One of my guilty pleasures here is watching the Discovery Travel & Living channel on cable; their focus is often on lifestyle, travel, and food, with lots of programs on the last two. Some of my favorite shows are Lonely Planet: Six Degrees (hosted by Asha Gill and Toby Amies), Keith Floyd's various trips through India and Africa and etc., and, one that just started here in Singapore, Anthony Bourdain's No Reservations.

Bourdain is cocky and full of himself, but also brutally honest, observant, and more than willing to explore the different foods of the world. He traveled to Singapore last September, and wrote up his gastronomic journey for The New York Times:

For budding gastro-tourists and first-time visitors to Asia, Singapore is the perfect city to avail oneself of a broad spectrum of culinary delights without straying too far from the familiar. English is an official language. Mass transit and taxis are cleaner and more efficient than in most places. Crime and annoyances are virtually, and rather notoriously, nonexistent. Even proficiency with chopsticks is unnecessary.

Hawker stands were once unregulated street vendors that sold dishes from carts, but some years back they were absorbed into official malls with electricity, running water and health-department-regulated work areas. There are about 115 of these centers throughout the city, each containing dozens of stalls, often separated by ethnicity. These gastronomic amusement parks are so popular that hotels like the Grand Hyatt have co-opted their simple, straightforward charms, and in some cases their chefs, and set up stands in their lobbies and dining areas. But for the real culinary delights of Singapore, you have to hit the streets.

On a recent trip back, and inspired by a previous culinary epiphany in Borneo, I hit Sungei Road Laksa my first morning in town. Once you’ve had laksa — a spicy Peranakan (Chinese/Malaysian) noodle soup — for breakfast, bacon and eggs become completely inadequate. It usually consists of seafood, rice noodles, fried bean curd, coconut milk and lots of chilies. The word “laksa” is said to have come from the Sanskrit word for “many,” referring to its many ingredients, but it might as well have referred to its many versions. The one at Sungei Road, though less fiery than the Borneo variety, is still a spicy hellbroth of fresh cockles, slices of fish cake and beehoon noodles in coconut milk, seasoned with garlic, red chilies, belacan (dried shrimp paste), lemongrass, galangal root and turmeric. It’s a classic “hurt so good” experience, requiring only a spoon — and a towel to mop the sweat from your face. For some time, I sat alone enjoying the sweet, relative coolness of the coconut milk against the sting of the chilies, with hearty bass notes of seafood and shrimp paste, while happily watching the morning commuters and fellow devotees slurping their breakfasts around me. Pure pleasure at around $2.

Link to the artcle. And ditto his remarks about laksa; it's one of my favorite local dishes here, and it has been fun trying the efforts at lots of different stalls to taste which one is the best (right now at the top: Roxy Laksa at the East Coast Laguna Food Village).

Photo by Bärbel Schmidt for The New York Times

31. The waitresses at the Cosafé Maid Café are dressed in anime versions of a maid's uniform and smile huge smiles at the passersby, hoping that their cosplay atmosphere will attract the otaku on the street, or at least the curious. From what I can see, none of the girls looks over twenty years old, and yet there is a strain behind their eyes, as if they enjoyed dressing up and performing the part at first, but just wish they could drop the act and put on some comfortable clothes.

32. Like almost anywhere, Singapore has its trends, and one of them right now is doughnuts. Coming from the state that invented Krispy Kreme, I'm indifferent to the hype, but Singaporeans will line up in sectional queues all around the basement of Raffles City (where a queue will start in front of the store and last seven feet, then continue at a point down the hall and around the corner and last another seven feet, and so on, so that you get short queues all over the basement floor, connected by the spaces between) just to partake of the Donut Factory's offerings.

33. The sinfully delicious soffiato cake at Menotti Italian Café. I've taken to calling it "exploding cake," since it contains a molten core of fudge lava that oozes out once you break through the outer shell. The server takes our order on a PDA, and the service is blazing fast, even in the middle of a rush period, I suspect because I am trying to write all this down in my Moleskine notebook for blogging purposes later and am possibly mistaken for a food critic.

34. The insanely low prices at Mr. Tea, a tea house near the SMU campus. The almond tea was better than anything you could get at Starbucks, and a fairly large mug was only S$0.80. There was also a very college-coffeeshop-type atmosphere to the place, including card games and board games (Settlers of Catan!), and squashy chairs. I've really missed Cup A Joe, my old Raleigh haunt during grad school and after, and this place was the closest to it that I've yet seen in Singapore. On the way home, Janet gets an idea for a themed coffeeshop, and it sounds plausible and cool enough that it could easily work.

