Month: April 2010

Science!!!

I love this person!

The Periodic Table of Dessert:

And the even more awesome Flavor Wheels of the World.

Describing tastes has always been a fuzzier proposition, and it’s not because taste has more dimensions than color or pitch. As I say above, that’s a false analogy: vision and hearing have more dimensions than color and pitch! I think taste is fuzzier because we can discriminate lots of tastes — they vary much more than sounds, I’d say.

(Or perhaps sound varies more, but we’re willing to tolerate more slop in describing sounds. There are many brassy honks, but if you imagine something even remotely brassy and honking, then my description was good enough. Whereas people are very picky about flavors.)

Images vary even more, but we are exposed to lots and lots of images, so we have more exemplars to make descriptions from. We give children books full of animal pictures. But it’s perfectly possible to grow up without ever tasting asafoetida, and if you do, what am I going to compare it to? It isn’t like anything but itself.

I can’t even describe, you need to go see it for yourself. I LOVE HEEM. OR HER. LOVE.—Snacktime

The Stinking Rose. Cake.

I have a unshakable childhood memory of being home sick from school and watching Suzanne Somers on the Dinah Shore show talk about how she put garlic on ice cream. Perhaps that is what made me the person I am today, with clear boundaries between garlic and dessert. Not everyone has learned this lesson. Pictured here, a garlic cake with onion frosting that won first place at a backyard garlic festival. Not pictured: shallot cream puffs, ramp cookies, and scallion macarons. YET. —Snacktime

And although I admire the fashion-conscious set throwing “caloric caution to the wind,” I wonder if the choice of foodstuff doesn’t infantilize late night partying. On the other hand, when Sex & The City 3: The Depends Years starts filming in 2020, Carrie and the girls will know exactly where to relive their glory days.

Billy Gray, Guest of a Guest’s “Is Mixing Cupcakes and Cocktails the worst idea in nightlife history?” A scathing review of Rivington Street’s Red Velvet Lounge definitely worth a read – will induce bitter chuckling.

School Lunches Are Matter Of National Security!

The group Mission: Readiness, a nonprofit led by retired military leaders, has issued a report that America’s children are too fat to fight. (PDF download here.) A member of their advisory council, General Johnnie E. Wilson (Ret), says:

“Child obesity has become so serious in this country that military leaders are viewing this epidemic as a potential threat to our national security. We need America’s service members to be in excellent physical condition because they have such an important job to do. Rigorous service standards are critical if we are to maintain the fighting readiness of our military.”

It’s bad enough that, thanks to the Patriot Act, schools are required to turn student records over the the military, and that recruiters strategically target vulnerable kids. Now they’re complaining about the quality of the recruits?

Mission: Critical is calling on Congress to increase funding for better nutritional standards in school, to get junk food out of schools, and to increase funding for obesity reduction programs.

Obviously I don’t have a problem with those goals. Then again, there would be more money for school lunch programs if we weren’t spending so much on the military! The National School Lunch Program budget is about $9 billion per year. The military budget is what, a hundred times that? I have a problem with that not being part of the conversation.

Mission: Critical has also asked for better early-childhood education in Mississippi (PDF link) and other states, saying that:

“Commanders in the field have to trust that our soldiers will respect authority, work within the rules and know the difference between right and wrong. Early learning opportunities help instill the qualities that make better citizens, better workers and better candidates for uniformed service.”

Early-childhood education? Another worthy goal. But is anyone else creeped out by the idea that this organization views children only as potential soldiers? Enjoy your lunch, kids, you’ll be shipping off soon.