Mountain Views News          Saturday, May 14, 2016

THE WORLD AROUND US

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Mountain Views-News Saturday, May 14, 2016 


KEPLER MISSION DISCOVERS 1,284 NEW PLANETS


NASA’s Kepler mission (http://www.nasa.gov/
kepler) has verified 1,284 new planets—the 
single largest finding of planets to date.

 “This announcement more than doubles the 
number of confirmed planets from Kepler,” 
said Ellen Stofan, chief scientist at NASA 
Headquarters in Washington. “This gives us 
hope that somewhere out there, around a star 
much like ours, we can eventually discover 
another Earth.”

 Analysis was performed on the Kepler space 
telescope’s July 2015 planet candidate catalog, 
which identified 4,302 potential planets. For 
1,284 of the candidates, the probability of being a 
planet is greater than 99 percent—the minimum 
required to earn the status of “planet.” An 
additional 1,327 candidates are more likely than 
not to be actual planets, but they do not meet the 
99 percent threshold and will require additional 
study. The remaining 707 are more likely to 
be some other astrophysical phenomena. This 
analysis also validated 984 candidates previously 
verified by other techniques.

 “Before the Kepler space telescope launched, 
we did not know whether exoplanets were rare 
or common in the galaxy. Thanks to Kepler and 
the research community, we now know there 
could be more planets than stars,” said Paul 
Hertz, Astrophysics Division director at NASA 
Headquarters. “This knowledge informs the 
future missions that are needed to take us ever-
closer to finding out whether we are alone in the 
universe.”

 Kepler captures the discrete signals of distant 
planets—decreases in brightness that occur 
when planets pass in front of, or transit, their 
stars—much like the May 9 Mercury transit of 
our Sun. Since the discovery of the first planets 
outside our solar system more than two decades 
ago, researchers have resorted to a laborious, 
one-by-one process of verifying suspected 
planets.

 This latest announcement, however, is based on 
a statistical analysis method that can be applied 
to many planet candidates simultaneously. 
Timothy Morton, associate research scholar at 
Princeton University in New Jersey and lead 
author of the scientific paper published in The 
Astrophysical Journal, employed a technique 
to assign each Kepler candidate a planet-hood 
probability percentage—the first such automated 
computation on this scale, as previous statistical 
techniques focused only on sub-groups within 
the greater list of planet candidates identified by 
Kepler.

 “Planet candidates can be thought of like 
bread crumbs,” said Morton. “If you drop a few 
large crumbs on the floor, you can pick them 
up one by one. But, if you spill a whole bag of 
tiny crumbs, you’re going to need a broom. This 
statistical analysis is our broom.”

 In the newly validated batch of planets, nearly 
550 could be rocky planets like Earth, based 
on their size. Nine of these have orbits in their 
sun’s habitable zone, which is the distance from 
a star where orbiting planets can have surface 
temperatures that allow liquid water to pool. 
With the addition of these nine, a total of 21 
exoplanets are now known to orbit in habitable 
zones.

You can contact Bob Eklund at: b.eklund@
MtnViewsNews.


OUT TO PASTOR 

A Weekly Religion Column by Rev. James Snyder

CHRISTOPHER Nyerges

WHY MOTHERS WOULD MAKE 

GOOD POLITICIANS

THE OLIVE TREE – HOW TO PROCESS 
OLIVES FOR FOOD, AND MAKE OIL

[Nyerges is the author of 
“Guide to Wild Foods,” 
“Foraging California,” 
“Extreme Simplicity,” and other books. He has been 
teaching about wild foods and self-reliance since 1974. He 
can be reached at School of Self-Reliance, Box 41834, Eagle 
Rock, CA 90041, or www.ChristopherNyerges.com.]

Olives have been valued since ancient times for their 
fruit and for their oil. Drought-tolerant, evergreen olive 
trees were brought to North America from Europe and 
they have done quite well here. Because of this, they 
are widely planted in parks, along streets, on school 
campuses, and in housing complexes where a “California 
look” is desired. 

 When the mission system came into California, the 
native way of life was displaced, overrun, and largely 
destroyed as a functioning viable lifestyle. As part of 
the agricultural system brought by the missionaries 
from Spain, the so-called mission olives were brought 
here and planted at most of the missions. Other now-
seemingly ubiquitous plants were the mission figs and 
the mission grapes.

 Old olive trees, laden with their dark purple fruits, 
providing shade around the old missions, seemed to 
be the quintessential tree of California as mission era 
segued to ranch era.

 And olives are still very popular today as landscaping 
trees, dropping their olives for gardeners to rake up 
and discard. But rare is the person who realizes you 
can collect and eat these olives. They are olives, after all, 
and everyone sees cans of olives in the store but isn’t 
clear how to turn the olives that fall to the ground into 
something tasty. If you bite into a fresh raw olive that 
you’ve picked up from the ground, it’s astringent and 
not flavorful.

 How are they prepared? Is it hard to do? Is it safe to 
do?

