Supernatural Harmony

A consortium of candy manufactures wants to change the definition of chocolate. The Chocolate Manufacturers Association, whose members include Hershey, Nestle SA and Archer Daniels Midland Co., has a petition before the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to redefine what constitutes chocolate.

When is chocolate no longer chocolate? The answer in my opinion is very simple. Chocolate is no longer chocolate the moment you stop using chocolate.

Are you still following me or have I gone to fast?

The consortium want to make it without the required ingredients of cocoa butter and cocoa solids, using instead artificial sweeteners, milk substitutes and vegetable fats such as hydrogenated and trans fats. Hershey, the largest U.S. candy maker, says that broader labeling is needed to keep up with changing consumer tastes. I’m a consumer, and when I have a craving for chocolate, I expect to eat chocolate.

The Chocolate Manufacturers Association is attempting to change the definition of chocolate to protect themselves from any potential liability. Numerous manufacturing associations have attempted to perform the same switch. Margarine manufactures have attempted to call their product butter, but were turned down. Lobbying groups submit these types of proposals all the time to deceive the consumers.

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The Tribeca Film Festival starts today with a slew of films dealing with politics and other topical social issues. The festival aims to be a celebration of music and culture, with special events including street fairs and drive-in movie screenings. The Tribeca Film Festival caters to every film niche during the 11 day event.

This year there has been a modest reduction in screenings. The films being presented vary from edgy indie works and obscure non-English language pictures to mass-market populist fare. The Drive-in series held at World Financial Plaza kicks off tomorrow with a screening of “Dirty Dancing” and is free for the general public to attend.

One of the unique features of the film festival is large plethora of events that cater to the general public. Anyone can purchase tickets to see over 400 films being shown at the festival. This is unique considering that most top level film festivals are invitation only. The Tribeca Film festival will be hosting several film technology workshops which will be open to the public free of charge.

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Nothing puts a smile on my face like getting free stuff. There is no better reward than receiving something for next to nothing. Most of the blogging community feels the same way about this and have used it to generate lots of new traffic by running contests. We can all thank the evil genius John Chow for this. A few months ago John was running a promotion for some free pens. Numerous individuals entered his contest not for the free pens but for a chance to have their blog promoted. Unfortunately for me I was not interested in taking part of this promotion (man was I wrong).

Luckilly all is not lost David Culpepper from PureBlogging.com is taking it up a notch. Currently he is running a contest for a chance to win a 8GB iPod. This is a great opportunity even if I don’t win the iPod it gives me the opportunity to help support, and participte on one of my favourite blog’s. David posts regularily to his blog and there is a wide variaty of useful information available for anyone thinking of starting their own blog. I’m still develeping my blog but I can’t help but take part in this contest.

After much consideration I have finally decided on a theme. I have chosen Vidial by Sadish Bala. The terms of use are pretty straight forward and free for anyone to download. Feel free to take a look a the terms of use agreement located that the following link. It would be time consuming for me at this stage in the game to create a new template from scratch. I definitely want to learn how to create my own unique theme, and proudly share it the wordpress community. Given the amout of free time that I have it was in my best intrest to use an existing theme. This theme will do just fine considering that I am new to this. I Read the rest of this entry »

Captains Log 234123.234

This is the first of many posts. My goal is to document all the steps taken to create my first blog. I will be testing numberous plugins over the next few weeks.