35. A red-headed young woman on the MRT, a tourist who from the side almost looks like Lena (except not as smiley), grabs a support pole in one hand and holds a French translation of Kafka's The Trial (Le Procés) in the other. I almost strike up a conversation, since I still retain a smattering of French and I both loved and hated The Trial in equal measure, but think better of it. The last thing she needs is to feel as if the only other white person on the train is hitting on her, even if that is not my intent.

Previous observations: 1-4, 5-8, 9-13, 14-17, 18-22, 23-25, 26-30

Another reason why I'm glad I've stopped drinking soft drinks.

(via Singapore City Zen)

My bitterness is being offset somewhat (but only to an infinitesimal degree) by the incredible number of things to do and see this weekend in Singapore.

1. Great Singapore Sale (25 May - 22 July)
One of the country's annual big tourist draws, where everyone is encouraged to shop thanks to big bargains and discounts. Just about every single retail outlet in the country is participating, with many of them displaying GSS signs in their entryways alongside the deals on offer.

2. Singapore Arts Festival (25 May - 24 June)
All kinds of great concerts and performances and gallery showings, lasting an entire month. Opening the festival last night was Spanish group La Fura dels Baus, who performed a synchronized routine suspended high in the air.

3. Aquarama (24-27 May)
Ornamental Fish and Accessories Exhibition, and we went today. Much more on the accessories side than on the fish side (I only saw one stall where you could actually buy fish, the rest were devoted to tanks and lights and all kinds of stuff), although one of the coolest things there was a coffee table that had been transformed into an aquarium. They also had a competition between different types and breeds of fish, and the marine tanks were particularly cool.

4. World Book Fair (25 May - 3 June)
We went to this one before Aquarama. A huge dealer's room, mostly catering to Chinese readers, but there were some English-language stalls as well. After much consideration, I nabbed River of Gods by ianmcdonald, even though I'd already read it, since this was the original Simon & Schuster UK trade paperback, which is gorgeous and easy (typographically) to read, and which I'd likely not be able to find again; it was a hard decision to sell this book when we moved, but now I have it back, and in a nicer edition to boot.

5. MPH Book Sale (25-27 May)
A massive general books sale in order for MPH to sell off its excess and/or remaindered stock. I probably won't be hitting this, since I bought a book today, and I have about ten books on my plate that I need to read and/or review fairly soon.

6. Singapore Food Expo (25-29 May)
We drove by the Singapore Expo Centre last night around dinner time, and the car park was absolutely packed. I'm interested in checking this out, but not if it's going to be a huge pain dealing with such massive amounts of people.

7. Vesak Day Celebrations (12-31 May)
Celebrating the Buddha's birth, enlightenment, and attainment of Nirvana, with everything culminating on the last day of the month. The Project Million Lotus at Ngee Ann City looks cool, and I may have to check it out.

ME+3 (just easier than saying I, Janet, and her parents) went to the Shaw Theatre on Orchard Road yesterday for the final day of the Asian Buddhist Film Festival, to watch How to Cook Your Life.

The upbeat film revolves around Zen Master Edward Espe Brown, who explains how cooking and living revolve around each other. Enough about "Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance" and such for now - this is "Zen and the Art of Kitchen and Dietary Maintenance". This documentary is definitely no preachy material. Master Brown presents himself in a disarmingly human way, with faults and all. He admits to impatience for instance - we even see him struggling to open a food package. And he also sheds tears when he recalls how the sight of battered teapots reminded him that he too can serve despite his imperfections. Beyond his role as a teacher, we also see a fellow Dharma practitioner in him.

In his words, "My teacher Suzuki Roshi said, 'When you are cooking, you are not just cooking. You are not just working on food. You are also working on yourself. You are working on other people.'" Indeed, when you are working in a Zen kitchen, cooking for the community while interacting with kitchen folks, cooking can be a spiritual challenge.

A moving film, with so many lessons on how cooking and food preparation relate to the lives we live. If you get a chance to see it at a film festival or arthouse theatre, I recommend it.

Following the movie was a talk by Ajahn Brahm, who'd come from his monastery in Western Australia, and who hadn't been in a movie theatre in more than a decade. To complement the film, he talked about "Eating Your Life," about being grateful for the food that is given to you, if it is given with love. This is one of the most compassionate things we can do for each other, he said, and he talked about eating nothing by rice and frogs when a monk in northern Thailand, and realizing that even though he didn't care for the taste (and was a vegetarian besides), he came to eat it anyway, because the laypeople supplying the food loved the monks and wanted to take care of them, and the frogs they supplied were the best of the lot. Lots of other stuff in there as well, and it was very cool to see him in person after listening to his podcasts.

