Our friends at Orange V are serving drinks at another organic booze bash in NYC on April 6th hosted at some secret VIP location in Manhattan to celebrate the most recent installment of the Conscientious Innovation SHIFT report. Based in Vancouver and Portland, OR, Ci works with sustainability driven companies including Happy Planet & Edible Planet. Read their white paper. The music will be by Canadian band Wagon Repair, the water by Biota and the food by Green Table. Thanks to Learned Evolution for the head's up. But you'll need to pull some strings to get there. It's a Nu Yak thang, ya kna?

Posted by RemyC - March 28th 2006
 

Paul Dana, a very courageous and outspoken advocate of ethanol fuel use in both racing and commercial automobiles, sadly died last night during a test run around the Homestead-Miami Speedway. He was racing the Ethanol Honda Panoz Firestone car for the Rahal Letterman team co-sponsored by Remy (not yours truly, but the General Motors battery company.) He also had evil sponsors like Monsanto Imagine who wants to control all the world's ethanol production with GMO corn! Paul was only 30, and a rising Indy racing star, as well as a life long writer, and chronicler of the sport for major national publications. He will be sorely missed, as one can only hope his team will carry on his ethanol message. Read the official press release from the ethanol industry.

Posted by RemyC - March 27th 2006
 

Chris Parker's Highland Harvest Scotch whisky is made from organic grain grown and stored without the use of chemicals or pesticides. "I couldn't deny that our impact on pollution levels is tiny, but what I would say is that big oaks from tiny acorns grow." Parker says his organic whisky has much lower levels of methanol in it, also known as Mr. Nasty. Methanol occurs naturally in the distillation process, and is the culprit which causes hangovers. The body metabolizes methanol into formaldehyde and formic acid which are linked to a sore head." Parker also says: "Whilst natural yeast isn't as effective at removing all the sugar out of the barley or the grain, it's extremely high in ethyl acetate, which actively improves flavor." More here, here and here! Cool cartoon here!

Posted by RemyC - March 25th 2006
 

Jeff Mendelsohn, president of New Leaf Paper, turned CocktailOrganico on to this new brand of organic vodka. Just so happens Square One also wants to use  sustainable paper materials for all their business needs. They are working hard with GreenerPrinter in Berkeley to produce labels, packaging, and all PR materials on recycled stock and soy-inks. The labels are still giving them a few quality problems. Allison Kent Evanow, CEO and Co-Founder, tells COblogs that she will have product in her NY warehouse the 1st week of April, and will start selling immediately in the Manhattan area with simultaneous launches in SF, LA, and Santa Fe. Allison intends to give part of after-tax profits to land and water environmental causes, in addition to other social responsibility charities.

Posted by RemyC - March 24th 2006
 

Why organic booze you ask? Why organic anything? Well, see this film and you'll know why! Deborah Koons Garcia directed, wrote and produced The Future of Food with Catherine Lynn Butler. Yes, Deborah was married to Jerry! Monsanto created Roundup and Roundup-resistant seeds, now wreaking havoc on farms all over the world. The loss of progeny is nothing short of a disaster of apocalyptic proportions and a return to the old feudal system. The US Constitution used to ban patents on living organisms. Microbiologist Ananda Chakrabarty's oil-spill eating bacteria and General Electric changed all that in 1980, opening the floodgates to global disaster. One more good reason to buy organic booze, folks, and nothing else! Check out the trailer. Join the bright side, exploding heads & Measure 27! If you're in Connecticut, go picket Dekalb in Mystic!

Posted by RemyC - March 23th 2006
 

The lead character played by Natalie Portman in the movie is called Evey!!! As in EV for electric vehicles! V For Vendetta graphically glorifies terrorism, and blows up Big Ben in London. The V For Vendetta logo is the street symbol for anarchy, with a V instead of an A drawn inside a circle. It's a miracle this movie made it to wide distribution in the current anti-climate of Hollywood vs Washington. It's going to spark quite a raging debate, about leadership, about our future, about the future of the planet, and yes... about the role state-of-the-art electric vehicles are going to play in the demise of the oil economy. Let's drink to that! In the meantime watch this French Connection commercial shown in the theater before the film.

Posted by RemyC - March 17th 2006
 

Orange Vodka meets Florida oranges. I discovered Orange V on treehugger which more or less seeded the idea for CocktailOrganico. We invited OrangeV to be a sponsor at the ICI-nyc party. That's when I learned reading the back of the bottle OrangeV heralded from Westport, CT. Let's face it, a lot of booze in America has distribution based out of Westport for some strange reason. We were neighbors. Dave Schmier, a founder of the Idea Foundation, a promotional strategy firm, with clients like Absolut Vodka, started out wanting to make the best possible orange flavored vodka. Just turned out organic! Liquid Ice Organic Vodka from Idaho is Orange V's flavorless cousin. Dave now helps the COblogs sort wheat from chaff. We got a lot of really cool things in store for you!

