Category Archives: Food

Food, Security

The Deadly Blue Ring Octopus

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I just found out from The Cephalopod Page that some octopuses have a venom that can quickly kill humans:

Typically, the victim is unaware of the danger and either picks up the innocuous looking octopus or inadvertently contacts it. The bite is slight and produces at most only a small laceration with no more than a tiny drop of blood and little or no discoloration. Bites are usually reported as being painless. Often the victim doesn’t even know that he had been bitten. This can make it difficult for emergency and medical personnel to determine the cause of a patient’s distress. In fact, there is some question as to whether the octopus even needs to bite to envenomate a human. In cases with prolonged contact, the venom might pass directly through the skin. While most severe envenomations appear to involve bites, I can report developing mild local neurological symptoms after immersing my hand in sea water in which a large blue-ring had been shipped.

Seems like powerful stuff. Probably most dangerous if you try to eat or drink the toxin. The damage potential of even a small octopus is impressive:

The toxin was characterized as a low molecular weight, non-protein molecule and was named maculotoxin. It was recognized to be similar to tetrodotoxin (TTX), the extremely deadly toxin found in pufferfishes Experiments with rabbits showed that a single adult blue-ringed octopus weighing just 25 g possessed enough venom to fatally paralyze 10 large humans.

Why so much? And how many rabbits had to die to figure that out? Interesting to note how these octopuses happen to produce and carry the toxin:
Blue Ring

Their salivary glands harbor dense colonies of TTX-producing bacteria. The blue-rings have evolved a symbiotic relationship with the bacteria, providing them ideal living conditions while using the toxin they produce to subdue prey and as part of their highly advertised defense.

There’s a beautiful picture of one available HERE, probably taken just before it killed the photographer, William Tan.

Food, Poetry, Security

BSOD at RSA

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The exhibition floor reminds me of a county fair, bristling with prize cattle and pigs. I hate to say it, but I find myself wandering among the herds of vendor logo’d sales people and entertainers, munching from troughs of mediocre food, wondering if this is really the best way to find new/interesting products and make contacts.

BDOD at RSA

Perhaps the most odd thing of the evening was when I found a Blue Screen of Death prominently displayed on a vendor system, and realized I was the only person who seemed to realize that it was a bad thing. I thought about making a big deal of it, but then just decided to help the vendor understand the error and to get the system back up again.

Someone in a PGP shirt walked up to me and said “How does anyone make a decision here”, to which I simply had to reply “Hmmm, let me think about that. I’m not sure, but it’s one of two ways.” He didn’t laugh.

An enigma

I had fun at the NSA booth where I typed out a message on an actual three-rotor German military Enigma from WWII. The keys are hard to press, but satisfying. Here is the result: QLKERMAKJDU. Pretty cool, eh?

I played some odd ping-pong ball drawing and won a lottery-ticket that won two dollars. I must have had a dour expression on my face during the process because the woman pulling the balls out said “you don’t seem very excited” to which I simply had to reply “oh, is it exciting to stand here and win other people’s money?” I guess I don’t believe in the “free” money concept.

Clearly I was missing something since I really just wanted to find the folks who could solve a few burning questions about encryption and key management for/with me, not play the lottery or place a bet on roulette, or throw bean-bags through a hole…sigh. Ten California rolls, three tiramisus, two kebabs, a slice of roast, some mozzarella balls, two salami slices, six egg-rolls, and a chocolate-covered strawberry later I finally connected with a real crypto-token vendor who gave me a demo and might actually be able to sell me some fobs (no software, no integration, no lottery tickets…).

I also discussed some anomaly and fraud detection software with the IBM engineers, but they kept saying “contact center” instead of “call center”, which started to give me the creeps, so I took one of their squishy brains and moved along. Microsoft said they could sell me software to integrate directories for just $25,000. I almost coughed up a cracker (with cheese) when they tossed that number out at me. Microsoft sells midrange software? They backpedaled a bit “you probably have a reseller who could get it to you in the teens”. It started to sound like an IBM rep talking. Apparently the cough-up your food on the sales engineer technique is handy in negotiation. They were just lucky I wasn’t drinking wine.

All in all, some good contacts, a couple interesting new products, and a fine start to the week. I just wish I had paid more attention to math when I was young.

