October 9, 2005

SOS or Safegaurd organic standards

SOS or Safegaurd Organic Standards is what the Organic Consumers Association is calling their effort to protect the USDA's National Organic Program's organic food standards adopted in 2002. A rider attached to the 2006 agriculture appropriations bill and sponsored by the Organic Trade Association contains changes to the standards that in their view will make "technical corrections" to the national organic standards. This became necessary in their view after a 73-year-old organic blueberry farmer from Maine named Arthur Harvey won a court appeal against the USDA, arguing that federal regulations guiding organic food standards were less stringent than the original legislation had intended. This issue is splitting the organic standards lobbying community. Or perhaps this has been in the works for sometime as large corporate food producers have moved to take advantage of the rapid growth of the organics market. (more inside)
posted by flummox at 10:12 PM PST - 14 comments

Balance the baguette

Balance the baguette without hitting the croissants. [note: flash]
posted by crunchland at 7:52 PM PST - 15 comments

Is the Blair government creating another dodgy dossier?

Is the Blair government creating another dodgy dossier? Following Tony Blair's recent outburst accusing the Iranian government of supporting attacks on British troops, a team are being dispatched to Iraq on a hunting expedition, in the hope of proving him right. Meanwhile, a prominent neo-con who served as the Iraq desk officer for the Office of Special Plans is telling the British that only the threat of force will tame Tehran. Sound familiar?!
posted by insomnia_lj at 6:18 PM PST - 75 comments

Those librarians aren't like I remember them

And you thought librarians were stuffy. (should be SFW, though some flesh does show)
posted by malaprohibita at 6:05 PM PST - 40 comments

Six Drinks that Changed the World

Six Drinks that Changed the World. Beer, Wine, Coffee . . . Their impact upon the history of the World. via GeekPress
posted by caddis at 5:34 PM PST - 50 comments

This post is for MiguelCardoso

What poetry should I read while drinking what whiskey?
posted by kenko at 3:34 PM PST - 42 comments

Shouldn't it be Vincente?

An odd hurricane season becomes odder. Meet Vince, the 23rd tracked topical low, and the 21st named storm of the near record setting 2005 Atlantic Hurricane season. But, where is he? Not here. Not even way over here. No, Vince is way over here -- and is headed towards Spain. Of course, this isn't the oddest place for a tropical cyclone. There was Catarina last year, forming the first hurricane ever recorded in the South Atlantic, and never mind what, to all eyes, appears to have been a hurricane in the Mediterranean Sea.
posted by eriko at 1:56 PM PST - 30 comments

Orsten - Microscopic Images of Cambrian Fossils

Orsten or stinkstone (it smells like rotten eggs), is a limestone nodule that has preserved Cambrian fossils extremely well. Scanning Electron Microscopic images of the fossils reveals incredible detail.
posted by obedo at 11:39 AM PST - 8 comments

UNICEF bombs the Smurfs

UNICEF bombs the Smurfs. UNICEF recently launched a campaign to teach schoolchildren about the horrors of war. Among the efforts are a mini-cartoon, where, yes, the Smurfs are bombed (Warning: Video file, strong images, Smurfs don't kick in for 40 seconds, most of which are dedicated to limbless children. NSFW or small children). I couldn't understand the language the movie is in (Dutch?), but the Smurfs say it all.
posted by huskerdont at 10:56 AM PST - 35 comments

James Yee - An American In Chains

My cell was 8 ft by 6 ft, the same size as the detainees’ cages at Guantanamo. It was my turn to be humiliated every time I was taken to have a shower. Naked, I had to run my hands through my hair to show that I was not concealing a weapon in it. Then mouth open, tongue up, down, nothing inside. Right arm up, nothing in my armpit. Left arm up. Lift the right testicle, nothing hidden. Lift the left. Turn around, bend over, spread your buttocks, knowing a camera was displaying my naked image as male and female guards watched. It didn’t matter that I was an army captain, a graduate of West Point, the elite US military academy. It didn’t matter that my religious beliefs prohibited me from being fully naked in front of strangers. It didn’t matter that I hadn’t been charged with a crime. It didn’t matter that my wife and daughter had no idea where I was. And it certainly didn’t matter that I was a loyal American citizen and, above all, innocent... I knew why I had been arrested: it was because I am a Muslim.

James Yee: An American in chains It's OK to demonize the 'Other' if the Other is a Muslim.
posted by y2karl at 9:46 AM PST - 163 comments

From Skid Row to Disney Hall

"I haven't been in a concert hall in 4 billion years". Nathaniel Anthony Ayers, 54, had been excited about an invitation to see the Los Angeles Philharmonic in action at Disney Hall. "The anticipation is horrible". He'd started showering daily at a shelter, to gussy himself up as much as possible. Nathaniel was a music student more than 30 years ago at the Juilliard School when he suffered a breakdown. Today, as he continues to battle the schizophrenia that landed him on skid row, he plays violin and cello for hours each day in downtown Los Angeles, lifting his instruments out of an orange shopping cart on which he has written: "Little Walt Disney Concert Hall — Beethoven." After the Philharmonic's rehearsal, Ayers has played Disney Hall -- the real one, this time. Without the bow at first, picking the strings with his right hand, Bach's Cello Suite No. 1: Prelude. Several Philharmonic staffers heard the music and wandered over, peering in to see a man of the streets, tattered and elegant, close his eyes and drift into ecstasy.
posted by PenguinBukkake at 9:13 AM PST - 14 comments

Pakistan/Kashmir quake

Over 19,000 dead in earthquake in South Asia
posted by Snyder at 4:21 AM PST - 66 comments

Someone has to draw the line.

You can't POSSIBLY be serious. The fact that modern breakfast foods (or at least, foods normally associated with breakfast) have expanded to include items such as cereals whose marshmallow content threatens to outweigh the actual nutritious content, slightly more nutritious items covered in frosting, and of course, the wide variety of chocolate flavored items, cereals, milk, muffins, and so on. But that's just breakfast. Now, however, we're getting into personal hygiene. And that may just be Snakes On A Plane dangerous.
posted by deusdiabolus at 1:33 AM PST - 33 comments

Adventures of an International Male

Adventures of an International Male - For almost 30 years a curious clothing catalog has sold ruffled pirate shirts, pink sleeveless suits, and sequined black capes to a seemingly invisible public. What’s it like to go through life in a mesh top?
posted by well_balanced at 1:06 AM PST - 43 comments

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