I Dare You to Eat One Serving

I recently learned about Liz Lovely artisan, organic, vegan cookies. They are made in the Green Mountains of Vermont, by a young couple and their small staff. And while the operation appears small, they are available in some 500 retail locations around the country (check on their site).

The article I read said they had just opened up their first hometown storefront when hurricane Irene powered through a few weeks ago and flooded their store. The article's appeal was to order some cookies just to keep their bakery going while they rebuilt their storefront. Never one to turn down a reason to buy good vegan cookies, I placed an order, which arrived promptly and well packed.

These are bad, bad (meaning good, good) cookies—seriously decadent (meaning delicious). The ingredients are fine (except the use of palm fruit oil)—vegan and mostly organic—but they are loaded with sugar and dark chocolate. (Did I mention they are delicious?) The cookies are large, so a serving size is one-half of a cookie. The sample pack I ordered had four different kinds of their cookies, each having a serving-size calorie count of 170-200 calories—for ONE-HALF of a cookie. And I defy you to eat a half of one of these babies. They are sold in packs of two cookies, meaning you could put down around 800 calories if you eat both—which you probably will. So, caveat emptor.

I won't order more (I don't suffer from sugar deficiency), but I'm happy to see a young couple doing principled work with good ingredients. Nobody could eat these on a regular basis, but for a special treat they'd be hard to beat. (You know you want to try them, so go ahead. You'll be helping them get back on their feet after the flood.)

P.S. Read their inspiring story here.

"How to Change a Lightbulb" by the U.S. Government

The U.S. Government Printing Office just released the official federal guidelines on changing a lightbulb. (Not really, but who would be surprised if they did—and if it looked like this?)

So Much for Royal Values

The general opinion of Prince William has been that he seems fairly thoughtful for a rich young man who's had life handed to him on a gilded platter. But the tide of public opinion has taken a hard shift. His plan to celebrate his brother Harry's recent birthday is to purchase 250 ducks, pheasants, and partridges for a shooting party in Harry's honor. As one commenter on the LondonNet site said, "Why not just toss puppies up in the air and shoot them?"

England has a long history of shooting animals for sport—men and women in tweed, tattersall, and Wellies tromping through the moors and heath blowing birds out of the sky, or chasing foxes on horses with dogs, etc. But buying 250 game birds for the express purpose of slaughtering them? Prince William ought to be ashamed.

Welcome to Amerika

Adam Guerrero teaches high school math in Memphis, TN. But currently his front yard is a crime scene because he has a garden planted there. (The yellow Crime Scene tape looks like it was Photoshopped in -- but his yard is, in fact, the scene of an illegal activity.) He was cited for violating two ordinances: failure to maintain "a clean and sanitary condition free from any accumulation of rubbish or garbage," etc. This in spite of the fact that there is no such rubbish or garbage in the front yard. Bottom line, some neighbors complained which makes Mr. Guerrero a nuisance.

Not only has Mr. Guerrero been growing food ON HIS OWN PROPERTY, he's been using the garden as a teaching tool for several of his high school students who are interested in learning about gardening:

You can go HERE on the Kitchen Gardeners web site to read about this situation. He is due in court on Friday, September 23. There is a petition you can sign in his support, a Facebook page in his support you can join, and the email address of the judge hearing the complaint. (I've done all three.) Please speak out in support of this man's right to grow food in his own front yard.

9-23-11 update: Adam gets to keep his garden—and more!

The Kitchen Gardeners International web site reports that the judge was so impressed with the support from all over the world for Adam that he decided Adam can keep his front-yard garden. Plus, the city is going to make a vacant lot nearby available for him to expand his educational gardening activity. The people have been heard! :-)

What You Need to Know About Chia Seeds

I've been eating chia seeds for a couple of years, having had to order them from exotic distributors. But they have hit the mainstream—I noticed they are now available in bulk at a local market (EarthFare). They supposedly contain the highest amounts of Omega-3 fatty acids of any plant food. Fooducate.com has posted a nice little summary of "what you need to know" about chia seeds.

My two cents: Chia seeds are so small (read TINY) and hard that they will not get broken down by your teeth—you'll swallow them whole, which means they might go all the way through your system without ever being broken down to release their inner goodness. Therefore (and this is true of almost all small seeds like flax, un-hulled hemp, etc.), they should be ground in a coffee-type grinder and then sprinkled in/on your food as a meal or powder. I've worked my way through lots of different coffee bean grinders and currently have two of this model which does a good job. There are so many available that it's hard to know what kind to pick, but I've been happy with the Capresso grinders.

Anyway, read the Fooducate article on chia and incorporate "the little buggers" into your diet to get the fiber and the Omega-3's. (And subscribe to Fooducate's RSS feed. They publish great stuff on food and have iPhone and Android apps that you can use at the grocery store to get the facts on foods you're interested in trying.)

