Babel: The multilingual, multicultural online journal and community of arts and ideas

I’ve been finding a lot of interesting developments with regard to food lately. So thought I’d share them with you…

Nano-food, nano-tech?

Something new is being added to our table and life called Nano-foods or nano-tech products. What in heavens name is Nano-food?

The internet is buzzing with a lot of stories. Reuters (2008, July 30) Nano-foods: The next consumer scare? In essence Nano-foods are produced by using nano-technology, which involves design and manipulation of the molecular level. Companies utilizing nanotechnology claim it can enhance flavor or nutritional effectiveness.

The Observer Welcome to the world of nano foods. Claims the food industry is developing a colorless, tasteless programmable nano-drink that you zap in a microwave which has been encoded with your eating preferences.

Sounds like sci-fi… Star Trek’s Captain Picard ordering ‘Tea, Earl Grey, hot’ and it materializes in the replicater. That’s an interesting concept. But I wonder about eating what appears to be synthetic food. What about the food’s vitality?

Are there food products that currently contain nano-technology?

Out of the Laboratory and onto our plate. (2008, March) A detailed report on Nano-tech products in agriculture and food funded by Friends of Earth. List of food products currently containing nano-products include: Canola Active Oil (Shemen), Nanotea (Shenzen Become Industry & Trading Co.), Fortified Fruit Juice (High Vive.com), Nanoceuticals Slim Shake (assorted flavors, RBC Lifesciences), NanoSlim beverage(NanoSlim), Oat Nutritional Drink (assorted flavors, Toddler Health), and ‘Daily Vitamin Boost’ fortified fruit juice (Jamba Juice Hawaii).

Do we know if there are risks consuming nano-foods or the potential toxic effects to the body? 

Science Daily ETH Zurich/Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (2008, July 22). Nano-modified Food: How Much Are Consumers Willing To Accept The Associated Risks?. Reports, "Nanoparticles, however, are considered as highly reactive and it is not yet clear whether under certain conditions they can get the better of protective mechanisms and have a toxic impact on the body." Consumer Reports (2007, July) Nanotechnology Untold promise, unknown risk. Reports, "A growing number of scientists say the unique properties of nanomaterials might pose substantial risks, which are largely unexplored, to both human health and the environment."

Besides food there are a lot of products containing Nano-tech over 600 and growing. NanoForum offers an interesting report called Nanotechnology in Consumer Products (2006, October 25) which contains a list of products. As well Madison’s Nano Cafe is a great resource for news and articles about nanotechnology.

I like to make informed decisions about everything in my life. So I’m all for labels disclosing complete information. 

Cloned animals for food?

Wired (2007, December 19) Senate Votes to Keep Cloned Meat Out of Your Burger, for Now. The Senate passed a Farm Bill measure intended to bar the FDA from approving meat and milk from cloned animals until further study was conducted. Center for Food Safety (2008, January 17) Press Release. EUROPEAN UNION GROUP ISSUES OPINION CALLING CLONING FOR FOODS ETHICALLY UNJUSTIFIED. Center for Food Safety Praises Opinion; Calls for Swift Passage of Farm Bill Mandating Examination of Economic Risks to US Agriculture.

Public Opinion Center for Food Safety Reports, "Recent opinion polls show the majority of Americans do not want milk or meat from cloned animals in their food. A national survey conducted this year by Consumers Union found that 89 percent of Americans want to see cloned foods labeled, while 69 percent said that they have concerns about cloned meat and dairy products in the food supply. A recent Gallup Poll reported that more than 60 percent of Americans believe that it is immoral to clone animals, while the Pew Initiative on Food and Biotechnology found that a similar percentage say that, despite FDA approval, they won’t buy milk from cloned animals."

CNN (2008, January 18) FDA OKs meat and milk from most cloned animals. When introduced there will be no labeling required. The FDA asserts that there is no material difference between cloned and conventionally grown animals.

What’s up with the swift approval by the FDA? If cloned animal products ever hit the grocery shelves I’d sure like to know so I can make informed purchasing decisions.

rBGH and GMOs?

Called old news. The newest hot topic is nano-tech, but they haven’t gone away. FDA tells us both are ok. Their endorsement means companies aren’t required to put this info on packaging. Since around 1996 about 70% of our processed foods have contained GMOs. I’d like to know by reading the packaging instead of having to do an extensive online search. My body has an adverse reaction to both of these technologies so I cannot eat them.

Public Opinion A CBS/New York Times poll done recently found that 53 percent of Americans wouldn’t buy genetically modified foods. 

