A former White House Administration official wants to Nix The Farm Bill: 1"I’ve got a way to reduce global poverty, decrease the number of workers crossing our borders illegally, save American taxpayers money, and cut your supermarket bill -- in one fell swoop. How? Get rid of US farm subsidies and tariffs."

For the rest, see former Secretary of Labor Robert Reich's latest blog post: Nix The Farm Bill.

- "Speechless" is drawing a lot of praise. Congrats to George, Alan and company on all the hard work. Here is a flattering piece in Time and one from the Associated Press (via CNN). The AP story also gives some journalistic love to Kristen and Peter, our fellow online activists at Hollywood Interrupted. Between their MySpace and Facebook squads, the Virtual Picket Line is approximately 6500 strong.

There was a full moon last night. It will be visible tonight too, and according to NASA, it will be the brightest full moon you'll see for the next 16 years:"That's because it's the highest-riding full moon until the year 2023."

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Exorcism at Warners,

The AMPTP walked away on Friday. The WGA never left the table.

The Guild has made itself crystal clear: Specific proposals have been detailed, compromises have been made, the leadership continues to be engaged in a constructive dialogue to quickly resolve the strike. The AMPTP is as clear about its position: You can't talk to writers because they're emotional and don't understand business.

With the AMPTP away from the table, the negotiation is playing out in the press. If you read Dave McNary in Variety today, there's only one answer to the impasse: the WGA has to accept the companies' demands and get back to work. The companies are too powerful, with their deep pockets and experienced PR resources. The writers' are too emotional, which is great when they're writing screenplays, but not good when you're engaged in a difficult labor negotiation.

No, really. A comprehensive, online, free!, encyclopedia of every living thing on the planet. One page for each. Millions of pages. And it's a wiki - a collaborative, updatable effort from people all over the world. I can't think of a more ambitious project facing the internet.

And it went live on Tuesday (although it may be slow, it's getting over a million hits per hour):
Encyclopedia of Life (EOL)

Here's what the New York Times had to say:
The Encyclopedia of Life, No Bookshelf Required

Here's its official blog:
Encyclopedia of Life Blog

Here are some sample pages (clicking the image will take you to EOL's demo page):

Yeti Crab

Death Cap Mushroom

Robert J. Elisberg's latest Huffington Post column, WGA Strike Primer: Spin the Bottle, puts the latest AMPTP ploys and PR stunts into perspective. The entire piece is a must read but here are some highlights...

Regarding the AMPTP releasing a press release just 20 minutes after storming out of negotiations (again) and demanding the WGA drop six issues or else the companies "petulantly won't even talk," Elisberg writes...

Something wonderful happened yesterday: A walkout by employees at MTV Networks successfully forced the company to restore most of the benefits it had announced would be rolled back. United Hollywood, and I personally, congratulate those who organized (yeah, I said it) this inspiring effort.

Bill Marler is blogging about raw milk if you'd like to add your two cents.
He posted a link to this video of Mark McAfee, owner of Organic Pastures, defending the sale of his raw milk:

"You have no question in your mind that you are absolutely fricking on target. There's no question. There's no scientific test. There's no rationalization. There's no argument. You're fricking right."

Do visit a Calorie Counter.

It also counts protein, fat, carbohydrate, fiber, and lots of other nutrients the USDA has tucked away in their data base. Uncluttered, fast, informative - government agencies in charge of food could learn from a site like this. :)

The owner of the site also has a blog. His last entry on November 6th points to a spectacular table he just created that compares basic nutrition facts for some popular foods from over 20 fast food restaurants:

Fast Food Restaurants & Nutrition Facts Compared

Talking about barley make me recall this Table I posted a while ago. It came from a paper written by Dr. Vinson in 1999, entitled:

The Functional Food Properties of Figs

I like figs.

Well, I just ran some numbers. According to the data in this Table, 2 tablespoons of dry barley has 37% more polyphenols than 1/2 cup blueberries ... and 3650% more polyphenols than an equal amount of wheat.1

Cultured meat isn't going away anytime soon. The People For The Ethical Treatment Of Animals (PETA) are making sure of it.

