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Holidays without ham?

Bacon is bad.

And so is ham, beef jerky, and all other kinds of processed meat.

So said a report by the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) of the World Health Organization (WHO) in late October.

While this isn’t really surprising — after all, it is accepted that any food eaten every day, without moderation, is unhealthy — should this stop us from devouring our favorite bacon, ham, tapa (dried or cured meat), or tocino (Philippine-style bacon)? Can we imagine our dining tables and holiday parties without ham and its succulent honey sauce? Or even tapsilog (tapa, sinangag, itlog — cured meat, fried rice, egg) without the tapa to greet us a good morning?

THE REPORT
Sausages, ham and other processed meats cause bowel cancer, the IARC warned in late October, adding that red meat “probably” does too.

In a review of 800 studies from around the world, it found “sufficient evidence in humans that the consumption of processed meat causes colorectal cancer,” and supports “recommendations to limit intake of meat,” particularly in processed forms — salted, cured, fermented or smoked. This includes hot dogs, sausages, corned beef, dried meat like beef jerky, canned meat or meat-based sauces.

According to the agency, for every 50 grams of meat eaten on a daily basis, the population-wide risk of developing colon cancer was 18% higher — enlarging the group of people likely to develop bowel cancer in their lifetime from six out of every 100 to seven out of every 100 who eat a three-rasher bacon sandwich every single day, explained statistician David Spiegelhalter of Cambridge University, who was not involved in the study.

The IARC agreed the cancer risk was statistically “small,” but “increases with the amount of meat consumed.”

“It is not yet fully understood” how cancer risk was increased, the agency added — speculating about the potential role of chemicals that form during meat processing or cooking.

According to the WHO, bowel cancer is the third most common type, with some 900,000 new cases every year, and 500,000 deaths.

By the IARC’s own account, meat has “known health benefits” — it is a good source of key nutrients like zinc, protein and vitamin B12, as well as iron, which humans absorb more easily from meat than from plants. And the agency says it does not know what a safe meat quota would be — or even if there is one.

dinner-art

NOTHING CAN STOP US!
“Walang makakapigil sa ’min!” (Nobody can stop us), was the consensus of those whom BusinessWorld asked if the report affected their consumption of bacon, ham, and other processed meats.

“As a person from the middle-class, sometimes we’re left with no choice [but to eat cured meats],” said Fay Virray, a high school teacher in Batangas. “If it’s cheaper, it’s better, as long as we don’t eat it every day and with moderation,” she said.

A kilogram of honey cured bacon costs around P340. Canned ham and corned beef cost at least P30. Ham, the usual star of the Noche Buena (Christmas Eve dinner), can start at around P130. (Retail prices based on those in a market in Trabaho, Manila).

Besides the relatively cheap price, Raffy Antes, a corporate communications assistant from CardBank Philippines, said he loves his bacon because it is easy to cook. Just a quick fry in oil and he has a filling breakfast to get him through the day. “It already comes with a seasoning, prito lang solve na, (Just fry it and you’re good to go),” he said. Although he’s aware of its bad effects, he said he doesn’t really have a choice.

“Just like [instant] noodles, people on the go love their bacon and ham because they are always busy and have no time to cook,” he said.

“And besides, bacon isn’t the only culprit. Don’t blame it on the bacon,” said Anna Dichoso, an employee at an Ortigas area call center. “Almost all the food we eat, whether processed or not, are cancer-causing at some point. You’re eventually gonna die.”

BusinessWorld asked San Miguel PureFoods Co. — whose products include ham, hotdogs, and a wide variety of processed meat — on its reaction on the WHO’s statement, but as of this writing, it hasn’t replied.

But in a published press release, the company said it saw higher earnings in the past nine months, and expected the momentum to be sustained in the coming holidays. According to the report, its 8% growth in revenue was thanks to “better selling prices and increased sales of processed meats, dairy, spreads, and biscuits.”

According to Robinsons Supermarket marketing manager Aja T. Totanes, growth in sales of bacon and ham are up 15% and 26% year-to-date respectively. But the supermarket’s bestseller is the hotdogs.

Asked if they have seen an effect in sales after the health statement, Ms. Totanes said, “None so far, as what we have seen in the positive sales growth trend of bacon.”

