{"id":7412,"date":"2013-03-09T07:19:42","date_gmt":"2013-03-09T15:19:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/cahighways.org\/wordpress\/?p=7412"},"modified":"2013-03-09T07:31:06","modified_gmt":"2013-03-09T15:31:06","slug":"saturday-miscellany-money-food-plumbing-and-sex","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cahighways.org\/wordpress\/?p=7412","title":{"rendered":"Saturday Miscellany: Money, Food, Plumbing, and Body Acceptance"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignright size-full wp-image-4932\" alt=\"userpic=angry-dog\" src=\"https:\/\/cahighways.org\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/12\/userpicangry-dog.gif\" width=\"95\" height=\"80\" align=\"right\" hspace=\"5\" vspace=\"5\" \/>It&#8217;s Saturday. Time to clear out the bookmarks from the week that didn&#8217;t form into otherwise coherent themes. As always, these are news articles or other items that came across my RSS feed during the week:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><strong>Where Does Your Money Go?<\/strong> Have you ever wondered, as you buy things from corporate America, exactly which billionaire&#8217;s pockets you were lining? <a href=\"http:\/\/www.forbes.com\/special-report\/2013\/billionaire\/brands.html?google_editors_picks=true\">This special report from Forbes allows you to map corporate brands to the wealthy people behind them<\/a>. Some of these I knew, such as the folks behind Aldi being behind Trader Joes as well. Some I didn&#8217;t, such as the Koch Brothers being behind Brawny, or some of the same folks being behind both Burger King and Budweiser. It&#8217;s like a giant game of concentration.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Historical Money<\/strong>. In the musical Tenderloin, one of the songs makes reference to a &#8220;double eagle&#8221;, and I&#8217;ve always wondered what that was. I found my answer in this Mental Floss article, which looks at <a href=\"http:\/\/mentalfloss.com\/article\/49234\/10-lesser-known-us-coins\">10 of the lesser known coins in the US<\/a>. This is more than just Suzies and Sacajaweas. It is things like Gold Buffalos, Unions, Stellas, and various odd coin denominations such as\u00a0\u00bd\u00a2, 2\u00a2, 3\u00a2, 20\u00a2, half-dimes, and $3. Speaking of the \u00bd\u00a2, here&#8217;s another related item: <a href=\"http:\/\/mentalfloss.com\/article\/26838\/why-are-coupons-worth-1100th-cent\">Why are coupons worth <sup>1<\/sup>\/<sub>100<\/sub><sup>th<\/sup> of a cent?<\/a> Hint: The answer goes back to trading stamps. Remember those?<\/li>\n<li><strong>Food Issues<\/strong>. Another twofer of food items. The first looks at a niche in the world of Chinese restaurants in Monterey Park, CA: <a href=\"http:\/\/www.latimes.com\/business\/la-fi-organic-chinese-food-20130308,0,668103.story\">Organic Chinese Food<\/a>. Monterey Park is an Asian community east of Los Angeles, home to loads and loads of great Chinese restaurants. Many of these place the emphasis on quick and cheap. A few are bucking the trend attempting to go for organic and healthy cuisine (something that would go well in West LA), and the article looks at their struggles. Also food-related is <a href=\"http:\/\/www.cbsnews.com\/8301-204_162-57573286\/food-bloggers-start-petition-to-drop-yellow-dyes-from-kraft-mac-cheese\/\">a petition effort from a number of food bloggers to get Kraft to remove the food dyes from their Mac&amp;Cheese<\/a>. Of course, what they fail to realize is that one eats Kraft Mac &amp; Cheese expressly for the food dye (it&#8217;s a food group, don&#8217;tcha know?); <a href=\"https:\/\/cahighways.org\/wordpress\/?p=1702\">if you want healthy food for your family, don&#8217;t depend on the corporations<\/a> &#8212; make it yourself! Great mac and cheese isn&#8217;t hard to make.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Plumbing Issues<\/strong>. This one I discovered through Boing Boing: <a href=\"http:\/\/thebillfold.com\/2013\/03\/adventures-at-the-intersection-of-homeownership-and-sewage\/\">An article about a fellow who buys a new house, has a drain problem, calls a plumber, and enters into the rabbit hole of plumbing problems<\/a>. This is something I&#8217;ve run into &#8212; especially the situation of tarpaper sewage pipes, which we had in our front yard (our house was built in 1962). Plumbing is one of the reasons I hate houses built on concrete slabs &#8212; I still remember, as a kid, having plumbing leaks under the slab and having to rip up the carpets and jackhammer the floor.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Body Issues and Acceptance<\/strong>. One of the folks I read on Livejournal is <a href=\"http:\/\/theferrett.livejournal.com\/profile\">TheFerrett<\/a>. A wonderful writer, he often has very insightful essays (for example, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.theferrett.com\/ferrettworks\/2013\/02\/my-secret-to-success-im-the-dumb-one\/\">his recent essay on being the dumb one in the room<\/a>). This week he reposted an essay he had originally posted over at <a href=\"https:\/\/fetlife.com\/login\">Fetlife<\/a>, a fetish-oriented bulletin board. <a href=\"http:\/\/www.theferrett.com\/ferrettworks\/2013\/03\/your-genitals-will-dissatisfy-someone-a-rant\/\">This essay looked at body image from the genitalia point of view, noting that whatever you&#8217;ve got, there&#8217;s someone else that finds it sexy<\/a>. This essay hit a nerve with a lot of people &#8212; it is a very positive statement of body acceptance, and one that many people need to remember. It is something to think about everytime you see a couple and go: Why is he\/she with her\/him? The answer is because each has something the other loves. Related to this: <a href=\"http:\/\/www.kickstarter.com\/projects\/917772751\/the-nu-project-fine-art-book-beauty-in-every-body\">The Nu Project kickstarter<\/a>, as of when I write this, has about 3 hours left. This is your last chance to get the Nu Project book at a discounted price; <a href=\"http:\/\/thenuproject.com\/\">the Nu project<\/a> presents pictures of women of all shapes and sizes, taken in their homes, demonstrating that all bodies are beautiful.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><strong>Music:<\/strong> <em>If Not Now When?<\/em> (Debbie Friedman): &#8220;Kumi Lach&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>It&#8217;s Saturday. Time to clear out the bookmarks from the week that didn&#8217;t form into otherwise coherent themes. As always, these are news articles or other items that came across my RSS feed during the week: Where Does Your Money Go? Have you ever wondered, as you buy things from corporate America, exactly which billionaire&#8217;s <a class=\"more-link\" href=\"https:\/\/cahighways.org\/wordpress\/?p=7412\">Read More &#8230;<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[71,364,56],"tags":[81,125,399,73],"class_list":["post-7412","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-food","category-miscellaneous","category-news-chum","tag-battle-of-the-sexes","tag-money","tag-plumbing","tag-restaurants"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cahighways.org\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7412","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=7412"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/cahighways.org\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7412\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7414,"href":"https:\/\/cahighways.org\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7412\/revisions\/7414"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cahighways.org\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=7412"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cahighways.org\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=7412"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cahighways.org\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=7412"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}