Now initially you might think you don't need or even want to know about
butyrate (ˈbjuːtɪˌreɪt) noun,
any salt or ester of butyric acid, containing the monovalent group C3H7COO- or ion C3H7COO–, and when you then bumped into this, having first found out it is in butter, you might well panic:
Examples of butyrate in a Sentence
Recent Examples on the Web
Clear plastic screwdriver handles are usually made from cellulose acetate butyrate, a material developed in the 1930s.
— Roy Berendsohn, Popular Mechanics, "Why Do My Old Plastic Screwdriver Handles Stink?," 8 Oct. 2017
But then you would realize that lately it has had a great rise in reputation and helps maintain your biodome and aids in the production of key neurotransmitters that help both our gut and our brains to work. Apparently we make it when bacteria in our bellies ferment high fibre carbohydrates, but it is also, and here is the punchline, found in butter! The highest food source for it. I am relieved, and think I will just butter up everything!
At least these verbose scientist think so:
The neuropharmacology of butyrate: The bread and butter of the microbiota-gut-brain axis?
This is just the trumpet section of the UW- Eau Claire Blugold Marching Band. There’s a particularly fine looking young man up there, top row second from the right.
Spied some “evidence” in the back yard just now. What would appear to all the world to be dog poop, packed with what sure looks like popcorn (there’s a limit to how closely I want to examine it). We are feeling pretty sure that the fox is the main culprit.
Popcorn poaching is a new thing here, and so are frequent fox sightings. Raccoons have always been around and never been a problem before.
Nighttime attacks, yes, but also the occasional hit in broad daylight. Fox yes, raccoon unlikely during daytime.
Too much carnage overall for squirrels, and they have also always been around.
Hodag and Chupacabra still not crossed off the list. 😉
37 pages now Xty! i just checked and was surprised how much you have written so far! is your first novel going to be as long as a Michener? and you know the deal… i get a signed “first print”.
EO – i admit i was skeptical that your corn thief was a fox. but now you may have some forensic evidence. you will need to provide some pictures of said evidence. 🙂
http://icwdm.org/inspection/Scat1.aspx
edit: wow. i really do have all day to edit now.
edit: edit: might as well add this. i googled “do fox eat corn?”
https://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20080704150630AAl6xpN
well, blow me down.
Well I just did a bit of google searching for fox scat and raccoon scat images, and was initially a bit confused, thinking it could perhaps it was the raccoon after all. Until I saw a description of size! Images alone give a poor sense of scale, but I read that raccoon is typically 3/8″ in diameter, and often in small pieces about like a tootsie roll. The scat in my yard is much larger, with a diameter probably more like 3/4″. So now I’m back to the fox.
I’ll try to get a picture in the morning, with a ruler nearby for scale.
EDIT: Another source just said 1/2″ for raccoon, but Mrs. O and I both quite sure ours is larger than that.
EDIT AGAIN: Another source says 3/4″ for raccoon! Quite a variety of information. If Raccoon can go 3/4″, then more of the raccoon pics look more like ours, I think. The mystery continues!
The more I read, the more I’m thinking raccoon. A big one. The quote below fits very much with what I remember seeing this morning, but certainly with good size to it. The “uniform thickness” about it was particularly striking.
“Raccoon dung always has blunt ends and is quite uniform in thickness, looking a bit like a thin, blunt-cut, cigar.”
http://terriermandotcom.blogspot.com/2004/11/you-dont-know-squat.html
This might be taking things too far, but my mum took poop from her funny farm down to the Royal Ontario Museum, like any normal academic, and they were able to tell her that she had a vole infestation, and even the kind of vole, which I have now forgotten disappointed that they weren’t star-nosed. But I am now quite sure when I see vole poop. I would think it would depend what the racoon ate too, and whether he was a monster racoon with a super-sized anus.
I have managed to write quite a bit much to my own surprise too. I think I have only missed two Saturdays and the characters are starting to take on some life which is great. I am sorry it is so terrible, but if I wasn’t inflicting on you live like this I think I would keep erasing and never show anyone and still be on page one. We just have to sell the movie rights, to jump from isn’t it awful to desperate hope.
