Utah Open Source Planet

While the Democrat-led congress vacations, tensions between the U.S. and Russia have spiked as Russia has engaged in military operations inside the neighboring country Georgia. Many people I talk to have no idea why Russia has taken this action, what it means to the United States, or what it means, period.

Georgia is a small country just south of the western region of Russia. It borders the Black Sea on the west and Ajerbaijan to the east. Turkey and Armenia lie to its south.

As an aside, my paternal grandmother and her family left Armenia and came to the United States of America during the early 1900s to escape the invasion and (alleged) genocide by the Turks.

This region is no stranger to conflict. It would seen the unification of the USSR during the 20th century was one of the most peaceful times for the region. However, the people lacked freedom.

Since the fall of the old Soviet government, Georgia was established as a sovereign nation independent of Russia. At first, the new government was rife with corruption, but that began to change when Mikheil Saakashvili took office as president in early 2004. Saakashvili studied law in the United States in the 1990s and has strived to establish a very US-like domestic policy. Since becoming president, Georgia has risen to number 18 in term of ease of doing business, according to the World Bank. Georgia has also been named the top economic reformer country in the world.

Georgia's domestic policies are pretty revolutionary by US standards. Saakashvili has implemented a low 12-percent flat tax and frequently talks about the need for government to "get out of the way" of business so they can operate and grow unfettered by regulation.

Relations between Russia and Georgia have been tense over the years. Georgia's close ties with the United States, it's petition to be admitted as a member nation in NATO, and it's free market economy have not sat well with Russian officials. Georgia also cooperated with Turkey and Azerbaijan to build and operate an oil pipeline from the Caspian Sea to the Black Sea that would compete directly with Russian oil pipelines.

Finally, there's the issue of the South Ossetia province. This is a province in north-central Georgia that borders Russia. The Ossetians have expressed interest in becoming an independent breakaway state. Saakashvili has instead granted South Ossetia full autonomy as a state under the Georgian federal government.

Reportedly, a majority of South Ossetians hold Russian passports and Russia has claimed one reason for their military movement into Georgia was to protect their citizens. What isn't widely reported is that Russia offered free passports to the people of South Ossetia.

While the situation in South Ossetia is difficult to understand, what is clear is that Russia's move into Georgia was far more than a "reaction" to Georgia's actions. Not only that, but Russian military has gone much further into Georgia than just the contested lands of South Ossetia.

What is clear is that Russia is no longer the timid, floundering democracy it was during the 1990s. Under Vladamir Putin, Russia has amassed large amounts of wealth and power through the oil exploration and production. Russia is again poised to be a formidable military world power and its alliances with China, North Korea, Iran, Venezuela, Cuba and Libya paint a pretty clear picture of which side they're on relative to the United States.

Nicolas Sarkozy of France had his own Neville Chamberlain moment last week as he negotiated a cease-fire with Russia, but the fighting continued and Russian military incursion further into Georgia continued after Sarkozy returned to France with a false sense of accomplishment.

The United States has formally admonished Russia for its role in the South Ossetian hostilities and has insisted Russian military action must stop at once and Russian troops should leave Georgia. Secretary Of State Condoleeze Rice personally went to the Georgian capitol of Tbilisi late this last week to help broker a peace plan and was successful in getting parties to sign a peace plan.

I think there are many things we can learn from what has happened in Georgia this last week or so.

Oil is power. While one of the major issues in the 2008 US election season is oil and energy, Democrats in congress are very reluctant to increase domestic oil exploration and/or production. Presidential candidate Barack Obama insists alternatives to fossil fuels are the only energy sources we should be investing in. Meanwhile, other countries such as Russia, Venezuela, and China are growing their oil production at record pace. As a result, these countries are collecting large amounts of wealth and power while we here in the US watch the value of our currency languish.

One of the concerns on the left of the oil issue is that oil drilling, production, refinement, and consumption impact the environment negatively. While there is little doubt that is true, I find it hard to believe Russia, China, Venezuela, Iran, and others who would use their increased power against the United States are currently going about their petroleum business with an eye on environmental impact. If there is any country on the planet that can set the standard for clean, responsible, and environmentally sensitive exploration, production, and use of fossil fuels, it is the United States of America. But, instead, we seem poised on tying our own hands and watching our economy crumble.

