{"id":4732,"date":"2011-11-30T11:19:00","date_gmt":"2011-11-30T19:19:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/cahighways.org\/wordpress\/?p=4732"},"modified":"2011-11-30T11:19:00","modified_gmt":"2011-11-30T19:19:00","slug":"a-wandering-news-chum-i","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cahighways.org\/wordpress\/?p=4732","title":{"rendered":"A Wandering News Chum, I"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Today&#8217;s lunchtime news chum starts off focused, but then wanders off aimlessly. We begin with some interesting articles on geography and history:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><b>Geography and History<\/b>. We talk all the time about &#8220;securing our borders&#8221;, but most of us don&#8217;t even understand why our borders are where they are. In truth, there are all sorts of reasons a border is drawn where it is. <a href=\"http:\/\/opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com\/2011\/11\/28\/a-not-so-straight-story\/\" target=\"_blank\">The New York Times has an interesting discussion of our northern border&mdash;that is, why is the border with Canada at the 49th parallel<\/a>.\n<p>Next, a lot of people forget that California has islands&#8230; and if they know that, they forget about anything other than Catalina. <a href=\"http:\/\/www.latimes.com\/news\/local\/la-me-santa-rosa-20111129,0,3555111,full.story\" target=\"_blank\">The LA Times has an interesting article on Santa Rosa Island, and the ranching family that is finally leaving it<\/a>. I can&#8217;t remember if this was the island from &#8220;The Island of Blue Dolphins&#8221;.<\/p>\n<p>Lastly, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.cnn.com\/2011\/11\/30\/travel\/beverly-hills-hotel-history\/index.html?hpt=hp_c1\" target=\"_blank\">CNN has an article on the outrageously priced pink palace, the Beverly Hills Hotel, and the stars that have stayed there<\/a>. <\/p>\n<li><b>Hotel Breakfasts<\/b>. Speaking about hotels brings us to the subject of hotel breakfasts. On the mid-priced end, there are the breakfast buffets. The economy is impacting those: <a href=\"http:\/\/travel.usatoday.com\/hotels\/post\/2011\/11\/hampton-inn-miami-people-try-to-steal-hampton-inn-breakfast-buffet\/573578\/1?loc=interstitialskip\" target=\"_blank\">frequently, locals are crashing the buffets to get free food<\/a>.  That doesn&#8217;t happen at the high end hotels, which don&#8217;t deign to have free, or even low-priced food. <a href=\"http:\/\/travel.usatoday.com\/hotels\/post\/2011\/11\/how-much-would-you-pay-for-hotel-oatmeal\/572145\/1\" target=\"_blank\">How about a $15 bowl of oatmeal?<\/a> For that price, I&#8217;ll go to Starbucks or McDonalds, thank you very much.\n<li><b>Where Does Food Come From?<\/b> Lastly, our discussing food brings us to the question of where food comes from. In particular, baby carrots and pig wings. First fact: <a href=\"http:\/\/www.mentalfloss.com\/blogs\/archives\/83226\" target=\"_blank\">Baby carrots are not young carrots, they are the misshapen adult carrots that are cut down to an appealing size<\/a>. Second fact: Pigs don&#8217;t have wings (nor can they fly)&mdash;rather, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2011\/11\/30\/dining\/pig-wings-as-tasty-morsels-take-flight-united-tastes.html\" target=\"_blank\">&#8220;pig wings&#8221; are a new way of marketing ham shanks to a populace to whom &#8220;shank&#8221; is a dirty word<\/a>.<\/ul>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Today&#8217;s lunchtime news chum starts off focused, but then wanders off aimlessly. We begin with some interesting articles on geography and history: Geography and History. We talk all the time about &#8220;securing our borders&#8221;, but most of us don&#8217;t even understand why our borders are where they are. In truth, there are all sorts of <a class=\"more-link\" href=\"https:\/\/cahighways.org\/wordpress\/?p=4732\">Read More &#8230;<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[71,56,1,19],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4732","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-food","category-news-chum","category-lj-xfer","category-travel"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cahighways.org\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4732","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cahighways.org\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cahighways.org\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cahighways.org\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cahighways.org\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4732"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/cahighways.org\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4732\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cahighways.org\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4732"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cahighways.org\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4732"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cahighways.org\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4732"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}