Those tomatoes at Burger King come from somewhere...

When I was at the U. of A. I used to see protesters outside Taco Bell on the corner of Speedway and Campbell every Friday as I recall. It was a while before I discovered what specifically they were trying to accomplish. It turned out they were encouraging a boycott because of poor treatment of tomato pickers that supplied Taco Bell. Eventually, after several years, Taco Bell made some concessions and the calls for boycott ended. Well, according to Eric Schlosser's column in The Times, it didn't quite stick. Burger King is leading its fast food brethren in the charge to reverse the trend initiated by the Taco Bell concessions. So when you see the protesters outside Burger King, that's probably why they're there. If you're in Tucson, Dirtbag's on Speedway has better burgers anyway.

Trials and tribulations of blogging

To the handful of people who might actually be checking out my blog on a semi-regular basis for new content, you've obviously realized that it has been slow in coming. A lot of the time I'll read something and it will spark me to think of something I'd like to write. I'll start doing some additional research, because I want to confirm and fortify my thesis and ideas before putting it out there for everyone (a.k.a. all 8 of you) to see. By the time I've spent a few hours reading and refining my ideas in my head, I've often lost the impetus to put them in writing. Sometimes it's because the original idea I had didn't hold up to the scrutiny of my additional research. Sometimes it's because I discover the issue is exceedingly complex and doesn't lend itself well to a relatively short blog post. Sometimes it's because I don't want to devote the time to writing well, and I don't want to publish something I've written poorly.

The moral of this story is that I'm going to try a different format, at least some of the time, and post a link or two to the most interesting thing(s) I read lately. Perhaps I'll add a question or comment, and leave it to you to decide whether it's worthy of your time. I tried to refrain from doing this when I started this blog, because there are countless others who already do it, and there's limited value in browsing through an endless array of other people's links (unless you share very similar interests). But in an effort to maintain some purpose for Thinking Thrice, I'm going to try it.