Friday, October 23, 2015
Top news View all Link to headline article Historic Hurricane Patricia strikes Mexico as a vicious Category 5 storm Heavy rains and strong winds will affect Guadalajara, which is Mexico's third-largest city, with 1.5 million people. The storm will also enhance heavy rainfall and flooding into… Profile image of authorMashable Oct 23, 2015
Patricia, 'the most dangerous storm in history,' makes landfall in Mexico Greg Botelho-Profile-Image By Greg Botelho and Ray Sanchez, CNN Updated 7:38 PM ET, Fri October 23, 2015
Patricia, 'the most dangerous storm in history,' makes landfall in Mexico
(CNN)[Breaking news update, posted at 7:34 p.m. ET]
Hurricane Patricia -- the strongest hurricane ever recorded -- made landfall on Mexico's Pacific coast about 6:15 Friday evening (7:15 ET), its 165 mph winds barreling into the coast of southwestern Mexico near Cuixmala, the U.S. National Weather Service said.
[Previous story, posted at 6:35 p.m. ET]
Hurricane Patricia -- the strongest hurricane ever recorded -- weakened slightly Friday as it barreled closer to Mexico's Pacific coast, with sustained winds decreasing to 190 mph and gusts to 235 mph, the National Hurricane Center said in its latest advisory.
The storm began lashing the coast Friday evening with strong winds and rain as tourists and residents in resorts such as Puerto Vallarta and Manzanillo sought shelter. Areas near the expected landfall braced for potentially catastrophic 200-mph sustained winds and torrential rains.
Late Friday afternoon, the storm was centered 60 miles (95 kilometers) west of Manzanillo, and 110 miles south of Cabo Corrientes.
Moving at 14 mph, it is forecast to pivot north-northeast later Friday and pick up speed -- especially after it makes landfall, when Patricia should both accelerate and "rapidly weaken over the mountains of Mexico," according to the U.S. National Hurricane Center.
The excessive wind speeds, according to the head of the Mexican agency that includes its national weather service, "makes Patricia the most dangerous storm in history."
By that, CONAGUA director Robert Ramirez de la Parra meant any cyclone ever measured, not just in and around Mexico.
Ramirez de la Parra predicted Patricia wouldl make landfall somewhere on the coast of Jalisco state -- which includes the tourist hot spot of Puerto Vallarta and is close to Manzanillo and Colima -- between 5 and 6 p.m. CT (6 and 7 p.m. ET). But its impact was felt much sooner, with 100 kph (62 mph) winds lashing the region in the early afternoon.
"The hurricane is so big and so intense that it has the capacity to pass over both the Sierra Madres in our country -- that is, through our most mountainous ranges -- and then exit the country on the other side into the north part of the Gulf of Mexico and possibly the United States," Ramirez de la Parra said.
While its strength could fluctuate, "Patricia is expected to remain an extremely dangerous Category 5 hurricane through landfall," the U.S. National Hurricane Center said Friday afternoon.
Already, Patricia is "the strongest hurricane on record in the National Hurricane Center's area of responsibility (AOR) which includes the Atlantic and the eastern North Pacific basins," according to a Friday morning forecast discussion.
The closest contender, at this point, might be Hurricane Camille, which battered the U.S. Gulf Coast in 1969. Patricia looks to be more powerful than that storm, as well as stronger than Hurricane Andrew in 1992, Katrina in 2005 and many others.
It already has surpassed them in one way: its central pressure reading -- the weight of the air above a system -- which is a key measure of any storm's strength.
The midday Friday central pressure recording of 879 millibars (the barometric pressure equivalent is 25.96 inches) "is the lowest for any tropical cyclone globally for over 30 years," according to the Met Office, Britain's weather service.
Patricia's intensity is comparable to Typhoon Haiyan, which hit the Philippines in 2013, the World Meteorological Organization tweeted. More than 6,000 people died in Haiyan, due largely to enormous storm surges that rushed through coastal areas. Haiyan had 195 mph sustained windswhen it made landfall, while Typhoon Tip was at 190 mph (and had a slightly lower pressure reading of 870 millibars) in 1979.
Thursday, October 22, 2015
Witch's Tale The Were-Wolf Part 1 1935 OTR HALLOWEENHOLIDAZE OTR HALLOWEENHOLIDAZE
Witch's Tale The Were-Wolf Part 1 1935
The Myth of Mezcal SF Weekly (blog) After finishing a degree in industrial engineering, he worked with a nonprofit that had a campus in Oaxaca. It was then the Mexico City native started to ...
The Myth of Mezcal
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After finishing a degree in industrial engineering, he worked with a nonprofit that had a campus in Oaxaca. It was then the Mexico City native started to ...
"The dark eras are for transforming, no?" Santiago Suarez says. We're in a third-floor room of Anchor Brewing, comparing San Francisco's boom with Mexico City's struggles. Suarez is the founder and CEO of the six-year-old Mezcal Amores — Mezcal Amarás in the U.S. — and he is constantly traveling, evangelizing on behalf of mezcal's mystery.
"The first time I contacted mezcal was on a hippie beach in Mexico," Suarez recounts. "I was 18 years old, and the moment was perfect."
An older man, 60 or 65, was carrying bottles as he walked across the sand. He approached Suarez and his friends and made them an offer: 50 cents for a liter of the white spirit, a dollar if they wanted the glass bottle. Suarez held out an empty plastic bottle, and the man filled it with mezcal.
