December 2005 Archives

While the article is talking about sawmills, to me the article is really about how urban environmentalists who spend most of their lives removed from nature are screwing up environmentalism. Read it Here

Here's a quote:

Fifteen years ago, not long after the release of “Playing God in Yellowstone,” his seminal work on environmentalism's philosophical underpinnings, I asked philosopher and environmentalist Alston Chase what he thought about this situation. I leave you to ponder his answer: “Environmentalism increasingly reflects urban perspectives. As people move to cities, they become infatuated with fantasies about land untouched by humans. This demographic shift is revealed through ongoing debates about endangered species, grazing, water rights, private property, mining and logging. And it is partly a healthy trend. But this urbanization of environmental values also signals the loss of a rural way of life and the disappearance of hands-on experience with nature. So the irony: As popular concern for preservation increases, public understanding about how to achieve it declines.”

Yeah, I hate “Disney” environmentalism.

Ironically, a friend of mine is trying to start a sawmill in Winslow. Not only would it provide jobs, it would actually be the best possible thing to happen to the Coconino National Forest. See, because humans have “meddled” with the forest by preventing it from burning every few years, there's actually now too many small trees in the forest. Which means we need to “meddle” with it some more by cutting some of those trees down.

Which like anything that involves lots of dealing with small objects, expensive.

My friends sawmill could make saving the forest pay for itself. I know he could do it if he got the money. Despite Jim Petersen's doom and gloom, my friend has already turned around one lumber company increasing their sales from $9M/year to $24M/year. He's even lined up the support of the Sierra club.

He needs some investors though (not a lot, he needs $1-2M at most) so if you or someone you know would be interested in this sort of investment, let me know at the@opinionatedbastard.com.

For $19.95 if you buy the Chamois color. Good for you hipster PDA guys like me who are starting to think that carrying both a wallet and all these 3x5 cards is getting silly.

See it here

Hmmm... That was quick, Chamois seems to no longer be available...

Might be worth calling: 800-357-9991

Pierce

Technorati Tags: GTD

So InstaPundit reviewed, of all things, a bean bag chair. Fair enough. But I went to the website, which asked me “What's your favorite position?”.

Complete with a hot blond you can “pose” by mousing over the various options.

I'd have to say, position #3 babe, position #3. Hunh! Hunh! Hunh! Aaaaah!

Go Read This

Normally, I'd blow this off. But reading:

The Americans, responding to concerns that Iran's meddling might have gone too far reportedly arrested Bayan Jabr, Iraq's minister of Interior.

Maybe we'll only have to redo the Baghdad elections?

Gee, if only I'd finished that “cheat-proof elections” thing I was working on...

Read it here

My grandfather spent time in Leavenworth for being a Trade Unionist!

He had to get a Presidential Pardon to get out.

Guess I have a way to go to fill those shoes.

From over at Big Pharaoh, the Egyptian blogger:

I had a few minutes to spare during my working day today. I thought it would be a good idea to read Noam Chomsky's interview with Egyptian blogger Karim Elsahy who was interviewing the professor on behalf of Egypt Today magazine. I started reading and reached the sentence where Chomsky said:

I mean the level of religious fundamentalism in the United States is beyond any country I know.

That's when I laughed so hard, stopped reading, and went back to my boring excel sheet!

Yeah, me too Pharaoh, me too.

Citizen Smash says:

AS A STORM BREWS on Capitol Hill over revelations that the President authorized the NSA to conduct surveillance within our borders, now is a good time to take a step back, and examine our priorities.

Here are mine:

• We must defeat our enemies, and prevent further attacks against our nation.
• We must emerge from this war with our Constitution intact.

Yeah, what he said.

I'd started slacking off on these until the end of the month, but given the Iraqi Election, I felt it was worth doing one to measure all the things leading up to the election.

From over at the Brookings Institute:

The jury remains out over whether democracy in the Arab world would yield governments more supportive of U.S. interests, produce populaces less sympathetic to jihadists or prevent al Qaeda from pursuing its goals through terrorism. At stake is more than presidential rhetoric. Democracy promotion has become the sole and defining element of President Bush's long-term counterterrorism approach. That is why the administration has an obligation to go beyond assertion and demonstrate convincingly that its one-dimensional strategy will yield the desired result. If it cannot, the administration risks putting all of our security eggs in the wrong basket.

Yeah, those light-brown people might not always agree with us, so we should go back to the good old days of dictatorships.

