No Blood for Sugar

We want the Honey without the Bees and we want it now!

I'm reading Alton Brown's I'm Just Here For More Food, his book about baking.

He touches on the history of sugar. He writes the Arabs had perfected the technique required to take the white crystals from the sugarcane plant and were exporting the stuff into Europe for $500 a spoonful.

Finally Europe got fed up being stuck in the dark ages while the Arabs were living the good life, so they launched a thinly veiled religious operation called "the Crusades." One of their goals was to get sugar.

Ah, yes.

Oil. Spices. Sugar. Want. It. Now. Give it.

MVL

Read me a story, Daddy!

I pillage my credit cards to get some great books!

Some of you may know and some of you may care to know that I am a deeply nerdy political and public affairs junkie. Problems with P3 partnerships? Problems with the official story on the so-called war on terror? The pilfering of public funds and commons by the pursuit of the Olympic dreams? Heathcare issues?

Oh, baby.

These are the books I've just recently purchased.

Michael Heller's Gridlock Economy, How Too Much Ownership Wrecks Markets, Stops Innovation and Costs Lives. A cure for Alzheimer's disease has been found but is not being produced because the cost of 'royalties' to the owners of the cure's component parts is too high. The airwaves in the US are predominately underused because those who hold the rights (bought from the public) are unwillng to let them be used without exacting too high a cost.

So far, a great read. Published by Basic Books. List $27.99.

Alain Deneault's Noir Canada, Pillage, corruption et criminalite en Afrique. The Toronto stock exchange applies political pressures in Africa on behalf of mining and oil companies. This was the book that Barrick Gold sued to keep from being published.

Laure Waridel's Acheter, c'est voter: le cas du cafe. Published by ecosociete. Waridel looks at the path that the coffee bean takes from its tree to your coffee cup. Why your purchasing dollars are a powerful tool in fighting injustice.

I also bought Richard III and now want to be a bunch-backed venomous, murderous toad and seize the throne of medieval England.