(Btw, I picked up Ajahn Brahm's Who Ordered This Truckload of Dung? the other day at the Bras Basah Awareness Place, and am looking forward to it.)

I ate stingray yesterday for lunch, and will probably never do so again. At first, I cut a chunk out of one end and munched on the whole thing, and it was crunchy and stringy like it contained lots of tiny little bones, so I ended up spitting it out. Janet said, "You were eating the cartilage in addition to the meat. Here, this is how you eat it." And then she took the fork and spoon out of my hand and showed me how to scoop the meat away from both sides of the cartilage.

By itself (i.e., cartilage-free), the meat was not bad, firm and not flaky, absorbing the spiciness of the sauce poured on top. But I couldn't get over that initial reaction, where I now know what it would taste like if I were chewing on someone's ear.

And I kept picturing this poor stingray who'd been minding his own business, having a bit of a swim, who was then caught and chopped up and served to me along with rice and leafy greens. After that, I've been seriously considering going completely vegetarian.

A couple of weeks ago, I blogged about my newest addiction (Tim Tams), and turtleheart1976 informed me that Arnott's, the company the manufactures the delicious tasty treat, was "bought out by Campbell Soup Company in the 1990s. I don't know anything about where they source their chocolate from but we certainly don't grow it in Australia and I imagine they'd say so if it were fair trade."

Since I try to buy fair trade and/or organic as much as possible (esp. when it comes to chocolate, for some very good reasons), this troubled me a bit. Arnott's has a feedback form and are open to questions, so I put the question as to where they source their chocolate to them.

Here's the exchange:

Hello Jason,

Thanks for your email, we actually manufacture the chocolate we use ourselves and I don't know of any plans to change this at this time.

Thanks very much for your email.

Regards

[name redacted]
Consumer Contact Representative

***

Hello [name redacted],

I understand that you manufacture the chocolate in Australia, but my question pertains more to where you source your cocoa beans from. Many large chocolate manufacturers get their beans from plantations in Africa, and I was just curious if you did the same or if you used local farmers.

Cheers,
Jason

***

Hello again,

It's not our company policy to provide consumers with the names and details of our ingredient suppliers, but please be assured that promoting responsible and ethical business, farming and agricultural processes is important to Arnott's, which is why we do not condone unlawful practices such as child or forced labour.

Sorry I can't be of further assistance to you.

Regards

[name redacted]

On their website, they also have statements on their corporate policy toward the environment, snacking, exercise, nutrition, ingredients, and allergens. Their FAQ also contains answers about trans fats, salt, MSG, and genetically modified organisms in their products (low or nil on all counts).

Of course, this information is provided on the company's own website, and they're going to want to put their own spin on things to make themselves look as good as possible. Anybody have any idea on independent research into Arnott's? Because I'd love to continue eating Tim Tams (in moderate portions), but I want to have a relatively clean conscience whilst doing so.

Mycofarm is an organic mushroom farm (absolutely no chemicals or pesticides are used) in the northeast section of Singapore. Janet and I and her parents drove up to find it a couple of weeks ago, and got to take a tour of the place. It was really cool, these rows upon rows of hemispherical refrigerated walk-in enclosures that housed the different varieties of mushrooms that were grown there. The inside smelled damp and earthy, and was filled with multi-shelf racks of specially manufactured organic logs upon which the mushrooms were grown; temperature and humidity are carefully controlled to yield the most productive crops, which are then sold in the local groceries. They had free samples, stir fried in oil in garlic, yum. You can also buy directly from them there, and we did, feasting on five different kinds of mushrooms for the next several days.

It was a really neat place, and I hope to go back there again, this time with my camera.

I can't believe I haven't heard of, or tasted, Tim Tams before now. Four words: Best. New. Crack. Evar.

Seriously, I'm just drooling looking at this picture.

Why didn't anyone tell me that Jamie Oliver has a website, and a blog, and a podcast? Honestly, y'all are slacking off now.

Since we don't have cable in the States (I mean Janet and I "we," not the collective "we"), the only time I've seen Oliver on TV was in Singapore, and his cooking show was probably the best I've seen. Not only does he bring a lot of exuberance and passion for food, but he also buys ingredients from local shops, or grows them in his mum's herb garden. He does a great job reminding the audience that their food actually comes from somewhere.

I also admire his "Feed Me Better School Dinners" campaign to get junk food out of public schools, and healthy fresh food in.