We know how well that worked after all:

Don't bother reading the editorial, its long on criticism but doesn't present any alternatives. I only linked to it to be polite.

From over at the Brookings Institute:

The jury remains out over whether democracy in the Arab world would yield governments more supportive of U.S. interests, produce populaces less sympathetic to jihadists or prevent al Qaeda from pursuing its goals through terrorism. At stake is more than presidential rhetoric. Democracy promotion has become the sole and defining element of President Bush's long-term counterterrorism approach. That is why the administration has an obligation to go beyond assertion and demonstrate convincingly that its one-dimensional strategy will yield the desired result. If it cannot, the administration risks putting all of our security eggs in the wrong basket.

Yeah, those light-brown people might not always agree with us, so we should go back to the good old days of dictatorships.

We know how well that worked after all:

Don't bother reading the editorial, its long on criticism but doesn't present any alternatives. I only linked to it to be polite.

No one understands the whole “aiming” thing

No doubt, somehow, despite the fact that an Arab nation had a real election somehow the results (when they come out sometime between now an January) will be spun by the glass-half-empty-crowd to be somehow bad for the US.

Here's my answer:

• A higher percentage of people voted in Iraq than in the US.
• It doesn't matter who they voted for, they voted. I might vote for a Democrat for Governor. I might not. Unless you know the details about each candidate, you have no idea what it means.
• Iraq is a religious nation. Expecting them to vote like say, Californians is just dumb. Expect them to vote like someone in the Bible Belt.

Here are my predictions:

• Some Religious candidates will do well. Iraq will end up being more conservative then California or New York, but not as conservative as 1876 Boston (used to be illegal in Massachusetts to have your business open on Sunday), perhaps slightly more conservative then Alabama, but not much.
• Some Secularists will do well. Not as many as we'd like, but enough to ensure that Iraq will be mostly secular.
• The Kurds will do well in the north.
• Some Shia will have voted for Sunni and vice versa. News Flash: Sometimes Blacks vote for Whites and vice versa. Voters are always smarter then the politicians think. Competence trumps incompetence every time in a secret ballot.

Here's my long term prediction for Iraq:

• Iraq will neither agree with the US 100% of the time, nor make us happy 100% of the time. That is, they'll be just like every other ally or enemy we've ever had.
• All in all, a free Iraq will be better for the world then a Saddam Iraq.
• Iraq will prove that people in a democratic society are always smarter more reasonable then their leaders.

Juan Cole says:

There has been no improvement since Saddam fell or things are worse: 60%

Uh, that's not what I got, even if you lump the “same” category with the “worse” category because you're a half-empty kind of person:

I didn't do a pie chart for this one, but Juan says:

Things are going badly in Iraq today: 52% (30% say “very badly”).

Actually Juan, you should round up to 53%, then it's: 44% Good, 53% Bad, 3.2% “hard to say”. But you're definitely a half-empty sort of person...I'm not sure Americans would poll this well, most Americans tend to be kind of pessimistic...

Juan says:

It was wrong for the US to invade Iraq: 50%

Poll says: It was right for the US to invade Iraq, 46%. It's pretty amazing that 46% of the people polled thought some other country was “right” to invade their country, don't you think?

Juan goes on to say:

(Only 19% say it was “absolutely right” for the US to invade)

Yeah, and 28% felt the US was “somewhat right”. You want certainty? About someone invading your country and occupying you?

Juan points out:

Oppose presence of Coalition troops in Iraq: 65%

But conveniently fails to mention that only 26% think they should leave now. In fact, 98.7% of the Iraqis think the Coalition should leave eventually. Duh! Even Bush thinks that.

Juan says:

Iraq needs a government made up mainly of religious leaders: 48%

Except that table isn't that clear. Does that mean a leader who is a priest, or a leader who goes to church? I think something like 75% of Americans polled think a politician should believe in God. That's why there's always photo-ops of Kerry going to Mass. For that matter, 49% think that a government made up mainly of military leaders would be good, but 90% agree with a democracy. That question was actually agree/disagree on a lot of government topics, so Juan's drawing conclusions I don't think are supported here.

When I first posted these pie charts for the poll, I left off some of the negative stuff because I figured the media would spin it on their own. That's what Juan's doing here, but frankly, there was plenty more negative stuff in the poll that didn't require half-full/half-empty spin. He should have dug a little deeper.

Oh well, I never expect much from lefty professors anyways.

