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The most recent issue of Fine Cooking has an excellent article by Deborah Madison on the mighty avocado. We immediately zeroed in on these two recipes for summer-y avocado salads, a sure cure for our winter woes!

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Q: I would like to find a kitchen soap dispenser that doesn’t involve pushing a button or using pressure from your hands or fingers to get the soap to come out. I have arthritis in my hands and the button types are too hard for me to use.

My previous one (Libman) was about 5″ tall, stood upright, soap came out of the brushhead, which unscrewed to put the soap in, and had a rubber gasket inside with slits that kept the soap from coming out too fast. It appears to have been discontinued now. If anyone knows of something similar that doesn’t require pressure from your fingers or hands, I would appreciate it.

Sent by Joan

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Giles Parkinson has an article on market troubles for the Australian cleantech industry – Cleantech Outfits Are Having A Rough Time.

Since outperforming both the benchmark S&P/ASX 200 and the S&P/ASX Small Ords indices in 2007, the 75 companies that make up the ACT Australian CleanTech Index (once valued at $16 billion but now worth $10bn) have seriously underperformed those broader indices in each of the 2008, 2009 and 2010 first-half financial years. Essentially, the index fell harder than the rest of the market and recovered less.

Now it’s falling again. Figures for December show the CleanTech Index down 6.2 per cent for the month, compared with 1.7 per cent gains in the broader index and a 3.8 per cent gain in the small caps. …

The index and its components are also vulnerable to the vagaries of government policy.

The December slump coincided with the defeat of the emissions trading legislation and disappointment in Copenhagen, which hit carbon offset stocks such as Carbon Conscious and CO2, and the allocation of renewable energy grants.

Those that missed out, including Carnegie Wave and Kuth Energy, were among the hardest hit. Solar PV installers such as Quantum Energy went on a roller-coaster ride that pretty much followed government policy.

Companies such as Jackgreen went into administration, while others, such as Geodynamics, slumped after nearly sending its board of directors into orbit with a blowout at its flagship well.

The best performer for the past month was solar cell innovator Dyesol. Biodegradable packing group Pro-Pac Packaging was the best performer for the latest quarter, while biodegradable nappies producer Eco Quest was the best performer for the half, trebling its share price, mostly in the first quarter.

It’s hard to read any trend in the various components of the cleantech index. Solar, which performed well in the 2007 fiscal year and last year, underperformed in 2008 and so far this year, while wind, which boomed in 2007 but fared poorly in 2008 and last year, has performed better so far this year, as have the energy efficiency, geothermal and environmental services sub-indices.

Perhaps they could be neatly plotted against a graph highlighting policy hope, policy promises, and policy delivery over the same period. O’Brien says the volatility highlights the relatively immaturity of listed stocks in the area.

Now, I’m not trying to be rude (no R. Kelly), but there are too many classes at Stanford. It is absolutely impossible to keep track of all these things. That is why I, your intrepid columnist, am here to review this quarter’s worst classes (and a few good ones). The findings here are, as always, scientific and not to be questioned.

ARTHIST 414–Italian Mannersim (Morten Hansen, 5 units)

Now, I don’t really know what this class is about, or really whether it will answer “questions of the bella maniera, anti-classicism, and center and periphery in mannerist art in light of developments in scholarship from the 70s to the present.” But the fact that it has a typo in its name (seriously — check anywhere) should disqualify it.

PWR 1–Post-Feminism, Post-Race: Gender in the Age of Obama (Dana Carluccio, 4 units)

Students: do not encourage this. If this class turns out to be popular, every other class will be “Organic Chemistry in the Age of Obama,” “Private Lives, Public Stories About Barack Obama: Autobiographies in Women’s History” and “Ancient Journeys, Modern Quests with Barack Obama.”

CHINLANG 11–Beginning Southern Min (Taiwanese) Conversation (Lin, 2 units)/TIBETLNG  –First Year Tibetan (Clark, 3 units)

It really is time for these to be conquered by a Chinese language class.

SURG 230–Obesity in America (Woodard and Morton, 1 unit)

Should we be concerned that the solutions to “Obesity in America” lie in the Surgery department? The course description advertises, “Lunch provided.” If you are teaching a course about how fat everyone is, that takes one hour once a week, it shouldn’t have a lunch break.

