just a gastronomic thought

I like to cook. Not just to make something to shove down my throat to refuel but the creative act of selecting ingredients, chopping onions, cutting meat with a razor sharp cleaver, and selecting spices to satisfy not only a basic, primal, urge of survival but a specific chemical need my body is relaying to my brain in the form of appetite communication. I've always believed a picky eater is an underachiever but more importantly, if you eat something you like that you never had before you'll live a hundred days longer. My goal is to live forever and if I try something different every 99 days and like it I'm ahead of the game.

As I was preparing a gulyas the other day, I realized two things.

1. I'm a godam good cook.
2. Smokers make better cooks.


First of all, I don't measure anything. A pinch of this, a handful of that, dump in some of this, taste and adjust. In the case of the gulyas I started with a bunch of chopped onions, clarified and slightly blackened in olive oil, A bottom round roast cut in 1/2" cubes, washed and salted and dumped in the pot with caraway seeds, a bunch of hot paprika and a couple handfuls of sweet paprika, and water to cover after it browns. By the time it was ready for the spuds, the gulyas was developing a truly spectacular flavor. Then it dawned on me... If a non-smokin' me were to make this stuff it wouldn't have near the flavor it has now. See, nicotine reduces the sense of taste so non-smokers don't require as much flavor. It's been said you can pour a pint of Irish whisky in one end of Loch Ness and a non-smoker can taste it at the other end. Is that the kind of person you want to flavor your food? Someone who can taste .0003 parts per million? Or would you rather have a gastronomic experience prepared by someone who compensates for a diminished sense of taste by creating a fully balanced, sumptuous flavor that would make a Hungarian cry?

This explains why nuvo cuisine, wheat grass, and sawdust is so tasty to all those people who want a non smoking world.

I hear Julia Child used to smoke cigars with Paul Prudhomme. Is that true?

Say it ain't so, Joe

I was just researching Joe Papp's noble gas plasma engine and I can't for the life of me understand why I didn't know about this stuff before. I looked into room temperature nuclear fusion, hydrogen power engines, orgone, vegetable oil diesel engines, Joe Neuman's energy machine, the 60' drinking bird, and tons of other lesser-known contrivances doomed to the mists of forgotten perpetual motion antiquity but this noble gas plasma engine is, for lack of a better term, the tits.

Here you have Joe Papp, a pilot and microfiche technician who escaped to Canada in 1957 during the Hungarian revolution with plans for a revolutionary engine given to him by a scientist rather than letting it fall into the hands of the Soviets. Joe was no scientist but in 1966 managed to build a submarine and supposedly traveled under the Atlantic and was found bloody and battered on a life raft off the coast of France, 13 hrs after he left the North American coast. The sub was lost at sea, never to be found, and Joe was looked at as a stunt making jerk. Some 20 years later he developed and built a car engine. This engine is a multi-cylinder piston and crank design like today's car engines, but each cylinder is sealed with a charge of helium, neon, argon, krypton, and xenon. It has no intake or exhaust ports, nor even a radiator. Its outside temperature was about 140 degrees F and generated no pollutants, not even CO2. It was totally clean and could run for an estimated 10,000 hrs for about $1.00 worth of fuel in the form of inert gas. The engine could run smoothly down to 100 rpm and developed hundreds of horsepower at only 1000 rpm and had torque in the hundreds of foot pounds.

Imagine an engine that could run for 10 years with no fuel, no emissions, no cooling system, no heat, no exhaust, very little maintenance, only one moving part, and a fraction of the cost of a conventional engine.

This isn't just another cold fusion fantasy. Joe Papp managed to get 3 patents that could realistically transform the world as we know it.

* "Method and Means for Generating Explosive Forces," applied for on November 1, 1968, granted as U.S. #3,680,431, August 1, 1972, assigned to Environetics, Inc. of Gardena, California; Papp declares the general nature of the noble gas mixture necessary to produce explosive release of energy. He also suggests several of the triggering sources that may be involved. There is little doubt that Papp is not offering full disclosure here, but there is no doubt that others who have examined this patent and followed its outline have already been able to obtain explosive detonations in noble gases. Caution: Anyone who undertakes to try to duplicate this process must be very careful about safety issues.

* "Method and Means of Converting Atomic Energy into Utilizable Kinetic Energy," applied for on October 31, 1968, granted as U.S. #3,670,494, June 20, 1972, and assigned to Environetics, Inc.

* "Inert Gas Fuel, Fuel Preparation Apparatus and System for Extracting Useful Work from the Fuel," applied for September 4, 1980, granted as U.S. #4,428,193, January 31, 1984, and assigned to Papp International, Inc. of Lincoln, Nebraska. This is a very lengthy patent, filled with many insights about how his sealed, non-cooled engine process may have worked.


Unfortunately, Joe Papp was a paranoid asshole who was in constant fear that someone wanted to steal his invention so he chose to destroy his research shortly before his death.
What loss to humanity. If not for greed, scientist egos, and neutralization from the powers that be, we might be enjoying free energy in every form without being chained to Mobil/Exxon's gas pumps or our local power grid.

We can't expect GM to market this technology. They'd rather cut their own throats. The government? Fugetaboutit. And in today's climate of constantly chasing the dollar, it looks like the individual will have to develop this himself... and probably sell out to the highest bidder.
Is it any wonder we still use fossil fuels?

It seems to me the only way to get this technology out and to keep it in the hands of the people is to give it away and don't expect a profit. We're already stuck on this monetary merry-go-round with bleak prosperity, higher heating bills, and smaller cell phones to look forward to.

Wouldn't you rather have a total electric home, never have to buy fuel, and have a check from the electric company every month? Or would you rather be a mule?

metro driving 101

We used to drive like this when were kids and no one thought much of it. That's what steel bumpers were for. Try it nowadays and you can look forward to a substance test, loss of license, impounding of your vehicle, loss of your insurance, 30 days in the grey bar hotel, and a $2500 bill for every car you stick because the bumpers are made from plastic with the tensile strength of a potato chip.
Do I wish for the good ol' days when bumpers were designed to bump? Nah. We're much better off with plastic cars made from an ever renewable and plentiful resource... oil.

neighbors

A few phrases come to mind. Anger management, potential stroke victim, BPD, cruising for a coronary. The road to good mental health is right around the corner.

I feel a slight wave of nausea, don't you?

If your goal is to push the bile to the tip of my throat, mission accomplished.
Way to go John.