David Coulthard Considering NASCAR Future

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Dec 182007
 

Having watched both NASCAR and Formula One religiously for years, I can tell you this David Coulthard will be welcomed here in the USA. Unlike Formula One, NASCAR is for real racers. That is why guys like Juan Pablo Montoya and Jacques Villeneuve are finding it so fulfilling. They are both guys that just want to race and Coulthard falls into that category.

Lately, Formula One has come down to the man with the best car wins regardless of driver talent. Most of the time, passing is nonexistent and it is like watching follow the leader. Don’t get me wrong, I still like to watch Formula One mainly for the technology and the Soap Opera like drama that surrounds the teams. I think Lewis Hamilton is a natural born racer and I can see him coming to NASCAR someday.

With drivers like Jimmy Johnson, Jeff Gordon, Juan Pablo Montoya, Jacques Villeneuve, Dario Franchitti, Sam Hornish, and Patrick Carpentier, NASCAR is quickly becoming the real Race of Champions.

Coulthard will consider NASCAR when F1 days are over

Formula One veteran David Coulthard is open to the thought of a future move to NASCAR, but not until his F1 days are solidly over.

“I would consider something like NASCAR,” Coulthard said just before practice for the Race of Champions. “I don’t think I would consider IRL. The only thing is, America, you have to commit to it absolutely. Which means you move out there, take your family there.

“But I’d certainly consider it. This will be my 15th season in Formula One. After that … I’ll do this as long as I’m having fun, as long as they keep saying ‘Would you like to continue?'”

Coulthard said NASCAR’s lengthy 38-week schedule is of no concern to him. He said he has in the past raced every week but Christmas weekend, “and that wasn’t a problem. It’s not hard to get in private planes.”

He also feels the influx of foreign driving talent, like his former F1 mates Juan Pablo Montoya and Jacques Villaneuve, into NASCAR bolsters the perception of stock car racing internationally.

“I think it’s checking the box of NASCAR,” he said. “Generally, people in Formula One haven’t really been that aware of NASCAR, and of what we have been aware of we’ve probably higher respect for NASCAR than what we have for the oval racing IRL.

“That may come as a surprise, but as a single-seater racer in Europe, the perception in Europe is if you’re fat on a super speedway, yes there’s tactics, but how is that more challenging than driving Monaco? That’s a simplistic view, I know, and I’ve not done it. But [Jacques] Villaneuve’s a friend of mine who’s obviously won over there [in IRL], come over to F1 and won in F1. I just know it’s a different challenge.”

As Coulthard’s F1 colleague Jenson Button described it, “it’s like comparing football and cricket.”

“NASCAR is so different, and any of us in a touring car would find how difficult they are relative to a single-seater,” Coulthard continued. “So all it does is keep checking the boxes [for NASCAR].

“If they keep getting, it doesn’t have to be European drivers, but if they keep getting foreign drivers in the championship it’s only a matter of time before it becomes more and more [followed] around the world.

“From a NASCAR point of view, from what I can see they’re not fumbling with the business model to make money and everyone’s doing very well. But it can’t hurt any business to expand. And yeah, maybe it’s frowned upon by some of the good ol’ boys. But the Jimmie Johnsons, the consistent talented guys, will still be there and mixing it with these drivers from other formulas — and beating them.”

Coulthard explained the NASCAR dynamic overseas as such:

“I don’t think it’s a lack of respect, certainly not from me,” he said. “When I mention NASCAR to people I don’t get any [negative] perception to NASCAR. ‘Oh, [expletive] NASCAR?’ I don’t get that at all. I think it’s a lack of knowledge.

“I think that what we Europeans struggle with a little bit is sort of the high-fiving, chest-bouncing, hey buddy … That type of thing is not part of [our culture]. So I think it’s more about entertainment and people have got more confidence to express their joy and happiness. In the States that’s the whole sports culture.”

