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	<title>Dan Koeppel&#039;s Blog &#187; Banana Culture</title>
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	<description>Bananas, Los Angeles, and Transit Geekery</description>
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		<title>Banana Gin kills 81 in Uganda</title>
		<link>http://www.bigparadela.com/wordpress/archives/1132#utm_source=feed&#038;utm_medium=feed&#038;utm_campaign=feed</link>
		<comments>http://www.bigparadela.com/wordpress/archives/1132#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Sat, 24 Apr 2010 21:52:22 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Dan</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Bananas]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Banana Africa]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Banana Culture]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Bananas Uganda]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://bigparadela.com/wordpress/?p=1132</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[This is tragic. Uganda &#8211; the world&#8217;s top banana consuming nation (with an average intake of about 500 pounds per person, compared to about 25 pounds for the typical U.S. consumers) &#8211; finds dozens of ways to use the fruit. That includes the national dish, a sort of mush called matooke, along with banana beer and a banana spirit &#8211; that&#8217;s the gin in question &#8211; called waragi. Last week, 80 people died after consuming a home-distilled batch of the drink that was, apparently, laced with methanol. Many suffered blindness and kidney failure before they actually succumbed. Tragic, as I said, so I hope you won&#8217;t see this video &#8211; which I made in the Democratic Republic of Congo after my first taste of waragi &#8211; makes light of the situation. Even bottled and (assumedly) pure, the stuff isn&#8217;t so great, though my review was a little more kind&#8230;]]></description>
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		<title>Banana Museum, Saved, Again!</title>
		<link>http://www.bigparadela.com/wordpress/archives/1110#utm_source=feed&#038;utm_medium=feed&#038;utm_campaign=feed</link>
		<comments>http://www.bigparadela.com/wordpress/archives/1110#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Sat, 17 Apr 2010 01:47:14 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Dan</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Bananas]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Banana Culture]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Banana Museum]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://bigparadela.com/wordpress/?p=1110</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Still the best banana picture ever. I met Ken &#8220;Bananaster&#8221; Banister about six years ago, when I was beginning to research my book. At that point, his museum occupied a storefront in Altadena, California (a suburb of Los Angeles.) He&#8217;d been running the museum for decades, and it was the most amazing repository of banana items I&#8217;d ever seen. But Ken was retiring, and was trying to sell the place. At that point, he was asking several hundred thousand dollars for the facility; an eBay auction resulted in no takers. A couple of years later, with the future of the museum in jeopardy, he moved it to an exhibition center provided by the city of Hesperia &#8211; a high-desert town between Los Angeles and Las Vegas. All seemed well when I visited in 2008. But earlier this year, Hesperia told Ken that his collection &#8211; now reduced &#8211; could no longer be accommodated. The search for a new home was on, again. Last week, that home was found: Virginia Garbutt, who owns a liquor store near Salton Sea &#8211; a dry lake bed and former resort area south of Palm Springs &#8211; picked up the collection, and hopes it will be a [...]]]></description>
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		<title>&#8220;Fake Banana&#8221; at Significant Objects</title>
		<link>http://www.bigparadela.com/wordpress/archives/896#utm_source=feed&#038;utm_medium=feed&#038;utm_campaign=feed</link>
		<comments>http://www.bigparadela.com/wordpress/archives/896#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Tue, 20 Oct 2009 00:36:24 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Dan</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Bananas]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Banana Culture]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://bigparadela.com/wordpress/?p=896</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Here&#8217;s panel one of Josh Kramer&#8217;s funny cartoon. Follow the link for more. Fake Banana &#124; Significant Objects ; tip from the fabulous Siel at GreenLAGirl&#8230;]]></description>
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		<title>Video taste test: Ugandan banana gin</title>
		<link>http://www.bigparadela.com/wordpress/archives/481#utm_source=feed&#038;utm_medium=feed&#038;utm_campaign=feed</link>
