I scream, you scream, we all scream for....breast milk?

This article consumed me for the first hour or so yesterday at work. I was just so flabbergasted that I couldn't function for a bit. I'm sure by now everyone's already heard and read about this, but just in case:
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/odd_breast_milk_ice_cream
It's hard to even know where to start with this one. There are so many obvious problems here that it's hard to focus and write something coherent.
I'll start with some simple fact-based things. The article points out that you need 1.5 gallons of milk to make 1 gallon of ice cream. Ben & Jerry's FAQ section reports that they make and sell 18 million gallons of ice cream every year, thus requiring 27 million gallons of cow's milk every year. That's alot of milk! Now then, how many cows do you need to do that? I don't know anyone in the dairy business, so I had to fall back on my good buddy The Internet. Seems that an average cow can produce about 8 gallons a day of milk. At 27mil gallons a year, B&J needs just under 74,000 gallons each day. Therefore, they need to get the milk of 9,250 cows every day to make ice cream. Alot of cows, but not unreasonable.
You'd think that being married to an OB-Gyn resident would give me an inside track on finding out how much breast milk a woman can produce each day. In the words of my boy Lee Corso, "Not so fast!". So I had to once again fall back on my good buddy. I'm guess you could get 32oz (2 pints) from a lactating woman every day. So if B&J really wanted to make a switch they'd need to get 296,000 women to provide their breast milk in order to make ice cream. Or put another way, it'll take 1 woman 6 days to produce enough breast milk to make a single gallon of ice cream.
So clearly this just cannot work from a logistics stand-point. But let's move on from that. Let's say they decided to do a small-batch run and could get the volume required. One thing you can count on from cow's milk is a consistent taste and nutritional quality (more or less). They are fed a very consistent diet and said diet doesn't vary much from farm-to-farm. That's not true with women. You can't control what they eat and therefore the quality of their milk. So you'll have a problem making each gallon taste similar and getting a good manufacturing process. If the fat content changes enough from batch to batch you're going to have problems. Women also haven't been bred for a good-tasting milk. So it's not like they can just swap it out and no one will known the difference.
Personally I'd eat it at least once. I'll try damn near anything once for shits and giggles. But most people wouldn't touch this stuff with a 10-foot pole. The mere thought of consuming breast milk disgusts most people. PETA was clearly just looking for a way to get themselves back in the spotlight in a less negative way. They've been beaten up a bit lately and needed something to change perceptions and get some support again. And they likely did it.
Not surprisingly, Opie & Anthony actually made some breast milk ice cream yesterday morning. Apparently an intern has a sister who's lactating and want kind enough to donate some. Not sure how good the interns are at making ice cream, but it was described as 'gamey' with a pretty terrible after-taste. But initially it tasted just like regular vanilla ice cream. So maybe there's hope that we'll see a special edition in the future. Of course, if Hayley and I ever spawn an offspring, you never know what could happen....

Why all the Negativity?

I finally reached a boiling-over point regarding this political campaign. I'm used to each party attacking each other, but I don't recall regular people and bloggers being so aggressive in attacking a candidate. Maybe it's just my friends, but I've been seeing a pretty steady stream of anti-McCain videos, blogs, articles, etc. These are the same people that will talk about how the republicans are being un-fair when they attack Barack for his policies and personal issues. If you say anything bad about him you're either a racist or you think he's a terrorist. But somehow it's perfectly fine to create a YouTube video that goes on for 5 minutes about how McCain is a war mongering monster that's just out to kill everyone else in the world.
I'm certainly not a fan of McCain, but I really don't hear people say much about what Barack is going to do besides "not what that facist McCain would do!". What's his plan to get us out of this economic funk? How does he plan to handle aggressive rogue nations like North Korea, Iran? What is he going to do about the health care situation? Medicare, health insurance, required or not? Can we get an accurate read on how many of his announced initiatives he'd actually be able to get through Congress and the Senate? I never hear any Obama supporters bragging about that. Or bragging on what he's accomplished in his political career so far. Really you only hear about what he did in college. And he did do some great things. But they didn't involve judging what your supporters really wanted and what compromises would be required to make it happen. Didn't involve dealing with other countries that really didn't like you.
"Luckily" for me my vote really doesn't matter so I don't need to get too involved. Massachusetts is so overwhelmingly democratic that it doesn't matter who you vote for. But the fact that Obama's supporters have been so negative and ruthless in their attacking of McCain has me worried. I think we may be getting into to situation where people will support him because they get sick of the relentless attacking of him on a personal and professional level. And not that they have Palin to take shots at it's getting even worse. It's pretty clear that she's horribly unqualified to be the VP of this county. You don't need to go out of your way to attack her and point it out. Maybe you should take that energy and use it to spread positive messages about Obama and Biden. Educate people on their policies and what they plan to do. Tell us about their history and how that should convince us that they are just blowing smoke up our asses right now.
So here's what I plan on doing; next time I hear anyone bad-mouthing McCain/Plain I'm going start drilling them on Obama/Biden's politics. See if they acually have real reasons for their choices and aren't just toeing the party line and picking the guys that "aren't Bush".

