Random Rodricks

SUVs -- worse than we think

Sat, 18 Jul 2009 13:57:43 -0500

Rick Larrick, a professor of management at Duke's Fuqua School of Business, provides an interesting (and probably more accurate) perspective on assessing gas mileage in motor vehicles, particularly in light of the government's new cash-for-clunkers program. Larrick wrote in reaction to my Wednesday column on fuel efficiency and the need for consumers to make that their priority when they shop for new vehicles.

I agree with you July 15 column about mpg, and wanted to point out that mpg math disguises the real inefficiency of 13 mpg Suvs. It’s worse than you think. The better way to look at fuel efficiency is with gas consumption, such as gallons per 100 miles. Here’s some comparisons:
10 mpg = 10 gallons per 100 miles
11 mpg = 9 gallons
12.5 mpg = 8 gallons
14 mpg = 7 gallons
16.5 mpg = 6 gallons
20 mpg = 5 gallons
25 mpg = 4 gallons
33 mpg = 3 gallons
50 mpg = 2 gallons
Getting one 14 mpg car off the road in favor of a 25 mpg car saves more gas (3 gallons per 100 miles) than any possible replacement for a 33 mpg vehicle.
Here’s an interesting puzzle. Imagine two people with cars that average 14 mpg. Imagine one is going to upgrade to a more efficient car. How big does the mpg improvement need to be so that the new average for the two people is 25 mpg? Intuitively, it seems like trading in one 14 mpg car for one that’s about 36 or so should do it. But a 14 mpg and 36 mpg car use a total of roughly 7+3=10 gallons per 100 miles, which is an average of 5 gphm per vehicle. That yields an average mpg of 100/5 = 20 mpg. The “gallons per 100 miles” math shows that even improving one car in this example to 50 mpg does not yield a final average at 25 mpg. If you have a 14 mpg car and a 50 mpg car, they use 7+2=9 gallons per 100 miles, which is an average of 4.5 gphm, and an average mpg of 100/4.5 = 22 mpg!
The moral of the story: The urgency for the country is in removing the most inefficient cars. The puzzle about the mpg improvement shows that even a 50 mpg car can do little to offset the gas consumption of a 14 mpg car. A 50 mpg car and a 14 mpg car still average out close to 22 mpg. The national policy implication: Improving the low mpg cars by even a seemingly small amount is where the main gas savings are possible.
I published a paper in Science a year showing that mpg causes illusions (because gas consumption and gas savings are not a one-to-one function of mpg); gallons per hundred miles fixes these illusions.
I also have two non-commercial websites where I make the case for thinking in terms of gallons per 100 miles (recently adopted by USA Today and by Popular Mechanics):
www.mpgillusion.com
www.gpmcalculator.com
Rick Larrick
Professor of Management
Duke University
Research webpage: http://faculty.fuqua.duke.edu/~larrick/bio/

Travel lighter, smarter

Thu, 16 Jul 2009 08:20:21 -0500

Compare the attitude reflected in this this letter (in response to Wednesday's column) with the one published in the print edition today:

Mileage could improve immediately if many of the (no longer an option / standard) comforts many Americans have come to expect were taken out of the cars. For example, I would love to know how much the Toyota Yaris (or any subcompact / compact car) could improve in MPG if all unnecessary options were simply removed and I'm not recommending compromising safety.
Cars certainly would not need to have: 1) power steering, 2) power brakes, 3) power windows, 4) power door locks, 5) air conditioning, 6) automatic transmission, 7) cruise control. Does anyone know the total combined weight of all these "extras"? There have been many articles written about unnecessary extra weight in a car (and how the weight degrades MPG) and these options certainly have some weight to them. I would like to see Myth Busters prove or disprove my theory.
In the old days, if you wanted these fancy extras you had to pay for them, now they come standard on the car - and of course the price (and poor MPG) reflects all of these mandatory/standard options! I had a base model 1988 Honda Civic and it did not have any of the aforementioned options and I got 33 - 40 MPG gallon. When purchasing a compact or subcompact (commuter) car, we should have a choice as to whether we want to haul around this extra weight or not!
--Patty

Perspectives on gas mileage

Wed, 15 Jul 2009 09:54:09 -0500

Two interesting e-mails in response to today's column.

