Tag: food

WE’RE NUMBER ONE!

Michael Rutkaus: ‘Consumer Reports has Honest Tea Highest Rated of all teas for Lemon iced tea and second after Arizona for green iced tea (July, pages 18-19). I always get it when it is available, love the low calories.’

☞ My current favorite is the Mint White Tea. But the whole line seems to be taking off. In the New York market, for example, sales are up more than 100% over last year.

Full disclosure to newcomers: Honest Tea is a private company, founded by a Yale B-School Professor and one of his former students. If you drink enough of it, I will get rich and, by reducing your antioxidants, you will live forever. (Or at least have a nice light caffeine buzz.)

Mint White Tea – grown from the same plant as black and green tea, but picked at a “youthful” stage. White tea delivers the same potent antioxidants, but less caffeine than other teas. This season, white is the new black and green. Our Mint White Tea is a delicate organic white tea blended with organic spearmint and a touch of organic vanilla. Certified organic by Pennsylvania Certified Organic.

DO CHICKENS HAVE EAR DRUMS?

Dan Nachbar: ‘I think you’ve missed the point on the whole chicken/egg thing. It is not actually a question at all, but rather a pithy way to capture the difference in beliefs held by creationists and evolutionists. Creationists will answer ‘chicken’; evolutionist will answer ‘egg.’ Other seeming ‘odd’ questions are also terse statements of much deeper issues. For instance, ‘How many angels can dance on the head of a pin?’ poses the question of whether God (and Heaven) have a physical manifestation measurable in our universe. As for trees falling in the woods, the deeper issue is whether one can/must consider things in the universe that are completely outside of human perception and knowledge. If you are a believer in the modern scientific method, then the ‘answer,’ painful as it may seem at first, has been pretty well established as ‘The tree makes no noise.”

Joel Grow: ‘I read some physicist a while back who opined that a tree disturbs the air if it falls, but that this disturbance only registers as noise when and if it strikes an eardrum. So, if no body, and no eardrum, is present, it isn’t noise.’

☞ Oh, my. I guess it depends on how you define noise. Or light. Or smell. If noise is something that is heard, then: no ears, no hears. If noise is something you’d hear if you were there, then falling trees make noise. Or are there two kinds of falling trees: the ones that fall silently and the ones that fall with a crash? Two kinds of roses? The ones you can smell and the ones that (because you’ve run inside to get a beer) you can’t?

THE REPUBLICAN COURT

From the Associated Press:

WASHINGTON – The Supreme Court scaled back protections for government workers who blow the whistle on official misconduct Tuesday, a 5-4 decision in which new Justice Samuel Alito cast the deciding vote.

In a victory for the Bush administration, justices said the 20 million public employees do not have free-speech protections for what they say as part of their jobs.

Critics predicted the impact would be sweeping, from silencing police officers who fear retribution for reporting department corruption, to subduing federal employees who want to reveal problems with government hurricane preparedness or terrorist-related security.

Supporters said that it will protect governments from lawsuits filed by disgruntled workers pretending to be legitimate whistleblowers.

The ruling was perhaps the clearest sign yet of the Supreme Court’s shift with the departure of moderate Justice Sandra Day O’Connor and the arrival of Alito. . . .

THE TRICYCLE MOVED

Paul: ‘Here’s a motor I can imagine on three-wheeled bikes in retirement villages all over Florida. It won’t pull an airplane, but it will help Mom and Pop get the groceries when they don’t have a car.’

☞ Cool! It’s apparently a front wheel that you can retrofit to your existing bike. Go 20 mph, 200-mile range, low emissions, $399 when it starts shipping (they say) next year.

HUD SECRETARY JACKSON

So now the Housing Secretary retracts the story he told (recounted yesterday) about canceling a contract at the last minute when the contractor criticized President Bush. The story he told his audience was untrue. Gosh – reassuring to know he wasn’t telling the truth.