Global Warming May Force Santa To Wear Shorts

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Dec 182007
 

This qualifies as the Asinine Global Warming News Of The Day and you, being that gullible idiot, are supposed to buy into it hook line and sinker. Meanwhile, parts of Canada are digging out from a monster snow storm that set a record for the most snow in a single December day.

What a hand-wringing hoax!

Global warming may soon see Santa don shorts

If the most dire climate forecasts come true the tourism industry in Europe’s far north, already feeling the effects of global warming, may find itself promoting a Santa in shorts and a camel-drawn sleigh.
Each year at the end of autumn, residents, shopkeepers, travel agencies, reindeer herders and even politicians in the Finnish Arctic town of Rovaniemi — home to Santa Claus’ Village, one of the biggest tourist attractions in Finland — look to the skies in the hopes of a snowy winter.

“Everyone working in tourism here is worried. The past three or four years have been difficult for us,” says Jarmo Kariniemi, owner of the Santa Claus’ Office in Rovaniemi which each year attracts 340,000 visitors eager to meet the “real” Father Christmas.

This December, with only a few weeks to go before Christmas, there are only 20 centimeters (seven-and-a-half inches) of snow on the ground, just enough for snowmobiles and dog- and reindeer sleighs.

But the rivers and lakes, which normally freeze over in winter and are used to take tourists on snowmobile or sleigh rides, have not turned to ice yet, and that’s bad news.

Tourism generates some 235 million euros (345 million dollars) of direct and indirect revenue in Finnish Lapland, of which about 60 percent comes during winter.

It is an enormous amount of money for the region, hit hard by high unemployment and the rural exodus to bigger towns.

“The winter tourism period in the Nordic countries will be shorter and shorter, both at the beginning and towards the end, and it will go fast and it will be huge,” climatologist Heikki Tuomenvirta told AFP.

Average temperatures in Finland will rise by three to six degrees Celsius in winter by 2050, and by four to eight degrees by 2080. The average winter temperature in Rovaniemi will rise from 15 degrees Celsius below zero (five degrees F) to eight below (18 F).

“Precipitation in winter will increase, with both rain and snow, and then there will be more rain,” Tuomenvirta said.

More rain will melt the snow that normally covers the vast region from November to April, she added.

Towns further north of Rovaniemi are already making the most of the first effects of global warming to attract tourists.

“The amount of snow varies from year to year in Rovaniemi, while here the snow is guaranteed,” said Carina Winnebaeck, a hotel manager in Enontekioe.

This village of 2,000 people, located a three-hour drive north of Rovaniemi, has already succeeded in persuading British tour operators to bring planefulls of holiday tourists seeking a winter wonderland to their town.

While global warming presents several short-term advantages — lower energy bills, greater agricultural possibilities, a longer summer tourism season — the long-term effects are dire for the region’s fauna, flora and local population.

Reindeer herding, the traditional activity and main income for the 70,000 indigenous Sami people spread out across the Arctic, is also at risk.

“Last year we were in northern Russia following the reindeer migration, and it went from -28 degrees C to above zero (-18 to above 32 degrees F),” said Bruce Forbes, a biogeographist at Rovaniemi’s Arctic Institute.

Then “it snowed and rained and went down to minus 40,” he said, explaining that the temperature swings led to alternating layers of thick snow and ice which the reindeers could not break through to get to the lichen they eat to survive through the winter.

“The herders had to physically break the ice to help the animals,” he said.

Sami Ruismaeki is one of Finland’s 7,000 reindeer herders whose livelihood has become more and more precarious.

“When it doesn’t rain, there are no mushrooms and the reindeer aren’t able to build up their body fat before the long winter. Then the lichen disappears under the heavy layers of ice,” he said.

The reindeer “have to be fed with grain or hay, and we have to bring water from home. It’s not profitable anymore,” he said.