FILIPINO CULTURE
Christmastime is the season to be jolly — and fat. It’s part of the culinary culture of the Filipinos to eat plenty and merrily, especially evident during the holidays.

A healthy diet? It seems to take a backseat in December when people’s social lives are filled with reunions and parties. A partygoer is sometimes scorned as being corny or KJ (a killjoy) if he or she chooses the salad amid the sea of lechon (roast pig), ham, pasta, and unlimited cups of rice.

“The problem with Filipinos is they love food rich in carbohydrates. They want tasty and saucy food. But it’s all about retraining your palate. I tell my hypertensive patients to eat food with less salt, and they can do it — it’s just that they’re not used to it,” said Philippine Heart Association president Dr. Alex Junia at a recent forum about healthy eating during the holiday season.

But then again, that’s easier said than done. It takes formidable will power to resist food temptations (the lechon is calling you!), especially when our eating culture includes unlimited servings of rice, bottles of sodas, and a fetish for anything fried.

“It’s hard not to gain some extra pounds during the holidays,” said Monica Antonio, a health enthusiast and an online website editor. “But it doesn’t mean that you have to punish yourself and stay away from, say, bacon or ham. Just simply eat in moderation and always pair it with fruits or other sources of fiber.”

Ms. Antonio never fails to eat bacon every day, but she said she pairs it with wheat bread. Plus, she does regular exercise like cardio and sometimes, boxing. For Christmas, she said her dining table would highlight ham — and a handsome fruit platter.

“Bacon is bad, but it’s so good, right?” said celebrity chef Rosebud Benitez when asked if she could imagine a Filipino dining table without ham or bacon or other processed meats.

“We can’t imagine holidays without ham, but then again, I don’t recommend anything artificial. Choose lean meat and avoid processed meat. I suggest do it yourself. Marinate your own meat,” she said.

For the holidays, she recommends trying roasted vegetable lasagna for a main course instead of a ham. While ordinary lasagna recipes have 550-600 calories per serving, hers only has 220 calories.

But then again, we only live once, and having a little, just a quick bite, of bacon or ham wouldn’t hurt, right? — Nickky Faustine P. de Guzman with a report from AFP

Roasted Vegetable Lasagna

By Rosebud Benitez

Ingredients:

2 pcs of zucchini
Bell peppers
Mushrooms
Eggplants
Quick melt cheese
Cornstarch
Chicken cubes
2 tbsp canola oil
1 kilo of tomatoes
1 clove garlic
150 grams of onion
2 cups of spaghetti sauce
1 gram of fresh basil
Low fat milk

Procedures:

(The white sauce)
• Heat the low fat milk in a pan along with chicken cubes.
• Stir in the cornstarch and water mixture until it thickens.
• Then season to taste.

(The red sauce)
• Prepare the fresh tomatoes by putting them in boiling salt water until the skin peels off. Then cut them in medium slices.
• Saute onion and garlic in a pan.
• Add the tomatoes and spaghetti sauce.
• Bring to a boil then simmer
• Season to taste and finish with basil leaves.

(The noodles)
• Lay cooked lasagna in a pan then layer the red sauce then the white and top it with vegetables.
• Repeat the layers.
• Top the last layer with cheese then bake in a pre-heated oven in 375 degrees.

Serving size: 15 servings

Christmas’ Ads & Ends

Ads & Ends
Nanette Franco-Diyco

OVER THE WEEKEND, my daughter and I went around the metropolis savoring a little of Christmas “before the real Christmas rush thoroughly dissipates one’s energies.”

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Exploring, investigating, or probing

Getting The Edge In Professional Selling
Terence A. Hockenhull

MOST SALES programs teach participants to ask questions.

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Marvel’s Jessica Jones

The Binge
By Jessica Zafra
SUPERPOWERS are one of the less interesting elements in Marvel’s Jessica Jones. They’re very useful, and they account for the heroine’s ability to sleep soundly despite having a broken front door, but they don’t protect her from life itself. No wonder she’s so pissed off.

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Up Periscope for Nescafé in tandem with Twitter

TWITTER, Inc. partnered with Nescafé last weekend to show off the Nescafé RED MUG Machine via the tech firm’s live video service Periscope, according to a recent press release.

