I had mentioned I wanted to try adding a longer primary fermentation, a so-called “preferment” or “pre-ferment”. The first one I tried was a simplistic poolish using my typical bread formula and flour amounts. The second batch used too little yeast, and it didn’t rise very well.

The first poolish batch turned into very nice bread, bread that was accidentally ruined after it had been bagged in plastic, ready for slicing the following day and stored in the oven, when I forgot it was there and started warming up the oven for something else. The oven was somewhat over 200F when I remembered the two loaves there, but the plastic had shrunk itself around those loaves. I decided to compost that batch, as I figured that plastic fumes had saturated through the bread.

I wasn’t enthralled with the poolish process, however, because it was more complicated to make, it involved more weighing of ingredients and separate processes (particularly if I had to separately autolyse each), as well it didn’t seem to provide much advantage over the straight dough approach I’d been using judging by the results (but it was and is easy to mix). More work for the same result? That’s when I realized that the poolish methods didn’t autolyse all the flour, at least not a strict autolyse.

So I started wondering if I could autolyse all the flour much the same as the straight-dough process I’d been using, then turn some or all of that dough into a long fermentation that occurred prior to the typical overnight bulk refrigeration. Flipping the question around, it seemed easy enough to simply add a long fermentation step between the straight-dough autolyse and the typical, retarded or refrigerated overnight fermentation. Additionally, I realized that with an additional fermentation step, I could add the salt and oil immediately prior to the secondary or bulk fermentation, and not need to do much kneading the next morning before division and panning for the final proof: there would be nothing that needed to be mixed into the dough at that point in the process.

I had originally hoped the long fermentation would take 8-hours at 72F (winter room temperatures here), but it had tripled in bulk at 4.5 hours due to the 0.15% Instant Dry Yeast added to it at that point-in-time. I’ll have to reduce that amount the next time for a longer fermentation, as the schedule allows an 8-hour primary ferment without needing a third day. For reasons of simplicity of process, I opted to subject all the autolysed flour to this long fermentation at 55% water (only flour, water, vinegar, and yeast added to the dough at this point).

First, a warm autolyse of only flour and water that resulted in 100F degree dough, which was placed in the refrigerator for 1.5 hours, at which point it cooled to about 83F degrees. Then the vinegar was added and kneaded, then a small amount of yeast for the long primary fermentation was added, and this mix was returned to the refrigerator for another 1/2 hour or so, until the dough cooled to 70F, when it was removed to room temperature. This rose for the next 4 hours at room temperature (72F) for a total of 4.5 hours. Because the dough had tripled in volume, I thought that was enough, but my guess is it would still be considered immature. At this point, more yeast was added, a short knead of a minute or so followed by a 10 minute rest, then salt was added and kneaded, then oil was added and separately kneaded with 1/3 of the dough using the prior-mentioned food-processor blade technique, then reincorporated and all of it stand-mixer kneaded for another minute on the slowest speed. The dough was 79F when it entered the refrigerator for the overnight bulk or second fermentation.

This dough process seems to result in the nicest and softest crumb yet, and the crust is a somewhat darker golden color. The crust was slightly tough following baking, but as toast it’s wonderfully crisp:

Scale Recipe Here	Flour	Total #	Total g	% of Base	4.5-hour	3-5 hour
Flour Weight per pan	Weight	of pans	per pan	Flour	First	Retarded
827	1654	2	1349.83	100.0%
ingredients	Baker’s	normal	“Base”	Autolyse	1st Frmt	2nd Frmt
	Percent	percent	grams	grams	grams	grams
High Gluten Flour	28.00%	0.17	463.12	463.12
Baker’s Flour, bleached, enriched	72.00%	0.44	1190.88	1190.88
Water	55.00%	0.34	909.70	909.70
Vinegar	2.35%	0.01	38.87		38.87
Instant Dry Yeast	0.64%	0.00	10.59		2.48	8.10
Salt	1.23%	0.01	20.34			20.34
Olive Oil	4.00%	0.02	66.16			66.16
Totals	263.22%	1.00	2699.66	2563.70	41.35	94.61
<— Flour Sub-Total —>	100.00%	H20 F –>		118.55	70F

I’m not certain why the crust was tougher than straight dough versions which have always been crisp shortly after baking. I think I’ll keep playing around with this additional technique for some batches and see if it can’t be better optimized.

This dough was warmed to 79F before the overnight retarded rise, but I find myself doubting whether warming is needed for this step of the process when using a long primary fermentation.

Another question that I’ve had over a number of baking cycles is how fast does the temperature of the dough rise during the final fermentation proof after panning. The dough warms up quite a bit during division and panning, before the proof itself. I recorded some temperature measurements this time.

IDY	First Ferment
0.15% IDY	“Place on top of refrigerator” rise data
hrs ——>	2:00	3:31	4:37
clock —->	4:30 PM	6:01 PM	7:07 PM
d.temp.F>	71.5	71.5
notes		doubled	tripled	0.15% too much yeast for this step
beer odor —>		none	none
IDY, salt, oil	2nd or Bulk or Retarded Ferment
0.49%	“Place dough in refrigerator” rise data
hrs ——>	0:00	0:26	1:01	1:27	2:00	2:31
clock —->	7:40 PM	8:06 PM	8:41 PM	9:07 PM	9:40 PM	10:11 PM
d.temp.F>	79	73	74.5	73.5	70.7	69.6
notes			woke up
beer odor —>
86F	Final Proof
	Proof temps and rise
hrs ——>	0:49	1:08	1:47	2:15	2:45
clock —->	12:50 PM	1:09 PM	1:48 PM	2:16 PM	2:46 PM
d.temp.F>	66.4	67.7	70.8	74.1	75.8
notes		swelling	almst.x2	x.2+
beer odor —>	Retarded dough had moderately strong alcohol odor before final Fermentation

While those data points with the proof were derived from an 86F thermostat setting, it stands to reason that even if it were set to 96F, and if the initial dough temperature (which I often abbreviate as d.temp) is =< 65F, the dough will still need to warm up, that it will take time in the chamber to do so, therefore it would only warm the cold dough at a faster rate. It further stands to reason that the size of the final proofing dough ball or mass would also affect the rate of warm up, with smaller masses warming up faster.

The baking procedures and temperatures for this formula were the same as they’ve been for the last few batches.

Sundry Reading:
Creating Artisan Breads (General Mills) PDF.
Your Guide to Preferments.

I’m also grateful I was able to obtain a copy of Bread by Jeffrey Hamelman. I haven’t had a chance to read it fully yet, but I’ve picked it up a few times, read a few pages, and each time learned something new!

2009.Nov.26

I note that this last batch using autolyse and “pre-ferment” is a darker baked color, much like the straight dough batch with 2% scalded flour. Because one loaf of the straight-dough batch with scalded flour had “flying crust”, I opted to not further explore that at the time, however it’s possible with additional optimization, particularly with the baking or mixing process, the chance of a “flying crust” could be reduced or increased. Perhaps scalded flour is a fast method of simulating longer-fermented dough.

I also note from the fermentation temperatures that it seems to take instant dry yeast about 1 hour to “wake up”.

With the straight-dough versions, I found it beneficial to warm the dough to 84F before placing in the refrigerator, and while the dough’s cool-off time in the fridge is related to the size of the dough ball (probably a function of surface area to volume), at the current dough ball size (two loaves or about 2700 grams total weight), that allows a cool off period that was long enough so there was significant swelling of the dough before the dough gets below 68F degrees, which seems a temperature threshold where yeasts’ out-gassing activity decreases. Because there’s additional fermentation with the addition of the first ferment (”pre-ferment”) in this latest process, I find myself thinking that it’s less important to get a lot of rise during the first portion of the retarded bulk ferment, a technique that seemed to work well for straight dough. I want to try reducing the initial temperature of bulk fermentation to 75F, particularly to delay and or decrease the rise occurring during the initial portion of bulk fermentation, and to try to synchronize outgassing in such a way that more of it occurs during final proof after the dough has been panned.

Besides lowering the initial temperature of the dough, shortening the bulk fermentation period would also seem a similar outgas-delaying tactic.

I’ve calculated that if I autolyse the dough to 40% hydration for the autolyse, but keep the total formula’s water at 53-55%, and further weigh 25% of the the autolysed dough and add the balance of the water to that 25%, it will end up at 100% hydration, or what is generally known as a poolish. Because 75% of the autolysed dough will be allowed to rest without the addition of yeast until incorporation at the bulk ferment stage, none of the carbohydrates in that 75% portion will be consumed by yeast during the first ferment, so I believe the poolish that does have yeast added can mature more than the last batch’s first fermentation. So, I’ve decided to keep the 0.15% IDY for the 8-hour first fermentation for at least one more try.

Using the flours I have on hand, I’ve found in the past that 40% hydration will probably cause the autolysed dough to remain mealy unless it’s pressed together. It may be too little moisture for a satisfactory autolyse and, if so, the percentage of the dough that can be brought to 100% hydration would decrease from 25% to some lower figure. If the autolyse moisture percentage is the same as the formula’s overall moisture, then any amount of autolysed dough can be used for the first ferment, as there would be no additional water needed. In this case, the first ferment wouldn’t have enough moisture to be considered a poolish, it would be a biga.

So, this will be the next experiment: split the first fermentation from 100% of the dough to 25%, as well as decrease the initial bulk fermentation temperature a few degrees.

Sundry Reading:

The somewhat high pH of hard water is undesirable because the high content of alkaline salts tends to neutralize the normal acidity developed during yeast fermentation. Since the functions of enzymes in dough are significantly affected by the pH of the medium (enzymes act at their optimum at pH levels between 4 and 5) it is evident that excessively alkaline waters, which raise the pH of the dough above the optimum range for enzyme activity, have a detrimental effect on the direction and quality of the fermentation. The alkaline pH can be adjusted by adding acetic acid, lactic acid or monocalcium phosphate.
…
On the other hand, soft waters (10-50 ppm calcium carbonate) are objectionable because they lack the gluten-strengthening minerals and tend to yield soft, sticky dough. Also, the somewhat low pH of soft waters has an accelerating effect on fermentation, requiring some reduction in fermentation time. While soft water may yield bread with fairly good volume and very even grain, its texture and colour are likely to be poor. Corrective steps include an increase in the use of yeast food and dough salt.

Perhaps the sticky dough that I have is due to the soft water I use. It could make an interesting experiment to autolyse first with water that has only had the chlorine removed, and find out if the dough made from the baker’s flour that I’ve been using is still sticky.

2009.Nov.29

I made the poolish percentage as 20% of autolysed dough weight (not a baker’s percent), instead of 25%, which allowed the autolyse hydration of all the flour to be about 43% expressed as baker’s percent.

In spite of having little-to-no oven spring, and falling a little during the bake (slightly overfermented), this bread made the crispest toast so far, and the tough crust, after loaf cooling, has disappeared. There are visible differences in the lower and side crusts in the larger photos when zoomed in.

While it’s my intent to make process and ingredient changes to the second and third ferments due to perceived issues, this particular formula is probably worth saving for the outstanding toast. It seems that crisp toast needs at least three bread characteristics: sufficient oil, open crumb, and some residual sugars remaining during the bake.

With respect to both this batch, and the last, the dough had a different feel during panning, perhaps a characterization is more dissolved feeling, certainly a little more translucent, a slightly different shade of color; both batches at this stage were more extensible.

This last batch was more work to make given the 43% hydration of the autolysed dough. The blade attachment of the food processor seems to work well for this situation, trying to mix something much more liquid into what is essentially hard and dense. The prior batch used the overall formula’s hydration during autolyse, and that makes for much easier mixing.

The next batch will have process changes to bulk and final fermentations, to re-adopt a process I used with the straight dough versions, and see how it compares to these last two batches.

2009.Dec.1

I just noticed the bread dough rise times are partly a Fibonacci sequence: 8, 5, 3.

A yeast-related question that has been simmering in the mind is whether the poolish, were it to be added to the next flour batch without any more yeast added, then how long would it take to rise? Restated, if the 8-hour poolish or sponge comprises 20% of the flour total, it’s brought to maturity or somewhat past it, and the other 80% of the autolysed dough is then added to the poolish without any additional yeast added, then how long will that rise take?

2009.Aug.14

I feel like I found the mother load of information about enzymes, and as I was reading through the commercial report from an apparent enzyme manufacturer (PDF), I found these two paragraphs that may explain the increased stickiness (I may have gone overboard with my chosen emphasis):

Glutenin can be classed as a heterogenous mixture of proteins. It has a molecular weight of 100,000 to several million. It is a multiple chain protein with crosslinked intermolecular disulfide bonds. It has moderate adhesiveness and high elasticity….

Gliadin is considered a heterogeneous mixture of prolamines with a molecular weight of 25- 60,000. It is a single chain protein containing intramolecular disulfide bonds. It has high adhesiveness and low elasticity.

It would seem possible that the increased stickiness in my implementation of the above described autolyse process could be the result of a changed glutenin-gliadin ratio. The big problem with determining this is that I made so many changes at once, I’m not sure which change increased the stickiness. Along with the increased stickiness was more extensibility, as I understand the term versus elasticity. It could be a worthwhile step to backtrace to the prior flour mix with all purpose and high-gluten, but use the newer process, to help narrow the possibilities of whether the increased stickiness is due to the flour mixture, or to the autolyse step, or something else in the changed process.

The problem with making one change at a time in a recipe is that it takes so long to make significant progress from one set of conditions to another set, and there’s also a tendency to want to make smaller amounts of dough, one loaf or even less, which further increases the time investment. But it would also avoid the impulse to backtrack. I’m not sure if I want to do that right now, I’d prefer to keep figuring out how to exhaust the available dough sugars through longer fermentation times, and try to determine a practical method for predicting when that happens, perhaps time, temperature, and yeast quantity based.

It wasn’t long ago (first I had to learn and understand baker’s percentages, then I needed scales) that I tried a recipe for pizza dough that was considered “quick” to make (the link is the source, however what follows is a cut and paste from my spreadsheet where I laid out all the separate-page formulas column-by-column so I could quickly compare and study them, and I recall rearranging the ingredients’ order for spreadsheet organization purposes, so I didn’t need to scroll to see them all).

 

High-gluten Flour (14%)	100
Water	59
Oil	2
INSTANT Yeast (IDY)	1.5
Salt	1
Sugar	4
Non-fat Dry Milk	1

Its basic formula difference was that it had a high yeast amount and high added sugar, and a correspondingly short fermentation time. Since I didn’t have any heat-inactivated (enzyme) non-fat dry milk, indeed, any NFDM at all, that ingredient was skipped, though undoubtedly there are carbohydrates and proteins in milk. I interpreted the recipe’s written ingredient “sugar” as sucrose, there was nothing to indicate otherwise. My god, that pizza caused so much gas and indigestion I couldn’t believe it(!), and those after effects did remind me of a couple of restaurant pizzas I’d eaten over my lifetime. The next day, just to check, I made an identically topped pizza with a longer fermentation dough with a smaller yeast amount and no added “table sugar”. Result: No upset tummy.

What I figured happened was simplistic, and keep in mind this is just my guess: When the bread with topping is baked, the yeasts’ spores are not necessarily all inactivated, only the yeasts are reliably killed. Since it was a “fast rise” dough, along with the added sugar, the yeast did not have enough time in pre-baking fermentation to consume that extra sugar, no matter the precise sugar sub-name it is that the yeast feed directly upon (I think it’s maltose). After a number of steps including baking and eating, the food stays in the stomach for some time, then passes through the pyloric sphincter into the duodenum or small intestine. At about this time, my guess is some yeast spores germinated, and were present in enough numbers to restart fermentation, thus creating gas. The “fast rise” continued in the gut, and as I recall, it felt “fast” there too! My lesson to myself was to be exceedingly careful about added sugars in yeast-bread dough, particularly when combined with high-fat, high-melting point toppings such as cheese, which likely slow digestion in part by encapsulating some pockets of partially digested baked bread.

2009.Aug.15

I was searching for “straight dough“, I believe yesterday, and found the hold-over webpage from the pre-Over-Commercialization Internet days, days I sorely miss.

It confirms that the process I’ve developed and documented here is a hybrid technique, not straight dough and not sponge dough. That said, I’m explicitly not claiming I’m the sole developer. Bread has been around for millennia, it is said the Egyptians made varieties of bread, indeed, it seems one of the initial timeline points of “civilization” versus “pre-civilized” or the hunter-gatherer era. “Civilization” centered around agricultural propagation of food and particularly cereal crops, the beginning of mono-cropping. So, we’re talking about techniques that have been around for many, many years. Tools may have changed. Knowledge regarding why particular chemical processes are occurring may have improved. Fancy new automated factories may have been built with computerized machines reducing required labor. But bread as a product is old. Very old.

Why there is so much misinformation floating around about making it could be the basis of a few good rants.

One of the problems is that over the years terminology and technique changes, and that’s something to be aware of when reading older cookbooks. A case in point is another page about “1916 straight and sponge doughs,” apparently an Army manual for bakers published back in 1916. When reading through that, it is clear the term “prove” was used to identify more sub-stages of fermentation than it is today, where definitions have evolved somewhat according to the terminology used by a number of recently published bakers. Today, the usage of proving and proofing is understood as limited to the post-shaping and pre-baking period, in other words, the final rise before baking. Nevertheless, the term prove is a curious term that relates to yeast. Essentially rising dough at any stage of fermentation proves yeasts’ viability. One cannot say today, and expect to be fully understood, “I added yeast to my pre-fermentation water and flour mix and set it aside to proof, then I kneaded it some more and set it aside to proof again.” In the past it appears that statement would have been understood. It’s likely professionals would understand, or at least would question it, having read old recipes themselves, whereas beginners would be confused by reading newer recipe’s text in contrast to old recipe’s text, when proofing meant one thing, versus today when its meaning is more specific, at least among certified professionals who tend to be the authors of published baking books. It’s not clear, at least to me, that all these semantic evolutions have been improvements (besides just today’s oxymoronic usage of “pre-ferment”, already covered). For example, “Dough rising in bulk-fermentation is proof of yeasts’ viability, but dough rising in bulk-fermentation is not considered the proof stage.” Say what?

If the purpose of language is to communicate, it’s not clear that modern baking terminology has served the intent of clear communication, instead it appears to have increased confusion among those who most need it, those who are first learning.

To wax momentarily cynical, in the far, far distant future, or perhaps in the next few publishing cycles, the proof stage could perhaps be correctly referred to as post baking, where “heat inactivation” will be the new term used to describe today’s baking cycle in reference to killing the yeast, and something else, perhaps “flour hydration” will be used to describe today’s autolyse stage. Then, even more books can be sold to describe the “new” process with the new and improved terminology! After all, the final heat-inactivated product is the ultimate proof, is it not?

One curious newer technique is Oregon State University’s page description of “continuous mix“. It’s easy to visualize a tube in which water and-or flour flows and that at different length points ingredients are added. This process, particularly if the tube has vanes and blades or mixing technology incorporated in-between these add-another-ingredient points, reinforces the idea of ingredient order being of critical importance in dough processes.

Another page OSU has are some dough-temperature guidelines. I love this kind of technical stuff. And how about thier awesome word, “temperapature”! Whether it’s a dictionary-listed word, or not, it certainly carries accurate meaning! As in (my sentence, but used in the context their page seems to mean it), “The aperture of the cells is related to temperature.” Temperapature! Very cool.

2009.Aug.17

It occurred the term “proof” is also used in rating the alcoholic content of some beverages. There’s no reason to rehash that here, just use a search engine if you want to find out more. I’ve often wondered why I’ve never learned how to make beer or distilled spirits, though the odor of alcohol, specifically a beer odor, in some bread batches has been obvious.

The most recent batch of bread I made is nearly tasteless, however, that was not as true of the prior batches, including the one immediately proceeding it, though undoubtedly, since I’ve so far resisted the urge to experiment with bacillus (sourdough) due to not caring for sour bread, not as much “flavor” if sour flavor is the intent. So tracking the alcohol content by some measure, perhaps smell even though it is inexact, could be a good indicator.

For my next test, when I need to make more bread, which will be a little while yet, I’m going to alter some of the temperatures related to process, but keep the formula the same as the last batch. One change will be made in order to determine if the warmer water used in the autolyse stage is the source of the post-autolyse stickiness. So, at some point in the future, I will use cooler water when mixing the flour and water during the autolyse, and which will decrease the temperature of the post-mixing and pre-resting stage. I still will use a cooling process during the rest, due to years of experience with foods where I’ve noted a cooling cycle blends flavors. It’s my belief that a cooling cycle during autolyse rest probably helps the flour hydrate. I think of such a process as breathing in (cooling) and out-breath (heating), as with cooling there tends to be volume contraction and with heating, expansion. “Temperapature” as used by the author of the OSU page is perhaps a better, more accurate term to use (though I do wonder if it’s spelled the best way). Physically, I believe this volume expansion is found in the extreme when something is in its gaseous state, yet I’ve also found the flavor mixing that occurs when making chili as well as blue cheese dressing during an overnight cool down followed in the case of chili with a reheat, to perhaps be explained by the same phenomenon. It also appears as part of my process used in throughly seasoning cast iron pans, heat it up, brush oil, cool off. During cooling, things seem to contract slightly, whereas when heated, they expand. In the case of the pans, the cast iron seems to absorb a little oil during quick cooling, since cast iron pans are typically somewhat porous. An engineered bi-metallic thermometer is one use of this phenomenon in the case of two metals (which are solids) of differing temperature expansion rates. Varying the autolyse temperature through contraction of cool (refrigeration) and expansion of warmth (mixing) probably helps molecules to better align with each other.

In any case, I will be testing two different changes with my next loaves. The first is whether the warm water temperature used in the autolyse step is related at all to the post-autolyse rested dough’s increased stickiness. My wonderment has to do with whether the warm temperature water added to the flour tends to favor gliadin instead of glutenin, perhaps through some unknown-to-me enzymatic process. I also want to continue extending the fermentation stage, as it seems from the bulk-fermentation temperature readings that active fermentation is mostly occurring at greater than 63F degrees or thereabouts. I’m still undecided as to how best to go about that. One possibility is to keep the initial dough temperature of about 84F degrees the same, followed by a refrigerated bulk-fermentation for about 2-3 hours, then remove the dough to a room temperature environment for a few hours, then possibly return it to the refrigerator at some point, or perhaps letting it sit out the entire night, which is the cooler portion of the day-night cycle, or perhaps only leaving it out for another 3-6 hours, and then returning it to the refrigerator for about 3 hours minimum. A second possibility is to decrease the initial bulk-fermentation dough temperature, perhaps attempting to keep it at about 65 degrees or so (by allowing the cooling of the autolyse to be extended a little more), and keep the initial bulk-fermentation at room temperature for 6-9 hours, then refrigerating it for the remaining period to slow the yeast. Of those two, I tend to think the first is preferable due to wanting the yeast to get a good start in a warmer environment, however, the latter is more streamlined or simple with respect to process and temperature, hence my indecision.

The addition of yeast represents a division line of sorts in the process, so I’m hoping that making these two changes will still be somewhat scientific, in the sense I’m looking for two different things. 1. Whether the pre-yeast stickiness of autolysed dough is decreased with a cooler and different temperature process. 2. Whether extending the warmer fermentation time of bulk-fermentation increases the yeast numbers (which I can only determine indirectly).

The results of 1 should be obvious as soon as handling the post-autolyse and pre-fermentation (before yeast added) dough. The results of 2 will be noted in whether the increased time at warmer fermentation levels increases yeast numbers to a point that the odor of alcohol is more evident and also results in a higher proofing rise and in a larger cell structure in the final baked product.

I’ve read in a number of places that baker’s yeast doubling should occur in anywhere between 90 minutes and 4.5 hours (that’s a very wide variance), and according to theartisan.net, one group of researchers found no increased yeast numbers at all. I’m sure there are a huge number of different yeast strains, specific strains that aren’t typically disclosed on the packaging of baker’s yeast, so what’s important to me is the doubling rate of the yeast I’m currently using. The last time I found some that passed a viability test, I went back to the store and purchased several large packages with the same batch number, and I keep it in the refrigerator in the still vacuum-sealed packages, so I won’t be running out of this particular strain for some period of time, probably several more years (however, next time I do need to purchase some, it could be a different strain but packaged identically). Since my bulk-fermentation temperatures are not constant, it wouldn’t seem possible to determine the cycle length judged by how much the dough peak shifts by changing the initial inoculation amount, though if I go to a constant temperature fermentation period somewhere within the range of active yeast multiplication temperatures, that time-shift test would still seem possible, so perhaps it will be revisited in the future.

I was just reading through my brief spreadsheet notes, and saw that I’d recorded a higher stickiness post-fermentation with the latest batch. So it appears that decreased stickiness is also a test of sorts regarding the amount of fermentation that has occurred. Therefore, it would be inappropriate to try to make two changes at once because it appears both steps alter stickiness. I should decide on one, or the other. Since my generalized thrust is currently with altering the fermentation peak point, I should skip altering the autolyse temperatures for now.

In case anyone is wondering why I want to find out if autolyse temperatures are responsible for the increased dough stickiness, it’s actually quite simple. I’m wondering about proteolytic enzymes or proteases. These enzymes break down proteins. That beer-making diagram that I linked to as a commenter several years ago in my own Honey Wheat Berry post, and also linked to somewhere in this series of posts, is, if not memorized (it’s not), at least is indelibly impressed in my mind as a resource to refer to. The pH of the dough at this point is likely on the alkaline side of the proteolytic bounds, but I’ve seen different figures elsewhere for those bound points anyway. It’s impossible to know precisely what the miller and packager has put into any of the flours, but that is my thinking for why the temperature may be making the dough stickier (in this case). There could be other, simpler reasons for stickiness, such as too much water, but that doesn’t seem the case in this instance. It is something that I need to track down, the precise reason why these last two batches, with the new process, are stickier after autolyse. In order to do this, one must consider all the known possibilities first. Since I’ve been carefully tracking what I’ve done, I can go back and undo things one by one until the precise reason is found.

Perhaps what I need to do is make some very small dough amounts using different flour mixtures and processes, without the intent of following through and making a whole loaf, or combining them all together for one baking of a “surprise” loaf. Perhaps just a handful of flour each time, in proportion. Change processes singly, flours as well, and see which one causes the stickiness. This seems doable, and wouldn’t require the eating of a bunch of mistakes in larger amounts.

Here’s another expensive book with more information about proteases. This science report (PDF) says that alpha-amylase can also increase stickiness.

2009.Aug.19

So far I have two basic flour mixes, one of high-gluten mixed with all-purpoose flour, a second of high-gluten mixed with baker’s flour; each has a unique ratio to adjust the mixed-together protein to roughly equivalent levels, 12.14%, based upon the best information I have available. The high-gluten’s protien level is derived from the nutritional label, which may—likely does—have a rounding error, that protein level is 13%. The figure I’ve been using for All Purpose is 10.3%: while I don’t remember specifically, I believe I also calculated that from the nutritional label, but I also recall looking it up at the USDA Nutrient database lab. 10.3% was the best figure I was able to discern at the time. The Baker’s Flour figure of 11.8% was sourced from a manufacturer’s infosheet. Ultimately, I have little clue as to how accurate any of the figures are.

