Leave fruit juice on its own for a few days or weeks and yeast—a type of fungus—will appear as if by magic. In one of nature’s great miracles, yeast eats sugar and excretes carbon dioxide and ethanol, the chemical that makes booze boozy. That’s fermentation.

If fermentation is a miracle of nature, then distillation is a miracle of science. Heat a fermented liquid and the lighter, more volatile chemical components—alcohols, ketones, esters, and so on—evaporate and separate from the heavier ones (like water). That vapor, cooled and condensed into a liquid, is a spirit. Do it to wine, you get brandy; beer, you get whiskey. Distill anything enough times and you get vodka. When it’s executed right, the process concentrates a remarkable array of aromatic and flavorful chemicals.

I always wondered how it was done… and this single paragraph put it so succinctly.

Alexis de Tocqueville once described what he saw as a chief part of the peculiar genius of American society—something he called “self-interest properly understood.” The last two words were the key. Everyone possesses self-interest in a narrow sense: I want what’s good for me right now! Self-interest “properly understood” is different. It means appreciating that paying attention to everyone else’s self-interest—in other words, the common welfare—is in fact a precondition for one’s own ultimate well-being. Tocqueville was not suggesting that there was anything noble or idealistic about this outlook—in fact, he was suggesting the opposite. It was a mark of American pragmatism. Those canny Americans understood a basic fact: looking out for the other guy isn’t just good for the soul—it’s good for business.

So very true.

The geologic record suggests that climate ought not to concern us too much when we’re gazing into the energy future, not because it’s unimportant, but because it’s beyond our power to control.

What the Earth Knows

Understanding the concept of geologic time and some basic science can give a new perspective on climate change and the energy future

Robert B. Laughlin is a professor of physics at Stanford University and a co-recipient of the 1998 Nobel Prize for Physics. This essay is adapted from his new book on the future of fossil fuels, which will appear next year.

Legacy systems archaeologist
WANTED: INDIVIDUALS FAMILIAR WITH 3270, VAX/VMS, COBOL, AS/400, AND OTHER LEGACY SYSTEMS NO ONE ELSE REMEMBERS. MUST BE ABLE TO TYPE ENTIRELY IN CAPITAL LETTERS FOR EXTENDED PERIODS. APPLICANTS MUST MEET MINIMUM AGE REQUIREMENT OF 55.

Help desk zombie
Excellententry-level opportunity for multitasking individual with low self-esteem. Ability to read from scripts a plus. Potential to move up to bug scraper, password reset technician, or tape rotation coordinator.

On-site reboot specialist
Seeking individuals for on-site support of end-users. Must be familiar with three-fingered Ctrl-Alt-Del salute and power cord reconfiguration. Ability to withstand a variety of environments and personality types; concealed-weapons permit a plus. Individuals with anger management issues need not apply.

Interdepartmental peace negotiator
Lookingfor self-starter skilled at moderating tech disputes between warring factions within the same company or between company and its client. Must possess experience in ego-stroking, manipulative massage, and hand-to-hand combat.

Enterprise espionage engineer (black ops)
Seeking slippery individuals comfortable with lying, cheating, stealing, breaking, and entering for penetration testing of enterprise networks. Requirements include familiarity with hacking, malware, and forgery; must be able to plausibly impersonate a pest control specialist or a fire marshal. Please submit rap sheet along with resume.

Datacenter migration specialist
Position involves relocating and reconfiguring datacenter over impossible distances within a ridiculously short time frame. Prior experience as cable jockey, rack-n-stack grunt, console monkey, and/or log zombie a plus.

Sludge systems architect
Seeking individuals with demonstrated ability to squeeze over, under, or between confined spaces to solve technical problems. Candidates should be prepared to work long hours for low pay under adverse conditions. Must not be allergic to sawdust, vermin, airborne pathogens, or sewage.

Disconnect/reconnect specialist
Wanted: Able-bodied individuals with affinity for adapters, plugs, prongs, and dongles; willing to crawl under desks and squeeze into tight spaces that have never seen daylight. Strong stomach required.

Data crisis counselor
Wanted: Empathetic individual able to withstand long bouts of unwarranted abuse; soothing phone manner and low blood pressure essential.

Fearless malware hunter
Wanted: Go-getter with inquisitive nature and a high tolerance for gore, sleaze, and the baser instincts of humanity.

Zombie console monkey
Wanted: Individuals with low self-esteem and high boredom threshold willing to spend long hours poring over server logs and watching blinking lights on a network console.

