San Franciscans and water

San Francisco is full of funny people, but I doubt if that catches you by surprise. They want to be so eco-friendly. They try hard, they really do. Until it comes to water, that is.

Just like most of the rest of the US, they're all caught up in the bottled water craze. During my week there, I was served water called Calistoga (or something like that). My mind immediately began to picture semi trucks coming down out of the mountains of California loaded with bottles of this stuff. As if water weren't heavy enough, they bottle it in glass. So you can imagine the diesel fumes that are spewed every day just to cart water into San Francisco.

Another day, I was served Fiji water. Yes, it's actually from Fiji. It's bottled at the source from an ancient aquifer. The source is sealed, and the water is never exposed to the atmosphere until you open the cap of the bottle you bought. And it's good water, I'll admit. But then I think about shipload after shipload of it being transported to the US from Fiji. And then I think about truckload after truckload of it going all over the US. (You can even buy Fiji water in Wamego!) And then I think about the tons of fuel being burned to move ... water. So when you do open it, the first atmosphere it's exposed to is full of diesel fumes!

The most amazing part of it all is that I found the San Francisco tap water (at least in my hotel room and at the drinking fountains I used) to have excellent flavor.

In the interest of fairness, I must admit to the occasional purchase of a bottle of water. Sometimes for convenience, but mostly it's because I don't like the taste of Manhattan water. So I buy a case of Wal-Mart's best about once a year. Then I use the bottles to carry water from my house to my office, using a handy canvas totebag. After a year or so, the bottles begin to show too much wear, so they get tossed and I buy another case.

Advertising

I heard it again on the radio yesterday. Some car dealer in Kansas City was having a sale (big surprise there, eh?), and the announcer said that they guaranteed 100% acceptance of all credit applications.

Sure enough, they'll accept your application. Whether or not they'll give you credit is still to be decided.

Innumeracy, part 2

Today's Wamego Smoke Signal has an interesting factoid on the front page:

Did you know Kansas produces 68 percent of the world's cattle? We are the second highest producer in the world; Texas came in first.

This is wrong in a couple of ways. The first is obvious, and I'm surprised that the reporter (or at least the Editor) didn't catch it. If you produce 68 percent of something, you cannot be the second largest producer. In fact, if you produce even the tiniest fraction over 50 percent of something, you're guaranteed to be the biggest producer of that thing. Second, I just don't see how it's possible for Kansas to produce 68 percent of the world's cattle. I'll admit we have a lot of them here, but just think of how many are in Nebraska, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, California, and a whole lot of other states. Then start thinking about how many are in all the other countries of the world.

If the article had said we produce even 6.8 percent of the world's cattle, I might have done a double-take, but I wouldn't have doubted it too long. That is on the order of a number that strikes me as reasonable ... and yet it's still somewhat larger than I might have expected.

The name of the reporter is a new one for the Smoke Signal, so let's give her the benefit of the doubt. She's probably very new to the job, fresh out of school, and not particularly polished at the art of taking notes at a meeting and then writing a story later. I hope she learns from her mistake. At the very least, Melissa took the paper to her Newspaper class at the High School today, so her fellow journalists could learn from it.

Update: According to the USDA Economic Research Service website, in 2006, Kansas produced $6.25 billion in Cattle and calves. This is 60.4 percent of the state's total receipts from agriculture, and 12.7 percent of the nation's. Our distant second most profitable agricultural activity was Wheat ($1.27 billion) followed by Corn, Soybeans and Hogs. As far as exports, Wheat was number 1 ($912 million), and we were number 1 in the nation in that commodity.

This blog is rated G.

Officially rated "G", that is, and here's the seal to prove it:



They said I used the word "crap" once, but I guess that wasn't enough to merit a "PG" rating. Frankly, I'm surprised I only used that word once, since there's so much crap around to talk about.

Oops. Now I've used it three times.

Breaking news ...

...that I'm still reading about. It appears that the LDS church has issued an apology for their part in the Mountain Meadows Massacre, and the cover-up which occurred after that. The killing happened 150 years ago today, and was recently the topic of a movie called "September Dawn." Read along with me:

Deseret News Article

From the LDS website

Text of Elder Henry B. Eyring's remarks

More info later as I find it.

I knew it!

Sometimes I think I'm the only person in the world who doesn't like popcorn. It's mostly the smell, I think. Especially the microwave stuff. I always thought that the fumes from that were toxic, and now I have proof!

Read about the toxic fumes here!

Innumeracy

Over the lunch hour, I heard an old song (1986) on the radio. It is by Wang Chung, and it's called "Everybody Have Fun Tonight".

In the first line of the song, the lyrics say, "I'd drive a million miles to be with you tonight." It's a nice sentiment, but let's look at the reality.

Assume you could average 60 miles an hour. That's driving 75mph or more, with occasional breaks. A million miles at that speed would take a million minutes, which is 16,667 hours. Even driving 16 hours a day, that would take over 1041 days, or the better part of 3 years.

Love (lust?) is blind, and sometimes innumerate.