 When I was growing up, our next door neighbor, 
Mrs. Yamada, would always process her own olives from 
a tree in their backyard and from olives they collected 
from local trees. She used the lye process, and kept a five 
gallon crock in her cellar where she did the processing. 
Once, when I was about 13, she took me down there to 
show me the crock full of olives. It was interesting, but 
I didn’t learn how to process them just by looking at a 
crock full of olives. In time, I learned that there are many 
ways to process olives.

 The lye solution is one of the most common ways to 
process olives. Yes, the same lye that you could use to 
help open clogged drains, which you need to wear gloves 
if you use it because the lye is so caustic. In fact, many 
cans of lye say right on their labels how you can use it 
to process olives. I have processed olives with lye many 
times, but never liked using such a dangerous product 
in order to produce an edible food. Weren’t olives 
commonly used in the Middle East and much of Europe 
centuries ago? Would they have used lye, I wondered?

 It turned out that peoples of the past processed their 
olives using only salt. Today, I no longer use lye for 
processing olives, but instead buy a few boxes of table 
salt. Here is an example of what I do.

 I select olives that are not bruised. Once I collect the 
olives, I wash them. Sometimes – but not always – I pit 
the olives using an olive-pitter, a device which is not 
common. I generally try to process as many olives as 
possible because it takes the same amount of work and 
time to process a cup of olives as it does to process five 
gallons. In general, I end up with about a gallon of olives 
each time I process. I select olives that are not bruised.

 I put them into a container, which is usually plastic 
or glass, depending on what is handy. For a gallon 
container, I will dissolve one full (round) box of 26 
ounces of salt in water and pour it over the olives. This 
is a very salty brine, and I just let the bucket sit for about 
two weeks. I place a cheesecloth cover over the bucket to 
keep out bugs or dirt.

 After the two weeks, I pour off the water, rinse it, and 
then add water in which only a half box of salt has been 
dissolved, and this time let it set for just a week. At this 
point, you can begin to taste the fruits to see if they are 
ok to eat. Generally, I do at least one more weak brine 
solution before they are ready to eat. Then I pack them 
into glass jars with a little salt, some garlic and other 
seasonings, and refrigerate them. They seem to last for 
years this way since I have had some that were over 10 
years old and were still good.

 Of course, if you don’t want to refrigerate, you need 
to do proper canning, and there are several books and 
classes which will teach you how to do that safely.

 What I learned about processing olives came from 
seeing what other people did, asking a lot of questions, 
and trial and error. One of the best sources of information 
on the home processing of olives is a pamphlet called 
“Home Pickling of Olives” published by University of 
California, Cooperative Extension, Berkeley, CA 94720.

OLIVE OIL

 How about olive oil? Before I knew how to make 
olive oil, I figured that it couldn’t be all that complicated 
because people in the ancient world figured it out. Since 
all of the literature I had collected told me how to process 
the olives, but not how to make olive oil, I began by asking 
the olive oil vendors at farmers markets. I would just 
simply ask, “How do you make your oil?” Surprisingly to 
me, they all just smiled but were not forthcoming in their 
methods of processing. I assumed that this was because 
there were some mysterious proprietary secrets to doing 
this. Nothing could be further from the truth.

 Eventually, I learned that though the details vary, and 
the manner of pressing varies, to make olive oil you simply 
crush the olives so that the oil is expressed. You collect the 
oil and let it settle. Once it has settled, you can readily filter 
out any dirt and any water. That’s all there is to it!

 The first time I processed a batch of olive oil, I used 
an Acme food processor and juicer. My friend David 
Arzouman and I first decided to remove the pits from 
each olive. Obviously, in commercial operations, this 
is not done because it’s time consuming, tedious, and 
simply not necessary. But we felt we should do it for our 
small experiment. 

 We carefully packed the olive pulp into a large cloth 
container, and then put it back into the processor and 
turned it on so that it began to press on the pulp. We did 
this slowly and eventually a clear liquid flowed from the 
machine. We collected about two cups of pure olive oil, 
and discarded the pulp.

 We let our oil settle in a glass jar. Within an hour or 
so, a little debris was floating on the top, which we easily 
removed. On the bottom was a little water. So, what 
naturally happens is that the oil and water separate. We 
carefully divided the clear pure oil into two containers so 
we could both take some home to use. It had a remarkably 
clean flavor. It was subtle, and very good, and went well 
with salad dressing and sautéing eggs. Both David and I 
found it to be the best olive oil we’ve ever had.

 Apparently, there are different grades of olive oil in the 
normal world of commerce: Extra virgin, virgin, and just 
olive oil. Within each of these three grades can be found 
several types. The extra virgin and virgin olive oil is the 
first pressing of the olives and no heat or chemicals are 
applied. The extra virgin is ideally suited for use raw, 
such as in salads, and must have an acidity level of less 
than 0.225%. The virgin olive oil is ok for cooking, and its 
acidity level must be below 2%. Other olive oils that have 
an acid level of 3.3% or more are further refined with heat 
and chemicals. This is sometimes called refined oil.

