If you enjoyed the twice-issued, often-replayed History Channel "Modern Marvels" show on "Salt Mines," you'll want to tune in tonight at 8 pm for the one-hour sequel: "Salt " for which Mort Satin and I were both interviewed (No, we haven't screened it yet). With all the "holiday releases" from Hollywood, we hope this means the History Channel considers their newest creation a prime time feature. It will re-air four hours later, at midnight EST and next Saturday, December 6 at 7 pm. A great way to get the holiday spirit.

New Mexico Salt and Minerals, Carlsbad, NM, has joined the Salt Institute. The company operates a solar saltworks in southeastern New Mexico and sports a new owner, Sergio Saenz . With the company's membership, Mr. Saenz becomes a member of the Salt Institute's governing board, the CEO Council. Welcome.

If you're intending to prepare a paper for the Beijing salt symposium next September, breathe a sigh of relief. The deadline for submitting papers has been extended from December 15 until April 30. Check the Symposium website for details.

mpiweb.org, the voice of the meeting planning industry, had a clever article in its October issue: it identified the "Ten Meetings that Rocked the World ." They include:

1. Marco Polo meets Kublai Khan in 1274 fostering in an era of global trade.

2. The International Olympic Committee in 1894 reviving the ancient Greek games to encourage competition in sport, not war.

3. John Lennon meets Paul McCartney in 1957, the birth of the Beatles and a new style of music.

4. The Fifth Solvay International Conference in 1927 bringing together such intellectual luminaries as Albert Einstein and Niels Bohr and launching a new age of quantum mechanics-based technology manipulating subatomic particles (e.g. lasers, transistors, diodes, etc.).

5. Dumbarton Oaks Conference in 1944 which led to the creation of the United Nations.

6. Ray Kroc meets Dick and Mac McDonald in 1954 leading to the birth of "fast food."

7. The Hampton Court Conference in 1604 producing the King James version of the Bible which represented the primary literature for its age.

8. The Seneca Falls Convention of 1848, the beginnng of the women's rights movement in the U.S.

9. The organization meeting of the Black Hand Secret Society in 1911. Ten Serbs created a cell of Serb nationalists who, in 1914, assassinated Austro-Hungarian Archduke Franz Ferdinand and precipitated WWI.

10. The Baghdad Conference in 1960 creating OPEC, the world oil cartel.

Did you pick up on the "salt" meeting? #4, the Solvay Conference. Okay, it's a stretch, I know.

Organizer Ernest Solvay had been sponsoring these conferences since 1911, the first one also being star-studded (Marie Curie, Max Planck and a younger Albert Einstein). Solvay was a Belgian chemist who became a philanthropist later in life. Fifty years before his first "Solvay international conference," in 1861, he had developed the ammonia-soda process for the manufacture of soda ash (anhydrous sodium carbonate) from salt (sodium chloride) brine and limestone (as a source of calcium carbonate). The process was an improvement over the earlier Leblanc process. Solvay Chemicals is still heavily into salt-based chemicals and, within the past decade, sold its salt business to K+S, both Salt Institute members, to make esco, the European Salt Company. At one EuSalt meeting in Brussels, we were able to tour the Solvay House.

Compañía Minera Cordillera SCM (CMC), a new Chilean rock salt mining company and part of the Mahoney holding group (Eastern Minerals Group and Eastern Salt Group) has joined the Salt Institute. The Mahoney companies have been long-standing significant importers of deicing salt for roads along the east coast of the U.S.

CMC owns the "Tenardita" mine) in Salar Grande de Tarapacá, Iquique-Chile, with claimed reserves for more than 180 years and a purity exceeding 99%. The surface mining operation can produce 600 tons/hour with a 3-million ton annual production capacity.

US Salt Corporation has sold its only salt property, the former Akzo Nobel evap plant in Watkins Glen, NY., to a natural gas company seeking US Salt's salt cavern storage capacity for its product. Both seller US Salt and buyer Inergy Propane LLC are based in the Kansas City area. The Kansas City Business Journal reported August 11 that Inergy will invest $191 million in acquiring US Salt and expanding its storage capacity by 5 billion cubic feet. A second stage development would add a further 5 billion cubic feet. The story quotes Intergy CEO John Sherman's news release:

"First, the salt business is characterized by stable cash flows and long-term growth potential; and it meets all of our strict acquisition criteria. This transaction also provides us with a long-term pipeline of high-return storage development projects in the heart of the Northeast natural gas distribution infrastructure."

Welcome to the salt industry, Intergy.

Salt Institute member Salinen Austria has just re-launched its presence on the Internet with clean and attractive new website . Check it out.

Earlier today, former Google engineers launched the Internet's newest, biggest search engine, Cuil . Pronounce it "cool." Cuil has indexed 120 billion Web pages and claims to deliver the results three times faster than any other search engine. It's worth a look. Cuil claims its search algorithm is based on content quality, not page popularity (we'd like to think they're right).

