"It's a food product, essentially."
Leave it to Faux News to try to "spin" police brutality against unarmed citizens exercising their constitutional rights. Last night, Fox News hosts
Bill O'Reilly and Megyn Kelly declared pepper spray a vegetable and bent over backward
to
condone its use by campus police against Occupy protesters on the University of California, Davis, campus. O'Reilly even went as far as to use the infamous Hitler-era "they were only following orders" defense—orders that the chief of campus police has been placed on leave for giving, along with two of the officers involved in the spraying.
Speaking of John Pike, the pepper-spraying cop, not
only has he already become an internet meme, but the meme has gone meta and is showing up on protest posters on the UC Davis campus. Small towns that
have streets named Wall are also getting in on the Occupy Wall Street action, albeit ironically, and John Pike has already shown up there as well.
There's a Wall Street in Westerly; anyone up for occupying it?
By Linda Felaco
Occupy Christmas.
The other day, I wrote some suggestions for shopping locally this Christmas. Along the same
lines, there is also a Facebook group called Occupy Christmas,
which has numerous tips for homemade decorations and alternative gift-giving ideas. TLC offers ideas for recycled Christmas crafts your kids can make.
David Fisher has some tips for cutting down on the annual ritual of mass consumption on ecoRI. Dave advocates skipping the light displays to save energy, but I have to say, traveling the dirt roads last night to the Eastern HQ of Progressive
Charlestown, I would not have minded a house or two decorated in Griswold style to help light my way
there.
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| Stop me before I casserole again! (image by Rick Kimpel from Spring, TX, USA) |
"It's a food product, essentially."
But really, there's not much more that can be said about the American holiday ritual of the green bean casserole. I realize it's tough to get kids to
eat green beans. (I was apparently an extremely abnormal child; I liked vegetables, even broccoli.) I realize that after doing all the prep work
required for all the other staples of the meal, it's tempting to cut corners when you discover you've got nothing green to put on the table. But to
resort to a "recipe" invented by Campbell's to boost sales of its cream of mushroom soup is, as John McIntyre of the Baltimore Sun implores, "a survival of American culinary practice better abandoned." And he offers much tastier alternatives.
Yes, McIntyre says, "you will have to contend with resistance from people at the table who think they like this bland slop and consider it an
indispensable component of festivity. Be strong. If you do not educate them in the taste of real food, who will?"
Pizza is a vegetable, but water doesn't prevent dehydration.
Apparently, bureaucratic stupidity is not confined to the United States. After a 3-year investigation that failed to prove what even children know
instinctively,
the European Union has banned the manufacturers of bottled water from making claims that the water prevents dehydration. According to The Telegraph, "[a] meeting of 21 scientists in Parma, Italy, concluded that reduced water content in the body was a symptom of
dehydration and not something that drinking water could subsequently control." Is there some way to increase the water content in the body besides
drinking water?
And now for something completely different. Never let it be said that all I do is complain. In the spirit of the holidays, I leave you with a couple of holiday-themed videos. Enjoy!