health food?

While wading through the remains of your Halloween candy, there is undoubtedly a pack or two of M&Ms left over.  If you are tempted to finish them off, just tell people you are eating them for health reasons.  Then wash it down with some blue Gatorade.  It could even help a quadriplegic walk again.  Say what?

Ok, admittedly, these sound like crazy statements.  And they are, in a sense.  They are certainly exaggerated.  But in a recent study published in July in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Science of the United States of America, researchers from the University of Rochester Medical Center reported that mice – in whom spinal injuries had been induced – in fact learned to walk again after being injected with the blue dye that is used in “foods” such as blue M&Ms and blue Gatorade.  (There was one temporarily small downside:  their skins turned blue for a while.  No worries.  No one minds a little Smurf/Smurfette Mouse that is learning how to walk again.  They might be actually kind of cute.)

But how does the blue coloring work?!??  Supposedly, an ingredient in the blue dye, Brilliant Blue G, inhibits inflammation – a large part of what causes irreparable damage in spinal cord injuries.  By inhibiting the inflammation, one may be able to reduce or inhibit injury, in the future.

Hmmmm, intriguing.  It certainly bears more research.  I have only one question, though:  ummm, why are they “inducing” spinal injuries in mice?  Seriously?   I’m not really a rodent fan, but is this really necessary?  Are they throwing mice against the wall?  Snapping their little necks?  Come on now, there must be a better way to further medical research for humans without turning us into the Dr. Mengele of Minnie and Mickey. 

Now, when your friends are complaining this weekend about how much Halloween candy is still sitting around the house, you can offer them this interesting tidbit about the candy that melts in your mouth, not in your hands.

Read on:

msnbc.com – Blue food dye helps heal spinal cord injuries

WebMD.com – Blue Dye in M&Ms Helps Spinal Cord Injuries?

Over the weekend of August 15-16, the Park Service is even waiving entry fees at approximately 100 of the parks which normally charge a nominal entrance fee.  This special deal has been offered in the past, but this is the last weekend the free special will be available this summer.  Now you have no excuse, so get out there and enjoy these wonderful resources! 

If you are in California, take a look at the tree made famous by U2′s popular album.  Spending a week in Idaho?  Visit the place where Yogi might steal your pic-a-nic basket.  Wait, that’s Jellystone, not Yellowstone.  At the very least, a trip to a National Park will give you something to talk about at your next dinner conversation. 

To find a list of the National Parks near you which are participating in the Fee-Free Weekend, please go to http://www.nps.gov/findapark/feefreeparksbystate.htm.

Read on:

nps.gov – National Parks Offer Free Admission this Weekend

nps.gov – Salazar Announces National Park Service Will Waive Fees…

(Yogi Bear image taken from http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/YogiBear)

One of my favorite books of 2008 is being made into a movie (Julie & Julia), opening tomorrow around the country.  Julie and Julia: 365 Days, 524 Recipes, 1 Tiny Apartment Kitchen by Julie Powell is the autobiographical memoir of the young Texan in the year she is 29.  Pushing 30, stuck in a dinky apartment in Queens, and sick of working in dead-end admin jobs, Powell decides to try to give herself a project that is bigger than all this mundane ennui: she will make all the recipes in her mother’s old Julia Child recipe book, Mastering the Art of French Cooking, over the course of one year.  

Madcap adventures and hilarious hijinks ensue, as she tries to track down gourmet ingredients and bizarre cooking accoutrement in modern day Manhattan, all without the benefit of a car.  But, when the media catches wind of it all, the project really takes on a life of its own, and Nora Ephron (producer: Sleepless in Seattle) decides she wanted to make a movie out of it.  Ephron tells Powell’s tale by weaving in scenes from one of my other recent favorite books, My Life in France by Julia Child with Alex Prud’homme (who is her husband Paul’s grandnephew).

The inimitable Meryl Streep will play Julia Child and the cuter-than-a-basket-of-puppies Miss Amy Adams will star as Powell.  I think Streep is superbly cast but I am a bit curious as to how the Amy Adams/Julie role will play out.  Powell is quite sardonic, sarcastic, and mouthy in the book, and Amy Adams is… well, Amy Adams is “Ella Enchanted.”

While serious foodies and gourmands will find little to sustain themselves in this late 20s/early 30s “find yourself” tale, the movie will still likely appeal to the latter demographic – or to anyone who remembers when they were in this demographic.  Either way, pass the popcorn and Milk Duds: I’m in!

(Or, maybe a more upscale movie snack would be called for this time? Coq au vin, anyone?)

Read on:

imdb.com – Julie & Julia

Amazon.com – Julie and Julia: 365 Days, 524 Recipes, 1 Tiny Apartment Kitchen

Amazon.com – My Life in France

First, a reminder about the Battle of the Wilderness.  This battle is where Robert E. Lee and Ulysses S. Grant first fought in 1864, in Virginia. Grant’s Union troops were headed to Richmond on May 4, 1864, when they ran into Lee’s “Confederate Army of Northern Virginia.”  The two groups battled, eventually pulling in more than 100,000 Union troops and 61,000 Confederates, and resulting in more than 4,000 dead and 20,000 wounded.  It is thought that this Battle hastened the War’s end.

Because of the historic significance of the battle site, over 250 historians and scholars – including filmmaker Ken Burns and Pulitzer Prize winner David McCullough – have now written a letter urging Wal-Mart’s CEO H.Lee Scott to build the new Wal-Mart farther from the historical landmark.  They wrote, “Wilderness is an indelible part of our history, its very ground hallowed by the American blood spilled there, and it cannot be moved.”