The only thing you left out about why mileage didn’t go up is that Congress was too timid to push it along until it became a crisis again. Over the last 25 years we could have raised the bar a little every year or two and had very little affect on what cars we buy, not to mention push technology ahead. I am against the slash and burn approach that California and now the Feds are using, which is likely to fall short and cost billions in wasted money. Too bad America never reacts until it becomes a crisis. See you soon.
-- John Davis, MPT's MotorWeek
Thank you for your column "Mileage Mediiocrity." It's all too true. There are some points you may be interested in.
1. One reason the EPA mileage figures are not as good as years ago is that years ago the EPA was basing their figures on tests conducted in garages equipped with rollers built in to the floor.( Like the emissions tests.) The cars would sit on these rollers while the wheels were spinning, and the mileage was noted. Not very real world driving. They now have wised up and conduct tests out in the city and on the highway, which show at least 20% poorer mileage than the tests on the rollers. Much more accurate.
2. Back in the 70's, bills were introduced to Congress calling for across-the board improvements in mileage for all cars. This was watered down by the car and oil companies' friends in Congress to require only the "average" score across all models of a given company to gradually improve the mileage. This meant that they could sell 8 mpg trucks and SUV's as long as they had other models for sale at 30 mpg. Guess which models sold at a bigger volume. The same loophole will continue with all new legislation.
3. The new cash for clunkers bill will actually allow you to trade in your old gas guzzler for a new one that gets only one mpg better!.
4. Even though it should be obvious that we cannot conduct foreign policy
while in thrall to hostile producers overseas (this is why we will not stop Iran from building the Bomb--we need their oil), nothing short of an economic depression seems to halt the rapid rise in oil imports.
5. World War One was fought over raw materials being extracted from the new colonies being developed. World War Two was fought over a. The German's drive for the Russian oil fields in the Caucasus and b. The Japanese drive for the oils fields in the Indies.
A lot of grief over oil.
-- Stan Gelber
Left to their own devices, automakers (like other rationally managed businesses) will not engage in "steady research and progressive development" unless and until it is in their economic interest to do so, and the Federal government will not modify consumers' behavior simply by demanding that automakers build cars that consumers currently do not want to buy.
If the Federal government truly wants to modify consumers' behavior, Congress should guarantee that, effective July 1, 2010, the price of gasoline will not be less than $4 per gallon by enacting a Federal gasoline tax that rises or falls in inverse proportion to the price of gasoline. Such legislation might even make the "Cash for Clunkers" legislation successful because consumers would be more likely to purchase vehicles that exceed the 22 mpg standard and "Clunkers" would be less likely to be recycled in the used car market.
If and only if consumers clamor for more fuel efficient cars and trucks, will automakers devote the time, money and resources to design and build more fuel efficient cars and trucks.
-- Bob Price

Towson Catholic: Get a plan

Wed, 15 Jul 2009 09:22:46 -0500

Add Towson Catholic to the list of school closings in the Archdiocese of Baltimore, and this one six weeks before the new school year. Good luck to the alumni association in its quest for an injunction to keep the school open for at least another year. If that injunction succeeds, the alumni ought to come up with a new business plan to market the school, and they could probably take some advice from Andres Alonso, the Baltimore schools CEO who sits on the archdiocese's blue ribbon panel on schools. (It's ironic that Alonso has that seat; every time a parochial school around here closes, combined with news of improving results and rising enrollment in the city schools, his system is among those that stand to benefit.)

To survive, schools such as Towson Catholic need to broaden the definition of religious education and approach their potential student markets in a whole new way, and yes, that market probably has to include non-Catholics who can pay full freight.

This all assumes the leadership actually wants the school to survive. When "declining enrollment" is cited as the reason, and a closure announced so abruptly, reasonable people ask, "Why?" You don't just close the doors.

Unfortunately, there has been a lot of that over the last couple of decades.

The Archdiocese is also closing the school at St. Mary's of the Assumption in Govans -- a school that has served a lot of low-income city families for years. They are closing another Catholic school on the south side of the city, continuing the retreat from inner-city parochial education because of money issues. (St. Alphonsus-Basilica School went a few years ago, too, because the Archdiocese didn't have the money for a renovation that involved asbestos removal. That school had served more than 200 students, almost all African-American from the the city and counties.)

But, of course -- and I've brought this up before -- the Archdiocese came up with at least $34 million for the Basilica restoration -- I heard the final price tag was much higher -- and more for an old hotel, which it knocked down to build an adjoining (unimpressive) prayer garden on Charles Street. The Catholic Church is not a democracy, but reasonable people have a right to question such priorities.

All that effort -- all that fundraising -- might have saved schools, might have gone toward endowments. Thirty-four million could keep a lot of schools open until other sources of funding (or new administrations to run them) can be found.

Maybe those who organized to raise the Basilica money -- they must have had a great business plan -- could step in to help Towson Catholic and other struggling schools get through this tough time. Get the injunction. Then get a plan. Good luck.

