Tag Archives: dining

Spineless – Juli Berwald

by Myrna Posted on November 7, 2017

READ GREEN WITH E-BOOKS

Spineless

The Science of Jellyfish and the Art of Growing a Backbone

Juli Berwald

Genre: Nature

Price: $13.99

Publish Date: November 7, 2017

Publisher: Penguin Publishing Group

Seller: Penguin Group (USA) Inc.


A former ocean scientist goes in pursuit of the slippery story of jellyfish, rediscovering her passion for marine science and the sea's imperiled ecosystems. Jellyfish are an enigma. They have no centralized brain, but they see and feel and react to their environment in complex ways. They look simple, yet their propulsion systems are so advanced engineers are just learning how to mimic them. They produce some of the deadliest toxins on the planet and yet are undeniably alluring. Long ignored by science, they may be a key to ecosystem stability. Juli Berwald's journey into the world of jellyfish is a personal one. Over a decade ago she left the sea and her scientific career behind to raise a family in landlocked Austin, Texas. Increasingly dire headlines drew her back to jellies, as unprecedented jellyfish blooms toppled ecosystems and collapsed the world's most productive fisheries. What was unclear was whether these incidents were symptoms of a changing planet or part of a natural cycle. Berwald's desire to understand jellyfish takes her on a scientific odyssey. She travels the globe to meet the scientists who devote their careers to jellies, hitches rides on Japanese fishing boats to see giant jellyfish in the wild, raises jellyfish in her dining room, and throughout it all marvels at the complexity of these alluring and ominous biological wonders. Gracefully blending personal memoir with crystal-clear distillations of science, Spineless reveals that jellyfish are a bellwether for the damage we're inflicting on the climate and the oceans and a call to realize our collective responsibility for the planet we share.

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Spineless – Juli Berwald

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Don’t Ask Me To Explain. This Trump Steak Headline Is Really Hard To Write.

by r9q9gb Posted on April 13, 2017

Mother Jones

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Let’s say you’re throwing a dinner party and it is a very important dinner party and your boss is coming over and many other people you want to impress and you and your family spend all day getting ready for this dinner party—cleaning the house, preparing the food, rehearsing songs the children can sing as they depart for bed before the adults have post-dinner drinks—and it’s all very stressful but you’re committed to it because the play isn’t the thing, the dinner party is—and so you wake up early and clean the kitchen and the dining room and the entryway and the second bathroom and even the third bathroom, which probably won’t get used but it would be very bad if it did get used and it was dirty, and in a fit of panic you even clean the closets—because what if someone goes to put their coat in the closet and the closet is messy and they think “wow, what a sick, disgusting family this is” and then they take a photo of the sick closet and post it on Instagram with no filter and everyone on the internet laughs at you and you lose your job and have to move with your family to the arctic because that is the only place you can live without shame?—so you clean the closet; and the food is also important so you spend forever making the best recipes from the Top Chef cookbook, recipes you really aren’t even qualified to attempt but attempt them you do and after a few failures and misfires you make them good—and it is you who is the real Top Chef—and then it is the afternoon and you are ready, everything is perfect, but you are stressed and you want a drink but you don’t want to be drunk when people show up so you don’t drink because not again but you really are stressed out and your back is killing you, so you jump in the car and pop over to the local mall and go to the Sharper Image to sit in one of their massage chairs and while you’re sitting in the massage chair unwinding before the big party you get a frantic call from your partner saying that there was a problem with the refrigerator and the meal you’d slaved over all day is ruined and there’s no food and your dinner guests are going to be arriving any minute and now you’re panicking because what are you going to do and you look around the Sharper Image in a daze and realize that there is nothing you can do because it is too late and your life is over and you resign yourself to the arctic but then you think maybe just maybe they sell steaks at Sharper Image and you ask the Sharper Image salesperson and they say, “actually, yes, we do” and you say, “but are they good steaks” and they say, “oh they are the world’s greatest steaks” and so you buy a bunch of the steaks and go home and make the steaks and then the guests arrive and they love the steaks and the night is a success and when you sleep that night you dream of your new life where people come up to you on the street and say “I’d love to come to one of your dinner parties. I hear they’re great.” Maybe you’ll invite them. Maybe you won’t. Your fate is in your hands.

