Cheese Ends, 20240519

I’ve been in a cranky mood the last couple of weeks. Health issues have been rearing their ugly heads and the world hasn’t been particularly pleasant to read about.

 

Then, several articles came across my desk that clearly came under the why-we-can’t-have-nice-things category. In pure pseudoscientific babbalese, I interpret this as the universe telling me to go with it. 

 

So, here we go. 

 

(Picture from here.)

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In the old days—back, say, in the thirties—about twenty-five percent of foodborne diseases came from the ingestion of raw milk. This was just as true in Europe and the reason Louis Pasteur invented the means by which milk could be mostly sterilized without ruining the flavor—called, of course, pasteurization. 

 

That hasn’t stopped people from deciding that raw, unpasteurized milk, has unprovable and dubious and health properties. 

 

I have a little skin in the game on this as my father’s family raised milk cows. The stories he told were quite funny and interesting and suggested that unfiltered, unpasteurized milk was something to be avoided. 

 

Recently, some dairy cows have been exhibiting H5N1 bird flu infections. It doesn’t seem to hurt the cow much but the virus does seem to preferentially infect the udders. Some cats have ingested infected raw milk and died of brain infections. One could deduce that maybe drinking infected raw milk might be dangerous.

 

That hasn’t stopped raw milk enthusiasts from demanding to get raw milk from infected cows in order to get some kind of imaginary immunity to H5N1 flu. 

 

*sigh*

 

Moving on.

**

What is the economic impact of the new weight-loss drugs?

 

The United States has a bizarre and unique drug pricing mechanism. For some reason, people seem to believe that market forces will prevail in a system where the patient has to have a particular drug. This is called, in economic terms, an inelastic demand: where demand remains unchanged whether price rises or falls. Health care falls largely within this system. 

 

Many other countries recognize this problem and fix prices or otherwise handle the issue. 

 

Not in America.

 

The other item in this discussion is obesity—well shown to be a strong factor in health issues. Enter the new GLP-1 drugs like Ozempic and Wegovy. 

 

Wegovy costs $809/month/patient in the USA. In Denmark, it’s $186/month. Yale researchers have estimated that the drug can be manufactured profitably at $5/month.

 

Adult obesity in the USA is about 35%. It’s been estimated that if half (looking to the future) the adults in the US started taking Wegovy, the collective cost would be around $411 billion/year—more than all other drugs combined. It’s projected that by 2031, cost of purchase of all drugs (including weight loss drugs) will exceed 1 trillion dollars. The drugs have long ranging health effects but are so expensive that the cost/benefit ratio is not in their favor. 

 

Remember, these prices were decided on. They are what the manufacturers figure Americans are willing to pay. Note the Yale study and the concept of inelastic demand. 

**

One of the continuing problems I have is how science is perceived. Like the colloquial concept of theory versus the scientific concept of theory. “Well, it’s just a theory...” is a common phrase. As if a scientific theory wasn’t backed up by evidence, mathematics, and laboratory studies. It’s scientific theory that can reassure you that during the night the sun hasn’t gone nova on the other side of the world. 

 

This issue of language isn’t limited to the word “theory.” It covers other words, too. Like “believe.”

 

I might say, I believe in Divine Right of Kings. I am stating that I support the idea that Kings rule based on the derived power of God incarnated in them. You could say that’s dumb. You believe in the concept of democratic representation: the will of the people to allow some to govern in their name. We both might adhere to these beliefs to the point we will die for them—or, at least, die for the symbols that represent them like King and Country.

 

These are beliefs in the common sense of the word.

 

When scientists say they believe in, say, the Cosmological Principle, they are saying they believe in a principle that can be inferred by other, provable, mechanisms. And they are committing to a rejection of that belief if it becomes falsified.

 

As long as one understands the difference, all fine and good. But that doesn’t seem to be happening in the media. If you say—to use the article’s example—that scientists know the earth is warming, that is far closer to the truth than to say those same scientists believe the earth is warming. “Believe” in scientific vernacular is far closer to “know” in the common vernacular.

