I’m not a huge fan of popcorn, but once in awhile I make it to satisfy a curious craving. I’ve tried for years to duplicate the taste of popcorn sold in movie theatres and was disappointed in the results.

I’ve tried popping it on the stove with oil, in hot-air machines, in ready-to-pop prepackaged microwave bags, and in a reusable microwave cooker specifically designed to pop dried corn kernels. This latter method is how I make popcorn now, and I don’t use any oil in the container during popping, though the container’s instructions indicated it was permissible to add oil if desired.

I’ve tried various oil toppings, including butter-flavored oils said to be specifically for popcorn, and still was disappointed, it never tasted like what they sold at the theatre. Popping the kernals using an oilless method led to the problem of getting salt to stick to the popcorn, and clearly, the theatre popcorn seemed to have a butter flavor. Cooking popcorn in butter never worked for me, the temperatures involved burned the butter. So, after using the oilless microwave method, I’d drizzle a small amount of gently melted butter on the popcorn after it was popped and stir it thoroughly. After this I’d sprinkle it with table salt to taste, stirring the pocorn several more times. It didn’t taste like theatre-quality popcorn, but it was the closest I’d found.

The other day, browsing one market’s eclectic products, I happened across some Flavacol. At first I was confused as to what precisely was in the carton, but after reading the label and noting the price, I purchased some to satisfy my decades long quest of homemade theatre-grade popcorn.

An Internet search lead me to various popcorn supplies, caramel, kettle, and cheese corn, various flavors of glaze pop, and some savory shake flavors. Finding a retailer that stocks them at a reasonable price is the challenge, the store where I bought the above-pictured product sold only this one type of flavored salt on the popcorn aisle. After making a batch of popcorn and sprinkling some Flavocol on as a final step, then tasting it, I believe it’s likely one secret of movie theatres’ popcorn! It seems to need less butter for a butter flavor when using Flavocol: ‘artificial butter flavoring’ and ‘real butter’ don’t have quite the same flavor.

I also learned from the Internet search that it’s not much of a secret anymore. Hydrogenated coconut oil with artificial butter flavoring is typically used to pop the kernals, and there’s an artificial-butter-flavored topping available that is composed largely of hydrogenated soybean oil, both of which include beta-carotene for coloring, according to their respective ingredient labels.

A search for the label ingredient “artificial butter flavoring” is revealing, it seems one should not deliberately concentrate and inhale it, some workers in popcorn production plants appear to have had lung problems.

Added on 2/16/06:

For my future reference, I’m adding a link or two regarding various cooking oils’ critical temperatures, otherwise known as the ‘smoke point:’ http://www.cookingforengineers.com/article.php?id=50 http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Cookbook:Smoke_Point

Coconut oil is high in saturated fat, and so is butter. For those of us who try to improve the health of our diets, any type of hydrogenated oil should probably be avoided.

It might be interesting to try popping corn using an extra light and highly refined olive oil, or some other less flavorful oil (with a high smoke point) as a method of further reducing the real butter added. Avocado oil would be interesting to try because it seems to have the highest smoke point, but I wonder about its cost and availability. Peanut oil might be good to try except for the people who are allergic to it. Fully refined soybean oil (the non-hydrogenated variety) is another.

edited on 2/22/2008

On Monday, while testifying at a congressional hearing investigating the Executive Branch’s authorization of without-a-warrant wiretapping of U.S. citizens, Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales said, “I gave in my opening statement, Senator, examples that President Washington, President Lincoln, President Wilson, President Roosevelt have all, uh, authorized electronic wiretapping.”

I watched this on CSPAN, live, as the statement was made, and was truly surprised there was no audible laughter emanating from the television’s speakers. Immediately after hearing the statement I burst out laughing, it was the best joke I’d heard all year.

What makes Gonzales’s statement so ridiculous is that the electric telegraph was patented in the U.S. in 1837, this was shortly after electromagnetism was discovered by scientists in the 1820s or thereabouts. Since George Washington was the first U.S. president, holding office from the years 1789-1797, it seems impossible that “electronic wiretapping” could have been performed during his presidency.