So my neighbor had noticed the “W” sign on my lawn during the election last year and made a point of inviting me to the party (it was at his house). My other neighbor it turns out was cooking (he used to be a chef). Now strangely enough, the day before I'd gone to another Xmas party and had a long talk with a former serviceman who told me afterwards “It's nice talking to Republicans”.

So I went to the party. I enjoyed myself immensly. I didn't have to apologize at the party for being patriotic, for supporting the troops, for being pro-victory, or for being Christian at Christmas. It was immensely relaxing. Plus the food was outstanding, and the bar was open (and I could walk home).

This morning, I read this piece from a lefty:

Last weekend I did something I haven't done in a long time. Something I swore I'd never do again. Something I'm deeply ashamed of.

I stood during the singing of the national anthem.

This is why even though I'm not sure I'll ever be a capital-R Republican, I doubt I'll ever be even a small-d Democrat. I've said it before, and I'll say it again: I'm not 100% happy with Bush, but the idiocy of his critics have made me a fan.

If you've never read it, go read this essay by Isaac Asimov about our national anthem.

Emily Weinstein, you are an idiot.

I am pro-victory. But if my only choice for being pro-victory is also pro-Republican, then so be it.

Graffiti in Iran

Read the Whole Thing

There was a free and democratic election in the Middle East!

A historic moment.

But the news yawns.

Because it's not news, its merely important.

I'm telling ya, Nightly News and Professional Wrestling? Same thing.

Since you won't be able to get decent reporting from our media, here's some stuff worth reading from others:

Hammorabi who's never been much of coalition fan makes too comments:

1. However the main players which make the elections to succeed are the Iraqis who voted by no for terrorism.

2. One of the most noticeable things is that some of the Sunni leaders like Mithal Al-Alowsi party (the Party of Iraqi Nation) achieved quite considerable amount of voices in the Shiite regions. It was reported that it achieved the third place in Karbala where there are 100% Shiite population and many Shiite parties. This is a good indication that many Iraqis are not looking for the faith of the person but for his program. This is the issue for many like Al-Alowsi, Sadoon Al-Doliami, Sheikh Mahmood Al-Eisawi and many other Sunni Iraqis who are against terrorism.

Austin Bay has some good links.

So does Pajamas Media who paid 8 Iraqis to report on the elections (imagine that! Asking the people who live there what they think? Weird!)

This is my own version of a cake recipe I found on the internet one day looking for “espresso chocolate cake”. My main tweak is that I use Hershey's Cocoa powder and butter instead of the baking chocolate. That way there's nothing to melt, so this cake is even easier to make...

Flourless Chocolate Espresso Cake

Things you will need:

Sauce: 3 packages of Frozen raspberries in syrup 10 oz each

If you can't find the ones in syrup, you'll have to mix in a LOT of sugar.

Cake:

   1.5 cups cocoa powder
   5.5 sticks butter
   1 cup white sugar
   1 c  Freshly brewed espresso
   1 c  Golden brown sugar; packed
   8 lg Eggs; beaten to blend

   Parchment Paper, Cake Pans with high walls

If you want to be fancy:

Some powdered sugar for making a design on the top.

Making the Sauce: Working in batches, puree raspberries and syrup in processor. Strain puree into medium bowl. Chill.

Making the Cake: Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Line bottom of 9-inch-diameter cake pan with 2-inch-high sides with parchment. Basically, you do this by putting the pan over the parchment paper, drawing a circle around it with a pencil, then cutting out the circle slightly inside the line. That gives you a nice circle for the bottom of the pan, which will keep the cake from sticking when you try to get it out.

Place all chocolate in large bowl. Bring butter, espresso and sugar to boil in medium saucepan, stirring to dissolve sugar. Add to chocolate; whisk until smooth. Cool slightly. Whisk in eggs. Pour batter into prepared pan. Place cake pan in roasting pan. Pour enough hot water into roasting pan to come halfway up sides of cake pan. Bake until center of cake is set and tester inserted into center comes out with a few moist crumbs attached, about 1 hour (takes me about 1.5 hours in Flagstaff though). Remove pan from water. Chill cake overnight.

Cut around pan sides to loosen cake. Using oven mitts as aid, hold pan bottom over low heat for 15 seconds, warming slightly to release cake. Place platter over pan. Hold pan and platter together tightly and invert. Lift off cake pan; peel off parchment.

A fancy design for the top: Ok, now what I generally do is get some sort of stencil and I put it over the cake. Like a flat snowflake ornament, or if I'm making the cake for a pot luck at the martial arts studio the black part of a giant yin-yang symbol. Or if its for Xmas dinner, I get one of the giant plastic snowflake ornaments and use that instead. If you then sift powdered sugar onto the top (fairly thick because the top of the cake is moist) you end up with a cool design on top of your cake after you remove the stencil.

