Non Servono le Pistole #4

GELA (Caltanissetta) - Una donna ha tentato di uccidersi insieme ai figli gettandosi in mare. Lei si è salvata mentre i due bambini di 2 e 9 anni sono morti.

Citando le famose immortali parole:

Lettore_713711: Quando si comincierà a proibire di fare un giro sulla spiaggia sarà troppo tardi!

Lettore_729672: cosa si può pretendere da una società nella quale chiunque può fare un bagno in mare!?

Precaution Does Not Fly

The long and wide closure of European airspace due to the ash plume produced by that volcano with an improbable name in Iceland has just been lifted, and damage is being counted now.

Besides grounded flights and airlines claiming losses above one and half billion dollars, there are tons of rotten perishable goods to dispose of; delays in international shipments of various goods and probably also missed business opportunities. And passengers still slowly making their way back home here and there.

What has truly hit me about this story is not the magnitude of economic damage, tho. It is that the competent national and European authorities issued blanket bans, binary decisions in which the forecasted presence of ash was enough to completely shut down air traffic.

Yet, when the European transportation ministers finally had a meeting - after some five days, soon afterwards the airspaces were reopened.

Is it because the ash magically disappeared, or because thei nitiale "zero tolerance" approach was flawed? I bet on the second option.

Some interesting information can be found in this document prepared byt the Italian agency ENAC: exploratory flights, with various aircrafts, were ran over Italy and no damage was observed even after flying into an airspace indicated as contaminated. The only important recommendation there is to avoind flying into visible ash clouds.

It seems that decisions of great importance for the economy of entire nations and the lives of hundreds of thousands were taken on the basis of dispersion models of dubious reliability and - more damning - without the support of empirical measurements and observations. It is not even known what ash concentration remains safe for jet engines*; a rather generic statement from the British CAA says that manufacturers of airplanes and engines have agreed on a safe threshold of 0.002 g/m3 - while concentrations above Britain always remained way lower.

Why this does not surprise me much? First, because for bureaucrats it is easier to say NO than YES - in other words, the default response when asking for an authorization is negative unless a set of conditions is met. Second, because the EU has adopted the infamous precautionary principle as a policy. In fact, it seems that even ICAO has adopted a similar principle - and more curiously, that they rely on dust dispersion models without requiring actual measurements of ash concentration.

Now you see what precautionary principle does.

* Not even considering the many different models and specifications of jet engines out there.

Psicanalisi Spicciola

Un commento di Lemming sul blog di Uriel:

Io questo discorso l'ho sempre fatto quando mi tiravano fuori l'argomento caccia (oh, devo avere la calamita, oppure la mia faccia quando vedo un cinghiale sanguinolento legato sul cofano di una macchina è un po' tanto esplicativa): ogni volta che lascio stare il discorso 'ma io mangio quello che caccio, e raccolgo i bossoli, e il cane lo faccio dormire con me sotto le coperte, e sparo soltanto agli esemplari deboli e brutti, e comunque solo quelli che cercano di uccidermi per primo' e lo porto su 'ma dimmi un po', quale compulsione ossessiva ti spinge a girare armato in cerca di esseri viventi da ammazzare in maniera orrenda?' ammutoliscono tutti.
Mi sa che non lo sanno, quale compulsione ossessiva li spinge.

Invece, è probabile che "tutti" decidano che non ha senso continuare a discutere con chi a priori ti ritiene un maniaco omicida sessualmente frustrato, e sono troppo civilizzati per dargli la risposta che si merita - la raffica di calci nel culo.

E ci si mette anche Uriel stesso:

Le loro mogli si'. Ma dove lo trovi, pero', un marito che ti lascia sola con l'idraulico negro per andare a sparare ad un fagiano?

Freud per la clientela del bar sport, mi sembra: porti in giro un fucile e ci spari alle prede? E' ovvio e lampante che hai delle frustrazioni sessuali. Ecco, questa è una delle cose che non mi piacciono, l'attitudine "Io ho chiavato più di voi, quindi sono l'arbitro ultimo e definitivo di tutto quello che riguarda il sesso".

Si potrebbero portare altri argomenti, ma non serve. Ho giudicato Lemming, e lui non si è salvato.

Curiosamente, questo commento arriva pochi giorni dopo un articolo del Corriere sempre sulla caccia. Nei commenti vediamo la solita umanità perennemente indignata, schiumante di rabbia ed incapace di leggere lo stesso articolo che stanno commentando, visto le assurdità che scrivono.

Cose tipo "Liberalizzando il periodo di caccia, l'Italia sta uscendo dal consesso delle nazioni civili" sono di una stupidità che si commenta da sola.