The United States is beginning to look like it's "all talk." Georgia has committed thousands of troops to fight alongside the United States in Iraq and Afghanistan. Its desire to be a NATO member country represents a great deal of where its alliances lie. If the NATO member nation is attacked, it is expected that other member nations of NATO would respond in kind to its aid and defense. Aside from formally issuing a few words critical of Russia, sending some humanitarian aid, and putting Secretary Rice on the ground in Tbilisi, we're looking pretty impotent next to Russia's tanks, missiles, and planes.

Russia is back. You'd better believe it. Saakashvili said recently in an interview he believed the bombs Russia was dropping on Georgia were meant for us. "This is for America. This is for NATO. This is for Bush," Saakashvili said were (figuratively) inscribed on the bombs dropped on his country.

Some critics of this theory say Saakashvili attacked South Ossetia first and Russia just responded to protect its citizens. The shear size of their "response" invalidates this theory. Something that big had to have been planned weeks in advance.

What do you think?

A couple nights ago, I posted a quick entry here about Barack Obama on domestic oil.

Levi Pearson, a friend and a fellow local geek, got right on my case about some issues he had with what I said and left some comments. He had some really good points and most people will miss out on these because now they're buried in the thread of comments attached to the original article.

Also, this weekend, Pete Ashdown, owner of Utah Internet service provider XMission and former candidate for US Senate, posted a status update on his Facebook site that the Salt Lake Tribune had published an opinion piece he wrote about Utah's national GOP delegation and their... seemingly hypocritical grandstanding on energy and domestic oil production issues.

As a result of the back-and-forth with Levi and Pete, and my own research and introspection, I decided it would be best to write another entry explaining what I've learned and what I've concluded.

I'll admit, looking over what I originally wrote in my previous entry, it was a fluff piece. I was ranting without any facts or figures to back me up. That's not to say I think I was wrong. In fact, I think I've found information to back me up.

Pete's opinion piece was a pretty level-headed argument that Utah's GOP representatives (and presumed congressman-elect) and senators are unfairly pointing fingers at democrats and generally just adding to the dysfunction that is our congress.

Rob Bishop

I completely agree with Pete that Sen. Hatch and Sen. Bennett have way too much non-action under their belt to answer for to be out touting their newly discovered position on energy policy. This is especially the case for Hatch who has plenty of seniority. They both need to be voted out of office as soon as possible, in my opinion.

Rep. Bishop, I actually like. I looked at his voting record both since the Democrats have gained majority control of congress and before and found, while he treads a little closer to the party line than I would like, he votes the way I would like on most issues.

Now, I was concerned that I saw he vote NO on a bill last year (HR 6), the Creating Long-term Energy Alternatives for the Nation act. This sounds like the kind of bill I would want an elected official representing our state to vote for, but then I looked at the details. This was one of the "first 100 hours" bills that Pelosi pushed when the Democrats first took control and contains broad, sweeping legislation to enact price controls on oil companies, remove select subsidies and deductions given to oil and natural gas producers, and add taxes on oil imports and domestic production to fund investment in alternative fuels and alternative energy.

California representative Wally Herger had some remarks on this legislation that were spot-on:

"A truly balanced energy bill would begin with the serious problem of record gas prices and reducing America's dependence on foreign sources of energy and then proceed with creating incentives that would unleash the power of American inventiveness and creativity in order to develop the next generation of energy technology and supplies. H.R. 6 relies on an outdated and failed belief that Washington knows best. Over 1,000 pages of legislative text contains little in the way of broad-based incentives, but is chock-full of new regulations and a higher tax burden, which will do little, if anything, for consumers. A better approach would get Washington out of the way and allow market-oriented solutions to provide for an affordable, diverse, and secure energy supply for America."
-- 17 December 2007

Another representative, Don Young of Alaska made a more ideological remark about the proposed legislation.

"I am wearing this red shirt today; it's the color of the bill that we are debating, communist red. It is a taking."
-- 23 January 2007

Anyway, back to Pete's article! It's probably just a coincidence this opinion piece came out the Sunday after a group of House republicans took to the floor of the house after the House had adjourned, to protest Pelosi not allowing an up or down vote on a bill that would allow more domestic oil production. Rob Bishop was the only member of the Utah delegation to join this group and I applaud him for standing on the issue like he did.

