Science and Belief and Planned Parenthood

When a homicidal lunatic opens fire, whether he is an ISIS maniac or a Bible thumping Christian, he usually says things, once apprehended, or in some pre recorded video justifying his actions with assertions of belief.

I've not heard the ISIS AK-47 wielding wacko yet, justifying chopping down women sitting at an outside Parisian cafe, but the wacko who opened fire in Colorado Springs reportedly talked about selling fetal body parts as a justification for shooting two patients and a number of others, including a campus policeman, who he killed.

Of course, Donald Trump opined that this is only to be expected because it's inflammatory when you hear Planned Parenthood doctors talking about buying and selling baby body parts from abortions as if they were automobile parts at a junkyard.

Listening to the Donald, you would conclude 1: Planned Parenthood doctors are in the business of selling body parts, which implies they may be avid to do abortions so they can secure a supply of baby brains, lungs, hearts to sell on the hot market for these items  2. This is so disgusting and reprehensible, it's understandable someone with a gun might react by killing baby brain kingpins engaged in this trade.

Of course, there are truths and truths. If the videos showed anything, they, at most showed some doctors who may or may not have received a salary or an office from Planned Parenthood discussed providing, (but not selling) body parts over lunch, wine and mouthfuls of Chinese dumplings--disturbing, but not exactly organ black marketeers. 

The guy with the gun, more likely, was looking for  an excuse to use it.

People believe what they want to believe, what they have need to believe.

The same people who are appalled by the idea of abortion are often just as determined to prevent contraception, which is something of a paradox because if there were more contraception, there would be fewer abortions, but they want to believe that the people who provide contraception at Planned Parenthood are guilty of the crime of abortion, although these two practices are ordinarily quite separate and provided by entirely different physicians.

And this crowd is often the crowd which argues for teaching intelligent design, i.e., the Biblical creation story in the same science class where evolution is taught. What they miss is that there is a difference between science and belief, i.e. religious faith.  Which is not to say science has a monopoly on the "truth" or the "Truth."  Science is simply a process, and is always a work in progress. The "scientific method" requires hypothesis, experimental testing and measurement.  Accepting the Biblical story of creation neither requires nor allows any of this, so it is not science.

Personally, I would have no problem discussing Biblical creation in school as a separate class, but it should be clear this is as different from science class as poetry is different.  

The other problem, of course, is teaching religion in school as received Truth.  In our democracy, we decided, I like to think, long ago we would have a society in which everyone can believe in whatever religion he or she wants to believe in, but that means we cannot teach any of these religions in public schools, which as public institutions are an arm of the government and the government cannot choose sides among religions.  So, no, Biblical creation cannot be part of a government school curriculum, although it ought not be disparaged in that public forum. 

If you want your kid to believe in Biblical creation, and the six days and resting on the 7th, then send him to Sunday school. Just don't ask the government to nod and say, "Yes, that's correct."

But for some, belief admits no dissent.  And that is when the ISIS boys start grabbing their guns and suicide vests. Nobody else's opinion matters or should even be tolerated for these guys.  The same, apparently, is true here in the USA, where differences of opinion get some people reaching for their guns and Presidential candidates shrugging, saying this is an understandable, if not commendable response.

Chicago police: It was more than murder.

What a wonderful city Chicago is. Visited only twice but loved it; loved its size, its architecture, its museums, its people.

But riding in to work today, listening to NPR, what a different image emerges.

First there was the tone deaf prosecuter, Anita Alvarez, who said the policeman who shot a 17 year old 16 times, mostly after he was unconscious on the ground, had not properly discharged his duties and used unwarranted force.  You think? Don't you think you could have shown a little more outrage at the press conference where you announced a first degree murder charge?

Don't you think you could say:  "We are proud of our police and we hope to make every policeman a friendly and valued presence in each community. We hope to make the cop on the beat someone people in the neighborhood can  trust again. So we are particularly outraged when a man entrusted by the city with a lethal weapon violates everything we hope to stand for, by committing murder in the name of the city of Chicago."?

Or words to that effect.

But, wait! There's worse.

It turns out the video which finally prompted the prosecutor to act, after more than a year, was in possession of the police department but the police refused to release it until forced by a persistent reporter and then, later some lawyers.  This is after the police investigated the shooting.  This is after the internal police investigator went to the autopsy at 8:30 the next morning and watched the medical examiner count 16 bullet wounds.  Oh, that did not raise any suspicions in the minds of the Chicago police that perhaps the officer might have used "excessive force?"

