Poised as the world's leading supplier of green tea, ITO EN is dedicated to the promotion of the fine taste, traditions, and benefits of green tea.

Generally speaking, Americans are not fond of drinking unsweet tea. Although (blessfully) many restaurants in the south offer it, you're not actually supposed to drink it that way. It always comes delivered with a collection of sweetener packets and with a big spoon sticking out of the glass, and I've gotten my share of odd looks from waiters when the first thing I do is pull the spoon out and then proceed to drink the beverage au naturale.

You're supposed to drink corn syrup. Coke in some areas, Pepsi in others. In the south sweet tea is an accepted substitute and unsweet is offered merely as an accommodation to diabetics, who are expected to load the beverage up with their artificial sweetener of choice if they aren't willing to drink one of the high tech "diet" beverages the cola companies are pushing. Don't believe me? Try to buy unsweet tea in a can. Good luck with that. I really wonder what the hell diabetic people in the United States drank before artificial sweetener was invented.

The recent popularity of green tea has resulted in a number strange iced green tea beverages hitting the market here. They can't just sell iced green tea in a bottle. No way. Americans aren't going to drink that! Often these green tea concoctions are so loaded with corn syrup that they are worse for you than cola! Diet versions are offered with those same high tech sweeteners, or honey. This is not what green tea is supposed to taste like!

The reason people in Japan are healthier than you isn't because anti-oxidants in green tea have some sort of magical power. Its because for every corn syrupy cola or rat poisoned diet beverage you've slugged away in your life they have chosen to drink a natural beverage without any sweeteners. And it tastes better that way! Fortunately the company that makes a significant portion of Japan's unsweet green tea does bottle and sell their product in America. You can order cases of it off of their website, but I ran into two liter bottles at Target recently.

It tastes good, its good for you, and its got plenty of caffeine. Please pick up a bottle and keep them in business over here so I don't have to go back to trying to brew the stuff myself!

Ito En

Wikinews has learned that six of the United Kingdom's main Internet Service Providers (ISPs) have implemented monitoring and filtering mechanisms that are causing major problems for UK contributors of the popular online encyclopedia, Wikipedia and other Wikimedia Foundation sites. The filters appear to stem from accusations that Wikimedia sites are hosting what some would call child pornography.

More here including an interesting rant in the thread from Cory Doctorow.* I think we're going to see this sort of infrastructure in the United States very soon, so this is worth paying attention to.

* During this rant he states that the mantra of "no security through obscurity" is "axiomatic to every field of information security." In fact, its an oversimplified idea that is constantly misunderstood and misapplied. Peter Swire gave the topic a very good treatment here. I don't bring this up because I want to undermine Doctorow's point about the need for an open process around these internet filters. I agree with him. I just bristle at the use of words like "axiomatic" to refer to policy preferences. Its a way of shouting down nuance.

CleanFeed: BoingBoing reports on the UK's Net Nanny

The virus behind cold sores is a major cause of the insoluble protein plaques found in the brains of Alzheimer's disease sufferers, University of Manchester researchers have revealed.

Cold Sore Virus Linked To Alzheimer's Disease: New Treatment, Or Even Vaccine Possible

Hey, Phil...remember when we were standing in line for the latest video game instead of for bread?

Financial Crisis Holiday Cards

It’s the coolest movie ever. And now there’s going to be a sequel.

You know how everyone's into weirdness right now?

Tor.com / Science fiction and fantasy / Blog posts / Heres Hoping Alex Coxs Repo Man Sequel Isnt One Big Circle Jerk

Worst job loss in 34 years.

NFP: -533,000 | The Big Picture

Canada's parliamentary opposition reacted with outrage after Prime Minister Stephen Harper shut down the Legislature until Jan. 26, seeking to forestall a no-confidence vote that he was sure to lose and that might have provoked a constitutional crisis.

No matter how democratic you think a country is, if its really a monarchy, there are still inherent risks in that. Imagine President Bush sending Congress home.

Canadian leader provokes anger by closing Parliament - International Herald Tribune

Greg Conti -- a West Point instructor in computer science and information war -- has taken a long, hard look at the amount of information Internet users explicitly and implicitly disclose to Google and the results, collected in his book Googling Security: How Much Does Google Know About You? are sobering.

Googling Security reviewed on BoingBoing

Nearly two pounds of still-green plant material found in a 2,700-year-old grave in the Gobi Desert has just been identified as the world's oldest marijuana stash, according to a paper in the latest issue of the Journal of Experimental Botany.

Oldest Marijuana Stash Found: Discovery News

Worth Less or Worthless?

Deflation is going to end before too long, so investors shouldn't get overly comfortable.

Avoiding inflation after so much stimulus will be like avoiding acceleration after having pressed the gas pedal flat to the floor in a truck that has now swapped going uphill for going downhill.

...the trick will become avoiding hyperinflation of the kind that kills currencies, as happened in the Weimar Republic.

You just need to know that we're about to do a three-step, from inflation (earlier this year), to deflation (now), and back to inflation again (a year or so from now). It's going to be neck-snapping.

Trying to protect my meager personal assets in the midst of this crisis, I feel like I'm in the middle of the pacific in a small sailboat during a massive storm, with swells reaching tens of feet above me.

Prepare for Your Money to Be Worth Less - The Daily Beast