Why must you honestly separate your opinion from your review?

This is a forthcoming post and concerns my reviews on yelp.com -ooooh exciting; really just my HOoF (humble opinion on food reviews).

Find food photos on:
http://flickr.com/iblee

A Healthier America

Guest blogger: School food service director on ingredients

Guest blogger: School food service director on ingredients: "*** Our resident food service director Ms A is back to share more information from her unique perspective. Read her previous post on pizza ***

The Ingredient list and what it suggests about school food



It can be as easy as peeling a label off the cardboard packaging and taping it to a wall, yet posting ingredient lists of food served in school cafeterias isn’t standard policy. In my last piece for Mrs. Q, I blogged that there are 62 ingredients in my school’s pizza. This information created a buzz among readers because that is a surprising number of ingredients for a plain slice. But what is more surprising is that so few of you have access to this information. It’s standard for processed foods to come with an ingredient list at the supermarket, and it should be the same in school.



For parents and students, displaying ingredients just makes so much sense. Everyone can make informed decisions about what they’re eating, especially those with food allergies or sensitivities.



For me, the reasons are somewhat different. I would love it if parents demanded that they have easily accessible information. Why?



Transparency



Posting ingredient lists allows everyone to talk about the food openly and dispels misinformation about school food and the school kitchen. Parents may make negative assumptions about the food coming out of the school kitchen, while the kitchen staff might feel the need to defend the food or be less than completely honest about it. It’s a truly unfortunate situation. Make no mistake - no one is thrilled about frozen and canned food, but such is the state of school food.



At my school no one sees nutrition information except the kitchen staff and our health director. I’m not sure how this came to pass in my school or elsewhere. Parental demand for ingredient lists would bring a level of transparency to school food and shine light on everyone’s dirty little secret.



Communication



Making ingredient lists available allows us to begin having concrete discussions about school lunch. We all know that school lunch needs improvement, so let’s come up with a list of priorities based on the most basic components of school lunch, the ingredients that go into the food. It’s a start to a conversation about explicit problems in school foods and the types food changes needed. It might be opening Pandora’s box, but at least it’s better than sitting on the issue.



Accountability



With information available, it is easier to hold those who make purchasing decisions accountable for what they buy. The truth about school food is often in the ingredient lists. Gauging improvement is much easier and more reliable with two ingredient lists side by side.



Knowledge is power



Having ingredient lists easily accessible still doesn’t solve the underlying problems. It simply places information into the hands of the school community so that no one can ignore the facts any longer. The initiative, budget, and determination to carry out change do not come with ingredient lists. Parental demand for ingredient lists, however, signals to your school that the community cares about its food. It is a starting point, and one that may help your school cafeteria garner the support it needs to switch from thaw-and-serve to meals cooked in the school’s kitchen.



I help run a school cafeteria, and I’m excited to be part of the movement to shake up school lunch in the years to come. I can’t do it on my own because I don’t have control over many aspects of the cafeteria. I’m very lucky that my cafeteria has had the support to make many changes already that place my school ahead of the curve. There’s still a long way to go, and I need community support.



Recently, I put up a few ingredient lists to highlight an improvement. We began purchasing fresh, locally made bagels without the artificial dough conditioners that our frozen bagels came with. I bet other schools that have made positive changes are also making more information about their school food available. Sadly, it seems that the majority of schools out there are slow to make improvements. Demanding ingredients lists from your school might be a call to action.



Ms. A can be reached at bravenewlunch@gmail.com and her blog Brave New Lunch.



NOTE: all guest bloggers have contacted me of their own free will, have given consent, do not know me personally, and are not receiving compensation.

"

Good to know

custom search strings work

http://news.google.com/news?hl=en&ned=us&q=site:wsj.com

what are you thinking?

