Natural

I'm currently reading the book, Fast Food Nation. I fully expected this book to contain all kinds of horrifying facts sure to send anyone screaming from their nearest McDonald's restaurant. In truth, there is relatively little in the book that I find surprising so far. There is a fair amount of interesting history of how the industry came to be, and an in depth investigation into the inner workings of food suppliers, franchise agreements, labor standards, etc. Not a thriller by any measure.

One section I found very interesting discusses the semantics surrounding natural and artificial flavoring. We see these ingredients listed on many of the foods we eat. I often read ingredients labels and have always been suspicious of these entries on the list because they are just so darn vague. What's in an artificial flavor?

As it turns out, the vagueness is intentional and authorized by the FDA. In order to protect the secrecy of food recipes, food makers aren't required to list flavor ingredients as long as they are "generally recognized as safe" (GRAS). This designation, after looking at the FDA website, does not appear to imply that the FDA has, itself, determined the safety of the ingredient, but has examined the evidence supplied by applicants, and does not object to it. There are interesting exclusions to this rule as well. For example, additives commonly used in food before 1958 are automatically considered safe.

Also, the difference between the designations natural and artificial are not what one would expect. They both allow for the same list of chemical ingredients. The difference is in how the chemicals are produced. It seems that older methods may be considered natural, while newer, more scientific methods would be designated artificial, even if the latter produced a purer, safer end result. Since the natural designation is more appealing to consumers, those methods are more likely to be used, even though they may result in a less-safe product.

As a result of the GRAS secrecy rule, these flavor recipes contain many chemical ingredients that are not listed. For example, a typical artificial strawberry flavor contains the following:

Amyl acetate, amyl butyrate, amyl valerate, anethol, anisyl formate, benzyl acetate, benzyl isobutyrate, butyric acid, cinnamyl isobutyrate, cinnamyl valerate, cognac essential oil, diacetyl, dipropyl ketone, ethyl acetate, ethyl amylketone, ethyl butyrate, ethyl cinnamate, ethyl heptanoate, ethyl heptylate, ethyl lactate, ethyl methylphenylglycidate, ethyl nitrate, ethyl propionate, ethyl valerate, heliotropin, hydroxyphenyl-2-butanone, a-ionone, isobutyl anthranilate, isobutyl butyrate, lemon essential oil, maltol, 4-methylacetophenone, methyl anthranilate, methyl benzoate, methyl cinnamate, methyl heptine carbonate, methyl naphthyl ketone, methyl salicylate, mint essential oil, neroli essential oil, neronlin, neryl isobutyrate, orris butter, phenethyl alcohol, rose, rum ether, y-undecalactone, vanillin, and solvent.

Remember, all of these ingredients are on the GRAS list. The fact that this is an "artificial" flavor merely indicates how these chemicals were extracted from their sources, not what chemicals are present.

What this means is that when you see the words natural flavor or artificial flavor, you must assume that a list of similar chemicals are likely involved whether it is a strawberry candy or a cup of Stonyfield Farm Organic Strawberry Yogurt.

Buyer beware.

Uptight

Last weekend I wanted to rent a movie. Since I have a great pay-per-view selection on my cable TV at home, I rarely rent movies anymore. But for some reason, it seemed like a fun thing to do and the Blockbuster store happened to be right there in front of me.

As I walked in, I vaguely remembered leaving annoyed the last time I had visited the store - without renting a movie. I couldn't remember why, but continued the movie mission anyway. There is something about Blockbuster that rubs me the wrong way. Maybe its size, maybe the fact that I don't care for their movie selection. In any case, it has never struck me as a company to celebrate.

I searched for The Corporation, a documentary I wanted Monica to see. I walked around the whole store twice before I found the documentary section - probably about 20 titles. No luck.

We settled on The Life Aquatic, a Wes Anderson film, and proceeded to the checkout. I realized I didn't have an account there and would probably have to open a new account. I figured it was probably pretty streamlined by now, considering the movie rental industry is about 20 years mature. Again, no luck. They made me move to a different window and gave me a long legal sized form to fill out. My attitude toward the movie mission began to deteriorate.

