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Science Friday interviewed Nobel Laureate George Olah, who's recently written Beyond Oil and Gas which argues that methanol, not ethanol nor hydrogen, should be the energy curency of the future. While that's an interesting premise, the interview was pretty bad, as Dr. Olah cannot be forced to come to a timely point. However, the podcast is almost worth a listen for the breathy, gravely, Eastern European accented voice of the doctor, a hilarious combination of Darth Vadar meets Count Dracula, methodically rumbling things like "Soviet Russia" and "The question you ask pushes me toward the point I am trying to make."

Meteoric rise

• I had heard of the notion, but I didn't realize that the Hygiene Hypothesis was a respected enough idea to have a fancy medical name.
• I bought a pair of Altec Lansing AHP712i Headphones with Active Noise Reduction headphones a month and a half ago and have been very pleased with both the noise reduction and sound quality. They're great for office work, running, or lawn mowing and have better bass response than any other headphone I've tried. At $28, they're $12 cheaper than I paid. My biggest complaint is that noise reduction system introduces a fair amount of hiss; fortunately, I can't notice it after about two minutes.
• A senior official in the Department of Homeland Security is proposing a global ID system to expedite travel and to inhibit terrorists.
• Republican senators recently proposed a $100 gas rebate for the vast majority of American tax payers. I thought the idea was asinine. How can the government rebate us for something we didn't buy from them? Moreover, what happened to those open-market, free-trade Republicans? It's nice to see that 86% of respondents at CNN.com thought the idea was silly, too.
• A little back-of-the-envelope math estimates that there are 150,000,000 eligible tax payers potentially receiving $100, for a cost, before administrative overhead, of $15,000,000,000. If the government took all of the profits that Chevron, ExxonMobile, and Marathon have reported this quarter, they'd still need to come up with a few billion to cover that bill. But what's a few billion?

Omega-3 fatty acids are generally recognized as healthy. Mercury is generally recognized as toxic. Seafood tends to contain both. Because I'm that kind of nerd, I figured out the optimal fish to eat to increase omega-3 intake while limiting mercury exposure. Here's a sorted list of the ratio of Omega-3 fatty acids to mercury in common seafood. A higher ratio is better.

	Mean Mercury (ppm)	Mean Omega-3 fatty acid (g)	Omega-3/Hg (g/ppm)
Salmon (fresh,frozen)	0.01	0.68	68
Herring	0.04	1.76	44
Flounder or sole	0.05	0.43	8.6
Pollock	0.06	0.43	7.166666667
Crabs	0.06	0.37	6.166666667
Canned tuna (light)	0.12	0.495	4.125
Catfish	0.05	0.175	3.5
Scallops	0.05	0.17	3.4
Halibut	0.26	0.7	2.692307692
Fresh or frozen tuna	0.38	0.76	2
Cod	0.11	0.185	1.681818182
Shark	0.99	0.9	0.909090909
Lobster	0.31	0.235	0.758064516
Swordfish	0.97	0.7	0.721649485
Mahi mahi	0.19	0.12	0.631578947
Tilefish	1.45	0.8	0.551724138
King mackerel	0.73	0.34	0.465753425
Red snapper	0.6	0.27	0.45
Grouper	0.55	0.21	0.381818182
Orange roughy	0.54	0.002	0.003703704

Data is from the American Heart Association.

Tim links to a post describing the problems with third parties. I think it's wrong.

1. It's wrong because it ignores that the Republicans began as a third party at a time when the two-party system was well entrenched. The rise of a third party simply required a powerful issue that was untenable for one of the existing parties.
2. It's wrong because a fair portion of folks vote based on party labels regardless of the candidate. More importantly, most voters couldn't tell you how the incumbent in their district voted on specific issues. So if folks are voting based on the individual, they're doing so based on an individual's charisma, not on his stance on issues, or his party label.
3. The two party system is dangerous because it puts so much power in the hands of the redistricters. Lines simply need to be drawn just so to give one party a slim advantage in some districts while giving the other party enormous advantage in other districts to diminish the effectiveness of the minority vote. In a multi-party system, electing representatives by party at-large in large states would better express minority opinions and would limit the meaningfulness of redistricting. Recall that DeLay's major accomplishment was to redistrict Texas in order to give Republicans a larger share of the state's seats, leading to a majority in the House.

I've been listening to and really enjoying Cory Doctorow's podcasts recently. Therein, the author or an invited guest reads 7-20 minute segments of Doctorow's short stories. The quality of reading isn't up to audio book standards, but it really is quite good with solid underlying recording technology and infrequent corrections. In general, I recommend Cory's stuff with the caveat of a blanket PG-13 rating.

While listening to When Sysadmins Ruled the Earth, an apocalyptic tale in which primarily only those sheltered in data centers survive, I laughed out loud, a dangerous proposition when running on a treadmill as I was, upon hearing the following exchange between two star-crossed sysadmins.

I've got a 486 downstairs with over five years of uptime. It's going to break my heart to reboot it.

What the everlasting s--- do you use a 486 for?

Nothing. But who shuts down a machine with five years uptime? That's like euthanizing your grandmother.