Despite the hours of preparation put into the often vast displays of food, waiters at top hotels in Dubai say much of the food left over goes straight into the waste bins.

The amount of food thrown out in the emirate jumps considerably in the holy month – by as much as 20 percent according to Dubai Municipality, with most of the waste comprising rice and non-vegetable foods.

Around 1,850 tons of food were thrown out on average per day during Ramadan in 2010, roughly 20 percent of total waste in the emirate during the holy month, it said.

Dubai wasteful? Huh.

This would have been a big deal in Dubai, here’s it’s relegated to a photo or two on Yahoo! News. Weird.

Check out: “In Fierce Opposition to a Muslim Center, Echoes of an Old Fight.”

The opening is killer:

Many New Yorkers were suspicious of the newcomers’ plans to build a house of worship in Manhattan. Some feared the project was being underwritten by foreigners. Others said the strangers’ beliefs were incompatible with democratic principles.

Concerned residents staged demonstrations, some of which turned bitter.

But cooler heads eventually prevailed; the project proceeded to completion. And this week, St. Peter’s Roman Catholic Church in Lower Manhattan — the locus of all that controversy two centuries ago and now the oldest Catholic church in New York State — is celebrating the 225th anniversary of the laying of its cornerstone.

Bam!

Anyone who doesn’t think history moves in cycles is a fool.

Check out this article from Sunday’s Boston Globe: “School system to get Muslim holiday.”

“At a time when I think the Muslim population is being characterized with a broad brush in a negative way, I think it’s important for us to say we’re not going to do that here,” [Cambridge School Committee member Marc] McGovern said.

Cambridge schools already close for some Christian and Jewish holidays, and McGovern said he believes Muslims should be treated equally.

“The issue that sort of came up was should we celebrate any religious holidays, but there was not the will to take away Good Friday or one of the Jewish holidays,” he said. “So I said, if that is the case, I think we have an obligation to celebrate one of the Muslim holidays, as well.”

I kind of want to move to Cambridge, now. Wow.

The last line is fantastic: “Can’t please everybody,” he said. “You have to do what you think is right.”

Unfortunately the story gained only minimal national attention, most notably on “The Colbert Report”, and in James Poniewozik’s blog at Time Magazine (see Stephen Colbert Picks Up Apology and Poniewozik on the Press Herald).

We can add the print edition of Time Magazine to that list now.

This week Poniewozik has an article about Jon Stewart’s Rally to Restore Sanity and Colbert’s competing March to Keep Fear Alive, and he uses the Press Herald apology to illustrate the media’s fright of that fringe element, the loud 15 Percenters.

Check out: “The 15% Solution.”

Key quote:

The very idea that in the U.S. today you have to hold a protest to promote rational discourse is absurd. It’s funny because it’s true.

Poniewozik has become one of my favorite writers in the young generation of Time Magazine writers, I’m glad he’s picked up this story.

Anyway, I think we’re nearing the end of the cycle for the apology story. While I would have liked a few more headlines, maybe a march on the Press Herald’s offices in One City Center or Richard L. Connor as Keith Olbermann’s “Worst Person in the World”, the coverage that the story did receive was quality.

And sane.

After a week of not seeing anything, I gave up hope.

And then Stephen Colbert talked about it on “The Colbert Report” on Monday!

The clip starts at 1:27:

The joke about ducks flying south and grandparents flying south is awesome:

Go Colbert!

Check out: “Remembering E.B. White’s sage advice.”

Key quote:

I meant to apologize for what we did not print — front-page coverage of 9/11 on the anniversary of a day that stirs deep and unhealed wounds. I was in no way apologizing for what we did print in a deservedly prominent position — a striking photo of our local Muslim community in prayer.

This is good, but why did it take a week to recant the apology, Connor?

Interesting how it took Richard L. Connor mere hours to apologize for Saturday’s story, but it takes the editorial board damn near a week to publish Letters to the Editor about it.

Also, I think this title, like so much about the story, focuses on the wrong theme; the disgust that many of us had was not about the Eid holiday or the September 11th anniversary but how the newspaper leadership apologized for running a news story.

They still don’t get it.

Key quote:

Here’s where we are in America, 2010: There is now one group of Americans whose peaceful religious observance cannot be noted by decent people, unless it is “balanced” by the mention of a vile crime committed in 2001 by people, with a perverted idea of the same religion, from the other side of the world.

This is a depressing statement about the state of dialogue in America. Nine years after 9/11, there is now a widespread belief that, for one religious group of law-abiding Americans, the boundaries of acceptable behavior are narrower than for everyone else. Yes, you have the right to worship. But it would be decent of you to do it somewhere else. Or on another day. Or in such a way that the rest of us don’t have to know about it. So now we have a newspaper kowtowing to a national freakout, apologizing for the most innocuous kind of soft feature, because acknowledging that there are decent Muslims in America is offensive. (From the comments on the article: “I don’t want to here [sic] how caring the Muslim religion is on 9/11.” But hey: it’s only for a few days a year!)

Please also note, he used “kowtowing” – the same verb I used!