ARTICHOKES

Michael Axelrod: ‘The earth is really different from an artichoke, and it’s not just size. The earth has a hot core [about ten thousand degrees Fahrenheit, another of you – Dana Dlott – tells me] because of accretion (material falling into a gravitational source) and because of radioactive decay. So the earth’s core generates its own heat unlike an artichoke which is simply a hot object that is cooling. Heated things cool by 1. convection (transfer of heat by a fluid), 2. conduction and 3. irradiation. Your toast cools mainly by convection where the hot toast heats up the air. When you burn yourself from a hot pot, the heat has reached your hand by conduction. Finally irradiation is radiant heat like a floor heater that gets red hot. The earth does not contact anything unless you believe it rests on a big turtle, and flies through the vacuum of space, so the earth only cools only by irradiation. I think an artichoke cools mainly by convection.’

USA TODAY (WELL, USA LAST MONTH)

The earth is really different from an artichoke, and the 21st Century is really different from the 15th. Back then, they didn’t even believe in evolution.

The ‘American Inquisition’
James Reston Jr.
18 April 2006
© USA Today

The paranoia that gripped Spanish society in the 15th century echoes even today. The result? A country struck by fear resorts to torture and spies on its citizens. And like King Ferdinand, President Bush couches his righteousness on Iraq in faith and in democracy.

Through the mist of time, the Spanish Inquisition has come down to us as one of the most barbarous periods in all of history. Its viciousness peaked in the late 15th century, during the reign of the messianic “Catholic kings,” Ferdinand and Isabella.

Paranoia gripped Spanish society as the Inquisition coincided with a Christian war against the Muslims of southern Spain. Clandestine trials, secret prisons, rampant eavesdropping, torture, desecration of Islam’s holy books, and gruesome public executions created an atmosphere of pervasive terror. Suspects were assumed to be guilty, with no recourse to a defense, to a jury, or to a legitimate court.

In the chaos now roiling the Western world, does any of this sound familiar?

It is time to ask whether the United States, with some of these same touchstones, is entering a period of its own peculiar Inquisition. Of course, there are no burning places for heretics in America now. No Tomas de Torquemada presides over this period of internal anxiety and investigation.

But the word, inquisition, is not exclusive to Spain in the Middle Ages. It is a useful term for historians to characterize phases of history that are distinguished by religious intolerance, by Christian holy war and Islamic jihad, by racial profiling and xenophobia, by show trials, and by snooping of secret police.

*Paranoia abounds*

This country, too, is seized with collective paranoia. President Bush knows, as Ferdinand, Isabella and Torquemada knew, that constant warnings about secret terrorists are a powerful deterrent to dissent and a useful tool for consolidating political power.

Bush, like his Spanish precursors, presses for a unity of faith and a credo of purification. His faith mixes the secular and the spiritual. Its hallmarks are Jeffersonian democracy for all the world, unquestioning patriotism and revitalized Christianity. Unbelievers in this holy trinity are to be ferreted out. Not to subscribe to the methods in the war on terrorism is not so much dissent as heresy.

The American Inquisition began on Sept. 16, 2001, five days after the monstrous attack, when Bush proclaimed his “crusade.” That was the defining moment for this era of U.S. history.

In the years since, Bush has demonstrated all the passion and single-mindedness of King Ferdinand. The American secret police force is not called the Holy Brotherhood as it was in 1492, for today’s brotherhood is more electronic than human. On Capitol Hill, Cabinet members, past and present, call search warrants obsolete. Beware. We are all “mined” for our “data.”

How different is this really from the spying that went on in the Spanish Inquisition? Suspect words or acts do not change that much with time. In Inquisitional Spain, neighbors were supposed to report a suspicious neighbor to the Holy Office. Now, symbolic words or actions are detected electronically.

In the past few months, Americans have been treated to the extraordinary spectacle of a U.S. president arguing for torture in the lofty staterooms of the U.S. government. Memos float around his Department of Defense, stressing that U.S. interrogators should cease their persecution if their victims come close to “organ failure.” The world wants to know what is going on in the star chambers of secret U.S. prisons around the world. The U.S. administration scoffs. The Geneva Conventions are called quaint, and the court in The Hague, Netherlands, cannot touch us. Standards for war crimes and crimes against humanity are for non-Americans.