SURG 69Q–It’s All in the Head: Understanding Diversity, Development, and Deformities of the Face (Helms & Brugman, 3-4 units)

This one wins the coveted “Least Appropriate Pun” award, dethroning last year’s winner, “Suck On This: An Oral History of Hard Candy in America.”

CEE 268–Groundwater Flow (Kitanidis, 3-4 units)

I’m still mad at these guys for stealing the name of my eco-conscious spoken word poetry collective.

COMPMED 103–Horse Medicine (Green, 2 units)

This is replacing the much less popular class offered last year entitled “Glue and Jell-o: How to Deal with an Unhealthy Horse Old Yeller-style.”

GSBGEN 315 — Strategic Communication (Schramm, 4 units)

When your class has a 300-word description concluding with the sentence “More details provided in the syllabus,” you are demonstrably unable to teach a class called “Strategic Communication.”

GSBGEN 34 –The Economics of Higher Education (Bettinger, 4 units)

There is only one session for this class. The professor arrives to class in a stretch limo, wearing a mink coat, coated in diamonds and platinum necklaces, walks up to the microphone, yells, “Suckas!” and leaves you with a newfound appreciation for the economics of higher education.

HISTORY 231S–Early Modern Things (Findlen, 4-5 units)

Part 2 of a two-part sequence with Late Antique Stuff.

HUMBIO 87Q–Women and Aging (Winograd, 5 units)

Proposed subtitle: “The Cougar Hunt.”

MUSIC 80T–Jewish Music in the Lands of Islam (Tchamni, 4 units)

Also known as “Shhh . . . keep that racket down, they’re going to hear us.”

PSYCH 146–Observation of Children (Lomangino & Hartman, 3-5 units)

Ladies and gentlemen, the creepiest class of the quarter.

PSYCH 266–Current Debates in Learning and Memory (Wagner, 1-3 units)

This would be a better class if the professor could remember any of the older debates in learning and memory.

PHYSICS 16–Cosmic Horizons (Romani, 3 units)

No Enchanted Broccoli Forest.

But that’s not all there is. In fact, there are a few worthwhile classes. Here is that list in its entirety:

ARTSTUDI 80–Color (Edmark, 3-4 units)

Feel the excitement.

FEMST 188N — Imagining Women: Writers in Print and in Person (Miner, 4 units)

Finally, a class in the feminist studies department where you are encouraged to have fantasies about women. Approve!

GEOPHYS 60N — Man versus Nature: Coping with Disasters Using Space Technology (Zebker, 4 units)

Screw coexisting! Enough with all this pro-environment bias in the curriculum — finally a class that has the balls to try to teach us how to defeat nature.

CLASSGEN 205B–The Semantics of Grammar (Devine, 2 units)

You’re probably thinking, “This sounds boring . . . grammar is boring — why should I care?” How about because the professor enters class on a zipline shouting, “Are you ready to learn about some grammar?!?!” into a megaphone, while the class mascot (that’s right, it has a mascot) the Conju-Gator fires off a T-shirt cannon? You will be excited by the passive voice.

Q: Counter space is so coveted in our house and both my husband and I hate the look of a utensil caddy filled with all our tongs and spatulas and ladles. Are there any creative ways to store commonly used utensils without cramming them all in jars on the counter but still keep them handy and easily accessible?

Sent by Jessica

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Mel Gibson, who split from his wife of 30 years last winter, is speaking out to offer words of encouragement to defamed golf star Tiger Woods.

The actor/director is now living with 39-year-old Russian singer Oksana Grigorieva – the mother of his 2-month-old eighth child, Lucia.

“Nobody is without sin,” Mel told The Daily Mail this week. “I did a pretty good hatchet job on my marriage,” he confessed.

His advice to Tiger: “You have to try to make amends if you can. You have to shut up and move on and not whine about it. And you have to deal with it like a man.”

Rust is a chemical reaction to  the surfaces of iron and steel becoming damp.  When iron and steel get wet, the surface reacts with oxygen in the air and the water (usually rainfall).  An acid is then formed by dirt and dust mixing with the chemical reaction caused by dampness and this acid eats away at the steel and iron, thus creating rust.