Lately it seems I’ve been making two loaves of bread at a time, instead of 4. So I can take the total flour weight of 2 loaves, and divide that weight by 4, and that gives me a gram figure, which I’ll temporarily call Test 1/4, which means the flour that exists in about 1/2 a typical loaf, or 1/4 of a 2-loaf batch. Since I have two basic flour mixes, I can use the 1/4 flour weight, and have two units each of one flour mix, and two units of the other flour mix. Each flour mix of each respective type can have a cold-water autolyse and a warm water autolyse, to test for stickiness. Then, when combining the Test 1/4 batches into loaves, I can mix the two cold-water autolysed flours together into one loaf, and the two warm-water autolysed flours into a second loaf. This combining of cold-autolysed Test 1/4s and separately warm-water autolysed Test 1/4s will mean I’ll have a third flour mix of three flours, a proportion which could be calculated, but I don’t believe calculating it is particularly important, what is important is that Both will have roughly the same flour mix of unknown proportions of three flours total (bakers, HG, and AP), separated by the temperature of the autolyse water. From there, instead of mixing the cold-autolyse & warm-autolysed Test 1/4s (which are doubled up) together in a larger bulk-fermentation, I can ferment them separately but identically, and bake them into two loaves. Besides any dough stickiness differences that may develop in some or all of the Test 1/4 batches, which may shed light on the nature of the stickiness related to either the flour mixes, the autolyse process, or the temperature treatment, it will also tell me of any differences that exist in the baked product based upon cold or warm-water autolysed doughs.

I thought momentarily of designing it so one baked loaf only used baker’s flour, and the other only high-gluten flour, split the same way into warm- and cold-water autolyse processes, but then when I baked the loaves they’d be of differing protein levels, so I discarded that idea as not quite as normalized a test. I guess this will be a diversion from altering the fermentation peak, but I guess this is what I’m being directed by my mind to do next. To try to answer two problems, both related to stickiness: whether the flour mix contributed to increased stickiness, or the warm-water autolyse, or perhaps some combination of each. If all dough batches are of roughly equivalent stickiness, I’ll probably have to conclude it’s related the autolyse process itself, something to do with hydrating all the flour first, and not related to either the flour mix or the autolyse water temperature (the latter seeming to eliminate enzymes as the possible/probable cause, since their activity is apparently related to temperature as well as pH).

2009.Aug.21

This is my next test. I’m not sure when I’ll be needing to bake it, but it provides somewhat of a graphic for August 19th’s idea, the one directly preceding. I decided not to backwards calculate the percentages of the final loaves’ flour mix, as it doesn’t seem all that important given what I’m trying to find out. Also, I routinely use the tilde symbol “~” to indicate approximately, as it reminds me of the math symbol for approximately equal to.

Note that I’ve increased the yeast % back to 0.64%, as I prefer the flavor of that bread given the current fermentation schedule. I’ll decrease it again when I return to changing the fermentation peak and the Peak:TotalTime ratio.

And here’s how I’ll combine them into two 827g flour-weight loaves to compare warm- versus cold-autolysed dough when baked:

The test is about relative stickiness in the dough post-autolyse and pre-bulk-fermentation in any of the 1/2-loaf batches, as well as any notable differences in the baked product of warm- versus cold-autolysed dough.

I will define cold-autolyse as I mean it for this singular test as using coldish water (I’ll derive a temp later) combined with the flour so that the mixed dough never exceeds 84F degrees until it begins baking. I’ll define warm autolyse as using at least as warm a water temperature as I used the last time for the autolyse, which was 105F, but I’m thinking of increasing that a little higher. At the point when this water is mixed into the flour, there is no yeast, so killing yeast isn’t a temperature concern at this point, but going too high can alter the starch’s structure too much, such as all the way to gelatinization temperature (also see gelatinization), which I want to avoid at this point of this test, as it will reportedly result in sticky bread crumb (read the referenced PDF. it is my intent to adopt this technique at some point in the future, but I have to build up to it in a way that allows me to consciously understand the interactions of the various ingredients with each other, as well as the effects of processes upon those ingredients. So, it’s several iterations away, presuming I don’t get sidetracked. Altering the fermentation peak comes first, then some poolish processes (which the fermentation peak relates to), then a small percentage of scalded flour. I also find myself thinking more about bacillus inclusion, but I can’t allow it to result in a “sour” flavor.). So a good point would be the upper bound point of the proteolytic enzyme box in the beer making diagram I’ve referred to in several places, but no higher. And I mean the water temperature, not the settled temperature of flour and water after combining the two. With the Warm-water autolyse batch particularly, it will need chilling that won’t be as necessary with the Cold-water autolyse batch, to equalize the temperatures in the two doughs. The objective with chilling the warm-water autolyse dough will be to bring it down in F temperature, so that after post-autolyse kneading, i.e. when mixing in the yeast, the doughs are of equal temperature, and will be at about 84F when both go into the refrigerated bulk-fermentation for 18 hours. This means once the yeast is added, the doughs will be treated, with respect to time, temperature and process, “about the same.”

2009.Aug.24

I mixed the dough today, will bake tomorrow. In the data table above, the 111F dough temp was a mistake, the temperature rise during kneading happened faster for some reason, and I didn’t stop soon enough. The NFM-warm immediately became sticky after adding the warm water and some short amount of blade-mixing. Continuing the mixing and before the autolyse rest, it didn’t want to drop down into the blades as I’ve explained the phenomenon in prior text. The NFM-warm was the only batch with that issue at this stage. After a couple of hours in rest, the OFM-warm increased its stickiness quite a bit. After mixing the two warms and the two colds together, adding the yeast, and raising them to fermentation temperature of 84F by machine kneading, the warm autolysed dough was so sticky it was very difficult to handle, it was very much like thick glue that wanted to stick to the fingers and bowls in thick layers. The cold autolysed dough was somewhat sticky, what I’d characterize as typical to moderate. Even though I’ve used the word moderate, it is somewhat stickier than the stickiness of the prior straight dough process, which leads me to the belief that autolyse itself increases stickiness somewhat.

I feel like I may need to repeat this (not sure if I want to), but with different flour mixes. I’d like to know, and have a repetition of, whether this warm/cold:sticky/less-sticky aspect remains when using only high gluten flour, or whether it is something that is only happening because of the baker’s flour. With this test, since the NFM-warm developed its stickiness almost immediately upon reaching temperature after adding the warm water, that same dough was mixed with the OFM-warm which didn’t have baker’s flour, and could have made that combined dough seem stickier than it otherwise would have been. Since I have no specialized machine for quantifying stickiness, I found the best test was handling during the process of rounding.

I’m wondering if the baker’s flour has an enzyme in it that the high-gluten doesn’t (even though the high-gluten says “enzymes” on the ingredient label). There are so many different kinds of baking enzymes, I guess it’s useful to know that enzymes of some kind have been added, but it would be nice to have more precision on labels. I suppose the flours could also be of slightly different wheat strains.

Another thing I noticed, particularly after the autolyse rest and during the process of kneading (to add temperature), as the dough temperature increased, stickiness also tended to increase a little, and this seemed true of all the dough.

I need to be sure to check the extensibility versus elasticity when panning the dough. In a prior batch using a warm autolyse, I seem to recall the dough seemed more extensible and less elastic. I expect to find this prior result re-confirmed, but it’s also a reason to retest using only the particular High-Gluten flour I’m using. The reason I say “particular”, is because it seems clear to me that there are significant differences between flour brands, that the U.S. laws don’t seem to require labeling of enzyme additions, that there are a number of different enzymes with somewhat similar effects but that act at different temperatures and pH ranges, and consequently, one flour is likely not the same as another flour with respect to these more subtle dough changes, and lacking that information does not allow a typical home baker to tailor a process for the particular enzymes that may have been added based solely upon what’s listed on the ingredient label. Consequently, changing the flour source, or even if the manufacturer or miller or distributor changes their formulas slightly in a way that is not reported on their own label, these changes could seem to greatly affect these more subtle temperature and time processes.

In any case, it will be interesting to find out if there’s any noticeable difference between the two baked loaves. If there are no notable differences, then my conclusion will be the cold-autolysed dough is easier to handle, and would seem to result in less dough loss (like what gets stuck to the fingers and gets washed down the drain). OTOH, if the warm autolysed dough is more extensible during panning and-or shaping stage, then the increased difficulty in handling may be a worthwhile tradeoff.

In this series of batches, due to the complexity involved in keeping small dough amounts separate, I was unable to record a number of the data points I’ve found are a good idea to record, tending to go more from memory. However, because these were fermented in dough balls of approximately half the weight of my temperature-fermentation test, and typical amounts fermented at once over many batches, I knew the fermentation-stage dough balls would cool off faster if placed immediately in the refrigerator, and would skew the peak:totalBulkFermentTime to a smaller number. Therefore, I left them at room temperature for 2 hours before placing them in the refrigerator. It’s my feeling that currently lacking a temperature controlled cold-fermentation box, that this is probably the simplest way to alter the peak:totalBulkFermentTime.

2009.Aug.25

While handling after adding salt and oil (per previously explained process), and during the multi-step process of panning, both warm and cold autolysed doughs seemed of roughly equal stickiness. Extensibility versus elasticity also seemed roughly equal, but more extensible than the straight dough process. The best home test I know of for extensibility is pizza dough shaping, and this style of sandwich loaf is vastly shape-different, requiring little extension. The warm-autolyse batch during rounding had the smoothest skin. Both doughs had a noticeable odor of beer or alcohol, so I probably overshot with my guess of 2 hours of room temp fermentation before refrigeration, but only slightly, though this is likely to give the bread a nice, if subtle, flavor.

Proofing was set at 86F (range of about 3F deg), and I guess (because I don’t yet know how long it will take) for 2.5-3 hours prior to baking, though possibly at the shorter end of the range due to the slightly longer room temp fermentation, and the fact that it’s a warm day here, already over 86F outside.

Proofing didn’t go as I expected, at 3 hours, it hadn’t risen as far as I thought it should, so I increased the proofing temperature to 96F, and at 3.5 hours began the oven warm up. At 4-hours the dough was poke tested, and it mostly sprung back, but it did leave a small dimple. It’s possible that the sugars were decreased due to the first 2 hours spent at room temperature during what would typically be called bulk fermentation. The baking procedure’s the same with pre-warm to 500F, bake at 500 for 5 minutes then reduce thermostat to 300F, steam for first 15 minutes (though 8 minutes is probably enough) and bake for 1.5 hours total. Both of these loaves had a bit less oven spring, possibly due to the increased proofing time, even though these loaves had the same amount of moisture that should become steam (so this may mean that yeast out-gassing activity is also important during the initial 3 minutes in the oven). It seems the warm autolyse dough rose a little bit higher than the cold-autolyse. I’m thinking a lighter crust color would confirm fewer sugars (Maillard reaction).

2009.Aug.26

Both crusts are definitely a lighter shade of some amount of brown or tan color versus other, better loaves I’ve made. I believe this is due to the increased fermentation temperature time, i.e., the two added hours of room temperature fermentation before refrigeration. I didn’t realize the dough was so close to the point of running out of broken starches for the yeast to feed upon. Additionally the warm autolyse seems a slightly darker shade of tan or brown versus the cold-autolysed loaf. Unfortunately, the sandwich-slice photos don’t show this as well as looking at the loaves themselves. The warm autolyse batch likely had extra enzyme activity, which created somewhat more sugars from “broken starches”, and likely explains the increased volume as well as a slightly darker shade of brown or tan versus the cold-autolysed loaf.

I cannot tell any difference in flavor between the two loaves but a dear friend that sampled them said the cold-autolyse was slightly more “sour”. I suppose the inverse of this is that the warm-autolyse was slightly sweeter. I noted with both loaves that the crust wasn’t as crisp like it is when it’s a darker color: it was tougher. The crumb is still tender.

This proofing problem has been happening throughout several of the batches, and I didn’t know where the issue was arising from. It’s good to feel like I’ve gotten to the bottom of it. Going for too long on the bulk-ferment (during yeast-active temperatures), exhausts the yeasts’ food supply, reducing food for the proof, which must limit the yeasts’ out-gassing.

This is not a simplistic shorter fermentation times are better observation, as the initial yeast inoculation amount contributes, as well as the time spent at various temperatures. Since I’ve been having this problem off and on throughout several of the batches, I believe one redundant way of dealing with this process issue is simply to add some yeast food, more broken starches, during the final kneading immediately preceding proof. A nice measured amount. This is a large problem as far as I’m concerned given its tendency to repeat, and dealing with the issue will have to take precedence over a high-gluten only warm versus cold autolyse test, which I consider a more subtle-process investigation.

What I will try first for the yeast food addition is a very small amount of scalded flour (PDF). I’m thinking of trying 1-2% of the total flour amount, though I believe the study said up to 6% is generally beneficial. I will add the scalded flour at the point when I mix the salt- and oil-added doughs together, which directly precedes shaping, panning, and proofing. If you read that study, they’re adding the scald for the purposes of extending the shelf life as an anti-staling ingredient and as a replacement for alpha-amylase. However, I’m basing my reason for trying it upon a different idea, that gelatination of the starch in flour breaks the starches down into smaller chemical structures (these two ideas seem to be different conceptual process reasons for what is essentially one underlying factor, the addition of broken starches). The reason I believe this will work is some obscure partial sentence I read in another science study:

the depolymerization of gelatinized starch into maltose and dextrins by a-amylase and the hydrolysis of these oligosaccharides into glucose by amyloglucosidase. . . . Gelatinized starch displays certain physicochemical properties resembling damaged starch. In particular, damaged and gelatinized starch are prone to enzymatic attack (Evers and Stevens 1985).” (PDF)

Another sentence from another source that seems to say the same thing, “The gelatinization dramatically increases the availability of starch for digestion by amylolytic enzymes.” Whether the amylolytic enzymes are working during the proof stage is unknown by me, my guess is they are (and results are suggesting that the beer diagram’s bounds are not as clearly defined when applied to bread dough processes as the bound points indicate), but the outcome of the process idea of adding gelatinized flour during the final kneading before shaping remains to be seen.

If it doesn’t work as expected, simply adding some malt or malt syrup of some kind would probably also work, but I prefer the idea of using the flour itself, it seems a more purist approach. It’s interesting that high-water temperatures are used to scald flour, combined with time at relatively high temperatures, and the warm autolyse is quite similar, but the temperatures are quite a bit lower. So perhaps we could say that the warm autolyse process is, or is quite similar to, a low-temperature scalded flour; or that scalded flour is a high-temperature flour-water autolyse process. It probably depends upon the definition of “scald” to make full sense, but I’m looking for the pattern or similarity of the two processes.

Adding food for the yeast is undoubtedly the reason why poolish process breads have flour added to them again after fermentation, besides just the moisture issue, as the new flour has some small percentage of damaged starch according to a number of experts. The same seems true of many biga recipes. Adding flour is apparently also done with sourdough cultures, though I have no experience with those (but I do read a lot). So it seems like the idea of adding broken starches by scalding a small amount of flour and adding it at the final kneading should work.

The process I’m using isn’t sponge since it uses 100% of the flour. Curiously, reserving 1% of the flour and some yet to be calculated amount of water from the autolyse amounts of flour and water reduces the autolysed flour to <100%, which later has yeast added, so then it seems it qualifies to be called a sponge. Ha. The sponge restriction still seems rather arbitrary to me, particularly since I’m thinking that what ingredients have been added, and in what order, is a preferable classification scheme.

2009.Sep.06

Upon further reflection and study, I’ve decided a 2% scalded flour level will be my next test. Hopek, Ziobro, and Achremowicz used three temperatures, given in degrees C, which I’ve converted to 167F as the initial water temperature, 140F as the mixed temperature, then mixture is maintained at 104F overnight. They used a 1:2 ratio of flour:water for the scald, so that means 200% baker’s percentage of water, however, my temperature calculations say that 243% water at 167F mixed with 74F degree flour, combined results in a 140F mixture. It’s possible my temperature calculations are off somewhat, but I’ll trust them for now. Additionally, I don’t know if a slow cooker will keep the mixture at 104F overnight. Another possibility is to put it in a vacuum bottle to slow the cooling process, however I’m thinking of simply putting the mix into a pre-warmed blender (pre-warmed so it doesn’t cool the mixture when added) and blended for some time period to speed the mixing and collisions of the enzymes with the remaining molecules. I also saw a patent online somewhere that said a microwave may be utilized to do this quickly. What is a monomer (mentioned in the patent)? “The glucose molecule is the monomer of starch.”

I’ve also noted that my bread is staling faster again. Upon defrosting a couple of slices several different times to make sandwiches, the staling or crystallization of the crumb began immediately, at least during hot and dry weather, a problem I never noted when the formula had vinegar added, so I presume that the pH of the dough hasn’t decreased much over the fermentation times currently being used. Therefor I intend to reintroduce the vinegar as a critical ingredient. I saw a web page online that said a mixture of 20:80 acetic:lactic acids generally results from sourdough, so that acid mix should probably be attempted at some point, but right now I have no lactic acid, though it is available at homebrewer suppliers, so for now it will be only 4% acetic acid (vinegar).

More and more I find myself thinking about exploring sourdough, as perhaps the exceedingly sour taste I dislike so much could be a result of formulas or processes that were designed to deliberately create extreme sour flavor. In any case, my readings have said in order to best modulate the growth action of wild yeast relative to the bacillus strains, a temperature controlled fermentation chamber is needed (27°C which favors wild yeast versus 33°C which favors the Lactobacillus), and right now I don’t have one of those dedicated solely as a fermentation chamber.

2009.Sep.13

I’m getting around to making the scalded flour loaves, this time both loaves should be identical. The 2% (normal percent of the total or “base” flour amount) scalded flour was added at the point after overnight refrigeration. First off, it was quite difficult to add the thin and watery paste to the dough, the best procedure seemed to be the blade mixer in a technique similar to adding the oil.

Another interesting effect that occurred was that the dough’s stickiness increased again, making it quite hard to handle. Once added, and rested in the refrigerator for a short time to aid the hydration (warming-cooling cycle), the dough felt ‘just like’ the baker’s flour pre-bulk fermentation stickiness, explored in a prior test. So I guess another possibility for the baker’s flour stickiness is that the miller, or packager, added some heat-treated flour. I don’t know if they’re required to disclose that on the label, or not, particularly if they processed the wheat according to some varying milling processes: it’s still “wheat”. With coffee beans, certain types of coffee grinders create more heat than others, so I suppose that is a possibility, the particular grinding method the miller used. In any case, this dough is so sticky it’s hard to handle once again.

It had been my intent to add this as a redundant technique to increase the damaged starch in the dough during the final proof, as insurance against poor bulk-fermentaion timing (and temperature) but the increased stickiness makes handling it much more difficult. Decreasing the moisture content slightly could help with this, but that also increases the difficulties associated with kneading. The increased stickiness at this point makes shaping and handling more difficult than it otherwise needs to be, so this may not have been the best idea, to include it post bulk-fermentation.

I also decided to re-include the vinegar, 2.35%, as the loaves without it had been staling a bit faster once again.

Making the scalded flour was also informative. I had thought to try the 160F water, in a flour ratio that settled the mixed temperature at 140F, but something happened, perhaps the mass of the measuring cups cooled the water too much, the final mix was only 117F, and afterward it was much like the consistency of a thin pancake batter. So, I thought to microwave it for a few seconds, much like the patent (linked above somewhere) said was a useful technique. After either 20 or 40 seconds, the temperature was 140F, but it’s consistency had changed massively, it had turned into a clearer, more opaque and thicker paste that reminded me somewhat of paper maché glue. So I think next time I’ll try starting with room temperature flour and water, mixed together, then simply use the microwave to bring it up to temperature. It seems very fast, and doesn’t seem to require a long, slow cooking like the scalded flour science report by Hopek, Ziobro, and Achremowicz, linked somewhere above, suggested.

I debated with myself how best to re-include the vinegar (4% acetic acid), as I wanted the main flour autolyse to occur at a natural pH level, so I let the scalded flour cool for a few hours, then added the vinegar to it, and brought it up to 140F again using the microwave. Then I let it cool some at room temperature and then refrigerated it overnight.

Anyway, here’s the formula. You’ll probably note the spreadsheet is growing:

The basic “recipe” or gram amounts I used are in the right-hand three-columns.

I still don’t have a good way to put the process, which appears to be at least as important as the ingredient formula, if not moreso, into table format (but I’m working on it). Basically, the process used this time is the same as the warm-autolyse used last time, as I wanted to insure I exhausted the damaged starches to the same level during bulk-fermentation. After the warm autolyse of the ingredients under the “Drier” column, and after a cooling for 1.5 hours, the yeast was added, then the bulk-fermentation began. It was extended like the last time, 2 hours at room temp before putting in refrigerator (the 2 hours at room temp seemed to be what exhausted the damaged starches resulting in a lighter colored crust in the prior NFM vs. OFM & warm vs. cold autolyse test). The next day the scalded flour was added, followed by 1/2 hour in the freezer, then 1/2 hour in the refrigerator. Next, the salt was added to 2/3 of the dough, and oil was added separately to 1/3 of the dough using the blade mixer, then those two were combined and kneaded using a spiral hook for 10 minutes. Division, rest, and panning followed, then the proof. However, this proofing time was a bit shorter, as it rose somewhat more and faster than the prior batch, thus it didn’t need quite as long a proof time. This proof was 1/2 hour shorter for a total of 3.5 hours from beginning of proof to beginning of bake (so this suggests to me that 2% scalded flour was perhaps a smaller amount than needed, as 3 hours should have been sufficient). The proof temperature was 86F for 2:20, then it was raised to 94F for 0:40 (I’m using a 75-watt halogen bulb, so it takes some time to increase. I might change that to a 150-watt bulb), then the loaves were removed from the oven-as-proofing chamber to room temperature while the oven was pre-heated to 500F.

Slicing surprise!

It’s what Barry Harmon would call a “flying crust” batch! Both slices are from the same loaf, but the second loaf, not pictured, didn’t have the flying crust at all. The tunnel is at least 1/2 the loaf’s length. Since both sets of doughs were treated the same, indeed being divided by weight for panning only after adding the s.flour, which itself was after bulk-fermentation, I don’t have a good understanding of how to create a flying crust on demand, except for the fact this is the first batch that had a remarkable one. I find myself wondering if there should have been more kneading after adding the scalded flour (s.flour), perhaps it didn’t get as evenly distributed throughout all the dough as it could have, perhaps hydration was somewhat uneven, but that’s just a guess. Or perhaps these types of huge tunnels are a possible symptom, a somewhat unpredictable one, of too many sugars left in the dough at the point when it’s baked.

Besides the crust being a more typical shade of brown or tan, one other characteristic worthy of note is that toasted slices developed a darker brown color than any prior batches in an equivalent time period, which is consistent with more “sugars” remaining in the final baked product.

The color of the loaves is normal, or darker brown (or browner tan?) than the last time. The crust is also much crisper, though possibly not quite as crisp as some prior batches. My general feeling before slicing and actually seeing the tunnel was that the 2% scalded flour added after bulk-fermentation didn’t entirely compensate for the over-extended bulk-fermentation; if it had, the 86F temperature proof would have been enough in 3 hours just like the “Wow” batch. That seems to be confirmed by the tunnel result.

Hopek, Ziobro, and Achremowicz in their scalded flour study (and by the way, they put the scalded flour into the dough pre-bulk-fermentation) say, with respect to the amount of damaged starch in wheat flour:

The number of such granules depends on the miling intensity and increases rapidly with increasing roll pressure, typical flour contains 5-9% damaged starch.

This could be a big difference between flours typically used for bread that, at least in the U.S., don’t have their “fineness” specified on the consumer label. I’ve read other, much lower claims, for the amount of damaged starch typically in wheat flours used for bread.

In thinking of the prior OFM versus NFM test, extreme stickiness seemed isolated to the warm autolysed Baker’s Flour. Perhaps the Baker’s Flour is a finer grind, and simply has more broken starches as a result? The only way I can think of to test that idea is to use sifting screens of different mesh sizes, but I don’t have any of those, just the typical wire strainer available at nearly any grocer which have rather large openings or spaces between wires.

It took me a little while to find at least some of the U.S. government regulations pertaining to wheat flour:

(a) Flour, white flour, wheat flour, plain flour, is the food prepared by grinding and bolting cleaned wheat, other than durum wheat and red durum wheat. To compensate for any natural deficiency of enzymes, malted wheat, malted wheat flour, malted barley flour, or any combination of two or more of these, may be used; but the quantity of malted barley flour so used is not more than 0.75 percent. Harmless preparations of α-amylase obtained from Aspergillus oryzae, alone or in a safe and suitable carrier, may be used. When tested for granulation as prescribed in paragraph (c)(4) of this section, not less than 98 percent of the flour passes through a cloth having openings not larger than those of woven wire cloth designated “212 µm (No. 70)” complying with the specifications for such cloth set forth in “Official Methods of Analysis of the Association of Official Analytical Chemists” (AOAC), 13th Ed. (1980), Table 1, “Nominal Dimensions of Standard Test Sieves (U.S.A. Standard Series),” under the heading “Definitions of Terms and Explanatory Notes,” which is incorporated by reference.

So it appears there likely is some legal wiggle room for millers on the fineness side, as long as most of it passes through a motorized #70 mesh in precisely 5 minutes (read section (c)(4)). Finer-ground flour would still pass through, but coarser-ground flour wouldn’t. While I haven’t read the entire page, that excerpted paragraph seems to imply that malted wheat can be used in quantities greater than 0.75%.

With 2% of scalded flour added, dough stickiness seems to be increased afterward. If the s.flour stickiness is due to a similar phenomenon to the Baker’s Flour stickiness, it seems reasonable to believe that after bulk-fermentation, it’s stickiness would be reduced (this would be consistent with reduced sugars that the yeast has consumed over time).

2009.Sep.14

Between the increased sugars, and the huge tunnel just under the top crust, it seems adding s.flour pre-proof and post-bulk fermentation is not optimal, it might be better to add it to pre-bulk-fermentation dough. That’s probably what I shall try next time. However, so far my best results seem achieved with a ~2700g dough ball at 84F immediately put into the refrigerator for bulk-fermentation. That seems to fix the total time available for yeast growth quite well. The length of time before dough reaches 63F or thereabouts (my data said it stopped rising, as dough cooled, somewhere between 65F-56.3F and 3-6 hours, so I estimate it was around 63F and probably at 3.5-4 hours), when this yeast strain seemed to stop much of its CO2 output, can be controlled either by the initial dough temperature (up to 105F or possibly a little higher won’t kill the yeast), or by the size of the dough ball itself. I’ve noted dough balls of half that weight cool much quicker. The idea of using time at room temperature for extending the yeasts’ growth curve before retarding also seems a valid technique, however, I’ve only explored extending it while the dough is at the warmer or initial temperature. Another possibility is to immediately refrigerate 84F dough for 3 hours, and when it reaches 65F, just before it stops rising, to remove it from the refrigerator for some time period to let the dough warm up somewhat, then put it back in the refrigerator at some point. This latter idea would extend the fermentation time while the dough is at the coolest portion of the yeasts’ CO2 output range.

