EOMMD

A look back at the wacky month of September via memes. Not a very thorough review, I have to admit.

New Rule

Since time and space are rather elastic on the internet and on this blog, here is the final "New Rule" from Bill Maher's most-recent Real Time show on HBO. I think he sums up the wicked web that 45 has woven pretty well. 

Honeycrisp apples

When we were in Minnesota recently we learned that the Honeycrisp apple was created by the University of Minnesota. The Honeycrisp is, hands down, the best apple on the market for my money. A lot of that research went on at the Minnesota Landscape Arboretum, a must-see arboretum just west of Minneapolis, if you like arboretums, even a little.

Sure enough, my sister uncovered a story on the Honeycrisp. It's an inside look at the development of apples, which is a lot more extensive than I figured.

Honeycrisp was just the beginning: inside the quest to create the perfect apple

Oct 6, 2016

The idea that a red apple is a delicious apple is one of the greatest frauds ever perpetrated against Americans. The apples we’re supposed to eat to keep doctors away, the apples we’re supposed to give to teachers to show our appreciation, the apples we compare to oranges — all of them are a deep, predictable red, and none of them are delicious.

The apple variety known as Red Delicious has, according to the US Department of Agriculture, dominated the apple industry since at least 1980. It’s been the most widely produced variety in the United States for the past 36 years.

The name is a total fabrication, a lie that’s woven its way into the tapestry of American culture. At best, biting into a Red Delicious is like biting into a firm cantaloupe that has only a serviceable sweetness. At worst, it’s like biting into an old baseball mitt, with shudder-inducing softness compounded by a flavor that tastes like it was muzzled between two cotton balls. Because they are common and cheap, Red Delicious apples are often served in hospitals and cafeterias across this great nation. Fuck the Red Delicious.

Thankfully, there’s hope. In the past several years, a new apple has emerged, one that all other apples should be judged against. This apple exemplifies American exceptionalism; it is a feat of science as well as of grit and determination.

The Honeycrisp apple is as good as the Red Delicious is bad. Its story is also a harbinger of apple greatness still to come. The Honeycrisp is a millennial apple born in the 1990s, after years of careful planning. It’s also considered the first “brand name” apple — the University of Minnesota had a patent on it, earning royalties from trees sold to growers.

Honeycrisp apples

It took 30 years for UMN scientists to develop the Honeycrisp, through a painstaking breeding process and lots of trial and error. Consumers first got their hands on it in 1992, but the buzz and media attention didn’t really take off until 2007. (Food trends like artisanal, organic, and local foods certainly helped.)

According to the US Apple Association, the Honeycrisp is the fifth most popular apple on the market today, ranking behind the Gala, the aforementioned Red Abhorrence, Fujis, and Granny Smiths.

The texture of a Honeycrisp is no accident: Its cells have been bred to be bigger than cells in other apples, making the fruit feel juicier and crunchier than its competitors. These cells explode as your teeth tear into them. Then there’s its distinct flavor — a clean, clarified sweetness that’s almost frosty.

When you talk to apple people — the people who create, market, and produce apples like the Honeycrisp — the phrase they tend to repeat is “eating experience.” It’s the snap of biting into an apple, followed by the wave of sweetness as the flesh breaks apart in your mouth. Ultimately, an apple is judged on its combination of texture and flavor.

For consumers and breeders, Honeycrisp has become the standard-bearer on both of these fronts. It’s the most successful of theapple varieties developed at UMN’s Agricultural Experiment Station (MAES), a horticultural research center that breeds new apples.

Prior to 2008, the university had a patent on the apple, which earned the school, itsinvestors, and a research fund at the university $1.30 on every tree sold. The patent brought in more than $6 million. It also was a way to control the supply and quality of the apple, as growers needed authorization from the university to plant the tree.

Even with the patent and authorization, Honeycrisp trees are a challenge to grow. They’re susceptible to heat, powdery mildew, and black rot. According to Growing Produce,a website geared toward American fruit growers, the tree is “finicky,” with brittle wood, and needs to be thinned carefully.

UMN’s patent expired in 2008, capping its Honeycrisp revenue stream and allowing anyone to plant the apple. That’s why you may hear anecdotes about subpar rogue Honeycrisps. Earlier this year, Wired suggested the apple’s eventual decline is inevitable.

The Honeycrisp’s consistent crunch is its strong point, but Luby says breeders are working on apples that have the potential to outshine it. In the United States, the Big Three of apple breeding are UMN, Cornell University, and Washington State University. They are where new apples come from, and their breeders are constantly experimenting by crossing different kinds of apples. It’s not exactly a speedy process.

