THE PEARL MARTINI

Today is my birthday.  I invented a new drink called The Pearl Martini (above, the Hawaii State Flower, yellow hibiscus with red center, in the background, is optional):

  2 ounces of gin

  Tablespoon of Cointreau (or Triple Sec will do)

  Two halves of calamansi (a tiny Filipino lime, also called calamondin, with a distinctive citrus taste)

  Tablespoon of pomelo / li hing mui confiture

  A lot of crushed ice

It is tangy, sour, sweet and tasty.  The perfect drink to test the limits of your buds.  I was close to calling it a Pearl Gimlet, but a martini is more chimeric.  You must try it.

For me, the gin can be anything with juniper flavor, for the concoction masks even that essence.  However, Tanqueray #10 will do quite well if you feel extravagant.

A confiture is a preserve, and in this case, take the flesh of a whole pomelo, add a teaspoonful of li hing powder, pour over sufficient gin, and store in a refrigerator for as long as you want.  It lasts forever.  If you can't find li hing powder, go to your local Chinatown and ask:

You can also link with Amazon.com and have two packages sent to you for $11, plus shipping.  Each will last you a lifetime.

Don't know what a pomelo is?  In Hawaii, it is known as jabong.  The fruit itself can can be whitish or pinkish (the bottom is flatter).  A grapefruit came from a marriage of an orange and a pomelo.  If you can't find a pomelo in your supermarket, use a grapefruit.

If you don't readily have a calamansi:

...use a lime.  A gimlet, as you might know, is just half gin and half Rose's lime juice, while a martini is gin or vodka with a touch of white vermouth, and, if necessary, topped with anything you want, like an olive, twist of lemon peel or pearl onion.  James Bond, in the books by Ian Fleming, actually had most of his martinis with both vodka and gin, sometimes together, shaken, not stirred.  The movie Bonds, however, mostly ordered vodka martinis.  To be perfectly correct, the classic martini uses gin, stirred, NOT shaken, in ice.  I significantly enhanced the combination.  I did not say shaken nor stirred, for I like to keep the crushed ice in the glass.

I'm actually famous for inventing drinks.  Buca di Beppo is considering my creation called the Pat Royale.  Many start a French meal with a Kir Royale, which is just champagne with  a dash of Creme de Cassis.  In an Italian restaurant, what better than Prosecco (an Italian sparkling wine) with limoncello?

The Perfect Pearl Martini can be made from 2 ounces of Pearl Black Vodka and 2 drops of Vermouth with a pimento stuffed green olive (left), or a wild concoction based on Crown Royal bourbon and St. Germain liquer with lemon juice, vanilla extract and pear nectar (right).

Therefore I had to distinguish mine from theirs.  Thus, The Pearl Martini, for I met Pearl on my birthday exactly 50 years ago.  The Manager of Hutchinson Sugar Company, Bill Baldwin, mentioned to me that there was this extraordinary (he might have used a different term) nurse working in the next town, Pahala, from the Southernmost Community in the USA, Naalehu, where I was working as a sugar industry trainee for C. Brewer.  He was successful in setting up a blind date.  In a little more than three months we were married.  A decade later Bill and I shared an office working for U.S. Senator Spark Matsunaga in D.C.

-

Hurricanes Leslie at 75 MPH and John at 115 MPH are loitering around in the mid-Atlantic, with Leslie threatening Bermuda.  If you project their paths, both will miss the USA, and head for Nova Scotia.  However, there is a possibility that they could crash into each other first:

-

The evening ended with a fabulous rooftop Shabu-Shabu / sashimi / burdock (gobo) / lotus (hasu) featuring three cuts of wagyu beef and the #1 rice, Niigata Koshihikari.  We had a bottle of Kaho-Gura Junmai Daiginjo sake.  Joining me were my floor neighbors, Debby and Dan, who also watch my apartment when I'm away.  Then came my birthday blueberry cheesecake with only one lit candle.  As Dan's photo made my blog a few weeks ago during our dinner at Morimoto's, here is Debby:

