Friday, July 10, 2009 - Posts
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You're at a friend's barbeque, all set to indulge in some ice cream for dessert, when your host offers you a choice between original vanilla or "slow churned" vanilla. Quick! Which do you choose? Slow churned, right? It sounds positively artisanal—handmade on the farm by some wholesome milk maiden. Or something out of the slow-food movement—an ice cream you can feel good about, a product of sustainable agriculture and fresh, local ingredients. But you'd have made the wrong choice: In the ice cream business these days, "churned" is just a clever marketing ploy, a euphemism for low-fat.
Dreyer's (or Edy's, depending on where you live) first introduced its Slow Churned Ice Cream back in 2004 (the company registered the trademark), and churned has since become the ice cream buzzword du jour. Breyer's has a "Double Churn" ice cream, and Baskin Robbins launched a "Premium Churned" ice cream in December. Although these companies claim that their various "churning" methods account for the taste (Edy's describes its as a "process of extremely cold blending over a longer period of time, to create an incredibly smooth and creamy light ice cream"), churned ice creams also possess any number of synthetic ingredients (Propylene Glycol Monostearate, anyone?) to make these lower fat, lower calorie versions taste better. Most also offer a no-sugar-added variety, also dubbed some sort of "churn," which boast even more additives—fake sugars and ingredients like polydextrose, added to create a richer texture.
In honor of National Ice Cream Month, keep it natural, and don't let these labels fool you—just because it's been "churned" doesn't mean it's any more wholesome than your typical additive-riddled light ice cream.
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In his Wednesday Culturebox on Norwegian and Swedish crime lit, Nathaniel Rich used Scandinavian and Nordic interchangeably, spurring an exchange in our reader discussion forum over whether these two terms are, in fact, synonymous. A frayster who goes by the handle "lazygirl" argues that "Nordic [means] Iceland and Finland. Denmark, Norway and Sweden are Scandinavian." Lapskojs disagrees, claiming that Nordic not only refers to Iceland and Finland, but to the aforementioned Scandinavian countries plus the Faroe Islands. Who's right?
Technically, the term Scandinavia refers to a geographical region, the Scandinavian Peninsula, which encompasses Norway, Sweden, and part of Finland. It may also refer to a language group, Continental Scandinavian, that is descended from Old Norse and includes Danish, Norwegian, and Swedish. (Technically, Faroese and Icelandic are descended from Old Norse as well, but they belong to a different group called Insular Scandinavian.) Nordic is a cultural term and includes these three countries plus Finland, Iceland, Greenland and the Faroe Islands. All of these territories were once united under the Kalmar Union of the 14th century. It dissolved in 1523, but the cultures remained similar with a predominately Lutheran population. They currently participate in the Nordic Council, founded in 1953, and, except for Greeland, still have similar flags featuring the "Nordic cross."
Lapskjos is right.
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If we are what we Google, then Google Hot Trends—an hourly rundown of search terms "that experience sudden surges in popularity"—is the Web's best cultural barometer. Here's a sampling of today's top searches. (Rankings on Hot Trends list current as of 10 a.m.)
No. 1: "Obama Looking at Girl"; No. 2: "Obama Checking out girl"; No. 3: "Mayra Tavares"; and No. 7: "Tail to the chief." You wouldn't think a wire photo of world leaders at the G8 summit would own the top three Google Trends spots. But the Drudge Report, TMZ, and other sites yesterday picked up on a Reuters shot in which President Obama and French President Nicolas Sarkozy appear to be ... appreciating certain assets of Mayra Tavares, a 17-year-old Brazilian delegate to the summit. Since then, the photo has been making the rounds across the web. Lynn Sweet of the Chicago Sun-Times claims, after video review, that it was Sarkozy, not Obama, who was doing the real ogling.
No. 20: "Edgar Martins"; No. 21: "Ruins of the Second Gilded Age." The New York Times on Wednesday removed photos from its Web site after it was revealed that the photos had been digitally manipulated. Metafilter commenters were the first to uncover the manipulation, and the animated simulation of the alteration is striking. The work of Edgar Martins, the photographer responsible for the images, is now being rigorously examined for other instances of manipulation. The Times's "Lens" blog promises Martin will tell his side of the story soon.
No. 45: "Nikola Tesla Inventions"; No. 53 "Nikola Tesla Death Ray." Google has decided to go all out in celebration of the 153rd birthday of the pioneer scientist whose experiments formed the basis for modern electric power. The Google logo today features purple sparks and electricity leaping from the letter G, which is drawn in the shape of his Tesla coil transformer. This follows the April celebration of Samuel Morse's birthday with a Morse code Google logo.