Ford Begging On Both Sides Of The Atlantic

How bad off is the auto industry?

The head of Ford Germany said the European Union should make around 40 billion euros (50 billion dollars) in loans available to the continent's ailing auto sector, in an interview with the Bild newspaper published Friday.

Bernhard Mattes said such assistance would not be state aid but was "in order to allow all European carmakers the possibility to meet EU requirements on fuel efficiency and emissions, etc., more quickly."

Those rich republicans are so dependent on government welfare. They should be embarrassed but of course they are not.

Sad To Hear

A California man fell to his death Sunday.

A Glendale man died Sunday, a day after falling 50 feet while hiking in Los Padres National Forest near Gorman, authorities said.

The Ventura County Sheriff's Department's Air Squad 9 rescue helicopter was called about 2:30 p.m. Saturday to the Trail Canyon area near the Hungry Valley State Vehicular Recreation Area, according to a statement from the department.

Hugh Blanchard, 79, and his friends were found at the base of a waterfall near the Castaic Mine. Blanchard was unconscious, according to the release.

My condolences to his friends and family.

Back On The Trail

Lion King Is back on the trail after his side trip to Hollywood.

Oil Companies To Exploit Global Warming

With the polar ice cap melting, oil companies are planing on ways to get oil and gas from under the arctic ocean.

I'm convinced, based on models and observations, the trend is one of accelerated ice loss, and we're probably looking at a scenario, even with the best efforts to mitigate (global warming), that we'll continue to see loss," said Richard Spinrad , director of research for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration .

Already, shipping already has increased within the Arctic Circle to serve the oil and gas industry.

The recent increase has been the result of a spike in commodity prices, not to capitalize on retreating sea ice, said Lawson Brigham , a former Coast Guard captain and climate scientist who made many voyages into the Arctic and around Antarctica .

The pull is strong in a world dependent on petroleum. In July, the U.S. Geological Survey issued the first public estimate of the petroleum resources north of the Arctic Circle . Its findings: 90 billion barrels of oil and 1,670 trillion cubic feet of natural gas.

Ethanol, Bad!

Farmers are more and more reliant on ethanol production than food production.

Scott Irwin says agriculture’s fortunes are now tethered more to ethanol than food, making crop growers vulnerable to sharp price swings at filling stations rather than the typically slower cost shifts at grocery stores.

“We’re just experiencing the full brunt of this new source of volatility,” said Irwin, a professor of agricultural and consumer economics. “When food prices were the main trigger, recessionary impacts were much less direct and much more gradual. Now, there’s this new connection through energy costs that immediately gets translated to agriculture.”

With fuel prices coming down and the Wall Street credit crunch many ethanol plants may close. There never has been a natural market for ethanol. It is time to end it's subsidies.

Connecticut Regulates Olive Oil, Say It Ain't Soy!

Connecticut becomes the first state in the nation to regulate olive oil.

Luciano V. Sclafani Jr. has imported enough olive oil over the years to know when something is not right. So when he saw an advertisement for a three-liter tin of extra virgin olive oil for $9.99 when the market price was between $25 and $30, he knew something was up.

He purchased the oil, had it analyzed and, sure enough, the "extra virgin olive oil" was actually 90 percent soybean oil and 10 percent pomace oil, a low-grade of olive oil.

Sclafani of Norwalk-based Sclafani Importers alerted the state Department of Consumer Protection and its agents' own analysis determined that not only was the oil not extra virgin olive, but it was also four ounces shy of the labeled weight.

The republicans and their free market friends always say that the market will take care of it's self. It is acceptable to republicans for you and your children to die for corporate profits. Even sensible regulation like requiring olive oil to be olive oil is unacceptable to them. But, Chef are you going a little over the top here. No! No! No! With children allergic to nuts like never before what if the distributer put in peanut, walnut, or hazelnut?

Oh The Humanity!

The classic WKRP Thanksgiving turkey drop. The incompetent Sarah Palin, pardoned a turkey and then gave an interview while they slaughtered turkeys in the background. Her answers were as incomprehensible as ever.

Heresy!

Chef is going to let out his inner heretic. Yes, this thanksgiving I am going to fight for the right not to stuff my turkey. Lindsey at Majikthise has a great list of tips for cooking a turkey. I like this one.

6. What I'm about to say sounds heretical, but stay with me: Don't cook the stuffing inside the turkey. Instead, fill the body cavity with a quartered raw onion, an quartered cored apple, half a lemon, and fresh herbs.

I would use lemon, half and orange, and fresh herbs. Also, I like to give my bird a subcutaneous rub.(Under the Skin) For my rub, I use butter, lemon zest, and garlic powder. If you do not brine your bird add salt to your rub.

If you have relatives that demand cranberry sauce from a can you can always fake them out by making your own and refrigerating it in a can so it has the classic shape. Depending on your recipe you may have to add some pectin to jelly it up.

VW 2.0L TDI Clean Diesel Engine

VW 2.0 l TDI Clean Diesel engine, originally uploaded by beedubz.

VW's Jetta TDI diesel won green car of the year.

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - A clean-burning diesel sedan, Volkswagen AG's Jetta TDI, won the "Green Car of the Year" award at the Los Angeles auto show on Thursday, the first time a diesel-powered car has taken the industry's top environmental honor.

"This signals that clean diesel has arrived," said Ron Cogan, editor of Green Car Journal, the trade magazine that awards the prize.

Diesel, a conventional combustion approach long favored by Europeans, has been making inroads into the U.S. market as a here-and-now option to make engines run more economically and pollute less.

It gets 41 mpg. Here is a picture. This guy has modified his for corn oil and claims 55 mpg.