And good morning.
I think being able to edit comments for longer is going to be good.
edit to add: but I thought I only gave you 30 minutes. The field I can change takes minutes, so I can stretch it out more and give you an hour if that would be better.
I don’t actually know how long the novel will be and it is something I was talking about to anyone who would listen yesterday (Mouse) about pacing and not being sure how to worry about that. I guess a more formal outline might help, but sometimes I want to take the characters through every action, and other times things just have to happen or get explained.
By the way, I have found this very useful:
http://www.youtube-mp3.org
You just copy in a youtube url and end up with an mp3. My computer still works just fine and there are no popups. But then if you like the song you should try to buy at least one version that gets back to the artist especially after watching Searching for Sugarman, unless it is some massive empire resting on the rights to a dead person’s music. The song I posted tends to get scrubbed, which is why I mention it.
Okay, that was weird. I checked that the video links were right, and then come back and the bottom video was suddenly the same as the second one. I put it back, but I really had clicked on all the links. I had been going to comment that I think Elvis Costello scrubs the web a lot, but didn’t want to besmirch his character. And now I have, but it is only alleged.
Ok, so here we go, pushing a new frontier on xty’s blog. Poo pictures.
Upon careful research, we are going to conclude, in this instance, in favor of the raccoon. Blunt or rounded ends for the raccoon, as opposed to tapered for the fox, and also the remarkable uniformity of diameter, argue for the raccoon.
http://icwdm.org/inspection/Identification%20Key%20to%20Scatdferraro.htm
http://terriermandotcom.blogspot.com/2004/11/you-dont-know-squat.html
The size is amazing. Just within the bounds of the largest parameters found on the web though. So a raccoon, but quite a big one.
Still, it doesn’t entirely fit. At least a couple of times, we are sure that a cob or two were pinched in broad daylight. Raccoons have not been seen in this suburban neighborhood in daylight. Ever. A nighttime prowler only. And the only observable change in the fauna in the neighborhood in recent years is the sudden numerous fox sightings, both day and night. So, could we be having a bit of both?
your novel is flowing just fine Xty. i am no expert, but just from my own experience, you are surely your own worst critic. so keep doing what you are doing. if you over think it, if you turn it into work, i think your writing will suffer.
i’m going to have to go with racoon also. we have had them here, and i have had to clean up some of their piles on the back porch. they are very opportunistic – they were eating cat food. they also would wash up in the water dish. they have a surprising amount of dexterity. racoons quickly get used to people, which is a problem. they really can eat a lot too. i think it may be because they don’t seem to digest their food very well. 😯
oh – the edit time is plenty enough. i only partially clean up my rants anyway.
When I was a kid, on camping trips, my Grandpa would tease us by saying he had been up early and had witnessed a raccoon dipping a frog into the pancake batter. It seemed almost possible. Just enough to keep us wondering…as we finished our pancakes.
I am going with raccoon. Here is the picture from this graphic link, Identifying Brown or Black Droppings, which I looked at because I was going to say small bear, in jest.
We had a raccoon open the screen door on the porch at the cottage, standing on two legs, using one paw to open the door. If he had been wearing a belt of burglars tools we would not have been surprised. We were sitting about 6 feet away, too. He looked at us like we were the intruders.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walpurgis_Night
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_Pigs
She really looks like she is sniffing his armpit.
that is blasphemy Xty.
Is it any better that she looks like she approves?
He reminds me of that Old Spice guy:
i can’t think of a comment for this.
Good Morning. So nice to hear from you!
I love this commercial that started running this weekend. For years, Apple ridiculed Samsung’s larger screen phones, and now a larger screen phone is Apple’s new thing. Hilarious.
I happen to own a Samsung Galaxy Note 2, from 2012, as referenced in the commercial. It may be the only time on record of me turning out to be an “early adopter” of anything. Usually, the moment I like something is the moment they stop making it.