*Forms of torture*

For the historian, symbolic acts such as torture often define an era, and the American brand of torture has a particularly medieval quality. “Waterboarding,” as it is called (as if it were a sport like surfboarding or skateboarding), uses cellophane instead of gauze with water to subject the suspect to near drowning and suffocation. So today this is called an “enhanced” technique of interrogation. But the pitcher and gauze were just as effective in the 15th century. The intent is really no different from that of Torquemada’s interrogators: to make the subject talk even though that talk might be drivel.

It is not surprising that a leader, who believes that his Christian God chose him to be president at this moment in history and that his Almighty speaks directly to him, should preside over this American Inquisition. Bush’s messianic bent came to light vividly in June 2003, when he announced that his God had inspired him to go fight those terrorists and to end the tyranny in Iraq. What, one wonders, is his God telling him now about the chaos?

This supposed pipeline to heaven is, of course, not new for kings and potentates. On his deathbed in 1516, King Ferdinand told his minions that he could not die yet: God had told him that he would move on from the conquest of Granada to lead a great crusade that would recapture Jerusalem. The messianic impulse is commonplace in history.

Now, we are just a few years into the Iraq era. The situation is getting worse, and there is no end in sight. When this nightmare ends, years of self-examination are sure to follow as happened after the Vietnam disaster. The Iraq syndrome will be lengthy. In the meantime, American Inquisition takes root. It is more hard-edged and mean-spirited than the Vietnam crackdown … for one reason.

Though Bush’s explanations for his wayward adventure may constantly change, though the enterprise may show itself to be a military and moral catastrophe of historic proportions, this American leader and his circle of illuminati are utterly convinced of their righteousness. Toward their detractors they misappropriate, like inquisitors before them, the verse of John 15:6:

“If any abide not in me, he should be cast forth as a branch and shall wither, and they shall gather him up and cast him into the fire, and he shall burn.”

James Reston Jr. is the author of Dogs of God: Columbus, the Inquisition, and the Defeat of the Moors. [And my college classmate. – A.T.]

YOUR LATEST TAX CUT, YOU LUCKY DOG

D. Stone: ‘What an outrage that a government running a huge deficit and paying for a foreign war decides to borrow another $15 billion to extend tax cuts for people making over $1 million per year. Insanity.’

☞ It is a grand time to be rich and powerful in America.

BANANAS: AND IT ALL COMES FULL CIRCLE

Doug Simpkinson: ‘Do you remember I once told you that bananas are pretty radioactive (yet still safe)? It turns out that the center of the Earth, which is so much hotter than an artichoke heart, would have long ago cooled to a solid lump if it weren’t for a decent quantity of radioactive potassium, the same stuff that makes bananas so radioactive. Without the radiation generated heat, no magnetic field would be generated in the core of the Earth, and our atmosphere would have been stripped away billions of years ago by the solar wind. We wouldn’t be here if it weren’t for the absolute power of bananas. Here is an article on the potassium in the Earth’s core:

‘The Earth is thought to have formed from the collision of many rocky asteroids, perhaps hundreds of kilometers in diameter, in the early solar system. As the proto-Earth gradually bulked up, continuing asteroid collisions and gravitational collapse kept the planet molten. Heavier elements – in particular iron – would have sunk to the core in 10 to 100 million years’ time, carrying with it other elements that bind to iron. Gradually, however, the Earth would have cooled off and become a dead rocky globe with a cold iron ball at the core if not for the continued release of heat by the decay of radioactive elements like potassium-40, uranium-238 and thorium-232, which have half-lives of 1.25 billion, 4 billion and 14 billion years, respectively. About one in every thousand potassium atoms is radioactive. The heat generated in the core turns the iron into a convecting dynamo that maintains a magnetic field strong enough to shield the planet from the solar wind. This heat leaks out into the mantle, causing convection in the rock that moves crustal plates and fuels volcanoes.

