Rotundus.com

Whether or not recalled food is actually safe to eat popped up again recently, this time in regard to the horsemeat scandal currently affecting Europe:

Two German politicians, for instance, suggested over the weekend that one practical use for tainted products, such as tens of thousands of packs of lasagna pulled from supermarket shelves because they contained horsemeat, would be to distribute them to the poor.

The idea began with Hartwig Fischer, a lawmaker from Chancellor Angela Merkel’s Christian Democratic Union, who told the mass-circulation Bild Zeitung newspaper on Saturday that products shouldn’t just be thrown away. To prove his point, he was photographed and filmed eating one of the offending lasagna meals and declaring that he could not tell the difference from any other lasagna.

Similar comments were made last year in regard to contaminated beef by Alberta politician Danielle Smith who asked on Twitter:

Is there no way to cook it so its safe and feed the hungry?

One thing that I've seldom seen asked is what the actual risks are and how much it would actually cost to evaluate said risks. As I understand it the issues with horsemeat in European products - other than some people's aversion to eating said animals - relate to some of the medications potentially having been used to treat horses - to quote Forbes:

the prevalence of a legal drug in the U.S. horse population that causes fatal cancers in humans. The U.S. official response has been classic: out of sight, out of mind.

There are definitely some contaminants, the question is what actual risks are involved in eating meat containing trace amounts of another type of meat that might contain amounts of harmful substances. The issue there is that trace contaminants up to certain levels are legally permitted in food and water safety standards. The question I haven't seen answered is just how potentially harmful - relative to this other stuff allowed - this horsemeat actually is. e.g. Look at the EPA's drinkable water safety standards. Substances that can increase cancer risk pop up 31 times in the list of contaminants, generally with non-zero tolerances.

It often seems to me that the sort of things that engineers need to take into account when building systems are the same sort of things that politicians need to take into account - but often don't - when it comes to building societies. Below is a brief excerpt from Jesse Robbins in Resilience Engineering: Learning to Embrace Failure. It's a statement on engineering software systems, but a point that applies far more broadly:

More than anything else, I've learned that the key to building resilient systems is accepting that failure happens. There's just no getting around it. ... It's only after you've accepted the reality that failure is inevitable that you can begin the journey toward a truly resilient system.

A truly resilient system or a truly resilient society would seem to be one that handles problems proportionately. That's something that politicians seldom seem to do nor do those voting for them, yet people tend to fail in some fairly predictable ways.

Think of some categories of needless and senseless deaths like the 2170 additional deaths resulting from people switching from flying to driving in the wake of 9/11. Yes, there's a real risk of dying when you set foot on a plane - one that tends to resonate with people. Yet there's also the risk of dying when you set foot in a car, or in proximity to a car or due to obesity or other health issues from avoiding exercise due to fear of cars. We need to try to grapple with all risks - not just a select few.

Want to help the poor? Don’t waste your time with the minimum wage

Interesting: "In Canada the link between minimum wage increases and lower employment levels is stronger than in the U.S. ... empirical studies that use Canadian data are able to exploit variations in the minimum wage both across time and across provinces (in the U.S., on the other hand, the minimum wage is largely driven by changes at the federal level)." From an earlier metaanalysis of the Canadian literature: "Overall it appears that the Canadian studies tend to find adverse employment effects that are at least as large and likely larger than US studies; certainly none find positive employment effects as occasionally occurs in the US."

Jewish Problems

"This is a special collection of problems that were given to select applicants during oral entrance exams to the math department of Moscow State University. These problems were designed to prevent Jews and other undesirables from getting a passing grade. Among problems that were used by the department to blackball unwanted candidate students, these problems are distinguished by having a simple solution that is difficult to find. Using problems with a simple solution protected the administration from extra complaints and appeals. This collection therefore has mathematical as well as historical value."

Chocolate Toothpaste could revolutionize oral care

"Doctor Tetsuo Nakamoto, the father of News 2's Chris Nakamoto, found "Theobromine" in chocolate in the early 80s. Since then, he worked to get a patent and put that substance into a toothpaste. 'Theodent is a fluoride free toothpaste,' Theodent CEO, Dr. Arman Sadeghpour said. 'Rennou, our active ingredient works better to re-mineralize the surface of human teeth.' Clinical trials show the positive effects of Rennou on a tooth."

Serena Williams blasts back at Andy Murray: I'd slam a man

So, roughly restated, the reigning women's world champion claims that, if she were to focus a lot more rigidly on her training she might be able to beat a man ranked below the top-100. Given that after she'd previously made similar remarks #203-in-the-world beat both her and her sister in a single afternoon after a not-so-rigorous warmup routine involving a round of golf and few beers this claim still seems worth contesting.

The trailer for a documentary asking whether or not the insider movement makes sense - i.e. that people can, in this case be followers of Jesus while still remaining Muslim: