VW L1 Hybrid: "Most Efficient Car In The World" (VIDEO, PHOTOS)

Though, it won't be available until 2013, the two-seater L1 -- which stands for its one-liter fuel capacity -- quickly become the talk of Frankfurt. The diesel-electric hybrid engine gets a whopping 157.8 miles per gallon and tops out at 100 miles per hour, according to CarConnection. The L1 also has an "impressive" driving range of 416 miles, which beats plug-in competitors

Read more at: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/09/18/vw-l1-hybrid-most-efficie_n_291257.html

VW L1 Hybrid: "Most Efficient Car In The World" (VIDEO, PHOTOS)

A Recycled Blog

I'm shutting down my original Rockinon blog and I am moving some of my favourite posts to this site. I'm not being lazy; I'm recycling.

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It’s a weird world when David Gough, the blogger covering environmental concerns for The London Free Press, comes out against a bylaw designed to stop the practice of idling a car for more than a minute.

Gough wrote: “Five minutes makes sense, one minute just seems to be cutting it too close.”

He goes on to argue that dropping his son off at the arena might easily force him to idle his car for more than a minute while his son putzes around undoing his seat belt, turning off his video game and getting his hockey bag from the trunk. Gough says he could see his son costing him money.

Dave, the idea is to turn off your car. It’s easy. It’s fast. It’s green. And, it’s old fashioned.

That’s right, old fashioned. When I was a boy, my father never let his car idle for more than a minute — not even in winter. He had been told by a mechanic that the manual choke made the carburetor fuel mix richer and this could cause a soot-like build-up on the plugs. This dirt, the mechanic said, caused engines to run-on when turned off.

Furthermore, the mechanic said the engine oil pump was not efficient when the car was idling. It worked best with the car underway and the engine reving higher.

Four decades ago, my father taught me: If you are stopping for more than a minute, turn off the car. If my dad could do it, we can all do it. And, my dad wasn’t even green.

Saganaki: It's from Chicago and not Greece!

It's not from Greece! What a surprise! Saganaki, flaming cheese, is not a traditional Greek appetizer. It's American from Chicago.

My nephew Bob who lives in the Windy City called me with the news. He saw a report on Chicago television and knew I'd be interested. He even took notes.

It seems the well known appetizer was created by two Greek-American restaurateurs, brothers Chris and Bill Liakouras, co-owners of Chicago's Parthenon Greek restaurant on S. Halsted Street.

Before July 5th, 1968, saganaki was just fried cheese. Today, 31 years later, the brothers' flaming cheese creation can be found in restaurants around the world, even in Greece!

Now that I know flaming cheese is a flaming phony, I am not too concerned with the recipe. I once worried about the liquor I used to flame the cheese. No more. There is no tradition stretching back generations.

The main ingredient for making flaming cheese is, no surprise, cheese. This is usually kasseri or kefalotiri, both sheep's milk cheeses which resist melting when heated.

Dip the cheese slices in an egg wash, then lightly coat each slice with flour, and finally fry the slices in a small pan for a couple of minutes, flipping once.

While the cheese is frying heat two tablespoons of Ouzo for 15 seconds in the microwave on high. When the cheese is done add the warmed Ouzo and light using a barbecue lighter --- the kind with a flame at the end of a long tube. Do not use a short match or small lighter. Be careful. The flames may flare a foot or more above the pan.

Squelch the sputtering fire with juice squeezed from half a lemon and serve with crusty French bread and a dry white wine.

I like using Ouzo rather than brandy as it gives the flaming cheese a gentle hint of licorice. But the choice of liquor is up to you; remember, you are not constrained by tradition.

One last thing: when you flame the cheese, don't forget to shout, "Opaah!" No idea why, it's, uh, tradition.
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Ingredients

2 slices of kasseri or kefalotiri cheese
egg wash made with one egg

a little flour

olive oil to well coat bottom of small frying pan

1 tablepoon butter
half a lemon
2- tablespoons Ouzo or brandy

I have found that the kefalotiri holds up better than the kasseri when fried. But, the kasseri had more flavour and it went well with the licorice flavour of the Ouzo. Just watch it carefully if using kasseri, or it will turn into a puddle of melted cheese.

My favourite science writer

My favourite science writer was the late Stephen Jay Gould. I discovered him many years ago when I picked a double book set as an introductory gift for joining the Paperback Book Club. It was an introduction to a gifted writer.

The twinned books were The Flamingo's Smile and The Panda's Thumb — both named after essays contained within the covers. I didn't mention: many of Gould's books are collections of his essays. You can read these books in short, but fulfilling, bursts.

Gould died in 2002 and since then I've been without a fave in the science field but the position is no longer open. Olivia Judson has stepped up to the plate and this lady can hit. And like Gould, she likes to write essays and short newspaper pieces. She a quick but rich read.