2009.Sep.15

In thinking about the best point to add s.flour, it seems it would be best to perform at least one more test using the 2-hour extended bulk fermentation at room temperature followed by refrigeration. Were I to change back to the bulk-fermentation performed entirely in the refrigerator, and also moved the point in the process where the s.flour is added, it seems that would be two changes, and wouldn’t compare as well versus the most recent “flying crust” batch.

Some sundry and related reading, how to make maltose, and a reasonably nice diagram of the maltose molecule.

2009.10.06

It was time to make another couple of loaves. This time I closely followed the above process, including the flawed 2-hour room temperature bulk fermentation before refrigeration. The intentional change was to add the 2% (flour weight) scalded flour prior to bulk fermentation, instead of prior to the final proof.

This tunnel is much smaller than the last one, it is less then 2″ long, and is only evident in about 5 slices. The other loaf had no similar flaws.

I did note a problem with the proof at 86F. After 2 hours of proofing, the panned dough hadn’t risen much, so I turned the temperature up to 96F 20 minutes sooner than the last batch, and I brought it up to temperature immediately using 10 seconds of the oven’s flame. Later, after removing the proofed dough from the oven-as-proofing chamber at 3 hours, and after warming up the oven, when re-placing the risen loaves into the 500F oven for baking, I noted they had risen a lot more than expected during that 1/2 hour at room temperature. Typically the rise tends to stall at this stage. This has led me to wonder if an issue with the scalded flour, which may have large components of dextrins (whatever may be a molecular component of scalded flour and or damaged starch), isn’t only one where the yeast has trouble waking up from the refrigerated overnight temperatures but is also due to a gas-ouput stall due to a yeast change in food source. I’m sure I’ve read somewhere that during this change from that which is easily digestible, i.e., shorter damaged starches and sugars, to other less digestible foods, i.e., longer starches and sugars, that there is a short period where the outgassing stalls.

Yes, here’s the out-gassing chart, and it appears on a page with some informative yeast discussion. I presume the times would be different than the chart indicates, as each line is at a constant temperature, whereas in the technique I’m using, the dough is cold when it comes out of the refrigerator, so it takes some time to warm up.

This bread is a little lighter in crust color, and when toasting, didn’t develop as dark brown of a crumb like the prior batch, indicating to me that there were fewer free sugars remaining at the point when the yeast action stopped during the bake. This batch had a very strong sharp alcohol odor after overnight bulk refrigeration. After baking and sampling a couple of slices, it has a nice flavor, as well as very crisp crust.

This batch also had a nice total volume in spite of the sub-optimal extended bulk fermentation.

At this point I will drop the extra 2-hours at room temperature before refrigeration. Were I to continue using the scalded flour in this same process, I would probably choose to reduce it slightly to 1% or thereabouts, due to the yeast stall and timing issues. I will probably also make the decision that 96F is a preferable final proof temperature for similar types of sandwich breads.

However, I’m not done experimenting with scalded flour yet. The next step in the experimentation is to incorporate a long fermentation poolish at room temperature, before mixing the final dough for bulk fermentation. I plan to also incorporate at least some portion of the scalded flour into this poolish as an additional food source for the yeast. In thinking about this, it seems one point to add it would be after the first drop after the dough-rise peak. Another addition point or place-in-the-process would simply be to include it right at first.

A poolish is defined as a fermentation (often called a “pre-ferment” or simply preferment, but it’s kind of a misleading name as I’ve previously pointed out) of about 100% water. Since I want to continue using the autolyse with all the flour, there’s a bit of a math problem that limits the total amount of flour that may be subject to the poolish step, because the total water used is the limiter. So I have a bit of calculating to do.

One more site in the related sundry-reading category is wikipedia’s page about maltodextrins and this site about carbohydrates, even though the latter doesn’t directly mention dextrins. Those dovetail nicely with this short youtube video about how to make dextrins from corn starch using an oven. I find myself wondering if the same thing can be done with wheat flour, though the coloration issue would probably not be ideal. If the wheat flour can be “gelatinized” in a dry process, it would mathematically free up some water for use in another portion of the dough process. I’m thinking of trying it. Afterwards, a simple home test would be how much it thickens the same amount of water as I used in the scalded flour portion of the above two batches. I believe it’s also possible to buy this type of flour already premade, though I haven’t seen it at any of the stores where I typically shop.

2009.Oct.07

Before bagging the last batch in plastic overnight, which I use to soften the crust prior to slicing, the crust was arguably the crispest yet. The wikipedia page about dextrins claims that they are used as crispness enhancers in many foods, so it could be that scalded flour added to dough, fermented, and baked may have some greater percentage of dextrins.

http://www.rpi.edu/dept/bcbp/molbiochem/MBWeb/mb1/part2/sugar.htm
http://www.anslab.iastate.edu/Class/AnS518/Ans518_Class3.ppt
(page 17 has a nice graphic)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maltotriose
http://www.elmhurst.edu/~chm/vchembook/547starch.html

This post is currently at 10078+ words, so it’s time to split it up again.

The continuation here was of text snipped from the bottom of that post, and is why the date of this post is later than some of the entries.

2009.Jul.27

Massive volume increase! Wow! This was the first dough I’ve made that passed the windowpane test without tearing before light was visible through the stretched dough.

I diverged from the scientific process of making only one change at a time, so some of the results cannot easily be traced to particular changes made. The following batch used a strictly-defined autolyse rest, and the fermentation was similar to a sponge as well as a biga, but it uses 100% of the formula’s flour, thus cannot be called either.

The major change made in this batch was one of process, or the order in which various ingredients were added. The following ingredient list or formula is not reflective of that order.

These loaves were scaled to have 827g of flour in each (the same as many of those above of 55% water), but the increase in volume can be noted by the slice’s changed x:y axes ratio in the photo below. These loaves are MUCH taller (compared to photos located in the earlier post). The protein ratio is about the same at 12.14%, but the crumb is much softer, more “squishy” and less springy.

The post-autolyse kneading failed in the food processor (first time this has ever happened), the dough was so sticky that it stuck to the plastic bowl’s upper sides, it didn’t want to drop down into the spinning blades, so the stand mixer was used to incorporate the instant dry yeast. However, after adding the yeast and following the refrigerated fermentation period, and the numerous chemical reactions that occur, the dough could once again be blade-mixed in the food processor, that’s the tool I used to later add the oil.

The biga-like primofermentation (defined below) was placed in the refrigerator for 18 hours. The next day salt was added to 2/3 of the fermented dough during stand-mixer kneading, then allowed to rest, while the oil was separately whipped into 1/3 of the dough using the food processor and metal cutting blade. Specifically, I poured the oil into the food processor, and added a golf-ball sized piece of dough, then blade-mixed it for a few seconds; then added another golf-ball sized piece of dough, and mixed it again for a few seconds; I kept repeating this until the dough started balling up in the food processor like it does when it’s kneading, then I added the rest of the unsalted dough, and blade-mixed for a few more seconds. It’s possible there’s a faster way to do this.

Once fully mixed, the oil-incorporated dough was added to the salted dough that was resting in the stand mixer, and another short kneading ensued to fully mix the the two together. Since I’ve noted that salt doesn’t typically dissolve in oil, and that oil and water don’t mix together well (unless there’s an emulsifier added, like egg yolks and-or lecithin: mayonnaise, for example) I wanted the salt added to hydrated dough that had no oil added, so the added oil would not first coat any of the salt grains, potentially isolating them from hydration. I’m not sure if hydration is the best word to use, as salt attracts moisture. Hopefully it carries meaning. In any case, I felt an oil barrier on a salt grain could restrict the particle’s access to free water existing in the dough matrix.

You’ll note that I’ve removed the vinegar from the formula. For a number of years I’ve used the vinegar to lower the pH of straight doughs mixed, risen, and baked on the same day, as I noted the baked loaves seemed to stay fresh a little longer when the vinegar was added. However, many sources say that with longer fermentation times, dough pH decreases naturally as a result of the CO2 production of yeast over time, and in fact, bubbling CO2 through water is one of the ways that alkaline water’s pH can be lowered. Theartisan.net has a chart of dough pH versus fermentation time. Unfortunately, I do not have the equipment or knowledge to quantify this pH change in my dough, it’s apparently more involved than just measuring dough pH, there are buffers in the dough and these must also be accounted for with some kind of special measuring chemicals, standard sodium hydroxide solution, and equipment. It’s not my intent to be a chemist, though for those so inclined, this could be quantified (hmm, the more I’m thinking about this, the more I’m realizing that being able to accurately measure dough pH would be quite useful).

The USDA Nutrient Data Laboratory had a database entry that said vinegar is about 94.78% water, so I multiplied the old vinegar amount by the vinegar water-percentage, then added that much to the formula’s water percentage, (strictly speaking, I should have done this on the normal percent instead of the baker’s percent [note to myself, the normal percent figure calculates to a baker's percent water content of 2.14, so 55+2.14=57.14]), to keep the dough moisture about the same as the prior batch’s 55% formulas.

I also changed the flour mix, as I’d been wanting to get away from using all purpose flour, which while it wasn’t specified on the label, may have been made from some percentage of soft wheat. However, the new flour mix (baker’s flour and high-gluten flour) was adjusted to have roughly the same protein level as the prior batches. The Baker’s Flour is said to be composed of a mix of hard red spring and hard red winter wheat according to a manufacturer’s specification sheet. Apparently, hard red spring tends to higher protein than hard red winter wheat.

The proofing process was also changed slightly to accommodate a different baking procedure. After 2.5 hours of proofing on a day so hot the proofing light never turned on (because the daytime temp was over 86F), I removed the panned and proofed dough from the oven, placed them elsewhere to continue their proof, and preheated the oven to 500F. At 2 hours, 50 minutes into the proofing time period, the pans of proofed dough were placed into the oven for baking.

The oven spring was about one and a half, maybe two inches, and occurred within the first 2 or 3 minutes. When zooming in on the crumb (click on photo for higher resolution), subjectively it appears there’s a lot less tunneling than in prior straight-dough batches.

It’s my current belief the larger holes nearer the bottom than the top the were likely caused by the changed baking procedure, which involved preheating the oven to 500F, inserting the panned and proofed dough, baking with steam for the first 15 min, keeping the oven at 500F for 5 minutes, then reducing the oven’s thermostat to 300F for the remainder of the baking period. It seems this higher initial temperature created steam internally in the baking dough at a faster rate, which was contained by some of the lower CO2 bubble walls and caused them to expand. In other words, the higher oven temperature heated up the stainless steel pans faster, thereby creating more steam over a shorter time period that, at least for a short time, remained internal to the baking dough. However, it’s just a guess, and some of the prior loaves using a different baking process also had larger holes, even if some weren’t as spherical, which suggests the answer is elsewhere.

Barry Harmon says that holes in the crumb are a characteristic of yeast-leavened breads. He also writes about a “flying crust” problem. If that flying crust is on the outer ring of a pizza crust, I’ll prefer it every time.

Another set of yeast issues to work out appeared. During the refrigeration period, I noted the dough peaked at about 5-6 hours into the refrigeration process (I mentioned above I needed to “tune” the yeast amounts), instead of at 18 hours. There are various strategies to remedy this, among them are decreasing the added yeast and-or decreasing the temperature of the dough and-or adding some salt to this fermentation stage of the process. While I did not track the internal temperature of the dough during this observation, I have noted in the past that the dough’s temperature was always warmer than the refrigerator temperature, apparently the activity of the various processes it’s undergoing add heat. Before placing the dough in the refrigerator, I raised the almost-a-biga’s temperature to 83-84F (by machine kneading). My reason for doing this is I want the yeast to be activated and actively multiplying (68-78F degree range from information I’ve seen), however, this undoubtedly keeps the dough’s temperature higher for at least some portion of the refrigeration process. I needed to go to sleep, and didn’t want to bake it until the following day, so there it remained.

I may, or may not, make a flow chart, but until then, this is the process I used for the best batch so far:

Water and flour mixed until all flour was moistened —> Autolyse (I used about a 4-hour autolyse period that included a cool down of about 90F dough to 60F [freezer was used some of the time, refrigerator wasn't cooling it fast enough]) —> add yeast and knead until 84F —> Refrigerate for 18 hours —> Knead salt into 2/3 (approximately) of the dough, then rest —> Whip oil into 1/3 (approximately) of the dough with metal blade food processor —> Put oil whipped dough into stand mixer with salted dough, and knead until well mixed —> Divide and scale dough for pans, then round each piece, let it rest for up to 20 minutes —> Prepare pans with organic palm oil shortening, a thin but very even coating, including pan lip —> Roll dough into cylinders, oil each cylinder with fully refined peanut oil, placing each into the prepared pans —> Proof for 2 hours, 50 minutes at 86F —> Put in oven preheated to 500F, with steam having been pumped into it for at least a couple of minutes prior —> Bake at 500F for 5 minutes, reduce oven thermostat to 300F —> Turn off steam at 15 minutes into baking process —> remove from oven at 1 hr 30 minutes, check that internal temperature is at least 200F —> let cool on cooling rack for several hours —> bag in plastic until following day without eating any (I can’t do this yet, still trying though) —> slice following morning and re-bag in two separately sealed plastic bags to freeze —> Place in freezer, being careful not to let anything weigh down on top of them, or press on their sides, until they’re fully frozen.

An interesting thing occurred when I sliced the few pieces I wanted to eat right away, the crust, while crisp, was much more tender, and it was possible to slice through without cracking and flaking using the freshly-sharpened non-serrated knife. I reckon it’s the flour mix, but like I said, I can only guess, since I made so many changes at once. It’s also clear from this baking result that process is critical to outcome.

2009.Aug.1

Autolyse flow chart

Fermentation flow chart

The image above has evolved through several versions. As of 2009.Aug.10, I’ve decided to call it the more generalized term Fermentation and stop at that. Trying to further define it at this point simply gets into pre-conceived weeds, so to say.

At one point, I called it Primoferment, short for Primary Fermentation, but then found that other baking authors had semantically or logistically connected primary fermentation to bulk fermentation. Originally, I called it “Sponge flow chart”, and used the term pre-ferment in the lower block. I still believe it’s a sponge, because it doesn’t have salt, oil, or other ingredients yet, but some notable baking authors claim a sponge can only be less than 100% of the flour (I guess 100% of the flour is like a sponge asymptote).

A number of baking authors say “pre-ferment” has a similar 100% flour restriction, therefore what I’m doing is not a pre-ferment. Anyway, the term “pre-ferment” doesn’t make a lot of sense to me, because once yeast has been added to wheat flour and water, fermentation begins. The prefix “pre” generally means before, so pre-ferment would seem to mean before fermentation, but adding the yeast begins fermentation, so it makes little sense to call a step after adding yeast the pre-ferment, regardless of the percent of the total flour amount. I’m going to need to train myself to avoid using the term, as it appears inherently contradictory, and as such is confusing. At best the term seems an oxymoron.

The bottom line is that I believe the above flow chart is a sponge, due to the hierarchy of ingredients and the order all ingredients are eventually added to dough. It seems there are different logical ways of organizing the various steps, and to some degree, this creates inflexibility.

I’m also going to start tracking the odor of alcohol as a subjective data point, it may be that relates to the bread’s final baked flavor. Don’t worry, the alcohol boils out during baking when it reaches about 172F degrees.

When looking at only the two flow charts (directly above), it’s very easy to see a progression of ingredients that could extend beyond the second flow chart, to a third, even a fourth. It would make some sense for specific, named stages of pre-bake yeast-dough to follow such a progression of ingredients, similar to that progression as seen from autolyse to ferment. Perhaps that was one of Calvel’s messages to bakers. Perhaps another message is not how many separate rests interspersed by kneadings there are, but simply the order that ingredients are mixed (kneaded) into the dough.

One aspect that seems to differentiate the autolyse (as a rest) from the others is that its a dead mixture (containing no added yeasts or bacteria, in reality its probably hard to work only with sterile flour and sterile water and-or not accidentally inoculate the dough. I also presume that trying to sterilize the flour would likely affect enzymes and possibly its other chemical structures, including any wild yeasts, spores, and bacteria that may exist naturally on or in a wheat grain or flour product). Once yeast has been added, the mix is no longer dead, life has been added to it. Autolyse no longer seems as logical a term for a process once life is thriving.

With my most recent batch, I logistically nested the dough from the autolyse into the “water” and “flour” primary fermentation ingredients (light green). Another way of stating this is that after the autolyse, I added yeast and kneaded to incorporate only the yeast into the dough, thus transforming the autolysed dough into one that would ferment.

Both poolish and biga are sponge pre-ferments, but they’re terms that are slightly more specific with respect to added water and moisture level. Since my latest batch was ~57% moisture, that lies within the 50-60% water guidelines that I’ve seen that define the term biga, therefore I called it biga-like. Any biga is also a sponge, and so is a poolish, as I understand the terms. However, since mine uses 100% of the formula’s flour, according to some recently-published baking authors, I cannot call it either sponge or biga. Nor is it straight dough, as the order of the ingredients added to the flour, with the multiple rests and mixings, surely excludes that as well.

Wikipedia says a biga can be as low as 45% water, and theartisan.net, 42%, however, as a practical matter with the flours I’ve worked with, getting under 50% and having it fully hydrate is questionable. I did try a series of tests of “cracker” pizza doughs that had somewhere near 42% hydration, but the flour after mixing, and I mean vigorous cutter-blade mixing as well, remained mealy, and would only stick together if pressed together. During that time was when I noted that it was near the 50% water level that allowed a dough’s gluten to fully develop, however, I didn’t try a series of experiments dialing it in at 1% increments, so my figure is approximate. Another factor that I haven’t yet explored is that those levels I tried were with straight dough formulations. Clearly, the autolyse rest changes hydration significantly, as evidenced by the vastly increased stickiness of a ~57% water-level dough subject to it. So, perhaps it is possible to obtain lower hydration levels in any flour using Calvel’s autolyse technique. More things to explore….

I happened across a very interesting related paragraph the other day in a book originally published sometime in the 1940s, re-published at chestofbooks.com, the title is “Experimental Cookery From The Chemical And Physical Standpoint”, by Belle Lowe:

Distribution of water in dough. Alsberg in “Starch and Flour Quality” states that in bread dough about 50 per cent of the water is bound moisture or water of hydration incapable of serving as a solvent for other substances. The starch holds approximately half of this bound water, the gluten the remainder. Starch at room temperature can absorb about 30 per cent of its weight of water, whereas gluten may absorb 200 per cent of its weight. But starch constitutes so great a percentage of the flour that as a result the quantity of water it binds is nearly as great as that bound by gluten. The remaining 50 per cent of the water in bread dough, which may serve as a solvent for other substances and form steam, cannot be separated readily from the dough by mechanical means. It is held in the interstices of the dough by surface and mechanical forces.

It seems to me that if the purpose is to grow and multiply yeast, having free water available for them “in the interstices” would be somewhat helpful, though it’s just a guess, as I’m no microbiologist. It’s my belief, since I’m trying to multiply yeast, that fully hydrating the flour is important, particularly since I’m using dry yeast that needs moisture, presumably “non-bound” or free water, to hydrate. While I still occasionally look, I have been unable to find those little foil-wrapped cubes of cake yeast in the local stores’ refrigerator section that I recall finding some 40-years ago. The instant dry yeast seems to work okay, and it’s my understanding that baker’s yeast, in its various forms, can be substituted for each other.

The other notable thing I see in that paragraph is that as a wheat flour’s protein content rises relative to its starch content, it should require a higher hydration because the gluten (protein) is said to absorb so much more water than starch. Perhaps this relates to baker’s and recipe author’s frequent use of the phrase, “develop the gluten.”

In the case of my most recent loaves, 100% of the flour was processed through the primoferment step, as well, 100% went through the autolyse.

That said, if theartisan.net’s strict biga guide is authoritative, then my dough used too much water to qualify to be called biga, nor were my temperatures in their given biga ranges. However, even their own references elsewhere on their site state that a biga can be of 60% hydration. I refer specifically to their referenced Indirect Method #1 formula for “Pane Casereccio”, the formula for a 16-2/3% biga dough. I say 16-2/3% because the biga comprises only 100 flour grams of a 600 flour gram formula.

And since we’ve now brought the divergent terms “direct” and “indirect” into the discussion, it appears to me that:
Direct dough = Straight dough
Indirect dough = Sponge dough

Perhaps the formulas using very low biga-hydration levels are using low-protein flours. I believe I also read somewhere that flours manufactured in different places are dehydrated to different levels. If true, then a flour that has a higher inherent moisture content should require less added moisture to “develop the gluten”, than a drier but otherwise equivalent flour with a lower inherent moisture level. I would also presume that storage humidity, as well as ambient weather conditions, could affect this, including those in the home.

I also had a few melancholy remembrances during the last few days. I was about 13, maybe younger, and sitting at the kitchen table reading through a large cookbook. When it started discussing sponge methods, sourdough was mentioned. This pattern repeated through several other cookbooks over the course of some period of years, so I learned way back then that sponge methods were only meant for sourdough, and since I didn’t care for sourdough’s flavor, why would I ever waste my time learning to make sponge dough or using sponge methods. I’m sure glad that myth has finally been put to rest.

2009.Aug.2

Just some sundry reading, Bread, The Staff of Life. After reading that I was reminded about the squishy and non-springy nature of this most recent batch. I’m certain that that aspect of the batch was not an improvement, and my plan is to increase the protein ratio to a higher level. However, that is not my primary concern at this point, tuning the yeast amount and fermentation temperatures are much higher on the priority list.

2009.Aug.3

The initial temperature of the primoferment before placing in the refrigerator for the retarded fermentation probably gives a great deal of control over the time intervals required for the rising dough to peak, besides just the initial seed or inoculation amount of yeast.

As I’ve been looking around for the math equations, I’ve increasingly been reminded of my capacitor solutions post and the project it describes.

I’ve noted that not one of my cookbooks has simplistic equations to calculate the dough peaks, and even more more to the point, to calculate shifting the peak to a sooner or later time interval which may involve temperature more than initial yeast inoculation. One of the books does have simple formulas for dough temperature (mixing flour of a temperature with water of another temperature to calculate mixed temperature), protein ratios, and some other things, so I find the absence of a simple equation for bakers to model yeast curious. So, if you’re a mathematician, or perhaps a molecular biologist, consider hooking up with a bread baking artisan/author, and devise a simple temperature and yeast growth formula so that us home bakers can plug some numbers into our spreadsheets so we can accurately shift the time our fermenting-dough peaks occur by changing the seed yeast amount and-or by changing the fermentation temperature.

The most comprehensive set of formulas I can find: sourdough yeast and bacilli culture mathematically modeled.

However, I feel that currently attempting to understand those will require more time-investment and lack-of-joy than I desire (just following the references to other studies is time consuming, then often they’re not publicly available anyway, so then one goes on a “hunting” trip to libraries and such looking… can potentially be a big waste of time).

Here are a few other links regarding yeast-growth modeling.

http://www.pizzamaking.com/forum/index.php/topic,5028.msg42572.html
(this pizzamaking.com reference isn’t yeast-growth modeling per se, but it’s interesting nontheless that a pizza baker modeled a dough formula)

http://blowers.chee.arizona.edu/cooking/kinetics/bread.html

However, this has the most simplistic formulas, scroll around the page some: http://regentsprep.org/REgents/math/ALGEBRA/AE7/ExpDecayL.htm

These last ones probably won’t work very well, but because they are so very simple, trying them isn’t a huge time investment. The doubling formula doesn’t take account of temperature, which is a major failing.

[This section is to continue adding links as I find them that relate to yeast-growth modeling, regardless of the date I find them]
http://archives.math.utk.edu/ICTCM/VOL18/W013/paper.pdf
This model seems to incorporate a bound point, and includes a simple graph.
[/end.link.section]

So I decided, in order to avoid going down this particular math rabbit hole right now, losing any joy the bread baking has been giving and instead having a month or two long math refresher cram session and lots-of-work, to instead simply cut the initial yeast amount in half, and make another batch, keeping the temperatures as constant as I can keep them. By selecting a yeast amount that is exactly half the value as that used in the last batch, then observing any increase in the time to the new batch’s retarded-fermentation dough peak, I should get a rough idea of the time interval required for yeast numbers to “double” under those conditions by observing the height of the peak, as well as the time intervals that have passed until the peak occurs.

This may give me some insight into whether it’s possible to shift the dough peak to something other than a 5-6 hour time-interval point, or whether yeast wants to follow a more time-fixed growth curve, particularly in the event the dough peak doesn’t time-shift much at all. It’s possible that the height of the peak will change more than any time-interval shift. In that case, my guess will be that it’s better to modulate the dough’s initial temperature going into the refrigerated fermentation, to decrease it some to slow growth versus changing the initial yeast added.

2009.Aug.4

I haven’t yet flow charted the the proof, and may not. It is my understanding that the yeast consumes a very limited amount of food composed of broken starch chains that comprise at most 1-2% of the total flour weight. It seems to me that with too many fermentations (that have kneadings or foldings between), the yeast will eventually consume all the available broken starches, at least with a lean dough that has no added sugar. Therefore, it seems there would be a point at which even viable yeast would fail to thrive. I also understand this can result in a pale colored crust, as it’s these same sugars that are responsible for what is called the Maillard reaction which results in the crust color. Diastatic malts seem to typically be used for this, to increase the yeasts’ food supply. Apparently the difference between malt powder and diastatic malt powder is that with the former, the enzymes and such have been inactivated, but in the latter, they remain active. I’ve also seen some references to malt syrups used in baking, but whether they are diastatic, or not, is often unknown.

Most of the flours I’ve purchased over the years state they have some malted barley added (the High Gluten flour I use does not state this on the packaging, but it does say enzymes), so if one uses a flour without such an addition, the importance of adding these yeast foods probably increases, and in the event those aren’t added, likely so does the yeasts tendency to consume its available food supply faster, as it seems its total food supply would be decreased.

Here’s an interesting page about making your own diastatic malt at home. A similar page. We used to buy some breads years ago at a particular market that also had its own bakery, most of their breads were whole grains of various kinds, some of which had the word “sprouted” in their name. One day they stopped making their one-of-a-kind Sprouted Triticale bread. That was a sad day.

Anyway, the bottom line of my current thinking is that the more fermentation rest periods there are (with the very important disclaimer of 100% of the flour), the more yeast food (simple sugars of some name, might be maltose) has been consumed by the growing until-the-bake—or—run-out-of-food yeast, particularly in a lean dough. It seems the advantage of the enzymes is that they seem to make the needed simple sugars from the more complex starch chains (undoubtedly an oversimplification). Another set of explorations could investigate the effect of food-starved yeast on the final proof, besides just a lack of color in the crust. My guess is that it wouldn’t rise as much, and be denser and chewier.

2009.Aug.06

I was just grocery shopping, and also reading labels once again, a habit of mine, and I saw that a similar flour with a higher protein ratio, labeled as “Bread Flour”, also contained ascorbic acid. The “Baker’s Flour” didn’t claim any ascorbic acid. Ascorbic acid is used as a dough conditioner, and current references seem to say it interferes with alpha amylase enzymes, while ascorbic acid’s inhibitory effect on beta amylase has been known for a number of decades. While it’s just a guess, with straight dough formulas such as those of a typical bread machine, ascorbic acid inhibition of amylase wouldn’t seem to matter as much. However, with longer dough development processes such as sponge doughs, amylase enzymes would seem critical to breaking down longer starch chains into simpler sugars that yeast can feed upon over longer time periods. Whether these enzymes are active or not at the lower fermentation temperatures typically used during bulk-fermentation and proofing, or whether they are only active at the higher temperatures found typically during the bake cycle, or whether the amounts of added ascorbic acid are sufficient to significantly affect these enzymatic processes are unknown by me. These two flours are from one manufacturer, whom I haven’t named, nevertheless, they seem important things to look for on the product labels, depending upon one’s intended usage.