A search on "salt" produced a near-instantaneous 130 million results. Predictably, and reassuringly, the Salt Institute's website ranked #1. Ditto a search on "sodium chloride."

It's always gratifying to hear someone saying you're doing a good job. It's especially gratifying when they know what they're talking about.

True Value announced its top suppliers last month and named North American Salt, a unit of Compass Minerals as its 2007 Supplier of the Year in the lawn & garden category. Compass Minerals announced the honor today. Congratulations.

The Salt Institute was among 40 associations which have asked Congress to delay implemention of Customs and Border Protection's "10+2 Rule" until the agency can test a prototype to ensure it is workable. The group argued that the new data requirements for U.S.-bound container shipments would cost $20 billion, raising the cost of doing business and raising consumer prices. Rather than enhance homeland security, the measure "creates new security threats by greatly increasing the opportunity for containers to be tampered with" during the additional time needed for the more extensive clearing procedures, the letter avers.

At 7:02 am this morning, Rohm and Haas announced it has sold its business to chemical giant Dow Chemical ; the sale includes Morton Salt. Rohm and Haas chairman and CEO Raj Gupta said combining the companies offered "transformative" potential. Dow chairman and CEO Andrew Liveris used the same word, "transformative," in Dow's release.

Each company has a spate of specialty businesses. The combination makes Dow "the world's preeminent chemical business," said Gupta. Dow will continue to operate Rohm and Haas as a separate unit and, in fact, transfer some of its exisitng speciality chemical businesses under the Rohm and Haas structure. Rohm and Haas will continue to operate its Philadelphia headquarters.

Dow offered $78 a share for the acquisition. Rohm and Haas closed yesterday at $44.83 in weak trading. Its 52-week high was $62.68.

Salt Institute president Richard L. Hanneman noted that Dow Chemical started its business as a salt-based chemical company in Midland, MI, where it is still headquartered. "Most people are surprised to learn that the single largest use of salt isn't to prepare our foods or keep our winter roads safe, but as the feedstock to the world's chlor-alkali industry, the same as petroleum is the feedstock to the petrochemical industry. "Chlorine chemistry touches every aspect of our lives," Hanneman explained.

The 9th International Symposium on Salt now has an active website and has issued a Call for Papers. Deadline for abstract submission is December 15, 2008.

The meeting, themed with the Salt Institute slogan (and film title) "Salt: The Essence of Life," will be held at the China National Convention Center in Beijing. It is being sponsored and organized by Salt Institute member China National Salt Industry Corporation . The Salt Institute is co-sponsoring, along with the Indian Salt Manufacturers Association and the Solution Mining Research Institute .

Topics for which papers are invited include the following:

• 1. Reduction of Energy Consumption in Salt Production
• 2. Salt Production Safety
• 3. Salt Sources and Occurrences
• 4. Salt Extraction
• 5. Rock Salt
• 6. Evaporated Salt
• 7. Sea/lake/Solar Salt
• 8. Salt Byproducts
• 9. Salt Processing, Analysis and Quality Assurance
• 10. Salt Markets and Applications
• 11. New Applications
• 12. Applications of New Technologies and Equipments
• 13. Salt and the Environment
• 14. Salt and Health
• 15. Iodized Salt for IDD Elimination
• 16. Salt and History (Salt and Culture)

Keep a watch on the website as the program develops.

Maybe you should be reading BizCentral.org . That's the opinion offered by Mark Tapscott, editorial page editor of The Washington Examiner .

After commenting about the origin of the word "insourcing," Tapscott admonishes:

By the way, if you aren't checking BizCentral.org regularly, you should be, as it brings together a dozen or so of the top minds from across the field of business-related associations that follow policy debates and developments in Washington.

Obviously, we're both flattered and prone to agree: visit BizCentral.org .

ABC News' The Blotter noted the launch of BizCentral.org and the high-flying lobbying groups participating, including the Salt Institute. Enjoy . Justin Rood reported:

Blogging: It's not just for the little guy anymore.

Big business has officially moved into the blogosphere, a territory once claimed by radicals, grassroots organizers and armchair political philosophers.

Bizcentral.org is a new group blog authored by lobbyists for some of the biggest industries in America. The petroleum industry is represented, as well as nuclear power, chain drug stores, the American Trucking Association - even the Salt Institute, "the world's foremost source of authoritative information about salt (sodium chloride) and its more than 14,000 known uses."

Business needs a stronger voice in the blogosphere and so the Salt Institute joined today with ten other associations - representing sectors as diverse as energy, transportation, telecomm, manufacturing, retail and consumer goods - to launch BizCentral.org , a community blog for business associations, the Salt Institute announced today.

The charter members of BizCentral.org may represent very different industries, but they support common pro-growth economic principles like free markets, free trade, and low taxes. But, while each of the industries has a unique story, the collective story of how business and industry satisfy basic consumer needs and what public policies can deliver sustainable economic security is a message that will interest and inform the influentials who we expect to participate in the blog discussion.