The findingDulcinea Blog

Sweet Sites | Graphic Gourmet: All You Can "Eat" Online

A screenshot of foodgawker.com

From “Top Chef” to “Julie & Julia,” from the Travel Channel’s “Food Paradise” to New York Magazine’s whopping 82-burger slideshow, delicious food has become the new cultural obsession. But has it also become a treat for our eyes only? Michael Pollan recently fretted so in The New York Times, arguing that proper, wholesome cooking has migrated from the pots and pans of the American kitchen to the Food Network’s primetime lineup.

Don’t tell Pollan, but we’re about to enable America’s food-porn addiction. We researched the tantalizing world of food art, photography and sheer voyeurism on SweetSearch, and turned up the following (sesame) seedy side of the Web. Plenty of sites serve up photographic fodder, but few can beat Photograzing from Serious Eats, foodgawker or the aptly named FoodPornDaily for lush and delectable pictures. Although the latter two sites offer neither more nor less than their URLs promise, the Serious Eats main site features recipes, restaurants and food news from all over the country—in addition to tasty photos, of course. The restaurant-review site Menuism earns honorable mention in the low-hanging but mouthwatering fruit category: It allows users to browse for restaurants by food photos.

As the photographic equivalent of street food or carnival fare, the above sites offer little for a higher-brow palate. Fortunately, there’s a range of food art and food-centric social commentary that caters to the tastes of both voyeur and connoisseur. WebEcoist offers “15 Fascinating Food Artists and Sculptors,” an excellent introduction to food art that features potato chip portraits, elegant butter statues, surreal foodscapes and a “Biscuit City.”

Time Magazine’s feature “What the World Eats” shows 15 families from all over the world with their entire week’s food allowance spread out before them, providing a fascinating look into geographical differences in diet. Similarly, Mark Menjivar’s “You Are What You Eat,” presented by Good Magazine, captures the contents of strangers’ refrigerators, and the simple Tumblr “Hospital Food” collects photos of meals from sickbeds worldwide.

Finally, there are plenty of resources for budding food photographers. Check out Rob Willey’s advice in his Food & Wine Magazine article “Shoot First, Eat Later,” Photojojo’s “The Ten Tastiest Food Photography Tips,” “little nuggets from the front lines of food styling and photography” from the blog “Still Life With” or, for a behind-the-scenes look at a professional in action, watch Cooking Up a Story’s “The Art of Food Photography.”

If you’re still not sated, findingDulcinea offers lots of news and features on food, and don’t miss our Web Guide to Food for recipes, restaurant reviews, special diets and more.

Jill Marcellus
Senior Intern

Get Acquainted With Health Care Reform Issues

I don’t think that health care reform will be Obama’s “Waterloo,” as South Carolina Sen. Jim DeMint was quoted as saying by Ben Smith of Politico. But the stakes are high, both personally and politically.

An article in Slate Magazine explains how private insurance companies give incentives to employees to drop expensive accounts—just before a major surgery—“based on stupid technicalities.” These are called rescissions. According to Slate, an employee at WellPoint received a high score on her job evaluation due to “the dollar amount [$10 million] she had managed to deny through rescission.”

My mother was a victim of rescission. After suffering from gingivitis for 15 years, she had two teeth taken out. The cores of the teeth had rotted with infection. Unfortunately, these teeth anchored her permanent dentures, so she not only needed two teeth removed but also a new denture. Her insurance company, which paid for her previous dentures, dropped her two days before she was scheduled for a $38,000 procedure on the basis of an “undisclosed previous condition.”

More than half (51 percent) of Americans admit that they don't understand the issues involved in health care reform. The numbers are even lower for Americans’ faith in members of Congress: Only 27 percent of Americans believe that members of Congress have a good grasp of health care issues.

The sheer complexity of the current health care debate needs to be understood. Get informed with a variety of perspectives on health care reform:

Jonathan Cohn, a writer for The New Republic, is stationed in Washington, D.C., and reports what he sees in The Treatment, The New Republic’s health care blog.

The Washington Post's health care blog, Health Care Rx, is a reliable source of breaking news. Turn here for new research on the complicated social policies involved in the debate.

The Cato Institute, a nonpartisan, nonprofit think tank headquartered in Washington, D.C., presents different philosophical views on the health care debate in its blog, Cato @ Liberty.

Jim Sabin's blog, Health Care Organizational Ethics, keeps an eye on policy ideals and the most efficient distribution of health care.

David Williams, cofounder of MedPharma Partners, covers business issues in health care in his blog, Health Business Blog.

Health Beat is a project of The Century Foundation, an organization that examines public policy. The blog is maintained by Maggie Mahar, a fellow at the Foundation and author of “Money-Driven Medicine: The Real Reason Health Care Costs So Much.”

The Covert Rationing Blog, written by a former professor of medicine, explains why it's unavoidable to ration health care, and distinguishes between productive and unproductive means of rationing health care.

Read findingDulcinea's four-part article series on health care to learn more about landmarks and issues leading to President Obama's plan:

Part I: Surveying the Facts of the American Health Care Landscape
Part II: Revisiting HillaryCare: What It Proposed and Why It Failed
Part III: Does Socialized Medicine Work? A Look at British Health Care
Part IV: Deconstructing the Democratic Plan for Health Care

Josh Goldberg

Sweet Sites | Dear Diary…

What with Facebook, Twitter and confessional blogs, there’s little room for privacy in the Internet age. But thanks to the online publication of historical diaries, Web surfers can now shine that invasive modern light on the darkest pages of the past. The personal diaries we’ve unearthed evoke a sense of personality, society and daily life that is somehow more authentic than the incessant noise of today’s tweets. Explore the diaries below and recapture that increasingly rare feeling of stumbling across something truly secret.

