Wednesday, April 15, 2009

Tilting at Windmills: It's Not Just Me

I've written before about how wind power is great, but that some of the opposition to it might stem from the threatening appearance of three-bladed windmills. Trust my favourite cartoonist to express the same sentiment, but in a humourous fashion.

Yoplait is Getting Brazen

I've just eaten some yogurt that had a very realistic lemon cheesecake flavour, including a biscuit crust, despite being very smooth and obviously lacking any crumbled biscuit pieces. A check of the ingredients list confirmed the absence of any actual pastry. Most fruit flavoured yogurts include a small amount of real strawberry or mango so you can pretend that the fruit is what you're tasting. However in this case it's blatantly obvious that the crust flavour is generated entirely by added chemicals.

In a way, I'm quite impressed with the artistry of this concoction, and the food scientists' ability to dissociate flavour and texture so completely. We are getting closer to the world described in a certain movie that came out one decade and one week ago.

Friday, April 10, 2009

Evening Classes

I've had six weeks of lectures for my part-time commerce degree, and they're going well. I find the evening to be a good time for lectures, as I'm fairly alert at that time of day. I actually concentrate better during a 3 hour lecture beginning at 6pm than during a 1 hour lecture beginning at 2pm. Come to think of it, I'm being paid to deal with the mid-afternoon torpor, then getting to work on my own qualifications during a peak period.

It probably helps that the subject material has been interesting. I'm particularly enjoying introductory microeconomics, which is a nice blend of cynicism and simple graphs.