Fast Food Nation

I finally finished reading this book (First Perennial edition with the a new afterword), and can recommend it to anyone who eats fast food but don’t know exactly what they are eating. Fast Food Nation reveals a lot about how fast food giants such as McD has changed not just the fast food industry, but the industries supporting it (e.g. meatpacking industry) as well as the health of not just US citizens but people of nations where (mostly) American fast food are served. Needless to say the book does not present the fast food industry in a good light, but I believe the author has done a fair job in reporting the problems of the industry.

Since the book mostly deals with the fast food industry in the US (with only one chapter covering overseas), I would also like to see studies (books or documentaries) of how fast food is affecting other nations, especially Japan and China.

Koh Samui: Paradise Lost?

A recent four-day trip to Koh Samui left me disappointed about this island in southern Thailand: the island is dying a slow death and I suspect the local government is the culprit.

Zempt

I am checking out Zempt, a client-based tool for blogging to MT. (I am using it to write this entry now.) The best thing about Zempt is that it lets you blog offline, automatically alters the font for html tags in the main entry window and has a spellchecker. Too bad it is only for Windows and doesn’t seem to support Western languages with accent marks (e.g. Portuguese) nor Asian languages.

More on the JetBlue Scandal

JetBlue Privacy Scandal[Ars Technica]
Regarding the JetBlue scandal, Ars Technica has a good overview of what privacy issues are at stake here, and if you have flown JetBlue before you should definitely read the article, and find out whether your personal data has been given by JetBlue to the TSA (Transportation Security Administration) without your permission.