Apparently, the tip to the reporter came from a source in the police department who was so disturbed he or she could not remain silent. 

Jamie Kalvern, the reporter

Craig Futterman, the lawyer

But wait!  There's more.

It turns out the police stormed into the Burger King near the shooting and went through the store's security cameras and found images of the shooting and destroyed these videos, but were caught on another security camera as they did their dirty work, obstruction of justice.  Was there ever a clearer case of guilty conscience? And why is only one police officer being charged, if the complicity goes so far beyond him? Does the phrase "accessory after the fact" not mean anything in Chicago? 

Why has  the chief of police not been fired? Who was involved in the investigation of the shooting?  Why is the investigator not being shown the door when he somehow failed to register what every citizen hearing this story registers?  What did the other policemen present say about it when, presumably, they were interviewed as part of the investigation?  Why did four other police simply stand there when this latter day Lt. Caulley continued firing? 

Where is Serpico, when you need him?

Shot 16 times. Black male. Knife in hand. Had it coming.

In "The Wire,"  the police would shrug this off as another case of, "He was killed in the wrong zip code."  Meaning, of course, he was Black and he was poor and his life did not matter.

The Notion of Intelligence

Not a Stellar Algebra Student

"You know how a stupid kid turns his head to answer but a smart kid will roll his eyes over to you without turning his head from the TV screen?"
--Omar Ahmad in The New Yorker "Helping Hand" quoted  by Karen Russell


Actually, no, I did not know that was a sign of intelligence, staying focused on the TV while answering a question. Mr. Ahmad is a programmer who makes video games which help rehabilitate stroke victims at Johns Hopkins.

This ability, to "decouple" attention from motion is supposed to be a hallmark of intelligence, we are told, in this excellent (or otherwise excellent) article. This may be a useful skill in playing video games, which if you live in the video game world, may be a key to success.

But when I think of intelligence, I think of something like body habitus, big muscles on an athlete, which might be enhanced by weight training but is just basically "there" genetically. You know if you lifted weights like a mad man for years, you would never bulk up like that guy. Something "innate."

Decoupled Regularly 

This characteristic (decoupling)  to which Mr. Ahmad alludes is something I would think, I know, can be taught. When I first learned to play basketball, one of the first things my friends taught me was not to look where I wanted to pass the ball.  Larry Bird was said to have eyes in back of his head because he could pass to a spot he wasn't facing. Does that make him a smart kid or a kid who has practiced something?

There as so many things we "know" are manifestations of "intelligence" which can actually be trained. Listen to quarterbacks interviewed after the game and some are articulate, others not so much, others who sound just one step up from Neanderthal and yet watch them squatting behind center, looking over the defense, analyzing patterns, recognizing indicators learned with coaches in the film room in the week prior to the game, and then exploiting the weakness of the defense, calling a new play to exploit that weakness at the line of scrimmage. That quarterback cannot solve a differential equation, may not know his multiplication tables, cannot understand an analogy and abstraction leaves him cold, but he can employ that intelligence called "football smarts" at the moment he needs it.

When I was 7, learning football with my friends and my brother, we talked about setting up plays: Run three plays to the right, then run one which starts right but actually goes left. Set up a pattern and then change it. 

All through life, I've met people who looked from one set of indicators to be pretty stupid, but when you saw them function in some other realm, they were brilliant. Musicians are particularly likely to be this way--they can sound really dumb but they can understand the intricacies, the math, of music which is beyond most mortals.

I suspect "intelligence" is a mix of learned behavior and what the speaker values. 
Clearly, there are some people who are dumb as a stick, but once you get beyond that group, the whole notion of "intelligence" is likely simply a short hand for people who have talents you admire, wherever those may emanate. 

Highly Intelligent Football Smarts

Morning Jo[k]e

Okay, I admit it, I have no one to blame but myself.  Now that it's dark at 5 AM, I go down to the basement to run on the treadmill until sunrise, and I'm a more or less captive audience to whatever is on TV at that hour but that doesn't mean I have to watch Morning Joe. 

It's just that I scroll through as the commercials come on and it goes Fox, Morning Joe, Squawk Box, Bloomberg, Weather Channel, Jewelry Channel--what is that?-- and  then ESPN 1, ESPN 2,3,4 unto infinity.