Justin March

The best way to get rid of rust is to try and stop it from forming in the first place.  To prevent rust iron or steel should be painted as soon as it looks a little tired and faded.  This should be done by removing any grease from the surface with white spirit, then applying a metal primer and finally a gloss paint or one designed for steel or iron.

If rust has formed then sand it down using sandpaper or a wire brush and then paint using the techniques indicated above.  But prior to painting make sure all rust is removed.

Following a 2009 when the German carmaker flooded the market with countless releases, 2010 promises to be even more action-packed for the Wolfsburg manufacturer. The year-opener for the carmaker was chosen to be the new compact coupe car which will be unveiled later today at the 2010 North American International Auto Show (NAIAS) in Detroit.

The New Compact Coupe (we hope this is just a provisional name) is a hybrid vehicle powered by a TSI gasoline-engine and an electric motor. … (read more)

Q: Hi! My fiance and I just (mostly) finished a year long kitchen renovation, and are starting to cook again.

Now, here’s the thing: I want to make my own chicken stock, but neither of us really like white meat. Roasting a chicken is actually sort of a waste for us. Can you make chicken stock with just bones and shreds of meat from roasted drumsticks and thighs? Or does it totally botch the flavor? Do you really need a whole carcass?

Sent by Christine

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Computers make our lives so much easier in so many ways, but there’s one important task they have not yet been able to do: make you coffee in the morning. Well, my lazy computer-addicted friends, that is about to change with the iMac CS.

A gentleman by the name of Klaus Diebel has taken it upon himself to create a computer that makes you coffee. Diebel used the shell of an old iMac and inserted a WMF1 single-cup coffee maker where the screen would be.

The Mac mod also includes a Mac Mini and a JBL Spot sound system so you can listen to beautiful music while sipping your morning joe.

The only downside is that the iMac CS has no monitor. But isn’t that a small price to pay for a fresh cup of coffee?

[via Technabob]

Related posts:

1. How to Make the Best Cup of Coffee on the Cheap
2. What Does Your Computer Desktop Reveal About You?
3. Coffee Laced with Viagra Seized in Malaysia

If I may, I would like to propose a question for you to gnaw on: Who are you? Simple, terse, yet somehow strikingly elegant, these three words underscore the very foundation of student life and culture at Stanford. Allow me to clarify. I am not asking about your hometown, your ethnicity or your sexual preference, though these do tangentially play a role; what I want to know is your freshman dorm, your varsity or club team, your fraternity/sorority, what VSO you currently run and whether you prefer Stern to Lag Late Nite. In short, my inquiry is actually this: Here at the Farm, what is your identity–what set of masks do you wear for the campus to see?

So long as you have not spent the last several contiguous years living here without end, it is a bit difficult to miss the fact that Stanford exists as a bit, oh, how shall we say, disconnected, from the world at large. I am frankly of the opinion that the Stan feels more like some Zimbardian social experiment, whereby a coterie of twisted psych researchers concocted an alternate realm free of traditional social norms and replaced instead with Synergy, STS and the TOTOTTILSJUMB.

What this means for us pampered inmates is that our lives, the paths over which we tread within Campus Drive, are constructions we (the Stanford community, both past and present) have erected with our own hands. Being an ASSU hack has as little (though probably even less) relevance to society than if you are an Uj CTA or Dance Marathon VP of Development, though all three in some respect carry unique implications that we have invested them with here. I am not arguing that your activities and involvements on campus do not matter; rather, that it is easy to overlook the fact that we inhabit a place that exists very much unto itself and with very few parallels elsewhere.

The Stanford life is continually turned on “repeat.” It bears noting that, with a few notable exceptions, we are not special. In fact, we are marginal replications of archetypes that have passed through this place several times over. If you ever get a chance, go through your freshman year scavenger hunt pictures and then track down the albums of Stanford folks both a few years older and younger than you. When photos taken over a half decade apart look identical, the red flags start to arise.

I get the idea of traditions, really. I’m a history major. But we are not talking about traditions. Instead, those experiences and events that as wide-eyed frosh we are almost convinced are unique and special to just us take on a different light when placed beside the realization of their annual repetition for decades. My freshman year RA had a major impact upon my life and my understanding of Stanford, and currently in his old room is a friend of mine who is RA-ing for the same dorm, with frosh popping in for guidance and company and candy, not unlike what this old fool did two long years prior. Such a realization, while not detracting from my memories, certainly provides a new way of looking back at my time here.

