itan_nati

Tuesday, January 5, 2010

Rodney Smith

With a new coffee book, it was time to revisit one of my favorites.

Sound of Music in Contemporary Times

Wednesday, July 22, 2009

a chocolate bar that won't melt in your hands or pack on the pounds.

One of the world's leading producers of industrial chocolate and cocoa, which it distributes to global giants such as Nestlé and Cadbury, claims its new product, called Vulcano, is the world's first — and so far only — melt-resistant, low-calorie chocolate. "No more stains or sticky fingers," the only place where Vulcano will melt is in the mouth, because of the enzymes present in the saliva."

Regular chocolate starts to soften at 30°C (85°F), but Vulcano can withstand temperatures of up to 55°C (130°F). The manufacturer also claims that its new creation has 90% fewer calories than standard chocolate because it contains less of the treat's fatty ingredients like cocoa butter.

Given its unique no-melt, low-fat combination, Barry Callebaut is keeping the tasty details of Vulcano's ingredients and manufacturing method under wraps. The company will only reveal that the chocolate was invented accidentally, while food engineers were working on another hush-hush project. "When we realized what we had stumbled upon, it was a real 'Eureka!' moment," Tschofen says. But whether Vulcano can melt the hearts of chocoholics around the world remains to be seen. "Generally speaking, low-calorie products, particularly those in more indulgent parts of the market, like chocolate, have become increasingly popular in recent years.

Saturday, July 18, 2009

The Most Trusted Man in America

His obituary in the New York Times was well done, but this memory of his made me laugh.

"I have stood on a long-held principle in refusing even to entertain the idea of running for office. Should one who has achieved national fame as a presumably impartial news person ever run, the public is going to have every reason to question whether that person had been tailoring the news to build a political platform. The burden of credibility is already heavy enough without that extra load.

I tried to explain that to Bobby Kennedy, who was then a Senator from New York, in 1968. I had just returned from Vietnam and the controversial broadcast in which I stepped out of my normal role and, clearly identifying the material as editorial opinion, suggested that we should seek an honorable peace and get out.

Kennedy called me down to his Senate office to have lunch, just the two of us. He wanted to hear more about Vietnam but it turned out he had something else in mind. At that moment he was considering whether to run for the Democratic nomination against the incumbent, President Lyndon Johnson.

After hearing his strong views on Vietnam, which happened to coincide with my own, I fell into a trap which always lies there for the unwary newsman who succumbs to the heady narcotic of being on the inside. I became a player rather than observer.

"If you feel so strongly on the subject," I said, "it seems to me you certainly ought to run for the Presidency."

"Give me three reasons why I should run," he challenged, "and I'll give you three why I shouldn't." We discussed Vietnam a little longer and then he changed the subject.

"You don't vote in New York, do you?" he said. I said that I did.

"But then you are not registered as a Democrat." Apparently he had been checking the registration rolls.

I told him I was an independent both by registration and inclination.

"Well, that doesn't matter," he said. "I want you to run for the Senate in New York."

I thought my answer was very clever. "Give me three reasons why I should and I'll give you three why I shouldn't." Then I told him why I would never be a candidate.

I went back to CBS's Washington bureau to get ready for that evening's broadcast only to find that Roger Mudd, then a correspondent for the network, was preparing a story on the Kennedy clan and advisers gathering for a weekend conclave to decide whether or not Bobby should run.

Our luncheon conversations had been strictly off the record and I needed to explain to the Senator that the story had been developed independently by Roger Mudd with no input from me. But I also saw the opportunity to ask him for a comment on the report.

Kennedy was on the floor of the Senate but his assistant, Frank Mankiewicz, a little miffed, I think, because he wasn't in on the lunch, promised to take my request to him.

Frank called back a few minutes later.

"I don't know what this is about," he said, "but the Senator gave me a message to give to you and said you could use it only if you used it in full."

"The message is: 'I am thinking of running for the Presidency even as Walter Cronkite is considering running for the Senate in New York.' "

A few days later I was to learn again the dangers of a newsman trifling even ever so innocently in the complicated game of politics.

Dr. Frank Stanton, the president of CBS, called me to his office and sternly faced me down with a serious complaint from President Johnson that I was urging Kennedy to run against him. So much for our off-the-record luncheon.

