April 2008 Archives

This detail from my reading pile. All NPR lovers have heard of the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation. They also fund the famed "genius" grants every year. But a new book, Eccentric Billionaire, focuses on their odd life. A recent piece in USA Today includes this gem:

His questionable ethics persisted as he and Catherine continued to acquire insurance companies and increase the MacArthur wealth.

Bankers Life garnered positive press in the late 1940s for employing 650 older and handicapped workers. Of course, Kriplen writes, "With John … there was often more to any action than what appeared on the surface."

The twist to this story of diversity in hiring? "(The) basement ceilings were unusually low. … Bankers was still able to make this usable space, however, by hiring dwarfs as custodians."

For those of you lucky enough to get some. Here are some things to do with your leftovers.

Hat tip: A certain Passover-hating friend.

Buried in a NYT story about Passover, this statistic.

According to Lubicom, a marketing firm for the kosher food industry, about 350,000 households in the United States keep kosher kitchens year-round, a number that has gone up by 3 percent to 5 percent every year since 2005 as some American Jews have become more observant.

Seems high to me, but very interesting, especially that the number is said to be rising.

The Bread and Mammon crowd, which is to say those who like to expalin American behavior with biblical precedents, should love this. We are once more defying the Bible. As the AP reports, "The two biggest U.S. warehouse retail chains are limiting how much rice customers can buy because of what Sam's Club, a division of Wal-Mart Stores Inc., called on Wednesday "recent supply and demand trends." The broader chain of Wal-Mart stores has no plans to limit food purchases, however.

The move comes as U.S. rice futures hit a record high amid global food inflation, although one rice expert said the warehouse chains may be reacting less to any shortages than to stockpiling by restaurants and small stores [emphasis mine]. Sam's Club followed Costco, which put limits in at least some stores on bulk rice purchases."

The chief culprit, as it is in the Great Matzah Crisis of 2008, is hording.

Farmers and food executives appealed fruitlessly to federal officials yesterday for regulatory steps to limit speculative buying that is helping to drive food prices higher. Meanwhile, some Americans are stocking up on staples such as rice, flour and oil in anticipation of high prices and shortages spreading from overseas.

Their pleas did not find a sympathetic audience at the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC), where regulators said high prices are mostly the result of soaring world demand for grains combined with high fuel prices and drought-induced shortages in many countries.

Hording is exactly what God warns the Israelites not to do in Exodus 16:13 when he rains down manna from the sky.

It's a fact! Both the NYT and the L.A. Daily News have now run breathless stories about the Plight of the Missing Matzahs (insert your own spelling here; a brief search of the NYT website finds three different spellings of the unleavened bread -- matzah, matzoh, and matzo).

Here's the NYT:

From coast to coast, a shortfall of the unleavened flat cracker bread eaten by Jews during the eight days of Passover has sent shoppers scurrying from store to store in search of it. On Monday, Allison Mnookin circled the aisles of her local Whole Foods store in San Mateo, Calif., three times. There was no matzo to be found.

“Being out of matzo is like being out of milk,” Ms. Mnookin said. So it was on to Safeway. Nothing. Fearing that the box of stale matzo remaining in her pantry from last year would not cut it, she drove nearly 15 miles to Menlo Park.

Hypothesis: If the shortage had been on gefilte fish, complaints would have been far fewer.

The reasons behind the matzo shortage range from manufacturing problems, decisions by some stores not to carry the product this Passover and vague talk of a possible work stoppage.

“It seemed like the whole region had a problem getting it in,” said Jason Hodges, a supervisor in the grocery department at a Whole Foods in Miami. A person who answered the phone at a ShopRite in Philadelphia said stores there were sold out, as was the Food Emporium in Briarcliff Manor, N.Y., in Westchester County.

“We heard there was a strike or something,” said the Food Emporium manager, Frantz Baptiste. “The first shipment we had was a month ago, and we never got another one.”

Did the L.A. Daily News just echo the story; here's their take a day later:

Each year, Jewish families look forward to playing "hide the matzo" during Passover, when adults hide a piece of the holiday flatbread in the home and give a prize to the child who finds it.
But this year, adults are the ones who are asking: Where's the matzo?

Partly due to decisions by Costco and Trader Joe's not to carry matzo - and a bit of stockpiling by shoppers who bought up supplies early at Vons, Ralphs and some other supermarkets - a number of California communities are reporting shortages during Passover week.

Some observant Jews say they have been scrambling around the San Fernando Valley and Los Angeles, even hitting up popular Jewish delis such as Canter's for matzo.

When I scoffed at this story to a friend today -- no word of a shortage in Boston, where I was this weekend; and no sign of it in Brooklyn this afternoon; plus, what's with stories about matzah shortages that focus on Trader Joe's and Whole Foods??? (Fox News Alert: Elitism in the American media!!) -- my friend assured me there was no matzah on the West Side of L.A., one of the most Jewish areas of the country. He then added that his mother-in-law may be one of the culprits as she hordes matzah every year. Hording!

Made me think of this passage from Exodus 16, not long after the Israelites celebrated the first Passover, crossed the Red Sea, and found themselves starving in the desert.

13 That evening quail came and covered the camp, and in the morning there was a layer of dew around the camp. 14 When the dew was gone, thin flakes like frost on the ground appeared on the desert floor. 15 When the Israelites saw it, they said to each other, "What is it?" For they did not know what it was.
Moses said to them, "It is the bread the LORD has given you to eat. 16 This is what the LORD has commanded: 'Each one is to gather as much as he needs. Take an omer [a] for each person you have in your tent.' "

17 The Israelites did as they were told; some gathered much, some little. 18 And when they measured it by the omer, he who gathered much did not have too much, and he who gathered little did not have too little. Each one gathered as much as he needed.

19 Then Moses said to them, "No one is to keep any of it until morning."

20 However, some of them paid no attention to Moses; they kept part of it until morning, but it was full of maggots and began to smell. So Moses was angry with them.

More proof that Passover is still alive and even Jews in L.A. are living up to the admonition of the haggadah: Experience the Exodus as if you yourselves were coming out of Egypt. What's seem to be happening in the new Promised Land this week is exactly what happened in the wilderness of old. Some people long for food, others stockpile. Now that's the spirit of Passover!

Say what you will about the Tibet protestors, but as an act of brand warfare -- tarnishing one of the most carefully cultivated worldwide brands ever created -- they've done a masterful job. They've now got the torch cowering inside...

No, but Harry Potter may be. Harris Interactive has released results of its Favorite Book of 2008. While The Bible is number one among each of the different demographic groups, there is a large difference in the number two favorite...

A friend and loyal reader of Feiler Faster sent along this email this morning: Even I, who thinks religion can't sink much lower, had a hard time with this one...there's a toy store [in Brooklyn] that's on our way to...

I've been looking at YouTubes of King's famous speech the night before he was killed -- 40 years ago today. The speech is featured in my new book on Moses in America because of King's famous references that he'd been...

I was looking at a Merriam-Webster dictionary on Amazon and came across this comment from a parent. Christian parents should know that this dictionary has only a generic, small case listing for "god" while listing "Allah" as a specific entity....