging. She is living at her mother’s home in Cold Spring, Minn. She spends a lot of her time in physical therapy, which is being paid for by Cargill in anticipation of a legal claim, according to Mr. Marler. Her kidneys are at high risk of failure. She is struggling to regain some basic life skills and deal with the anger that sometimes envelops her. Despite her determination, doctors say, she will most likely never walk again.

What can be done?  What should be done?  Why aren’t those responsible in jail?

 A 140 year old hot doghas been found frozen under a building that is being torn down in ConeyIsland.  Boy, they don’t make em like that anymore.   Yep, with all the preservatives in the “new dogs” you could skip the freezing process completely to create a memento for posterity 140 years from now.

What kept that poor lump of meat (or floor sweepings) frozen in a large block of ice for 140 years?  Doesn’t New York ever warm up? 

By coincidence a receipt was found with it.  I guess that is how they dated it to 140 years ago.  Otherwise what would they do to determine its age?  Carbon dating?  DNA?  Taste comparisons?  Or a newspaper article from 140 years ago about the mysterious disappearance of a hot dog and receipt as described by a depressed and hungry little boy when he went to the Coney Island fair? 

Did the little boy buy another hot dog or did he continue to grieve?  Did this loss of his bun containing that tube of nutritious grub affect his whole life and potentially his family and descendants to this day?  I know I would never give up trying to locate my poor runaway hot dog!

Who on earth is stupid enough to buy a hot dog and put it under a building, with the receipt, into a convenient block of ice 140 years ago?  Were they saving it “for later”?

This glorious reminder of past delightful foodstuff creation by a famous inventor will be on display and available for your viewing pleasure soon.  NO TASTING!!  The exhibit is free, believe it or not, surely a 140 year old hot dog should be exploited!  The proceeds could go towards reducing the cost of health care.

Good grief, I’m not sure I believe it’s real!!  Look what we’ve come to, counterfeit hot dogs!! 

Are we being suckered here?

Coney Island in the 1880s

This is Coney Island in the 1880s, about 10 years after the rash of hot dog thievery started.  As you can see none of these people have hot dogs.  Were they stolen and hidden?  Is the insane hot dog perloiner still plying his trade?  What’s with this nut?

Have fun.