Digital Distraction Drug

 

” … the Web is also an enormous global timesink, sucking up massive amounts of time that might have gone into more productive, thoughtful, and fulfilling activities. It’s difficult to measure the cost of this wasted time, because it’s impossible to know what people might have done if they weren’t surfing and tweeting and youtubing and huluing and foursquaring and emailing and IMing and googling and etc. The Web often gives us the illusion of having an incredibly diverse set of pursuits when it’s really narrowing the scope of our thoughts and activities.”

— Nicholas Carr, at Rough Type.

 “The Unplug and Recharge Challenge: Breaking Our Always-Connected Addiction,” Arianna Huffington and Ellen Kunes, Huffington Post.

 

Image by Mike Licht. Download a copy here. Creative Commons license; credit Mike Licht, NotionsCapital.com

Comments are welcome if they are on-topic, substantive, concise, and not boring or obscene. Comments may be edited for clarity and length.

Social Media Addiction

  
Flash: digitally deprived college students go daffy. The youngsters are social media addicts and feel disconnected when not online.

200 University of Maryland undergrads spent an entire “Day Without Media.”  No Blackberry, laptop, television, iPod, texting, Twitter, phone calls, IM-ing, email or Facebook. OMG!

Participants were students in Professor Susan D. Moeller’s JOUR 175 “Media Literacy” course at the U of Maryland J-school. After 24 hours of “cold turkey,” they each wrote around 550 words about their mental states and experiences. Could students TXT this in? BTHOM (beats the hell outa me).

Blogs With Bite

Blogs with Bite is an occasional omnivorous sampling of food blogs and sites we find particularly tasty. Follow the trail of bread crumbs back to earlier editions, starting here.

Here’s a fresh serving of Blogs with Bite:

Asian Dumpling Tips —  Few people know more about gyōza, wonton, lumpia, momo, bao, har gow, siu mai, and samosa than Andrea Nguyen, and none of them write as well.

McDonald’s History — “Travel through time using our Interactive Timeline! See the birth of McDonald’s, the launch of your favorite menu item, McDonald’s characters, or advertising jingles!”

Jellypress  — “Old recipes, art, and ideas” from Laura Schenone and Nancy Ring.

SardineKing.com – “The largest collection of vintage California sardine can labels on the Internet.” Gallery and Pacific sardine facts.

à la carte —  The “culinary ramblings, thoughts, comments, observations, and miscellany of one Francophile [Peter Hertzmann] including lots of recipes and pictures.” 

BBC Glossary of Food Terms —  “A to Z guide to cookery terms” from BBC Food.

airlinemeals.net —  World’s largest website about airline meals. Economy Class, Business Class, and First Class meals; airline food in films; menu card archive; more.

Flagrante Delícia — Remarkable desserts by Leonor de Sousa Bastos; astounding photography by Miguel Coelho. Also in Portuguese.

Big News From AP

The respected AP Stylebook announced (via Twitter) that “Web site” should now be written as “website.”  This would cause newspaper copy editors great excitement, if there were any newspaper copy editors anymore.

“Now what about ‘Web log?'” asks the Chicago Trib’s Eric Zorn. Mr. Zorn also wants to “lower-case the Internet.”

 

 Hat-Tip: Mashable. Yes, we know about the American Copy Editors Society (ACES).

Image by Mike Licht. Download a copy here. Creative Commons license; credit Mike Licht, NotionsCapital.com

Comments are welcome if they are on-topic, substantive, concise, and not boring or obscene. Comments may be edited for clarity and length.

Blogs with Bite

Blogs with Bite is an occasional omnivorous sampling of food blogs and sites we find particularly tasty. Follow the trail of bread crumbs back to earlier editions, starting here.

Here’s a fresh serving of Blogs with Bite:

Plate of the Day — Daily recipes of outstanding interest from New York’s Simon Dang.

Cooking With Kangaroo —  “Kangaroo meat is used by some of the worlds best restaurants ….”  Recipes from the Kangaroo Industry Association of Australia.

