Up in smoke.

Another election, another slice of freedom gone, but this time it doesn't effect me directly since I am in Tulsa.

Manhattan (Kansas) passed their ban on smoking in public places this time around. Now everyone can enjoy their "freedom" of eating in a smoke-free environment at the cost of business owners deciding what legal activity their patrons can partake in.

Freedom doesn't mean that you can do whatever you want, how you want. Freedom means that the government will not limit what you can do.

Due up in 2012: Ban on trans fat
In the batting circle in 2016: Ban on large portions of food
Clean up in 2024: Ban on "unhealthy" food

Suck it personal choice, hurray government dominance!

Update: Ever since starting my job here in Tulsa I felt the need to post again about how no one does correct statistics in their studies. However, my comment that I left is close enough to scratching that itch that I will just post it here and be done with it (for now).

The first time that I actually looked at a study that was conducted, just to see what it had to say, was a study that the American Heart Association did on second hand smoke. What I found shocked me.
While the study was used to say that second hand smoke was dangerous and bad, the study actually found that unless you live with a smoker that smokes multiple packs a day for many many years second hand smoke does not hurt you.
They were lying to us about the outcome of the study.
This got me interested in other studies, mainly global warming, since the quick analysis that is presented to the general public is flawed. Sure enough, they aren't finding anything like they are claiming, but some how it gets reported that the problem is dire and completely our fault.
Now that I work answering statistical questions from people doing studies all over the world it is quite obvious -
It is rare for someone to do an actual statistically valid study.
I don't think that people are intentionally misleading people, or doing bad science on purpose, I think that it is a matter of not knowing what they are doing statistically.
And it is sad to say, but if you do the best experiment in the world, but then do a wrong analysis or misinterpret the results your study is for naught, or worse you come to the wrong conclusion.
So here we are with "evidence" for a need to protect peoples health with a smoking ban. Policy is made without regard to actually knowing the truth.
But we can all sleep better at night, right?

About Sweet Corn

At the risk of sounding stereotypical, I grew up in a Kansas town and I spent my summers out in corn fields. We didn't own corn fields, although I had a friend that was a farmer, but my dad owned a crop consulting business, so we told the farmers when they needed to spray, how to optimize water usage and stuff like that. So I have some knowledge about buying sweet corn that I need to pass on to the rest of the kind folk on the internet.

About the corn at stores and markets: the problem with corn at the store is that it is generally picked too ripe after alot of the sugar in the kernels have switched to starch. This makes the corn taste not as good. Stores generally get the same corn as markets (or farm stands) do, but the people at markets probably only sale corn that will actually be good while stores just sell all the corn they get.

If you want to make sure that the corn that you are buying is good no matter where you get it pop one of the kernels that is in the middle of the ear with your fingernail and let the liquid dry on your nail. If it dries to be white the corn has alot of starch in it and won't taste good. If it dries and it is clear and slightly sticky then the corn has alot of sugar in it and will taste good.

Another thing to look for is if any of the kernels have indentions in them. This means that the ear of corn was picked after the corn plant started to dry itself out, that corn will not taste good.

Finally, this one is my pet peeve with sweet corn; make sure that the corn is actually a sweet corn variety and not a young field corn variety. Young field corn (the corn that farmers grow to make cow feed, which is what most corn grown does) looks and tastes like sweet corn. The problem is that field corn always will have more starch and has a flavor that just tastes a bit off. Now here is where the local farmer is at a disadvantage, alot of the time a farmer will plant field corn and sweet corn in the same field, and if the corn field is center pivot irrigated the sweet corn will be planted down the access road in the middle of the field. This means that the perfectly good sweet corn plants will most likely be pollinated by field corn and will make a hybrid that does not taste as good as it could be. So unless your local market is getting corn form a sweet corn only field the corn might not taste great. Grocery stores on the other hand probably only get corn from sweet corn only fields, so the corn might be better off genetically, but have the problems listed above. I'm not sure if everybody can taste the sweet corn hybrid that is sold, but since I know what young field corn tastes like I generally can tell if the corn is sweet corn or not. I guess this can be my talent.

Ray's Apple Market

We stopped on by the newly remodeled Ray's Apple Market this afternoon to pick up some groceries. Unfortunately the free milk this was the high point of the shopping trip. Even though the store is not Food 4 Less anymore and it looks many times better than it used to, it still feels the same. Which is too bad, I was hoping that it could at least one-up Dillions and Walmart, it wouldn't be that hard...