Impolite Company

Anniversary of the Tet Offensive

It's funny, when I saw the simple headline "Tet" on The Feed Demon from The Edge of the American West, I immediately thought of Full Metal Jacket and when I went to read the post I saw that they had included a clip from that flick in their post.  I'll have my own clip in a moment but this was a very good breakdown of the strategic reasoning and end results of the Tet Offensive and a worthwhile read, Tet:

On this day in 1968, guerrilla forces in South Vietnam mounted a massive offensive against both American forces and the Army of the Republic of South Vietnam (ARVN). Timed for the Vietnamese holiday of Tet, the attack caught the defenders unready and shocked an American public that had been assured by both its military and President Lyndon B. Johnson that the U.S. was winning in Vietnam. The result of Tet was a military disaster for the Vietcong attackers but a political victory for the communist effort in South Vietnam. The fallout from Tet brought down a President, as LBJ would drop his reelection effort in 1968, and it essentially doomed the American effort in Vietnam. Tet became mythologized as the embodiment of the violence and futility of Vietnam, never more so than in Stanley Kubrick’s film Full Metal Jacket.

And here's my own Full Metal Jacket clip, this one also from the Hue City part of the movie (Animal Mother--2 minutes):

The Possible Bad Bank

There's been plenty of talk over the last week or so that the Obama Administration may be considering some form of a federal "bad bank" to buy up the toxic assets that have been written down by the banks.  As there hasn't been much information about this possibility, I've been holding my fire on talking about it, though my hesitations on it remain from back in the fall when I said that I thought it was a bad idea.  Krugman and others pointed out at the time that determining the value of such assets would be next to impossible, that paying their marked down value (near $0) would ruin the banks and paying enough to save the banks would put the taxpayers on the hook without much value in return, other than the banking system remaining alive.  It's a middle of the road option, between nationalizing the banks and letting them wallow in their own cesspool.  Here's part of what Krugman is saying today in The Geithner Put:

As best I understand it, the reason not to buy up assets that haven’t been written down is that paying book value would be an obviously bad deal for taxpayers, while paying a low price would devastate banks’ reported capital, a process sometimes known as “recognizing reality.” So the really important part of the bailout will involve providing what we have to call the “Geithner put”: taxpayers will assume a large part of the downside risk.

When Nerds Plan a Super Bowl Party

This is not to say nerds in general do this, more it would refer to a specific type of science nerd.  I don't really know any nerds like this and I'm not sure if they actually exist anywhere other than online or in popular forms of entertainment.  But here's a post on what this strange subset of Uber Nerd might want to make by way of Super Bowl snacks (and yes, if there are any word nerds out there reading this post I am fully aware of the tension between referring to a "sub" set of nerds and their "uber" nature within the same sentence), Make Your Own Scientific Super Bowl Snacks:

Wired Science asked leading molecular gastronomists for their own preferred finger foods recipes. Inspired by the experimental spirit of science, they've come up with new variations on old standbys, from Wylie Dufresne's pizza pebbles to Homaro Cantu's olive dipping chips.

Dreams from My President

I don't normally remember my dreams, but last night I dreamt of Pres. Obama.  We were at some sort of retreat for political folks that occurred at a place that felt like a cross between the dining hall on the Word of Life Island and LBJ's ranch.  For those of you who know it, think The Salt Lick.   Except that somewhere on the grounds of the retreat was an old quarry where everyone went swimming (Pres. Obama didn't swim with us, so no swim suit moments).  I don't remember much of my interaction with the president, other than realizing during the dream that I had probably been a little to informal with him, though I do remember calling him "sir" at least once.   I'm not sure what any of this means, there was no obvious personal symbolism in the dream, nor were there any national symbols, like seven skinny cows eating seven fat cows because the recession is going to last seven years after seven years of prosperity (what?) or anything like that.  It was a very literal dream. 

Discrimination in Farm Subsidies

Given that most of the farm subsidies go to big corporate farms, including most of the money for environmental protection and so-forth, it's really not surprising that there is a distinct imbalance in payments when you compare them along racial lines.  My friend K just emailed me this article that explores this problem and the roots of the disparity.  Yep, those roots, the historical ones that continue to affect opportunity (related history:  40 Acres and a Mule)--having an African American president doesn't suddenly fix all the systemic problems, Farm Subsidies Overwhelmingly Support White Farmers:

The U.S. government spends billions each year subsidizing farm operations. Yet Black farmers receive only one-third to one-sixth of the benefits that other farmers receive, according to the Environmental Working Group, a D.C.-based nonprofit research organization that has partnered with the National Black Farmers Association on several reports. Looking at farmers of color more broadly, the Southern Rural Development Initiative found that less than 1 percent of agriculture subsidy payments between 2001 and 2003 went to Blacks, Native Americans and Asian Americans. (Because the available data comes from the Census Bureau, whose definition of “nonwhite” excludes many Latinos, the researchers were unable to include Latino farmers within its people-of-color analysis.)

