Curiositech

What a great gift item to put in your gift baskets to family and friends. Remember to decorate your jars to fit the holiday occasion.
Banana Nut Bread Baked in a Jar
Yield: 8 servings (1 pint) straight sided, wide mouth canning jars (www.weblife.org/canning.html)
Ingredients:
2/3 cup shortening
2 2/3 cups white sugar
4 eggs
2 cups mashed bananas
2/3 cup water
3 1/3 cups all-purpose flour
1/2 teaspoon baking powder
2 teaspoons baking soda
1 1/2 teaspoons salt
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1 teaspoon ground cloves
2/3 cup chopped pecans
Directions: Preheat oven to 325° F (165° C). Grease insides of 8 (1 pint) straight sided, wide mouth canning jars.
In a large bowl, cream shortening and sugar until light and fluffy. Beat in eggs, bananas, and water. Sift together flour, baking powder, soda, salt, cinnamon, and cloves. Add to banana mixture. Stir in nuts.
Pour mixture into greased WIDE MOUTH pint jars, filling 1/2 full of batter. Do NOT put lids on jars for baking. Be careful to keep the rims clean, wiping off any batter that gets on the rims.
Bake at 325° F (165° C) for 45 minutes. Meanwhile, sterilize the lids and rings in boiling water.
As soon as cake is done, remove from oven one at a time, wipe rims of jars and put on lid and ring. Jars will seal as cakes cool. Place the jars on the counter and listen for them to “ping” as they seal. If you miss the “ping” wait until they are completely cool and press on the top of the lid. If it doesn’t move at all, it’s sealed.
Bread should be eaten immediately or kept sealed in refrigerator for up to a week.
To release bread from jars: Just open jar and turn upside down – bread should easily slide out.
Using the same basic recipe you can substitute different fruits and vegetables to make other varieties.

Why to jailbreak:
– adobe flash (not having it is killing me!)
– backgrounder (it’d be nice not to lose Pandora every time I want to do something else)

Why not:
– not confident yet that I can fully recover if something goes wrong.
– no guarantee it’d actually work

http://www.theythinkyouarestupid.com/blog/2009/04/16000-people.html
http://walkerreport.blogspot.com/2009/04/san-antonio-tea-party-draws-thousands.html
http://directorblue.blogspot.com/2009/04/tea-parties-code-pink-and-sickness-of.html
http://jammiewearingfool.blogspot.com/2009/04/whole-meeting-was-really-kind-of-creepy.html
http://www.bobkrumm.com/blog/?p=2247
http://pajamasmedia.com/blog/dc-tea-party-republicans-should-not-be-rejoicing-quite-yet/?print=1
http://voices.kansascity.com/node/4274
http://www.freep.com/article/20090415/NEWS15/90415036/Tea+Party+protest+movement+heats+up+in+Lansing
http://www.greenvilleonline.com/article/20090415/NEWS01/90415020/1004
http://michellemalkin.com/2009/04/15/massive-tax-day-tea-party-usa/
http://hughhewitt.townhall.com/blog/g/e8947008-0f75-49c6-a76b-70853d02e136
http://news.cnet.com/2300-13578_3-10000738-1.html?tag=mncol
http://www.courant.com/news/politics/hc-tea-party-capitol-0416.artapr16,0,4753332.story
http://www.foundingbloggers.com/wordpress/2009/04/breaking-chicago-tax-day-tea-party-pictures/
http://www.10tv.com/live/content/local/stories/2009/04/15/story_protest.html?sid=102
http://bighollywood.breitbart.com/dtennapel/2009/04/15/why-i-took-my-family-to-a-tea-party/

From The Big Picture:

Citi (C) = $2.80
GM (GM) = $3.50
B of A (BAC) = $5.10
Alcoa (AA) = $8.35

If all four of these stocks went to zero on today’s open, the DJIA would lose only 157.3 points.

These are big enough companies that it should matter when they fail. Somebody’s not doing their job.

“Bush’s decisions don’t seem principled. I’ve tried to find the underlying philosophy what will knit together the last eight years. I can’t divine it. Maybe you can. I certainly don’t recognize him as a conservative. He has increased government size and oversight in ways that appall me. ”

“For me, the heart of conservatism rests on the concepts that small government is better than large government, local government is better than remote government, and private property and individual freedom and more important than social good. ”

“American conservatism is much more libertarian than not and we’ve lost sight of the strong appeal that the desire to be left alone has for people. Rather than being defined as the party of less government intervention, Republicans have settled for being about some kinds of intervention and not others. The key difference between Republicans and Democrats today is what kind of intervention you favor. ”

Read it all.

“In younger couples, the increasing availability of pornography on the Internet, which has been shown to affect sexual attitudes and perceptions of “normal” behavior, may be playing a role in rising infidelity.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/28/health/28well.html?partner=permalink&exprod=permalink

David Hasselhoff is laughing all the way to the bank.

Here’s the most complete analysis of the economic melt-down that I’ve seen so far.  It’s amazing that we could see this coming so far ahead of time.  If I’d had the money to take the risk, I would’ve shorted WaMu a long time ago.

http://www.humanevents.com/article.php?id=29009

Saw this today: http://gigaom.com/2008/09/05/forrester-defines-the-cloud-but-we-beg-to-differ/

 It’s an interesting debate as to what is in ‘the cloud’ and what is simply ’software as a servoce’ or SaaS.  I’m leaning towards an inclusive definition for cloud, myself, but will track this further.

 Another good man passes on.

Below I posted about how someone’s finally paying attention to the Credit Rating Agencies (CRAs).  However, as Bloomberg points out, the Banks are just as culpable – and perhaps more, if they rated identical investment vehicles differently depending on whether or not the Banks themselves owned the vehicle in question.