Many of us have heard or read of the story about Ben Franklin flying the kite in a lighting storm which lit up a key when the kite was struck by a bolt of lightning, and which, as the tale goes, marked the discovery of electricity. That reportedly happened in the mid 1700s sometime, according to Wikipedia, if in fact it is a true story. Static electricity was known of much earlier, but I digress.

If you haven’t seen or heard Gonzales’s statement, one video clip can be downloaded at Intoxination, via Crooks and Liars.

In a (mostly) unrelated bit of trivia, Western Union recently sent its last telegram, and this was said to have completed the company’s transition from communications to financial services. Here are some fair use snippets from the article, the emphasis on year dates was added by me:

“Effective January 27, 2006 … Western Union will discontinue all Telegram and Commercial Messaging services. We regret any inconvenience this may cause you, and we thank you for your loyal patronage.” … “The peak of Western Union’s telegram business was 1929, when the company and its army of uniformed messengers delivered 200 million telegrams worldwide — almost 550,000 a day.” … “Strictly speaking, the telegram — by definition, a message sent by telegraph — died a long time ago. In the mid-1960s, Western Union began sending its customers’ messages wirelessly using microwave radio beams instead of wires strung on poles.” “Western Union was first on many fronts: It built the first transcontinental telegraph line in 1861, it introduced the first stock ticker in 1866 and was one of the first 11 stocks tracked by the Dow Jones Average.”

I wrote above that this financial news item was mostly unrelated to this article’s main topic of warrentless wiretapping. However, the dates are curious:

• 1861 was the start of Lincoln’s Civil War, it was also in the mid-1800s that saw the beginning of Corporate Welfare.

“Charter revocation became less frequent, and government functions shifted from keeping a close watch on corporations to encouraging their growth. For example, between 1861 and 1871, railroads received nearly $100 million in financial aid, and 200 million acres of land.” (read more as PDF…)

• 1866 was during the American period known as Reconstruction.
• 1929 was the year President Hoover took office, the infamous stock market crash occurred which marked the end of the Roaring 20s, and about one month later, Hoover told Congress that (paraphrased) the economy was doing great and the American people had regained confidence in it.
• mid-1960s was a time of much technical innovation, one of which related to a precursor of today’s Internet, Darpanet if I remember correctly.
• 2006? What will the historians tell us in the future about now? We should know most of the possibilities by the end of the year. Perhaps the historically most significant event will be warrentless wiretapping, perhaps it will be something else more serious.

The connection in my mind between the two seemingly unrelated items is primarily due to the term Gonzales used in his testimony, “electronic wiretapping” and, paraphrasing, that the Executive Branch had done this broadly in various administrations. The news item about Western Union I’d noticed a few weeks ago relates to the telegraph, one of the first uses of ‘conductive wires’ for ‘electronic communication.’ Connecting the dots to a wider corporatist consipiracy seems tinfoilish, but is it all that hard to imagine when considering Abramoff, Cunningham, Enron, Worldcom, Arthur Anderson, et al? I guess corporate crime still pays.

EFF’s Class-Action Lawsuit Against AT&T for Collaboration with Illegal Domestic Spying Program

The investigation and turning of the wheels of justice down the road of wiretapping without-a-warrant or illegal domestic spying will require a firm grip on events to avoid slipping into hasty judgements that may be wrong turns if driven by a lack of meticulousness. If one views AG Gonzales’s statement, the one that seems so ridiculous on its face, as an admission to the public that our government has historically spied on its own citizens in spite of a 4th Amendment protection against unreasonable search and siezure, then it certainly explains why there was no laughter in the hearing room. In this case, Gonzales’s statement is definitely not ridiculous.

Twelve scholars wrote:

“Dear Members of Congress: We are scholars of constitutional law and former government officials. We write in our individual capacities as citizens concerned by the Bush Administration’s National Security Agency domestic spying program, as reported in the New York Times, and in particular to respond to the Justice Department’s December 22, 2005 letter to the majority and minority leaders of the House and Senate Intelligence Committees setting forth the administration’s defense of the program. Although the program’s secrecy prevents us from being privy to all of its details, the Justice Department’s defense of what it concedes was secret and warrantless electronic surveillance of persons within the United States fails to identify any plausible legal authority for such surveillance. Accordingly the program appears on its face to violate existing law.” (read more of the scholars’ legal reasoning…. Scroll to the bottom for their names, academic qualifications, and experience.)