If you’re interested here’s a list of products which contain GMOs. The photo above is an ad from Do You Know What You Eat?Greenpeace’s advertising campaign against Genetically Modified Organisms. What a superbly done and wonderfully creative campaign. Kudos to BBDO Russia.

Organic vs. conventional food study underway some findings released. Green MSN (2007, November) and BBC News (2007, October) reported - a Newcastle University study shows organic foods have far more nutritional value. They found levels of antioxidants in milk from organic cattle were between 50% and 80% higher than normal milk. Organic wheat, tomatoes, potatoes, cabbage, onions and lettuce had between 20% and 40% more nutrients.

Is this just the beginning of lots of comparable studies? To my taste buds naturally grown food (buzz word organic) has a fuller, richer flavor… like homegrown tomatoes vs. store bought. Studies proving what my mouth distinguished at first bite. Exciting! Tastes better and fresh organic food is better for you too! Yahoo!!!

Now if we could only get those crazy prices down…

P.S. I’ve been eating locally grown and organic produce all summer and I started walking. Really strange. I haven’t desired to walk in years. But now most mornings I walk to the Post Office and evenings around the neighborhood; about 2 miles total. I have more vitality and feel better too. Don’t know for sure if it’s related, but it’s sure interesting.

Here are a couple of links you may enjoy:

Food Routes - A resource on locally grown foods. Why to buy and where to buy.

Organic Made Easy - A guide to understanding and buying organic produce on a budget.

The Practical Guide to Healthier Living - Lots of videos and articles about natural healthy living. Why to buy at Farmer’s Markets, recipes and more.

~Bonnee Klein Gilligan

by: James Schwartz

To my birthday boy on his twenty eighth

On August thirty first two thousand eight

I present to you my poetic faith

A man of your own ideals: gay or str8.

To my longtime muse I present a toast:

May your year be of wine, roses and song

May your year be another year to boast

Of after hour adventures all day long.

Your future writ in the palm of my hand

Your dreams and mine intertwine in my ink

Your past a confusion I understand

Our reality served with a chilled drink.

Ever in gaiety, Jazz Age rages

Literary love can stun the ages.

Rosetta Project

The Disk surface shown here, meant to be a guide to the contents, is etched with a central image of the earth and a message written in eight major world languages: “Languages of the World: This is an archive of over 1,000 human languages assembled in the year 02002 C.E. Magnify 1,000 times to find over 15,000 pages of language documentation.” The text begins at eye-readable scale and spirals down to nano-scale. This tapered ring of languages is intended to maximize the number of people that will be able to read something immediately upon picking up the Disk, as well as implying the directions for using it—‘get a magnifier and there is more.’

On the reverse side of the disk from the globe graphic are 15,000 microetched pages of language documentation. Since each page is a physical rather than digital image, there is no platform or format dependency. Reading the Disk requires only optical magnification. Each page is .019 inches, or half a millimeter, across. This is about equal in width to 5 human hairs, and can be read with a 500X microscope (individual pages are clearly visible with 100X magnification).

- rosettaproject.org.

“We hatched a plan to produce a 3-inch non-corroding disk which contained at least 1,000 translations of Genesis and other linguistic information about each language.”

How could a society think in terms of centuries unless there was a reliable way to transmit and store its knowledge over centuries? This puzzle was the focus of a conference hosted by Long Now in 1998, dedicated to technical solutions for Managing Digital Continuity. At this meeting Brewster Kahle of the Internet Archive suggested a new technology developed by Los Alamos labs, and commercialized by the Norsam company, as a solution for long term digital storage. Norsam promised to micro-etch 350,000 pages of information onto a 3-inch nickel disk with an estimated lifespan of 2,000 -10,000 years.

Might it be possible to etch an entire library onto a set of disks? It might be worth trying. All we needed was a finite data set that a society might want to have backed up.

During a Long Now field trip to a southwest archaeological site, the idea of a modern Rosetta Stone came up — a backup of human languages that future generations might cherish. At a winter retreat in 1999, Long Now board member Doug Carlston suggested that for the parallel common text of this modern Rosetta Stone we should use the book of Genesis, since it was most likely already translated into all languages already. We hatched a plan to produce a 3-inch non-corroding disk which contained at least 1,000 translations of Genesis and other linguistic information about each language.

Following the archiving principle of LOCKS (Lots of Copies Keep ‘em Safe) we would replicate the disk promiscuously and distribute them around the world with built in magnifiers. This project in long term thinking would do two things: it would showcase this new long-term storage technology, and it would give the world a minimal backup of human languages.

