waxandmilk:

Gary Anderson (right): creator of the recycling symbol
1970 

Anderson was a 23-year-old USC Architecture graduate when he entered the Container Corporation of America’s design contest to create what would become the universal symbol for recycling. From Wikipedia: The 500 entries to the competition were judged by designers recognized as world leaders in graphics and industrial art, including Saul Bass, Herbert Bayer, James Miho, Herbert Pinzke and Eliot Noyes. According to Anderson: “Angela Davis had just shot up the courthouse and the Manson murders had just happened. I wanted to move away from that, from the Haight-Ashbury poster art with its amorphous organic shapes to create something simpler and cleaner.”

The other day I was having weird cravings. First, I wanted a salad, then I wanted stir fry. The problem: I am not hungry enough for a full course meal with both a salad and a stir fry. So I decided, instead of having a big meal (and go through the trouble of cooking it), why not just create something for myself? Something that is a combination of both a stir fry and a salad. A stir fry salad, just for me. As I searched through the nearly empty fridge, I picked up some eclectic ingredients for my stir fry salad: sundried tomatoes, chickpeas, collard green and brown rice. The product turned out to be a unique blend of different flavors that definitely satisfied my taste buds.

Stir Fry Collard Green and Sundried Tomato Salad with Chickpeas

You’ll need:

Pre-cooked (canned) Chickpeas
Collard Greens
Sundried Tomato
Pre-cooked Brown Rice
Olive Oil
Lime juice (optional)

1. Chop the collard green into small square pieces. Stir fry the collard green in a pan with 1 tablespoon olive oil. Add about 1/4 cup of  water (adjust the amount based on how much collard green you are using) when the oil is used up. Add a dash of salt. The collard green should appear dark green when it is finished.

2.  Keep your collard greens in the pan, add a handful of sundried tomato to the collard green. Add another 1/4 cup of water and stir.

3. Leave the stir fry in pan to cool.

4. Mix chickpeas and brown rice in a bowl.

5. Scoop the stir fry out of the pan and mix with the chickpeas and brown rice in the bowl.

6. add a tablespoon of lime juice to the bowl.

7. leave the bowl in the fridge to chill, then enjoy!

Not only palatable, this “salad” is also full of complex carbs, protein and fiber, a different yet refreshing choice for a light meal in a late afternoon. As I enjoyed my salad sitting on my lawn, I realized that what makes this salad wonderful is the combination of many different ingredients and of two completely different concepts. Sometimes the answer is not black or white, but rather a nuance of shades.

Thanks for all of the feedback so far, we're listening and doing the best we can to make everybody happy. Its not easy, but we're trying.

We couldn't do too much today as we spent most of the day responding to emails and phone calls, but we squeezed some stuff in:

• Appearance Settings - This is by far the most consistently received comment, so we figured we'd fix this one fast.  Sure, yellow isn't everyone's cup of tea, but it is one of our school colors... and yes, the yellow we were using for our school color isn't the "official" yellow, but had we used the official yellow, eyes would be bleeding... seriously.  So, we built an appearance settings page for you.  Its under your name, just where it was before.  We picked some colors you can use that we thought were tolerable.  However, if you still think our sense of style is lacking, you can pick your own color too.  So there, everyone wins.
• FYI, the official yellow is #FFCC00.  Try it out and then send us a note thanking us for not using it. ;-)
• Alphabetize your Favorites - If you've gone star-clicking-crazy and created a huge mess of favorites, there is now a button to alphabetize them for you on the Favorites page.
• Bug fixes and tweaks
• The login banner on topic pages is a bit more prominent.  This is important because many links now require you to be logged in.
• We removed the "myUMBC is new, send us feedback" banner from framed pages to save a little room for people with smaller screens.
• Links in the Alerts dashboard should not load in the proper window.
• Menus should be reliable and less likely to hang around after you're done with them.

A Special Request from the myUMBC Team

I always try and stress how important feedback is to us.  It is. It drives everything we do.  Every feature and every change was prompted by feedback of some kind.  myUMBC serves an extremely diverse user-base and we'd be foolish to think we'd make everybody happy with any change.  We are people, just like you, we work hard, we try our best, and for everything we've done that you like, we've probably done something else you don't.  We love to hear from you, even if its negative.  All we ask is that you be patient and try things out before you pass judgement, be specific as possible about any problems you may experience, and be respectful of the fact that there is a human being on the other side of the feedback box that cares a great deal about making myUMBC better for everyone.

Can't wait to hear from you all,

- Collier