Morning Joe replaced Don Imus, so that had to be an upgrade. Imus, as he got older and lost not just a few neurons, went from being loathsome but sometimes funny to simply loathsome--so whatever replaced him had to be better. 

But, in the case of Morning Joe, just barely.

This morning, they played a clip from the Democratic Presidential debate in which Martin O'Malley was asked about the reluctance of Democrats to use certain language or phrases, like "Radical Islam" and the questioner actually phrased it in an interesting way, "Isn't it possible that in avoiding more strident phrases you appear faint hearted?"   To which O'Malley replied, well our best defense against fundamentalist Muslims, like ISIS, has to be  our own loyal Muslim population. Why alienate them with language they may find offensive?

Personally, I'm with Mr. O'Malley. Language can be "politically correct" for a reason. Some phrases might offend when you don't intend or would never dreamed offense would be taken. 

But Joe Scarborough stares into the camera like a Donald Trump spin off,  and repeats over and over, "How stupid do you think we are? How stupid? How stupid?" Of course we do not think all Muslims are "Radical Islamists," but some are. 

The answer to Mr. Scarborough's question is: In your case, very stupid. 

To drive home the point, Joe had some over sized guy with a shaven head, who looked to be at least seven feet three hundred pounds who was there to agree with Joe.  This Incredible Hulk said this is what is wrong with Democrats: they are afraid to offend, even their enemies.

Which put me in mind of that wonderful episode from Band of Brothers in which Lt. Winters finds himself in a trench running along a dike at night with about 20 soldiers, looking to find a German detachment which shot up some American patrol.  The Germans are shooting their machine gun with tracer bullets in the general direction of the American camp some miles down the road, out of range. 

"Why are they shooting?" Winters whispers. "Why are they giving away their position?"
"Maybe," the soldier at his shoulder says, "They ain't as smart as you or me?"

Winters quickly organizes an attack on the German outpost and follows up with a surprise attack on an entire SS company, which he annihilates. 

What made me think about this is the big bully on the Morning Joe set who was supposed to make us all feel happy and safe we had the Incredible Hulk on our side. And I thought, "No, he is like those stupid Germans firing off their guns." Stupid does not win the day.

Truth be told, Mr. Scarborough is simply not very bright. He has great star quality hair, but he is simply not smart enough to be on national TV.  

His blond eye-candy co host, Mika Brzezinski, is supposed to be the balance, the Democrat, but she is no smarter than he is and she almost never disagrees with him. Her haircut is even better than Joe's, but again, neither is ready for prime time or even for off prime time, for early morning time. They are just too dumb. 

English TV, at least as I remember it, is populated by people who are brighter than average. This means discourse, thought are elevated rather than sunk to the lowest common denominator. The English do not apologize or celebrate stupidity. Americans, or at least American television producers do celebrate really inane people and we all suffer for it. 

One wonders, with all the people in this country who could provide insight, who could ask the question which needs to be asked, who have thought beyond the fraternity beer keg party level of depth on a wide variety of issues, why has MSNBC or CCN or any of these national networks decided to put these bozo's on the screen, to give them the microphone to reach millions?  Why are these people on stage?

As George Carlin would say: It's a mystery!

Paris: Barbarians At the Gates

The Paris attacks ought to make plain some obvious realities, but to look at TV news coverage, whether it is CNN or Fox or CNBC, you'd never know it. The usual parade of pundits and politicians have all sorts of analyses and find all sorts of implications for broader conclusions from the attacks: Republicans say this proves American foreign policy is a disaster, that this never would have happened if President Obama had only followed their advice, which has been to disengage from the Middle East wars (Rand Paul) to put several divisions of American soldiers in the desert (Ted Cruz, Marco Rubio and Donald Trump) and bomb them (Trump especially) to establish a no fly zone (Carly Fiorina) to do whatever it is Mr. Obama has not done. 

The pundits are similarly all over the map with advice to engage, disengage, drop bombs, use more drones, stop using drones. 

Everyone has an opinion. Nobody knows what he is talking about.