I waited and waited on a smartphone, precisely because I wanted a bigger screen, and I wasn’t seeing them in the marketplace. Turns out I’m not the only one. My kids laughed at my “huge” phone. Nobody is laughing now.
today’s rant is going to be short… Obama Care absolutely sucks. what a pathetically poor disguise for another sell out to big insurance and pharma. well, i promised to keep this short.
But if you listen to your Jesus Christ doll, it will calm you down and maybe heal your woes.
I think it is a tragic shame. It shouldn’t be called care. All it does is force people to buy insurance. I can’t believe how much it has made me treasure our government pay system, which I used to think was insane socialism. Nothing could be worse than an insurance company deciding what procedure you needed, not even a government official.
Yes, Apple does deserve some ridicule, but I find the iPhone already almost too big for my hand, so I think it might be one of those things that literally appeals to people who can hold one. Both middle son and hubby have HTC One’s of some recent sort, and they are pretty darn big even in their meat paws. Ikea did a great ad recently, speaking of clever ads that make fun of things:
And it does nothing for people who cannot get insurance, the very people it was meant to help. It is basically a tax on the young, healthy working people, that they somehow have to pay to an insurance company, as far as I can see. And then the vulnerable just fall through the cracks as before.
I disagree, but there’s probably no point in getting into it.
go ahead EO. my wife and i are trying to figure out what to do, right now, so i may have some perspective, and fresh arguments.
but in a nutshell, we find that medical care for us is going to be even more expensive than before, no surprise, since we practically have a gun to our head. buy insurance, or we will not provide you service is the message from the medical behemoth(s) around here, who have of course out competed (that was meant as a joke) all the little providers.
and even the big medical providers hate Obama care because the insurance companies are dictating everything now.
it looks like our decision will be to pay cash to a provider in Madison, full price, and also pay the penalty for not signing up for Obama Care. it sounds crazy, but for my wife and i, that will be the cheapest option – at least until we find ourselves penniless and homeless, or perhaps the best health care option of all, dead.
since i am ranting, this article blew my stack. maybe the democrats should quit lying about the economy if they want to keep the Senate!!!
http://news.msn.com/us/obama-tries-reagan-touch-on-economy-but-wages-weigh
and you all know that i am not partisan at all. partisanship = brainwashed ignorance. but that doesn’t mean i don’t especially hate the wing-nuts. i guess then that i don’t hate everyone equally, but that doesn’t make me a fan of the sell out democrats at all. maybe we should just elect David and Charles Koch and get it over with. they can fight out who gets to be the token president/vice prez privately, and whether to run as D’s or R’s.
not my best prose, but this morning i am especially disgusted with the great fucking USA.
good night Irene, and rant off.
edit: and also good morning 🙂
i don’t think anyone in this group will find anything to disagree with in this article.
http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/the_coming_climate_revolt_20140921
i wasn’t lurking over there, i promise.
Reply to: Pailin’s Trading Corner
Alonzo Jazzberry by pailin
2 hours 36 min ago
Alonzo Jazzberry wrote:
Pailin – for a newcomer, could you describe what the relationship is philosophically between this thread and TF’s site? The folks there, particularly TF, seem all-in on an imminent (next year or so) financial collapse, simultaneous with huge gains for gold and silver. The talk around here seems to be a little more measured. Would you say the people commenting here like yourself share roughly the same long term view, but are more ambivalent short/medium term, or is it a totally different mindset altogether?
Okay good questions. To start, this is all Turd’s site. And I’ll only be speaking for myself here.
What I do here is a reflection of how I view things, and to some extent, as much as it would be for anybody, that’s in flux based on my own experiences and changing external inputs. But you’ll always see me admit when I’m wrong or have gone over the line. For sure I don’t know it all, maybe nothing at all 🙂 That’s called intellectual honesty.
I think everybody on this site, whatever area, agrees that “things are not good” but what the endgame is and when it will happen…probably as many opinions are there are people. Opinions. That’s an important word. Nobody has The Answer. No specific dates, prices, correlations, etc. I most often play devil’s advocate and welcome many/all opinions that are logical and presented with solid premises and a conclusion that follows. Those that don’t (that I care to address), I’ll tear apart.