Serve very small slices (cake serves 20) with sauce and fresh berries. Trust me on the small slices, this cake is so rich you'll never finish a typical cake slice.

Or in my case Kurdish

Take the test at the link above and see which parties you like in the Iraqi election!

While I found Blueprint for Action a work of staggering genius and naiveté, tdaxp has been making fun of it lately.

Here's episode 1

Here's episode 2

Thomas Barnett is best for making you think in new ways about foreign policy, but following his strategies blindly would be well, like turning over the world to the French...

This morning, an inspiring story in the Wall Street Journal about a 31 year old journalist who just joined the Marines.

Consistently, the Wall Street Journal coverage of the war has been much better then the New York Times or the Washington Post. I think that's because while the NYT and WP are after ratings, the WSJ is trying to make their customers money.

So distortions and hype don't fly. Kudos to the WSJ.

My wife asked me this morning, here was my answer:

• It's the exact center of the Middle East, it borders 6 other countries in the Middle East, and ALL of the problem countries.
• For every problem in the Middle East, it was on our flank.
• It wasn't a home run on any problem, but it was a double for about 7 different ways. 7 doubles will win a game more than one home run.

Of course, I've said that before, in a more long-winded version here.

Get your “Opinionated Bastard Coffee Mug” right here

T-Shirts buttons and some other fun stuff there as well too.

Pajamas Media put me onto this poll of the Iraqis.

Here are some charts to explain the data a little more clearly:

Wow. 70.6% of the Iraqis say their life is good? Were things this good under Saddam? Guess not...

Life is better for most Iraqi's then it used to be under Saddam. Is this temporary?

Nope, 60% of Iraqis think things will be even better a year from now! (Inshallah means “god willing”, and is just me being funny, it really means “don't know” from the survey). Looks like the Iraqis are a victim of their own media though, while most of them are doing better, more of them think the the country isn't doing as well:

Though they are even more optimistic for the country as a whole a year from now:

The top 3 things Iraqis thought would be the best thing that could happen to Iraq would be:

1. Security
2. Peace and Stability

3. A better life

   The fourth choice was American forces leaving Iraq, but that was only 5.7% of the count (more people answered “not sure”). An Islamic government was .1% with only 2 people choosing that. Of the things people chose from their list, over 90% of them expected that “best thing” to happen would happen in the next year.

Iraqis think Democracy is best:

And they have high hopes for the elections:

There's lots of data in the survey, I just picked out the ones I thought needed graphs the most. Here's a fun one though:

In fact, overall, the Iraqis were pretty open-minded about women:

There was bad news in the survey as well, I just expect you can get that from the regular media. In a nutshell though, they think the coalition sucks, but they don't want us to leave quite yet.

M-A-Y-O-R of San Francisco needs to lighten up.

Watch the Video

Hat tip: California Conservative

Nice to know the cops in San Francisco have a sense of humor even if the mayor doesn't.

Over at Radio Free Europe

Hat Tip: Terrorism Unveiled which had an interesting article pointing out that only 69 people voted for George Washington, etc.

Over at Opinion Journal, Peggy Noonan is trying to make some sort of point about Immigration policy:

What does it mean when your first act is to break the laws of your new country? What does it mean when you know you are implicitly supported in lawbreaking by that nation's ruling elite? What does it mean when you know your new country doesn't even enforce its own laws? What does it mean when you don't even have to become an American once you join America?

Her whole point is severely diluted by her opening anecdote:

I recently found out through one of her daughters that my grandmother spent her first night in America on a park bench in downtown Manhattan. She had made her way from Ireland to Ellis Island, and a cousin was to meet the ship. It was about 1920. The cousin didn't show. So Mary Dorian, age roughly 20, all alone, with no connections and no relatives interested enough to remember her arrival in the new world, spent her first night in America alone on a bench, in the dark, in a strange country. Later she found her way to Brooklyn and became a bathroom attendant at the big Abraham & Straus department store on Fulton Street.

Peggy, did you know that sleeping on a park bench in downtown Manhattan is illegal? Should I ask your grandmother the same questions you seem to be asking illegal immigrants?

I don't think you'd like the answers.

