Summer fun food and drink - a burning in Seattle · Monday September 15, 2008 by colin newell
Attended Seattle Coffee fest this weekend – overall it was a great time and I will have a much larger report on it shortly.
My rant is on the current issue with the new bio-eco friendly coffee and tea to-go cups that are appearing in cafes everywhere.
What happened was this: My wife and I were in a Bakery in Seattle and while Andrea was preparing her cup of Tea, the Eco-friendly cup collapsed in her hand splashing her with water just off the boil!
Angry I was yes. Frustrated indeed.
We immediately got ice on it and kept it iced for almost 3 hours and she did not need a hospital visit.
Ok. I know all about all the law suits over coffee and take out cups. It is old news. The real issue are these new eco friendly and biodegradable “paper” cups that collapse when you breathe on them… or start to biodegrade the moment the product is poured into them.
My wife dodged a bullet. Many people will not be dodging this bullet and there needs to be more testing of these new eco-friendly products.
Ironically, a gentleman at the next table came over and offered: “I saw the whole thing…” (me now thinking he is a lawyer…) and he turned his hand over revealing a massive weeping scald blister from when he burned his hand a week earlier in the same bakery.
Bakeries and cafes: Get with the program and stop putting your customers at risk!
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Summer food fun and drink - Who wouldn't enjoy a coffee scrub · Friday August 29, 2008 by colin newell
I enjoy a good cup of coffee from time to time. Ok. Every day. Sometimes several times a day.
I also enjoy a good shower once a day. Ok. Sometimes more than once a day… depends on what is going on.
And when it hit me… the water from the shower head that is. It occurred to me, that if I could combine these two simple pleasures somehow, I could save a step or two in the average persons day.
So I tried combining a coffee maker with a shower head… and then I tried pouring hot coffee on my body… that didn’t work very well. And I tried actually drinking my black coffee while showering… and the coffee was diluted.
Looking around the shower room for ideas… I spotted the soap… in the tub… in front of me. As I stepped forward, onto it… and slipping… it hit me… the back of the tub. After I died, I figured, that had I added the coffee to the soap or a sudsing scrub… an exfoliating product would have resulted that would fit my requirements perfectly; it is an exfoliant scrub, it sudses and it has coffee in it. Perfect.
Before I gasped my last breath, I passed along my idea to a friend who produces wonderful soaps and lotions – and here it is. Check it out. Buy some. I would have wanted it that way.
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Summer fun food and drink - Breastfeeding in the upside down Universe · Thursday August 7, 2008 by colin newell
If you watch as much TV as I do (and it isn’t really that much…), what do you see?
Murder, mayhem, carnage, chaos, sadness, hunger, and death…
And that’s just what’s on Food TV’s popular, Chef Ramsay.
Tune around ABC, NBC, CBS or Fox… and CNN and you are assured of seeing a never ending body-count; kidnapping, gun shot fatalities, homicide, serial killers… all in mind boggling detail.
And yet when a woman feeds her baby, in public no less, the reaction from the surrounding public can vary from casual indifference to self-righteous indignation and utter contempt.
I mean, I would understand someone reacting with unbridled horror and revulsion if I pulled a Canada goose out of a giant paper bag and slit its throat with a K-Bar knife, tossing it onto a Hibachi on a busy street corner and serving it up with a tossed salad. That I would understand. A Canada goose, after all, is a sacred creature.
Breastfeeding, next to stopping at Starbuck’s for a double-tall decaf latte, is one of natures original methods of infant nourishment. So what is the big deal? Sure, breasts are sexualized on women – so what? It takes a deeply disturbed psyche to be perturbed by a new mom and her un-weaned young’in taking in a few dozen sips of Planet Earth’s first beverage.
So. It is with no surprise to me whatsoever that protests are popping up (or out) all over the place – At the H&M Store in Vancouver for example, where a young Mom was hustled into the back of the store by a brace of apoplectic staffers – shortly thereafter a coven of lactating mom’s showed up for a protest or circle squirt of sorts. God bless ‘em!