From the concept phase to getting an apple into a consumer’s hand, creating a new apple variety takes 15 to 17 years. The in-between stages involve everything from pollinating apple trees by hand to researching the regions where the new variety of apple might thrive to conducting an extensive naming process once you have a winning combination of texture and flavor.

If apple breeders were content with sitting on their laurels, we wouldn’t have much more than Red Delicious. Thankfully, they want to keep creating wondrous things. They want to bring joy into people’s lives. That’s dedication. That’s love. That’s determination. And look me in the eye and tell me that’s not goddamn American.

Over the past 10 years, the Red Delicious apple’s stranglehold on American consumers has loosened. Growers are focusing more on varieties that taste better, like the Pink Lady and Honeycrisp, and cutting back on Red Awfulness.

The Honeycrisp’s success is what spawned the club apple model. Had UMN trademarked the apple instead of just patenting it, it would still have some control over it and benefited from its popularity.

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Extreme Burping

I laughed so hard on these videos I was gasping for breath and my stomach and sides were aching. If you have had recent abdominal surgery, I would suggest that you NOT watch this.

Ahead on the Left

Bruce Bartlett

Bruce Bartlett was one of the original "trickle-down" theorists. But in his defense, once he realized that trickle-down did not work, he abandoned it. He saw reality and he changed his opinion. Sadly, the rest of the GOP goes right on with the trickle down nonsense because they see a big tax cut going into their own pockets, and todays GOP cannot see any further than their own pockets.

I helped create the GOP tax myth. Trump is wrong: Tax cuts don’t equal growth.

The best growth in recent memory came after President Bill Clinton raised taxes in the ’90s.

by Bruce Bartlett

Four decades ago, while working for Rep. Jack Kemp (R-N.Y.), I had a hand in creating the Republican tax myth. Of course, it didn’t seem like a myth at that time — taxes were rising rapidly because of inflation and bracket creep, the top tax rate was 70 percent and the economy seemed trapped in stagflation with no way out. Tax cuts, at that time, were an appropriate remedy for the economy’s ills. By the time Ronald Reagan was president, Republican tax gospel went something like this:

• The tax system has an enormously powerful effect on economic growth and employment.
• High taxes and tax rates were largely responsible for stagflation in the 1970s.
• Reagan’s 1981 tax cut, which was based a bill, co-sponsored by Kemp and Sen. William Roth (R-Del.), that I helped design, unleashed the American economy and led to an abundance of growth.

Based on this logic, tax cuts became the GOP’s go-to solution for nearly every economic problem. Extravagant claims are made for any proposed tax cut. Wednesday, President Trump argued that “our country and our economy cannot take off” without the kind of tax reform he proposes. Last week, Republican economist Arthur Laffer said, “If you cut that [corporate] tax rate to 15 percent, it will pay for itself many times over. … This will bring in probably $1.5 trillion net by itself.”

That’s wishful thinking. So is most Republican rhetoric around tax cutting. In reality, there’s no evidence that a tax cut now would spur growth.

The Reagan tax cut did have a positive effect on the economy, but the prosperity of the ’80s is overrated in the Republican mind. In fact, aggregate real gross domestic product growth was higher in the ’70s — 37.2 percent vs. 35.9 percent.

Moreover, GOP tax mythology usually leaves out other factors that also contributed to growth in the 1980s: First was the sharp reduction in interest rates by the Federal Reserve. The fed funds rate fell by more than half, from about 19 percent in July 1981 to about 9 percent in November 1982. Second, Reagan’s defense buildup and highway construction programs greatly increased the federal government’s purchases of goods and services. This is textbook Keynesian economics.

Third, there was the simple bounce-back from the recession of 1981-82. Recoveries in the postwar era tended to be V-shaped — they were as sharp as the downturns they followed. The deeper the recession, the more robust the recovery.

Finally, I’m not sure how many Republicans even know anymore that Reagan raised taxes several times after 1981. His last budget showed that as of 1988, the aggregate, cumulative revenue loss from the 1981 tax cut was $264 billion and legislated tax increases brought about half of that back.

Today, Republicans extol the virtues of lowering marginal tax rates, citing as their model the Tax Reform Act of 1986, which lowered the top individual income tax rate to just 28 percent from 50 percent, and the corporate tax rate to 34 percent from 46 percent. What follows, they say, would be an economic boon. Indeed, textbook tax theory says that lowering marginal tax rates while holding revenue constant unambiguously raises growth.