"Rupert Murdoch has made this kind of noise before (and he gets wrong the extent of actual public access to Wall Street Journal content online, which is 100%). But in an interview with Sky News the News Corp chairman sounds a lot like he would be inclined to take up Google on its oft-repeated suggestion — to all old media titans who think they are being ripped off — to programatically withhold content from the search giant's massive gene pool of news links."


http://www.wired.com/epicenter/2009/11/murdoch-could-block-google-searches-entirely/

Cool idea from Titus.

Accessibility in Adobe [I don't know if just the free Adobe Reader does it of if it only works in Adobe Acrobat]:

    * Open a PDF file [where you can highlight the text] In Adobe Reader
          o Click on View
          o [At the bottom] Read Out Loud
                + Click "Activate Read Out Loud"
          o Then you can click on any text and it will start reading that page.
                + If you want it to read the whole document follow the first two steps
                      # Click "Read to End of Document"

sufjan stevens & the bqe

Thought you might like this:

 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_BQE_%28album%29

 http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_ss?url=search-alias%3Ddigital-music&field-keywords=bqe&x=0&y=0

 http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=114288376

 

 

Fwd: Do chimps grieve?

From BoingBoing: Do chimps grieve?

Look at this photograph and just try to tell me the answer is no.

This incredible image was shot for National Geographic by Monica Szczupider, and shows chimpanzees at the Sanaga-Yong Chimpanzee Rescue Center in Cameroon. They're observing as the body of an elder troop member named Dorothy is taken to burial. She died at 40 years of age, which is pretty old for a chimpanzee.

The photo appears in the November issue of National Geographic Magazine, in the "Visions of Earth" section. [ Thanks, Marilyn Terrell ]

http://themanzine.blogspot.com/

http://themanzine.blogspot.com/

"Ethics of Food & the Environment Series: Bryant Terry"

Ethics of Food & the Environment Series: Bryant Terry

via Information Center blogs by vienoo@stanford.edu on 10/5/09

Bryant Terry, eco chef, food justice activist, author, and fellow of the Food and Society Policy Fellows Program, will be kicking off this year's Ethics of Food & the Environment Series. His topic will be "Redefining Soul Food: Politics and Pleasures of Food and Eating in the Black Communities."

Lecture: Thursday, October 8, 2009 at 7:00 P.M.
Annenberg Auditorium, Stanford Campus (435 Lausen Mall)

Bryant Terry is working to build a more just and sustainable food system. To learn more about his work, visit bryantterry.

His newest book, Vegan Soul Kitchen: Fresh, Healthy, and Creative African-American Cuisine, will be available for purchase at the event.

Specalizing in comprehensiveness

Man is going to be displaced altogether as a specialist by the computer. Man himself is being forced to reestablish, employ, and enjoy his innate "comprehensivity." Coping with the totality of Spaceship Earth and universe is ahead for all of us.
--Buckminster Fuller--

"We hate those!'

Mint love.

		Hi there, Your 'Bank of America - MyAccess Checking' got hit with a Account Maintenance Fee fee on 9/15/2009. We hate those! To view details go here: Cheers, The Mint Team P.S. Have a 401(k) with a former employer? Rollover to an IRA for lower fees & better investment choices.

i don't doubt the truth here.

http://frugaltraveler.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/01/13/qa-with-leon-logothetis-a-5-a-day-traveler/#comment-2557

I thought "wow, how cool would it be to travel the Western hemisphere on a shoestring budget by depending on the benevolence of strangers?" Then I remembered that I am Black and that it wouldn't strike people as quirky and bohemian as much as panhandling. Interesting article. Double your travels and your standards all at once. — iduknoweither

I don't doubt that one bit.

"Here's my new monitor"

http://www.cubexvideo.com/ 

nice.

dang. Disney bought Marvel.

I wonder what that means and I think that means some incredible ideas will never see creation.

~lee~

Time to think again is it worth it?

I'm thinking again about society, change, ideas that influence us, controls, relationships, conversations, politics, and how we want to be.

A little bit lower I found this article on Standpoint while looking for something else entirely. Below is some interesting commentary from that article on how things are changing at a societal level -I think. I'm not saying my commentary is interesting. But combined with the article I'm quoting below it might be. So first my thoughts; then the article.