Rock: It Doesn't Get Much Better than This

Where to start?

Robert Palmer was the classiest rocker of his generation. It's a shame he died young (d. 2003, age 54). His best-known song, Simply Irresistible, has to be one of the best rock songs ever written. And when he performed it in his trademark suit and tie (he was British, after all), it took it to another level. The music videos for his hits (in the Eighties) revolutionized the genre. The video for Simply Irresistible is amazing, as is the shorter, revised version of it that Pepsi used for a 30-second TV commercial. Like Palmer himself, their power lies in the realm of subtle suggestion rather than overt hammering. I don't have the nerve to post them here, but his best-known music videos are available on YouTube.

The opening chorus line in SImply Irresistible is a classic: "She's so fine, there's no telling where the money went!" Ha ha! What a great line! Who cares where the money went? She's simply irresistible!

Palmer's appearance on Letterman in 1988 is a joy to watch, not just for Palmer himself but for The World's Most Dangerous Band—what Letterman's house band was called when they were at NBC (now known as Paul Schaeffer and the CBS Orchestra). The core guys in this band have been playing together since the Eighties and represent the quintessential rock band: drums (Anton Figg), guitar (Sid McGinnis—no guitar player has as much fun playing as Sid McGinnis—watch him), bass (Will Lee—ditto, a close second. Watch him clapping time during the bridge. Nobody told him to do that; it's just pure joy in playing), and keys (Paul Schaeffer). While they've added horns and a rhythm guitar since then, back then they were as tight musically as four guys could be. They're all older now, with shorter hair, and probably better musically—but pure rock doesn't get much better than this from 1988. (No wonder they've been the house band for the Rock 'n Roll Hall of Fame for decades.)

Pure class, musically and vocally. Here's hoping you've got good speakers:

P.S. That big square thing Letterman is holding up is a 33 1/3 long play vinyl album. (Just kidding. Most people know what "vinyl" means, but it's amazing that there are young kids today who will probably say, "What's that thing Letterman is holding?" How times change. I recently tracked down a used copy of a vinyl LP that I used to listen to on cassette tape in the late Eighties. It was from a church called Church in the City in Houston (no longer in existence)—beautiful, Jesus People style original worship music. Like most people, I no longer have a turntable, but have an audio engineer friend who has agreed to pull the tracks off the vinyl and burn them to a CD for me.)

Only in America

Only in America: three Jawas and a Stormtrooper cross 42nd Street in NYC:

Harvard vs. USDA on Food Health

In June of this year, I posted examples of the USDA's efforts through the years to construct a graphic portrayal of a health diet—and how their efforts have been mostly weak. Their latest version was the best effort yet, mainly because they borrowed heavily from the graphic put out by the Physician's Committee for Responsible Medicine—a plant-based organization.

Now Harvard has one-upped the USDA. They have put their own spin on the USDA's graphic and made it much better. Though not totally plant-based, if you read the descriptions carefully you'll see that they're playing up the good stuff and playing down the bad rather than catering to the meat and dairy industry like the USDA is required to do.

Here's the USDA graphic:

And here's how the Harvard School of Public Health tweaked it:

This is even better in some ways than the PCRM graphic, since Harvard has made the veggie quadrant much larger than the fruit quadrant (less sugar is better). And note the addition of the word "Healthy" to the protein quadrant, and the replacement of "dairy" with "water." The Harvard plate would be even better if processed oils were excluded (upper left).

It's amazing how widespread the focus on healthy eating has become, which is a good thing.

Tempting the Reaper—Beautifully

New Food Documentary

Ingredients is a new (2011) documentary on America's changing (slowly, for the better) food culture:

Changing History

According to the American Thinker website, PBS has deleted from their copy of the transcript a historical mistake made by President Obama in his jobs-plan speech this past Thursday night. The president's error was in saying Abraham Lincoln was the founder of the Republican party. I remember hearing that and thinking it sounded unusual, but didn't check the facts. Laziness on my part, and an assumption that "surely the president's speeches are fact-checked."


The president said (from the New York Times transcript):


We all remember Abraham Lincoln as the leader who saved our Union.  Founder of the Republican Party.  But in the middle of a civil war . . . 


What the president said after PBS deleted the historical error:


We all remember Abraham Lincoln as the leader who saved our Union.  But in the middle of a Civil War . . . 


A good example of how history (the history of this speech) gets rewritten courtesy of PBS. (Note also PBS's error in capitalizing "Civil War" following the indefinite article "a." NYT 2, PBS 0.)