We have found a witch, might we burn her?

(The above title quote was ruthlessly copied and pasted from the unofficial script of Monty Python and the Holy Grail)

This is an old story that Pharyngula apparently posted as current by accident.  Or not.  It's still amusing and sad to think that his happened as recently as 1999--the girl lost the lawsuit and her family was left in somewhat dire straits when they were told to pay $6000 in court costs.  A Lifetime TV movie was made about the situation, called Not Like Everyone Else., (no, not The Craft).  And here's the recent post about it Going Back to Our Puritan Roots:

The ACLU is suing Union Public School Independent District No. 9 of Oklahoma. The reason is bizarre: administrators at the school have harrassed and violated the civil rights of a young woman named Brandi Blackbear because — and I'm a bit ashamed to admit this can go on in my country — they accused her of witchcraft. They say she used a magic spell to make one of her teachers sick. In retaliation, she has been subjected to searches and public humiliation, and the school has banned the wearing of non-Christian paraphernalia.

And, more importantly, I won't run from the truth any longer.  I love me some Python (4:15):

The Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Restoration Act

It's signed and it's going into the books--the full measure of protection intended under the law for those who face pay discrimination at their workplace based on their gender.  When we have a Supreme Court that interprets the law with the tightest constraints possible, it's the responsibility of the legislature to define the parameters in an appropriate manner with no room for judicial interpretation.  Our system is set up with some protections that are enforced by the executive branch but when that fails, people need that door to the courthouse to be opened wide in order to get the protection they deserve. 

I know I'm turning into a shill for the Obama Administration but I just find it exciting when my government does something good that I agree with (around ten minutes):

President Obama signs the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pair Act from White House on Vimeo.

Presidential Smack Down--Take That, Wall Street

I love it when my president says things that I want to hear him say.  Like this (from the White House Blog post, Shameful):

One point I want to make is that all of us are going to have responsibilities to get this economy moving again. And when I saw an article today indicating that Wall Street bankers had given themselves $20 billion worth of bonuses -- the same amount of bonuses as they gave themselves in 2004 -- at a time when most of these institutions were teetering on collapse and they are asking for taxpayers to help sustain them, and when taxpayers find themselves in the difficult position that if they don't provide help that the entire system could come down on top of our heads -- that is the height of irresponsibility. It is shameful. [emphasis mine]

And part of what we're going to need is for folks on Wall Street who are asking for help to show some restraint and show some discipline and show some sense of responsibility. The American people understand that we've got a big hole that we've got to dig ourselves out of -- but they don't like the idea that people are digging a bigger hole even as they're being asked to fill it up.

And so we're going to be having conversations as this process moves forward directly with these folks on Wall Street to underscore that they have to start acting in a more responsible fashion if we are to together get this economy rolling again. There will be time for them to make profits, and there will be time for them to get bonuses -- now is not that time. And that's a message that I intend to send directly to them, I expect Secretary Geithner to send to them -- and Secretary Geithner already had to pull back one institution that had gone forward with a multimillion dollar jet plane purchase at the same time as they're receiving TARP money. We shouldn't have to do that because they should know better. And we will continue to send that message loud and clear.

Science: Reasoning v. Knowledge

The ongoing discussion of the proper place of science has led to some interesting looks at how we view science, how we finance it and how we teach it.  In the latter category is a good little piece arguing that we need to change our science education model from one that emphasizes collecting facts and knowledge to one that emphasizes reasoning skills and instilling curiosity and excitement about the sciences.  It isn't really an either/or situation but needs to be more complementary with more emphasis on the reasoning skills.  The writer makes his point by looking at a study comparing Chinese and American science students, Teaching Scientific Knowledge Doesn't Improve Scientific Reasoning:

On Tuesday, I wrote a short essay on the rightful place of science in our society. As part of it, I argued that scientific knowledge is distinct from the scientific method - the latter gives people the tools with which to acquire the former. I also briefly argued that modern science education (at least in the UK) focuses too much on the knowledge and too little on the method. It is so blindsided by checklists of facts that it fails to instil the inquisitiveness, scepticism, critical thinking and respect for evidence that good science entails. Simply inhaling pieces of information won't get the job done.