What really bothers me is the financial and social destruction that’s been wrought by those following gurus and bad advice. A lot of people have lost a lot of money (or serious opportunity cost), not to mention damage to businesses and families, by going all-in or making sweeping ‘any day now’ changes to their lives. There’s also a rotten lack of accountability for that damage by the advisors. How many bottoms have been called? How many amateur chart analysts have ignored the most basic bear signal of all…lower lows and lower highs? How many say out of one mouth the charts are all manipulated, ‘painted’, throw ’em out, etc. then go on to analyze them as if there’s grains of truth to be extracted? Hypocrisy.
So much of the metals (and by extension libertarian) story is about self-empowerment and self-reliance. Yet the advice/guru thing persists. And the ego thing. The leader thing. All of that. None of which is self-empowering or encourages self-reliance! I’d rather help people figure out answers for their lives than tell them what to do or warn of general impending doom. And I’m for sure not trying to sell subscriptions, a newsletter, or anything for that matter. So you’ll see me come out against that stuff when the advice tends to require payment.
Dunno if that’s what you were looking for…I tried 🙂
I haven’t had the pleasure of signing up for O’ Care, though I have tinkered with other “shadow” sites that help project what the premiums would be under various scenarios.
http://www.valuepenguin.com/ppaca/exchanges
Essentially, as income drops, premiums should get cheap, then cheaper, then free. So, I’m not quite understanding how you are coming out with such a bad outcome. Two potential glitches that I’m aware of are as follows:
1) Mismatches between recent income as time of sign up, and current or prospective income. For example, this fall will be the sign up period for 2015 coverage. Income numbers available will be from people’s 2013 taxes. Perhaps 2013 was higher, but now on hard times? The net premium (after subsidy) will come out fairly high. But there is a reconciliation process via the 2015 tax return, due in April 2016, where actual income, and actual proper net premium, will be compared to what was paid, and the difference adjusted on your tax return. In this example with a bigger refund.
2) Below a certain point in income, you are kicked off the main O’ Care exchange and shunted off into the Medicaid system, where again it should come out as free coverage. In Wisconsin this is called BadgerCarePlus. The problem is that many of these genius Republican governors, including our own Scotty Walker, have refused to implement the full “medicaid expansion”, which was meant to make for seamless transitions between O’ Care and Medicaid. I don’t know all the details but without medicaid expansion there is the potential for some gaps in the system, where people could end up screwed with nothing. Nice work, Tea Party. Sandbag everything as much as possible.
There are supposed to be some counselors available to help people wade through all the minutia, and I don’t know if those are on the county or city level, or what. Though again, in their infinite wisdom, many Tea Party governors had been doing their best to suppress that as well. I don’t know how that has been going in Wisconsin.
As for xty’s O’Care comments, well yeah, I wanted a full government pay system as well. A lot of people did. Current polls are showing roughly 50 to 40 against “approval” of O’Care. These numbers are often trumpeted by the right, as proof of how everyone hates it and we should go back to the old regime. What is seldom or never reported is that part of that 50% disapproval is people who wanted a gov’t pay system. I think it was about a third of those 50, last time I looked. So, in reality it’s a solid majority who either like O’ Care on it’s own terms, or who wanted something even more liberal. It’s a minority who just wants to chuck the whole works and go back to the bad old days.
Insurance company bean counters decided what procedures you could get before, and they still do, so no change there.
The biggest and best thing about O’Care is that it starts to cut the cord between employment and health insurance in this country. Being in Canada, you may take that for granted, but it’s a big deal here. Add in the fact that you can no longer be denied coverage because of a pre-existing condition, and this is really fantastically good for everyone.
Under the old regime, if you lost your job, you faced either super expensive private insurance, or none at all. This kept a lot of people desperately hanging on to crap jobs just for the insurance. Want to quit that job you hate, and look for something else? Sorry, there’s the insurance problem. Want to quit your job and go back to school for something else? Sorry, you’ll lose your insurance. Want to start your own small business? Sorry, there’s the insurance problem. Got enough to maybe retire early, sorry, but what about insurance? O’Care has solved many of these problems. Republicans love a desperate and compliant working class, and this goes to the heart of why they despise O’ Care so much.
