What Did I Tell You About Eating In The Car?

When it gets really, really hot outside, like well over triple digits, it's not uncommon for somebody, probably from the local news station, to crack an egg on the sidewalk to see if it'll fry.

It takes a little more effort to bake cookies. But apparently, it can get hot enough to do that too. What this requires is temperatures getting up into 120, high 110's, being in Phoenix, and leaving some cookie dough in a car with the windows up. (Also aluminum foil.) The National Weather Service, who attempted this, didn't have a thermometer on hand, so the exact temperature isn't available, but they do know that temperatures inside the car topped 200 at least. As a control, cookies were also put on the sidewalk.

After four hours, they had fully-baked cookies (and a car that smelled like cookies). The, um, chef, Charlotte Dewey, says she probably could have taken them out of the car after two hours, but she wanted to make sure the cookies were done on the inside as well. The sidewalk cookies didn't quite work out.

That's a hint. If the car's hot enough to bake cookies, imagine what it can do to you. Roll the damn windows down. Or use the air conditioner. Or reconsider if you really need to drive.

Running Towards The Crash

The euro has undergone quite the fall from grace lately. Originally hailed as a symbol of European unity, the shared currency now is viewed by some as the thing that will cause- or has already caused- the economic collapse of the entire continent. The problem, really, is that multinational currencies are only as strong as their weakest nation. If all the nations are stable, there's no problem. But one weak nation can affect the rest.

The euro began involving Austria, Belgium, Finland, France, Germany, Ireland, Italy, Luxembourg, Monaco, the Netherlands, Portugal, San Marino, Spain and the Vatican. When they switched over in 1999, most were fine. Italy (with San Marino and the Vatican sharing their currency) was very shaky, but they, like any weaker nation that pegs itself to a currency also used by someone else, viewed it as a stabilizer. A fresh start. Portugal and Spain were also comparatively weaker economies. The euro could handle them, though, for now. Then the eastern half of the continent, seeing how well the euro was doing originally, decided they wanted in on it too. Why not? It'd be a way to boost their economies as well.

Greece was the first nation to join after the originals. They were since joined by, in order, Slovenia, Cyprus and Malta, Slovakia and Estonia. With the exception of Slovenia, those later nations looked at least like passable additions. Greece, however, was as shaky as Spain, Italy and Portugal. After the global financial crisis hit, they were all re-exposed as the weak links.

Despite this, the euro is not only something nations are not abandoning or kicking anyone out of, but Latvia is now set to join the eurozone come January (at the same time Croatia joins the EU). As of this post, one Latvian lat is worth 1.42 euros. That's a good indicator. You typically want to be the lower number. That said, many Latvians aren't thrilled about this, having voted in majorities for anti-euro candidates last month.

We'll just have to see who's right.

Are You A Blog Making Money From Porn?

Well, bye. On Sunday, Blogger will be updating the terms of service to ban the monetization of adult content. If that describes you, get it all down by then or your blog is going to go away. Adult content in and of itself is fine, although you're asked to mark your blog as such lest they do it for you. You just don't get to make money off it.

I hope none of you are making money from porn. Though sometimes from the hits I'm getting...

(By the way, sorry about the large amount of blurb-sized posts lately. I have a couple other projects getting the bulk of my attention right now and that's not conducive to longer articles.)

Big Brown Stain... ...Yeah, Let's Go With That

I ran across an article at Deadspin, excellently written, that I'd like to pass along today. The article is from June 7, written by Ryan Goldberg, and concerns horse racing, specifically the 2008 Triple Crown season. The three things you might know going in from that year are that A) Big Brown won the Kentucky Derby, B) the filly Eight Belles broke her leg and had to be put down, and C) still no Triple Crown win which is pretty much the only thing the general public cares about anymore regarding horse racing.

Part of horse racing's image problem revolves around general corruption, and Goldberg's piece is not going to help matters. It tells the story of an investment scheme that promised to pay investors from the horse's winnings, a poor investment strategy given how uncertain a revenue stream that is. It tells the story of a horse frequently given steroids. It tells the story of an owner, Rick Dutrow, who treated the rules as things that didn't apply to him and even if they did, didn't matter enough to worry about. Everything collapsed during the Triple Crown, and Big Brown not only failed to convert at the Belmont, he came in stone dead last and DNF'ed.

To the horse racing community's utter delight.

Companies Standing Behind Paula Deen

Via USA Today, let us go over who has actively voiced support for Paula Deen after her... remarks, her very very racist remarks. This is not every company she still has business with, just the ones she's gotten vocal support from.

*450ID
*Club Marketing Services
*Epicurian Butter
*Harvest NA
*IQ Craft
*Landies Candies
*Sandridge Food Corporation
*Springer Mountain Farms
*Tasty Blend Foods

So... whatever consumer decisions you want to make from that. Outside of the USA Today article, we also have the Metropolitan Cooking and Entertaining Show.

EDIT: Also Royal Caribbean International; thanks to Jay Rawls in the comments.

The Supreme Court Did A Bad Thing

I can't say I'm shocked. In fact, given the makeup of the Supreme Court, I'm not in the least bit surprised.

Doesn't mean I'm not stunned into doing little more than just posting a link regarding the gutting of the Voting Rights Act and leaving you to rage to your heart's content. I'll let Steve Benen of the Maddow Blog over at MSNBC do the talking.

At least you don't have to worry about your legacy anymore, Roberts. It's trashed no matter what else you do.

Some Would Argue They Don't Serve Food Anyway

If you've ever watched Kitchen Nightmares, or worked in a crappy restaurant, or heard of fast food, you'll know that some restaurants do not make things from scratch. They have food shipped in or pre-bought and more or less just heat it up and slap it on a plate when you order it. Understandably, and for good reason, these places are held in lower regard than places that do make your food from scratch.

But we still think of them as restaurants.

In France, though, one of the food world's cultural centers, they take things far more seriously. Not that pre-prepared food is not rampant there; in fact, according to a recent survey, 31% of restaurants in France admitted (repeat: admitted) to using pre-prepared food, a dramatic ramp-up from where that figure used to be. Not that I know where that number used to be, but it's a lot higher. And this is a very troubling thing to France's food community, who have up to this point made various efforts to build up the restaurants that make things on site, recognizing and defining various words such as 'artisanal',  'fait maison' (in-house), 'free-range', 'natural', 'traditional' and 'pure'. Some of the more notable French chefs have come up with a 'quality restaurant' label for places that make things on-site, tell you where things have come from and give you a welcome at the door.

Now they're going to go the other way. The carrot hasn't worked, so they're going to try the stick, redefining what a 'restaurant' is in the first place. As it stands now, the definition is 'a place where food is served for payment'. An effort is being made right now, through an amendment to a consumer-rights bill, to redefine the term to specifically apply to places that make food fresh and on-site. Bakeries, as of 1995, already have such a thing in place with the word 'boulangerie' (French for bakery).

Needless to say, the fast food industry, which has accounted for 54% of restaurant business in France last year, is bitterly opposed to the legislation, as they would no longer be legally able to call themselves restaurants. Their claim is that it would "confuse" tourists (which, seriously, anyone who needs any further explanation as to what you're getting at a McDonald's are probably beyond help anyway). Pressure from them has, for now, gotten the amendment withdrawn, though that by no means kills the effort.

What would probably help it would be for a nation that prides itself on its food, half of which have said they don't trust restaurants for exactly this reason and 96% of which would support a seal of approval like this one, to not eat at fast-food places over half the time.