Peggy concludes with:

The problem with our elites as they make our immigration policy is not that they have compassion and open-mindedness. It is that they are unknowing and empty-headed. They don't know, most of them, what others had to earn, and how much they, and their descendents, prize it and want to protect it.

The problem with our elites is that they've never talked to an actual living immigrant, legal or illegal. That includes you Peggy.

A friend of mine from Australia is on his 5th year of living here on a visa. Each year he has to apply, and one year later, he gets the visa...in time for it to expire...

Our immigration system is totally broken, legal or illegal. Perhaps the real answer is not to worry about whether these “illegal immigrants” are breaking the law, but to look at the law itself. Perhaps what they're doing shouldn't be illegal?

I don't mean opening the border completely, but if you make it easier to be legal then illegal, people will be legal. This is the “iTunes” lesson.

Our immigration policy is designed to make the unions and the population feel good, but as someone who lives in a border state I can say its all window dressing. 3,000 miles of border is always going to be a problem. This sort of editorial just points out to me the vacuousness of the debate: Peggy is comparing her grandmother's experience during the period when immigration was relatively open to the Latino experience now? If her grandmother was willing to cross an ocean, alone, and sleep on a park bench isn't it possible she would have been willing to sneak into the country as well?

Bah. I'm beginning to think that only California, Arizona, New Mexico, Florida and Texas should be allowed to set immigration policy. The other 45 states are just getting in the way.

When I went to the polling stations a little over a year ago, no one shot at me or beat me up.

Not so in Egypt.

Over at A Citizen of Mosul:

The convoy was coming toward the intersection with very laud warning horn, they usually come too fast expecting the police to open the street for them by blocking the movement in the other directions and keeping the way free for them. This poor policeman was either un aware of the convoy or he intentionally don't care,when they come to the intersection it wasn't completely free. And he deserve to be executed for his unforgivable sin.

From Scott Adams of dilbert fame.

If you liked Zarqawi's Website you'll like this too.

I liked Aeon Flux.

Looking at the movie reviews though, you'd think it was the worst movie ever...

It's not. In fact, its one of the best science fiction movies I've seen in that it doesn't talk down to the audience.

Of course, it's not really Aeon Flux, the movie. I didn't expect it to be, because the original Aeon Flux was sort of this oblique commentary on the whole Cold War. From the trailers, I knew that wasn't going to happen (the Monicans are no longer a separate country but “rebels”), so about 30 minutes into the movie, I decided to evaluate it as a regular science fiction movie. In that case, I found it pretty good.

It's fun, stylized, and makes you think. The future actually looks like the future, instead of “like the present only different”.

I found it to be like Gattaca, only entertaining...

Though, sure, the Original Aeon Flux was better (in an artsy sort of way), I still enjoyed the movie.

So if you see me recommending this article about the French Riots from a female point of view, you'll know its worth reading.

Donald Rumsfeld has an editorial in the Wall Street Journal about Iraq and the Media. It's a transcript of his speech for Monday at Johns Hopkins.

63% of people in the news media thought the enterprise would fail. So did 71% of people in the foreign affairs establishment and 71% in academic settings or think tanks. Interestingly, opinion leaders from the U.S. military are optimistic about Iraq by a margin of 64% to 32%. And so is the American public, by a margin of 56% to 37%.

Which view of Iraq is more accurate? The pessimistic view of so-called elites in our country--or the optimism expressed by millions of Iraqis and by the roughly 158,000 troops on the ground? But, most important is the question: why should Iraq's success or failure matter to the American people? I'd like to address these questions today.

Like everything the real Donald does, it's not rah-rah, but rather a fair assessment of the good and bad in Iraq. The Bad:

* Bursts of violence, including continued assassinations and attempts to intimidate Iraqi leaders and those supporting the legitimate Iraqi government.

* Continuing U.S. and Iraqi casualties.

* Iran and Syria continue to be notably unhelpful.

The Good:

* The political process is on schedule. Iraqis have a Constitution they wrote and voted for, and hundreds of candidates are politicking for the elections.

* There seem to be growing divisions among the enemies of the Iraqi people, particularly after the bombing of a wedding reception in Amman, Jordan.

* More of Iraq's neighbors now seem to believe this new democracy might succeed and are moving to get right with the Iraqi people by being more active in their support.

* A vital and engaged media is emerging, with some 100 newspapers, 72 radio stations, and 44 television stations.

* Sunnis are increasingly taking part in the political process, further isolating those who still oppose the legitimate Iraqi government.