Certain companies in dominant industries where billions and billions are made every year, who control Media Entertainment, are losing money (surprise surprise). Those groups or companies are trying to exploit for their own gain us (you and me and the "others"). We work at exercising in our lives conscious choice. But by exploiting the perversions of obscure groups of people (in the example I use below and am taking about here: mostly men who are pursuing every porn peccadillo they can find), they are changing the nature of our relationships to each other.

I'd like to believe we are immune and the're just TV shows but I recently found this one on youtube.com:
http://www.youtube.com/show/mommyxxx
It's a reality show about a porn star and her kids from what I can tell. Haven't watched it. (hey, keep the jokes clean.) But, what if that is your frame of reference? What if you grow-up in hyper state of (x)? Every year there is an Advertising Conference held in Orlando about marketing to kids. I'm talking 2-7 year olds. Little little kids. Companies know that if you can get "product familiarity" at a young age, you have them for life. I never knew why we used Crest growing up. We just did. (I don't now btw).

The reason certain industries are wholehearthedly pursuing these groups is their slavish devotion to one aspect of their lives; in this case it's sex but more accurately, pornography. Themes of control and exploitation come to mind. But, my exploitation is very different from yours, if you're a woman.

My thoughts on this area come from many sources online and off, various conversations we've had about technology and choice, and from books some of you have recommended:
Can't Buy My Love
Pornified
Full-Frontal Feminism
What does it mean to be a man?
Culture of Fear
Management of the Absurd

I especially appreciate you recommending books. All the time. Feel free. Now, those quotes from that article.

http://www.standpointmag.co.uk/node/2076/full
"The free availability of hard-core pornography on the internet is changing relationships between men and women in ways we have barely begun to talk about, but it is also changing television. What should executives do with the knowledge that sections of their ever-fragmenting audience are watching images they could not have found in the greasiest Soho basements 20 years ago? Once they would have ignored them, but now that television's power is waning, it must run after every viewer it can find. It cannot give them porn — not yet, anyway — but with Mock the Week it can reassure the onanistic that they're good lads, really, just having a harmless laugh."

"The audience cheers. Boyle knows that the BBC's managers will not complain about a male guest telling a woman that he will be masturbating next time she is on television. The Newsnight presenter Emily Maitlis established her superiors' indifference when she confronted the BBC's director-general with a Boyle line last year. O' Briain had asked the panel to come up with "things the Queen would never say during her Christmas speech," and Boyle replied, "I'm now so old my pussy is haunted."

So, next time you're in town or next time we have you over or the next time we get to talk at length, I'd love to have a conversation about what you might not be able to do in your life time. Or any other topic that requires us to slow down and think and respond and give and exchange ideas.

Personally, I think that is the only thing that can save us. If we need saving that is. Conscious conversation. And sharing.

~lee~

How many authors thank their library?

From Salt -an overdue thank you to NYPL
Originally uploaded by leeleblanc.

Check out this thank you to NYPL.

Kinda neat.

doing un-thing

http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2009/08/growing-open-government-with.html

From googleblog:

The "un-conference" format let attendees decide session topics

At Google we're inspired by efforts to connect people to the political process, to useful public information and to their governments — and we're eager to participate. To hear more about the different kinds of bottom-up change proposed at Transparency Camp, head to the Google Open Source blog for a summary by Clay Johnson from the Sunlight Foundation.

[Web4lib] Firefox plugin Recap to provide free public access to PACER material

-News from a listserv via Robert Malesko

An interesting development in accessing public court records
out of the Center for Information Technology at Princeton University.


Accessing US court material from PACER (Public Access to Court Electronic
Records) currently requires a credit card and charges 8¢ per page; accessing the same records from the Recap repository are free.

Recap, a Firefox plugin, uploads to a public repository (hosted by the Internet Archive) a copy of
items retrieved from PACER. It also notifies a user if requested PACER records have
already been uploaded. https://www.recapthelaw.org/