Salvation Is Worth That

LabRat writes:

The more they bang the “they’re actually all RACISTS so you should hate and shun them!” drum, the more it comes off sounding like “We suspect everybody not of our social and economic class of being racists- including you. And we hate you, too. Vote for us!”

And this made me think. Why someone would vote for a party being so condenscing and sanctimonious? Nobody would.

Unless...

The party is bringing salvation. I suspect that many on the left see themselves as saviors of humanity and the Earth and whatever else. And showing a man his evil ways is not thep rettiest of business; it may take some harsh words and deeds. But once that man will see the light, he will be saved and he'll relize that the harsh treatment was only for his own salvation.

So they don't see that as being insulting or hateful, but as showing someone's evil ways in the hope they will abandon those. What a mass movement craves the most is new members, and converts from the enemies' ranks are the most delightful.

Why I Homebrew

Yeah, why I do that?

In part, because I'm just curious and like to experiment. Remember, I have done a lot of experiments with vatfuls of chemicals in my past. Sugars and yeast are just a kind of novelty in this regard. It's not for the money, because the amount of time and effort taken by homebrewing is not really worth the few euros of cheap or average booze.

Another reason is that mead, for example, is hard to find here and probably expensive. But I can make my own and control the final outcome - at least I hope. And there's many other ferments that can be tried.

But if you want to know the real dark secret of homebrewing... I'm afraid that the nanny-state will massively curtail our ethilic pleasures in the course of my life, and I want to be ready to thumb my nose at them.

You may think I'm wearing my tinfoil hat now, but consider these facts.

In the last few months, even in Italy we started seeing those annoying "Drink responsibly" messages on alcoholic drinks and in their ads - there's even the website, for fuck's sake! And some politicians were clamoring to raise the legal drinking age from 16 to 18 years.

In Britain, after the war against smoking one against alcohol is being waged: minimum pricing is probably going to be a reality over there.

And considering that we Italians have this detestable habit of adopting the worst fads of the anglo-saxon world after a few years, and that there is that execrable entity if the EU around, I'm afraid that something similar will come.

So if there will be cabals of bootleggers trading in secret vials of yeast and cooking their worts at nighttime in remote locations, I'll be there!

Democrazia in Saldo

Nella civile Londra, una città per definizione anni luce avanti a quello che noi poveri italiani possiamo mai sperare:

"I clienti in coda che non sono riusciti a entrare si sono innervositi racconta il responsabile del negozio alcuni hanno cominciato e essere violenti con noi e con altri clienti, quindi abbiamo deciso di chiudere. Ci sono stati un sacco di problemi, è dovuta intervenire la polizia, siamo molto delusi”.

Nella democrazia pura, il voto di uno di questi ominidi vale quanto quello di chiunque altro, vi faccio notare.

E che fine ha fatto lo Homo Novus Europaeus, quello che si è tanto evoluto socialmente da superare l'uso della violenza per risolvere i problemi? Qualcuno dice che basta saltare un paio di pasti per portare l'uomo civile alla barbarie - ma ora pare che una svendita sia sufficiente.

The Revenge of the Mead

A second batch of mead is now fermenting in a quiet corner of my home.

For this batch I used yeast recovered from an obscure but fine beer known as Tripel Karmeliet. A starter for the fermentation was simply made with 100 g of honey and 300 ml of water boiled together, to which I added 100 ml of the sugary yeast suspension.

Apparently, the wort was too hot the first time, so the yeast died. But after adding another 50 ml, the telltale tiny bubbles of fermentation appeared in a few hours. Baker's yeast appears more resilient than this variety, and it produces a more vigorous fementation: it is not surprising, considering that that baker's yeast is selected for rapid raising of doughs.

The main batch was made of 400 g of honey dissolved in 1,5 l of water and brought to the start of boil with a sprinkle of dry wild fennel - for aroma. I added another liter of cold water (all Brita-filtered) and allowed the wort to cool nearly to room temperature before mixing in the starter (for a total of 3 liters of water) and transferring the wort to a sanitized fermentation bottle through a filtering funnel.

Finally, I capped the bottle with a piece of aluminium foil and placed it in a corner of the living room, at about 20 °C and away from direct sunlight.

My first batch was made using 1 kg of honey and 4 liters of water for a final sugar concentration around 18 °Bx (assuming 90 °Bx for honey). In this case, the sugar concentration in the wort is only 13 °Bx more or less, for which a final alcohol content by volume 0f 6.5 - 7% can be expected: a lighter and possibly drier mead than the first.

We'll have the first impressions in about one month.