Good News

Waxman defeats Dingell for House Energy and Commerce Committee. Good news for the environment. Look at this list of their supporters and see who is owned by oil and coal. Now something can get done about global warming.

College

Movie Reviews

Consequences

No one will shake Bushes hand. He is not liked! It could not have happened to a more deserving ass.

Skull Found!

I have never found anything very interesting in my hikes and I would like to keep it that way.

As George Garrigues hiked Tuesday through the Frazier Park hills with Poppy, his dachshund-Chihuahua mix, his dog started sniffing at something in the brush.

The 67-year-old retired journalist and professor has lived in Lake of the Woods for three months and said he likes to hike near his home on the 7000 block of Ivins Drive. He decided to take a new route this time, about a half-mile north of his home, he said.

“It looked like a rock, a stone,” Garrigues said. “I turned it over with my foot and saw it was a skull.”

It is possible that the remains belong to a lady who went missing earlier this year.

According to The Mountain Enterprise newspaper, 48-year-old Brenda Melech disappeared May 13. Forensic tests will be performed Thursday.

My condolences to her friends and family.

A Gift Of Eggs

Someone has been leaving eggs on, The Slow Cook, Ed Bruske's door step. It reminded me of some Pacific Crest Trail magic.

I was walking along the trail minding my own business, and I see my buddy K-Too standing in the middle of a dirt road staring at a carton of eggs, that he is holding in both hands. So, I asked what he had. He looked at me and told me this story.

He said some guy happened to be driving by in a truck pulling a camper. He just stopped and told me he had something for me. The guy went into the trailer and handed me a dozen eggs. Got back in his truck and drove off before he new what happened.

We sat on the side of the road scrambled them up with some cheese. Put them on bagels and served them with hunger sauce. Man were they a nice treat!

Ample Celebration

Ample Celebration, originally uploaded by jayinvienna.

It is getting to be Celebration across the nation time. It appears that Sierra Nevada has added a new beer to its year round collection. Sierra Nevada Torpedo Extra Ale can't wait to try it!

Bush Hates You And Your Parks

Bush is working hard to pollute the country on his way out.

The Environmental Protection Agency is finalizing new air-quality rules that would make it easier to build coal-fired power plants, oil refineries and other major polluters near national parks and wilderness areas, even though half of the EPA's 10 regional administrators formally dissented from the decision and four others criticized the move in writing.

Documents obtained by The Washington Post show that the administration's push to weaken Clean Air Act protections for "Class 1 areas" nationwide has sparked fierce resistance from senior agency officials. All but two of the regional administrators objecting to the proposed rule are political appointees.

The proposal would change the practice of measuring pollution levels near national parks, which is currently done over three-hour and 24-hour increments to capture emission spikes during periods of peak energy demand; instead, the levels would be averaged over a year. Under this system, spikes in pollution would no longer violate the law.

Coal plants are worse than nuclear plants.

Via Warren Street at They gave us a republic.

Body Found

In Northern New York.

Authorities in New York state have discovered remains they believe might be those of a Camarillo man missing since last month.

Fred Gillingham, 72, disappeared while hiking in the Adirondack Park Preserve in northern New York. He was reported missing Oct. 15.

A hunter found human remains near Rock River in the preserve Monday afternoon, according to a statement released by David Winchell, spokesman for the New York Department of Environmental Conservation. The agency had conducted a search for Gillingham in the weeks following his disappearance.

My condolences to his friends and family.

Have Athletes Foot Fungus?

It is hard when backpacking to keep your foot hygiene up. Fortunately Chile's copper industry is working on the answer.

"In clothes there is another venue ... where it has excellent anti-fungus qualities," he said.

Codelco is already working with the private sector to market socks, towels, pillow cases and even underwear sewn with copper fibers that fight fungi and even help combat acne.

Don't know how copper socks will feel but it might be worth a try.

Big Agra VS Food Security

James Surowiecki of the New Yorker has good article about the food supply.

This spring, disaster loomed in the global food market. Precipitous increases in the prices of staples like rice (up more than a hundred and fifty per cent in a few months) and maize provoked food riots, toppled governments, and threatened the lives of tens of millions. But the bursting of the commodity bubble eased those pressures, and food prices, while still high, have come well off the astronomical levels they hit in April. For Americans, the drop in commodity prices has put a few more bucks in people’s pockets; in much of the developing world, it may have saved many from actually starving. So did the global financial crisis solve the global food crisis?

The World Bank and the IMF worked to get developing countries to abandon staple crops that could be bought cheaply for export crops that would give farmers more money. The market was more efficient than the governments or so the arguments go. But if there is severe drought in one or two parts of the world, people could starve everywhere.

These changes did not cause the rising prices of the past couple of years, but they have made them more damaging. The old emphasis on food security was undoubtedly costly, and often wasteful. But the redundancies it created also had tremendous value when things went wrong. And one sure thing about a system as complex as agriculture is that things will go wrong, often with devastating consequences. If the just-in-time system for producing cars runs into a hitch and the supply of cars shrinks for a while, people can easily adapt. When the same happens with food, people go hungry or even starve. That doesn’t mean that we need to embrace price controls or collective farms, and there are sensible market reforms, like doing away with import tariffs, that would make developing-country consumers better off. But a few weeks ago Bill Clinton, no enemy of market reform, got it right when he said that we should help countries achieve “maximum agricultural self-sufficiency.” Instead of a more efficient system, we should be trying to build a more reliable one. ♦

We need to start working on local food security here in the United States.

Things That You Do Not Need

A new twist on the treadmill. A treadmill on wheels. Because it is no fun to walk in place, walk in place while moving. For those people that love their treadmill so much they want to take it with them.