In his harrowing novel “1984,” George Orwell envisions a future society in which a Big Brother state monitors everything, including the minds of its citizens. Readers who loved that book—or perhaps just loved the privacy-free dystopia it critiques—should also love peeking into George Orwell’s personal diary, now available online. The Orwell Prize blog, which also links to things such as an old breakfast menu Orwell might have perused and a Google Map of his travels, includes his diaries from 1938 to 1942 “in real time, 70 years to the day since each entry was originally written.” With tags such as “Anglo-Soviet pact” and “mowed nettles,” the diary offers an insightful glimpse into both the author and the early years of World War II. And, in a retro take on the stereotypical Congressman tweeting how many eggs he had for breakfast, Orwell shares how many eggs his chickens lay each day.

Technological trends may change, but the founding fathers never go out of style. It’s not surprising, then, that the Library of Congress has released the diaries of George Washington online. Stretching from 1748 to the day before he died in 1799, the diaries form a record of “Where & How my Time is Spent,” his oft-repeated goal in writing. Readers won’t find thrilling Revolutionary-era scandal; instead, much of the diary is consumed by agriculture, the weather and his dinner guests. Nevertheless, the diary’s editors admit that though reading them through can be a “tedious exercise,” it is also a “rewarding way to probe the depths… of a man who has come to personify the spirit of America in his time.”

If you were the kid who played Lewis and Clark or Oregon Trail—or if you still play Oregon Trail, for that matter—this is the diary for you. Truly experience the journey West with the diary of photographer William Henry Jackson, which documents his surveying trip in the summer of 1869. Also check out the New York Public Library exhibits “Heading West” and “Touring West” for coverage of the maps and performing artists that characterized westward movement in the U.S.

Jill Marcellus
Writer

Earth Day 2009: Blogging from Earth

Globes from an exhibit called "Cool Globes: Hot Ideas for a Cooler Planet" at the Rose Garden at Exposition Park in Los Angeles,Tuesday, April 21, 2009. (Photo: Reed Saxon/AP)

Visit our new section, The Environment, for news stories and features on food and farming; environmental threats; global environmental news; green living guides; wildlife news and more.

Our environmental coverage on the findingDulcinea blog has been varied: we’ve evaluated disaster-relief sites, given you the scoop on eco-cleaning products and divulged our favorite green city guides. Below, we’ve rounded up a few Earth Day-inspired posts for your web surfing pleasure.

Disaster Tracking

Research centers located around the world are dedicated to monitoring the violent storms that seem to be constantly discussed by news networks. Whether you’re concerned about floods, volcanoes, earthquakes or tornadoes, the research center Web sites in this "Sweet Sites" post on emergency preparedness will keep you in-the-know.

Traveling Green

Last fall, we introduced you to two fun and informative travel sites with an environmental slant. The green city guides are particularly helpful, explaining, for instance, where to walk and view great architecture in Chicago, and how to keep it green in Christchurch. Head over to our post on Green City Guides for further details and chosen links.

The Great Green Clean

If you’re a clean freak but hate the chemical smell associated with most home cleaning products, read our post on Green Cleaning. We culled information and tips on keeping a tidy home sans noxious odors and toxins, and linked to our favorite sources on everything from dish soap to laundry detergent.

An Arctic Following

With Arctic ice rapidly disappearing and dire predictions made by some researchers, you might be wondering what the true story is up north. To narrow things down and gain perspective, read our post on Monitoring the Arctic, where we’ve linked to organizations and online libraries to aid your researching efforts.

Sarah Amandolare
Senior Writer

Five Must-See Lectures

TED.org, which is full of free lectures.

You no longer have to attend expensive conferences or tune in to a live broadcast to experience the intelligence and expertise of the world's brainiest economists, reporters, authors and entrepreneurs. Below are five recent talks that will enrich your mind from the comfort of wherever you and your computer are sitting.

1. Malcolm Gladwell: Outliers: The Story of Success

The author of "Blink" and "The Tipping Point" returns with "Outliers," an inspiring look at how upbringing, personality, fate and thousands of hours of hard work commingle to create the world's most successful people. This lecture is that book in a nutshell.

2. This American Life: The Giant Pool of Money

In audio rather than video format, this talk between This American Life producer Alex Blumberg and NPR's business and economics correspondent Adam Davidson is credited around the Web as one of the best explanations of the subprime mortgage crisis and how it connects to Wall Street's recent failures.

3. The New Yorker Festival: The Next Generation of Fashion

At the 2008 New Yorker Festival, three top graduates from three design schools talk about their own work, their inspiration, and the future of fashion.

4. TED Conference 2008: Samantha Power: Shaking Hands With the Devil

At the 2008 TED Conference, Power, who heads Harvard's Carr Center for Human Rights, gives a lecture on genocide based on her book about Sergio Vieira de Mello, a UN diplomat who worked with dictators to protect human rights and was killed in a bombing in Iraq in 2003.

5. FreedomFest 2008: Charles Murray: "Real Education"

Murray, author of "Human Accomplishment" and "The Bell Curve," discusses his book about the American education system, including proposals about how to improve it.

Liz Colville
Senior Writer
Audience Development