However, a spokesperson for Wal-mart said, “We are not building on the battlefield.”  This is true.  In fact, the store would be behind a bank and strip-mall, a full mile from the Wilderness Battlefield.  And the locals WANT Wal-Mart.  They say, in fact, “Bring it on!”  They want the $500,000 in tax revenue they estimate the big box store will generate for rural Orange County.  This is a conflict which regularly flares up in rural Virginia, which can be caught between concerns of preservation and concerns of those who seek badly needed economic growth.

Which brings us up to the present. . .

There was supposed to be a public hearing on July 27, but that has been postponed.  Keep your eyes and ears open for more information.  It’s up to all of us to have a say.  What do you think?  If you have an opinion, share your thoughts in the Comments section.

Read on:

PreservationNation.org – Wal-Mart Superstore Threatens Wilderness Battlefield

CivilWar.org

Mahalo.com – Wilderness Battlefield Wal-Mart

There are plenty of news articles about the story itself, so you can form your own opinion on who was right or wrong, but Dinner Topics is here to give you a little background on Gates himself.  Some tidbits:

1. A professor at Harvard
2. About 60 years old (born in 1950)
3. Has been called “”the nation’s most famous black scholar” (Michael Kinsley)
4. His background is in history and English (basically, the humanities)
5. His focus now is on Afro-American Studies, both in language and literature, as well as history.
6. He walks with a cane because he broke his leg when he was 14 and one leg healed two inches shorter than the other
7. He hosted the 2006 and 2008 PBS television miniseries African American Lives which traced the lineage of notable African Americans
8. He was listed in Time among its “25 Most Influential Americans” in 1997
9. He is extremely active in scholarly and cultural circles, widely published in both academic and popular media
10. Has won too many awards to enumerate here

Read on:

Boston.com – Harvard professor Gates arrested at Cambridge home

NECN.com – 911 caller in Henry Gates case says she was vilified

fas.harvard.edu – Henry Louis Gates, Jr.

Wikipedia.org – Henry Louis Gates, Jr.

(image above taken from http://www.news.harvard.edu/gazette/2006/10.26/99-gates.html)

The Irregulars: Roald Dahl and the British Spy Ring in Wartime Washington by Jannet Conant was, in a nutshell, fabulous.  Roald Dahl, it seems, was an English WWII Air Force fighter, but was injured in the early part of the War and sent home on medical leave.  From there, he was posted as a Royal Air Force attaché to the British Embassy in Washington, where he was assigned to assist with covert activities to bring the United States into the War as quickly as possible.  As we all know, the Brits and Churchill really needed the US’ help; otherwise, things were going downhill very fast.  This book then describes Dahl’s life and times as a young spy in Washington.

“The Irregulars,” as these young English raconteurs came to call themselves, fancied to model themselves after the Baker Street Irregulars of Sherlock Holmes’ mysteries.  Conant paints a rich picture of their lives in wartime Washington and illustrates a sweeping vision of both the players and the zeitgeist of the era.  Of particular interest to modern readers:  various individuals, whom we all have learned about in history and/or literature class, also pop into the tale at various times and surprise you: Charles Lindberg, a young Lyndon Johnson, Ian Fleming (author of the James Bond novels), Ernest Hemingway, C.S. Forester (poet and writer), Walt Disney, Clare Booth Luce, and more.  Dahl also formed close friendships with FDR, Eleanor Roosevelt, Churchill, and, in the end, the he and the other “Irregulars” helped form the U.S.’ OSS, which was the predecessor to today’s CIA.

Overall, this book is very engaging.  It is nonfiction but reads like a spy novel.  It got positive reviews from the Chicago Sun-Times, Christian Science Monitor, Washington Post, Boston Globe, and The Wall Street Journal.

At times, it can get a bit too detailed, but, if you stick with it, you’ll be rewarded with a treasure of bon mots to share at your next cocktail party.

Read on:

Amazon.com – link to Conant’s book

Sources:

Boy – Tales of Childhood – early autobiography of R. Dahl (childhood)

Going Solo – continuing autobiography (young adulthood) (in which R. Dahl works for  Shell Oil in Tanzania; joins the Air Force and was one of the last Allied pilots to withdraw from Greece during the German invasion in WWII)

My Year – bittersweet:  an autobiographical book written in the last year of R Dahl’s life

Comeback? Yes, it seems Barbie hasn’t been faring so well in the sales figures recently. According to CNN and Fortune magazine,

“The $3 billion Barbie brand has suffered in the last decade, with sales plunging 28% from their peak of $1.52 billion in 2002.”

 They speculate this is because they’ve watered down the brand too much. “We were like Burger King,” said Richard Dickson — who became general manager and senior vice president for the Barbie brand in September 2008 – and has been tasked with reviving the flagging brand.

“If [Walmart or Target] wanted their Barbie in a purple dress or gold lamé, Mattel made it their way.”

No more! Barbie has gotten a makeover and she’s super-fab! This 50th anniversary “Generation of Dreams” edition shows Barbie with a fresh, revamped look: sassy, slanted eyes; smokey, come-hither lids, and a brazen, “take no prisoners” attitude. Her gown is festooned with illustrations of the various iconic manifestations of Barbie throughout the last half-century.

But would you expect anything less from an iconic doll that has broken glass ceilings throughout her long illustrious career? Heck no! From her introduction in 1959, to “Astronaut Barbie” in the 1960s, “Olympic Downhill Skier” in the ‘70s, and “UNICEF Ambassador Barbie” in the ‘90s, Barbie has always not only kept up with current events, but also looked damn good while doing it.

So, look out, ladies! Barbie’s back, she’s 50, and she’s fabulous!

P.S. Like most special ladies, “Generation of Dreams” Barbie will cost you, though: about 65 smackers before tax. YIKES!

Read on:

CNNMoney.com – Barbie gets a makeover

(image above also taken from above link)