Food Crisis in America (slight update)

Wes Jackson sees the crisis coming--we've abused our land for too long, failed to plant in a manner that would prevent erosion, planted in unnatural monocultures and relied on pumping the soil full of chemicals and fertilizer to kill the bugs and weeds and keep the plants growing.  It reminds me of how Johnny Cash described himself in one of those Christian comic books I read when I was a kid:  I took drugs to wake up in the morning, drugs to keep me going through the day, drugs to make it through my concert, drugs for fun after my concerts and then I had to take drugs so I could go to sleep at night.  Our farmlands are stuck in the same sort of cycle and have become nothing more than shells of their former selves, fragile hosts for an array of chemicals, thin, drawn, wan and on the brink of a breakdown.

He sat down with UT professor and journalistic provacateur Robert Jensen for an interview that appears on AlterNet, Is America on the Brink of a Food Crisis?:

First, let's recognize that without fossil fuels, the industrial-agriculture strategies we have now could not feed even the current population, and population growth makes these changes more important than ever. As populations grow, there's increasing pressure to put more and more marginal land into production, which increases the rate of degradation. A new model is essential.  

At the Land Institute, we've been working on perennializing the major crops and domesticating a few promising wild species. By increasing the use of mixtures of grain-bearing perennials, we can not only better protect the soil but also help reduce greenhouse gases, fossil-fuel use and toxic pollution. Carbon sequestration would increase, and the husbandry of water and soil nutrients would become much more efficient. 

If you're interested in more of what Wes Jackson, Wendell Berry and Michael Pollan have to say, La Via Locavore has a couple of links to a radio interview (Saturday morning then podcast afterwards) and a Pollan podcast at Foodie Heroes Wes, Wendell and Michael Speak Out.

25 Non-random Things

It's all the rage on Facebook, a viral little questionnaire being sent around trying to get people to spout out 25 "random" things.  Random.  Who are we kidding?  We're generally not very random in the way we do things and even things we attempt to do showing our spontaneity are really by design.  Oh, wait a minute, I think I'm just talking about myself!

1. I frequently practice conversations in my head before actually having them. 
2. Even phone calls.
3. Particularly phone calls.  I hate phone calls, at least the cold call types where you have to introduce yourself, explain why you're talking on the phone and what you want from the person in about twenty seconds without using your hands for anything other than holding the phone.
4. Because I've read a book entitled "The Trouble with Islam Today" I think I am an expert on all aspects of that religion.  Okay, okay, I've read some Karen Armstrong too, which makes me an objective expert.
5. My fingers are cold right now, making the typing difficult.  I'm waffling on whether to turn on the little heater next to my desk.  I'm thinking no--it's too sunny outside to turn on a space heater.  I'll put on a sweatshirt instead.
6. I grew up fundamentalist.  Many people know this.  I fancy that because of this I can understand what fundamentalists are thinking and that they can't understand where I'm coming from because they've never been where I am right now.  This is smug superiority.
7. Just because I've admitted to feeling smugly superior doesn't mean I'll stop acting smug or superior--this was more of an admission than a confession.
8. I love my goddaughter and feel very grateful to have the license to shower her with affection.  She giggles a lot and acts kinda goofy when she's around me and I take this as a strong indication that she kinda likes me too.
9. In theory, I like tramping around out of doors and wandering around on trails and stuff.  I rarely actually make it out the door.
10. In theory, I like hanging out with people, talking about this and that, sharing drinks and thoughts and good times.  I rarely actually make it out the door.
11. I often  blog in my pajamas.  This is less horrifying than it sounds since my pajamas are usually a pair of shorts and a t-shirt.  Now, if I actually slept in proper pajamas and then proceeded to blog while wearing them, that would indeed be scandalous.
12. One of my favorite books in grade school was "Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo"--the story of the Doolittle raids on Tokyo.  I didn't think at the time that the incendiary bombs they dropped were burning people alive.  I thought of that later.  War.
13. I generally find it impossible to cite what my favorite book, movie, music, food, anything is.  It always depends on the context and what I feel peckish for at the moment.
14. Whenever someone quotes any Monty Python sketch I have to fight like hell to keep from doing it myself. 
15. When I'm worried about something, a rather deep vertical line appears on my forehead between my eyebrows.
16. A few times a year I get hit by a wave of despair that renders me unfit to do anything for a period of time, usually about five minutes or so.
17. I tend to be completely divorced from my surroundings and often fail to notice pictures, messes, clutter, spider webs and pretty much anything else in my immediate environment. 
18. There are certain aspects of Facebook which I loathe with the intensity of a thousand fiery burning suns--crazy applications that appropriate the names on your friend list is one thing I hate.
19. I didn't do this exercise on Facebook because I wanted to take it outside of the coercive cycle of Facebookiness.
20. I'm a third degree black belt in Tang Soo Do and will be testing for my first degree black belt in Seido karate later in the spring.
21. I have a surprisingly good voice which I rarely use.
22. There are times when I appear to be lost in thought when I'm really not thinking about anything but just staring off into the distance.
23. A friend of mine  reminded me the other day exactly how privileged  and entitled my life has been.  I'm not sure if she realized she did this.  I appreciate it.
24. My hands are still cold despite the sweatshirt.
25. There are many people I've known throughout my life that I love deeply and yet I don't keep up with them.  I get lost in time (Vonnegut would call it getting unstuck in time, maybe) and a day ago can seem like a lifetime past and years ago can seem like yesterday.  The ages of separation come up when I'm thinking of things or events or places, the brevity of time when I'm thinking of people.  This is why, when I finally see them again, or email them or talk to them on the phone, I'm able to talk to them as if no time has passed and we're still best friends.  26.  One of my favorite memories that seems like yesterday or five minutes ago will always be driving up to Stratford up in Canada for the Shakespeare festival, listening to Sting's  "We'll Be Together Tonight" and looking in the rearview mirror and seeing my friends dancing in the back seat. 