It’s all about making radical changes to the school meals system and challenging the junk food culture by showing schools they can serve fresh nutritious meals that kids enjoy eating.

What we eat affects everything: our mood, behaviour, health, growth, even our ability to concentrate. A lunchtime school meal should provide a growing child with one third of their daily nutritional intake.

A fascinating article by Michael Pollan (author of The Omnivore's Dilemma) in the NYT (via Bookslut), "Unhappy Meals":

Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants.

That, more or less, is the short answer to the supposedly incredibly complicated and confusing question of what we humans should eat in order to be maximally healthy. I hate to give away the game right here at the beginning of a long essay, and I confess that I’m tempted to complicate matters in the interest of keeping things going for a few thousand more words. I’ll try to resist but will go ahead and add a couple more details to flesh out the advice. Like: A little meat won’t kill you, though it’s better approached as a side dish than as a main. And you’re much better off eating whole fresh foods than processed food products. That’s what I mean by the recommendation to eat “food.” Once, food was all you could eat, but today there are lots of other edible foodlike substances in the supermarket. These novel products of food science often come in packages festooned with health claims, which brings me to a related rule of thumb: if you’re concerned about your health, you should probably avoid food products that make health claims. Why? Because a health claim on a food product is a good indication that it’s not really food, and food is what you want to eat.

Uh-oh. Things are suddenly sounding a little more complicated, aren’t they? Sorry. But that’s how it goes as soon as you try to get to the bottom of the whole vexing question of food and health. Before long, a dense cloud bank of confusion moves in. Sooner or later, everything solid you thought you knew about the links between diet and health gets blown away in the gust of the latest study.

Pollan's discussion of food vs. nutrients (of isolating the intangible factors in food, such as saturated fat, cholestorol, beta carotene, etc. instead of treating food as a complicated whole object) ties a lot into what I've been thinking for a long time about the pharmaceutical industry, that instead of just telling people to eat this particular plant to make you feel better, they spend millions on research trying to isolate exactly what element is supposedly the cure (enzyme, protein, antioxidant, polyphenol, fatty acid, etc.), and then millions more on marketing it to the public so that it will seem an essential product. Then once people are convinced that they need this newest drug, they have to pay exorbitant prices to acquire it. The same with nutritionists: food is treated as a delivery system for nutrients instead of just food.

Anyway, go give it a read. At twelve pages it's long, but it's very interesting stuff.

We just got back a little bit ago from joining Jen and Alex (alexotica) for dinner and fine conversation at a kick-ass Singaporean restaurant in Chapel Hill called Merlion. For those of you who don't know, the merlion (pronounced mer-lion, not merleeon) is the Singapore Tourism Board's trademark symbol, a mythical creature that is half lion, half-fish. Anyway, the food at the restaurant was amazing, and authentically Singaporean; a browse through the menu reproduced on the website is enough to make one drool. Janet ordered laksa (rice noodles in spicy fragrant coconut broth, topped with shrimp or chicken, egg, tofu and a sprinkle of laksa leaves that gives the dish its distinctive flavor, which she says wasn't spicy enough, but was still tasty), I got char siew & dumpling noodles (Chinese honey-roasted pork fanned over noodles with seasonal vegetable and dumplings, delicious), Alex got char kway teow (flat rice noodles and soft egg noodles, stir-fried in a sweet dark sauce with shrimp, egg, Chinese sausage, bean sprouts and greens), and Jen got mee goreng (thin yellow noodles fried with onion, fried tofu, chili, vegetables, tomatoes and egg). For dessert, Janet and I shared an Exotic Bomba (mango, passion fruit and raspberry sorbetto covered in white chocolate with raspberry drizzles). Everything was phenomenal, and the service was great. I highly recommend Merlion for people wanting to try something new, to taste some authentic cuisine from the country where I'll be living.

But, you may ask, why would we go to a Singaporean restaurant just a few months before moving there, where we'll be eating the stuff all the time? Partly, it was curiosity, to see if they got it right (they did), but it was also a good excuse to get together with Alex and Jen again and chat about all kinds of things.

***

Tonight marks the debut of Behind the Wainscot #1, the companion blogozine to the larger Farrago's Wainscot exhibition, exploring similar ideas in smaller, more fragmentary segments. The inaugural issue features yours truly, with a brand spanking new interview, as well as reprints of five of my story grenades: "Siren," "Disport," "Banyan," "Somniloquist" and "Macerate." BTW is the new home of Mythologism, and new pieces will be posted there in a somewhat periodic manner. darinbradley is also actively looking for new work that can fit BTW's aesthetic for subsequent issues, so if you're interested, do that submission thang.