Where was Chris Cannon? Who cares? There's a reason he got tossed in the primaries and his absence almost says it all.

Jason Chaffetz

Pete threw a barb at Jason Chaffetz for going on a trip to Alaska telling the press he believes all our energy woes are attributable to the democrats. I agree with Pete that such a comment is, well, stupid. I went and looked for a media report on Chaffetz's comments. Sure enough, it's a pretty glaring comment and shows Chaffetz is, in some regard, just like every other person who has ever run for office and made vague, unsubstantiated criticisms of the opposition party.

"There's no doubt that Democrats are the problem. We've done what they've suggested, and look at the results -- since (House Speaker) Nancy Pelosi took over, gas prices have doubled,"
-- 18 July 2008

I know enough about the factors that have fed into the rising gas prices over the last five years to know that a Democrat majority in congress beginning January 2007 isn't to blame. However, I do think the factors that led to the Democrat Party wresting power from the Republicans is part of the problem.

That being said, Chaffetz was quoted in the same article saying something that reminded me why I'm glad I helped make him the GOP nominee for the congressional race:

"We have to explore every facet of development that's available -- wind, solar, hydro, nuclear -- we have to move forward on all fronts."

Pete's proposed solution... Re-run Carter?

Pete praised Jimmy Carter (which makes me a little worried about Pete) and his energy policy.

"It is more revealing to look further back to the much-maligned President Carter who, in 1979, during the first oil crunch, set goals for our country so we'd never see a second energy crisis. "Carter proposed that U.S. automakers attain a whopping 48-mile-per-gallon fuel efficiency by 1995. He demanded that we curtail imported oil by imposing fees. Finally, Carter proposed windfall taxes on oil companies to fund alternative energy and a goal of generating 20 percent of our power from solar by 2000. "

I think we now know solar power still isn't a viable source of "core" electric power. Otherwise, Pete would be running XMission on solar power, right? I've read some estimates that solar power might begin to be viable in as little as five years. I think it's fair to say President Carter's plan was a wee bit unrealistic.

And then there's Carter's "double-edged plan" to impose fees or tariffs on imported oil and then tax the heck out of domestic oil compnnies or penalize their profits.

I fail to see how this would have helped anything or how doing the same thing today would help anything. All this would do is hurt consumers more (with even higher prices at the pump) and possibly result in gasoline shortages.

Hurray for Jimmy Carter!

Oh, and while we're talking about windfall profits, consider that oil companies make about 8.5% profit. If that's going to be considered a windfall profit, what happens to companies in other industries like Publishing (34% average profit), Health Care Facilities (48% average profit), or Hotels (10.6% average profit)?!

Generally, I agree with Pete that we need to do something big, akin to the Apollo program or the Manhattan project, to get our country into a better energy situation. I also believe it will take years to accomplish the goal.

I believe the solution is for the government to get out of the way of business, within reason. Pete seems to think a massive government program is called for and he even insinuates that we may need a repeat of The Great Depression before the public agrees with him.

Maybe the ideal solution is something in between.

Levi and relief from gasoline prices

Levi criticized my claim that simple policy changes could lower gas prices to as low as $3.00/gallon or $2.50/gallon. That would represent a 33 to 42 percent drop in price. Yeah... Levi... I think you're right on this one. I don't know what I was smoking, but that's clearly quite a long shot.

That being said, I do believe that a combination of Summer driving season ending within the next month and, possibly, congressional policy changes on increased domestic production, could very well result in lower gas prices. Perhaps a more realistic estimate would be 10-15%. That would bring us down to the neighborhood of $3.65/gallon. You won't be hearing much complaining from me if that happens.

Levi, facts, media, and Glenn

One thing in Levi's comments really hit me hard:

"Most of my googling turned up articles reporting on opinion polls, which show that a majority of respondents believe that drilling for oil will reduce gas prices in the short-term. This, frankly, disgusts me. We're not lemmings, we should get facts and draw our own conclusions, not get our coverage of the issue solely based on some vague percentage of support in the polls. What a tremendous failure of the media!"

Levi's right. There's a symbiotic relationship between elected officials, public opinion, and media coverage of issues. The rise of a plethora of cable news sources, Internet news sources and more has resulted in news (and opinion) that is short on facts. In fact, it seems increasingly obvious that opinion makes the news as much as news does.