-

PROGRESS ON THE BLUE REVOLUTION

Blue Revolution Hawaii (BRH) was formed last year to advocate the ocean as the next frontier for economic development, but in harmony with the marine environment.  In fact, there are theories that the utilization of ocean thermal energy conversion (OTEC) could well enhance the atmosphere, as there is additional potential to remediate global warming and prevent the formation of hurricanes.  Click on a short video clip  making a case for OTEC.  Ted Johnson provided a tutorial on this technology when he previously led the Lockheed Martin team advancing this field.  Watch a nearly half an hour interview on this system by Life of the Land, featuring Henry Curtis and Dr. Johnson.

The International Space Station (ISS) will cost something like $150 billion to explore outer space as the regime for new enterprises.  Although valiant efforts are being extended to continue the effort, unfortunately, the economics of this all point to a slow abandonment of this expensive and well meaning experiment.  The primary effort of BRH is to draw together an international partnership to initiate the Blue Revolution on the Pacific International Ocean Station (PIOS), a more sensible and economically feasible adventure.  We have projected the initial cost to prove the concept at 1% that of ISS.

I participated in the Seasteading Institutes' (SI) June conference in San Francisco, and was impressed with the breadth and progress shown by this libertarian-leaning organization inspired by Patri Friedman (right) and Peter Thiel (left).  As our government and that of most of world are in advanced stages of being nearly useless, we can use some innovation on how best to optimize the future of humanity.  I recently saw a draft report from SI on BRH and PIOS. I'll feature this focus when it becomes official.

There are some early signs that the Japanese government is finally beginning to consider the ocean as an important component of their desperation to overcome Fukushima.  They need to expand this thinking by a factor of ten.  I made a personal appeal to the richest man in Japan, Masayoshi Son, but, got no response.  Sadly, he is focusing on electricity from the winds and the sun, in a country that doesn't have much of either.  Could be that this attitude is hurting him, as he might now be #3.

So where is the Blue Revolution in  Googleland?  Japan?  Well, you get a CD by Mari Hamada.  But, perhaps, this could be the uniting song for a Japan-U.S. partnership?  Uh...no.  USA?  A site to purchase American Blue Coat Revolutionary Mesh Hats.   Europe?  Try twitter and you get something about radio production.  You Tube?  Blue Hair.  Catchy song, though.  China?  Jeremy Lin's uniform, which was Knick's blue.  He got traded to the Houston Rockets, which goes with red, so maybe this will be an even bigger hit, for Chinese athletes wear red.  But so much on a global search for the Blue Revolution.  Well, this will take time.  It has only been a of couple decades since first dreamt.

-

There are two hurricanes in the Atlantic, Leslie to threaten Bermuda and move north towards Nova Scotia, and Michael, further north and east, but also projected to head for Canada.

-

WHAT DO YOU REALLY KNOW ABOUT ENERGY?

Your knowledge and views about energy and the environment, to some degree, depend on whether you are a Democrat or Republican, plus, if you are associated with the fossil industry or green technologies.  However, not only is energy low on the list of issues facing the candidates for the 2012 presidential election, it is not even important enough to be placed in polls.  Also too, there is so much disinformation floating around in the various media that most people are just not aware of the seriousness of what might be facing humanity.  Here is the inflation adjusted (in red) historical price of oil:

Note that our most serious recessions occurred just after the price of petroleum jumped.

If you're old enough, you might have lived through both energy crises in the 1970's, for there were lines to fill your car. Certainly, you must remember that oil spike up to $147/barrel four years ago.   You've heard of Peak Oil, but are not sure if it means much, especially if you're a Republican.  In any case, you're reassured that fracking for natural gas is lowering the price of energy, with just a tiny bit of worry about possible environmental effects.