***

All right, now some Friday night quickies for you:

Matt Cheney reminds us all at The Mumpsimus that there is no time better than the present to buy books from independent presses, especially in the wake of the AMS bankruptcy. Support your favorites -- be it McSweeney's, Soft Skull, Cleis, Parallax, Thunder's Mouth, or any number of the dozens listed on the Publishers Group West site -- who are struggling to stay alive right now.

Harvard University Press has posted mp3 extracts of "lost" lectures given in English at Harvard in 1967-8 by Jorge Luis Borges, collected in This Craft of Verse. It's so cool to be able to hear Borges' voice as he discusses literature and gives advice for writers.

Dr. Cherian George -- academic, social critic, former journalist for The Straits-Times, and author of the incredible book Singapore: The Air-Conditioned Nation -- has not only one blog, but three, all of which are worth checking out: Singapore: New Media, Politics & the Law, Air-Conditioned Nation, and Contentious Journalism.

Last week, I blogged about the essay collection Mindfulness in the Marketplace, and specifically brought up John Robbins' essay "Is There Slavery in Your Chocolate?" Like I said originally, this essay revealed some information surprising to me, and, as indicated in the comments, surprising to some of you as well. For those of you who may be a bit unsure about Robbins' credibility, or the accuracy of the information relayed, I did a bit more digging on the subject.

First of all, Robbins' bio, from his website:

Widely considered to be one of the world's leading experts on the dietary link with the environment and health, John's work has been the subject of cover stories and feature articles in The San Francisco Chronicle, The Los Angeles Times, Chicago Life, The Washington Post, The New York Times, The Philadelphia Inquirer, and many of the nation's other major newspapers and magazines. His life and work have also been featured in an hour long PBS special titled Diet For A New America.

The only son of the founder of the Baskin-Robbins ice cream empire, John Robbins was groomed to follow in his father's footsteps, but chose to walk away from Baskin-Robbins and the immense wealth it represented to "...pursue the deeper American Dream...the dream of a society at peace with its conscience because it respects and lives in harmony with all life forms. A dream of a society that is truly healthy, practicing a wise and compassionate stewardship of a balanced ecosystem."

Considered to be one of the most eloquent and powerful spokespersons in the world for a sane, ethical and sustainable future, John has been a featured and keynote speaker at major conferences sponsored by Physicians for Social Responsibility, Beyond War, Oxfam, the Sierra Club, the Humane Society of the United States, the United Nations Environmental Program, UNICEF, and many other organizations dedicated to creating a healthy, just, and sustainable way of life. He is the recipient of the Rachel Carson Award, the Albert Schweitzer Humanitarian Award, and the Peace Abbey's Courage of Conscience Award. The widespread media attention he has received has included numerous appearances on national shows including Oprah, Donahue and Geraldo. When John spoke at the United Nations, he received a standing ovation.

John serves on the Boards of many non-profit groups working toward a thriving and sustainable way of life. He is the founder and Board Chair Emeritus of EarthSave International, an organization dedicated to healthy food choices, preservation of the environment, and a more compassionate world. John is also the active Board Chair of Youth For Environmental Sanity (YES!), which educates, inspires and empowers youth to take positive action for all life on Earth.

Pretty good credentials, eh? But, you might say, he may have had an agenda in writing what he did that colored his point of view and objectivity. How can we really trust what he says about the slave trade in Ivory Coast?

We could get into a long drawn-out discussion about objectivity, and how I believe that no piece of writing is ever truly objective, even the driest history book or scientific report, because the author is always going to have a specific viewpoint about a topic, and this will color the information that he or she chooses to present, and where the emphasis is placed, but that really wouldn't be fruitful or a good use of our time.

So instead, here are some other links to the issue, found with the most cursory Web search:

"Mali's children in chocolate slavery" by Humphrey Hawksley, the original BBC article that began the awareness of this problem, first published on 12 April 2001.

"A Taste of Slavery," by Sudarsan Raghavan (Knight Ridder's Nairobi burueau chief) and Sumana Chatterjee (Knight Ridder Washington correspondent), a major multi-part award-winning series published in over 30 major newspapers on 24 June 2001. The full series was later posted on the Knight Ridder website, but now all the links to those pages that I can find are broken. However, StopChocolateSlavery was good enough to post the series in its entirety.

On 19 July 2001, Raghavan and Chatterjee appeared on Democracy Now!, and the interview is archived in audio format.

