"rule" news and stories

The Big Island City Council in Hawaii has just passed a resolution to require coffee sellers to use more Kona Coffee in their "Kona coffee blends." Currently, the required minimum amount for a coffee to be labeled with the Kona blend term is only 10% of the beans. The new resolution ups the amount to 75% - an increase the growers and officials say is necessary to protect the Kona coffee name and reputation, as well as the financial well-being of the growers. They borrowed the 75% standard from California wine growers, who require that 75% of the grapes used in a wine to come from California grapes.

Proponents of the change, which passed through the council in a unanimous vote, say that not only will this protect the (wee deserved) reputation of Kona coffee as a luxury product, but it will ultimately prove to be better for consumers, who will know with certainty what they are paying for when they buy a Kona Blend and won't end up overpaying for a substandard product that bears the region's name.

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A few weeks ago, we heard about a child being disciplined for eating lunch with a spoon, instead of a fork and knife. Continuing the trend of what seems to be huge overreactions, a student in a Virginia school was suspended for taking a cookie. Jeremy Maitland, an 8th grader, was filling up a water cooler after his team's baseball practice and saw that someone had knocked over a container of cookies near the fountain. He picked them up, putting them back into their container, and ate one as he did so (the 5 second rule in action!). The cookies, as it turned out, belonged to a teacher and the boy was suspended for violating the school's no-theft policy. He was also kicked off the baseball team.

Making the situation even stranger is the fact that another child was suspended, as well. Convicted of cookie conspiracy? It doesn't appear that anyone else consumed any cookies, though a superintendent said that the punishment was reasonable under the circumstances.

One would assume that if there was a valid reason for this boy's suspension, like a fight or the theft of a non-baked good, that it would have been cited as the reason for the discipline, not eating a cookie.

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