nice view

I am not sure what side of the publicly funded ballpark debate I come down on, but doesn't this look about one million times more awesome than the Dome?

Sorry American productivity...

... but I just had to share this with my friends: ALLofTV.net. Now you can enjoy your favorite TV show, whatever it is and whenever you have access to the high speed internets. Scary. And probably illegal. But most definitely awesome. Enjoy.

Who's in?

Any of my Minny friends out there want to form up a bike posse and do this? This being the MN MS Society MSTRAM Bike tour (the "Ride Across MN"). I want to do it, but not alone! James? Erik? Who's down? Its for a good cause (raising much needed money for MS) and we'll get to see a bunch of the state in a beautiful (ok, hot as hell) time of the year!

Food in the news

As you may well know, folks, my pet issue these days is food. Food policy, food safety, unhealthy food, and, my personal favorite, eating good food. So it's cool to see all these articles popping up lately that are dealing with food issues. Not too long ago there was this Time magazine cover with an apple wearing a sticker that read "Forget Organic. Eat Local." (Thanks to Time for not putting that article behind a firewall.) And it is a really good read, especially if this is your first foray into the issue of Good Food (food can be deemed "Good" in the capital G sense of the word if it successfully answers the where/how/who/when questions of its production, or inception, rather).

But alas, there is more. Food born illness is a big deal these days, what with E-Coli bagged spinach and peanut butter floating around. Not to mention deadly pet food (for pets, that is). These are not examples of Good Food because they fail in the where/how/who qualifiers: "factory farms," "industrial ag. techniques," and "agri-business" being their answers, respectively. And while industrially (probably not a word) produced food accounts for most (~80% I think) of all the food in our "Food System," we can't really blame agri-business for growing and making food that is killing us when our nation's regulatory agency doesn't have the ability to oversee them. See this article from the Washington Post a few days ago, saying how the FDA [and USDA] just seem to let this small sorta thing--you know, protecting us from food born illness--fall through the cracks, and what is worse, they say there is nothing they can do about it! Bullshit I say, although no one has cared to ask for my thoughts on this (thank god for blogs). Also, no real shocker here that the Bush Admin has stripped all of their funding and regulatory ability. Nor is it a big shocker that Dems, avid poll and newspaper readers that they are, now say they want to do something about food safety.

Luckily, Prince Charles will save us all. The Agrarian King, if you will. That is, once he becomes King. Turns out he's a bit of a foody-enviro-nut, much like the Domestique (except that he has the riches and resources to grow his own food, whereas I have just enough riches and resources to waste them at my local Whole Foods).

Unluckily, not even Prince Chuck will be able to save us from China. China is the world's largest exporter of fruits and veggies, and yet there is almost no regulation of food production in China. They routinely used banned pesticides and other chemicals, and chances are their farming practices are not what even a Texas oilman would call "green." And the whole deal with Good Food is that it is what goes into the food that makes it Good or not (think of this Good label I've created as a spectrum, some things can be better than others, while still not being very Good, while in other cases some things are clearly good and others are clearly not good, regardless of their relation to one another). Know what I mean? The qualitative valuing of food that I am shooting for here is a holistic approach, or an ecological view of food, if you will. All of it matters: where it was grown (and how far did it have to drive to get to your dinner place), who it was grown by, and how it was grown. When is important too, because food (at least fruits and veggies) start to loose their nutritional value the second they are picked from the vine.

ANYWAYS, the point of this post was to offer up some good and interesting links on food in the news, and what is more interesting than a few articles on the failed policies of our current administration, the growing danger of everything China, and an update on our ole pal Prince Chuck? Not much by my standards (which I admit, do appear to be excrutiatingly low).