Today's first e-mail

Wed, 15 Jul 2009 07:02:12 -0500

. . . arrived at 4:01 am Eastern time, and it was from a fellow named Tony, reacting to today's column. It reflects skepticism, cynicism, negativism and the smug unwillingness to change that will work against progress on the energy front. But that's OK. Progress isn't for everyone. The cost of oil, the growing world population, the new emissions and fuel efficiency standards are going to force this to happen anyway. A new generation -- the kids who grew up inside SUVs and minivans -- are going to demand a new way of traveling through the world. The other day I heard a college sophomore, 19 years old, declare she planned to live in a way that allowed her to avoid owning a car altogether for as long as possible. The future is going to be an interesting place. Anyway, here's Tony's blast from the past, unedited because it has a wonderfully dismissive nature in its raw form. I love this guy. (No, really):

"The car you bought 30 years ago didnt get 30 mpg it might have been EPA rated 30 mpg but it probably got 20-24-The54Mpg VW you cite was a tinny slow 5speed diesel rabbit that no body bought-didnt have power windows or air bags or any of the convenience or safety features we insist on today. The stupid 3cylinder Smart car which is a death trap only gets about 30mpg and the Hybrids dont do much better in the real world and in less than 10 years need a $5000 battery pack- what a bargain.People in the US travel long distances -haul things and want and need space and power - this is not Europe.If you want MPG buy a scooter or small motorcycle --even small bikes get only about 50mpg -70 mpg on dinky scooter-try powering a car with a 650cc or smaller engine- you could beat it on a bicycle.

Cummings on AIG bonuses

Tue, 14 Jul 2009 15:15:09 -0500

Rep. Elijah E. Cummings, a member of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, sent the following letter below to Kenneth Feinberg, the Treasury's Special Master for TARP Executive Compensation, regarding discussions between Feinberg and AIG about upcoming bonuses for company executives:

According to recent media reports, American International Group, Inc., (AIG) approached your office seeking approval of $2.5 million in performance-related bonuses for several dozen of the company’s high-ranking executives. These media reports also highlight the even larger compensation issues that remain unresolved at AIG, including more than $200 million in so-called retention payments scheduled to be paid in March 2010 and directed predominantly to the employees of the Financial Products (FP) unit of AIG—the same division whose transactions posed such a systemic risk to our entire economy that the U.S. government provided AIG more than $180 billion in financial assistance.
Although I recognize that all of these various bonuses were promised before your appointment to the position of Special Master of Compensation, I urge you to reiterate the views of President Obama and the American people—who are now majority shareholders of AIG—that these bonuses are excessive and therefore simply unacceptable.
Edward Liddy, Chairman and CEO of AIG, wrote in a letter to the Treasury at the time the first FP retention payments came due in March 2009 that Treasury had “asked AIG to rethink our 2008 corporate bonus proposals.” AIG’s Form 10K/A Amendment No. 1 filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) for fiscal year 2008 – filed on April 30, 2009 – offers revealing insight into exactly how seriously AIG has taken Treasury’s request that it “rethink” its bonus proposals.
Specifically, the April 10K/A Amendment filing presents three compensation principles that AIG states “guided our actions as 2008 developed.” These three principles are:
Principle 1: Embrace evolving standards of compensation governance.
Principle 2: Bring AIG’s historic guiding principles into 2009.
Principle 3: Act, if necessary, to provide appropriate incentives to preserve value.
Having set forth these principles, AIG offers some interesting observations. For example, the firm notes that “AIG continues to face extraordinary challenges that demand focus and difficult decisions in regard to the compensation of AIG’s seniormost employees.” But, using its guiding principles, “AIG intends to face these challenges and strike the best possible balance between motivating its experienced, capable and technically proficient employees to achieve results that matter to American taxpayers and conserving scare liquidity resources.” To that end, as the firm has “faced the challenge of developing a new annual compensation framework, we have continued to be mindful of our historic compensation principles. We believe that we should continue to apply them, although we necessarily will implement these principles different than we did before.”
Verbiage like this is frankly insulting to the American people. AIG’s ONLY guiding principle—in compensation policy and in all corporate matters—should be to repay the American taxpayer. There is no metric of any kind by which AIG can be judged to be a successful firm or to have “improved” its performance; in fact, its future as a going concern is judged by many to be very much in doubt. The firm has not earned any performance-related bonus consideration, and its “historic guiding principles” have guided it straight to the largest single quarterly loss and the largest taxpayer-funded corporate bailout in history. Under no circumstances is it tolerable to think that these “historic guiding principles” should be allowed to be brought into 2009.
Against this background, I urge you to undertake a comprehensive review of all aspects of AIG’s compensation policies and to express the strongest possible disapproval of any policy that does not have as its sole focus ensuring that AIG repays to the American taxpayers every single dollar loaned to it. It is beyond comprehension that AIG should be establishing a “corporate pool for variable performance-based pay” when the firm has demonstrated nothing to warrant any bonuses, or that it should contemplate awarding “retention payments” to individuals at the very unit that drove the firm into the ground.
As you assess AIG’s proposed bonus awards, I urge you to use your position to focus AIG’s corporate policies on what should be its first and only priority: making the taxpayer whole—as Mr. Liddy himself indicated was his intention at a Congressional Hearing before the House Financial Services Committee on March 18, 2009. Mr. Liddy also told me personally in a meeting on January 15, 2009 that he hoped to return taxpayer money early. While I have not seen the company present a check to the U.S. Treasury, I continue to see the firm working to cut bonus checks to its corporate executives.
As unemployment continues to rise, it is simply unconscionable that AIG should pay out millions of dollars in bonuses to AIG executives while the taxpayers who are footing the bill struggle to stay in their homes and feed their families. Everyone else in the country has been making sacrifices during these difficult economic times; there is no reason why the executives at AIG should be exempt.