Levi has commented to me before that he thought a certain stance I had on an issue was indicative of "Glenn Beck thinking." I took that to mean he was inferring that I didn't really have a substantive opinion of my own on the issue, that I was just repeating what I had heard from talk radio.

Talk radio does get a bad rap for that -- that listeners are nothing more than lemmings or foot soliders lined up for marching orders.

I used to listen to Rush Limbaugh a lot. That was before I got hooked on Glenn Beck. Looking back, I think Rush is more of, dare I say, a shill for the Republican Party, than I was willing to admit. He's been very vocal about not liking John McCain this year and that would represent some independence from the party, but I think he's still quite beholden.

But Rush Limbaugh isn't the "blowhard" a lot of people like to make him out to be. If a caller phones into Rush's program and whines about this or that and says something like "Rush, I know we live in a democracy, but this is insane!" Mr. Limbaugh will stop everything and take five, ten minutes, however long it takes, to help this caller (and all the people listening) understand that we do not live in a democracy, we don't want to live in a democracy, and here's why: bam, bam, bam. He'll lay it all out and I have to respect the guy for using his forum to actually educate his listeners and not just indoctrinate them.

Anyone who has listened to (or watched) Glenn Beck for any significant length of time knows he's got a pretty cool team of researchers working for him on both his radio program and his TV show. They fact-check just about everything before it goes on the air. In addition, Glenn seems very sensitive about the typical talk-radio rumors that always go around. For example, lately it's that Barack Obama won't pledge allegiance to the flag, that he's not a Christian, etc. In fact, this last week, a guy called into Glenn's radio program to point out Obama's hypocricy in saying he was embarrassed that Americans don't know many foreign languages but that he delivered all his Europe speeches in English. Then, the caller thought it would be funny to add a little something. Read below and observe as Glenn deals with it.

CALLER: Well, you know, I'm not really sure about when he went to, oh, the Muslim countries. But I have a feeling he speaks their language, though.

GLENN: See, now wait a minute. I don't even know what that means. Why would you even go there?

CALLER: Well, because I'm just the evil conservative.

GLENN: Well, you know what? You know what? You give conservatives a bad name when you -- no, listen to me, Cliff.

CALLER: Okay.

GLENN: When you insinuate that Obama is a Muslim and he's not a Muslim, you give conservatives a bad name. You give people a bad name because that is the kind of argument where you lose immediately. You say something like that and nobody worth their salt listens to you anymore about what you have to say about Barack Obama. Don't say those things. There's no reason to say those things. You know what? You say something like that and then I stop looking to see if Obama ever, the elitist, ever did say, "You know what, you go over to other countries, I'm sick of these Americans" because I no longer believe you. I don't think you have any credibility at all.

--28 July 2008

To kind of get back on topic here, I admit a chunk of my opinion is shaped by what Glenn Beck says, but I'm willing to go with it because I know he (and his people) have done their work. Plus, Glenn encourages his listeners to learn for themselves and often gives them the sources where they can find the facts  themselves.

Facts to back me up

So, I went out looking for articles written by "experts" in energy policy and found a lot of what I was looking for at The Heritage Foundation.

• Supply, demand and gasoline prices by David Kreutzer, Ph.D.
• Oil speculators help consumers at the gas pump by David Kreutzer, Ph.D.
• Oil: Open up federal lands by Ben Lieberman
• No drilling? No excuses by Ben Lieberman
• More Energy Supplies, Not More Taxes and Regulations, Are What We Need by Ben Lieberman
• Lifting the Offshore Drilling Ban: A Positive Step in the Fight against High Energy Prices by Ben Lieberman

• Death of Reason, Again? - Article on windfall profits by Bruce Bartlett
• Oil Company Profits and Tax Collections: Does the U.S. Need a New Windfall Profits Tax? by Jonathan Williams and Scott A. Hodge of The Tax Foundation

Whew. I'm tired.

Okay, it's time for a little political talk. Today, our friend and savior, Barack Obama was campaigning in Florida and revealed that he has flipped, justifiably so, on the issue of increasing domestic oil drilling.

I applaud the Obama campaign for starting to "get it" on the issue of energy. Most Americans, even those on the right, support the development of new alternative, forms of energy. But, in the meantime, there's a lot we can do to keep the price of petroleum-based fuel from continuing to climb.

