ASK DR. SCHUND (C)1996 Alan M. Schwartz Dr. Schund, every milk product is made from skim milk, and butter has been displaced by margarine. To where does all the butterfat disappear? The US Department of Agriculture says, "Milk production increased 1% in 1995 to 156 billion pounds. The rate per cow at 16,451 pounds, was 276 pounds above 1994. The annual average number of cows on farms at 9.46 million head, was 39,000 less than 1994. Cash receipts from 1995 marketings of milk was $19.9 billion dollars." Producer returns averaged $12.93 per hundredweight. (Awful grammar aside, 100 lbs of milk density = 0.97 grams/ml, is 49.5 quarts @ $0.25/quart. What does a quart of milk cost you?) Number Year of Per Milk Cow Percentage Total Milk Cows of Fat in All Milk Milkfat Milk Produced Milk Milkfat ---------------------------------------------------------------- 1,000 Head Pounds Percent Million Pounds 1992 9,688 15,574 573 3.68 150,885 5,551 1993 9,589 15,704 575 3.66 150,582 5,514 1994 9,525 16,128 590 3.66 153,622 5,622 1995 9,461 16,451 602 3.66 155,644 5,694 An odd thing it is that the consumer cannot purchase milk which is 3.66% butterfat. Whole milk is Officially 3.25% butterfat (21 CFR Part 131). Tremendous volumes of skim and fat-free milk are sold compared to whole milk. Cheese and yogurt are made from skim milk. Butter has been 93% displaced by margarine made from vegetable oils. Real whipped cream is but a memory. A plop of sour cream occasionally graces a baked potato. To where do 5.5+ billion pounds of milkfat disappear each year? One might entertain various scenarios. When we talk about greasy politicians, are we uncomfortably close to the truth? Is the US nuclear-powered Navy really butter-burning? Are Environmentalist outrages like Naugahyde upholstery, Spandex exercise suits, glistening black PVC garter belts, and bungee cords based upon industrial remanufacture of sweet cream? Is there something about nuclear reactor heat exchange fluids - hot, abundant, and lubricious - which we are meant not to know? And what about Zambonis slithering across ice arenas leaving their slick wakes? Dr. Schund spent a serene evening in his TEMPEST-armored bunker sipping Strathisla single malt and surfing the wonder of Pentagon Top Secret/Lotus Eater files when he unshrouded a outrage of bovine proportions. There coalesced a phantasm of understanding stretching from Roswell, NM alien innuendoes of July 1947 to contemporary Area 51 (Dreamland, bounded by 36 degrees 12.5 minutes and 37 degrees 17.5 minutes north; 115 degrees 45 minutes and 115 degrees 56 minutes west), home to eldritch technologies celebrated by the blackest of military aircraft. Collections of inconceivably huge refrigerated Federal cream sumps are buried in Arizona and New Mexico safeguarding us against the extortionate demands of space aliens from 47 Ursae Majoris B who threaten to confiscate our Sun unless we continue paying a planetary ransom in butterfat. Old storage depots in Nevada are easily seen from the air as mammoth circular depressions in the desert where transdimensional butterfat transfer has resulted in catastrophic topographic subsidence. Said depressions are hot with long-lived nuclear radiation and rich with constitutionally and isotopically variant inner lanthanide metals. Shocked quartz, coesite and stishovite lay mute testimony to the violence of the act. Why is butterfat the interstellar coin of the realm? A search of technical literature reveals hints of extraordinary doings. Consider The Physics Teacher 34(5) 288 (1996). Scientific American 273(6) 104 (1995), and European Journal of Physics 16(4) 172 (1995). Extensive mathematical modeling in symbolic and analytical forms proves beyond question that buttered bread launched in stochastic trajectory from table tops lands buttered side down. Always. Cats land on their feet. Always. Strap a buttered piece of bread buttered side to a cat's belly and drop the construct. Will the universe be caught in a conundrum? The living construct is vigorously excluded from a gravitational field. (Don't try this at home unless you like the smells of scorched cat fur and vaporized neighborhood). Transforming a will-o'-the-wisp spectacle into a terawatt star drive has consumed more than 10% of the American national budget annually for a quarter century. Strange tales of airborne wonders darting bizarre paths across Dreamland skies are as common as Congressmen on the take. The blackest of US black research tickles awesome powers hidden within Manx sandwiches. Our betters demand and receive ever-escalating butterfat tribute to fuel their own ambitions. Each glass of skim milk you drink plunges a knife into the back of American national security. Each slice of Kraft Process American Cheese is a perfidious machination dooming our children to remain mudfeet. Hysterical Official cries to avoid ingesting butterfat at all costs are the pillars of a secret odious agenda condemning our race to phyletic extirpation. Got milk?