I’m feeling like I’m going down the baker’s rabbit hole, without even getting into math.

2009.Aug.8

I’m still reading and searching for information about amylase, and trying to determine whether it is active at the lower temperatures typically used during bulk-fermentation and proofing, as well as wanting to know if it is active at typical refrigerator temperatures. The following page is about industrial enzymes added to bread, but their first sentence, at least to me, implies that amylase enzymes are active at temperatures typically used in bread-dough fermentation, i.e., “Maximises the fermentation process…” The temperatures aren’t specified, and beer-making guidelines say that the optimum temperature for amylase activity is higher than fermentation temperatures (temperatures at which yeast lives), the linked image appears on this page. It’s a little hard to reconcile the two, unless the wort mashing guidelines are idealized to optimum points but that the given enzyme activity also occurs outside the image’s given temperature and pH bounds.

One of the curious processes when using a poolish, is that dry flour is typically added between the poolish stage and bulk fermentation or later proof, adding more broken starch chains, effectively supplying fresh food for the yeast. However, if one wishes to autolyse that dry flour first, autolyse with only water at non-yeast modified pH levels, then the percentage amount of poolish used must decrease in the final dough (by the amount of water added to the flour for the autolyse process, water which once used there is not available to have used it in greater percentage amounts in the poolish). By definition, a poolish is of 100% hydration, or equal weights of flour and water. This is one of the reasons why I wanted to try the biga (whether biga or pseudo-biga) first.

One thing I need to be aware of when altering the yeast amounts to tune when the dough peak occurs is that I may begin to alter “older dough” into “newer dough”, which may alter flavor. My prior batch had the peak occur at 5-6 hours, which means the dough continued fermenting for another 12-hours, so the ratio of 6:18 (18 derived from 12+6, or the total retarded bulk-fermentation time) may be important. The last batch I made had a ‘very light’ scent of alcohol at the end of bulk-fermentation. Some of the prior batches, before I practiced more care with temperature and time, had stronger alcohol smells at similar process points. So, if the dough peak is altered, I need to also specifically note any odor changes, as it may be the dough’s alcohol that slightly alters the baked bread’s flavor. This may be something worthwhile to note on the flow charts, besides just the current data points which are mostly time and temperature. I’m sure the pros probably have a test of some kind they can perform to provide a precise alcohol content datapoint; I’ll have to be satisfied with the subjective smell test for now.

So, two new datapoints to add to fermentation flow charts. The ratio of the dough peak to the total fermentation time, and the subjective smell test. The data points might be irrelevant, and they might not be, the only way for me to know is to track the information then perform the highly subjective taste test.

I think I’ll go back and alter at least one of those flow charts above to include these data points, and while I’m at it I’ll delete the silly term pre-ferment.

2009.Aug.9

For some reason, the use of the term pre-ferment by so many other published bakers has stuck in my mind as a misuse of the root words, particularly the prefix. This morning, it occurred to use the term “primary” as a word in the phrase “primary fermentation” instead. I’m sure I’ve seen the term used elsewhere in this context. However, it’s tempting to turn “primary” into the shortened prefix “pri”, unfortunately, I cannot find “pri” listed as a prefix in any English-only dictionary (but I haven’t yet checked OED). I’ll probably go back and change my usages of the term “pre-ferment” to “primary ferment” or “primary fermentation.” Maybe someday “pri” will be considered a valid English prefix, if so, then I can shorten it to pri-ferment; further, pre-ferment and pri-ferment might or could be homonyms.

Someone asked WikiAnswers what the prefix meaning “first” is, the answer given is “primo-”. So, “primo-fermentation”? But I’m not going to take WikiAnswers as authoritative, I still need to check OED. My little unabridged dictionary doesn’t list “primo” as a valid prefix, nor does a define:primo Google search turn it up as a valid English prefix, though the unabridged dictionary I commonly use does have the word-fragment “primo” preceding other words when not using the hyphen, such as primogenitor, and indeed it seems to mean “first.” So, maybe primofermentation and primoferment fits better, but today, that doesn’t seem to be a “recognized” word. Perhaps I’ll start using it anyway. Yes. I will “coin” the word primoferment and the variant primofermentation, as well as plurals with an added “s” at the end. I will define it thusly: First and-or Primary Fermentation. When used in reference to baking bread, as I have used it, it specifically allows any flour amount, either less than, equal to, or greater than 100% of the flour (if a single batch of primoferment was for multiple specific and different formulas, and the total primoferment was divided to make each one, it could have a larger amount of flour than 100% of any given specific formula).

The purpose for my use of this word is that in the case of the term “sponge”, as well as “pre-ferment”, the explicit meanings as used by published bakers evidently excludes using 100% of the flour. Thus, I will use the term primoferment to mean the first fermentation, regardless of the percentage of the final dough’s flour amount. A primoferment could also be a sponge, or even the oxymoronic preferment, as those terms have apparently come to be defined by bakers. While I’ve never made a sourdough culture due to personal taste preferences that I learned of when a child, if such a culture is or was the first fermentation, the term primofermentation could also apply to that.

I’ve just discovered that the bi-metallic refrigerator thermometer that I’ve been using in my “warm” refrigerator is now defective (I believe it worked fine when it was new). Putting it into a non-defrosting chest freezer with a newer, fluid-based refrigerator/freezer thermometer (AKA “bulb” thermometer, but inside some kind of plastic and metal case) shows that its error is huge: Fluid-thermometer reads -15F, while bi-metallic reads 42F. So, while I was believing that my dough retarder (it’s a spare fridge, an old keg cooler I found rusty in a backyard back in the 1980s — it needed a minor repair, a start capacitor for the compressor–I love it because it doesn’t have a defroster-heat cycle, thus it uses very little power) was warm, evidently my thermometer was misreporting the temperature. I do know the old keg cooler doesn’t freeze water, so it’s above 32F. I moved the fluid-based thermometer into it, and it seems to read 38F. I guess it’s time to buy more refrigerator thermometers, and I hope to get the fluid type (maybe they’ll last longer). So all that prior data where I believed my retarder was warm at about 45 or thereabouts is wrong, based upon the reporting of a defective thermometer.

But before doing any of that, I’m getting low on baked bread…

2009.Aug.10

This is a test of halving the added yeast. The process is about the same as the prior “Wow!” batch above. When I say, “about the same”, I mean as precisely the same as I’m humanely able to duplicate it. I’m trying to find out if and how much the dough peak time-shifts with a refrigerated bulk-fermentation process, due to so many claims on others’ sites that reducing the yeast amount shifts the dough peak to a longer time interval.

The following observations were made on the same day as baking (very fresh).

Crumb Texture: The cell sizes are smaller, and overall, because the proof didn’t rise as high in the pan (reduced absolute yeast numbers is my guess), the bread is more dense. It isn’t as “squishy” though it’s still soft, (softer than the straight-dough series of 55% water and about same size and total weight), but the crumb springs back after squeezing (similar squeeze to what happens when eating a sandwich). Not a very heavy squeeze, but a compression of a slightly thick slice to about 1/8″.

This bread is almost tasteless. Reminds me slightly of factory made hamburger or hotdog buns, shape excepted, though this is probably springier, and crust is thicker. Tasteless quality persists with toast. This size does allow 4 slices to fit in the toaster oven simultaneously. Two differences with prior batch: Reduced yeast numbers, and probably related, absence of alcohol odor.

I’ve updated the most recent dough formula to be more specific with regards to the water I use, and have used in the past. Chlorine in the water may act to inhibit yeast growth, and I understand dissolved minerals such as calcium raise pH.

Next comes the retarded dough-peak data, it peaks at roughly the same time as the prior batches where the initial temperature was 84F and the total dough-ball weight was about 2600g, though the height of the peak is about 2 inches less. The row that says ‘”s to top’ means the inches to the top of the pan, the number decreases as the dough rises higher.

The problem with shifting the dough peak is that the dough is cooling off within 6 hours to a temperature below yeast multiplication levels, given the 84F initial dough temp when placing it there. So the answer appears that the dough peak does not time-shift significantly with this type of changing-temperature process. The reduced height of the peak could be considered a type of shift, but it doesn’t appear as a time shift. My guess is that the total yeast numbers are reduced throughout the entire yeast active temperatures. Since there wasn’t increased time at active temperatures, yeast didn’t multiply to greater numbers needed to rise dough higher, and effect other dough chemical changes, such as decreased stickiness (stickiness that first showed up with the autolyse process, but that disappeared relatively more after other batches’ retarded bulk-fermentation, batches when yeast numbers would seem higher).

The major out-gassing of the yeast seems to stop or slow somewhere between 65 – 56.3F, as my non-calibrated black digital probe reports. I can think of three possible ways to extend the fermentation peak given the apparent problem: Do some of the fermentation outside the 38F cooler, say, 6 hours or so, then place it in the cooler for the remaining 12 hours; raise the dough temperature some (I estimate it needs to be raised to about 100F for a 12:18 Peak:Totaltime, which is kind of a high dough temperature, though it might make an interesting test to sample the effects of a partial higher-temperature fermentation on autolysed dough) before placing in fridge; or a combination of the two. Oh, another possibility is to connect the thermostat used for the proofing light to the fridge, then set the temperature higher than 38 (it’s trivial wiring, but I would prefer a process that uses a typical refrigerator temperature, though being able to retard to any desired stable temperature is possibly/probably the best solution.)

My current guess is that the dough peak would shift as a point-in-fermentation time provided that fermentation temperatures were constant and of a level that was between yeast activity temperatures. My understanding is that those temperatures would typically be between 68 – 105F to possibly a little higher, though the rising data of this latest batch also shows activity at lower temperatures including 65F and a bit lower. This is why being able to set the retarder’s or refrigerator’s temperature somewhat higher than 38F would be preferable. Since my non-calibrated temperature probe indicated that yeast activity (outgassing) slowed to a stop somewhere between 65 – 56.3F, setting a fermentation temperature at those levels (whatever the actual temp is, my black digital probe has an unknown amount of error, possibly 5 degrees high or slightly more) would provide the slowest dough rise and associated yeast multiplication. If I could set the retarder to 65F, it seems it would be a slow, steady rise, and if I could set it to 64F, then 63F on a different batch, and keep lowering the temperature over successive batches, I could probably find the lowest temperature point where this particular yeast strain appears to go into dormancy. As a related issue, I recall reading somewhere that yeast lagers (a beer type) are typically cold fermented (I don’t recall the precise temperature). Ales are fermented at warmer temperatures than lagers.

To do the freeze test, I filled a drinking glass that was tall enough for the stainless probes to be completely submerged, filled the glass with crushed ice, then placed the black and green thermometers in the ice with their probes touching the bottom (both have probes of roughly equal length), then filled the glass with water up to the bottom of the thermometers’ plastic circuit-containers or the point where the stainless probe is fully submerged, the same as the level of crushed ice. Then I placed it all in the freezer for 20 minutes. Then I removed the glass and thermometers from the freezer to take temperature readings. When looking at the data, it seems to me that the thermometers’ circuit-cases, when they warm up in room-temperature air, increase the reading, though I’d like to have confirmation of that, such as with an accurate bulb thermometer. I have trouble believing that a fully filled glass of ice with some icewater is as high as 38F, the ice should have been more melted at that point, but I don’t have a calibrated bulb thermometer to test it against. What I’m saying is the temperature measurement may not be well isolated to the probe itself, never mind only the tip of the probe. So, next time I measure bulk dough rising temperature, I will use the green digital thermometer, and leave it in the dough while the dough is in the refrigerator, that may get the plastic circuit case closer to the same temperature (upon a reread, this also runs the risk of skewing the temperature reading to the low side, if the probe is not well temperature isolated and the center of the dough is warmer than the surrounding air, such as in a refrigerator).

The reason I’ve preferred using the black digital thermometer was that when pressing its on-off button to turn it on, it had the last used F or C setting saved, so all I had to do was turn it on and wait for the reading to stabilize. With the green thermometer, it always defaults to C (centigrade) when turned on, meaning I have to press two buttons to use it. First, turn it on by pressing one button, and press the other C-F button to change it to F.

I prefer thinking of baking-related temperatures in Fahrenheit because the oven’s thermostat knob is scaled only in Fahrenheit, so it makes more sense for me to think in relative terms to Fahrenheit. If the oven knob had both scales printed on it, I doubt if I’d care which scale I used.

I’ve noticed when I make one loaf and refrigerate the dough, it rises less than when I make two loaves. Two loaves worth of risen dough, about 2600g, fully fills the large pan and lid I use in the retarder when the dough has expanded to the point it typically falls (the “peak”). This point may be between 4 and 6 times its starting volume. Anyway, as the mass placed in the pan increases, it seems to take longer to cool off, so the dough rises a little more because it’s at a higher temperature for a bit longer time, keeping the yeast active for longer. So, another strategy would be to get a larger pan (expensive, particularly for stainless steel, personally I wouldn’t want to use aluminum due to dough acids that form – certain food-grade plastics would probably be okay, if the dough can be removed without adding oil to its surfaces), and make four loaves at a time, refrigerating all the dough starting as a single rounded ball.

When I wrote “food-grade plastics” in the paragraph above, it flashed into my mind that yet another tactic would be to insulate the rising container, so that the heat transfers out of the dough slower. Plastic alone insulates more than stainless steel. So it seems there are a lot of strategies that could increase the current 4:18 – 6:18 peak ratio.

This dough was stickier than the prior batch when it came out of the retarder, I presume because the reduced yeast numbers didn’t effect as many dough changes in the first 4-6 hours when the yeast was active and before cold put them into dormancy.

No alcohol odor after fermentation was noticed. One possibility for this is that due to frequent temperature checking, the fermentation pan kept having its lid taken off, then replaced. I forgot to specifically sniff-test this post-fermentation dough. With some prior batches, alcohol odor was obvious without intentional sniff or smell test. However, my belief is that yeast numbers weren’t yet high enough during temperature-active bulk-fermentation periods to produce a higher level of dough alcohol that would have been of obvious odor.

2009.Aug.12

One more piece of data that I haven’t been explicitly tracking, and which certainly seems important, is the total time in fermentation. In other words, the clock time and date when yeast is added to the flour and water, and the clock time and date when the shaped and proofed dough is placed into the oven for baking, which shortly thereafter kills the yeast (said to be 140F). For the purposes of consistency from batch to batch, this total fermentation time seems quite important, though the varying temperatures tend to alter the yeast growth as well. Most of the interim fermentation steps already have an associated time and temperature, so tracking the total time also seems important as a double check that process was repeated accurately.

Additionally, I still need to develop a shorter and more concise method of conveying all the process steps, the time and temperature in each. The flow charts are okay-to-superior for understanding the general process, but they’re text-based objects, not data cells that can easily be altered with a glance and a keystroke or two.

It’s my understanding, from reading, that the large bread factories have gotten to the stage of near total flour-to-bread automation, which, whatever the weaknesses of their final product, at the very least provides a high level of batch-to-batch consistency, something which is hard to characterize as anything other than a definite strength.

2009.Aug.24 SNIP

The entries that were here have been moved into a new post with the title Part 2: Experimenting with Bread Dough Process. This snip, like the prior one, is due to difficulties updating when the post length exceeds some length amount. I started having trouble with this post when it contained about ~12,000 words. Apparently I will need to plan to have multiple posts, rather than one long one which was the original plan, and when the posts start reaching the 8K-10K word level, to start looking for a break point.

H.R.1866 Title: To amend the Controlled Substances Act to exclude industrial hemp from the definition of marihuana, and for other purposes. Sponsor: Rep Paul, Ron [TX-14] (introduced 4/2/2009)

Cosponsors (10)
Latest Major Action: 4/2/2009 Referred to House committee. Status: Referred to the Committee on Energy and Commerce, and in addition to the Committee on the Judiciary, for a period to be subsequently determined by the Speaker, in each case for consideration of such provisions as fall within the jurisdiction of the committee concerned. COSPONSORS(10), ALPHABETICAL [followed by Cosponsors withdrawn]: (Sort: by date)

Rep Baldwin, Tammy [WI-2] – 4/2/2009
Rep Clay, Wm. Lacy [MO-1] – 4/2/2009
Rep Frank, Barney [MA-4] – 4/2/2009
Rep Grijalva, Raul M. [AZ-7] – 4/2/2009
Rep Hinchey, Maurice D. [NY-22] – 4/2/2009
Rep McClintock, Tom [CA-4] – 4/2/2009
Rep Miller, George [CA-7] – 4/2/2009
Rep Rohrabacher, Dana [CA-46] – 4/2/2009
Rep Stark, Fortney Pete [CA-13] – 4/2/2009
Rep Woolsey, Lynn C. [CA-6] – 4/2/2009

Apparently the text is not yet available at Thomas, though Internet searches indicate some of the major news outlets already have some information on the bill.

It is my understanding that Industrial hemp has no psychoactive properties, so if this bill attracts enough attention, and eventually passes into law, farmers could probably grow it without applying for a special license. Once that occurs, folks will probably will be able to buy hemp clothing at reasonable prices once again. It is said to be stronger and more durable than other natural fabrics. Industrial hemp is quite useful for a number of other things, including paper. It seems preferable to make paper from an annual crop, versus cutting down older trees for that purpose. My understanding is that hemp as a crop is drought tolerant.

All of these plants breath in CO2. Surely this would help some with the Global Climate Change portion that’s said to be due to mankind’s accelerated production of large amounts of CO2 that seemed to begin with the Industrial Revolution in the 18th and 19th centuries.

So if you support this bill, be sure to write to your Representatives encouraging them to sign on as cosponsors.

I plan to do that myself soon, this post hopefully will remind me. I believe it’s better to print or write the letter on paper and send it by mail. I’m not at all certain that electronic submissions even reach the intended offices. Maybe they do.

In a peculiarly relieving way, the city of Austin reportedly approves a particular composting toilet.

That is a good story to upon which to end seasonally based news rants.

ProPublica has a very curious article out that relates to the healthcare debate, but is specifically about insurance companies' denials of medical care payments to civilians injured in war zones.  Here's a <a href="http://www.propublica.org/feature/congressional-hearing-officials-acknowledge-program-to-treat-war-contra-619">paragraph</a> I find particularly illuminating:

<blockquote>A retired U.S. Army Reserve general who served in Iraq, Fay called the war-zone insurance program "a flawed statutory and regulatory scheme." He noted that the law requires payments for injuries within 14 days — a timetable he said required carriers to issue denials to protect their legal rights. </blockquote>

I find the quote revealing because shows how some war-zone insurance companies presume guilt instead of innocence with regards to those humans submitting claims.  

<hr>
2009.05.28<span id="more-164"></span>

Energy Secretary Steven Chu has reportedly said that<a href="http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2009/05/27-3"> flat roofs and roads should be painted either white or with paints designed to reflect light</a>, that this would help to cool the earth some.

This seems like one of those simplistic ideas that might help.  If it's coming from a physicist, it's a bit harder to argue with than if it was coming from, say, Joe Doe who noted when he was a kid that black asphalt roads burned the soles of his feet when he walked on them barefoot at noon on a hot summer day, followed by a reflexive dance quickly back to the sidewalk, which though warm, was at least bearable. 

Amid a bevy of buzz today about how much the uninsured cost the insured, surely “proof” that accounting is creatively different for big corporations versus the accounting demanded of the typical citizen, I was relieved to see that an organization called Healthcare Now! is planning rallies on May 30 to push for single-payer universal healthcare, H.R. 676.

On a similar theme, it appears that details of <a href="http://www.reuters.com/article/domesticNews/idUSTRE54Q5EQ20090527">Corporate's pledge to Obama to reign in healthcare costs</a> are leaking out, emphasis added:

<blockquote>In addition to providing <b>incentives</b> and information to beneficiaries to encourage the use of high quality, cost-efficient doctors, the recommendations include measures to reduce avoidable and inappropriate care.<br /><br />

For example, the report recommends using nurse practitioners to manage illnesses and <b>prevent hospitalizations</b> as well as linking some payments to evidence-based therapies.</blockquote>

Translation: the plan is for corporate to limit what doctors you can see, and when you can see them, by using "incentives", which basically seems to mean it will cost you more to get the care you want, all while they tout it as a plan to "save money"!  

It appears the spin being placed by corporate that single-payer universal healthcare will prevent you from seeing a doctor when you need one, or having long waits for operative care, is in fact what corporate plans to do!  They just said so in the above item as I read it.

Here’s a reasonably good and very short history of corporations.

Some things to think about higher education.

2009.05.26

Two big Judicial Branch news items today, the California Supreme Court ruled Proposition 8 as valid (PDF), and Obama has nominated Judge Sonia Sotomayor to the U.S. Supreme Court.

Commondreams.org talks to <a href="http://www.commondreams.org/newswire/2009/05/26-1">Americans about Canadian healthcare</a>, to dispel scare tactics being used in the U.S. media regarding nationalized healthcare.  Sylvan Meyrons reportedly "lived and worked in the United States until a back injury forced him to go back to France after frustrated struggles with American insurance companies."  Isn't that just like particular entities, to accuse "them" "over there" of what they are doing here.  It seems the scare tactics are what, I understand, psychologists call *projections*.

I’m going to be scaling back my posting frequency, as I have other projects to work on. I had hoped to make it through the entire spring season, but it’s taking too much time away from other interests.

2009.05.25

Gore and Ban Ki-moon are urging global corporations to cut greenhouse emissions.

In a sense, reading about this story over the years is somewhat like watching a play. Reading through that particular story, and some similar ones, also see this, seems to show a great deal of hypocrisy. Rather than write on that myself, it seems others have already. Reportedly Kenneth Haar, with Corporate Europe Observatory (CEO) has said:

The access available to Shell, Duke Energy and other companies to meet climate change negotiators from the United Nations, China and elsewhere in Copenhagen was condemned last night by the Corporate Europe Observatory (CEO) campaign group.
…
“Corporate lobbyists have been trying to influence the UN climate talks from the start. But now they are being invited to set the agenda before the negotiators have even sat down. If their demands are listened to, we might as well give up the fight against climate change now.”

Why did Haar’s organization decide on a name acronym for their group that are the same letters as Corporate Executive Officer?

I was saddened some days ago when U.S. Energy Secretary Chu reduced funding for Hydrogen research, though I do understand why he did so. Hydrogen as a power storage medium for transportation has been held as a carrot in front of our collective noses for more than 50-75 years now, and as always, it seems the promise of clean, solar-derived energy stored and used as Hydrogen, leaving only water as emissions byproduct, is “right around the corner”.

Of course, the danger is that it really is right around the corner, and as such is reminiscent of The Boy Who Cried Wolf falsely too many times, so that when it really did happen, nobody believed him.

My own reading of the above items is that our leaders are essentially preparing us for massive inflation, and given the shrinking of the middle class, very few will be able to afford to use or own a vehicle.

Perhaps if carbon-spewing airplanes and helicopters were simultaneously no longer allowed to fly anywhere in the world, the tradeoff would be a fair one.

Robert Reich, writing about <a href="http://robertreich.blogspot.com/2009/05/only-sure-way-to-fund-universal-health.html">funding healthcare</a>, reminds us:
<blockquote>It’s also an upside-down system. The biggest share of the $246 billion goes to upper-income people. The lower your pay, the less coverage you’re likely to have. Workers in lowest paying jobs don’t generally get any health insurance from their employers. Few people collecting $12 an hour at fast-food restaurants or big-box retailers see any part of the $246 billion. The higher your pay, the more health coverage you receive, and the bigger chunk of the $246 billion you get. Top executives and their families get gold-plated plans guaranteeing top-notch medical attention for just about every risk imaginable, along with extra coverage in retirement.</blockquote>

It appears that single-payer universal like H.R. 676 is still off the table.

<hr>
2009.05.23 <!--more-->

Citizen-times.com has a well written opinion out on <a href="http://www.citizen-times.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20090523/OPINION07/90515053/1006">marijuana</a>, among other points, it praises Schwarzenegger for calling for an open debate.  One point it made that seems correct is how alcohol prohibition was stopped as much if not mostly by the Depression (the one that started in 1929), and that we're currently experiencing a similar set of problems relating to marijuana prohibition.

<hr>
2009.05.22 <!--more-->

Yesterday Citizens for Tax Justice released a report that offers some <a href="http://www.ctj.org/taxjusticedigest/2009/05/new-ctj-report-proposes-progre.html">"straightforward" ways to pay for healthcare reform</a>. From their report, "They involve eliminating or reducing several subsidies and preferences provided in the federal tax code to the wealthiest and most powerful among us."  Here's a particularly strong quote from the <a href="http://www.ctj.org/pdf/healthcarefinancing.pdf">report itself (PDF)</a>:

<blockquote>
Proponents of the preferential rates for investment income enacted under President Bush argue that they encourage investment in businesses, which leads to more jobs and a better life for everyone. But given the evidence of how the economy has performed in the years since these tax cuts have been in effect, this view seems delusional.</blockquote>

BBC reports Steven Chu, Energy Secretary, envisions a world powered by wind and solar power!

On solar he explained: “The challenge is to make solar energy cost-effective. The amount of energy hitting the Earth – if you looked at it, if you could convert (with photovoltaic cells) 20% of the Sun’s energy into electricity you would need 5% of the world’s deserts. This is not much land. So the opportunity is enormous.

Chu reportedly says the problem is transporting the generated electricity long distances, as well as storing it, presumably for use during nighttime when photovoltaics don’t generate power.

It’s too bad the last 30 years have seen a decrease in the middle class’s purchasing power. If most families had enough disposable income, solar cells could be purchased and put on every roof.

Steven Chu reportedly recently discontinued, or vastly reduced, funding for hydrogen research, one focus of fuel-cell powered vehicles. This has been a controversial decision. Shortly afterward, Stanford scientists reported a storage discovery that would triple the amount of vehicular hydrogen storage versus Department of Energy guidelines for the year 2015.

He recently signed an agreement with HUD Secretary Shaun Donovan to weatherize low-income homes:

The Recovery Act provides $16 billion to the Department of Energy and the Department of Housing and Urban Development to improve the energy efficiency of existing homes. The partnership announced today between HUD and DOE will coordinate funding for the Weatherization Assistance Program, which received $5 billion under the Recovery Act. Other energy efficiency efforts include $4.5 billion in HUD funding to renovate and upgrade public and Native American housing, as well as $250 million to retrofit privately owned federally assisted housing. In addition to the weatherization funds, DOE received $3.2 billion for Energy Efficiency and Conservation Block Grants for cities, counties, states and Indian Tribes, $3.1 billion for the State Energy Program, and other programs.

