A Change in Google’s Management

Larry Page, one of the co-founders of Google, has made some major changes to management ranks at the Internet search giant.  The Los Angeles Times reports that Page promoted seven executives from the company to run various divisions within it.  That being said, the move was said to make an effort to “restore the sense of urgency and innovation that drove Google’s prior success.”

Andy Rubin, who is in charge of Android mobile phone software; Salar Kamangar, who runs YouTube and videos; Sundar Pichai, head of the Chrome Web Browser and operating system; and Vic Gundotra, who is in charge of Google’s social networking strategy, are all being promoted to Senior VP roles.  Existing Senior VPs, meanwhile, will take over various departments throughout the company.  All these changes are being made to bolster performance in parts of Google’s business that has seen little growth.

 

Taylor P.

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The Festival of Books

The annual Festival of Books, which is sponsored by the Los Angeles Times, will be held on April 30^th and May 1^st, 2011, on the University of Southern California (USC) campus in downtown Los Angeles.  The festival is free for everyone, but there will be a charge for parking at USC’s campus.  There are several stages set up for the two-day event, from children’s books to cooking demonstrations.

Hundreds of authors will be there on stage, reading selections from their own books, showing their new books, or just enjoying the festival like everybody else.  Ludwig Bemelmans started the legacy of the Madeline books, authoring and illustrating these wonderful books.  His grandson, John Bemelmans Marciano, carries it on.  The Los Angeles Times has Book Prizes, as well.  The two main winners are Beverly Cleary, who won the 2010 Robert Kirsch Award.  Powell’s Books in Portland, Oregon won the 2010 Innovator’s Award.  Many other authors won in separate categories such as Biography, Fiction, Current Interest, Graphic Novel, and History, among other categories.  There will be a ceremony held in honor of all the winners.  Come join the hundreds of authors and bookworms on April 30^th and May 1^st to enjoy this literary festival.

Taylor P.

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The Public Launch of a “Private” Space Plane

The evening of April 22 marked the launch of the United State Air Force’s spacecraft, the X-37B Orbital Test Vehicle, into space to test “a new batch of reusable technologies”, according to Gary Payton, deputy undersecretary of the Air Force space program.  Launched into space using an Atlas V rocket booster from Cape Canaveral in Florida, the test vehicle will undergo a demonstration mission.  Payton, however, would not go into further detail about the length of the mission or what exactly the demonstration will entail.  Following the mission’s end, the craft will land at Vandenberg Air Force Base in California.  Following the renewed commitment of the government to the U.S. space program, we can expect more aerospace-related activity in the near future.

Francis M. Unson

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Filipino food – Too slow to assimilate into the mainstream?

Despite the high position of many of the top Los Angeles chefs, many of whom are Filipino and grew up on Filipino food, few traces of Filipino food can be found in the restaurants they work for or own.  The private kitchens of these chefs churn out dish after ethnic dish for their families or private company, but diners at the restaurants would find no such dishes.  Marvin Gapultos, a Filipino-American food blogger, cites the geography of the Philippines as a factor of the lack of a unifying dish, where “there are 7,000 ways to make [adobo]“.  The history of the Philippines offers glimpses into the foreign influences that shape what Filipino cuisine is today: Indonesian and Malaysian cultures brought biko and suman; the Chinese, lumpia and pancit, the Mexicans, tamarind, chiles, and chocolate; and the Americans, hot dogs, spaghetti, and Spam.  Read more…

If Filipinos can assimilate into other dominant cultures (Spaniards brought Roman Catholicism and the Latin script; the Americans brought English), why has Filipino food not yet assimilated into mainstream American cuisine?

Related: Recipes for chicken adobo

Mom’s nilaga

Auntie Fe’s bichu-bichu

Francis M. Unson

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