Posted by RemyC - March 16th 2006
 

Plastic Planet dates from 1998. It was part of the Just The Facts Learning Series aired on the BBC. The video company Goldhil is long gone. I discovered the VHS at my local public library, part of a six episodes set. Plastic Plastic was the title of Geezer Butler's first solo album in 1995, Black Sabbath's bass player. While the series was designed for young adults, Plastic Planet gets decidedly raunchy, delving into rubber fashions and condoms. It concludes with a nod to green plastics, ergo the ethanol connection, courageous and prophetic a decade ago. It's fast paced, extremely well edited and fun to watch. I learned that Teflon was classified by the US military for 20 years before it found its way into your cooking pan (it also finds its way into your food) because it is used as a sealant to store U-325 for atomic bombs. Not until NASA needed it as a heat shield for re-entry could civilian kitchens benefit. They say there is no suppression of technological innovation! Yeah, right!

Posted by RemyC - March 14th 2006
 

While the blog-o-sphere is abuzz with eco-design, this amazing new book by prolific doom & gloom writer Mike Davis reminds us that China has 194 million citizens living in slums, and that Mexico City has by far the largest Mega-Slum, home to 4 million people. This book owes a great deal to the data compiled by Un-Habitat. Orion magazine has made this book its Mar/Apr cover story. Try to imagine how much ethanol these people consume, and where it's coming from... all the more reason to encourage regional ethanol distilling programs, rather than furthering this incessant effort to centralize ethanol production into the hands of a few power hungry corporations. Anybody, anywhere, can make ethanol from just about anything. I can't think of a better way to re-empower entire communities by producing ethanol for fuel, for medicine, and yes, folks, for "west and welaxation!" as Elmer Fudd would say. Maybe that's why alcohol is prohibited in Islamic nations... these religious leaders are afraid their flock might substitute ethanol for petroleum, just like our oil barons.

Posted by RemyC - March 13th 2006
 

In the Mar/Apr issue of Atlantis Rising magazine my friend and Vancouver-based suppressed energy technology journalist Jeane Manning writes: "Newspaper and TV reporters are under pressure from the newsroom culture of cynicism, and are also intimidated by science experts, and thus don’t dig further regarding such a story. They don’t talk to the researchers who work with out-of-the-box science. For instance, the esteemed experts don’t do the experiments that add resonant phenomena to the standard electrolysis procedures. Maybe they would find that pulsing the electrical input at frequencies that resonate with the atoms in the water molecule encourages the molecule to release its hydrogen and oxygen atoms more readily, therefore requiring less electricity input." Same could be said for ethanol combustion engineering.

Posted by RemyC - March 13th 2006
 

There's another revolution going on in cyberspace... The slow demise of modeling agencies. All these girl book themselves! They are their own agent. They wouldn't have it any other way. They are smart, savvy, and most of all, they're all treehuggers! They know the score. They know what's going down. They control their image. They have a brain, they think on their feet. They are fast becoming the new pin-up stars of our generation. You've seen them, yet you don't really know who they are yet. They're the new independent breed. One is an extraordinary electronica musician. The other a very funny stand up comic and hemp activist. Yet another an amazing photographer in her own right. One of them even makes fashion from condoms! COblogs salutes them all! They each host pages on the Model Mayhem website.

Posted by RemyC - March 12th 2006
 

GreenCarCongress (who won't give Electrifying Times a link, won't say why!) writes: "US producers delivered 4.267 billion gallons of ethanol of all grades (fuel, beverage and industrial) in 2005, up 20.6% from the 2004 level, and just exceeding Brazil’s total of 4.227 billion gallons. Of those 4.3 billion gallons, 3.904 billion were fuel ethanol, up 15% from the 3.4 billion in 2004." This could quadruple in a year if we were growing hemp instead of corn, think about it! I mean, really think about it! Check out this Frazier, Barnes & Assoc. ethanol plant map of America. Gives you a good idea of who's running the show out there! Study the link between the cattle industry and ethanol production in Iowa.

