Category: the value of X

This summer has been bountiful for fruit trees around town. Where we had millions of blossoms a few months ago, now we have apples dropping to the street everywhere you look.

I took advantage of one such windfall myself. I pass a vacant — for sale — house every day that has a huge crop of bright red apples, and today I pulled into the driveway and filled a mesh shopping bag in a few minutes. Probably got 10 pounds or more, all fine, no worm holes or coddling moths.

Got ’em home and realized peeling them was going to be a chore, so I put out a WANTED notice on FreeCycle for one of those hand-crank peeler/corers.

Wonder of wonders, someone loaned me one, and I quickly prepared 6-8 apples, with some tasting help from my staff. I have to say, those things are pretty amazing. Once you get the peeling blade setup, it makes short work of an apple. You end up with a beautiful spiral cut apple, ready to chop or whathaveyou. Might not be a bad purchase.

Made a crust — always a hit or miss proposition for me — and after the requisite chill time, then rolling/cutting/assembly, the whole affair just came out of the oven.

Smells awfully good and will make a fine breakfast. I suspect I didn’t put enough filling, but it’s not like I won’t have another chance. And another chance to make a crust will be welcome.

And if you think you are looking at a similar waste of good fruit, you may be permitted, if not entitled to save them from rot/rats, etc. I am not a lawyer, but the principle of usufruct deals with this: Latinate readers will note the roots of “use” and “fruit” in there, so this is quite germane.

I think I may get The Large Cafe Shoulder Bag by TOM BIHN

While Timbuk2 may come in for another look.

Thanks for the suggestions. Of course, as soon as I buy one, the lost one will turn up.

I have been fooling with this off and on for a while now, but with a family camping trip coming up next week, the pressure has been turned up a notch.

I got it working tonight: the test photo below shows it takes serviceable, if unflattering, pictures.

It’s actually a lot easier than it was back in the olden days (2004 or so). Now, you simply unlock the camera with software tools (read here for details), figure out a way to connect it to your computer (I am soldering USB type B receptables to mine: free samples from Molex), install the drivers of your choice (RadioShack), and you’re done. On the Mac, iPhoto will even recognize and manage the camera as if it were a much shinier one.

I’m relieved.

1. Sweet Little Lisa / Dave Edmunds / Repeat When Necessary
2. Satellite (Demo) / Elvis Costello / Spike Bonus Disc
3. Starless / King Crimson / Red
4. All The Madmen / David Bowie / The Man Who Sold The World
5. Veronica / Elvis Costello / The Very Best Of Elvis Costello (Disc 1)
6. Solid Rock / Dire Straits / Making Movies
7. Part Past Part Fiction / The Chills / Submarine Bells
8. Does This Bus Stop At 82nd Street? / Bruce Springsteen / Greetings From Asbury Park, N.J.
9. Stomping Grounds / Béla Fleck & The Flecktones / Live Art (Disc 1)
10. Souljacker, Part II / Eels / Souljacker
11. Vix 9 / Béla Fleck & The Flecktones / Live Art (Disc 1)

Continue reading “Friday not-so-Random Ten”

ABC News: Veg or Non-Veg? in Bombay, It Matters:

“It’s just not fair. It’s a monopoly by vegetarians,” said Kiran Talwar, 49, a prosthetics engineer who has seen vegetarianism take over restaurants and groceries all over his childhood neighborhood on posh Nepeansea Road.

“If you step out to eat, there’s nothing for miles because everything around is veggie,” he said. [link]

I’m sympathetic, actually. Having been a true omnivore, I’m inclined to let others be themselves. I get tired of vegetarians/vegans being accused of zealotry and intolerance when I read comments like this:

That’s just a sample of the sanctimonious writing that fills this book, perfect for gratifying your ego if you’re vegan, or making you laugh a lot if you’re not.

Some of the various definitions might apply to the kind of person who makes comments like the above.

Might be time to dump this feed: it was about food when I subscribed, now it seems to be all commentary.

some new pictures on Flickr. A bad run of luck on some of these, for technical reasons. 

This was a Holga shot: dig that vignetting. I’m sure the next generation of digital cameras will offer a vignette setting. 

laugh all you want, East Coasters, but remember we don’t have household air-conditioning (we’d only need it 4-5 days a year). But when it gets hot, it’s pretty uncomfortable.