And Hey – Having worked at a University for over 20 years seeing virtually every square inch of male or female flesh exposed (especially this time of year…) all I can say (or feel) now when I see a mom and baby feeding is: “There is a happy baby and at least it isn’t crying…”
Maybe these weird folk suffering from breast aversion need to spend some flying from here to there on a jumbo jet filled with implacable babies screaming their heads off – if only to appreciate the simple joy, simplicity and honesty of that one moment – One mom, one breast, one baby… in perfect harmony and silence.
Summer fun food and drink - vacation from sunspots · Saturday August 2, 2008 by colin newell
I am starting a 3 week vacation today and we are pretty much playing it by ear. We are, quite literally, in the dark about what we are doing… where we are going exactly.
I would tell you if I knew. But I don’t. So I cannot.
What did cross my mind today (am I am talking quite extemporaneously now…) was that people who do things at the last minute are the bane of security hawks very existence. What do I mean by that you ask?
Well. Did you know that there are cruises line in the U.S. that (choose to) report every single guest they are going to have on their cruise to the F.B.I. and/or homeland security. Not every cruise line does this. It means that before you hit the lido deck on Day one of your Caribbean cruise, the men in black are aware of your location – right down to the GPS location of the ship.
Not me though. And it got me thinking again: What if I dropped into WestJet.ca or AirCanada.ca and picked up a flight… for say… tomorrow morning? I mean, there have to be empty seats on planes all over the place. Or what if I decide to fly to London, England… like… tomorrow? Would that not upset some security suit somewhere. I mean, that whole not knowing where I am at any given moment can quite literally drive someone out there… mad. Mad I tell you… Mad.
Next item. Sun spots. No, not age spots. Sun spots.
I have been a radio guy since 1971… when I was young. Very young. I will keep it simple and say Ham radio – which for the purposes of this entry is the suitable term. Most people know what Ham radio is… so I can skip the long definition.
Anyway. I have been observing all the neat science things that are needed to make this hobby work… for 38 years. And the primary thing that makes Ham radio work… and the ability to talk to and listen to radio signals from around the globe (without the internet folks!) are sunspots. Sunspots. Not age spots. Sun spots.
Sun spots come and go. They generate some of the forms of solar radiation that energize the Earth’s ionosphere – that allow radio signals to bounce around – like at night time when you listen to San Francisco from your cabin in Anchorage Alaska. Most people have noticed that AM radio signals carry a lot further at night then it does during the day. Conversely, FM radio rarely skips. It does more often than people realize… but that is another medium.
Photo above – a recent picture of the Sun which should be festooned with at least one big Sun spot. Instead, nothing.
Long story short: Sun spots go through cycles of intensity that last 11 years. And these Cycles have been going on without interruption for hundreds and hundreds of years… thousands of years… since the beginning.
Uhm. With some exceptions. Like the 17th and 18th century. When there were, how can I put this… mini ice-ages. Doldrums. Periods when there were no Sun spots for several decades at a time. Triggering brief global Ice-ages. Albeit Small ones. It effected the whole planet. Normally moderate climates like the one they have in London, England — In the 1700’s, the Thames River would freeze up solid 3 weeks of the year… year after year… for about 20 years.
Like I said: I have been observing solar cycles for 38 years. And something is amiss. But there is no immediate cause for alarm… like not in the next week or so anyway.
To a geophysicist or a radio science guy like me, being told that a Solar cycle is not starting is kind of like being 21 again and having your girlfriend tell you she’s late.
If you get my drift. It is a scenario that has long term consequences. That are almost immediate – once it’s confirmed.
We have just concluded Solar Cycle 23 and Solar Cycle 24 was supposed to start… a year ago.
So listen up. The term Solar Cycle 24 could very well become a household phrase over the next 6 months. In some ways, it could be coming at a good time… and at a very bad time.
Do yourself: Google Solar Cycle 24 right now. And strap yourself in for an interesting ride. More scholarly reading here
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