But there is no evidence showing a boost in growth from the 1986 act. The economy remained on the same track, with huge stock market crashes — 1987’s “Black Monday,” 1989’s Friday the 13th “mini-crash” and a recession beginning in 1990. Real wages fell.

Strenuous efforts by economists to find any growth effect from the 1986 act have failed to find much. The most thorough analysis, by economists Alan Auerbach and Joel Slemrod, found only a shifting of income due to tax reform, no growth effects: “The aggregate values of labor supply and saving apparently responded very little,” they concluded.

The flip-side of tax cut mythology is the notion that tax increases are an economic disaster — the reason, in theory, every Republican in Congress voted against the tax increase proposed by Bill Clinton in 1993. Yet the 1990s was the most prosperous decade in recent memory. At 37.3 percent, aggregate real GDP growth in the 1990s exceeded that in the 1980s.

Despite huge tax cuts almost annually during the George W. Bush administration that cost the Treasury trillions in revenue, according to the Congressional Budget Office, growth collapsed in the first decade of the 2000s. Real GDP rose just 19.5 percent, well below its ’90s rate.

We saw another test of the Republican tax myth in 2013, after President Barack Obama allowed some of the Bush tax cuts to expire, raising the top income tax rate to its current 39.6 percent from 35 percent. The economy grew nicely afterward and the stock market has boomed — up around 10,000 points over the past five years.

Now, Republicans propose cutting the top individual rate to 35 percent, despite lacking evidence that this lower rate led to growth during the Bush years, and a drop in the corporate tax rate to just 20 percent from 35 percent. Unlike 1986, however, this $1.5 trillion cut over the next decade will only be paid for partially by closing tax loopholes.

Republicans’ various claims are irreconcilable. One is that the rich will not benefit even though it is practically impossible for them not to — those paying the most taxes already will necessarily benefit the most from a large tax cut. And there aren’t enough tax deductions, exclusions and credits benefiting the rich that could be abolished to offset a cut in the top rate.

Even if they had released a complete plan — not just the woefully incomplete nine-page outline released Wednesday — Republicans have failed to make a sound case that it’s time to cut taxes.

Nor have they signaled that they’ll commit to a viable process. It’s worth remembering that the first version of the ’81 tax cut was introduced in 1977 and underwent thorough analysis by the CBO and other organizations, and was subject to comprehensive public hearings. The Tax Reform Act of 1986 grew out of a detailed Treasury study and took over two years to complete.

Rushing through a half-baked tax plan, in the same manner Republicans tried (and failed) to do with health-care reform, should be rejected out of hand. As Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) has repeatedly and correctly said, successful legislating requires a return to the “regular order.” That means a detailed proposal with proper revenue estimates and distribution tables from the Joint Committee on Taxation, hearings and analysis by the nation’s best tax experts, markups and amendments in the tax-writing committees, and an open process in the House of Representatives and Senate.

There are good arguments for a proper tax reform even if it won’t raise GDP growth. It may improve economic efficiency, administration and fairness. But getting from here to there requires heavy lifting that this Republican Congress has yet to demonstrate. If they again look for a quick, easy victory, they risk a replay of the Obamacare repeal fight that wasted so much time and yielded so little.

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big water. ocean water.

45 continues to embarrass every single American. Here we have another instance of, "What if Obama had said this..."?

A Closer Look

Seth Meyers has a good little franchise going with his "A Closer Look" series.

Poor GOP, always seems to have the best and brightest (and funniest) against them.

tax reform

Now that the GOP has failed yet again at putting forth a reasonably decent health care plan, they will turn inevitably towards tax reform, by which we mean, tax cuts. This is about all the GOP knows how to do anymore. And they're not even very good at that.

One thing you can be sure of: there will be a veritable tsunami of lies to support the tax plan they have advanced. 

Chances the Trump tax proposal gets through Congress? 'Slim-to-none'

Sanders: Trump tax plan is 'morally repugnant and bad economic policy' 

160TBs

Imagine an internet connection at 160 terrabits per second speed. Yee-ow.  I can still remember when there was no internet at all!

Microsoft and Facebook just laid a 160-terabits-per-second cable 4,100 miles across the Atlantic

Enough bandwidth to stream 71 million HD videos at the same time

Microsoft, Facebook, and the telecoms infrastructure company Telxius have announced the completion of the highest capacity subsea cable to ever cross the Atlantic Ocean. The cable is capable of transmitting 160 terabits of data per second, the equivalent of streaming 71 million HD videos at the same time, and 16 million times faster than an average home internet connection, Microsoft claims. The cable will be operational by early 2018.

