"It's better to light a candle...

...than to curse the darkness."

I really like that proverb. A thunderstorm yesterday left me without power for perhaps an hour or two. Really made me appreciate how much I depend on it (esp. since my range, hot water heater, etc. are all electric). Also thought about how many people don't have access to this great wonder or suffer frequent outages. As it happened I'd recently looked at my bill when I paid it online and all of this--heating my showers, cooking my food, light at 1 a.m. and much more--costs me less than $2 a day. Amazing. Of course the real cost includes environmental damage, etc. A good reason to sign up for NC Green Power.

The Food Issue (The Nation)

An entire issue of my favorite magazine devoted to my favorite topic. Delicious.

Getting Mideast News

Sorry I didn't post this a while back when things were really hot.

It's important to read foreign media if you want to get a better perspective of what's going on. Here are a few:

Haaretz

Al Jazeera in English.

BBC News Middle East

Informed Consent Mideast Historian Juan Cole's blog, which often translates media from abroad.