Next, Obama delivered a precious disclaimer he's used before:

"It's also important to recognize if you start drilling now you won't see a drop of oil for ten years, which means its not going to have a significant impact on short-term prices. Every expert agrees on that."

(This quote from an article at http://www.palmbeachpost.com/localnews/content/state/epaper/2008/08/01/0801obama1.html.)

This is fear mongering, plain and simple and it's a classic maneuver straight out of Al Gore's playbook. "All the experts agree!" Yeah, right. Show them to me!

If we do no drilling and merely "hope for change" via Obama's promise of new technology delivering us out of our energy slump, it will be at least ten years before things start to improve.

And that's not all. This ten-year delay makes no sense. Obama's claim may be based on the time it would take for America to increase refining capability. It's true that it takes 4-10 years (depending on how much red tape the local and federal government throw up in their path) for an oil company to build and begin operating a new oil refinery. But, for drilling and then pumping crude oil out of the ground, we're talking about a matter of weeks or months before product is available on the market, not years.

If domestic supplies are harnessed, we can lower our oil imports and supplant it with domestic oil supplies. It's a no-brainer that oil prices in the U.S. will fall or at least become less tied to the world market price levels.

Crude oil futures dropped about $20 right after President Bush lifted the presidential ban on offshore oil drilling. Oil production didn't change! The market just responded to the possibility of increased domestic production. The market will respond even moreas soon as roadblocks to increased domestic supply are removed.

We may never see $1.50/gallon gasoline for a long, long time, but we could see $3.00 or $2.50/gallon gasoline despite increased demand from India and China.

My dad sent me a link to the American Solutions website. I checked it out and was impressed enough to sign up for an account on it. If you are interested discussing and affecting the direction of future policy in America, particularly with regard to energy policy, this site may be of interest to you. It appears to be fairly non-partisan so don't assume it's conservative, liberal, environmentalist, or anything else.

American Solutions does seem to be somewhat weighted toward people who want to get rid of some of the current restrictions that keep oil companies from drilling in various areas of the US. Doing this would boost our domestic production, but unlike some of the people on this site, I don't think that will significantly affect crude oil prices much. We need to get busy investing in all kinds of alternative energy production as well as drill for more domestic oil. 

Have you ever wondered what significance the measurement error of your scale has in making soap? What, you didn't realize your digital scale has measurement error?

If your scale has 1-gram precision (the norm these days), then if it says 42 grams it actually means that it most probably is between 41.5 grams and 42.5 grams. The possible measurement error is ±0.5g.

What does this mean in measuring ingredients for soap? Well, there are two extremes: lye surplus and lye deficit (or inversely, fat deficit and fat surplus).

On the one extreme, you may have 0.5g more lye than the scale says, and 0.5g less fat than the scale says. In that case, the extra 0.5g lye is actually close to 4 grams worth of fat. The exact value depends on the saponification value of the fat in question. For example, olive oil has a saponification value of 0.134, so 0.5g/0.134 = 3.7g worth of oil. That means that if you do indeed have an extra half gram of lye, you need 3.7g more oil than the recipe called for (for simplicity, assume the recipe has no lye discount/superfatting). Now factor in the possibility that you have half a gram less oil than the scale says, and you need 4.2g more oil to be 100% sure you are not lye-heavy. Of course your scale only does 1g increments, so you have to bump it up to 5g. So, regardless of the recipe size, if you add 5g oil to the recipe, you're sure to have at least the nominal superfatting, but perhaps more. Actually, probably more.

What about the other extreme—a lye deficit? If you have 0.5g less lye than the scale says, and 0.5g more olive oil than the scale says, then you have 0.5g/0.134 + 0.5g = 4.2g extra oil. Add that to your 5g that you added to be sure you're not lye-heavy, and now you've got about 9–10g more oil than the recipe calls for in the most lye deficit case.

Now, we want to add the first 5g to a non-superfatted recipe, for sure, so we know we're not lye-heavy. Then, the scale threatens to add another 5g, so it's entirely possible we get more fat than we are willing to tolerate.

What kind of impact do those 10 grams actually have? Well that depends on the size of the recipe. For most recipes you'll find on the internet, that 5 grams will be less than 1% of the total weight. No big deal. But if you, like me, are experimenting and making quite small batches it becomes significant. I like to aim for 1–5% superfat, but I'd be ok with 0–8%. So if I want no more than 8% superfat, and I add 5 grams of oil to be absolutely sure I don't go below 0% superfat, and the scale adds another 4.2 in the worst case, then I want a minimum batch size of 9.2g/8% = 115g (before water). That's a nice one-bar batch size.