2009.05.21

Via Organicconsumers.org newsletter, there’s been a new science study that has found fructose-sweetened beverages increases belly fat (visceral adipose tissue) versus glucose-sweetened beverages:

Studies in animals have documented that, compared with glucose, dietary fructose induces dyslipidemia and insulin resistance. To assess the relative effects of these dietary sugars during sustained consumption in humans, overweight and obese subjects consumed glucose- or fructose-sweetened beverages providing 25% of energy requirements for 10 weeks. Although both groups exhibited similar weight gain during the intervention, visceral adipose volume was significantly increased only in subjects consuming fructose. Fasting plasma triglyceride concentrations increased by approximately 10% during 10 weeks of glucose consumption but not after fructose consumption. In contrast, hepatic de novo lipogenesis (DNL) and the 23-hour postprandial triglyceride AUC were increased specifically during fructose consumption. Similarly, markers of altered lipid metabolism and lipoprotein remodeling, including fasting apoB, LDL, small dense LDL, oxidized LDL, and postprandial concentrations of remnant-like particle-triglyceride and -cholesterol significantly increased during fructose but not glucose consumption. In addition, fasting plasma glucose and insulin levels increased and insulin sensitivity decreased in subjects consuming fructose but not in those consuming glucose. These data suggest that dietary fructose specifically increases DNL, promotes dyslipidemia, decreases insulin sensitivity, and increases visceral adiposity in overweight/obese adults. PMID: 19381015 [PubMed - in process] PMCID: PMC2673878

So, what is insulin sensitivity? Wikipedia says, emphasis added:

Insulin resistance (IR) is the condition in which normal amounts of insulin are inadequate to produce a normal insulin response from fat, muscle and liver cells. Insulin resistance in fat cells reduces the effects of insulin and results in elevated hydrolysis of stored triglycerides in the absence of measures which either increase insulin sensitivity or which provide additional insulin. Increased mobilization of stored lipids in these cells elevates free fatty acids in the blood plasma. Insulin resistance in muscle cells reduces glucose uptake (and so local storage of glucose as glycogen), whereas insulin resistance in liver cells results in impaired glycogen synthesis and a failure to suppress glucose production. Elevated blood fatty acid levels (associated with insulin resistance and diabetes mellitus Type 2), reduced muscle glucose uptake, and increased liver glucose production all contribute to elevated blood glucose levels. High plasma levels of insulin and glucose due to insulin resistance are believed to be the origin of metabolic syndrome and type 2 diabetes, including its complications.

High-fructose corn-syrup (HFCS) is very hard to eliminate from the diet if you eat processed foods, but if you read ingredient labels, it is possible to reduce it, though you’ll probably find, like I have, that your choice of processed foods is vastly reduced and you’ll have to do a lot more cooking from scratch or be willing to spend more time and money searching for alternatives.

What is most interesting in the HFCS phenomenon was how it started entering our food supply in the 1970s and ended up in so many of our processed foods. Over time, did this increase the flow of money into the health sector?

Via <a href="http://www.opednews.com/articles/American-Academy-of-Enviro-by-Jeffrey-M-Smith-090519-809.html">OpEdNews</a>, <a href="http://www.aaemonline.org/pressrelease.html">The American Academy of Environmental Medicine</a> has called for a ban on Genetically Modified foods, specifically:  

<blockquote>    *  A moratorium on GM food, implementation of immediate long term safety testing and labeling of GM food.<br />
    * Physicians to educate their patients, the medical community and the public to avoid GM foods.<br />
    * Physicians to consider the role of GM foods in their patients' disease processes.<br />
    * More independent long term scientific studies to begin gathering data to investigate the role of GM foods on human health.</blockquote>

<a href="http://www.aaemonline.org/gmopost.html">AAEM's White Paper</a>.

Labeling of GM foods has been suggested by advocates for as many years as I can remember being online, but it never seems adopted by our corporate leaders, who also don't seem to want us to have single-payer healthcare.  

Perhaps we're all part of a huge-in-scope corporate-medical experiment.

The ACLU has written a demand letter to the Ramona Unified School District, over the schools censoring of a student’s presentation on Harvey Milk. A copy of the student’s presentation can be downloaded here. The school has 5 days to respond before ACLU considers filing a lawsuit.

I read the student’s presentation, and clearly it is not sexual education material, it is simply a short biography of a politician’s life and death. Therefore, it would seem accurately classified as historical.

We just had an election in which money for schools was at stake, the claim was and is that California public schools are financially hurting. Then we read about actions like this, that besides any ill will directed toward this particular student and her presentation, also wasted taxpayer money for the staff time calling parents to reschedule, etc. What a waste.

While on the subject of saving money, the ACLU claims that <a href="http://blog.aclu.org/2009/05/21/save-1-billion-in-five-years-end-the-death-penalty-in-california/">California can save $1 Billion in 5 years</a> by eliminating the death penalty.  I don't know about their financial math, but whether it's true or not, the death penalty does seem rather barbaric.

<hr>
2009.05.20 <!--more-->

The <a href="http://vote.sos.ca.gov/returns/props/59.htm">State of California's election yesterday</a> didn't go quite as some hoped.   Those are pretty amazing figures, almost 2:1 against, except for limiting legislators salaries in deficit years, which was almost 3:1 in favor. 

This morning it appears that Gov. Schwarzenegger and AG Brown have joined up to challenge a couple of court rulings against violent video games sales to children by filing an appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court.

<a href="http://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2009/05/right-repair-law-pro">EFF comments on the DMCA</a> through the newly proposed <a href="http://www.govtrack.us/congress/bill.xpd?bill=h111-2057">Right-to-repair Law, H.R.2057</a>.  

<a href="http://www.theoscarproject.org/">Open-source design and manufacturing</a> could be another answer to all the intellectual property "locks" (that EFF mentions).

<hr>
2009.05.19 <!--more-->
The White House has announced an improvement in <a href="http://www.whitehouse.gov/the_press_office/Background-Briefing-on-Auto-Emissions-and-Efficiency-Standards/">vehicle MPG ratings and CO2 emissions</a> targets that are accelerated versus CAFE standards.  The new standards will require a fleet average of 35.5 MPG by 2016.  

From the <a href="http://www.whitehouse.gov/the_press_office/President-Obama-Announces-National-Fuel-Efficiency-Policy/">announcement</a>:

<blockquote>"In the past, an agreement such as this would have been considered impossible," said President Obama. "That is why this announcement is so important, for it represents not only a change in policy in Washington, but the harbinger of a change in the way business is done in Washington. As a result of this agreement, we will save 1.8 billion barrels of oil over the lifetime of the vehicles sold in the next five years. And at a time of historic crisis in our auto industry, this rule provides the clear certainty that will allow these companies to plan for a future in which they are building the cars of the 21st century."</blockquote>

This is good news that was accompanied by much ceremony at the <a href="http://www.whitehouse.gov/the_press_office/Remarks-by-the-President-on-national-fuel-efficiency-standards/">Rose Garden</a>.

But is better fuel economy and reduced emissions what we need at this time of climate change or as some have said, "<a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/espeak/~3/0KnUC3r3Rqk/climate-code-red-case-against-carbon.html">emergency</a>"?  

A car company in Oceanside, California, has made a vehicle that far exceeds the White House's MPG targets, it's called the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aptera_Motors">Aptera</a>.  They're not the only one with such eye popping efficiency.  A <a href="http://www.hybridcars.org.uk/200mpg-from-the-200-mph-micro-turbine-velozzi-hybrid/">proposed vehicle design powered by a microturbine</a> is expected to get over 200MPG, and it will run on several different fuel types, something that could be useful in some situations, such as when one fuel type gets too expensive or unavailable.

Another technology which promises even greater cleanness are so-called zero-emission electric vehicles. Battery technology keeps improving.  In these cases, they're sometimes called "zero emission", but that's something of a misnomer as emissions are simply shifted to the point of electric production.  If technology such as solar power generation becomes predominant, then electric vehicles seem to offer the environment the cleanest option.  But even in these cases, there still would seem to be issues with material production emissions and toxicity impacts.

In less of a feel-good story, the Government Accountability Office released it’s report about Selected Cases of Death and Abuse at Public and Private Schools and Treatment Centers, here’s some of the summary, emphasis added,

GAO recently testified before the Committee regarding allegations of death and abuse at residential programs for troubled teens. Recent reports indicate that vulnerable children are being abused in other settings. For example, one report on the use of restraints and seclusions in schools documented cases where students were pinned to the floor for hours at a time, handcuffed, locked in closets, and subjected to other acts of violence. In some of these cases, this type of abuse resulted in death. Given these reports, the Committee asked GAO to (1) provide an overview of seclusions and restraint laws applicable to children in public and private schools, (2) verify whether allegations of student death and abuse from the use of these methods are widespread, and (3) examine the facts and circumstances surrounding cases where a student died or suffered abuse as a result of being secluded or restrained. GAO reviewed federal and state laws and abuse allegations from advocacy groups, parents, and the media from the past two decades. GAO did not evaluate whether using restraints and seclusions can be beneficial. GAO examined documents related to closed cases, including police and autopsy reports and school policies. GAO also interviewed parents, attorneys, and school officials and conducted searches to determine the current employment status of staff involved in the cases. GAO found no federal laws restricting the use of seclusion and restraints in public and private schools and widely divergent laws at the state level. Although GAO could not determine whether allegations were widespread, GAO did find hundreds of cases of alleged abuse and death related to the use of these methods on school children during the past two decades. Examples of these cases include a 7 year old purportedly dying after being held face down for hours by school staff, 5 year olds allegedly being tied to chairs with bungee cords and duct tape by their teacher and suffering broken arms and bloody noses, and a 13 year old reportedly hanging himself in a seclusion room after prolonged confinement. Although GAO continues to receive new allegations from parents and advocacy groups, GAO could not find a single Web site, federal agency, or other entity that collects information on the use of these methods or the extent of their alleged abuse. GAO also examined the details of 10 restraint and seclusion cases in which there was a criminal conviction, a finding of civil or administrative liability, or a large financial settlement. The cases share the following common themes: they involved children with disabilities who were restrained and secluded, often in cases where they were not physically aggressive and their parents did not give consent; restraints that block air to the lungs can be deadly; teachers and staff in the cases were often not trained on the use of seclusions and restraints; and teachers and staff from at least 5 of the 10 cases continue to be employed as educators.

This is so sad, but it’s good that the information is being released, and I’d bet it’s the visible “tip of the iceberg”. While these cases seem the most serious, restricted as they were to cases of “seclusion” and “restraint”, how many “less serious” abuse forms have there been? For some reason my memory flashed on a commercial that used to run on, I believe, television several decades ago, the verbal frame was “words hit harder than fists” or something like that.

One of the reasons often cited for the existence of compulsory education was that it was a government response to child labor abuses, underpayment for such labor, and dangerous factory conditions. Yet, children undoubtedly labor in schools, they do not get paid for it, and some apparently are subjected to death. I’m not convinced there’s been any substantial positive change, it’s just that, as the song says, the boss has changed, and to which we can add, the pay’s gone down.

Scotusblog.com reports that the U.S. Supreme Court has refused to hear two California counties’ challenges to the state’s medical marijuana laws.

** A plea by two California counties for the right to challenge state power to decriminalize the use and cultivation of marijuana for medical use, on the theory that this conflicts with federal narcotics law. Their case marked a failed attempt to get the Court to strike down the laws of 13 states that allow medical use of marijuana. (San Diego County v. San Diego NORML (08-887) and San Bernardino County v. California (08-897).

Maybe now San Diego County will decide to start issuing medical marijuana certificates to lawfully prescribed patients, and perhaps they will stop harassing caregivers.

The ACLU has written on this, as well has MPP who says “Game Over”.

Via the FreePress e-newsletter, Multichannel News reports that an <a href="http://www.multichannel.com/article/232605-Lawyer_Sees_First_Amendment_Problem_In_Financial_Woes.php?rssid=20059">attoney has written to the FCC describing a banking danger to the First Amendment</a>:

<blockquote>...<br />
"We now have a potential seismic restructuring of broadcast ownership he warns, "with bankers acquiring significant interest in numerous broadcast stations. The concurrent de facto nationalization of these lenders may, in turn, lead to significant de facto government onwership of the commercial broadcast media," he said.</blockquote>

I think this guy is onto something important, but is he describing something that is soon to be, already exists, or that has existed for some time and that merely formalizing bank ownership will exacerbate.  Once again the fact of money being in supreme control is inherent in the observation and FCC request.

It seems to me the danger to the First Amendment was in a privately-owned and debt-based banking system.  That would put the real danger to the FA timeline-wise back in 1913 or thereabouts.

Rawstory reported yesterday that Ron Paul is calling for more transparency from the Federal Reserve, as well as an audit of them. His bill H.R. 1207 currently has 165 cosponsors and is in committee.

Perhaps more Democrats will jump on that bandwagon.

In a somewhat bizarre sounding story, the developer of Tamiflu has apparently said that the current <a href="http://abcnews.go.com/GMA/SwineFlu/Story?id=7584420&page=1">swine flu may not be of natural origin</a>.  Via <a href="http://www.opednews.com/articles/Tamiflu-developer-Swine-f-by-Fred-Burks-090518-933.html">OpEdNews</a>.

It seems some “disabled” school kids have been physically restrained [tortured?] in schools, even when they haven’t been “physically aggressive or dangerous“, and this treatment called “prone restraint” has apparently resulted in deaths.

Robert Reich writes a good critique on our <a href="http://robertreich.blogspot.com/2009/05/health-care-cave-in.html">failure to fairly consider single-payer universal health insurance</a>.
<blockquote>But now the Medicare-like option is being taken off the table. Insurance and drug companies have thrown their weight around the Senate. And, sadly, the White House -- eager to get a bill enacted in 2009 rather than risk it during the mid-term election year of 2010 -- is signaling it's open to other approaches. What other approaches? One would create a public insurance plan run by multiple regional third-party administrators. In other words, the putative "public plan" would be broken into little pieces, none of which could exert much bargaining leverage on Big Pharma and Big Insurance. These pieces would also be so decentralized that the drug companies and private insurers could easily bully (or bribe) regional third-party administrators.</blockquote>

Perhaps the corporatists are "prone restraining" single-payer healthcare, hoping to give it a quick death.

<hr>
2009.05.17 <!--more-->

I just felt a rather strong earthquake, it seemed to move east-west. This rock we're sitting on doesn't shake very often.  <a href="http://quake.wr.usgs.gov/recenteqs/Maps/118-34.html">USGS is reporting</a>:

<blockquote>5.0  2009/05/17 20:39:36 33.940N 118.338W 13.5    2 km ( 1 mi) E   of Lennox, CA</blockquote>

That's Richter 5.  <a href="http://earthquake.usgs.gov/eqcenter/shakemap/sc/shake/10410337/intensity.html">Shake intensity zone</a>. According to that last link, we're in a zone that shouldn't have felt anything.

[update] It appears USGS has reduced the magnitude to 4.7 from the earlier 5.0.  

[update May 18] Most news reports have said LA has escaped injuries or significant damage, but some reports say there was <a href="http://laist.com/2009/05/18/last_nights_earthquake_did_cause_da.php">some minor damage</a>.

<hr>
2009.05.16 <!--more-->

[sundry cooking]  I wanted to make some Orange Chicken, so thought to check online after the first cookbook on my shelves that I checked didn't have any similarly named recipe. After spending only a short time reading and studying a few of them, the one that appealed the most to me was named <a href="http://allrecipes.com/Recipe/Asian-Orange-Chicken/Detail.aspx">Asian Orange Chicken</a>, but another site has some very nice photos attached with the same recipe, they call it simply, <a href="http://blogchef.net/orange-chicken-recipe/">Orange Chicken Recipe</a>.  It appears that several hundred different sites have this same basic recipe.  

Most often I'm not entirely happy with any recipe that I've tried without wanting to later make some changes, but this particular recipe is better tasting than most versions of it that I've had in restaurants over the years. Yum!  I wouldn't change anything.

Or would I?

For some reason I read this OpEd after making the Orange Chicken, it's subtitled an "<a href="http://www.opednews.com/articles/1/An-interview-between-Neuro-by-Barbara-Metzler-090506-385.html">Interview with Neurosurgeon Dr. Russell Blaylock on devastating health effects of MSG, aspartame and Excitotoxins</a>".  The original seems to be <a href="http://www.naturalnews.com/020550.html">here</a>.

What about the Soy Sauce?  As I was adding it to the pan, a thought occurred to me, something along the lines of, "I don't really know what is in this stuff."  Keep in mind this thought occurred before reading the Blaylock interview.   

From <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monosodium_glutamate">Wikipedia</a>:
<blockquote>Monosodium glutamate is one of several forms of glutamic acid found in foods, in large part because glutamic acid is pervasive in nature, being an amino acid. Glutamic acid and its salts can also be present in a wide variety of other additives, including hydrolyzed vegetable proteins, autolyzed yeast, hydrolyzed yeast, yeast extract, soy extracts, and protein isolate, any one of which may appear as "spices" or "natural flavorings." The food additives disodium inosinate and disodium guanylate are usually used along with monosodium glutamate-containing ingredients, and provide a likely indicator of the presence of monosodium glutamate in a product. For this reason, the FDA considers labels such as "No MSG" or "No Added MSG" to be misleading if the food contains ingredients that are sources of free glutamate, such as hydrolyzed protein.[12]

In 1993, the FDA proposed adding the phrase "(contains glutamate)" to the common or usual names of certain protein hydrolysates that contain substantial amounts of glutamate.[12]

In the 2004 version of his book, On Food and Cooking, food scientist Harold McGee states that "[after many studies], toxicologists have concluded that MSG is a harmless ingredient for most people, even in large amounts."</blockquote>

The brand of soy sauce I used, classified as a Tamari type, says, "No MSG added", <a href="http://www.truthinlabeling.org/hiddensources.html">but does that mean it has no free glutamates</a>?  This is actually a question I cannot answer, but wish I could. 

From <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soy_sauce">Soy Sauce</a>, emphasis added:
<blockquote>Although there are many types of soy sauce, all are salty and "earthy"-tasting brownish liquids used to season food while cooking or at the table. Soy sauce has a distinct basic taste called umami by the Japanese (literally "delicious taste"). Umami was first identified as a basic taste in 1908 by Kikunae Ikeda of the Tokyo Imperial University. <strong>The free glutamates which naturally occur in soy sauce are what give it this taste quality</strong>.</blockquote>

Perhaps it's better to remove the soy sauce from the recipe, as it seems likely to have free glutamates.  

[may 17]  Apparently this topic is still on my mind, I guess I'm trying to discern where the truth lies.   It seems that free glutamate sensitivity is something of an individual matter.

A document not to be missed in the <a href="http://www.foodsafety.gov/~lrd/msg.html">MSG and Free Glutamate controversy is the FDA itself</a>. <blockquote>In 1993, FDA proposed adding the phrase "(contains glutamate)" to the common or usual names of certain protein hydrolysates that contain substantial amounts of glutamate. For example, if the proposal were adopted, hydrolyzed soy protein would have to be declared on food labels as "hydrolyzed soy protein (contains glutamate)." However, if FDA issues a new proposal, it would probably supersede this 1993 one.

In 1994, FDA received a citizen's petition requesting changes in labeling requirements for foods that contain MSG or related substances. The petition asks for mandatory listing of MSG as an ingredient on labels of manufactured and processed foods that contain manufactured free glutamic acid. It further asks that the amount of free glutamic acid or MSG in such products be stated on the label, along with a warning that MSG may be harmful to certain groups of people. FDA has not yet taken action on the petition. </blockquote>

Labeling is generally a good idea, it follows along the generalized ideas of transparency and disclosure.  The FDA document lists a number of symptoms some folks may have.

Along the same generalized thought process of <a href="http://www.msgtruth.org/whywe.htm">free glutamate symptoms</a>:
<blockquote>It is interesting to note the joke that after eating MSG in foods at a Chinese restaurant "you are hungry an hour later", may have some merit.  The glutamate in MSG acts as an insulin trigger.  This will definitely give you a hunger response about an hour and a half later.  This fact has not been lost on American food manufacturers.  They know the value of an addictive food ingredient. If they keep you hungry for more, they have succeeded.  </blockquote>

Perhaps if you are not highly sensitive to it, but you are trying to lose weight, avoiding free glutamate is a good idea.  However, since food labels do not have a product's free glutamate listed, what <a href="http://www.msgtruth.org/avoid.htm">foods should one avoid</a>?  That's a very long list.  So, what foods <a href="http://www.msgtruth.org/eatwhat.htm">can one eat</a> if you want to avoid free glutamates?  Also, an extremely restrictive list.  Even getting bread flour that doesn't have malted barely added would seem quite difficult.  While I would love to buy my flours at a flour mill (I've written briefly about this elsewhere on this blog), we have none around this area of Southern California, and the wholesale-retail schism rears its head again, millers even use a different grading scheme from that used by repackagers and retailers.  All the flours that I've bought over the years have "malted barley" added as an ingredient.

Going full circle back to the Blaylock interview republished at OpEd news, there's one logistic item in the debate that I find curious when juxtaposed against the marijuana debate:  Blaylock claims that our bodies have glutamate receptors throughout the body, and seems to use this as an argument against free glutamates;  while marijuana advocates use the 1980s-discovered cannibinoid receptors in our bodies as an argument for our bodies' need for marijuana.

It's no wonder the truth is difficult to discern.

<hr>
2009.05.15 <!--more-->

I noted an article about <a href="http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/05/090511122416.htm">soil nitrogen, measuring it, and microbes</a>.  Then, I noted the site has an entire section devoted to <a href="http://www.sciencedaily.com/news/plants_animals/organic/">organic agricultural practices</a>.  Are we in paradise yet?  I'll undoubtedly be spending a few days reading everything I can find there.

Last year I placed a 8" deep ring of about 5-6' diameter self-made compost around some fruit trees I'd planted 6 months to a year earlier. This ring was sunken in the sense that I removed  existing soil, digging carefully to not disturb roots closer to the still-small tree trunks, and replaced it with pure compost, in order to keep the surface grade about the same.    The trees' feeder roots were growing along with the tree, and I wanted them to have a nice thick area of compost to spread into. The compost was what I'll call young in the sense that it wasn't fully black yet, though it had spent several months in a turned pile that had heated up several times, prior to using it for this ring.

This year, I was reworking the irrigation micro-bubblers and changing to micro-sprayers that expanded the ground-surface area the irrigation water is applied to. As the trees get bigger, their root zone also gets larger, so the area that needs irrigating also grows.  While doing this replacement, I moved some recent leaf drop, and noted that the prior year's compost ring had turned fully black, and I was ecstatic to see a large amount of life, pill bugs, worms, etc., that were crawling in a small 4" diameter circle on the top of this compost.  While I didn't count them precisely, or take a picture, it seems like there were at least 25-50, maybe more, lifeforms moving in that 4" circle, all visible with the naked eye!

I've always "non-scientifically" figured that it's this kind of life that supports and perhaps creates the soil's smaller microbe content which in turn feeds the trees or plants, reducing the need for synthetic fertilizer applications.

I'm hoping to spend a bit less time behind this computer and some more time outside in the near future.

According to this item, urine should be kept separate for recycling and purification.

Urine accounts for less than 1% of our waste water, but it contains 50-80% of the nutrients in the waste water. For this reason, it is extremely burdensome for our sewer water purification installations. In fact, it is illogical to allow such a dirty waste water flow to mix with other waste water, as has occurred in our sewers for more than a hundred years. There is growing support therefore for collecting and purifying urine separately. By separating urine, phosphate and nitrogen are more effectively removed. Phosphate can even be reclaimed as a raw material. Urine accounts for at least 50% of the phosphate in waster waste, (with phosphate being a raw material of limited availability), and for 80% of the nitrogen found in the waste water.

This claimed that it’s illogical to mix the two waste streams, yet I’m quite certain that running another set of pipes to and within every existing building would be a costly project. Hmm, urine has nitrogen (N) and phosphorous (P), and we’re paying to dispose of it? Maybe it would be better to use it as part of the NPK macro-fertilization needs of nearby plantings, it’s only missing K. This is something to look at more closely. According to Wikipedia, urine also has some K.

Urine contains large quantities of nitrogen (mostly as urea), as well as significant quantities of dissolved phosphates and potassium, the main macronutrients required by plants. Diluted at least 8:1 with water it can be applied directly to soil as a fertilizer. Undiluted, it can chemically burn the roots of some plants, but it can be safely used as a source of complementary nitrogen in carbon rich compost.[10] Urine typically contains 70% of the nitrogen and more than half the phosphorus and potassium found in urban waste water flows, while making up less than 1% of the overall volume. Thus source separation and on-site treatment has been studied in Sweden as a way to partially close the cycle of agricultural nutrient flows, to reduce the cost and energy intensivity of sewage treatment, and the ecological consequences such as eutrophication, resulting from an influx of nutrient rich effluent into aquatic or marine ecosystems. The fertilization effect of urine has been found to be comparable to that of commercial fertilizers with an equivalent NPK rating. [11]

However, depending on the diet of the producer, urine may also have undesirably high concentrations of various inorganic salts such as sodium chloride, which are also excreted by the renal system. Concentrations of heavy metals such as lead, mercury, and cadmium, commonly found in solid human waste, are much lower in urine (though not low enough to qualify for use in organic agriculture under current EU rules). [12] Some have expressed concern as to the health consequences of the hormones and pharmaceuticals found in the human waste stream being recycled through the agricultural system.[citation needed] Proponents of urine as an agricultural fertilizer usually claim the risks to be negligible or acceptable, and point out that sewage causes more environmental problems when it is treated and disposed of compared with when it is used as a resource. Critics counter that more research is needed into how the resource is to be collected, processed and handled.[citation needed]

It is unclear whether source separation and on site treatment of urine can be made cost effective, and to what degree the required behavioral changes would be regarded as socially acceptable, as the largely successful trials performed in Sweden may not readily generalize to other industrialized societies.[11] In developing countries, the application of pure urine to crops is rare, but the use of whole raw sewage (termed night soil in China) has been common throughout history.

I’ve been aware for some time that adding nitrogen to a compost pile helps decompose it faster, a number of sources have said to add a little synthetic fertilizer, something I don’t favor, so I’ve taken a mechanical shredding approach which also helps speed decomposition, as does adding grass clippings which I’ve read have a low C:N ratio, and perhaps have verified by noting some years ago that it composts quickly. However, adding urine could be an interesting approach.

It’s a little problematic that in some countries urine is not considered an “organic” amendment. It’s a bit perplexing to think of us animals, and our products, as synthetic, though I suppose what goes in also comes back out, changed perhaps, but not necessarily natural when one thinks of the various ingredients, particularly synthetic preservatives, added to factory-made foods.

I wonder where the lead, mercury, and cadmium comes from reportedly in solid waste. I seem to recall that old sewer pipes, the iron type, were connected using lead that was melted onsite. That may not have been pure lead, it may have had other alloys added at the joints where the pipes connect to impart particular working characteristics. Another pipe connection method used a specially made packing material that as I understand it, was worked cold.

2009.05.12

The Hill reports that Rep. Kucinich is a little upset with the White House over health-care insurance, saying the new plan is an “unconscionable rip-off” and “Just like we bailed out the banks, we’re bailing out the insurance industries“.

2009.05.11

This item from Rawstory caught my attention, it’s about how New York City (NYC) is charging homeless folks, if they’re employed, up to 50% of their income for homeless shelters. According to Rawstory, the NY Daily News reported recently that NYC recently asked local churches to stop providing beds. Rawstory also cites a NYTimes article that states bills are sometimes placed under a door:

Vanessa Dacosta, who earns $8.40 an hour as a cashier at Sbarro, received a notice under her door several weeks ago informing her that she had to give $336 of her approximately $800 per month in wages to the Clinton Family Inn, a shelter in Hell’s Kitchen where she has lived since March.