This is one of those problems for which we are not currently equipped.  When the Twin Towers were annihilated on September 11, a few F-15 fighters patrolled over the skies of Washington, D.C. for hours, shaking our windows and rattling our walls, and I looked up in the sky and thought, "How absurd: As if scrambling those jet fighters is going to prevent anything now, as if they are making us safer. Those loud, menacing looking airplanes seemed the perfect image of American impotence and bluster:  Hey, we've got these big airplanes! Terrorists, aren't you afraid now?  

It reminded me of that wonderful scene in the movie "Lawrence of Arabia" when an Arab prince, having seen his mounted cavalry decimated by the strafing machine guns of an airplane, and he chases after the airplane pathetically, brandishing his sword above his head, shouting after the airplane in impotent rage. So this time it was George W. Bush sending F-15's aloft, to vent his impotent rage.

The trouble is, we do not have a good strategy to insure the safety of our citizens against surprise attacks against civilians, armed or unarmed, in an open society which has for years allowed and encouraged its citizens to congregate in peaceful crowds. 

ISIS rages through the Middle East and we can use our guns and technology against their troops there. Only if they come out in the open in trucks,  is this  a war we are equipped to fight, we are trained to fight. But when ISIS slips its suicide bombers across borders, when they are cunning and sneaky and unpredictable, what do you do then?

Fact is: Nobody knows. Rush Limbaugh says he knows.  Ted Cruz, Marco Rubio and Donald Trump all have plans.  None of them knows. 

The only worse thing than not knowing what to do is to pretend you do know what to do and to charge off with your sword raised, screaming vainly, "I'm gonna get you!"

Oh, Don't We All Feel Safer Now?

  

Only the Dead Know Brooklyn

Sycamores, McGorlick Park, Brooklyn

When Tom Wolfe heard his cabbie say, "It'd take a guy a lifetime to know Brooklyn t'roo and t'roo, an' even den you wouldn't know it all," that became the title "Only The Dead Know Brooklyn." 

Personally, I think the cabbie got closer to the truth. Brooklyn is for the living. Cruising down the avenues in Greenpoint this weekend what struck me most was the life--people at sidewalk tables outside cafes looking happy to be alive but most of all, happy to be in Brooklyn, happy to have friends and to be meeting new ones. The striking thing was how friendly everyone was,  a trait many people not from New York would think foreign to New York City. But those who think New Yorkers tough, unfriendly, unpleasant do not know the New York borough of Brooklyn.

People in Brooklyn mingle: They greet each other on the streets, wave across streets to each other, hug each other, introduce kids to friends, laugh together. 

Brooklyn women: lots of young mothers, in pony tails, leggings and T shirts, with a Bohemian look I used to associate with The Village. You see young white women in causal and warm conversation with old Black men, white men laughing with young Hispanics,  as if inter racial dialogue were the most natural thing in the world. It's Starship Enterprise incarnate. If ever there were a poster for multiculturalism, Brooklyn is it.

And the parks! Sycamore trees, with their multi-hue bark, kids chasing each other around benches filled with old men carrying on voluble conversations in languages I could not recognize.

In Greenpoint, you hear Polish everywhere, constantly. Behind the counter at Syrena Polish Bakery twenty something women go back and forth between English and Polish effortlessly, for the most part, although surprisingly, some of these young women do not have much English, meaning they are either new arrivals or they grew up in Brooklyn not needing English.  Or something. Most likely, they are new arrivals. Kids would have to learn English in school. But it's fun.  

Down the road in Coney Island, there is a Russian speaking neighborhood, Brighton Beach.

Friends in New Hampshire deride Lawrence, Massachusetts, because "there are people there who don't even speak English!" They wrinkle their noses: "All you hear there is Spanish."  What would they think of Greenpoint or Brighton Beach? Those people ought to learn English!  They ought to assimilate! They may even be, Heaven Forbid, illegal! A thirty minute drive from the whitebread men in their plaid shirts and suspenders hanging out in the hardware store at Hampton, there is a multiethnic town, Lawrence, where Hispanics from the Dominican Republic, Puerto Rico, and others from  Haiti and Jamaica live among recent arrivals from Egypt, Syria, Jordan and Greece. 

Most of this immigrant community is likely drawn because they have family in Lawrence and the United States immigration laws are constructed to reunite families, as opposed to draw in people with particular skills or education. And some of this immigrant wave is clearly attributable to the generous provisions of Mass Health for healthcare. New Hampshire offers next to nothing for health care coverage, even to its native population.  In New Hampshire, you're on your own, in more ways than just health care.  What it means to be a community in Massachusetts, I'd infer is that we take you in, provide you with the basics--healthcare, education and ultimately, you bring your talents and energy to build our economy. In New Hampshire, I'd infer, the idea is: swim or sink but don't expect your neighbor to help you.