You probably feel that gasoline prices are unbearable today, but might not know that we pay about half the price of Europeans.  The difference is because we do not lop on as much tax.  If you want to pay less for gas, go to OPEC countries, for many of them charge about one-fourth what we do. For people from Hawaii, we shell out about 10% more for gasoline than the U.S. average.

Around the world, electricity prices are all over the map.  The U.S. average is about 12 cents/kWh, but Hawaii is three times that rate (36 cents/kWh). We thus are charged 300% more than the national average.  As in gasoline, Europeans pay about twice as much per kilowatt hour compared to the U.S., but there are some global anomalies:  Argentina (6 cents/kWh), Brazil (34 cents/kWh), Denmark (40 cents/kWh).

The world today uses energy as shown in the right column:  roughly one-third oil, one third coal and one third all the rest, with natural gas the most dominant, and gaining.  Solar energy is less than one-third of one percent.  China uses the most, with the USA second, and together, we use a bit more than one-third of world consumption.

Some time in the 2025-2050 future, the U.S. will be using energy in the following manner, which should roughly represent the world average:

(If you can't read the numbers, just click on the spaghetti diagram, it will expand.)  Note that only about one-third of the energy consumed goes towards electricity production.  Then why is most of the renewable development going towards electricity?  Because you've got to start somewhere, and here is where there is earlier potential for competitiveness.

There are local differences, of course, and Hawaii is an especially aberration, for only 8% in world consumption goes towards aviation, but Hawaii's is closer to one-third.  This is partly why there is relatively little concern for developing next generation aircraft and jet fuel substitutes.  In a word, Hawaii is screwed, for much of our economy is dependent on tourism, which will be decimated when petroleum spikes beyond $150/barrel.   Read my HuffPo on the future of sustainable aviation.  Perhaps a next generation dirigible might have some application.

The dominating X-Factor in the future of energy is global warming.  If Republicans and the fossil industry are right, the USA, being the Saudi Arabia of fracked gas and oil shale, will do well, indeed.  If it turns out that scientists knowledgeable about this field are correct, and nothing continues to be done about enacting a serious carbon tax, we could be well on our way to The Venus Syndrome, the end of humanity.  On the one hand, we have Republicans and the fossil industry.  On the other, competent scientists.  Who should you believe?

Well, we've already answered that question with the present stalemate, so let us proceed with this analysis.  Yesterday, I showed Wired's bar graph of the relative cost of electricity:

Thus, it is clear that natural gas is economically attractive.  In the production of electricity, the carbon dioxide generated by natural gas is about half that of coal.  Second, let me repeat: the future of energy will only be one-third electricity.  But, half of coal is still a lot of carbon dioxide.

Wind and solar are intermittent and dispersed.  There is no hope for these two options dominating in the future.  In addition, there is not enough biomass/water to satisfy global needs, unless marine biomass can be effectively developed.  Hot dry rock (if go deep enough, our planet does get very hot) has promise, but every exploratory effort has been abandoned.

Nuclear fission (left, think Atomic Bomb) was eliminated by Fukushima.  Nuclear fusion (right, what our Sun and all the stars do to provide energy) hopes for ITER in France to advance the technology, but they are only running into more difficult problems.  That system uses something called magnetic confinement. I think laser fusion, known as inertial confinement, shows more potential, and I continue to dream about cold fusion.  There is, too, heavy ion fusion, a second form of the latter, which promises more than electricity.  We need, though, to more seriously progress on the other two-thirds of our energy consumption.

Transportation should be our greatest concern.  Unless gasoline lines return, though, advancements will be slow.  Remember our romance with ethanol from corn?  That was a huge mistake.  Even the U.S. Congress has reconsidered, for tax incentives were finally eliminated.

The future trend now is to use the cellulosic portion of the plant and advance algae R&D, for microalgae can be up to five times more efficient than any terrestrial crop to convert sunlight plus nutrients and water into biofuels.  The biomethanol economy with a direct methanol fuel cell for ground transport deserves a good look.  There is a more futuristic pathway, the hydrogen economy, but my sense is that this alternative is many, many decades away.