"We couldn't go into the ocean that day, so we started drinking the mezcal. It was one of the best drinks I'd ever had," says Suarez. Later, he and his friends went looking for the man. "We wanted to buy more, but we couldn't find him. He was like a myth."
The encounter stuck with Suarez. After finishing a degree in industrial engineering, he worked with a nonprofit that had a campus in Oaxaca. It was then the Mexico City native started to notice the cultural differences between regions.
"A really important part of the community was mezcal," he tells me, describing the role of the spirit in the celebration of birthdays, quinceañeras, the Day of the Dead, and other festivals. "It was a part of those special days, and I got to know it."
Suarez spent two years learning about the spirit's history and production, and launched Mezcal Amores on Dec. 12, 2010, during the celebration of the Virgin of Guadalupe. Over time, the brand has expanded, growing horizontally rather than vertically — a distinction that Suarez insists on. While a single factory can produce anywhere from 1,000-4,000 liters, it isn't possible to use the traditional process on a grand scale.
"And if we lose the way it's produced, we lose a lot of this product," says Suarez.
While Mezcal Amores exhibits a particular flavor, process, and expression of terroir, it varies from bottle to bottle and from one mezcalero to the next. To select his partnering mezcaleros — currently there are 11 — Suarez has visited more than 200 factories throughout Mexico, some of which are dirt-floor, thatch-roof facilities run by mezcaleros who have hundreds of years of collective experience. Of the four mezcaleros who contribute to Amores' Espaín variety, three have been in the industry for more than six decades. One recently turned 93.
Making mezcal is labor-intensive and requires patience, as plants can take up to 35 years to mature. Once ready to reproduce, their leaves begin to open and the agave shoots up, growing more than 60 feet in six to nine months.
"The plant takes its whole life to survive and reproduces only once before it dies," Suarez explains. "If you think about it, you're drinking all of the energy that the plant has stored up. The plant is sacrificing its life for us, and not doing what living things want to do, which is reproduce."
Once cut, the agave's core (or piña) is extracted, cut into pieces, and cooked for up to five days over a fire made in a conical in-ground oven lined with stone. It's then sliced and ground into meal, to oxygenate it. The resulting liquid is fermented for eight to 25 days, slow-cooked, and distilled in batches of less than 400 liters. (Every ton of agave yields roughly 100 liters of mezcal.)
"Each time you do this you can't reproduce it," says Suarez. "It's very organic, unique."
Each mezcalero works according to his own specifications. There can be variations on the type of wood burned in the oven, the type of fermentation pots, and the amount of time spent in any stage. And then there is the agave itself, with 23 species and 350 subspecies. It's a wonder that one bottle of mezcal even resembles the next.
"It's a mystery we're still figuring out," Suarez says. "There is no cultivation of wild agave. That's why we don't harvest wild plants if we don't have a reforestation plan. Each year, we plant 10 to 15 for each plant we use."
Mezcal Amarás' espadin, a balance of smoke and agave flavor, is what Suarez considers "the perfect way to enter the mezcal world." It is "centered, but not explosive." On the other side is cupreata, developed in Guerrero state. Where espadín is a point of entry, cupreata shows mezcal's complexity. "We wanted to show the extremes of what it can do," says Suarez. "[Cupreata] can be spicy like chili or bell pepper. Think of the flavor green," he says, as I take small sips. It does, indeed, taste like a deep jungle green, lush and herbaceous.
When Mezcal Amores decided to distribute in the U.S. under the name of Mezcal Amarás, it did so with the desire to keep the mezcal tradition, moving when the moment was right. Though mezcal only makes up 1 percent of tequila sales, the age-old drink is quickly growing in popularity. As it does, it is important to Suarez that it is consumed responsibly and carefully: "We should honor it by drinking in celebration with friends, respecting the life of the plant."
"For me, the best way to enjoy a mezcal is sipping it," Suarez says. "You never shoot a mezcal; you should kiss the glass. If you feel like you're swallowing, you're doing it wrong." To him, a good shot should last 20 to 30 minutes. "You're taking a journey through the soul of the plant," he tells me, "Tasting the biodiversity of Mexico."
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Call Me Maybe - Throwback Thursday Just For Laughs Gags Just For Laughs Gags
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Wednesday, October 21, 2015
Sam Hunt - Take Your Time (Tyler & Ryan Cover) DirtyTAR
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The One Thing You Should Never Do With Your Boarding Pass October 19, 2015 6:49 pm by Jamie Ditaranto
The One Thing You Should Never Do With Your Boarding Pass
You're at the gate. You've got your boarding pass. You're heading somewhere exciting and you just can't wait until you get there to share the news with your friends on social media. So you snap a picture of your boarding pass and post it to Facebook. Harmless, right?
Maybe not.
Because the information printed on your boarding pass actually reveals a lot more than you think.
As explained via a recent blog post by KrebsonSecurity, there are websites that can read the barcodes on your boarding pass and provide someone else access to your travel information—your phone number, frequent flyer number, and information not only about the flight in question but also all future flights booked through the same number.
With access to your boarding pass, someone could even change your seat on the plane, cancel any future flights, and reset your account PIN number.
You may love your friends, but would you trust everyone you know on Facebook or Twitter with your private travel information? Didn't think so.
The takeaway here: Don't post pictures of your boarding pass on social media.
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Tuesday, October 20, 2015
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Travel Tips: How to do laundry while traveling Gabriel Traveler
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