18thC Cuisine  — 18th century French cuisine “as a habitante in Nouvelle France may have cooked.” Carolyn Smith-Kizer re-enacts history in the kitchen and blogs about it, with recipes.

Kopiaste  — Ivy Liacopoulou welcomes you into her kitchen for Greek, Cypriot, and international recipes.

Cooking Gadgets  — Flatbed toaster. Adjustable rolling pin. Salad dressing mixer. Dry ice maker. All this plus Cyndi Lavin’s recipes.

Pizza Today — “#1 Magazine of the Pizza Industry.”

Kumquat Recipes — Kumquat Growers, Inc. of Dade City, Florida provides 41 recipes and answers that age-old question, “What is a kumquat?”

The African Cookbook — Selected recipes from Bea Sandler’s 1993 compilation, via the University of Pennsylvania African Studies Department.

Food Moulds — The website of noted culinary historian and educator Ivan Day displays historic food molding devices, dishes made with them, and associated recipes. There are additional period recipes, sugar sculptures, and table settings from museum exhibitions curated by Mr. Day.

My Colombian Recipes —  Columbian cooking; good notes about ingredients.

So Good — Jon Eick blogs about food marketing and the kind of foods that get “marketed.”  Hilarity prevails.

Hungry For Change —  “Posts on genetic engineering, school nutrition, pesticides, urban farms, and more.”

Blogs with Bite

Blogs with Bite is an occasional omnivorous sampling of food blogs and sites we find particularly tasty. Follow the trail of bread crumbs back to earlier editions, starting here.

Here is a fresh serving of Blogs with Bite:

 A Brief History of Turkey Research at BARC — The USDA’s Beltsville Agricultural Research Center developed the Beltsville Small White Turkey, the genetic foundation of most turkeys sold today.

MeatHenge – Grilled meat, smoked meat, roasted meat and photography. Restaurant and product reviews from across the USA; recipes.

Gastronomer’s Guide – Well-written food blog by New York’s Joseph Erdos.

International Federation of Competitive Eating — IFOCE “supervises and regulates eating contests in their various forms throughout the world” with affiliates in United States, Japan, England, Germany, Canada, Ireland, Thailand and Ukraine.

International School of Pizza — Master Instructor Tony Gemignani offers U.S. students opportunities for Scuola Italiana Pizzaoili certification in Classic Italian Pizza, Roman Style Pizza or Pizza in Teglia (Pan Pizza). There are also courses in Neapolitan, New York, Chicago, California, and New Haven style pizza for professionals and home chefs.

TurkeyFest — Cuero (“rawhide”) Texas was known for cattle drives until a turkey dressing house opened and drovers walked the big birds into town each fall. In 1912 the event became a tourist attraction know as the Turkey Trot. The parade of poultry was replaced by a turkey race in 1972.

DC Blogger Meetup July 15th

This month’s Washington, DC Blogger Meetup will be at an Adams Morgan watering hole at 7 PM on Wednesday, July 15, 2009.  

Founded in 2002, this Meetup provides opportunities for Metro DC area blog writers and readers to share experiences and tips, drink beer, socialize, drink beer, and plan collaborative blogging projects and other events. Did we mention that beer is available?

Join and RSVP (requires free Meetup registration), save the date, and spend a couple of hours with other bloggers.

 

Image by Mike Licht. Download a copy here. Creative Commons license; credit Mike Licht, NotionsCapital.com

Comments are welcome if they are on-topic, substantive, concise, and not obscene. Comments may be edited for clarity and length.

Blogs With Bite

Blogs with Bite is an occasional omnivorous sampling of food blogs and sites we find particularly tasty. Follow the trail of bread crumbs back to earlier editions, starting here.

The latest serving of Blogs with Bite:

Italian Innards, Snails, and Frogs — Main course recipes from the Italian Trade Commission. More conventional offerings here.

What Would Jesus Eat?— Blogger Lucas Land, a graduate of Baylor’s Truett Seminary, is interning at World Hunger Relief and farming. He explores intersecting issues of food and faith, sustainability and stewardship.