"Slavery Free Chocolate?" by Brooke Shelby Biggs, published in Alternet on 7 February 2002.

"Bittersweet chocolate" by Caroline Tiger, published at Salon.com on 14 February 2003.

"Disconnecting Chocolate from Slavery" on NPR's news program Talk of the Nation on 14 February 2005. Rep. Eliot Engel (D-NY; co-sponsor, Harkin-Engel protocol; House International Relations Committee) is interviewed about the amendment he introduced into Congress to require chocolate manufacturers to label chocolate that has not been produced by slave labor, as well as the continued efforts to monitor practices of West African chocolate plantations.

"Chocolate and slavery," a Wikinfo page last updated on 19 Jan 2006.

And there are many more sites devoted to this issue, if you follow the footsteps.

Again, here's a short (incomplete) list of companies known to sell slavery-free chocolate and cocoa products:

Clif Bar
Cloud Nine
Dagoba Organic Chocolate
Denman Island Chocolate
Gardners Candies
Green and Black's
Kailua Candy Company
Koppers Chocolate
L.A. Burdick Chocolates
La Siembre
Montezuma's Chocolates
Newman's Own Organics
Omanhene Cocoa Bean Company
Rapunzel Pure Organics
The Endangered Species Chocolate Company

Parallax Press was founded in 1986, "following a suggestion by Vietnamese Zen teacher and poet Thich Nhat Hanh, [and] is the publishing division of Unified Buddhist Church, Inc., dedicated to publishing books and tapes on socially engaged Buddhism." Many of their titles involve Buddhist approaches to subjects such as death and dying, terrorism, mindfulness and public service, politics, war, and social change. These are things in which I've recently taken an interest, and it is heartening to see so much of it being put into a Buddhist context.

Mindfulness in the Marketplace, edited by Allan Hunt Badiner, was a book that Janet picked up at Dechen Collections (a Tibetan store in downtown Raleigh where we've also bought Thubten Chodron's books Open Heart, Clear Mind and How to Free Your Mind (although the store sells much more than books)). The subtitle is "Compassionate Responses to Consumerism" and is an incredible anthology of essays from Buddhist experts in the fields of physics and systems theory, cultural history, evolutionary theory, business administration, social and political activism, eco-philosophy, comparative economics, and religious studies, as well as noted monks and scholars such as His Holiness the Dalai Lama, Thich Nhat Hanh and Stephen Batchelor.

Much of the book discusses the more general aspects, causes, and effects of Western consumerism, and is informative in itself, but the pieces that really stand out are the ones that get to you personally, such as John Robbins' essay "Is There Slavery in Your Chocolate?" that talks about the slave trade within Ivory Coast cocoa farms:

A 2001 inquiry into the cocoa sources used by 200 major chocolate manufacturers found significant differences between companies. The $13 billion U.S. chocolate industry is heavily dominated by just two firms -- Hershey's and M&M Mars -- who between them control two-thirds of the market. Unfortunately, both of these companies fall into the category of those companies who use large amounts of Ivory Coast cocoa, and whose products are almost certainly produced in part by slavery.

[...]

M&M Mars and Hershey Foods Corp. are not alone. Other companies whose chocolate is almost certainly tainted with child slavery include: ADM Cocoa, Ben & Jerry's, Cadbury Ltd., Chocolates by Bernard Callebaut, Fowler's Chocolate, Godiva, Guittard Chocolate Company, Kraft, Nestle, See's Candies, The Chocolate Vault, and Toblerone. While most of these companies have issued condemnations of slavery, and expressed a great deal of moral outrage that it exists in the industry, they each have acknowledged that they use Ivory Coast cocoa and so have no grounds to ensure consumers that their products are slavery-free.

[...]

There are in fact many chocolate companies who only use cocoa that has definitively not been produced with slave labor. These companies include Clif Bar, Cloud Nine, Dagoba Organic Chocolate Company, Denman Island Chocolate, Gardners Candies, Green and Black's, Kailua Candy Company, Koppers Chocolate, L.A. Burdick Chocolates, Montezuma's Chocolates, Newman's Own Organics, Omanhene Cocoa Bean Company, Rapunzel Pure Organics, and The Endangered Species Chocolate Company. At present, no organic cocoa beans are coming from Ivory Coast, so organic chocolate is unlikely to be tainted by slavery.

I am admittedly a chocoholic, so this was news that hit me to my core. We've recently begun only buying organic chocolate anyway (both Dagoba and Newman's Own are delicious), but it pains me to think that my previous consumption of Peanut M&M's, Reese's Cups, Cadbury Creme Eggs, and a dozen other types of chocolate may have helped to perpetuate an industry in which other human beings are owned for their labor.

