September 2014 archive

 Burger King Japan unveils a black ninja burger that licks you back

   Michelle Lynn Dinh

Burger King is bringing on the bizarre burgers once again with their new “Kuro Ninja,” a burger with a black bun and long, thick strip of bacon protruding out of one side. We’re not sure if ninjas ever stuck their tongues out at their enemies, but if they did and they were somehow magically transformed into a burger, this is what they’d look like.

The Kuro Ninja, or Black Ninja, is Burger King Japan’s newest sandwich. It has a pitch black bun colored with bamboo charcoal (nothing new), but this time, a huge slab of “King’s Bacon” juts out from the sides, making it look as if your delicious burger has sprouted a pink tongue. What

The leaders of 125 nations will meet on Tuesday at the United Nations for the largest summit on the climate since Copenhagen summit that ended in collapse in 2009.

Climate change is not a far-off problem. It is happening now and is having very real consequences on people’s lives. Climate change is disrupting national economies, costing us dearly today and even more tomorrow.  But there is a growing recognition that affordable, scalable solutions are available now that will enable us all to leapfrog to cleaner, more resilient economies.

The summit will be preceded by the People’s Climate March in New York City. The march is expected to draw over 100,000

The truth about our planet is horrifying, but the true leaders aren’t the ones at the UN – they’re in the streets

At exactly 1pm on Sunday, the streets of New York City are going to fill with the sound of clanging pots, marching bands, church bells and whatever other kinds of noisemakers that participants of the People’s Climate March decide to bring along.

It’s being called the “climate alarm”, and the general idea is that a whole lot of people are going to make the very loud point that climate change is a true emergency for humanity, the kind of threat that should cause us to stop what we are doing and get out of harm’s way.

Is it a stunt? Well, sure, all protests are. But the mere act of expressing our collective sense of climate urgency goes beyond symbolism. What is most terrifying about the threat of climate disruption is not the unending procession of scientific reports about rapidly melting ice sheets, crop failures and rising seas. It’s the combination of trying to absorb that information while watching our so-called leaders behave as if the global emergency is no immediate concern. As if every alarm in our collective house were not going off simultaneously.

Only when we urgently acknowledge that we are facing a genuine crisis will it become possible to enact the kinds of bold policies and mobilize the economic resources we need. Only then will the world have a chance to avert catastrophic warming.

In her new book, “This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs. the Climate,” Ms. Klein outlines the need for “a new economic model to address the ecological crisis.” She joined Amy Goodman and Juan González of Democracy Now! to discuss the radical action that will be needed,

“We have not done the things that are necessary to lower emissions because those things fundamentally conflict with deregulated capitalism, the reigning ideology for the entire period we have been struggling to find a way out of this crisis,” Klein writes. “We are stuck because the actions that would give us the best chance of averting catastrophe – and would benefit the vast majority – are extremely threatening to an elite minority that has a stranglehold over our economy, our political process, and most of our major media outlets.”

Watch the livestream of the People’s Climate March on Sunday September 21 from 10:30am to 1:30pm ET via Democracy Now.

Welcome to the Stars Hollow Gazette‘s Health and Fitness News weekly diary. It will publish on Saturday afternoon and be open for discussion about health related issues including diet, exercise, health and health care issues, as well as, tips on what you can do when there is a medical emergency. Also an opportunity to share and exchange your favorite healthy recipes.

Questions are encouraged and I will answer to the best of my ability. If I can’t, I will try to steer you in the right direction. Naturally, I cannot give individual medical advice for personal health issues. I can give you information about medical conditions and the current treatments available.

You can now find past Health and Fitness News diaries here and on the right hand side of the Front Page.

Follow us on Twitter @StarsHollowGzt

A couple of months ago, at the height of the summer tomato season, I gave you a recipe for a delicious whole wheat focaccia with tomatoes and fontina. I was so enthralled with the bread that I decided I’d come back to it and post a week’s worth of focaccia recipes. [..]

Focaccia takes more time to make than pizza, but I find that it’s less challenging to make and it’s more versatile in some ways. You can serve it warm or at room temperature, as a snack or as a small meal. It’s easy to transport, freezes well and lends itself beautifully to whole grain flour.

~ Martha Rose Shulman ~

“Punting the Pundits” is an Open Thread. It is a selection of editorials and opinions from around the news medium and the internet blogs. The intent is to provide a forum for your reactions and opinions, not just to the opinions presented, but to what ever you find important.

Thanks to ek hornbeck, click on the link and you can access all the past “Punting the Pundits”.