I Love Pickles — Website of Pickle Packers International, Inc., “a trade association for the pickled vegetable industry.”  Tips and facts and recipes (including Saurkraut Chocolate Cake and Fried Dill Pickles).

Farida’s Azerbaijani Cookbook — Californian blogger and cook Farida Sadikhova Buyuran is originally from Baku on the Caspian Sea, capital of Azerbaijan.

Food Poetry — Charlston’s Doug DuCap observed National Poetry Month (April 2009) on his blog, HuggingTheCoast, with a celebratory aggregation of links to 42 well-chosen works.

This Is Why You’re Fat—  “Where Dreams Become Heart Attacks.”  Caution: do not view this blog if you take medication to control blood lipids. Still, that Deep Fried Cheeseburger On-A-Stick does look mighty tasty.  A Hot Beef Sundae for dessert, perhaps?

Museum of the American Cocktail —   The physical museum is located in New Orlean’s new Southern Food and Beverage Museum (SoFAB). The drinks museum has a virtual exhibit is here, but mix it up with the MOTAC blog.

Read It and Eat — “A Culinary Expression of Awareness, Sensuality & Community.” Food, wine, recipes, photos, food issues, culinary culture.

Vintage Tea Rooms — “In the 1920s, especially, tea rooms became the fashionable places for women to meet friends in small towns, big cities, and suburbs alike.”  A refreshing site by Jan Whitaker. Shall I pour?

Feast on the Cheap— “Delicious, healthy, homemade food should be easy and accessible – and shouldn’t require a massive bank account.” Recipes, and food tips from Mary Anne and Muriel Rittenhouse. Excellent advice on the well-stocked pantry.

Flu Fear Mongering

 

Each year, a billion people in the world get the flu, 3 to 5 million get severely ill from it, and 300,000 to 500,000 die. In the United States, a typical year sees 25 to 50 million flu cases, 150,000 flu patients hospitalized, and 30,000 to 40,000 flu-related deaths. Total U.S. H1N1 (“Swine Flu”) cases to date: 100.

Flu prospects this year look fairly typical so far. What is different is the media and information environment.

It’s not just the capacity of Twitter and blogs to spread and sustain rumor. The weakened economic condition of the mainstream media makes them susceptible to the infection of fear-mongering. Television is most vulnerable, since only the old and sick watch it these days, as all those commercials for pharmaceutical, OTC drug, and eldercare products clearly indicate.

Blogs With Bite

Blogs with Bite is an occasional omnivorous sampling of food blogs and sites we find particularly tasty. Follow the trail of bread crumbs back to earlier editions, starting here.

Today’s serving of Blogs with Bite:

Kalofagas.ca— “Greek Food and Beyond,” from Toronto. Recipes, food, more.”Kalofagas” is Greek for “gourmet.”

MR Bloch Salt Archive —  Everything there is to know about sodium chloride (NaCl), common salt, table salt, halite.  Archaeology, history, geology, production, physiology, paleogeography, paleoclimatology, religion, economics, etymology, monomania.

Beer-a-Day — Daily beer feature of the Hop Talk blog.

gas•tron•o•my — Recipes and restaurant reviews from across the country and globe. Book reviews, photos, food fun. Includes the Hanoi Top 10 and Saigon top 10  foods.

Catholic Cuisine —  “Recipes for Celebrating the Feasts and Seasons of the Liturgical Year.” Recipes, prayers and blessings, monastic cuisine, divine mercy cupcakes, and more.

Photograzing — Food photos from Serious Eats to stimulate the appetite.

The Vienna Vegetable Orchestra — Two tasty videos: an introduction to the acoustics of vegetables and a second helping that is beyond words.

Bacon Unwrapped —  Salty, slick, and smokin’ blog by Heather Lauer, whose bacon book will be out soon. For some crisp images, add a rasher of It’s All About the Bacon, a highly-visual appreciation of a certain cured pork product.