Nice Picture, Now What Do You Really Look like?

Food In Real Life is a one design blog examining how closely food resembles it's packaging or other advertising renditions and appearances.

Not surprisingly most items aren't up to snuff (you must already have heard that they use glue for milk when shooting cereal boxes, and that they place each sesame seed on a burger bun with tweezers before the shoot) but there are a few (think pop tarts and Uncle Bens) that are fairly accurate.

Bonus points for the tastiness reviews.

(via EMD)

Catch And Release

Carl Safina talks about why we shouldn't take the biggest fish we catch home to eat while on a great little fishing trip with Andy Revkin.

(Not Quite) All The Right Moves

Since I'm now at Duke University studying environmental management, the dealings of Duke Energy (particularly when related to climate change etc) are increasingly catching my eye.

So good for Duke Energy for leaving the American Coalition for Clean Coal Energy after the group continued to fight efforts to pass climate change legislation. Duke Energy also deserves credit for leaving the National Association of Manufacturers for the same reasons earlier this spring.

Good to see that Duke Energy, which has been an industry leader in supporting climate change legislation, is making good on it's talk. Hopefully this trend will continue and it won't turn out to be a huge green-washing fiasco.

When we get comprehensive climate change legislation and Duke Energy stands behind it I'll dispense with the caveat in the title.

(via TP)

The Nightly News

I don't watch the nightly news very often, truth be told our tv currently receives no signals so I don't watch a lot of television period. But it's still worth noting that Charles Gibson is leaving the ABC anchor chair and Diane Sawyer will (finally) be taking over the job.

This will be the first time ever that two of the three main evening news anchors are women.

Terminate Robo-calls

Well not every single last one just yet, but starting today (September 1) you can report most robo-call solicitations to the FTC, which now requires that solicitors obtain your written permission before robo-calling you...

American consumers have made it crystal clear that few things annoy them more than the billions of commercial telemarketing robocalls they receive every year," said Jon Leibowitz, Chairman of the FTC. "Starting September 1, this bombardment of prerecorded pitches, senseless solicitations, and malicious marketing will be illegal. If consumers think they're being harassed by robocallers, they need to let us know, and we will go after them.

(via HTWW, click thru for the number to call to complain)

Take A Look...

It's still in a book, but Reading Rainbow isn't on tv anymore.

This video seems to be everywhere so I'll just go ahead and pile on...

Read This Now - Daily Rations

Ezra Klein neatly shoots down the myth that health care reform will lead to rationing. Why was his post so easy to write and this popular canard so quickly dismissed? Because we already ration health care...

We ration. We ration without discussion, remorse or concern. We ration health care the way we ration other goods: We make it too expensive for everyone to afford.

(quick addendum, I had stopped reading EK when he moved to the WaPo and my reader was swamped, but everyone with any interest in healthcare reform should make sure to get their daily dose.)