According to an Internet search, the Clinton Family Inn is considered a Tier II shelter. So that explains the the notice that was put “under her door”. But up to 50% of her income? It appears Vanessa was paying about 41% of her income as the article reports it. That’s even higher than is recommended for a mortgage ratio, and with a mortgage, there is usually a tax benefit, so for someone renting, the ratio should probably be less to be fair. So it seems to me to be gouging the poor. According to citylimits.org, the city pays Tier II landlords up to $3000 per month. No wonder NYC wants the homeless to help pay. It seems Real Estate is now too valuable to have room for very low-wage workers.

Perhaps the federal government needs to have an Indian-reservation like plan for the homeless, a land set aside, away from established city centers, where the homeless can go to live if they choose and have some limited sovereignty there, where local police wouldn’t come looking for them to bulldoze their “encampments” as it is often framed by the news. If they want to live in a tent, then fine. If they want to build an adobe moon-dome from dirt and sandbags, then fine. They would need some water and some fertile land so they could grow some of their crops, and some limited educational programs to help them learn how to recycle their sewage so it wouldn’t transmit disease. This could provide a release, an alternate type of life, for some of the chronic homeless whom the economy has failed to serve.

For an alternate perspective, Roll back rents has some thoughts.

2009.05.10

There’s been “buzz” about a health care plan soon to be announced that will save $2 trillion over 10 years. So does this compare favorably with H.R. 676’s estimated savings?

According to HHS.gov, in 2007 total healthcare expenditures were about 2.2 trillion. According to John Conyer’s information page about H.R. 676, it is estimated to save about $387 billion per year. That’s about an 18% savings when compared to 2007 expenditures. Multiplying $387B out by 10 years results in $3.87 trillion in savings over the same time period.

It appears that H.R. 676 saves roughly double what the “new corporate plan” is promising.

2009.05.09

According to the San Diego Union Tribune, (via rawstory) Bob Filner and a few others were arrested after an act of civil patriotism when a renovated restaurant complex under new ownership refused to keep union help upon reopening, and chose instead to go non-union. The patriots were estimated at 80 strong.

2009.05.08

Propublica is reporting that Dennis Kucinich has written a letter to AIG and demanded to know whether and why AIG has routinely denied medical care payment for injuries sustained by civilian contractors in Iraq:

“Apparently, AIG is profiting both by charging unreasonably high premiums to contracting firms and by denying or delaying legitimate claims of civilian workers for medical care and other services needed as a result of war zone injuries,” Kucinich wrote.

The findings are “all the more disturbing,” Kucinich wrote, given that AIG has turned federal supplicant, with promises of almost $70 billion in taxpayer aid to date. “The Subcommittee is interested in obtaining information from AIG shedding light on why there has been such a high rate of denials and unreasonable delays in processing claims, and why it is reaping such huge profits at taxpayers’ expense,” Kucinich wrote.

While corporate parasitism is nothing new, running for at least 100 years now, right now is also a time when health care and medical-care insurance is a topic of reform. Therefore, I found the following OpEd somewhat disturbing, it’s about the arrest of a Dr. Margaret Flowers, a former physician who is trying to get Congress to consider all reform proposals, including single payer, fairly considered:

Our first goal was to have a seat at the table. That has been a request to Congress throughout this year, really since the presidential election. All we’ve asked is that when the government looks at options for health care reform that single payer is given equal attention. We would like the Congressional Budget Office to review the cost of improving and expanding Medicare to everyone. We know that this is an affordable way to provide health care to everyone.

So, the very companies that are in financial trouble and receiving record amounts of taxpayer assistance and government largess, like AIG, banks, et al., are also seemingly somehow able to keep lower-cost health-care proposals like H.R. 676 off the table of congressional discussion.

There’s something seemingly wrong with the whole picture.

A second article with a similar title, but with more information about Fowler’s advocacy:

Right now 30% of our health care dollars go towards bureaucracy and not to direct health care. This bureaucracy, imposed by private health insurers, is designed to restrict and deny health care. If we remove the private health insurance industry, we save around $400 billion each year on administrative costs alone. This money can be used to pay for health care.

2009.05.07

It seems that not only has there been more discussion and debate about marijuana legalization, it also seems to be getting more public agreement:

New Poll: 52% Say Marijuana Should Be Legal, Taxed, Regulated May 6, 2009 WASHINGTON, D.C. — A new Zogby poll commissioned by the conservative-leaning O’Leary Report has found 52 percent voter support for treating marijuana as a legal, taxed, regulated substance. The survey, published as a full-page ad in today’s issue of the political newspaper The Hill, polled a sample of 3,937 voters weighted to match the 2008 presidential outcome — 54 percent Obama voters and 46 percent McCain supporters.

More discussion, as well as a breakdown of the results nationally can be found here.

I was directed to do a little search and reading on <a href="http://ematusov.soe.udel.edu/final.paper.pub/_pwfsfp/00000062.htm">helplessness</a>, and found a curious and interesting paragraph, typos notwithstanding:

<blockquote>Learned helpless students do not fit under the intrinsic motivational characcteristic. They fit more in the area of extrinsic motivation (Stipek, 1988). This motivation is based on external rewards, the avoidance of threats or punisshments, gaining recognition, and conforming to socially accepted behavior. Learned helpless students try to avoid failure and punishment from their teachers. They try to become recognized by others through being the class clown, tease, or bully, and they only work for external rewards because they have no interest to do a task but to get a grade, a sticker , a candy, a token, etc. When they go into thie adolescent years they become very antisocial in order to conform to socially accepted behavior. Learned helpless students feels the need to respond to socially prescribed demands, limits and patterns of behavior. Extrinsic motivation is also oriented towards seperable goals, rewards, contingencies and values upon individual’s satisfaction of the task. Learned helpless students feel as if they have no choices because no matter what they do they will fail.</blockquote>

It strikes me that this would be a very good quality for people in a capitalistic society to express (or to be impressed with), to take sole solace in extrinsic rewards ... like ... Money!  Greed, ain't it grand?

Continuing with the idea that “This is a time for reflection, not retribution,” there have been a number of articles on torture in the last few days, the first one I noticed was this propublica.org article about psychologists’ involvement, and their objections or silence, with torture.

According to that article, one of the Joint Personnel Recovery Agency memos on prisoner “exploitation” said, “may be very effective in inducing learned helplessness and breaking the [Afghan] detainees’ willingness to resist.” Another point it brings up is that Banks, “chief of the Psychological Applications Directorate at the U.S. Army’s Special Operations Command”, presumably one of the military’s head psychologists, doesn’t appear to have objected to psychological exploitation techniques, only physical ones; and further, even these objections, reportedly expressed by him in an email, never seemed to make it into reports that went up the chain of command.

Here’s another few torture items, the first one is about a psychologist’s assertion that community good is more important than individual good and human rights. Anyway, you should go to the link and read the precise block-quote, as my paraphrase is undoubtedly inaccurate. It’s sad for me to think that this person is essentially arguing against the U.S. Constitution itself, and even it’s basis. Waxing rhetorical, perhaps that quoted author believes the Declaration of Independence should have read, “… certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. That to secure abuse these rights, Governments are instituted …”

One more item on torture, and below it is a comment written by a Micheal Collins, who linked to a Salon article about torture (excerpt follows) that also mentions “helplessness” in relation thereto. However, that is not what grabs my attention most, this is:

Soldiers undergoing SERE training are subject to forced nudity, stress positions, lengthy isolation, sleep deprivation, sexual humiliation, exhaustion from exercise, and the use of water to create a sensation of suffocation.

It’s sobering to look at that list of items SERE soldiers are trained with, and ask oneself how many of those items K-12 students also experience at times. Certainly not all of them, but some of them, certainly, but probably to a less-extreme intensity, and perhaps more so for some selected students incurring the wrath of administrators.

I believe it should be obvious that the problem here is not just about a few folks who did something wrong, but instead is reflected in an entire structure including a U.S. K-12 compulsory system that seems designed to make us look outside ourselves for extrinsic rewards and which creates some degree of Learned Helplessness in all of us. One must even question the role some psychologists may have had not only in tailoring the big-picture items surrounding how we educate our children, a process that seems to result in a number of these children later going into the workforce and refusing to rock the boat, “do what the boss says no matter what” (because of the ever-present threat that the extrinsic reward might be withheld), but also in how that relates, however distant it may seem, to alleged professional failures to point out explicitly and formally to their bosses that torture has little information-gathering value, besides being prohibited by such documents as the Geneva Conventions and other more recent agreements.

2009.05.05

Jason Furman, Deputy Director of the National Economic Council, said in regards to Obama’s plan to eliminate some corporate tax loopholes, “the United States has the second highest statutory tax rate in the world, the official rate published in the tax code. But the United States also has more loopholes and special tax preferences than many other countries. As a result, the United States has a much lower effective tax rate. If you look at corporate taxes as a share of GDP they are below those of most major economies. The result is a tax code that is complicated, inefficient and unfair.”

The following PDF has a nice chart that is titled “Corporate Income Taxes as a % of GDP, Fiscal 1942 to Fiscal 2003” which illustrates part of Furman’s point. That same PDF says, “GM’s tax rate for the past three years was negative 1.3 percent”.

So, what is a negative tax rate? Wikipedia says, “a negative income tax (abbreviated NIT) is a progressive income tax system where people earning below a certain amount receive supplemental pay from the government instead of paying taxes to the government”.

Another PDF approaches the same phenomenon from a different perspective, look for the chart titled: “25 Companies with the Largest Total Tax Breaks vs. Changes in Capital Investment, 2001 to 2003“.

We clearly have an obvious and glaring dissonance between the corporate and human parts of our society. Once again it seems to hinge on the definition of “person”. I’m reminded of Orwell’s phrase, “some … are more equal than others”.

[sundry reading, *or lack thereof*]  I was just looking for the RSS, atom, or other feed of the <a href="http://www.supremecourtus.gov">supremecourtus.gov</a> site.  I guess it doesn't exist.  I wonder why. 

One positive thing that I noticed since Obama became president, the White House seemed to all of a sudden have RSS feeds for at least some of their site.  When I had looked for them prior, I couldn't find them: this is not to say they weren't there, just that I wasn't able to find them.

It would be nice to see the legislative and the judicial branches follow that example.  So too with state as well as local.

It's all about Openness and Transparency, or so I've read somewhere.

While on the topic of RSS feeds, I’ve been finding myself organizing the feeds in the feadreader by whether they include the full text, part text or snippet, or even no text and only the title.

2009.05.04

A pharmaceutical company allegedly paid a scientific publisher to publish marketing work as a peer-reviewed journal! This according to Honest Pharma Not, which itself references another blog with the meat of the story.

On a similar or related topic, a day or two ago there was a hard hitting posting at OpEd News titled, “Mexican Flu Outbreak 2009: SPECIAL REPORT by Dr Leonard Horowitz“, curiously, the link that worked for it now goes to their front page, so I substituted another link that’s working at the time of this writing. There are other links with more information if you wish to search it out, but a bunch of it is fear based, and I don’t think that’s the best way to approach this. Keeping the spirits up is supposed to really work!

I’ve read that flu and pneumonia were the primary killers in the old days several centuries ago. Easy come easy go. It would be nice if we could figure out how to make the part in the middle just as easy.

Here are a couple of items, the first one initiates lots of deep thought, or at least it did for me, it’s about how to build a culture of trust in politics, while the second news item undoubtedly parries with the first by offering the stark contrast of our current political reality of concealment (via a RawStory link).

Unfortunately, I have no new solutions to this dichotomy between what is said is desired in politics and what is done in politics. It is not a new topic, this theme also was present some years ago. One very old solution is simply to get the money out of politics and legislation, something else that’s been chatted about for decades as well as centuries (read the Articles of Confederation sometime), but it never happens. All accounts are that money has played an increasing role in politics and legislation over time.

One of my solutions, which I’ve been assured could never happen in discussions I’ve had elsewhere, is to give every congressperson the line-item veto on every bill they vote upon. This is much different in concept to giving the Executive Branch the line item veto, which serves only to increase the power of that branch which is by most all accounts already far too powerful. When a line-item veto is given to the Executive Branch, ultimately there is only one person who decides: when it is instead given to the representative and senatorial bodies, there are many folks that must agree, and therein lies a vast difference.

Giving “phrase voting” to every Representative and Senator would cancel out a lot of earmarks, as well as phrases that nobody but a few understand (arguably the more important point). If you don’t understand that phrase, just don’t vote for it, but still vote on other phrases in the bill that you do understand and agree with.

It’s my belief this would stop dead it its tracks the phenomenon where our laws increase both in wordiness and in specificity (micromanagement), and which simultaneously goes past the point where folks agree and treads into where they do not agree (which has the additional effect of keeping us divided amongst ourselves). I believe this would result in a slimmer body of law that has the broader concepts that the majority can agree upon and that most folks can understand, as well as lacking the more divisive and aggressive elements upon which there is substantial disagreement.

A good OpEd with some salient points about a proposed rescue to Chrysler, by Dave Lindorf.  He says that under the proposed rescue plan, Chrysler workers would own 55% of the company, but would only get 11% of the board member seats, something he characterizes as a "token", and that Chrysler workers have been down this same road before.  Here's a particularly poignant paragraph of <a href="http://www.opednews.com/articles/Workers-Always-Lose-Even-by-By-Dave-Lindorff-090501-129.html">Workers Always Lose</a>:
<blockquote>Of course, if you step back a minute and think about it, it was corporate managers, put in place by boards of directors who represent the elite of the Wall Street investment crowd, who have run most American companies, and indeed the whole US economy, into a ditch. These supposedly smart folks with their fancy MBAs and PhDs and law degrees have outsourced jobs, pillaged the environment, destroyed communities, piled on debt, failed to modernize and invest in R&D, laid off highly skilled workers in favor of lower paid, less skilled workers, poisoned and injured their own workforces, made stupid acquisitions motivated by a desire to aggrandize more power or more market share, rather than to achieve real synergies, and have pilfered corporate resources to boost their own undeserved obscene levels of compensation.</blockquote>

So, we have schools that pseudo-rape some of their honor students, as well as other students, leading them directly to failure; a workforce that keeps getting the shaft; and in contrast against that we have bankers that have recently received corporate welfare to an unprecedented degree when they're failing, who themselves led a largely unnoticed government coup back in 1913.  Seems like the dots are getting connected, no? It seems we now have bankers in charge, they even "own" congress, according to Senator Dick Durbin.  

Maybe someone should just tell the workers to go home on strike, and everyone else in the entire country should support them, and go home in sympathy strike, this includes the students as is reportedly done in France.  Maybe that would get the attention of those entities who worship the money god above all else.

Hey, it would probably help with H1N1's spread, as well!  Just go home and do whatever it is that you normally do there to relax and enjoy.


2009.04.30<!--more-->

According to <a href="http://www.scotusblog.com/wp/souter-to-retire-nbc-tv-reports/">scotusblog.com</a>, Justice David Souter will be retiring.

While this is from a few days back, this excerpt about Savana Redding struck me hard. It’s about a grade school strip search of a student caught up in the administrative zeal to find banned ibuprofen.

… No drugs were found. But even those justices lacking a daughter, a niece, or a uterus had access to an amicus brief in this case documenting the fact that student strip searches “can result in serious emotional damage” and that student victims of strip searches “often cannot concentrate in school, and, in many cases, transfer or even drop out.” Savana Redding, herself a data point, described the search as “the most humiliating experience” of her life. Then she dropped out of school.

This was an honor student that the school transformed into a drop out! She’s another casualty of the police state’s War on Drugs, in this case to unsuccessfully find the prescription- or double-strength of the same medicine found in an OTC and non-narcotic pain killer, one we all probably have in our home medicine cabinets.

What better argument is there that compulsory attendance at school must be compensated time, i.e., where the student is paid for their time when they attend. At least then Ms. Redding would still have had the cash rewards for her time wasted by the state (and so would all her classmates). It may have been little consolation, but a little is better than none at all.

There’s very little difference between this incident and a rape, where the latter just has an additional final act, but the steps leading up to it would seem much the same.

I wonder what kinds of mass outcomes this type of abuse tends to result in when an unspecified portion of the populace is forced to experience it. What is it like to drop out as a result of administrative power-abuse, then individually what does it feel like when your president tells you you’re unpatriotic for not wanting more pseudo-rape education in your life, “And dropping out of high school is no longer an option. It’s not just quitting on yourself, it’s quitting on your country“? Individually, the local administrator on a power trip pseudo-rapes you, while the more distant, mass administrator or top executive initiates a guilt trip for your natural reaction to the local administrator’s arbitrary and capricious actions. Is this oscillation conducive to either individual’s or individuals’ mental health?

(another aside: this seems a repeating pattern we’ve seen in California with medical marijuana that is and has been legal for patients with a prescription for it, but that [more local] county administrators deny through such mechanisms as refusing to issue ID cards as required by law, supervisors who have proven they will use the police to hassle their own residents and citizens who may need to utilize marijuana for their own or their patients’ individual health care)

Do you watch more TV (cable … Kaching) afterward, or something else, to escape? Watch those advertisements … Kaching. Take more medicines to forget or cope? Kaching. Visit more therapists, themselves graduates of the same corrupt system? Kaching. Are the schools deliberately destroying some folks, specifically to enable multiple lucrative markets for their chosen ones? Wouldn’t that be what the lawyers call “a conflict of interest”?

Is the only group for which “pursuit of happiness” has truthful meaning and modern intent are the chosen ones, the very ones who appear they cannot possibly understand being pseudo raped by the schools, because, hey, it didn’t happen to them.

One has to wonder what the Shadow’s selection criterion is to be a chosen one, if honor students are subjected to such administrative fear-hatred as this. Maybe there is no criterion, and it’s all a great big lottery based upon nothing more than either good luck or the absence of continuous good luck, and that the hard work that we’re often told is expected of us is a fool’s errand. Perhaps the criterion is whether you are a transnational corporation or are closely associated with one. If not, then too bad?

An alternative to paying K-12 students would be to stop paying anyone and everyone for their work, then at least we’d have a fair economic system, one that treats everyone’s work pretty much the same.

According to <a href="http://feeds.salon.com/~r/salon/greenwald/~3/_Op4WFtFR2A/index.html">Glen Greenwald</a>, Senator Dick Durbin, the Democratic Majority Whip, blurted out that the banks own Capitol Hill, he reportedly said they "own the place".  I suppose that with the billions (or is it trillions, I've lost count) bankers have recently received, it shouldn't be news to much of the citizenry, but it's good that a senator is stating this explicitly.  Hopefully there will be some redundancy and repetition among our other legislators. 

I believe the standard advice to kill a dangerous addiction is first acknowledging it, otherwise you're in denial.

<hr>
2009.04.29<!--more-->

According to The San Fransisco Chronicle, the California Supreme Court has left intact a lower court ruling allowing <a href="http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2009/04/29/BA5817BGU2.DTL">private schools to expel lesbians</a>.

This is more proof that compulsory schools are primarily about punishment, and one more reason that students should be released from the state's compulsory attendance requirement upon a single expulsion.  If a student wants to go back to school after such a traumatic event as being expelled from one school over the possibility of sexual orientation, it should solely be the student's lawful decision whether to sign up elsewhere, or instead have the right to decide to forgo the promise of future school-house punishments.  

Unfortunately that doesn't seem to be the law today. Surely these private schools benefit from the state's compulsory requirement, a subsidy of sorts, yet these private schools have zero responsibility to their students to not ruin students' future lives.

It occurs that this is a type of mental torture.  It surely seems a reflection of administrative hatred, another facet of which seems to manifest as the reported serious physical and sanctioned torture in places like selected military prisons.

Sundry Reading (not news): It appears we can finally make homemade mayonnaise and its uncooked eggs won’t bother folks, because the “raw eggs” will be “pasteurized”!

How to pasteurize eggs at home:

http://www.georgiaeggs.org/pages/pasteurization.html

The above method may or may not be satisfactory for homemade mayonnaise due to the added liquid required which cannot be an oil.

http://www.christonium.com/culinaryreview/ItemID=11943886808367
Pay attention to comments. This method seems like a great way that doesn’t involve mixing the egg with other liquids, but getting the center of the egg to 140F degrees would seem difficult, so risk isn’t entirely eliminated.

According to the Science of Cooking, egg whites begin to solidify at 63C degrees, which seems to be around 145.4F degrees, while yolks begin their solidification at 70C degrees which seems about equal to 158F degrees.

Consequently, if the Science of Cooking is accurate (who knows) any home pasteurization method which involves bringing the egg to 160F degrees for any amount of time will also involve solidifying some portions of both the egg white and yolk. I’m pretty sure that would not be satisfactory for homemade mayonnaise (great tasting mayo is easy to make with raw eggs, but nobody around here but me wants to consume that). So for the entire egg (yolk and white) to remain entirely non-solidified, it can’t be brought to a temperature higher than or equal to 145F degrees.

Using the Georgia Egg Commission’s pasteurization method, “140 degrees reached and held for 3 minutes”, would seem the best way, but whether mixing the egg with any liquid, perhaps a small amount of water, would work for mayonnaise would require some experimentation. Mixing egg yolk with an equivalent amount of water seems to work very well for hollandaise sauce, but that sauce is cooked and mayonnaise isn’t, so the two processes probably can’t be directly compared.

If one wants to do the egg pasteurization process in the shell, it may be necessary to keep that egg in the 140F degree water for an extended time period, perhaps half an hour or even longer, as it seems it will take some time for the center of the egg to reach 140F degrees (based partly upon observation and experience of years of cooking eggs), and the amount of time it takes probably depends upon the eggs’ initial temperature. Unfortunately, some government references make the claim that eggs shouldn’t be kept at high temperatures for any length of time, such as anything over 2-hours.

It would be handy to have an electric pot with a highly accurate thermostat. With such a utensil, this egg pasteurization could be done without the need to watch the water temperature manually for any given period of time. In my experience most automatic cooking thermostats don’t seem very accurate, and I wouldn’t want to buy one without some guarantee of its calibration and accuracy. For this purpose, it seems like accuracy would need to be at least +/- 2.5F degrees of accuracy ([140-145]/2), and it would be even better if it was within +/- 1F degree. That way if it was set on 141F degrees, once the water reached that temperature, it would never go below 140F, and would also never exceed 142F (unless there was a malfunction), giving one a 3F degree buffer zone before the albumin or egg white begins to solidify, and which would allow one to set the thermostat as high as almost 144F degrees without running the risk of cooking the egg.

I’ve never seen a home cooking instrument (or a hotplate), with either degree of accuracy. Some electric pots advertise “Precision thermostat”, without specifying the degree of precision, which essentially makes it a rather meaningless phrase.

I’m guessing that it’s going to take more time to find one of these precision-temperature cooking pots than it would to watch and modulate a water-bath temperature manually. [update] I used a triple boiler, like a double boiler, but with an additional cup in it for the egg. However, it was painstaking to keep an eye on the thermometer and keep turning the flame on and off. I also found that the temperature differential needed to be rather larger than 4 degrees if one didn’t mind the egg’s temperature increase to slow once it had reached temps over 130F. My intuition was also telling me an issue is that the cup holding the yolk and white (mixed or scrambled), was allowing too much dispersion of heat, or the conduction of heat away from the egg, requiring a higher temperature differential than what I initially thought would be required. So perhaps the technique where the entire egg in the shell is surrounded by water of a modulated temperature would seem to be much more efficient.

Since mayonnaise only needs the yolk, and not the white, for the emulsification effect, and since the yolk doesn’t solidify until about 158F degrees, then perhaps solidifying the white is okay, with the objective of getting the center of the yolk to > 140F degrees for at least 3 minutes. Hmm, it’s an interesting idea for cooking a soft-boiled egg, to use a water bath that approaches but never quite reaches 158F degrees. However, modulating the water bath’s temperature manually is difficult. Maybe this is one meaning of “a watched pot never boils”, so, keep watching that pot!

Digital Thermostat 100C seems a shopping search keystring. Digital water baths seem to be laboratory grade instruments, and well above a reasonable price for a mundane kitchen appliance. This PDF of an electronic kit may provide part of a less expensive solution, but the relay or 120V AC part of the circuit may not be of sufficient amperage to support an electric hotplate when it’s on. It doesn’t seem to have a digital readout, and combining the two kits into one unit would seem to require a specialized power supply, one appears to use 12V, the other 9V. Oh, here’s the electronic-control motherlode, and it appears to be from homebrewers to homebrewers, electronic temperature controls (speaking of which, I’ve always meant to try homebrewing beer, there aren’t a lot of things you can do when you reach my age that you haven’t already tried — maybe someday).

As an aside, that referenced book, the Science of Cooking, actually gives an equation for precisely how long it will take for the center of an egg to reach a particular temperature! It looks like the kind of cookbook I would have loved to have had access to some years ago before I stopped collecting cookbooks. Now that I think of it, it’s probably the kind of cookbook any parent of school age children would want in their home bookshelf for their child’s educational reference.

2009.04.27

I saw a couple of news items today that Obama may restrict some of the practices associated with mountaintop mining. Dare we hope he’ll lead the way to outlaw the practice completely? A removed mountaintop can never be replaced.

He’s also appointed a bunch of science positions, and announced a plan to fund energy education efforts. Many of us were dreaming of solar energy back in the 70s, and the failure to get it and or other cleaner energy techniques to all of us by now seems like a massive educational failure, so the solution is funding more educational efforts.

I suppose that it’s possible the problem wasn’t as much a failure of energy education, as it was a failure of our economic system.

Here's a good follow up on the my Earth Day thoughts of compost.

<blockquote>Garden of Eve farm really began as just a garden -- Eve Kaplan-Walbrecht's, to be exact. In 2001, a friend invited her to sell some of her vegetables that she'd grown at a farmers' market in Long Island. She made $40 that day, and decided to take gardening to the next level. Today, the farm boasts 70 varieties of vegetables, 20 herbs and 30 flowers, all certified organic, across its 100 acres. 500 Rhode Island Red laying hens run wild and free, producing rich eggs that keep the customers coming back. There are seven beehives, not so much for producing honey as to promote healthy crops and biodiversity. This spring, the farm welcomed a small handful of baby lambs to join their few goats, sheep and guard dogs, and next weekend, they're planning to bring some piglets down from Vermont's Tamarack Hollow Farm.

<a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/cathy-erway/from-gardening-to-farming_b_191757.html">read more...</a>
</blockquote>

This is one of those feel good stories. I wonder how many just like her started out similarly, and didn't make $40 on their first day, but had expensive booths to pay for, putting their first day, and however many days they continued to pursue that goal, at a loss and in the red.  

One of the biggest attractions of the Southern California agricultural neighborhood that we moved into 10 years ago was all the local fruit and vegetable stands that some folks had in their front yards.  It was great being able to buy some local produce, and not have to go to *a grocery store* to do so.  A few years ago, maybe 5, those vegetable stands seemed to all or mostly disappear.  Word was that some folks complained, and the county supervisors and their employees acted, even though our little town is said to be *unincorporated*.  Now, I go to the local market, and I can't even find locally grown fruits and vegetables, instead I end up going to the membership warehouse and buy lettuce that says it may have been grown in either the U.S. or the E.U. and if the latter, presumably must have been jetted halfway around the world.  Me thinks the folks that may have complained to the county about local vegetable stands may have had financial conflicts of interest, and for me one magic of this little town is now in the history dustbin of memories of better times.  