Thought for the Day 12.0

Oh, yet we trust that somehow good

Will be the final goal of ill,

To pangs of nature, sins of will,

Defects of doubt, and taints of blood;

That nothing walks with aimless feet;

That not one life shall be destroyd,

Or cast as rubbish to the void,

When God hath made the pile complete;

That not a worm is cloven in vain;

That not a moth with vain desire

Is shrivelld in a fruitless fire,

Or but subserves anothers gain.

Behold, we know not anything;

I can but trust that good shall fall

At last far off at last, to all,

And every winter change to spring.

So runs my dream: but what am I?

An infant crying in the night:

An infant crying for the light:

And with no language but a cry.

(Lord Alfred Tennyson, "In Memoriam," section LIV)

What's Stopping Them?

A new website called patrioticmillionaires.org is collecting signatures from wealthy people to petition the president to increase taxes on people who make more than one million dollars per year.

Fine. My question (asked by many others) is, "What's stopping them from writing a personal check to the government today?"

I wonder how many of them are willing to send in a big check (or have done so already) to the government on their own, privately, if they're so convinced that Washington deserves more of their money.

My guess is that none have—and none will.

They want you (if you're a millionaire) to be forced to support a profligate government that has demonstrated it has neither the will nor the capacity to manage the money we have given it. Why on earth would anyone thing they are capable of managing more?

But if you think they are, Mr. and Ms. Petition Signer, please send in your check and leave the rest of the millionaires alone.

The Insanity of War

"Lord, have mercy on the beautiful, innocent children of war."

This image is borrowed without permission from Romeo Gacad/AFP/Getty Images from the "Afghanistan: 2011" photo series at The Atlantic's "In Focus with Alan Taylor."

This horrendous scene is stunning—and depressing. NATO tanker trucks full of fuel making their way through Pakistan (our supposed ally) to Afghanistan were attacked by GUYS ON MOTORBIKES—motorbikes—and blown up. How many millions of dollars in equipment and fuel is going up in smoke because a bunch of guys in sandals on motorbikes blew them up? It's this kind of insanity that makes the average person (Southerner, at least) wonder who's in charge over there? This is really depressing. (I say that with respect for our military commanders. But neither the U.S. nor NATO can afford this kind of waste, the fog of war notwithstanding.)

This image is borrowed without permission from Banaras Khan/AFP/Getty Images from the "Afghanistan: 2011" photo series at The Atlantic's "In Focus with Alan Taylor."

Steve Forbes: "Obama's policies are the definition of insanity."

Steve Forbes predicts Obama will be gone in January, 2013, and along with him Ben Bernanke, and that the U.S. will be back on a gold standard within five years. This is a great (and encouraging) interview from Forbes' perspective, but a terrible job by Newsmax.tv -- using a blond talking head to read questions to Forbes which one wonders if she even understands. Who is Newsmax kidding with this kind of production? I couldn't even bring myself to post it here. But if you want to hear Forbes' perspective, which is well worth listening to, you can watch it here.

Forbes is a lot like Ron Paul—his quirky personality and mannerisms kept him from being widely considered as a two-time presidential candidate. But the man, like Paul, knows his economics and history.

Food as Medicine

Last Monday night, CNN's Dr. Sanjay Gupta aired a one-hour special on heart disease, the focus being on preventing and reversing heart disease with food instead of medicine or surgery. Feature prominently was Dr. Caldwell Esselstyn who has tutored former president Clinton into a vegan lifestyle and back to health after heart surgery, then stents, failed to "fix" his heart problem. Dr. Gupta spent a year on his own study and has become a believer. If you missed the one-hour special, called "The Last Heart Attack," and want to see it all, it's available at Dr. Gupta's blog here.

This is a brief summary interview on CNN where Dr. Gupta summarizes the message of the hour-long special: heart disease can be prevented, and reversed, using food as medicine.

This additional short interview contains more of Dr. Gupta's findings from the hour-long special. Good stuff:

Jerusalem: Center of the World

A preview of a 2013-release IMAX 3-D movie on Jerusalem and the Holy Land. Having stood in most of the spots shown in this movie, I got chills seeing them again and remembering why Jerusalem remains the most important piece of real estate in the world:

Jerusalem | Filmed in Imax 3D from JerusalemGiantScreen on Vimeo.

Ron Paul: Smartest Guy in the Room

Congressman Ron Paul was on Fox News Sunday morning answering some marshmallow questions thrown to him by Chris Wallace. Yes, the questions were easy for Paul to answer, and the 14 minutes amounted to a campaign opportunity for the Congressman. But that's a good thing. From all I know of the Congressman, I don't agree with 100% of his views on everything. But he says more that's right about the Constitution, the economy, the role of government, and the status of liberty in America than any other candidate in the race. He's not the most polished or most handsome candidate (which says something about why we should pay closer attention than we might otherwise pay), but he's definitely the most accurate on matters of substance.