Follow us on Twitter @StarsHollowGzt

Trevor Timme: Is Obama really going back to war with a worse legal rationale than Bush? He still won’t say

Whatever the administration’s tortured and torture architect-approved logic for combatting Isis, one thing is clear: the public isn’t allowed to see it

It was equal parts ironic and tragic watching US Secretary of State John Kerry testify before the Senate Foreign Relations committee this week, as he shamelessly made the case for a war without end against Isis. It was the same place he sat 43 years ago, as a young soldier, bravely and eloquently calling for an end to American fighting in Vietnam, his generation’s endless war – the same war that led to Congress passing the War Powers Resolution, the law the Obama administration has now decided it can completely disregard.

As with much of the White House’s secret and possibly illegal march back to Iraq and beyond, almost every aspect of Kerry’s testimony on Wednesday was riddled with holes. The Obama administration’s case for intervention begins and ends with the fantastical idea that it thinks it can use a law passed 13 years ago – before Isis even existed, and meant for the perpetrators of 9/11 – to start a war that White House officials freely admit will last for years, yet is aimed at a group that virtually all intelligence analysts agree is not an imminent threat to the United States.

Jess Zimmerman: The 1% has bought its own internet. What’s next? Words with Rich People?

If Internet Platinum Reserve is surprising, it’s only because we’ve been trying to fool ourselves that the web is a populist haven, over here at Poor People Online

In one of the best moments of the genius webcomic Achewood, occasional protagonist Ray – a Scottish Fold cat who is also a wealthy playboy – goes on eBay while high and impulsively types, in the search bar, WHAT’S THE BEST THING YOU GOT? The screen blinks, then lights up with the message “Welcome to eBay Platinum Reserve.” [..]

Proponents of net neutrality worry about this happening for real. Or at least they worry about a future in which a small handful of monopoly-happy telecoms are able to throttle access to any website that doesn’t make them money or provide lower-paying customers with slowed and restricted service. Net neutrality boosters want government regulation to dictate that all sites and customers get the same treatment, rather than splitting the web into “slow lanes” and “fast lanes” along financial lines. Internet pinkos don’t want rich people to have better internet.

Well, it’s too late. Rich people already have better internet. Mercifully, cable modems are fairly common these days – remember when the best you could afford was DSL? – so for now, the rich don’t necessarily get faster internet. But they do get Internet Platinum Reserve.

This is your morning Open Thread. Pour your favorite beverage and review the past and comment on the future.

Find the past “On This Day in History” here.

September 20 is the 263rd day of the year (264th in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. There are 102 days remaining until the end of the year.

On this day in 1973, in a highly publicized “Battle of the Sexes” tennis match, top women’s player Billie Jean King, 29, beats Bobby Riggs, 55, a former No. 1 ranked men’s player. Riggs (1918-1995), a self-proclaimed male chauvinist, had boasted that women were inferior, that they couldn’t handle the pressure of the game and that even at his age he could beat any female player. The match was a huge media event, witnessed in person by over 30,000 spectators at the Houston Astrodome and by another 50 million TV viewers worldwide. King made a Cleopatra-style entrance on a gold litter carried by men dressed as ancient slaves, while Riggs arrived in a rickshaw pulled by female models. Legendary sportscaster Howard Cosell called the match, in which King beat Riggs 6-4, 6-3, 6-3. King’s achievement not only helped legitimize women’s professional tennis and female athletes, but it was seen as a victory for women’s rights in general.

Billie Jean King (née Moffitt; born November 22, 1943 in Long Beach, California) is a former professional tennis player from the United States. She won 12 Grand Slam  singles titles, 16 Grand Slam women’s doubles titles, and 11 Grand Slam mixed doubles titles. King has been an advocate against sexism in sports and society. She is known for “The Battle of the Sexes” in 1973, in which she defeated Bobby Riggs, a former Wimbledon men’s singles champion.

King is the founder of the Women’s Tennis Association, the Women’s Sports Foundation, and World Team Tennis, which she founded with her former husband, Lawrence King.

Despite King’s achievements at the world’s biggest tennis tournaments, the U.S. public best remembers her for her win over Bobby Riggs in 1973.

Riggs had been a top men’s player in the 1930s and 1940s in both the amateur and professional ranks. He won the Wimbledon men’s singles title in 1939, and was considered the World No. 1 male tennis player for 1941, 1946, and 1947. He then became a self-described tennis “hustler” who played in promotional challenge matches. In 1973, he took on the role of male chauvinist. Claiming that the women’s game was so inferior to the men’s game that even a 55-year-old like himself could beat the current top female players, he challenged and defeated Margaret Court 6-2, 6-1. King, who previously had rejected challenges from Riggs, then accepted a lucrative financial offer to play him.

I’ve often opined that “classical” music (also called “art” music to distinguish it from the time period) is the “rock” music of it’s age.  You have the dysfunctional artists (why do you think they call them divas?), the groupies, and-

a cruel and shallow money trench, a long plastic hallway where thieves and pimps run free, and good men die like dogs.  There’s also a negative side.