An interview with Ian Stephenson, a reincarnation researcher, that claims to have been published in Omni magazine (link via OpEdNews, via Grant Lawrence):

I cannot emphasize too strongly that a child who is going to remember a previous life has only about three years in which he will talk about it. Before the age of two or three he lacks the ability. After five, too much else will be happening in his life, and he will begin to forget.

I wonder about this. Reincarnation does begin to explain one possibility for why some people may have talents that don’t seem to come from any formal education they may have had.

I wonder how many parents just dismiss what their child might be saying, perhaps because they’re just a child and can’t possibly know anything yet, or perhaps children should be seen and not heard, or perhaps because their personal religious beliefs or lack thereof don’t accept the possibility of reincarnation or life after death, or perhaps another reason.

2009.04.26

Torture, the ailing economy, and swine-flu epidemics seem to be some of today’s main stories. Besides the seeming reality of the various reports and discussions, I wonder if they’re also metaphors of each other.

Because of that observation, perhaps it’s time to read a bit less of the news.

2009.04.25

Here’s a feel good story, Sacramento City Unified school district is reportedly expanding specialized programs of high school education.

The small schools are designed for no more than 500 students and are centered around unique education or career themes such as medicine.

The item says they have no money to currently enact the programs. However, this seems like a very smart move to make. There are a lot of questions besides money. How will schools identify students’ strengths?

In the item, Steinberg claims “many” were well served by their education, but that is a very unspecific statement. Since only about 25% of high school grads go on to get a college certificate, one can only believe a better choice of terms would have been “few”. But then when you have that college degree, and believe it did serve you well, it’s very easy to believe education will serve everyone else just as well, so when speaking to others of similar education level, you tell them what they want to hear.

Personally I see two MAJOR flaws with compulsory education. Failure to pay the kids for their labors, whether the government considers it labor or not, and two, failure to release kids from future compulsory education upon a single expulsion or suspension, and this latter point, as well as the former, can be broken into a single abstraction, that of punishment. It’s nice to believe that some students were rewarded, but hey, some people also believe the tooth fairy takes their baby teeth, leaving some money under the pillow in exchange.

In a capitalistic society, one is either paid for labor or one is a slave, and punished every day payment is not made for required work.

I see the schools themselves are concerned with money, so it is hypocritical for them to believe students should work for free. But hey, when I go to the grocery store and food is free, as well as having a comfortable and free place to call home, then I’ll stop complaining about students being forced to work for free. By then, if it ever comes to pass, we can all be non-paid volunteers, then perhaps there won’t be hypocrisy behind forcing students to work for free, though, there’s still that forcing concept to contend with.

When I went to school, the approved curriculum actually taught us that child labor had been outlawed. What a load of you know what. Only some types of child labor had been outlawed. It was the War on some Child Labor, perhaps analogous to the War on some Drugs. Divide then conquer.

It’s so nice to know, though, that education, in the end, actually worked for a few.

In other news today, Protestors are clashing with police over the handling of the economic crisis at an IMF meeting in Washington, D.C. Via democraticunderground.com.

I’m reminded of the Declaration of Independence for some reason. These days when I read that document, it’s like deja vu.

And I have a bit of my own news to report about country of origin labeling. For the first time I’m seeing multiple countries represented on product labels. I bought three heads of lettuce just yesterday at a membership warehouse, the bag said “Product of U.S.A / Produit de E.U.” (please note I’m going from memory, I may have the slash wrong). Some avocados for sale at another store were in a bin labeled “Product of U.S.A, Mexico, or Brazil.”

I’ve never seen such confusing labels before. The lettuce heads were not individually labeled, so I couldn’t figure out if they were grown in the U.S. or E.U.. Maybe they were transplanted halfway through their growth cycle, hydroponically transported and replanted so they ended up individually grown in both places? Or did the label mean they were grown in one of the two places, without specifying which? However, a few of the avocados were individually labeled. Those labeled fruits all said they were from Mexico, so does that mean the ones that weren’t individually labeled were from U.S.A and Brazil, or U.S.A or Brazil, or perhaps that the individual labels fell off the unlabeled fruits or were never labeled in the first place?

Oh, now here’s a newsworthy item, from Rawstory, via democraticunderground.com: Appeals court has ruled gitmo detainees are not persons within the meaning of a particular statue.

So, a century ago and over several decades of court rulings a doctrine of corporate personhood was defined, and now we’re beginning to see rulings that some humans are not persons.

It seems history is in a repeating time loop.

2009.04.24

Monsanto has been in the news recently. In several states, pigweed has become resistant to Roundup, the trade name for Monsanto’s glyphosate, a contact-herbicide. An Argentine science study has reportedly found that when glyphosate is injected into an embryo it alters cell division, possibly linking Roundup and or glyphosate to birth defects.

Germany has reportedly rejected one of Monsanto’s genetically modified crops, and Monsanto has responded by suing Germany.

Rob Kall, editor of OpEdNews, says that Monsanto has made life exceedingly difficult for one activist who’s been trying to bring the dangers of the company’s products to the public’s attention.

2009.04.22

Today is Earth Day, among other things a day to celebrate our connection to the earth, sometimes affectionately referred to as Mother Earth. As much as some might like to deny it, we are all connected to her, we are born of her, and when we die, our bodies shall return to her in one way or another. So if you have time, give thanks to her for all she does for all of us everyday. For but one small example, you might decide to look at some flowers growing outside somewhere. It’s easy enough to realize their beauty, all it takes is a thought, preferably a conscious one, though it can be silent, and in that moment, you have given thanks for a small part of her beauty.

Perhaps you could decide to help your community with recycling efforts, whether you understand them or not.

You could learn to make compost. I’ve been making my own for a number of years, it’s not that difficult, though I do limit it by only composting my own yard’s trimmings. When I make my own, the first step is to shred all the leaves, and the second is to place them in a pile, and the third is to add some water if needed. We have been advised by snail-mailings that our local fire code only allows a pile of 12″ depth. This seems to considerably slow the composting process probably because it limits the pile’s internal heat. Because of that limitation, there’s probably a change in the pile’s ability to self-sterilize seeds and I’d guess also a change in the pile’s microbial flora, though I’m sure it’s a reasonable code restriction for closely-built neighborhoods consisting mostly of homes built with wood-frame construction. Yes, some folks actually use thermometers to judge whether their compost is “composting” properly!

Compost begins to become a good source of plant fertilizer once it has aged well and the carbon:nitrogen has decreased to lower than 20 or thereabouts. That figure is what I recall from reading older writings, it was said that was about the ratio value where the absorption of N stops and the compost begins to be a nitrogen source, instead. There may be new research on the subject now that there’s been more interest in making compost over the last few decades. That ratio is an abstracted way of thinking about compost, and likely not too practical for most folks unless you have access to an agricultural laboratory, generally a rather expensive option mostly of use to commercial operations. However, the ratio is a good thing to learn about if such abstractions interest you, doing so helps the person directing composting efforts to consciously blend compost-pile ingredients that help speed up the decomposition process and result in a more balanced compost-as-fertilizer end-product.

One of my older observations is that when earthworms have arrived in my compost pile, and it’s both fine in coarseness and near black or very dark in color, the compost is ready to be used. Another even simpler sign is that weeds may start growing in it, presuming of course that it’s an open to air and sunlight compost pile and hasn’t been turned or worked recently.

Sadly, the techniques and knowledge of composting became obscured for some decades, perhaps for a century (in the U.S.), and when I was young, it was very difficult to find written information about it. Happily, this is no longer the case!

Making compost is actually an old farming technique, probably first adopted and used by those who noted that plants dropped their leaves (and other observations [for more advanced techniques]). Perhaps they noted that the upper layers of soil were of a different quality than lower levels, and then someone long ago must have attempted to duplicate nature’s process. Over long time periods, this leaf drop, and other events, caused the natural buildup of what slowly becomes compost and fertile topsoil. Mother Earth at work again! Thank you!

One of the mid-level techniques is the use of manure and other animal products in compost, and in addition to its other benefits such as adding a natural supply of primarily phosphorous and also usually some small amounts of potassium depending upon manure source, this can more quickly lower the compost pile’s carbon:nitrogen ratio. It works by speeding the breakdown of the woodier plant products which have much higher ratios (I’ve read that sawdust has a C:N ratio value of around 400), and the primary ingredient that does this is the manure’s N content. My readings on the subject have said that high C:N ingredients (such wood chippings) absorb N during their decomposition process which takes time and creates heat, then the wood chips’ C:N ratio falls as decomposition proceeds. What do you do if you don’t have an animal farm and a ready source of raw manure? Humanure offers one set of suggestions. However, it’s often cautioned that some animal manures may transmit diseases, so additional sterilization steps should probably be taken. It’s possible that it’s not very cost efficient to pay to dispose of something that has fertilizer value, then turn around and buy manure, paying even more. In our area, and given that fire codes only allow 12″ depth compost piles, and the further observation that this tends to reduce their heat somewhat as well as the size of the center of the pile where most of the heat is located, I wonder if pretreatment with solar sterilization would suffice (I don’t know, just thinking outloud), something like baking it in a solar oven for some period of time. [update] It seems there are others who think that solar baking kills a lot of pathogens, from solarcooking.org. In the following excerpt, SBC stands for Solar Box Cooker:

MEDICAL WASTES—DECONTAMINATING: Soiled bandages and bedding, infectious body drainage, feces from intestinal diseases, and other infectious material may be placed directly in an SBC and thoroughly cooked to kill most infectious agents. How long it takes should be determined by specific circumstances. The SBC heat-treated materials will be disinfected although some heat-resistant spores may still be viable. A separate SBC is recommended for this use.

Folks who are farmers will probably note the NPK values of fertilizers (nitrogen, phosphorous, and potassium) that they’re so used to working with are also represented in some of the potential compost pile ingredients. An Internet search will provide some listings of NPK values of various manures.

Here’s the best online essay I’ve ever read about compost and earthworms, though it’s not a ‘how to make compost’ article per se.

Composting in closed up plastic trash bags may to some degree simulate the anaerobic conditions of peat bogs. While I haven’t used this technique in many long years, I believe I read once that it was a way to create acidic compost, though I’ve not tested this out, so consider it just a rumor. It could make an interesting science project for grade school. Plants are sensitive to the pH of soil, and having some acidic compost, given the high cost of peat moss, means that anaerobic composting could be a valuable soil-pH-modification technique for alkaline soils, if indeed it works. Oh, what the heck, I decided to see if I could find it again, hopefully without spending much time, and wadda’yaknow, here it is: anaerobic composting (PDF). From that document, “…the extra acidity caused by anaerobic composting.”

Here are a couple of search engine results for compost that may be more along the lines of, simplistically, how to make it:

http://www.howtocompost.org/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compost

When rereading that statement about extra acidity of anaerobic composting, I realized it’s the same thing that is said to happen with bread dough as it ages, that the dough gets more acid with more time, as yeast is filling the inside of the dough with CO2, not air which contains oxygen, therefore bread dough rises should also be anaerobic. It’s odd how all of these various techniques are used in industry, but we don’t learn any of them in school, or at least we didn’t when my generation was forced to go. It’s enough to make one believe compulsory education is deliberately engineered to keep us both ignorant and dependent while publicly proclaiming the opposite! I hope that all the talk of reducing CO2 production and the creation of suspect financial derivatives and carbon credits for industry and corporations isn’t a backdoor anti-competitive method of increasing costs for home bread bakers while simultaneously giving the large corporate mass-production bread bakers a competitive advantage… Lots of us bake our own breads, in part, to save money because we don’t have a choice about the inequitable distribution of money in our society. Via Wikipedia, Yale University economics professor William Nordhaus says it will raise the cost of a loaf of bread by 30 cents, but does that include all the middle folks and their markups which I’ve found are usually desired as percentage markups?

Wikipedia

A harmonized carbon tax would raise the price of a good proportionately to exactly the amount of CO2 that is emitted in all the stages of production that are involved in producing that good. If 0.01 of a ton of carbon emissions results from the wheat growing and the milling and the trucking and the baking of a loaf of bread, then a tax of $30 per ton carbon will raise the price of bread by $0.30. The “carbon footprint” is automatically calculated by the price system. Consumers would still not know how much of the price is due to carbon emissions, but they could make their decisions confident that they are paying for the social cost of their carbon footprint.

As long as our corporatist police policy state doesn’t decide to upstream disrupt the supply of flour and yeast to citizens as they have with precursor chemicals like cheap and effective generic allergy medicines (pseudoephedrine, a huge win for citizens back in the 70s that lowered OTC medicine costs) in their stupid War on some Drugs, then we’ll still be able to bake our own bread (but will we get less economic savings from doing so?).

Nordhaus says the increased costs will be concealed to citizens, but I believe that since corporations who’ve purchased credits (not concealed) can also deduct their transportation costs (gasoline and oil-based hydrocarbon) as an expense and citizens cannot (personal expenses not deductible), corporations effectively get another ratcheting up of a subsidy that citizens don’t get, and the icing on the cake for them is that since it’s a concealed tax with respect to retail products prices, no citizens will will be able to analyze it: whether the guess of a .30 cent retail increase is accurate, or not; whether the tax applied to a bag of flour is less than the tax on a flour-weight equivalent amount of baked loaves of bread, which it is represented that it should be due to the baked breads additional energy inputs.

It seems the carbon tax applied on any and all products should be disclosed at the retail level, because there’s no other way to know if the tax is being fairly and accurately applied. An additional matter is that all advertised prices should be the total price including all taxes and including a breakdown of all taxes applied, so that citizens can choose the most economically efficient distribution chain, and also analyze the tax components thereof. After all, corporate seems to generally have a long and illustrious history of creative accounting, and what seems a pattern of misrepresentation and a desire to hide facts. Citizens need protection from that, and it seems the best protection is self-protection through open disclosure and transparency.

Regulation has generally failed in the past because of what seems to be classifiable as legalized corruption and bribery.

2009.04.18

According to Glenn Greenwald, during the last few days the Obama administration has released some torture memos, memos that are said to be required to be released in relation to a lawsuit. Greenwald’s Update II references an ACLU repository for the recently released torture memos.

When I read portions of the Geneva Conventions, at least a few years ago, and while I cannot remember the precise language, I do recall that humane treatment of prisoners seemed required.

I find myself wondering if we’re viewing the very real effects of “the shadow” (quoted as I’m using it as a metaphor).

While some of my thoughts below may seem unrelated, I find myself absolutely amazed to watch movies today that some decades ago I thought were great movies, but now I find the violence depicted within them, at least somewhat if not a great deal, off putting. To what degree did those moving pictures program our minds to accept violence as the way things must be. Undoubtedly related to this is the Affect, a term used in part by psychologists to classify events and memories that are impressed by emotional stimuli:

Affect, like the adjective affective, refers to the experience of feeling or emotion.[1] Affect is a key part of the process of an organism’s interaction with stimuli. The word also refers sometimes to affect display, which is “a facial, vocal, or gestural behavior that serves as an indicator of affect.” (APA 2006) The affective domain represents one of the three divisions described in modern psychology: the cognitive, the conative, and the affective. Classically, these divisions have also been referred to as the “ABC of psychology,” in that case using the terms affect, behavior, and cognition.

It’s been said that the best art is that which provokes emotion within us. But what kind of emotions are being preponderantly created and disseminated by what Joe Bagent calls our Theater State?

If I recall history, the television didn’t become an effective mass-market device until sometime in the 1940s or perhaps later, maybe the 50s. Wikipedia claims that the 1930s saw TVs as commercially available, that advertising was adopted in the 1940s, but what I mean is percentage of households that had them, and amount of hours spent viewing them. Next to consider is when was violence as a mass-market plot-conflict explicitly depicted on screen with all the modern day special effects of blood and gore and most importantly, Fear with a capital “F”, to keep us on the “edge of our seats.”

The Geneva Conventions were re-written back in 1949, therefore based upon the similar correlating timeline, I find myself wondering if what we’re seeing with official justifications of torture is partly due to changing internal (mental) values that have occurred since 1949, perhaps due to an extreme accentuation of The Shadow of Fear that now exists within most or all of our minds.

One could take this line of reasoning far past torture memos, to conceptions of business itself as war, to internal mental justifications that when we make hundreds of millions per year it’s all due to our own efforts and we need not give back to those who helped us get there; that the homeless deserve their plight; that poor folks don’t deserve healthcare if we can’t afford to either buy it outright or purchase private-insurance coverage for it; that people dying of hunger simply didn’t work hard enough; “The War on __________” (insert favorite negative or fear-based catchphrase); etc., etc….

Many of us learned when young that physical violence directed against other humans was and is simply not tolerated, it’s only later when we get older and learn more that we find that there are times that it’s legally justified (such as self-defense in very limited circumstances), yet our minds en-masse have been subject to daily doses of picture-based violence programming (Corporate or State Theater), in spite of those legal prohibitions against actual violence. In a sense, we’ve all been subject to the “mental pictures” only a very unfortunate few would have been subject to in prior eras, had they miraculously survived (highly unlikely) similar extreme and real events often depicted in modern motion pictures.

It seems there are at least two very big potential dangers of violence depicted in motion pictures: We may make a mental connection that the violence is not physically harmful, at least within the context of viewing the movie; and two, some of the more artful depictions of such violence may impress within our minds through Affective processes, and we may remember those scenes for years. I guess a question that needs to be asked and discussed is whether having those mental pictures alters our mass behaviors in any ways, but particularly in un- or sub-conscious ways that are detrimental to all of us together.

Violence depicted within motion pictures is a relatively new phenomenon with respect to the historical course of modern humans’ planetary existence, it’s even new when viewed relative to the total existence of the current civilization era, or even the existence of the U.S. itself, though much less so. Most of us alive today are probably not old enough to remember a day prior to the existence of mass-disseminated TV.

How this created “extreme mind shadow” might physically manifest in our various occupations could not only be quite broad, but also quite unexpected.

Scientists have reported that they may have found the problem with honey bee colony collapse, and they have a treatment that cures bees from and in the affected hives. I don’t have the link where I read this item a day or two ago, but a search turns up the good news.

On another topic that’s not really a news item, and while I generally don’t like to take quotes out of context, or create an excerpt without adding something substantial of my own, I guess I’m going to make an exception, as this sentence seemed to just jump off the page: “Avaricious individuals may acknowledge one reaps what one sows.” It’s an essay well worth reading.

2009.04.14

A few items that seem like good news!

It’s raining as of 5:15 PM in our little corner of Southern California. That’s practically a miracle all on it’s own. Thank you!

Today there are two marijuana stories, one from a source I characterized yesterday as “mainstream”. The Sacramento Bee reports that the Mexican Congress is debating marijuana legalization. The second is via Talk Left which excerpts and references a NORML blog posting, Calling All College Campuses To A National Marijuana Forum. From NORML:

“National Marijuana Forum
April 18-20, 2009
University of Colorado, Boulder

It seems there’s going to be some discussion, as Mexico’s U.S. Ambassador suggested on Face the Nation yesterday.

While on the subject of college students, the Electronic Frontier Foundation issued a press release announcing a motion to squash a search warrant which was served on a Boston College student and resulted in the loss of his computers and various other electronic devices. What the court will decide is currently unknown, but portions of the release border on being humorous, and certainly seem absurd. From their release (pay particular attention to EFF’s quoted words):

“The dorm room search stemmed from an investigation into who sent an email to a Boston College mailing list alleging that another student was gay. Police say they know who sent the email and that the sender committed the crimes of “obtaining computer services by fraud or misrepresentation” and obtaining “unauthorized access to a computer system.” However, nothing presented by the investigating officer to obtain the warrant, including the allegation that the student sent the email to the mailing list, could constitute the cited criminal offenses.

“Some of the supposedly suspicious activities listed in support of the search warrant application include: the student being seen with “unknown laptop computers,” which he “says” he was fixing for other students; the student uses multiple names to log on to his computer; and the student uses two different operating systems, including one that is not the “regular B.C. operating system” but instead has “a black screen with white font which he uses prompt commands on.”

EFF Senior Staff Attorney Matt Zimmerman says campus police are on a “fishing expedition”. We’ll see what the court decides.

That’s the end of the better, “feel good” news.

Econospeak had a curious posting titled Reparations. While the topic is undoubtedly an important one centered around justice and a fair society, a couple of sentences stood out:

“The owner of an indenture contract could extend the term of service pretty much at will for a whole range of real and imagined “offenses,” and dying from hard usage (poor food and corporal punishment) wasn’t exactly rare.

I find myself wondering when there will be reparations for all those from compulsory education that didn’t later economically thrive? What about the chronic homeless, a large portion of which are veterans, who die living in the streets, being chased out of what Mainstream routinely characterizes as “encampments” under the demands of those who better adapted to the post-compulsory-school-years’ parasitic economic system. In essence, compulsory education was a tax, extracted from us before the law said we were legally allowed to labor. You’re “not laboring” as a child because ‘those who know better’ declare your time spent in compulsory education isn’t labor!

While I don’t have the link, recently I read a posting about tithing 10%, but not to a church, instead to any thing or cause you support, and that if we did so, we’d get back more in return; that that was how money worked. Since our compulsory education years comprise about 10% of our total expected average lifespans, haven’t we already tithed enough to prove that assertion false? Anyone with only a high school diploma earning less than a living wage is still waiting for the payback of those early-year tithings taken by force from us by the state’s mandate.

The most curious thing to me is how ‘those who know better’ essentially set school kids up to expect no payment in return for work, meaning that when we reach our adult working years, working for less than we’re worth feels quite normal.

So back to school, this time college to learn even more, and if you do get that degree, you mostly likely find out later that what you’re able to earn doesn’t match what the CEO makes, and there aren’t any jobs available in your expertise area so you’re overqualified and certainly underpaid for that work you’re overqualified for. So, back to school again, and again, in a feedback loop.

Timothy Leary told us the solution to the feedback loop, “drop out.” In essence, it was sage advice, as our rulers can never be satisfied with us as a whole, only with a very small fraction of us to whom they shower great monetary riches, everyone else is just a serf. A cost. A burden.

The other day I noticed a news item in the San Diego Union Tribune about high-school drop-outs. This is one of those “Duh” studies, but that’s not what bothered me about it. The implication is that the school kids’ future labors are essentially owned by the cities, or rephrased, the kids’ value to the local government system is based upon either the benefits or costs they will later bring to the same system, and that is the be all end all of the kids’ value.

The kids are not being valued by our local overlords because they’re alive. Because they have goodness in their hearts. Because they have future lives of love and friendships to live out. Instead, compulsory school is now primarily about economic parasitism.

“life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness”

I noticed a curious contrast in some new items about a single CBS TV Interview with Bob Schieffer on Face The Nation, which I did not watch, conducted with Mexico’s U.S. Ambassador, Arturo Sarukhan. The story is about the Mexico-U.S. border, guns, and money. And the interview was also apparently about marijuana, but you wouldn’t have known that by reading only some of the stories. At least four Internet outlets seems to have covered the interview. I’ve grouped them here to try to understand the contrast.

Alternative Media: Raw Story & Aid and Comfort had stories regarding how Ambassador Sarukhan called for a serious discussion regarding marijuana legalization.

Mainstream Media: The Sacramento Bee and the Wall Street Journal both had similar stories regarding guns and violence on the U.S.-Mexico border, in fact these two stories seem so identical, they appear to be rewritten copies of each other, but the Bee’s seems more complete.

While it’s just a guess, it looks like mainstream has decided to censor Ambassador Sarukhan’s drug legalization discussion statements for some reason. Reading the mainstream versus alternative source stories seem somewhat like living in two different worlds, even though all four are based upon one interview. If you don’t like the slant of one group, just change to the other! See, that way everybody’s happy. “Happy” until we try to come to a common understanding of the problem and how best to deal with it, that is.

Mainstream is concentrating on the problems, upon the fear, and offering “control” based solutions. Curiously, there is no mention of restricting the country-to-country flow of all money, just particular portions of it (this is a huge problem now with electronic currency that is transferred around the world in milliseconds, allowing the free flow of money, but restricting the flow of humans who are laborers, so any “free market” derived from such a system is essentially “rigged” in a supply-demand sense in the favor of large corporations moving money and against humans looking for better wages and opportunities). More border inspections. Perhaps more inspections of individuals purchases. More police. More authoritarianism. More delays. Mainstream’s solution is calling for the spending of vast sums of money on interdiction and control, with an implication of greater information gathering along with it’s 4th Amendment implications, judging some money as “good” and other money as “bad”.

Alternative’s implied solution, were the Ambassador’s call for serious discussion to result, at some point, in decriminalization or legalization, regulation, and taxation, is much more along the lines of a live-and-let-live conception. Alternative’s solution is first, let’s discuss this openly.

So, is it better for our government to spend money “forcing” and “controlling” all people for the actions of some, in what appears to be a long-term failing effort, i.e., The War on Drugs: or is it better to earn money from legalized, regulated, and taxed marijuana?

“life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness”

2009.04.08

U.S. Representative Eric Massa is reported to say Time Warner’s Usage based Internet pricing plan looks like “corporate greed” and that we, presumably meaning congress, will use every tool to stop them.

[edit 2009.04.12] eWeek is reporting a number of additional details and quotes of Rep. Massa’s in regards to Time Warner’s Usage Caps.

2009.04.07

Joe Bagent had some pointed comments about corporatism, politics, and media’s critical role in creating a Theater State. Here are the paragraphs:

“Americans, regardless of income or social position, now live in a culture entirely perceived inside a self-referential media hologram of a nation and world that does not exist. Our national reality is staged and held together by media, chiefly movie and television images. We live in a “theater state.”

In our theater state, we know the world through media productions, which are edited and shaped to instruct us on how to look and behave and view the outside world.

One of the curious things I find about most of these arguments, is what they lack, what they don’t explicitly say. The school dimension is one such missing dot, rarely is it mentioned, except to march in lockstep to the education-is-always-good construct, which our media often frames as, “The opportunity of eduction.”

I know that as early as the 2nd, or maybe 3rd grade, we, my classmates and myself, were encouraged, back then, to bring newspaper-article clippings to class to share. Thus began the social conditioning to listen to others outside yourself, but not just those humans who were physically near, classmates and the teachers, but outsiders that were, and still are, abstracted through media. Some 40+ years later we’re still doing it. Read read read share, read read read share, maybe you get the point.

Why, why are we always looking outside ourselves for snippets of what we think is true, or even wrong and false? It’s a curious phenomenon. Oooh. Wrong and false? I’m sorry, you didn’t get an A+ on that test, maybe you’ll do better next time. Our educational years are spent punishing us to one degree or another upon the slightest flaw we might have, even if that punishment is as mild as a red-pen markdown on a test, demanding nothing less than absolute perfection from us. But as adults we’ve hopefully either learned there is no such thing as absolute perfection, or stated in the oxymoronic sense, that we are perfectly imperfect. Adults are often advised to “be positive”, to switch our mindset to the “pursuit of happiness” paradigm, to simply be happy, after our compulsory-school years were mostly spent teaching us the precise opposite.

