One of the most amazing things about Craig is his penchant for taking the time to notice things simple yet sublime. He used to write about and take photos of birds. I miss that (it was like virtual bird watching), but I did notice his recent photo of a sunrise over San Francisco.
Anyone else notice that his next post just so happens to be about the Sunlight Foundation? Could it have been…foreshadowing? I have to say the image was a bit shadowy.
Maybe I just haven’t spent enough time in Japan, but this part of a story about raising tuna caught (pun not intended) me by surprise:
This is clearly a labour of love, but how will he feel when the time comes to send his fish to the market to be slaughtered for the first time?
“It will be like sending my daughters off to get married,” he says with a grin. “Joy and sadness.” But will he be eating them? “Definitely!”
Eating your daughters after they are married? I think something must be missing in that translation. Although it does make me wonder why people are often so intent on eating things that are raised in far away places, often saying the further the better the taste, but they do not want their children marrying anyone from outside a small radius…strange analogy, I know, but the BBC started it.
This site has some useful information about how sulfur is regulated quite differently for different foods, although the risks may be the same:
Sulfites are not allowed on red meat. Sodium bisulfite does such a good job of color fixing, that sulfited ground beef can be rotten and you can’t tell by looking at it. For this reason, the FDA has an absolute prohibition against sulfites in meat. However, the rule doesn’t apply to other ingredients that may be mixed into the meat. For instance, sausage may legally contain corn syrup, molasses, or wine.
SharkFish is another story. Sulfites are a preservative for fish. Theoretically, sulfited fish must carry a warning somewhere near the fish display, but I’ve never seen one.
The author goes on to describe how he has tried to find sulfur in various foods but often suspected the wrong thing, or had a hard time tracing the source(s) of his allergic reactions.
How’s this for the ironic American quote of the day:
“I find it perplexing what the Ethiopians are up to,” said David Shinn, a former U.S. ambassador to Ethiopia. “Over the long term, I don’t see where this gets them. And one wonders how long they can hang on in this situation, because eventually it’s going to turn into a nasty guerrilla war, and I don’t think the Ethiopians have the stomach to carry on with that kind of campaign.”
As I suspected, the Ethiopian government has grown tired of guerrilla forces rattling sabers at their border. Ethiopia has a long history of conflict over the Ogaden region, not to mention they are still smarting from the hugely symbolic loss of Red Sea access after defeat by Tigray and Eritrean forces. And then there’s the less than public subtext of Western forces maintaining a long-standing presence as tactical and strategic advisers in the Horn of Africa. You might even say the ever-present French rapid deployment forces hanging out in Djibouti have been fed up with the Somali situation for some time and, coupled with the American special ops teams hunting for Al Qaeda, play a silent hand pushing Ethiopia into action. Complicated yes, but perplexing, no.
Now about that perplexing situation in Iraq…