Seeing clearly (day 149)

bacterial update:  I had great hope for the kombucha tea this morning.  The pH reading was at 3.5 and I thought maybe just maybe I could get it down to 3 by evening.  But it was not to be.  It's hard to declare an ad-hoc experiment a failure because even if it had succeeded the amount of information gained would have been so low.  Still, I'm disappointed.  I even bought a bottle of commercial (live) kombucha to compare the pH.  It had a perfect pH of 3 (not to mention a really seductive apple cider taste).  Oh the sting.  Tomorrow I will dump mine out, separate the new scoby from the mother, and start over.  I've decided against the exotic sugars, and will just use regular old cane sugar.  Might as well start with the basics.  Here is some good news though.  Steve and I went to the recycling depot today and he spotted some nice green Grolsch bottles that will be perfect for bottling the kombucha.  There were eight of them.  The seals were a bit old but the iPhone directed us to the nearest wine making supply store and we were able to buy new seals,  some sanitizing chemicals, and a filler wand to go with the siphon hose we got from Canadian Tire. 
Today's Kefir took about the same amount of time to finish fermenting as the last batch even with the extra milk which is puzzling.  I ended up having to strain it at 8am.  I'm wondering if the shorter fermentation is because I've been using 2% milk for the last two batches.  Presumably it would have a higher proportion of sugar and could be causing more bacterial activity? To test this hypothesis I've bought 3% milk and hopefully we'll be back to the 24 hour schedule.  Otherwise, there will be too much chaos in the straining times and I'll be unable to keep up.  Adding more milk is not really feasible because I wouldn't be able to drink it fast enough.  I could also decrease the volume of grains.  One test at a time.

My friend Alex talks about FOMO, Fear Of Missing Out.  I'm not sure if she coined the term but it wouldn't surprise me.  She's clever that way.   She talks about it in the context of the impulse to check RSS and twitter feeds which both trigger and remedy FOMO, and has some insights about information addiction.  I see FOMO as a symptom of globalization.  Our biological senses are not evolving quickly yet we somehow need to sense what is going on across the globe to react appropriately.   The problem is that if we are not sensing at the appropriate graininess, we start to see patterns in randomness.  Nassim Taleb talks about this in his answer to the question "how is the internet changing the way you think?"  He talks about going on a "news diet" and seeing things more clearly.   I love how he says at the end of his short essay "I can feel harmony with my genes; I feel I am growing again."  It's worth a read.  There are also lots of other thinkers that have weighed in on the question.  If it's within your information diet, spend some time with this buffet of thoughts.

A song for this post.