Home gardening

Several years ago when articles were being written about the urban decay in cities like Detroit, I remember wondering why those abandoned wrecks couldn't be bulldozen down and replaced with garden space.  Now an article at Wired Science suggests that in some cities that is exactly what is being done.

By transforming its vacant lots, backyards and roof-tops into farming plots, the city of Cleveland could meet all of its fresh produce, poultry and honey needs, calculate researchers from Ohio State University. These steps would save up to $155 million annually, boost employment and scale back obesity...

Both Scott and Grewal hope that shift is coming. Cleveland now has hundreds of community gardens. Some residents are growing market gardens, cultivating and selling produce as a full-time job. The city is seeing the grandest show of large public gardens since the Victory Gardens of World War II, when 40 percent of U.S. vegetables came from private and public gardens.

And speaking of (sub)urban gardens, our backyard garden is now coming to fruition.  The tomato plants to the right center of the photo are about six feet tall (the one behind me is closer to 7 feet), all of them supported on steel frames.  On the left side of the photo are the eggplants in containers; lower right center are cucumbers climbing a trellis (and a tomato cage).  At the very bottom are zucchini and radishes (the latter already bolted to seed).  Out of the frame are the peppers and dill and cabbage and broccoli - and of course the milkweed and butterfly plants.  My wife gets the credit for all of this.

"The Silence of Love"

YouTube link.

One of a series of heart-wrenching ads from a Thai life insurance company (see also here and here, and you can find others at YouTube).

Why Van Halen demanded "no brown M&Ms"

I heard the story years ago -

In case you weren’t around during the 80s, the rock supergroup Van Halen had a clause in their concert contracts that stipulated that the band would “be provided with one large bowl of M&M candies, with all brown candies removed.”

- and like everyone else, I assumed it was a whimsical request reflective of celebrity hubris.  It wasn't until yesterday that I read about the reason for the request:

Here’s the thing, though: the band put the “no brown M&Ms” clause in their contracts for a very good reason.

Van Halen was one of the first rock bands to bring truly massive concerts to mid-size cities like Macon, Georgia. The staff that worked at concert arenas in these smallish cities were used to bands coming to town with, at most, three tractor-trailers full of equipment. Van Halen’s equipment took up 9 tractor-trailers. It was a lot of stuff, and the staff at these venues were frequently overwhelmed. And when people are overwhelmed, they make mistakes... mistakes can cause stage lights to fall from the ceiling and kill people… which is exactly what the band was afraid of.

At the heart of any major concert is the contract. Much of the text of these contracts is standard legal boilerplate, but each band may attach specific demands via something called a “rider”. Most of the contracts involving concerts at large venues are jam-packed with riders, most of which involve technical details specific to the band’s stage design. For instance, a rider might say “Article 148: There will be fifteen amperage voltage sockets at twenty-foot spaces, spaced evenly, providing nineteen amperes total, on beams suspended from the ceiling of the venue, which shall be able to support a total gross weight of 5,600 pounds each, and be suspended no less than 30 feet, but no more than 37.5 feet, above the stage surface”. Van Halen’s concert contracts would have several hundred such demands, and their contracts ended up (in lead singer David Lee Roth’s words) looking “like a Chinese Yellow Pages”.

The staff at venues in large cities were used to technically-complex shows like Van Halen’s. The band played in venues like New York’s Madison Square Garden or Atlanta’s The Omni without incident. But the band kept noticing errors (sometimes significant errors) in the stage setup in smaller cities. The band needed a way to know that their contract had been read fully. And this is where the “no brown M&Ms” came in. The band put a clause smack dab in the middle of the technical jargon of other riders: “Article 126: There will be no brown M&M’s in the backstage area, upon pain of forfeiture of the show, with full compensation”. That way, the band could simply enter the arena and look for a bowl of M&Ms in the backstage area. No brown M&Ms? Someone read the contract fully, so there were probably no major mistakes with the equipment. A bowl of M&Ms with the brown candies? No bowl of M&Ms at all? Stop everyone and check every single thing, because someone didn’t bother to read the contract.

I owe David Lee Roth an apology.  Further history and details at jimcofer.

Photo via Chocolate Wiki.

These chickens had to come home to roost sometime

Found at the Washington Post, via The Dish.

Odori-don

YouTube link.

The "dancing squid" on this dish appears is dead; the motion of the tentacles is simply a biologic response of the neurons to the salt in the soy sauce, similar to the response that can be seen in frogs' legs.

This point has been argued in several discussion threads I've seen.  Some make the point that live neurons imply life, while others say the preparation of the squid includes removal of the brain before serving.  Such a condition would be incompatible with life (except for U.S. Congressmen).

Miss Cellania has made an intersting (and I think valid) point that the reason for presenting the squid in this fashion is that it provides evidence to the diner that that the food is fresh.

In any case, dead or alive, I would warn potentially squeamish readers that the video is at least grotesque, if not gruesome.  I was going to label it "NSFL" (Not Safe for Lunch) -- until I realized that it actually IS someone's lunch...

(The video posted at A London Salmagundi and at Neatorama has been taken down; this one may not last long.  If it goes, try searching YouTube for Odori-don.)

The street children of Odessa

On Odessa streets, children from all over Ukraine, Moldova, Belarus, Prydnestovye and Russia coexist. “According to…official statistics about three thousand children live in the streets of Odessa. According to the words of the specialists it is just a top of the iceberg”, says Tatiana Semikop, Chief of Criminal Militia on Youth Affairs. No one has real data on the number of homeless children in Ukraine, but the country is overflowing with a third wave of child homelessness. During the first two waves of the Civil War and Second World War, children became orphans when their parents died. The majority of modern homeless childrens’ parents are alive. An awful concept has appeared in Ukraine: “social orphans,” children who in theory have somewhere to go, but who will go never there.

Burn magazine has a brief essay and a gallery of thirty photos by Michal Novotny.

The children of Russian oligarchs

Photography by Anna Skladmann, from her book "Little Adults." Found at Spiegel Online, which also has a gallery of ten photos.