		<comments>http://www.bigparadela.com/wordpress/archives/481#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Sat, 08 Aug 2009 23:35:16 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Dan</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Bananas]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Banana Culture]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Banana Treats]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://bigparadela.com/wordpress/?p=481</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Waragi is to Ugandans what tequila is to Mexicans, vodka is to Russians, and Diet Coke is to Sarah Palin. I bought a bottle during a stopover at Entebbe airport, and conducted a video taste test when I got to Kinshasa, in the Democratic Republic of Congo. I&#8217;d been in the backcountry under rough conditions for a couple of weeks when I recorded this, which might explain my enthusiasm. The stuff is rotgut &#8211; which isn&#8217;t meant to diminish the importance of bananas in Uganda, which are used not just for hooch, but  as a primary source of calories. People would starve without them, and the fruit is threatened by disease, making the nation ground zero for banana research. Still, you could run a moped on this stuff. Which is more than you could say for Diet Coke.]]></description>
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		<title>&quot;Banana&quot; is a &quot;Low-Probability&quot; Word for Typographical Errors</title>
		<link>http://www.bigparadela.com/wordpress/archives/8#utm_source=feed&#038;utm_medium=feed&#038;utm_campaign=feed</link>
		<comments>http://www.bigparadela.com/wordpress/archives/8#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Mon, 11 May 2009 14:19:00 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Dan</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Bananas]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Banana Culture]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://dankoeppel.wordpress.com/2009/05/11/banana-is-a-low-probability-word-for-typographical-errors/</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Above: The world&#8217;s most beautifully designed search engine. Wikimedia Commons License. That&#8217;s according to the very cool Typo of the Day for Librarians blog, which posts a single word each day and &#8211; by searching electronic catalogues &#8211; determines how high the chances are that it will be misspelled in those records. They also add a little snippet about the word in question, and when the name of the world&#8217;s best-loved fruit was chosen, I was happy to see that a mini-review of my book was included. I think the first impression one might have on encountering this site is one of novelty, but there&#8217;s cool utility here, as well. Though modern search engines automatically  recognize frequently misspelled words and do the correcting for you, but the TOTDFL blog is conducting real-time research in how mistakes appear and behave in both the digital realm and &#8211; via the collections that the databases link to &#8211; the analog world, as well. According to the site &#8211; which solicits participation from librarians all over the world &#8211; he word &#8220;banana&#8221; has a low chance of being misspelled. The database the group searched found seven bad versions of the word (the commonly used &#8220;Bannana,&#8221; which [...]]]></description>
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		<item>
		<title>No Cups or Glasses Necessary&#8230;</title>
		<link>http://www.bigparadela.com/wordpress/archives/13#utm_source=feed&#038;utm_medium=feed&#038;utm_campaign=feed</link>
		<comments>http://www.bigparadela.com/wordpress/archives/13#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Tue, 28 Apr 2009 00:41:00 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Dan</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Bananas]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Banana Culture]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Banana Economics]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://dankoeppel.wordpress.com/2009/04/28/no-cups-or-glasses-necessary/</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[<div class="posttagsblock"><a href="http://technorati.com/tag/Banana%20Art" rel="tag">Banana Art</a></div>]]></description>
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		<slash:comments>0</slash:comments>
		</item>
		<item>
		<title>Make Your Own Chandelier Out of Chiquita Boxes</title>
		<link>http://www.bigparadela.com/wordpress/archives/18#utm_source=feed&#038;utm_medium=feed&#038;utm_campaign=feed</link>
		<comments>http://www.bigparadela.com/wordpress/archives/18#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Tue, 14 Apr 2009 00:12:00 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Dan</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Bananas]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Banana Chiquita]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Banana Culture]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://dankoeppel.wordpress.com/2009/04/14/make-your-own-chandelier-out-of-chiquita-boxes/</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[<div class="posttagsblock"><a href="http://technorati.com/tag/Banana%20Art" rel="tag">Banana Art</a></div>]]></description>
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		<item>
		<title>Banana Nut Cheerios: Review and Rant</title>
		<link>http://www.bigparadela.com/wordpress/archives/20#utm_source=feed&#038;utm_medium=feed&#038;utm_campaign=feed</link>
