Tuesday February 16, 2010

WEB BOHEMIAN (Tuesday February 16, 2010)
(1)- McDONALD'S TRIES ITALY -- Fast food chain McDonald's has teamed up with the Italian government to cook up a hamburger with a national twist, but the unusual initiative is giving some food lovers cultural indigestion.

(2)- FOODIE GUIDE TO HISTORY -- Tom Standage’s fascinating new book reveals how central were the production, transportation and consumption of food to the creation of human societies and human progress.

(3)- BRIT WOES -- As religious violence deepens in his home country, Nobel laureate and Nigerian political activist Wole Soyinka shares his unbridled thoughts on Islamic terrorism and why England is a “cesspit.” with The Daily Beast.

(4)- EXPLANATION -- China often views the ideas of foreigners, from missionaries in the 17th century to 21st-century Internet entrepreneurs, as subversive imports. The tumultuous history behind the clash with Google is fully explained here.

(5)- HITLER ODDITY -- When the Soviets released Hitler's autopsy in 1968, it held the report the Führer was one testicle short. Dr. Faust Shkaravaski says Hitler’s scrotum sack remained perfectly intact and very definitely minus a bollock.

(6)- RENOIR'S WINE GLASSES -- The glassware has a palpable, material presence. The artist is working like a Las Vegas magician, grabbing our attention with something small and striking, distracting us from the trickery behind the larger illusion.

(7)- CRASHING FASHION -- Every season, wannabes crash Fashion Week shows and parties. But few are as brazen as the daughter of a Vermont gubernatorial candidate and her BFF, who allegedly hacked into a fashion PR company's database.

(8)- FRENCH VEIL RULES -- French authorities have denied citizenship to a man who forced his French wife to wear a face-covering veil, saying he had rejected national values of secularism and gender equality.

(9)- THEY KNOW -- In a new study published in the New England Journal of Medicine, four of 23 patients diagnosed as being in a vegetative state showed signs of consciousness on brain-imaging tests.

POLITICAL COMMENTARY

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