The Whole Grain Stamp

Consumers searching the grocery aisles for authentic whole grain foods now have a new "search tool" – the Whole Grain Stamp. Making it easy for shoppers to spot whole grain foods will help close the Whole Grains Gap and promote a goal long sought by nutrition and medical experts.

With the Whole Grain Stamp, consumers won't need to read ingredients or count grams and ounces to meet the whole grain goals in the 2005 Dietary Guidelines. The Stamp makes it easy to get the recommended three servings a day of whole grains: Eating three whole grain food products labeled "Excellent Source" or "100%/Excellent" does the trick – or six products labeled "Good Source.

The 2005 Guidelines advise eating half or more of our grains as whole grains – at least three 16g servings per day. A "Good Source" contains at least 8 grams of whole grains per labeled serving, while an "Excellent" or "100% Excellent Source" contains at least 16 grams of whole grains per labeled serving.

Definition of Whole Grains

Whole grains or foods made from them contain all the essential parts and naturally-occurring nutrients of the entire grain seed. If the grain has been processed (e.g., cracked, crushed, rolled, extruded, lightly pearled and/or cooked), the food product should deliver approximately the same rich balance of nutrients that are found in the original grain seed.

Examples of generally accepted whole grain foods and flours are:
Amaranth, Barley (lightly pearled), Brown and Colored Rice, Buckwheat, Bulgur, Corn and Whole Cornmeal, Emmer, Farro, Grano (lightly pearled wheat), Kamut® grain, Millet, Oatmeal and Whole Oats, Popcorn, Quinoa, Sorghum, Spelt, Teff, Triticale, Whole Rye, Whole or Cracked Wheat, Wheat Berries, and Wild Rice.

Taken from:

The Whole Grains Council

A Consortium of Industry, Scientists, Chefs and
Oldways Preservation Trust committeed to
increasing consumption of Whole Grains for better health

What is that star?

"This is only the second time in my life I've seen Mercury," says sky watcher Jeffrey Beall who snapped this picture looking west from his balcony in Denver, Colorado.Mercury is the bright "star" just above the mountain ridge, rivaling the city lights.

Mercury makes a rare appearance in the evening sky this week.

"Mercury is elusive because it spends most of its time hidden by the glare of the sun. This week is different. From now until about March 1st, Mercury moves out of the glare and into plain view. It's not that Mercury is genuinely farther from the sun. It just looks that way because of the Earth-sun-Mercury geometry in late February. A picture is worth a thousand words: diagram.

Friday, Feb. 24th, is the best day to look; that's the date of greatest elongation or separation from the sun. Other dates of note are Feb 28th and March 1st when the crescent moon glides by Mercury—very pretty."

Other space stories can be read at Science@NASA.

Greek Hiker Finds 6,500-Year-Old Pendant

An undated handout picture showing a 6,500-year-old gold jewel that has been picked up in a northern Greek field by a hiker who handed it over to authorities, an archaeologist said in the northern Greek port city of Thessaloniki on Thursday, Feb. 16, 2006. (AP Photo/Culture Ministry)

By COSTAS KANTOURIS, Associated Press Writer Fri Feb 17, 1:17 AM ET

THESSALONIKI, Greece - A Greek hiker found a 6,500-year-old gold pendant in a field and handed it over to authorities, an archaeologist said Thursday.
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The flat, roughly ring-shaped prehistoric pendant probably had religious significance and would have been worn on a necklace by a prominent member of society.

Only three such gold artifacts have been discovered during organized digs, archaeologist Georgia Karamitrou-Mendesidi, head of the Greek archaeological service in the northern region where the discovery was made, told The Associated Press.

"It belongs to the Neolithic period, about which we know very little regarding the use of metals, particularly gold," she said. "The fact that it is made of gold indicates that these people were highly advanced, producing significant works of art."

She said the pendant, measuring rough 1 1/2 by 1 1/2 inches, was picked up last year near the town of Ptolemaida, about 90 miles southwest of the northern city of Thessaloniki. Karamitrou-Mendesidi is to present the artifact at a three-day archaeological conference that opened Thursday in Thessaloniki.

Opening Ceremonies Turin

TURIN, ITALY - FEBRUARY 10: Italian actress Sophia Loren, Chilean writer Isabel Allende, American actress Susan Sarandon, Nobel Peace-prize winner Wangari Maathai of Kenya, Nawal El Moutawakel of Morocco, Manuela Di Centa of Italy, Maria Mutola of Mozambique and Cambodian human rights activist Somaly Mam carry the Olympic flag during the Opening Ceremony of the Turin 2006 Winter Olympic Games on February 10, 2006 at the Olympic Stadium in Turin, Italy. It was the first time eight women carried the Olympic flag. (Photo by Vladimir Rys/Bongarts/Getty Images) Bongarts/Getty Images



TURIN, ITALY - FEBRUARY 10: The Olympic flag is seen during the Opening Ceremony of the Turin 2006 Winter Olympic Games on February 10, 2006 at the Olympic Stadium in Turin, Italy. (Photo by Clive Rose/Getty Images) Getty Images

Mary Magdalene

Mary and Child with Sts Mary Magdalene and Catherine
by Alvise Vivarini
1504
Oil on canvas, 89 x 129 cm
The Hermitage, St. Petersburg

