Even preschool teachers unwind with a round of drinks now and then. But in professional kitchens, where the hours are long, the pace intense and the goal is to deliver pleasure, the need to blow off steam has long involved substances that are mind-altering and, often enough, illegal. ‘Everybody smokes dope after work,’ said Anthony Bourdain, the author and chef who made his name chronicling drugs and debauchery in professional kitchens. ‘People you would never imagine.’ So while it should not come as a surprise that some chefs get high, it’s less often noted that drug use in the kitchen can change the experience in the dining room. In the 1980s, cocaine helped fuel the frenetic open kitchens and boisterous dining rooms that were the incubators of celebrity chef culture. Today, a small but influential band of cooks says both their chin-dripping, carbohydrate-heavy food and the accessible, feel-good mood in their dining rooms are influenced by the kind of herb that can get people arrested. Call it haute stoner cuisine. ‘There has been an entire strata of restaurants created by chefs to feed other chefs,’ Mr. Bourdain said. ‘These are restaurants created specially for the […]
Out of the frying pan and into the fire? Offshore oil drilling, meet Canada’s oil sands. Proponents of this vast alternative oil source in Canada have wasted no time loudly pitching themselves as the great North American alternative to risky deepwater drilling in the Gulf of Mexico. Not a sheik in sight, and no oily sea turtles to boot, right? Not so fast. Just two days ago my coalition of major investors and environmentalists, Ceres, released ‘Canada’s Oil Sands: Shrinking Window of Opportunity.’ The report’s lead author, Doug Cogan of RiskMetrics Group, calls oil sands production in Alberta’s pristine boreal forest ‘kind of like the Gulf oil spill, but playing out in slow motion.’ Heed the message: This is a risky undertaking on a scale with offshore drilling. Take it from a very large investor, CEO Jack Ehnes of the nation’s second largest public pension fund – the California State Teachers’ Retirement System (CalSTRS). Ehnes’ fund is heavily invested – at close to $2 billion – in major oil sands players like BP, Shell, Exxon and ConocoPhillips. He’s got to be there – a fund the size of CalSTRS invests across the entire global economy – […]
The number of American households behind on mortgage payments appears to have reached a plateau at a high level as the economy recovers, a survey showed Wednesday. At the same time, people who fall behind on their mortgages are staying in their homes longer as banks struggle with huge volumes of calls for help and with the complexities of federal and state foreclosure-prevention programs. Diane B. Robertson of Oldsmar, Fla., said she had to stop making mortgage payments around the end of 2008 after a drop in her income. She said her lawyer advised her ‘to just sit tight because you may be sitting there for two years.’ Seventeen months later, foreclosure proceedings are under way, but Ms. Robertson is still waiting to be evicted. The Mortgage Bankers Association, a trade group, reported that 14% of mortgage loans on one-to-four-unit homes were 30 days or more delinquent or in the foreclosure process as of March 31. That represents about 7.3 million households. The rate was 12% a year earlier. BBecky Mehaffey gardens in her yard in Marysville, Wash., on Wednesday. The Mehaffeys are 15 months delinquent on their mortgage but haven’t been evicted from their home. […]
The Obama administration replaced the Minerals Management Service, faulted for lax regulation of offshore drilling before the BP Plc spill last month, with three offices to oversee leases, drilling safety and fee collection. Interior Secretary Ken Salazar signed an order today creating the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, the Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement and the Office of Natural Resources Revenue. President Barack Obama said on May 15 that he would end the ‘cozy relationship’ between companies that drill for oil and gas and the Minerals Management Service, part of the Interior Department. Its track record has been scrutinized since the BP well blew up on April 20, killing 11 workers and creating an oil spill that continues to spread toward Gulf Coast states from Louisiana to Florida. ‘Theses three missions — energy development, enforcement and revenue collection — are conflicting missions and must be separated,’ Salazar said on a conference call with reporters. ‘So today I’m ordering the division of MMS into three distinct entities.’ The MMS generates about $13 billion a year for the U.S. Treasury by partnering with companies such as BP and Exxon Mobil Corp. to develop oil and natural gas, […]
Taking your vitamin D supplement with the largest meal of the day may boost its absorption substantially, according to a new study. Researchers from the Cleveland Clinic instructed 17 men and women, average age 64, whose blood levels of vitamin D were borderline insufficient despite taking supplements, to take their supplements with the largest meal of the day. After two or three months, the study participants had about a 50% increase in blood levels of the vitamin, regardless of the dose they took. Researchers Guy B. Mulligan, MD, and Angelo Licata, MD, had noticed that patients typically report taking the supplement either on an empty stomach or with a light meal. Because the vitamin is fat-soluble, the researchers speculated that taking it with a big meal would improve absorption. Vitamin D is crucial not only to maintain bone strength, but research now suggests it plays a role in immune system problems, cancer, and cardiovascular disease. The researchers measured blood levels of the vitamin at the start of the study and two or three months later. Participants took a range of doses, and the researchers divided them into three groups: less than 50,000 IU a […]
Remote Viewing the Year 2060