More on Lyme disease

Tue, 14 Jul 2009 15:07:14 -0500

TODAY ON THE RADIO: 88.1 FM WYPR WYPO WYPF

We took another look at the controversy over the diagnosis of Lyme disease as a chronic condition. Dr. Paul Auwaerter, clinical director of the Division of Infectious Diseases at the Johns Hopkins University, was our guest. We discussed this topic last week (available on podcast) with the maker of a film about Lyme, and my criticism of Under Our Skin in this blog provoked numerous responses from people who believe they suffer from chronic Lyme. You can read their comments to get an idea of the tone the "chronic Lyme lobby" uses in making their arguments. In seperate e-mails, a few have wished Lyme disease on me and my family, and one called me a "Lyme Disease Terrorist" who takes cash from Big Pharma.

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Comments or questions: midday@wypr.org

A polemic on Lyme Disease

Fri, 10 Jul 2009 12:52:51 -0500

Before Wednesday's radio show, I watched on DVD Under Our Skin, the film about Lyme disease by Andy Abrahams Wilson, the brother of a woman who has the disease. Wilson was a guest on Midday today by telephone from California. (You can listen to a podcast of the show by visiting the WYPR web site.)

Wilson's film will be screened at The Senator Theater in Baltimore, starting Friday. You can get information about screenings on the film's web site.

Wilson has made a compelling and disturbing film, and it is beautifully shot, with a strong musical score -- and no narration, and the lack of narration is not a plus. Without the voice of a story-teller, Wilson moves the camera from Lyme sufferer to Lyme sufferer, from doctor to doctor (including one researching Lyme in the basement of his house) to the occasional (dismissively quoted in brief) expert at Yale or UConn -- no one from Johns Hopkins -- back to the sufferers, and then there are collages of people -- never identified -- who claim they suffer from "chronic Lyme disease" and that their doctors either refused to treat them for it or told them they needed to see a psychiatrist.

This is not a documentary. A documentary suggests journalism. There's not much in the way of journalism here, nothing you might call objective, detached, skeptical inquisition. The New York Times refered to Under Our Skin as a polemic, and that's exactly it. Wilson's targets are the doctors and research scientists who say there is no evidence that Lyme disease is chronic and who believe that long-course antibiotic treatments have not been proven effective in arresting the disease and making its victims healthy again. The film sets out to discredit the Infectious Diseases Society of America, which has declared that chronic Lyme disease does not exist. Wilson's claim that the doctors who wrote the IDSA's treatment guidelines for Lyme have conflicts of interest is just that -- a claim, and the charge is not effectively supported. Under Our Skin is full of suspicions, assertions and anecdotes; it's low on science and objectivity. That doesn't work -- in fact, borders on irresponsible -- when you're telling a medical story.

This is the kind of media "coverage" of Lyme disease that the New England Journal of Medicine criticized in a 2008 article: "The media frequently disregard complex scientific data in favor of testimonials about patients suffering from purported chronic Lyme disease and may even question the competence of clinicians who are reluctant to diagnose chronic Lyme disease. All these factors have contributed to a great deal of public confusion with little appreciation of the serious harm caused to many patients who have received a misdiagnosis and have been inappropriately treated."

Had Wilson presented the controversy over whether Lyme is chronic and whether long-term use of antibiotics is effective -- had he explored that and presented both sides -- then I would call his film a public service. In that it draws attention to Lyme disease, the most common vector-borne disease in the nation and spreading each year as ticks bite into humans, Under Our Skin deserves props. But it takes a long detour to defend what current credible science dismisses and in the process pretty much goes off a cliff.

If you see the film, make sure you read the following excerpts of letters I received early today in preparation for the radio show. The first is from Dr. Paul G. Auwaerter, clinical director of the Division of Infectious Diseases at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, and the second is from Diana Olson, vice president of communications for the IDSA.