What I Voted Against

John Yoo, the architect of the Patriot Act and author of many of the legal memoranda that formed the basis for the Bush Administration's use of torture, has an essay in today's Wall Street Journal in which he characterizes Pres. Obama's Executive Orders to close Gitmo within a year and to end the use of torture by American intelligence services as being a naive return to pre-9/11 thinking.  As we've discussed here at Impolite Company, the questions surrounding how to deal with alleged terrorists in our custody are complex and require more than simplistic solutions.  Yoo's solutions, to keep them locked up in Gitmo indefinitely, try them under a deeply flawed legal process and torture as much misinformation out of them as possible are exactly that--simplistic and flawed.  I unabashadly call for a return to the rule of law and adherence to our treaty obligations in dealing with these terrorists, alleged terrorists and others caught in our War on Terror.  Where that law is insufficient to deal with the situation, we should reexamine the law and find ways to make it work.  But I don't think ignoring the law is or should be an option. 

John Yoo, [Pres.] Obama Made a Rash Decision:

What such a review would have made clear is that the civilian law-enforcement system cannot prevent terrorist attacks. What is needed are the tools to gain vital intelligence, which is why, under President George W. Bush, the CIA could hold and interrogate high-value al Qaeda leaders. On the advice of his intelligence advisers, the president could have authorized coercive interrogation methods like those used by Israel and Great Britain in their antiterrorism campaigns. (He could even authorize waterboarding, which he did three times in the years after 9/11.)

Some analysis from Think Progress on the other side:

Checking in with Those ACORN Crooks

Another bill before Congress, another set of false accusations and lies about ACORN.  This time according to the right wing they're getting $4.9 billion in the stimulus package.  Kind of makes me miss the good ol' days when certain elements could parade the communist bogeyman as the source of all our problems, though I guess if that was the case they'd be calling ACORN a bunch of communists (I'll bet if I looked hard enough I could find someone saying that now).  In the interest of balancing out the internet narrative, here's part of an opinion piece by Bertha Lewis, ACORN's chief organizer, ACORN:  The Bogeyman in the GOP Closet:

Sometimes, in my copious spare time, I like to peruse what various folks in the media, both new and traditional, are saying about ACORN. Sometimes this makes me happy, for example when I see Ben Ehrenreich’s well done article on what people are doing to combat the foreclosure crisis at the heart of the economic meltdown. And sometimes it leaves me perplexed. Like now, watching the right-wing blogs and then right-wing traditional media outlets pick up the ridiculous talking points from the GOP leadership attacking Obama’s stimulus package by claiming that it gives ACORN a $4.19 billion bailout.

