Bill's Comments

In mammals that hibernate, there is a layer of fat in the back near the kidneys that is brown instead of yellow like ordinary fat. This fat has been found to be metabolically different from other fat, in that all the energy that is consumed by the fat does not create either more fat nor do work. All it does is create heat. The heat is what keeps a hibernating animal from freezing.

Brown fat is useful, though I have often compared government organizations to brown fat--money goes in and all that comes out is hot air and useless programs. Considering the scale that it has now come to, I think I need to create a new category, black fat. Black fat consumes energy and poisons its host with the metabolic byproducts. It takes in good energy, far more than it can use, consumes a lot of it in useless metabolic cycles, and then spews out altered nutrients that can only be used by the least useful cells of the body, and poison the remaining ones or transmutes them into other useless cells. Sounds like the US government to me.