This business side of the disk is pure nickel. Picking it up you would not be aware there were 13,500 pages of linguistic gold hiding on it. The nickel is deposited on an etched silicon disk. In effect the Rosetta disk is a nickel cast of a micro-etch silicon mold. When the disk is held at the right angle the grid array of the pages form a slight diffraction rainbow. You need a 750-power optical microscope to read the pages.

… The Rosetta disk is not digital. The pages are analog “human-readable” scans of scripts, text, and diagrams. Among the 13,500 scanned pages are 1,500 different language versions of Genesis 1-3, a universal list of the words common for each language, pronunciation guides and so on. Some of the key indexing meta-data for each language section (such as the standard linguistic code number for that language) are displayed in a machine-readable font (OCRb) so that a smart microscope could guide you through this analog trove.

- Kevin Kelly @ kk.org: Link.

Via Slashdot.

The Long Now Foundation:

The Long Now Foundation was established in 01996* to develop the Clock and Library projects, as well as to become the seed of a very long term cultural institution. The Long Now Foundation hopes to provide counterpoint to today’s “faster/cheaper” mind set and promote “slower/better” thinking. We hope to creatively foster responsibility in the framework of the next 10,000 years.

~ Karl Jones

A gorgeous tribute to Jesus and Christ Consciousness created by  K. KRISHNA DAS. Another masterful, sweet work of art.  Enjoy!

~Bonnee Klein Gilligan

By Rossitza Ohridska-Olson
From Saturday till September 10th, the Bulgarian and foreign artists will gather for the 24th issue of Apollonia Art Festival. The most charming part of it are the jazz concerts and the surroundings of the ancient city of Sozopol (Apollonia – the city of Apollo, the patron of arts). During the communist times this festival was a fresh breath of democratic art since it  “allowed” participation from “enemy” countries, such as France, Germany and the USA.
Now is becoming bigger and bigger. There are artists even from Burkina Faso, and of course Bulgaria, Russia, USA with a 12 days program divided between classical and modern music, literature, theater, movies and visual arts.
For those who want to visit it, the program is here. If you need travel arrangement, please write me and I will find you an agency to take care of your request.

Amazonian Shaman. Pastel  9″ x 12″.

Spiritual, esoteric. A highly respected teacher, holy man, psychic, singer and healer. Penetrating, revealing. Original was commissioned. 

Giclee prints are available at Spirit Art Gallery.

~Bonnee Klein Gilligan

Earth and Sky
Gennadiy Vasilyevich Pavlov
Link

• From 16-21 September 2008, St Petersburg State Academic Institute of Painting, Sculpture and Architecture will host an international calligraphy exhibition.
• Press release.
• Participants’ gallery page (there is more to see around the site)
• via Gil Claudio’s trilingual La Grafía blog.

Via BibiOdyssey.

~ Karl Jones

“By and large … comics are long-lived.”
- Dick Cavett

From the blog of Dick Cavett, some thoughts on the profession of comedy:

“Few comedians kill themselves. (Maybe because audiences so readily do it for them.) Young Freddie Prinze comes to mind. At least two in recent years have indulged themselves to death (in different ways) — John Candy and Chris Farley — but I think the legendary funny folk outlive the general population as a rule. And I guess you could say Lenny Bruce — whose alleged genius largely escaped me — did himself in. And of course John Belushi, for whom I had great affection. But by and large (will anyone ever explain that phrase?) comics are long-lived. (See Hope, Burns, et al.) Quite a few hundreders.

- Dick Cavett:  Link.

~ Karl Jones

Mantis Parable is a beautifully animated short film about hope created by Josh Staub. I first saw this short through Spiritual Cinema Circle. A masterful production. Bravo!

Thought you might enjoy it.

~Bonnee Klein Gilligan

~a poem by Bonnee Klein Gilligan

A man with power, pride perhaps

  with jealousy no doubt.

Tries to control, by putting down

  denouncing and defiling

  with envious beguiling.

All empty threats and meaningless

   and truly of no import.

Unless you take it inward

   engaging self to battle self.

Indeed there is no other

   take back what you have given.

Your power and your peace

   take back what you have given, friend.

Back up a step… and breathe self in!!!

Breathe in the knowledge who you are

   breathe in the peace, breathe in the calm.

Breathe in your light…

   it will illumine what you see

   and flood with light the darkness.

For it alone is all that’s real

   and it alone supports you.

Take back your power, step into life

   and choose a different story.

You write the script, edit the book

   create a new beginning.