Posted by RemyC - March 11th 2006
 

Things I learned today: Sterno is gelled alcohol trapped in a network of solid calcium acetate !!! Pure ethanol (aka absolute alcohol or dehydrated alcohol) can be purchased as medical grade ethyl alcohol. Production of alcohol greater than 95.4% requires a special dehydration process that includes benzene or glycerine. While 95% grain alcohol (190 proof moonshine) is non-toxic and can double for medicinal uses. I also learned on treehugger that you can't add more hydrogen atoms to ethanol without turning ethanol into something that isn't ethanol anymore. That methanol vs ethanol ratio of hydrogen to carbon molecules for MeOH is 4 to 1, for EtOH 3 to 1. Direct methanol fuel cells (DMFC) pull electrons directly out of hydrogen: albeit one third more efficiently than ethanol. But in racing, the fuel is burned, not directly converted to electricity, in which case ethanol is the better fuel. Read how Argonne Labs is working on improving ethanol combustion. (Mouse over banner for a great ethanol t-shirt!)

Posted by RemyC - March 11th 2006
 

Peter Shapiro owned and operated Wetlands from the time Larry Bloch moved to Brattleboro, VT where he opened Save the Corporations. Peter is producing the Green Apple Music & Arts Festival along with Relix Magazine (ask them about their recycled paper content!) in over 30 nightclub venues all over Manhattan. If you so happen to have any organic booze you'd like to see served during the festival, do contact these club owners and managers directly. For any assistance and a list of direct action plans during Earth Day NY, contact the Wetlands Activism Collective. Send this organic booze promo-emailer we've prepared especially for the occasion to all your bar, restaurant and club owner friends!

Posted by RemyC - March 10th 2006
 

Papagayo Organic Spiced Rum from Paraguay adds natural organic ingredients to the rum giving it flavors of vanilla, ginger and even a hint of chili. The story of this rum began in 1993 with an organic farming project designed to help poorly paid sugar cane farmers. The scheme flourished, and today more than 800 families in the region benefit from better organic cane prices while receiving an education in farming methods. This method of production is perceived to offer significant environmental benefits as well as improving standards of living for the growers.

Posted by RemyC - March 5th 2006
 

Much of automobile racing today uses alcohol blends. This would certainly be a terrific topic for a book on ethanol fuel chemistry. Ethanol can be tweaked in many ways, by blending oils to render it more viscous, leading to better combustion and mileage. There are additives that can be introduced to render its flame visible in case of fire (mandatory now in racing) plus other things nobody seems to be talking about yet, like means of ignition. Spark plugs are antiquated devices. Sandia Labs looked into laser ignition at a time when lasers were still a pricey proposition, but today solid-state lasers are common place. Replacing spark plugs with an electronically controlled laser ignition system, sympathetically tuned to the molecular composition of the fuel, this could generate tremendous increase in combustion. Read about ethanol for the IndyCar Series from Hemelgarn Racing and its sponsor Alfalaval. Also check out Mark Thomas's ethanol super far out Funny Car.

Posted by RemyC - March 4th 2006
 

When Bush says jump, everybody jumps! When Bush talks switch grass, he diverts media attention from industrial hemp prohibition. Back in the early 80's, after I joined Factsheet 5 as its new age editor (not my choice of title mind you) I opted to produce my own zine called Sick which laid out my master plan for taking over suburbia! One of my ideas was to genetically engineer a very high glucose blade of lawn grass to then consolidate all the lawn care services in delivering their grass clippings to a municipal solar still. Monsanto already develops genetically-modified corn for use in ethanol, so why not lawn grass? Needless to say, the idea went nowhere, though years later some high school kid got written up in a local newspaper for patenting that exact same idea. We talked on the phone briefly... needless to say I never heard from him again. In the meantime, while we wait for a miracle, read Amanda Griscom Little's ethanol article on AlterNet, especially the amazing comments section.

Posted by RemyC - March 4th 2006
 

David Blume's book from New Society Publishers is part of the Mother Earth News Wiser Living Series. Perhaps not since the landmark The Forbidden Fuel in 1982 has there been such a walk down hidden memory lane of ethanol fuel. Blume's book includes instruction for small scale production, yielding ethanol for as little as 40 to 60 cents a gallon, with distillery and plant design, vehicle conversion, reducing emissions 99%. David is President of the International Institute for Ecological Agriculture and founder of the American Homegrown Fuel Co. Inc. In 1983 David produced and hosted Alcohol as Fuel, a ten-part series on PBS, teaching thousands of farmers how to make alcohol fuel. Big Oil got wind of the project forcing KQED, the San Francisco PBS affiliate, to halt printing of the companion book and cancel the release of the series to the rest of PBS. KQED’s oil-funded lawyers crushed any attempt to rescue it, the series ended up locked in KQED’s vault. This book sat on the shelf for 20 years, earning a big fat 10 on our Don't Drink While You Drive, Drive What You Drink bumper sticker meter!
(Find out publishing date and reserve your copy here.)

Posted by RemyC - March 4th 2006