Tag John McCain

McCain’s Porkiest Pork

Apparently John McCain has discovered Twitter, and has recently tweeted (twitted? twote?) his list of “the TOP TEN PORKIEST PROJECTS in theOmnibus Spending bill the Congress is about to pass“.

Phil has already shown him to be an antiscience luddite (item #2 is $2 million for astronomy in Hawaii — as if that were a waste of money).

And the #1 porkiest project in the omnibus spending bill is

$1.7 million for pig odor research in Iowa

It looks as though this refers to the SOMMRU, the Swine Odor and Manure Management Research Unit, at the National Swine Research and Information Center on the campus of Iowa State University in Ames.

Now, maybe it’s just me, but I for one think that a lot of people who live or work near pig farms would like it if they smelled less (remind me to check with my Iowan friend about that). Okay, maybe that’s a luxury that isn’t worth $1.7 million (or $1.8 million, if you believe the NY Times), but I bet that you can tell a lot about a pig’s health by its smell. And unhealthy pigs → reduced profits.

But beyond all that, McCain has seized on the word “odor”. SOMMRU’s About Us page shows that there’s more to their work than pig farts:

The mission of the Swine Odor and Manure Management Research Unit is to conduct basic and applied research to solve problems in the livestock industry that impact production efficiency and environmental quality. Multidisciplinary research teams generate and integrate knowledge for evaluation and development of new management practices that minimize nutrient excretion, malodorous emissions, and the release of pathogens into the environment as well as have a positive impact on animal health.

(emphasis added.)

In other words, yes, they do research on pig smell, but also work on improving farming practices.

Their Research page confirms this. How about this Salmonella study?:

Objective:

(1) Determine the persistence of Salmonella in swine manure as affected by dietary treatment. (2) Identify genes important for Salmonella colonization of the swine gastrointestinal tract and persistence in manure.

Or improving pig diet?:

Objective:

Objectives of the proposed research are: (1) evaluate the ability of commercially available enzyme preparations to improve the apparent dry matter (DM), lipid (EE), phosphorus (P), nitrogen (N), energy (E), and fiber (NDF and ADF) digestibility of diets containing 30% corn dried distillers grains with solubles (DDGS); and (2) evaluate potential interactive effects between enzymes and mechanical processing (extrusion) on nutrient digestibility.

In other words, as I understand it, how can pig feed be prepared so it’s digested more efficiently (i.e., so they don’t crap out half the corn they’re fed).

Ditto the fat from your fries:

Objective:

To determine the variation in metabolizable energy (ME) content of crude glycerin samples from a range of plants and feedstuff sources such as soybean oil, animal fat, and used restaurant grease.

And corn and more corn.

Now, this doesn’t address questions inevitably related to pig farming, such as how the pigs are treated (to say nothing of vegetarians’ concerns). But if we assume for the sake of argument that pig farming is a Good Thing, these seem like the sorts of questions we should be asking, questions that directly affect the pork business.

Besides, a million bucks doesn’t buy as much as it used to. At my place of employment, I could name a couple of million-dollar “computing infrastructure” projects. In this light, $1.7 million to improve pig farming seems like a bargain.

But, of course, I could be wrong. It could be that ISU is full of weirdos who like smelling pig farts.

The Election, Explained

Right now, Five Thirty-Eight
gives McCain’s win percentage as 3.3%. Or, to put it in gamer terms,
he has to roll a natural 20, and then he has to roll 5 or 6
on 1d6 (or 3 on 1d3).

As for Palin, from her interview and debate performances, she reminds
me of nothing so much as a verbose
Eliza:
you ask her a question, her internal
regexp
parser picks out a few keywords, and she spits out a string of
preprogrammed phrases, with possibly a few pattern substitutions.

Of course, the original Eliza was designed to be terse so as to hide
the simplicity of the algorithm. Palin goes on for minutes, making her
more of a cross between Eliza and
Dissociated Press.

So☭ialism

In light of the right-wing hordes calling Obama a socialist for daring to raise taxes on the rich, I’m amused by dKos’s compilation of times when McCain has expressed the same sentiment:

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d8EyGpOU3qM&color1=0xb1b1b1&color2=0xcfcfcf&hl=en&fs=1]

Not to mention this quotation that I found a long time ago, but which
seems especially apt right now:

The US treats its socialism like a Catholic priest
treats masturbation: it does it very rarely, with a great amount of
guilt, and tries its very hardest to ignore the relief that it
brings.

— Electric Angst

Aiding the Terrorists

Remember the 2004 election, when partisans from both major parties
were arguing that Osama bin Laden wanted the other guy to win? Well,
this time around,
wonder no more:

“Al-Qaeda will have to support McCain in the coming election,” said a commentary posted Monday on the extremist Web site al-Hesbah, which is closely linked to the terrorist group. It said the Arizona Republican would continue the “failing march of his predecessor,” President Bush.

The Web commentary was one of several posted by Taliban or al-Qaeda-allied groups in recent days that trumpeted the global financial crisis and predicted further decline for the United States and other Western powers.