This blog is to fill a gap in internet knowledge.

Back in 1974, Julia Child was on Mr. Roger's Neighborhood. During her visit she gave the recipe for a casserole. I can remember my mother hearing the recipe on the television and scrambling for a pen and paper. She missed the recipe, and watched Mr. Roger's Neighborhood with us religiously until they re-ran the episode and she could copy it down. My family has taken that recipe and made it into one of our favorite dinners. I can't find the recipe anywhere on the internet, and so I'm adding it for posterity.

Here's the recipe:

Mr. Roger's Casserole

One small can of tuna, drained
3-4 green onions, chopped
one handful of grated Swiss cheese
one handful of chopped black olives
one handful of dried parsley
one handful of walnuts
one box (8 oz?) of spaghetti
leaves of lettuce - iceberg, greenleaf or your choice

serves 3-4

1. Prepare spaghetti noodles

2. Combine all other ingredients except the lettuce.

3. When spaghetti is finished, drain and combine in the cooking pot with the other ingredients. Stir until the cheese is melted and the casserole is mixed thoroughly.

4. Make a bed of lettuce and place mix on the lettuce.

5. Salt and pepper to taste

My family has always adored this recipe for it's simplicity and it's tastiness. It is fairly open to modification. I've changed the recipe in my own household to use whole grain pasta and a variety of leaf lettuces. Though there were rarely leftovers, they are good either re-heated or served cold.

I don't have anything to add to what already has been said today, but I will share what today's "Cheeky Quote" was on my iGoogle page:

"Rosa Parks sat so Martin Luther King could walk.
Martin Luther King walked so Obama could run.
Obama ran so we can all fly."


I know I'm flying, and I hope that we all continue to soar.

Congratulations President Obama.

Once again, I steal any good thoughts from illdoctrine.com

Much love to Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., the flawed, real human beings that fought and struggled to increase justice and mercy in our world. Society does no favor to King's legacy by reducing it to one speech, or one issue and it does no favor to the rest of humanity to elevate King above his humanity. Dr. King worked to end poverty, bring about reparations for slavery, and an end to war.

Dr. King was a person who was a creature of his time. He may or may not have supported LGBT rights when he was alive, and he may or may not have supported LGBT rights if he were alive today. This is not to minimize the struggles and necessity of LGBT rights, but to emphasize that Dr. King may have had his vision limited by prejudices that are apparant to us today as racism was apparant to Dr. King in his day. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was and is a great man, a person to emulate. But let us not lose sight of the fact that he was also a man, and that what he did and who he became is achievable not just by a select few, but by all of us.

Dr. King was inspired in his own day by Jesus, Mahatma Ghandi, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, and many others. Today, Dr. King continues to exist as an inspiration for those of us alive today and those yet to come. Let us not "white wash" his legacy and our memories of him, thereby making him and what he did for us all unattainable by those who continue the struggle today. Let us see the full spectrum of his character and soul. Knowing that he had flaws, just as the rest of us do, should not be considered scandalous but a reminder that great things can come from any of us, despite of or maybe even as a result of our flaws or weaknesses.

There will always be those that will attempt character assassination of anyone they don't agree with. It is only by embracing the whole person of who Dr. King was will we be able to move beyond this increasing polarization. Just as it is patriotic to say when our country is wrong, so also is respecting the memory of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. by remembering that no one is above sin or is perfect.

Scientists at Scripps Research Institute have created indefinitely self-replicating RNA enzymes. Using the In Vitro Evolution technique, strains of RNA were developed that "can sustain molecular information, a form of heritability, and give rise to variations of itself in a way akin to Darwinian evolution."

While this isn't life created in a test tube, this is a major step forward. I find myself marveling at this advancement in science, but wonder about the potential implications given the limitations in bio ethics, intellectual property, and patent\copyright legislation. Genetically engineered organisms can already be patented, with disturbing implications. Bias is given to large corporations, enabling them to sue individuals for owning their patented products, simply because pollen from the engineered plants blew onto neighboring cropland.