Judson rose to public prominence with “Dr. Tatiana’s Sex Advice to All Creation: The Definitive Guide to the Evolutionary Biology of Sex.” The book was written in the style of a sex-advice column to animals while detailing the variety of sexual practices in the natural world. It provides the reader with an overview of the evolutionary biology of sex.

Judson has been published in The Economist, Nature, The Financial Times, The Atlantic and Natural History. And today she writes a science and biology column for The New York Times. If you haven't read Judson, check her out.

Gould's essays are getting a little old, some haven't aged well, but good writing, thoughtful writing, writing that makes science and, by extension, our world more accessible never ceases to bring joy. Both Flamingo and Panda are good introductions to Gould's writing, but I also rate Wonderful Life highly. It is centred around the Burgess Shale found in the Canadian Rockies and so carries a Canadian tint.

Cheers,
Rockinon

Too green for the LFP green blogger

This is a tricky post to write. It's both funny and disgusting. I thought of not writing this at all because children might stumble upon it. Then I realized, kids talk about this stuff all the time. Kids love to be both funny and disgusting.

My tale involves The London Free Press and their green blogger. It seems the newspaper blogger first heard of a Brazilian water-saving strategy quickly becoming the talk of the globe while listening to local radio. He found what he heard upsetting, as well as unbelievable.

He tried putting it out of his mind. He soon discovered he couldn't. The Brazilian story was everywhere. He even saw tweets about it on Twitter. I agree, it was an impossible story to ignore. I read about it in The Huffington Post.

The green blogger found the concept behind the Brazilian green strategy "gross." He got "the heebie jeebies just thinking about doing it." The senior online editor at the paper, showing his sharp wit, commented, "I smell a hoax. I saw this story, I don't believe it for a second."

The online editor flippantly called the story a hoax without a second's worth of investigation. I thought that his lack of initiative reflected poorly on the profession of journalism. If a senior online editor can't confirm whether a story is a hoax or not, who can? ( Uh, I know the answer, a dedicated blogger.)

Let's not drag this out. There is no point in an adult being so prissy. What offended the journalist's oh-do-delicate sensibilities? Talk of peeing in the shower to save water. Heck, it's not as if peeing in the shower was completely unheard of. Why even Kelly Clarkson admits doing it. Clarkson reportedly told Blender magazine: "Anybody who says they don’t is lying." I wonder if that includes our green blogger, senior online editor, journalist.

And Kelly is not the only one coming out of the (water) closet. Read this post by a blogger named Fran who confesses, "I often pee in the shower and have since I was young." Fran goes on to promise that she doesn't "pee in the bathtub or in swimming pools." (Good to know.)

The Huffington Post reported Brazilians are being encouraged to save water by urinating in the shower. Here, it is important to note: if you are healthy, your urine is sterile. The Brazilian environmental group SOS Mata Atlantica says the campaign running on several television stations is using humor to persuade people to reduce flushes. The group claims a household can save up to 4,380 liters of water annually by following this green advice.

SOS spokeswoman Adriana Kfouri said Tuesday that the ad is "a way to be playful about a serious subject." The spot features cartoons of people from all walks of life — a trapeze artist, a basketball player, even an alien — all are urinating in the shower. Narrated by children's voices, the ad ends with: "Pee in the shower! Save the Atlantic rain forest!"

If you are as put off as most folk, Tucson Citizen reporter Ryan Gargulinski will put you at ease on this and other germ-o-phobic myths. Read Ryan if you'd like to stop worrying about that public restroom toilet seat.

So was this whole thing just a hoax? I wasn't sure at first. If it was it sure fooled a lot of folk. For instance, both the Toronto Sun and Canoe carried the story a day before our local journalist dismissed it.

Using Orkut and Facebook I contacted people living in Brazil. I asked them if the campaign was a hoax. It took me just minutes using social media to confirm that the story is not a hoax.

When I googled some details of the story and added the word hoax, my only relevant hit was the  comment by the local journalist. He may have learned not to pee in the shower but now he must learn what not to do into the wind.

If you'd like another way of saving on water, check out my post on dual flush HET toilets and water saving shower heads and faucets. I have installed all green plumbing fixtures in my main floor bathroom. It has cut my water usage and all without offending my wife or giving my house guests the heebie jeebies.
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This post has been edited from the original. I removed the name of the journalist. I believe the journalist exhibited a sloppy approach to confirming information that is all too common in the profession. Yet, I see no reason to embarrass the chap. I was wrong to have included his name in the original post.

I rechecked this story almost a decade later. I was able to easily confirm that I was right in my original assessment. The peeing-during-showering video is not a hoax. It the video is from the creative  minds at F/Nazca Saatchi & Saatchi and can still be found both on YouTube and the S.O.S. Mata Atlântica web page.

And lastly, the video was a winner at the 2010 Gold Lion Cannes Advertising Awards. I'd post a better link but the best one is unavailable. It is behind a membership only wall. Breaching such a wall is a job for a journalist.