If thou art diligent and wise, O stranger, compute the number of cattle of the Sun, who once upon a time grazed on the fields of the Thrinacian isle of Sicily, divided into four herds of different colors, one milk white, another a glossy black, a third yellow and the last dappled. In each herd were bulls, mighty in number according to these proportions: Understand, stranger, that the white bulls were equal to a half and a third of the black together with the whole of the yellow, while the black were equal to the fourth part of the dappled and a fifth, together with, once more, the whole of the yellow. Observe further that the remaining bulls, the dappled, were equal to a sixth part of the white and a seventh, together with all of the yellow.

— Archimedes

Food, History, Security

Death by Insurance

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Bruce Schneier has posted a restaurant guide to San Jose, which reveals his particular taste in food as well as humor. I found it enjoyable and informative and noted that he, and his wife Karen, hate the idea of corporate food because corporations are not legally bound to serve the interests of the consumer:

Look up the 1919 court decision Dodge v. Ford Motor Co.; it’s easy to find with
Google. That case still stands, and it upholds the fundamental legal principle that a corporation must put the interests of its shareholders above all other interests; and that it has no legal authority to serve any other interests, customers included. A corporation can only serve its customers’ interests inasmuch as it also serves its shareholders’ interests. Otherwise, as in Dodge v. Ford, the shareholders can sue.

The Super Size Me documentary showed the dangers of being an uninformed consumer, and how the giant food corporations can get an upper hand on average people by abusing their trust. Some suggest that putting regulations on these corporations will have a chilling effect on the market, but the opposite is generally true. The problem is that the market of “nutrition” slides into a market for “marketing”, which means those who actually try to deliver nutritous meals are sidelined by the deceptive and more profitable substitutes. “Honey, are we having snake-oil for dinner again tonight? It’s my favorite!”

In related news, I just read about the tragic story of a man who paid money into a health-insurance company only to find out that they had no intention of helping him afford health-care treatment. If you think markets do not need regulation, try to figure this one out.

When [KMBC’s] Flink talked to Tracy Pierce, his cancer was attacking his body. Despite being fully insured, every treatment his doctors sought for him was denied by his insurance provider. First-Health Coventry deemed the treatments were either not a medical necessity or experimental.

“I don’t know what else to do but just wait,” Tracy Pierce said last May.

As he waited, his doctors appealed again and again, including a 27-page appeal spelling out that Tracy Pierce would die without care. Coventry dismissed each request.

“It’s purely economical. You never see an insurance company try to block an inexpensive test,” said William Soper.

Soper leads a group of doctors who filed a lawsuit last year against insurance providers. This week, Soper went to Jefferson City to lobby legislators for change.

“And you know, it’s not going to get better anytime soon. It’s going to get worse,” said Myra Christopher, who is the president and chief executive officer of the Center for Practical Bioethics.

It is hard to read this type of news and then review the Coventry Health Care, Inc. website, which boasts how shareholders are richly rewarded by sound financial management.

Coventry Health Care, Inc. (NYSE:CVH) today reported operating results for the quarter ended December 31, 2005. Operating revenues totaled $1.72 billion for the quarter, a 24.2% increase over the fourth quarter of 2004.

Their mission statement seems plausable for a health-care provider:

To be the recognized leader in providing quality, accessible, and affordable health care benefits and services that maintain and improve the quality of life of all our members and the communities we serve.

But the only news that this corporation reports seems to be related to pleasing their shareholders:

Barron’s has repeatedly made note of Coventry’s focus on keeping costs down, indicating that Coventry shared in common with 2005’s other top 5 finishers “a tightfisted approach to overhead� and an “innovative use of information technology.�
[…]
Among all companies named to Forbes’ list in the category of Health Care Equipment & Services, Coventry was recognized in the 2005 edition as having had the highest 5-yr annualized total return, a distinction the company repeated in the 2006 edition.
[…]
Among all Fortune 500 companies, Coventry was also cited in the 2005 edition as having had the third highest total return to shareholders over the prior five-year period.
[…]
The Wall Street Journal again named Coventry to its list, and cited it as having the seventh highest five-year returns among all companies. As in the 2004 edition, Coventry again ranked #1 among all health plans nationally based on five-year performance.

Take a look yourself, ALL the news items they cite are related to shareholder returns. Not a single news item related to their mission statement!! Any chance they would post a news page where they actually say something like “we helped someone stay healthy today” or give some testimonials? I couldn’t find one. In light of the news they favor, maybe they should change their mission statement to “we keep overhead down and give great returns to shareholders”.

