Journalist Michael Pollan, author of In Defense of Food along with four previous books, spoke at Google last month as part of their Authors@Google series. The video of his talk is up on YouTube and it’s incredible.

So compelling (and practical) was his talk that I rushed out to purchase his book immediately and it’s been worth every penny. In a world that has constantly conflicting scientific reports on nutrition, a government that issues shifting guidelines oftentimes in response to politics rather than data, and supermarkets filled with food-like products rather than food, how are we to know what to eat? And why in the world would we even have to ask such a seemingly silly question?

Pollan addresses and answers these questions and more in his book while also giving us – in seven words no less – very practical advice on eating and staying healthy.

Nigel Hardman, a 40-year-old “illusionist” from England was recently charged with eleven counts of cheating the benefits system (aka collecting unemployment, for those in the States) after his “act” brought him to the attention of authorities.

Performing – and I use that term very loosely – under the name Prince Razaq, he is said to have presented “death-defying” stunts such as sword swallowing, fire eating, walking on broken glass, escapes from straitjackets and standing on a bed of nails. Investigators apparently became curious regarding his claims of “too ill to work” - for which he was collecting benefits - after seeing him perform on the television show The Big Breakfast, clearly demonstrating that he was, well, not too ill to work!

A collection of persistent mistakes and fraudulent facts from the world’s most popular reference work.

How many times have you found yourself in a lovely yet heated discussion, feeling that you might be making some headway with your argument, only to hear the following dreaded phrase - “Weeeelll, according to Wikipedia…” - followed by a stream of apocryphal facts and sources?

Forget for a moment the questionable prudence in citing an encyclopedia as a source – after all, we all turn to it as a quick reference now and again – but with mistakes so rampant, bias so pronounced and (despite Wikipedia’s best policy efforts) the actual real world practice of scholarly correction so spotty, how can we in good conscience trust the trivia that comes spewing forth from the Grand Collaboration?

side note: I have direct experience with the sketchy nature of Wikipedia. A good friend’s well-researched entry was once removed with no explanation and replaced with a poorly written and terribly inaccurate 14 year old girl’s entry (still active), while one of my own original entries became a marketing platform for my competitors – still uncorrected years later.

How to view your website in 53+ browsers on 3 major platforms in mere minutes with zero effort.

Though current statistics indicate that almost 62% of web users are surfing the web with some version of Internet Explorer (reaffirming that I always find myself in a minority) with Firefox coming in a distant second at around 28%, web designers need to be aware that users will be viewing their websites in a huge variety of web browsers each running on a wide cross-section of platforms. Safari and Opera are the only other browsers to regularly make the top stats lists, but there are literally dozens of browsers and platforms available.

A bit old according to ‘net standards – being from October, 2007 and all – but just picked this up from Casey’s blog and it got me to thinking…

TwitterWhere is an application that allows you to view Twitter Tweets by location via RSS or XML. Along with other Twitter-based apps (such as TwitterVision and TwitterMap, mentioned even on the TwitterWhere page) it’s a cool little extension of Twitter that gets geeks excited simply by being a neat remix of data.

My first thought upon seeing this was “cool, I can watch and anticipate flash mobs and the like by location!” which made me stop and consider - “Hey, anyone can watch and anticipate flash mobs by location!”

Undoubtedly some savvy government type entrenched in an office somewhere – Homeland Security, local police, et. al. - also had this “duh” moment, and maybe even wrote their own app eons ago.

(note about video: My inclusion of this is a bit unfair to Lang Lang, as this is not a formal performance. Truth be told, it’s wonderful to see such joy and delight in the act of making music. Nevertheless…)

My good friend Melissa sent along an article that I missed yesterday from the New York Times.

When Histrionics Undermine the Music and the Pianist
By BERNARD HOLLAND
Another reason classical music is not reaching more young people: not because of how it sounds, but because of how it looks.

It’s a great article - but then, I’m sympathetic - and Melissa was curious to hear what I thought about it. I jotted off a quick response and, after sending, realized that it would be perfect for discussion here as well.

This photo was recently taken at Universal Studios’ Islands of Adventure theme park. This particular one was outside of the Dueling Dragons roller coaster, but they can be seen all over the park, sometimes in variation.

The Walt Disney World theme parks have similar signs but I didn’t manage to snap photos of them.

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Anything to get people to read, right?

In follow-up to the last post entitled Bach, Fugues and Britney Spears, I thought that I would share more of my love for the self-referential/reflexive art (would that be conceptual, perhaps? Nah… Bream has skill.) that has so influenced my own theater work, as can be evidenced in my creation and performance of Sketches, a humorous and reflexive commentary on modern art delivered through the vehicle of satire and, well, mindreading.