It appears that the FISA law, passed by the Legislative Branch and signed by the President in 1978, was violated by the current Executive Branch.

Most all of us who have watched television cannot miss the flood of commercials that, we have often been told, help support the artists creating the entertainment as well as the corporate distribution network that brings the shows to us. It seems to me that the time granted to commercials on television versus the time granted to the show itself is a growing ratio—commercials are much more preponderant than they were 20- or even 5-years ago—and at the same time costs for viewers to purchase programming have increased far in excess of the rate of inflation for some number of years now.

If one has subscribed to a premium movie channel, the viewer will see fewer commercials, but this is not the only way to decrease commercial content. Technologies such as VCRs and Tivo have apparently turned the advertisers’ television model on its head, as viewers using these devices can skip through the commercial onslaught.

TV advertisers claim they aren’t getting the market saturation they feel they have paid for and claim they are entitled to, so they are increasingly demanding that screenwriters include more product placements within the body of the show itself. The Writer’s Guild of America claims the increasing frequency of this is unfair, perhaps even deceptive, and is fighting back. From an article authored by David Cohn (his weblog), and published by Wired News:

“While the WGA hasn’t filed a FCC petition, they have drawn up a list of demands. These demands include a full disclosure of all advertisers, strict limits on products placed in children’s programming and a collective voice for writers on how products can be incorporated into story lines.”

While I’m absolutely certain that the majority of writers are underpaid (I know well more than one novelist that claims this), and I fully support the rights of groups of people to gather together in peaceful dissent and to petition for higher wages, I have to ask, where is the concern for the average entertainment viewer?

Has the purchaser of cable TV or satellite programming simply been relegated to consumer status?

If one watches over-the-air broadcasts, or even subscribes to basic cable or satellite programming, but doesn’t routinely record shows using a VCR or Tivo for the purpose of commercial free television viewing, then increasing the amount of product placements written into the body of entertainment itself further increase the commercial onslaught that this subset of viewers watch.

If one is paying for a premium movie channel, for advertisement-free viewing, and advertisements are increasingly included in the script as product placements, then are premium-channel purchasers getting the same level of service they received in the past? If one buys DVDs to watch instead of subscribing to a premium movie channel, and advertisements are written into the movie script, then has the retail cost of DVDs gone down as a result of this advertiser subsidy?

If the Television Networks don’t watch out, they’ll find the insatiable greed of their advertisers causes even more people to turn off the TV, more than those who already have. If average television viewers are going to be watching only commercial content, both in the obvious commercial slots as well as the increasing amounts of advertisements within the body of the show itself, advertisements that are not obvious and have an intent other than telling the screenwriter’s story, then shouldn’t those viewers be paid to watch TV?

Yesterday, Time Magazine online published an article regarding the airport shooting on Flight 924 by federal air marshals which contradicted what had been characterized by television news reports, as the incident unfolded, of a man with a bomb who threatened to blow up the plane. TIME reported in part that a passenger by the name of John McAlhany disputed earlier reports that Alpizar, the man shot dead by federal air marshals, claimed to have had a bomb:

“I never heard the word ‘bomb’ on the plane,” McAlhany told TIME in a telephone interview. “I never heard the word bomb until the FBI asked me did you hear the word bomb. That is ridiculous.” Even the authorities didn’t come out and say bomb, McAlhany says. “They asked, ‘Did you hear anything about the b-word?’” he says. “That’s what they called it.” http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,1138965,00.html

This morning, KGTV10 San Diego claims “passengers” confirm that Alpizar said “bomb”:

But passengers of American Airlines flight 924 saw a much different behavior. They say Alpizar claimed to have a bomb in carry-on luggage and ran towad the cockpit. His wife ran after him. “She was crying, ‘my husband my husband’ when he ran up there. I know there was a scuttlebutt, some kind of intensity happening in the front and those poor people in first class saw everything. There were children there and I know that was horrifying for them,” said witness Mary Gardner. http://www.10news.com/news/5496761/detail.html

KGTV’s article has no reporter or author attribution that I can find right now. Further, the paragraph that claims passengers said Alpizar had a bomb doesn’t include witness names or their direct quotes. KGTV then follows the first paragraph quoted above with another one that might imply or suggest that witness Mary Gardner said it. But did she?