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On The Go: a fashion solution to a painful problem

By Jessica Zafra

SENIOR CITIZEN Pete Pineda never let his age get in the way of his social life. He had always enjoyed going out, taking walks, and meeting friends for meals and conversation. And then he was diagnosed with a prostate condition, and like thousands of elderly people in the Philippines, he had to start wearing a catheter.

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The Freak : A Chaplin masterpiece that never was

CORSIER-SUR-VEVEY, SWITZERLAND — A large crate tucked away in a musky storage room reveals a treasure: a pair of meticulously crafted wings covered with swan feathers made for a final film Charlie Chaplin never completed.

The seminal filmmaker had the surprisingly heavy contraptions made for his daughter Victoria, whom he envisioned in the role of “The Freak” — a winged girl who brings hope to humanity, but also exposes its deepest flaws.

“It seemed to me to be a very beautiful fairytale. Something that maybe only a man of his age can imagine, can dream. A very charming dream,” Chaplin’s now 69-year-old son Michael told AFP, his dark eyes sparkling as he recalls reading his father’s script back in the 1970s.

Comic genius Charlie Chaplin, whose iconic films like The Kid, Modern Times, The Great Dictator and City Lights are admired and loved the world over, was planning something very different for what he intended to be his last picture.

A book published this week in Switzerland, where Chaplin spent the last 24 years of his life, for the first time gives a full account of the unfulfilled project.

Author Pierre Smolik says he was able to consult archives containing hundreds of pages of Chaplin’s notes detailing the evolution of the project, two scripts, dialogues and a synopsis, as well as pictures that together give a picture of what his final film may have looked like if he had finished it.

Mythical, winged girl

After what turned out to be his last finished film, A Countess from Hong Kong flopped in 1967, Chaplin was distraught, but immediately dived into a new project, The Freak, Smolik told AFP.

The famous filmmaker wrote the synopsis for the story in 1969, at the age of 80, and worked on the project for another two years at his sprawling, idyllic estate, Manoir De Ban, overlooking Lake Geneva.

He had the wings made, and even held a few rehearsals at a studio in Britain with his 18-year-old daughter Victoria, whom he wanted to embody the mythical lead character.

The film was meant to tell the story of a winged girl, a “freak” born to a couple of British missionaries, who one day falls onto the roof of a professor working in Chile.

He takes her in, names her Sarapha, and sees his house become of pilgrimage site for invalids who see the girl as an angel who might provide a cure.

But Sarapha is kidnapped and brought to London, where she is put on display before a crowd hungering for miracles.

She escapes, is captured and forced to prove she is human before she is finally released.

Sarapha decides to fly home to Chile, but does not make it. She plunges into the Atlantic and dies.

“When reading it, one can glimpse what this Freak would have been: a subtle mixture of the tale, the fable, the dream, the amusing, tender or satirical comedy, black humor, the tragedy, the nightmare, suspense, poetry,” Smolik writes.

So why was it never completed?

Smolik, who grew up near Chaplin’s estate and occasionally ran into the filmmaker as a boy, says there is no single explanation.

“He was quite old, and his wife did not want the shoot to weigh on his health,” the author said, pointing out that Chaplin was a perfectionist who worked himself ragged on all of his films.

But there was also the more mundane problem of finding someone willing to insure the complex project, he said.

Family secret

After Chaplin’s death in 1977, “the family generally was very protective about the script. They didn’t really want it to fall into other hands,” Michael said, explaining why so little was made of it previously.

“It was kept more or less as a secret,” he said.

That was until 2010, when Smolik, who had already written a book about Chaplin and knew the family, asked if he could take a look at the documents.

“It’s Pierre who pulled the wings out of the box again,” Michael said.

Among the documents Smolik discovered a few sequences of film, never published, shot by Chaplin’s wife Oona in the garden of his Swiss estate in 1974.

In the book’s afterword, Victoria and Michael describe how Chaplin’s family and friends had gathered at Manoir de Ban, when the old wheelchair-bound man suggested Victoria get the wings out of the cellar and put them on.

“Once he saw her with the wings on it was really quite amazing,” Michael said, recalling how his father “got up out of his wheelchair and came down and said: ‘No, no, you’re not doing it right.’ And he became a film director again.”

