BITES : Ride the Wine Line

The city council of Stockholm, Sweden, has decided to import 5,500 tons of alcohol produced from Spanish red wine to fuel the city’s 84 ethanol-powered buses. For fuel purposes, ethanol is usually made from wood, but Sweden’s growing use of alcohol-powered buses has caused an ethanol shortage there, with the result that the price has shot up 30%. The Spanish alcohol will be denatured by adding chemicals to make it undrinkable.

There were fears that Spanish winemakers would be offended by this use of their product. The Swedes have already upset French winemakers with boycotts and by pouring French wine down drains to protest French nuclear tests.

Texas Will Not Be Cowed

People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, the animal rights group, tried to promote vegetarianism among Texas school children by sending somebody in a 7-foot-tall carrot costume (“Chris P. Carrot”) to grammar schools at the beginning of the school year, armed with “Meat Stinks” buttons. Texas might not be exactly the right state for the campaign. At least one elementary school turned the giant carrot away, and the principal at another warned students not to talk to strangers.

More ‘Net News

Perrier now has an Internet site (address: www.perrier.com). Needless to say, it features the art works that the French bottler has sponsored, and many screens are Perrier-bottle green.

Besides the art, and a couple of contests, the attraction of the site is an on-line version of the restaurant guides to Los Angeles and New York edited by Andre Gayot, who was affiliated with the French restaurant guidesters Gault Millau for 33 years. You can search by criteria such as type of cuisine, price range, general location, credit cards accepted and Gayot guide rating. It may need a little work: Request a Westside French restaurant and you get a choice of Alto Palato, a northern Italian restaurant, and Wolfgang Puck’s Franco-Chinese restaurant Chinois-on-Main.

Convenience Bivalves

Yves Renaut, a French inventor, has come up with a way to raise oysters with a sort of pop-top for easier shucking. While the oyster is growing, the cultivator inserts a wire which encircles the muscle that holds the oyster’s two shells together. The wire is attached to a plastic disk that dangles outside. To shuck your oyster, you just pull on the disk, and voila .

Still More ‘Net News

There’s also a site on the ‘Net for a Spam haiku contest, which reports having received 1,000 entries. Derogatory sample: “Bum with hole in shoe/ finds Elmer’s and Spam. Eats/ glue, patches hole with Spam.” lyrical sample: “Brasiliana/ amorphously glistening/ the sound of Spam Getz.” That address: https://cougar.stanford.edu:7878/spam/vote--spam.html.