Puh-lease, people! When we heard that we fell over ourselves to see the language in the bill that would make us the richest organization of poor people in world history. We scrambled to set-up a direct deposit account. We wondered if check cashing outlets would take government checks. Turns out, though, that this $4 billion is pretty much like the last billion we read about in GOP press releases: a complete fabrication of overheated partisan fever dreams.

Is Acupuncture's Efficacy Little More than a Placebo Effect?

I have a number of friends who get needled regularly and derive personal benefits from receiving acupuncture treatments; I also have at least a couple of friends who are studying it.  As a martial artist for the last, gulp, seventeen years of my life, I also have something of a personal bias in favor of certain practices that are outside the mainstream but focus on the movement of energy through the body.  So when I run across something that questions the effectiveness of acupuncture, it catches my attention.  Today I read Can We Finally Just Say That Acupuncture is Nothing More Than an Elaborate Placebo?  Can We? and the upshot of it (aside from some general snarkiness) was that the analgesic or pain control effects of acupuncture beyond a placebo effect were minimal.  I'd be interested on anyone's take on this if there are folks out there who'd be willing to speak up in favor of acupuncture.  I guess my current position is sort of a somewhat favorable agnosticism but I'm open to going either way with it.  Here's a quote from the study the post was based on, Acupuncture Treatment for Pain:

Our findings question both the traditional foundation of acupuncture, which is based on the existence of meridians and Qi sensations, and the prevailing hypothesis that acupuncture has an important effect on pain in general. If this hypothesis is wrong, and our results point to that, then acupuncture would seem to be unlikely to have an effect on pain related only to certain conditions, but further studies may examine this question.

Anything Alaska Can Do, Texas Can Do Crazier

Back in the day when a certain governor from Alaska was running for vice president, there was a fair amount of uproar over the legality of shooting wolves from airplanes in Alaska, which Gov. Palin apparently supported.  Texas State Representative Sid Miller has played the trump card, filing a bill that would allow for hunting feral pigs from helicopters.  Vince at Capitol Annex has a good discussion of this bill, noting that Texas does have a fairly serious feral hog problem that needs to be addressed but this probably isn't the way to deal with it, HOG WILD:  Bill Would Allow Hunting of Feral Hogs from Helicopters:

While the bill allows the Texas Parks and Wildlife Commission to adopt rules to make sure chopper hog hunting is safe, the bill itself doesn’t restrict where hunting can occur, when hunting can occur (i.e., at night or during the day), or anything else. Leaving all of the finer points to the appointed members of the Texas Parks and Wildlife Commission–esteemed as they may be–leaves the door open for a lot of problems.

I think that Vince may treat this proposal with a little more respect than it deserves (even though he doesn't give it a whole lot of respect!)--I think that a general principle we should carry into domestic policy-making is that shooting problems from the air is usually the least efficient manner of dealing with it.  And, as a visual example of what this new law might bring us in Texas, I give you Full Metal Jacket:

John Updike

I've been holding off on writing anything about John Updike's death because I haven't really had anything hot to say about it yet but Andrew Sullivan and Updike himself have done me the favor of having a really good quote that I'm going to throw out there as my Updike placeholder for the moment.  Updike was talking about the novel's waning position in US culture.  I've spent most of my adult life surrounded by readers and so I don't feel the decline in my personal circle, though I certainly see it in the media.  I hope to write more about Updike over the next day or so, but until then, from The Daily Dish's Quote of the Day, I give you the man himself:

"When I was a boy, the bestselling books were often the books that were on your piano teacher's shelf. I mean, Steinbeck, Hemingway, some Faulkner. Faulkner actually had, considering how hard he is to read and how drastic the experiments are, quite a middle-class readership. But certainly someone like Steinbeck was a bestseller as well as a Nobel Prize-winning author of high intent. You don't feel that now. I don't feel that we have the merger of serious and pop -- it's gone, dissolving. Tastes have coarsened. People read less, they're less comfortable with the written word. They're less comfortable with novels. They don't have a backward frame of reference that would enable them to appreciate things like irony and allusions. It's sad. It's momentarily uphill, I would say...(read the other half of the quote at The Dish)

Texas Bullet Train Proposal

It looks like there's a serious push by the Texas High Speed Rail and Transportation Corporation for a high speed rail system in Texas that would connect Dallas, Austin, Houston and San Antonio.  Having driven the nasty four-plus hours to Dallas several times in the last year, I'd welcome it but we'll have to see how receptive the decision-makers are this time around.  The story was in the Houston Chronicle, 90 Minutes to San Antonio?  Rail Backers Thinking Big:

The idea of high-speed rail is being pushed again in a big way in Texas, and backers hope to have $12 billion to $18 billion high-speed trains running by 2020. This time, they say they have taken care to ensure the idea won’t fall flat the way a bullet-train push did some 15 years ago.

