Umami = Pleasure

Interesting article on why we enjoy foods high in calories. Umami is about to become foodie-speak for delicious.
  
"This is fascinating, no? We are so convinced that the tongue is the source of culinary joy — we eat too much ice cream because we want to make our mouth happy — but it’s not. Instead, we eat calorically dense foods because we are also trying to pleasure this secondary pathway, which responds not to the nuances of flavor but to the brute intake of energy. (On a more depressing note, this research also explains why the obesity epidemic is so hard to fix. Let’s imagine, for instance, that some genius invented a reduced calorie bacon product that tasted exactly like bacon, except it had 50 percent fewer calories. It would obviously be a great day for civilization. But this research suggests that such a pseudo-bacon product, even though it tasted identical to real bacon, would actually give us much less pleasure. Why? Because it made us less fat. Because energy is inherently delicious. Because we are programmed to enjoy calories.)" 

Tinariwen on the Radio

Tinariwen is a band of Tuareg musicians from the Sahara Desert region of northern Mali, founded by Ibrahim Ag Alhabib, who as a child saw a western film in which a cowboy played a guitar. Ag Alhabib built his own guitar out of a tin can, a stick and bicycle brake wire. The band recorded their new album in the Algerian desert, where TV on the Radio co-leaders Tunde Adebimpe and Kyp Malone joined them to play.