The Marea Atlantic subsea cable stretches between Virginia and Bilbao in Spain

 Image: Microsoft

Called Marea, which is Spanish for “tide,” the 4,000 mile long subsea cable lies 17,000 feet below the ocean surface and extends between Virginia Beach, Virginia and the city of Bilbao in Spain. Marea also stretches a route south of most existing transatlantic cables. Because of this, Microsoft says the cable will provide resiliency for those living in the US and Europe by safeguarding against natural disasters or other major events that might cause disruptions to connections like those seen during Hurricane Sandy. More importantly to Microsoft and Facebook: both companies have large data center operations in Virginia.

“Marea comes at a critical time,” said Brad Smith, president of Microsoft. “Submarine cables in the Atlantic already carry 55 percent more data than trans-Pacific routes and 40 percent more data than between the US and Latin America. There is no question that the demand for data flows across the Atlantic will continue to increase.” For most of the route, the cable — made up of eight pairs of fiber optic cables enclosed by copper — lays on the ocean floor. Some parts are buried to protect from shipping traffic, usually in areas closer to the shore.

In a blog post, Microsoft said the project was completed nearly three times faster than usual, in under two years. Marea’s cables are an “open” design, which will allow it to evolve as technology does, and as the population of internet users around the world jumps. The Marea cable also provides a path to network hubs in Africa, the Middle East, and Asia, where the next billion internet users are anticipated to come from.

Tech companies are increasingly moving into the infrastructure space, funding new cables themselves, rather than joining telecom consortiums which operate undersea cables already. Google has also invested in two cables that run from the US to Japan, South America, and other countries in Asia. With the Marea cable, Facebook and Microsoft’s investment gives them more control over the vast amounts of data they need to move quickly around the world. Both companies will benefit from improvements in cloud services for products like Microsoft’s Office 365, Azure, and Xbox Live, and Facebook’s Facebook, Instagram and Whatsapp.

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MN Landscape Arboretum

While visiting some family up in Minnesota, my sister took us to the Minnesota Landscape Arboretum. 

Yes, there were bees and butterflies all over the property.

They claim to be open 363 days per year, so that would include a lot of snowbound days. 

who doesn't like a dahlia garden?

This place is awesome, with displays of so many types of flowers, annual and perennial herbs, trees, trees, every kind of tree, shrubs as ornamentals or hedges, it would take days to visit everything on site. They have a really nice gift shop too.

The whole thing is surrounded by a "three-mile drive" that visitors can leisurely drive through, stopping here or there at the multiple benches, picnic tables, or other exhibits around the huge property. They also run a slow tram around the same drive, narrated by the worker/driver. 

it's almost mum time!

If you have any interest in gardening, you should go and check it out. The variety is just overwhelming. Sure, perhaps not a lot of these plants are suitable for extreme south Texas, but WTF.

We didn't have time to see the beehive spaces or the apple farm. Did you know that the popular "Honeycrisp" apple was developed at the Minnesota Landscape Arboretum? 

Bravo, Minnesota. Bravo!

Sassy Trump

It's simple. It's brilliant. It's Sassy Trump!

Madison, WI

We took Sunday to explore the Madison area.

The state capitol is located on that thin strip of land between the two biggest lakes in Madison, Lake Monona and Lake Mendota. That area is rather spotless, yuppie-fied and under construction. It was a nice surprise to find so much food growing on the grounds of the state capitol like tomatoes, squash, basil, thyme, cilantro, and a few I didn't recognize. Food was growing in several other places around downtown too. Too bad Wisconsin has a dick like Scott Walker as their Governor, but we have Gov Abbott in Texas, so ....

West of downtown is the huge University of Wisconsin campus and many old, large, fine homes on broad, tree-lined streets with hills mixed in. Just beautiful. Bike routes everywhere. Lots of people on bikes. 

If not for those winters.

We took in the Henry Vilas Zoo on another lake just west of downtown on a friends recommendation. Glad we did.

The Vilas Zoo is one of the few free zoos remaining in America and, for being free, is remarkably well-maintained. 

a tree boa in the Herpetology Exhibit

Gorgeous day. A few clouds here and there and around 75 degrees. There are benches all over the zoo to rest your weary feet and soak the place in. And they were all donated by members of the community.

Didn't go near the Children's Zoo. After all, we had no child with us.

The badger is the official state animal of Wisconsin.

Zoos are kinda sad places, really, especially for the larger animals. The giraffes looked like they had enough room to roam, the big cats, the polar bears, the bison all seemed to have a decent-sized habitat, but still....Monkeys, orangutans, just look sad. Why not? They are basically in prison. 