Four-fifths of the book is devoted to the world's problems and social ills, pointing out the fact that these things exist and continue the cycle of suffering, but the last section begins to look at solutions: living simply and sustainably, reducing the dependence on material goods, being mindful of where our food comes from, voting with your dollars, etc. It reminds us that the issues affecting the world may be huge, but that because we are all connected, small differences in the way we live can lead to global change.

Some links for your Monday morning work distractions:

Discworld Cake!

At the NYTimes: "Singapore: A Repressed City-State? Not in Its Kitchens" by R.W. Apple Jr.

At Making Light: "Attention US Military Personnel" by Jim Macdonald

At The Agony Column: Rick Kleffel interviews Jeff VanderMeer

At the WaPo: "The Writing Life" by Stephen King

John Scalzi passes on the recipe for Schadenfreude Pie. The photos made me literally drool at my desk.

Had a nice and relaxing weekend. The weather had cooled down and we opened all the windows in our duplex. We also spent quite a bit of it outside, which was a nice change of pace.

Saturday morning, we woke late and broke our fast with some oatmeal, then got online. I spent several hours adding titles to Second Chance Book Adoption (there are 280 at present, go take a look!), although there are three bookshelves I haven't even gotten to yet. It's been an interesting process, going through my books with a more critical eye than I ever have, trying to decide whether they're worth shipping to Singapore. This process is made easier by the existence of Kinokuniya and Borders over there, which will carry a good majority of the books I'm getting rid of, just in case I want to purchase them again. There are several small press ventures I wouldn't be able to get there (or would have to at great expense), so I'm keeping those, but I'm also selling some as well, such as Charles de Lint's Triskell Tales and the deluxe limited edition of John Shirley's Wetbones. The prices are rock-bottom, folks. Step on up.

(And believe it or not, I do hate to keep talking about the site, but it's important for two reasons. 1) Any books that I place with you lovely people won't need to be shipped to Singapore, thereby reducing the cost; and 2) any money made from the adoptions will be going toward helping us move there, halfway round the world, which is damn expensive anyway. So please, help a guy out.)

At 4:30, we met my parents at the fairgrounds for the Greek Festival. The food was delicious (natch) and the dancers were great. They'd moved to a new building this year, and it was much bigger than the last venue (which had gotten so crowded over the years that you could hardly move). I bought some pastries to bring home (baklava, flogeres, galaktoboureko and thiples), and polished them off last night. My mother was working this year as an emcee, making announcements every so often and trying to keep the crowd energy high. Unfortunately, she wasn't told what to say or when; they basically handed her the mic, threw on her stage, and said, "Good luck!" Fortunately, she has lots of experience in front of people, both as a teacher and broadcaster; I can't remember the number of times that she worked Festival (the bi-annual begathon) at PBS trying to raise money for the local station. So she did a great job, although it tired her out.

After we left, Janet didn't want to go home yet, so we drove over to North Hills Mall and walked around. I told Janet about how different the mall looked when I was in high school (much much smaller, with far fewer upscale shops), and how David Sedaris had written about it in Me Talk Pretty One Day (and here). I have to say that I really like the walkability of the new remodeled shopping center, although many of the shops and restaurants are so pricey that we have to hurry by lest we get sucked in and our wallets emptied. They've also built condos into the levels above the shops, and it appears that people are living there now. There were both a Kerr Drug and Harris Teeter nearby, so we walked over and got a few things, then went back to the car and headed home.

Yesterday we headed over to the farmers' market and picked up some fresh okra, baby bell peppers, squash, tomatoes, goat cheese and free range eggs. It was probably the most we've ever spent there, though it was still less than $20. The market was packed, and it was good to see so many people there, buying directly from the farmers themselves.

Also this weekend, I watched Smoke Signals on VHS (I know! Videotape!) and looked for things I could use in my comp. class. We're reading Sherman Alexie's "Indian Education" for class, and one of my fellow faculty noticed this and mentioned that the film (which Alexie wrote the screenplay for) might be something my students might enjoy. I did enjoy it quite a bit, especially the odd-couple friendship between the angry Victor Joseph and the dorky Thomas Builds-the-Fire. (An interesting tidbit from IMDB: the beautiful Irene Bedard, who plays Suzy Song in the film, was the physical model for the Pocahontas character in the Disney films.) The film also is an achievement in its all-Native cast and crew, from the director down to the extras. Now I just have to decide whether I can pluck out one section to play for the class or show the entire thing; the running time is 89 minutes, so it would take two classes to play the whole thing, which would eat into a lot of class time.

