der mann ohne eigenschaften

For Christmas I ended up buying “Panda membership” in WWF for my siblings' children. I hesitate buying that. I couldn’t help but think about my childhood and think something like the following. I grew up with a nature interest and I was an outcast in school. If I happen to give one or more of those kids a nerdy interest in biology, it would be my fault if they become outcast. Okay, you get what I’m saying. Or am I rambling too much?

Today’s interesting fact about covid-19. While men are more likely than women to get seriously sick, it seems like women are more likely to suffer from isolation. So that’s fair. While more old men die than old women, women take more damage from the policies most countries follow. There’s another interesting thing, that most women has two x-chromosomes and that means double set of the immune system genes found on the x-chromosome. That’s not the interesting thing. The interesting thing is the word “most”. I learned in junior high school that it’s posible to be born a cis-woman with XY-chromosome.

My point here actually is that this was not presented as a political thing, or as a controversial thing. Honestly I don’t know if those women, as well as men with XX-chromosomes, have any role in discussions about gender or trans-ideology or whatever. But even if it is here, in the early 1990s, it was just presented as one of those things nature does. Then it comes to biology, my impression is that pretty much everything can happen in nature. If anyone says “X isn’t natural”, X probably is something that actually happens in nature. As long as X doesn’t break the laws of thermodynamics or whatever. That btw also includes GMO, horizontal gene transfer happens. Am I rambling too much?

When it comes to my last entry about my international friends' view on covid, there is a third thing I forgot to write. The following is just from my perspective and I can see that there are other perspectives. If a person is first a cheerleader for draconian laws and then points finger at anyone who can not following these draconian laws, there is a risk that the person does not appear to be particularly sympathetic. Well, that’s my spontaneous thought anyway.

I thought I had a deadline for the course yesterday, but it turned out to be next Wednesday. Today I decided to take one day off from the course and now I’m writing here instead. Down in the centre of the my town there are walking roads over the river that flows through the town. And that’s feels safe since it has been cold, between -10 and - 20 C (10 to -4 F), the last weeks. Being this cold means I’m craving hot food, something I didn’t thought about when I made kimbab. The recipe I followed was, rice, cucumber, daikon, carrots and cheese in nori. It just happens to be so that I have a cookbook named Grönt (meaning Green) there some recipes are from two Korean sisters that have (had?) a restrung in Stockholm. So that’s why I made Korean sushi, because I’m sure we can call it Korean sushi without anyone complaining. Now I can also share that I think my new neighbor is Korean. Their name looks Korean to me, but it might be so bad that the only reason I think that is because the name isn’t obvious Chinese or Japanese.

Another thing I have made is Worcestershire sauce. Vinegar, anchovies, sugar, soy sauce, spices and tamarind concentrate. They say worcestershire sauce should ferment. First I thought: “there’s a lot of acetic acid and salt in this, microbes can’t ferment that”. Then I realized that microbes are life and "life find a way", some microbe will colonize the sauce. The cool thing to see is if bubbles will start forming in the sauce. That should be a proof of fermentation. The definition of fermentation is metabolic process that doesn’t use oxygen as reaction agent, or wait, maybe it was oxygen as oxidation agent. Or maybe the word “agent” shouldn’t be there at all. It was some years since I was at the university.

Anyway since fermenting food is to work with microbes, I could pretend I’m good at that. I have taken one course of microbiology. At least I could be an irritating know-it-all person. Bloggers writes that home fermentations is about being “clean not sterile”. Thereupon I could add, of course, if you want to work under sterile conditions you have to have filters that sterilise the air. You need UV-lights. Bleach. Pressure cooker. And if you want to sterilise the spices you use, you need to soak them in bleach and alcohol for quite some time. I have done micropropagation of plants, where the work area needs to be sterile. I know it’s not something you do in an ordinary kitchen.

Or on one blog written by diy-scientist they suggested isolating microbes from for example yogurt and beer. Then you could use the microbes for fermentation of food. Sounds doable. But the question they asked is that companies can have patent on microbes. If you isolate patented microbes and use them for fermentation - of for example Worcestershire sauce - are you breaking the law?