Couple Camping Stories

I know you're all eagerly awaiting to some most excellent stories from the camping trip. Trouble is, I need to wait for my dad to type up and send out this year's journal before I can really re-tell most of them. Yes, we keep a journal while we're there. It's amazing how much each day just blends right into the next when you don't. Since we stay in the same base camp for the entire trip, we don't have any geography references to date our memories. And even if we did, you tend to just forget alot of really great little things after a week. We've got hundreds of things that we both totally forgot about until we read through the journal. And it's usually the little things that really make me smile.
But I do have a couple bones I can throw out there today.
1) I know alot of people out there are probably dying to get their hands on a new and unique thigh workout. And I've got a great one you can do at home with $5 in equipment. Here's what you do...go get a small garden trowel (little shovel for those that don't know) and a roll of toilet paper (or some napkins that you "stole" from Hardees when you stopped for breakfast on the drive up to the Boundry Waters). Then just wait around until the next time you have to take a crap. When you finally do, go dig yourself a small hole in the yard and take a crap in it. This works even better if the ground is dirty and full of pine needles, there are mosquitos buzzing around, and you really have to go. Nothing is more fun then frantically trying to dig a hole deep enough for this job in an area with very little soil and, in the words of my dad, "mosquitos big enough to rape turkeys".
2) We actually saw the end of a rainbow and there most certainly didn't appear to be a pot of gold anywhere to be found. It was our last day in the Quetico and we were just chilling in camp while a collection of drizzly little clouds broke up an otherwise sunny day. While standing under the rain fly waiting one out we looked up and saw a quite magnificent rainbow arching right down to the water's edge on the other side of the lake. As the drizzle moved by the end moved out more towards the middle of the lake, then retreated back into the trees and beyond. We've seen some pretty amazing displays by nature up there, but that was definitely unique. I didn't even know it was possible to see the end of a rainbow. I figured it was just another part of the myth. But there it was, clear as day and landing right on the water. And as we joked about where the gold might be, the same guy that said that great line about the mosquitos says, "maybe this is just nature's way of telling us that this whole area right here is our pot of gold." Fortunately I've yet to see any crazy Leprechans chasing after me to get any of it back.

Back in Black!

Well, I'm finally back from the woods. It's really amazing what 10 days in a canoe completely removed from everything except nature will do for you. Strip away all the pressures and problems of your life, and everything is just perfect.
Granted it'd be considerably harder if we were living there full-time and all. We go up there with enough food and clothes for 10 days, not 10 years. We don't have to worry about caching food for the winter. Or somehow making and repairing our clothes. But that's not my point. When the sun comes up, we got up. When it went down, we went to sleep. The only thing we really had to decide on a daily basis was where we were going to fish and where we wanted to have shore lunch. Everything else just took care of itself. Rain, wind, cold, you can't control any of it. You just wake up, see what the day has given you, and go about your business doing what you need to do. If it's too windy to safely go out in the canoe, you try to fish from shore and find something else to do. Take a nap, read some of the newspaper we bring to start fires, explore the island (again). Once you stop trying to force yourself to do things that clearly can't be done, life gets pretty simple.
And once you stop running around so fast you start to notice all the great things around you. When was the last time you just took some time to watch the clouds go by? Or check out a storm front as it moves in or out? How about just watching another animal go about it's day? It's amazing what you can learn about the world around you once you start watching it and paying attention to how you fit in it.
Yeah, I'm going to be all mellow and reflective for at least the next 4 or 5 days. I come back all idealistic about what I want to do with my life, people I need to get back in touch with, changes I need to make, etc. And it all inevitably falls apart as soon as I get back to work. Probably by Wednesday of next week it'll all be over and done. But you never know. Sometimes these changes and thoughts stick with me.
And of course I'll be posting various stories and events from the trip as time goes on. And once Dad gets the pictures developed, I'll post some of those. I know, analog film! But when you have to travel 20 miles to get where you want to get, every pound counts. And neither of us wants to carry in extra batteries to power a digital camera for 10 days when analog works just fine. Pictures can't even capture 1% of the actual image, so we don't need it. The photo just serves as a way to remind ourselves and jog our memory. That's where the real image is. The sights, smells, sounds, etc all together.
But it is good to be back. No more crapping in a hole in the woods. No more wearing the same dirty clothes for 4 days in a row. No more having to slice up ~5 fish every day for lunch and dinner. Every normal activity becomes so much easier to do. Kinda like this! Sure beats trying to send smoke signals over the horizon to try and communicate with someone else.