Seattle P-I: Detoxification and elimination diets seem to be all the rage, but they are not necessarily beneficial.
San Francisco Chronicle: A review of “French Women for All Seasons: A Year of Secrets, Recipes & Pleasure” — the follow-up to the best-selling “French Women Don’t Get Fat” — confirms what has really been starting to sink into us. Eating consciously, meaning moderately and seasonally, turns out to be way more healthy, not to mention fun, than how most of America eats.
Metro.co.uk: There has been a bit of fuss surrounding the McDonald’s application to patent sandwich-making. While this exemplifies the silly extremes of the patent process, McDonald’s does not appear to be patenting sandwiches, but an industrial process for making them. One wonders about the ’sandwich delivery tool’ and whether that is a fancy name for ‘knife.’ (Via BoingBoing and Jack.)
The New Yorker: We knew that corn was a big “welfare queen” among subsidized crops, but sugar’s free ride was news to us (to Dairy Queen at least). Financial columnist James Surowiecki explains clearly and concisely how sugar tariffs, quotas, and subsidies are as big a problem for the so-called free market as corn’s. “Our current policy is absurd even by Washington standards,” he writes. “Congress is paying billions in subsidies to get us to use more ethanol, while keeping in place tariffs and quotas that guarantee that we’ll use less.” Why should we care? Global warming.
New York Times*: In the “future dream job” category, we discover that there is a shortage of qualified sommeliers in the United States, driven by the recent upsurge of interest in wine. The article details the challenges of the job, and if you think that drinking wine for 12 hours every day is fun, think again.
Seattle P-I: Seattle’s tough recycling policy has achieved 99.98% compliance in the first 9 months. Garbage cans containing more than 10% recyclable goods are rejected, to be sorted by the owners. The city’s goal is to recycle 60% of trash by 2010.
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