How hot is the earth’s core? This is very interesting. I boiled an artichoke today for 25 minutes – artichokes are in season and they are great to eat just the way God made them (after He boiled them and taught you how to avoid the chokes), all you need is a little salt on the plate to touch the base of each leaf onto before you scrape off its meat between your teeth – and after I took it out of the pot I left it on a plate for 20 minutes while I went and did something very important. (If I have not made it clear to you over the years, I am very important.) Back from whatever that was (it may have involved reading the newspaper), I began, as one does with an artichoke, to eat it from the outside in. The outer leaves were cold, and I didn’t mind: there are few experiences better than the plot line of an artichoke, however predictable – culminating in the after-taste of the whole experience, which is just one more reason to celebrate life. But I’m getting ahead of myself, even though you know exactly where this is heading. Leaf by leaf, even as time itself was passing, yet, verily, did the leaves get warmer. In other words, the rate of decline in their temperature – even being exposed to the outer air just before it was their turn to get scraped – was less than the increase in temperature they retained from having been closer to the core. And that’s saying something, because you know it takes a while to go around the entire artichoke and scrape a layer of leaves. And yet warmer they did get, until – remember, the outer leaves were cold – as I neared the finale they were burning my fingertips.

Do you see what I’m saying here? Adjusting for the relative sizes of the Earth and an artichoke, and for the starting temperature of molten – nay, gaseous! – rock and stuff . . . and working back from estimates that the earth’s core is five billion years old . . . I calculate that the center of the earth is exactly . . . well, really, really hot. After 5 billion years.

Not that we didn’t know this already, but it’s always reassuring to have confirmation.

BANANAS – WHY SO CHEAP?

Don Goldberg: ‘Well, they do grow on trees.’

Nick Watson: ‘Enjoy them while we can . . .‘

The world’s most popular fruit and the fourth most important food crop of any sort is in deep trouble. Its genetic base, the wild bananas and traditional varieties cultivated in India, has collapsed. . . .

ABSOLUTE POWER

From the DNC: ‘Alphonso Jackson, the Republican Secretary of Housing and Urban Development, told a story recently during a talk he gave in Dallas. Here’s what he said, according to the Dallas Business Journal:’

Jackson closed with a cautionary tale, relaying a conversation he had with a prospective advertising contractor.

“He had made every effort to get a contract with HUD for 10 years,” Jackson said of the prospective contractor. “He made a heck of a proposal and was on the [General Services Administration] list, so we selected him. He came to see me and thank me for selecting him. Then he said something … he said, ‘I have a problem with your president.’

“I said, ‘What do you mean?’ He said, ‘I don’t like President Bush.’ I thought to myself, ‘Brother, you have a disconnect — the president is elected, I was selected. You wouldn’t be getting the contract unless I was sitting here. If you have a problem with the president, don’t tell the secretary.’

“He didn’t get the contract,” Jackson continued. “Why should I reward someone who doesn’t like the president, so they can use funds to try to campaign against the president? Logic says they don’t get the contract. That’s the way I believe.”

☞ Had enough?

Here in New Orleans, the PBS station showed ‘All the President’s Men’ last night. There was so much more to Watergate than just the break-in. The parallels to current cover-ups are just CREEPy. (Are you old enough to remember CREEP?)

BUTTER SUBSTITUTE BY THE STICK

Mark W. Budwig: ‘Yes, it’s the ‘stickiness,’ or rather the solidity [that accounts for the higher trans fat content of the same spread when bought in stick form]: ‘Trans fat (also called trans fatty acids) is formed when liquid vegetable oils go through a chemical process called hydrogenation, in which hydrogen is added to make the oils more solid. Hydrogenated vegetable fats are used by food processors because they allow longer shelf-life and give food desirable taste, shape, and texture . . .”

Janus Daniels: ‘Hydrogenating natural oils (i.e., making them chemically combine with more hydrogen) raises their melting temperature, making them solid at room temperature. Generally, holding other factors constant, the softer the healthier.’

Marissa Hendrickson: ‘If you’re into fake butter, you should try Earth Balance Natural Buttery Spread. It’s got no trans fats, it’s vegan (good for your kosher or dairy-allergic friends), it’s yummy, and, unlike most fake butter spreads, you can cook with it just like butter. It’s usually in the ‘natural’ food section of the grocery store.’