The form asked for my name, address, date of birth, driver's license number, credit card number, and a series of signatures waiving various rights.

I filled out the form, getting more and more annoyed at each question and check box. It occured to me that the thin piece of plastic I was renting was actually worth less than the restroom keys you borrow from gas stations, and they don't require nearly as much paperwork. After filling out the form, I was sent back to the original window to pay my $4, and we left.

After getting only a few feet from the store, I was reminded of the security process hoops I am currently jumping through at the city for collecting similar, although much less sensitive information from those making payments on our websites. I am not, even as a pseudo city manager, entitled to possess those pieces of information even for a few minutes. The people I work for consider it far too great of a security risk. The information is processed and then erased forever in some cases.

But I had just handed over even more sensitive information to a video store clerk who would probably stuff it into a file cabinet in the back that's likely used frequently to deal with non-returned videos. Now, the staff at Blockbuster seemed very friendly, competent, and trustworthy. But video stores just seem like the kind of place that would have high employee turnover, and besides, it seems to me Blockbuster should be able to come up with a better system than paper stuffed in drawers for that type of information.

I began to become very uneasy, even though I knew many people hand the same information over all the time. The fear started... Identity theft!! Ugh.

We got home to watch the movie, and it didn't work. The picture was all screwed up. Double Ugh.

That was the last straw. I decided I would take the movie back, get my money back for the defective DVD, and get my precious paper form back.

The next day, I did just that. I was bracing for a hassle, planning my rebuttals.. but alas, the friendly, competent, probably trustworthy manager returned my money and my form without argument. He seemed a bit inconvenienced. He had to rummage through two separate drawers stuffed with forms. But was far more compliant than I expected. He did have to use a key to get into the drawers, but the key was in the cash register drawer... Not super high security.

So after getting what I wanted, I was left wondering if I was just being paranoid. I was also left with a slightly better taste in my mouth about Blockbuster, at least the Church & Market store. I feel a little bad about not trusting those people.

I may be a little uptight. But I'm glad I got my form back.

Nikka

I have a new favorite recording artist for whom I'll likely hold a torch for at least a few weeks. Her name is Nikka Costa. When I ask others if they've heard of her, they say yes. But somehow I never have until yesterday. She is performing at The Independent next month and I have the fun habit of pre listening to upcoming shows there to gauge my interest in attending. Napster has two of her albums which are both excellent. She continually reminds me of many great artists (Prince, Chaka Kahn, Stevie Wonder to name a very few) and integrates all of those influences seamlessly. I can't wait for her show.

Update: I saw her show on Sunday night. All I can say is don't ever miss this woman if she is performing near you. The energy in that room was tremendous and her voice and band are fantastic. I think everyone in attendance was blown away.

Napster

Along with thousands of other early adopters, I've been undertaking a grand experiment in digital music consumption. The introduction of digital music files several years ago and the, at first, illegal trade in them via services such as Napster has since evolved into a new, still immature business model for the music industry.

The Apple iPod has become an extremely popular consumer electronics device, and millions of music files have been purchased legally to fill them up. Apple is now enjoying a cultural phenomenon that businesses only dream of. Because of its popularity, their product's name, iPod, is now becoming synonymous with the class of product (think Band-Aid, Kleenex, etc). Since their product is closely tied with their music purchasing service, they only need stand by and watch as a whole generation passively accepts their business model for selling music online - Pay a dollar, get one song.

But theirs isn't the only model. Napster re-emerged as a legal subscription based service. Their model is - pay ten dollars per month, listen to anything in their catalog - pay fifteen, and transfer all of it to a portable device as well - but you still don't "own" the song until you pay the dollar for it. Depending on one's music listening habits, this model may or may work better for some people.

I, for one, don't like the idea of paying a dollar for a song I haven't heard before and don't know if I will like. Apple and other services allow you to listen to a 30 second snippet of the song before purchasing. With Napster, I can listen to the song as much as I like, then only if I wish to burn it to a CD, pay the dollar. This way works better for me because, you see, I'm cheap.

