Giant Robot Store and GR2 News
It’s a sad day for the dog meat fans in Korea. The festival is cancelled. There’s more to the festival that the fantastic idea of dog eating. There’s cosmetics and more that use dog product. “… there are about 600 farms raising dogs for meat in South Korea, where their meat has long been eaten and dog soup, or Boshintang, is a summer delicacy.” Either way, dog fans around the world would make this the butt of jokes for decades more. It’s not like there’s enough dog eating jokes, and a festival that glorifies the wonders of eating the brothers of our best friends, just won’t fly. (Google hosted news – Dogtown)
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Took a trip to the Contemporary Art Museum in Honolulu, Hawaii, but the gallery was closed for an installation in progress, so we decided to go to the Contemporary Cafe located inside the museum gardens instead for their “picnic service”- sandwiches and salads, drinks, and dessert packed into a picnic basket. You can picnic anywhere on museum grounds -
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“Somehow this feels like a Vonnegut plotline: population boom equals food shortage. Solution? Synthesize food from human waste matter.” Actually, this story made us think of the classic 1973 Charlton Heston science fiction movie “Soylent Green”. In that grim cinematic scenario, the world was so crowded and resource-starved that human beings weren’t cremated or buried upon their death, they were turned into breakfast. And lunch. And dinner. No one is really sure if we are headed for a similar future; but just in case we are, a scientist in Japan has figured out a way to take our feces and turn it into….steak. Actually, this strange journey from the toilet to the dinner table began when the Tokyo Sewage Company asked Okayama Labs scientist Mitsuyuki Ikeda where there might be value in the many tons of excess sewage mud generated in the Tokyo metropolitan area every year. Ikeda found that the mud contains vast amounts of usable protein molecules which can be synthesized into a viable, edible meat product with the addition of a little food coloring and soy protein. At the moment, the “excre-meat” costs an average of 15 times more than real beef, largely due to research and development costs. But science has a way of making new discoveries affordable very quickly, so in the next several years you might be able to find this stuff in your grocer’s freezer. (Yahoo News – Feces Filet Mignon) Daily Tech also has a report on this with some additional information on the technology: Daily Tech Fake Steak
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Chicago has a lot of great things happening lately. Alinea for high end gastronomy. Pitchfork for your summer time music fest cravings. Half Acre Brewery for well…duh, beer and Hot Doug’s for basically any type of encased meat you probably never even thought of. Lucky for us, we also have Debbie Carlos calling Chicago home. Her modern photography is some of the quietest and simplest (simple in a good way) photography I have seen and I have been obsessed with her photos since 2005. Her photos are actually the only pieces of art up in my apartment other than a few Jay Ryan prints and her Antlers photo has been blogged and re-blogged and blogged again throughout the interwebs. I was lucky enough to sit with Debbie over some pho where we talked about her work and the following questions came from that discussion, our general friendship, and heavy duty emailing back and forth. Photo of Debbie by Devin Higgins other photos by Debbie Carlos SIX QUESTIONS WITH Debbie Carlos GR: 1. You were born in Manila, grew up in LA, lived on the East Coast and have also spent a lot of time in Tapei. How did you make your way to Chicago and what do you dig about this city? DC: I moved to Chicago from Massachusetts in the spring of ‘04 to study photo at The School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Of the cities I’ve lived in, I think Chicago was the first one I felt a real connection with. There is such a great sense of history, that you can feel everywhere. You get a lot of culture, and the hustle and bustle of a large city, but there is also a really nice Midwestern relaxed attitude. There is also a diverse set of neighborhoods surrounding downtown, and I think it’s these communities that make the city really interesting. Also, the eating is pretty excellent. GR: 2. You got a bachelor’s in psychology and then made the bold decision to attend School of the Art Institute for a second degree in photography. How did you make that leap and how did your family react? Was your mom a “tiger mom”? DC: Even from the moment I finished my first degree, I really wanted to pursue photography, but was held back because I thought I needed a ‘real job.’ And I thought that was what my family wanted for me. When I got laid off from my office job, though, my hope to study art kind of slipped out over the phone to my mom. She told me to go for it. I think I have the advantage of having a mom that studied piano and fashion design during her years in college, so I think she is actually really open to me having a non-conventional job. My dad is supportive, too, but I think he leans more to the side of wanting me to have a real and steady job. They both wish that I lived closer...
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“This festival is essentially a tribute to the all mighty soybean, truly one of the most versatile food products in Asian culture, if not the world.” If you are in Northern California this weekend and love soybean products, you are in for a treat. The Nichi Bei Foundation in San Francisco is holding a new event on Saturday in Japantown, called the “Northern California Soy and Tofu Festival: Discover the Joy of Soy”. The festival has been modeled after the LA Tofu Festival held in Little Tokyo for 12 years. The San Francisco version will be in the Japantown Peace Plaza from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m., and will feature vendors such as Kikkoman and San Jose Tofu, and performers from the San Francisco Taiko Dojo. And if you get there early, for 25 bucks you can sign on to be a judge for the Tofu Dessert Competition. Judging tofu desserts sounds like a lot of yummy fun, but here’s hoping there will be lots of fresh natto to sample. (Rafu Shimpo – San Francisco Soy Festival) And you can read the official press release here: Tofu and Natto in Japantown.
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