BURIED DEEP IN THE CODE

I recognize that I am practically the last one still to be using AOL (give or take 30 million others) – and that I may be literally the last one to be using AOL 5.0. I have my reasons. (Prime among them: I have never been able to upgrade; my address file exceeds their secret limit.) But my point is not about AOL, but about how complicated computer code has gotten since the days when HAL’s core functions were first programmed (surely you have seen 2001), onto which trillions of lines of code have since been overlain.

How would anyone in a million years have come up with THIS bug?

• Trying to send an email with the phrase “St. Maarten” in it crashes AOL 5.0 when you click SEND.  Every time.  Misspell it – “St. Mmarten” – and the otherwise identical email goes through just like the billions of others that are sent every day.  Totally bizarre.  I have not tried it with aardvark, but . . . well, okay, I just did try it with aardvark and it went through fine.  Then I tried it again with St. Maarten and got, as always:  Main Module has encountered a problem and needs to close.  We are sorry for the inconvenience.

I’m telling you, people, we are dependent on things coded long ago that, well – who knows what oddness lies within.

CREDIT CARD SUGGESTION

Jeff Bauer:  “Like most of your readers (I presume), I pay off my credit card balances each month.  However, there’s the rare occasional event – an unexpected overseas trip, misplaced mail, etc. – that prevents me from writing that check.  The double-digit finance fees are bad enough, but the added insult are the additional fees for missing the minimum payment.  It also doesn’t look good on your credit record to miss payments.  My solution is to have my online bank account send an automatic check each month to cover the minimum payment.  Then I pay the full balance when my statement arrives.  I’ll still have to eat the finance charges if I miss paying the balance, but I save the cost of the penalty.”

☞ I visit my two credit card websites periodically and pay off the balances even before the bill arrives.  And checks?  How quaint.

THIRTY-THREE MORE MONTHS

“I mean, think about it.  Other than the war in Iraq, the Katrina disaster, the deficit, the CIA leak, torture, stopping stem cell research, homeland security, global  warming and undercutting science, we’ve yet to really feel the negative  effects of the Bush administration.” – Bill  Moyers

TWO WORDS

It is a dark day for my old friend, I Can’t Believe It’s Not Butter – Light. I never thought I’d say this, old pal, but I have just two words for you: Fleischmann’s Premium Blend Made With Olive Oil. ‘NOW NO TRANS FAT per serving.’

Okay, that’s more than two words, and I will admit I am getting a little confused, but we all know trans fat is bad and olive oil is good. We also know that I Can’t Believe It’s Not Butter – Light has no trans fat per serving either – when you buy it in the TUB, but 1.5g of trans fat per serving when you buy it in the STICK. Which strikes me as odd, because the serving sizes are identical. Is it the ‘stickiness’ that produces the trans fatty acids? You would not necessarily associate tubbiness with better health, but there it is.

And yet – even though the ‘per serving’ qualifier after NO TRANS FAT tells me that Fleischmann’s has just rounded down (if the servings were bigger, I presume they’d show trans fat) – I’m going with the olive oil anyway. For now. Tastes good. Try it.

TWO MORE:

Honest Tea. Look at the new varieties! Tangerine Green Tea – 10 calories per bottle. And, now, Honest Ade. E.g., Pomegranate Blue Organic Fruit Quencher, which ‘harnesses the flavor and power of antioxidant-rich organic fruits.’

The nation’s first organic pomegranate drink combines the antioxidant power and great taste not just of pomegranate but also of blueberries. It’s got less than half the calories of those other pomegranate drinks so it has a light, refreshing taste that has everyone asking for more. In fact, we have yet to leave a focus group without someone draining every last bottle. Honest Ade Pomegranate Blue takes the power of the pomegranate to new heights of refreshment.

Some of the teas come in glass bottles, which are classy but maybe not perfect to shove into your backpack for the bike ride to work. (I don’t have a backpack, my bike long since rusted, I don’t work.) Others come in more modern, grippable plastic.

I know all this because – as long-time readers know – I was a very small, very early investor in this still-private company. (So every time you buy Honest Tea, you add to me Prosperi-Tea.) And I’ve been a cheerleader ever since.

To quote the inside of an Honest Tea bottle cap: ‘Optimism can make you look stupid, but cynicism always makes you look cynical.’ – Calum Fisher

Drink up.