Outside of the occasional presidential election, football upset or campus controversy, Stanford culture operates within an unspoken, albeit highly apparent and relatively predictable, set of norms. The arbiter of long-term success for any and all student organizations and activities hinges on the capacity to provide a sustainable model that can be replicated years down the line. I know that I sound like Waldorf and Statler here (if you know the reference, I’ll bring you to Bagel Day), but chances are that whatever wonderful and dynamic activities dictate your Stanford experience have been doing just that for others before you so many more times than any of us want to accept. We are not some massive state school that makes no claim to puffing up our individuality–here we are told that we are special. However, those grand NSO illusions lose their luster at some point.

My aim is to not depress the hell out of the campus or crush any naïve dreams. The winter gloom, our own respective demons, and the Biocore seem to accomplish that far better than I could ever manage. As the Dude would ask, then, “What’s your point Walter?” The acceptance of our own miniscule and ubiquitous roles at Stanford, I contend, is actually beneficial to succeeding and thriving here. When inane and superficial social demarcations are seen to be just that, unexpected characters and opportunities arise. Discarding prevalent campus tropes makes this strange and utterly bizarre place all the more fascinating. In short, it really ties it all together.

Big Green Purse believes the way to drive environmentally friendly products is to spend on them … and use dollars to vote in the marketplace.

" … we believe that the fastest, easiest, most direct route to a clean and healthy environment is to shift our spending to environmentally-safe, socially responsible products and services."

" … Big Green Purse … our focus on women because women spend $.85 of every dollar in the marketplace. That’s a lot of power packed in a purse…… used in a way that can’t be ignored. … encouraging A MILLION WOMEN to shift at least $1,000 of money they already spend for an initial $1 billion Big Green Purse impact. …"

" … saves you time. … found products that are really green (not just "green washed") at prices you can afford … pinpointed goods that are not only green but "fair trade," meaning people are paid a fair wage for their work and no child labor is involved."

Via:  Big Green Purse  LINK

Federal Reserve Board Chairman Ben Bernanke spent most of his speech to the American Economic Association on Jan. 3 responding to the critique that easy monetary policy during 2002-2005 contributed to the housing boom, to excessive risk taking, and thereby to the financial crisis.

Many have expressed the view that monetary policy was too easy during this period. They include editorial writers in this newspaper, former Fed policy makers such as Timothy Geithner (now the secretary of the Treasury), and academics such as business-cycle analyst Robert J. Gordon of Northwestern. But Mr. Bernanke focused most of his time on my research, especially on a well-known policy benchmark commonly known as the Taylor rule.

This rule calls for central banks to increase interest rates by a certain amount when price inflation rises and to decrease interest rates by a certain amount when the economy goes into a recession. My critique, which I presented at the annual Jackson Hole conference for central bankers in the summer of 2007, is based on the simple observation that the Fed’s target for the federal-funds interest rate was well below what the Taylor rule would call for in 2002-2005.

Read the whole story at WSJ.com — >

Join the conversation about this story »

See Also:

• How Bernanke’s Policies In 2009 Created A Permanent, Negative Turning Point For The Dollar
• Sorry Ben Bernanke: Your Inflation Fighting Scheme Won’t Work
• Better Regulation, Not Better Monetary Policy, Is The Key To Preventing Bubbles

Several ways to translate web sites, texts or documents online have emerged in the past few years, with Google Translate probably being the best-known tool. Google’s service is free and works for most quick and dirty translations, but when it comes to delivering truly accurate results, nothing can beat a human translator. In 2008, Google itself toyed with the idea of establishing the so-called Google Translation Center, a marketplace that was supposed to match translators with people who need texts translated.

The concept was shelved later, and now it’s a startup called MyGengo that tries to become the world’s Mechanical Turk for translations. MyGengo offers human translation services between English, Japanese, Chinese, Spanish, Italian and Russian. And it does work much like Amazon’s crowdsourced marketplace: The site’s 600 “certified” translators wait for a customer to upload a document or text and take care of those jobs they can deal with. Customers can choose between three quality and pricing levels and usually get the translations back within a few hours, saving up to 70% in costs when compared to professional translators.