Dr. Auwaerter, of Hopkins:
"I see the effects of misdiagnosed Lyme disease frequently (as patients actually have conditions such as fibromyalgia, multiple sclerosis, Parkinson's Disease, and many others) who are not well served by taking antibiotics for months and years for fears of persistent infection that are not substantiated by any good evidence. Well-controlled scientific studies have not shown any durable benefit from long-term antibiotics compared to placebo, and importantly these studies show rates of improvement in the placebo arm of 30 percent or higher. therefore, ask for proof from these people that they are doing better than 30 percent with their treatments. They may say so from a testimonial basis, but they have no evidence published in quality medical journals."
Ms. Olson, quoting from a recent letter on Lyme disease from IDSA:
"The concept of Lyme disease as a chronic condition requiring long-term antibiotic therapy is not shared by the vast majority of the medical community and relies on questionable scientific evidence. Furthermore, long-term antibiotic therapy poses substantial risks to the community and the patient and can even be fatal.
Lyme disease is a real and growing public health threat. Patients with Lyme disease are frequently misdiagnosed. However, IDSA’s concern is with the concept of chronic Lyme disease.
Self-described “Lyme-literate” clinicians believe that the Lyme disease bacteria, Borrelia burgdorferi, can survive conventional antibiotic therapy (usually 10 to 28 days of oral antibiotics) and become a chronic infection. Therefore, they claim, patients must take antibiotics for months or even years in order to fully eradicate the infection.
The vast majority of scientific evidence does not support this view. Not a single well designed, reproducible study to date has found B. burgdorferi in human patients following conventional antibiotic therapy. This casts doubt on the basic premise of long-term antibiotic therapy. (The National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases has a review of several studies on its web site: http://www3.niaid.nih.gov/topics/lymeDisease/research/antibiotic.htm.)
Some patients do improve while taking long-term antibiotics. But in studies sponsored by the National Institutes of Health, patients receiving placebo improved at about the same rate as those receiving antibiotics. Also, some antibiotics have anti-inflammatory or neuroprotective “feel-good” side effects. These properties are likely responsible for the improvements some patients experienced in some studies.
In addition to providing no proven benefit, the risks of exposing patients to long courses of antibiotics are substantial. Patients often experience adverse reactions to the drugs. In fact, some of the symptoms that the “Lyme-literate” community attributes to chronic Lyme disease, such as fatigue and mood swings, may be adverse reactions to the antibiotics. In addition, infections in the catheter used to deliver intravenous antibiotics are common and have led to life-threatening bloodstream infections. There are many anecdotal accounts of serious adverse reactions. In addition, according to one report published in the peer-reviewed literature, a 30-year-old woman died from an infected catheter after undergoing inappropriate intravenous antibiotic therapy for more than two years.
The risks of inappropriate antibiotic therapy go beyond the individual patient. Antibiotic-resistant “superbugs” such as methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) are on the rise in part because of the inappropriate use of antibiotics. Long-term antibiotic therapy for Lyme disease only makes the problem worse, without any evidence of benefit.
Many patients credit long-term antibiotic therapy for their miraculous recoveries from debilitating fatigue, pain, headaches, concentration problems, and other symptoms. There is no doubt these patients were suffering. But the question is whether Lyme disease was responsible for their suffering. Several studies from Lyme disease clinics at major universities have found that most patients who came to these clinics with a previous diagnosis of chronic Lyme disease did not have Lyme disease at all, but actually had something else, such as rheumatoid arthritis or other autoimmune disorders, fibromyalgia, or depression—conditions that need treatment with something other than antibiotics.
Diagnosing patients with subjective, nonspecific symptoms such as fatigue, pain, and difficulty concentrating can be a difficult and frustrating experience for both the patient and the clinician. Most frustrating are the cases that don’t have a clear cause after a thorough examination and an exhaustive battery of tests. IDSA does not have all the answers for why some patients are suffering. Even in the 21st century, medicine is sometimes an inexact and imperfect science.
When patients are left seeking answers, a window of opportunity opens for unscrupulous clinicians. These clinicians can earn substantial amounts of money administering long-term antibiotic therapy. Many “Lyme-literate” clinicians back up their diagnosis with tests that are unproven or have not been approved by the Food and Drug Administration for that purpose—a practice that has drawn a warning from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. (See http://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/mm5405a6.htm.)
For vulnerable patients, the diagnosis feels like deliverance from their suffering. For far too many patients, the diagnosis is false.
If sound evidence emerges that Lyme disease is a chronic condition that can be successfully treated with long-term antibiotics, IDSA would gladly accept it, if it would help physicians treat their patients. The burden of proof rests with those who make this claim. Until more reliable evidence emerges, IDSA regards the theory of chronic Lyme disease infection as speculative at best, and we consider long-term antibiotic therapy to be more harmful than beneficial. Lyme and other tick-borne diseases are a serious and growing public health threat, and we support efforts to improve prevention and education and foster appropriate research. However, news coverage that support the theory of chronic Lyme disease and long-term antibiotic therapy is not in the best interest of patients or public health.

