8 Goes Green, Trendsmap and O&CO

On the journalism side of life

 This week, my classmate Nan Wu and I worked on a blogpost for KOMU's 8 Goes Green project.   It aims to be "a guide for greening up."  With Spring arriving, our post was about keeping lawn products, like fertilizers and pesticides, out of our local watershed.  We also provided an alternative to chemicals - composting - and how to learn to make it.

One cool site to watch this week has been Trendsmap.  It provides a real-time look at the most used words and hashtags on Twitter around the world.  If you spend some time on the website, you can watch the words and hashtags grow/shrink and move around on the map.  Clicking on the links allows you see the tweets that mention the word or hashtag you clicked on.  I watched the word "anderson" - as in Mizzou's old men's head basketball coach and Arkansas's new head coach - move from being over the mid-Missouri area to being above Fayetteville, Ark., thanks to his decision to switch teams.

I also think it's interesting to look at where on the world map there's blank spots.  The three most prominent spots - besides Antarctica - are Eastern Africa, most of the Asian continent including Russia, China and Mongolia, and Northwestern Australia.  I believe it says something about how that area has adapted to technology, which says something about the economy.  But, I don't believe China fits into that assumption.  We know they use technology profusely and that the Chinese government tends to restrict access to certain internet sites.  The last reports I've seen show that China has blocked Twitter, which is reflected on the Trendsmap.

On the personal side of life

Last weekend, my family and I visited New York City.  We took a food tour of Greenwich Village with Foods of New York.  We visited a variety of places including a pizza joint, cheese shop, bakery, and Cuban restaurant.  My favorite spot was OLIVIERS & CO., better known as O&CO.  Their main product is olive oil made with hand-picked olives grown by family farmers mostly in the Mediterranean.  The olives are cold-pressed to keep their rich flavor, not hot-pressed like industrial growers.  We tasted basil olive oil on a toasted baguette slice with sea salt and I knew I had to have some for my own kitchen!

It had a rich olive flavor with the light, crispness of basil.  My bottle arrived Thursday and my Friday afternoon snack was exactly what we had in NYC.  I can't wait to try it on pasta and see how else I can work it into my cooking!