Michael Moore on the state of newspapers

Only the first part of the following interview applies to Canadian newspapers. It's good to hear someone else voicing some of my views. I like to say that the Canadian newspaper industry is now too big to succeed. Big corporations like Quebecor have gobbled up vast numbers of community newspapers and now must try to stay solvent while paying off the horrendous debt load they have accumulated.



The future does not belong to the one with the biggest press, the most trucks or the largest building. The future belongs to the organization that can pull together the largest group of talented, well-trained reporters and expert editors, and back their editorial A-team with great tech support. The Internet may prove to be the great equalizer when it comes to news organizations.

I visit the Internet site of my favourite newspaper, which sadly is Quebecor owned, and notice that their online editor may make a rash statement and then ask the reader, "What do you think?" This is not journalism. Bloggers often do more work.

Michael Moore is correct when it comes to advertising. I had an editor admit why the paper would not run an accurate article detailing the problems with the automobile industry's 0% loan programs - 0% loans that aren't 0%. Don't believe me when I say most, if not all, the 0% loans are a ruse? Read the fine print. Or go here, as I do not worry about advertiser support.

Ask yourself, "Why does the local paper accept double truck ads pushing the Amish miracle heater?" And if the local paper applies absolutely no standards to the ads running in the paper, how can we trust any ad running in the paper?

Social networking, not quite a buzzword

Social networking: not quite a buzzword (buzz phrase?) but it is doing more work than should be expected of any two words, especially two words in such a young relationship. Constant and repeated togetherness can be deadly to linguistic unions. I've seen it before: mission critical, alternative lifestyle, hidden agenda, office effectivity. Office effectivity? It may be hard to believe but it was once such an overworked phrase that it was banned by the unicorn hunters of Lake Superior State University, Michigan.

It is not just the the phrase that's in danger of early extinction; it's the social networks themselves. Do you recall Six Degrees. com? Once employing a 100 people, servicing a million registered members, it was valued at $125 million (U.S.) by YouthStream Media Network who bought it in 2000. YSM soon closed it, and in 2003 sold its patented approach to constructing a networking database for $700 thousand to Reid Hoffman of LinkedIn and Marc Pincus of Tribe.net.

In order to bid on the SixDegrees patent, it was reported that Hoffman and Pincus made an end run around their own social networking friend, Jonathan Abrams of Friendster. Social networking sounds so positive, so friendly but among the gurus of the movement it can be downright cutthroat.

Friendster may be almost off the radar in North America but it is a social networking force in Southeast Asia, and still boasts 105 million profiles worldwide. A quick check shows that there are still Friendster members in my hometown of London, Ontario. One is the heavy metal bank Kittie which is lead by two sisters, Mercedes and Morgan Landers from London. Note that Kittie has both the private profile and the messaging on their Friendster site turned off. Hmmm. Not all that friendly, but certainly wise.

Today, Facebook and Twitter are the big bullies on the social networking block. If you question the word bullies think of MySpace and how it was pummelled. Xanga has taken a bit of a beating, too, I believe.

With so many social networking sites, big and small, there is actually a social network aggregator - Spokeo.com. On their site Spokeo says they, " . . . set out to build search technology to automatically detect online identities associated with emails and URLs . . . " Note that Spokeo has an HR product as part of their Recruiting edition. Be careful what you post on Facebook and other social networking sites. It can come back and bite you.

What does social networking deliver? It's a mixed bag. I could have hundreds of Twitter followers but I block the vast majority. Most are ads and some are porn. I find in the computer world it is important to pick your friends with care. I don't want to pick up a social (networking) disease - a computer virus.

But the few contacts that I have made have had a positive affect on my life. When I expressed and interest in new urbanism a chap appeared out of the fog of the Internet to suggest a book to read. It was an excellent suggestion. And I've learned stuff, I've filled holes in my knowledge by paying attention to the comments elicited by my blogs.

But mainly, I find Twitter a great way to stay abreast of the news. I follow The London Free Press Twitter tweats. Facebook has become very crowded with oodles of suggested friends whom I have never met, never will, and have no desire to meet in either my real or my virtual life. And, I have a hard enough time pairing up real socks without accepting virtual socks on Facebook. A virtual sock?

Yet, it was through Facebook that I reconnected, a fragile reconnection I admit, but still a reconnection with one of my former students. I was then able to reconnect the long lost student with another friend whom we both have in common. I have to admit, all this was kinda cool.

So, if Twitter and Facebook are not my faves when it come to social networking, what is? GroupRecipes.com! This social networking site has a tight focus - food. Ah food, I think about it everyday. At my age, I enjoy it more than sex.

GroupRecipes allows you to search by ingredients or by flavour. Check your pantry and run a search and find dinner. I like this.

Or, click on the folder tabs: new today, popular, active users, and trends. There's a lot that I wouldn't let near my kitchen but there are also gems. Find something that impresses you, click on the cook's name, and if you like a lot of what they have posted, become a follower. In researching this I stumbled upon Midgelet and a recipe for autumn pear pie.

Midgelet may I follow you? Think about your answer. Spokeo may be watching.