Daniel Lubetzky

By Fareed Zakaria, Thursday, March 29, 2018

By way of explanation for some of President Trump’s bizarre foreign policy moves, we are often told that he is “unconventional” and that this could well be an asset. It’s certainly true that he doesn’t follow standard operating procedure on almost anything, from getting daily intelligence briefings to staffing the State Department. But his most striking departure from previous presidents has been in his rhetoric. American presidents have tended to weigh their words carefully, believing that they must preserve the credibility of the world’s leading power.

And then there is Trump, for whom words are weightless. During the campaign, he excoriated Saudi Arabia as a country that “want[s] women as slaves and to kill gays,” only to make his first presidential trip abroad to the kingdom and warmly embrace its rulers. He said NATO was obsolete and then affirmed the opposite. China was a currency manipulator that was “raping” the United States, until it wasn’t. [Read more →]

Dr. Oz did extensive tests on apple juice and determined that about 60% of the apple juice found in US shelves comes from China and much of it is contaminated with arsenic. 

That China has terrible safety food standards does not surprise me. That good ol’ American apple juice boxes for little kids come from China does, and scares me.

As a general rule, any toy or food product that comes from China concerns me for their lax standards with lead, etc. and I try to avoid my kids from coming in contact with it. But it is hard given how extensive Chinese penetration is across all consumer goods.

[Read more →]

Given all the bad publicity that Chinese companies have gotten for the lax standards and unethical practices employed by the food industry there, resulting in numerous deaths due to consumption of poisoned milk, honey, baby formula, and other food products, it is not surprising that Chinese manufacturers and importers of Chinese food products would not want to publicize the origin of the source of their products.

But it doesn’t make it less ethical.

And the FDA, US Customs and other US agencies do not do nearly enough to protect consumers against these deceptive and dangerous practices.

People often get surprised when they learn that some of the food they may be eating may be manufactured in China, because the manufacturers go very far to try to hide this.  The labels of Mrs. Mays products hide their “Made in China” claim with tiny print on the far side under the wrapper foil. I learned this when analyzing their packaging after they tried (unsuccessfully) to copy our products’ packaging, names, and features.

But the challenge can be even more elusive with the import of raw materials – like honey or peanuts.  And the challenge is no less critical to manufacturers, because of the high incidences of contamination of raw materials in these products from China.

Now a great website, TrueSourceHoney.com, aims to help consumers and food manufacturers trace where honey comes from.  As reported in Food Business News countries like “Indonesia, Malaysia, Taiwan, Thailand, the Philippines and Mongolia raise few bees and have no history of producing honey in commercial quantities, yet have recently exported large amounts of honey to the United States,” much of it counterfeit from China. 

[Read more →]

by Adeena Schlussel on behalf of Daniel Lubetzky

The New York Times had a fun compilation of signs across the world that conveyed something surprising, not always unintended, but always funny.

[Read more →]

"He who controls others may be powerful, 
but he who has  mastered himself is mightier still." 

–Lao Tzu (forwarded by Len & Libby Traubman)

Very impressive! Watch till the end! Does anyone know how the last part is done?

While many of the choices on TIME Magazine’s Top 10 lists for 2009 were lame or uninspired, here are a few worthwhile picks:

MOST HILARIOUS VIDEO:

Bonnie Tyler spoof of 80s (Other viral videos: I had already noted great videos including of Susan Boyle, and there are other good ones like this wedding procession, the post-it film "deadline", the mock ad for Flutter that underlines the silliness of the world we live in, and the baby dancing that even my grandmother had forwarded me)

FUNNIEST AD:

Hulu

COOL AND DEEP:

The Longest Way 1.0 – one year walk/beard grow time lapse from Christoph Rehage on Vimeo.

Also Cool Scientific Discoveries:

• The Human Epigenome, Decoded
• Gene Therapy Cures Color Blindness
• A Robot Performs Science
• Breeding Tuna on Land
• Teleportation!
• Top 10 New Species
• A 3D Digital Camera

In an interesting note about the gap between knowledge and learning, Gidi Grinstein pointed me to this amazing video that highlights the quick pace at which information is growing.  This year, more information will be created than was generated in the prior 5,000 years.

Lost in Translation…

Underscoring the depth of the challenge to freedom as we know it, no less than NYT Editor Bill Keller led the Week In Review with an analysis of China and Russia’s rise:

If it is not yet an age, it is at least a season: Springtime for autocrats, and not just the minor-league monsters of Zimbabwe and the like, but the giant regimes that seemed so surely bound for the ash heap in 1989.

[Read more →]