The whole issue is so heavily propagandized. Poll people on the individual components of O’Care, and they support them up and down the line. Ask them about O’Care using the name, and they say “NO! O’Care Bad!”
Look at Kentucky. A conservative state, but one that happened to have a Democratic governor at the just the right time. They fully embraced the medicaid expansion, put a good effort into setting up their state exchange, and the system as a whole is called KyNect, and is wildly successful and popular. The knuckledraggers walk around talking about how it’s a good thing they have this wonderful KyNect instead of horrible Obamacare, which should be repealed. Just try to explain to them that they are one and the same thing. Good luck with that. Politicians go around Kentucky pounding the table for repeal of Obamacare, but oh, you can keep your KyNect! What a horrible self serving lie! KyNect IS Obamacare in Kentucky.
We have insurance tied to employment as well, as we have lots of things, like prescription drugs, dentistry and eye care that are not covered by our medicare, but that do get picked up by most employers. It is a way to avoid high taxes, by giving benefits instead of pay but it has led to insurance run dentists and opticians, with ludicrously high fees and very expensive brand-name drugs. A friend went to Mexico to get his teeth fixed. When we became unemployed and now self-employed we looked into buying insurance privately but it was a total rip-off. So we just pay for service where we have to.
Separating insurance from employment is good, as it is just a perversion of the tax system, pretending something isn’t actually a salary but a benefit is only work for accountants (sorry) and lawyers. But the real problem is the insurance company paying the doctor. That looks absolutely bonkers from the outside. This doesn’t mean I would want to elect a republican! It just means there is a fatal flaw in this new system, and that is why it is so expensive because the true cost of medical care has to be inflated to keep all those insurance companies afloat. It is the corporate democracy that DP’s article rails about so effectively.
Oh yeah, and there are some O’Care taxes that stick it to the rich. It makes them piss and moan and cry about socialism when they do their tax return. Which is totally awesome! 😎
And Good Morning.
Oh, and yes Pailin sounds nobel, but he has and is helping support tfmr. That is one fight you cannot win from within, and he benefits as does the turd by keeping traffic flowing to an immoral site.
That “fatal flaw” in the new system of insurance companies paying the doctor is unchanged from our old system. It was the “fatal flaw” of our old system as well, and is why so many like myself wanted a government pay system. We didn’t get it, but on balance O’ Care is still way better than what we had. Half a loaf is better than none.
We still have those damn insurance companies, but at least now we have a few strings on them, a separation from employment if needed, and a way to subsidize premiums for those in need.
Yes, half a loaf is good, but feet to the fire still, for those elected no matter what party.
It was a mistake of massive hubris to name it Obamacare. I cannot think of a precedent for a President to do such a thing. There should be nothing partisan or political about trying to figure out a way to try to spread the cost of medical care out so that a minimum standard can be met for a maximum number without bankrupting everyone. But of course as we know from our entanglement with people who do not believe in community, not everyone is willing to take the same or any hit for the team, and once the changes got personalized by President Hubris, it meant they lost half the nation at one stroke.
It’s real name is the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act. Obamacare is simply popular parlance, initially pushed by opponents as an attack, and it stuck. Purists on the left, and others interested in accuracy, refuse to use “Obamacare”, and simply refer to it as “the ACA”.
ACA aka Obamacare is a disaster, but i will concede that it is a step in the right direction. i challenged you EO, and you rose to the occasion. btw i too wanted a single payer system.
i am out of synch with you two. i like to get busy in the morning, and then chill out later. so i will add some thoughts later in the day if this is still the topic.
We agree violently, that’s the thing.
I didn’t know Obamacare was a name launched by his enemies. Live and learn, and man capturing the language of a debate is so much a strategy these days it makes communication difficult. I have put up an impenetrable new post, speaking of making communication difficult, but it is an attempt to help toss tfmr and Santa and all those idiotic metals gurus on the dust heap of history, in my own glacier like manner.