A side effect I have noticed from this easy access to music is jade. It's now very tough for me to find music so interesting that I believe I'll listen to it frequently enough away from my PC to justify paying for it. When I listen to music now, I'm much more inclined to sample artists and titles I've never heard. Read a review in a magazine - take a listen. An artist I've never heard of is playing in the city - let's see if I'd like them. Why buy it?

So lately I've been trying the portable music model that Napster offers called "Napster to go". I bought one of the compatible mp3 players (iPods are not an option) called the Creative Zen Sleek. It held 20 gigabytes worth of music, or about 10,000 songs. It seemed like an awesome notion to have that much music walking around with me all for the price of my monthly subscription. Napster liked to point out in their ad campaigns that to put that much music on an iPod would cost $10,000.

My fantasy that I would just dump 10,000 songs onto my new portable player was just that. Not only did I have to actually dream up that much music to transfer, but each song can take up to a couple of minutes to download from Napster. I soon realized that 20 GB worth of storage was probably overkill, and that a smaller, lighter player would probably work just as well.

I returned the Sleek and bought another Creative player, the new Zen Microphoto. It holds 8GB and is much smaller than the Sleek.

Now am I happy? Well.. not so sure. I've discovered that it's really not all that comfortable for me to dink around with headphones and player controls while I'm walking around the city. It's alright to have music with me, but it certainly isn't changing my life.

Also, I was expecting to use one of those fancy FM transmitter things to play music from my player while I'm in the car. It turns out those things are pretty crummy so I can't really do that.

So we'll have to see if this thing survives my 30-day no-questions return policy from Best Buy. At this point, it's kind of a cool toy, but probably not worth the price tag. We'll see.

Funk

Urban living is getting to me today.

Working the entire day in a ten story concrete cube means that I usually need to escape for lunch to get some sunlight and fresh air. Unfortunately, I work in civic center which isn't always so fresh, so I regularly ride some form of public transit to a more pleasant lunching atmosphere.

That journey takes me through an especially colorful part of town. The Tenderloin district is known for it's drug dealers, users, and other shady types. I used to be so disturbed by the cast of characters, that I would take the underground train just to avoid the spectacle. Over time, I became used to it, and now rather enjoy the show much of the time.

Today though was somehow my day to find myself next to far more than my statistically likely share of smelly people. Young and old, street and professional. There were laundry mildew mishaps, musty old men, leave-behind BO, and urine stench a go-go.

I couldn't help but wonder how this could happen. Today was nice and cool... no hot day sweaty excuses this time. I know that some of my fellow citizens live in much less luxury than I do. But one thing seems likely to me: If you have a home, you have access to bathing facilities. Some form of sink, shower, or tub comes with anything you could possibly refer to as a home. That gives one the ability to wash clothes and self.

I imagine that cultures change on this subject. I know that Europeans think Americans are far too concerned about such matters. Cleanliness is one American trait I'd like us to hold on to. If notions of cleanliness ebb and flow in culture, I wonder in which direction this one is headed.

Today wasn't a good sign.

Ghosts

I Googled myself today and came across a document from the California Court of Appeals. The document describes in great detail the dramatic story of several of my high school friends, one of which eventually killed the other in cold blood. I was close friends with the killer's brother Joey growing up and also good friends with the victim, Steve, who actually helped teach me to drive my first car.

This document describes the events in greater detail than I have ever heard before. Up until now, I have relied on newspaper articles and hearsay, mostly.

I don't know what has become of Rob, the defendant. I know that he was the subject of controversy in past years because he was paroled but kept in prison by then governor Gray Davis.

I had heard that the San Francisco gay community had rallied to Rob's side, arguing that he was the victim of gay bashing. Although there is truth to that as described in the case, it doesn't appear to me to rise to the level of justifying death to the basher. It always seemed to me that Steve had been forgotten by the courts, the press, and the activists. And that always bothered me. It still does.

Steve didn't always behave well. But he was a good guy. And I miss him.

This is the document