Foie gras

Back in March, I criticized campaigns by so-called animal welfare activists to ban foie gras, the great goose and duck liver delicacy found in many fine restaurants and shops. Yesterday, the Chicago City Council, bolstered by Mayor Richard M. Daley’s comments that this was the silliest ordinance, repealed the ban on foie gras for that city’s restaurants. The vote: 37-6. In March, the Maryland state legislature rejected a ban on foie gras. Money quote from the New York Times’ dining journal.

“Monica Davey, the Times’s Chicago bureau chief, says the ban has been a source of embarrassment for the city and the repeal comes as residents have accused officials of trying to micromanage people’s lives, with talk of prohibiting smoking even outside along the lakefront and eliminating transfats from restaurants.

“No other American city has prohibited foie gras’ sale, but California has passed a law banning it as of 2012.”

Hopefully, common sense will float back to California.

Archuleta’s social media networking support

Needless to say, we now have an all-David final for the American Idol competition. Readers who’ve been following my new Twitter feed saw yesterday morning’s report indicating predictions from two sources about Syesha Mercado’s elimination. Updating my earlier post about the extent of social media networking support for the Murray, Utah singer, the following comes from BuzzLogic’s blog:

Following Tuesday’s performances, here’s where we stand on influential blogs and number of posts around each contestant:

David Cook: 618 sites / 8352 posts
David Archuleta: 428 / 8553
Syesha Mercado: 232 / 10188

Key analysis point:

“The frontrunner, according to the influential buzz, is David Archuleta. Yes, the influencers love to poke fun at his penchant for “eye squinting” - and despite the fact that the number of sites and posts buzzing about David Archuleta doesn’t immediately signal an Idol winner, the positive influencer sentiment here is much stronger than that around David Cook. Buzz around David Cook’s last two performances was not favorable - the perception being David Cook will make the finale by the skin of his teeth.”

John-Paul Jespersen

This young, gifted photographer — who’s been featured before on this blog (here, here, and here) — regularly provides banner photos for The Selective Echo’s home page. The new one was taken just days ago off the pipeline trail north of the Avenues District of Salt Lake City.

In March, Jespersen also published Man Was Here, a book of 31 photographs taken since 2006. This 40-page book contains images from an ongoing project. This is not a final body of work. The images contained here may again be published when the work is finished. This book is limited to an edition of 20 copies, to be numbered and signed by the artist. It is available here. Other work is featured here.