MOO

This was posted March 21 by Jane Smiley, and reverberates still. Smiley is the author of Moo. Her post is more of a roar – or a scream. It will seem too strident to many of you. In places, it seems too strident to me. But there’s a lot to be strident about. It’s objectively true that we are far weaker than we were five years ago – financially, militarily, and in moral capital. Cry, the beloved country. And register to vote.

FMD

More positive analysis on this one here. Some of us bought it cheaper a few weeks ago, but – for better or worse, and with all the usual caveats – I also bought more at current prices.

MUSHROOMS

Don Hurter: ‘When I shop at the local Safeway, I head over to the bakery department before going to produce. Why? So I can pick up a paper bag (normally used for hand-picked bagels) and use it for the mushrooms instead of a clingy plastic bag. No need to transfer later. Just leave the top open at the cashier so they can see what’s inside.’

Mark W. Budwig: ‘I forgot to say refrigerate, or was that obvious? (Or maybe it’s not even necessary. I don’t know; I always do it.) The key thing is that the mushrooms can breathe so they don’t rot in their own moisture.’

☞ If you don’t refrigerate, your mushrooms could grow a fungus. (Yes, I know.)

YOU HAVE TO WASH IT?

Michael: ‘After you wash your lettuce (you DO wash it right away, right?), drain and then wrap in a paper towel before putting it back in the fridge. The paper towel absorbs excess moisture that otherwise will turn the edges brown.’

☞ Lettuce comes in its own wrapping. Just toss out the outer leaves (coated with pesticide, dirt, and germs), then cut off a wedge, drown in dressing and devour.

And don’t start talking to me about ‘romaine’ lettuce. It’s way more expensive, it’s probably French, dirt does get stuck throughout all its leaves, and Cooking Like a Guy™ guys just don’t have time to mess around with it. Paper towels? If God had meant for you to use paper towels, He wouldn’t have invented sleeves.

JONATHAN POND’S ADVICE

Gray Chang: “I am reminded of a story I read in Herb Caen’s column in the San Francisco Chronicle. Back when he was in high school, a teacher told his class, ‘Is it worth a lifetime of guilt and shame for just one hour of pleasure?’ So a kid in back raises his hand and asks, ‘How do you make it last a whole hour?'”

GUNS — WHAT SAY YOU?

Jonathan Levy:“Your item on guns reminded me of an idea I have had for a long time. There should be a requirement that all guns carry insurance against death, injury, and property damage they might cause. The manufacturer would be required to take out the original policy on any gun and the only way a policy (i.e., the insurance company) could be relieved of responsibility for a gun would be if the gun were picked up by another policy. Such a plan would have a number of benefits: (1) It would assure that most gun victims could be compensated. Only those injured by an unknown gun would be left out and even they could be included if there were some provision to create a pool of money from the insurance premiums to compensate victims of unidentified guns. (2) It would create a stronger disincentive against letting guns fall into the black market. The last known owner and his/her insurance company would be on the hook for these guns until they resurfaced and were properly passed to another insurance policy. Most likely, the owner would not have to pay premiums forever for stolen guns but there would be a provision (priced into the policies) for insurance companies to carry the ongoing risk for no additional premiums on stolen guns properly reported to the police. (3) It is a free-market solution that should appeal to conservatives. The law-abiding hunters that the NRA likes to put forward should be able to get very low rates through competition between insurance companies. Some guy with a string of arrests likely would pay much more or not even be able to find coverage and thus would not be able to own a gun. However, it would be the private insurance markets that made that decision, not the government. (4) For those who might argue that only law-abiding gun owners would buy the insurance, not criminals – fine.   One more charge prosecutors can level against people most of us think should be locked up, anyway. If it gives them a chance to do it before the people commit violent crimes with the guns, that is even better. (5) This plan works with any gun policy. It could be implemented with as much or as little other gun control as communities, states, and Congress saw fit.”

