Bacillus What?
From Foods to Soap to Enzymes to Diseases. It's a big family, with Superstars, and Dangerous Losers.
1 - The Book of Bacillus
A probiotic is defined as a live microorganism (bacteria, yeast, or fungus in a food or supplement) that, when administered in adequate amounts, confers a health benefit on the host. In this case the word host refers to you, or maybe someone else who is eating or drinking something in another part of the world. It’s a universal thing.
The operative word here is benefit. The reason way anyone started fermenting or preserving - or eating or drinking anything for that matter - is for the survival benefit. No one can survive without energy that fuels body metabolism that includes breaking down foods into smaller and smaller pieces that are useable. The carbohydrates, fats, and proteins in what you eat and drink is that energy source.
Survival would not be possible without the help of enzymes produced by microbes that live inside and on you, and those in the air, soil, and water that get into the food you eat. Fermentation is a way to direct how and when and the amount of those microbes work on what you eat. Although we don’t know everything about all the microbes and what they are capable of, we have been surviving and often thriving with what we do know.
The genus - that’s a scientific word, or system of taxonomy word, that helps us better identify plants, animals, microbes like yeasts, bacteria, and fungi - Bacillus consists of bacteria that are related in how they function. But that’s like having the name Smith.
Remember the movie The Matrix where the lead agent was named A. Smith? I’m writing that with a period after the A. I assume that’s an abbreviation of a full name like Alfred or Alberto. I haven’t read the script. It’s just so much easier if you use standardized, formalized naming systems.
Remember the Year 2000 crisis? Okay, maybe some people over-reacted. Well, maybe not. The Y2K threat was real, and actually caused damage, but the response to it benefitted the world.
Y2K, stemmed from older computer systems storing years as two digits, for example 99 instead of 1999. At the time it was rare to see anyone use all 4 numbers for a year. In the US, everyone would write that December 6, 1989 was 12/06/89. Sometimes without 06, just 12/6/89. That was, however, strongly discouraged by bureaucrats - especially at banks- with whom decimal points and numbers were never just casually omitted. So, when the date rolled to 00 in certain systems, there was a risk it would be - it was - interpreted as 1900 instead of 2000.
Did Anybody Die?
No. Not because of Y2K at least. Fortunately, all damages were relatively minor, and were localized. None of them were trivial. A few nuclear power plant monitoring systems in Japan reported data errors. It’s hard to believe I just wrote that sentence. A U.S. spy satellite failed to process data. Some credit card systems temporarily malfunctioned.
But the reason why they were relatively minor is because people prepared, some for years beforehand. Most instituted multiple layers of backup and contingency plans. They agreed that by using the systems they used that something as seemingly meaningless to those outside of them as leaving off the 00 when designating a year was incredibly significant.
There was no large-scale societal breakdown.
The lack of disaster is widely considered a success of preventative engineering, not proof the threat was imaginary or overblown or meaningless. An estimated $600 billion was spent on a massive remediation campaign. Words, numbers, decimal points, letters, and names matter.
Lots more Below
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