But, he added: “It was kind of sad too, because obviously he was not going to make that film.”

After filming the final scene, with Victoria dramatically crashing on the lawn instead of into the Atlantic, the wings were packed up for good.

But the public can soon catch a glimpse of the now yellowing feathered contraptions.

They will go on display at a new Charlie Chaplin museum opening at Manoir de Ban next April. — AFP

What’s Hot this Weekend

EVENTS

Robinsons Land Corp. will host the “City Savor” food bazaar at The Trion Towers in Bonifacio Global City on Dec. 19, from 10 a.m. to 9 p.m . City Savor’s list of participating food establishments include El Chupacabra, Mac & Jac, Bald Baker, Baguettini, Chef Adrian Cuenca, Baits, Sabao, Bag Wings, Hillside Cafe, Global Beer Exchange, Buccino’s Ice Cream Experiments, Earth Desserts, Saddam’s Shawarma, Boom’s Cold Brew Coffee, Liquido Maestro, Jertie’s Kitchen, Karnitas Korner, The Juice Stand, Truck Bun, Juice Bar, ChocoATBP, Pipino Vegetarian, Snow Shack and Cannoli & Co, among others.

EXHIBITS

Artist Jonathan Rañola’s Under Tall Shady Trees is on view throughout December at Art Elements Asian Gallery, 3rd Floor, SM Aura Premier Mall, Bonifacio Global City. The exhibit features his figurative portraits in acrylic and pen set amidst flora and fauna on canvas and on wood. For details, call 519-9683 or logon to artelements@surfshop.net.ph.

RE:VIEW 2015, a year-end group show, is on view at the BenCab Museum’s Gallery Indigo until Feb. 7, 2016. The show features the works of 38 artists including Leonard Aguinaldo, Virgilio Aviado, BenCab, Marina Cruz, Emmanuel Garibay, Kawayan de Guia, Winner Jumalon, Arturo Luz, Raffy Napay, Leeroy New, Ramon Orlina, Soler Santos, Rodel Tapaya, and Olan Ventura. Also on exhibit at the museum’s Print Gallery is Philippine Views, an exhibition of 18th to 19th century prints. The BenCab Museum is located at Km. 6 Asin Road, Tuba, Metro Baguio.

Kulay Diwa Gallery of Philippine Contemporary Art presents Aaron Bautista’s one-man show, Abstracting Angono’s Rustic Scenes. Mr. Bautista belongs to the third generation of Angono artists and belongs to the Neo-Angono Artists Collective, a group that has been exploring art using public spaces through contemporary means and medium. The exhibit runs until Jan. 7. For details call (632) 624-4344 or e-mail bobbit@kulay-diwa.com.

Artinformal  has several exhibit which are ongoing until Dec. 28. These are idyls by Salvador Alonday at the Main Gallery, an installation of recent works in stoneware; Rebuilding Blocks by José Santos III at The Big Room, in which he transforms and presents individual rocks into objects that show the material in all its rawness; and Mythamporphosis by Raena Abella at The Inner Room, a meditation on mythology, nostalgia, and transformation. The gallery is located at 277 Connecticut St., San Juan.

Samsung Electronics Philippines and the Yuchengco Museum present a tribute exhibition to National Artist for Visual Arts Benedicto “BenCab” Cabrera who is is marking 50 years as an artist. The interactive exhibit, dubbed BenCab in Two Movements, is on view at the museum until Jan. 16.  Yuchengco Museum is located at the RCBC Plaza, Corner Ayala and Sen. Gil J. Puyat Avess., Makati City. For details e-mail info@yuchengcomuseum.org or visit http://yuchengcomuseum.org.

The Metropolitan Museum of Manila takes its turn in celebrating the 50 creative years of National Artist BenCab (Benedicto Cabrera) with a retrospective exhibition that will run until Feb. 27. The museum is located at the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas Complex, Roxas Blvd., Manila. For details, e-mail info@metmuseum.ph.

The Mind Museum presents A Glass of the Sea, an immersive, interactive and constantly updated exhibition on the discoveries from the Verde Island Passage in the Philippines, also dubbed as the “center of the center of marine biodiversity.” The exhibit runs until the end of the year, then will go on tour around the country. The Mind Museum is at JY Campos Park, 3rd Ave., Bonifacio Global City. For details, call 909-6463.