Yesterday PETA disclosed they'll be offering one million dollars to the first group able to grow palatable chicken meat within the next 4 years:

From PETA: PETA Offers $1 Million Reward to First to Make In Vitro Meat:"PETA is offering a $1 million prize to the contest participant able to make the first in vitro chicken meat and sell it to the public by June 30, 2012. The contestant must do both of the following:

• Produce an in vitro chicken-meat product that has a taste and texture indistinguishable from real chicken flesh to non-meat-eaters and meat-eaters alike.

Uh oh. Never trust the smile of a crocodile?

Alex Ben Block of Hollywood Today reports that the AMPTP's public gestures of reconciliation may mask a plan to derail negotiations and cancel Christmas.There are signs the writers unity is working – reports of dissention among the ranks of the AMPTP’s key members; a softer stance by management in PR and negotiations in the past few days; and comments suggesting that management proposals are flexible.

However, what I am hearing is that this could be another sucker punch for the writers, who think they have finally broken though into a new level of negotiations where the two sides talk things over instead of talking at each other.
...
In its public utterances, the AMPTP continues to use its indoor voice, no doubt fine tuned by a new PR team.
...

It was in my second job, as an editor of a company publication for a large insurance company, that I first learned the power of truth. And what people will do to avoid it.

I was writing a typical article about a committee's marketing planning efforts. I asked what the team was doing, who was on the team and when they expected to finish the work, and I got a blank stare from the manager who was my source. She said she didn't want to put a date out there because the team might held accountable to that date.

That's when I first learned the truth about truth: it's a moving target.

And I think that's why so many brands are so bland. Company's say one thing and act entirely different. There's no accountability to the brand.

The Mississippi House of Representatives has floated a bill (HB 282, below) that would make it illegal to serve obese patrons.

The gentlemen below are the Bill's authors. From left to right: W. T. Mayhall, Jr. (R), John Read (R) , Bobby Shows (D). It appears to be a bipartisan effort.

The USDA has jurisdiction over meat, poultry, and eggs. The FDA has jurisdiction over just about all other food products. The FDA does not currently have recall authority, but they are in the process of asking Congress for it.

In my previous post I said I did not know whether the USDA had recall authority. The article below suggests they do not have recall authority, nor do they want it:

Today, we received some solid information regarding the timetable the DGA is setting for its talks. Michael Apted, president of the DGA, and Gil Cates, their NegCom chair, issued a statement:"Because we want to give the WGA and the AMPTP more time to return to the negotiating table to conclude an agreement, the DGA will not schedule our negotiations to begin until after the New Year, and then, only if an appropriate basis for negotiations can be established."The rest of their statement is strongly worded and reflects the same frustration the WGA and the rest of Hollywood is feeling right now. The WGA wants a fair and reasonable deal. The DGA wants a fair and reasonable deal.

I'm still wondering ... is cultured meat living?

A group of artists from the Tissue Culture and Art Project (TCA) in Australia grew this steak for their exhibition "Disembodied Cuisine".

Click to read captions, and to see some cultured meat up close.

I wish every corporate communications pro would read at least one short segment in Robert Scoble's interview in Communication World. In answer to a question about organizations being threatened by blogs, the A-lister answers:

"The fact of the matter is (corporations are) out of control and they're just holding on to a memory. When I talk about blogging to big companies, I see fear: I see a memory of the way the world used to be."

For more about the article - the online version of Communication World is not posted yet - check out IABC's engaging blog, IABC Commons.

Every day, a little bit of my faith blows away ...

Cancer Docs Profit From Chemotherapy Drugs
Situation begs the ethical question: Are they overprescribing?"The significant amount of our revenue comes from the profit, if you will, that we make from selling the drugs," says Dr. Peter Eisenberg, a private physician who specializes in cancer treatment.________