Why is it that schools teach us with goal-oriented curricula, instead of opportunity-oriented learning that’s more like life is experienced by the vast majority of the adult population? Is it perchance that only top corporate executives are supposed to learn the secret of advantaging and leveraging opportunity? Or am I off base here? Maybe today opportunities are really only meant for “corporate persons”.

First you complete First Grade, then you go on to Second Grade. After learning the abc’s, then you’ll start on addition and subtraction…. All highly structured and goal oriented (there is little-to-no choice in a compulsory system). You take tests to prove, to others, you’ve met their goals. Maybe you make it through college, get a PhD or something roughly equivalent behind your name, in pursuit of that elusive goal which so few achieve, all so people will listen to you? Pay you the big bucks? All the while the executives are cashing in on everyone’s labor, with the top executives doing so well income wise it’s hard for 99.9999% percent of us (including the PhDs) to even imagine (here’s a chart, you may need to “zoom in”). Those few are “burning rubber” all the way to the bank, or maybe they already are the bank, and that bank just has a few favorite humans who do their bidding, so the corporate entity compensates them extravagantly, while everyone else can barely pay their bills.

If our lives truly are centered around opportunity, being in the right place at the right time, i.e., good luck, instead of wrong place or wrong time, i.e., bad luck, then why are goal-based methods used to teach us, which we then learn ourselves through the power of example, from our earliest years?

Perhaps it has to do primarily with teaching us to look outside ourselves both for our answers, and even before then, sometimes subtly, leading us to the correct questions to ask that, in turn, lead us to those answers others—properly trained, certified, and approved answers, of course—then give to us.

If any of this has any truth, then it seems there’s been a deliberate or engineered-by-others mental subterfuge, by entraining our minds so deeply when we’re young that the goal-based approach-to-life is sub-consciously or habitually pursued. Perhaps we’re taught the goal-based methodology, so that when our opportunities do come along, we’ll be so busy pursuing and struggling with what we now perceive, wrongly, are our goals, that even if we notice the opportunity when it occurs, we’ll choose, consciously or otherwise, to instead stick to the goals that others so cleverly convinced us were our goals.

To add one more opportunity obstruction to us as humans, advertising perhaps serves a reinforcing purpose. Most of us know that advertisers are trying to sell us something, usually a product or a service, but advertising also sells us ideologies, sometimes openly, other times not so openly. These sales jobs often manifest as careful framing of selected redundant and very short phrases, and sometimes these same frames are repeated across a wide media spectrum. The repetition occasionally occurs over time periods of years, decades, and even longer. So, is there a deeper purpose for surrounding us with advertising-supported media? Perhaps some advertising serves to confuse our minds when it comes to the real opportunities that sheer luck may present us with, serving us instead what I shall call pseudo-opportunities. By being surrounded with a saturation level of pseudo-opportunities at nearly all times, our minds are tricked, through confusion created largely by overwhelming displacement, that any real opportunities which might momentarily present themselves are likely nothing but a new variation of one of The Theater’s oft-repeated pseudo-opportunities.

Isn’t corporatism grand?

2009.04.05

The New York Times reports deaths due to Italian earthquake. How sad. Mother Nature reminds us once again who’s in charge.

[update, of the 12th, more recent stories put the death toll in the hundreds]

2009.04.03

Apparently, the Lawyers representing Gitmo detainees are threatened with jail sentence for writing letter to President Obama.

“Clive Stafford Smith is accused of ‘unprofessional conduct’ by Pentagon officials who monitor communication between Gitmo prisoners and their lawyers. Lawyers for Binyam Mohamed face the incredible prospect of a six-month jail sentence in America after writing a letter to President Obama detailing their client’s allegations of torture by U.S. agents.

This is quite bizarre. The Pentagon has censored a letter by an accused’s counsel to President Obama, a letter that allegedly followed the required classification rules, along with an admonishment that the letter didn’t follow some rules that allegedly were left uncited.

I’m not sure I understand the problem, for one would think that as the person at the top of the military chain of command, i.e., the “Commander in Chief” as I believe the President is called, surely would have enough security clearance to view anything written by an accused’s lawyer. Therefore, the President would be a person ‘within the chain of command’.

Is the Pentagon now the de facto Commander in Chief? Is that how deeply broken our nation has become?

No Lawyer should be subject to any jail sentence for writing a presumably respectful letter intended to be kept within the same chain of command, even if it was intended to go ’straight to the top’ of that chain. It makes the whole process of detainment and trial seem like a real Kangaroo Court.

Perhaps the rest of us are next?

May President Obama have enough smarts to deal with this before it gets further out of hand, as so very many other things clearly have already.

~~~

Published by the same site back on March 28th, this item says Corporatism can be traced back to Higher Education.

In decaying societies, politics become theater. The elite, who have hollowed out the democratic system to serve the corporate state, rule through image and presentation. They express indignation at AIG bonuses and empathy with a working class they have spent the last few decades disenfranchising, and make promises to desperate families that they know will never be fulfilled. Once the spotlights go on they read their lines with appropriate emotion. Once the lights go off, they make sure Goldman Sachs and a host of other large corporations have the hundreds of billions of dollars in losses they incurred playing casino capitalism repaid with taxpayer money.

Now that was a powerful paragraph. The rest of the item is well worth reading.

It was my experience in California community colleges (this was some decades ago), that the campus police, perhaps because they work too closely with the staff, would believe a lying staff member, then turn around and stalk the accused student, themselves a citizen of the state and nation, and paying for the right to be there. In other words, students of any age simply were not and presumably are still not safe from campus police, who themselves are probably just doing their jobs as they’ve been trained and indoctrinated. If campus police were skeptical of the student, they also needed to be equally skeptical of the accuser. They weren’t.

The source of the police problem on California school campuses, particularly higher education, evidently is sourced within the text of the California constitution, coupled with some, perhaps only a few, deceitful folks who work within the same educational institutions. It may be that the system is set up the way it is so that on a staff member’s whim, the campus police then deliberately hassle the accused student.

Perhaps it’s one of those pecking order things, and in that respect, seems somewhat similar to the Gitmo Lawyer story above. How can a lawyer for an accused be lower in pecking order than the organization doing the imprisoning of the lawyer’s client? In similar fashion, a paying post-high-school student is a customer, and shouldn’t be lower in pecking order than a school employee or contractor.

If I had my druthers, some enabling portions of the California Constitution would be changed, specifically excised, with respect to that close and seemingly corrupt association between educational institutions and the police. It’s kind of sad that when one thinks of formal forms of education, or reads the words “education” or “training” or even “class”, corruption and tyranny immediately jump into mind.

2009.04.1

Time Warner CEO says to adopt Internet Cap and Usage charge.

Time Warner Cable CEO Glenn Britt says in an interview. “We made a mistake early on by not defining our business based on the consumption dimension.” Time Warner Cable has 8.4 million broadband customers. “

I’m always amazed by the short or selective memory of folks, particularly overpaid executives and CEOs. It’s almost like they’re completely ignorant of the history of their own so-called field, feigned or not, and then they get paid the big bucks for their ignorance, while often telling the rest of the workers they don’t get paid more because they don’t yet know enough and that they need more training and education.

In the early Internet days when companies were trying to attract the general public to the service, the late 80s and early 90s, tiered pricing plans were tried, and they failed to attract a wide user base. Later, unlimited bandwidth plans, i.e., flat fee for access, were the very thing that grew a large Internet user base among the general public.

I wonder what would happen to the reading public if, at the local public library, charges were instituted simply for opening each and every book, and higher charges were made for larger books. While it’s just a guess, I bet they’d find a lot fewer folks using the library.

Perhaps that’s the intent of the attempts at tiered pricing for high-bandwidth connections and usage. It seems executives want to crank up the MONEY machine, to squeeze a few more nickels & dimes here and there, wherever they can, from the masses.

Another news item: Freedom to Connect says A “movement” is defined

SILVER SPRING, Md. — The Internet is changing our country by changing how we interact with our media and government, said speakers here at the Freedom To Connect conference on Tuesday.

“We’re talking about more than technology and politics here,” said Timothy Karr, campaign director for Free Press. “We’re talking about a movement.” Read more…

Now we begin to understand why some corporate executives likely want tiered Internet pricing. They wish to slow then stop a mass “movement” of citizens that have been manipulated, probably since the beginnings of the current civilization era, by the few.

While it’s not a news item and, at least at first, appears only tangentially related, I ran across this webpage just yesterday or the day before. It’s the clearest explanation I’ve found regarding one aspect of Net Neutrality and the injection of advertising over others’ copyrighted works. While you’re there and after reading that page, if you like music, then press the website’s “back” button and have a listen!

Going back to the public library metaphor, if charges are made for opening the books, and then additionally, if it were possible, each of the pages you’ve paid to read also include advertising of various kinds, with flashing ‘bells and whistles’ to distract your attention from the underlying content, then you begin to understand where some corporate executives are not only desiring to take this, but are doing so right now. Couple that with what seems an ever increasing advertising-to-content ratio, essentially a moving division line that that will rarely if ever decrease, a well-established phenomenon not only on TV but also on the web, both over the course of years, and the endpoint is clarified: you paying to view advertising, and paying higher amounts to view more of it.

And don’t forget the unwanted spam problem. How much will you have to pay for an unwanted flood of spam that some malicious third-parties who are ‘flying under the radar’ cause? Is your machine infected and unknowingly been turned into a spam bot? Hey, the corporate executives, under a pricing plan based upon bandwidth consumed, could really make out like bandits, as the spammers steal some percentage of your billed bandwidth.

And speaking of billing, how would you know how much bandwidth you’re using? By checking a site the same company creates and provides to you? LOL!

It would seem that free broadband is one rational response to these latest executive moves.

2009.03.28

From Glenn Greenwald:

“. . . the primary hallmark of a deeply broken nation — is the total elimination of the rule of law for the ruling class, with a simultaneous intensification of the law as a weapon against the citizenry.

In a related issue, today democrats.com sent me via email a petition to “Tell Congress to Break Up the Banks”:

Our friends at A New Way Forward have a plan: NATIONALIZE: Insolvent banks that are too big to fail must incur a temporary FDIC intervention – no more blank check taxpayer handouts. REORGANIZE: Current CEOs and board members must be removed and bonuses wiped out. The financial elite must share in the cost of what they have caused. DECENTRALIZE: Banks must be broken up and sold back to the private market with new antitrust rules in place – new banks, managed by new people. Any bank that’s “too big to fail” means that it’s too big for a free market to function.

After giving it some consideration, I thought no. Why, if the banks need to be broken up into little units that are no longer “too big to fail”, and if Nationalization is part of this mechanism, then why should they be “sold back to the private market”?

I’ve often wondered why we all don’t have a free bank account, or clearing services sans account, at the local Federal Reserve branch (because the banks are “private”). If we had accounts at Nationalized branches, there’d likely be little privacy from a snooping government, but what else is new. I’m quite certain that if the government wants information from most any of our bank accounts, it probably only requires a subpoena, if that. Perhaps a letter (another letter link) would suffice. I doubt if it requires a warrant as the Fourth Amendment promises.

If anyone doubts the trouble the banks are in, here’s a reasonably good technical explanation, Money Creation and The Fed.

Waxing sarcastic, the way I figure, a broken nation cannot be expected to keep such trite irrelevancies as a Bill of Rights for citizens. Those are only meant to apply to the moneyed few corporations that have legal departments on staff to handle such contingencies. Yep, it’s just like Greenwald writes: “total elimination of the rule of law for the ruling class, with a simultaneous intensification of the law as a weapon against the citizenry.”

2009.03.25

Via Economists View, a NY Times piece about how the federal agency entrusted to enforce labor laws is failing in that task.

The federal agency charged with enforcing minimum wage, overtime and many other labor laws is failing in that role, leaving millions of workers vulnerable… In a report scheduled to be released Wednesday, the Government Accountability Office found that … the Labor Department’s Wage and Hour Division, had mishandled 9 of the 10 cases brought by a team of undercover agents posing as aggrieved workers.

First off, and based upon my news reading experience, this kind of stupidity has been reported for at least 40+ years.

Some people, myself included, think that minimum wage itself is “wage thievery”. In many areas, such as Southern California, minimum wage doesn’t come close to a living wage, making a mockery of the 40-hour workweek for compulsory school graduates sans college degrees, which comprise about 75% of the population. So we see poorer folks working several part time jobs without benefits, sometimes reportedly working up to 70 hours per week.

Sometimes I think the French people have it right with their national strikes of millions of workers, but these days, any such effort would probably need to be global in its solidarity, simply because the biggest corporations are global.

[edit 2009.03.29] Apparently, in France, high school students belong to unions. No wonder the French people have such a strong labor movement, they’re not just abstractly taught about “unions” and “strikes”, they “learn by doing.” In a way, it makes a mockery of public education in the U.S.

2009.03.24

Public knowledge has a good news item about President Obama.

“President Obama outlined the goals of his new policy:

“To ensure that in this new Administration, we base our public policies on the soundest science; that we appoint scientific advisers based on their credentials and experience, not their politics or ideology; and that we are open and honest with the American people about the science behind our decisions. That is how we will harness the power of science to achieve our goals — to preserve our environment and protect our national security; to create the jobs of the future, and live longer, healthier lives.

Whenever I read about science and government together, I’m reminded not of my first compulsory-school science class, but my first public-school science class (because it is the government that mandates compulsory grade schooling). I believe it was the 10th or 11th grade, some 35+ years ago, and our science teacher showed us a small but marvelous pyrotechnic display on his desk that burned a shade of purplish-lavender. Most all of us students wanted to know how to do that, but the teacher repeatedly refused to tell us. The lesson of example: science experiments are not meant to be repeatable! Curiously, he had a different rule when it came to dissecting a frog, we were all supposed to do that. Poor little frog, I’m so sorry!

I wonder if they’re teaching compulsory-school students less hypocrisy-in-science these days.

Jerry Brown, Attorney General of California, has made a statement counseling gay marriage backers:

In an unusual Monday night conference call with gay marriage supporters, Attorney General Jerry Brown offered tips to carry their fight forward should Supreme Court justices disappoint them and uphold Proposition 8.

Reading through that item, AG Brown seemed a little disappointed with the aggressiveness of his attorney who argued the case, but I would suggest that aggressiveness is what turns our human lives and happiness as citizens upside-down.

One of the most surprising overviews to me as I read quickly through portions of the California constitution, was it’s explicitness with regards to corporations (I make no claims of understanding all of what I read).

Perhaps in the future, all citizens should merge into ONE corporate entity, sharing all incomes and expenses, then there would be only ONE taxpayer for all who chose to do so! After all, this seems how corporations do business accounting after a “merger” (a word whose similarity to “marriage” seems obvious), the merged corporate entities share their income and expenses with each other, thus reducing tax liabilities of the more profitable divisions, and which helps to financially support the less profitable ones.

Why isn’t this model followed for citizens? Perhaps it’s because we no longer have a government of, by, and for the people. Instead, it’s now of, by, and for the corporations. When it comes to aggressiveness, no single person can match the aggressiveness of an army of corporate lawyers and lobbyists to manipulate our laws to their benefit, and simultaneously citizens’ detriment. There are few limits on the number of corporations that can join in a merger, at least up until certain anti-trust legal mechanisms are triggered, but with humans, it can only be a single man and a single woman, presumably for the sole purpose of creating more little future taxpayers?

At our current global population levels, making more future taxpayers at the same growth rates as the last century would seem far less than ideal.

Perhaps humans have a natural tendency to seek a less aggressive form of life and pursuit of joy. Perhaps aggressiveness is the real enemy of life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness.

Mar 23, 2009

Wired is reporting the Obama Administration asserts the 4th Amendment doesn’t protect cell-phone tower records.

The Obama administration says the Fourth Amendment prohibition against unreasonable searches and seizures does not apply to cell-site information mobile phone carriers retain on their customers.

The EFF is quoted in the article as saying this will give the government the ability to track everyone with a cell phone, and as such is a violation civil liberties. The government counters that cell tower records only give a general idea of location instead of a precise one. I’m sure I’ve read that cell-tower triangulation can be used for precise locational data, but whether triangulation-location information is included in the cell phone records is unknown, so we’d also need to know if it can be derived from such records to evaluate the government’s counter argument.

Thank goodness I don’t have a cell phone. Since this information is apparently not yet constitutionally protected, I’m thinking the cell-phone companies would have to pay me to use one, instead of charging me, to compensate for, or offset, the loss of privacy.

Disabled folks allegedly abused by corporations are in the news.

An article titled “‘Abuse’ Raises Question About Law for Disabled Workers“:

“Last month, FBI agents, social services and health department officials in Iowa converged on a 106-year-old bunkhouse. It’s where dozens of mentally retarded men lived when they were not working for as little as 37 cents per hour gutting turkeys in a processing plant, according to news reports and documents released by state officials.

According to the item, the company allegedly rents a $600 bunkhouse, presumably from the building’s owner, then allegedly charges the disabled residents, who are also company employees, a claimed total of $40,000 per month to live there, which the company deducts from their pay. Wow.

I actually read the following item yesterday, but it’s so well phrased it stuck in my mind. It’s from an article at Salon.com by David Sirota, and talks about “hypocrisy and double standards in America”:

“Last month, the same government that says it “cannot just abrogate” executives’ bonus contracts used its leverage to cancel unions’ wage contracts. As the Wall Street Journal reported, federal loans to G.M. and Chrysler were made contingent on those manufacturers shredding their existing labor pacts and “extract[ing] financial concessions from workers.” In other words, our government asks us to believe that it possesses total authority to adjust contracts at car companies it lends to, and yet has zero power to modify contracts at financial firms it owns. This, even though the latter set of covenants might be easily abolished.

The hypocrisy is obvious. Perhaps according to the folks running AIG, we’re all “fully-functional and disabled” folks now.

We currently use ancient (in android time) weblog and anti-spam software. While it used to work superbly, changes our host has made, that I will not attempt to explain except to say we now have hanging MySQL queries, are causing problems for folks trying to comment.

So, be advised that our websites will be non-operational at times, but that these glitches will hopefully be temporary.

Update (of same day): The upgrades went a lot smoother on this weblog than I expected. Now I have to watch how it reacts in actual operation. This weblog is the test box.

Update (Saturday, March 21 2009): Made it through the night without any apparent issues requiring manual maintenance! This is a tentative, “Yay!” Even if the current solution is not as good as the old one (it may be better), our need to make the change seems somewhat forced by realities of our current host’s and the recently-increased existence of the hanging queries that manifested as several different interactivity problems.

“Raising the standard from determination of obviousness from the person having “ordinary skill” in the art to a person having “recognized skill” in the art.

Who defines “recognized skill”? One thing I’ve learned over the years is that those who recognize “pat each other on the back” and either express disdain for, or quietly dismiss, those not in their “inner circle” however they define that phrase.

I once went to a Patent Attorney many years ago, with an ugly but functional device I’d built by hand out of PVC pipe, a dish-washing device, and he tried to convince me that no one in their right mind would buy that, that consumers want something pretty, then he spent the rest of our appointment time trying to convince me to become a petition “signature gatherer”, that’s where the money was he said, and then charged me about $250 for his time of less than 20 minutes! Another time, I went to an invention submission corporation with drawings for a specialized front bicycle wheel, that another guy appeared to study carefully. While this time there was no charge, he spent some time discussing this and some other drawings I showed him which he didn’t look at closely. While we talked, he found out I didn’t have any substantial money to spend, and then said that I should contact a bicycle company (corporation).

20-years later when doing an Internet search, I recall finding that a professor at a University had recently designed and built such a front bicycle wheel as that in my drawings.

The American revolution was fought to get rid of corporations from our lives. They didn’t precisely teach us that in compulsory education, though the educators danced around that precise point skillfully. They almost connected the dot for all of us.

It seems to me that with the explosion of the Internet, and the sharing of knowledge that now seems in the public domain, patent attorneys are probably chomping at the bit to privatize the commons of the Internet and specifically the ideas that have been freely shared.

Even Facebook was recently in the news regarding privatizing their members communal work, a policy they reportedly temporarily reversed, after a huge outcry from their members.

So the pressure to privatize others’ work is certainly there. Hopefully, Public Knowledge will change their position on at least that one item, or perhaps I simply don’t understand the strategy behind it. I did read it very quickly and probably missed important things, and it seemed like a good time for a rant.

Perhaps patents, and the protection of devices, shouldn’t be allowed at all. If there can’t be a level and equal playing field for everyone, including insuring everyone has the money that is required to be spent to acquire a patent and its implication for the masses of human beings who cannot possibly afford (hint hint) to play that game today, then why should there be any patents? Has the primary purpose behind “Limited Time”, espoused in the U.S. Constitution, now been crossed out by Orwell’s Pigs to mean something else: continually privatize the profits, and keep socializing the losses (some are more equal than others)?

According to Wikipedia, the first capacitor was invented in 1745. After its patent presumably expired, and with respect to a society that claims to want to advance knowledge and scientific understanding, shouldn’t our current compulsory schools be teaching this now common or public knowledge of what capacitors are, how they work, what they’re used for, and how to mathematically calculate what sizes are needed in particular applications? It is a ubiquitous device these days. Wouldn’t the same go for electric motors, again according to Wikipedia first invented in 1828 or thereabouts? Don’t some electric motors often accompany capacitors? When I went to public and private schools during the compulsory years, motor-winding class was never offered, even though that’s a skill I could have used many times! Instead, I’ve had to purchase (consumer) new motors when their windings did burn out, or do without.

So it seems the purpose of allowing a patent for a limited time so an inventor could profit from it, has now somehow transformed into a perpetual obscuring to the masses of knowledge gained over past years of scientific advancement, while simultaneously saying we must go to school.

Later in our adult lives our advertising supported media skillfully encourages all of us, regardless of our educational or income level, to buy, buy, and keep buying: so much so that in the last few decades we’re increasingly asked to pay for cable to watch advertising on TV, or buy the new converter box so we can keep watching the ads fed to us, or buy a magazine filled with ads.

What does any of this do for those of us who need money to eat? The last time I was in a grocery store, they still charged money for food. Recognition doesn’t bring money with it, I’m sorry to report. Just look at the homeless. They’ve been recognized at least since the 1980s. They’ve been on TV news. They’ve been studied by scientists. They have advocates working on their behalf. They’re celebrities who are eating out of trashcans because that’s all they can afford!

Think they’re planning on getting a patent anytime soon?

I’ll let you guess where this came from:

“To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries

When one realizes the U.S. constitutional authors didn’t intend “Authors” or “Inventors” to be corporations, the extensive undermining of our society and government created by the granting of corporate personhood, allegedly done not by a judge but instead a court clerk, becomes a lot clearer.

Are these deceptive games solely so a very few (corporations only and the wealthiest of the already wealthy who own most of the largest corporations) can profit and keep profiting until the end of Time itself? Is that how “limited Times” is currently being interpreted by some? If not, then where’s the progress to the masses within a society that continually keeps making all of us pay to keep socializing the losses of a few corporations? Is the sole purpose of the masses to be consumers and underpaid (hint hint) employees in an employment system most like the Feudal Era of Lords and serfs?

If you don’t have any money, you’re only worthy of eating out of a trashcan, or counseling that you need more education and a job so a few elitists at the top of the money pyramid can profit, and after getting that job you can barely pay your bills, never mind having enough disposable income from that job to have a professional file a patent on your behalf and defend it if need be?

Where’s the so-called “Progress”?

“More than 300 people gathered to debate the idea Tuesday at a Constitutional Convention Summit. They agreed on one thing: The state’s system of government is broken.”

Reportedly, the Summit was organized by a business-interest group, the Bay Area Council. Another item that stood out for me was how some reportedly want reform of the initiative process, while it appears they might use the initiative process that exists to make these changes. Is ‘use what they don’t like’ a correct summary of their intent?

“Who should be chosen as delegates to a constitutional convention? What issues should be considered? Whose ox gets gored? How do you sell a complex issue to a public that’s turned off by politics?”

Anyway, this is something to keep an eye on. There are statements in the article that Californians are uninvolved in politics, but is this even true? Isn’t every school kid who attends education for at least 13 compulsory school years (without pay) involved in politics for those years? Isn’t everyone who votes involved in politics? Isn’t everyone who pays taxes involved in politics?

Well, I guess that’s my view. Why are we being told we’re not involved, when in some cases we have little choice about our involvement? Does this business group really mean something else?

Once again the Marijuana Policy Project (MPP) has a quick and easy letter you can send to California legislators if you as a citizen of California support this bill, A.B 390. You can choose among several different letters, by hitting the appropriate link at the site. The California weblog page of MPP also has some information.

[addition of 03.01.09]: What to read the current version of A.B. 390? Enter “390″ in the appropriate search field and select “bill number”, and follow the onscreen promts.[end addition]

I sent mine yesterday, and this time I wrote my own (it has typos, but at this point they can’t be edited).

Some of the thoughts expressed are based upon my prior post titled San Diego County Board of Supervisors, Medical Marijuana, and Waiting to Inhale. Here’s my letter:

February 23, 2009

[recipient address was inserted here]

Dear [recipient name was inserted here],

It’s my understanding that California Assemblyman Tom Ammiano has authored a bill, A.B. 390, that will legalize and tax marijuana. Additionally, it will regulate it similar to how alcohol and cigarettes are currently regulated.

This seems like common sense legislation to me. Recently I was appalled to find out that San Diego County has been refusing to issue Medical Marijuana IDs to patients with a prescription from their doctors for its use, which either prevents them from using this medicine, or subjects them and their caregivers to the pressure of arrest. Caregivers in our county are reportedly being stormed by swat-like police teams, their property confiscated. It’s now about 15-years since Californians legalized medical marijuana, and some counties within the state are refusing to follow our laws!

I find myself wondering why state authorities haven’t arrested our County Supervisors for failing to follow California law. When any of the rest of us decide to challenge a law in court, as they reportedly have, we still have to follow the law that’s in existence until such time as a court overturns it or the legislature agrees on new laws. I understand this is a complex issue, involving federal government prohibition, but it makes a poor example when our own local leaders refuse to follow a state law passed by ballot proposition some 15-years ago.

Therefore, I’m feeling quite strongly that legalization and taxation is the next step for the people of California to take: San Diego County has refused to issue IDs to lawfully prescribed patients, subjecting them to arrest, if not prosecution, and the state has failed to arrest the real lawbreakers: the county supervisors! Therefore, to legalize, tax, and regulate marijuana makes some sense to ratchet up the pressure on the supervisors and over time, upon the Federal government through the U.S. Senate.

California just had a record budget stalemate, along with reported tax increases and service cutbacks. Think of the tax revenues that could roll in with regulated and taxed marijuana, but also remember all the otherwise good people who’ve been hurt by the insane prohibition of a weed through stiff enforcement and jail time. How much money have Californian’s been taxed to process and jail all these citizens all these past years?

Just thinking of these folks’ tragedies over the course of decades breaks my heart.

Please support A.B. 390.

Sincerely,

Ken Klaser

The recipients were:
Assemblymember Jeffries
Senator Hollingsworth

Can local school districts and kids or their parents save money? “OpenSource, Linux, belongs in schools. Ring their ears and wake them up!”

Thanks all you great programmers!