Galleria Duemila in partnership Greenbelt presents New Life, a public sculpture exhibition by Impy Pilapil. The exhibit runs until Feb. 28, 2016 at Greenbelt Park, Makati City. For details, call 831-9990, e-mail gduemila@gmail.com, or visit www.galleriaduemila.com.

PERFORMANCE

Philippine Philharmonic Orchestra presents the concert PPO Concert Series IV on Dec. 18, 8 p.m., at the Main Theater of the Cultural Center of the Philippines, Roxas Blvd., Pasay City. Yoshikazu Fukumura will conduct the orchestra on a program that includes Tchaikovsky’s Symphony No. 2 “Little Russian.” For details, visit www.ticketworld.com.ph, or call 891-9999.

Children’s show Hi-5 House of Dreams will have performances on Dec. 18 to 21 at the Newport Performing Arts Theater, Resorts World Manila, Pasay City. The musical play is set during the big Hi-5 sleepover party, where, with the help of Chats the “Dream Meister,” and her magical Dream Catcher, the group journeys on some wild dream adventures. For details, visit www.ticketworld.com.ph, or call 891-9999.

The Cultural Center of the Philippines (CCP) and the Bayanihan Folk Arts Foundation present Fiesta Folkloriada 2015, on Dec. 20, 8 p.m., at the CCP Main Theater, Roxas Blvd., Pasay City. Fiest Folkloriada is an international folk dance festival that aims to promote solidarity and goodwill among participating countries, and features performing ensembles from all over the world who showcase their unique cultural heritage through folk dance and music. For details, visit www.ticketworld.com.ph, or call 891-9999.

The holiday season at Shangri-La Plaza  features a great deal of music. Voces Manila performs on Dec. 21, 5 p.m., at the Grand Atrium, while the all-male choral ensemble Koro Ilustrado takes over the East Wing’s East Atrium with classic and contemporary tunes on Dec. 21, 7:30 p.m. The Hail Mary the Queen Children’s Choir, best known for singing “We are All God’s Children” with Jamie Rivera, the official theme song for the Papal Visit of Pope Francis, will perform on Dec. 22, 5 p.m., at the Main Wing Grand Atrium. Soloists Arthur Manuntag and Shiela Valderrama-Martinez follow at 6:30 p.m. on the same day at the East Atrium, followed by the UE Chorale at 7:30 p.m. It is the turn of the Kilyawan Boys Choir on Dec. 27, 5 p.m. at the Main Wing, and The Executives Band will rock the East Atrium stage at 7:30 p.m. For inquiries, call 370-2500 loc. 593 or visit www.facebook.com/shangrilaplazaofficialfanpage.

Robinsons Malls nationwide will celebrate the holidays with a slew of musical performances plus entertaining shows and activities for kids. For the children, there is the Jungle Book Jive, a live show from Australia featuring Mowgli and his friends, which will have performances at Robinsons Sta. Rosa and Robinsons Place Bacolod on Dec. 19; Robinsons Place Manila, Robinsons Place Malolos, and Robinsons Fuente on Dec. 20; and Robinsons Magnolia and Novaliches on Dec. 21. Robinsons Place Lipa will host the Jungle Book Playland. Meanwhile, the Jungle Book Jive Photoland lets kids take souvenir photos of this experience at Robinsons Place Las Piñas, Robinsons Place Imus, and Robinsons Sta. Rosa. Animated mechanical displays bring children to the Winter Park and the Winter Wonderland. The animated Winter displays are running at Robinsons Place Antipolo, Pangasinan, Gensan, Dumaguete, Bacolod, and Butuan, and at Robinsons Metro East, Robinsons Ilocos, Fuente and Cybergate Cebu. The popular Giant Lantern Festival kicks off at Robinsons Starmills Pampanga on Dec. 19, with nightly shows of the Giant Lanterns held from Dec. 20-23, Dec. 25-30, and Jan. 1-6 at 6:30 p.m. and 7:30 p.m. There will also be fireworks display across the many Robinsons Malls in the country. Meanwhile, shoppers will be serenaded with the hottest hits and all-time favorite Christmas tunes by Ely Buendia (Robinsons Place Manila on Dec. 18, and Robinsons Magnolia on Dec. 19, at 6 p.m.), The Company (Robinsons Galleria on Dec. 18, at 5 p.m.), Sitti Navarro (Robinsons Place Las Piñas on Dec. 19, 5 p.m.), and Juris Fernandez (Robinsons Place Angeles on Dec. 20, at 5 p.m.).

