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Set ‘em loose amongst the politicians

By lex, on June 15th, 2008

Scientists find bugs that eat waste and excrete petrol

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June 15th, 2008 | Tags: | Category: Tech Lust

11 comments to Set ‘em loose amongst the politicians

  • XBradTC
    June 15, 2008 at 7:43 am

    Call me when they piss beer and crap pizza…

  • Marianne Matthews
    June 15, 2008 at 8:04 am

    Lex … actually, the oil industry has developed seagoing critters [actually bacteria] which devour the oil from oil spills and excrete waste. Isn’t that cool and environmentally efficient?

    Marianne

  • Marianne Matthews
    June 15, 2008 at 8:06 am

    P. S. As to your other point, I can’t think of any critter that would willingly eat politicians, except maybe a really hungry bear.

    Marianne

  • Byron Audler
    June 15, 2008 at 8:37 am

    Sharks won’t eat ‘em…professional courtesy. Catfish won’t either, too nasty.

  • AW1 Tim
    June 15, 2008 at 9:06 am

    Byron,

    Reminds me of the old question:

    Q: “What’s the difference between a politician and a catfish?”

    A: “One’s a scum sucking bottom dweller, and the other is a fish.”

    Happy father’s day to all… :)

  • Byron Audler
    June 15, 2008 at 10:43 am

    Yup, Tim, was just the thing I was thinking of when I posted :)

  • Marianne Matthews
    June 15, 2008 at 12:23 pm

    Captain, sir … I neglected to wish you a happy Fathers’ Day. I imagine you are being showered with gifts and attentions by your grateful progeny, who are dam lucky to have such a nice Dad.

    Marianne

  • lex
    June 15, 2008 at 3:28 pm

    Thank you, m’dear, but in point of fact your correspondent spent the afternoon cleaning out his office and closets – no more need to hang those uniforms up front, and need to make room for the “working casual” rigs. And my new seersucker suit. Of which, being a son of the south, I am inordinately proud. No matter how ill-suited it is to these west coast environs.

    Anyways. A very beast of burden, like. *sigh*

  • SJBill
    June 15, 2008 at 4:08 pm

    Better a beast of burden than like me, a beast of bourbon.

    Happy FD, Lex. Seersucker is practical.
    Glad it’s not Hawaiian shirts and cut-offs.

    How you gonna cope with PTO, which there isn’t much of, now that you are a civvie? I’m up to 17 days/anno, which isn’t too bad, but I can use twice that figure.

    Knockemdead!

    -SJBill

  • MaxDamage
    June 15, 2008 at 9:55 pm

    Depending upon what is considered “food” for the critters in question, and what kind of psuedo-crude they can put out, I expect we’ll see the whole ethanol cycle take a more efficient turn in the near future.

    Because this has a chance to make agriculture a whole lot more efficient. Or a lot more dependent upon other inputs like fertilizer.

    See, let’s take corn as an example. You grow a stalk of corn, there’s sugar in the kernels but not so much in the cob or the stalk. Right now the stalk is waste if you’re harvesting kernels, it’s chopped up and becomes mulch for the next crop. If you’re harvesting silage for animals, you chop the whole thing up and put it in a pit with some bacteria, the slight fermentation avoids rotting and it’s good for a few years as feed.

    But today you can’t do both. The corn stalks and cobs aren’t worth anything, hence no use in saving them when harvesting for kernels, and if you’re chopping everything up for feed removing the kernels is like removing the steak from steak and potatoes.

    But we could. We could easily combine (heh! – it’s a farmer pun) the harvesting of kernels with the chopping up of the stalks and cobs, the former going into the bin and the latter into wagons for later processing at a crude plant.

    Question is, if there’s no mulch being put back into the ground, what nutrients will have to be added by other means?

    We rotate crops precisely so nutrients taken by one crop can be added by another (corn takes nitrogen, soybeans add nitrogen to the soil). Planting corn in what was a corn field last year requires nitrogen inputs, generally via anhydrous ammonia or guano application. Likewise soybeans on the same land two years in a row results in lesser yields without fertilizer.

    The other question, of course, is can this bacteria survive in the wild? If pretty much any flora is food, and it escapes the crude plant, what happens to the vegetation we depend upon?

    Heady times we live in.

    – Max

  • geo6
    June 16, 2008 at 8:52 am

    I think the dungbeetles we have now will work just fine with pollytishens. After all, there seems to be a bumper crop this year….
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