Food and politics – Salad or Stew? Butter or Marge?
Wednesday, 16 April 2008
Here’s a bit of silliness that combines my two casual interests: food and politics (via Serious Eats). Suffice to say, it’s demographics gone mad. Or maybe not. Consider the food preference of the “likely” McCain supporter: high-fibre cereal, protein bars, energy drinks are all foods I would previously have associated with a certain demographic of caucasian, middle-aged, fairly affluent gym-going males. But in California, I’ve met younger males and females who are die-hard Obama supporters who have similar shopping cart contents. Let’s take a look at the food profile of potential Hillary Clinton supporters: also high-fibre cereal, energy bars and energy drinks, but all of “trendier” brands that are associated with shoppers at the more expensive supermarkets (typified by Whole Foods). Hmm, I’m beginning to see a trend here… OK, final look at the third major-party candidate: Barack Obama. Oooh, he bucks the trend with granola and sparkling juice, but retains energy bars.
I think I’ll make one parabolic observation from this NY Times article: Americans like their high-fibre/healthy cereal, buy power/energy/protein bars and energy drinks, and have shopping carts that look nothing like mine¹.
[/tongue-in-cheek]
¹ I concede that the intention of the micro-targeting is to categorise the brand choices of the electorate; there is a certain trendiness to the list made for Barack Obama, which makes me suspect the writer of the sidebar of this NY Times article favours him over the other candidates, who have been made out to draw in an older crowd of supporters. The main article, on the other hand, makes a few good points about candidates and the different aspirations of their potential voters.
My usual disclaimer here: I’m not American, I can’t vote in the US elections, and I wasn’t sure who I’d vote for anyway even if I could, but hmm McCain supporters are more likely to go fishing? Sign me up..
BBC+Guardian=Danger?
Friday, 22 February 2008
Is this for real? Do people really think the BBC is a sinister left-wing organisation? (via)
Goes without saying:
After all, without the BBC, there’d be no Doctor Who.
Pesky pre-primary pussyfooting
Sunday, 10 February 2008
Any semi-regular reader (that’s you, you and you over there who reads the food posts) can guess on which arm of the political spectrum I lie. (Or quadrant, if left and right are too simple for you.) So you must have been rather pleased that I haven’t been inundating these pages1 with posts about the current drive to select the US presidential candidates who will be duking it out in the final contest this November. It’s not that I’m not interested. It’s just that, as a foreigner, I can’t vote. But I can tell you who I would have voted for last Tuesday if I could have. Or would have wanted to vote for if s|he existed.
Quite simply, I would have voted for someone who is/was opposed to invading Iraq, has plans for getting Iraq back to civility, is pro-Social Security, can keep an open mind on stem cell research, supports choice in schools, leans towards fair trade, is pro-labour (the workers, not the UK party), is pro-choice, pro-gay partnership/marriage, anti-death penalty, will bring in gun-control legislation, will act on environmental concerns, fix the crazy US health care system, and isn’t a complete nutjob.
According to one of the very many presidential selection tools out there2, such a candidate DOES NOT EXIST. Hmm, funny that. If this were the UK, quite a few possibilities would have flagged up on all issues except that most important qualifier of not being a nutjob. But, of the US contenders, Dennis Kuchinich came up tops, followed closely by Barack Obama, then Hillary Clinton and John Edwards. No need to even ask where any of the Republican candidates came in. If akatsukira ran the world, those guys would be given a small island in the middle of nowhere3 and told to just get on with it.
So, now you know. Wish you hadn’t started reading, eh?
1 Quite unlike the blog diarrhoea I subjected you to in 2005 then.
2 Ones that compare policy and not hair styles.
3 Kiribati, anyone?
Trumptown
Tuesday, 18 December 2007
The Trumptown saga continues.
What bothers me the most about the whole affair is the speed with which the Scottish government involved itself. The “call in” happened just a bit too fast to be due process. Surely some pressure was placed on them.
Having been in the US for a couple of years now, I think I can safely accuse the Americans of the bad practice of wanting everything done yesterday. Everything has to happen as fast as possible. Delays are always the fault of someone else slowing the process down. If the job is not done at superhuman speed, then someone must be deliberately sabotaging the process so the competitors can get ahead. Corners can be cut willy nilly to get the job done fast. And that’s in academia – historically one of the slowest fields. Imagine the speed of things in the heady world of property development. The Trump team will probably be a prime example of doing whatever it takes to close the deal asap. That’s not a surprise.
