Cinco de Mayo: A Profoundly Researched Insight

It's Cinco de Mayo! To look at this traditional Mexican-American feast in greater depth I turned to Wikipedia and the Urban Dictionary, where the first definition put the feast in a somewhat insensitive but likely accurate nutshell:

Photo: El Castillo at Chichén Itzá [Wikimedia Commons] by Eric Baetscher (March 29, 2008)
Licensed under GNU Free Documentation License

Trig-Birthery

The most popular story on the Guardian's website this morning is Megan Carpentier's perspective on the conspiracy theories surrounding former vice-presidential candidate Sarah Palin's youngest child.

(Megan is the ex-Washington, D.C. lobbyist who once wrote pseudonymously for the political blog Wonkette. Then she contributed her expert commentary as an editor at Jezebel before, during, and after the 2008 presidential elections.)

Easter in an Eggshell

In honour of the Easter holidays I have been culpably bad about updating the blog, but here is a culinary-centric retrospective of the past weekend:

1. Easter:

Breakfast with croissants, buns, cheese, ham, and jam. Tea, coffee, hot chocolate. A lot of Easter eggs, both proper and chocolate or candy, and two chocolate Easter bunnies for everyone. A bouquet; this year it was composed of a variant of cherry twigs, and red geranium and heart's ease from our flowerpots and box. The tablecloth was white as usual.

Listening to Händel's Messiah.
(Note: The umlaut on the "a" is important, since it is the difference between "handle" and the correct pronunciation "hendell," which is however so rare in English that it is probably best to go with the wrong pronunciation.)

2. Easter Monday:

Lamb roasted with garlic and sage and butter. Potatoes, broad beans and a lettuce salad with olive oil and aceto balsamico.

Gas Wells: The Trickle-Down Effect

The Guardian is running an article by Nina Berman for Alternet about the effects of living in a gas-rich part of Pennsylvania.

The creeping arrival of industry and the intensifying manifestations of subterranean chemistry sound like a surreal alien invasion.

Lest We Forget

It is the 150th anniversary of the shots on Fort Sumter which opened the American Civil War. In other words, a kind of wedding anniversary for battle reenactors.

Which presents to give? I turned to the relevant Wikipedia article for inspiration.

***

A Dagger to the Heart of British Architecture

While confessing to liking the Shard, I enjoyed the lament of the Guardian's critic, Jonathan Jones, over the new skyscraper in the core of London: "Shard Attack" (April 12). The comments section is also worthy of a glance.




The Shard From Southwark Street
by Loz Pycock
Licensed under CC Attribution-ShareAlike 2.0 Generic
(via Wikimedia Commons)

Los Angeles Police Officers Successfully Sue Over Ticket Quota

In 2006 a new head of Los Angeles's West Traffic Division reportedly started a policy that every officer had to hand out at least 18 traffic tickets a day.

Officers Howard Chan and David Benioff took issue with the quota, which is illegal in California, and were punished for it by their superiors.

On April 11th they won a lawsuit against the department and were given $2 million in damages.

"LAPD officers who complained about ticket quotas are awarded $2 million" [Los Angeles Times], by Andrew Blankstein and Joel Rubin(April 12, 2011)

Update: "10 LAPD officers sue, saying department has traffic-ticket quotas" [Los Angeles Times], by Andrew Blankstein (August 4, 2011)