Just as in contemporary times there are works that feature the talents of a small group and those that highlight a virtuoso individual performer.

And that is the difference between a Sonata and a Concerto.  A Sonata is a piece of several movements composed for one or two instruments as an ensemble.  A Concerto is a piece of several movements featuring a soloist accompanied by an orchestra or band.  The Sonata is the older form and originally meant a work without a vocal component (as opposed to a Cantata which means, literally, “to sing”).

The essential component here is several movements.  In Baroque music there were two types of Sonata- Sonata da Chiesa, which is one suitable for Church and always consists of several movements, “a slow introduction, a loosely fugued allegro, a cantabile slow movement, and a lively finale in some binary form suggesting affinity with the dance-tunes of the suite“, and a Sonata da Camera which was used at Court and basically a Prelude and then a Medley of popular dance tunes.

Rock, what am I telling you?

Gradually the form of the Chiesa came to predominate along with the content of the Camera so that during what we can properly call the Classical era the format of a Sonata evolved to 4 movements rather than 3 (or 2) including an Allegro with exposition, development, and recapitulation; a slow movement, an Andante, an Adagio or a Largo; a dance movement, usually a Minuet or a Scherzo featuring a trio; and a big windup, often a Rondo.  Because it was “art” music, melodies and rhythms were frequently repeated with variations in tempo and key and sometimes inverted and reversed notation.  Think of it as “sampling” especially as most of it was stolen from whatever people were grooving to at the moment.

As noted the Sonata is mostly scored for very small groups, typically a piano or harpsicord and the featured intrument.  So it’s like hiring the local garage band (keyboard, guitar, drums?) to play your backyard party.

A little aside-

I was studying (hah!) in Syracuse and my next door neighbor needed a ride to his buddy’s down in Binghamton where they were having a big blow out.  I already had plans for that day but I had some time so I said sure.  I got him there and helped the band set up and looked at my watch and said- “Woops, gotta go.”

What?!  You’re not going to stay for the party?

I have another party.  I’ll pick you up tomorrow.

Anyway I come back the next day and as I thought the party is still happening and other than having to pick my way through the beer cans and mud I didn’t miss a thing.  He, on the other hand, was totally impressed.

So, like that in wigs and frock coats.

A Concerto is an entirely big deal, like tickets for Springsteen.  There’s Bruce, and then there’s the band.

Once you have a background in the forms I expect I’ll be reduced to 17th to 19th century gossip and calumny which suits me just fine.  CT stands for COMPLETELY TRUE! (also Connecticut where we’re happy to sell you a chunk of wood and call it Nutmeg).  Today I’ll highlight 4 pieces, a Sonata and Concerto by Vivaldi from the Baroque period when the form was developing, and a Sonata and Concerto by Mozart which represents the Classical era archtype.

Vivaldi Sonata for Bassoon and Harp in A minor

Vivaldi Concerto for Two Cellos in G minor

Mozart Violin Sonata No 32 in B flat major

Mozart: Clarinet Concerto in A major

Oblgatories, News, and Blogs below.

I’m pinch hitting for triv tonight, as she is a bit under the weather. She may show up if she feels good enough, but for tonight, ya gots me!

We don’t really have a topic for tonight, so the topic is going to be whatever moves ya! Can e old songs, new songs, stuff you haven’t thought of for a while. It’s open for anything!

I still have some work stuff to finish and a multitude of kitties to feed, so I will be scarce til after 8pm Central time. But I will be grading your choices, lol… On a very easy curve… 😉

So here are a few of mine. This one reminds me of my pop:

Jump!

Ahoy mateys.  It be Cap’n Hank Bloodbeard hijacking your blog ag’in.  Since the establishin’ of International Talk Like a Pirate Day in 1995, the number of Pirates has increased gratifyin’ly thereby proving the success of our Pastafarian Pirate Recruitin’ Program and confirmin’ the link between increased piracy and declinin’ Global Warmin’.

But wait ye say, Global Warmin’ has gotten worse and Pastafarianism is a made up religion contrived out of equal measures of ennui, ignorance and Rum!

WHY IS THERE NEVER ANY RUM!  Oh, that’s why.

Ye scurvy dog, them be fightin’ wards.  Ye’ll walk the plank. I’ll keelhaul ye.  I’ll see your black hearted soul in Davey Jones Locker (the one ‘e shares w’ Peter Toth).

We used to worry about that too until we took up w’ a crew o’ Freshwater Pirates from the Chicago School who explained that it doesn’t matter how consistently and thoroughly wrong ye are if ye suck up to rich people enough and parrot their prejudices, beat down the po’ folk until morale improves, and kiss their ass long and hard.  Take what ye can, give nothin’ back, yo ho.

