Space Tropic

ABC news reports that warmer climates are causing a population boom for everyone’s favorite cephalopod. Meanwhile, Peruvian drug lords invent their own version of stuffed calmari.

A cheery prognosis from children’s-literature lady Helen Caldecott, from a site the specializes in upbeat commentary. She says Bush’s reelection will destroy planet Earth.

Well, she actually says that Bush “threatens mankind” and we should expect “endless war, and I think that could mean nuclear war”. She did win a Nobel Peace Prize, so she probably hangs out with the other award-winners and peace experts.

Caldecott spent the 1980s in the disarmament movement. This is the movement that used protest marches and teach-ins to convince Reagan and the Soviets of the moral virtues of a nuclear freeze, thereby ending the Cold War and bringing peace to Eastern Europe.

Is Jello a popular dish among Al-Jazeera’s viewers? Scott Ritter deserves credit for trying. But I’m also curious if that old gelatinous dessert has the same wiggly appeal in the Qatar and Iran.

On a related note, former Jello spokesperson Bill Cosby is sure kicking up dust with his latest incendiary remarks. On the drive to work this was the hot topic on my local hiphop/R&B radio outlet.

Jello is a trademark of Kraft Foods Uber Alles Inc.

To an epicure, certain items are beyond praise: Olive oil, holy basil, noodles, good stock. Counted among these magnificent essentials is the simple tomato. Grown in summer or in a hothouse off-season, they are always worth it, always important.

Something to reflect on during these difficult times.

Also, rogue chef Anthony Bourdain is back with a new cookbook. From the roast chicken recipe : Don’t throw away “the pope’s nose” (the ass). That’s flavor. The entire volume is like that, obscure secrets of the trade laced with profanity. I spent a while with it in the bookstore yesterday, and came away with provocative new ideas about vinagrette and boeuf.

William Raspberry from the Washington Post admits that divisive politics makes for better copy:

Scores of public controversies are reported as to-the-mat battles between unyielding opposites — in part because our journalistic habits send us looking for these irreconcilables.

But Raspberry doesn’t go far enough. By exaggerating these political conflicts the media rubs salt in the wound, and soon enough the extreme groups on both sides of an issue feel more justified in portraying each other as grotesque caricatures, worthy of contempt.

Then both sides keep amplifying the rhetoric, and ‘purples’ get to hear them repeat the latest bombast from Fox, or Franken, or Limbaugh, or those velveteen socialists at NPR, as if we simply never had the pleasure of being assaulted with a “reasonable position” before.