Of course, there are plenty of people from New Hampshire who are cosmopolitan, who travel to Europe, Asia, and even New York. And I know at least one New Hampshire citizen who drives up to Manchester to tutor an immigrant in English and help her negotiate for a visa for her daughter back in Somali. So non governmental charity is alive and well in New Hampshire, but again, if you want to offer that to your neighbor, you're on your own.

If Donald Trump ever took a walk through Brooklyn, he might change his mind about immigration and the value of mixing cultures and races and ideas.  If for no other reason that good bakeries, I'm all for mixing. 

In Providence, Rhode Island, there were amazing Portuguese bakeries at Fox Point.  That part of the state is heavily Italian, but the Italians appreciated the Portuguese bakeries, and the Portuguese ate at the Italian restaurants on Federal Hill. 

And another thing--getting people out of cars and on the sidewalks or on bicycles frees the mind. You see this in Portsmouth and Durham and New Market, people walking, mingling.  In Connecticut, where they arrange the towns around a central green space, usually flanked by churches, people actually mingle. Too often, in New Hampshire, we drive by each other--except at the lakes and mountains. There you see people outside of their cars. 

I guess you can't ask of a rural state the same things you see in cities, but at least you can think about another way of living.  We don't all congregate at church on Sundays any more. 

Where do we actually mingle?

Is it possible to be a community, if you are a rural state?

Kentucky Justified

I know next to nothing about Kentucky, other than what I can see on TV. 
TV has shown me Mitch McConnell, one of the sleaziest Senators ever to slither across a television screen, and then there is "Justified" which depicts the denizens of Harlan County, Ky as amusingly inbred, determinedly small minded and resistant to learning anything which might upset their long held, cherished beliefs, leading small, brutal lives. 

This morning a judge from Harlan County explained the outcomes of the state elections which put a Republican in office who vowed to dismantled Obamacare in Kentucky, a program which has provided new health care coverage for over 500,000 citizens of Kentucky and has been widely popular as KYnect, which, apparently, most Kentucky residents do not know or do not want to know is actually Obamacare.

They hate Obama in Kentucky. They hate him, the judge explained because he seems intent on closing down coal mines and there were 500 active mines when Mr. Obama took office and only 5 remaining, and this is because Mr. Obama hates coal.

The Best Kentucky Can Hope For

Apparently, nobody in Kentucky is buying the idea they might find jobs making solar panels or windmills rather than going down to the coal mines.

A Career to Cherish and Protect

All this reminded me of driving through western Washington state, on the way to the Olympic peninsula and seeing pathetic little shacks, with broken down trucks and cars in the front yard, just behind enormous signs saying, "We make our living from logging. Support logging. Damn the EPA!"  Just beyond these homes the landscape looked like the surface of the moon, or maybe Hiroshima just after the bomb--miles of hills denuded of what was once forest. "Clear cutting" they called it. 

The Good Life In Kentucky Coal Country

Another example of people who made their living despoiling the planet and thinking it was the best life they could hope for, and it was a life barely better than what people in the worst parts of the third world in India and Africa have.

The judge also noted that a lot of people around Harlan County were angered by the way Kim Davis was treated for taking a stand against gay marriage. She, after all, was listening to God, whose voice she clearly heard and obeying his command. 

Good Christian Boy Listening to the Lord

For the republic to thrive, citizens have got to achieve at least a modicum of knowledge, enough so they can see what is in their own best interest. But, apparently,  if you are ignorant enough and poor enough and fearful enough, not even Obama can help you.

God Bless America. 

The Failure of the Professions

When I was in college I signed up for a course in the department of Sociology called, "The Professions."  It quickly became clear how difficult it is to actually define what is meant by that word, "profession." 

Many people use the word only in a pejorative sense:  "Oh, that was so unprofessional," by which they mean they are unhappy with someone.

My father laughed when a barber told him, "That guy tells me how to cut his hair. Who does he think he is?  I'm a professional!"  To my father no barber was a "professional."  Doctors are professionals. Some lawyers were professionals. Some engineers. But not auto mechanics. Auto mechanics, tailors, electricians, plumbers were "in the trades" or craftsmen.