HOW TO MANAGE $250,000

Dan: “My recently widowed 67-year-old mother-in-law asked me for some financial advice. (First big mistake.) She has a modest net worth in the $250K range and needs income to supplement her Social Security and small pension. As my own focus is growth, I’m not well versed in income maximizing strategies. I suggested that she assemble a diversified portfolio of income producing assets. My thoughts were some Treasury instruments, ginnie maes, perhaps a cautious bond fund and some dividend oriented stocks, like utilities . . . and a small growth component (10%?) in an index fund like Vanguard Total Market. Dividend stocks seem reasonable as the tax treatment is better and the yields may be better at the cost of a bit more risk. Fair advice? Any other comments?”

☞ Consider using the $250,000 to buy a lifetime annuity (learn about this at brkdirect.com). The annuity will never run out (though if it’s not inflation adjusted it would dwindle), and she has the advantage of – in effect – being able to spend the principal as well as the interest.

Her Social Security pay-out rises with inflation, but because most annuity pay-outs do not, maybe put $150,000 in the annuity now and $100,000 in Vanguard’s inflation-protected fund (VAIPX). Then, after a few years, if interest rates should rise – and with VAIPX having held its value against inflation in the meantime – you might cash that in to buy a second annuity that throws off as much as the first.

(How can a $100,000 annuity throw off as much income as a $150,000 annuity? Two ways. First, if interest rates are higher when you buy the second one, so too will be the rate at which the annuity pay-out is set. Second, having waited a few years, the insurance company will assume a somewhat shorter life expectancy over which it will have to make payments.)

Of course, if you had reason to believe your mother-in-law is unlikely to live a long life, this may not be the way to go. Nor is it a good option is if she is determined to leave you and your wife an inheritance. With a lifetime annuity, the insurer will pay forever (if she lives forever). But once she’s gone – whether at age 110 or next week – so is your money. (For a price, some insurers will provide gimmicks to partly get around that. But there’s no free lunch. The more bells and whistles on your annuity, the more likely you are getting less than great value.)

Finally, if your mother-in-law owns a home, she should consider taking out a reverse mortgage.

HAVE A GREAT WEEKEND

WILL HUGO CHAVEZ RIG THE U.S. ELECTION?

Oh, probably not. But maybe this will get our friends in the Republican Party to join in trying to assure verifiable elections. Click here, if you haven’t already – whatever your political leanings – to urge support of Rush Holt‘s election protection legislation.

LETTUCE NOW PRAISE FAMOUS MEN

Bryan Norcross: ‘Mark Budwig’s advice on the mushrooms yesterday reminds me of this: If you put lettuce in a plastic Ziploc bag in the refrigerator… do NOT zip the bag closed. The lettuce will last many times longer if it can breathe.’

JUGGLING

Andy Fink: ‘For juggling videos, I recommend the amazing Jason Garfield.’ [How’s this for 10 seconds?]

TODAY’S CHARMING VIDEO

And you’ll even learn a few words of Italian. (My favorite scene: seduction / seduzione.) Click here. Thanks, Roger!

Tomorrow: How to Manage $250,000

But first . . .

I BEFORE M C SQUARED

Michael Cain: ‘Much of spelling in English is simply memorization. Many years ago when I studied German in school, spelling in that language was much more regular, to the extent that we were told, ‘If you can pronounce it correctly, you can spell it. If you see it written down, there’s only one way to pronounce it.’ I have since wondered if spelling bees are held in other languages, or if they are purely an artifact of the lack of regular spelling in English. Perhaps your readers know?’

☞ Anyone? Anyone?

Joe Devney: ‘It seems you have forgotten the rest of the rhyme. ‘I before E except after C, or when sounded like A, as in neighbor and sleigh.’ Nine of your fourteen “-ei-” words follow this more complete rule. This obviously still leaves several oddballs, but the situation is less chaotic than you thought.’

☞ Mrs. Green never taught us that part.

Jim Batterson:‘This rule would drive Einstein crazy. He broke it twice in his own name!’

MORE BAD ADVICE FROM CHILDHOOD

1. It’s simply not true that you can’t put ketchup on salmon steaks. Sure, salmon burgers; but salmon steaks, too. (Try it.)