Previously:
Asinine Global Warming News Of The Day: Divorces Contributing To Global Warming ~ Evaluation
Asinine Global Warming News Of The Day: Ireland To Ban Incandescent Lightbulbs ~ Evaluation
Kangaroo Farts Could Save The Planet From Global Warming ~ Evaluation
Environmentalists Encourage Jews To Light One Less Candle For Hanukka To Help The Environment. ~ Evaluation

Forget The Turducken: Meet The Monster Roast

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Dec 162007
 

Chef Phillip Corrick samples the monster roast

The Monster Roast is a turkey stuffed with 12 different birds, that costs more than $1,000 and serves 125 people. As Alton Brown would say, “Now that’s good eats”.

It serves 125, takes eight hours to cook and is stuffed with 12 different birds … now that really IS a Christmas dinner

For decades, a few simple slices of turkey were all it needed. But now even the traditional Christmas dinner has been supersized.

Multi-bird roasts, where different types of bird are stuffed inside a larger one, have become the thing to carve this year – and the more birds involved the better.

One of the top-sellers is the Waitrose four-bird roast: guinea fowl, duck and turkey breast stuffed inside a goose. Demand has soared 50 per cent this year – even though each roast costs an eyewatering £200.

The surge in popularity may have something to do with TV chef Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall’s creation of a ten-bird roast on his show two years ago.

He stuffed an 18lb turkey with a goose, duck, mallard, guinea fowl, chicken, pheasant, partridge, pigeon and woodcock – producing a remarkable Russian doll-like dish.

But now his effort, inspired by recipes dating from Tudor times, has been dwarfed by a behemoth containing no fewer than 48 birds of 12 different species.

This massive roast, the proud creation of Devon farmer Anne Petch, weighs almost four stone (more than most airlines’ baggage allowance), costs £665, and has enough meat to serve 125 people.

It contains about 50,000 calories and takes more than eight hours to cook in an industrialducksized oven.

Anne, who runs the Heal Farm shop near Kings Nympton, said: “The True Love Roast has a bird for each of the 12 days of Christmas.

“It uses skinless breast meat from several birds of each species with flavours that work well together.”

The roast contains turkey, goose, chicken, pheasant, partridge, pigeon squab, Aylesbury duck, Barbary duck, poussin, guinea fowl, mallard-and quail with herb and fruit stuffings.

Anne added: “It takes about 45 minutes to build the roast. However, it takes at least three hours before that to bone the birds and another couple of days to make all the stuffings.

“We’ve been making smaller multibird roasts for a while, but I wanted something with a real wow factor.

“It was only when I was halfway through the first prototype that I realised what a crazy idea it was. But I still think that next year we’ll have something even more spectacular, perhaps a 21-bird roast.

“These sorts of things used to be made with great bustards and swans, but they are protected birds now.”

To put the True Love Roast to the taste test, we took it to the Royal Automobile Club in Pall Mall, London – home to a mammoth convection oven capable of cooking our monster.

Chef Phillip Corrick said: “I was taken aback by the sheer bulk of meat. Something of this size is difficult to cook because it could get very dry, but in the end, I was surprised.

“It was very moist and had an interesting mix of textures and flavours. All the citrus stuffings cut through the strong gamey flavours really well.

“I’d happily eat this on Christmas Day. But I found that although the game has some powerful flavours, it’s difficult to distinguish-which is which because the flavours mingle together.

“I think a better result could be achieved by simply taking the four most distinctive-tasting birds – the goose, the Aylesbury duck, the turkey and either the pheasant or partridge.

“As it is, this is more interesting than turkey, but not very practical.

“There’s no doubt it’s a very impressive thing to serve. But much as I enjoyed it, the impression is better than the taste.”

Food historian Ivan Day said that despite popular opinion, multi-bird feasts were historically cooked in pies, rather than roasted because with the real fires of the era, rather than ovens, the outer meat would have become dry and tough.

“These pies would have given Bill Oddie nightmares,” he said: “There was one baked for the Earl of Lonsdale in 1753 after which there must have been not a single bird singing for miles.

“It had dozens of things like yellowhammers in it and weighed 20 stone.”

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