According to Curt Anderson, Associated Press writer:

Added another passenger, Mary Gardner: “I did not hear him say that he had a bomb.” http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/nation/3514066.html

Further, AP reporter Anderson writes that police held guns to other passengers on the plane after passenger Alpizar was shot and killed.

I remember having the TV on while the incident unfolded, and it distracted me for a time from some other tasks. Not once did I see any video of Alpizar acting agitated, or saying he was going to blow up the plane, or any video of him in the alleged incident whatsoever, but an audible narrative was fed to the viewer that claimed those facts. All I could see was a plane parked on the tarmac, and over time, a growing presence of emergency vehicles surrounding it. Who fed the alleged facts to the broadcasters on the day of the shooting? Who fed this morning’s story to KGTV that the dead man, Alpizar, claimed to have a bomb?

In the same way there’s been a saying, “buyer beware,” perhaps news viewers should repeat to themselves, “viewer beware.”

With the buyer beware warning, one at least knows that the seller is going to benefit from a transaction and what the seller tells us prior to then is likely biased by the profit motive: what is sometimes in question is how much the purchaser will benefit from what is purchased.

However, with viewer beware, we can only wonder who and in what ways some shadowy, and what appears deliberately-obfuscated, entity benefits. Viewers en-masse likely come away with widely divergent views depending upon which version of the story they heard or read. Perhaps it is precisely this effect the shadowy entity desires—to keep us arguing amongst ourselves—and so wrapped up in current serial crises, that we don’t look up and see the bigger, long-term picture.

Last night, a measure authored by Duncan Hunter which called for the immediate termination of U.S. forces in Iraq, was voted on twice by the House of Representatives and was soundly defeated on the second vote. Hunter was apparently inspired to author the bill after hearing of a speech given by Representative Murtha.
(read more . . . )

GAO Document Summary

“According to the election officials surveyed, about 423,000 provisional ballots were cast in 13 of the 14 jurisdictions, and 70 percent of those votes were counted. Also, 8 of the 14 jurisdictions reported challenges implementing provisional voting, in part, because some poll workers were not familiar with provisional voting or staff did not have sufficient time to process provisional ballots.”

GAO Full Report

Patrick Fitzgerald, United States Department of Justice Office of Special Counsel to the Grand Jury, has indicted I Lewis “Scooter” Libby, Chief of Staff to the Vice President of the United States on multiple charges. Here’s the PDF indictment.

The charges are: Obstruction of Justice, two charges of False Statement, and two charges of Perjury.

It is a bittersweet day when deception and deceit is officially alleged to be found in one of the closest advisors to the Vice President of the United States and consequently within the White House.

If this charge is true, then what other lies have the citizens of the United States been told? If a high Executive Branch official is brazen enough to make false statements to the Grand Jury under oath, then what other false statements have been made to reporters, and hence to citizens, over the years?

Is there a relationship between the Salton Sea earthquake swarm near Obsidian Butte and the hurricane Katrina of 2005? Astrology says maybe.

First I decided to check Google to (hopefully) determine whether science makes any claims of relationship between terrestrial magnetism and earthquakes, hurricanes, or weather.
weather “terrestrial magnetism” earthquake “terrestrial magnetism” hurricane “terrestrial magnetism”

While I found no absolute yes or no answers in the few results I checked above, I found it interesting that some of the same sites tended to display in each search result.

My attention was drawn to the swarm of earthquakes that occurred at Obsidian Butte near the Salton Sea of California, and I noted the concentrated earthquake series started during Katrina on Aug 28, 2005. It’s ‘out there’ in concept, but whether the answer is yes, no, or maybe to the question posed in the title, it appears there is an astrological relationship between them.

I’ve checked some of the earthquake times and there are mundane angles running through Louisiana in many of them. The data for the first quake of the swarm beginning on the 28th: 2005/08/28 23:19:52 33.183N 115.596W 1.2 4 km ENE of Obsidian Butte, CA Source: http://quake.wr.usgs.gov/recenteqs/Maps/116-33_full.html (data older than one week not shown.) There was at least one Obsidian Butte quake prior to this after Katrina had been identified, but I chose the 28th as the first in an unbroken serial sequence that lasted through the 29th.