What is surprising is that the Scottish government feels the need to circumvent the usual appeals process and deal with the rejected plan so soon. It is surprising that they feel the need to accommodate the Trump team to the extent of not following procedure. The council must have rejected the property plan for good reasons. While I’ve not had a chance to find out what those are yet, if I were the Scottish government, I’d look into that first and ignore outside lobbying until they’ve had some impartial advice. In particular, the hurrying by the Trump team should not be heeded; Donald Trump’s spokesperson was quoted as saying:
“These attacks are more than misguided; they are malicious, inaccurate and potentially destructive and they threaten to once again endanger a £1 billion project which has the overwhelming backing of the North-east of Scotland.”
A cynic would read between the lines and translate their statement as a threat: “If you keep interfering with our deal, we’re taking it off the table and screw you silly Scots for not wanting our easy money.”
I say: ignore them. We expect our politicians to make their decisions:
“steadily, sensibly, never too quickly, never too slowly”
In the Ca(f)Ca – Wendy A.
Friday, 14 December 2007
Holyrood’s Donorgate has been superseded by the Trumptown affair . But that shouldn’t stop us from enjoying this montage tri(al)bute to Labour’s buck-stopper at Holyrood. (via Tartan Hero)
Lib Dem spat/row/silliness
Sunday, 18 November 2007
As much as I dislike slander in modern-day politics, sometimes I think reactions to name-calling can get even worse than the original infraction. Take the case of the recent nastiness involving Nick Clegg and Chris Huhne. It was not nice of the Huhne camp to coin the “Calamity” nickname. Perhaps more than not nice; irresponsible, even, to say something like that publicly about your fellow man, let alone your party-mate. Stupid too; it can further split an already disparate party. But the Clegg camp also had a choice to turn a deaf ear. Instead of bringing attention to the silly name-calling, they could have taken the better, unseen, unheard higher ground of ignoring something so petty and childish. By lodging the complaint, they helped it along to newsworthiness, and also helped to bring their own party into disgrace.
I don’t care which of these gentleman become the next Lib Dem leader. I just want the party to hurry up and become that third force of political power they’ve been struggling to live up to these last few years.
Merciless treatment of Ming
Monday, 15 October 2007
Menzies’ leaving is not much of a surprise. The timing was probably not to his own plans though. But hey, if a general election is a year away, the Lib Dems probably want to get their leadership battle out of the way and all the nasty words forgotten by the time voters cast their ballot.
Dawkins in the Doghouse
Thursday, 11 October 2007
As a sign of how little I read outside science these days, it’s taken a full week for this debacle to reach my consciousness via the sharpener. And without launching into is-he-or-isn’t-he 1, the Sharpener article’s comment about prevalent mud-flinging attitudes reminded me of a recent Doonesbury comic [clicky the linky; I don't want to break copyright law and reproduce it here]. LOL all you want. It’s sad but true that we are headed towards an era of smear2.
1 For what it’s worth, I really don’t think Dawkins can be accurately named and shamed as an anti-semite. If anything, as a devout atheist, he’s just anti-any-religion-you-care-to-name. Call him an anti-religionist if you must. Anti-semite has overtones of picking on a particular racial and religious group that we all know has been very badly treated by the world in general lately. Bad choice of example. But then again, can you choose any example of religious dominance in state-run affairs and not offend anybody? Hell no.
2 And I don’t mean PAP smears. No, those are good things. If we were headed into the era of free PAP smears for all women, that would be much better…
Touche
Wednesday, 13 June 2007
[crawling out from under the rock]
So, Tony Blair has been getting his knickers in a twist, has he? A choice quote:
Opinion and fact should be clearly divisible. The truth is a large part of the media today not merely elides the two but does so now as a matter of course. In other words, this is not exceptional. It is routine.
–Outgoing Prime Minister Tony Blair, taken from the full speech published by the Indy.
A bit rich coming from the man who convinced Parliament to go to war in Iraq based on no evidence whatsoever of weapons of mass destruction1. I am particularly impressed by the way he has a good whinge about the Hutton inquiry then quickly moves on. And singling the Indy out for criticism? Hmph, I think they’d rather like that. As the leading viewspaper in the UK, it must be nice to know that their words have hit the mark. Own goal, Mr PM. You have indeed said what needed to be said, but perhaps you should now sit down and read it through, paying particular attention to how it also applies to you and your time in government.
1 An over-simplification, but you know the back story. Preach. Choir.