This is a small zoo, but they found the space for a few gardens tucked here and there, and lots of open green space for humans to have a picnic or just soak up the sun. And one of the best things about this zoo (don't have a pic of it) is that the explanatory plaques in most cases were elevated up above head level so it was very easy to read the info even with people in front of you. I've been to many zoos where the info plaques are low, around knee-level, and anyone between you and it blocks your ability to read. This is a small thing, but still smart.

Well done, Henry.

FFRF Day 2

Saturday, Sept 16 started off with the "Nonprayer Breakfast" in the Monona Center. Really good turnout, and a good opp for connecting with other members. We shared a table with two guys from Santa Fe, New Mexico, another man from Ohio and a third, a woman from Nebraska. Now why didn't I get any pictures of these good folks? ... ?

A cute part of the Nonprayer Breakfast is the "Moment of Bedlam" led by FFRF co-President Dan Barker, as opposed to the more-typical "Moment of Prayer" hoisted upon attendees at various events before sharing a common meal. It was raucous, indeed.

We skipped a few events after breakfast but made it back for the Freethinkers of the Year awards. It's inspiring to hear the tales of everyday citizens like you and me who discover a state/church violation and decide to stick their necks out to correct it. Becoming a local plaintiff, to establish standing to bring suit, can be a rough experience, depending upon how insane the locals are about their Biblical BS.

The first Freethinker of the Year Award went to Jesse Castillo and Kevin Price. They both live in Alpine, Texas. Jesse is a cop; Kevin is in the military, and could not attend, as he was on duty in Syria. 

In 2015, Brewster County (Texas) Sheriff Ronny Dodson decided that all his patrol cars needed to have a Latin cross on them, because Dodson wanted "God's protection over his deputies." And we all know how well that works. Jesse is a deputy under Sheriff Dodson.

The story is detailed here, but strangely, the fact that Castillo is a deputy that worked for Dodson is not mentioned. Jesse told us that at the convention. Castillo and Price brought suit, with the aid of FFRF, on March 2, 2016, to remove the crosses from the patrol cars. Inevitably, FFRF won the case and the crosses came down. Happily, Castillo and Dodson are still on good terms. Dodson's wife is the local animal Vet, etc etc. 

Castillo, and the other winners can be seen and heard below.

We were on our own for lunch and ducked into Lucille, just a block from our hotel. Craft beers everywhere!

Madison is a pretty cool town. Lots of bike rentals all over with serious bike lanes; vegetable gardens scattered around the grounds of the state capitol with lots of tomatoes; flowers, flowers, everywhere; tomatoes and herbs growing here and over there, down the street. A rather limited outdoor growing season, I suppose. Make fruit while the sun shines.

Weather was perfect. Where would we be with the app Yelp!? It's amazing! And essential. How else are you going to know what is where and their hours and menus, etc., etc.?

We returned to hear Brent Michael Davids give a talk titled, "Do you know an American Indian atheist?" Uh, Dan Barker.

His talk was pretty moving:

I got the chance to chat with him for a while and, as with other Indians I have talked with (very few, actually), took an instant liking to him. He's even on Facebook.

Michelle Goldberg, now a columnist for the New York Times, was next up and chilled everybody with "Donald Trump & Christian Nationalism." It's one of the great hypocrises of modern Christianity that Trump is so tightly embraced by Christian evangelicals. Hey, if that doesn't tell you Trump is a real fraud, nothing will.

Just about all of the speakers can be seen and heard at the FFRF YouTube channel here.

We skipped Steven Pinker's talk (but it can be seen at the link above) and came back for the ticketed dinner. Here we sat with another great and random group of people. Four from Michigan, two from Pennsylvania, and us. The

Mitch and Dan

name tag on one guy read Mitch Kahle, and I knew his name was familiar but couldn't recall why until we talked. Check out Mitch's exploits here, here, and here. He was a nice, down to earth person, as was his wife Holly.

Roy Zimmerman

Alas, we didn't win any money during the Clean Money drawing (they give away money that was printed before the U.S. mints added "In God We Trust" to everything), but thoroughly enjoyed Roy Zimmerman's performance after that. And you didn't even need subtitles. 

We caught a part of Julia Sweeney's speech. I think she was on meth or something. She went into a long, rapid exposè of recent "Christian" movies and there are some really ridiculous ones out there, that are making tons of money. Those poor deluded Christians. On second thought, it's probably enough to drive anyone bonkers. I'm glad she's watching them so I don't need to. Her talk was also recorded.

In short, we loved it. Next year's convention is already set for San Francisco, and that sounds like a great reason to get to SF.