solanasaurus.com

Warning: this is not a comment on the condition of the planet, but a crude business plan to make money off vegetarians and their friends.

Vegetarians will only eat beef if there is no meat in it. So vegetarian restaurants are constantly serving up faux meat, imitation meat, mock meat, or meat analogue, as they also call it, and people happily order and chew on soy, mushrooms, and proteins, with a texture uncannily similar to meat – sans les corpses. You can get chicken, hot dogs, beef, and even shrimp.

I can’t help wonder, if no species has to suffer, why not get a little more adventurous in the “meat” offerings. You know you always wanted to taste dinosaur meat (I did). Even if it tastes just like chicken, you wouldn’t know if it was authentic. In fact, why not make a restaurant called Darwin’s that only serves the finest (faux) extinct or nearly extinct species.

The menu could change daily and the staff could quip, “Sorry, we’re all out of that.” Get it? I tested this idea on both a vegan and a vegetarian, and I think it’s a winner. I’m issuing this menu on a Creative Commons basis. If anybody makes a killing on this idea, I demand free food.

Today’s menu

Starters

Turtle egg soup
Humming bird tongues
Dodo nuggets
Baby polar bear tails
Southern fried finches
Wooping crane webs

Mains

White tiger curry with string beans
Brontosaurus burger
Leg o’ mammoth with greens (for 4)
Crispy panda with rice
Dolphin snout risotto
Bald-eagle noodles

Desert

Platypus milk pudding
Polar icecap cream

My friend Paul’s new website, The School of Everything. Check it out. Teach something, make friends, make a scarf.

JK Rowling is great, but Astrid Lindgren is the true master of children’s storytelling.

Here’s another video. The funniest reactions to Al Gore’s Nobel Peace award were actually from Fox News. Thank you Daily Show.

In London, I had the opportunity to poke the co-founder of Facebook in person. He was standing right next to me at the end of an event at the Frontline Club last week. In the end I decided I would think it was more funny than he would, so I didn’t do it. Really, I had too many questions to ask. Like whether he has made his own personal profile available on search engines like Google, like the rest of us are expected to.

I’ve been railing about the fact that people keep “tagging” photos of me on Facebook I really don’t want the world to see. I have a lot of professional “friends” on the service and I’d rather they didn’t see me in beach-mode. Luckily, you can “untag” photos on other people’s profiles, but I think we all know privacy issues are bound to be far more serious. Like going swimming in sharky waters. Or smoking cigarettes. These guys made a scary movie, by simply reading out loud the terms and conditions of the site: What happens in Facebook stays in Facebook? It’s not exactly reassuring. Watch out what you post.

Well, so I haven’t blogged in a million years, which is atrocious especially given my new part time job as co-managing editor of the ultimate blog of blogs, Global Voices. It’s been a fantastic experience so far, and I’ve met blogloads of interesting new colleagues by email. Prepare yourself to be filled with insights on what that’s like.

I’m in Denmark right now working for five weeks with the Danish radio program Harddisken. One of my first assignments is to cover the Chaos Communication Camp, a meeting/festival of hackers north of Berlin. I’ve got a long list of other stories to work on too, and a very comfortable chair in an office with real people in it.

Giuseppe Di Bella tells the chilling story of how he was investigated by the British anti-terrorism police and American FBI for making fake postage stamps with pictures from Abu Ghraib. Pretty ridiculous.

A few weeks after the British authorities incident, I received a phone call from my friend Art informing me that two FBI agent were about to pay him a visit regarding the Abu Ghraib work and myself. As he was obviously concerned about it, I suggested he simply answers their questions and not to worry too much, as it was clear they were inquiring about my artwork and me. The FBI wanted to know where he knew me from, if I had spoken to him about my political views and finally if I had a bigger agenda. (Making new stamps maybe?) The funniest thing about this laughable story is that the two FBI agents were dressed with back suites and black glasses.

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For those of you who just can’t stand more than a few days without eating “lakrids” there is hope for salvation on the internet. The Danish Food Shop has collected all the most vital Danish food items and made them available at exorbitant prices online. There is also liver paté, curried herring, and wooden clogs if you have hankering for that too.

I blogged this before on another blog, but it’s been a super hit with strangers on the internet. So here goes again, take this clever test to see how many countries you can remember in Africa. Don’t cheat!