"youtube" news and stories

Using Facebook and Youtube, Greenpeace stared down Nestle, and Nestle blinked.

According to the London Independent newspaper, Nestle -- the giant, Swiss-based food conglomerate that operates in 86 countries around the world and employs hundreds of thousands of people -- had been under virtual fire for three months for its use of palm oil in many of its products, especially KitKat, Aero and Quality Street.

Greenpeace asserted that the palm oil was harvested unethically, at the expense of indigenous forests and the wildlife (like Orangutans) that live in them.

The palm oil controversy was not originally aimed solely at Nestle. Many food companies use it, of course, including Cadbury and Mars, competing confectioners to Nestle. But when certain methods of palm oil farming were exposed as unethical, those companies vowed to stick to sustainable farming practices.

But Nestle dragged its feet, promising only to meet the latest acceptable date of 2015 set by the World Wildlife Fund, reports the Independent, so Greenpeace grew impatient and waged a media campaign that some might term virtual guerrilla warfare (or gorilla warfare, as the case may be).

Julia Child certainly could make a mean boeuf bourguignon, but did you know she could also whip up the building blocks of life?

It's kind of scary watching her describe scientific diagrams using her chef's knife as a pointer. But it's helpful for all us home cooks that she converts grams into teaspoons. Bon appetit!

[Neatorama via Buzzfeed]

Photo: miskan/flickr

A Domino's Pizza franchise in North Carolina was forced to close its doors forever last week, and its owner puts the blame on disgusting videos two former employees posted on YouTube.

"My business was off 58 percent because of YouTube," franchise owner Kevin Hendren told the Hickory Daily Record. The store closed on Sept. 22.

The franchise's troubles began when two employees of his Conover, N.C., Domino's Pizza allegedly created videos of themselves showing one putting cheese in his nose and then putting it on a sandwich, sneezing on cheese sticks and pulling down his pants, wiping himself with a sponge and then using that sponge to clean a pan. The videos were discovered in April and have been removed from YouTube.

Hendren told the newspaper he will not reopen the Domino's franchise. "I'm just living day to day right now," he told the Daily Record.

It's amazing what a couple of rabbit ears will pick up, and it pays to do a little futzing around with the remote to sample the bevy of weird and wonderful channels and sub-channels blazing through the airwaves in all their pixelated glory.

Case in point: "The Dotch Cooking Show." This little gem of Japanese pop culture may have ended in 2007, but it lives on thanks to Los Angeles' KSCI-TV channel 18.2 -- not to mention online, in countless YouTube clips and less-than-legal downloads.

America's cook-off shows seem downright sleep-inducing by comparison. As TV spectacles go, Dotch occupies a space somewhere between the loose, tipsy fun of the celebrity-studded '70s staple "The Match Game" and the free-wheeling nuttiness of "Peewee's Playhouse."

Every once in a while it's good to have a refresher course in kitchen safety. The FDA's 1996 flick "Dirty Little Secrets" does just that with a dramatic announcer, toilet paper in the fridge and a copy of "The Silver Palate Cookbook." Did they miss anything? Weigh in.

[Via Public.Resource.Org, BoingBoing]