Snowballs: A hot topic 'round here

Thu, 09 Jul 2009 20:21:47 -0500

Well, the second hour of Midday on Thursday was all about snowballs, the Baltimore-area summertime treat. Our guest, Henry Hong, the Food Nerd, wrote a piece about snowballs in the City Paper, and he came into WYPR's Studio A to compare notes with our listeners. We were flooded with calls and e-mails on the subject. I didn't have time to read all of them on the air, so here's a sampling:

I am a die-hard snowball fan–especially when it's hot. (I've been known to skip dinner and just have the snowball). My favorite is a "humdinger" - a scoop of vanilla ice cream in the bottom, chocolate snowball, topped off with extra marshmallow. The only place I have found near me that even sells sort of traditional snowballs is the Chinese take-out on Route 13. I haven't had the guts to try them - instead I have a mini-snowball maker I bought from Target and I make my own...not quite the same but still pretty good!
-- Liz in Salisbury
It's great to know the history of our own snowballs in Baltimore. When I was a child, my mother used an ice crusher to try to make her own and put marshmallow creme on top of it. Then she would go to the restaurant supply stores and buy the snowball syrups. My favorite was always egg custard with marshmallow in that Styrofoam cup!
-- John in Baltimore
Sorry. From Hagerstown (Washington County) -- No Snowball stands or lemon sticks. Or Smith Island Cake for that matter.
-- Joseph
I used have a small corner store in Fells Point/Canton. One of the bestsellers for me was marshmallow on the bottom, egg custard flavor, marshmallow on top and sometimes a shot of chocolate. In Indonesia, one of their favorite deserts is a bowl of ice, with sugared, chopped tomatoes.
-- Linda
I had the best snow cones ever in Tampico, Mexico in the summer of 1969. Guys would ride around on bicycles with aluminum coolers tied to the handlebars. They carried a wood plane to shave the ice and would put crushed fruit with syrup on top. They cost pennies and were terrific!
-- Mike in Shepherdstown, W.Va.
Although I'm not from here, when I was a kid we visited Baltimore grandparents and loved to get snowballs. I am sure that in my childhood there was no such thing as Styrofoam cups.
-- June
We go to Waldo's Snowballs in the Harford Mall parking lot. I always get "Rainbow." Kids always get chocolate with peanut butter sauce (we call that flavor "the loaded diaper"). As far as I know, peanut butter is new. Bad thing about peanut butter is that it actually adds some nutritional value to otherwise totally empty calories.
-- Fritz
Hi Dan and Henry,
I have to jump in and tell you that the real chunkier snowballs are true Baltimore, not shaved ice! FYI...the Chestnut Ridge Volunteer Fire company runs a unique snowball stand all summer in that it is staffed completely by volunteers with 100% of the profits going to the station and protecting the community. The stand is a meeting place for the neighborhood and we have customers that come especially for our old fashioned snowballs year after year, which we sell with marshmallow and ice cream if you want...the best! The prices are incredibly reasonable with a small at only $1.25 (I think). Many folks are interested in the firehouse when they come up for a snowball, so we are always happy to have a firefighter/member give you a tour of our equipment and firehouse if you'd like. The kids love it. So snowballs are helping our community!
-- Hillary
Forty years ago when I was a kid, you could only get a snowball from a truck ringing a bell. You got a paper cup, flat wooden spoon, and crushed ice–not shaved. Shaved ice was, and is, a snow cone. Shaved ice was usually at a festival.
-- John

We also got into lemon sticks, like the ones sold at the Flowermart each year. I wondered where you get those porous peppermint sticks used to make them. (I made them once a few years ago for visiting relatives, who loved them, but I could not quite remember where I got the sticks.)

