Ends Up, There're NOT Plenty of Fish in the Sea

Posted on 14. Aug, 2009 by michelemitchell in Environment, Middle Class Crunch

So the fish of the world are disappearing — we’re literally eating our way to their extinction. But some of the leading chefs of the world, like Le Bernardin’s Legion d’Honneur chef Eric Ripert, are actively working to change this, one table at a time.

Even if that table belongs to a cash-strapped college student.

The man works with intense budgets every day—albeit a bit more highbrow than what I’m used to—but he was once a starving student, so he had a few handy tips on how to eat well, for less, and save the world, too.

Ripert told us he likes to eat steak and drink a scotch--not necessarily together, though.

“You can buy a good fish fillet and pair it with a good, inexpensive starch, like potatoes,” Ripert told me recently. “Try collard greens, or even whole heads of lettuce instead of packaged salads. Buy in bulk. Instead of chicken wings, buy the whole chicken.”

And then there’s the environmentally sound choices that also fit a tight budget. Those slabs of tuna steak or tender Chilean sea bass belly are very expensive—and for a reason. They’re practically gone.

“The perception of whether a fish is expensive or not is in the eye of the beholder,” Ripert said. “You can always use cheaper fish such as sardines or tilapia,”

And how to cook that sardine, if you (like me) are used to pulling them out of a can?

“You have to sear the skin of the sardine until it is crispy.”

Learn more about it in this episode of A Minute of Your Time.

-Sabrina Chan

And Back to Those Orangutans…

Posted on 13. Aug, 2009 by michelemitchell in Energy Security

Our recent “Minute” dealt with the effects of palm oil production on humans, animals and land. Here’s a first-hand account from our own Sabrina Chan, who grew up in Malaysia.

Haven't We Played This Record Before?

Posted on 10. Aug, 2009 by michelemitchell in War on Terror

Admittedly, it doesn’t help when you have a president citing Gog and Magog as swell reasons to go to war. Countries like, oh, say, Israel, might be forgiven for being confused now, after eight years of ears open to Biblical reasoning to public policy, that the same arguments aren’t working on the Obama administration.

So if you can’t count on good old fashioned American biblical rhetoric, maybe you can count on good old fashioned American short-term memory! We’re famous for it.

Today’s Haaretz has the interior minister touring the E-1 corridor in Jerusalem and saying “he hoped Israel would succeed in convincing the U.S. to approve construction.” The minister goes on to note that the “the new [U.S.] administration is different from the last,” and that the Bush administration had “made clear comments” regarding its acceptance (italics, ours) of construction in that area.

Sigh. We are hoping that our upcoming episode of “Political Graffiti” will be our Last Story About Israel Ever, but then there are moments like these, when we have information. So in our Second to Last Story About Israel Ever:

In addition to the on-record testimony we have from former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice regarding the E-1 corridor–”“We have told the Israelis in no uncertain terms that [settlement in the E1 area] would contravene American policy”–we have from a US source involved in the negotiations that “the issue Rice got the most incensed over was the development of the E-1 zone. The US said time and time again: you do not start E-1.”

Now, whether or not Israel presses forward and starts construction is one thing. But the ruse that this was a project ever approved by any US administration (Elliot Abrams does not count as an “administration”) is just that–another ruse.

"Don't do it! Doooon't...do...it!"

Of Orangutans and Clogged Arteries

Posted on 10. Aug, 2009 by michelemitchell in Environment

In the pursuit of health, we now post calorie counts on menus, we talk of salads and trans-fats–but what went in foods when the trans fats went out?

The New England Journal of Medicine published its findings here. We tackle palm oil in this episode of A Minute of Your Time and explain what orangutans have to do with it.
http://blip.tv/file/3414885

There's Uranium in That There Canyon!

Posted on 07. Aug, 2009 by michelemitchell in Environment

Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar has decided to stop uranium mining at the Grand Canyon. Now, perhaps this falls into your “common sense” file, but during the Bush administration, claims popped up along the Colorado River and the canyon itself. Currently, about 1,100 uranium mining claims are within five miles of the Grand Canyon National Park.