“In the past, high-speed rail was not completed in Texas primarily because it was a top-down model driven by lobbyists out of Austin,” former Harris County Judge Robert Eckels, chairman of the nonprofit Texas High Speed Rail and Transportation Corp., told lawmakers at a Wednesday transportation briefing.

This time, he said backers from the consortium — which includes elected leaders, cities, counties and two airlines among others — reached out to past opponents to try to solve their concerns. Among them: Southwest Airlines, which fought the last high-speed rail project as a potential competitor. Southwest spokesman Chris Mainz said the airline is neutral on this proposal.

Solar Energy Plant for Austin

Austin Energy and the Austin City Council are looking at contracting to build a solar energy plant with a 30 megawatt capacity, one of the largest solar power plants in the nation.  Currently, the largest such facility in the U.S. produces around 14 megawatts but a planned Arizona facility would dwarf the Austin site at 240 megawatts.  There are pricing concerns among Austin's manufacturers and the city needs to do some work to get more information out about the project and convince voters but at first blush, it sounds like a good idea.  Here's the Statesman article on the project, Austin Proposes Nation's Largest Solar Array:

Austin Energy, the city's electric utility, wants to set aside 300 acres it owns outside Webberville in eastern Travis County for a solar array, which would be built and owned by San Francisco-based Gemini Solar Development Co. Austin Energy would be the exclusive client and pay $10 million a year for 25 years for the power generated by the array.

The facility would open in late 2010 and produce enough energy annually to power up to 5,000 homes.

It would also raise the monthly electricity bill of an average Austin homeowner, who uses 1,000 kilowatt-hours, by an estimated 60 cents, according to Austin Energy.

Pres. Obama Must End the War on Cheese

(Don't miss French First Lady Carla Bruni's "Raphael" at the end of this post)

One relic of the Bush Administration that I was not aware of until two minutes ago was a trade war that involved hiking the duty on Roquefort cheese by 300 percent.  Why, oh, why the cheese, the yummy bleu cheese ?  Not to say that there aren't equally tasty US versions--Maytag Blue is pretty damned good but why pick on Roquefort?  Apparently, this was a retaliatory attack on France for putting up trade barriers to U.S. beef because of the hormones or what-not, trade barriers that I've somewhat embraced myself (Whataburger gets the occasional waiver).  You can read more about the Big Bleu Blockade at Bush War on Cheese Raises Stink in France:

In its final days, the Bush administration imposed a 300 percent duty on Roquefort, in effect closing off the U.S. market. Americans, it declared, will no longer get to taste the creamy concoction that, in its authentic, most glorious form, comes with an odor of wet sheep and veins of blue mold that go perfectly with rye bread and coarse red wine.

The measure, announced Jan. 13 by U.S. Trade Representative Susan C. Schwab as she headed out the door, was designed as retaliation for a European Union ban on imports of U.S. beef containing hormones. Tit for tat, and all perfectly legal under World Trade Organization rules, U.S. officials explained.

Local Food Friendly Chef Takes White House Job--Updated

The Obamas have brought a chef from Chicago into the White House, a man who has cooked for the Obamas for some time and who is intent on sourcing from local food and cooking healthy meals.  He won't be the executive chef, as that position will continue to be held by Cristeta Comerford who has been executive chef since 2005, Obamas Hire Chef from Chicago:

Mr. Kass’s appointment should please chefs like Alice Waters, who have lobbied the Obamas to set an example for the rest of the country by emphasizing food that is healthy, local and sustainable. It further suggests that a vegetable garden on the White House grounds, another of Ms. Waters’s dreams, could be on the horizon.

Mr. Kass, one of the new breed of chefs who are concerned about the environment and about poor eating habits in this country, has been quoted as saying people in his profession should take the lead in tackling public health issues.

“Not only is there an unconscionable amount of people who remain hungry,” he told In These Times magazine last year, “there’s even a larger population, mostly poor, who are faced with obesity, diabetes and various other problems from overabundance.”