Jeppi Nut carries the Piedmont Candy Company Peppermint sticks in large tubs. They are a little more porous than the original lemon peppermint sticks, but will do in a pinch.
-- Tom in Timonium-
Looking at the website for Piedmont Candy in NC that your earlier caller mentioned, they are selling the same sticks that Jeppi carries in Timonium, MD. We've had some success with them, though they don't seem to be quite the same as what I used to get at the Hopkins Fair and other summer festivals.
-- Ben
Sometimes you can find the King Leo brand peppermint sticks at Williams-Sonoma in Cross Keys.
-- Meg
Eddie's usually has little baggies of the right peppermint sticks by the cash registers.
-- Jill in Roland Park--
I'm pretty sure they have lemon sticks in Lexington Market, in the back, just inside from the peanut guy. As far as international ice treat, Malaysia as an amazing treat called chendol, and another one called ice chachang. And the best of all is found in the Philippines in a truly amazing dish called halo-halo.
-- Ellen
When I was a student at Roland Park Country School from 1960 to 1973, lemon sticks were a very popular item at our annual Christmas Fair. And i think McDonogh had them at their Christmas Bazaar too.
-- Debbie
I have been able to get peppermint sticks at the Amish Market in Annapolis Harbor Center on Solomons Island Rd. They are suitably porous, but only about 3" long apiece. Just be advised that the Amish Market is only open on Thursdays, Fridays, and Saturdays. Regarding marshmallow–not on my snowball!
-- Barb
I'm almost positive that you can get the halved lemon with a peppermint stick at SNOASIS (or OASIS maybe?) lemonade stands. there is one in the Harborplace shopping center at the Inner Harbor. When i was a little kid i ran a snowball stand outside of my house in Little Italy for several summers, until some anonymous jerk called the cops on me for not having a permit. Anyhow, as far as crushed ice vs. shaved ice goes... when we're talking Baltimore sno-balls, you are enjoying CRUSHED ice. Shaved ice is what you would get at the Boardwalk in Ocean City. The Boardwalk stands use an actual block of ice and a planer to shave it. the snowball stand that i operated used a tall metal machine, that you would top-load cubed ice into. the ice would drop into a tunnel which had rotating grinders and blades which would crush the ice and shoot it into a cup. . . . My rule of thumb is this: if it's crunchy, it's crushed ice. If it melts in your mouth, it's shaved ice. Oh, and best snowball flavor ever: egg custard with vanilla ice cream on the bottom and marshmallow on the top.
-- Justin in Little Italy
Graul's Market sets up a display at the start of each summer with lemons and King Leo peppermint sticks. Good, but they dissolve a little too readily. Still looking for the perfect stick. Will try Piedmont.
-- Christy in Annapolis
I was lucky to have inherited a commercial Sno-master machine. I make snowballs lots during the summer for kids and adults alike. One of our favorites is ice, vanilla ice cream and then more ice topped with chocolate syrup. Drop by any time for one.
-- Stephie
After visiting in Costa Rica a number of years ago, we brought home one of the beautifully decorated carts that were pushed through the streets by young men hawking the snow cones. Mine is a bright blue background with multicolored flower designs special to Costa Rica. There were slots for the bottles of flavoring and the main part of the cart held the ice. It came with a small table, not unlike our TV tables, where the cones were placed ready for purchase. It is a beautiful piece of artwork in my home.
-- Patricia in Annapolis
Ice cream on the bottom, vanilla flavor, marshmallow on top!
-- John
My experience in snowball-eating goes back to early '50's in East Baltimore. People would make the snowballs in their homes 5 cents made with a hand-held shaver ran across a block of ice. The shavings were not as fine as the ice in a snow cone. The snowball was served in a paper boat shaped container. The handheld shaver was shaped like a computer mouse.
-- Inexplicably anonymous
Dear Dan and Henry:
My blog writes about all things sweet in Baltimore, from cakes and pies to cookies, ice cream, and...SNOWBALLS! And by coincidence today I have a posting about Baltimore snowballs. I've also started a photo-sharing group on Flickr where people can post their photos relating to the Baltimore snowball; if any of your listeners would like to join, just go to Flickr.com and enter the search term "Baltimore snowball" under "groups," and they'll be directed to the spot. To see today's posting about the Baltimore snowball on my blog, go to: www.bmoresweet.blogspot.com. I welcome everyone's comments and shared experiences about this great summertime Baltimore tradition!
www.bmoresweet.blogspot.com
B More Sweet, all things sweet in Baltimore

Pondering Lyme disease

Thu, 09 Jul 2009 15:33:14 -0500

A reader/listener from East Hampton, Long Island, who says he (or she) had Lyme disease in the mid-1980s, sent along these thoughts:

Four somewhat interrelated factors may have coalesced to make Lyme increase in the past two decades:
1. The expansion of second homes into formerly isolated rural areas.
2. A large spike in the deer population as food from gardening has increased, while hunting has diminished.
3. A concomitant increase in field mice populations, which, like deer, are an essential vector for the deer tick.
4. The compassionate removal of feral "house cats" from the wild. These cats are capable of catching and eating 100 field mice per day, which ordinarily would keep the mouse and tick populations down.
Each one of these human-centered actions was considered benign in itself; but taken together they may have caused an epidemic.
I don't know whether scientists have studied this possibility, but the outbreak of hysteria culminating in the Salem witch trials may well have been modulated by the Lyme spirochete, with its many attendant mysterious physical and mental symptoms, as settlers began clearing land in New England in the 1600s.

Tracking that seal

Thu, 09 Jul 2009 09:39:24 -0500

Hamilton, the rescued seal released to the Atlantic at the Delaware Shore about 15 minutes ago by his keepers and healers at the National Aquarium in Baltimore, has a tracking device. You can see where Hamilton goes from here: Click here for the tracking map. Hamilton is an adult male harbor seal originally stranded on the beaches of Bermuda in February, a long way from where such animals are usually found. Here's Frank Roylance's story on him from the other day. Good luck, Hammy.

