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An important story that I missed

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while on vacation was the story about the Bush administration’s reversal on an extremely important issue, the Fissile Material Cutoff Treaty. Basically, this is a long-sought treaty that will compel states to no longer produce new fissile material – i.e., material that can be used to make weapons. US policy has always been to support the treaty with a strong verification plan, but last week, the US changed its policy on the nuke pact. As you can see by the chronology on this issue, this is a big reversal of policy. But as I have argued before, this is entirely in line with the mainstream of US foreign policy, which for years (since Reagan and GHW Bush and accellerating through Clinton and GW Bush) has been to commit other states to treaties that do not bind the US.

Two things to note. First, as usual, Bush says that he supports something (FMCT) and acts against it. Second, the ultra-conservative Washington Times gets the story exactly backwards, in what is obviously a willful editorial decision to misinform the paper’s readers.

Another celebrity death:

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Singer Rick James died on Thursday. The CNN article glosses over what, for many, is the weirdest aspect of his history. The CNN article reads, “James was reported AWOL [from the army], and he fled to Canada, where he continued his musical career. The charges came back to haunt him when his success brought him back to the United States, and eventually he served time.”

What that leaves out is that he “continued his musical career” in a group called the Mynah Birds, with none other than Neil Young as his bandmate. The band signed to Motown, and when Rick and Neil (and others) were driving from Toronto to Detroit, James was arrested. That spelled the end of the band, although there was an album in the can by that point – work that has never been heard by the public. The main question: how would modern music have been changed if the Mynah Birds had released that album and achieved success with it? No Buffalo Springfield, likely no CSNY, and Rick James in the public consciousness as a rocker, not a funkster, about 13 years earlier, overlapping with the career of Jimi Hendrix.

Food

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Living where we do, and having the lifestyle we have (work, work, work, play with dogs), Nadia and I spend a lot of time socializing around tables. Restaurant tables, our dinner table, the counter we eat at when it’s the two of us at home, and more. So I’m inaugurating a new category here at mikel.org called simply “Food” in which I plan to note down quick reviews of restaurants we go to, meals we make, things we put on the grill, etc.

The first entry will be to note our favourite new (to us) find, a wonderful market/French resto called La Colombe on Duluth E. We’ve been twice now in the past few weeks and everything we’ve had has been spectacular. Last time, I had the magret de canard, which was wonderful, and the time before that the jarret d’agneau (sorry don’t know what you’d call that in English; probably a lamb hock or something) which was just a shade less satisfying as the duck. Hint: they suggest the cheese plate as an entree, but save some wine (it’s BYO) and you’ll enjoy it more where it should be served – before dessert.

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