FORDLANDIA

The Amazon has always proved fertile soil for extravagant utopian fantasy. Victorian explorers, American industrialists, ideologues and missionaries all projected their dreams and ideas onto this terra incognita, this untamed wilderness of exotic possibility.For Europe and North America, the vastness of South America was a focus for romance, discovery and potential profit, and also a canvas on which to paint a new world according to individual belief. Elisabeth Nietzsche, the sister of the philosopher, plunged into the jungles of Paraguay in 1886 intent on creating her own vegetarian Aryan republic, spurred on by the anti-Semitic effusions of Richard Wagner. Theodore Roosevelt predicted the great river system could be harnessed to create “populous manufacturing communities.”

The Amazon had a way of swallowing up dreams.

Elisabeth Nietzsche left her flyblown, half-starved New Germany to rot, and scurried home to distort her brother’s philosophical legacy. Roosevelt returned from his Amazon expedition of 1914 declaring the jungle to be “sinister and evil,” a place inimical to man. Alongside the myth of the Amazon’s boundless opportunities grew another: the jungle as impenetrable nature, immune to modernity, a world savage and primeval where each successive conquistador arrives puffed with pride, and is conquered.

Henry Ford’s failed endeavor to export Main Street America to the jungles of Brazil. Fordlandia was a commercial enterprise, intended to extract raw material for the production of motor cars, but it was framed as a civilizing mission, an attempt to build the ideal American society within the Amazon. As described in this fascinating account, it was also the reflection of one man’s personality — arrogant, brilliant and very odd.

In 1927, Ford, the richest man in the world, needed rubber to make tires, hoses and other parts for his cars. Rubber does not grow in Michigan, and European producers enjoyed a virtual monopoly on the rubber trade because of their Asian colonies. So, typically, the car magnate decided to grow his own.

Ford’s vision was a replica Midwestern town, with modern plumbing, hospitals, schools, sidewalks, tennis courts and even a golf course. There would be no drink or other forms of immorality, but gardening for all and chaste dances every week.In Grandin’s words, this outpost of modern capitalism was to be “an example of his particular American dream, of how Ford-style capitalism — high wages, humane benefits and moral improvement — could bring prosperity to a benighted land.” Instead of a miniature but improved North American city, what Ford created was a broiling, pestilential hellhole of disease, vice and violence, closer to Dodge City than peaceable Dearborn.

The American overseers found it hard to retain employees, who tended to wander off after earning enough to satisfy their immediate wants. Those who stayed died in large numbers, from viper bites, malaria, yellow fever and numerous other tropical afflictions.

Meanwhile, some of the Americans brought in to run the project went mad. Indeed, Joseph Conrad’s “Heart of Darkness” resonates through every page of this book, as the white men struggle and succumb to the jungle.

He never set foot in the town that bore his name, yet his powerful, contradictory personality influenced every aspect of the project. The story of Fordland ia is a biography of Ford in relief, the man who championed small-town America but did more to destroy it than any other, the pioneer who aimed to lift workers from drudgery but pioneered a method of soul-destroying mass production that rendered them mere cogs.

Ford was obsessed, among other things, by Thomas Edison, soybeans, antiques and order. He hated unions, cows, Wall Street, Franklin Roosevelt and Jews.

The intransigence of the jungle, changes in the world economy and war ensured its ignominious demise. The Ford Motor Company invested $20 million in Fordlandia. In 1945 it was sold to the Brazilian government for $244,200.

Stuff White People Like

Wednesday, July 15, 2009

Dash Snow

Artist Dash Snow died Monday night, reportedly of a heroin overdose. The 27-year-old artist was part of the "Bowery School" and downtown New York scene. In a 2007 profile, New York Magazine chronicled his art and troubled existence. "He has been living as hard as a person can--in and out of jail, doing drugs, running from the police--for a decade."

Snow comes from a well-known New York art family. His grandmother, Christophe de Menil, is a prominent art collector and philanthropist.

Snow began as a graffiti artist, co-founding the (in)famous Irak Crew. The artist worked with video, Polaroids, photographs, collage, founds objects, and his own bodily fluids to create subversive pieces that were garnering critical praise at the time of his death.