Monster Ball

Wed, 08 Jul 2009 20:47:20 -0500

As I suspected, the spontaneous game -- pickup baseball, makeup something -- that kids used to invent in the days before PlayStation et. al, is a rare occurrence in American life. Sports for kids are either very organized or not organized at all. It's the in-between that's missing -- kids making it up as they go along, hunting up friends to make use of an empty baseball field in summer. I wrote about the 'joy of unorganized sports' in May, and asked readers to let me know what they do and when and where they do it -- anything at all spun out of the imagination or the spur of the moment.

Very little feedback on this. A trickle. Most people don't seem to know what I'm talking about.

I've just about given up the idea of posting neighborhood games in this space, or sending alerts about them on Twitter for readers who want to get up a game of Wiffle Ball. It just doesn't happen much anymore.

Then Bradley Kolodner, a college sophomore from North Baltimore, sent me a note about what he calls Monster Ball. The Baltimore Messenger's Louisa Peartree wrote about it a year ago, when Bradley was a senior in high school, and here's a link to her story.

Below are photos Bradley sent along. Here's the Monsterball Facebook Group.

"Originally, the field was made up of paper plates as bases and we only had a few regular players," Bradley says. "The field and game have evolved over the years. We pick teams once everyone arrives and play for a couple hours or until the neighbors tell us to be quiet. Quite often, my friends who play bring their younger siblings. I just thought I'd share with you my effort to keep up that 'simple joy of unorganized sports.'

Thanks, BK. Monster on . . . !

A cabaret in Little Italy

Wed, 08 Jul 2009 13:41:25 -0500

Here's the July lineup for cabaret performers (and the blurbs for each) at Germano's in Little Italy. All shows begin at 7:30 pm. Cover is $10, if you don't go for dinner first. Seating is limited and reservations are recommended. www.germanostrattoria.com

John Oliver Sings "Songs of the American Musical Theater"
July 9
Accompanying himself on piano, John Oliver sings the songs of George Gershwin, Irving Berlin, Jerome Kern, Cole Porter, Richard Rodgers and others, introducing the songs with historical anecdotes and humor.
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L'Tanya Mari' Sings "A Teardrop of the Sun"
July 10
"There are many fine female jazz singers on the scene today but, with the
release of A Teardrop Of Sun, L'Tanya Mari' immediately emerges as one of
the top contenders. It is not just that she has an inspired repertoire (from
Chick Corea's "Crystal Silence" and "This Is New" to "That Old Black
Magic"), impeccable intonation and a pretty voice. Most impressive are her
choice of notes, her use of space and silence, and her intelligent way of
improvising melodically. She pays tribute to each composer's intent while
uplifting each tune through her phrasing, subtle emotions, and solid sense
of swing." -Scott Yanow, Jazz Critic
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Jazz Vocalist Amanda Bloom Debuts
July 17 Twenty-year-old jazz sensation, Amanda Bloom, in her debut appearance at the Cabaret at Germano's.

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Leneida Crawford in ”Come Ready and See Me”
July 23
In "Come Ready and See Me," Leneida Crawford, mezzo soprano, and Susan Ricci, piano, explore the universal themes of love, hope, belonging and forgiveness in their selection of clever, quirky and beautiful American Art songs. Traditional torch numbers, along with the more contemporary stylings of composers such as Richard Hundley, Jake Heggie, Ricky Ian Gordon and William Bolcom, as well as the popular Broadway sounds of Sondheim and Schwartz are presented within this multi-faceted cabaret experience.
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Meredith Seidel and "Soul Fusion"
July 24 at 7:30 pm
Meredith Seidel and Soul Fusion perform music from all eras and genres. As they effortlessly fuse their authentic talent and organic style, they will captivate and send you with the originality of their soulful sounds.
Performers:
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Heather Lockhard-Wheeler and Friends in "Champagne Hour"
July 30 and 31 at 7:30 pm
Please join us on July 30 and 31 for "Champagne Hour". It will be an homage to Lawrence Welk and the Lennon sisters with a lot of Baltimore Hon tossed in for good measure. Performers are Shaina Vatz, Vikki Jones, Catrin Davis, Heather Lockard-Wheeler and James Harp on the piano and accordion. Bubble machine will be present. Have fun like they used to with big hair, four part harmony, great food, accordions and bubbles.
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Dealers oppose 'right-to-repair'

Wed, 08 Jul 2009 06:50:16 -0500

More on today's column about the "right-to-repair" effort by auto parts manufacturers and independent mechanics:

What the National Automobile Dealers Association says in opposition.

Why the Automotive Service Association thinks federal or state laws are unnecessary.

Why Canadian dealers oppose the effort in their country.

A 2007 New York Times story on mechanics and high-tech repair information.

McNair, Kazemi photos

Tue, 07 Jul 2009 07:04:44 -0500

TMZ claims these are recent photos of Steve McNair and Sahel Kazemi together.