2. Of course bananas can go in the refrigerator, although, yes, if you keep them there too long, they do get black. But for a day or two? Just waiting for the moment when you have your fat-free banana split? (One or two bananas befriending big chilled strawberries – some cold fresh pineapple chunks if handy – covered in fat-free chocolate syrup beneath a triumph of fat-free ConAgra Foods ‘let the fun out’ ReddiWip.) You certainly don’t want your bananas room temperature for that.

3. Anyone? Anyone?

Face it: IT’S HARD TO DO ANYTHING IN AUGUST

Bob Sakowski: ‘‘The FBI agent who arrested Zacarias Moussaoui in August 2001 testified Monday he spent almost four weeks trying to warn U.S. officials about the radical Islamic student pilot but “criminal negligence” by superiors in Washington thwarted a chance to stop the 9/11 attacks.’ Think of it, Moussaoui was arrested on Aug 20. He was charged because he did nothing to prevent the plot that was to occur on Sep 11. Bush had the PDB of Aug 6 read to him on that date and did nothing to prevent the events of Sep 11. If Moussaoui is culpable what does that say about Bush?’

☞ Not much. We all become torpid in August, and that Presidential Daily Briefing was not specific. (Bin Laden determined to strike where in the U.S.?) But how about seven months earlier, January 7, 2001, at Blair House, when the CIA chief told the incoming President, Veep, and National Security Advisor that there was a man named Bin Laden who posed a ‘tremendous,’ ‘immediate’ threat to the United States?

January’s no August. January’s the kind of month that crackles with energy. A tremendous, immediate threat? Instead of jumping on and redoubling the CIA’s plans to go after Bin Laden, the Administration shut them down, taking seven months – in the face of a ‘tremendous, immediate threat’ – to come up with an alternative plan for review. (Source: beginning on this page of Bob Woodward’s generally pro-Bush Bush At War.) One thing you can feel confident about when you have a seasoned team of top Republicans, many of whom had served under Reagan and Bush Senior: whether it’s terrorism or hurricanes or hunting quail, these are guys who anticipate problems and keep you safe.

MORE BRUTAL STILL

I’m all for sparing people’s feelings – reading stuff like this must be torture for the President – but it’s hard not to see at least a few grains of truth in it, over-the-top though it may be. Bill Maher last Friday night:

Mr. President, this job can’t be fun for you any more. There’s no more money to spend – you used up all of that. You can’t start another war because you used up the army. And now, darn the luck, the rest of your term has become the Bush family nightmare: helping poor people.

Listen to your Mom. The cupboard’s bare, the credit cards maxed out. No one’s speaking to you. Mission accomplished.

Now it’s time to do what you’ve always done best: lose interest and walk away. Like you did with your military service and the oil company and the baseball team. It’s time. Time to move on and try the next fantasy job. How about cowboy or space man? Now I know what you’re saying: there’s so many other things that you as President could involve yourself in. Please don’t. I know, I know. There’s a lot left to do. There’s a war with Venezuela. Eliminating the sales tax on yachts. Turning the space program over to the church. And Social Security to Fannie Mae. Giving embryos the vote.

But, Sir, none of that is going to happen now. Why? Because you govern like Billy Joel drives. You’ve performed so poorly I’m surprised that you haven’t given yourself a medal. You’re a catastrophe that walks like a man. Herbert Hoover was a s—-y president, but even he never conceded an entire city to rising water and snakes.

On your watch, we’ve lost almost all of our allies, the surplus, four airlines, two trade centers, a piece of the Pentagon and the City of New Orleans. Maybe you’re just not lucky. I’m not saying you don’t love this country. I’m just wondering how much worse it could be if you were on the other side.

So, yes, God does speak to you. What he is saying is: ‘Take a hint.’

And now . . .

FUN

Jeff: ‘On the heels of your pointing us to Google Maps, now comes Google Finance. It’s cool. You can see a chart along with important news stories – I’ve been waiting for this for a long time. Check it out.’

MORE FUN

Hubert Heller: ‘This is an incredible performance. Watch with speakers on. (Click on: Must-See Finale.)’

☞ And you thought your cousin was impressive for being able to balance a spoon on his nose.

Tomorrow: Wal-Mart, How to Manage $500,000, and a Great Speech