1) Pictures found on the Net today:

 

A polar bear has a bucket on his head, while a cub swims nearby in the cooling waters of Moscow Zoo on Wednesday as a heat wave continued in central Russia.

I guess even polar bears need protection from the sun in this record breaking hot weather.  I must admit that bucket is probably better looking than some hats I have worn.

If you wear hats do you what do you think other people think about them?  “What a cool looking dude/dudette!” or “What was he/she thinking?”

 

British Prime Minister David Cameron (c.) eats a hot dog with New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg on Wednesday during his first visit to the US since taking office. 

Two world leaders eating at a hot dog stand?  Maybe the economy is a lot worst off than we think. 

I often ate at outdoor vendors when I was traveling, except in Newark, New Jersey.  There was a “shish kabob” stand outside my banks building.  The kabob looked at more like rat than any meat I have ever seen.

Do you eat at outdoor food vendors?  

2) Summer reading list

I have been using CD’s of books from my library for much of my summer book list.  I can down load the CD to my iPod which makes it very convenient compared to carrying books around.

Two audio books that I really enjoyed were:

A. Hatchet by Gary Paulsen

Brian Robeson is a young boy stranded and alone in the Canadian wilderness, after the pilot of the plane in which he is traveling suffers a fatal heart attack.  Brian is forced to try to land the plane, but ends up crash-landing the plane into a lake.  He just manages to escape as the plane sinks into the remote lake.

Brian figures out how to make fire. He forces himself to eat whatever food he can find, such as turtle eggs, fish, berries, fruit, some rabbits, and even a couple of birds. He deals with a porcupine, bear, skunk, moose and a tornado and a tornado. He eventually becomes quite a craftsman, crafting a bow, arrows, and a spear. He also fashions a shelter out of the underside of a rock overhang. During the story, he struggles with memories of home, and the bittersweet memory of his mother, who Brian has discovered was cheating on his father.

Hatchet is a simple, but compelling coming of age , wilderness survival, story.  Anyone who loves the outdoors will enjoy this book.

B. In Defense of Food by Michael Pollan

A review from Publishers Weekly:

“In his hugely influential treatise The Omnivore’s Dilemma, Pollan traced a direct line between the industrialization of our food supply and the degradation of the environment. His new book takes up where the previous work left off. Examining the question of what to eat from the perspective of health, this powerfully argued, thoroughly researched and elegant manifesto cuts straight to the chase with a maxim that is deceptively simple: Eat food, not too much, mostly plants. But as Pollan explains, food in a country that is driven by a thirty-two billion-dollar marketing machine is both a loaded term and, in its purest sense, a holy grail.

The first section of his three-part essay refutes the authority of the diet bullies, pointing up the confluence of interests among manufacturers of processed foods, marketers and nutritional scientists—a cabal whose nutritional advice has given rise to a notably unhealthy preoccupation with nutrition and diet and the idea of eating healthily.

The second portion vivisects the Western diet, questioning, among other sacred cows, the idea that dietary fat leads to chronic illness. A writer of great subtlety, Pollan doesn’t preach to the choir; in fact, rarely does he preach at all, preferring to lets the facts speak for themselves.”

Are there any books you have read recently that you recommend?

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