Current Watches, Warnings and Advisories for Washington Issued by the National Weather Service:

Excessive Heat Warning
Seattle Bremerton Area (Washington)

URGENT – WEATHER MESSAGE
NATIONAL WEATHER SERVICE SEATTLE WA
214 PM PDT FRI JUL 21 2006
WAZ505-507>509-221200-
/O.CON.KSEW.EH.W.0001.000000T0000Z-060723T0600Z/
/O.CON.KSEW.AS.Y.0002.000000T0000Z-060723T0600Z/
EAST PUGET SOUND LOWLANDS-EVERETT AND VICINITY-
SEATTLE/BREMERTON AREA-TACOMA AREA-
214 PM PDT FRI JUL 21 2006
…EXCESSIVE HEAT WARNING REMAINS IN EFFECT UNTIL 11 PM PDT
SATURDAY…
…AIR STAGNATION ADVISORY REMAINS IN EFFECT UNTIL 11 PM PDT
SATURDAY…
SATURDAY WILL BE ANOTHER HOT DAY WITH TEMPERATURES AROUND 90.
OVERNIGHT LOWS WILL COOL ONLY INTO THE MID 60S IN SOME AREAS.
FRIDAY AND SATURDAY WILL BE THE HOTTEST DAYS OF THE YEAR SO FAR.
AN EXCESSIVE HEAT WARNING MEANS THAT A PROLONGED PERIOD OF HOT
WEATHER WILL OCCUR. DRINK PLENTY OF FLUIDS…AVOID OVER-EXERTION…AND
CHECK ON RELATIVES AND NEIGHBORS. DO NOT LEAVE CHILDREN OR PETS
IN THE VEHICLES…EVEN FOR JUST A FEW MINUTES.
IN ADDITION TO THE HEAT…AN AIR STAGNATION ADVISORY IS IN EFFECT
THROUGH SATURDAY EVENING. CLEAR SKIES AND LIGHT WINDS OVERNIGHT
WILL CREATE A TEMPERATURE INVERSION…LIMITING DISPERSION OF
POLLUTANTS. CHECK WITH THE PUGET SOUND CLEAN AIR AGENCY FOR FURTHER
INFORMATION.
AN AIR STAGNATION ADVISORY IS BASED ON WEATHER CONDITIONS. IT IS
NOT AN AIR POLLUTION ADVISORY OR FORECAST. AIR POLLUTION
ADVISORIES AND FORECASTS ARE ISSUED BY AIR QUALITY AGENCIES.
$$

Pushing the water is not a problem: I have quaffed three 16oz glasses in the last hour or so and sweated out at least one.

Two headlines from the Independent:

The second one mentions something that deserves more attention. The hidden costs of airlifting out of season fruit (do we really need Chilean raspberries in February?) will have to be made good at some point: some say they already are.

Nieman Watchdog > Commentary > Speculators – not supply and demand – are to blame for skyrocketing gas prices:

What we are left with is the possibility that out of the $70 price for a barrel of oil about $20 can be accounted for by speculation. This brings us to the most important part of the report: We need to know more.

Until quite recently trading on futures markets was regulated by the CFTC. Trades on regulated markets are subject to reporting requirements. Traders are required to report large trades to the CFTC, which has the responsibility of limiting excessive speculation. However, concurrent with the dramatic increase in speculative trading of energy futures, there has been a shift of this trading to unregulated commodity exchanges.

Essentially this shift is the result of an exemption written into the Commodity Futures Modernization Act of 2000 at the behest of Enron. Perhaps more important is the announcement by the Intercontinental Exchange that it would permit traders to use its terminals in the United States to trade futures contracts for crude oil, gasoline, and heating oil produced and delivered in the U.S. on its ICE Futures exchange in London.

In effect, American traders can completely circumvent all U.S. regulation, including reporting requirements, by simply routing their transactions through London. It is important to understand that the CFTC’s large trader reporting requirement is the Commission’s primary tool for preventing market manipulation. The recent charges against BP for manipulation of the propane market appears to involve activity on the over-the-counter-market. Apparently it was part of BP’s strategy to use the unregulated market, where it could avoid making reports and could expect no surveillance.

Not sure how accurate it is to say that speculation is to blame. It looks like a trailing indicator, if the price before speculation went from $20 to $50. Good old-fashioned gouging is still a possibility, of course.

This chart shows the nominal and adjusted prices of a barrel of crude from 1865 onward. A history of OPEC and their control of the market since the early 70s might shed some light on why the prices get so wild after 1975.