Wave of Relief in Japan

Hundreds of thousands of people evacuated the eastern coast of Japan yesterday in advance of predicted tsunamis. Powerful waves were anticipated, produced by the massive earthquake that struck Chile, on the other side of the Pacific.  Japan, always attentive to seismic events, had just been struck by a strong temblor of its own in the Ryukyu Islands, near Okinawa.

Relieved officials of Japan’s Meteorological Agency issued a downgraded tsunami alert Sunday evening after the waves were milder than expected. Officials cautioned that tidal swells of up to 6 feet were still possible. NOAA’s Pacific Tsunami Warning Center had cancelled a similar warning for Hawaii, where initial seismic-reaction waves reached about 3 feet tall.

 

Image (“The Great Wipeout Off Kanagawa, after Hokusai”) by Mike Licht. Download a copy here. Creative Commons license; credit Mike Licht, NotionsCapital.com

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Blogs with Bite

Blogs with Bite is an occasional omnivorous sampling of food blogs and sites we find particularly tasty. Follow the trail of bread crumbs back to earlier editions, starting here.

Here’s a fresh serving of Blogs with Bite:

Plate of the Day – Daily recipes of outstanding interest from New York’s Simon Dang.

Cooking With Kangaroo –  “Kangaroo meat is used by some of the worlds best restaurants ….”  Recipes from the Kangaroo Industry Association of Australia.

18thC Cuisine  – 18th century French cuisine “as a habitante in Nouvelle France may have cooked.” Carolyn Smith-Kizer re-enacts history in the kitchen and blogs about it, with recipes.

Kopiaste  — Ivy Liacopoulou welcomes you into her kitchen for Greek, Cypriot, and international recipes.

Cooking Gadgets  — Flatbed toaster. Adjustable rolling pin. Salad dressing mixer. Dry ice maker. All this plus Cyndi Lavin’s recipes.

Pizza Today – ”#1 Magazine of the Pizza Industry.”

Kumquat Recipes — Kumquat Growers, Inc. of Dade City, Florida provides 41 recipes and answers that age-old question, “What is a kumquat?”

The African Cookbook – Selected recipes from Bea Sandler’s 1993 compilation, via the University of Pennsylvania African Studies Department.

Food Moulds – The website of noted culinary historian and educator Ivan Day displays historic food molding devices, dishes made with them, and associated recipes. There are additional period recipes, sugar sculptures, and table settings from museum exhibitions curated by Mr. Day.

My Colombian Recipes –  Columbian cooking; good notes about ingredients.

So Good – Jon Eick blogs about food marketing and the kind of foods that get “marketed.”  Hilarity prevails.

Hungry For Change –  ”Posts on genetic engineering, school nutrition, pesticides, urban farms, and more.”

Edible Black History

Rice (Oryza sativa)

Calas (pronounced ca-LA) are fritters made from cooked rice and flour. They were sold in the streets of New Orleans by vendors, women of color, often slaves (who had Sundays free), and remained part of old-time home cooking for many Gulf Coast families of African descent.  The recipe may have been modified in the New World, but the term and concept are said to have been brought to Louisiana by slaves from Ghana.

End of the Road for Hummer?

General Motors’ agreement to sell its Hummer division to China’s Sichuan Tengzhong Heavy Industrial Machinery company turned into a Great Leap to Nowhere — the deal fell through. Now GM (owned in part by the American Taxpayer) is set to let the giant SUV drive off into the sunset. Only 9,000 of the beasts were sold last year, so Hummer plants are scheduled to shut down, putting 3,000 U.S. employees out of work.

No Recession on Wall Street

Bonuses for employees of Wall Street financial firms were up at least 17 percent in 2009. You remember 2009 — TARP, unemployment, foreclosures and all that (so tiresome).

More:

Market Watch: “Wall St. bonuses climbed 17% to $20.3 billion in 2009.”

New York Times DealBook: “The Big Money’s Back in Town.”

Viet Nam Vet Murdered by Terrorist

A terrorist crashed a small aircraft into a Texas office building last Thursday, killing Vernon Hunter, age 68,  a civil servant.  Mr. Hunter served 20 years in the United States Army, including two tours of duty in Vietnam. He was a father and grandfather, an usher at Austin’s Greater Mount Zion Baptist Church. His wife, a co-worker, was in the burning building when he died. 

Many public figures were too busy praising the killer as a “hero” to mourn Mr. Hunter’s passing.

 

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Conservatives Vote for Ron Paul

Reporters called the 2010 Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) a “conservative convention.” Perhaps this reflects the recent Supreme Court ruling giving corporations the political rights of flesh-and-blood citizens.  Certainly CPAC’s big funders include entrenched corporate entities that import and refine oil and profit from the legislative obstructionism ACU and CPAC generate.

It’s Sweeping the Olympics!

The gleaming ice! The competition! The … brooms?

Curling, king of winter sports. Don’t miss the 2010 Winter Olympics action.

Remember: Curling takes big stones.

 

Image by Mike Licht. Download a copy here. Creative Commons license; credit Mike Licht, NotionsCapital.com

Comments are welcome if they are on-topic, substantive, concise, and not boring or obscene. Comments may be edited for clarity and length.

Tiger Woods Gets a Rise Out of the Stock Market

Disgraced golfer Tiger Woods danced his “heavily-choreographed apology” for adultery on TV and the stock market rose, notes the Wall Street Journal.

While correlation is not causation and past results do not guarantee future performance, this is The Year of the Tiger.

Image (“Tiger Woods’ New Logo”) by Mike Licht. Download a copy here. Creative Commons license; credit Mike Licht, NotionsCapital.com

Comments are welcome if they are on-topic, substantive, concise, and not boring or obscene. Comments may be edited for clarity and length.

Report Indicts DC Council Earmarks

It’s not called “All About Barry.”  The report by Robert S. Bennett  and Amy R. Sabrin is entitled ”Council of the District of Columbia Contracts and Grants.”  Among the findings:

In the view of Special Counsel, the current form of Council earmarking is not a sound method for appropriating public funds. It effectively permits each Member to designate individual programs for funding on an ad hoc basis without prudently establishing spending priorities. Council Members, moreover, are understandably not equipped to fully and carefully vet individual grantees, and the legislative “logrolling” inherent in the earmark appropriations process inhibits thorough scrutiny of proposed grant recipients. The informal method by which grantees are selected clearly does not ensure that public funds go to the best or most effective organizations to deliver the intended services or accomplish the stated goals of the grant.