Perhaps he reads the Opinionated Bastard, because he's trying to define the victory conditions:

To be responsible, one needs to stop defining success in Iraq as the absence of terrorist attacks. As Sen. Joe Lieberman recently suggested, a better measure of success might be that a vast majority of Iraqis--tens of millions--are on the side of the democratic government, while a comparatively small number are opposed. This gives the Iraqi people an enormous advantage over time.

Anyways, read the whole thing.

Technorati Tags: Iraq

A friend of mine gave me this tip: He always downloads the combo installers for Mac OS X rather then use System Update. He claims that the big installers update a little more than the incremental and they tend to fix any outstanding errors in his system.

It helped fix a machine I had that wasn't bringing up the login screen, so I think I'll be doing that as well from now on.

Technorati Tags: MacOSX

Could he go back to obscurity already? Geesh.

The Black Iris of Jordan posts his list of 50 things he'd like to change in Jordanian society.

Here's a few:

• Do not speed in your car. Amman is small, you can get anywhere relativly quickley and an accident is not worth shaving off 2 minutes from your travel time
• Remain quiet in movie theaters and watch the damn movie
• Close your mouth when you’re eating

The more people are different, the more they are the same.

So I was reading one of the Iraqi Blogs and came upon this post, linking to this article. The comment was:

Military autopsy reports provide indisputable proof that detainees are being tortured to death while in US military custody. Yet the US corporate media are covering it with the seriousness of a garage sale for the local Baptist Church.

Except I actually followed all the links over to the ACLU site here.

Out of these 44 supposed torture autopsies, 31 out of the 44 reports the cause of death is natural or an accident.

Some of the other deaths are caused by the fact that the person was actively fighting with the troops that captured them, then died later from those injuries.

Even some of the “homicides” happened during problems at the prison:

Iraqi male detainee in U.S custody was killed by a shotgun wound to the head. The shot was delivered by coalition force guards when a group of prisoners became unruly.

If you accept everything the American Left accepts as “truth” instead of “rhetoric” you're going to end up hating everything about America. Realize that the CounterPunch guy is trying to make a point, so recognize the point, but don't trust anything he says until you follow up.

I think the real point is that America actively investigates and autopsies these deaths instead of just dumping them in a mass grave. I think that speaks well of us. I'm sure that there have been problems with the US-run prisons. I see no reason why the US would get an exemption from the history of prisons in the world.

But don't get sucked into the hysteria of the screamers. That's one of the reasons I'm always looking for reports from Iraqis or Soldiers about Iraq, and why I have a whole section of my blog called Ground Truth.

So while this report is disturbing, I don't find the ACLU report that interesting. In fact, I'd take them more seriously if they weren't inflating the body count to 44 by including the deaths from natural causes.

Being a female suicide bomber is like being a black KKK member.

Technorati Tags: Iraq

Last Year I bought a printer from Epson and got a rebate for $20. Except instead of sending me a check, they sent me this weird debit card for www.myecount.com. So when I was cleaning out my office, I found the stupid thing and tried to use it. No go. So I went to their website.

Turns out they charge you $3/month for every month you don't use the card.

I now have only $5 on the card, which is going to be almost impossible to use.

So let me get this straight. Instead of giving me $20, Epson has given these guys $15?

Idiots. Once burned, twice shy. I won't be trusting Epson for a while now. Don't these guys know it takes a long time to gain a customer's trust, but only an instant to lose it?

Those HP printers are looking better now...

Technorati Tags: rebate, epson

Here's a cooking tip:

Cut the onions first.

Why? Well, the real tip is that if you rub your hands with celery after cutting onions, it will remove the smell from your hands (which seems to be hard to wash off with regular soap).

Except that's much more complicated to remember, and it works for other vegetables besides celery.

So I just cut the onions first, because I rarely use onions alone so if I just cut them first by the time I've cut all the other vegetables, the onion smell has been driven away.

This is especially useful this time of year if you're making stuffing: cut the onions first, then the celery, then transfer the celery to the mixing bowl by scooping it off the cutting board with your hands rather then scraping.

Technorati Tags: lifehacks

I've used up the sample spool of label tape that came with my labelmaker.

Even worse, I used it up labeling the file cabinets in the garage where my wife “filed” the big tools like the drills and the saws because I was tired of having to search through each drawer to find stuff.

So I've gone from never making a label in my life to labeling stuff my wife does (who's generally more organized then me, she needs First Things First not Getting Things Done ).

Speaking of which, I got another friend of mine to join the cult. As he put it: "I've never felt so good about spending $200 on office supplies."