Link Salad

[neadods]

fan_eunice, who has a very rare form of breast cancer, is auctioning her formidable vidding skills on behalf of the the Triple Negative Breast Cancer Foundation. (Knitters, I don't know if this foundation is part of the usual breast cancer charity drives - but are any of us going to turn down yet another good reason to knit?)

havocthecat is having a heck of a time finding multicultural children's books. A few options for finding some are on the post, but she would be grateful for specific book suggestions.

For the bento users, (and the Bollywood fans), the Washington Post has an interesting article: Newly Frugal Indians Revive Tiffin Tradition by Emily Wax. (You can get past registration with bugmenot, maybe.) To condense, while the rising Westernized class in India had been eating out in restaurants, the economic crash has led to a major renaissance for dabbawalas - men who pick up hot homemade lunches from the worker's homes and then run them to the office at lunchtime. But the dabbawala revival is not just a matter of rupee-pinching. The lunch deliveryman has recently become a pop-culture icon, with a cult status built on nostalgia for old-time Mumbai, formerly known as Bombay. A retro-looking dabbawala appears on coffee mugs and coasters. Psychedelic posters show a white-uniformed dabbawala dreaming of hundreds of tiffins, which swirl around his Gandhi topi, or trademark white cap. There's even an online video game in which players are given a map of an Indian city and must deliver food on time.

In 2006, when more and more urban professionals were dining out or eating lunch at corporate cafeterias, Manish Tripathi, a software engineer, set up a Web site and text-messaging service to boost business for dabbawalas. He was quickly adopted as an honorary dabbawala, because most of the lunchbox carriers aren't computer literate.

But it wasn't until the economic crisis that tiffin services reported a surge in customers not only in Mumbai, but also in Chennai, New Delhi and Bangalore.

If you want a do-it-yourself tiffin, Ebay usually lists a couple of traditional tiffin tins, but a better version in the West would probably be one of the thermos lunch jars, of which Zojirushi's Mr. Bento seems to be the most universally available. (Not cheap, just available.) I've always used mine to keep food cold and reheated it in the internal bowls, but they can also be used to keep food hot. There are billions of links out there, including one to "Mr. Bento Porn" which is nothing but pictures and descriptions of the food people put in theirs, so there are plenty of ideas.

Pharyngula has a rather depressing article on the book Idiot America: How Stupidity Became Virtue in the Land of the Free. The rise of Idiot America, though, is essentially a war on expertise. It's not so much antimodernism or the distrust of the intellectual elites that Richard Hofstader teased out of the national DNA, although both of these things are part of it. The rise of Idiot America today reflects — for profit, mainly, but also and more cynically, for political advantage and in the pursuit of power — the breakdown of the consensus that the pursuit of knowledge is a good. It also represents the ascendancy of the notion that the people we should trust the least are the people who know the best what they're talking about.

Comments

[flaviarassen.livejournal.com]

There's a reason our ancestors did what they did -
a lot of times, it's more valid than people realize.
Or, IOW, don't re-invent the wheel!

[persiflage-1.livejournal.com]

Looks like the last part of your post has vanished owing to a dodgy LJ user tag.

[neadods.livejournal.com]

Nothing got cut off; I just forgot to erase the last spare blank link that I ended up not using.

[fourzoas.livejournal.com]

Will be saving that last link for later when I'm in a mood to be angered; I'm trying to enjoy the first student-free week of summer break! ;-)

I need to learn more about the bento/tiffin business; my lunchtime planning is Truly Tragic, and when the caf is closed, I'm often out of luck. I have a hard time remembering to eat.

Is there a knitting project in the work to raise funds?

[neadods.livejournal.com]

My lunchtime planning is at an all-time low, which is particularly appalling because I know there'll be nothing I want to eat in our cafeteria. Must Return To Bento Planning! (Follow my bento tag for commentary on containers, etc., and there are all sorts of youtube things and communities.)

I know of no knitting project in the works, but I figured that raising the concept may make one eventually appear in the works.

[persiflage-1.livejournal.com]

Well that's a relief!