 So, the pure clean oil that David and I produced 
would be considered extra virgin olive oil, the very best!

The common olive is a member of the Olive Family 
(Oleaceae). This family contains about 25 genera and 
900 species world-wide. Although the genus Olea 
contains 20 species, only Olea europaea occurs in the 
wild in California. Others may be found in cultivation.

In thinking of Mother’s Day, I could not help 
but think about the mess our country is in right 
now. Not that messes remind me of mothers in 
particular, but honesty compels me to admit they 
are good at cleaning up messes. Moreover, the 
messes they cleanup are not their doing, which is 
what makes it so terrific.

 Somebody needs to clean up the mess we are 
in.

 Anybody who steps outside their house knows 
that the country is in a terrible mess these days. It 
would be impossible to blame one political party 
over another. In this area, everybody is equal. The 
truth is, politicians make messes. Furthermore, 
they leave these messes for other people to clean 
up. Many politicians have dirty mouths and 
minds, but none has dirty hands from cleaning 
up messes.

 There are two kinds of politicians in our 
country. Those who make messes and those who 
allow those messes to be made. Wouldn’t it be 
nice to find a politician who actually would clean 
up a mess?

 Our country is in the soup, and not the kind 
of soup your mother used to make. Politicians 
make soup out of circumstances that nobody can 
stomach while mothers have a marvelous way of 
making soup out of almost anything, and it tastes 
heavenly, plus it is good for you.

 Not too long ago some politicians were in 
an uproar and quite nervous over the swine flu 
situation. And there was good reason. With all 
the pork in Washington these days, they should 
be afraid they might catch whatever is going 
around. Maybe, and I know I’m a little sadistic 
here, it might be good for a couple of them (okay, 
all of them) to come down with some kind of flu 
and send them to their beds for at least a month. 
Maybe a high fever might clear up their thinking. 
Plus, our country could use a vacation from 
politicians. We could put them all in quarantine 
until the danger is over. (I’ll let them know when 
it is over. Honest.)

 But getting back to my subject, I believe 
mothers would make wonderful politicians. 
There are several reasons why I think so. Mothers, 
generally speaking, know how to ask questions.

 “Have you washed behind your ears?” 

 “What time are you coming back?” 

 “Do you have clean underwear?” 

 “If all your friends jumped off a bridge would 
you?”

 It is one thing to ask a question, but it 
is another thing altogether to ask the right 
question. I firmly believe asking questions is a 
highly refined art. Politicians, for example, ask 
questions they think people are asking. Before 
they query any audience, they take 197 polls to 
make sure they have the right question so they 
are not embarrassed.

 Mothers, on the other hand, ask questions to 
embarrass you and put you back on the straight 
and narrow.

 Politicians rarely expect answers to their 
questions. They are all rhetorical. They ask 
questions in such a way that nobody in their 
right mind could ever answer it. Quite frankly, if 
they ever got an answer to a question they would 
be so shocked they would not know what to do 
about it.

 Mothers expect an answer to their questions 
immediately...without delay.

 Their universal answer to everything is, 
“Because I’m your mother!”

 Question a politician, you get the runaround. 
Question your mother and she will chase you 
around. It would be more beneficial to be chased 
around by your mother than to have some 
politician give you the runaround.

 Another reason mothers would make good 
politicians is that they never stop until the work 
is finished. Everybody has heard the old saying, 
“A man works from sun up to sun down, but a 
woman’s work is never done.” At the end of the 
day, every mother has something to show for her 
work.

 It would be beneficial for our country if every 
politician were apprenticed to a mother with 
four or five kids. Let him follow her around for a 
week, if he can last a week, and he will get some 
idea of what working is all about.

 Let some politician clean up after four or 
five kids for a week and experience real work. 
Perhaps, if he has to clean up messes of other 
people’s making he might think twice before he 
makes a mess himself. The only work a politician 
really does, is working his mouth, which rarely 
accomplishes anything useful.

 By her very nature, a mother is always thinking 
about others. Rarely does she take any time for 
her own personal pursuits. Other people come 
before her interest and comfort. Wouldn’t that 
be a wonderful trait in some politician? Instead 
of always thinking about the next election and 
what can get him reelected, he begins to think 
about other people and their needs.

 Instead of putting his political career ahead 
of everything else, he would sacrifice himself to 
benefit other people, to help clean up the messes 
around him.

 Although it may seem like a good idea, we 
cannot afford to send mothers to Washington 
and neglect the important work she has at home. 
Nehemiah said it so well, “I am doing a great 
work, so that I cannot come down: why should 
the work cease, whilst I leave it, and come down 
to you?” (Nehemiah 6:3).

 God knew exactly what he was doing when he 
put together a marvelous creature we now know 
as Mother.

 

 The Rev. James L. Snyder is pastor of the Family 
of God Fellowship, in Silver Springs Shores. Call 
him at 352-687-4240 or e-mail jamessnyder2@att.
net. The church web site is www.whatafellowship.
com.

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