		<comments>http://www.bigparadela.com/wordpress/archives/20#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Mon, 16 Mar 2009 23:24:56 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Dan</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Bananas]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Banana Culture]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Banana News]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://dankoeppel.wordpress.com/2009/03/16/banana-nut-cheerios-review-and-rant/</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[You can barely see the bananas on the package, and the product itself could do with a bit more banana flavor, too. You will think I&#8217;m a lousy sourpuss for saying this, but there are WAY too many kinds of Cheerios. But that&#8217;s because you probably don&#8217;t know how many kinds: Eleven. That&#8217;s right. With the addition of the new banana-nut flavor, you now need your toes to count the number of varieties of America&#8217;s favorite breakfast food that are currently available on store shelves. I don&#8217;t care how much you love Cheerios. Eleven kinds? That&#8217;s insane! (There are two Yogurt Burst flavors; only one is shown.) The other thing that&#8217;s totally sucky about Cheerios is the brand&#8217;s constant harping on the &#8220;fact&#8221; that eating it &#8220;may&#8221; reduce the risk of heart disease. SHENANIGANS and BOGOSITY! Not eating a lot of bacon may reduce the risk of heart disease, and Cheerios may a breakfast delight, but can&#8217;t cereal just be advertised as something that tastes good, even if two of the Cheerios varieties are shameless imitations Kellogg&#8217;s Froot Loops and Apple Jacks &#8211; a couple of the best-tasting bowl-and-milk horrors ever created? (See links below for the actual health claims, [...]]]></description>
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		<slash:comments>1</slash:comments>
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		<item>
		<title>Stocking Stuffers, 2008</title>
		<link>http://www.bigparadela.com/wordpress/archives/27#utm_source=feed&#038;utm_medium=feed&#038;utm_campaign=feed</link>
		<comments>http://www.bigparadela.com/wordpress/archives/27#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Sat, 27 Dec 2008 07:31:59 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Dan</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Bananas]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Banana Culture]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://dankoeppel.wordpress.com/2008/12/27/stocking-stuffers-2008/</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[When you&#8217;re the &#8216;banana guy&#8217;, you&#8217;re blessed with special cheer: Gifts like these. Item one is a massive bar of soap &#8211; about the size of a mango &#8211; with this lovely banana branding. On opening, it turns out to be a Portuguese-made beauty bar marked &#8220;confianca&#8221;, or &#8220;confidence&#8221;. No banana scent, but the word &#8220;banana&#8221; was brought to us in the15th century by Portuguese traders, who found the fruit being grown at a town near the mouth of the Congo river by the same name. That guy is going to get hurt. Second on the list: this silicon &#8220;banana handle,&#8221; designed as a compact potholder. Slip the peel onto the handle of a hot skillet, and you won&#8217;t get burned. I tried it last night on a pot of spaghetti sauce, and it worked! Thanks to the Thompson family for the loot. [Posted with iBlogger from my iPhone]]]></description>
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		<slash:comments>0</slash:comments>
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		<item>
		<title>This Thanksgiving, One Condiment to Rule Them All</title>
		<link>http://www.bigparadela.com/wordpress/archives/32#utm_source=feed&#038;utm_medium=feed&#038;utm_campaign=feed</link>
		<comments>http://www.bigparadela.com/wordpress/archives/32#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Mon, 24 Nov 2008 00:01:00 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Dan</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Bananas]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Banana Culture]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Banana Recipes]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://dankoeppel.wordpress.com/2008/11/24/this-thanksgiving-one-condiment-to-rule-them-all/</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Got this at a Philippine grocery a few blocks from my house in Los Angeles. Price: $1.59. The lady behind the counter called it &#34;banana ketchup,&#34; and that&#39;s pretty much what it is, with the same basic ingredients &#8211; sugar, vinegar, salt, and spices &#8211; as the tomato stuff, but with bananas substituted for the red fruit base. There are a bunch of varieties from Jufran. The product is listed at Ketchupworld.com, with both regular and hot versions; neither of these seem to be the one I found &#8211; the ingredients listed for both are different. The ketchup site gets $3.50 for a mail-ordered bottle. Searching around, it seems that the product has multiple incarnations, with different labeling &#8211; some designated as &#34;sauce,&#34; others as &#34;ketchup,&#34; and some using bright red food coloring to make them look more like the real thing. Mine is marked as &#34;The Original,&#34; so I&#39;ll go with that. How did ours taste? Fantastic: a little spicy, a little sweet &#8211; with the same consistency as tomato ketchup. I had mine on a big hunk of Turkey breast. Whupped the daylights out of cranberry sauce. All hail the new King of Condiments. Here&#39;s a link to [...]]]></description>
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