It's hard to know what he would make of IT people today. The nature of work has changed so greatly, so transformed by computer technology.

One of the characteristics of professions, my professor suggested, is they are given the power to regulate the quality of their practitioners--so the government does not design tests for physicians but cedes that task and privilege to organizations of professionals. On the other hand, government does devise licensing exams for physicians in some states and government decides to make board exams, created by professionals, to be requirements for medical licenses in some states, despite objections by some doctors the government has no business endorsing or ceding its own judgments to boards of examiners who often seem to care more about restricting competition or generating profit than insuring quality of practice.

Today, a pulmonary specialist asked me about a diabetic patient who he was thinking of starting on a drug which stimulates the pancreas to make more insulin but he had read this would certainly cause the demise of whatever insulin making cells the patient had left.  I pointed out there is no clear agreement these drugs actually push islet (insulin making) cells over the cliff. He was surprised by this. It struck me the difference between what he knows and what I know is important and constitutes the difference between my specialty and his.  I would know the studies on sulfonylureas and apoptosis (the process by which cells destruct) because that is my specialty.

But the guys who create the specialty board exams certifying me as a specialist would never ask that question, and in fact would never ask any of the questions I get daily which I answer more accurately because I go to the national conferences and keep up with the literature in the area of endocrinology.  Every day, I see other doctors make mistakes in the management of endocrine problems because their knowledge has not been refined by the process of education I cleave to in my own specialty. (I'm just as clueless when faced with questions in their specialties.) But the design of the exams which are supposed to distinguish who has the special knowledge is so flawed there is no way these exams can make the very distinction they claim to make.

I don't know who makes up these exams. It used to be academic types. Might still be in some specialties. But I do know I could make up an exam very few full time faculty members at the university hospitals could pass, in my own specialty. The answers would elude them because they simply do not know the things you need to know to take care of patients:

1. Are thyroid nodules homogeneous enough that a fine needle sampling of them is representative of the whole nodule--like dipping a spoon into soup or is it more like a salad, where a fork in one part of the nodule would bring out a different result than the fork in another part of the salad?

2. If a man is  on testosterone injections and his doctor finds he has coronary artery disease should he stop the testosterone?

3. An overweight patient with dismal blood sugars has been brought into control using insulin but he's gained weight. Is the trade off of weight gain for blood sugar control a good one?

4. A patient is found to have five, 7 mm thyroid carcinomas in her gland. If she had one 35 mm thyroid cancer she would require not just surgery to remove her thyroid but follow up radioactive iodine, but  does she need it with 5 small cancers?

These are the questions which separate the men from the boys, and to know the answers to these, you have to skulk around the national meetings, grilling the experts when you can pull them aside. But you'd never see these questions or their ilk on a board exam. 

Once, I served on a committee at Georgetown University School of Medicine and someone suggested Georgetown deny hospital admitting privileges to anyone who had not passed his board exams, as a "quality measure."

Wait, I said, can you name a single question from the last board exam in internal medicine? Just one? 
Nobody in the room could. 
All these doctors were ready to cut off from their livelihoods physicians who needed hospital privileges but they had no clue what was asked on the exam. 
"Well," the leader of the pack said. "I just figure if you can't pass that exam, there's something wrong with you."
"Would you be willing to take that exam today?"
"Well," he said, smiling, "Actually I've been grandfathered in."

"And doesn't that just say it all?" I said. "The exam is so important we only make the new guys take it.  Not only that, we make the young docs keep taking the exams over and over, just to be sure they're not getting out of touch. But none of us have to demonstrate that we're up to date, just the guys a decade behind us have to do that.
It's a way for you to control competition, plain and simple."

That's professionalism for you.

Kelp, Sea Otters and a Diet to Save the Planet

Okay, I admit it, I am as guilty as a Republican of believing what I want to believe whenever it gives me a warm and fuzzy feeling.  
So when I read Dana Goodyear's article in the November 2 New Yorker  about aquaculture growing seaweed to feed a hungry planet while cleansing the oceans, helping to soak up excess carbon dioxide, providing nutritious food that helps people lose weight by inhibiting fat absorption, delivering protein without cholesterol all I could think was: Oh, this could be good for sea otters.

I love sea otters the way Republicans hate government.  We have sea otters here in Hampton, N.H. They come into the salt marshes certain times of the year, when their pups are young, and they are beyond adorable.

