POSTS FROM November 2002

How cool is the new Amex Blue card?


I'll be honest — when I first saw the ad 3 years ago, I got one immediately simply because it was transparent (yeah, yeah...materialistic Asian, blah, blah — it was cool damnit). But, oh the dissapointment. When the card arrived in the mail, it was not clear. It was not cool. It was not supercalafragalistic. Apparently there were issues with it being clear because some ATM machines didn't recognize it since the detector depended on an opaque card. Simple people, simple pleasures, I guess.

Do you think that red food dye is formulated by meek, bespectacled, lab coat-wearing scientists who prefer the glow of a computer monitor to the natural light of the sun? Well you're wrong — it's made from ground up bugs.

Cochineal extract (also known as carmine or carminic acid) is made from the desiccated bodies of female Dactylopius coccus Costa, a small insect harvested mainly in Peru and the Canary Islands. The bug feeds on red cactus berries, and color from the berries accumulates in the females and their unhatched larvae. The insects are collected, dried, and ground into a pigment. It takes about seventy thousand of them to produce a pound of carmind, which is used to make processed foods look pink, red, or purple. Dannon strawberry yogurt gets its color from carmine, and so do many frozen fruit bars, candies, and fruit fillings, and Ocean Spray pink-grapefruit juice drink.
— Eric Schlosser: Why McDonald's Fries Taste So Good

Mmm...cactus eating bugs.