Bonifacio Global City (BGC) literally wraps up the development in holiday cheer with larger than life gift bows to mark the season. At the heart of all of this are a series of activities and events geared towards the community. The Christmas Box Spectacular will be performed at the main stage every night, while the Wandering Minstrels sing familiar holiday tunes. A Christmas Symphony will be performed at Bonifacio High Street on Dec. 19; and there will also be performances by employees from Globe, Deutsche Bank, St. Luke’s Medical Center, the NET Group and The Mind Museum to name a few, over the holidays. Grab a Santa Hat by presenting receipts worth P2,500 from Bonifacio High Street establishments. Each hat will allow the wearer access to selected holiday activities such as Meet and Greet Santa, Santa’s Mail Station and Christmas Carriage Rides. Alternatively, a donation of P500 can get you a Santa hat as well. BGCitizens, however, need only present any proof of residence or employment to get one free Santa hat. Everyone is invited to donate gifts and wrap boxes on Saturdays of December, in a project by Fort Bonifacio Development Foundation which will deliver these presents to the children of the different barangays. For the full holiday schedule of activities, e-mail info@bgc.com.ph or visit www.bgc.com.ph and www.facebook.com/bonifacioglobalcityph.

Megaworld Lifestyle Malls has officially begun the “Season of Sharing.” There will be musical performances by: Jed Madela on Dec. 19 and X-Factor Australia Grand Winner Marlisa Punzalan on Dec. 27 at Lucky Chinatown. Venice Piazza at McKinley Hill host a performance by Marlisa Punzalan on Dec. 26. At Eastwood City, meet Santa and the Minions every weekend. Children’s play Jack and the Beanstalk and a meet-and-greet with Dibo the Gift Dragon, will be held on Dec. 27 the Venice Piazza at McKinley Hill. Grand fireworks displays will be held every weekend at 8 p.m. in Eastwood City and Venice Piazza at McKinley Hill, and 7 p.m. at Lucky Chinatown. The malls will also be holding raffles in its Gift of Joy Holiday Promo. A Volkswagen Beetle, a condominium unit at Eastwood Le Grand Tower 2, and P1 million worth of jewelry from Rustan’s Silver Vault are up for grabs for those who will spend at least P2,000 at Eastwood City, Newport City, and Lucky Chinatown, or P1,000 at Venice Piazza, Forbes Town Center, The Clubhouse at Temple Drive and Paseo Center. For details call the Megaworld Lifestyle Malls Concierge at 709-9888, 709-0888, 0917-838-0111 or visit www.megaworldlifestylemalls.com.

Bituing Walang Ningning (The Musical) has  performances at the Newport Performing Arts Theater in Resorts World Manila until January. Starring Mark Bautista, Antoinette Taus and Monica Cuenco, it is based on the famous film of the same name about an established star who finds herself competing for fame and love with a newcomer. For details, visit www.ticketworld.com.ph, or call 891-9999.

Why Disney blew up more than 30 years of Star Wars canon

WHILE the arrival of Star Wars: The Force Awakens is a new beginning for the storied franchise, it’s a painful reminder of something else: More than 30 years of novel, toy, game, and comic book tie-ins collectively known as the Star Wars Expanded Universe. In April 2014, Disney — which had purchased the series in 2012, when it bought Lucasfilm — announced that all such previous efforts would have no bearing on future Star Wars projects. It was, as Obi-Wan Kenobi might have put it, “as if millions of voices suddenly cried out in terror and were suddenly silenced.” In its place would be a new Expanded Universe, one crafted to complement Disney’s multiyear plan for the world’s most beloved space opera.