Bad news, my friend: You mishandled the steaks. You’re moving to the arctic.

tldr: The Sharper Image used to sell Trump Steaks. Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort—which doesn’t actually sell Trump Steaks since Trump Steaks no longer exists—was just dinged by health inspectors for mishandling meat. There is no reason to believe that Trump Steaks were spoiled or that the Sharper Image didn’t handle their Trump Steaks correctly. This post is a joke about the fact that Donald Trump used to sell steaks at the Sharper Image. Please stop shouting at me.

Original article: 

Don’t Ask Me To Explain. This Trump Steak Headline Is Really Hard To Write.

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How Are You Supposed to Win a Gold Medal If You Can’t Get A Cup of Coffee?

by Daisy49F7358 Posted on August 5, 2016

Mother Jones

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Brazil has been the globe’s most prolific coffee-producing nation for 150 years; and coffee culture has long permeated Rio de Janeiro, where you can find everything from a cheap cafezinho (little cup of coffee) at a corner cafe to super fancy brews extracted from the nation’s best coffee beans. But if you’re an athlete holed up in Olympic Village for the games, things are apparently a bit different. Here’s NPR:

BLOCK: This will be the second Olympics for Egyptian archer Ahmed El-Nemr. He’s mostly happy, but there is a problem.
AHMED EL-NEMR: Actually, yes, I have some complains about coffee (laughter).
BLOCK: He’s been shocked to find there is no coffee for athletes in the village apartment buildings or at the sports venues.
NEMR: I asked. They said we are only limited to Coca-Cola products. So…
BLOCK: You’re kidding me.
NEMR: No. Yeah, that’s what they told us in the venue.

What? No coffee for Olympic athletes in the globe’s coffee epicenter, because…Coca-Cola? According to the Daily News, “A Coca-Cola spokeswoman denied the archer’s claim and said there is coffee in the Olympic Village but it isn’t being supplied by the company.” But apparently, it’s not very easy to find. This must not stand. If I were an athlete in Rio, I’d organize a revolt. And I would not be mollified by some crap like this—I’d want a fresh cup of coffee. In solidarity with my coffee-loving brothers and sisters in the Village, I’ve done a Google dive into catering and sponsorships at the Games to try and figure out what’s going on.

I found a Rio 2016 “Taste of the Games” document that lists the sugary beverage behemoth as the “exclusive” provider of non-alcoholic beverages for the 2016 event, including for its 17,500 athletes. (McDonald’s is listed as the exclusive provider of retail food services, and Skol—a Brazilian brand owned by global beer giant AB InBev, maker of Budweiser—is the exclusive beer provider.)

What does “exclusive” mean? “What this means to caterers is that if menus include products from a sponsor product category, the products of that sponsor must be used unless Rio 2016 approves otherwise in writing.” However, “this does not mean that all food and beverage products must be sourced from these organisations alone,” the document continues. Drinks not offered by the sponsor—in the case of Coca-Cola, say, a fresh cup of joe—can be provided, with the stipulation that it be unbranded. Easy enough for a damn cup of coffee.

So, under the terms of the sponsorship, the Olympic village can provide fresh coffee. But is there a right to coffee? Here the document is muddy. It contains this line about services to be provided to the athletes: “Supply of snacks, fruit, isotonic sports, ugh drinks, soft drinks, mineral water, tea and coffee, biscuits, cereal bars and other items at Athletes’ lounges in competition and training venues.”

Note that this clause mentions “Athletes’ lounges in competition and training venues,” but doesn’t mention the living quarters, where El-Nemr tells NPR he’s being denied coffee—and where athletes wake up in the morning. Coffee time, in other words. Here’s what the document says about that region:

• 24/7 catering service at the Main Dining Hall in the Olympic Village
• High-quality menu with wide range of options, in line with different cultural and nutritional needs in every location serving Athletes.

Not to play Olympic Village lawyer, but that last bit to me sounds like a right to coffee—morning coffee fuels many cultures across the globe. If I were an athlete in Rio, I’d print out that doc, put a big circle around that clause, and take it directly to a Rio 16 official, preferably trailed by a band of annoyed and imposingly athletic fellow coffee fiends.

Originally posted here: 

How Are You Supposed to Win a Gold Medal If You Can’t Get A Cup of Coffee?

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