Well and good, as long as you're not trying to observe the effects of superfatting, since you have such a wide range of possible actual superfat. For that you'd have to break down and make larger batches.

But what is the expected value of your superfatting? The extremes are actually less likely to occur than something much closer to the actual reading. As a simplification, just take the actual reading to be your expected value. So if you add 5g oil to a 120g batch, then you probably have about 4% superfat. 4±4% superfatted soap. It's alright by me.

So, a pure castile soap one-bar ingredient list:

102 g olive oil
13 g lye
25–30 ml water or milk (preferably goat's milk)

So in summary, if you have a 1g scale and you make small batches, the above is important to understand and take into account. If you have a 1g scale and make medium to large batches, then you are going to get within ½–1% of your target superfatting.

Oh, and of course none of this actually takes into account the accuracy or variation of those saponification figures.

Have you ever wondered what significance the measurement error of your scale has in making soap? What, you didn't realize your digital scale has measurement error?

If your scale has 1-gram precision (the norm these days), then if it says 42 grams it actually means that it most probably is between 41.5 grams and 42.5 grams. The possible measurement error is ±0.5g.

What does this mean in measuring ingredients for soap? Well, there are two extremes: lye surplus and lye deficit (or inversely, fat deficit and fat surplus).

On the one extreme, you may have 0.5g more lye than the scale says, and 0.5g less fat than the scale says. In that case, the extra 0.5g lye is actually close to 4 grams worth of fat. The exact value depends on the saponification value of the fat in question. For example, olive oil has a saponification value of 0.134, so 0.5g/0.134 = 3.7g worth of oil. That means that if you do indeed have an extra half gram of lye, you need 3.7g more oil than the recipe called for (for simplicity, assume the recipe has no lye discount/superfatting). Now factor in the possibility that you have half a gram less oil than the scale says, and you need 4.2g more oil to be 100% sure you are not lye-heavy. Of course your scale only does 1g increments, so you have to bump it up to 5g. So, regardless of the recipe size, if you add 5g oil to the recipe, you're sure to have at least the nominal superfatting, but perhaps more. Actually, probably more.

What about the other extreme—a lye deficit? If you have 0.5g less lye than the scale says, and 0.5g more olive oil than the scale says, then you have 0.5g/0.134 + 0.5g = 4.2g extra oil. Add that to your 5g that you added to be sure you're not lye-heavy, and now you've got about 9–10g more oil than the recipe calls for in the most lye deficit case.

Now, we want to add the first 5g to a non-superfatted recipe, for sure, so we know we're not lye-heavy. Then, the scale threatens to add another 5g, so it's entirely possible we get more fat than we are willing to tolerate.

What kind of impact do those 10 grams actually have? Well that depends on the size of the recipe. For most recipes you'll find on the internet, that 5 grams will be less than 1% of the total weight. No big deal. But if you, like me, are experimenting and making quite small batches it becomes significant. I like to aim for 1–5% superfat, but I'd be ok with 0–8%. So if I want no more than 8% superfat, and I add 5 grams of oil to be absolutely sure I don't go below 0% superfat, and the scale adds another 4.2 in the worst case, then I want a minimum batch size of 9.2g/8% = 115g (before water). That's a nice one-bar batch size.

Well and good, as long as you're not trying to observe the effects of superfatting, since you have such a wide range of possible actual superfat. For that you'd have to break down and make larger batches.

But what is the expected value of your superfatting? The extremes are actually less likely to occur than something much closer to the actual reading. As a simplification, just take the actual reading to be your expected value. So if you add 5g oil to a 120g batch, then you probably have about 4% superfat. 4±4% superfatted soap. It's alright by me.

So, a pure castile soap one-bar ingredient list:

102 g olive oil
13 g lye
25–30 ml water or milk (preferably goat's milk)

So in summary, if you have a 1g scale and you make small batches, the above is important to understand and take into account. If you have a 1g scale and make medium to large batches, then you are going to get within ½–1% of your target superfatting.

Oh, and of course none of this actually takes into account the accuracy or variation of those saponification figures.