Month: June 2006

Cracking the Cream Cheese Code

Wired 14.06: Schmear Campaign
Kraft, which has been perfecting its Philadelphia-brand cheese for more than 75 years, closely guards its manufacturing secrets, keeping them in a vault in Chicago. What it knows, it isn’t sharing. The company controls nearly 70 percent of the $800 million market.

At the moment, Schreiber Foods is in the best position to challenge Kraft’s dominance. Schreiber is the world’s largest privately held cheese company, generating more than $3 billion in annual revenue. It jumped into the cream cheese business only four years ago but moved aggressively, buying manufacturers that supply private-label super-market brands. Schreiber is now the number two producer, controlling an estimated 25 percent of the market. Continue reading “Cracking the Cream Cheese Code”

Trapping Carbon, Freeing Coal

Trapping Carbon, Freeing Coal: BLOG: SciAm Observations
The idea is to burn the coal but capture the carbon that the burning produces and pump it back underground.

It sounds simple. But millions of dollars have been spent–with the promise of billions more–in the thus far vain pursuit of a technology that can capture a diffuse gas (carbon dioxide), concentrate it and render it suitable for transport. Now the R.E. Burger Plant in Shadyside, Ohio, stands on the threshold of becoming the first coal-fired power plant to test both the capture and storage of the leading greenhouse gas.

Open or Closed

Enterprise Resilience Management Blog: Open or Closed

David Brooks’ column in today’s New York Times [“Changing Bedfellows”] summarizes the philosophical tension he believes polarizes modern American politics. He eschews the labels “liberal” and “conservative,” believing they no longer adequately describe the emerging political landscape. On one side he places “populist nationalism” on the other “progressive globalism.” The value of Brooks’ column is that he shows the appeal of both political philosophies.

This insightful blog’s commentary on Brooks, who is the NY Times’ token Conservative, supports the increasingly unpopular “Open” Foreign Policy, which encourages the connectiveness of Globalization in the face of the historical American Isolationist tendency.

Time is on our side in the Long War

KnoxNews: Columnists
Americans are routinely accused of lacking strategic patience. We want our wars finished by the next major holiday or certainly by the next election. Given that mindset, we’re forced to subsist on current events for encouragement – e.g., al-Zarqawi’s death rescues us from the chilling revelations surrounding the Haditha killings.

But if you subscribe to the Long War, you look for trends and not individual events to drive your strategic calculations.

Gen. John Abizaid, current CENTCOM commander, calls Iraq the first war of globalization. Ultimately, we’re trying to connect the Middle East to the global economy on the basis of something besides oil, turning all those idle young males into stakeholders instead of bomb-throwers. Meanwhile, the radical Salafi jihadists seek to disconnect the region from what they see as the corrupting – and growing – influence of globalization.

Here’s the good news: Time is on our side.

Seal found in Anegada BVI

TCPalm: Local News
Plug the name of Harbor Branch Oceanographic Institution’s Greg Bossart into Google’s Internet search screen, and information about his work on dolphins, manatees and whales will pop up.

So Bossart, the director of marine mammal research and conservation, wasn’t surprised when he got a call from a biologist from the British Virgin Islands, asking for help with a beached animal. But he was surprised by the animal.

It seems a hooded seal — a marine mammal that lives on and around packed ice off the coast of Newfoundland — somehow found its way to the tiny island of Anegada in the Caribbean Sea.

“This is a very unusual occurrence,” Bossart said Friday. “They live on off-shore packed ice. They’re migratory, but the Caribbean is a little ridiculous.” (Thanks to Natalia Collier)

A Shift Among the Evangelicals

A Shift Among the Evangelicals
When the Southern Baptist Convention elected the Rev. Frank Page as the group’s president at its meeting this week in Greensboro, N.C., the news appeared on the back pages of most secular newspapers — or it didn’t appear at all.

But Page’s upset victory could be very significant, both to the nation’s religious life and to politics. He defeated candidates supported by the convention’s staunchly conservative establishment, which has dominated the organization since the mid-1980s. His triumph is one of many signs that new breezes are blowing through the broader evangelical Christian world.

Religious movements stay vibrant thanks to the complicated interaction of fidelity, reflection and reform. The evangelical world is going through a quiet evolution as believers reflect on the perils of partisanship and ideology and their reasons for being Christian.

Daring rescue of whale off Farallones / Humpback nuzzled her saviors in thanks after they untangled her from crab lines, diver says

Daring rescue of whale off Farallones / Humpback nuzzled her saviors in thanks after they untangled her from crab lines, diver says

This story has been circulating around the net for awhile. Thanks to Randy Marks for this link to the original new article and pictures.

China Easing Its Stance On Taiwan

China Easing Its Stance On Taiwan
China’s adjustment was decided at senior levels of the Communist Party in the summer of 2004, shortly after Chen was reelected to a second four-year term and Beijing realized its policy was going nowhere, officials said. The Chinese decided that talk of conquering Taiwan within a short time was not fruitful and that the real answer lay in the longer-term strategy, based on making China more attractive to Taiwan’s 23 million inhabitants through economic and political development,