MyGengo says their system makes it possible to accept just about any job size, including those usually denied by traditional translation agencies. Customers can have books, office documents, newspaper articles, blog posts or even tweets translated. (MyGengo itself translates selected English tweets from TechCrunch, Ashton Kutcher and others into Spanish to show how that looks like.)

The service offers two specific solutions for people who need to localize a website or an application: Starting March 2010, an API will speed up the process of requesting the translation of frequently updated content, for example blog posts or comments. Another solution dubbed String lets developers manage all language “strings” of a multilingual website through a dashboard during the localization process. This hosted service will link to the API, but using String by itself is completely free (more background).

Founded in Tokyo in 2008, the startup can count on the support of Silicon Valley-based investor Dave McClure in its efforts to conquer the American market for web-powered translations. McClure, who discovered MyGengo during the previous Geeks on a Plane trip to Japan, decided to make a personal (seed) investment in the company just last week and became an advisor, too.

MyGengo and their new investor are looking at a large market: The language service market as a whole is worth over $14 billion dollars already (MyGengo estimates web-based translations are worth around $3 billion), with some sources predicting it will balloon to $25 billions by 2013. (See this industry report for details).

Crunch Network: CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware.

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So often I wonder if interfaith work can really have the voice I hear. I wonder if it can shed its pathetic refrain of vague, self-congratulatory liberal notions of tolerance. I wonder if, amid the noise and haste of talk-show evangelism and televised extremism, we can discern the more powerful alternative stories: of Mahatma Gandhi and Badshah Khan, of Martin Luther King, Jr. and Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel. I wonder if our silence, our inability to tell these stories as they affect us, cedes the terrain to agents of destruction, who would have only their group dominate and others suffocate.

In truth, I don’t know. Our public discourse on religion is too frequently filled with violence and virulence, endowing the so-called clash of civilizations with the sheen of inevitability. It’s this very uncertainty, however, that urges me to change the conversation from conflict to cooperation. So, I’d like to tell you how I spent the last days of my winter break. The Hindu community in which I was raised bought a new property some two years ago–an old church in the foothills of San Jose. The final day of our new year’s retreat involved a special Vedic fire ceremony to pray for, among other things, spiritual maturity and mutual cooperation with our neighbors: a Polish church that has been particularly warm and welcoming. I love these rarefied rituals: the smells of smoke and mystery and tradition, the joyful liturgical harmony of the priests, the deep sense of the height and glory of this sacrifice. But my favorite part of the day was to hear the following from several attendees, my mother included: “There’s something about this place, this church. People have really prayed here. It’s those blessings that are coming to us.”

For her, the dialogue of religious experience did not simply override cultural boxes; it drew on their deep wells and breathed their spirit across space and time. I don’t think we require some mystical assertion to recognize that, as Gwendolyn Brooks says: We are each other’s magnitude and bond. Like the faith heroes I mentioned, I believe my religious tradition calls me to build mutually enriching relationships with those different from me by working together to serve others. Religious particularity is not only about domination or persecution or political intransigence; it gives us the ability to interrogate ourselves, to take learning seriously, to be surprised and humbled by the fact of existence. I am not interested in apologetics, but in fellowship; not merely in hearing another’s story, but in writing a new chapter together.

This is what I hope Stanford F.A.I.T.H. will begin here: countering violence by confronting the triple threats of racism, economic exploitation and war; countering hatred by advocating for feminist and LGBT rights; countering mistrust by preventing deaths due to malaria. These are concerns that call on the best of our traditions–religious and secular alike–and require us to engage our deepest identities in common action. Please join our weekly meetings: Wednesdays at 7:30 p.m. in the Common Room in the CIRCLE (Third Floor, Old Union). Help us transform interfaith cooperation from an anomaly to a social norm. Every student is a potential interfaith leader. We need only have the words and the heart to act.

– Anand Venkatkrishnan

Co-founder, Faiths Acting in Togetherness and Hope (F.A.I.T.H.)

We have slightly crazy cabinet doors in our old rental kitchen. The hinges must be busted somewhere inside, because as much as we fiddle with them, they never allow the doors to close completely. This drives us completely batty, and we’ve been thinking about a hinge-replacing spree. But hinges can be pricey, so we were glad to learn this alternate door-closing hack from This Old House.

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