THE SAINTLY SINNER
by JOAN ACOCELLA
The two-thousand-year obsession with Mary Magdalene.
Issue of 2006-02-13 and 20
Posted 2006-02-06 The New Yorker

The Catholic Church presumably has enough on its hands right now without worrying about popular fiction, but the Holy See cannot have failed to notice that Dan Brown’s “The Da Vinci Code,” a novel claiming that Jesus was married, has been on the Times best-seller list for almost three years. (Its message will soon spread more widely: the paperback is due out next month, and the movie version will be released in May.) Brown is by no means the first to have suggested that Christ had a sex life—Martin Luther said it—but the most notorious recent statement of the theory was a 1982 book, “Holy Blood, Holy Grail,” by Michael Baigent, Richard Leigh, and Henry Lincoln. “Holy Blood,” which was one of the main sources for “The Da Vinci Code,” proposes that after the Crucifixion Jesus’ wife, with at least one of their children, escaped to France, where their descendants married into the Merovingian dynasty and are still around today. Nobody knows this, though, because, according to the authors’ scenario, the truth has been kept under wraps for a thousand years by a secret society called the Priory of Sion. The book offers a fantastically elaborated conspiracy theory—involving Leonardo da Vinci, Isaac Newton, Victor Hugo, and Jean Cocteau (all “grand masters” of the Priory of Sion), plus Emma Calvé and various others—that cannot be briefly summarized, but the upshot is that the Priory may now be ready to go public with its story. The authors warn that the organization may intend to set up a theocratic United States of Europe, with a descendant of Jesus as its priest-king but with the actual business of government being handled by some other party—the Priory of Sion, for example.

And who is the woman who caused all this trouble? Who married Jesus and bore his offspring and thereby laid the foundation for the overthrow of post-Enlightenment culture? Mary Magdalene.


"Mary Magdalene is one of several women named Mary who appear in the four canonical Christian gospels: Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. She is said in the Gospels to have been relieved of seven demons, to have supported Jesus' ministry financially, and to have witnessed the crucifixion and resurrection. Mary Magdalene was also important to the Gnostics, a category that collectively describes several early Christian sects that placed an emphasis on salvation through knowledge. She appears in several texts that are classified as "gnostic" as a favorite disciple, visionary, and leader. "

Intuition...

Author: Malcolm Gladwell

I have gone through my life trusting my intuition and making what others would call snap decisions. It has always seemed that I’ve just “known” what I had to do, where I had to go, or the character of a person within the first few minutes. I’ve gone with decisions that feel right. It’s almost as if I can see the path as a result of the decision. When I read this book I felt like my way of approaching life was validated.

Blink: The Power of Thinking without Thinking

(ISBN: 0316172324 Format: Hardcover, 288pp Pub. Date: January 2005 Publisher: Little, Brown & Company)

From the Publisher: How do we make decisions--good and bad--and why are some people so much better at it than others? That's the question Malcolm Gladwell asks and answers in the follow-up to his huge bestseller, The Tipping Point. Utilizing case studies as diverse as speed dating, pop music, and the shooting of Amadou Diallo, Gladwell reveals that what we think of as decisions made in the blink of an eye are much more complicated than assumed. Drawing on cutting-edge neuroscience and psychology, he shows how the difference between good decision-making and bad has nothing to do with how much information we can process quickly, but on the few particular details on which we focus. Leaping boldly from example to example, displaying all of the brilliance that made The Tipping Point a classic, Gladwell reveals how we can become better decision makers--in our homes, our offices, and in everyday life. The result is a book that is surprising and transforming. Never again will you think about thinking the same way.

And this profile just published in the New York Times:

The Gladwell Effect

By RACHEL DONADIO

Published: February 5, 2006 NYT

"PEOPLE are experience rich and theory poor," the writer Malcolm Gladwell said recently. "People who are busy doing things — as opposed to people who are busy sitting around, like me, reading and having coffee in coffee shops — don't have opportunities to kind of collect and organize their experiences and make sense of them."

With a writerly verve and strong narrative powers, he leavens serious social science research with zany characters and pithy, easily digestible anecdotes. Gladwell selects his anecdotes from a wide range of sources — the military, business, food, music, romance — and diverse locales, a tactic that broadens his books' appeal.

…In "The Tipping Point," he discusses everything from the drop in crime in New York in the early 1990's to the retro return of Hush Puppies, the rise of the Aeron chair in the dot-com era, and how "Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood" became a best seller through its popularity in small reading groups. His point is that social epidemics can spread with the right context and the pull of certain influential people: "connectors," in touch with different groups of people; "mavens," experts in one area; and "salesmen," who can win customers over.

Similarly, in "Blink," he introduces a range of case studies and experts, including art historians who can tell within seconds that a statue is a fake and a psychologist who can predict whether a couple will get divorced after observing them for only a few minutes. His message is that we should trust first impressions — except when we shouldn't. Gladwell, who is multiracial, said he became interested in first impressions when he grew his hair into an Afro and then was repeatedly pulled over for speeding, and stopped once by the police looking for a rapist with similar hair. In an era of increased specialization and niche thinking, Gladwell himself is the ultimate "connector," bridging disparate universes: the New York literary world and corporate America; liberal and conservative; men and women; high and low.