However, Salazar’s protections won’t include existing claims near the canyon–thanks to the General Mining Act of 1872. Check out our take in this episode of A Minute of Your Time.
http://blip.tv/file/3414587

Gog and Magog leave Chirac…well…Agog

Posted on 06. Aug, 2009 by michelemitchell in War on Terror

So ’tis the season for policymakers and politicians to steer public opinion their way, via books. We know one is on the way from Cheney. Former President George W. Bush, too. And we’re really hoping that when Bush publishes his “decision” book that he includes some guidance as to how he decided to pitch former French President Jacques Chirac on the war with Iraq…by citing Gog and Magog.

According to a new book by Chirac (Si Vous le Répétez, Je Démentirai–If You Repeat it, I Will Deny) to be published next March, Bush told him: “Gog and Magog are at work in the Middle East…. The biblical prophecies are being fulfilled…. This confrontation is willed by God, who wants to use this conflict to erase his people’s enemies before a New Age begins.”

Chirac had no clue what Bush was talking about, so his staff asked Swiss theologian Thomas Roemer of the University of Lausanne to explain. We went to Wiki.

"I simply have no idea what on earth you are talking about."

Settle Down, Settlers

Posted on 06. Aug, 2009 by michelemitchell in War on Terror

Ah, the settlements. We’re not sure how that particular word got chosen for massive housing tracts that more closely resemble Southern California suburbs (if those suburbs were, say, plunked down on land that technically belonged to someone else), but still, homes inhabited by Israelis that are built in the West Bank are referred to by a term usually used to denote pioneers, like Laura Ingalls Wilder or Davey Crockett.

President Obama, following the Mitchell Plan of 2001 (which identified settlements as a flashpoint and advised an immediate freeze), has now drawn the ire of Abe Foxman and the Anti-Defemation League–the ADL coughed up money for a full-page ad in the New York Times to say so. The takeaway is this: “the problem isn’t settlements, it’s Arab rejection.”

J Street, having none of it, published an open letter on August 4, retorting, “The problem isn’t just settlements, nor Arab rejection. And a lasting resolution to this decades old conflict – a goal which I know you and your organization supports – isn’t advanced by pointing fingers at either side.”

And the ADL fired back with it’s own open letter, to J Street, criticizing the “exaggerated emphasis on the settlement issue.”

J Street’s Isaac Luria sat down with us to discuss the settlements earlier this year.

They Got WHAT Wrong?

Posted on 05. Aug, 2009 by michelemitchell in Environment

A new study in Nature Geoscience found that scientists may have gotten their global warming prediction wrong–in this case, the study says, climate models explain only about half of the heating that occurred during a well-documented period of rapid global warming in Earth’s ancient past.

This isn’t the first time scientists have reconsidered their global warming predictions. In fact, the IPCC report on global warming–it ends up–may have been far too optimistic. Our take is here

Getting Soggy

Posted on 04. Aug, 2009 by michelemitchell in Environment

When it comes to global warming, it’s not just carbon dioxide we’ve got to worry about–there’s methane, too, and this is about to be the new hipster greenhouse gas to muddle over. Why? Because it’s bubbling up from the permafrost in the Arctic, and because the potential for disaster is so much greater than CO2.

Scientists are concerned that methane released from melting permafrost will trap hot air, raise the air temperature, lead to more melting of more permafrost, which releases more carbon–you get the idea.

Katy Walter Anthony, an ecologist at the University of Alaska, has done some of the seminal work in this area. We cover it in our latest “Minute of Your Time.”

AIG…A Hero?

Posted on 03. Aug, 2009 by michelemitchell in Environment

The California Natural Resources Agency is issuing a report today sure to completely depress the state’s beleaguered citizens. Yes, kids, back to global warming. AP rattles off,”Over the last century in California, the sea level has risen by 7 inches, average temperatures have increased, spring snowmelt occurs earlier in the year, and there are hotter days and fewer cold nights.”

The report urges local governments and private land owners to “work together.” (Good luck with that!)

We expect to hear a lot more global warming policy planning to take place (Senator James Inhofe, we’re looking at you), but it might surprise you who is leading the charge nationally. Our take is here.

I just got here and I'm already a hero! Awesome!