bookofjoe

Penny Graffiti — '8 days of work condensed into 6 minutes'

Created by Stefan Sagmeister (and lots of friends) in Amsterdam last year.

[via Le Grand Cru and Milena]

Microwave Thermometer

From the website:

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Microwave Thermometer

Leave-in microwave thermometer reads accurately from 100°F to 200°F.

Screw-on pointed plastic sheath easily pierces dense food while protecting the thermometer tube.

Includes handy temperature chart for common foods.

Constructed of microwave-safe materials.

Easy-grip handle.

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$9.99.

New & improved TypePad — Episode 2: Just a flesh wound

"New and improved" is perhaps the most frightening phrase I encounter in my regular online activities, especially when it's something I use for many hours daily.

So when I received advance word a couple months ago that I'd been selected to try out the "new and improved" TypePad that would replace the then-current iteration for everyone on Tuesday, October 6, 2009, I really wasn't all that excited.

For TechnoDolts™ like me, change in technical stuff is almost always for the worse.

Though posting today's stuff using the new features took me about twice as long as it would've the day before the changes, I was still able to figure it out and not hit my head on the computer as happened the last time TypePad "upgraded."

Onward.

What are they?

Answer here this time tomorrow.

BehindTheMedspeak: Anatomy of a Burger — 'Eating ground beef is still a gamble'

Above, a graphic that accompanied this past Sunday's New York Times front page article by Michael Moss about how hamburger meat is made.

Long story short: I guarantee more than a few people around the country decided to go with something else on the grill later that day. You will too if you're reading this before dinner.

Excerpts follow.

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Meat companies and grocers have been barred from selling ground beef tainted by the virulent strain of E. coli known as O157:H7 since 1994, after an outbreak at Jack in the Box restaurants left four children dead. Yet tens of thousands of people are still sickened annually by this pathogen, federal health officials estimate, with hamburger being the biggest culprit. Ground beef has been blamed for 16 outbreaks in the last three years alone, including the one that left Ms. Smith paralyzed from the waist down. This summer, contamination led to the recall of beef from nearly 3,000 grocers in 41 states.

Ms. Smith’s reaction to the virulent strain of E. coli was extreme, but tracing the story of her burger, through interviews and government and corporate records obtained by The New York Times, shows why eating ground beef is still a gamble. Neither the system meant to make the meat safe, nor the meat itself, is what consumers have been led to believe.

Ground beef is usually not simply a chunk of meat run through a grinder. Instead, records and interviews show, a single portion of hamburger meat is often an amalgam of various grades of meat from different parts of cows and even from different slaughterhouses. These cuts of meat are particularly vulnerable to E. coli contamination, food experts and officials say. Despite this, there is no federal requirement for grinders to test their ingredients for the pathogen.

The frozen hamburgers that the Smiths ate, which were made by the food giant Cargill, were labeled “American Chef’s Selection Angus Beef Patties.” Yet confidential grinding logs and other Cargill records show that the hamburgers were made from a mix of slaughterhouse trimmings and a mash-like product derived from scraps that were ground together at a plant in Wisconsin. The ingredients came from slaughterhouses in Nebraska, Texas and Uruguay, and from a South Dakota company that processes fatty trimmings and treats them with ammonia to kill bacteria.

Unwritten agreements between some companies appear to stand in the way of ingredient testing. Many big slaughterhouses will sell only to grinders who agree not to test their shipments for E. coli, according to officials at two large grinding companies. Slaughterhouses fear that one grinder’s discovery of E. coli will set off a recall of ingredients they sold to others.

With seven million pounds produced each week, the company’s product is widely used in hamburger meat sold by grocers and fast-food restaurants and served in the federal school lunch program.

Dr. Kenneth Petersen, an assistant administrator with the department’s Food Safety and Inspection Service, said that the department could mandate testing, but that it needed to consider the impact on companies as well as consumers. “I have to look at the entire industry, not just what is best for public health,” Dr. Petersen said.

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Comforting.

Not.

Wasp Chair

Designed by Onur Mustak Cobanli,

grand panjandrum of OMC Design Studios.

Helpful Hints from joeeze: Light bulb hack

For once, something I thought of myself.

For days I've been annoyed by the fact that a ceiling socket that always features a 150 watt bulb has been downgraded to a temporary 100 watt iteration while I scour Charlottesville (and Amazon) for some more 150s.

Turns out none of my usual suspects (Kroger, CVS, Harris Teeter) have 150s in stock and Amazon's sole vendor offers delivery in 2-3 weeks.

Sold, but what about now?

The reason I instantly ordered from Amazon was because you never know if you'll find any locally, and that way eventually some will come and in the long run I'll use them so no matter, and if I haven't sourced any nearby at least I'll have those.

But then yesterday I had an idea: why not try a 50-100-150 three-way bulb in the socket?

As I recall, whenever a three-way bulb blows its usually one of the lower wattage filaments, and the bulb reverts to its highest wattage.

So.

I replaced the 100 watt bulb with one of the aforementioned three-ways and voilà: 150 watts of beautiful reading brightness.

Style me "delighted."

DoneRight Kitchen Timer

Cook's Illustrated featured it in its latest issue (Nov/Dec 2009) as follows:

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If you’re cooking for a crowd, with a pot topping each burner and food in the oven, it’s hard to keep track of when each dish is done. The 5 in 1 DoneRight Timer ($24.95)  offers a clever solution: a stove-shaped device with four individual timers in the position of each burner as well as one for the oven. The timers only clock up to 99 minutes, but we found them easy to use and readable at a glance. The DoneRight is a useful gadget, especially during the holidays.

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3.25" x 3.5" x 4.5".

Plastic.