Data cleansing drone
Wanted: Detailed-oriented individual to pore over endless amounts of repetitive data looking for errors. Requires high tolerance for mindless drudgery; clinical diagnosis of obsessive-compulsive disorder a plus.

IT mortician
Wanted: Morbidly minded individual sought to gather up dead or discarded electronic equipment and perform last rites; excavation and embalming experience preferred.

Espionage engineer
Wanted: Network sleuth willing to secretly read employee e-mail, shadow coworkers across the Web, and unmask corporate spies; ability to keep secrets a must.

Heroes is really sliding in quality. The plot threads are just silly. Nothing like the first season, and the lead up to the WGA strike in season 2.

But this… this is good news.

“Dead Like Me” and “Pushing Daisies” creator/executive producer Bryan Fuller is close to a two-year overall deal with Universal Media Studios which will include him rejoining the drama “Heroes” on which he served as writer during the first season reports Reuters.

Fuller, who is wrapping post-production on the final episodes of “Daisies’” 13-episode second-season order, would officially come on board “Heroes” starting with Episode 20. His exact role though is undetermined though he’s expected to play a key role in the writers room alongside showrunner Tim Kring

Elected officials are sent to Washington to govern but not to rule. This may sound like a question of semantics or at best a fine distinction. But rulership isn’t a legitimate part of democracy. When a governing class develops in a democratic society, it loses contact with the people who elect it. In many ways America is burdened with such a class, which has amassed power over the past fifty years, until it arrived at a place where its right to rule goes almost unchallenged.

Who belongs to the ruling class? One might start with the wealthy lawyers who form an inordinate percentage of senators and congressmen, then move on to the corporations whose lobbyists write the very laws that are supposed to regulate corporations. Working hand in hand, these two blocs form a privileged class that feels free to ignore what the American people actually want.

An unexpected benefit of the Bush years is that the ruling class may have gone too far. A culture of corruption binds Congress and lobbyists to an unheard of degree. Bill after bill, earmark after earmark, has blatantly served special interests. Both parties are guilty of kowtowing to money and the corporations that dispense it with shameless abandon — the buying and selling of political favors has never been so outrageous. Influence peddling, once a crime, has become the norm.

The ruling class also includes those who wield power without checks and balances. The disaster of the Iraq war can be traced in large part to a small cabal of neoconservatives surrounding the White House who decided to railroad Congress and the American people without consultation from anyone who failed to buy into their ideology. Under the cloak of national security, the advent of warrantless wiretapping, torture of captured enemies, secret prisons abroad, and a host of other infringements of the Constitution came about without discussion or advisement. A handful of self-styled rulers did what they wanted to because they could get away with it.

Finally, the present ruling class imposes a narrow religious ideology that grossly oversteps its rights. Right-wing Christians, the so-called values voters, constitute roughly 25% of the electorate. As such, their minority rights are protected in a constitutional democracy. But that’s a far cry from pretending to be a majority and forcing their values on to everyone else. Unknown to the average citizen, the religious right has infiltrated every department of the executive branch by the use of civil-service appointments. On a broader basis, conservatism has become a litmus test for federally appointed lawyers and judges as well. A good example is provided by the new laws that demand voters to show government ID before they can enter the polling booth.

Previously, such IDs were not required (one only had to be listed on the voting rolls) and border on being unconstitutional. Yet a number of states have adopted such requirements, which seem on the surface to be a blatant form of intimidation, since blacks, Latinos, the poor and the uneducated would be the least likely to have IDs or to trust the government for demanding to see one. In every single case where such laws have been tested in federal court, Republican judges have supported these laws and Democratic judges opposed them. This rigid partisanship grew directly from the litmus-test standards imposed by conservatives and is shocking to long-time judicial observers. The days when a judge could change his philosophy over time or choose to align himself with liberals one day and conservatives the next, depending on the merits of the case at hand, seem to be forgotten.

The betrayal of democracy hasn’t escaped notice, and the Democrats have promised, once they gain the White House, to sweep away the distorted policies of the right wing. Yet we can only watch and wait. The end of neoconservatives won’t end the war. Nor will it depose sitting judges or weaken lobbyists or bring in a new class of congressmen who aren’t beholden to moneyed interests. The entire government has become entangled in the problem, and it will take an awakened electorate to undo the harm that has been done already. The key to an optimistic, progressive America — the America that threatens to turn into a dream of the past — lies in a renewed belief in an open society and trust in the principles of democracy. Do you want to be governed or ruled?

A great quote:

The collective amnesia the entertainment industry has about its past and recent attempts to limit consumers’ rights and technological innovation is nothing short of startling.

Awesome.