Not that charismatic mammals should affect the way I think about the ecosystem, but they do. I admit it. 

And the ecosystem is  complicated. It's so complicated you can see it just about any way you want to--so Republicans see the ecosystem as a vast liberal media plot to kill the coal industry and the glorious oil companies. I see it as a way to think about sea otters.

Sea otters are big fans of kelp, so they are relevant. Actually, they don't care a whit about kelp--what they like is to eat sea urchins who just gobble up kelp like foxes go through chicken coops. And otters eat sea urchins the way my Labrador retriever eats, well, just about anything--pocket lint, biscuits, anything.  

Gotta Love It

Sea otters, especially on the West Coast, have not had an easy time, over the past century or two. First it was people, who killed them for pelts and just about drove them to extinction. So the sea urchins were left uneaten, to decimate the kelp forests and the chain reaction of loss of the kelp forests and with them kelp's capacity to soak up CO2. 
 But then there was a law--that horrid thing called the federal government put a law (and regulations) into effect (those horrid tings called "regulations" which thwart free enterprise and all that entrepreneurial spirit) and this law saved the sea otters. 

Sea Urchins: The Scourge of Kelp Forests

People, however, were not done with doing bad things which got to sea otters: People hunted whales down to low numbers and without enough whales to eat, (so the story goes,) whale predators called orcas found  their preferred meals in decline or completely depleted, and orcas eventually turned to feasting on sea otters, who then could not eat the urchins who then ate every kelp forest right into near oblivion. 

Still with me? It's a chain reaction thing, we are talking about here.

Move over Kansas and Iowa: The farm belt of the future, Long Island Sound

Or so the story goes.  
But then there were agreements among some people (not the Japanese or the Norwegians, but among other people) and so the whales came back and the orcas were happy to shift back from skimpy sea otters, which are like tapas meals for orcas, who prefer big plate meals, and so the otters got another reprieve from extinction.

Okay, so it's a seal, but they eat otters, too.

All this came to mind when Dana Goodyear started telling the story of Bren Smith, who is farming kelp off the New Haven harbor in the Long Island Sound, and he raises things like clams and mussels and scallops who filter water and are good environmental citizens.  But kelp and seaweed are the big game changers potentially, if we could just convince more people to eat slimy things.

Not otter friendly

Personally, I like the look of sea weed. Down at Plaice Cove there are different sorts of sea weed: Some days there is this maroon sea weed three feet deep covering the beach. The next day--poof--it's gone. 
Then there is this pea soup green stuff with air bubbles which my dog eats whenever it washes up in profusion and then he vomits it up about 12 hours later.  Apparently, you need to slice and dice it and saute it and mix it with other stuff, but some types of seaweed can be cooked up to taste like bacon, which is encouraging, from a marketing point of view.  
Most people are fussier about what they eat than my dog, who, as I said before, is a Labrador and he eats just about anything. He is what some people might call an "adventurous eater," or perhaps, more accurately, an indiscriminate eater or a vacuum cleaner, but most people are more picky about what they eat.

There's a restaurant in the East Village in New York called "Superiority Burger" which serves seaweed burgers and lines form outside its door. People from Brooklyn love it. Dana Goodyear quotes a ten year old who is more articulate than 90% of my adult friends and must have an IQ of 230. Differentiating his own love of sea weed burgers from his sister's love of the more accessible potato chip-like SeaSnax treat,  this ten year old says:  "I'm the adventurous eater in my family. I hate SeaSnax. It's not like real seaweed. It's over-salted,over-olive-oiled. My sister likes anything that tastes normal. True story: if we put a plate of SeaSnax in front of her  she'd eat the whole thing."

I got distracted by this 10 year old. I think what he is saying is that only the adventurous eater will embrace sea weed burgers, where the hoi polloi will eat other forms of sea weed which taste like things they already know and like. 

But, eventually, if it can be marketed properly, and if the chefs can figure out how to make it more palatable, there'll be a huge market for seaweed burgers and we can shift from growing soy and corn and tobacco and mining coal and drilling for oil to farming kelp or macroalgae, as the cognoscenti call it, and eating seaweed burgers and kelp bacon.

Which means we'll need more kelp forests, and fewer sea urchins, which is where the sea otters will get a break. 

From the New Yorker's lips to God's ears.