This of course begs the obvious question what is the antidote to the powerful incentives that make companies deny treatment in order to achieve financial accolades? Who can answer? Could it be the new Coventry CEO (ex-CFO), Dale B. Wolf who reported a cool $4,364,807 income for 2005, and $1,153,490 in exercised stock options (and $16,733,300 in vested, $2,632,500 in non-vested options)? Not bad for a company that was reported in 2005 to have a $5.3 billion revenue with $337.12 million net and $3.72 earnings per share.

Ouch. Tracy Pierce died while Coventry reported a $337 million net. Something tells me if you take this case to the feds right now, they might have a hard time understanding the problem. Even though the public pays for an ambulance that the AP says Vice President Cheney always has on call, I suspect that Bush and Cheney never actually bother with health-care insurance or consumer-grade care because they simply do not trust the system to take proper care of them.

We are told a corporation in America is legally a person (as in corporeal) and yet how many of us really know the person that we entrust with our lives or health? What do you do when you get cancer and the person you paid in advance to take care of you says “sorry, I don’t think you’re worth the time/expense”? And that is not even to touch upon the insurance premiums that are forcing the cost of care to skyrocket. The health-care crisis is solidly upon America, and detailed insider information (about corporations) is power.

One final thought: I always see innocent kids drinking “Rockstar” and I wonder if they know or care who is behind the label. Does it matter? Based on the above, I would hope most people might say yes. We need information to make the market work, and yet most people find information gathering expensive and clumsy. Journalists used to make a living out of delivering quality information, but even that market has eroded in terms of quality to the point where individual contributors and boutique outfits (those less beholden to the shareholder) are a more reliable source of data.

Anyway, back to Rockstar, Russell Goldencloud Weiner is the founder and CEO of the company, which is based in Las Vegas, Nevada. It turns out he is the son of Michael Weiner, ala the extremist right-wing talk-show host Michael Savage. You might have heard of Savage as the guy who said on air that the US should murder millions of Arabs, or the guy who claims that “radical homosexuals” and “radical Islamists” are “one and the same, they’re all terrorists”. Maybe you heard about the time when he said Clinton would recover from heart surgery only because “hell was full”. And then there’s the time he explained to his listeners “When you hear ‘human rights,’ think gays. […]think only one thing: someone who wants to rape your son”.

So, speaking of sons, is there a political connection between the younger Weiner and the Savage? Sure enough, Salon reports that they are both in the business together:

Savage’s son, Russ Weiner, kicked off the show. With his spiky, dyed-orange hair and calculated scruffiness, he was reminiscent of Dr. Evil’s son Scott from the Austin Powers movies. The resemblance was confirmed when Weiner proclaimed, “I’m proud to be the son of Savage!” The 30-something Weiner is the founder of RockStar, an energy drink that he developed with his dad, drawing on Savage’s previous career as a Marin County herbalist and ethnobotanist named Michael Weiner. RockStar’s herbal liver-cleansing formula is supposed to enable drinkers to “party like a rock star,” which presumably means drinking and doping. Generous free samples had been passed out to the crowd on the way in. It lived up to its hype: The antifreeze-colored, cough-syrup-flavored beverage can only be enjoyed if you’re taking drugs.

But while Weiner has cashed in on other people’s bad behavior, he made it clear that he’s a family-values kind of guy.

Right. Drink up everybody. Here’s to healthy information.

Food, Poetry

Cheese blends

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I’ve been eating Cambozola lately and trying to figure out the odd pattern of little circles on the rind. They seem to indicate places where someone has inserted something and left a scar. The name of the variety apparently refers to a mix of Swiss camembert and Italian gorgonzola, and there are dots of blue on the inside that are roughly in line with the marks around the outside. So I suspect the gorgonzola is injected via a large needle…altogether it ends up having a very creamy and soft consistency with just a hint of the typical blue’s sharpness, which was probably the objective.

Well done, I say.

Hints to Cheese Makers
by James McIntyre (1827 -1906)

Addressed to Jonathan Wingle, Esq.

    All those who quality do prize
    Must study color, taste and size
    And keep their dishes clean and sweet,
    And all things round their factories neat,
    For dairymen insist that these
    Are all important points in cheese.

    Grant has here a famous work
    Devoted to the cause of pork.
    For dairymen find that it doth pay
    To fatten pigs upon the whey,
    For there is money raising grease
    As well as in the making cheese.