All for now. Later today I'll be writing a response to gabe chouinard's recent rant/review with a really long name, so stay tuned.

Exhausted after dealing with unruly students again today in my 1:00 class. Time to bring the hammer down, thinks I, or something less cliche. So tired I can barely think.

But I was cheered up to see that my review of John Burdett's Bangkok Tattoo is now up at Strange Horizons. Yay.

And now we're going out for Indian food. And on Saturday, we'll meet up with my parents at the Greek Festival and eat Greek food. Gastronomic therapy.

Three links:

"Meaty Arguments," an extract from The Bloodless Revolution, Tristram Stuart's remarkable history of vegetarianism.

Copper, a beautifully drawn and written webcomic by Kazu Kibuishi. Some of these stories have almost brought me to tears. (via Chrononautic Log)

And Teresa Nielsen Hayden details "how to throw a large room party at a science fiction convention." Everything you'd ever want to know. Really.

Two excellent interviews spotted today.

The first, from Powells, with The Botany of Desire author Michael Pollan, on his new book The Omnivore's Dilemma:

There are two reasons why the [agribusiness] industry wouldn't want labeling. We shouldn't impute motives, but let's analyze what the possibilities are. One is that if people knew what they were eating, they would not want to eat it. That may well be true. These products offer consumers nothing. They're designed to offer certain dubious agrinomic benefits to farmers -- the crops might need a little less pesticide, or the farmers can spray herbicide with abandon -- but since New Leafs offer nothing to consumers, why should we take even a tiny risk for no gain?

The other reason that I've heard, which I think is more devastating, is the fact that if there is any problem with this food, if there is a GMO that turns out to have an allergen in it and sickens a lot of people, it will be impossible to prove where it came from. The correlation can't be proven, the epidemiology cannot be done. If you haven't labeled the food, you can't prove that Hey, look, all these people were eating the GMO cereal. They don't want anyone to track that path because they're liable.

One of the key decisions in the history of this industry was not to seek a limitation on liability from the government, as for example the nuclear industry did. The nuclear industry said, "We have a risky technology here. We want the government to protect us before we invest a lot of money." And the government did. Nuclear plants have very low liability, given the kind of destruction they can cause. With GMOs, they apparently reached that fork in the road and decided, If we seek this limitation on liability, we're going to call a lot of attention to ourselves. Maybe we just won't do it. It's an Achilles heel of the industry, and not labeling is a way to protect themselves.

The second, from AlterNet, with Tamara Draut (who spoke in Durham last week), on her new book Strapped: Why America's 20- and 30-Somethings Can't Get Ahead:

Today's generation of twenty- and thirty-somethings are experiencing the fallout of a three-decade-long shift in our culture and politics. A generation ago, three factors helped smooth the transition to adulthood. The first was the fact that there were jobs that provided good wages, even for high school graduates. A college degree wasn't necessary to earn a decent living. But even if you wanted to go, it wasn't that expensive, and grants were widely available.

The second was an economy that lifted all boats, with productivity gains shared by workers and CEOs alike. The result was a massive growth of the middle class, which provided security and stability for families.

Third, a range of public policies helped facilitate economic mobility and opportunity: a strong minimum wage, low college tuition and generous financial aid, major incentives for homeownership and a solid safety net for those falling on hard times. Simply put, the government had your back. This world no longer exists. The story of what happened is well-known.

As the nation's shift to a service-based economy accelerated, the new economy dramatically changed the way we lived and worked. Relationships between employers and employees became more tenuous, as corporations faced global competitors and quarterly bottom-line pressures from Wall Street. Increasingly, fringe benefits like health care and pension plans were only provided to well-paid workers. Wages rose quickly for educated workers and declined for those with only high school degrees, resulting in new demands for college credentials.

As most families saw their incomes stagnate or decline, they needed two full-time incomes just to stay afloat, creating new demands on working parents. Getting into the middle class now required a four-year college degree, and even that was no guarantee of the American dream.

While adults of all ages have endured the economic and social changes brought by post-industrialization, today's young adults are the first to experience its full weight as they try to start their adult lives. But the challenges facing young adults also reflect the failure of public policy to address the changing realities of building a life in the 21st century. Government no longer has our back. As young adults today are working to get into the middle class, they're being hit by a one-two punch: The economy no longer generates widespread opportunity, and our public policies haven't picked up any of the slack.