OK, I know we covered this topic in the past, but it just won't go away.

Food products that have advertising icons inviting you to eat them sort of spoils my desire to consume. This evening I ate a microwave chicken patty. I know, I know, so I'm no gourmet chef. Anyway, as I remove the frozen meat-like disc from the plastic bag I notice a little cartoon on the back of the receptacle. It is a chicken patty with arms and gloved hands, legs and feet with sneakers, a happy face and a duck-billed hat (very close to the attached illo) with the caption, "Little Redi." He has a word balloon above his head proclaiming, "I'm Redi!" To eat, probably.

Now stop me if I'm on the wrong track here, but in the natural world do chicken patties come up and personally invite you to consume them in a cheerful and happy manner?

Well, it tasted pretty good as far these types of foodstuffs go. It will probably be better next time when I try it with Marmite. Still, I enjoy eating something that isn't so beta and willing to surrender its existence for my tastebuds.

Here is the incredible sunrise over Oly for 24 November.

Some of the discussion of economics, consumerism, collectivism leads me to recommend the following:

I have only watched the first of the three dvds so far, but I found it to be pretty thought-provoking and informative. I live relatively simply for an American, so my lifestyle is lavish by global standards and I am concerned about that. I don't want my lavish lifestyle to come at the expense of lives of other human beings on the planet, but how we move from the rapacious media-programmed consumerism of capitalism to something more magnanimous is a mystery.

This review of the big ideas of global economics - the play and tension between keynesian economics of humanism and stability versus the potential rising-tide-raises-all-ships economics of free market economics is very interesting.