This reminds me of the story of the golem, an artificially created being from Jewish legend. Many of the golem stories relate to the creature going out of control. Yet often the issue wasn't the creature itself, but the limited vision of those who created the creature. Similarly, science fiction is filled with ideas and stories about human creations gone awry. I hope that the power of narrative is used to inform researchers and ethicists in advance of their research projects, and not after the fact.

Read the entire article on the self-replicating RNA enzymes here: http://www.scienceblog.com/cms/scientists-develop-first-examples-rna-replicates-itself-indefinitely-18191.html

I really don't have much to say. Not that there isn't a lot to talk about: the war in Gaza, the upcoming inauguration of President Obama, the economy, etc. I'm just not moved to speak of any of those things today. In the case of the war in Gaza, well, I'm despondent about the whole thing, but not optimistic that Israel will declare a ceasefire. The economy is dependent on the new administration, which won't even be in their offices for two more weeks, let alone everyone getting approved by the Congress.

Instead, I'll list some recent Bible quotes that have fallen in my lap this past week.

As iron sharpens iron, so a man sharpens the countenance of his friend. - Proverbs 27:17 NKJV

But some one will say, "You have faith and I have works." Show me your faith apart from your works, and I by my works will show you my faith. - James 2:18 RSV

Behold, you desire truth in the inward parts: and in the hidden part you shall make me to know wisdom. - Psalm 51:6 American King James Version

What quotations, scripture or otherwise, have fallen in your laps recently? Leave yours in the comments.

Today, the New York Times published two OpEd pieces, "The End of the Financial World as We Know It" and "How to Repair a Broken Financial World," both written by Michael Lewis and David Einhorn. The titles are pretty self explanitory. While reading both articles, I kept thinking that it was about DAMN time someone was able to explain what's going on and what needs to be done about it.

These are pretty dense and bulky pieces, so make sure you have a few minutes before you dig in, but these are must reads. As we begin the new year and a new Presidential administration, I finally feel I know enough to understand and critique the coming changes.

Alright, if you haven't picked up on it already, I'm infatuated with the video blog website illdoctrine.com. It's run by Jay Smooth, who has decades of cred in the hip hop community. His postings cover a wide range of topics and cover a lot of ground in the hip hop and Black community including culture, politics, and the issues of misogyny and homophobia. I find what he has to say to be persuasive, multi-layered, and spot on. Not to mention entertaining. So, don't be surprised if I keep posting his videos until I get this blogger crush out of my system.

I'm sure you are dying to know why I find this so interesting. I've been a fan of hip-hop since I started listening to music. Some of the first cassettes I had were called Raps Greatest Hits and had tracks from Kurtis Blow, Doug E. Fresh, Erik B. and Rakim. At the time, I was just one more white kid in the suburbs trying to be Black, or as we called it, a wigger. These were also the days of New Jack Swing, which influenced my sense of romance. Anyway, as time went on hip hop's lyrics and style influenced me, and I realized that if I liked this kind of music I also needed to pay more attention to the cultures and influences that shaped this music. This pushed me towards trying to understand racism and poverty in the United States, and started me thinking about cultural appropriation, the taking of elements of a usually minority culture by a more dominant culture.

To this day, cultural appropriation is one of the things that angers me the most, is rarely discussed, and is in reality a much more complex cultural interchange, as mainstream American culture is not totally seperated from the African American, inner-city cultures. So, I have tried to not be just a consumer, or a taker in Randian terms. As a member of dominant society, I must constantly check my priveldge and remember that I must instead work towards cultural exchange, where I give back as much as I take. I don't do this just in regards to hip hop and the Black community, but also in regards to interfaith dialogue, especially when it comes to Native American religions.

So, to bring it all back, illdoctrine has been a great reminder to me of the nuances of hip hop culture and the larger Black communities and I find Jay Smooth can help keep me on track. A good example of this is a piece he did on a church in Chicago putting up billboards telling people to not listen to some rappers. For all you ministers out there, what he has to say about this church's move is something to take to heart and mirrors much of what I learned in seminary about community dialogue.

So check it out. Don't believe the hype (even if it's my hype)