 

This is a big problem in media. Most scientific reporting is commitment phobic. Media folks are not stupid. I believe they know the difference but squishy reporting is more comfortable. Less vulnerable.

 

And it makes a difference. Research has shown that content presentation is as important—or even more important—than the content itself. To quote them: “’Know’ presents [a statement] as a fact presupposing that it is true, ‘believe’ does not.” This was supported in their experiments.

 

I’m a writer and I know words are important. People who use words nefariously know it, too. So should readers.

**

There’s a whole youtube channel devoted to unexpected consequences to well-intentioned action. I won’t link to it here because I don’t always agree with the agenda behind the videos. But it’s fun. 

 

As far back as 1953 laws in North Carolina prohibited public masking. This was done in order to prevent actions of secret societies like the Ku Klux Klan and others. Best of intentions, right? Of course, masks can be used for public health situations, right? Recently, however, demonstrators have been showing up wearing surgical and other kinds of public health masks. 

 

This last week, the North Carolina Senate voted to repeal a legal exemption, enacted during COVID, for public health masking. The immuno-compromised, sick, and those that didn’t want to get sick, would not be able to wear masks in public.

**

Did you know there was such a thing as a zombie fire? I did not—well, sort of. I knew about smoldering coal fires in Pennsylvania and other places. But a zombie wildfire?

 

Turns out that the drought in Canada is bad enough that fires can smolder through the winter and wake up in the spring. Canadian Zombie Fires.

 

The reason this is in the why-we-can’t-have-nice-things category is that this is clearly due to global warming. Just like the models say it is. Just like the scientists believed would happen. Just like we should have expected.

**

Okay. Okay. Okay! Some positive things.

 

China has created the worlds first high-definition lunar geologic atlas. This is the best collection of lunar geographic data since the Apollo missions. Fully public. Accessible. Usable across the world by anyone. And published by China. This is a big deal.

 

NASA is doubling down on advanced concepts for space exploration. These include:

 

• Pulsed Plasma Rocket: fission powered propulsion that could get humans to Mars in two months.
• Radioisotope Power Cells: for missions that require power long and far beyond solar cells.
• FLOAT: A lunar railway for Moon settlements. Flexible Levitation on a Track. Far and away the best acronym of all time. Roll out the track and you have an instant cargo carrier. 

 

One last thing.

 

Every year fish swim up the river in the center of Utrecht where they meet a lock preventing them from going further. The lock is closed in the spring. The Utrechtians (?) set up a camera at the bottom of the boat lock and put the live feed up and a button. (A doorbell.) Watch for the fish and if you see one, press the doorbell. That alerts the lock keeper that there are fish waiting. When enough fish are detected, the lock keeper opens the lock and lets them proceed to their spawning grounds.

 

Here. Go free the poor waiting fish.

 

Happy now?

 

 

State of the Farm: May, 2024

Now that it’s May, we can attempt to start work on our garden without a high expectation of weather damage. 

 

Of course, that’s a hope. Last year we got a hard freeze in May and lost all of our stone fruit. Other years, we get a Hammer of God heatwave. New England isn’t the easiest place to garden in the US to begin with. Global warming has made it much more... interesting.

 

We finished the cattle fence arbors and now have a sort of T structure: two cattle fence arbors next to one another—think of it as an 8 foot by 5.5 foot wire tunnel—bordered at the end by two more such arbors at 90 degrees. It works very well and there are now bud on the grapes. I have high hopes for the future on this. The arbor is much more open and much easier to manage.

 

The adjacent arbor is essentially a square with a mesh roof. The square itself is about 10x10 feet and the height about seven. Originally, we intended it as a grape arbor as we saw at Lookout Farm a while back when we went and picked Saturn Peaches. I fell in love with this variety and we’re trying to grow some ourselves.

