I had salmon and mango sushi yesterday. Very interesting. I'd like to try it again at a good restaurant.

I need to eat MUCH. I think it is gonna be stir fry and noodles.

Excellent Al Gore speech on the suckiness of US media:

I came here today because I believe that American democracy is in grave danger. It is no longer possible to ignore the strangeness of our public discourse . I know that I am not the only one who feels that something has gone basically and badly wrong in the way America's fabled "marketplace of ideas" now functions.

How many of you, I wonder, have heard a friend or a family member in the last few years remark that it's almost as if America has entered " an alternate universe"?

...

On the eve of the nation's decision to invade Iraq, our longest serving senator, Robert Byrd of West Virginia, stood on the Senate floor asked: "Why is this chamber empty? Why are these halls silent?"

The decision that was then being considered by the Senate with virtually no meaningful debate turned out to be a fateful one. A few days ago, the former head of the National Security Agency, Retired Lt. General William Odom, said, "The invasion of Iraq, I believe, will turn out to be the greatest strategic disaster in U.S. history."

But whether you agree with his assessment or not, Senator Byrd's question is like the others that I have just posed here: he was saying, in effect, this is strange, isn't it? Aren't we supposed to have full and vigorous debates about questions as important as the choice between war and peace?

...

The German philosopher, Jurgen Habermas, describes what has happened as "the refeudalization of the public sphere." That may sound like gobbledygook, but it's a phrase that packs a lot of meaning. The feudal system which thrived before the printing press democratized knowledge and made the idea of America thinkable, was a system in which wealth and power were intimately intertwined, and where knowledge played no mediating role whatsoever. The great mass of the people were ignorant. And their powerlessness was born of their ignorance.

It did not come as a surprise that the concentration of control over this powerful one-way medium carries with it the potential for damaging the operations of our democracy. As early as the 1920s, when the predecessor of television, radio, first debuted in the United States, there was immediate apprehension about its potential impact on democracy. One early American student of the medium wrote that if control of radio were concentrated in the hands of a few, "no nation can be free."

As a result of these fears, safeguards were enacted in the U.S. -- including the Public Interest Standard, the Equal Time Provision, and the Fairness Doctrine - though a half century later, in 1987, they were effectively repealed. And then immediately afterwards, Rush Limbaugh and other hate-mongers began to fill the airwaves.

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I had salmon and mango sushi yesterday. Very interesting.

I wish my brain could do that. I don't think "very interesting" with new foods, or any unfamiliar taste. I think, "THIS IS VERY WRONG! WHY COULDN'T WE HAVE ORDERED A PIZZA LIKE NORMAL PEOPLE?"

"THIS IS VERY WRONG! WHY COULDN'T WE HAVE ORDERED A PIZZA LIKE NORMAL PEOPLE?"

Mmm. Salmon and mango pizza ....

Dammit, why couldn't we have had a president who knew his Habermas?

I had salmon and mango sushi yesterday.

That sounds good, except do you put soy/wasabi on it? That seems like it would be too much.

except do you put soy/wasabi on it?

I put a teeny bit of soy, no wasabi, as is my usual. The salt and the fruit sweet worked well together.

INteresting.

I had pizza for lunch like a normal person.