But I just had to start ranting and babbling in this post because I think it is important for everyone to have a better idea of where their food comes from and I think that all of these stories nowadays (and there are tons more) indicate that our food system is fundamentally flawed and is undermining our nations' health. I think we (you and I) ought to try to and bypass or opt-out of the food system as presented to us at Safeway, Giant, Rainbow, Cub, (fill in your local grocer) and find ways to get good quality, healthy food. In that regard, the best thing any of us urban-dwellers can probably do is to join a local farm through a community supported agriculture program (or CSA). This means you essentially buy a share in a farm for the summer, and get food delivered fresh weekly. Its still early enough in some parts of the country that you might be able to join one for this summer yet. Find a CSA near you here.

Scary quote of the day

Monday, April 23rd's scary quote of the day comes from the very scarily titled article in the LA Times Abortion aside, conservative Christians like Giuliani for 2008 nomination. And here's the quote, along with the setup as seen in the article:

Retired teacher Lorraine Long, 74, said she was not "a huge Giuliani fan" and strongly disagreed with him on abortion. But she still might support him because of what she sees as his strength on national security.

"If we're annihilated, we can't fight abortion and the liberals," she said.

Well then.

Actually this is more than just a scary quote. What is scary is that Giuliani, despite the DC inside ballgame conventional wisdom that he is not conservative enough, is the clear favorite for the 2008 GOP nod, even among white Christian conservatives. Giuliani's appeal is not derived from partisanship, it's from 9/11, and since he is coming from outside of DC will probably be immune to whaat would be a popular theme for a Dem presidential hopeful, something along the lines of "Look at what their party did when in control of the executive, Bush et al have been nothing short of disaster, etc etc etc." That is, I don't think attacking the Republicanness of Giuliani is going to be nearly as effective since he is seen as such a moderate to liberal GOPer.

Weekend update

[Note to self: hit spell-check before posting the first time, you idiot]
Wow, we here at the Domestique just had a great weekend, hope you did too. Here's a recap of mine:

• Friday, 5:31p.m. -- quittin' time after a long week. 71 degrees outside. so I pedalled around east and west potomac parks until sundown, awesome. Worked briefly on my new bike project, converting my ole centurian ("Titus") to a single speed bike. Then hung out with Steff and Mish' and drank a nice spanish bottle of red, from the catalan region I believe. Steff and I were basically sorry sacks of crap and couldn't be motivated to go out. Sorry mish'.
• Sat, 7:30 a.m. -- waking up so early is easy when you pass out by 11:30 the night before. Worked briefly on the bike, then hopped on fuji-san and pedalled up to Max's, so we could head out to bumblefart, MD for a footy game. We destroyed the other team. I had to play goalie about 80% of the game, which really sucked. But I am not complaining, the weather was beautiful and I kept a clean sheet. Then we had some kids over for a little BBQ appetizer/tapas/cocktail party out on the ole patio. Tres chic! Great time had by all. Except for me, I actually had a horrendous time of it in the kitchen. I KILLED the tortilla espanola as I went for the final flip out of the pan onto the serving plate... it ended up in a million pieces all over my stove. (People politely ate it anyways, but I was pissed.) Then later, when I was capping off the meal with homemade BBQ sauce marinated tofu steaks on the grill (yes, I too cannot believe I just wrote that with a straight face), I grabbed the little beauties from the grill (again, completely unironic here, they were fucking good), I promptly dropped them all as I stumbled up the patio stairs. All over the brick steps. Covered in shit and dirt and ants. Ruined. So. Fucking. Pissed.
  
  Thankfully, there was plenty to drink and a delicious cake that Steff made. And again, I'm passed out by 11:30.
  
• Arise around 8 and just hit titus with all I've got. Stripped everything off, cleaned the bajeesus outta him, and started reassembling in a new image, with 5 less speeds and a new, straight & true set of wheels. I'll post a pic soon, I am sure you are just DYING to see it. Played in another footy game in the afternoon, win 3-1 officially, 5-1 by my count (two nice goals by Max disallowed, one of which I assisted on. We were robbed dammit, robbed). Finished the weekend off with a little BBQ at a buddy's place.
• I think you get the picture: sunny, 70s, footy, food, friends added all up and tossed well to coat, leads to first really amazing weekend of the summer.