I have provided semi-optimistic, more sober, and downright depressing assessments of biofuels from biomass.  About plug-in EV's, I posted a less than encouraging article in the Huffington Post four years ago  and followed up with a more recent overview.  In short, the world is in trouble, and we can only hope Peak Oil awaits another quarter century.  The Chicago Mercantile Exchange has petroleum only at $86/barrel in December of 2020, so, perhaps we have some time to do something.  No responsible decision-maker, though, should count on the price of oil being $86/barrel in 2020.

As the full transition to cleaner energy resources will take another generation, the timing is such that about all you can do is to pray that Peak Oil and Global Warming are hoaxes or somehow are delayed.  In the meantime, we must continue to press forth along all sustainable fronts, with, I think, special emphases on the Blue Revolution and fusion.

-

WIRED: WEIRD READING ON LABOR DAY

On this Labor Day, Maru, a Japanese cat, is taking it easy above.  Here is Part 2 of offbeat items from the September issue of WIRED:

1.  Last week I posted on the 100 most viewed videos of all time.  Justin Bieber is approaching a billion, but Maru has been pinged 170 million times.  Can't imagine why.

2.  Why natural gas is making the renewables obsolete:

3.  Anyone know what this is?  Hint:  it is called the Dyson Ball:

That is a vacuum cleaner.

4.  Ever heard of a vegan egg yolk?  A vegan doesn't eat any animals products.  Called the Vegg, it is a mixture of yeast with black salt (a purplish rock salt from India), plus some beta carotene to provide a red-orange color and alginate (seaweed extract) to serve as a thickener.  It reportedly has the consistency and taste of a real egg yolk.  Rocky Shepheard is now working on the whole egg.

5.  These are Tide pods:

This is the next generation detergent for washing your clothes.  Careful, though, as, already, more than a thousand youngsters ate it, thinking it was candy.  The problem is that it comes in what looks like a candy jar:

They are poisonous, and contain polyvinyl alcohol, fatty acid salts, alcoholethoxy sulfate, disodium distyrl-viphenyl disulfonate, mannanase, termamyl, natalase, xylo-gluccanase, subtilisin, diethylene-triamine pentaacetate sodium and calcium formate.  As terrible as this sounds, I've cornered myself into ingesting Kellogg's fruity snacks, for I bought I whole boxful at Costco when my personal study into high blood pressure showed that mine jumps when I get hungry.  So I bring a small package when I golf.  I happened to read the ingredients one day and, in addition to the usual fruits, acids and vitamins, it has carnauba wax (which is also good for polishing your car), yellow dye #5, red dye #40, sodium citrate, blue dye #1 and a trivial amount of fat (their term).  Gummy bears (yes, I also have a box of them too) contain almost exactly the same additives.  The Tide pods I don't consume.  These fruit pods I unfortunately do.  I have more than 50 left.

6.  Insects are being touted to replace beef/pork/chicken for protein because these entomological farms would generate only 10% the methane of livestock.  You say you don't particularly like the taste and ooginess of insects?  Already, apple butter, legally, can contain up to five whole insects per 100 grams (less than a quarter pound).  From a Phuket market:

If you're grossed out, keep in mind that this could remediate global warming.  Read about THE VENUS SYNDROME!

-

DOOMSDAY 2012

I've been subscribing to WIRED for several years now and have finally come to a realization that, as technology in general has surged past my competence (I can now only vaguely understand my wrist watch and barely get by on my various computers), so has the editorial content of the magazine.  WIRED first made a presence almost two decades ago, founded by Stewart Brand and Kevin Kelly (of WHOLE EARTH CATALOG--the original was published in 1968 and their 30th anniversary edition in 1998 now sells for $300--fame) and many others.

Well, their latest edition must have technically retrogressed a lot because I actually comprehended goodly portions.  I will have a two part posting of this September edition, starting today with APOCALYPSE NOT.  

As we all know by now, according to the Mayans, the world will come to an end on 21December2012, the winter solstice, or shortest day of the year in the Northern Hemisphere.  Well, that is how oddballs (New Agers, eschatological scholars...whatever  you want to call them--can you believe people make a living out of this??) throughout history have interpreted the surviving 17 or so calendars.

The Maya civilization might have begun as early as 2600 BC, and maybe earlier, as the Mesoamerican Long Count Calendar begins on 11August3114 BC.  They flourished from 200 to 900 AD and the population then crashed, probably from a 200 year drought.  When the Spanish came in the early 1500's, the Maya had no leader and were scattered from the Yucatan Peninsula into a good part of central America (map to right).  However, the Spanish conquerors took almost 170 years to prevail.  Reflect on this a bit, for this period would take us back to 1842, before the Civil War.  The Mayans are still around today in Mexico, Nicaragua, Belize, Guatemala and El Salvador.

One analysis of what the Mayans prophesized is that the Sun will be aligned with the center of the Milky Way, and, therefore, all hell will break loose.  First of all, the Sun is always aligned with the center of our galaxy.  Two points in space always are.     Now, when you add Earth to this equation, the conjunction of all three will not happen for another 4 million years.  Of course, it is more complicated then that, for there is a supposedly  25,800 year cycle where the Sun's precession of the equinoxes come into play, a curved line, which further confuses me because our Sun takes about a quarter billion years to orbit around the center of the Milky Way.  Anyway this astrophysical mumbo-jumbo confounds me.

Further, all this antiquated forecasting effort occurred a millennium before Copernicus had the courage (on his deathbed) to declare that the Earth went around the Sun.  The Mayans sort of identified Venus, but this was before telescopes, and, let's face it, they knew less than I do about the Universe.  With a giant telescope I can barely find Saturn, and as much as I know more astrophysics than any ancient Mayan, I wouldn't be able to portend doom on 21December2012 under any celestial singularity.

So what form of doom have these seers predicted?

  1.  There is a galactic alignment every 26 million years when mass extinctions occur.  This has something to do with the Oort cloud, Sagittarius A, Jupiter and a bunch of other synchronicities that might happen on 21December2012.  Don't lose any sleep over this one.

  2.  Solar flares will peak in 2012, according to Michio Kaku.  Nope, says NASA.

  3.  We are at the point of geomagnetic reversal, possibly to be triggered by #2.  Anyway, if this happens this year, it takes from a thousand to ten thousand years to complete, and no deaths are forecast.

  4.  Planet X will collide with us.  There is a connection to alien life, with a high giggle factor.

  5.  2012, the 2009 movie (63% audience rating in Rotten Tomatoes), with John Cusack, Amanda Peet, Woody Harrelson, etc.  There were various references to solar flares and the Mayans.  Toss in a mega earthquake along the San Andreas Fault, eruption of the Yellowstone caldera and the Ark (yes, to save a selected few) and you have a film I'll have to see.  Maybe Netflix has it.  It made almost a billion dollars.

  6.  Heard of the Photon Belt?  Not worth mentioning.

  7.  The red supergiant Betelgeuse will go bang and become a supernova.  However, it is 600 light years away, and will take at least that long to reach us.  Yet, suppose this already happened almost 600 years ago?  Not to worry, as astrophysicists have calculated that this star, which could, actually explode at any time, will only cause us problems if it were 25 million light years away, or closer.

  8.  Ah, among my favorites:  alien invasion.  According to the English edition of Pravda, a digitized sky survey by SETI showed three large spacecraft due to arrive very soon.  To quote:

The spaceships were detected by HAARP search system. The system, based in Alaska, was designed to study the phenomenon of northern lights. According to SETI researchers, the objects are nothing but extraterrestrial spaceships. They will be visible in optical telescopes as soon as they reach Mars's orbit. The US government has been reportedly informed about the event. The ships will reach Earth in December 2012.

Again, be reassured, for Seth Shostak (left), chief astronomer of SETI, has debunked these claims.

I treat Doomsday 2012 as a joke, but 10% of global citizens fear the possibility of the world ending on 21December2012:

Twenty two percent of Americans believe that the end of the world will occur in their lifetime!  Well, a similar percentage doesn't believe in God, so maybe there is a correlation here, although the logic is contradictory.

Jay Leno joked about late night shopping channels and purchasing a 2013 Mayan calendar, calling himself a moron. The best truth is that the current Mayan calendar ends on 21December2012, and 22December2012 merely begins another cycle.  So the next one should be good for, maybe, 5000 years.  He thus got a bargain.

-

CUISINE FOR WATCHING SPORTS ON TV

This is the first weekend of college football.  I'm spending the next few days at home watching my 55 inch 3D TV.  Unfortunately, there are no games being televised in this format.  However, there is a simulated 3D option that is better than nothing.  But, those goggles are way too uncomfortable.  I'll have a decision to make.  If the Olympics were an indicator (these were in 3D), then I'll skip this special effect.

The two games of noteworthiness are Michigan and Alabama in Texas, and Boise State at Michigan State (the latter team won last night).  A third, Hawaii versus USC, is a gross mismatch on national TV (ESPN), giving away 41 points, and the question is, will the Trojans, the #1 rated AP team, win by 50 or 60 or more?  Their coach, Lane Kiffen is noted to run up scores.  I might note that Penn State will lose to Ohio at State College.

The undefeated Rainbow wahine volleyball team also has a tournament for three nights against San Francisco (we won last night), Baylor and Cal-Berkeley.  They already beat Stanford last week and UCLA comes into town next week.  You just got to see Jane Croson serve.

Later this fall, the Hawaii women basketball team brings in against Stanford, then Baylor (that's Brittney Griner, who, last time I checked, was still 6 feet 8 inches tall), the two best in the country.  I don't quite understand these suicidal tendencies.  Actually I do, but that is for another day on a different subject.  Gib Arnold, coach of our basketball team, however, starts with Maryland, Arkansas and Houston, but, more specifically, Maryland-Eastern Shore, Arkansas-Pine Bluff and Houston Baptist.  Now that is somewhat embarrassing, but a heck of a lot better than the other nonsense.

For a head start, I went to Teddy's Bigger Burgers and ordered their largest (9 ounces) original plus a side of onion rings, for $12.  The burger was great, with a real beef taste.  It is made on order, which is good and bad.  I wasn't sure what the orderer said, but I heard either two or twenty minutes.  After many two minute periods, which means 20 minutes might have been the correct time, I rushed home to have this feast with 500 ml of Bitburger.  No, not another hamburger, but a German beer.  Nine ounces of meat are too much in one sandwich, and the onion rings were too doughy.  The company started in 1998 (I think that's Ted to the left) in Hawaii, and now has 9 establishments, with one in Woodinville, Washington, and another in Tokyo (Shibuya), Japan.

I purchased half a pound of garlic chips from Foodland for a bit over two bucks.  This is a terrific value, which I highly recommend, found at their live food counter.  Add some rice chips, Hawaiian poke, Zippy's chile, small piece of rib eye and Polish dog plus mini-baguette, a large bottle of Kosher Dills, two kinds of blue cheese and an assortment of nuts, to go with my giant assortment of beverages, and you have a relatively low-diacetyl series of snacks to last me through Labor Day.  So much for calories, salt and cholesterol.

I yesterday provided some details on our current blue moon.  Here it is setting over Blue Honolulu this morning when I awoke:

As you know, a blue moon is rarely blue (it is, sometimes, when there are particulates in the air).

-