The literary and musical influences to which I am in debt are innumerable, but the subject of this post is the legendary classical guitarist Julian Bream. Please let me extend my apologies to Mr. Bream for potentially belittling him in the title of my post, for he has every last ounce of respect that I can possibly give. I can not say enough good things about this man and his work, and the video posted here is testament to his genius. He truly is a giant.

Back in July, Danielle Egan attended TransVision07 - the 9th annual meeting of the World Transhumanist Association - and New Scientist carries the report this month, along with a great little video interview compilation available via YouTube.

Link to the New Scientist article here - Death special: The plan for eternal life.

YouTube video interview available above.

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A a staple part of the “Mediterranean Diet”, the listed health benefits of olive oil are many. From its high antioxidant count to its ability to protect against heart disease, aid in the prevention of many types of cancers and lower blood pressure, this oil – actually more of a fruit juice than an oil - is one of the chief secrets to the success of the Mediterranean diet. So why should you worry about using your olive oil? Because what claims to be extra-virgin olive oil in your kitchen cupboard may in fact be a blend of many oils from hazelnut, soybean and canola to the illegal lampante oil (“lamp oil”) made from spoiled olive fruit that has fallen from the tree and can not be legally sold as food. Companies looking to stretch their profits – and many of them very common supermarket names in the United States – cut good oils with these inferior oils, oftentimes simply substituting one for the other, then color the concoction with industrial chlorophyll, flavor it with beta-carotene, package it and sell it as quality Italian-made extra-virgin olive oil.

The unexpected success of the WordPress to Myspace Crossposter has left me delighted and happy that, when I have downtime, I still have a fun little pet project to work on that is actually of some use. Of course, the continued development of the plugin wouldn’t happen if it weren’t for the many people who have begun using the code. So, in thanks to some of those who implemented it early, left insightful and useful comments or otherwise tossed in their two cents, I’m providing a short list of some of the blogs that I’ve managed to scare up that have contributed by being great users and testers.

The Summer 2007 issue of Cabinet Magazine features an article by two London-based authors, Sally O’Reilly and Ian Saville, entitled I Can See Your Ideology Moving. From the start it grabs the reader with its droll humour, setting the scene as follows:

The scene: A windy seaside town in England. An arts festival (entitled, perhaps pretentiously, The Windy Seaside Town Biennale) is in full swing. An audience of skeptical locals, theater-seat-radicals and bloodthirsty performance-art lovers, sated after fish and chips and lashings of warm ale, is watching a man speaking to a picture of Karl Marx. More unusually, the picture speaks back to the man, for this is Ian Saville, socialist magician and ventriloquist, demonstrating his revolutionary art.
At the back of the hall, the art critic Sally O’Reilly watches curiously, almost unable to contain the questions that crowd her mind. The audience is laughing …

“In the first place, God made idiots. That was for practice. Then he made school boards.”

There is a struggle inside me each and every day. On the one hand, I feel that I should continuously dumb-down my performance material so as to appeal to the masses - an artist has to make a living after all. Yet on the other, I believe strongly in my conviction that one should not pander to the masses for fear of perpetuating the sickness. It’s a difficult struggle - I enjoy my expensive coffee and organic food - and it’s challenging not to lose sight of your own standards when thrown into a world that so highly values and rewards reality television, pop icons and stupid stunts. Then I see things like the above clip from The View and I’m reminded why I hold a commitment to education and reason in such high regard.

Appearing in the Boston Globe on Sunday (link via boston.com) was a wonderful article by Anthony Kronman, Sterling Professor of Law at Yale and author of Education’s End: Why Our Colleges and Universities Have Given Up on the Meaning of Life.

The article explored - as presumably does the book - the reasons for which exploration of the most important questions in life have been abandoned by virtually all modern colleges and universities.

In a shift of historic importance, America’s colleges and universities have largely abandoned the idea that life’s most important question is an appropriate subject for the classroom. In doing so, they have betrayed their students by depriving them of the chance to explore it in an organized way, before they are caught up in their careers and preoccupied with the urgent business of living itself. This abandonment has also helped create a society in which deeper questions of values are left in the hands of those motivated by religious conviction - a disturbing and dangerous development.

Coffee makes us severe, and grave, and philosophical.

Coffee has been a love interest of mine for many, many years, but it wasn’t until my first trip to Italy that I truly discovered how rich and divine a beverage these beans can yield.

Upon waking for breakfast my first day in Venice, I was served a steaming pitcher filled with espresso and a second with steamed milk. My own fault, really, because I wanted coffee, asked for caffè and then, fearing that it wouldn’t come with milk, followed it up with an “uh… latte“. Little did I know that what I was getting was actually what they always serve and so not out of the ordinary at all.