Here’s the AstroClick Travel map for that moment, the earthquake’s PDT has been converted to CDT by adding two hours. Astrodienst’s maps make use of cookies, therefore, it’s possible these maps may not be viewable by all. If you cannot see the map, you might try creating a login ID at their site and try clicking on the link above again.

What the map shows astrologically is a line representing the geographical locale where Pluto conjuncts the Descendant, and that line runs either right through or very close to New Orleans. Also, slightly to the west is the Uranus conjunct MC (midheaven) line.

This time is about 5 hours before the storm is reported to have hit the coast. There are 21 other Obsidian Butte earthquake times that curiously, of the several I’ve checked, have various mundane angle hits near Louisiana.

Another AstroClick Travel map for the time Katrina first hit the Louisiana coastline as reported by WDSU timeline: 5:34 a.m.: Katrina Makes Landfall.

This maps shows a line representing Chiron conjuncting the DS (descendant) running through the Salton Sea area. It also shows another line representing Mars conjunct MC (midheaven) slightly west of New Orleans, approximately bisecting the state of Louisiana.

In summary, the time of the first Obsidian Butte earthquake swarm shows astrological mundane angle (AS, MC, DS, IC) relationships to New Orleans, Louisiana: the time of Katrina first hitting the Gulf Coast states shows mundange angle relationships to both the Salton Sea (Obsidian Butte) and Louisiana.

I really don’t know what to make of it, other than forming the question regarding correlation posed in this article’s title.

Please note this article will be undergoing some edits and additions as time allows: this is a rough draft. I will try to put some standard astrological charts up in this article that will show the same angular relationships as the astromaps (astrocartography), but they won’t be overlaid on a geo-graph because I don’t have the necessary software.

(click on image for larger graphic. Image source: http://quake.wr.usgs.gov/recenteqs/Maps/116-33_full.html )

The above image was captured on Sept 1, 2005.

“Officials with the USGS said that a geothermal plant in the area may be the cause of the temblors, because when water is re-injected back into the ground, it can cause the earth to shake. San Diego State University geology professor Pat Abbott said that what is taking place in Imperial County is not a common occurrence. “It happens — not on a regular basis, but certainly every decade anyway, there’s big earthquake swarms,” said Abbott.”

(read more . . . )

According to a Justice Department press release, KPMG LLC, the US member firm of KPMG International, a major international accounting and consulting firm, has agreed to pay $465 million in fines, restitution, and penalties, the result of tax evasion and shelters that cost the United States $2.5 billion in taxes not received.

How does this settlement deter future corporate fraud? If I said to you, “I’ll give you change for $1.00 if you give me $5.00,” would you be dim enough to take the deal? The actual figures were $465 million in exchange for $2.5 billion.

Shades of Enron and Arthur Anderson? When does the pattern of Robber Baron behavior consume all corporations? Is the corporate structure itself the problem?

CEO Timothy P. Flynn, in a PDF file says: “The resolution of this matter allows KPMG to confidently face the future as we provide high quality audit, tax and advisory services to our large multinational, middle market and government clients.”

In an unrelated(?) news item of the day, the Small Business Administration has reported that 23% of federal contracts awarded were to small business, but according to the Small Business League, this is likely not true.

“The latest SBA small business statistics ignore the findings of seven separate government investigations and two private studies that have all concluded the SBA has dramatically overstated the governments true level of contracts with small businesses by reporting billions in awards to many of the largest firms in the country as small business awards.”

One of the reasons given for the awarding of contracts to some of the largest U.S. firms is reported by the SBA to be “vendor deception.” The American Small Business League needed a court ruling upholding a FOIA request in order to obtain this information.

“What is in this report that the SBA doesn’t want the public to know?” asked Lloyd Chapman, president of the ASBL. “Instead of spending six months in court trying to suppress evidence, the SBA should be working to stop big corporations from stealing small business contracts.”

Well, now we know: Corporatist Crime still Pays