Polly want a grant?

E’en on these shores Cap’n Bloodbeard (aside from really enjoyin’ referin’ to hisself in the thard person) be known for ‘is trail of terror and carnage and really bad puns.

• 2007 DocuDharma

• 2008 DocuDharma
• 2008 Daily Kos

• 2010 The Stars Hollow Gazette

• 2011 DocuDharma
• 2011 The Stars Hollow Gazette

• 2012 DocuDharma
• 2012 The Stars Hollow Gazette

• 2013 DocuDharma
• 2013 The Stars Hollow Gazette

I generally celebrate International Talk Like a Pirate Day by telling the 3 Pirate Jokes.  There are only 3, all the others are just variations.  As Cap’n Slappy says:

Thar be only three pirate jokes in the world. The biggest one is the one that ends with someone usin’ “Arrr” in the punchline. Oh, sure, thar be plenty o’ these, but they’re all the same damn joke.

“What’s the pirate movie rated? – Arrr!” “What kind o’ socks does a pirate wear? – Arrrrgyle!” “What’s the problem with the way a pirate speaks? – Arrrrticulation!” …and so forth.

The second joke is the one wear the pirate walks into the bar with a ships wheel attached to the front o’ his trousers. The bartender asks, “What the hell is that ships wheel for?” The pirate says, “I don’t know, but it’s drivin’ me nuts!”

And finally. A little boy is trick or treatin’ on Halloween by himself. He is dressed as a pirate. At one house, a friendly man asks him, “Where are your buccaneers?” The little boy responds, “On either side o’ me ‘buccan’ head!”

And there ye have it. A symposium on pirate humor that’ll last ye a lifetime – so long as life is violent and short.

If ye steer a course to the official website of International Talk Like A Pirate Day, ye may wish to read the FAQ, to help ye splice the mainbrace proper like.  Then ye’ll be ready to talk like a pirate.

Talking like a pirate, however, doesn’t just mean running through the hallways yelling “yarr!” at everyone. To get more in touch with one’s inner pirate, here is a short list of useful terms that may help readers throughout their day of pillaging and searching for buried treasure.

I also spend this day in Worship at Church and emulate the manners, customs, and language o’ me Pirate forbearers (I have the good fortune to be 1/4 full blooded Pirate through my Viking ancestors, indeed Viking is a verb which means ‘Pirate’) and singing some Pirate Carols.

There will come a time when you have a chance to do the right thing.

I love those moments. I like to wave at them as they pass by.

“Punting the Pundits” is an Open Thread. It is a selection of editorials and opinions from around the news medium and the internet blogs. The intent is to provide a forum for your reactions and opinions, not just to the opinions presented, but to what ever you find important.

Thanks to ek hornbeck, click on the link and you can access all the past “Punting the Pundits”.

Follow us on Twitter @StarsHollowGzt

Richard (RJ) ESkow: Want to Save the Planet? Flood Wall Street

This is a critical week for the planet. A United Nations conference on the climate will be followed on Saturday by the People’s Climate March, which is expected to be the largest environmental march in history. But it would be a grave mistake, for the planet and for ourselves, to overlook another event that is to take place on Sunday. That’s when the Flood Wall Street rally will target the role of global capitalism in our environmental crisis.

The profit economy is a root cause — make that the root cause — of climate change.

Wall Street is, in a very real sense, the epicenter of our environmental crisis. To ignore that fact is to risk dooming our other climate efforts to failure, or to use them merely as palliatives for troubled consciences. There’s no other way to say this: Capitalism, as practiced on Wall Street today, is an existential threat to humanity.

Martin Kettle: Scotland votes no: the union has survived, but the questions for the left are profound

The immediate political question now suddenly moves to London: a new constitutional settlement needs to be on the table by the end of next month

Like the battle of Waterloo, the battle for Scotland was a damn close-run thing. The effects of Thursday’s no vote are enormous – though not as massive as the consequences of a yes would have been. [..]

But the battlefield is still full of resonant lessons. The win, though close, was decisive. It looks like a 54%-46% or thereabouts. That’s not as good as it looked like being a couple of months ago. But it’s a lot more decisive than the recent polls had hinted. Second, it was women who saved the union. In the polls, men were decisively in favour of yes. The yes campaign was in some sense a guy thing. Men wanted to make a break with the Scotland they inhabit. Women didn’t. Third, this was to a significant degree a class vote too. Richer Scotland stuck with the union – so no did very well in a lot of traditonal SNP areas. Poorer Scotland, Labour Scotland, slipped towards yes, handing Glasgow, Dundee and North Lanarkshire to the independence camp. Gordon Brown stopped the slippage from becoming a rout, perhaps, but the questions for Labour – and for left politics more broadly – are profound.