The casual viewer of a Star Wars movie may think that the only stories extant are the ones in the (now) seven films, but the Expanded Universe used George Lucas’s films as a launching pad for new narratives. As early as 1978, Kenner toy company’s action figures gave names to characters otherwise unmentioned in the movies. Who can forget Walrus Man at the Mos Eisley cantina, or Lando’s co-pilot Nien Numb — to say nothing of Sy Snoodles and the Rebo Band — in Return of the Jedi.

“I felt a great disturbance in the Force, as if millions of voices suddenly cried out in terror, and were suddenly silenced.” — Obi-Wan Kenobi

The original Expanded Universe was scattershot — a tabletop role-playing game here, a comic book there — but that had changed by 1991 with Timothy Zahn’s book Heir to the Empire. Many fans viewed the text as the first installment of sequels George Lucas never made. The novel reached The New York Times fiction best-sellers list.

What differentiated the Expanded Universe from such corporate-owned mythologies as Doctor Who or Battlestar Galactica was that it was not just tolerated by the creator of Star Wars but managed by him as well. “When I said [other people] could make their own Star Wars stories, we decided that, like Star Trek, we would have two universes: My universe and then this other one,” Lucas told Starlog magazine in 2005. “They try to make their universe as consistent with mine as possible, but obviously they get enthusiastic and want to go off in other directions.”

Lucasfilm licensed a slew of media that added to the adventures of Luke, Leia, and Han, as well those of as completely new characters. Eventually, more than 100 novels were written by dozens of authors, all with Lucas’s blessing. Clean as the Expanded Universe may have been, it still had inconsistencies, just as anything made by many different people would. That’s why fans were in fear after Disney purchased Lucasfilm in 2012.

Aside from the six movies (the original trilogy and three prequels from the last decade) and an animated series called The Clone Wars that ran from 2008 to 2014, Disney shunted everything released before April 25, 2014 to the side under the “Legends” banner, removing it from the Star Wars timeline. The company’s stated goal was “to give maximum creative freedom to the filmmakers” — J. J. Abrams in particular, who had by then signed on to direct an Episode VII.

Since then, Disney has set about creating its own expanded universe. New timeline-approved Star Wars cartoons, comic books, and video games began appearing last fall, as well as seven adult books touching on everything from the prequel films (Dark Disciple) to the gap between the trilogies (New Dawn, Tarkin, and Lords of the Sith) and the unseen moments between the first three movies (Heir to the Jedi and Battlefront: Twilight Company). Most exciting of all has been early hints as to what really happened after Return of the Jedi (Aftermath), and what will appear in the upcoming film.

The new books have been solid so far (something that couldn’t always be said about prior Expanded Universe material), and four of the titles have cracked The New York Times fiction best-sellers list so far.

That’s not to say that the original isn’t missed. “What I miss the most is that the [Expanded Universe] truly made me feel like I was entering a galaxy far, far away that was even bigger than the one I saw in the canon films and TV series,” said James Akinaka, a site administrator for the online Star Wars encylopedia, Wookieepedia. “The world-building that occurred in the [Expanded Universe] was incredible, and it will be a while before the current Star Wars continuity can reflect that.”

So the Expanded Universe may have been wiped from the canon, but it has not been forgotten. As John Jackson Miller, one of the new novels’ authors, said last year: “The thing about ‘Legends’ — and that’s the word on the cover of the previous material — legends can be true, in part or in whole.” — Bloomberg

The Five Key Decisions Made in the UN Climate Deal in Paris

ENVOYS to the United Nations (UN) climate talks handed down a 31-page document on Saturday outlining their boldest steps yet to rein in global warming. Here are the key points of the text, along with comment on why the decisions made in Paris matter:

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Epson lights up Capitol Commons Park with holiday show

AS A WAY to say thanks and spread the holiday cheer — and to show off its high-brightness projectors — Epson Philippines is celebrating its first Christmas as “the brand of choice in projectors” and “the dominant projector brand in the Philippines” (according to a company press release) by doing a 3D-projection mapping show at the Capitol Commons Park in Pasig City.

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Disney’s Star Wars marketing force reaches for female fans

LOS ANGELES — Star Wars actress Daisy Ridley smiles on the cover of Glamour magazine, stormtrooper necklaces are on sale at Kay Jewelers, and commercials for the new film The Force Awakens are running during Kim Kardashian’s reality TV show.

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