WordHurdle

The story of cashew chicken

"Springfield Cashew Chicken" as it's known in places other than Springfield, Missouri, was recently featured in the New York Times.  David Leong, the man credited with creating cashew chicken, now age 88, was interviewed, and the article does a great job of running through the history of cashew chicken and showing how significant cashew chicken is to the culture of the Missouri Ozarks.

The 'dirty bomb' that never was?

I just ran across an interesting story on Reddit that lead me to Wikileaks.  The back story is effectively that a millionaire neo-Nazi from Maine named James G. Cummings was working to put together what appears to have been a "dirty bomb" with possible intent to set it off during the Obama inauguration.  We will never quite know for sure because Mr. Cummings was shot to death on December 9, 2008, and his wife has been taken into custody in the matter after apparently admitting to the shooting.

Wikileaks, which is known as the Wikipedia of leaked documents, published a confidential FBI field intelligence report (these briefings are amazing to read) on January 12, 2009, that reported the incident in the context of a Presidential inauguration threat analysis, under the title,"9 December 2008 Discovery of Radiological Dispersal Device Components, Literature, and Radioactive Material at the Maine Residence of an Identified Deceased US Person". The Wikileaks analysis of that report says:

According to the FBI report, Cummings had four lots of one gallon containers of bomb-grade hydrogen peroxide, uranium, thorium (also radioactive), lithium metal, thermite, aluminum powder, beryllium (radiation booster), boron, black iron oxide and magnesium ribbon.  The FBI states it also seized literature on how to build “dirty bombs” and information about cesium-137, strontium-90 and cobalt-60 and other radioactive materials.
. . .
There was also evidence linking Cummings to white supremacist groups, including Cummings' membership application to the US National Socialist (Nazi) party.

According to Wikileaks, the Associated Press has independently confirmed the Wikileaks FBI report.  Wikileaks says it was noted in the Maine media, but I'm not sure many outside Maine have heard any details of this event. This is the first time I've read about it.

Wikileaks has an interesting perspective, detailing the reasons why conservatives, liberals, libertarians, security contractors, Maine government officials, the FBI, and main stream journalists have motivation to not make a big deal out of the story.  It smacks of conspiracy theory, but I'm intrigued by the Wikileaks discussion on the matter as well as the original documentation.