For clarification, Paul uses the term "monetize the debt" near the end of the interview. This refers to the Federal Reserve Bank (headed by Bernanke) buying up the bonds that the Treasury Department (headed by Geithner) continues to issue. In the last few years, the Federal Reserve (as I understand) has bought about three-fourths of the trillions of dollars of new debt instruments issued by the U.S. Treasury Department. And where does the Federal Reserve get the money to buy the Treasury bonds? It "prints" it—creates it out of thin air. This is what's known as "monetizing the debt"—increasing the money supply to buy U.S. debt instruments. And it's this "monetizing of the debt" (increasing the money supply out of thin air) that results in inflation. I don't think the average person understands the charade that's going on at the Federal level. The right hand (the Treasury) sells new debt instruments (bonds) to continue to fund the bankrupt U.S. government and the left hand (the Fed) creates money out of nothing to buy the debt. The only reason the U.S. government stays in business is by living off new borrowed money (new debt that it borrows from itself). Ron Paul is the only candidate who continually tries to expose this bankrupt policy.

This is a great interview:

Young Entrepreneurs

Occasionally, something brings to mind one of my three sons' (plural) first venture into entrepreneurship—running the summer concession stand at the neighborhood swim club to which we belonged in their grammar school years. I fronted the money to purchase cases of junk food and sodas, and they were responsible for selling the products at the pool's concession stand. We kept track of P&L figures in a notebook on the kitchen table, the goal being not so much to make a profit but to learn a bit about running a business, being responsible, keeping commitments, and other Dad-type agenda items. I can't remember how it all ended—whether I got my investment back or how much they learned or made. But it was a good exercise in . . . something (like learning that being the owner has its privileges—like "free" candy?). And they were entrepreneurs for a summer. And have each risked capital as adults in various ways and made a few dollars doing it.

Ran into a few more budding entrepreneurs lately—even younger than my sons.

While riding my bike a few days ago, I passed a house with the proverbial lemonade stand in the front yard, "girled" by three young businesswomen. It was a terrible location on a busy street in a yard totally hidden from one direction by trees, and nowhere to stop except their driveway. This is a road I always ride to the end of, then turn around and go back the same way, so I knew I'd be passing their house again. Before I arrived the second time, I stopped my bike and pulled out a couple dollars from my biker's wallet to give them when I got to their house. I declined the lemonade but told them "way to go" for running their stand. They didn't quite understand when I just gave them money but didn't take the lemonade, but when I told them just to put the money in their money box they said, "Okay!" (Never turn down money—even when the customer doesn't want the product. His loss, your gain.)

Yesterday, I heard a tentative knock on my front door. The knocker was a young guy around eight years old, accompanied by a pal and what looked like a little sister. He asked if I wanted to buy a copy (for fifty cents) of the comic book he was writing. He had finished his manuscript (he showed it to me) and was taking orders. He would make copies and deliver them the next day. "Heck yeah," said this writer to the other. "Hold on while I get fifty cents." Two quarters and a sign-up later, he had the money and I had an eight-year-old's promise. Today, the budding writer/publisher/marketer showed up with my copy of his two-page, hand-drawn, hand-written, photo-copied, black-and-white comic—about a greedy kid who learned to share and be generous. Nice theme.

Nice to see these little ones finding their skills and setting out to discover how much said skills are worth in the marketplace. More power to 'em.

My First Earthquake

Because I work in my home office all day, I am immediately sensitive to differences of any sort—sounds, light, temperature, etc. Just before 2:00 EST today, I began hearing VERY slight noises like might be made if a bookcase or table were creaking back and forth—ever so slight noises. I actually got up and walked around my office trying to pinpoint the origin of the sound but couldn't. It stopped, so I returned to work.

A half-hour or so later I happened to turn on a radio and heard that a 5.9 earthquake had occurred at 1:53 p.m. just NW of Richmond, VA, about 300 miles from where I live outside Charlotte. That explains that.

I am proud to say I lived through my first (as far as I know) earthquake. Hope the folks in Virginia are okay—and that it rattled a few cages in the nearby nation's capital.

Every time the earth is shaken by an earthquake, I think of Hebrews 12:26-29:

When God spoke from Mount Sinai his voice shook the earth, but now he makes another promise: Once again I will shake not only the earth but the heavens also. This means that all of creation will be shaken and removed, so that only unshakable things will remain. Since we are receiving a Kingdom that is unshakable, let us be thankful and please God by worshiping him with holy fear and awe. For our God is a devouring fire.

Update: Turns out this was serious, as everyone knows by now. This picture is of the National Cathedral in Washington, the left-hand spire of which was shaken and broken off during the quake: