Please don't abuse the term "ion"; in every instance of the the word "ion" in the above entry, you mean "atom". There are enough nuts out there who can't even tell me what an 'ion' is who are trying to sell me things that somehow put "ions" into the air for my health. Shame on them. Don't be part of the problem. (The bonds in the above molecule are covalent, not ionic, so the atoms in the molecule are not "ions".)

(And yes, I'm interested in the sciences, which is why I'm offering this point of correction.)

Oh, and my flaky crust method doesn't use any hydrogenated oils or trans fats. It uses only real butter, flour, salt, and water + egg.

If anyone is interested in a "kitchen hacker" trick for making flaky crusts, I came up with a cheater's shortcut.

http://dietarydiaries.blogspot.com/2006/04/secrets-to-flaky-pie-crusts-are.html
http://dietarydiaries.blogspot.com/2005/09/add-one-more-dessert-to-menu.html

They should bring back stewing chickens! Totally! I'd be first in line to buy them.

If you ever cook chicken in a slow cooker, you'll know that chicken tends to overcook. The older the bird, the more connective tissue there is, so the better it stews. I've never tasted a real stewing chicken before, but I'd sure love to. I love stewed meat, so long as it has enough connective tissue to keep it from overcooking. All that connective tissue gelatinizes into delicious stewed goodness. If you've ever had good ox-tail stew, you'll know what I mean.

Microsoft fell into Steve Jobs' trap with a combination of hubris, and greed. No matter how dominant they are in the world of tech, they can't stand a market that they don't dominate, especially with Apple showing them up.

Less than a year before the Zune project got started, Steve Jobs was interviewed by some business or news magazine, and asked how he would kill the iPod if he were one of the competitors. He basically said that the user experience of the competition sucks because it is divided up too much; the solution to killing the iPod, as Jobs said, was vertical integration: have one company control the player hardware, the software, and the content distribution. (In other words, imitate the iPod/iTunes model.) I thought to myself, "Exposing the cause-and-effect of the iPod's success has got to be either one of the stupidest things Steve Jobs has ever done, or one of the most brilliant things he has ever done."

It has turned out to be the latter. Steve Ballmer has said that the Zune effort is a marathon, not a sprint. Basically, by luring Microsoft into doing this, Steve Jobs has led MS to stab its partners in the back while investing in a long-haul project that not only will fail, but will bleed MS of billions of dollars in the process and breed much ill will against it along with erroding confidence in MS--as if Windows Vista weren't enough to do that. Brilliant!

@BrentWatson:

Even though our electrical grid is dominated by coal, it is being burned at maximal efficiency at the power plant, since their generators run continuously and are tuned to run optimally. Cars run in a stop-and-go fashion most of the time, and that's where the inefficiency comes from. Hybrids run their engine at maximal efficiency, and don't subject the engine to the stop-and-go conditions of the road, making up for the difference using electrical motors.

Studies have been done to determine just how much more efficient, and have found that by using electricity, even if generated by coal, result in about a 40% reduction in carbon dioxide output over the lifetime of the car.

I highly recommend all of you watch "Who killed the electric car". This documentary shows you what GM was up to when they removed every last EV1 (all of them were leased: GM refused to sell the EV1) and crushed them all, except for one, which went to the Peterson automobile museum. It's out on DVD. Rent it and watch it. It will open your eyes.

http://www.sonyclassics.com/whokilledtheelectriccar/

When will they realize that using an existing energy source to electrolyze water to make hydrogen, spending more energy to compress it to a usable density, transporting it, just to use it in a fuel cell to convert it back to electricity is an extremely wasteful process?

Each step along the way, there are significant losses. Forget the hydrogen economy! It's all about the electron economy. Hydrogen isn't a real fuel: it's an artificially made fuel that's just a lousy way of storing electricity: it takes more energy than you can get back from it.

GM sure as hell better not waste any more money on hydrogen fuel cells. Hydrogen would be a great solution if available hydrogen were found in nature. It is not; all the usable hydrogen would have to come from using electricity to electrolyze water, or to strip it from hydrocarbons at great cost. Better to just use the electricity to begin with.

See these articles for expert analysis on the hydrogen economy vs. the electron economy:

http://www.thewatt.com/article-1210-nested-1-0.html

http://www.thewatt.com/article-1238-nested-1-0.html

If, by "doomed", he means prosperous and winning market share and person-share from Dell, HP, and Microsoft, then yes, I agree: Apple is "doomed".

Don't forget to do the many variants of Baklava. . . they are easily the yummiest nut recipe, IMHO.

Nice lips are definitely under appreciated in popular estimations of sex appeal.