 

If you look here, and browse through the pictures, you will see some grapes. The farm is quite large and there are small paved roads between the sections. These roads are shaded by grape arbors. I was quite taken by this and attempted to recreate it with the square arbor. We didn’t have much luck with grapes and it has now transformed into a kiwi arbor. 

 

Kiwi has a different structure. Instead of little tendrils holding onto the support, it wraps like bittersweet. We’ll see if it eventually rips apart the wire “ceiling” of the arbor.

 

We’ve made a heavy commitment to the Birdie’s metal raised garden beds. We bought three kits a few years ago. This translated to three large beds and two smaller beds. Last year, we set one up as a strawberry bed, used two for potatoes, one of the smaller ones for mint and one of the larger ones for peppers and eggplant. They did quite well. 

 

We found with the first set that rodents love to turn such beds into hives. The mint bed was riddled with tunnels and, this year, the innards are collapsing. We filled the bottom of subsequent beds with drainage rock and that seems to have kept the rodents out.

 

We bought three more. One we finished today. It now requires only the last foot of soil. We plan to fill the next one with the contents of the mint bed, then line the bottom with drainage rock. We’re taking our time and not planning to have all three new ones ready until the end of the season. 

 

They have a couple of big advantages. One, they are quite tall—about three feet. This means very little bending to manage the bed. That’s a big advantage for someone that’s getting less flexible as they age. The other is longevity. Because they’re metal, they don’t degrade the same way. We’ve seen no corrosion in the years we’ve had them. We got the idea from Self Sufficient Me and his beds seem to be going fine.

 

We’ve been having a very good blooming of the fruit trees. At this time, we have almond, apricot, peach, apple, Cornelian cherries, pie cherries, and pears either open or passed. No freeze.

 

If we have a good harvest, I’m going to have to revisit the solar dryer. I built it about eight years ago with the collector being only black sheet metal. It was an experiment to see if I built a porch of the same construction, it could be used as a heat collector for the house. The experiment failed. It kind of works in that it does capture some heat but nothing like the clear collectors. 

 

The problem is that we’ve been getting too good. I have to dry many pounds of beans and other produce. We will still dry truly wet produce—like peaches or bananas—in the electric dehydrator. But drying beans swamped us last year. Hence, revisiting the old solar dryer. 

 

Last year we had a very good crop of blueberries. We made a hoop structure using the cattle fencing and covered it with plastic netting. The plastic netting was an incredible pain and when we took it off for the winter it because irretrievably tangled. In addition, the structure itself collapsed over the winter. The width of the structure was too much for the steel and it fell in. We propped it up with some poles. The plan is to make those poles permanent—probably using galvanized pipe. We haven’t got to that part yet.

 

We used knotted netting this year. It was much easier to handle and we hope it will keep out the birds. However, it doesn’t fully cover the structure. We’re going to make permanent end caps. The idea is we remove the netting every year because of the snow load. The blueberry flowers have just opened so we have until the first of June or so to get it up.

 

Not all of the blueberry bushes are under the structure. For those, we’re trying bird scare tape. We saw this being used up in Vermont. The bushes seemed to have a fair crop of blueberries so we will see.

 

I planted some peas and they didn’t really take. I think I planted them incorrectly. Wendy planted peas a couple of weeks later and they are coming up fine. Also, fava beans and radishes. We have started sugar beets and melons in the greenhouse. We’re planning to try peas again in the fall after we harvest the beans. We’re planning on bringing them out around Mother’s Day. In the same garden, I planted schisandra and it is coming up well and covered with blossoms.

 

This week I will finish clearing the main garden and prepare for planting in the next two weeks. We used to plant Memorial Day weekend—and a lot of cold sensitive stuff will be planted then. But, with global warming, planting season comes two weeks early and harvest season ends two weeks late. A small benefit from the coming catastrophe. 

 

Coming? Hell. It’s here. The best we can do is adapt to it.